Symptoms of Depression in Each Zodiac Sign

♐️sagittarius: isolates self, stays at home and skips a lot of classes, loses interest in hobbies, doesn’t keep in touch with friends. it might seem like they’re fine with this, or make it look like a choice they’ve made, but usually they’re not fine at all. they can be really stubborn. (if you believe your sag friend is behaving this way and that is not how they usually are, make sure to pronouncedly invite them to activities and parties etc, make them do stuff. get out with them. just walk along with them in parks or something. it’s not the longterm solution but it’s a very good way to make them calm and happy.) uselful information / for friends

via It’s what we do. | (disclaimer) this is completely based on… .

Decorate Cookies for Day of the Dead

dodcookie My sister would love these. She decorated her whole face as a skull last year for The Day of the Dead (El Dia de los Muertos). They actually call it the sugar skull. You have probably seen it somewhere by now.

The Day of the Dead is not about Halloween or zombie movies. It is a real event in Mexico, a long time tradition.

Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a Mexican holiday celebrated October 31, November 1st and November 2nd in connection with the Christian days for All Hallows Eve, All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day.

Family gather to remember and pray for deceased friends and family members. Traditions include building private altars to honour the deceased. The altars are decorated with sugar skulls, flowers and the favourite food and drink of the departed family and friends. Gifts and/or possession of the dead are left on graves. The living will spend the day (and possibly the evening) at the grave. They pack food and have a picnic in the cemetery.

Day of the Dead is not a grim holiday. Other cultures may not understand that this is a family holiday, a day of remembering and giving thanks for the people who have been important and valued in our lives. Pagans have a very similar holiday, Samhain, which is also based on remembering the past and celebrating the harvest in the present. In North America we call this Halloween, but it has lost most of the original meaning behind the holiday.

Prompt for December 4 | Project Reverb

20/20: Hindsight is the one thing we never benefit from in the present.  Is there one moment you wish you could do over?

via Prompt for December 4 | Project Reverb .

No. I don’t want do overs of anything unless it’s a single great moment. Even then, things are always better in the moment than the second time around. You can’t have the same reaction twice, especially when you already know how things are going to end.

Do you read the end of a book while you are still reading it? Life is like that. At times we would like to know how it ends, do we accomplish everything, or anything? How do family and friends do with their own lives? So many questions to ask and yet having the answers leaves us without all those questions.

I think we need those surprises, questions and all those moments of suspense and even fear. If we had a book of our lives to read from how dull that would be. To already know how your every moment will be…. Wouldn’t that be sad to just be waiting around for things to happen instead of wondering what will happen next?

I'm a Woman with a Moustache and I Don't Mind

disguise At the great old age of 48 now, I still have the same whiskers on my upper lip which I have lived with since I was about 13 or 14. I have never tried to hurt, maim or kill my moustache. I have left it alone, in a live and let live kind of way.

It helps that my whiskers are sparse. I do have dark hair and the hair on my lip matches the colour of the hair on my head (or most of it now that I’ve got grey mixed in with my dark brown mane).

I live with my facial hair and I don’t mind it. I even have a bit of fondness for the facial hair – It makes me feel connected to other women in my family who have far more facial hair than I ever hope (or want) to have.

I remember the very first day I actually noticed the whiskers myself.

I was in our downstairs bathroom and I had leaned in for a closer look at my face because I had a zit (also known as a pimple). I still like to get rid of those. I squish them then put stuff on them to finish the killing process and decontaminate so they can’t so easily return.

Seeing darker hairs on my upper lip was a surprise. I’m sure they weren’t there before then. I hated them on sight. They were traitors to the young, perfection of my face. That face being one of the few things I actually did like about myself – and still do. Having whiskers was a shock. Only old women were supposed to get those kind of things, women going through menopause or women from hairy families. I had neither. I was about 14 and my ancestry was pretty slanted to the Celtic side.

I called in for reinforcements, my Mother. She looked and then looked closer. She said they were hardly noticeable unless someone was really looking for them.

So I took a step back from the mirror, which wasn’t much considering my face was almost pressed against the glass to start with. It was true! Once I stepped back and wasn’t focused on that area of my face, I really couldn’t notice the whiskers. If I looked, I did see them. But, I had to be looking pretty carefully.

So I wasn’t turning into some weird sort of man-beast after all.

My Uncle has had a full beard and moustache for as long as I can remember. As children we would buy him shaving cream, packages of razors and so on. Children sometimes have such great ideas but not the common sense to see these ideas through. He laughed about our gifts and after being embarrassed once or twice we realized a man with a full beard and moustache isn’t going to need shaving cream. Later I would try after shave, thinking he could use it like cologne. I never did hear either way about that one. Maybe he thought it was a good idea.

Anyway, at that young age myself and having whiskers I did picture myself growing a beard, thick and hairy as I went through puberty and all those changes. I would check my upper lip for changes, new growth, more growth – dreading to see a whisker begin to do so much as curl.

I was lucky in the genetic lottery. I never did get more whiskers, or thicker whiskers. I did have friends who were less lucky.

