Making Better State Insects

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morbidsmenagerie https://morbidsmenagerie.tumblr.com/post/736852311666819072/making-better-state-insects :

So at some point I stumbled across a list of State Insects. Honestly I wasn’t even aware states had “state insects”, but as I looked down the list my disappointment grew. A vast majority of states had selected the European honeybee (which is not even native) as their state insect, with monarch butterflies and ladybugs being the two runner ups. I thought this was a damn shame because there’s so many interesting insects in the US, so I’m making a better official new list of state insects.

For this list my criteria are:

• Insect must be native to the state
• No repeats
• Insect must be easily observable to the naked eye

I also had general guidelines of picking insects that were relatively common (based on inaturalist heat maps of observation) and picking insects that were cool or interesting. Some of these insects I picked because I thought they were important parts of the areas culture and experience (lovebugs, toebiters, and periodical cicadas) and some insects I picked just to raise awareness that they exist in the US.

I also don’t think I gave anyone huge L’s, no mosquitoes, louses, cockroaches, ect, because my goal of this list is to get people interested in their native insects and I want it to be fun to find and observe your state insect.

Also some states get gold stars for picking state insects that already meet these criteria and are cool so they get to keep theirs. Some states also have “state butterflies” or “state agricultural insect” which for this list I’m ignoring, you can keep those I’m just focused on state insects. Slight disclaimer also, I’ve only ever lived in California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and South Carolina, and all these states are keeping their original state insect. So all the insects I’m choosing are for states I haven’t lived in. Also I’m not including photos in this post just for my own sanity.

List under the cut!

Keep reading https://morbidsmenagerie.tumblr.com/post/736852311666819072/making-better-state-insects (Your picture was not posted)

kitchen status

color theory?

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ok well. so. we’re at the point now where the countertop guy (his name was Ken and he had a cool laser thing and confessed he often enjoys playing with people’s cats with the laser thing when nobody’s paying attention; alas our cat is not home and missed her chance) has come and measured, and now the countertops are due on January 4th.

Today the electricians are finishing the installation of all the outlets and such, which is exciting.

My mother advised me that the one thing she regrets about her kitchen remodel of, gosh more than ten years ago now, is that she didn’t immediately install shelf liners. So I am going to do that. A cursory websearch told me that you can in fact make your own from fabric, but I think I am going to mostly buy premade ones, since they’re not very expensive and I want this to get done.

BUT I do have a lazy-susan corner cabinet that’s got these big round shelves that the liners won’t easily fit, so I am going to make my own slightly-padded lil quilted guys to go on those, I think that’s the most expedient thing. i intend to fill that cabinet with my saucepans and baking dishes, so it doesn’t need to be spillproof and grippy and all that.

ANYWAY the next thing I need to think about is COLORS. I found a bunch of my notes from when we first started thinking about remodeling the kitchen and my big conclusion was “i don’t want gray! i don’t want a kitchen all in shades of gray!” and guess what my new kitchen is all shades of gray. BUT. that’s because I realized that getting brightly colored cabinets would lock me into one color. Like blue– a lot of bright blue options in cabinets or countertops exist, but then you’re locked into that specific shade of blue. And what if the cool accessories you wanted don’t coordinate? No.

So I figure, i will pick ONE very bold color, and will paint the east wall around the window, the window trim, and the west wall and entryway that color, and then perhaps a secondary bold color will be what the dishes, spoon rest, and other replaceable accessories will be in. (I think some floor rugs too, at least in a couple high-traffic areas.)

But I need help choosing colors, so please do weigh in.

The kitchen is all in shades of gray with both warm and cool tones. The floor is grayish-mottled faux stone vinyl with a kind of warm cast. The cabinets are warm wood washed blue, which comes out to a fairly cool grayish color. The countertop will be a mottled mostly-white quartz composite. The backsplash will be (boring, I know, I know) white subway tiles.

The neighboring room, the living room, which the kitchen is now wide open to, is bright, saturated buttercup yellow, with royal purple trim. (The bedroom is deep royal purple with bright scarlet trim.)

I don’t like pastels or desaturated colors. The colors I prefer are primary or secondary colors in jewel tones.

So I’m currently considering cobalt blue, emerald green, pthlao green, deep teal, mermaid blue, royal purple, or bright crimson as my main color, with the smaller secondary color being either goldenrod yellow, bright scarlet, bright orange, bright turquoise, or metallic gold.

My everyday china is in the classic Blue Willow pattern, and a few of the pieces are mended with gold kintsugi from the time period in which Dude was into doing that. We also have some CalamityWare because his sister bought us a bunch of that– and that includes some soft furnishings, a pair of kitchen towels and a hot dish mitt and an apron and such.

Middle-Little advised me that the Pantone color of the year is “Peachfuzz™” and that a pale peach or bright coral would be great colors for the kitchen, and she is correct, but that is not in the slightest bit to my personal taste so I won’t be doing that. Alas. She’s super correct though. But I have discovered I am allergic to those types of colors. What category is that? I don’t know but I know my answer is No. And I feel like anything on-trend will soon be dated. (Also, and I do know this by chance, the Pantone Color Of The Year for like 2018 was a coral color, and like, why. Why do they keep coming back to this.)

I don’t know what that means but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, LOL. (Your picture was not posted)

Friends In High Places - Chapter 1 - hobbitdragon -

favor, yes it's witcher, but all y'all vampirefuckers need to check this out

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Friends In High Places - Chapter 1 - hobbitdragon - Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types [Archive of Our Own] https://archiveofourown.org/works/52413640:

bittylildragon https://bittylildragon.tumblr.com/post/737710073473810432/friends-in-high-places-chapter-1-hobbitdragon :

Chapters: 2/4 Fandom: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Wied%C5%BAmin%20%7C%20The%20Witcher%20-%20All%20Media%20Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game) https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Wied%C5%BAmin%20%7C%20The%20Witcher%20(Video%20Game), The Witcher (TV) https://archiveofourown.org/tags/The%20Witcher%20(TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Queen of the Night, Geralt of Rivia/Vampire Sex Workers, past Geralt/Regis, Background Geralt/Yennefer Characters: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Queen of the Night (The Witcher), Original Female Vampire Characters, Jaskier | Dandelion Additional Tags: Vampires, Vampire Sex, Shapeshifting, Size Difference, Riding, Vaginal Sex, Biting, Vampire Bites, Blood Drinking, Altered Mental States, Anal Sex, Oviposition, Prehensile Ovipositor Clits, Bigger Woman Smaller Man, Species Difference Kink, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Sex Work, Vampire Sex Workers, I may be a beta-reader myself but I can’t beta-read my own shit Series: Part 41 of Witcher Fics https://archiveofourown.org/series/1731811 Summary:

Two very different people each loved a vampire named Regis, once. In Vizima in 1270, they meet for the first time. Then in 1272 they meet again, much more physically.

omg this is so good

Even if you don’t really go here fandom-wise, the monsterfucking part is gorgeous and lovely and also really imaginative, absolutely you need to read this even if before this moment you had never really wondered what it would be like to fuck a gorgeous enormous beautifully-groomed furry-bat-vampire-thing with a prehensile ovipositor and an extremely good grasp on exactly what she likes.

It’s also an incredibly emotionally-detailed fic with brilliant characterization and a beautiful exploration of grief, memory loss, meditations on the precarity of life and love etc., but. Also. Prehensile ovipositor. You don’t even have to be into that to absolutely need to read this to find out how that would even work.

As ever bittylildragon https://tmblr.co/MFZ-dyX2gnK2QUR8N-lH5pA is an absolute genius with this sort of thing. (Your picture was not posted)