In honor of Prime day (…found out it was Prime day the day of because I’m clearly amazing at being an “influencer”,) and my unending adoration of lists, cats, and run-on sentences, here are some Amazon purchases my fellow captor and I have made for our feline overlords over the years that have made our cohabitation more tolerable.
I should start off by saying that we have Bengal cats. They’re like normal cats, but louder…smarter… and oh so much more demanding.
Also! As a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, (an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com,) I receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
Let’s get started! First:
We don’t have tigers I swear. We just have finicky little turd nuggets (both literal and proverbial,) that like to perform acrobatics while defecating, then launch out of the box and sprint away from their own poo as fast as their own now-toxic wind can carry them.
This high-walled masterpiece contains all matter of ill, is easy to clean, and has handy dandy side pockets (further proof pockets make everything better) which helps contain all the other madness I’m about to describe to you.
Okay, that’s an exaggeration. I’ve never seen heaven so I don’t know what it’s comprised of, but this stuff is pretty darn amazing. It blocks smells, clumps like no other, and doesn’t launch a meteor impact cloud of clay dust every time one of our fur babies departs the box like they’re dismounting the uneven parallel bars.
Also, honorable mention / shout out to World’s Best Cat Litter, which lives up to it’s name and we used and loved for YEARS, but the cats decided they didn’t like it anymore and told us in the most imaginative and odorous of ways in which Jackson Pollock would have been proud.
In the immortal words of Will Ferrel’s character in Blades of Glory whose name I can’t remember right now, “I could not love a human baby more than I love this…cat litter scoop.” …Or something like that.
Honestly. Whoever said money couldn’t buy happiness hasn’t been digging cat turds out of a babypool sized litter box using only a spork for the last ten years.
If the Doctor showed up with the Tardis right now, I’d take his hand, tell him “it’s fine I don’t need pants”, remember NOT to blink, and would ask that our first stop be back in time so I could chuck this glorious time-saving contraption at my own head, to knock some sense into it.
My cat loves to lounge in the sun, staring at all the birds he’ll never be able to chase, contemplating when the next belly scratches are scheduled to commence.
There is a rather bold squirrel who keeps climbing up into it off and on, and I wouldn’t mind the structural integrity of the suction cup to give way just once to teach him a quick lesson in boundaries.
We love this little fountain, and although at times the cats like to bat at it and splash it about like they’re reenacting the gas station scene from Zoolander, it’s crucial to cats to drink a TON of water to keep their lil internal organs functioning properly. This fountain is easy to clean, refill and is just cute as a button (…I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from. I mean honestly, what does that even mean? Buttons aren’t even cute.)
I’m clearly amazing at writing, and descriptions in general. Please buy all my future published works.
Essentially this palm-sized disk goes to town quickly and easily removing cat (or dog…or ferret…or…sasquatch) hair from couches, curtains, and more!
Not all cats will be down for this. In our house, we have one cat who’s constantly trying to go outside, and another that turns into the Tasmanian devil the second you set his precious little toe pebble footsies on a dirty surface.
If you’ve been binge-watching My Cat From Hell and want to give it a go, this is the harness for you.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that if you spend mad skrilla on a cat toy, your domesticated jaguars will play with the plastic wrap you took off of it instead.
Regardless, this fish is hilarious and you should probably buy it if only to piss off your cats.
Alright! You’ve made it this far! I’m super proud of you. What? You don’t own a cat? Well, this is embarrassing…
What did I miss? Cat got your tongue?! (I regret nothing…) Have an epic pet item that made your life easier? Drop it in the comments below!
Check out my complete list in my storefront here.
]]>Kitchen witchcraft for the expert, or culinarily challenged.
My head is buzzing today. Like a hive of angry bees swarming around their queen, I can’t figure out which way to go to accomplish the extensive to-do list before me. And when there is SO much to do, I find myself opting to do none of it.
Instead, I read a book (which, I usually don’t see as a waste of time, but is an avoidance when there are more pressing activities to be done) watch TV, or scroll on social media until the END OF TIME.
At one point today I closed the Twitter tab on my browser, picked up my phone to clear notifications and when I went to open the file I needed to edit, muscle memory had me opening a tab for Twitter all over again!
When I post something on one platform, I end up posting it to the rest, in hopes of maintaining and growing the community of followers that somehow have found me in the vast expanse of online entertainment, and in doing so, I lose just a smidge more energy to devote to other efforts.
The amusement I funnel into tweets, and posts, and witty responses siphon off the shallow wellspring of snark otherwise allocated towards the fictional characters patiently awaiting my return in the various poorly named word docs squirreled away in the underbelly of my computer.
