Sunday Coffee – Cat-shuffling

Posted on June 12, 2022 by Thistle

Last Sunday, I talked about surrendering Shai and Hulud to the animal rescue for surgery and adoption. The absolute hardest thing in surrendering these kittens is that I had no control over the situation once they left my hands. I had no way of knowing how their surgeries went, who got to adopt them, if they were adopted together or at least with another kitten, etc. Once I turn them in, it’s over. The most I could do is watch the website and hope for the best.

So that’s what I did. I watched. The shelter had named the two babies Tater and Tot, so that’s what I looked for, and it didn’t take long before both girls were on the website. Their stock photos were horrible. Shai looks miserable and I wouldn’t have even recognized Hulud if I hadn’t know what name to search for! And that made my heart ache. A lot. So much so that I did something I’d promised myself not to do. I went in to the shelter to visit them.

I’ve been to this shelter many times. In fact, Ash and Christabel were adopted from this specific shelter in 2009. One of the best things about it is that the cats have free-roaming rooms, rather than sitting in blocks of cages. I had this idea that I would walk into the kitten room, say something aloud, and my girls would recognize me and run up to me. That’s…not what happened. Because I’d actually never been in the kitten room before. And the kitten room isn’t free-roaming. It’s two to a crate, small spaces with small litter pans, food, and water. Shai and Hulud were together in a corner crate, and their eyes were heartbreaking.

Visitors are limited to handling two kittens, but I was only there to visit two. I explained that I’d been their foster mom and was visiting them post-surgery. They brought Shai out first for me. She was so scared of all the noises and smells, but she clearly recognized me and snuggled into my neck immediately. While she did, Hulud sat at the crate door screaming at me to get my attention, reaching toward me as far as her arms could go through the bars. She also clearly recognized my voice/smell, but she had to wait her turn. I spent 15-20 mins holding Shai, then swapped the two kitties. Hulud was purring before she even got into my hands. She tried to climb onto my shoulder, potentially to go down my back so she could run free (she loves running free!), and when I didn’t let her do that, she settled into the crook of my arm and began to suck on her paw to put herself to sleep, just like she used to do at home. Meanwhile, Shai was now calling out to me, begging me to pick her up again. Neither kitten had made a sound before I came close and they heard/smelled me.

I should not have gone. The whole experience tore my heart apart, and I knew that I could not come back. If I came back, I’d bring the girls home. I was so upset that they were in cages, that they were scared, that they couldn’t run free…but they told me at the shelter that kittens go quickly, especially the fluffy ones, and they weren’t wrong. On Wednesday, Hulud was adopted. I cried, because I missed her so much, and because she and Shai didn’t get to go together, and I didn’t know if she would have any kitty friends with her at her new home. Then Shai was adopted the next day, and again, I didn’t know any of those things, but this time I cried happy tears because both of my little girls were out of that cage and hopefully in wonderful homes that will spoil them rotten.

So. Lesson learned. Do not go visit the kittens, under any circumstances. And it’s a lesson I’ll need to remember, because Tillie and Penny are going to the shelter this upcoming Thursday. Thankfully, with the current clear-out of kittens (the shelter is running a fees-waived special), they now have room for these sweet girls. So by the end of the week, there will be no more kittens in our home, and hopefully by the end of the next, Tillie and Penny will be adopted, too. Tipsy, the last of the litter, will go back to our neighbor, who has fallen in love with him completely.

I do hope this gets easier in time. Because when I dropped them off, I thought I was going to be okay, but after they showed up on the website, with everything that followed, it was absolutely gut-wrenching.

Also, I think I might volunteer to take better photos of the animals for the website, if I can improve my photography and editing skills enough!

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Wellness Wednesday – Move Every Day

Posted on June 8, 2022 by Thistle

My body hasn’t been well for a long time now. Ever since October 2020, with the double whammy of a bad medication and an injured foot caused massive inflammation, weight gain, and chronic pain/fatigue, I’ve struggled to just exist day to day. In that not-quite-two-years’ time, I’ve gone through periods of pushing myself to crippling levels, and periods of crashing down and doing nothing for months on end. I’ve been in the ER/hospital more than once, had multiple surgeries, had over 175 doctor’s appointments/tests/etc, gotten multiple diagnoses, and generally had very little success at getting my body into a better place. It has sucked.

