Month: May 2017

I’m so excited!!   I have a book coming out next year!! Backstory: I wrote a book about Blackwell’s Island, now called Roosevelt Island. To give you an idea of what it was like there in the 19th century, one of the titles we’re considering for the book is Damnation Island.

I wrote about a medical experiment that was conducted in one of the hospitals on the island (there was also a lunatic asylum and a couple of penal institutions). A doctor tried to graft the bone from a dog to a little boy. His procedure including sewing the dog to the boy. I won’t say more, but it was very upsetting reading his paper about what he’d done. Here’s a picture of the boy and the dog from the paper.

I wish I was allowed to take and post pictures from the Kitten Nursery at the ASPCA, you would all just die. Today I am in love with Tater and Waffles. (I don’t name them, although I could. They let everyone suggest names and put them on a board. I’m just not into naming any.)

I know I’ve been all cats all the time for a while now, but that will change. Right now I’m focused on Finney. I found another massive mass on him. Why are they always so big?? I have a call into his doctor.

I always go by their eating habits when I pick the time to let them go. When they stop eating, and start hiding out somewhere alone, it’s time. But Finney is still eating well, and still wants to sit on my lap or curl up on the couch.

Finney in better days, sprawled on the floor sleeping.

After work, after running errands, then taking care of the cats, it’s practically time to go to bed. I still have half a book to fact check, and illustrations to pick out, and Echo to run. How am I ever going to manage and not feel like the Alice in Wonderland quote, “My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.”??

Someone decorated a tree in front of their building with robins.

I dropped my computer while taking a picture of my new haircut—which I love, it’s shortish and I’m growing out my bangs after having them for decades, it’s a genuinely new look—and in my excitement I completely broke my computer. It’s almost ten years old though, it was time for a new computer anyway. I just wanted to wait until more cash came in.

So, I’m stressed. But very happy with my brand new, shiny Macbook Air! Thank you Ben (who helped me and got a discount for me)!!

These are the flowers of my childhood. I see them and I go back to our house in Centerport, Long Island, when we lived in this beautiful wooded area filled with ponds and streams and these flowers (and others).

Bodhi, the tiny kitten who aspirated while I was feeding him is back from the hospital! With an infected eye which he probably got from the hospital and so he wouldn’t have gotten if it weren’t for me. But still! He’s alive! Oh thank God. I’m not sure how I would have handled it if he didn’t make it. One of the bottle babies I got later that day is not looking good. They warned us this is part of the job, but still. I hope I don’t come back on Sunday to learn he’s gone.

I had to feed Bodhi again of course, and I was scared, who wouldn’t be?? But it went well. He latched onto the bottle and I got to watch that blissful eyes-closed, ears twitching thing they do. (For the record, that kitten is being fed incorrectly. A kitten being bottle fed should not be on its back, but stomach down, like they would be if they were feeding from their mother. Not a criticism of the person in the video, who probably doesn’t know and was just doing their best to help a kitten.)

From street artist Hans Honschar, @honschar.