I’ve been meaning to write a post about my menagerie for weeks now. And today, well, was an absurdly crazy day. You will see why in a minute.

First up, the cats. All of my kitties are seniors now, how did that happen! I have Marlow, the gray tux, Maggie, the black and white tuxedo, and Miso, the poofy Himalayan. All three are rescues from different situations. Billy and I used to volunteer at the shelter quite a bit before we had Wyatt, and we ended up with three cats and a dog as a result. Penny, my sweet English Setter, passed away when Wyatt was born. But we still have our three cats, although they are now 17, 14, and 14. I’m having a hard time finding a photo of my flibbertigibbet Miso. She is too inquisitive when I go to take photos and gets up and comes to me. Lol. Maggie was a stray kitten, Marlow was abandoned in an apartment when his owners moved, and Miso was from a hoarding house. Now they are all here. And super spoiled.

And, we have the reptiles and lone amphibian. Harry and Luna, the leopard geckos, and Apple Jack the crested gecko.(L-R Luna, Apple Jack, and Harry)

And then finally Freddy.

For the most part, the entire menagerie is fairly easy to manage. This weekend however, a situation arose with Harry. He was acting different, not eating, and when he shed he didn’t eat it, which is not really normal. Then Sunday night, I noticed some sore looking areas on his um..nether parts. Not good. Not good at all. Since Michigan is all arctic right now, with temps zero and below, I was hoping that we would not need to take him to the vet. So, Billy googled it. And google actually gave Billy the right diagnosis, clogged pores in his hemipene plugs. I could go into more detail on that but I will leave that up to you whether you want to google it or not, because TMI. We read we could try some things at home, which we did, but it wasn’t helping. So this morning, I called around to find a vet. And let me tell you, finding a vet for a reptile is not easy. But, I found one, and lucky us, they had a cancellation for today. Woohoo! However, then I had the challenge of figuring out how to transport a desert creature to the vet on a zero degree day in Michigan. I decided to put the carrier and a towel in front of our heat vents to warm up prior to leaving, then fifteen minutes before we left, I started the car to let it warm up. I wrapped the carrier in a blanket and towel, had a hand towel in the carrier, and turned on the heated seat for him. And crossed my fingers. It was only a 15 minute drive so not too bad, and we made it ok. Or rather, he was fine. When I got to the vet, due to Covid, the policy is to wait in your car until the vet calls you to come in. Ok, I can deal with that. However, with the heat at max by the time we got the call I was so hot and sweaty! Yay me. Harry was nice and toasty though and that is what mattered.

Poor Harry was such a trooper. The vet did his exam and he was so uncomfortable he squeaked! I have never heard him do that! The vet came to the conclusion that yes, he did have clogged pores. And that he would require slight sedation and perhaps even an incision. At the very least lanced. In case you are unfamiliar, leopard geckos can also drop their tails when scared or upset, so in order to prevent that from happening we decided that sedation was the right route.

In case you are wondering, I took that photo of the vet holding him so that we could mimic that hold later on. Not because I randomly snapped a photo during the exam like a weirdo. Lol.

Sedating him for his procedure, while not cheap and took part of my Christmas money from my dad I had been hoarding for books, was the absolute right call. The vet told me later when I picked him up that he had a lot of back up and that the procedure took a lot longer than she had anticipated. But it was successful! They also told me he was a popular guy while he was there. Before the surgery they gave him a little warm soak under warming lights and the tech told me that everyone kept popping by to see him and pet him. He was the BMOC.

And the after care, you ask? Well, we needed to move him from his bioactive tank to a tank with paper towel or paper anything, that would not get in his wounds. So Harry is temporarily living in my butterfly tank. You see, when you are a nerd you have lots of extra tanks, picked up from free sites and curbside garbage picking. So Harry returned home, a bit stoned, in some pain, but to a clean and sterile tank. Oh, and we have to give him two different medicines as well. We have not attempted this yet, but.. I am guessing it is not going to be easy. Cross your fingers for us!

Today has been a very big adventure for us both!

I have been reading so many good books lately!