(2018)

When I got my RA diagnosis in late December, I knew that one of the big things I needed to do was slow down. The pushing myself until I crashed was only doing more damage in the long run. I spent January through early March trying to find a good balance between doing enough but not doing too much, and tbh, it wasn’t working. I gave up for several weeks, and started over again in late March. The first weekend of April, I injured my bad foot, and said f*ck it. I had those kittens anyway, and I was going to take some time off to heal. Heal my foot, tend to my mental health during the toughest months of the year for me, let my body rest. And what happened? I just felt worse, and worse, and worse.

Last week, I saw a TT vid from a fellow spoonie who talked about how she shifted her mindset away from workout plans and toward daily movement. She had a long list of options that would satisfy a daily movement requirement on days when she couldn’t manage an actual workout. Some days, she may do a full body strength training regimen; others, she might manage a single stretching pose, and she had to shift her mindset to accept that both were equally valid, rather than one being better than the other. She included a specific statement in her video that sliced through to my core:

Before I sent this goal, I spent a year or two “only workout when I felt great” and let’s just say I missed A LOT of days and consequently felt even worse.

THIS. When I saw this post last Thursday, I hadn’t done any exercise in two months. And I felt like garbage. The longer I rested, the worse I felt. The more “jammed up” my body got. And before that, when I’d exercise, I’d push too hard, and then just stop to rest, and nothing ever improved. It was a never-ending cycle of pain, constantly too much or too little. That video opened my eyes, and right then, I made a choice to do the same as this woman. Whether I felt up to a six mile hike or only a few cat-cows and spinal circles, I would move my body in some way every day.

This is, of course, a work in progress. It’s been five days now. For two days, I did yoga first thing in the morning, and honestly, I felt brilliant. The yoga was tough and I had to modify a lot, but afterwards I had more energy than I’d had in ages, and my body felt really good. Then the third morning came around, and I decided not to push things too quickly, and instead of doing a full workout, I did some basic mobility work on my shoulders and neck. It felt good, but also didn’t give me that boost of energy. And maybe it was too little, or maybe I overdid things the first two days, or maybe it’s that my cycle started, or maybe it’s the grief of missing Shai and Hulud that hit me on delay, but whatever it was, I spent the last two days doing nothing at all, miserable and depressed and on the edge of a panic attack, binge-watching shows and putting together puzzles and generally Not In A Good Place. Clearly, I still have a lot of room for improvement, and today I plan to start again with some yoga.

Progress, not perfection, right? The whole goal is a mindset shift away from an all-or-nothing perspective. So I move on.

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Sunday Coffee – Surrender

Posted on June 5, 2022 by Thistle

“I could never foster animals, I wouldn’t be able to give them up.”

This is a common sentiment that gets stated all the time from people who interact with animal rescue workers and foster parents. And certainly, it’s what people have thought of me in the past, especially after we ended up keeping Angus, Gherkin, and Ghost last year. The boys still claim that I “just wanted more cats,” which is categorically untrue – four was enough, and if I’d wanted to keep the kittens we rescued, I would have given them names aligned with our other kitties! We only ended up keeping them because we couldn’t find a shelter to work with us, the vet wouldn’t spay/neuter until they were 5-6 months old, and all the adoptions we lined up later fell through. By the time all that happened, they’d been living with us for six months and had bonded with both us and our other cats. It would have been cruel to dump them in a shelter, where they were no longer cute little kittens to be snatched up, and where they might linger for years without being adopted.

But Shai and Hulud – the only reason we could take them in was because we could foster them through a program and surrender them at eight weeks old. (Their siblings are a different issue, but we’re working on a solution that will likely be good for all.) We threw everything we had into those little girls, from bottle-feeds every two hours, to making sure they were the healthiest, friendliest, cutest little critters in their new adoption room. I loved them with my whole heart and every fiber of my being. And this Thursday, when it came time to surrender them to the shelter, I shed a tear or two, but still handed them over.

