#insert usual disclaimer that I don't actually expect anyone to read this and it's for my record keeping etc

[firelightfoxes]

Why did you go with mudi for a breed choice? I’ve been interested in them but so far what I’ve read on some sites was neurotic, independent and very high energy...(I’d love a high energy+ off switch dog thats medium sized,lower maintenance grooming wise and very affectionate/cuddly herding breed cos I vibe with them better lol, and I’m hoping a mudi fits this). Good luck with lichen❤️

hi!! sorry in advance for this ESSAY i'm about to write. i deliberated for a long time on my next breed. i actually wasn't planning to add in another dog for much longer (until Ava started slowing down due to age) but Ava's DLSS diagnosis made it so that i could no longer do most of the dog hobby things i enjoyed, so i moved up my timeline.

i'd been interested in mudi for a while but there was some intense gatekeeping around them the first time i looked into them - some people calling them crazier border collies or mini malinois. i was seriously considering aussies for a while (i grew up with them and i love them) but i didn't love the coat and their appearance isn't usually what i go for (i prefer pointy). in addition, a huge consideration for me was that my next dog could not have any chance of being bigger than Ava (she's 45lbs), because she absolutely cannot have other dogs jumping on her back, or having enough force/strength to bowl her over.

so i looked more into mudi and learned more about them on my own. they're a great size, usually 20-35lbs with females being generally smaller, their coat is wash-and-wear and they do shed but typically less than many other shedding breeds like ACDs and shepherds. their temperament is quite unique for a herding breed but they still definitely are a herding breed. i would say they act a bit more primitive than say a border collie or an aussie. they're only recently gaining popularity, so they aren't as far-removed from their original breed purpose as a lot of other herding breeds, which means their instincts are quite strong - and being bred as farm dogs, they alert at strangers/strange dogs, can be busy, prefer to have a "job". removing a mudi from the farm life, this can manifest as being LOUD AS FUCK, reactivity, noise sensitivity, and problem behaviors when bored. they were also mainly working stock no larger than sheep, so they are not bred to be hard, and are quite sensitive, their feelings get hurt easily and they do get offended and they will make this very apparent. they are also notorious for disliking repetition, so they're the type of breed that will tell you what they like and you'll just have to go with that. i would highly caution against getting a mudi solely as a sport prospect because they might not like the sport. there are, in my opinion, better breeds for that. these are the sort of disclaimers i would give to anyone who is interested in the breed because they are a bit unique if you're comparing them to other herders. they're not necessarily more difficult depending on the trainer, but again, they're just different from what many might expect.

now for the positive! mudi are suuuper intelligent and very intuitive. they bond super quickly to their family. i know everyone says that adding a [insert breed] is like adding a family member, but this breed is Really That. for example, Lichen needs hugs and kissies in the morning or else she'll be sad for the whole day. i personally hate repetition, so i love that she can pick things up super quickly and we don't have to "drill". she's an absolute sweetheart and she loves me, loves hanging out and cuddling with me. she learned really quickly how to differentiate between her toys/not her toys. this doesn't go for all mudi, but she legitimately doesn't have a naughty bone in her body. she just wants to please me but not in an annoying or busy way. she's also HILARIOUS, very spunky, makes her own games to entertain herself. gets along fabulously with Ava. other mudi owners generally consider their dogs a "do-everything-with-me" type of dog who can go hiking/camping, do sports, and then cuddle/chill on the couch. most mudi i think have a pretty good off-switch.