Greenglass House by Kate Milford: I read this book the few days before Christmas and it was absolutely perfect for those crazy days. I needed something easy but entertaining and this middle grade was the answer. Twelve year old Milo is so excited for his winter break at his home, Greenglass House. It’s Christmas, there is snow, and usually no guests at the inn this time of year, leaving plenty of time for him to relax all he wants with his parents. Until one after another, guests begin to trickle in. And Greenglass House is not just any inn, but a smuggler’s inn – and these guests seem mysterious and secretive. The whole crew gets snowed in, things start happening, and Milo and his new friend Meddy find a mystery to solve. I absolutely adored every second of this book. It was fun, imaginative, different, atmospheric. Milo has the idea for the guests to tell stories at night to keep each other entertained, and it was such a cool part of the book. I loved all the backstory for the characters – I feel like I could go on and on with how much I loved this book. If you are looking for a snowy middle grade, you can’t go wrong with this one!

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley: I must have been in “guests snowed in at a mysterious remote location” mode for a few weeks, because The Hunting Party also features a remote lodge where the guests are snowed in. This book! It was my first read of the New Year, and I loved it. Loved it. I read it all in one day which for me takes some skill these days. A group of old college friends are on a holiday trip together to bring in the New Year in the highlands of Scotland, in a very posh sounding lodge, with the hostess and the gameskeeper being the only others at the lodge with them. Then one person is found, dead. This book is told from multiple viewpoints over a period of a few days and the mystery just keeps growing as more of the actions from those few days come out. I could not stop reading it, and when I was done, immediately gave it to my mom to read. The ultimate snowed in thriller!

Crazy Like a Fox by Melinda Metz: I read the first book in this series, Fox Crossing, in January of last year, so it made sense to read this second in the series this January. I loved it just as much as the first one! If you visit my blog, you may know I love foxes, and pretty much pick up anything that is fox related. If only I loved in Fox Crossing, where everything is fox themed! This book is adorable. It is the story of Gavin, a typical Peter Pan, and Lillian, who is a Wendy. I mean not really, but that is who they reminded me of. Gavin is forever hopping in and out of relationships with women, although never actually ending the relationship himself; instead, he acts like a brat and eventually drives the woman he is in the relationship away, forcing them to end things. Lillian on the other hand, has given up so much of her own sense of self in order to stay in a relationship with her boyfriend. She has stars in her eyes (and on her toes) when it comes to Owen, and bends over backwards to make him happy. However, during their time in Fox Crossing, both Gavin and Lillian do a bit of soul searching, and things begin to change. This book also has amazing, fun secondary characters. Kristina/Kiki, Simon and Violet, Ford and Stephanie, and of course Honey and Nick and Annie and Banana from the first book as well. I love this series and can’t wait to read the next installment! (Oh, and if you prefer a clean romance, this one qualifies.)

* Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington books for an ebook copy in exchange for an honest review.

Does everyone wander around lost that week between Christmas and New Year’s? I know I spend the week alternately cleaning and straightening but also being incredibly lazy, all while saying I can eat what I want because New Year’s is coming and I will probably not be eating healthy for those two days anyway so why bother now? And so on…

This year Billy had the entire week off with Wyatt and I! I would like to say that we did lots and lots of cool things, but in reality we spent a lot of time bumming around the house together. That doesn’t mean we didn’t have fun though. Because we did. It was actually really nice to have all that time together while also having time to do different individual projects. Billy spent a few days making bread with my sourdough starter. (I made one for my stepmom too, and I named it The Grateful Bread) We also made homemade chicken noodle soup in the instant pot. It was delicious!

I worked on school things, different plans, watched a lot of YouTube, painted and played games and with different toys with Wyatt, who had lots of new things he wanted us to try out together. And so many books for us both! We have been reading up a storm around here.

We did get dressed in actual clothes and ventured out a few times though.

We went for a hike one afternoon, and were hoping that it would snow while we were out there. There is nothing like being in a forest while it is snowing. And wouldn’t you know it, the universe provided.

Another day we took a field trip to one of my favorite shops, The Conservatory. I love it there, especially in the winter. All the green!! It just makes me so happy. It was short outing but a good one. And I ended up bringing home a new pothos, a Silver Satin that I named Sam Elliot.

And I was excited to learn that The Conservatory is expanding and opens up in it’s new location (two doors down from its current one) on the 8th of January! I may need to take another trip. We followed our plant shopping up with pizza at my mom’s, where my brother and his family joined us. It was a nice night!

