Vitamin D + Writing + Boudicca
May I recommend
Vitamin D
Look, we all know we’re supposed to take Vitamin D. It helps with heart disease, insomnia, depression blah blah.
Those of us in the benighted north don’t get enough of it from the sunshine, what with our short winter days, wrist to chin turtlenecks and hunched, inward-caving postures of defeat. Really, though even people living in sunnier climes should take it because so few of us work outside all day the way our bodies and their Vitamin-D absorption systems were designed.
I, like everyone I know, have been told to take more Vitamin D by a medical professional. The challenge with being told you are deficient (rude), is that you are then supposed to adopt the sensible course of action and resolve the issue via an easy to implement and readily available cure (take a pill that isn’t that expensive and that you can find in every drugstore in the land). Somehow, though, I and many of the people I have discussed this with, can’t manage to do this.
First you have to get to the drugstore. This is basically impossible. WHEN are you going to find the time? You have to work, lounge around, call your mother, walk the dog, catch up on TikTok, make dinner, do a yoga class, read your book… As you can see, there is no free time for drugstore visits. Also, how are you going to get to the drugstore? Will there be parking? If you walk, which shoes will you wear? Do you need to have showered before you leave your house? If so, then it’s a NON STARTER.
,Next, when you make it to the drugstore, you have to remember to buy the pills… This is already difficult, because when you walk into the drugstore you are immediately confronted by the lipsticks and you get distracted thinking that maybe you’ll buy yourself a lipstick, because aren’t small luxuries important when you’re feeling down or uncertain, and maybe this time you’ll find a type of lipstick that stays on your thin dry lips for more than 30 seconds and a colour of lipstick that doesn’t make you look like Mrs Roper?
After the lipsticks you need to buy some of that sunscreen that’s on sale - such a good deal and so important in preventing cancer and wrinkles, although also preventing the absorption of Vitamin D, but that’s fine because you came in here to buy Vitamin D so you’re counteracting the skin cancer with the sunscreen, and counteracting the depression and heart disease with the Vitamin D. All bases covered. Where is the Vitamin D? Next to the Tylenol. Better buy more Tylenol because ideally you have some in the upstairs bathroom and the downstairs bathroom to cover off all headache onsets. Did you read somewhere that a cool compress is good for headaches? Did you see some very cute eye cooling eye masks back at the end of the lipstick aisle… And that’s how you forget to buy Vitamin D for six months.
When you finally do get the vitamins into your hot little hands, the real challenge occurs - remembering to take it. Put it by your bed, so that you take it when you first wake up. Guess what you are when you first wake up, dummy? Half asleep. You’ll forget. Put it in your bathroom so you take it when you brush your teeth. It’s a pandemic, genius, we’re not brushing our teeth anymore (right?) . Put it in the kitchen, you’re always in there getting snacks, you’ll see it all the time. Way to go, brainiac, there are 500 things that are more interesting to eat in your kitchen and you’ll never remember.
Here is the game changing thing to do. One that I implemented in Early Pandemic and that has made me a regular Vitamin D consumer for over a year… I bought the sugary ones… They are cherry flavoured and they melt on your tongue. They are delicious little candies. I can tell you in all honesty, that the thought of eating of these delightful guys is sometimes the only reason I get up in the morning. I have recently discovered they also make gummies. Gummies! GUMMIES!
But Amy, doesn’t the terrible sugar from the candy pill negate the positive effects of the vitamin? My answer to that is, shut up.
I’m taking the goddamn pill, okay? It’s getting into my body and if it’s doing so surrounded by sugar and/or gelatin. just accept it. Sometimes that’s the way these things just go down.
It’s fine, the Yukon Government understands, as their quickly cancelled awareness campaign can attest:
Do you “Do the D” ? Let me know in the comments below!
Articles
There is no $ in writing
Last Publisher Standing: Why Books are Facing a Bleak Future
I am continually surprised at how little money there is in writing. Like, only the very famous author you have heard of is making a lot of money and those semi-famous people you enjoy who seem to write full-time are definitely supplementing their income through teaching or grants. It’s bonkers, but it does make me feel less weird about coming to this in my mid-forties. I have way more financial stability now then if I’d started getting published in my twenties. I’m grateful for that.
Contract work (newspaper and magazine writing, for example) has suffered a precipitous decline—putting the “free” back in freelance. Surveys have shown that writers’ incomes have plummeted in the US (42 percent since 2009) and the UK (42 percent since 2005). According to a 2018 Writers’ Union of Canada income survey, that trend was “by far the worst” in Canada, with writing-related incomes over the previous twenty years dropping a whopping 78 percent—nearly a third of that decline happening in the three years leading up to the survey.
Queens of Infamy: Boudicca
This Queens of Infamy series is great and you should read all of them. Boudicca is very kick ass.
She was tall — terrifyingly large, in fact. Her tawny hair fell in a “great mass” to her hips. She was dressed in a colorful tunic and cloak, her outfit completed by a giant fuck-off gold torc. Her voice was harsh, unfeminine. She had spent the last weeks murdering and maiming her way across the British countryside, and now she led a force of hundreds of thousands of Britons in a standoff against the occupying Romans. She had a rabbit hidden in her skirt for occult purposes. She was a bloodthirsty barbarian, devoted to a ghoulish religion, out to destroy the social order of the known world
Chalk Giant
The Mysterious Origins of the Cerne Abbas Giant
I seem to be having an Ancient England theme today.
The Cerne Giant is so imposing that he is best viewed from the opposite crest of the valley, or from the air. He is a hundred and eighty feet tall, about as high as a twenty-story apartment building. Held aloft in his right hand is a large, knobby club; his left arm stretches across the slope. Drawn in an outline formed by trenches packed with chalk, he has primitive but expressive facial features, with a line for a mouth and circles for eyes. His raised eyebrows were perhaps intended to indicate ferocity, but they might equally be taken for a look of confusion. His torso is well defined, with lines for ribs and circles for nipples; a line across his waist has been understood to represent a belt. Most well defined of all is his penis, which is erect, and measures twenty-six feet in length. Were the giant not protectively fenced off, a visitor could comfortably lie down within the member and take in the idyllic vista beyond.
It’s worth clicking on this whole thread to see some great clips of dance numbers
TikTok
Empty the Dehumidifier
Bad dog
It’s the leg pumping that kills me
The lift off at the leap
Mary Hunt and her melon
Her hair, her accent, her story
Good lord
The fear in his eyes when realisation hits…
I love this lady
At least he’s not saying “crescent roll”
Logical reaction
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Amy Tector, The Honeybee Emeralds (March 2022)