One young woman I worked with had to shave her face every day. If she skipped a day she had 5 o’clock shadow. From talking to her I know she tried all kinds of methods to get rid of her whiskers. Waxing was painful but seemed to give her an extra day from having to deal with them. She tried several of those gimmicks from TV ads. Some of them burned her skin and made everything worse. Not only did she still have whiskers but her skin was burned and red or even blistered too. I was so glad for my sparse little whiskers then.

We Women Do Get Whiskers

Women in my family have a small tendency towards whiskers, when we get older. My own Mother began plucking her face (not just her eyebrows) once she was in her 40’s. My younger sisters both had whiskers on their upper lip and chin by the time they were in high school. Mine may have started sooner but they were less visible.

When my Great Aunt Alice died one of the saddest things was the full beard she had which no one was there often enough to prevent for her. She was my Grandmother’s sister (on my Mother’s side of the family).

My Grandmother also had stray whiskers on her face, but I never saw her with a lot of them until she was quite a bit older, when I was far past being a kid myself. She was a plucker too. Interesting to note that I have her same pattern of grey hair mostly in the front too. Maybe we share our whiskery ways too and I won’t have to really worry about them until I’m 60 or so too. I miss her – in that way it’s an honour to share her whiskers and grey hair. I do think about her nearly every time I look at my face in the mirror.

But… I do Like Being Contrary

Having written all that, a funny thing happened when I turned 40-something and began to get whiskers on my chin – I began plucking them, pretty mercilessly, with tweezers. I’m far from being a bearded lady. I only notice one a week and I do pluck them as soon as I feel them.

The only difference with the moustache and the chin whiskers was my age. I did not like the hair on my chin making me feel old when I actually was past the age of high school and beyond. Nature’s little digs about our age are much easier to take when we aren’t old yet.

Moustache Growing Month: Movember

Dare to Be a Feminist

Scoop.it: Dare to be a Feminist

My friend, Deanna, writes about a lot of issues to do with women. When I read them, I feel passionate, angry, etc. But, I don’t write about women’s issues or feminism myself. I don’t curate a topic about it. I don’t even look for or read about it.

I don’t think Deanna has ever asked me why. Maybe she already knows, or assumes I’m just one more woman who goes along and doesn’t think about the issues, or especially care. Maybe she thinks I prefer not to know and just walk along, blindly ignoring everything but what’s right in front of me.

That isn’t it. The truth is I just don’t want to keep fighting. I’m not the fighting type. I’m about keeping the peace, finding ways to work things out and getting situations under control. Women are natural peace keepers they say and I believe that to be true.

I grew up as the oldest of four kids. I looked after the others and myself.  I did it pretty well for a kid. My Mother was there. But, she was more like a back up plan. She liked (still does) being busy, always cooking, cleaning or planting something. She was a good Mother but she wasn’t always so hands on. That was me. I learned to keep four kids together when we were out and I learned to keep four pretty different temperaments together when we were home. Situations came up where there were disagreements, problems, even a small house fire, and I handled them all.

I’ve never been particularly into news reading. A headline will catch my eye. I am far more likely to skim the first paragraph then read on to find out the details. If the first paragraph engages me I will skim farther along. I have to be pretty passionate about the topic to read the whole thing. Seems far more people are like me than ever before, when it comes to reading news and blogs.

So, I don’t find the issues important to women first. I read it all second hand.

Don’t assume I’ve had an ideal life, never affected by anything. I’ve been molested as a young teenager. My sister was raped and would have been murdered if someone hadn’t heard her scream and come to look. All sorts of situations and happenings in my life, not all of them about sexual assault. I stopped reading the news or listening to the news a few years ago because I just can’t deal with more violence against women and how deeply angry I feel. You can’t live your day to day life if you are consumed by deep seated anger.

I find it hard to be social, to keep friends. I can be friendly and social in short spurts. I do it really well. People usually like me. But, I’m not connected to anyone, really. I’m isolated and most of who I am likes it this way.

So I don’t keep up with women’s issues. Not because I don’t care. Not because I’m not affected. But, because I’m too affected and I just can’t live with all the anger. I have to keep living and I can’t spend my time fighting everything and everyone. I have enough to do just to fight myself. To keep myself from hiding away from the world.

If you ask me, I will say I’m a feminist. But, it may be that no one will agree with me, or believe me, because I’m not a fighter on the outside.

The Lyrics for Today – I'm Not in Love

I’m not in love
So don’t forget it
It’s just a silly phase I’m going through
And just because
I call you up
Don’t get me wrong, don’t think you’ve got it made
I’m not in love, no no, it’s because..

I like to see you
But then again
That doesn’t mean you mean that much to me
So if I call you
Don’t make a fuss
Don’t tell your friends about the two of us
I’m not in love, no no, it’s because..

I keep your picture
Upon the wall
It hides a nasty stain that’s lying there
So don’t you ask me
To give it back
I know you know it doesn’t mean that much to me
I’m not in love, no no, it’s because..

Ooh you’ll wait a long time for me
Ooh you’ll wait a long time
Ooh you’ll wait a long time for me
Ooh you’ll wait a long time

I’m not in love
So don’t forget it
It’s just a silly phase I’m going through
And just because I call you up
Don’t get me wrong, don’t think you’ve got it made
I’m not in love
I’m not in love

10CC – 10CC – I’M NOT IN LOVE LYRICS
Writer(s): STEWART, ERIC/GOULDMAN, GRAHAM