An urbanist in the suburbs.

MAGIC.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had fins or a tail lol

THE MOST PURE!!!

HELLO MY FRIEND IM DRESSED JUST LIKE YOU

Don’t tell your daughter that when a boy is mean or rude to her it’s because he has a crush on her. Don’t teach her that abuse is a sign of love.

My mom always taught me yell or fight back. Boys would be mean and I would yell back. I would get my ass pinched and I would smack them as hard as I could.

Who alway got in trouble? Me.

They would call my mother and she always came in and lectures my teachers and threatened to sue for making her miss work and treating me poorly.

She always taught my brothers to respect women. The only fights my brothers ever got in was defending women from someone else.

The school tried to call my father once instead of my mother on us. He came in in his full preacher outfit (being a preacher and all) and gave them an entire sermon on what would Jesus day of he was called in. They decided dealing with my mom was better.

I think my favorite story of this is when some kid snapped my bra and I turned around, didn’t even think about it, and punched that little motherfucker right in the nose.

So naturally, I end up in the principal’s office, refusing to apologize. 

“He shouldn’t have put his hands on me and I wouldn’t have hit him!” That’s the only thing I was saying.

These people had the unfortunate luck of catching my dad at home, instead of my mom. So he comes fucking sauntering in there, like he’s Clint fucking Eastwood in some western movie and looks at me. 

“Melissa, did you punch him?” 

“Yes.” I said. 

“Why?” 

“Because he snapped my bra strap.” 

And he turns his squinty eyed glare to the principal and says, “You’re telling me my daughter is in trouble because that squirrely looking kid put his hands on her and she chose to defend herself? That’s what you are saying to me.” 

“Well, sir-” The man kind of stuttered because my dad is kind of intimidating in the quiet sort of way that kind of whispers in the back of your mind that this person could be dangerous. “Melissa did make it physical.” 

“No. That kid put his hands on my daughter. Are you saying my daughter cannot defend herself when some boy decides to put hands on her? Is that what you are teaching my girl?” 

I didn’t get suspended that day.  

*slow clap for excellent parenting*

This is the parent I want to be omg

I went to a nun school. 

The nuns there were like, so rad. 

It was a party organized for the end of the school year, and I was helping in the kitchen to prepare stuff with a nun and a bunch of little girls. There was one of the girls’ little brother who was there. 

There was a little girl who was carrying a bowl of tomato sauce and was going outside, but the boy was just in front of her and he slammed the door in her face. She dropped the bowl on the floor and got all messy. 

So what happened? 

The nun went outside, took the boy by the arm, and gave him an epic speech going around the lines of: “Would you treat the Virgin Mary like that, young man?” “Nnnnno…” “Then treat every girl like she’s the Virgin Mary.” Not only the boy had to apologize to the little girl, but he also had to clean up and he was put on kitchen duty for the rest of the day. 

Then another day, in catechism class (I was a in a girls’ school, mind you), the nun was there telling us: “If a guy touches you in a way you don’t like, punch him in the face. It’s not a sin against charity. On the contrary, you’re being charitable by showing him he’s sinning by impurity and you’ll save him from going to hell.” 

So I was at my desk during class looking like this: 

Reblogging for awesome dads and kickass nuns.

“you’re being charitable by showing him he’s sinning by impurity and you’ll save him from going to hell.”

What a mood.

Jesus said if guys hands were causing them sin-problems, they should cut them off.  Face-punching seems like a good pre-amputation steps, to prevent it getting that far.

those seem like Our kind of nuns.

Source If you want more facts, follow Ultrafacts

I’m buying a castle.

https://www.moulin.nl/en/realestate/castle-for-sale-france-midi-pyrenees-gers-32_102909/

Update: The castle as of April 2015 is actually only around $1,300,000 USD now due to the currency exchange rates! :D

this goes even further, some European countries will give you a castle for free if you submit a plan stating how you intend to restore or preserve it. Italy alone for example has somewhere between 100 and 300 castles they intend to give away to anyone with intent to be a caretaker, they literally cant keep track of how many discount castles are up for grabs it doesn’t even have to be an ambitious plan, even if it says you just intend to keep it from becoming more shitty and will occasionally add a few bricks when you can afford it. given that most of them come with land you could convert the grounds to actually produce enough income to pay for the repairs- like setting up apple trees and brewing cider you sell with your castle name on the bottle, or raising some goats for cheese, a hobby farm could turn this into an actual income opportunity. hell, throwing parties at the castle could make it an income opportunity they will literally -GIVE- you a castle to make sure someone is taking care of it rather then let them all sit empty

I want my writing to be smart.