neuroses does happen in the breed but this is something i think you can avoid by talking to breeders and learning about their lines. in addition, i definitely would NOT consider them to be independent. they love their human(s) and always want to be with them. they can have some prey drive but other than that can be expected to have an easily-trainable recall. and energy levels can depend on lines. if you go with a more sporty litter of course you're more likely to get a super high energy puppy. but again, i would recommend finding a breeder near you and talking to them about their dogs. in addition, if you have facebook, there are several mudi groups that have tons of info and lots of helpful people. they can also help you connect with someone local to meet a mudi in person. i would highly recommend meeting them in person because to me, they're so unique and it's much easier to get a true feel for them after meeting one or two. after i met my breeder's dogs i fell head-over-heels for the breed and was absolutely committed to getting one. there isn't an exact breed-split (although one is forming), but if you get a show-prospect from less intense parents, you might have a higher chance of getting what you want and avoiding chances of neuroses/business/super high energy.

i hope this helped!!! sorry again for the dissertation but i love this breed lol feel free to let me know if you have any other questions or you can always PM me if you need breeder recommendations/info :)

#mudi #asks #anonymous

[ntshastark]

MAWS liveblog: part 2 (1x03-1x04)

Episode 3

i love him so much it's unhealthy

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OH THERE'S AN OPENING SEQUENCE NOW

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tiddies

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whipped

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the humour in this episode is just Not Working for me, idk

==

why is lois mimicking cat's personality when the warden is much more likely to realise they're not the same person via, y'know, the photo on her badge??

==

now that was a quintessential clois moment

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this poor man

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clark's voice as superman is way too similar to his regular voice tbh, his tone when he was pretending to be interviewed by lois is way closer to what i'd expect

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[paris hilton voice] that's hot

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[paris hilton voice] that's hot

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[agrees to give an interview]

[can't answer a single question]

[flies away]

nailed it

==

i love him

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i mean, you're not wrong

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Episode 4

that's my future pulitizer prize winner! 😭

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OH HELL YEAH CLARK IS A CRYPTID!!!!!!

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bums me out that i can't get into this series' version of clois, but they're just so mushy (and, don't get me wrong, i love mushy established clois, but they've just met!! lois should be a mean hbic and clark should be- well, he should be a whipped blushing mess, which is exactly what he is here. guess the problem is just lois :/ i could blame it on the decision to make them both interns, but smallville!lois is a teenager and still manages to be perfect)

==

and the thing is!! the rest of her characterisation is so good!! she's a career-driven law-breaking menace and i love her!!! literally the only thing that bothers me is how they've made her immediately into clark - which i guess makes sense, if she mostly ignored him then the entire premise of the cartoon doesn't really work*, but it still leaves me with a version of early!clois stripped from basically everything that makes their dynamic interesting (To Me)

*= there's plenty of ways to make them work together while having lois' feelings towards clark be equal part disinterest and fuming one-sided beef (i'd know! i've read the fics!), but i guess it wouldn't fit the quirky fun protagonist trio this series is aiming for, which is ok! it's a cartoon for kids! i'm the weird one here!

==

man i miss the world cup

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oh my god he's so precious

==

.............................that's a voltron character

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why does this dr ivo guy feel like a mcu!tony stark parody (disclaimer: i don't think i've heard of him before and i don't wanna google if he's a comics character to avoid possible spoilers)

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OH MY GOD HIS NAME IS EVEN ANTHONY

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[paris hilton voice] that's hot

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dont know why the screen suddenly looks like i need to clean my glasses but [insert 'í love arm' tweet]

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WHY IS THE SCREEN SO BLURRY (is this bc i'm pirating??)

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oh my god

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ok, if he's not a comic character then he was definitely based on tony (stark, i mean. as this guy is also named tony.)

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ok, did anyone involved in this series also work on voltron, serious question

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i'm in love with her

==

1. i think i'm gonna enjoy them a lot more once they're actually dating bc this was very domestic!clois and, to quote clark, :3

2. holy fuck his head is so much larger than hers

==

he's so lucky no one follows him on that thing bc he's literally uploading footage he was paid to take by someone else, once perry finds out he's toast

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???? he was playing cupid two episodes ago

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OH SHIT I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT SEE THAT COMING 10/10 PLOT TWIST

==

i usually enjoy the identity porn going on for way longer, but i wasn't happy with how they were handling it, so maybe this will shake up things into something that i like more 👀

#if i ignore work due to it being Too Hot To Function i can maybe watch two of these today 👀 #edit (next day): i didn't but i'm putting them in the same post anyway lol #f: dc #g: dc animations #s: maws #mari liveblogs

[stillgeekingout]

I always end up doing this like halfway through january but this time I got covid so I have an excuse lol. anyway reflections on 2021!

