Best posts made by Aria

Sooooooooo, my company just updated their dress code and I'm super excited. We're adopting a "dress for your day" policy that now allows jeans, something that never would've been considered even just two years ago. (For reference: I work in the finance industry, which is notoriously conservative re: professional image. They only stopped making all employees regardless of level wear full suits and ties to work in, like..... early 2013.)

But! But. Even more exciting than that:

"At X, all gender identities are respected, and employees are welcome to dress in a way that allows them to express their gender identity and individuality."

Please excuse me. I'm getting a little watery-eyed with pride over my employer.

Fuck bronchitis.

#Camacho2020 -- At least he'd listen to the smartest guy in the room.

<stares at bra 'sale'>

Look, fuckers. I get it. Bras come in endless shapes and sizes and colors and price points.....

Except for us big-titty ladies, where it's like "Now in plain beige! For $70! And it's probably still not gonna fit quite right!"

But whatever this two hundred and five dollar "miracle" bra bullshit you're trying to sell me is, at that price point? I could probably pay a vaguely hot graduate student weeping into his bank account to just walk around behind me carrying my tits in his hands and giving shoulder massages on demand.

This isn't just an ADHD thing. I have issues with anxiety. Like, once went out on short-term disability because a cardiologist told me that if the clonopin didn't work, she'd have to put me on beta blockers so I wouldn't have a stress-induced heart attack at thirty level issues with anxiety.

I have had multiple people ask me how I have managed to stay so detached and calm for most of this pandemic. They think I'm kidding when I'm like, "Ohh. The way you're feeling right now? Is how my brain is all the time. The way my brain is all the time? Is designed for dealing with shit like this."

I am really, really good at calmly and sedately conducting risk assessments and contingency planning. I am really, really good at staring a crisis in the face and breaking it down into small, manageable, actionable chunks that will make the Worst Case Scenario measurably better in small but steady ways. It's the in-between where everything is ambiguous, where something bad is looking likely to happen, but we don't when or how severe it's going to be that my brain catastrophizes every goddamn thing and is like "HOLY SHIT, ARIA. We are all going to die AND be homeless AND lose your job AND also, fyi, EVERYONE HATES YOU."

@JinShei said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Tinuviel I literally could do this!

Coming to you now from Estate Road 2, where three families have converged on the side of the street to have a barbeque and let their children play on a bouncy castle, despite the perils of COVID-19. Today, on the JinShei Show, we ask, do people really dislike their kids and friends this much? Should we just let them all catch this and die?

I mean, this absolutely horrible to admit and, like, probably the 837th reason I'm going to hell....

But every now and then, I look at someone doing something really, really obviously stupid that they have publicly, loudly, repeatedly been warned against re: COVID and I think to myself, "....Maybe this one is actually doing us all a favor and we just don't realize it yet."

Then I remember everyone else they're putting at risk and get pissed off again.

@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@HorrorHound said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

You mean every Keanu Reeves movie - ever?

I suppose except the ones where he plays a toy, a bush, and Theodore Logan, right?

Bill & Ted Face the Music drops on August 28, 2020 and I AM SO FUCKING HERE FOR IT.

@JinShei said in RL Anger:

Someone who is retired: We need to do these five things (meaning JinShei and JinDaughter need to do these things)

Someone who is retired: We need to do these five things (meaning JinShei and JinDaughter need to do these things)

My response to these sorts of people: "That's an excellent idea! Thank you so much for volunteering. I'll let everyone know to direct anyone with questions about those five things to you."

Folks tend to back down real fast.

@Macha said in Dead Celebrities 2020:

John Lewis.

....Fuck.

That moment in grad school when you seriously spend twenty minutes staring at an assignment, scribbling away on a scratch pad, trying to remember how to do ninth grade math.

Fuck algebra, y'all.

I thought you would all like to know that the Emotional Bleed thread has just inspired me to this out loud:

"Your feelings are valid. Your behavior is not."

To my cat.

@insomniac7809 left for work and every time he does, Pasha feels the need to sit in my office literally screaming for at least ten minutes. No amount of comforting him will work. No amount of treats or attention will soothe him. Even as I cuddle him and give him snacks, he feels the need to vehemently shout at me about how I am insufficiently my husband.

