Sunday Coffee – I Don’t Know. Stuff.

Posted on December 5, 2021 by Thistle

I admit that in times of extreme stress, I tend to do a little retail therapy when all else has failed. Right around Black Friday, all else had failed, and I took advantage of some sales that were floating around the interwebs. There were four orders: some journals and washi tape from Archer & Olive, a camera harness strap from Cotton Carrier, a polarizing lens filter for my camera (B&H), and a Lensbaby Velvet 56. The lens filter has yet to arrive, but the other three came this week, and all with Stories.

Harness strap: Fedex delivered this with the package half ripped open. Oy. Thankfully all the pieces were still inside. I’ll be trying out this strap for the first time later this morning.

Archer & Olive: When I opened this box from UPS, I was surprised to find three journals instead of two inside. On further inspection, the third (unexpected) journal was not from the company. Instead, it was from some christian planning company, a 2022 christian calendar/planner that was large, hardback, and heavy – and apparently retails for $40! A&O doesn’t sell this planner through their site, so I have no idea how it got in the box. I did write to them to let them know, in case one of their employees is sneaking these into packages – especially since they paid the shipping, not me! One of my friends is going to take this thing off my hands, so I’m glad someone could use it. I’m not even remotely interested in a christian planner…

Lensbaby: Okay so there’s no real fun story to this, but I’ve fallen instantly in love with this lens! I took a few shots the first night it arrived (Friday), in my living room, just to get a sense of how it works. I’ve never had a lens that was full manual on the lens itself, rather than communicating f-stop on the camera. Definitely a new experience, and I can tell that the manufacturing quality is much higher than my two Canon lenses. Of course, I’ve never paid this much for a lens before, so it makes sense! Anyway, the only real story that goes along with this one is that yesterday, I took it out to my garden to try out some good macro shots, and all was going quite swimmingly until I stepped into an ant colony that I hadn’t seen and my feet – stupidly shod in sandals – were swarmed! I freaked out and was screaming. Thankfully Jason was outside and able to get to the hose right away to help me, and afterwards we immediately threw on a baking soda paste to help. I never did go back for the shot of the lavender that I was trying to get when I stepped in the ants… (All photos in collage taken with my Lensbaby.)

The arrival of all this stuff – with or without Issues – has been helpful this week as I continue on in medical hell. I tested negative for mono on Thursday, but the test also shows that I’ve had it in the past (not sure when!). I also had bloodwork done Tuesday, and my Tuesday tests show extremely high white blood cell counts, while my Thursday tests show WBC count smack in the middle of normal, so no one knows wtf is going on. A bunch of other test results from Tuesday show massive inflammation everywhere in my body, especially related to my liver. Which isn’t great, because I also found out (from my GI dr) that I have scarring on my liver, and need to go in for a dye-contrast MRI this week, as well as a second jaw ultrasound and the f/u with my GI doctor. December is turning out to be as awful as November in terms of Every Other F-king Day Is At A Doctor’s Office, so I’m irritated and irritable and glad to have a few fun things to play with. (Despite irritation, though, I’m glad some doctors are finally taking me seriously. I wonder how much damage could have been prevented had they done these tests in 2014/2015 when I had the sudden and unexplained 80-lb weight gain over nine months instead of just telling me that I was eating too much, grr.)

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Apples Never Fall, by Liane Moriarty (audio)

Posted on December 3, 2021 by Thistle

After a cryptic and inexplicable text to her four grown children, Joy Delaney disappears on Valentine’s Day. A missing person’s report is filed. Her husband, Stan, is looking mighty suspicious. The police are searching for a young woman named Savannah who stayed with the Delaneys for a few weeks about six months back. Everyone is keeping secrets, and with each passing day, it looks more and more like Joy may have been murdered.

I have lots of thoughts about this book, starting with a revelation I had after I finished it. This is literally the first Moriarty book I’ve listed on the blog as an audio-listen instead of a print-read, and yet, I feel like half of the books I’ve read by her have been via audio. What Alice Forgot is an exception, because I’ve listened to that one several dozen times (though apparently I read it in print the first time, according to my blog!). But I thought I’d listened to Big Little Lies (my first by her, and no, I’ve not seen the show) and especially Nine Perfect Strangers (my most recent before this one). Apparently not. The books are written in such a strong voice that I can actually hear them spoken in my head! That’s kinda awesome.