I recognize that 2021 was shitty for a lot of people but I was riding the high of how much better it was for me personally than 2020 so I actually had a decent year. for one thing ingrid was back (our first full year in the same country!), I got new plants to replace the ones that died while they were doing construction on my apt in 2020, I wasn’t alone in the house anymore, etc.

some stuff that happened in 2021:

-read a bunch of books at the beginning of the year bc I hadn’t been reading for a while and then kind of continuously read on and off throughout the year (special mention to one last stop!! and awtwb which I didn’t actually like as much as the first two but the end of the series was a significant thing)

-I did a few more months of yoga with adriene throughout the year, it wasn’t as much as I necessarily wanted to but I’m glad it’s something I keep periodically going back to

-played a lot of animal crossing cause we were late to that party

-baby’s first covid test (jan) and 2nd covid test (dec)

-spent the first few months of the year on a roommate hunt and then finally found our current roommate who is lovely

-s&s lived in *gasp* different apartments! 

-made a weird little experimental short film for orlando fringe which was mostly just me reading books on the roof of my parking garage while waiting for time lapse footage

-watched a whole bunch of tv shows (finished steven universe, owl house s2, gravity falls, hsmtmts, we are lady parts, rutherford falls, wwdits, ted lasso, only murders in the building, kevin can fuck himself, girls5eva, infinity train)

-VACCINES! got 1st & 2nd shots in the spring then booster in the fall which was such a peace of mind thing despite everything and made it so I could actually feel ok seeing people again

-ingrid & I got engaged in may & started wedding planning ahhhh

-wrote a TON of this story that I had been kinda working on for ages (yeah it’s the one I just mentioned having finished)

-fully into aly & aj, if you haven’t listened to their recent stuff you should

-taylor and her rerecordings can be on here I guess lol (so can new bleachers album I guess. tried to see them in concert but it got cancelled for- shocker- covid reasons)

-since I mentioned tv & books, my favorite movies this year were prob raya, luca, encanto, and mitchells vs the machines lol I’m still a sucker for animation

-prob shouldn’t say this bc uh they follow me but I doubt they’ll see this so: my parasocial relationship w a certain person is always probably teetering on the edge of delusion that someday we’re gonna be friends (anyway read reputation lol) (if they do see this I’m sorry)

-speaking of parasocial relationships there are several babies and small children of people either I/ingrid/sarah know who I’m obsessed with and watched grow over the course of the year on social media

-related, there is a baby who lives close enough to me that I should’ve been able to see him a lot and have a relationship with him but covid/work/poor communication made everything complicated and it was a rough time for me about it for a minute there

-ingrid and I went to new orleans and stayed in a very cute airbnb and ate beignets and looked at art and went to parks

-my mom threw a MASSIVE party in july for my grandma’s 80th bday which was probably irresponsible but at the time the numbers were low and we were all vaxxed, anyway I got to see a ton of people I hadn’t in a while 

-my dad had open heart surgery (he’s ok but it was a time)

-one of my sisters was our neighbor for the summer and now my other sister is our neighbor (also ingrid and sarah are finally friends which makes me happyyy)

-speaking of ingrid and sarah the three of us briefly revived my silly rp forum site from when I was like 14-15 lmao

-spent a long miserable time at my shitty horrible job and then FINALLY quit at the end of the summer

-got to be unemployed & just chill for the month of september, took a lot of walks downtown

-my high school 10 year reunion happened lol but I didn’t go because it looked like a hot mess

-tried in vain to get hired as an advisor at several universities/colleges near me… which was frustrating bc especially for international stuff I’m very qualified… stay tuned if that ever happens

-started working at a plant store in october! it’s been a fun time so far, my coworkers are mostly chill and my boss is a little annoying but not actively evil like my previous boss so I count it as a win. also I’m learning so much about plants & fueling my plant addiction

-related, I started a garden on our balcony in december and so far it’s doing ok!

