#muse in real life

[museaway]

As requested, here's how I trained myself to wash the dishes pretty much daily.

Dishes and laundry have always felt insurmountable to me. It's probably because they never end. I live alone and I don't have a dishwasher, so I have to do the dishes whether I like it or not. I would much, much rather watch YouTube than do chores, so here's how I get around that.

(It's long so I'll put it behind a cut.)

Disclaimer: What works for me might not work for you. We all have different lives and situations. Take what works for you and leave the rest.

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Solution #1: Make it low commitment

Sometimes I look at the sink and think, "I have to wash all of these?? It's going to take FOREVER. I'll do it tomorrow."

On those days, I challenge myself to wash dishes for the length of one song. It doesn't matter how many dishes I wash, just that I wash them for as long as the song plays!

Sometimes the song will finish and I'll feel up to washing for just one more. Usually, I end up listening to three or four and clean the whole sink. But if the song ends and I want to go do something else, I'm allowed to.

Try working up to multiple times a day.

Make a playlist with songs that make you feel energized! I use anime OPs because they're loud and fun to sing to.

Be gentle with yourself. If you washed one cup, that's great! That's a clean cup! That's one more clean cup than you had one song ago.

You're taking care of yourself by doing this. Really, it's a great kindness you're doing yourself and your family by cleaning something! You deserve to be taken care of!

This method also works with putting away folded laundry. If you don't want to use music, set a timer. Work for 3 minutes and stop.

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Solution #2: Gamify it

When I have a little more energy, the goal changes:

"Can I clear the sink before this song ends?"

"Can I wash all of these within three songs?"

"Can I wash this cup before the chorus?"

This technique really motivates me. I tend to focus and work efficiently since I'm trying to beat the song. If I don't make it, I usually give myself another song or two. It's rare that I stop until the sink is clear.

Whether you beat the song or not, you've washed a bunch of stuff, so you win either way!

This technique also works for putting sheets on the bed, dusting, taking the trash out ("can I get back before the song stops??"), etc. Timers can replace music here too.

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Solution #3: Use a habit tracker

The above solutions got me to stop leaving dishes in the sink for three days, but I was still leaving them overnight. To train myself to wash the dishes every single day, I made it a nightly chore for a solid month.

I used a habit tracker so that I got to check it off every day! I love checklists, so this was terribly satisfying.

I've tried a slew of habit trackers and hate all of them except for this one by TheFor. It's simple, has color coding, supports habit-based goals (like dish washing 7 days a week, or sweeping the deck once a week), and displays an overview so that you can check if you missed any days! Free on the Apple and Play stores. This isn't sponsored; I'm just a fan.

It took a month for my new habit to form, but it did! I'll now go wash the dishes when I see them in the sink, although I still use the first two solutions to keep it from feeling like a chore again.

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Hand-washing tips:

Dish gloves will save your hands! Get a pair you like

I like a wooden dish brush with a replaceable head

I think it helps to like the scent of your dish soap

Get big, easy-to-clean things out of the way first. They take up a huge amount of room in the sink and make the situation look worse than it really is. Think colanders, cookie sheets, the pot you only boiled water in.

Wash things in categories. For example, I like to wash all of the mugs at once. It seems to go faster that way.

Leave the hardest-to-clean stuff for last so it can soak.

Paring down my mug collection sincerely helped the mug overload. Maybe put spares in a drawer for a while.

Sing while you work

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Here's my dish washing playlist

[hinamie]

binding vow

[ghost-bxrd]

Ya’ll ever think about how Bruce probably hates watching The Lion King because in there the dad managed to save his kid, but he, Batman, didn’t manage to save his own son in time?

[louismygf]

some louis tomlinsons i never posted ^_^

[shortnotsweet]

In a Week by Hozier ft. Karen Cowley

“The raven is death, obviously. When I die, I want a good tombstone—something right spooky. LT’s got something against the underground, though you’d think that would be just his kind of place. That’s alright. He needs to, he can cremate me. It’s not exactly Catholic, and Mam would turn in her grave, but God is a unicorn and no one is pure anymore, so. What’s all that got to do with me?”

Johnny “Soap” McTavish has a journal. Had. It is his no longer.

