souvenir handkerchiefs

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His whole life, my dad was a handkerchiefs kinda guy. He sneezed a lot, he had allergies and asthma, he was just always blowing his nose, and he never used Kleenex, I never saw him do that one time. He just used handkerchiefs. Always, endless ones.

Did you know, the Army used to issue them? He had a number of them. Cotton, olive drab, not the softest, but sturdy and practical.

He had so many handkerchiefs. Bandanas, sure, but also the white ones with decorative edging. he had tie-dyed ones. He had many that small children had decorated with fabric markers as gifts, since he had grandkids. An entire drawer in his wardrobe was filled with just handkerchiefs, and they were a significant portion of his laundry.

After he died, right away Mom went through and found most of the ones the kids had decorated, and gave them back to those kids, since it would be meaningful to them. She kept a few for herself. And then she dumped the rest in a box and gave them to Farmsister, who also uses handkerchiefs fairly faithfully.

As I was at Farmsister’s house before the interment and was getting dressed I cursed that I’d brought several handkerchiefs and couldn’t find them, and was going to have to try to dig out a travel pack of tissues. “No, no, no,” she said, and ran into her bedroom and retrieved the box Mom had brought over.

“Souvenir handkerchiefs,” she said. “Take a couple. Actually– shall I bring the box?”

And so she brought a box of Dad’s handkerchiefs to his interment.

Anyway I had stuffed one into my backpack and i can’t stop sneezing this morning and just pulled it out to use it and you know, it doesn’t smell like him anymore, but. Now my nose is running a lot.

Good thing I have this. (Your picture was not posted)

It’s Actually Ok To Round Up At Checkout

been so cynical about the checkout charities, i know the local health insurance giant's big charity donations were from their employees' paychecks, so i let that tarnish my vision of checkout charities, but that's good to know

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copperbadge https://copperbadge.tumblr.com/post/664311700746567680/its-actually-ok-to-round-up-at-checkout :

I keep seeing posts about how you shouldn’t round up your payment at checkout “for charity” because the company takes the money, gives in their own name, and then receives a tax break for the donation.

*This is incorrect. It’s just plain wrong information. *

Because it’s illegal for a company to claim collected donations on their taxes, since they give you a receipt that proves you can claim it on yours. They are considered a collection agent – the corporate equivalent of a firefighter with a boot soliciting on the sidewalk.

And the sentiment is potentially fucking nonprofits out of serious change.

So here’s how it works. When you make a purchase you’re asked if you’d like to round up your price, say $22.70, to $23 and give that extra 30 cents to charity. When you choose yes, the company adds that as a special charge, and transfers the amount to a processing company. The processing company disburses many small gifts in one big chunk to the nonprofit, so that the nonprofit doesn’t get ten thousand transactions of thirty cents. Over the course of a couple of years, campaigns like this can raise millions for the nonprofit.

So where’s the catch? you’re thinking. Capitalism doesn’t allow kindness like this to rampage unchecked!

Well, you’re kinda right. For one thing, there’s something called the Halo Effect, where companies get a huge PR boost from this giving. People feel better about themselves and the place they give, when they give this way. That’s why companies do it, pure and simple. It’s cheap, built-in positive messaging.

The companies aren’t deducting it (it’d be chump change to them anyway tbh) but you can. You can literally deduct the thirty cents you gave at Jersey Mike’s off your very own taxes, if you keep the receipt. But unless you’re giving more than $6K to charity each year ($12K if you’re filing jointly!) then there’s no point keeping that receipt, because before that threshold you won’t get a tax break for charitable giving anyway.

One significant benefit of giving at checkout is that the nonprofit doesn’t get your name or address, so you never go on a mailing list. If you give an average of 30 cents twice a week when you buy a soda at the gas station, over the course of a year you’ll have given over $30 commitment-free. Sweet deal.

Here’s what most people think is the catch: between three and seven percent of the money given goes to that processing company I mentioned. Because they have to, you know, process that money, which comes with expenses like software, customer support, servers, bank fees, etc.

However. Three to seven percent? That’s nothing. A good fundraiser working for a nonprofit costs, in salary, roughly 20% of what they raise. For every dollar they earn, they bring in about $5 from donors. Round-up campaigns raise $5 and charge you 25 cents for it and require almost no work from the charity – that money just shows up. And even if you didn’t give at the checkout, if you give online we pay a processing fee to the place processing THAT payment. If you give by check or cash, we still have to pay people to count, record, and deposit those payments. Giving money costs money. That’s just the way it is.

1. Unless you actually are giving elsewhere, if you choose not to round-up, then you’re just…chest pounding. You’re pretending to stick it to the man when really you’re just not making a charitable gift at all. If you do give elsewhere that’s great, keep up the good work, I’m not talking to you. And if you can’t afford to give, I’m really sorry, I want you to keep your money and I’m also not talking to you. As we know, thirty cents adds up. I couldn’t give for several years, and it’s a point of pride now to always be able to hit the round-up button without doing any math.

