The Alchemist of Fire and Fortune, by Gigi Pandian (audio)

Posted on December 13, 2021 by Thistle

Blackmail. Treasure maps. Fool’s gold. Missing persons. Fire. Family. Alchemy.

This is the fifth installment of the Accidental Alchemist series about a 300+ year old alchemist living in Portland with her 150-year-old living gargoyle best friend. And as I’ve raved before, I’ll rave again: This series is awesome!

After listening to the novella that bridged the gap between books 4 & 5, I thought I’d take some time to listen to other books before diving right into this one. Nope. After the novella, I wasn’t ready to leave this particular world. After a few failed attempts at listening to something else, I gave up and returned to Pandian’s alchemical adventures. Unfortunately, I discovered quite quickly that I didn’t remember the fourth book in the series at all. I don’t know where my brain was when I listened to it, but the only reason I even know that I read it is because I reviewed it! Unfortunately, due to trying to avoid series spoilers, my review says absolutely nothing about the book itself! The good news is that it didn’t take me long to orient myself to the current narrative, even if I didn’t remember how exactly we’d gotten to this place.

I quite enjoyed the book. It felt a bit deeper than previous volumes, working on a more thematic level, particularly with regards to fire, transformation, and found-family. It also incorporated one of my favorite childhood memories – The Goonies! – which was delightful. (Side note: I’ll always be sad that on our 2018 Pacific coast cruise, our day at Astoria, Oregon, kept us stuck on the boat because of heavy rain, so I didn’t get to see the town where the Goonies was filmed – or where a big chunk of this book took place!) The mystery of the book, as always, was impossible for me to unravel ahead of time. And like the last book – according to my review, anyway – it also had less focus on recipes throughout, which I personally prefer.

Once again, a fun read, narrated by the awesome Julia Motyka. Highly recommended!

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Sunday Coffee – 100 Happy Days, Fini

Posted on December 12, 2021 by Thistle

My attempt to find the happy for 100 days in a row is now over, as of 12/9. This has been a very trying time for me, and I admit that the project helped provide a little distraction. For that, I’m grateful. Just as I’ve done over the last three quarters of my little challenge, I’m posting this to highlight a few photos from the final quarter. The dates on that quarter ran from November 15th to December 9th. In no particular order:

From 12/3 – My first Lensbaby arrived this day (a Lensbaby Velvet 56) and I wanted to shoot a few photos to get an idea of what it performed like. You can do much cooler things with these lenses, but I loved how even this simple photo came out. There’s no editing on my part – the softness is from the lens itself. Angus looks so beautiful here, and it made me so incredibly happy to get have this lens!

From 11/15 – This red admiral butterfly has taken up permanent residence in and around our succulent garden. Those rocks make a perfect sunning spot!

From 12/9 – Gherkin and Atticus cuddle. They make me so happy!

From 11/26 – Santa pencil! So you can’t see his whole body, but this is one of the boys’ favorite ornaments. It comes from sometime in Jason’s childhood, inherited as he left home to live on his own. It’s literally a Santa with a long, long, pointed-tip body that looks like a faux version of being carved out of a pencil. Every year, the boys hang this one at the bottom of the tree so that it’s almost touching the ground, purposely to tempt the cats. (Though they put it up higher this year, as they don’t actually want it to be destroyed.)

From 11/17 – Another photo of the mini-succulents thriving in our zen garden! Yes, every time I go down to the garden, it makes me happy.

C’est fini! The full 100 photos are available at my Instagram, or in a dedicated album on Facebook. I plan to get a printed photo book of them as a kind of time capsule, the same as in past 100 happy day challenges.

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The Lost Gargoyle of Paris, by Gigi Pandian (audio)

Posted on December 10, 2021 by Thistle

After the Notre Dame fire, a document supposedly drawn by Victor Hugo is discovered inside some of the wrecked walls of the cathedral. Fearing that this document might be stolen and used by backward alchemists, Zoe Faust and Dorian travel to Paris to make sure all is well.