Here’s what I mean: I want to write something you can understand on the first go, no problem. But then, the more you think about it, the more little things you realize. Are those little things essential to grasping the plot? No, but they enhance it. Most importantly, you feel smart for pointing them out, and I feel smart for writing them.

This is a very specific mood but I’ll be damned if I don’t also want this

I want people to read my work again and again, and each time they spot something and go “HOW DID I MISS THAT?!”

^ yes this

How my lineage be #Repost @diasporadash (@get_repost) ・・・ Jekua Jey Yansa!

Just introduced a kid to her adoptive parents. They brought her a dozen roses. We met at a restaurant. I arrived early to get a private booth and told the waitstaff what was up. So all the servers were having a cry in the corner. I’m at a coffee shop a few miles away, giving them space and having my own cry.

Adoptive mom clarified to me later: roses were pink because pink means forever.

What’s more important than the roses, though, is they also brought her a luggage set so she wouldn’t be moving her things in garbage bags. The luggage matches theirs, cause it’s family luggage for family trips.

And now the rest of us are crying too

This is beautiful. And on the topic of sleepovers and kids getting stuck in uncomfortable situations: My mom and I had a code, ever since my first sleepover. I would always call home to say goodnight, and if I asked “How is the cat doing?”, it meant that I wasn’t comfortable and I wanted her to pick me up. I did use this code a few times, and whenever I did, my mom came up with the excuses for me. I was never stuck at a sleepover I didn’t want to be at - and as a child with anxiety and social phobia, this was a great system.

posts like these are the reason i love tumblr

Once, I was at a friend’s birthday party, and they began to play strip poker and 7 minutes in heaven and immature stuff like that. I am the biggest virgin that you’ve ever known, so I pretended like my phone was vibrating, punched in my mom’s speed dial, and when she answered, I said “Hey mom, whatcha need? *Pause* oh, okay. So I have to come home now? Yeah, sorry, I’ll clean my room right when I get there. *pause* ten minutes? Okay, that works. See ya.” and she understood exactly what I wanted, and she came and picked me up, and even scolded me in front of my friends for ‘not cleaning my room’. I’ve used this so many times, it isn’t funny. My mom is so understanding each time.

And now I must hug my mother and post 5 million mom appreciation posts.

(hugs this)

A friend and I were out with our kids when another family’s two-year-old came up. She began hugging my friend’s 18-month-old, following her around and smiling at her. My friend’s little girl looked like she wasn’t so sure she liked this, and at that moment the other little girl’s mom came up and got down on her little girl’s level to talk to her.

“Honey, can you listen to me for a moment? I’m glad you’ve found a new friend, but you need to make sure to look at her face to see if she likes it when you hug her. And if she doesn’t like it, you need to give her space. Okay?”

Two years old, and already her mother was teaching her about consent.

My daughter Sally likes to color on herself with markers. I tell her it’s her body, so it’s her choice. Sometimes she writes her name, sometimes she draws flowers or patterns. The other day I heard her talking to her brother, a marker in her hand.

“Bobby, do you mind if I color on your leg?”

Bobby smiled and moved himself closer to his sister. She began drawing a pattern on his leg with a marker while he watched, fascinated. Later, she began coloring on the sole of his foot. After each stoke, he pulled his foot back, laughing. I looked over to see what was causing the commotion, and Sally turned to me.

“He doesn’t mind if I do this,” she explained, “he is only moving his foot because it tickles. He thinks its funny.” And she was right. Already Bobby had extended his foot to her again, smiling as he did so.

What I find really fascinating about these two anecdotes is that they both deal with the consent of children not yet old enough to communicate verbally. In both stories, the older child must read the consent of the younger child through nonverbal cues. And even then, consent is not this ambiguous thing that is difficult to understand.

