The Book of Cold Cases, by Simone St. James

Posted on March 14, 2022 by Thistle

In her spare time, Shea maintains a website and blog called the Book of Cold Cases, looking into theories and evidence of unsolved crimes. She never expects to run into Beth Greer, the so-called “Lady Killer” of the 70s, acquitted of two murders, nor does she expect Beth to agree to an interview. Shea is wary of the Greer house, not only Beth’s home but the site of the home invasion murder of Beth’s father years before the Lady Killer case. Neither Beth nor the house is particularly welcoming, and before long, Shea is questioning her sanity as taps turn themselves on, objects move to new locations, and there’s a whisper on her phone’s interview recording that wasn’t audible in person.

Mystery, (fictional) true crime, ghosts, psychological warfare, gender issues, and light romance. Really, you can’t get any more me if you tried. This book was very similar in feeling to The Sun Down Motel by St James, which was my favorite of the two I’ve read by her in the past. The creep factor was through the roof, and brought me not only chills during the read, but horror-based nightmares when I wasn’t smart enough to put the book away for my before-bed read! It was that kind of delicious.

And beyond the excellent atmospheric writing, St James explored some really heavy topics. Shea suffers from severe PTSD and survivor’s guilt due to an incident in her childhood. Beth’s childhood was the unpleasant combo of wealth, neglect, and her parents’ horrific marriage. There’s discussion of genre roles in the 50s-70s, and how women were limited, and how they’re treated by cops and media alike when they’re accused of major crime. There’s never any overt discussion, nothing heavy-handed, but this is a great look at the way women have been viewed, treated, and limited in our society, and how that changed over the decades.

I love the setup of the book. The story is split into two parts. In the first, the mystery is open-ended, but early in the second part, the answers are mostly revealed to the reader – if not the characters. I’m a big fan of the “mystery is for the characters rather than the reader” style, so this completely worked for me. I also liked the interweaving of the historical story chapters with the modern day chapters. And best of all, I like that the supernatural elements of the book weren’t just written off or explained away. That’s probably my favorite thing about the three books I’ve read from St James. The supernatural is just accepted as a thing that is, rather than a thing that must be a trick, hallucination, or misunderstood phenomena. It’s not magical realism, because the supernatural bit is still out of the ordinary and terrifying for the characters, but it’s never brushed aside as not-supernatural, either. Very few authors write that way, so I really enjoy the books I come across that fit into this narrow framework!

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Sunday Coffee – The Last Child

Posted on March 13, 2022 by Thistle

It’s official. I only have adult children now. Happy 18th, Laurence!

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The (new) Feral Colony

Posted on March 11, 2022 by Thistle

It’s been some time since I discussed the ongoing problem of the feral cats in my neighborhood. There are multiple colonies, and honestly, I’d guess many of them track back to the original colony in the hoarder’s yard. (Many kittens born into a colony, especially the males, will branch out as they get older to find or form nearby colonies, reducing the chance for inbreeding.) I don’t know that these all come from this one situation, but I know that in the episode of Hoarders that featured this man, there’s one shot of a siamese-tabby cat in a metal cage in the house, and that was all the way back in 2012. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but it’s very rare to have feral siamese cats, and the litter born in summer 2020 were siamese-tabby.

(Regular visitors, clockwise from top left: kittens’ mom and aunt (with Berlet); Big Papa; kittens’ uncle; tuxie; kittens’ aunt or uncle and our most regular visitor)

We live at one end of our neighborhood and very near the original colony. Our kittens of course came from that colony, and we were working to TNR the adults until the folks next door to the hoarding house took over** the colony. We still get regular visitors to the yard, including the four siamese cats – though the two sisters in the photo together (our kittens’ mom and aunt) stopped showing up*** anywhere several months ago – a tuxie that I think is someone’s pet; and Big Papa, likely our kittens’ father and a cat that is seen just about everywhere on the streets in our part of the neighborhood.