Years back, I took a chance on a cheap audiobook from Audible called The Accidental Alchemist. From there, I fell in love with this story, and have listened to each new volume as it comes out. A few weeks back, this novella – numbered 4.5 in the series – popped up on my radar, and I looked it up. From there, I discovered that Book 5 in the series came out this past October, and this little novella had been around since 2020! It’s been 2.5 years since I read the last book of the series, so the novella was a great way to ease back into the story-arc. Now I’m all set to listen to the last one!

As usual with this series, the story was awesome, with a great narrator (Julia Motyka), and I enjoyed every minute. It’s a great series, and I definitely recommend starting with The Accidental Alchemist. Best Audible gamble I’ve ever made, honestly. This series is a hidden gem that I’ll never stop raving about!

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Wellness Wednesday – Dreamscape

Posted on December 8, 2021 by Thistle

In January 1999, I woke up from a dream that wasn’t typical for me. I’m not going to recount the entire dream, but at the end, I lifted my gaze from my empty hand to what had been a tree-lined campus to my left, only to find that the buildings and trees had disappeared. In their placed was a desert made up of a sandstone maze about two feet high, stretching as far as I could see. When I woke up, I felt different. Restless. I understood instinctively that something inside me was changing.

(like this, only shorter and red sandstone)

For the rest of the month, I continuing to have recurring thematic elements – especially the sandstone maze – in my dreams. They were more lucid than usual, and even without any specific mention of my personal PTSD traumas, it was like those dreams were putting to bed some of the old baggage my brain had held onto. It felt like my brain was literally shifting around and reorganizing, the way a computer does when defragging. (Does defragging even happen anymore? So much of modern-day hard drives are virtual and cloud-based…)

Years later, I learned from the boys’ pediatrician that toddlers and children often go through periods of nightmares right before they make large developmental leaps. The leaps weren’t necessarily emotional or intellectual – they could be as simple as learning to walk or talk or use the toilet. Or they could be intellectual – right before something clicks, and they learn to read, for example – or emotional – common going into puberty. When I learned this, I thought back to those dreams from January 1999, the ones that felt Significant with a capital S, and the way my mental health went through a huge shift at that time. It was the first time I could remember going through a period of Significant dreams, but not the last.

These periods always seem to come when I need to learn something. Either I’m hiding from a truth in my life, or my subconscious brain is putting together external clues that my conscious brain hasn’t registered, or I’m processing some age-old traumas that I might not even know I’m still carrying. The dreams aren’t always nightmares. They can actually be quite euphoric. But they all hold common elements. They’re more lucid, overly symbolic (to the point of heavy-handedness), and repeat at least one thematic image to drive the point home.

I entered one of these dream therapy sessions (ha!) in mid-November.

Honestly, I have no idea what they’re trying to tell me this time, or what my brain is about to do or shed. The repeated elements are of the street I grew up on. Both the house my parents rented and my grandparents’ house were on the same street, and both of those houses frequent my dreams. The street between them, on the other hand, isn’t usually part of my dreamscape. I keep dreaming about it as if it’s a minefield that I have to cross, in the dark, holding my breath so as to not catch the attention of any sleeping predators. Sometimes I’m carrying something valuable, and I’m terrified I’ll be robbed and shot. Sometimes it’s dogs waiting to rip me apart. Sometimes, I’m clearly not meant to be there, and the local gang will jump me if they see me. (This last was a literal fear from my early adolescence – I lived in a hive of gang activity and rivalry.) All of these things wouldn’t be extremely unusual given that they were all legitimate fears I had as a kid walking in that neighborhood. (To this day, my aunt takes a weapon and pepper spray with her when she runs in that neighborhood. There is a lot of violence (and violent dogs!).) But then there is the maze.

(us in front of that house, ~1993/4?)

I don’t know why mazes seem to crop up so often in these Significant dreamscapes. In any case, the current maze starts about halfway up the street as I walk from my grandmother’s house to my old house. Instead of a street, I have to enter a building and walk through multiple rooms, trying to find a way out and back onto the other end of the street. Each room I go through has another danger that I have to try to silently avoid, in addition to getting more and more lost. When – if – I do make it to the other side, I find that the street has changed so much that my old house is no longer there. It’s been bulldozed to the ground for an apartment complex or strip center. Or it’s there, but it’s changed so much that I realize this isn’t my home anymore. Either way, the thing that I’m looking for, the past that I’m trying to step back into, no longer exists. (Did I mention already that the symbolism in these dreams is extremely heavy-handed?)