Moriarty is a bit hit or miss for me, though more hit than miss. This turned out to be one of the good ones. It’s a complicated look into the intricacies of family life, and especially of long-term marriage. The story is wrapped up in tennis, as the Delaneys are a tennis family (all six of them playing in tournaments, the two parents running a tennis school, etc). It’s the thematic element of their life, as Joy puts it when she’s accompanying her friend to a memoir-writing class. It’s also the root of a lot of passion, and therefore both happiness, grief, and secrets. Issues (with a capital I) come to the surface when Savannah enters the Delaneys’ lives. As you can guess, she’s not who she first appears to be when she lands on their door late one night, barefoot, her face cut open, sobbing.

My favorite thing about Moriarty’s books is how well she explores human interactions and relationships. Apples Never Fall is written in a similar format to Big Little Lies, with some back-and-forth time narration and parts of the story told from outside observation by unimportant – sometimes unnamed – characters. The result is a well-rounded story with many threads all tangled together. In real life, even when folks try to figure out where a thing began or where it went all wrong, it’s too messy to fit easily into any kind of classification. The book is the same.

Performance: The audiobook was read by Caroline Lee. It’s my first experience with her narration, and I enjoyed all of it except her attempts to speak with American accents. They were very cringy, as I imagine non-American accents spoken by American narrators are cringy to those familiar with what they’re imitating. However, that was a very minor portion of the audiobook, and the rest was fantastic!

Trigger warning for the book: There is discussion of child abuse and domestic violence. There’s also a disturbing ambiguous end to one thread of stories that could really upset some readers.

Note: My audiobook cover doesn’t show the tennis net portion of this book cover, which is a shame! I thought the apples were just sitting on a table. Glad to see the full cover afterwards!

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November 2021 in Review

Posted on December 1, 2021 by Thistle

I said in my October wrap-up that November would be a medical-heavy month, and I wasn’t kidding. I’ll wait ’til I get to the Health portion of this post to discuss it, but let’s just say that various doctors’ visits and procedures took up about 90% of my thoughts this month. I had little room left for anything else!

Reading and watching
Why didn’t anyone tell me until this month that I needed to watch Schitt’s Creek? That’s how I began November – binge-watching all six seasons in less than a week. I’m 100% in love with David and Patrick. And I’ve been in fangirl-love with Eugene Levy since I was a little kid watching him in Bridge of Boogedy, ha! It took me like five episodes to realize that David was actually his son in real life, too. I just kept thinking wow, they really got someone who looks like Eugene Levy to play his son! And then ironically, after seeing Dan Levy in a show for the first time, I randomly watched a movie I had saved from last year on Hulu (The Happiest Season) only to find him in there too. And I saw he is a host for the Great Canadian Baking Show, which I didn’t know existed, and which I can’t watch because it’s not available in the US. Boo!

This month was pretty much a “watching” kind of month. Besides The Happiest Season, my family saw both Ghostbusters: Afterlife and King Richard in theatre. (Side note: Alamo Drafthouse is the best!). Then there was the finale of GBBO, plus all the other TV shows I’m currently watching, plus obviously the binge-watching of Schitt’s Creek. Books kinda fell by the wayside. I meant to read a lot for Nonfiction November, only the second book I started was extremely dense and textbook-like. I kept trying to read it for about three weeks before I gave up, and didn’t get more than a couple dozen pages in. Honestly, after reading so much in October, I think my brain wanted a little break from books. Also: so many medical appointments this month that I was too exhausted to focus on anything more taxing than TV. In the end, I read four books, only one of which was nonfiction (and it was tiny). Favorite for the month: Any Sign of Life.

Goals
Forget 2021’s goals. I’ve been obsessed with planning for next year. Mostly because I finally found some good pens that write on black paper! I love Archer & Olive‘s journals, but honestly, I found their pens a little lacking. They dry out so easily even when I work so hard to take care of them. They write a bit unevenly as well, because they’re acrylic ink, so I started looking for other brands. First I tried some double-ended pens from Barnes and Nobles, which was a complete mistake and waste of money. I don’t even like how they look on white paper! Then I tried some Zebra Sarasa Dry pens, and while those are all good, only the metallic ones worked on black paper. I heard online that Posca was the way to go, so I went down to Michaels to try to get some – only to find out Posca is well beyond my price range. I’m not going to pay $50 for six pens! I’m just not that into creative journaling!! However, I discovered Gellyroll pens, and I adore those. They’re absolutely perfect for what I’m doing, and I’ve had so much fun prepping my goals and habit-composites for 2022. Probably to the point of going overboard and giving myself too much to do. Heh. What’s new?