Because they weren’t mine, and they were never meant to be mine. As much as I loved them, I knew that the best thing for everyone would be to surrender them. They’ll find good homes with families who love them and have more resources than a home already overfull with cats. And because I surrendered them, I have more room and energy to take on more fosters eventually, to raise more kittens or help more cats regain their health, to socialize babies who came in from the streets or to give a mom a safe place to raise her kittens. I can work to TNR more cats from the neighborhood, and spend more time with my own cats, who have not had nearly as much mom-and-dad time over the last two months as normal.

A kitten rescuer I follow says that as a foster parent, you need to fall in love with the foster cycle. To shed a tear when you let go of a cat that has your heart, but to also know that for every cat you decide to hold on to, that’s another cat you won’t have room to help in time. Finding wonderful forever homes for these babies is the end goal.

I will miss my little Shai and Hulud. It was hard to say goodbye. But it was also the right thing to do, and I don’t regret it at all.

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May 2022 in Review

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Thistle

I’m not feeling so well right now, had a really bad cold the last few days (several negative covid tests say it’s just a cold, anyway, despite me moaning dramatically about it at home). So this post is going to be fairly short/terse. May was about the same as most Mays are for me, though at least I didn’t have a full breakdown anytime this month like I usually do. It was frustrating to have our vacation canceled, twice, and to be stuck doing unexpected construction, and to have the cat situation grow exponentially, but what can you do? The only way out is through.

Reading and Watching
I was into fast, thrilling reads this month that kept me entertained and that I didn’t have to do a lot of extra thinking to read. I’ve declared The Hacienda my favorite, but over time, that may change to Breathless, which seems to be the one that has stuck with me the most. I did get to see a few movies that had been on my list for awhile, too: Death on the Nile, Nomadland,  and of course the newest Downton Abbey in an early showing at Alamo Drafthouse!

Goals
Only one crossed out this month, my Paint Your Pet night for Nimi, which is both a personal goal for 2022 and part of my 50×50 goals!

House
I already wrote about the bathroom saga, and the only other thing related to the house this month was discovering that our red oak by the porch potentially has oak wilt. We need to get an expert in, and I’m hoping that I’m wrong about the diagnosis. If it’s oak wilt, the whole tree has to go. They don’t survive that fungus and it spreads like crazy. So I hope it’s something different!

Health/Fitness
This continued very poorly this month. I did no exercise at all, not one day of it. I did finally get my CPAP toward the end of the month, but the mask doesn’t fit properly, so I’m sleeping worse than ever. I was supposed to get a refit yesterday, but Sunday came down with a really bad cold with a fever, so I have to reschedule once I’m healthy. I also had to skip the next round of tests for my nephrologist, because I can’t take them when I’m sick. My mental health hasn’t been great, and honestly, as much as I love these kitties, I can’t wait until they’re all off to other locations and no longer in my house!

The Ferals
When I last left off regarding Shai, Hulud, the sibling crew, and their mom, Tippy was off for surgery and the babies were in a playpen in the garage. Since then, Tippy has been returned home to her feeder. I sterilized and cat-proofed my room, then moved Shai and Hulud in here until June 2nd when they go to the shelter for surgery/potential-adoption. (Them being in my room, btw, isn’t helping the sleep situation!!) The siblings – now named Tipsy, Tillie, and Penny – moved to Jason’s room after he sterilized it, and have been working on socializing. It’s slow-going, but they’re actually pretty sweet, just timid.

(Tipsy, Tillie, Penny)

I mentioned in the post at the above link that one of the two girls was a chonk? Turned out, she was all fluff, and was actually the lightest, weight-wise, of the kittens! They all lost weight for the first few days but they’re rebounding, and currently on a medication regimen for the next two weeks. One of them has a home after that, the others need to get on an intake list for the shelter since they can’t go through the foster program. Sigh. (This last part is frustrating because it’s not what the shelter originally told me, but if we can’t get them taken in by the time their meds are finished in two weeks, they’ll go to the humane society instead, because they’re young and more likely to find homes that way. I can’t do this on my own like I did last year, because we really can’t have more cats stay in house!!)

