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So, we're getting whimsical this summer, huh? I found my gnome doppelganger. 26 years ago exactly (starting something on a decade, century, and millennium-starting year sure makes it easy to remember), I was preparing myself for my first summer as a tarot card reader at a renaissance festival. I didn't choose the whimsical life, the whimsical life chose me. As a former Manic Pixie Dream Girl, I am happy to share my tips for a whimsy-filled summer to distract from The Horrors.

The first part of the blog post I wrote this morning was a lot of me thinking out loud about how to practically prepare for a drought potentially severe enough to cause water rations. Yes, like I'm sure most everyone else my original thought was how to stockpile water, but that's not practical at all... not only would you need the collection and storage equipment (I don't have the space for a water tower, I measured), but water goes stagnant. The question to ask is, "how do I

They're predicting a Super El Niño for fall/winter 2026-2027. Potentially the worst we've ever seen, which, considering where we're at in the process of climate change wouldn't surprise me. That means that my rural, farming area is facing a potential drought. Considering over-construction has drained the county water table (did I mention I live in a coastal county?), Nestle's been paying off the state government for water-drawing rights that are nowhere near sustainable up no

I'm from the Midwest, and both of my grandfathers are military veterans - one in WWII, one in the Korean War - so "Dopp Kit" is one of those traditions and terminologies that got persistently handed down in my family, much like calling chipped dry beef in cream sauce served over toast "shit on a shingle." But I digress. A Dopp Kit is a particular design of men's toiletry bags used for travel. Nowadays, there are many travel kits out there, and the kind that fold open and hang

After 10 years of Tent Camping While Disabled, I have a gear collection and my own setup down pat. And since I could use a new packing list after a forced two years away from the campgrounds, might as well make this blog content while I'm at it, right? I should point out that this is the car camping in state campgrounds kind of camping. It's music festival camping (which is how I got into camping in the first place). It's kind of half between rustic camping and "glamping." An

While I'm over here reminiscing on Millennial Summers of Yore, remember when Evian launched the mist bottle of Evian water? That's it, it's just Evian in an aluminum mist bottle. And it was THE beach and gym bag item of the summer the year it was launched, probably somewhere in the 2017-2018 years. Y'all, they sell that stuff for $3 an ounce. It's... water. Mineral water, yes, I have sea salt in my cabinet, too. Here's how the trail of innovation happened... I bought a contin

Here's a hyper-regional reference for you: use an orange slice and dilute it just enough and no one will know it's not an Oberon... Fellow Millennials, remember when rosé wine was the symbol of Summer 2015? When all of us 20- and 30-somethings, and by "all" I generally mean feminine women, were wearing short white shift dresses with gladiator sandals and big, floppy straw hats with giant designer sunglasses to brunch, where we spent three hours gossiping over chilled bubbly r

It's okay, my boobs laugh at those lacy things, too. And as a current 36K US myself (that's a 36I British), we need to talk about how we're keeping our underboob from rashing out and splitting apart when the temperature rivals that of the hotter regions of Hell this summer. I'm about to make bra recommendations. None are sponsored. All (okay, most) have been actually worn by me, on my 36K's (which have also been 38J's and 40I's in the recent past - the weight loss dropped my

Fun Auntie Fact: I was born overlooking the opening ceremonies of what at the time was my country's largest volunteer-run arts festival. It's sadly defunct starting this year, but it used to kick off festivals celebrating all of the ethnic and creative enclaves of the city, from a Pow Wow the very next weekend, straight through to Kasimir Pulaski Days at the beginning of October. Another Fun Auntie Fact: I started my career as a professional tarot card reader in a tent at reg

Have wheels, will travel. The local stock car races started up a couple of weekends ago, and I discovered that Kevin, my hot rod rollator, isn't enough for outings like that anymore. I completely undid the steroid epidural I just got a couple of weeks before going to the race, and I don't get to have another one until July, oof. To Cynthia, the 18" manual wheelchair I go! Thankfully, I do have one, thanks to a friend not needing his anymore. Here's how I'm tricking her out fo