(view from our deck at the scrubland behind the yard)

The area behind our back fence is scrubby woodland. It’s technically commercial property but has stayed woody (with tons of animal life, including many deer) until recently. One part of the woodland closer to the highway has been cleared for some kind of new build. It’s close enough to our house that I can hear the construction easily, but not close enough to see. However, I have a feeling that it’s displacing a bunch of feral cats, as we’ve had a flood of one-time new visitors: a little brown tabby that could be Gherkin’s twin, right down to her clipped tail; a brown tabby with orange patches and a bright white tail tip; a long-haired gigantic tuxedo cat. Those are the three that I got long enough looks at to get a full description, but there have been others. Most of them look like they’re cousins to our kittens. And given the history of what I believe to be the original colony, they probably are!

After seeing half a dozen new cats in our yard over two weeks, Jason and I decided that we needed to do something. San Antonio has almost no resources for feral cat rescue or TNR programs. The San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition, which we went through last summer, is really disorganized and, frankly, abysmally run. They don’t help with trapping, there’s very few slots for low-cost spay/neuter surgeries (like maybe 30 a week in the whole city, and you have to line up at like 2am to hope to catch a slot), and when they say they’re sending help/resources, you never get a call back. They wouldn’t even let us list the kittens on their adoption page last summer after socializing and paying for all the medical care out of pocket! I know a few other people who have had equally bad, if not worse, treatment from SAFCC. That’s literally our only resource in town. So J and I have decided we’re just going to do this on our own. Put out food to try to lure the displaced cats to our yard. Buy traps if the luring works, and work with our vet to get these babies TNRed. Provide food and shelter and a safe place for these community cats that no one else seems to be helping.

(Left photos: this last week. Right photo: last August)

The first day we put out food, Feb 28, we immediately got a visitor that we hadn’t seen before. They were a beautiful all-grey cat, and I was so excited to see them because I think this may have been the kitten that hid under our deck back in August! So far, this cat has come back almost every day to check for food. (There’s not always any left when they come as we put out food twice a day, but they still come, which is exactly what we want!)

(left: giant unaltered male; right: another Gherkin-twin)

Since then, we’ve had three more new visitors that I’ve gotten photos++ of, plus a return of an earlier kitty. The first new cat showed up at dusk on the 2nd. At first, we thought it was Big Papa, but a closer look showed that while they’re probably related, it’s not the same cat. Too much white around the mouth, different slant to the eyes, shorter tail, etc. This big guy looks intelligent and crafty, and has probably been around for some time. He barely flinched when I left the house and went to the end of the deck to take better photos of him; just kept an eye on me between bites to make sure he was safe. Our next new visitor, from the 6th, was another twin to Gherkin, but without a clipped tail! How many of these guys are out there?? It’s not just that they’re brown tabbies, which are very common, but they have the exact same markings, body shape, and eye shape as our kittens. It’s clear they’re cousins, and in fact, we actually texted the neighbors to find out if this was one of the born-in-late-June kittens from the original colony. They said it wasn’t. This little one – probably female – has returned a couple times since then, and seems to like to hang out in our yard.

(Top left: new tuxie; bottom left: brown tabby girl with orange patches and white tail tip; right: possum, because apparently we’re going to feed all the wildlife)

Our third and most recent new visitor (9th) is the tuxie in this photo. At first, I thought this might be the tuxie in the first photo in this post, one of our regular visitors, but the white patterns don’t match up, and neither do the cheeks or facial shape. It’s also not the recent super-fluffy longhaired tuxie I saw before this project started. Definitely new, probably a roaming male. Our last (cat) visitor, just yesterday, was the return of the brown tabby with orange patches and a white tail tip. She came into the garden to dig a litter spot, and I only got a very quick blurry photo through a screen before she saw me, spooked, and ran off.

In the meantime, the cats are not the only ones getting something out of this experiment. The birds and squirrels keep stealing bits of dry food (we put out a mix of wet and dry), and as you can see above, we’ve had a possum come to visit as well. It’s very amusing! And then there was the night when I took one last look outside, when it was almost too dark to see, and I saw a form slinking around with a fluffy tail. At first I thought it was going to be one of the big tomcats again, but as the shape revealed a smaller head and longer legs, I suddenly shouted, “That’s not a cat!” and scrambled to try to get photos.

That photo is grainy and blurry, but it was much, much darker outside than it looks here. Jason couldn’t see this guy out the window at all, and I barely could. This was the best I could do with my limited resources. I was honestly glad to get any photo of the gray fox in my yard! This was such a cool experience!