Favorite Photos
Didn’t take a whole lot this month, and most of what I took were kitten reference photos, so I basically have four cat portraits and a lizard for you all in May, ha!

Top: anole on the porch, startled Hulud. Bottom: Angus, Nimi, Shai.

Highlights of May
I barely touched my computer this month so I’m struggling to remember the lighter moments of May, but here are a few good moments:

  • the kittens bopping around as if they’re big scary creatures, ha!
  • homemade scones with clotted cream, even if I shouldn’t eat either of those things…
  • squirrel asleep in the crook of our red oak tree
  • watching the skunks in our yard!
  • finally getting Laurence’s junior and senior photos printed and onto the wall
  • the crazy small-world moment at the Paint Your Pet class
  • we are all done with school for all the kids!

Coming up in June
Ambrose will be off to the military soon, and the kittens will be off to the shelter one way or another, and then I’m just going to take some time off to hopefully get my health and fitness back to a better level, and my mental health to baseline…

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Sunday Coffee – PyP Nimi, and a Small World

Posted on May 29, 2022 by Thistle

I have a really crazy story for y’all! My friend Stephanie and I went to a local business called Painting with a Twist this week, to participate in a Paint Your Pet session. This is my third experience with a paint-your-pet class, and her second. I was there to paint Nimi, using the portrait there at the right.

About an hour or so into the class, we took a break. There were five of us there, and one of the women sitting opposite of me was also painting a cat. I looked at her picture, which looked to be a Russian Blue cat, and asked her if it was. She told me yes, and we got to talking, and it turned out she’d gotten her cat at the SA Cat Cafe that was open briefly in 2018, where Stephanie and I used to do Yoga With Cats, and from where Jojo was adopted. She asked to see the cat I was painting, and I introduced her to Stephanie. During the introduction, my brain made a sudden connection.

Cat Cafe. Russian Blue. Goose.

I asked the woman what her cat (now named Wheatley) went by at the Cafe, and she said it was Goose. Stephanie and I both lit up. We both knew Goose. Furthermore, Jason LOVED Goose. If Goose hadn’t been a cat who preferred a calm, quiet household with no or few other cats, we may have adopted him. Jason loved him so much that I literally have a picture of him holding Goose (pic from Feb 2018). I had to pull up the photo to show Goose’s mom. (And no, somehow we never exchanged names. Even though I texted her the photo and the person she was with took a photo of the two of us with Wheatley’s completed painting. Heh.)

What a small world, right?

The rest of the night was fun. Nimi was a hard one to paint, being a tortie, and I definitely could have used more time to define the shape of her face more. (One of her eyes looks smaller than I’d like, and she needs more line to define her ears, so her face doesn’t look so flat.) But it was already ten past when the class was over, and it was a three-hour class…so yeah. It’s the best I could do in the time, if not my best PyP result. Nimi’s portrait joins those of Christabel, Ash (by 10-year-old Laurence), and Gavroche in our hallway. Only five more cats to paint (ha!).

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Horror Hotel, by Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren

Posted on May 27, 2022 by Thistle

Elisa Lam meets Scooby Doo meets RL Stine. TBH, I’m not sure how this book got on my TBR, but it someone landed on my library hold list, possibly based purely on the cover. And somehow, I got the impression that this was an adult novel. I was hoping for RL Stine For Adults. When it arrived and I began to read, I quickly realized that not only was this YA, it was young YA, reading more like middle grade, only with murders. Definitely not my cup of tea, writing-wise. I kept reading because I wanted to see if my immediate theory panned out (it did) and because I was curious how closely the authors would tie in the Elisa Lam case. (They did, in fact, dedicate the book in part to Lam, which I appreciated.) Will this be the best book I’ll read this year? Nah. Was it good enough to hook me into continuing to read despite not enjoying the type of writing? Yup. Would’ve made a really good RIP/Readathon combo, too. But hey, if anyone has suggestions for RL Stine For Adults, send them my way because obviously that didn’t pan out here and I’m still craving it!