House
The work we started in October continued this month. Jason built the little fence that lines the back of the succulent garden, and we’ve been working to stabilize the side yard as our house is on a slight hill and there’s been a lot of erosion in both side yards. (Pic is in-progress.) I drew out sketches of other eventual structures, pathways, and planting areas for our back garden, taking advantage of natural lines of the hill. Our garden is still not too much to look at, but it’ll get there. And frankly, it feels nice to be doing optional projects rather than necessary ones! (Bonus: We found a nearby company that sells fancy pavers, and tosses the local junk rocks they can’t use off to the side as garbage. They said take as many of the junk rocks as we want – it’s less money for them to get off their lot, and it’s free for us. Win-win!)

Health
November = my medical month of hell: PCP x 3, chiro, urogynecology + labs, optometrist, mammogram + f/u ultrasound, bloodwork x 3, thyroid ultrasound, jaw ultrasound, dentist + xrays x 2 (including emergency dental), GI surgery (colonoscopy, endoscopy, several biopsies), fibroscan, endodontist + xrays, dietitian + body scan, rheumatologist. All resulting in 17 separate appointments, more prescriptions than I can even remember, and absolutely zero answers. (Note: The rheumatologist is currently our best bet, and my appointment was on the last day of the month, so there may be future answers. The 17 vials of blood they took will hopefully tell me something. Oy. Also, in filling out the medical history for the rheumatologist, I made a discovery that may lead to an answer very soon, which as you can imagine is really exciting!!) You can see why this was time- and brain-consuming this month!

Of course, the big health thing in November was the triple-GI surgical procedure the week before Thanksgiving. I personally think colonoscopy prep is a special kind of hell, the worst part being that HORRIBLE medicine you have to drink, TWICE, the second time in the middle of the night, ugh. However, I have to say that I actually felt much better afterwards. More energy, less physical pain, etc. Which really makes me think there’s something in my diet that’s causing inflammation. I still don’t know what that might be, though. I have a f/u appointment on the 9th, but really, all the results came back negative except for an excessive amount of inflammation in my stomach, which they gave me heartburn medication to control. That seems like a bandaid rather than a cure, so I’m still on the hunt for answers.

Then there was the teeth issues. I have a lot of pain in my upper left teeth. One tooth has some crack-lines because I grind my teeth, and the plan was to put a crown on it. But then I started getting sick with symptoms similar to the ones I got during my 11-year-tooth-saga. Antibiotics made the throat-swelling go down, but I still have three very large swollen lymph nodes under my ear. We were all pretty sure that the tooth was infected – to the point where my dentist put me on a heavy antibiotic (which I ended up having a severe allergic reaction to – pic shows the eye-swelling, but it was swelling/pain through all my organs, eek!) and I got a referral to an endodontist. Only then I saw the endodontist, and he took a bunch of specialized imaging and did all the horrible tap-crush-cold tests on my teeth…and they’re all fine. He doesn’t even think I should get a crown! Yet I still have these symptoms and swollen lymph nodes, and it’s just one more medical mystery to unravel. More bloodwork scheduled for tomorrow!

Quarantine diaries
I don’t have much to say on this. Numbers have stayed relatively low in our area, though of course with any time of year that involves gatherings, it’s likely to start going up again soon. Hopefully things will still be okay by Christmas! I’m hearing worrying news about the Omicron variant, but it’s too soon to tell how that will go. Meanwhile, Jason and Ambrose got their booster shots. Laurence isn’t 18 yet, so he isn’t approved for booster, but as he says, at most he has three months to wait (he turns 18 in March).

Favorite photos
I didn’t have a lot of natural time to take photos this month, other than Thanksgiving and one long hiking trip. So I spent some time thinking about what I wanted to portray in photos, and went out of my way to take some nice ones with just what I had in and around my home. As always, these are taken by me and not always the best photography, just a favorite in some way. Full versions are available both on Instagram and FB.