Teaching consent is ongoing, but it starts when children are very young. It involves both teaching children to pay attention to and respect others’ consent (or lack thereof) and teaching children that they should expect their own bodies and their own space to be respected—even by their parents and other relatives.

And if children of two or four can be expected to read the nonverbal cues and expressions of children not yet old enough to talk in order to assess whether there is consent, what excuse do full grown adults have?

I try to do this every day I go to nursery and gosh it makes me so happy to see it done elsewhere.

Yes, consent is nonsexual, too!

Not only that, but one of the reasons many child victims of sexual abuse don’t reach out is that they don’t have the understanding or words for what is happening to them, and why it isn’t okay. Teaching kids about consent helps them build better relationships and gives them the tools to seek help if they or a friend need our protection.

Teaching Consent to Small Children

I wish this post featured the OP’s name more prominently; it’s by Libby Anne of love joy feminism, and she writes fantastic stuff. A survivor of Christian patriarchal fundamentalism, she writes about parenting from the perspective of someone working through her own traumatic experiences. I love reading her blog.

I met my nephew (codename Totoro) in person for the first time when he was eight months old. Before this, I’d known him only through video calling. A few hours after getting home from the airport, my sister (codename Mystery) was holding him on her hip. I asked her, “Can I hold him?”

She smiled and said, “Ask him.”

“What?”

“Hold out your hands to him and see if he leans toward you or away from you.” So I did, and he leaned away, and I dropped the subject. Five or ten minutes later, he was leaning towards me, overbalancing and almost falling out of Mystery’s arms, and she said, “He’s asking you to hold him now.” So I did, and it was magical, getting to introduce myself to my nephew and the firstborn of the Sybil family.

I am all about respecting children’s agencies and teaching good boundaries. I didn’t ask at the airport, when Totoro was surrounded by new stimuli and needed the reassurance of his mother. I didn’t ask when we first got back either; I gave him time to settle down, get used to his surroundings, and get used to me in person instead of a moving picture on a cell phone screen. I thought I was respecting his boundaries. But it had never occurred to me that an eight month old, who couldn’t speak or even understand most speech, might be able to establish his own boundaries.

A year later they came to visit again, when he was 19 or 20 months old. The weather was what we Northwesterners call “a bit nippy” and what thin-blooded Midwesterners like my sister call “fucking freezing, are you kidding me?” As we were getting ready to leave the house, Totoro objected vehemently to the need for pants and a coat. Finally Mystery had me stand by and hand her things as she near-literally wrestled him into his clothes. He was screaming and kicking and saying, “No pants, no no, don’t wanna, no Mama.”

And as she worked, Mystery kept talking to him soothingly. “I can hear you saying no, and I understand that you don’t want to wear your clothes, but it’s my job to keep you safe and warm. I know you’re saying no, I can hear that, but it’s very cold outside and I have to keep you safe and warm.” Over and over, reassuring him that she understood what she wanted and that she had a good reason for ignoring his wishes.

And it hit me all over again, an aspect of respecting children’s agencies and boundaries that had never once occurred to me. Because sometimes it is necessary to override their wishes. Part of being a good guardian is keeping them safe even when they want to play in traffic or eat nothing but candy. But I’d never thought about it from Totoro’s point of view, how frightening and how helpless it would feel to scream “no” into an unhearing void. Mystery made sure he knew he was being heard, he wasn’t being ignored, he was important enough to have people react to his words.

It’s just, geez. Every time I watch Mystery interact with Totoro I learn something new about agency and boundaries and just plain humanness. It blows me away.

lately i’ve been replacing my “i’m sorry”s with “thank you”s, like instead of “sorry i’m late” i’ll say “thanks for waiting for me”, or instead of “sorry for being such a mess” i’ll say “thank you for loving me and caring about me unconditionally” and it’s not only shifted the way i think and feel about myself but also improved my relationships with others who now get to receive my gratitude instead of my negativity

This is some 2017 mood

Me in my ideal state

Reddit user HeMeYou was left “overwhelmed” by advice from online strangers after accidentally discovering his son might be gay.