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Tippy, Mini-Tippy, and Crew

Posted on May 25, 2022 by Thistle

I’m pretty overwhelmed at the moment. School is coming to an end – we’re in the last week, with graduation this weekend – and there’s only a few weeks left before Ambrose leaves for the Air Force. I spent almost a week in a hotel last week as we gutted and rebuilt my bathroom. We have guests coming into town over the upcoming weekend. There are two foster cats (Shai and Hulud) running around Jason’s bedroom until the 2nd, and they’ve been dealing with some bouts of diarrhea requiring medication for the last couple weeks. It’s all been a lot, so TNR-ing the neighborhood cats has taken a bit of a back seat.

(on the left is Tippy and MT – you can see both their white tail tips! top right is the tiny skittish kitten; on the hose is the Chonk)

This past weekend, though, we needed to act. King, the Deadbeat Father of the neighborhood, has been sniffing around our neighbor’s yard and trying to “snuggle up” to Shai and Hulud’s mother, Tippy. The litter of five are just shy of eight weeks old and eating solid food, though I’m sure the three still with their mother were still nursing a little, too. Mama cats can get pregnant any time after giving birth, though, and her heat cycles don’t stop while she’s nursing. Between that and the need to catch those three siblings before they’re too old to socialize, we had to act.

(Mini-Tippy’s first night in the playpen)

I won’t bore anyone with the details of multiple failures, and I’ll just say that we finally managed to trap Tippy –> and her sidekick/favorite baby, Mini-Tippy, on Sunday evening. Mini-Tippy went into the playpen in the garage, where we have a/c set up to make sure he doesn’t get too hot, and Tippy stayed in the covered cage, which we set up in my shower. (They couldn’t stay near each other, or it would be really stressful for them both, and we needed Tippy to stop producing milk before her spay surgery.) Monday evening, we finally managed to catch the other two siblings, one of which is a giant chonk (she’s got to be the size of a 10-week old kitten!) and one that’s small and fierce. By that point, Mini-Tippy (or Tip-tip, or Tip, or MT) had been with us for 24 hours and had let us hold him, determine he was male, and even purred for Jason.

(remaining siblings on their first night in the playpen)

By last night, we were able to pet and hold all three kittens, and determined that the tiniest and the chonkiest were both female. The girls were still scared of us, but most of the hissing had stopped. MT, on the other hand, was joyfully hopping around the pen, running for pets, and he even started grooming the neighbor (his former feeder) when she came by to see how they were doing. I think these guys are going to get really sweet, really fast!

(left to right: the Chonk, the Skinny Minnie (butt showing, fact turned away), and Mini Tippy)

Tippy has not been happy with her three nights in our care, and she went to the vet this morning. Assuming all goes well, she’ll have her spay soon and come back here for another night’s recovery. Hopefully she can return home tomorrow and spend a happy, baby-free life!

Note: No, Shai and Hulud won’t be reunited with their siblings. Because the three other kittens were outdoors, they need at least two weeks of quarantine for medical treatment (fleas, worms, making sure they don’t have any contagious diseases, etc). By that point, Shai and Hulud will be off for adoption already, and I’m sure they’ll be swept off the floor in no time! They are the cutest, cuddliest, sweetest babies ever. (Hulud will literally pet your face and demand kisses over and over and over when you hold her, then she’ll snuggle up and fall asleep perched on your shoulder! Shai will stare up at you adoringly and lick your fingers as you pet her. They’re incredible.)

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Breathless, by Amy McCulloch

Posted on May 23, 2022 by Thistle

Cecily is famous for not making it to the summit of high mountains. She’s still a bit gobsmacked that the famous Charles McVeigh has invited her to be the only journalist on his final push to break a world record: to summit all fourteen mountains above the death-line of 8000 meters in a single year, alpine-style (no fixed lines, no supplemental oxygen, etc). There’s a catch, though. McVeigh has invited her on this trip, but she only gets the big interview after she makes it to the summit. Cecily has little confidence going into this experience, despite training hard, but she also has no other choice. Without that interview, her career is over. So even when the first fellow mountaineer dies in a freak accident before the climb even begins, and whispers of a killer on the mountain trickle through camp, Cecily must keep going.

