My tiny baby witch collection of knowledge, thoughts and musings
1910-1915 Dress by unknown American maker
silk netting, silk velvet, glass beads, rhinestones
(Indianapolis Museum of Art)
jonphaedrusi keep mentioning the bread pudding incident and not telling the full story and at some point i really should
gallusrostromegalusYes you should.
jonphaedrusim procrastinating so i will tell the story.
despite the incident in question happening about a year and a half ago, it has two preceding incidents, the contents of which are needed in order to understand the full scale of the bread pudding incident.
two facts about me:
1) i recently found out i have what was described to me as “the worst case of adhd that (my therapist) had ever seen”, totally unmedicated and,
2) i cannot reliably count to ten.
so a couple years ago, i tried to get into box-baking. my husband is an incredible baker, and has made some awesome things (including one time a pancake-based strawberry shortcake for my birthday because i hate cake? he’s a gem) but he doesnt always have energy to bake and i crave brownies literally at every minute of every hour of every day, so i was like ok sick ill bake box brownies. thats easy. (i have since, with a liberal amount of help, learned how to reliably box bake precisely one brand of brownie)
the first time, i misread the instructions and made them with the oil and water reversed and only one egg. they were inedible. the second time i realized we had no eggs ¾ of the way through, panicked, put in applesauce but only half the required applesauce, and they came out (mostly) inedible.
so at the time my sister sensibly decided “you cannot bake any more” and i sensibly agreed with her.
last year in the deep swings of my masters-induced depression i figured i had forgotten about a loaf of french bread in my fridge for weeks and it was approximately the same hardness as a stone. i should use it for something! bread pudding. that is what you use stale bread for.
i cook to taste—i rarely use recipes, because of the aforementioned “i have the attention span of a gnat and i cannot count to ten” so using a recipe? pretty much useless. this does not work to bake. so i googled a recipe, figured, okay, i can get the ingredients, and pretty much guess? i closed the recipe immediately afterward, and forgot my laptop even existed within minutes.
things bread pudding requires: stale bread. butter. milk. sugar. cinnamon. raisins. eggs. vanilla. and, if you are southern™, alcohol.
things i had in the house: stale bread. margarine. sugar. pumpkin spice. one egg. vanilla. alcohol.
first i broke up the bread. with a hammer! like you do, for weeks-old french bread. i put it all in a casserole dish, because that was what was clean. no milk? water is fine! throw that shit in! how much water? i dont know. enough to get it wet! submerge all the ingredients. how much sugar? i don’t know. the recipe said brown sugar.
me: can i use the brown sugar to make bread pudding? james: sure. but don’t use much. me: ok. (takes less than a teaspoon of brown sugar, one of the big-ish clumps) that’s enough, right? throw that in there. that’s enough sugar! i don’t need more white sugar.
pumpkin spice is essentially cinnamon! can’t use too much vanilla. just shake a little bit in there. that’s good, that’s enough. how much was that? two drops? plenty! that’s how much vanilla it needs, right? how much margarine? i don’t know! i closed the recipe. let’s get three or four big pats. i don’t have any stick margarine. crack that egg in there.
can’t forget the whiskey! just slop some in there. i’m southern. a dollop? a dollop. a dollop sounds right.
what temperature do you cook bread budding at? i don’t know. this casserole dish is only barely like, a tiny bit full. just coating the bottom. not much, then. 250 is probably right?
and then i forgot i was cooking until the kitchen began to smell.
the object which was removed from the oven was approximately the same size and density as a bowl full of very, very burned sand. two square inches of it was the correct texture for bread pudding—i.e, soft, squishy. the rest of it was as like unto hardened lava, and the same color. a single taste revealed it to taste like wet, disgusting bread or almost sort of exactly-unlike-bread-pudding but in the saddest way imaginable, the potential had been there, and had not been achieved. the brown sugar had not even dissolved it was just there. in a chunk. burned into the bread. it all smelled strongly of whiskey. it took about three weeks to soak totally off of my casserole dish, full of daily-replaced soapy boiling water.
so i’m not allowed to bake any more.
gallusrostromegalusThis is the most “Cooking while ADHD” thing I’ve ever read and I feel much better about Switching “3 Eggs & 4 cups flour” to “4 eggs and 3 Cups flour” earlier this morning.
jonphaedrushey remember this post? in case you’re wondering “i think i might have adhd and it’s too much work to get it diagnosed/medicated” then let me tell you i now regularly bake bread from scratch, bake cakes, have perfected my ideal chocolate chip cookie recipe, and i can make three different types of biscotti. and also pie. and quiche.
if you need something to tell you “it’s worth doing the work to go get diagnosed and medicated for your adhd” let it be that i, jon “bread pudding incident” phaedrus, am now not only allowed but encouraged to bake.
gallusrostromegalusWE LOVE A SUCESS STORY!
