Hey, y’all. So, I’m trying to move away from toxic family and also to give myself a fresh start. My initial plan was to move in September to save me from having to deal with another winter, but it’s been pushed back to March/April of next year. I’ve decided I want to move to Georgia, which is as far away from my parents as possible without moving inland; I would, but I can’t be landlocked, y’know?
My goal is to reach $20,000, hopefully by the end of the year, which would pay for the move and rent and utilities for a few months while I get on my feet.
I have many ways you can donate, which are: Ko-fi: themythicalattic P*ypal: mikkibyrnes V*nmo/C*shapp: stomecko
Also, if anyone has any insights about Georgia, specifically around the Peachtree City region, I’m all ears.
Thanks for listening. Please boost this post, yes?
I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes I honked again. Since this was going to be my last ride of my shift I thought about just driving away, but instead I put the car in park and walked up to the door and knocked.. ‘Just a minute’, answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.
After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90’s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940’s movie.
By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets.
There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.
'Would you carry my bag out to the car?’ she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.
She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.
She kept thanking me for my kindness. 'It’s nothing’, I told her.. 'I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother to be treated.’
'Oh, you’re such a good boy,’ she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked, 'Could you drive
through downtown?’
'It’s not the shortest way,’ I answered quickly..
'Oh, I don’t mind,’ she said. 'I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice.’
I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. 'I don’t have any family left,’ she continued in a soft voice.. ‘The doctor says I don’t have very long.’ I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.
'What route would you like me to take?’ I asked.
For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.
We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.
Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.
As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, 'I’m tired. Let’s go now’.
We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.
Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move.
They must have been expecting her.
I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.
'How much do I owe you?’ She asked, reaching into her purse.
'Nothing,’ I said.
'You have to make a living,’ she answered.
'There are other passengers,’ I responded.
Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.
'You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,’ she said. 'Thank you.’
I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light.. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life..
I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day,I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?
On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life.
We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.
But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.
PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID ~BUT~ THEY WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL.
At the bottom of this great story was a request to forward this - I deleted that request because if you have read to this point, you won’t have to be asked to pass it along you just will…
Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance
🥺💜
Well done lad.
❤️👌❤️👌
This was a beautiful start to my-or anyone’s day. Passing it along…🕉
I feel compelled to pass this every time it comes across my dash….maybe someone see’s it for the first time…….
This has brought tears to my eyes. Like this elderly woman I have no family other than my cats. I have very few remaining friends. I’m not quite ready to move to a nursing home or hospice but I struggle daily to accomplish what I can. I will say THANKS to many of my Followers on Tumblr because you have often brightened my days & made me feel relevant & worthwhile. There is one person in particular - and you know who you are - who has been supportive & always so helpful to me THANKS TO “MEETING” INITIALLY ON TUMBLR. I am so grateful to have you (and your precious puppers) in my life.
Why You Should Keep Fruit In Mason Jars Instead Of The Containers They Come In…….
When you get your fruit home from the grocery store, the first thing you should do is remove it from the plastic containers they’ve come in and recycle them. Next, clean out your sink and fill it with water (you could also use a large bowl). Then, toss in a few tablespoons of distilled vinegar. You’ll then want to submerge your fruit in the water and let it soak for about 10 to 15 minutes. The purpose of this is to get rid of any mold or bacteria on the fruit which is what causes them to go rotten more quickly.
Once the fruit has had a nice soak, remove it from the vinegar water, transfer to a strainer, and rinse with cool water. Leave the fruit out to dry on a tea towel or paper towel. Once dry, transfer the fruit to mason jars and seal up those lids. This is the best way to make your fruit last, particularly berries, which tend to be very prone to mold and bacteria buildup.
And that’s it! Incorporating these few extra steps into preparing and storing fruit can help you eliminate food waste, save money, and keep your fridge stocked with fresh produce for much longer.
helpful advice for people who don’t eat the entire kilo of raspberries on the ten minute walk back from the supermarket, yay!
If you don’t have the time or energy for all this, just rinsing them with a 4:1 water:vinegar mix before you put them in the fridge makes them last a LOT longer, usually 2-3 weeks with no mold. I used to have a huge problem with strawberries getting moldy before we finished them but now they get old and sad and mushy (but still usable in smoothies) after like 2 weeks but no mold!
trans ppl shouldn’t have to out ourselves to not be on the receiving end of “all men are evil and dangerous and i have a right to lash out at them bc they’re my oppressors uwu.” and if ur wondering “then how am i supposed to know who’s my oppressor” consider this: individual human beings u randomly encounter on the street or in the grocery store aren’t ur oppressor. also if ur constantly analyzing the identity of everyone u come into contact with to decide whether or not u can treat them like shit bc u consider them an oppressor, u were probably gonna treat them like shit anyway.