More to come (hopefully!) soon.

**They’re supposed to be TNRing the adults, but other than a young male that we call Bertlet, they’ve pointedly not answered when we’ve tried to talk with them about their progress. There’s some contention because they decided at one point that we were “torturing” the colony cats during the process of trying to trap them. It’s a long story. In any case, it’s possible there are still unaltered cats from that colony running around. We don’t know.

***Those same neighbors were interested in adopting the siamese cats. It’s possible they were able to socialize them and bring them inside, but that’s pure speculation/hope. I just know that as soon as the cold weather started to hit, I stopped seeing them anywhere, when they used to be out in yards, driveways, and porches in the vicinity of their colony all the time. I do hope they’re safe!!

++I can’t watch the area all day, so sometimes the food disappears and we don’t know who got it. We’re in the process of getting an outdoor motion-sensor camera so we can get a better idea of the scope of this project.

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Wellness Wednesday – Enbrel Update

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Thistle

Back on January 15th, I took my first dose of Enbrel (injection) for my rheumatoid arthritis. Right away, I had a few minor side effects, and slowly, I had some improvements as well. I’ve now had eight weeks of injections, and according to the medication package details and my rheumatology office, most people see their best improvements in the 8-12 week window. I wanted to document where I’m at now, hitting the eight-week mark.

Initial side effects included:

  • slight loss of appetite due to very mild nausea in the afternoons of the first few days after the original injection. Update: This happened again the second week, but went away after that.
  • periods of increased swelling/throbbing of joints (especially feet, hands, fingers, and toes) – this was noteworthy because most of my symptoms pre-Enbrel were in my spine, not my extremities. Update: This also seemed to lessen after a two weeks, but then came back after week 7’s injection and got worse after week 8’s.
  • less restful sleep combined with hyper-obsessive dreams for a few days after injection. Update: Like the loss of appetite, this happened after the first two injections but then went away.
  • sudden and unpredictable stabbing pain in certain joints (ankles, knees, wrists) if too much pressure was applied, followed by the joint collapsing. Update: While this decreased after two weeks – mostly because I stopped doing yoga or any activity that required too much pressure on my joints – this does still happen at unpredictable times when there is pressure on a particular joint. And after Week 8’s injection, began happening at random times even when there was no pressure on the joint.

In addition to the side effects, I did begin to see some immediate improvements in back pain. I could go for a walk around the block without my lower back or hips seizing up, and eventually without pain at all. I still struggled with steeper grades or any kind of climbing, but it wasn’t too bad if I stopped and stretched my back out a few times while I  walked/hiked. The pain along my sciatic nerve dropped to be about 90% gone, and I hardly felt it sitting, standing, or lying down. Definite improvement, and it only took about two weeks to get there.

The downside:

Around six weeks, I noticed that the effects of the Enbrel began to decrease. I was more likely to get those sudden sharp stabbing pains. (I did mention them to my rheumatologist’s PA, who claimed that was a normal part of RA and it meant nothing at all that I never had them pre-Enbrel and they started literally the day after my first injection…sure. Did I already mention how awful the PA was?) The sciatic pain increase to only about 80% gone, and the neck/shoulder pain, which was like 99% gone, dropped to 90%. The throbbing pain and swelling in my hands and feet have gotten much, much worse, and sometimes it now takes over my entire body. I took a nap on Monday, and woke up with every single muscle in my body cramped and aching like I’d run a marathon, for no reason at all.

So to sum up: two of the initial side effects disappeared, two decreased for awhile but are reappearing, and my pain/inflammation/joint-issues/mobility all improved for a month only to start deteriorating again. I actually had a moment earlier this week when I told Jason that I wasn’t sure the Enbrel was doing much at all for me anymore. I’m still convinced that there’s something more going on beyond RA – a food intolerance or allergy or something. But we’ll see. I see the RA PA (ugh) again in mid-April to see where things stand then.

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Small Changes

Posted on March 7, 2022 by Thistle

A few years ago, I wrote a series of posts about making small changes that led to big results. That sounds like a weight loss ad, but that’s not what I mean. One of the changes, for instance, was where I set up my yoga mat in my bedroom, which led to an increased desire to practice. All I did was change the angle my mat faced, and I tripled the number of times I got on the mat during the month. Another example is that I placed a pillow between my knees while I slept, which aligned my hips better, which decreased the constant tightness of my right sciatic area, which eliminated plantar fasciitis pain entirely.