Simon “Ghost” Riley had dreams—awful ones, the kind that sank claws into his lungs, dragged him into sleep, and then sent him careening out of it. He still has dreams, but they’re different, now. Better. Johnny’s pages have folded themselves under his eyes and gotten into his head, brighter and more infectious than anything else has ever been. It’s more than the past, that rotting carcass behind him, and more than now. Now is nothing. Now is ash. It’s like, it’s like—blinding, is what it is. He’s a blind man.

It is biblical now. Ghost has read it backward and forward and sideways and inside out. When he runs out of things to read, he reads them again, and when that is not enough, he reads between the lines.

[lady-quen]

Hello Guild Wars 2 community! A new poll has dropped! 🐦‍⬛

(At least, hopefully new, lol.) I'm curious, which blessing did your Commander get on their first/canon go through the Raven Sanctum in the story mission "The Invitation?" Choose and tell me in the tags why they made their specific decisions :)

Compiled explanations from the wiki below for ease of access:

The trial choices in order:

Save the wounded man or save the healers

Save the spell tome or save the historical record

Save the queen or save the prince

Blessings:

Blessing of Daybreak

"When the fear of beastly claws and a child's pain is made sharp by the knowledge of elders, we make no mistakes. But do we grow?"

Healers -> historical record -> prince

Grace of Dawn

"When wisdom is favored in all things—a healing hand, a text of old, a beloved queen—we lose the sharpened sword of the truly bold."

Healers -> historical record -> queen

Consecration of Morning

"We seek to destroy monsters with sharp claws and icy breath, but do we protect ourselves from the beasts shaped like us, who prey on the young and vulnerable, who seek to rule us?"

Healers -> spell tome -> prince

Invocation of Midday

"When we flee from the things we fear most - the teeth of beasts, the storm of a dragon, a change of power-we risk running backward."

Healers -> spell tome -> queen

Supplication of Midday

"We favor the skill of healers and the wisdom of elders over the uncertainty of the future. But the young take chances, and the young push us forward."

Wounded man -> spell tome -> prince

Consecration of Evening

"We long for the comfort of a healing touch, an ancestral word of wisdom, a leader we know and trust. But comfort is fleeting, and with it comes inertia."

Wounded man -> historical record -> queen

Grace of Dusk

"We sacrifice so much—safety from the claws of death, knowledge of the ages, a steadfast reign—to propel ourselves forward. But if we move too fast, do we risk the inability to stop?"

Wounded man -> spell tome -> prince

Blessing of Twilight

"We try so hard to do the right thing. We heal, we protect our people, we preserve stability. But we cannot control how the winds of fate may shift, and a tight grip can sometimes hurt more than it helps."

Wounded man -> spell tome -> queen

[sunny-daze-ahead]

Tim Drake: broke something inside me many years ago, and it feels like I just keep shattering there's ice in my blood and fire in my throat and electricity all down my skin Sebastian Ives, barely awake: First of all, that's cryptic, second of all, fucking go to sleep Why the fuck are you awake at 5 am

[butcharium]

My main issue with men's clothing has far more to do with fit than style. If anything I love that mens fashion is a bit more boring bc i personally am a bit of a boring butch and I looooove solid & boring clothing in one colour maybe some stripes if I feel daring! However I hate that men's fashing has been haunted by slim fits for so many years now. My grandfather and I have toughly the same shoulder and arms measurements, but he is long and thin and while I'm not short I am fat and squat. His shirts from like the ninties to early two thousands fit better and more consistently than what I've found in any store, but with any of his newer shirts I'm not even remotely able to close them around me:') current movement towards oversized and baggy fashion has improved things somewhat, but in the end just fits a bit weird bc well, it's designed to look oversized and that uses different proportions usually, but at least then I can close the shirt:/

[thatsrightice]

“Bucky Cleven, the impervious, the invincible, was gone. If he couldn't make it, who could? His good friend, Bucky Egan, didn't talk much that night.”

“The loss of Bucky Cleven over Bremen and Bucky Egan over Münster seemed to have cut the heart right out of the the 100th. Without them the 100th was a shadow.”

"What I can't really handle is that when Cleven and Egan were still around, the men were happier. With them gone, the heart of the 100th has stopped beating."

“It wasn't only that my friends were gone. The spirit was gone. The laughter. Ham, Brady, Warsaw, Crankshaft, Solomon, Murph-always good for a laugh-were gone. Under Dart Alkire and Chick Harding as Group Commanders, anything went with the 100th and it did. When Bucky Cleven and Bucky Egan were setting the tone of the 100th, there was dash. There was derring-do. Flying the war was an adventure.”

