Kitten Adventures

So a while back I saw this headline at on the Huffington Post about a golden retriever and kitten who became the best of friends, and couldn't help but share my own treasure trove of adorable animal photos. Back in September someone at work found a tiny, itty bitty kitten in a box in one of our warehouse sheds. He was so young, maybe 2 weeks, and his ears were still flat, his tail was stubby, and he could hardly walk or see. There was no sign of mom or of any more kittens, so he put the little thing in a box and brought it, crying, into my office. I took it to my vet and they showed me how to feed him with a syringe and kitten milk, and so I took him home and set about raising him up big and healthy. 

Bailey gladly did her part to clean him up after his feedings.

The watched the leaves and squirrels out in the front yard to make sure no intruders were allowed too close.

They found the softest spots to take naps.

5 months later, we had one of the most strikingly gorgeous young cats I've ever met.

More naps - dog beds work just fine as cat beds, fortunately.

Sunday afternoon snoozin', the day before I took him to his new forever home.

Bon voyage, little kitty! We loved having you around!

The Winter Times

Going into this winter, I feel like I'm actually prepared. Not just with clothes and things, but mentally, too. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the way we have the living room arranged, or all the plants I have around the place now, or the new tiny lamp we put on one of the bookshelves that has single-bulbebly transformed the entire room. Also, I started singing in a church choir again, so it could be those few hours each week where I'm just focusing on the notes on the page and my breathing, and not my phone or the dirty kitchen or the TV that's making a difference. Regardless, here are a few products that are also helping me out:

 

In an effort to save my skin and hair from the stresses of cold weather, I'm focusing on not showering every day and trying to wash my hair as little as possible. I have tried so many dry shampoos, ranging everywhere from $4 to $20, and this Dove dry shampoo is hands down my favorite - and the cheapest! It really makes my hair look and feel less oily, and I love the texture it creates. (My next favorite is Matrix, fyi!)

This one's for fun! This color looks exactly like that perfect army green jacket you were coveting all fall, but just as you were about to splurge it got really cold and all you wanted was a big coat. A little grey, mostly green - it's perfect.

This has been my mom's go-to moisturizer for as long as I can remember, and recently I've started using it, too. The first time we went to Cancun, my face flipped out the first night I washed it with a face wash, so this year I opted for cleansing with oil to remove the salt, sand, sunscreen, and sweat that had accumulated throughout the day, and it worked - no dry scaly breakouts this time! And it's so soothing in the winter, too. I use it all over my body and on my face and lips. (For my face, I made a mixture of almond oil, EVOO, and vitamin E oil and a tiny bit of essential oils.) Plus, I think it's helping my nails and cuticles.

My friend started making all-natural products this year, and now I swear by this sun balm. I put it on every morning that I'm not wearing Bare Minerals for protection from the sun and for moisturizing. It smells a little almond-y and I love it.

Just trust me on this one. Get yourself some Norwegian Formula Neutrogena. You can thank me later.

No pictures. Just a list. List of books. My favorite kind of list.

Here's a list of the books I've read this year, in no particular order, and I'm sure it's not the complete list:

1. World War Z by Max Brooks - So good. I read it surreptitiously all day on my iPad while at work. Took me 2 days. I've never been a "what if?" doomsday planner type of person, but you can't help but start to look around and take stock of your surroundings and wonder how long you'd last if an epidemic began to run rampant over the entire world, and how you'd try to survive. It's not so much a zombie book as it is a book about individuals, cultures, relationships, and civilization. <---worst description ever. The Oatmeal describes it perfectly, I think. {Conclusion: DO read!}

2. Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill - I think I read it in one day. Pretty spooky, and really well done. I loved it! Spooky/ghost stories are totally my thing. Highly recommended. {Conclusion: DO read!}

3. Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McReight - meh. {Conclusion: I mean, if you have nothing better to do...}

4. The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith aka. J. K. Rowling - LOVED this one. Couldn't put it down! You will fall in love with the main characters so, so hard. {Conclusion: DO read!}