Anyway. I’m a bit believer in small changes leading to really big results, and this is another post that explores that. This time, rather than physical changes in my life or environment, I’m going to talk about digital changes, ie photo editing.

I am still very early in my foray into photo editing and digital software. Hell, I’m still fairly early in my foray into photography! But I had an experience this last week that just blew me away in its simplicity. It starts with the above photo. One morning, I went outside to document how well the mistflower garden was holding up, and I saw that some of the plants were blooming for the first time. I took some photos, including one of this mystic spires salvia. I took the photo because the bloom – which was already there when we planted – was thriving, while the leaves seemed to have shriveled in during the cold front and ice storm. The photo itself ended up being lovely, and the above photo is the original, entirely unedited.

Once I uploaded the RAW file onto my phone, I decided to do a small amount of editing. The photo didn’t need much, I thought, but I made a few small changes. I cropped it slightly for better composition; tweaked the exposure, brightness, shadows, and contrast; and sharpened the photo a bit. I almost always add a tiny bit of vignetting to my photos just because I like the feel of it, but I didn’t want to do much of that here, so it was the barest amount. I made no changes to the saturation, temperature, or tint. The final result, with just a few small changes, is this second photo.

They look similar, but at the same time, the second photo is drastically improved. There’s more depth to it, and even though I did no work at all with color or temperature, it looks more true-to-life and vibrant. More real. I put the two photos side by side in a collage to really highlight just how much of a difference these tiny changes made.

One day, I know I’ll look back at this and see all the things I could have done to improve the photo even more, if I’d only known more about digital editing. That’s how any new journey begins, yeah? I won’t pretend it’s the best photo or the best editing job in the world, not by any stretch of the imagination. But honestly, I’m just so excited to be taking these baby steps, to learn and to grow, to explore this new creative outlet. It feels so wonderful to bring to life the world around me in images!

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Sunday Coffee – Rerecording Audiobooks

Posted on March 6, 2022 by Thistle

Toward the end of our road-trip last fall, Jason and I began listening to Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. I’d already read the book twice, once in print and once on audio, but it had been awhile and Jason had never read it, so I didn’t mind. We listened to maybe a quarter to a third of it during the last couple days of our trip. When we got home, I didn’t continue the book because again, I’d already read it several times, and I had other books I wanted to read. Jason didn’t continue it because he was already in the middle of listening to a long podcast series.

Six months went by, and then I needed something to listen to in the background while working on a project last month. I wanted something that I’d enjoy, but I wouldn’t have to concentrate to comprehend. Finishing that re-listen of Elantris was perfect, and as I went through the book, I told Jason that I’d love it if he could finish his listen at some point, too, so we could discuss. After he finished his listen-in-progress, he grabbed Elantris from Audible and started over from the beginning.

Here’s where things got weird. Jason bought the tenth anniversary edition of the audiobook, which is not the one I have. We figured they’d be the same, particularly because it was the same narrator, with perhaps some extras added to the re-release as a way of drumming up interest in the new edition. The newer print editions of Elantris have an added Hoid chapter at the end that explores a part of the Cosmere system only mentioned in passing prior to this. Maybe that was added to the audio version, I thought. What I didn’t expect was that the entire audiobook was rerecorded, with the pronunciations of 90% of the names/places changed. Examples:

  • Serene: In the original, this is pronounced like the normal word; the updated version adds an extra “ee” to the end, so it’s like sir-EE-nee.
  • Telrii: Original is tell-RYE-eye. New version is TELL-ree.
  • Jaddeth: Original pronounces the J as a Y, new one pronounces it as a J.
  • Roial: Original says ROW-aisle (with the “row” as in “row your boat”); new version is the word “royal” with normal pronunciation.
  • Ashe: Original is A-she (with the A being a long a, like in “day”); new version is the word “ash” with normal pronunciation.

Like I said, these are just a few examples – nearly all of the names (people, places, concepts, titles, etc) have been changed. I can only think of about a half dozen – out of hundreds – which didn’t change in some way.

