someone: haha you just want to know when you’re off the hook
me: hah
me: (actually i just need to allocate the right expectations and backlog of energy and make sure the rest of my day falls in good accordance with it so that i don’t feel time-crunched and propel myself into a hysteria because if i don’t know how long this thing lasts or when it ends i can’t possibly know when literally anything else starts and my entire life becomes an unraveled realm of anarchy with no rhyme or reason and how is that not terrifying to you)
me: hey how long will this take
someone: oh like twenty minutes
me: ok
*an hour later*
me: *clinging to every learned social skill i can think of with the desperate hope my distress and exhaustion doesn’t show*
someone: hey we’re almost done don’t be so crabby
me: *smiling* *internally screaming at this SENSELESS CHAOS*
someone: hey do you want to do [involving time-consuming thing]
me: hey that sounds fun! when were you thinking?
someone: oh we’re doing it right now
me: oh. like. now-now? like right now. like you want me to stop what i’m doing and get up and do this thing with you, suddenly, with thirty seconds of warning. now. like this second. immediately. now?
this feeling is so real
And then non spoonies get upset when you try to explain your energy issues or try to call it bullshit like its all made up. Um. No. I know my body. Tell me how long the task lasts. Ill help if I can but not to the point where I have no spoons left.
These are the domesticated version of the African Collared dove, and as they are, do not and cannot exist in the wild.
This mess is a Eurasian Collared Dove, an invasive wild dove closely related to and often mistaken for a Ringneck.
If you see a big, light brown dove in your yard with a collar marking, it’s one of these.
Smaller than a Ringneck, but SIGNIFICANTLY larger than a mourning dove, taking the same niche in nesting and diet, a LOT more aggressively than the mourning, white wing, and other Zenadia dove species.
This is a young Mourning Dove.
Roughly half the size of a Collared Dove, MICH darker brown, and spotted.
Here is a mourning dove hen with her peeps.
Here is an adult mourning dove cock.
Fun fact, they provide the owl noises in a lot of films!
Just as a sidenote on that discussion around no-fault divorce (and UK legal space).
A marriage is where you stand up in front of your family, friends, and (often) God to promise that you’re going to stick with this person for the rest of your life. Where I come from, adults keep their fucking promises.
Actually, I never promised any such thing, and wouldn’t have been willing to if it had been required. (Same with the “forsaking all others”, for that matter.)
Precisely because I do take oaths very seriously, and cannot in good conscience promise that. Shit happens, and it’s impossible to know how the situation may develop over time. I’m not going to promise things that may be impossible to deliver even if I wanted to. That’s a ridiculous thing to promise in advance, without qualification.
(Not even starting into the very different ideas about what all gets lumped together as “marriage” across societies. Which may or may not look much like what that commenter wants to consider universal. But, not everybody attaches the same stigma to divorce. At all. And the lifelong thing comes bundled along with some very specific religious/cultural ideas about marriage.)
The only specific statements actually required in a civil marriage ceremony in England and Wales?
I do solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful impediment why I [name] may not be joined in matrimony to [name].
and
I call upon these persons here present, to witness that I [name] do take thee [name] to be my lawful wedded wife / wife-husband / husband.
That’s it. You want to make other vows to one another that are personally meaningful? Go right ahead. But, it’s not required in any way. Two statements affirming that you intend to marry the other person, and hey presto! You’re legally married.
(As usual, it’s a little different in Scotland, but the requirements sound pretty similar. I couldn’t easily find the actual legal declarations there.)
We actually went with our local register office’s default ceremony, because there was nothing anybody objected to. Which was a bit of a pleasant surprise, tbh. They did a pretty good job at keeping it secular.
Anyway, it’s totally possible to have a wedding without the rest of your life even coming up. Thank goodness.
I don’t normally talk about the sanctity of marriage, ‘cause most of the people who say that phrase are a) religious and b) homophobic, and I am neither.
But I think one of the few things that genuinely does effect the ‘sanctity’ of marriage is forcing people to be married who don’t want to be – whether forcing them to marry, or to continue in a marriage when they want to divorce. Being legally obligated to do something takes away that thing’s meaning, and makes your integrity pretty much negligible.
(#people who don’t want the law changed because they’re worried about the sanctity of marriage #are genuinely baffling to me #marriage shouldn’t be a game of quantity over quality #in either sense of the phrase)
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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