5. The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant - This is the book that the made the movie "Lawless" out of with Shia LeBouf and Jessica Chastain and a bunch of other people. I didn't like it (the book, I mean: I haven't seen the movie), but it wouldn't take much to tell the story better than this author did. He had good intentions and good material, but someone else could have probably done a better job. I slogged my way through this one and I'm not sure if I actually finished it. {Conclusion: Read something else.}

6. Serena by Ron Rash - This one was pretty cool overall. I think it could have been a tiny bit better, but I really mostly loved the writing and the characters. A friend described perfectly it as "Appalachian Gothic." Jennifer Lawrence is starring in the movie adaptation. It will be interesting to see her as a character to hate! {Conclusion: DO read!}

7. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles - This is one of those books where I wanted to underline every other passage, it was so well written. "It was as if America had launched the Depression just to teach Manhattan a lesson." The whole book was just unbelievably good. I read it on my Kindle in Cancun but I want to get a hardback copy to keep forever and ever. {Conclusion: DO read!}

8. A Mind to Murder by P.D. James - Not my favorite P.D. James that I've read, but still good. Adam Dagliesh has got to be one of the most well-written detectives out there. "Original Sin" was way better, but still, you've got to love James. {Conclusion: Just read everything P.D. James has written.}

9. Night Chill by Jeff Gunius - This one must have been a $0.99-er on Amazon or something, but I love reading scary stories, even if they aren't totally great. A little creepy, a little fun - I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but if you're like me and love reading for the sake of reading, then, whatever. {Conclusion: I mean, if you have nothing better to do...}

10. Dirty Weekend by Helen Zahavi - Jaw dropping. So entertaining. Dark and weird and icky and awesome. I don't even want to tell any of the plot at all, but I can say that Bella woke up one day and decided she'd had enough. READ THIS BOOK. (Also, I'm not sure what it says about me that I think everyone should read this, but I'm pretty sure I'm not a psychopath.) {Conclusion: DO read!}

11. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill - She's no Shirley Jackson, and I didn't think this was as scary as other people had reported, but maybe I read it too fast. Dracula is way better. Not that this has anything to do with Vampires, but as far as first-person recountings go, Harker wins. {Conslusion: I mean, if you have nothing better to do...}

12. Inferno by Dan Brown - Ugh. Seriously, I should have stopped with Deception Point and Angels & Demons. Don't read this. But do read this! {Conclusion: Read something else.}

13. In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson - Larson uses primary sources to recreate the experience of the family of the Ambassador to Berlin in 1930's post-war pre-war Germany. Really incredible read, and makes you think hard about how you would have acted at the time with the information that was coming out of Germany at the time. {Conclusion: DO read!}

14. A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness - started off so good! But then the main character turned into another Bella Swan and turns completely daft and obsessed with her "angelic looking" vampire boyfriend. Or whatever he was. I don't remember, and I don't care to go back and find out. I also don't care to read the next two books of the trilogy. {Conclusion: I mean, if you have nothing better to do...}

15. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - I can't remember now if I read this this year or last year, but it was a page turner! I read the first half on a Monday after work and as soon as I got home Tuesday I sat down and didn't move til it was done. I will definitely be re-reading this one before the movie comes out! {Conclusion: DO read!}

16. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss - As soon as I finished the second one (see below) I turned right back to the first page of this and started them all over again. I can't get enough. I almost don't want the third one to come out because then it'll be over. {Conclusion: DO read!}

17. The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss - see above. I honestly can't say which one I like more. These are probably my two most highly recommended books ever. I've read them each at least 2.5 times now. {Conclusion: DO read!}

18. The Magicians by Lev Grossman - Grossman captures so perfectly what it's like to be an adolescent and young and bored and scared and curious. Yes, the kids go to a school for magic, but I assure you, this is no Hogwarts. {Conclusion: DO read!}

19. The Magician King by Lev Grossman - Just go ahead and read the both of them. The third is coming out (hopefully) next year. {Conclusion: DO read!}

20. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling - Mostly pretty funny. Read it, don't read it, whatevs. But DO watch the Mindy Project. {Conclusion: I mean, if you have nothing better to do...}

