The Introverted Detective

 Life below the stairs during the Victorian era was not glamorous. If you think working for the public in a restaurant or store puts you in contact with ungrateful people, consider what the servants of the ungrateful rich dealt with. Service jobs were done by "inferiors" who were supposed to be invisible unless needed. If you were treated well you were lucky, but not everyone worked for people as nice as the Bridgertons.  To be clear I am not talking about slavery. This is paid servanthood that is not forced. This is comparable to being an employee in personal maid services or a kitchen worker (though today you won't be treated like you are inferior unless you have a crappy boss). The rich employed people to bend to their every whim. While Cinderella may have technically been a slave, most domestic servants were paid money. If they weren't it was slavery. The Roles and Duties The wages of servants were different based on roles. The butler had the benefit because he ha...

 As a Nancy Drew gamer, puzzles are an everyday part of my life. I think I'd go insane if I didn't have a jigsaw puzzle going or didn't have a game to play. I have so many sudoku books in my possession I may never finish them all. Today I'm going to talk about every type of puzzle I can and how to do them, including tips and tricks to solving them.  Chris Ramsay and others on Youtube have channels that explore solving physical puzzles. So many Nancy Drew gamers stream and post on Youtube it'd take you months to watch them all. Markiplier and others play a variety of strange and fun games (horror and otherwise) consistently and for charity. Youtube is a treasure trove of people who solve puzzles for a living or just for Youtube in their spare time. I'll let you look these people up later, but for now, we'll start with categories of puzzles.  The categories of puzzles I'll talk about today are physical, numbers, letters and words, logic, and jigsaw. Physic...

I talked about fallen women already here , but we have yet to talk about the shame connected with being an illegitimate child. What happens when it isn't your fault you were born outside of marriage? Let's find out.  Photo by legalnaija.com First of all, you couldn't inherit any title or anything. Daughter of a duke? Means nothing. No status or inheritance for you. Basically, you would be a dirty secret that got swept under the rug by most people. Even if you didn't have a parent with a title it was bad. You represented the sin of your mother. Some women ditched their children at churches in the area in order to spare themselves shame. Some even killed their own children. The term for an illegitimate child is still in use today as an insult - bastard. At this point in time, you do not have to endure abuse for being born out of wedlock (thankfully for many children), but it has not always been so.  Society's Flawed View  The father was considered the leader of the ho...

 Writers and artists are probably the kings and queens of procrastination. We get distracted and end up somewhere on our social media scrolling or end up on Pinterest (where we originally went for inspiration). I am guilty of this all the time. Today we're going to explore how to create a writing routine that keeps you consistently writing and on track. This can go for artists, too. Photo by greatspeechwriting.co.uk A writing routine becomes a habit once you create it and use it consistently. I am not perfect by any means, yet I have finished drafts faster than I thought I would because I didn't wait for the muse to show up. I just wrote, whether it was a paragraph or a whole chapter. You can't wait for the muse to appear if you actually intend to go somewhere with your writing or art form. You'd never get anything finished if you did that. As for editing, the same goes. Editing is exhausting. You need to schedule breaks in and schedule out what you are doing to your dr...

 I have long hair. When down and out of the braid I keep it in, it nearly hits my waist. I quite literally have it up or in a braid almost all week, with the exception of when I wash it. Today I have found some nifty tips on what to do with super long hair.  Photo by The Freckled Fox In the general sense, thick long hair is great to have, yet takes work to take care of. I love my hair being long and it makes different hairstyles possible. I only wash it once a week and have my husband braid it (because he's so good at making the braid last) to keep it from tangling. Even then it tangles after five or so days of being up. I sleep in this braid, for reference. (If I'm not supposed to do that, well, too bad. I work in foodservice. It makes it easier to wear a hairnet.) I did some research on how we're supposed to care for long hair. This is everything that I found.  General Care When you brush your hair go from the bottom to the top, working your way up. It doesn't rip out...

 Journaling has many benefits, one of which being that it helps you process your thoughts. I did this all the time during college when I couldn't find a safe place to blurt out my thoughts verbally to a friend or alone. It is best to do this while being honest with yourself. What else are journals good for? Let's find out! Photo By Committ30 Why journal? There are many reasons. You can release your thoughts and process whatever is most bothering you. It helps you manage anxiety and depression, too. Keep in mind that typing it out and ignoring it is not processing it; to process those thoughts you released you have to leave it all out on the page and reread it to identify bad thought habits and what is most stressful. If you are obsessing over something unhealthy it will come out in your journal.  How To Journal To get the most out of the journaling (typing or pen/pencil) you have to do it at least weekly, if not daily. It unclutters your mind and clears the cobwebs out of your...

 Christmas Carol mentions poorhouses and workhouses through Scrooge's infamous line about "Are there no workhouses?". Allow me to enlighten you on what those were.  Photo by gold.ac.uk When we see the horrified faces of the charity workers responding to Scrooge's comment on workhouses this is because these places were horrible. Scrooge literally told them that the poor can die in these places and he didn't care in different words. I mentioned almshouses and poorhouses in a previous blog about Nursing Homes .  The earliest laws for dealing with the poor were made in 1601. The Elizabethan Poor Law declared locals had responsibility for the poor, had to provide for them, and were not liable for the poor outside their town. The paupers of the time could be auctioned off and work as payment for having a home. The poorhouses had the goal of transforming the character of their people and check the expenses of pauperism (selling the poor to other people). You still had to...