I need a social media cleanse.
But why is it so much easier said than done?
Probably because the Twitter community has become my primary means of social interaction over the last year, and I enjoy talking with everyone. But as an introvert, my proverbial batteries deplete from constant stimuli and communication. So while I enjoy chatting, and interacting, and building up this community, it’s wearing me down or distracting me in the process.
I’m not going to declare in 250 or so characters to the world that I’m taking a break, because I know myself, and I will still be online constantly.
But I am going to make an effort to shut it all down multiple times a day for writing, meditation, and personal reflection to try to restore some balance to the force of nature I need at my disposal to distill into my books.
Once I have an agent and have been published I can put down my proverbial pen, pull out a bottomless box of bonbons that would make Mary Poppin’s purse envious, and spend all my time finding out what people are canceling or what David Tennant and Michael Sheen are up to these days.
…and maybe then, when that is all that is expected of me, the intense pressure to create, write, and do so with an air of grace and poise will be gone, and the roaring of angsty bees will subside.
]]>I’m dreaming of a write Christmas,
waiting for the muse I used to know,
Where the character arcs glisten,
And demons dogs are hissin’,
and plot holes are backfilled with plows of snow.
I’m dreaming of a write Christmas,
With every inciting incident, I write,
May your Baes be suited for a fight,
And may all your Christmas’ be write.
I’m dreaming of a write Christmas,
the ones where we don’t tell, we show,
Where conflicts insight frisson,
Witches brew ricin,
And vamps tap veins that always flow.
I’m dreaming of a write Christmas,
With every vicious murder scene, I write,
May your faes, may your plays, may your essays,
Be aerie and enemies quickly smite.
And may all your Christmas’ be write.
Here are my notes / main takeaways from today’s Comic-con at home panel about “the best advice I ever got” with host Tricia Narwani, and panelists / authors: Sarah Kuhn, Micaiah Johnson, Alexist Henderson, Josh Malerman, and Kevin Hearne:
Advice they’ve received:
This has been such an important time for reflection.
So many people have been enlightened lately.
I’ve been enlightened to my level of ignorance and naivete, and am hopeful that these revelations continue, and spread like a new pandemic of equality.
Someone reminded me recently to use “I” and “me” less in any posts because this isn’t about me. This is an important reminder, and although I think it is important to acknowledge your ignorance and announce your intentions to do better, it is important to not make this about ourselves and our experiences if we are not impacted by the movement first hand.
Now is the time to witness the movement, hear what the black community has to say and help amplify their voices, and in doing so, say less ourselves.
Listen, Hear, Absorb, Change.
Be a part of the change. Be on the right side of history.
Some people have no yet been enlightened. They cling to their perspectives, and their beliefs, seeing this movement as an attack on America, but America was born of movements. Protests. Riots. Although rioting is never ideal, neither is inaction and continued inequality.
If you “lose” friends or family along the way, know that it is not their time to be enlightened. Their hearts and ears are closed. They are working through their own crap, and aren’t capable yet of understanding and seeing past their own lives.
Hopefully, they can catch up with us later.
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I’m an anxious person. I consider it a quirky personality trait, and one that hasn’t really seemed to scare anyone that matters away, yet.
Anxiety manifests itself in weird ways. Sometimes it is over nothing, sometimes it is over the idea of nothing. Usually, it is my own personal emotional trigger that creeps up when I’m least expecting it and sends me into a crumpled mass on the floor until my brain reboots and reminds me I require oxygen to function.
People with anxiety find ways to fight it; Healthy diet, sufficient sleep, robotic, high-intensity workout plans that generate serotonin.
I tread water in times of hardship with equal parts unending optimism and low-dose sarcasm, which may seem like opposites but somehow works for me.
I absorb other people’s feelings, whether I want them or not. When someone experiences a personal victory, I will feel every ounce of their enthusiasm and my brain will dose me with oxytocin on their behalf. If someone tells me a story about something terrible, or painful that happened to them, I walk away wearing their feelings; drenched in a cloak of someone else’s darkness that sometimes takes days to shrug off.
The world is hard right now.
But you don’t need me to tell you that.
I’ve had to ask my husband to filter what he tells me because this cloak is getting so heavy I can barely keep my head up, and I can feel its tattered edges dragging my head underwater.
But I don’t want to be completely out of touch.
The world needs witnesses to what is happening so maybe someday we can be better, and never do it again.
Where is the balance? Where is the line?
