October 2020 archive

16
Oct
2020

Why do you do the thing you do, tiny mortal?

categories: personal; word count: 358 words

For some reason, Bub is transfixed with pouring things like seasoning salt into the trash can… and there were two occasions where he actually took some of his homeschool plants and poured the soil from them into the kitchen sink because they were within his reach. Luckily nothing had been growing in them all the times that he did this, because for the life of me I couldn’t get a single daisy to start from a pack of seeds that I had (and I’ve gotten plenty of things to grow in the past, so I speculate that the problem was the batch of seeds, not me), and he did this after I had simply put a fresh batch of soil into the pots. I’m still confused.

I hide things where I can though in the hopes that he won’t as easily be able to get a hold of, or grab, certain things… and so far it has had mixed results because Bub is crafty and he can, in some cases, eventually find a way to what I’ve put “out of reach” to him. We’ve had several conversations about this, and I think that he understands enough after every conversation to stop engaging in this behavior, but for some reason it continues in cycles where he’s trying to reach for the seasoning that we use in our food to pour it somewhere (and sometimes it’s even been in the dog’s food that he’s poured it in, which has caused me to have to throw that food away and get her some fresh food) or dumping small pots of soil down the kitchen sink. Luckily the pots are so small that the soil effortlessly goes down the drain and passes through them, but the fact of the matter is that I don’t want him to be engaging in these behaviors at all and he seriously needs to stop them.

That, and it’s uncomfortable to “wait around the corner” for him to start this back up, because this behavior comes in cycles with him for some strange reason that I have yet to figure out. Sort of like with the toilet…

15
Oct
2020

I don’t think I’ve ever actually mentioned it here.

categories: personal; word count: 328 words

You can kind of see it in the picture that I used for this most recent Wordless Wednesday, but I have what is called brachydactyly — an inherited condition that causes unusually shortened fingers (and in my case, it appears to be just my fingers that are affected, as my feet and toes seem fine). My form of it is not as severe as some people’s, which is why I “got away” with people thinking that I simply had small hands as I grew up… and a lot of people, even now, simply think that I have small fingers and hands. And although that’s the case, my fingers and hands — mainly my fingers — are abnormally small, especially in proportion to what they should be. The type that I appear to have, or the one that appears to most line up with the structuring of my hand, is Sugarman’s. I don’t completely fall in line with any of the listed types of brachydactyly even though you can tell that I have it, but of the various types, Sugarman’s brachydactyly is the one that most resembles my hand size. And again, I don’t have it as severely as some people… but I do have “small hands”.

Some people have also gone a step further than that and have described my hands as “small, weird hands”.

I’ve actually found that you can get away with more being, or passably presenting as, female, and being short or small. I didn’t find out until I was an adult that there was actually an explanation for my hands being the way that they were (and I didn’t even find this out until I found out why I could not adequately follow nail polish tutorials… of all of the reasons to find something like that out, huh?), let alone that it was an anomaly.

I’m sure some of you can imagine the relief that I felt finding out that there was a scientific reason for this.

13
Oct
2020

Coming up with the perfect pen name.

categories: personal; word count: 454 words

Truth be told, I haven’t exactly needed to come up with a pen name because I’ve found myself using two monikers more than anything else when I’m not using my own name: (Oerba Dia) Vanille or Serah (Farron), depending on where you find me. This might surprise some people given that I’m… a bit more careful than most about what I publicly post, but I haven’t conclusively come up with a “pen name” that is uniquely mine as much as I use monikers that pay homage to favorite characters of mine from, up until this point, video games that I love. My Discord name happens to be Vanille, and that one was easier to snag because Discord assigns numbers after your name (Name#Numbers), which means that you can probably get the “name” that you want on Discord without having to work hard at it. As for my domain, I was actually surprised that this URL wasn’t registered. Both happen to be favorite characters of mine in the Final Fantasy XIII series.

At any rate, a lot of Satanists have come up with pen names for themselves because they are not in positions to where they can “out themselves” as such — they may not have supportive family members, it may be perilous for their job if that information were to become public knowledge attached to their real names, or for any number of reasons. I wish that we didn’t have to live in a world where one’s religious views, or even lack thereof, meant that we had to safeguard ourselves against others’ criticism, but we still do, even though I would like to take the time to point out the irony in Christians claiming to be persecuted because of their religious views when they are anything but in today’s world. I don’t feel like I can openly wear my necklace from The Satanic Temple in a lot of situations, or even a shirt. I don’t quite feel like I can openly wear some of my other Satanic jewelry (over my shirt, of course, since my skin allergies are that bad) because someone might recognize the lore it comes from and attempt to start something with me “in the name of Jesus”. I don’t feel like I can tell a whole lot of people what my religious views honestly are. So I definitely get the appeal of having a pen name, and have begun to give it some thought, just to have one in the back of my mind in case I ever do authentically need one. (Some people call them “Satanic names”, heh.)

I suppose something will come to me in due time, something that just sounds so right I go, “That’s the one!”

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