Clockwise from top left: creek at Lost Maples; mini-succulents thriving in the zen garden; portrait of my dad and stepmom at Thanksgiving; seed-heads at Lost Maples

Top left: The photo prompt was “face a fear,” so I put together this layout with a peeled orange, raw tomato, and a cup of coffee, next to an empty chair, to represent the fear and loneliness of disordered eating and weight-related issues.
Top right: a portrait of Ghost on the day Jason and I decided to stop looking for new homes for the kittens
Bottom: This hibiscus flower was about to bloom, and I managed to get a really good macro shot of it. Then I edited it to filter it down to not-quite-monochrome b&w, still some chocolate tints to it. It was how I felt at the time, tightly wound around myself, struggling with the stress of living in a body that has become a medical nightmare. In the end, I couldn’t decide which photo – the original or the edited – was my favorite, so I included both.

Highlights of November
I already mentioned some of the highlights above (booster shots, fun journals/pens, etc), so here are the non-repeats for November!

  • Richard Simmons calendar (this is a running joke with my siblings)
  • David and Patrick
  • girl’s hike out to Lost Maples
  • some nights and/or days with the windows open – the weather is finally changing toward chilly!
  • lunch out with my cousins
  • walking through my old house
  • federal judge overruled the ban on mask mandates in TX schools
  • so many triple-sibling kitty-cuddles
  • this hilarious TT video and the accompanying comments – I literally laughed so long and so hard at the accumulation of comments that I couldn’t breathe and my eyes were streaming!
  • our copper canyon daisy is starting to bloom!
  • being able to go to movie theatres again, especially Alamo Drafthouse – their pre-movie reels are just phenomenal!
  • the succulent garden is seeing insane growth!
  • everything related to Thanksgiving, especially seeing family again!
  • all the Christmas decorating, even if we had a minor disaster this year!

Coming up in December
It’s Christmas time! And Jason’s and my 22nd anniversary! And the winding down of what has not been an impressive year imo. I won’t have a full December monthly wrap-up because I have all the yearly wrap-ups instead. Most likely, my blog posting will be sporadic too. This time of year tends to be pretty busy for most people, and I have a long tradition of quiet time in terms of online presence in December. Used to be because of the scramble of NaNoWriMo in November, but even since I stopped participating, I still take December as my quiet month. This is early, but: I hope all of you stay well this year, and have a great end of 2021.

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The Cousins, by Karen McManus

Posted on November 29, 2021 by Thistle

Twenty-five years ago, the Story children were suddenly cut from the family with a cryptic note from their mother: You know what you did. Except they don’t, or at least they claim that they don’t. Now, another inexplicable letter from the family matriarch arrives, inviting her three grandchildren to work on her island over the summer. The cousins go at their parents’ urging, each with different hopes for what this opportunity will mean. Secrets are only buried until someone digs deep enough to find them, and this will be the summer they come to light.

I don’t have a lot to say about this book. I enjoyed it, unraveling the mystery slowly and figuring things out a few chapters ahead of the three island guests. The rotating narration was fun, though admittedly, each cousin sounded exactly like the other in narration, so I sometimes forgot which point of view I was reading. Every few chapters, there would be a chapter from the summer of 1996, told from the POV of the only female Story child, which helps bring the mystery to light. (Yes, I was amused that the “past” that the cousins think of as distant was from 1996/1997. I’m apparently the same age as the Story children.) The ending was quite appropriate, with no unnecessary last-second twists so often in adult thrillers and mysteries. It was a fun experience. Plus, I just love reading books about cousins, because cousins are the best!

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Sunday Coffee – A Lovely Thanksgiving

Posted on November 28, 2021 by Thistle

Two years ago, my dad’s side of the family got together at my aunt and uncle’s house for Thanksgiving. I don’t have any photos from that year. My immediate family was dealing with a ton at the time, from Morrigan’s medical release from boot camp, to buying a new house and prepping the old one to sell. We had no idea that everything was about to change. My aunt and uncle’s house had just gone on the market, too, and by Christmas, they had moved out to live in a temporary apartment and couldn’t host the family gathering. We’d just moved into our new house and still had boxes everywhere, and couldn’t host the family, either. There was nowhere big enough for the whole of us to gather (picture below is the family at Christmas in 2018), so we simply didn’t have a big Christmas gathering. And then covid hit.