Here’s the thing: In reality, I would never in a million years go back to live in that house and neighborhood, no matter how well you paid me. Sure, I pined for it for the first few years after we moved, though mostly that was because I had to change schools and I missed my old life. But that desire ended well over two decades ago. These dreams aren’t about that house, or that street, or those PTSD triggers from growing up in a dangerous environment. Maybe they’re something about holding onto the past or being lost or tiptoeing around dangers. Or maybe it’s something altogether different that I haven’t yet figured out. Either way, it feels like my brain is once again on a precipice, about to click over into something new, some growth that it’s finally ready to make. And despite the nightmarish quality of these dreamscapes, I don’t mind. In the end, I know that if I pay enough attention, I’ll learn something new about myself, or have an ah-ha moment, or let go of a burden I’ve carried for way too long.

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Understanding Exposure, by Bryan Peterson

Posted on December 6, 2021 by Thistle

Subtitled: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera

The subtitle says it all. This isn’t so much a how-to for working a camera in manual mode, but to help photographers understand more the ins and outs of doing so to get creative shots. I’ve been reading this book on and off since last December. First, I got it from the library on the recommendation of half a dozen photographer friends. Then I realized my then-camera didn’t have any way to work in manual mode, and I returned the book. When I did get a better camera, I checked it back out, and basically kept putting it on hold again until my friend Maricruz bought me my own copy for my birthday. Since then, I’ve read snippets here and there as the year went by.

There were a lot of reasons for my off-and-on reading, but two were primary. The first was that some of the information in this book is more advanced than I am as a photographer, so I found parts of it difficult to follow along. The author uses a different camera brand than mine, and there were things his (more expensive) camera could do that mine can’t. Some of those things I just skipped over, but others, I was left trying to understand the rest of the lesson. Sometimes, I simply couldn’t, and the lesson would go over my head, because I don’t have the technological knowledge to understand without something I could see or do. There were also places where the author just didn’t explain very well. For example, the first 18 pages, he kept talking about adjusting the shutter speed until you have the “correct exposure,” but didn’t explain until page 18 what he meant by “correct.” That made it very difficult** to follow all the information that came before that explanation, because it was all predicated on understanding what he meant by “correct.” I had to go back and start over again once I had a real explanation.

The second reason was related. So yes, there was some more advanced stuff in this book that went over my head, but there was also just a lot of…bad writing. The author may be a brilliant photographer, and for all I know, he’s an excellent teacher. I learned a lot from the book, and if someone asked me for a good reference book for starting in photography, I would definitely recommend this one. However, the author is NOT a good writer. The example I gave above – explaining something 18 pages after we need to understand it – is one kind of bad writing. A second involved cramming a lot of information in at the end of the book and having no conclusion to speak of. A third was the very cringy jocular tone used throughout. I don’t imagine the guy’s intention was to come off sounding misogynist, condescending, patronizing, and “aren’t I the greatest?” but it does. There was a lot of secondhand embarrassment as I read. It was truly awful, and so I could only take small dips into the book over time.

I know that makes the book sound horrid, but that’s the thing. It’s this kind of book that made me quit rating books back in my early days of book blogging. If I was rating this book on its value of information, it would be a 4.5 out of 5 stars. If I was rating it for the author’s voice, the copywriting errors, and the general ability to convey the information in a timely manner, it would be a 1-star read. In other words, I feel like the book is 100% a good book to read, but you’ll just have to put up with some garbage in order to get to the good stuff. I say that as someone who took a year to read the book, and who will now put it on my shelf and go back to it to both refer to and reread in the future as I learn more about photography. It is a great resource, and I don’t regret the read. I only wish someone else had written it.

**It didn’t help that at this point, I was still learning how to use my camera, and didn’t even know how to focus the lens in manual mode. I think I originally needed something a bit more basic than this book to start!

Posted in 2021, Adult, Prose, Visual | Tagged , | 1 Comment

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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