My mom knew good and well that she wasn’t cut out for any of the limited range of “caring” professions getting pushed so hard on them, when she was in high school in the mid-late ‘60s. And she managed to resist it.
She ended up with a full ride National Merit Scholarship, and was hoping to take it to Duke (or a couple of backup options) with an eye towards law school. And probably had a good chance of pulling that off.
…If it hadn’t been for a guidance counselor who absolutely refused to send her transcripts anywhere but the local state teachers college. (Which also had nursing programs.) The very idea that A Nice Girl would need to go anywhere or do anything else was ridiculous! Especially since she would no doubt get married and stop working within a few years, anyway. And so on.
She also didn’t have a lot of backup there, so off it was to Local State Womens College, in the same town. Out of the options available there, she initially wanted to go into theatre–but my grandfather pitched big enough fits that she didn’t. (His main concern? It was a well enough known problem then, and creeps like Weinstein could get away with even worse behavior. He really did not want her to end up harmed by that kind of atmosphere. Not the best way to deal with it, but a sorta understandable set of concerns.)
Anyway, that’s how my mom chose library science. She was into books, and at least it wasn’t teaching or nursing. Ended up enjoying it even if she didn’t work in the field for that long (another story), but it definitely was not her first choice.
That wasn’t an unusual type of story in her generation. And no wonder mine tended to get pressure in some very different directions.
OTOH, hers was a more unusual version in that particular genre, because she did manage to resist even that far. Just one of the reasons there are/were so many people in certain “caring” professions who never should have been–and too often take it out on the safe targets they’re put in charge of.
I am so glad you did not put straight up tea tree oil on his head. That would have been very uncomfortable for him.
I am actually aware of it, and from what I can tell it is an okay brand? I’ve never used it so I don’t know.
The oils in use are good for keeping lice away (and treating them) (side note, if he does end up with them, olive oil smothers them. Shower cap on over night, wash out in the morning with a lice comb. May have to repeat a few times if there are any eggs left to hatch. But smothering the adults is a good place to start. My school had a lot of outbreaks. The chemical treatments burned my scalp a lot, olive oil was my savior.) and they are appropriately diluted by several good carrier oils.
The only thing I’d be worried about would be how old he is, and whether he has sensitivities of his own to contend with. So if it were me, I’d try a very very small amount to see how he does. If you’re able to find it in a store, maybe let him sniff it and see if he likes it or not. Menthol can feel “funny” to kids, which is a way of saying they know they don’t like it but they don’t know why and that’s a good enough reason to avoid it tbh.
Another thing you could do, would be to boil some fresh rosemary leaves (provided he’s not allergic to rosemary) in hot water for about 30 mins (about 3-4 stalks) let it cool, and put it in a spritz bottle and use it as a periodic treatment after bath times. Rosemary is a generally good scalp stimulant and good for making hair shiny, but lice also don’t like it. So it could be a better alternative if you’re worried about putting anything on his head that has menthol in it, which Fairytale does, cause it has peppermint in it.
Anyhoo. Just use your judgment, and his. If he tells you “smells funny” or sometimes they even let you know it smells “fuzzy” which is a way of letting you know it makes their chest go warm (one of the warning signs of a menthol sensitivity in kids) I wouldn’t use it. And hopefully you wont need to use the olive oil trick but if you do, good luck.
I mean, I had a fair few teachers who never should have been dealing with kids. Nurses too, with sick people (especially kids). But, they had been pushed into those fields as the main options even open to them at the time. No matter how badly suited they were to the job.
Which, of course, never should have happened, and other people should not have been subjected to the results.
Younger people who do have more career options? That’s not even a factor, which makes it even worse in some ways.
Each year, as our planet slowly continues it circular dance around the sun, I make these colour wheels all over the place to remind myself of the fact that the darkness that is slowly approaching us is temporary, and that it – despite my autumnal mood – can’t strip the world of its beauty.
The presbyornithids were an early group of waterfowl birds – relatives of modern ducks, geese, swans, and screamers – that first appeared in the Late Cretaceous, about 71 million years ago. With their long necks, long legs, and duck-like bills adapted for filter-feeding, they seem to have essentially been primitive ducks converging on the body shape and lifestyle of flamingos – and as a result they’re sometimes even nicknamed “flamingo ducks”.
They lived in shallow freshwater environments all around the world, and after surviving through the end-Cretaceous extinction they even became some of the most common waterbirds in the early Cenozoic. Some species have been found in large bonebeds containing fossils from thousands of individuals all in one place, suggesting they were very social and lived in huge flocks.
Around the mid-to-late Eocene (~40-37 mya) they seemed to disappear completely, until some fossils from Australia that were originally thought to be from a species of ancient stone-curlew were reassessed in 2016 and found to actually represent the latest-surviving members of the presbyornithids.
Named Wilaru, this bird lived in South Australia during the Late Oligocene and Early Miocene (~28-20 mya). Two different species have been identified: Wilaru tedfordi and its slightly larger and stockier descendant Wilaru prideauxi. With only partial pieces of their skeletons known it’s difficult to estimate their full life size, but based on similar presbyornithids they were probably both somewhere around 1m tall (3′3″).
As well as outliving the rest of their kind, the two Wilaru species were also rather weird compared to the other known flamingo-ducks, with adaptations that indicate they were spending much more time walking around on land than wading in water. Their feet resembled those of modern screamers (which are also more terrestrial) and may have partially or fully lost their webbing, and since they lived alongside various other species of waterfowl and early flamingos they clearly weren’t competing for the same ecological niches. It’s possible they might have also shifted away from their ancestral filter-feeding diet, perhaps becoming more herbivorous, but without any preserved skulls we can’t tell for certain.
Unlike other presbyornithids they also had large spurs on their wings – and based on the behavior of modern spurred waterfowl this suggests they were much less social. They were probably rather aggressive animals, living solitary or in pairs and fighting each other over mates and territory.
This major departure from the lifestyle of their ancestors may have been what allowed Wilaru to survive for so much longer than all the other presbyornithids. They might potentially have lasted a few more million years into the mid-Miocene, but a cooling and drying climate – especially a sudden temperature drop about 14 million years ago – may ultimately have altered their habitat and food sources too quickly for them cope with.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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