Yellow Wallpaper

This past week was not very good. I was tired and didn't sleep well most nights--I should have been writing a draft of my paper that is due next Sunday, but I haven't done it yet. There were several nights where I felt exhausted and decided to try going to bed early instead of writing, and instead I didn't fall asleep right away so I was still tired and I have no draft of my paper. I also spent most of the week stressing about our final exam that took place this morning. Spoiler alert: I took the exam and think I did a pretty reasonable job even though it's hard to write seven decent short essays in 75 minutes. We're all adjusting after the death of our sweet kitty last Saturday. Surprisingly the kids have been mostly fine with the new state of things. My other kitty spent the first few days wandering the house and meowing, which was more heartbreaking than actually saying goodbye to the other cat. She peed on the couch on Monday but has otherwise not changed her ...

While I was making dinner on Thursday night I heard the unmistakable sounds of kitty barf happening in the hallway. I got there too late to move the cat, but realized that she was barfing up a large quantity of white foam and water. As soon as I saw that, my heart sank--that's exactly what has happened the last two times she ate something and got sick . I cleaned up the mess and finished dinner; later I checked the basement (her preferred barfing spot) and found more evidence of a sick cat. Friday morning she was curled up on the downstairs couch, and when I got home last night she was still in the same spot. This morning she made her way upstairs and lay down next to the water dish, looking sadly at it but not drinking. Thankfully the vet's office has Saturday hours, so I decided not to wait until Monday and gave them a call to make an appointment.  Before taking the cat in to the vet, I had already decided that if she had a foreign object in her stomach I wasn't going t...

The Good Girl by Mary Kubica If anyone has been keeping track of my reading habits over the years, they will have noticed that I have a weakness for the "literary thriller of the month" (as I like to call it). I don't read a lot of mysteries otherwise, but every now and then I grab something like this book because it sounds fun. I figured out most of the plot twists in this book before they were revealed, but the ending still managed to have a few more that surprised me. Not the best thriller I've read, but certainly not the worst. The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit This is the first time I've read anything by Rebecca Solnit, and I fell in love with her beautiful writing and powerful insights. This book is hard to describe; it's a series of essays that are interconnected, and somewhat chronological. It's not quite a memoir and not quite a simple collection of standalone essays--the chapters describe a period of time in her life, with themes and i...