We pretty much laid low the rest of the week, watching The Witcher and Brokenwood Mysteries (which we finished…noooo!), doing the same stuff we did earlier in the week. New Year’s Eve we didn’t do anything too special but we did have plans for New Year’s Day! We woke up early (because that is not an issue when you don’t do much on NYE) and headed to the woods as we do every New Year’s Day.

The snow was gone sadly, but we were expecting a bit of a snowstorm later that night – right when we had plans for dinner with my brother and SIL. It was a low key dinner, spaghetti and homemade bread at our house while my mom watched the kids, and gave the four of us a chance to chat and catch up a little without the kids around for a few hours. And that was the extent of our socializing for the week! Sunday we watched movies (The Big Year and Encanto) and all of a sudden, vacation was over.

What do you do that week, if you are not working? Are you productive, or a bit lost like a lot of us?

It’s a brand new year, y’all!! Happy New Year!

My One Word: I always set a word and intention for the year, much like I do resolutions. This year, the word I chose was Explore – as in explore ideas, new places, the outdoors as much as I can. COVID and work will obviously put limits on where exactly we can travel still for a while, but I want to take more small road trips, see different things and places this year whenever it is possible. But beyond the physical, I want to explore new ideas as well, new ways of living, authors, habits.

First Book of the Year: The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley. I am so excited! I waited to read this until the New Year like a nerd, because the book takes place at the new year.

For fans of Ruth Ware and Tana French, a shivery, atmospheric, page-turning novel of psychological suspense in the tradition of Agatha Christie, in which a group of old college friends are snowed in at a hunting lodge . . . and murder and mayhem ensue.

All of them are friends. One of them is a killer.

During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands—the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.

They arrive on December 30th, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.

Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.

The trip began innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps.

Now one of them is dead . . . and another of them did it.

Keep your friends close, the old adage goes. But just how close is too close?

I can’t wait!

Resolutions: I’m going to keep this simple. I always make resolutions but never get down on myself for not accomplishing them. I feel it is ok to dream and try without always having success!

• Yoga. I miss yoga so much. I need to make time in my life for it again. Before I had Wyatt I did it almost everyday and I loved how it made me feel, physically and mentally.
• Feeding the chickadees in our neighborhood from my hand. Yep. This is a goal of mine. How cool would that be? I will feel so very Snow White.
• Eat more whole foods, and keep buying local to support small farmers when and where I can.

And that is it! Keeping it simple. Kind of. Lol.

Traditions: Today we are watching The Big Year like we do every single New Year’s Day for the past ten years or so. This movie I think “flies” under the radar and it is just so good. Especially if you love birds. And Jack Black. And Rosamund Pike. We will take a hike through the woods, taking time to stop and listen and look around. And hopefully eat something good too.

What every you do today, I hope you have a good day!

It’s hard not to take a look back at the year when you reach the end and a new year is looming. I’ve mentioned before that New Year’s Eve makes me a bit melancholy, the passing of time makes me feel a bit wistful for the things that were and used to be. New Year’s Day I am ready for the fresh slate and adventures to be had, but New Year’s Eve is different for me. Anyway, let’s see what we really loved this year!

Movies:

Hmm. Where to begin? I absolutely loved the new Rebecca and The Secret Garden.I think both were just visually stunning, especially The Secret Garden. I also really loved The Dig – I am intrigued by all of these discovery, archaeological finds from the past and Carey Mulligan was amazing in this movie. Disney and I also had a good relationship this year. I was a huge Indiana Jones fan in my youth, and I loved Emily Blunt’s character. Had I been a kid when this movie came out I probably would want to be Lily Houghton when I grew up. As for Luca, I loved the beauty of this cartoon, the story of acceptance, and of course, the Italy part. And Coco! Wyatt and I watched this together in October for the first time, while Billy was on a camping trip. It is probably one of my favorite Disney movies ever now. I just loved it – although I did totally cry at the end.

YouTubers:

1. Rachel Maksy: I love this channel. Maksy is a maker, and makes the coolest costumey type clothes. Her videos make me laugh, she is whimsical and weird, and has the cutest dog, named Frodo.

2. Roots and Refuge: A gardening/homesteader channel I watch. I learned how to grow fantastic tomatoes this year thanks to Jess!

