The Northern Lights 1: Howard Russell Butler (1856-1934) 2,3,4: Sydney Laurence (1865-1940)

non-writers will never understand the mental illness of writing an entire conversation in your head while doing dishes and then forgetting every word the second you open a blank doc

“Forget about it.”

“But, Dad!”

“I said no.”

“This is completely unfair. I’m an adult witch and –”

“– And as long as you live under my roof, you do as I say. And I say you’re not going out alone with a boy, unless he makes his intentions for you clear.”

Lily Evans huffed and turned away from her father’s sitting form, as he returned to his newspaper without the slightest concern about ruining his youngest daughter’s love life.

She ran her palm over her face in despair. It was all James Potter’s fault. Stupid James Potter and his stupid smile that set her heart racing and his stupid kiss she couldn’t stop thinking about.

Read the full story on AO3!

Completed, 7.4k words.

This story hit 250 kudos today! I am so thankful for the reception it's got - I had a blast exploring Sirius and Petunia in tandem with Jily, and it's wonderful to see it so appreciated! Thank you all so much for reading!! ❤❤❤

A nurse has heart attack and describes what she felt like when having one

I am an ER nurse and this is the best description of this event that I have ever heard. 

 FEMALE HEART ATTACKS 

 I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is description is so incredibly visceral that I feel like I have an entire new understanding of what it feels like to be living the symptoms on the inside. Women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have… you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor the we see in movies. Here is the story of one woman’s experience with a heart attack: 

 "I had a heart attack at about 10:30 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior emotional trauma that one would suspect might have brought it on. I was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, ‘A-A-h, this is the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up. A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you’ve been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you’ve swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn’t have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my initial sensation–the only trouble was that I hadn’t taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m. 

After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my aorta spasms), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR). This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws. ‘AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was happening – we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, haven’t we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, Dear God, I think I’m having a heart attack! I lowered the foot rest dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, If this is a heart attack, I shouldn’t be walking into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else… but, on the other hand, if I don’t, nobody will know that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in a moment. 

I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics… I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn’t feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts. She said she was sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to un-bolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in. I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost consciousness, as I don’t remember the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the radiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions (probably something like ‘Have you taken any medications?’) but I couldn’t make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side stints to hold open my right coronary artery. 

I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stents. Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned first hand. 

1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body, not the usual men’s symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didn’t know they were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping they’ll feel better in the morning when they wake up… which doesn’t happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you’ve not felt before. It is better to have a ‘false alarm’ visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be! 2. Note that I said ‘Call the Paramedics.’ And if you can take an aspirin. Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER - you are a hazard to others on the road. Do NOT have your panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what’s happening with you instead of the road. Do NOT call your doctor – he doesn’t know where you live and if it’s at night you won’t reach him anyway, and if it’s daytime, his assistants (or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics. He doesn’t carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later. 3. Don’t assume it couldn’t be a heart attack because you have a normal cholesterol count. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it’s unbelievably high and/or accompanied by high blood pressure). MIs are usually caused by long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let’s be careful and be aware. The more we know the better chance we could survive to tell the tale.“

Reblog, repost, Facebook, tweet, pin, email, morse code, fucking carrier pigeon this to save a life! I wish I knew who the author was. I’m definitely not the OP, actually think it might be an old chain email or even letter from back in the day. The version I saw floating around Facebook ended with “my cardiologist says mail this to 10 friends, maybe you’ll save one!” And knew this was way too interesting not to pass on.

snopes.com says this one’s true.

Save a life–Reblog.

Female heart attacks are much different, and most people don’t know it!

This is so much more helpful than the fucking lists that basically describe everything that happens during a really nasty panic attack and then tell you to go seek help as if you don’t have an anxiety disorder that does this to you on a regular basis and can afford to go to the emergency room.

Auto-reblog.

Many women have silent heart attacks as well, where there are no symptoms at all until BAM! Then it happens.