Wow, this book was a trip. Definitely the best thriller I’ve read in quite some time! It probably helps that McCulloch has actually climbed Manaslu, the mountain this story centers on. Her real-life experience allows for incredibly realistic sensory writing, not just limited to emotion and sight/sound. The little details: condensation collecting inside the oxygen masks. The change in the color of the sky as you gain elevation. The varying and unpredictable reactions to altitude change. I don’t think the book would have been nearly so evocative without the experience behind it.

I loved that this was set up in a more traditional mystery style than with modern-day thriller tropes. From the prologue, you know – or at least there is the assumption – that the killer is a man, and as different men are introduced, they are each immediately under suspicion for one reason or another. I personally had two theories in mind from the beginning, and in a way, both ended up being right! It didn’t all come together exactly as I was expecting, though, so I wouldn’t say it was predictable. By the end, there were quite a few unanswered questions – it makes me wish I could discuss it with someone!!

One of my favorite aspects of Breathless is the respect McCulloch pays to the Sherpas and their culture. I’m no mountaineer, and while I love hiking, I have no desire to scale one of those giant Himalayan mountains. My opinion may be entire irrelevant because of this. However, I feel like the Sherpas are the true mountaineers and the true heroes of these mountains. To hear some of the things they were doing – how many times they scale the mountains; how they fix the lines and cart up ladders and even carry plush furniture up the mountain for some spoiled-rich clients! It’s just beyond imagination, and yet, they stay quietly in the background, appreciated perhaps by clients but hardly noticed by the world so fixed on the (usually white, usually male) mountaineers who plunk their flags at the summit. McCullogh spent some of the novel’s time with the Sherpas, one on one and also detailing some of their rituals, prayers, and beliefs. I loved that.

The only real downside to the book for me – and this is purely because I’m an American who was never taught the world’s measurement system – is how often I had to put the book down to do meters-to-feet conversions. Actually, funny story: When I first read the prologue, I was really surprised to hear that 8000+ meters is considered the death zone, where oxygen is so thin that your body is slowly dying the longer you stay above it. My brain automatically thought “feet” instead of “meters,” and I was thinking of all the people I know regularly climbing 14k-footers in Colorado, and how Jason and I were up around 6500 feet on one of our hikes last fall, and sure, the air was thinner than I’m used to, but surely it wasn’t that close to the death line? It took a few minutes for my brain to click. Meters, not feet. Do you know what 8000 meters converts to in feet? 26,247. That’s a LOT of climbing. Heh.

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Sunday Coffee – The Paint Saga

Posted on May 22, 2022 by Thistle

So last week, I discussed the plans for my bathroom. In good news, my bathroom was (mostly) finished yesterday. In bad news, it took far more work and far more hotel time than expected.

Let me start by setting the scene. My original plan was to have one accent wall that was a rosy, dusty, autumn-toned orange, like in the photo below. The other walls would be a teal-ish color, so that it would be like a bright autumn sky with a burst of orange. I had a bunch of decoration in mind for the walls, but the essential bit was the one accent wall and the three blue walls, with a new tile floor that looked like a pale grey wood with reddish accents to match. The trim would stay white, the hardware (like the frame of the mirror I found, and the towel rods) would be spray-painted to match the new light fixture. Our plan was for me to be in the hotel three nights/four days – enough time to level the floor, build/paint the back wall, and lay the tile.

Then came the Paint Saga. So the above photo is what the paint was meant to look like, right? I matched the color swatch to this, and also to a towel so I had a non-light-based color to look at. Unfortunately, the store I went to did not mix the paint properly. It’s not the first time I’ve had an issue at this particular store. It’s literally a Sherwin Williams store. Paint is their specialty! You’d think that of anyone, they’d be able to mix paint properly! But this is the second time I’ve gone in with one of their own swatches and come out with a paint that looks absolutely nothing like what I chose. They got close on the teal paint – close enough that I didn’t mind that it wasn’t quite what I originally intended – but the warm rosy orange of the accent wall? Let’s just say that it looked like my bathroom was an Americana explosion, a Fourth of July room, patriotism unleashed.