-I mentioned getting engaged but oh my god so many of my friends got engaged

-so much of this year was just wedding planning lol

-I got ingrid to play age of mythology aka the game I was obsessed with in middle school and haven’t shut up about since muahaha

-played dnd with my sisters a couple times which was a fun and crazy time

-my mom finally got the christmas she’s been trying to have since my parents moved onto a boat, aka my parents got an airbnb and my mom got to have family around throughout the holidays

that’s pretty much it, I think! the covid depression is still real and hits from time to time, I don’t make enough money and I’m very uncertain about my ~career future~, but overall I can’t complain too much. I’m looking forward to ‘22 if for no other reason than I’m getting married this year! Also I have made the executive decision that we’re calling it 22 bc 2022 is too much of a mouthful when you say it out loud!

thank u for joining me on this recap of my year, if you did. peace & love lol

#insert usual disclaimer that I don't actually expect anyone to read this and it's for my record keeping etc #but feel free if you wanna #personal?

[genesischi]

Um, hi. I hope you don't mind me asking if you have any suggestions on how I should deal with my new college's enablement services? For the course interview,I explained I have diagnosed mental health issues, and was in the process of being assessed for autism as an adult (I should have the final diagnosis before/after) starting the course in August. I disclosed to explain my circumstances -- and because my GP advised me to... But I don't really know what they expect me to ask for? (1)

2) I went through a 3year BA degree with no accommodations *before I had a breakdown* inmy honours year. Don’t get me wrong - I found lectures pointless (Idon’t process audio information very well). Exams were nightmares,every little noise, footsteps of invigilators… And now I make itclear that I was disclosing to explain my circumstances - how do Iaccept help? It took me years to go to a dr for my mental healthissues. From your blog, it seems as if you have personal experience…

I’m really reallyglad you asked me! I don’t mind at all. I panicked a little atfirst since I had no idea how to answer, but after calming down frominitial communication shock I realised that while my experience is ofcourse individual and the solutions I have found won’t necessarilywork for you, I can always make suggestions.

Disclaimer: All thisinformation is based on current British law, any other countries willrequire checking the laws there.

So I can’t promisethis will be helpful, and always feel free to ask follow-upquestions, but I’ll certainly do my best and try.

Okay, so first thingsfirst, how to deal with the enablement services? What problems areyou having: do you not know what to say to them? Do they not listento you? Are their suggestions not helpful? Are they overfull and notable to make time for you? Are there funding problems? I can’treally help without knowing what the problems are.

For lectures (notknowing anything about what you may have already tried, or what typeof course you do or the teaching style where you go) I would suggestperhaps having a audio recorder with a speech-to-text software so youcould upload it and read it later, however this is very expensive andrequires a sufficiently powerful computer or laptop, so depends onwhat funding you have. Otherwise, and far cheaper, would be to askyour teachers for their lecture notes, class plans and curriculum,and if your lessons have presentations to obtain copies - I knowthese are very generic but I’ll cover the basics since I don’tknow the specifics here.

There are lots of studyTumblr blogs that could probably advise better on how to take notesin way you find easy to follow, but I can’t really help there,since I don’t take notes EVER. I either pay attention and learn bylistening and talking in class (though I don’t process well withaudio alone either, I need visual and audio to line up), or I couldtake notes and actually learn nothing.

The solutions I foundfor exams were to ask for separate invigilation, which does notrequire much funding as they are either teachers and it’s part oftheir contract, or they’re volunteers/parents who are doing a gooddeed.