I typically try to combat negativity and fear with self-deprecating humor and bad jokes, but that is getting harder. Writing, a hobby that is typically cathartic is cumbersome and daunting. Drafting the title of this article took five minutes, and the anxiety of the permalink creating a slug and bench-marking my indecision made my heart rate spike.
My novels have been shoved on the proverbial shelves, being unable to focus long enough to devote any actual attention to a fictional narrative that feels like it won’t make a difference to anyone. My energy is displaced. Focusing on cleaning, staring at the walls, or rereading the same few pages of a book who’s title I can’t remember.
The news reports are devastating. Heart-breaking. Nauseating.
Retweets are spreading fake and real news; a virus of toxicity that feels like its straight out of a dystopian novella I’d like to slam shut and set fire to.
I don’t have a meaningful message to wrap this up with. The knob to my optimism has been turned to low at the moment, and I’m open to any and all suggestions you guys have to turn it back up to 11.
I’m in a place where I want to help. I want to make a difference.
But I also want to survive the vicious mental barrage of feelings and devastation.
Do me a favor and please be nice to one another. Maybe we could start there, and just put one foot in front of the other.
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I had grandiose plans to get elbow deep in my latest project today.
It’s one of those stories that starts off as a hypothetical conversation with a friend and quickly morphs out of control like a wildfire in a cotton field.
If you asked me, I’d tell you I was a “pantser.”
To a non-writer, you might imagine me gallivanting around pulling down unsuspecting victim’s trousers then pointing and laughing at them, but in the writing world, a “pantser” is someone without a real plan or outline, who flies by the seat of ’em while writing. You let the muse take you. Without rules, plot points, or other restrictions to inhibit the organic progression of the storyline.
I would not claim to be a planner – or someone who outlines out the entire story, details every character, and knows every intimate detail about them. Despite my Type A personality in which I can, at times, desperately fight to control the outcome of things I’ve deluded myself into believing I could control, I find it appealing to get lost in writing and not know where it will take me.
In actuality, I am a “plantser.”
I have conversations in my head with people I’ve never met. I come up with entire backstories on why a secondary character might ditch her terrible double-blind-date to catch a late movie with the waiter she met at the restaurant. The details of their date will come naturally, but when I go down to write it, I’ve already laid the groundwork.
I have a plan in mind for the secondary character’s spin-off story and who she ends up with (….and I’ll never telllllll…well, I mean, hopefully, I will and you can buy the book), and I haven’t even dug in on the main story yet.
Writing is about making connections, fabricating details, and spinning addictive webs for your reader to follow…and it’s intoxicating.
So why is it so hard to find the time to do it?
Why is it that in the four free hours that I had set aside today to work on my book, I’ve started a loaf of bread (sourdough is another addiction), loaded the laundry in the wash and the dishes in the dishwasher, redesigned my author site for web and mobile, created a Facebook Author page, (written this blog post…) and am now fighting the urge to go and play in my greenhouse?
If I had a quarter for every time a writer Tweeted about their lack of writing, I could retire in Bora Bora right now.
Do all artists have this attention deficit disorder towards their passions? Do painters polish their silver candelabras (do people still have those?) instead of their craft? Do sculptors binge watch Netflix instead of molding their own perspective of the world?
Or is this a unique writer trait that we can create entire worlds in our minds, but can’t find the time to finish jotting them down.
Curiouser and curiouser…
Alright, I’m off to go right now…and I’ll let you decide if that was a Freudian slip or intentional typo
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Have you guys been more or less creative in captivity?
Although my work schedule is mostly unchanged, my habits were altered dramatically.
I spend less time writing, and less time reading, feeling as though the extra time should be spent doing something “more important.” …and I hate that feeling.
Do you ever feel the same?
How do you fight the feeling?
I wish I could reprogram my mind to acknowledge that writing is my art and that it is just as important as the household to-do list.
Granted, I did also finish the last read-through on my manuscript, and sent it off to my editor, and started a new project, I still need to find a way to prioritize my writing as high if not higher than the broken sprinkler head.
Things on the horizon: working on gathering a mailing list for a newsletter, creating a Facebook author page, working on the cover art for my second manuscript, toying with the idea of resuscitating my first project and cleaning off the two years of electronic dust that has accumulated atop it, and am working on an overhaul on the blog site.
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New article on Taylor Magazine!
In what feels like just overnight, the world that we knew has changed.
Parents have children of all ages home for an unknown amount of time and are struggling to fill the enormous shoes of our teachers and daycare leaders. Children are bouncing off the walls with excess energy and are confused about what is happening.
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