3. Alexandra Roselyn: I just started to watch her channel recently. I love that she includes YA and middle grade reads in her videos as I am working on our home library for Wyatt beyond picture books. I know I will include tried and true favorites like the Little House books, Narnia, etc but I also want to explore newer options as well.

Music:

I hesitate to include this as I am not very knowledgeable about music; I just listen to what sounds good to me. But without a doubt, I became a Swiftie this year. Not really her earlier music, but her Folklore and Evermore albums in particular.

And now for some random favorites, as I did say there would be randomness!

Cereal: We eat a lot of cereal in this house. Well, Wyatt and I do. Our go to’s are Mom’s Best Cereals Mallow Oats, Nature’s Path Sunrise Crunchy Cinnamon, and Nature’s Path Envirokidz Panda Puffs.

Pens: This set of Tul pens in assorted colors. I always get a set of pens for Christmas and these are my favorites!

Favorite Starbucks Drink: Matcha Latte – iced or hot, I love it

Favorite candy: Haribo cherries!

Favorite purchases this year: I know Billy’s answer – the InstaPot. I am a tiny bit afraid of it but I like what he has made in it so far this year. My favorite non-animal purchase – all the art I have purchased this year from artists on Etsy. It’s been fun redoing our rooms!

I would love to hear about any of your favorite media that you have been consuming – listening, watching, tell me! Or any of your other favorites as well!

Nature is such an important part of our life. We have such a connection to nature, to animals and the trees and the earth around us, that I don’t like to let a solstice go by without some sort of acknowledgement. This year Wyatt and I were able to turn it into a bit of a science lesson as well, albeit a fun one. When we woke up, I talked about how the day ahead was the shortest day of the year, with the longest night, and that the next day would signal the return of the sun, and that gradually, slowly, slowly, the days would become longer and the dark and night would become shorter.

To celebrate during the day, Wyatt and I read Bear Noel and The Animals’ Santa. We had a lot of fun reading them both, but we added a bit of fun to our reading of Bear Noel, with sound effects and participation. I think we might continue this as a tradition, at least for another year if Wyatt lets me. Then we decided to be a bit of an animals’ Santa ourselves, and make gifts for the outdoor animals near us. The birds and the squirrels and the porch opossum, although I haven’t seen the latter in a week or two which makes me nervous. Neither of us like to get sticky fingers so we skipped any ideas that involved goopy peanut butter or even worse, lard. However, dried apples and oranges were just our speed, so we (I) dried the fruit slices in our oven and when they were dry, Wyatt turned them into hanging fruit ornaments to put outside. I also threw some pecans out there as well, for a little added treat.

After our activity, we both had a little quiet time. I read my book and he played a bit. Eventually it became time to make dinner so I switched on some music (Alexa, play Taylor Swift Folklore..) and got to cooking. Every year I want to make sun bread and never remember. This year included. But I did make Greek Lemon Chicken and Rice in a skillet, which was delicious. With lemon to celebrate the sun! Then..we had my ugly cake. I had planned to make cranberry cake which is amazing and delicious. However, I found I didn’t have any sugar! How did this happen! Thankfully we had a spare cake. Lol. The Sunday before solstice we had celebrated my brother’s 40th birthday; I was supposed to make the cake. It was a bit of a baking disaster though, and we deemed it too ugly to take to the party, so we bought one at Kroger on the way instead. My brother was appalled though, and told me I should have just brought the cake anyway. Well, it worked out for solstice because what is a celebration without dessert?

A not great photo of my not great looking cake. At this point I wasn’t sure what was going on with it so I just threw some plastic over it, not caring much about preserving the frosting. It wasn’t too bad though, removing it, we still had plenty somehow. It was actually quite yummy!

After dinner, we moved into the den and read two more books, The Shortest Day and The Longest Night (we absolutely love this one). We talked about some of our favorite nature memories this year – Billy’s camping trip for him, our trip up north with the old Cedar Forest trail and the picnic among the wildflowers, swimming in the lake. My monarchs. Tomato sandwiches, made with tomatoes from our garden. The trolls. So many wonderful moments this year.

That morning, we started the day with two songs – Here Comes the Sun which is Wyatt’s favorite, and Morning has Broken, one of my favorites.

It was a wonderful start to the holiday season! A little tiny celebration before the happy chaos of Christmas.