— Harry Crosby in his memoir, A Wing and a Prayer

[museaway]

work stress is high (deadline day. 17 minutes until deadline, actually, and Boss has yet to give me his component, which means I cannot submit these files...have you ever seen Sekaiichi Hatsukoi? the scene where they're avoiding the printer bc the issue isn't done is the most real, real, real thing I've ever seen in my life. I am terrified prepress is about to email me) but thinking about Favorite Character does not help since Favorite Character is a money-obsessed workaholic telling me to keep my eye on the prize

[meadowmusing]

Imagine finding out you're a demigod (potentially in an explosive way), being explained all this by a real life satyr, being escorted on a likely perilous journey to this mysterious magical camp full of distant cousins divine just like you, only for your mythical absent parent to never claim you, and you end up in Hermes Cabin without even a bunk.

You're stuck there for years, offering up the best parts of your dinner hoping your parent finally acknowledges you, a sleeping bag the only comfort from the hard cabin floor.

And out of nowhere, this kid who just showed up barely a few days ago, gets claimed by one of the big three. He shouldn't even exist because of the oath but here he is, and yet your godly parent cant even deign to metaphorically sign your birth papers.

I'm just saying, I get why kronos got an army of halfbloods

[randomnameless]

I really want to get into Unicorn Overlord because that prologue slaps and it sounds like an interesting gameplay experience

but

the designs are just...

Camel toes, battle thongs and bouncing boobies that would straight up be from some of the worst FEH alts, furry baits (forget the sniddies, we have foxtits and... owl boobs...) and leg art that would make Duo!Doro look tame in comparaison.

What to do...

[knowlesian]

i will die obsessed with how annie’s “you aren’t a good person” speech to bev in midnight mass is both the most personally devastating and thematically appropriate thing she could say there

she doesn’t say bev, you are a bad person; she says bev, you aren’t a good person.

she doesn’t say you’re a villain; she says you aren’t a hero and you certainly aren’t a victim.

and worst of all, she doesn’t say god doesn’t love bev: she says god loves bev exactly as much as he loves everybody else.

for bev, who has defined herself as good and victimized and above all else special that’s the cleanest way to cut right into her core without giving her any easy excuses to ignore the things annie is confronting her about

and for a show that is dealing with how we are not inherently good or bad but rather an assemblage of choices that all lead up to the last choices we will ever make and how those choices define us, it points out bev was never doomed by god or the narrative

she made selfish, cruel choices over and over her entire life and never once actually valued the god she said she believed in or a community founded around that belief, so she dies having been confronted in the most effective way possible, alone and without even her much-bragged about faith in god to comfort her despite that all being on offer via (oh hey look) annie goddamned flynn, who absolutely would not have turned bev away in those last moments before the sun rose

midnight mass really is just so, so good

[quinloki]

Alright so, uh....

Some bad news has me in a space.

One where I'm not really feeling writing.

I'll get back to the one-word challenges as soon as I can, and I'm going to do my best to not cancel the upcoming June-July event, but if I have to, well, that's life sometimes. 🙃

I'm okay, and I'm still going to be on - just know that updates of any kind might be a little sparse until a point.

Your patience is appreciated ^_^ 🥰

[copingchaos]

Layla El Faouly, the woman who is so caring kind and patient that even a broken man like marc spector feels smiley and safe around, would still judge anyone who is willfully silent on what's happening to the Palestinian people

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

I think I might get into the thriller/mystery genre. I've always been a huge fantasy fan, but I've recently run into three problems.

I used to read fantasy books where Sapphic (I'd say 'lesbian' but let's be so fr) romance was the focal point/end game. However, they are often so damn disappointing and I'm honestly really tired of feeling that way. I love lesbian books but they're either actually bi books or like. Memoirs. Or, worse, depressing/don't end how I'd like.

I can't take straight romance seriously at all so that's a no go.

Fantasy without romance often doesn't catch my eye. I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy such a book, but just that none have really jumped out to me as a must read.

It's been a while since I read anything, and I miss it quite a bit but I don't feel like the "well-written fantastical lesbian romance" genre is a long list (believe me, I looked) and straight romances are corny. I'd be willing to read a no-romance fantasy book but ones that suit me are so hard to find.

All that to say that I think I might like the mystery/thriller genre? I'm actually currently making my way through "the girl on the train" audiobook and I like it a fair amount. This may be the right direction to go in to get back into reading.