Maybe it’s just me, but this bothers the hell out of me!! Why would you do this? Why would you change the entire language structure of an audiobook?? Research tells me that the new versions are apparently closer to what Sanderson envisioned originally, but I don’t care – the originals are what I first heard and learned, so those are the final versions in my head. Especially as a character from this world shows up in Oathbringer. He’s not named in Elantris, so I can’t say how the two versions of his name might differ, but in the audio recording of Oathbringer, his name (Riino) is pronounced rye-EYE-no. That is exactly like the original – the updated would be REE-no. So in my mind, no matter what anyone says, the original versions are correct! Ha.

Every time Jason and I discuss something from the book, we trip over each other’s pronunciations. We keep discovering new ones, too. We’ve also played portions of the same chapters to each other, to see how different they sound with every other word being pronounced differently. And since Jason didn’t really remember the portion of the book we listened to back in autumn, he’s got all the “wrong” versions in his head now! Oh well.

Anyway, I thought the whole situation was so bizarre. I’ve seen authors change things to update a book over time, or fix minor continuity issues, etc. (Rowling did this between hardback and paperback versions for almost every HP book!) This was really extensive, though, and I wonder what others think about “updated” versions of books that change so much of something as essential as how language sounds in a particular world!

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Birthday the 43rd

Posted on March 4, 2022 by Thistle

My birthday was this past Tuesday, and lucky me got a full day of celebration! Jason took off work, and we started the morning with a hike at a park in town that I hadn’t been to in months. (Notably, the last time I went was before I lost my mobility in November, so I wasn’t sure how well my body would handle it. It was…okay. I had to stop to stretch my back several times, and I can tell just how much I’ve lost in both muscle and cardio fitness over the last few months. But since it was just Jason and me, we could take it as slow as I needed, or stop whenever that became necessary.)

We hiked a bit over three miles, then headed into town to have lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, India Oven. Sadly, I have to say that the experience was disappointing. Because it was lunch, we were there for the weekday buffet, and apparently, they’ve changed the buffet from “mild” to “medium” spice. I can barely handle the mild spice level, so in the end, there was very little I could eat. Mostly I ate naan and rice, and I’m not technically supposed to have naan given that I’m meant to be eating gluten-free. So lunch was one of the less satisfactory parts of my birthday.

It’s a good thing that a really huge surprise came that afternoon and totally made up for it! Brandon Sanderson announced a new project – a “Year of Sanderson” subscription box for 2023, including four previously-unannounced novels that he’s apparently been using his pandemic-lockdown time to write. I’ve been looking halfheartedly for a new subscription box after some not-so-great experiences over the last year, and this is one that’ll be 100% perfect!! Yeah, it’s expensive, but honestly there was no chance I was going to back anything lower than the top tier of the kickstarter. I want all four books, plus the audio versions, plus the themed swag boxes. I never buy books like this, not before reading them, except under very particular circumstances. This absolutely qualifies! I’m so excited – this is like the best unintentional birthday gift ever! I spent most of the afternoon watching the various videos and livestreams dedicated to the kickstarter.

Once all the livestreams were over, Jason and I went shopping for sunglasses. Honestly, I’m not a fan of sunglasses and so I never wear them, but I’ve noticed over the last year or two that I’m starting to feel the effects of the sun on my eyes after hiking. I knew that, with getting older and my eyes doing the things eyeballs do (like crystalizing), I needed to start protecting them better. So I got two pairs – one to keep for driving, one to store in my hiking pack. (Can I just say that I’m not a fan of the current sunglasses fashion? What’s up with the giant two-toned lenses that are all yellowy, like they’re straight out of 1989? Or that double bar on top? Those glasses look like they belong on an inept bank robber from an early episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Thankfully, I found some non-80s glasses!)

(images from Unsolved Mysteries – top middle is what 90% of the sunglasses out right now look like, eek!)

In the evening, Jason made Cincinnati chili for me, and we had a double-desert combo of chocolate bavarois and GF chocolate chip cookie cake. I opened a few gifts, including a cat-moon-and-pearl necklace from my dad and some digital editing software from Jason.