The problem with thiscan be limited amount of rooms available when you need them,depending on where you are, some places have excess rooms. However,if you think this would help you and rooms are scarce, this shouldcome under what in England and Wales is called “ReasonableAdjustment”, which means legally under the United Kingdom EqualityAct 2010 organisations, employers and services have to supplyreasonable adjustments to anyone meeting one or more of the“Protected Characteristics” (e.g. disability, age, gender, etc).So in this example they cannot deny you based on rooms, in that casein Britain there would be a case for discrimination.

Separate invigilationgave me a room on my own, with two invigilators, one for the student,one for the paper (in case you need to leave to go to the toilet orsomething like that, they can’t leave the paper alone so you needtwo). From my experience they don’t patrol around, they just sitand look bored, so that removes the feeling watched aspect. We alsonegotiated that they would never be behind me, only ever in my lineof sight since it makes me nervous when people stand behind me. Youmay also be able to ask to be in a certain position (whatever is toyour liking) near the doors or windows, or specifically ask to be ina room with/without certain electronics (e.g. fluorescent or buzzinglights/fans).

I get separateinvigilation as it means I don’t disturb other people taking theexams when I leave early, another clause that I require. Depending onthe exam length, and the place I was taking the exam there weredifferent rules, some I could leave the room but not the building,but that the paper could be removed and I be allowed to sit and chatwith the invigilator, and some allowed me to completely leave and gohome.

I know this is unusualto finish earlier rather than later, but I’m usually finishedwithin a third or two thirds of the time given, and I really can’thandle sitting in silence doing nothing between 30 mins and twohours. The silence and lack of activity allows anxiety and intrusivethoughts and other bad things to happen.

One of the things thatwas discussed but ultimately ruled out for me in exams was to allowme previously-approved music. If I remember correctly it was decidednothing with words could be allowed as it could in some way be usedto cheat, but instrumental pieces or relaxing sounds like whale musicor the wind or rain - this is something you could discuss if it mighthelp you.

A more common one butone that still had to be negotiated was the use of a “wordprocessor” aka a computer/laptop, since I struggled with orderingmy thoughts, and if I needed to edit on paper it would look verymessy and waste a lot of time, where with a laptop it’s much easierto edit and move text around to insert or change things.

Now, having reread yourquestion I was less sure I understood it, but thought I’d keep theabove information in case I’d interpreted it correctly there.

If you actually meanthow do you get the mindset of accepting help that is given ratherthan just proudly refusing it, then I may still be able to help, butit’s a rather personal answer yet again.

I’d say the trick tolearning to accept help, is to realise that you’re human, you’renot innately capable of everything. But also the more important bitis to remember that those who created all these rules and systemswere also humans, and they got it wrong, they created a structurethat doesn’t work for a huge percentage of the population who gothrough it. Some may fake it better than others, but I know thateveryone struggles at some point.

So, in summary what youneed to figure out is what are struggling with (the hardest part),what support could actually help you, and finally what is actuallypossible/legal/within the rules.

I find that mindmappingon my worst days is the best way to figure out what is causing theproblems, I then needed to filter out home/personal issues andfinetune my observations to what was relevant to my educationprovider. From there, you need to discuss (withfriends/family/supporters) or think about what can be done for thedifficulties you have identified. And then, take this to yourenablement service for further discussion.

Be prepared forrejection of some ideas due to funding and/or plausibility, and awarethis may take months of sessions to arrange to your liking. You mayhave to compromise.

I think that’s allI’ve got to say, but I’m happy to help more and talk privately ifyou wish.

#education #university #college #protected characteristics #Equality Act 2010 #school refusal #school phobia #problems with exams #problems with lectures #struggling at school #breakdown #mental breakdown #mental illness #autism #coping with mental illness #coping with autism #coping with mental illness at university #coping with mental illness at college