I haven’t seen a large chunk of my extended family in two years – specifically aunts, uncles, and cousins. We didn’t know what the plan would be this year, if there would be any gathering at all given that we’re still in a pandemic, even though numbers in our area are very low at present. Happily, my aunt and uncle decided to host Thanksgiving this year. There were rules, though – my aunt’s family would be there in addition to my (blood) uncle’s side, and her mother and aunts are elderly and vulnerable. The rule was that everyone in attendance must be fully vaccinated to protect them. No hard feelings if you weren’t and couldn’t come, no pressure either way, just a group that had to be protected. I do have several aunts who have decided against the vaccine, so unfortunately, I still have yet to see them. But I did at least get to see some of the family. It felt nice to have a family gathering again this year.

I didn’t make the mistake of not taking photos this year. In fact, I brought my nice camera with me, and not only did we get some family portraits, I got a lot of nice impromptu shots and environmental photos. For the most part, though, I kept the camera away and just enjoyed being with family. We watched football and drank wine or cocktails and chatted about college or cats and ate way too much food. My aunt and uncle’s new house has part of the city’s trail system directly behind it, so Jason and Ambrose went on a walk down the trail to a rock-climbing wall. They expected to find a manmade rock climbing wall. Instead, it was an actual sheer rock wall, with anchors for belays and everything. Even without equipment, my spider-child – the one who used to stand on windowsills at 18 months old – scrambled right up…

It was a nice night. We were meant to finish it off with a fireside night at my dad and stepmom’s house, but Laurence wasn’t feeling well. He’s allergic to milk and eggs, and this was his first year of dealing with that allergy in a group environment. He ate the mashed potatoes, which were full of butter and milk, and probably had some further contamination from other foods. Poor guy. So we took him home instead.

The rest of the week was nice, too. We did see King Richard, which the rest of my family loved and I thought was okay but not my favorite. On Monday, I had the follow-up visit to the concerning mammogram, and it turned out to be nothing (more cysts!), so there was no more worry about that. I spent a lot of time prepping my 2022 goals and journals. We watched the Macy’s parade pre-Thanksgiving festivities, and on Friday, we put up the Christmas decorations.

Unfortunately, we had a bit of a disaster with the decorations this year. One of our snow globes broke sometime in storage, and the water inside seeped into an entire box of stuff. We lost some things – including all of our custom stockings (mine dated back to the mid-90s!) – as well as most of the packaging that kept the other snow globes safe while packed away. All things considered, though, we didn’t lose TOO much. Our actual tree ornaments are kept in a separate packing system, so those were fine, and we were able to decorate for Christmas without buying too much in replacement. Of course, the kittens are scattering the ornaments and lights every chance they get…ha! We actually bought that metal tub thing to go around the bottom of the tree just to try to discourage them from climbing up it. Yeah, that didn’t work. Heh. But, you know, we’ve dealt with kittens and Christmas trees many years now, and the big thing is that we just don’t put any of the fragile or priceless or very old ornaments up, or any ornaments they can pull apart and possibly eat/choke on. By next year, they’ll be better.

Yeah, you heard that right. By next year. Because these three are firmly bonded to each other now, and very attached to two of our permanent residents, and they’ve lived with us for five months now, since they were eight weeks old. It would be cruel to put them into a shelter situation, or to separate them. We have no resources to help them get adopted, much less adopted together, so this week, Jason and I decided that we’re just going to have to let them stay. So we have seven resident cats now – something no one actually wanted or planned for, but hey, that’s life, right? If people can have seven kids, we can have seven cats…

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Thanksgiving Break

Posted on November 22, 2021 by Thistle

Hey everyone! I’m taking the week off from blogging to spend time with my family for Thanksgiving. I’m happy to say that I’ll get to see some of my dad’s side of the family for the holiday this year, some for the first time since pre-pandemic! Unfortunately, Morrigan can’t come down from Kansas, and none of my siblings will be in town either. So it’s still Thanksgiving-lite, but it feels rather heartwarming to get to see anyone these days – especially since we’re already starting to see a small reversal in number trends and I don’t know what that’s going to do to Christmas this year… In any case, this week I’m going to take some time away from social media to be with my kids. We plan to see King Richard this week, and catch up on DVR-ed shows, and hey, I only have two doctor’s appointments this week, hurrah! On Friday, we’ll put up the Christmas decorations and hope for the best that these three little kittens won’t wreak too much havoc on the tree…

See y’all next Sunday! Have a lovely Thanksgiving, to those in the US.