Hum. Always loved red-haired girl

saw someone say that they don't read fics under 10k and had to laugh because more fool you, that is where all the bangers are. obviously I'm biased but truly nothing hits like a 1.5k fic with a lowercase title from some obscure poet where nothing actually happens and yet you emerge blinking with a completely new outlook on the character. infinitely rereadable. like a perfectly crafted pastry. I'm gobbling them up!

i literally love when people realize positive reinforcement works like yes its so silly isnt it. but it literally works humans love juice reward too

Back in grad school I TA'd a couple 400 level courses on stone tool production and zooarchaeology that involved a lot of technical memorization that required the students to learn complex terminology very quickly. They were two of the only such undergrad courses the program had (I think the third was Mesoamerican Pottery, and there was a grad course on Human Osteology), so none of them would have encountered much if any of this info in the two years since their first intro courses. There were over a dozen quizzes in each course, nearly one a week, and the grades were known to be abysmally low compared to the lab reports because of how much time you needed to spend in the lab handling the material in order to study for it.

I like being paid to have fun, so I bought some Transformers stickers and put one on every quiz that got over 90% (ie. the 'A' range). Any quiz that got an A+ got Optimus Prime himself. B grades still got a "good job!!" and any passing grade at all got a smiley face, but no sticker.

Y'all, 4th year arky courses are FULL of nerds. The MINUTE the first quizzes were handed back they went nuts over the stickers. There were stars in their eyes, they were crowing in excitement. These were students in their mid-twenties. Only one person got an Optimus Prime on that quiz, and when I told them the sticker rubrick and the requirements to get Optimus you could practically see the fire it lit. They would get those stickers. Optimus Prime was going to be theirs.

I fucking ran out of stickers TWICE throughout those courses. I had to go and buy whole packs JUST TO HAVE ENOUGH OPTIMUSES (Optimi?) for all the A+ quizzes that came in every time. That meant i had more generic TF stickers to promote the B grade papers to stickerdom. The materials lab was full of students every week, studying for these quizzes. They hyped each other up for them. They petitioned me to sticker their lab reports and final projects too (of course I did).

The prof, a delightful 80-something socks-and-sandals hippy of a guy who supervised my honours thesis, was fucking beside himself over this. He thought it was the best thing ever. He joked that the marks that semester were so abnormally high that he needed to look over the tests himself in case I was going too easy on them (I wasn't, those TF stickers were expensive). He had to look over them anyway in case *I* made a technical mistake grading them, which meant he was the first to see the stickers each time XD

Anyway, it's true. I've yet to meet an adult who didn't enjoy a sparkly sticker reward.

this is actually like my third or fourth rodeo so i sort of get it but sort of dont

in some ways worse than my first rodeo cause i feel like i should be better at it by now

*not counting people you knew irl first. use your discretion for other edge cases

gentle reminder that you’re still a writer even if you haven’t written in days. or weeks. or months. or if you take a long break and don’t write in years.

Asking AI to remove clothes from anyone should be enough to put people on the sex offender registry for life

you need to make more self-indulgent art btw. hyper-specific self-indulgent niche shit that appeals to You Specifically and maybe nobody else will get it or even like it but that's the point.

Justin posted the 1956 house he and his wife bought in Jasper, Indiana. It is a complete time capsule. Absolutely NOTHING has been updated or touched.  

Everything is still here- look at the appliances. All original. This is not like the classy expensive updated mid century homes we’ve seen before. 

The furniture has to be the original pieces and sets the previous owners bought. 

The wall hangings are aged.

This is an interesting piece, this bar. 

Look at the bathroom- pink fixtures.

Those lamps!

The master bath has a yellow tub and fixtures.

A 2nd bdm. Even the bedding is vintage.

And, this bath has blue Fixtures. Wow, I would definitely keep them.

More cool lamps and original furniture in the knotty pine family room. 

Wow, look at the built-ins in the office.

The lower floor.

The basement is cool- look at that floor! And, the TV. The bar is classic. I wonder if they were leaving any of this.

Off the rec room is a 2nd kitchen. A pink fridge!

And, there’s this room, too. Look at the stone wall.

for the love of old houses

I’m reblogging this just because it’s great reference. Who knows if i ever get the chance to draw a fifties living room?

@teatotally – please join me in whimpering with a strong need to go to there.

Wow, honestly this is the first time I’ve seen a pristine 50s house that made me go “Oh THAT’S why they made those choices”??? Like, you usually only see old houses looking VERY worn-down and kinda sad, but this looks like we time-traveled into the past when it was new and tidy, and suddenly some of those choices that feel odd today make SENSE, because while they were new and loved, the now-odd furniture and appliance colors and whatnot look NICE. It’s still an “outdated” style but it doesn’t look “old.” Very neat glimpse at history!