But if you could give and aren’t giving somewhere…then no offense but you have no skin in this game and you need to sit down and let people who give a shit get on with their work.

Because an additional truth is that some people only remember to give when they’re asked but they HATE TO BE ASKED, except at checkout. And some people only give if they feel like they’re giving insignificantly relative to their income – like thirty cents at checkout. These campaigns are nearly-free, super-easy money for us from people who probably wouldn’t otherwise give. They raise our profile, too, so that people who have given at checkout think of us when they DO remember to give (like oh, around the holidays, which are fast impending).

In the end, I suppose I’m really just begging people, as a whole, for about the seventh or eighth year running, to stop coming to charitable giving from the standpoint of “Well whaddaya give me for it? Where’s the catch? How do I know you’ll do the best with my money? Can you prove you aren’t a scam?”

I know that most of you, most of the time, come to any relationship with an inherent assumption of good faith – from tv shows to friendships to Etsy purchases to pet ownership. You’re not deeply suspicious by nature! But this lingering hostility towards charitable giving, where the immediate assumption is one of bad faith, is really harmful to people who are attempting to do good work. An extremely small fraction of the nonprofits that want your funding are scams, religiously sketchy, or deeply negligent when it comes to how your money is eventually spent. Most are doing their best and many are putting up with a lot of unnecessary fucking side-eye while they do it.

So try to downshift from “Who will scam me the least” to “Who would I like to help the most?” and give accordingly. Whether that’s a local pet shelter, a toy or blanket drive, a national cancer organization, your friend’s top surgery gofundme, or the woman standing in traffic with the cardboard sign. Your blood pressure (and mine too, for that matter) will go way down. (Your picture was not posted)

(no subject)

ten months, just found it, had stuck it there because i thought it needed revision, i don't think it actually does

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thatgirlwithadhd https://thatgirlwithadhd.tumblr.com/post/619685889600372736/ive-read-these-sentences-before-but-only-in-shit :

adhdbreadbin https://adhdbreadbin.tumblr.com/post/619428400881385472:

i’ve read these sentences before but only in shit posts

thegayestmusic​ I’m not OP, but I saw you wanted a link to the article! In case you haven’t gotten one yet, here https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-sleep-disturbances-symptoms/ it is. It’s actually an article on sleep and ADHD that touches on messed up internal clocks as a potential cause of sleep problems.

Also, for anyone interested, I also like this article https://www.additudemag.com/is-your-spouse-always-late-running-on-adhd-time/, which conceptualizes ADHD time perception as more “kinesthetic” than neurotypical time perception, which is more linear:

The pictures reveal that people with ADHD perceive time not as a sequence of events the way others usually do, but as a diffuse collection of events that are viscerally connected to the people, activities, and emotions that fill them. The person with ADHD focuses intensely on all of the related details, experiencing these events with all of their interconnectedness. Slotting events into their proper place in time is a challenge.

Then there is this article http://adultadhdrelationships.blogspot.com/2010/09/adhd-and-time-blindness-dr-russell.html about managing time blindness, taken from Russell Barkley’s book, Taking Charge of Adult ADHD. I’ve found it helpful.

And finally there is this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmV8HQUuPEk&list=PLzBixSjmbc8eFl6UX5_wWGP8i0mAs-cvY&index=10 by Dr. Barkley that goes into more detail about exactly what time blindness is and how it affects people with ADHD.

I just wanted to comment on the bit in the quote where he says his patients “don’t wear watches”– this is not because they’re too stupid to realize that a watch would help them, which is what I feel like that sentence sounds like it’s saying. No, in my experience, we spent years of our childhood wearing watches– in my case, I wore an analog watch for years to force myself to learn to tell time, theorizing that I just needed yet more practice, but what that meant is that I couldn’t read the watch I was wearing so if someone asked me the time I’d have to show them the watch face, which was confusing, and a lot of times if I wanted to know the time, I would have forgotten that I was doing that by the time I deciphered what the hands meant. So then I wore a digital watch, which I mostly used to tell my left hand from my right, which was another thing I by then was aware it was age-inappropriate that i couldn’t. I used that watch for its alarms, exclusively, and it was somewhat useful, but I lost it and never replaced it.

Over the course of my life I’ve gone through several years-long phases where I wore watches, and I did not know what time it was at any point during those phases, any more than I did without the watches.

Here’s a weird sidebar, however: I do not need a kitchen timer when I cook, or an alarm clock to wake up. If pasta has to boil for nine minutes, I’ll set a timer, and then I’ll come back into the room when there are thirty seconds left on the timer, without fail. And I don’t even have a clock by my bed anymore, because I wake up when I need to. I am a fastidiously punctual person, I’ve trained myself to be.

It makes me wonder what it cost me to become this way, but there it is. I don’t understand time well, but I am never late. (Your picture was not posted)