“For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism—a body-wide starvation response that blasts you with hunger hormones and drops your internal temperature until you rise back to your highest weight. Keeping weight off means fighting your body’s energy-regulation system and battling hunger all day, every day, for the rest of your life.
The second big lesson the medical establishment has learned and rejected over and over again is that weight and health are not perfect synonyms. Yes, nearly every population-level study finds that fat people have worse cardiovascular health than thin people. But individuals are not averages: Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Meanwhile, about a quarter of non-overweight people are what epidemiologists call “the lean unhealthy.” A 2016 study that followed participants for an average of 19 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fit fat people.”
A surprising article to find on the Huffington post. I think, especially towards the end, there’s still a saturation of healthism and diet talk (just of the “clean eating” variety), but the information about weight discrimination is absolutely on point, especially within the medical field ignoring decades of research.
Not only do we know that weight loss isn’t sustainable or possible, we also know that weight discrimination kills, in a myriad of ways. If you actually care about “health” then start unlearning your weight bias NOW and realize that fat people are just people who are a different shape.
im gonna be real i do think we need to spend more time as a society encouraging adults to play pretend in structured ways bc what i’m getting from a variety of sources is we all like to make fake shit and pretend to be people we are not
No fr adults would be a lot healthier if their need for play was more easily satisfied. Play is a fundamental human need that does not go away when we exit childhood but it’s treated as childish and frivolous. No bitch that’s how we process our experiences and knowledge and practice emotions of all kinds in a safe space!! Learn how to play again!
what bugs me about it is every other animal on earth engages in play behaviors all the time. for their entire lives. yet for humans for some reason play isn’t considered normal once you’re a certain age? come on bro. crows are rolling down peoples windshields and sheep are jumping on trampolines. go have fun too
To a homophobe, even the most chaste kiss on the cheek between gay people is exactly as disgusting and degenerate as a hardcore BDSM orgy hosted in the town square, so you may as well ally with the BDSM orgy enthusiasts to throw bricks at the cops who are going to try and arrest all of you together anyway.
I once held hands with my husband at an event where my wife was also present, and a concerned parent lectured me about how she didn’t want us to “influence” her son. Our icky gay polyam hand holding was such a threat to this woman that she made a point to corner me away from my partners and get me on my own to lecture me about being “indecent.” If she had been inclined toward violence, I would have been fucked.
Hand holding. That’s all it fucking took.
So catch me at Pride in a leather harness and holding a bat, because if hand holding is all it takes, we owe it to each other to stand together.
We’re here. We’re queer. Get fucking used to it.
The sheer number of LGBT people who have called me a “degenerate” and a “pedophile” and an “abuse apologist” and a “homophobe” and a “woman-beater” over this post, in the less than 24 hours since I have posted it, is proof that it needs to be said.
Call me a degenerate if you want. I don’t care. It has always been the degenerates protecting each other when the cops raid our bars and inspect our clothing and haul us away for being cross-dressing, family-destroying, society-polluting, tranny dyke faggot freaks.
I know who I’d rather have on my side, and it’s not the self-loathing pieces of shit who would rather destroy their own people than dismantle systems of oppression.
You will never be wholesome and pure enough for the bigots, no matter how much you distance yourself from the kinksters. Once they’ve killed all us degenerates, they’re coming for you next. And we won’t be here to fight for you anymore.
cottagecore vegans buying chickens bc tiktok told them chickens are cute and fluffee, then watching said chickens fucking obliterate any small mammal they see, and then getting upset about it has to be, hands down, some of the funniest shit in the world
besties, you bought fat velociraptors. and you’re going to have to come to terms with that
People always think chickens are cute and harmless until they see them attack as someone from a rural town you don’t fuck with chickens
With the exception of 5 years spent in the exurbs, I’ve only lived in cities and even *I* know chickens (AND GEESE) never forgot that they were once dinosaurs.
Every Living Bird is a Dinosaur, and they all Remember. Some remember better than others.
“how would YOU fix the medical system then 😡” im 17 years old
like i dont need to be a carpenter to see that your ikea chair that impales everyone that sits on it and then shatters was put together wrong but that doesnt mean i know how to fix it
If you are silent about your pain they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it - Zora Neale Hurston
This is one of those posts where I feel like I’m doing others and myself a disservice by not sharing. I wish someone had shown me this a long time ago.
Maybe I’d be having to do less work to break out of this shell, now.
