October 2024: What I Spent

Just as a reminder, my husband handles the "big" bills like the mortgage, cell phone, and electricity. I mostly pay for groceries and the pets. This division works for us. Until it doesn't. *cue ominous music*

The above is what the pie graph ACTUALLY looked like. Our cat, Zelda, did a treatment to cure her hyperthyroidism (did it work? things aren't looking great from our end, but we to need to follow up with blood tests) and it was honestly more than my monthly take home. I put it on my credit card and paid for about half of it out of savings and half of it out of my paycheck. So I'm going to redo this and take out the cat's treatment - still including all the other pet expenses, but I want you all to know the truth. Pets are expensive. 

Groceries (33%) - There was a trip to Costco. 

Pets (23.5%) - This is just Zelda's regular annual vet appointment, some medications for both, and a scale for weighing Zelda. 

Savings (9.1%) - Whistling past the graveyard with this, aren't I?

Donations (8.2%) - I did a fair number of donations that were a bit unusual this month. 

Personal care (5.9%) - Shampoo, some makeup, some lotion. It's expensive for me to look like an average woman.

Cars (5.5%) - Gas for both cars a couple of times. I was annoyed because we basically wasted an entire tank of gas to get the recall done. Oh, well. 

Bills (5.3%) - Home and car insurance. 

Clothes (3.6%) - I ordered new cross trainers. I actually ordered like five pairs to try and I'll send most of them back. The rest of the shoes will get billed next month, so that's a preview for November. 

Eating out (2.4%) - I did sort of eat my feelings this month. With every new vet appointment, I'd get coffee and a pastry. I had lunch with a friend. I had coffee the first day I went back to work after COVID. I just...coped. 

Gifts (2%) - I bought some greeting cards. 

Entertainment (1.6%) - I had a fun day out with Anne and spent some money there. #noregrets

********************

What was your biggest expense last month?

Happy Election Day‽

I once happily declared Election Day my favorite holiday. I have such wonderful memories of the peaceful transition of power of presidents (Bush to Clinton is one of my favorite political memories) and I found the entire process so encouraging, like the parties can disagree on how to spend money, but we agree on basic principles - we should do the best thing for the country, try to not be jerks, and listen to people. I found presidential handoff of power so HOPEFUL. 

Speaking of hopeful, I can barely stand to think about poor, naive 2016 NGS who was positively GIDDY after voting for Hilary Clinton. GIDDY. I don't think I need to remind you how that turned out. 

Today my stomach is in knots. What if Trump wins? Like, he's the one with nuclear codes? What if Harris wins? Will MAGA revolt? Will there be riots? Civil war? 

I've been listening to a lot of Garth Brooks lately (for a post that no one besides TJC will find interesting) and there's a line in the song "Do What You Gotta Do" on the album Sevens:

Hey, you just tell them true
Because they can't take the truth from you
So do what you got to do

There's so much in this world right now. Fake news. Fake AI news. Deep fakes. Russian bots. It sometimes feels like we are Winston and Julia and 2+2 is 5. But, hey.

They can't take the truth from us. They can't.

And to quote another Garth Brooks song ("Belleau Wood," also from Sevens): 

And he raised his hand and smiled at me
As if he seemed to say
"Here's hoping we both live to see us
Find a better way"

I don't like to think of my fellow citizens as the enemy, but right now we are literally fighting for the future of this country. 

Go vote for good, fellow Americans.

Non-Americans, here's hoping we do you proud, too. 

*****************

No comments today, folks. 

Life Updates

1) The cat is officially radioactive. More to come on this (wait until I tell you about the stockpile of used litter in our garage!), but suffice it to say that the cat is unhappy, we are unhappy, and one of us is regretting persuading our spouse that this is the best course of action, gold-standard of treatment be damned.

2) Yes, the dog still has diarrhea. No, I don't want to talk about it. 

3) COVID kicked my ass and I still feel pretty crummy. No, I don't want to talk about this, either. There have been some moments of marital disharmony surrounding this and while I don't want to talk about marital disharmony, I do want to say that when someone takes over my chores for three days and then complains that it is an "unsustainable way to live," I might argue that the patriarchy has really won. I have a full-time job AND do these chores EVERY DAY of the YEAR. 

4) There's family stuff. There always is. My mom is doing really well and that's the great news. The bad news is that this election is really a problem for my relationships with a lot of family members and the holiday card list is getting smaller and smaller. I am staying up at night worrying about this election and I see bad things no matter how things turn out. 