It was a nice day, and a good mix of getting out and doing things I wanted to do, with enough downtime that my body didn’t feel completely overrun and inflamed. I hate that this is my life now until the RA is under control – if the RA ever gets under control – but I’m doing my best not to kick against those limitations and land myself sick in bed the next day. And hey – I didn’t get a picture of it, but on our way home from sunglasses shopping, a rainbow popped out between two clouds just out of nowhere. There was no rain or even any threat of rain, bright clear skies with only a couple of clouds, and yet there was a rainbow. Rainbows always give me a little boost, make me feel like I’m where I’m meant to be, so this was a good omen to start a new year. This is what 43 looks like so far.

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February 2022 in Review

Posted on March 2, 2022 by Thistle

It’s hard to believe February’s over, probably because I spent most of the latter half of it in poor mental health. Heh. I’m okay, just feeling the effects of a few health-related issues. Beyond that, not much happening here. To continue last month’s family stuff, Ambrose got his ship date (mid-June), and Laurence finally did get to perform in the musical at school. That’s about it for February!

Reading and Watching
It was another good book month, with seven finished, only two that fell into the “meh” category, and none that I disliked! It wasn’t hard to pick a favorite this month – The Second Blind Son was a book I treasured all the way through. I definitely need to read more by Amy Harmon.

Despite reading the same number of books this month – including more pages and more audio than January – there was actually a big chunk of February where I just didn’t read much at all. Instead, I took to binge-watching various true crime (and related) shows: Catching Killers (okay), Inventing Anna (ugh), and Wild Crime (pretty good). Toward the end of the month, my friend Alia convinced me to watch Love is Blind with her, so I binged my way through that one as well, heh. I can’t deny a bizarre enjoyment of crappy dating reality shows! The one thing I didn’t watch this month? The Olympics! I thought I would, but except for in 2018 (when my grandmother had just passed away and I was grieving), I’ve never been big into the winter Olympics, not like the summer ones. I just never got around to watching them this time. My favorite thing I watched all month, though, was the first episode of Season 15 of Murdoch Mysteries. It only released on the last day of the month, and I’ve been looking forward to it for months!

Goals
I got a few more goals completed this month: mistflower bed planted, our first bug hotel put up in the yard, scratched another five books off my priorities list, and began to learn a bit more about digital editing.

House
We had more projects than expected this month. First, the paperwork to get our solar panels done finally came through, so contractors came to install them on the house. We’re still waiting for tree-trimmers and for the local energy company to wire the panels into the grid, but soon we’ll be on green energy! We also put together the mistflower bed a few weeks early. The big unexpected project was replacing the toilet in the main house bathroom. Last Saturday, it very suddenly began to leak sewage from underneath it. EEK! The old connection to the drain had corroded away, so we had to remove the old toilet, clean out and replace the connections, and put on a new toilet (as the old one was too corroded and rusted out to be connected securely). Thankfully, Jason was able to do that so we didn’t have to call someone out and wait until they had time for us!

Health and Fitness
This month was a bit less medical-heavy, mostly because I was waiting on availability from specialists. I did see my dietitian, rheumatologist (PA), and endocrinologist this month. The good news is that my rheumatology labs showed my inflammation is down to a certain degree, and on a scale from 0-100, the progression of my RA is at 25 (the high end of the “low” category). The bad news is that the endocrinologist is still awful – I need to find a new one – and my rheum PA was equally awful. Oh well. I also took a two-day at-home sleep study this month, because either I’ve developed sleep apnea, or I have an obstruction that’s causing issues with my sleep. No results yet, but hopefully soon. I do see an ENT in a week or so (March looks to be a bit more medical-heavy) so he’ll be able to look for obstructions.

(hikes of February, all but one very early in the month)

Unfortunately, as I said at the beginning of this post, my mental health has not been well. There are a lot of factors mixing together to cause depression: trying to reconcile myself to this diagnosis and the lack of mobility; the general pain brought on by the new RA medication as my body adjusts; the lack of exercise on days when my pain and mobility are low; sleep quality and quantity issues; poorer than normal diet stemming from depression and sleep issues…etc. I still haven’t found the energy to call around looking for therapists. Sigh. So I didn’t eat as well as I’d’ve liked, or exercised as much, or been out hiking with my friends as often, etc.