bromanticallygod i hate how normalized diet culture and shit like bmi and calories are. bmi is based on eugenics. calories are a measurement of how much energy something gives u and not at all of how much weight or fat ull gain. diets have been proven to be harmful and ultimately unhelpful in actually losing weight. fatness has been largely proven to not be inherently unhealthy and doesnt inherently cause health issues.
if anyone has more good links to add on then please do and if anyone knows more on this stuff than me then dont hesitate to correct me!
more-beaniesFOOD IS GOOD. FOOD IS GOOD. FOOD IS GOOD!! if you’re eating, ever, and even/especially if it’s hard, know that i am personally SO SO proud of you
normal-horoscopesThe BMI was invented by Adolphe Quetelet, the 19th century statistician who invented phrenologist anthropometry. He wasn't just a eugenicist, he was one of the founding fathers of racist pseudoscience. Please do not listen to anything he has to say about your body.
uglymelon“And get this: While epidemiologists use BMI to calculate national obesity rates (nearly 35 percent for adults and 18 percent for kids), the distinctions can be arbitrary. In 1998, the National Institutes of Health lowered the overweight threshold from 27.8 to 25—branding roughly 29 million Americans as fat overnight—to match international guidelines. But critics noted that those guidelines were drafted in part by the International Obesity Task Force, whose two principal funders were companies making weight loss drugs.”
Source: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/why-bmi-big-fat-scam/
Why BMI is a big fat scam
Body mass index is used to sell weight loss drugs, set insurance premiums, and counsel patients. There's just one little problem.
https://href.li/?https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/why-bmi-big-fat-scam/
doctorfoxtorseriously the more people keep going on and on about 'unhealthy weights' the more i'm convinced they don't actually give two shits about health
condensed-theorem-shopOne of the most bizarrely cool people I’ve ever met was an oral surgeon who treated me after a ridiculous accident (that’s another story), Dr. Z.
Dr. Z. was, easily, the best and most competent doctor or dentist I’ve ever encountered – and after that accident, I encountered quite a number. He came stunningly highly recommended, had an excellent record, and the most calming bedside manner I’ve ever seen.
That last wasn’t the sweet gentle caretaking sort of manner, which some nurses have but you wouldn’t expect to see in a surgeon. No; when Dr. Z. told me that one of my broken molars was too badly damaged to save, and I (being seventeen and still moderately in shock) broke down crying, he stared at me incredulously and said, in a tone of utter bemusement, “But I am very good.”
I stopped crying on the spot. In the last twenty-four hours or so of one doctor after another, no one had said anything that reassuring to me. He clearly just knew his own competence so well that the idea of someone being scared anyway was literally incomprehensible to him. What more could I possibly ask for?
(He was right. The procedure was very extended, because the tooth that needed to be removed was in bits, but there was zero pain at any point. And, as he promised, my teeth were so close together that they shifted to fill the gap to where there genuinely is none anymore, it’s just a little easier to floss on that side.)
But Dr. Z.’s insane competence wasn’t just limited to oral surgery.
When I met Dr. Z., he, like most doctors I’ve had, asked me if I was in college, and where, and what I was studying. When I say “math,” most doctors respond with “oh, wow, good for you” or possibly “what do you want to do with that after college?”
Dr. Z. wanted to know what kind of math.
I gave him the thirty-second layman’s summary that I give people who are foolish enough to ask that. He responded with “oh, you mean–” and the correct technical terms. I confirmed that was indeed what I meant (and keep in mind, this was upper-division college math, you don’t take this unless you’re a math major). He asked cogent follow-up questions, and there ensued ten or so minutes of what I’d call “small talk” except for how it was an intensely technical mathematical discussion.
He didn’t, as far as I can tell, have any kind of formal math background. He just … knew stuff.
I was a competitive fencer at this point in time, so when he asked if I had any questions about the surgery that would be necessary, I asked him if I’d be okay to fence while I had my jaw wired shut, or if it would interfere with breathing.
“Fencing?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, “like swordfighting,” because this is another conversation I got to have a lot. (People assume they’ve misheard you, or occasionally they think you mean building fences.)
“Which weapon?”
“Uh. Foil.”
“No, it won’t be safe,” and he went off into an explanation of why.
Turns out, he was also a serious fencer – and, when I mentioned my fencing coach, an old friend of his. (I asked my fencing coach later, and, oh yes, Dr. Z., a good friend of mine, excellent fencer.) (My coach was French. Dr. Z. was Israeli. I never saw Dr. Z. around the club or anything. I have no idea how they knew each other.)
So this was weird enough that later, when I was home, I looked Dr. Z. up on Yelp. His reviews were stellar, of course, but that wasn’t the weird thing.
The weird thing was that the reviews were full of people – professionals in lots of different fields – saying the same thing: I went to Dr. Z. for oral surgery, and he asked me about what I did, and it turned out he knew all about my field and had a competent and educated discussion with me about the obscure technical details of such-and-such.
