I love doing family history research in old newspapers. turns out my great-grandmother was learning the violin in the late 1930s (which explains a lot about her telling my mom to chill out about me practicing my clarinet in the house in the early 2000s tbh)

had a second interview for a legal/administrative-type job today, and the interviewers asked about my cats after I mentioned them. would it be bad form to attach a picture of said cats to the email I send tomorrow thanking them for their time and consideration?

these two would constantly post on nextdoor if only they could type (thank goodness they can’t type)

I’m Steve every day at this point

Steele, the bathtub gremlin

The mystery of medical diagnosis!

Coal thinking highly uncharitable thoughts after I pspspspsed him

“how did you find me in here, Mom?” well, Coal, the crinkling gave you away. (in a basket that makes a LOT of noise with some clean sheets)

Funny isn’t the word but it is nice to see live and on camera when the people who live solely in the Fox and online Twitter space run face first into institutional reality and kinda flail

Steele was all cozy in bed when he heard a cabinet door close in the kitchen, and now he’s afraid he’s missing something…but not enough to get up and investigate. those ears. so alert!

woke up feeling extremely anxious, but the cat support squad showed up almost instantly: Steele stretched out on my ribs and Coal curled up against my chest. don’t know what I’d do without my boys!! 😭

blessed with meows instead of just the usual mrrrrs from the boys today. 😻😻

turns out Face ID doesn’t recognize me with a “clarifying anti-acne mask” smeared all over my face lol love to have my face threatening to break out under 48 hours before a job interview 🙃🙃🙃

No one ever talks about what this garbage does—has already done—to American power. American power is not absolute or assured.

“solving autism” the day before the rapture is so desperate

I know antifa isn't a real organization because I don't get 40 texts a week from them asking for donations.

my sweet Lissy Lou showed up 10 years ago today. these are the first pictures I took of her, on September 21, 2015. she’s been gone for a little more than eight months and I miss her every day. forever my best girl. 🖤🤍

The Free Speech President has now pulled two of the three major late night hosts off the air through threats and intimidation because of their jokes. Obviously I’m behind Jimmy Kimmel 100% in the face of this fascist garbage. Speech against this admin isn’t just being chilled, they’re freezing it.

if Jimmy Kimmel's political humor is too hot for you to handle, I'm not sure "snowflake" even cuts it as a term of derision for the level of fragility you've achieved

Steele really loves to attack feet in the middle of the night. idk why, he’s always been this way. around 4:30 this morning, he was attacking mine and I told him to stop. he didn’t. Coal went over to him, they exchanged a few mrrrrs, and then Steele left my feet alone.

just Coal enjoying some belly rubs after yelling at me from atop the cat tree for ten minutes. I think he looks a little smug about this

a very happy ending to this story, and so close to me! 🥹

text from my mom: “[cousin I was fairly close to] passed away on Sunday, didn’t want you to find out from Facebook” gee thanks, I found out from Facebook a day and a half ago though. fuck cancer, especially pancreatic cancer. Dale was diagnosed 7 weeks ago and now he’s dead. he just turned 55.

forensic genetic genealogy has resulted in so many people getting their names back over the past few years. I will never regret my test (which changed my whole perspective on my identity) or making my DNA available to cold case researchers, because of identifications like this one.

current cat inventory: -one (1) freeform loaf cat -one (1) half-octopus cat (assembly instructions misplaced)

cat? no, no cats here, mom. just one tough and scary vampire bat. -Coal, probably

middle age is watching a documentary you know your dad would enjoy and emailing him the YouTube link, not texting because you know he doesn’t watch YouTube on his phone

lol I can’t do anything right at work, this is dumb

my boys have been kind of turning their noses up at the fairly expensive wet food they’ve been eating eating (Purina ProPlan) so I bought some Weruva. the smell damn near knocked me out when I opened the can (🤢) but my babies cleaned their plates. go figure.

the thing about the flip folders (and lyres) was that you could expect them to fail when you needed them the most, so you actually put the time and effort into memorizing your music, or at least being able to fake it well

@bricheesedraws.bsky.social drew this amazing picture of our Coal 🖤😍

more and more, it feels like the way people expect me to learn things at work is to try to do them without any guidance/help and then tell me afterwards about how much I screwed everything up. it’s not productive, it’s super demoralizing, and it’s unfair to our clients and their pets.

we had a spreadsheet called “Passwords.xlsx” at my last job that dated to sometime during George W. Bush’s first term as president. it was an .xls file until 2021, when we finally converted it so it would open correctly for other people in the company with newer versions of Excel. 🙃

The mental health benefits of not knowing any history right now must be massive. Moving through your day with total equanimity. What happens next? Who knows? Maybe something good

woke up around 4:45 this morning to the weight of two cats on my body. usually it’s just Steele, up on my chest. reached out to pet the cat on my chest and discovered it was Coal. my sweet boy who usually cuddles next to me, not on me, and always keeps at least half his body touching the bed.

If you lost a pacifier on the trail, you are going to have to fight a dog to get it back.

had to have a little talk with Coal this morning about how sinking a tooth into mom’s hand and pulling it towards him is NOT an appropriate way to ask for pets 🙃

The thing that disturbs me most about DC isn't the military pageantry or even the bursts of federal violence. It's the emptiness. The strange, dead silence. People should not be afraid to come to America's capital, see the sights, and have dinner afterwards They didn't used to be. They are now.

it really sucks to work someplace where there are so many double standards. god forbid I leave the desk more than 2 minutes while someone else is there, but nobody has a problem leaving me to juggle 18485294727 things alone for an hour at a time

just moments after I walked in and realized Steele had burrowed under the blanket (it was close to 80° in here) and Coal was sitting on him so he couldn’t come back out. Coal wasn’t thrilled I scooted him over, and I’m not sure Steele had any idea what was going on.

a company I applied to declined to move forward with my application because I’m not available to talk on the phone a bunch of times before actually scheduling an interview, like this is the 1990s or something. I was very hopeful about it too. 😡

just left work and already don’t want to go back tomorrow. you would think, given current staffing, that colleagues might be kinder and more helpful instead of finding fault with everything I do, even if I followed their directions to the best of my ability.

happy black cat appreciation day from Coal, who wishes I’d stop bothering him unless it’s time for dinner

finally ordered a new night guard since I’ve worn through mine. it lasted almost a year! unfortunately I catch myself clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth during the daytime too, so looking into how to mitigate that as well 🫠

this is around the corner from where I used to work - an area that, beyond a few isolated incidents, always felt perfectly safe to me for over six years. completely unreal.

tfw brother does a scrungly yawn and sets off your scrungly yawn too. yawns are contagious!

The Onion, truly America’s Finest News Source 🫡

something about Coal often reminds me of Jiji. I can’t quite figure out what it is, but there’s definitely something.