Photo: Thanksgiving family portrait, 2011.

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SC – Product Review: CatLadyBox Subscription

Posted on November 21, 2021 by Thistle

It’s time for another subscription box review! I took a few months off between my last and latest subscription box, and then let a randomizer choose which from my list that I wanted to try. And yeah, I was really happy that it chose the Cat Lady Box for the fall months! I thought there might be some good fall-themed items in here.

The box costs ~$40/month, depending on the size of shirt you request, and if you do month-to-month or a lump subscription sum. (Note: there’s an up-charge per size once you reach plus-sizes, grr.) There’s also a Crazy Cat Lady version, for about $5 more, to include two cat toys with each box. I went with this latter one and paid about $45/month. My first box arrived in September.

September – Purple Box
In this box, I received a shirt, pen with cat-head top, an iridescent mug, a small trinket dish, and two catnip toys for the cats. There was a sneak preview of the box ahead of time that showed the mug, and the word was that while the box was purple-themed, it would also keep the autumn time of year in mind. That last part wasn’t true – there was nothing fall-themed at all in this box. But setting that aside, here’s my review.

First, I’m still wondering if I’ll use the trinket box or give it to someone for Christmas. I don’t keep trinkets out and I don’t wear a lot of jewelry, so I’m not sure this is the gift for me. Second, the mug is really cute, but before my box even arrived, the company sent out a warning email that despite packaging, the mug is not microwave safe and will get very hot, including handle, possibly even when hot drinks are used (but def in the microwave). So I was a little worried about using it, tbh – nothing like burning yourself on your mug when you have your coffee, yeah? (I haven’t used it. I tend to drink more iced drinks these days.) Then there’s the pen, which as far as I can tell works like a normal pen, it just has a big cat-head on the top. The shirt was a bit big on me as I chose a size too large and will adjust for October, and it’s honestly a little silly in a middle-class-middle-aged-white-woman kind of way. I’ve never worn these kinds of shirts before, but it’s a good bum-around tee.

The best part of the box was the catnip toys, though. The kittens went crazy over them! Gherkin doing bunny kicks on the carrot, Angus drooling over the crown…we had to buy some extra catnip toys to make sure all the cats had one, ha! These two were soaked within minutes. Not sure two toys was worth the entire box cost, but hey, they were fun. I do hope next month’s box is a little better for me. Box score: 2 of 5 stars.

October – Black Cat Box
In this box, I received a sweatshirt, a concrete planter, a black cat puff keychain, and two catnip toys.

So. Once again, I have to admit to not being terribly impressed, especially not for the price I pay. The sweatshirt looks like it’ll be cozy this winter, but it’ll be awhile before it cold enough for me to find out. Plus the Notorious BIG theme is a bit…meh. The planter, which has cat ears, was already broken when I pulled it out of the box, part of one ear torn off. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the keychain, because it’s too bulky for actual use with keys. And just like last month, the best part is the two catnip toys. The kittens took turns wrestling with them, which always makes me feel like I need to go out and buy more catnip toys for everyone else…

Honestly, I decided after this box to unsubscribe. Because the renewal auto-renews on the 14th and I received my package on the 14th, I was too late to cancel the November package. At least I’m helping nonprofits while buying this! Box score: 2 of 5 stars.

November – “Be Meow Guest” Box
This box consisted of a t-shirt, a cat-shaped soap dispenser, a couple pot-holders, and two catnip toys. Of the boxes I’ve received, this is probably my favorite. Mostly because the shirt is really soft and high-quality fabric, in an awesome color, and 100% cats > people. (Note that the picture makes the shirt look this awful brown color, but it’s not. It’s actually a really beautiful heathered rust color.)

Other than the shirt, here’s how I rank the two human items. The soap dispenser is porcelain (or whatever pottery-fired cheaper version of porcelain – point is, it’s not cheap plastic or anything) and is kinda cute in a silly way. I’m still deciding if I’m going to use it in my bathroom or give it away as a gift to someone else who also loves cats. The two pot-holders  both have different patterns and seem like fairly tradition-quality pot-holders. In other words, I wouldn’t use the to pull things out of the oven – I use my homemade cotton crochet hot-pads for that, they’re better than anything I’ve ever gotten manufactured, even an Ove Glove! – but they’ll be good for setting down hot dishes onto. And they’re both pretty cute.