Quarantine Diaries
For the first time, I had a direct covid scare. (Though to be honest, I was never particularly worried.) Some friends and I hiked early in the month, and afterwards, we found out that one friend had tested positive for covid through a routine work screening. She felt terrible that she may have exposed us, but also a little confused because she hadn’t been around anyone (at all). None of us were worried. We were all vaccinated and we’d been outdoors. She took three more covid tests through different facilities and they all came back negative, so we think it was a false positive anyway. The other three of us just wore masks around people for ten days. None of us ever had any symptoms or positive tests, except that first one my friend had through the work screening.

Favorite Photos
As usual with depression-heavy, stay-inside months, I didn’t take nearly as many photos as I’d like in Feb. Here are the few best-ofs.

Top, left to right: Ambrose dressed up for the musical (full story in my highlights below); Atticus training to become my adventure cat; hiker silhouetted on craters at McKinney Falls State Park. Bottom, left to right: McKinney Falls, upper falls; sunset; kitty siblings

Highlights of February
Bright spots in a dark month:

  • Angus and Gherkin simultaneously laying out on their backs, legs spread, with bellies up asking for pets (Gherkin never does this, so she’s learning from her brother, who does this all the time!)
  • After Laurence’s musical, when we were out in the lobby to hang out with the cast, some guy from the audience came up to Ambrose to tell him “great job,” thinking Ambrose was part of the cast because of his outrageous outfit. We got a kick out of that one!
  • discovering (practically, because I already knew intellectually) how much better RAW file format is
  • Headwaters Sanctuary walk/hike with friends, followed by a delicious dinner at Mr Juicy
  • meeting another agender person in real life for the first time
  • everything about Galentine’s Day!
  • the gulf fritillaries returned to my garden! (above pic)
  • training Atticus to be my Adventure Cat
  • the kittens letting Stephanie pet them profusely for the first time; especially Angus, who not only came to investigate her without toy incentive for the first time ever, but offered his belly to rub!
  • exploring a new-to-me nursery in town and getting my first bug hotel, plus some wildflower seed packets, and petting the nursery kitties!
  • this hilarious conversation I had with Jason about Gherkin’s inability to Loaf properly
  • a new Boston fern to hang in our dining room –>
  • prepping our taxes to file in March, with a good refund coming to pay off some debts

Coming up in March
Birthday month! Not only mine, which was yesterday, but eight birthdays in my family take place this month: mine, my stepmom, two brothers-in-law, both mother- and father-in-law, my son’s, and a sister-in-law. Three of those are all on the same day! Three others are all back to back in a row. It’s a fun month, heh. There’s also spring break and a bajillion medical appointments and procedures to look forward to. It’s going to be a busy one! Yay?

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A Twist of Fate, by Kelley Armstrong (audio)

Posted on February 28, 2022 by Thistle

Four years ago, Rosalind accidentally stepped through a time-slip and ended up in the 21st century, leaving behind her husband and infant son. When she finally manages to return to her own time, she doesn’t know what to expect. Does her husband, who already had a history of abandonment by the women in his life, think that she ran off? Will her son hate her for disappearing? Has her husband remarried, giving her son a new mother? Through interference by a con-woman and a spectacular twist of fate, Rosalind – in disguise – is brought into her family’s household, only to discover mysteries, disappearances, and tragedies that she couldn’t have anticipated.

When I read A Stitch in Time, I fell absolutely in love with this series/world. Technically, both of these books are 100% standalone. This is a case of a series stepping sideways to a new character, rather than continuing a story arc. This was a great story, and proves that my first experience with Armstrong wasn’t a fluke. Did I like it as much? Not quite, even though tbh I listened to the audiobook twice in a row because I wanted the double-experience. The enjoyment-difference between the two were slim, though, and I think A Stitch in Time edged this one out purely because I like the narrator more. (The narrator, as in the story’s narrator, Bronwyn, rather than the audio’s narrator, though that’s also true. I’ll get to that later.) There were also slightly fewer paranormal elements to this one, so that it read mostly as historical fiction and mystery, as well as fewer spicy romance parts.

All that added up to me enjoying the first book a bit more, but I still loved this one. I loved seeing how Rosalind’s character evolved through living four years in the modern world, loved seeing August (her husband) again after his role as a side character in the first book, and of course loved the glimpses of Bronwyn’s and William’s lives in the years that followed the first book. It makes me want to go back to read the first one again, to see if I can catch glimpses or hints from this book, as the early portion of the book overlaps to a certain degree.