That semi-annual clothing swap that has me on a few US government watchlists for being "anti-American" was three days ago now, and I've been working on laundry and stain treating and mending and tailoring since. So, I've been thinking about my wardrobe a lot, and thought I'd share how I built mine for style and function, since it is a learned skill. I learned the ropes from working the cool art museum job with a bunch of fashionistas at the same time that Pinterest debuted. A

This one's for my AFAB Millennials. And it has content warnings of pedophilia, human trafficking, torture, and eating disorders. The biggest conversation everywhere but on US media as I write this is The Epstein Files, particularly the early 2026 "info dump" that made it brutally obvious that Jeffrey Epstein, likely the literal Antichrist, known pedophile (among other things), controlled pop culture for girls and women for 30+ years. A lot of women are coming to terms with ho

I was introduced to the concept of decolonization in 2016, when I joined the #noDAPL movement for indigenous water rights. I was already pretty deep into both third wave feminism and early body positivity, so decolonization seemed like the logical next step - intersectional feminism identified the problem as a twisted patriarchal system fed by capitalism and religion as social control, decolonization proposed a perfectly do-able solution of personal accountability in returnin

If recent forays into my genealogy have taught me anything, it's that I'm descended from multiple continents worth of ancient royal lines, no matter which branch of the family tree you shake, both sides. Me? I'm a disabled Michigander with no money to my name. I have decided that location, time period, and circumstances be damned, I'm just as much of an ancient queen as my ancestresses, and I'm going to act like it. See, I studied archaeology in college, I know what the quali

TW: diets and diet culture, including describing extreme dieting techniques of the 80's and 90's. I've been waking up really late recently, daylight savings time is not helping this, and I had an 11:30am appointment yesterday. A normal person would have plenty of time to pull themselves together, but I slept until nearly 10am, and it takes my stomach a couple more hours to wake up than the rest of my body, so I went to that appointment on water, coffee, and collagen powder. A

TW: weight gain and loss, plus clothing sizing, fatphobia, body dysmorphia. I took the nice weather and having some energy yesterday to try on some of the things in my closet that I haven't put on in awhile, to see if it even still fits. And the most surprising pieces do and don't fit! A little storytime about my size and clothing sizes over the years - at 18 years old, in 2000, I was a perfect Lane Bryant size 18. I could go into Lane Bryant and put anything in a size 18 on

I'm going to dive pretty deep into the woo here, brace yourselves... But first, some Auntie Lore: I was born into a prominent Seventh-Day Adventist family. If you know anything about that sect of Christianity, it's very, very focused on the Book of Revelations, including hosting a week-long deep-dive into the book and Ellen G. White's "The Great Controversy" every October called the "Revelation Seminar" (which incidentally inspired David Koresh to start the Branch Davidian co

yr Auntie here is unsurprisingly on the "alternative spirituality" side of YouTube, with the tarot readings and the current astrological happenings tracking and the daily Schumann Resonance reports. And yr Auntie is all over the comments, and can see the fear, we might as well name it, even in the spiritual community right now. I'm likening this energy to wave riding in Lake Michigan. Something I first did at six years old, and it's been one of my most favorite activities on

TW: medical neglect I've read from a few sources that it was believed for a long time that autistic people don't feel pain, or feel it at far lower levels than neurotypical people. As a neurodivergent person with multiple chronic pain issues that have brought me to the Emergency Department on many occasions, I've experienced this personally. But it's not that my Emergency staff knew I was neurodivergent and therefore assumed I wasn't feeling pain, it was that my neurodivergen

TW: medical neglect I'm going to let you in on how the medical system works. When you go to your PCP, they're there to treat normal stuff - colds and flu, high blood pressure, etc. They can be your first gatekeeper when it comes to determining if your condition is "normal" enough to see a specialist or not. Otherwise, they refer you to a specialist. Now, here's the thing. Your body is intimately connected. And you may not be seeing the right specialist based on the symptoms y