That photo is after two coats of paint, because we thought maybe it would be better after a second coat. (It was worse. At least with the first coat, it looked bright orange instead of bright red.) So I went to a different store, picked out five new swatches and got sample-sized paints to try out. (In the pic below, you can see the towel that I matched the swatch to. That’s literally the color of the swatch. How did that translated to brick red in paint???) We tested the five swatches, and I chose the one I liked best. It wasn’t my original intended color, but the rosy cinnamon brown looked better with the not-quite-right blue anyway.

We had a few other problems along the way. It was no surprise to discover that the reason we’ve had two sewer gas leaks in the last two years is because the builders put the pipe hole too close to the wall, so a standard sized toilet won’t fit properly. We had to seek out a specialty toilet with a shorter-depth, taller-height tank! Then somehow, in the middle of all of this, something dropped onto the sink and punctured right through it, leaving a gaping hole in the porcelain. Long story short, I spent an extra two nights in the hotel, we had more work than originally expected on the bathroom, and yesterday, we finally finished everything** that we’re going to do for now.

I love the way it looks! I can’t wait to start thinking about decor!

**We do still need to paint the ceiling, which has both nicotine staining from the previous occupant plus some burn marks on the ceiling above the old light fixture. But we decided to hold off a few weeks on that one!

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Yerba Buena, by Nina LaCour

Posted on May 20, 2022 by Thistle

From GoodReads: When Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, she leaves behind not only the losses that have shattered her world but the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern. In her seventh year and fifth major as an undergraduate, she yearns for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but is unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena and embarks on an affair with the married owner.

When Sara catches sight of Emilie one morning at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But the damage both women carry, and the choices they have made, pulls them apart again and again. When Sara’s old life catches up to her, upending everything she thought she wanted just as Emilie has finally gained her own sense of purpose, they must decide if their love is more powerful than their pasts.

I’ve loved LaCour’s writing in the past, and I was interested to see what she could do with her adult debut. In many ways, she succeeded. This is a combination slice-of-life, second coming of age, and love story. Many of the elements were beautiful, and the really horrifically ugly ones weren’t at all glossed over. (Note: Please check trigger warnings posted at the bottom of this review.) Both Sara and Emilie have led different kinds of tough lives, ones riddled with drugs, personal loss, and family troubles. As far as love goes, things were never going to be easy for these two women, who come from very different backgrounds socially, ethnically, and situationally. And LaCour doesn’t make it easy. She doesn’t make it guaranteed, either. I liked that a lot.

The only part of the book that felt off to me was that there was a lot of meandering that didn’t seem to lead anywhere. Long periods of time would pass between events, and life would happen, but nothing would really happen. You know, as life is like in reality. But in fiction, if you’re going to describe the non-events that are part of time passing, it feels like they need to be moving the story along, not just in there for no reason. And a lot of the meandering, especially after Sara and Emilie met, felt like it could have been edited out of the book without detriment. Part of it, I’m sure, was to get across that feel of Emilie’s pointless wandering before she reaches a better idea of what she wants and finds inner purpose, but even that kind of pointless wandering needs to move the story forward, and instead, those sections felt a bit stagnated.

Still, I appreciated that LaCour didn’t take this down the road that I’ve seen other books – especially by male authors – that have the “meet and get pulled apart many times” trope and use the bits in between to debase the characters when they’re apart. I do love that Sara and Emilie have these complicated and traumatic pasts, and that they are both trying to deal with them, even if they must be pushed into doing so. It was a thoughtfully written book with beautiful prose, and other than a few sections that felt like they didn’t really need to be there, I thoroughly loved Yerba Buena.

TW: addiction, drug use, death of loved ones, prostitution and statutory rape

Posted in 2022, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , | Leave a comment