21. ROOM by Emma Donoghue - told in the perspective of a 5 year old boy who lives in the same world we're all in, but who perceives it totally differently for a very icky reason. I don't want to give it away, because I like how Donoghue slowly reveals bits and pieces about the boy and his mother's situation. {Conclusion: DO read!}

22. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - the movie's coming out and the trailers seem pretty close to the book, so I don't need to go into much detail. Just do yourself a favor and pick this up. (It's under $3 on Amazon for Kindle right now, if you're into that sort of thing!) {Conclusion: DO read!}

23. The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom - Read this for book club. So bad. All tell and no show, and it's one of those where I want to slap the author because she has no business writing (or selling!) books! {Conclusion: Read something else. Like, anything else.}

24. Seraphina by Rachel Hartman - A friend was clearing out her book collection, so I re-homed 38 of them to help her out. This one I grabbed is YA Fantasy, and damn good YA Fantasy at that. Dragons, music, court intrigue - what more could you want? {Conclusion: DO read!}

Reading now:
1. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt - David gave me The Secret History really early in our relationship, so Tartt is kind of special to the two of us. He saw Goldfinch at Costco and picked it up! I started this last night and I'm already hooked.

2. Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak - at the rate I'm going I'll finish this in about 8 years, but I think it'll be worth it.

3. Snow by Orhan Pamuk - I can't believe I haven't read any Pamuk yet, considering how close Turkey is to my heart, but he's a mesmerizing writer.

5. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

6. Sandman by Neil Gaiman - rereading this one, really. Kindle had a deal for the first volume so I snatched it up. It's my dream to someday have the entire (physical) collection.

S&P Bison

...aaand I think this pretty much covers everything I could possibly want to register for...

On Belief and Breaking Bad

We ended a weekend of general carousing with a showing of The Faculty, that modern masterpiece starring Josh Hartnett's hair and Usher and ugly-but-then-she-takes-off-her-glasses Famke and John Stewart and Elijah Wood and Piper Laurie. You know the movie: aliens start taking over all the humans and it's up to the last two outcast high schoolers to save the planet. Everything about the movie was completely unbelievable, but we watched it all and accepted every silly, goofy little thing, right up until the point Josh Hartnett's character is dressed for football practice and not five seconds after taking off his helmet he takes a drag off of a cigarette that has just inexplicably appeared from out of nowhere. Was someone holding it for him? Where did he get a lighter out of those tight football pants? Why is it already half smoked? Will someone please explain what is going on here?

We're willing to suspend belief for such huge things that when the details don't match up they stand out as glaringly obvious. Last night's episode of Breaking Bad had just a few such moments:

1. How did Todd not see Jesse under the car? There are literally two places he had to look - inside the car and under the car. Todd was all "he probably ran down the wash. That's what I'd do." but if you really consider being in a shootout, I think it's pretty clear that you'd roll out of the car and try to make yourself as flat and inconspicuous and un-shootable as possible. So you get under the car. Todd's not that stupid, but I guess how else would the writers get Walt in a position to rat out Jesse?

2. I definitely need to re-watch, but I don't remember Jesse ratting out Marie. I thought he said "just him and his partner, that's it!" even though I can't really imagine Jesse having the guts or brains to protect Marie or anything like that.

I've been (pretending to be) mad at David for jumping on the Breaking Badwagon (see what I did there?) only at the start of this season. He hasn't known Tuco or the twins or Badger and Skinny Pete. He hasn't known Gale Boetticher and he didn't get to see Gus poison Mexico's drug lords with the tequila. He hasn't experienced the exploding tortuga. So it was not with a small amount of glee that I got to hear him ask last night "wait, who's Jane?"

Kitten needs a home!

We found this poor, pathetic little creature crying and mrow!!-ing at 4a.m. on Saturday morning, curled into a ball mere feet away from the busy road behind our house! He's so adorable it's not even funny, and I want to find him a good home! Any and all help is welcome :)

Lovely print

{FIFI DU VIE}

Yes, please!