5) I mean, the election is what it is. If you are a US citizen and have not already voted or made a plan to vote tomorrow, what are you waiting for? It's literally the fate of the democratic world (and, honestly, if you want to get started thinking about nuclear war, the entire world) at stake. Because of my husband's work, this election has added even more stress to what is a stressful time. 

6) I don't want to end this on a downer with nuclear war and stress. It was my one-year anniversary at my job last week. That's cool, right? I love my job, my co-workers are great, and I'm going to go to work late tomorrow because I am going to vote. 

******************

What's new in your world? Any radioactive pets? 

Cool Bloggers Walking Club, 10/27-10/31

We're all trying to get 10 minutes of walking done every day with Elisabeth's Cool Blogger's Walking Club.

Sunday, October 27
Nothing, sadly. I was sick.

First time out of the house in days. Hannah was not in for a photo op. LOL.

Monday, October 28

15-minute late morning walk with Hannah - Just starting short walks around the block to see how it goes. 

18-minute walk with Hannah before bed

Tuesday, October 29

20-minute morning walk with Hannah

15-minute walk with Hannah before bed

LOLOLOL. 

Wednesday, October 30

26-minute morning walk with Hannah

23-minute walk with Hannah after work

14-minute walk with Hannah before bed

Thursday, October 31

16-minute morning walk with Hannah in the rain - no one enjoyed this

22-minute walk with Hannah after work in the cold, blustery wind - Hannah DID enjoy this, but I did not

7-minute walk with Hannah before bed - our three beautiful weeks of fall are officially over 

******************

And that's a wrap on CBWC. How did you do getting your ten minutes a day in? 

October 2024 Books

This was a brutal meh kind of book month for me until the very end when things turned around. 

10/1: The Reformatory by Tananarive Due (library audiobook narrated by Joniece Abbott-Pratt , 2023) - Strange book that addresses the historical reality of abusive reform schools for boys, but also has ghosts. A nice way to start October. 4/5 stars

10/1: Colton Gentry's Third Act by Jeff Zentner (library, 2024) - I don't know if I've really read a romance novel written by a man from a man's perspective before. Interesting. 4/5 stars

10/6: Zazen by Vanessa Veselka (library, 2011) - Great cover. Otherwise, I don't think I am the intended audience for this one. 3/5 stars

10/10: You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day (library ebook, 2015) - Day is funny, but this lacked something for me. 3/5 stars

10/12: Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics by Dolly Parton (library audiobook, 2020) - It's fun to hear Parton talk about her songs, but this was incredibly superficial. 3/5 stars

10/13: Miracle Creek by Angie Kim (library, 2019) - I knew who did it by page 70. I didn't care for Happiness Falls and I didn't care for this one. I don't think this is the author for me. 3/5 stars

10/18: Bookshops & Bonedust (Legends & Lattes #0) by Travis Baldree - Prequel to Legends & Lattes. The beauty of Legends & Lattes is that the story was delightful, but low stakes. This was similarly delightful, but the stakes were so high - it really was life and death. And there were a lot of fight scenes. And that's why it's not as good. 3.5/5 stars

For Jenny, the quotation in this book, describing a bookshop was:

The interior smelled almost exactly as she’d imagined—of old paper, mildew, and disappointment—but with the additional odors of dog and … henhouse. She wrinkled her nose. (location 278)

10/20: Northern Spy by Flynn Berry (library, 2021) - Single mom Tessa works as a producer at BBC when the news shows that her sister is an IRA terrorist. Soon she is involved in espionage and counterterrorism. I don't know about this one - I mostly felt terrible for Tessa's son's father who really gets screwed in this book. 3/5 stars

10/27: The Sentence by Louise Erdrich (library, 2021) - Book club book for the month. I hated it. I don't think I'll be up for pandemic literature ever in my life and I was really pissy about reading it while I was in bed with COVID. Thumbs down. 1.5/5 stars

10/28: The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past by Nate DiMeo (advanced reading copy, expected publication date November 19) - So good. I loved every word. 5/5 stars

10/28: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (library, 2024) - Very compelling. Impressively good job of keeping multiple timelines under control. 4.5/5 stars

10/29: Serious Concerns by Wendy Cope (university library, 1992) - Beautiful collection of mostly funny poems. 4.5/5 stars

10/29: Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century, edited by Alice Wong (book I own, 2020) - I read this for a book club at work. As with most essay collections, the quality of each selection varied greatly, but it was an interesting look at how easily disability is overlooked in public policy and life. 3.5/5 stars

10/29: Shattered by Kathryn Casey (audiobook narrated by Coleen Marlo, 2010) - Dated true crime book. Interesting case, though. I'm pretty sure the guy did it, but I can't believe they convicted him on such little evidence. 3/5 stars

Total: 14 books

Average star rating: 3.46/5 stars

Did not finish: 

Lunar Love by Lauren Kung Jessen - Look, I thought it was boring, okay? DNF at 8%. 

