Pretty Little Moments

www.ourgom.com

So twice in the past week-ish, I have woken up to the same sound. Sounds kind of creepy, but it’s not I promise. In both incidents, it was well before I wanted to be awake that I was awoken and I was fairly immediately pleased.

The first of these encounters happened on the last day of my finals and the last thing I needed was to be awake before I had to be, and when I heard a strange ruckus downstairs, I was confused and annoyed for a couple minutes until I heard the telltale sound of a little kid. A one year old to be fairly precise, doing that “ah ah” noise. And I was like, there’s a baby in my house! Yay, I love babies! So I went downstairs not knowing why or how there was a baby in my house, but I was too excited about having a baby in my house (did I say that phrase enough?). So I rush down stairs and my dad’s friend is over and he has his little grandson who is toddling around my living room being mega-adorable. I was pretty glad to be awake, man. He was so sweet.

The second instance was this morning actually. I hadn’t gotten home until like midnight and right after the sun rose, basically, I heard outside my window people yelling. For a split second, I was highly irate until I realized it was little kids giggling. Then it was just infectious and I started smiling. There is something about little ones laughing that just makes me happy. I love hearing youthful, innocent happiness.

I tell these stories for two reasons, one because I just want to express how healing and utterly beautiful children’s happiness can be. And secondly, I think that it is so important to appreciate little moments like those. A lot of my happiest moments in life come from appreciating very small things; like hearing laughter in the morning instead of an alarm clock. Or taking a nature stroll and witnessing spectacular things (which I often write about in Escaping Suburbia). As the holidays come barreling towards us about to pass in the blink of an eye, take some time to enjoy little things and reflect on them. Cherish moments more than gifts (sorry, that was mushy). 

Weird Is Good

About a year ago, I was up late on my phone (shocking, right?) and I was getting to that really weird part of the internet where it can either turn into looking at videos of elephants giving birth or things that you wish your eyes could un-see. 

What I found was pretty much in the middle of the spectrum. It's called ASMR and apparently it had a surge of popularity in 2013, but I'm always late to the party. 

ASMR, which is an acronym for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response is when you get tingles on your scalp, neck or back. A lot of people get those tingles when someone is brushing their hair, if they hear certain sounds, or when they get massages. 

The videos can get really weird, like really really weird. (TORTURE With MEMORY Hypnosis: Binaural ASMR Sleep Role Play | Halloween) But once you get past the weirdness, its like the second best kind of video to watch on YouTube other than kitties. 

I particularly like ASMR because a lot of the videos deal with easing anxiety. My favorite video right now is this one:

~Relaxing Reiki Session ASMR Roleplay~

And then there are the funny ones where people tease at the weirdness of ASMR like:

Amazing ASMR Experience - Rhett and Link from Good Mythical Morning

and

The Most Disturbing ASMR Video from CollegeHumor

I suggest for anyone who needs to chillax, you go ahead and check this odd phenomenon out. If you can handle weird and you aren't afraid of someone looking through your YouTube History, then ASMR is for you. 

Among many of its kind, here are some videos for newbies to ASMR:

What is ASMR? by GentleWhispering

What is ASMR? 30 different BINAURAL triggers to find yours! By Olivia Kissper

What is ASMR? 40 fast triggers to find your TINGLES for relaxation | binaural | Olivia kisser

What Is ASMR? An explanation by Emma WhispersRed

Go explore! Honestly, it is one of the most helpful things I have found for dealing with my anxiety when I need to occupy my thoughts, but don't want to feel like I'm mindless. ASMR is like a spa for your brain and there is so much of it on YouTube that it never gets old. 

Real Talk | The Veggie Stigma

opkansas.org


When I was a freshman in high school, I became a vegetarian and since then (the last seven years (holy sh*t that’s a long time!)) I have been on and off varying forms of vegetarianism.  For the last year or so, I have eaten meat, but haven’t touched dairy. And just recently, for about the last few weeks, I stopped eating meat for ethical reasons. There are some people in my life, a lot actually, who give me a stank face when I say things like, “I don’t eat dairy products,” or when I first declared my vegetarianism seven years ago. The only reason I ever quit vegetarianism in the first place was because I felt so pressured by people all the time. I was always made to feel like I was a burden to feed even though why I was doing what I was doing felt right.