All sorts of different fields, saying this. Lawyers. Businessmen. Musicians.
As far as I can tell, it’s not that I just happened to be pursuing the two fields he had a serious amateur interest in – he just seemed to be extremely good at literally everything.
I have no explanation for this. Possibly he sold his soul to the devil.
He did a damn good job on my surgery.
kyranekoSome god is slumming it on Earth with maxed-out stats helping people and his dive bar of choice is oral surgery.
mysteryhackedhello friendly reminder that you do not need a special occasion to use nice things! if you wait long enough your nice bath bomb won't be as fizzy! your favourite fruits will go out of season! candles are meant to be burned, not looked at! you're not enjoying your special tea if it's just sitting in your cupboard! you're allowed to have nice and special things on completely ordinary days! heck, it might just make that day special!!
Reblog if you are aware you still have far to go in your craft.
Even after years of practicing, I still feel like I have only begun to scratch the surface.
There is no veil between this world and another. It is, instead, a rich tapestry woven together with the finest of thread. You don't train yourself to see through a barrier, but instead you learn to feel the strings all around you.
FYODOR SHEKHTEL, Ryabushinsky Manison - Gorki House Museum, Moscow, Russia, 1900-01
22alexandra22My candle spell from the last Dark Moon 🕯🌑
will-o-the-witchDon't do this.
Hemlock is EXTREMELY poisonous to humans and pets and should never be handled with bare hands let alone burned. This is extremely dangerous and potentially fatal, especially to the cat.
OP's response was to double-post the video to try and make a fresh one without all of the hazard warnings in the notes. 🚩🚩
I think about this a lot.
you know i don’t think we often talk about how difficult it actually is to suddenly realize that a belief you thought was good and moral and correct was actually really fucking toxic. how you have to look at something and go ‘oh shit, oh i fucked up. oh this is going to take probably years at minimum to deprogram from my brain because of all the little ways this shit pervaded the rest of my beliefs’
so. to all the people picking up all the pieces of a recently shattered world-view and trying to figure out what is safe to keep and what has to be thrown away and started over
to all the people having to relearn how to even listen to other people
to all the people putting in the work to do better while struggling with the guilt that comes from finding out you were the asshole
i’m proud of y’all.
it’s hard to admit being wrong and even harder to change in the aftermath. just keep doing the best you can and just know that the effort is appreciated. everyone can change. everyone can do better. keep fighting.
I wouldn’t want anyone to click on this link and search from a database of thousands of free books, many of which are about witchcraft and occult practices…
Offerings
I don’t think a lot of witches and pagans in general realize that you can offer actions to your deities
Even though Offering a tomato is a one time thing,
Growing a tomato can be something for ages.
Every single time you water the plant, de-weed the area, etc, that can be an offering
These kinds of things are especially good when you are working in the city, or in a college dorm like I am.
Dedicate a walk to them. Or a meditation if that’s your thing.
Have a little cactus you care for in their name
Create poetry or read something
Unpopular Opinion: The Gods would never let a trickster spirit claim to be them. Most religious people are not scared of malicious entities masquerading as their God(s). Have more faith that your Gods will take care of you.
Rapid fire shit I wish people had told me about witchcraft:
Every fucking thing is a spell if you put your mind to it
You can and should bless your medications
Pepper is the best for banishing, especially in the form of pepper spray
Don't trust any man who promotes sex magic...with himself
Powerful witches live and die by arch support
Conversely, plantar fasciitis is one hell of a curse and all it takes to cast it is gifting one pair of cute shoes
Sing while you cleanse - it doesn't have to make sense, it doesn't even have to be real words, but the noise helps drive out bad spirits
Fire IS the cleanser but firefighters uncleanse everything so be fucking careful
Early wiccans made up the bullshit of the Law of 3, the Rede, etc, because they were shitty people who were terrified of being rightfully cursed
Never do a knot spell you can't untie
You can untie any knot spell with scissors
Witchcraft isn't an aesthetic; the most powerful witches don't look like witches and the ones who look most like witches rarely know what the fuck they're doing
Never underestimate the power of a grid
Scrapbook paper will take your spell from 0 to 60
Concrete powder in a gas tank is much more effective than sugar in a gas tank
You can practice any religion, or no religion, and be a witch
Turtles are always a good sign
Crows will be your friend for peanuts, but they WILL eat hummingbirds
Witchcraft is science with some flair
Yeah signs from the universe do exist, but most things aren't Signs(tm)
reminder that your deities love you even if you aren’t able to worship consistently!!
going on vacation and can’t bring any supplies? they still love you
physically disabled and are out of spoons? they still love you
have mental illness that brings long bouts of fatigue? they still love you
busy juggling your job and your family? they still love you
In light of my recent monkeypox post, A LOT of people seem confused or unaware of the growing public health concern. Here’s some high level info
saywhatjessie
roboticchibitan