As always, the cat toys were the star of the show. This month, they were shaped like a green bean (complete with little stringy end, ha!) and a candle with feather flames. The cats, especially the kittens, were sniffing around the box the moment we brought it inside, and they couldn’t get their paws on those two toys fast enough. I got this photo of them after things had calmed down a little. Nimi had stolen the green bean and Ghostie was still playing with the candle, while Gherks and Angy both looked up at me like I was disappointing them for life because they didn’t have a toy. Ha! Box score: 3.5 of 5 stars.

I did cancel my subscription in October – too late to stop the November box, but I won’t receive more. And I’m okay with that. This doesn’t really seem exactly like the right subscription box for me even though I’m quite clearly a crazy cat lady. Plus there were just too many issues with broken/dangerous items, and the shipping always took more than 2 weeks through Fedex, etc. It just wasn’t worth the money. On the other hand, I think I’ll definitely buy my cats some new catnip toys once a month from here on out. For years, we avoided anything with catnip in it because our first cat got really aggressive whenever he was around it. So our older cats weren’t really exposed until maybe the last year. It’s really fun to be able to do that for them, and to see a more normal reaction to catnip.

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Any Sign of Life, by Rae Carson

Posted on November 19, 2021 by Thistle

Paige is one of the first to succumb to a deadly wave of flu. She falls into an addled sleep, only to wake up six days later to an entirely different world. She’s malnourished and dehydrated, none of the utilities are working, and when she manages to explore the house, she discovers that the rest of her family are dead. And not just her family – there’s no one left on the street. From what she can tell, there’s no one left at all. Paige sets off to find answers, and to discover if she’s the only person left in this bizarre new world. When she meets Trey, she has at least one answer, but more questions arise. How has the entire world fallen to a plague so quickly, and how have some rare people survived?

Note: Do not read the GoodReads description if you dislike spoilers, as it contains hints about which direction this book goes.

Let me just start by saying that I love Rae Carson, and I haven’t been so caught up in a book like I did this one in quite some time. Most of my reading has been at night before bed, and I rarely get more than a chapter read at a time. However, I went to bed with this book one night and before I knew it, I was over 100 pages in and it was WAY past time to be sleeping. Carson’s writing and storytelling is excellent, and I was fully invested in this story almost from the beginning.

Then the book went off in an entirely unanticipated direction. It wasn’t a bad direction, just not what I was expecting. I can’t say more about this without giving spoilers – the spoilers that would be hinted at in the GR description – but I want to give an example from another series to illustrate my point. Imagine you were reading the Hunger Games, and in the middle of the uprise against the Capitol, you find out that actually the Capitol doesn’t exist, and it’s actually a portal to a time period several hundred years in the future, which would explain the weird technology they have. Suddenly, you’re in a time travel story instead of a post-apocalyptic one. Or imagine you’re reading Harry Potter, and after all this Harry vs Voldemort stuff, you find out that actually all this is happening in the mind of a person with psychosis, and Voldemort is actually an alley cat that they have to pass on the way home from school and that tends to jump out from behind trash cans and scratch them. Suddenly you’re dealing with a very different type of book. That’s what this book was like. It’s a plague novel, with hints of potential bio-weaponry and government conspiracy, and then BAM it’s not that book at all anymore.

There was a moment when I was startled and somewhat disappointed by the change. And then the change was so horrific and visceral and imaginative that my disappointment evaporated. As a reader, I felt utter despair for the few characters we meet in Any Sign of Life. I can’t fathom how they must’ve managed a much more pressing sense of despair. It made the book interesting, because it turned the traditional YA dystopian/post-apocalyptic genre on its head, reaching back to a more classic version. The ending was so powerful – triumphant in some ways, pointless in others, with no real conclusion, tons of unanswered questions, and yet no hint of potential sequel. I can only imagine how many readers will hate it. But on a higher-than-plot level, it was perfect. After all, the book is about a plague that wipes out most of humanity, and figuring out what “humanity” even means when you’ve dropped into the worst possible scenario. It shouldn’t have a neat, unambiguous, conclusive ending.