The 38-year-old father posed the question to Reddit after finding Google searches on his son’s iPad suggesting he wanted to come out.

He said: “I found out my 13 y/o son is gay… He hasn’t told me, but I want to support him. What can I do?”

I’m 38, and a single dad to my 13 year old son, 14 in four months. The other day I asked my son if I could borrow his iPad and he gave it to me.

After my first attempt at Google searching something I noticed that he forgot to delete his history as a lot of the search terms were along the lines of “I’m gay what now?” etc…

I love him regardless of which gender he loves, in fact when I was slightly older than him I had a few flings with guys, which he doesn’t know about, so I am 100% supportive.

He has seemed slightly down recently, as in, he isn’t as cheerful as he once was, and I desperately want to tell him that I love him regardless of which sexuality he is.

What are my options? Should I wait for him to tell me? Or should I make a few hints at it?

I’m worried that if I don’t hint at it, that he will be worried about something that he really doesn’t have to be worried about… if that makes sense. Thanks.

Shortly after, he received a flood of supportive messages, with many users offering advice based on their own experiences.

One user posted: “Google ‘how to tell my son I will love and support him no matter what’ and leave it in his search history.”

Another said: “Let him come out on his own terms, just make sure he knows that you’ll support him and you don’t have a problem with it.”

The father, who wished to remain anonymous, told Buzzfeed the response to his post was “overwhelmingly helpful and kind.”

A few days later, HeMeYou posted an update on what he ended up doing:

I started off with talking about general media with him, for instance I mentioned how awesome it was that Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) came out as being gay and I asked him what he thought about it and I was completely expecting him to give a typical teenager response like “yeah.. its good” or something like that but he actually gave me a detailed response which I absolutely loved because for the first time in a good while I’ve actually held a conversation with my son that felt really… rewarding.

I also wanted to talk to him about how I’ve noticed that he’s not been acting as cheerful as he usually has and I sort of gave the cliche spiel of “I love you no matter what and I just want to see you be happy” but I didn’t get much of a response that time apart from “yeah I know..”

The next day as I picked him up from school I thought I’d ask him about any crushes he has, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t say a gender when I asked him, so instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’ I used ‘they’ etc.. Here is that conversation as I remember it…

Me: So, do you have a crush on anyone? Son: Uhm… no..m..maybe.. Me: Ohhh so who is the lucky person? At this point he sort of looked at me slightly confused, I’m not 100% sure why, but I’m assuming it is because I said “lucky person” rather than “lucky girl”. Son: Just someone from my french class… Me: Oh yeah… so what do you like about them? Son: Just.. stuff.. Me: Okay.. but.. like what? Son: I donno they’re just kinda funny I guess…

At this point I dropped the conversation but just before I did I told him “Well, whoever it is, they should be so lucky to have you as a boyfriend..” and while I didn’t see it, I certainly felt as though he was rolling his eyes at my cheesy comments.

At the dinner table the same day, while we were eating we had a couple minutes of silence, not much was heard apart from the cutlery and my son finally said “I actually wanted to tell you something in the car, but I was afraid you’d get in an accident..”

I looked up from my plate and looked at him straight in the eyes… I could see he was thinking about something and all I could think of was “OMG this is it…”

He said “Dad..” with a couple seconds of silence “..I’m gay”.

I looked at him and couldn’t help myself from smiling, and I told him “____, you know I love you so much… right?” and I got up and gave him a huge hug.

He even started to cry on my shoulder and because of that I couldn’t help myself but shed a couple tears.

Concluding his post, he said: “After dinner and after he finished his homework we both lay in our pyjamas on the sofa, while I was watching the Cooking Channel and he was playing on his iPad.

“I had my arm around him and he was leaning his head on my chest, and all I could think of was that I’m the happiest father on earth right now.”

Anyone else weep real Jesus tears after reading this?

THIS IS WHAT A TRUE FUCKING PARENT DOES. TAKE GODDAMN NOTES.

It really can be this easy.

“Not use collective punishment as it is not fair on the many people who did nothing and under the 1949 Geneva Conventions it is a war crime.”