Anyway, I don’t really have anything in-depth to say about these books. They weave together several genres that I love, with a critical eye toward sexism, racism, and classism. Plus all the cats. I mean, it really doesn’t get better for me.

Performance: This book was read by Gemma Dawson. It’s my first experience with Dawson, and I thought the narration was good within certain parameters. It was slower than I’m used to, so I had to speed the book up. The regular British characters were perfectly fine. I didn’t like Dawson’s child voice, especially for the two-year-old Amelia, and her “Canadian” accent for Bronwyn was frankly atrocious. It’s an accent often given to North Americans by British readers, and it doesn’t sound remotely like any North American accent – I can’t even place what it’s supposed to sound like. So yeah, I cringed every time Bronwyn spoke, the same way I’m sure people from other countries cringe when American audio narrators read non-North-American accents. However, Bronwyn wasn’t in the book often, nor was the two-year-old, so most of the book was well-narrated for me.

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Sunday Coffee – The Mistflower Bed

Posted on February 27, 2022 by Thistle

The next phase of xeriscaping the garden has begun!

Longtime followers will know that Jason and I are slowly converting our boring, scraggly front and back lawns into native, xeriscaped, water-saving landscapes that enhance both the ecosystem and the beauty of our little space. It’s a long process because 1) we’re doing it all ourselves and have to time it for when we have no other projects/appointments (not to mention the weather is okay aka not boiling outside), and 2) it’s expensive, so we have to do it in phases as we save up for it. The current project is the bed that goes along the back of the house from the deck to the a/c unit.

Our house is on a slight slope, and because the yard wasn’t well-cared-for before, a lot of the soil from near the house eroded down the hill. Last year, Jason built a small “fence” made of scrap wood to mark out this bed, and we threw a bunch of junk seeds (non-edible oats, peas, and barley) into the area to grow and hold down the remaining soil. Nothing was growing there before because the house had no rain gutters, so water would smash into this area and rip up any growth. The junk-plants were hardy and meant to be a stop-gap until we could get gutters up, which we did last fall. Now that it’s planting season, we tilled up the old growth; added topsoil, compost, and peat; and made a plan for the bed.

(weeded bed; new soil dumped but not tilled in yet; the plants)

This is an area that gets morning sun but a lot of afternoon shade. It’s also right outside my bedroom, and I knew I wanted plants that attracted butterflies. Jason and I also have a rule on our permanent beds (aka not just seeds thrown in temporarily) that plants have to be native, non-invasive, self-sowing, and low-water-need. Essentially, they have to thrive on very little care while also doing no damage to the local ecosystem (hopefully improving it!). We’ve been working with native plants since 2018, so I had a good idea of the ones I wanted in that bed: primarily mistflowers, with a mix of salvias, dusty miller, skullcaps, inland sea oats (for greenery), and native milkweed. Sea oats weren’t available, and since they were just for greenery, I ended up going with milky way cast iron plants instead. Jason and I also got a Carolina jessamine to trail up the side of the deck, particularly because we saw just how many native butterflies it was attracting. (Indeed, before these were even planted, I saw three different varieties of butterfly flocking to it!) Mistflowers weren’t available in the quantities I wanted, so I’ll have to go back in a few weeks to get more, but I got a few to start.

(bed-planning; plants in and watered; the next day)

I know it doesn’t look like much, but those will all grow and fill out that bed over time. Mistflowers tend to start their own gardens, which is one reason I chose them. This was, very specifically, my mistflower bed!

This was all done last weekend, and we waited a week to mulch, mostly because there was a lot of rain and some freezing temps all throughout the week. We wanted to prevent mildew/rot, so we waited until this weekend to mulch. Thankfully, all the plants seem to have done fine in the mild freezes, and even the light sheet of ice we had one morning. (The original plan was to plant in mid-March, after all danger of frost had passed. A miscommunication led to planting three weeks earlier than intended.) So this (above photo) is where the mistflower bed currently sits, while it waits a few weeks for the rest of the plants (more mistflowers, Texas milkweed) to be available in the local nurseries. Again, it doesn’t look like much, but I know how quickly this is going to turn into a gorgeous garden bed!

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