Around 2008-2010, I used to read a lot of dystopian novels (both traditional and modern versions). The YA market in particular was flooded with them. Now that we’re hitting the two year mark of a global pandemic, it might seem a bit odd to read, not just a post-apocalyptic novel, but a plague-driven one. I didn’t mind that, though, and in fact appreciated the throwback nods to our current pandemic (which ends roughly a decade before this book takes place) and how it was bungled in the US (“‘Our president at the time had already bungled a pandemic…and we were concerned that he would do everything in his power to save his family and billionaire friends – and no one else.'” Boom!). Some nice biting commentary to sweeten the read. Especially because some of the commentary contrasted with one of the main narrative questions – what does it mean to be human? When all else is lost, what is worth living for? What makes life “life”? Given that we all live in a world where more than 5 million folks have already been lost to a plague, these are questions that are worth considering. Just like this is a book worth reading, no matter how strange, unsettling, or close-to-home it may be.

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Wellness Wednesday – Hikes of 2021, #52-56

Posted on November 17, 2021 by Thistle

Next round of hikes, a bit sparse for the last month due to all the medical appointments. Wish me luck today. I’ve prescheduled this because I’m in for three surgical procedures this morning.

52. We had a beautiful cold front come through before this hike, so it was in the 50s out and just so lovely. Because of the cold – and the potential for mud on the trail – most of the participants dropped out, but the four of us who remained had a great hike filled with nature. I could’ve done without the wasps (eek!), but hey, we actually saved this grasshopper from a cardinal, and that was fun.

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Great Courses: Being Human

Posted on November 15, 2021 by Thistle

Subtitled: Life Lessons from the Frontiers of Science

Technically, this isn’t a book, so technically, I’m not writing a book review, and technically, I shouldn’t count this as nonfiction toward Nonfic November, right? Pshaw. I don’t care. It’s rare that I listen to a series of lectures, and as this is only my second time (ha!), I feel like I can set my own precedence here. And I kinda did already, since I also reviewed the last Great Courses lecture series I listened to (Stress and Your Body), and both Courses have been just phenomenal.

Okay. Being Human is a lecture series by Robert Sapolsky, a scientist, author, researcher and professor at Stanford. He also narrated the previous Great Courses lecture I listened to, and I find him to be an amazing lecturer. His teaching is engaging and relatable, his voice never drops into monotone, and even with subjects that I struggle to understand (like certain parts of biology), I learn tons from him. The biggest reason I enjoy listening to his lectures is that he doesn’t focus just on the biology or neuroscience or so-called hard sciences. Instead, he integrates those sciences with other kinds – sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, etc. In other words, he takes subjects and shows how broad-reaching human behavior is, and integrates it all so that you can come in and learn from many different directions. All without getting so advanced and technical that you need specific degrees to listen, but also not condescending to the listener, as I’ve often heard when trying other GC lectures. (Once, a dietitian gave a series of lectures on food, biology, psychology, and nutrition, and while I find that combination irresistible, I couldn’t listen past him saying something to the effect of, “Everyone knows sugar and bread are carbohydrates, but did you know that fruit is also a carbohydrate?” Yes, a-hole, I’m sure we’re all aware of that 1st-grade fact.)

To get more into the specifics of this lecture series, Sapolsky approaches the topic of what makes humans human. To me, the most fascinating part about this is just how similar humans are to other animals, how little is unique to us as a species. Some of the topics he addresses in various lectures include sleep/dreams, the science of bad moods, nostalgia and repetition in aging, our brains’ fascinating way of mixing metaphors into mood/thoughts, memory manipulation, dopamine response to reward/anticipation, etc. Some of the lecture series had crossover with the last series I listened to, but it’s been a few years and I loved that series so much that I didn’t mind this at all.

Favorite fun fact learned from this series: They’ve done experiments that show your neurons and mood can be changed just by mimicking the facial muscles of a smile (pen held in the teeth) or frown (pen held by the lips). Additionally, people with lots of botox injections around the face experience a muted version of emotions as their muscles aren’t as pliable. This is oversimplified – there was like half a lecture devoted to these studies – but it makes me remember back to my traumatized childhood/adolescent self. Back during that period of my life, I purposely attempted to hold my face in a mask of complete indifference, absent of all expression or emotion. (It apparently didn’t work as well as I wanted, because I have major RBF and so everyone just thought I was angry all the time.) At the same time, I was purposely trying to dampen all my emotions, to numb myself away so that I didn’t feel anything. There are some interesting correlations there.

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