Happy NaBloPoMo!

Today is the first day of National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo)!

San hosts NaBloPoMo every year. If you want to join, go sign up on her site! If you don't know what to write about every single day of the month, we have crowdsourced some ideas and have them here in a Google doc, so feel free to get an idea from that list (and feel free to add ideas to the list, too!). 

I'm aiming to post every day this month. I'm going to try to limit them to pretty short posts, though, for everyone's benefit. 

******************

For today, I want to do a brief (re)introduction. 

My name is NGS and some people call me Engie. None of that is true in real life, although my husband does sometimes jokingly call me Engie when I'm talking too much about my blog. I've had this blog for twenty years, though, so my relationship with it is longer than that of my relationship with him, so sometimes he has to listen to me blather about it. 

I live in a small town in Wisconsin where I work for a local regional university and I have a cat and a dog who I'm pretty obsessed with. Zelda is the cat and she is the queen of the household. Hannah is the dog and she and I just do what Zelda tells us to do. Zelda recently had a medical treatment and she is radioactive for 80 days, which means I am not supposed to cuddle with her. I'm not sure how that is going to go. 

I read a lot of books and so I write about books a lot. If you don't read books, just don't tell me, okay? We'll still be friends as long as I don't know about your reading habits. 

I'm obsessed with Taskmaster and The Great British Baking Show, have killed too many houseplants to mention, and have read every book in JD Robb's In Death series. I'm always trying to complete lists of books because I am a completionist at heart. I like nectarines, cherries, and plums. Purple is my favorite color. I like to send snail mail. I have a dozen post it notes on my computer at any given moment. I like my job and feel useful at work. I hate making adulting decisions like when to buy a new appliance or car, how often I should visit family, and what photo to use for the Christmas card.

Current adulting conundrum: My uncle, who has been a jerk to me since I got married more than fifteen years ago, is a thorn in my side. Why is he so grumpy with me? One, I didn't invite his children to our wedding because we didn't invite children to the thing (for legitimate reasons having to do with limiting the guest list! if we added cousins to the list, it would have doubled the number of guests!). Two, I didn't have my father walk me down the aisle because my relationship with my father was rocky and also, I am not property to be "given away." Three, he's kind of a jerk. ANYWAY. His daughter is throwing him a big birthday party later this month and I was invited. It was the first family thing I've been invited to in a bit and I could go. But I don't want to. It would take up an entire weekend. Should I go? Just send a card? Why do I have to make hard choices?

Anyway, that's me! If you have questions, feel free to throw them in the comments. Otherwise, weigh in on the adulting decision for me. 

Serious Concerns by Wendy Cope

I needed a poetry collection to fulfill one of my Pop Sugar Reading Challenge prompts for the year. I heard that Serious Concerns by Wendy Cope was a humorous collection, so I dug around and ordered a copy from the interlibrary loan system at the university library (sadly, this book only came from UW-Madison, so it's not like it travelled far). This book was published in 1992, but it was so yellowed and stained that I sort of assumed it had been published far before then, but then I did the math and realized it was more than thirty years old. *sigh* Time is passing by, isn't it?

This was fun! I had fun! Look at some funny poems. 

I think that "The Orange" is maybe Cope's most famous poem, but what do I know? It makes me laugh every time I read it, particularly the first stanza.

But, somehow I laughed even harder at "An Argument with Wordsworth." Why not pick an argument with a guy who's been dead for a 150-years?

But it's not all fun and games, you know? There were occasional heartfelt poems in there. Consider "Names." 

Anyway, if you're looking for a quick poetry collection that will give you an occasional chuckle, this one might be it! 4.5/5 stars 

No hats, friends. No hats. 

*******************

Has anyone else read Wendy Cope? Do you have a favorite humorous poet?