Frankly, I don’t understand it at all. I’ve encountered people personally offended by my choice of diet. My best guess is that it is their form of defense mechanism somewhere very internally protecting them from having to be around me. The stereotype about vegans/vegetarians is that we will preach to you about your wrong-doing to the world. Sometimes that is true. As I have done research whether it be scholarly or videos from YouTube, I often come across people who blatantly attack other people and spew venomous facts at them. Personally I think that it is the worst method of getting the message out about veganism. No one wants to be verbally assaulted.

With anything, really, you’ll find extremists and I personally will never be one. That’s why I get really angry when someone looks at me like I have insulted them when I say I’m vegan. That’s why I haven’t out right told anyone yet. I’m just sort of phasing into it discreetly, but still I get, “Why aren’t you getting the chicken on your chipotle?” with a caustic tone. For some reason, it really annoys people when I won’t eat meat. Again, it might be a subconscious reaction to try to shut me down to avoid any sort of Vegan Propaganda speeches. To anyone reading this that eats meals with me, the only time I will tell you information is if you A) ask me specifically to know more, or B) tell me I am stupid for my choices.

I will make it clear that I don’t think meat eating is wrong, I just have a problem with the way meat is mass produced and how it affects the animals’ lives. If you’re a Katniss-type and hunt wild turkeys and deer, that’s awesome. You’re living like a natural human. I wouldn’t turn down venison. This might seem pretty weird, but that’s just my choice. I encourage anyone to seek some information about factory farming, but I won’t go so far as some whacked out people I saw in a forum the other day. They said they won’t attend a holiday gathering where animal products are served. I think we can all agree that that sucks for everyone. And I promise not all of us are like that.

So I will leave you with the hopes that if you ever encounter a non-meat eater type human, you won’t make them feel weird about it if they haven’t tried to make you weird first; also to encourage you to not plug your ears if they do try to preach. They do it with good intentions.

How to Make Your Period Suck Less

So you’re a woman that menstruates. I’m sorry.

I know that a lot of the time PMS and cramps can feel unimaginably painful. Depending on how bad it is for you the pain can feel anywhere between a mild unpleasant stomach cramp (lucky) to actually writhing in pain because your body feels like it’s full of hot lava and a flailing, ravenous animal has gone loose in your uterus.

At my worst, I would feel like I needed to go to the hospital because something felt like it was going to burst. Advil didn’t help, and I couldn’t handle eating… It was awful.

I did some research about why period cramps suck so much, and how I could fix them. It was so bad that I would have to make sure that I was not doing anything the day I was supposed to get my period because I was totally bed-ridden. A lot of results showed up about diet and lifestyle choices, and that the only way to get rid of cramps was to do something about it before they start. Once you have them, there’s very little you can do.

My advice to the world of females is to log your period so that you can plan ahead. Usually a week or two before my period starts; (while I’m PMSing) I start to cut out greasy and sugary foods (and sometimes meat) from my diet. Mind you that I do not drink coffee, pop, or alcohol whatsoever. I have many reasons why those do not exist in my life, but the biggest incentive to someone who likes those things is that they make menstruation SO much worse. If you have a hard time with your cramps or PMS, stay the hell away from pop especially. It utterly destroys your system.

I know that diets really aren’t everyone’s thing, but if it’s only for those two weeks before your expected period date, it’s not that hard to do.

The Julia-Science-Logic (totally not real or credible, but I believe in it) is that if you treat your body well while it is creating the lining of the uterus that it is going to shed, you’re going to have an easier time dealing with the shedding of this lining. The more prepared/healthy your body is, the better it will function.

The only things that I can suggest for bad cramps the first few days of your period are tea (nettle and raspberry leave are great), heating pads, and getting out of bed. I find that the longer I wait to get going in the morning, the worse my cramps get. If I’m up right away, my body gets a head start on feeling good.

My goal in life is to get as many women as possible to understand that their periods are not a bad thing, and the first step in understanding that periods are good are to lessen the pain that they cause us.