....Basically I'm in an emotionally abusive relationship with a neurotic nine pound cat.

@aria said in RL Anger:

My dog is almost 11 years old. For his breed, the average lifespan is about 10-12.

And thought the vet said he was in remarkably good health for a dog his age and his size just two weeks ago, his back legs gave out on our stairs today. He went sliding backwards - fortunately just three steps - and hit the landing before I could stop it.

He's not hurt, I don't think, except for being even more sore. He's going to vet tomorrow tomorrow to refill his pain pills, now that we're pretty sure the ones that he had previously been on were the source of the coughing that brought him in for a checkup that last time. Will be having X-rays to confirm both.

So follow up from else-thread because I know how the internet works and I'm not just going to be like " a bad thing is probably happening to my dog" and leave y'all hanging. I, too, am the person who watches the horribly gruesome and violent scene in the movie and is like, "But is the dog okay?!?"

Tibs went to the vet again. And fell, again, getting out of the car. At home. Afterwards. Because of course that's when he would fall. (Yes, we have a special system to help him in and out. It usually works, but even that doesn't do much if his legs just cave under him. Yes, we have a helper-harness. No, he won't let us use it to help him because it smashes up against his boy bits when we slip it under him and he understandably Does Not Want.)

He had a little bit of a limp that seems to have resolved within a few minutes and @insomniac7809, being the fucking champ that he is, then carried our old man up the steps like a confused, furry sack of potatoes. He doesn't like being scooped, so he gets hoisted from the middle and just kind of goes limp and dangles. All eighty-five pounds of him. If not for the necessity of it being so super sad, it's also fucking hilarious to watch.

X-rays come back next week to rule out a) any injuries and b) any heart or lung conditions that might've caused the coughing. In the meantime, he's off the old pain meds that probably gave him an ulcer. Dog ibuprofen can do liver damage, which he'd been tested and cleared for, but it can also upset tummy linings due to increased acidic activity. He probably got an esophageal ulcer from it, hence the coughing and the coughs smelling like metal. He is on new pain meds that should significantly improve the issues with his legs and get him back to a point where he can go on short walkies for muscle tone and that will keep him steadier on stairs.

Barring bad x-ray news, World's Best Doggo should be okay for awhile more. And is currently napping on his $100 orthopedic mattress, letting loose a barrage of farts because I gave him bacon for being good at the vet's. Napping and farting from special treats = Tibs living his best life.

(Pro Tip: If you smell something metallic on your pet? It's not metal. That coppery smell is blood and you can't find out why they smell like blood, you need to take them to vet ASAP.)

We've had the harness for a few days now, including a trip to the groomer.

While doggo does not seem overly thrilled at this strange contraption with eighty-seven adjustable straps and buckles, he does seem to thoroughly appreciate the help on the stairs and the hand up when he's trying to get off a mushy surface but his back legs are "stucked and can't get up, Mom!"

So I present the Help 'Em Harness, in case you, too, would like to convert your elderly dog into an easily transported suitcase with a vaguely confused look on its face.

I recommend this video overview for peak "WTF is happening?!?" dog expression.

Present-
Arx: Mia (the 2nd)
Dawn of Defiance: Priskeri

Past-
Haunted Memories: Adina
The Reach: Mowgli
BSOrion: Sera, Atalanta
Fallen World: Some bitchy Mastigos I had for, like, a week.

Please feel free to flail your hands at me theatrically, with either nostalgic delight or long-pent rage, depending on who you are. I'm quite well aware that my presence may cause either and deservedly so.

I have what I feel is an appropriately mature response to his "jokes", by which I mean not mature at all and a bit vulgar but I can't get the spoiler tags to work.

Just imagine Jon Stewart sarcastically laughing before flipping the camera off. And yes, the choice of a Jewish celebratory is most definitely intentional.

My issue with Vampire isn't that I hate Vampire. I love Vampire and all of its themes as written.

My problem with Vampire is that I think it brings out the very worst in players, both IC and OOC, as most of its themes lend themselves to PVP. And because gamers are gamers, in many cases, PVP pretty much turns into the IC equivalent of the Hog Pit.

So... fuck that noise. I'mma peace out.