This job, you guys…It seems like the clock has been moving backwards and adding more time to each day. Now that we have reached Friday, my week has been 365 days of hell.
I’m really pulling for Saturday to get here early – or is that on time? Whatever. Just hurry up already, Saturday.
That decision really made me grow (as a person).
It’s true. Today is her birthday and she’s 16. She already wants to go to the mall and hang out. And her boyfriend keeps coming around to the window at night. I know he does. I asked his mother. His name is Stinky, and he’s also a brown tabby. He’s blind in one eye, but that doesn’t stop him from crossing the street and trying to date my daughter.
Susie has already started asking for the car keys now that she has a permit. I don’t want her to drive Victoria, because she doesn’t need to go back to the bodyshop. Susie can’t reach the pedals and she doesn’t have opposable thumbs to steer with. Then there’s the “novice driver” fluorescent green sticker that you have to put on your bumper when your teen starts to drive your car. Sigh.
She’s already wearing cat eye eyeliner and excessive amounts of necklaces and bracelets. Seriously, I can’t get her to stop wearing them. And she’s always rubbing my phone, trying to take it. She thinks it’s hers. She thinks I don’t know that she’s had her eye on it.
She stays up all night and sleeps all day, and she’s just turning 16. Do you know how much worse it’s gonna get? I can’t even imagine.
I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t been present for her birth. She still plays and eats well, her teeth are in good shape because I’ve only ever given her dry food. She seems content, happy. Her kidneys are failing a bit as most cats‘ kidneys do, due to their very high protein diet, otherwise she’s the same Suze.
(In human years, Susie is 80 years old today.)
Happy birthday, Susie.
Edit: this post was scheduled, but this morning on Susie‘s actual birthday, I heard her beating on the windows downstairs in the basement right before dawn. There must’ve been another cat outside. Luckily she can’t get out and doesn’t go out, because she would be a neighborhood menace. She guards this house like she pays rent. It’s good to see her still scrappy, but not great when she sets off the house alarm and pulls down the curtains. 😼
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I’m flattered WordPress, I really am. But you’re not my type. You are rather droll, dull, delve into data mining, detrimentally dumb, disorganized, dreadfully repetitive, despicably distant, and impossible to get to know. You keep us at a distance with your bugs and your malware attacks, and frankly, I’ve had enough.
I will not go to a restaurant with you, WordPress. You strike me as the type to bring a briefcase to a five star restaurant and put your leftovers in it. 
I will not go out with you, WordPress. But here’s what you can do: send food to my house. I love basil pesto with fresh angel hair pasta. Thanks in advance.
I’m definitely going over that limit.
Toothpaste
Clean water
Indoor plumbing
Shelter
Food
Drinking water
My cat
Kindness
Bumblebees
Flowers
Trees
Notebooks
Pens
OK, all stationery products – I have a bit of an obsession, all right?
Sleep
Music
My car, Koko (NOT the Audi Q3)
A hot cup of tea
Books
WRITING
Feeding squirrels and birds
Singing in my car (technically it’s performance art)
Brownies
Forehead kisses
Holding hands with the right person
The warmth of spring
Tennis
Finding cash on the ground
Making people laugh
All things Parisian
Pink skies
French fashion
Chocolate milk
Hummingbirds and their nests
My neighbor’s dog, Petey
Waking up to another day
It isn’t possible for me to answer this question with just one book, so I’m going to list them all. There may be a few that I have forgotten, but these are the ones I have in my bookcase.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. This is my favorite novel. Ever. It was required reading in American literature class, and I’m so pleased to have been introduced to this amazing wordsmith Ms. Hurston.
The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon.
Any and all titles by Bill Bryson.
The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club by Jessica Morrison. This is a fantastic novel. I’m not sure if it’s still in print, and I don’t believe the author ever published another novel, which upsets me to this day.
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
I, Elizabeth by Rosalind Miles.
The General’s Mistress by Jo Graham.
The next three novels are a series by author Diana Norman. Sadly, she has passed away and there will be no more novels in the series. The first book is A Catch of Consequence, followed by Taking Liberties, and last but not least is The Sparks Fly Upward. This author also wrote under the pen name Ariana Franklin. I was today years old when I found that out, so I am excited and will try to get my hands on the novels she wrote under that name.
The next one is the first book in the “Undead” series by Mary Janice Davidson. I thought the first book was the best: “Undead and Unwed.”
Next up is author Katie McAllister (a pen name), with Men in Kilts and Improper English being my favorite titles from her.
Jane Austen – the whole catalogue.
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.
Villette by Charlotte Brontë.
Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles by Margaret George.
Forever Amber, by Kathleen Winsor (this is a particular favorite of mine, though it is rather sordid, especially for the time period in which it was written.)
And the last one is Absalom! Absalom! by William Faulkner. Just kidding. I despise this book. I had to write a paper on it and I hated every second of it. I don’t particularly like Faulkner nor his writing style, and that’s being polite. Faulkner perfected the run-on sentence, and that’s being polite.
That’s my list. What are some novels that you can’t get enough of and read over and over again? Let me know in the comments!
The first hour of my day depends on what day of the week it is. Mondays look a lot like:
I meant to do that. Once I get up off the ground, I meander with one eye open and several bruises (and maybe some broken bones) to my computer and fire it up. I contemplate Monday, and always come to this conclusion:
After I eat my gummy vitamins, I feel a little bit more awake. It’s usually at about this time that my computer has updated over the weekend and will insist on a restart after I’ve connected to the Internet and have opened all of the apps I need.
On especially chaotic Mondays, which is really all of them, sometimes my Internet will disconnect for no reason at all. And then what happens? You guessed it – another restart.
Some days it happens more than once, and I want to unalive my computer. I don’t, of course (because it’s not alive…or is it?), but I wish I could.
And that brings us to 9 AM – my second hour of work. That’s when things get a little weird and I start to get a bit hungry. I have a small lick of my laptop, and I’m ready for hour two of my day.
Happy Monday everyone!
The title is the answer.
The rest of this post is
On a bad day, nothing is funny.
But I rarely have a day where it’s so bad that I can’t laugh at something.
Last night, I had a really bizarre dream. it was totally out there, unrelated to anything I had done all day yesterday. I remembered it this morning, which is not common for me. My mind remembered every detail. I can’t say much about this dream because it was really over the top, but I am still laughing about it, and adding my real time commentary as I think about it out loud.
I can find humor in almost anything. It’s one of my coping mechanisms, and I developed it early. It truly is a lifesaver.
Happy Fri-yay everyone.
“It's Amy,” I said. 