An Adult Lives Here, I swear

Apparently, my family has reverted to celebrating the holidays in Southern California this year. My mom still lives there, so it makes some sense, but the only thing I like about Orange County is my family. Everything else (traffic, architecture, traffic, billboards, traffic, omg is it ugly down there, etc.) sucks.

Because I'd assumed we were staying up here, I didn't book space for my dog to board back in July, and now he's on the second page of the waiting list. I suspect there won't be that many cancellations. So... I'll probably have to take him with me. That means he'll probably spend a lot of time at my brother's place during the day, since my mom isn't really into having animals in the house. And I'll have to book a hotel that allows dogs.

Anyhow, that's more or less sorted, the fungus-ridden foster kittens will go back to the shelter until I return, and my petsitter is still in business and agreed to look after the rest of my pets.

Which means I need to clean up the house so it looks like an actual adult lives here.

I mean, I'm not a hoarder, but I really don't notice when stuff piles up. I have a stack of empty CSA boxes in the living room, and the dining table has plant repotting supplies. The dog crate in the living room is covered with stacks of junk mail. There are cobwebs everywhere.

None of this stuff bothers me until I have to make the place presentable for someone else. And I haven't really had anyone visit for three years.

Luckily I have a couple weeks to get it all under control. But it's good that I'm starting now...

Obligatory Picture

This is Christmassy, right?

Currently Reading

• I have a few hours left on the audiobook of Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia. Fingers crossed the book sticks the landing — I've been enjoying it so far.
  
  
• Just finished the advanced reader copy of Fangs a Million by Tammie Painter. If a cozy mystery set in a circus of unusual creatures in the 1920s sounds like your sort of thing, you should check out this series. It's a lot of fun!

Look what you've done! I'm melting!

I'm not a big fan of bathing adult cats. Kittens, yes — they get covered with disgusting crud on a regular basis, and a quick trip under the faucet is usually the best solution. And, of course, the ringworm kittens get bathed in lime sulfur twice every week. But healthy adult cats usually take care of themselves just fine.

However, Guido is 19 years old and his sister groomed him more (before she died) than he ever groomed himself. So I decided it was time.

If you ever find yourself in a position of needing to bathe a cat, I recommend the three litter box method.

(These aren't litter boxes, because I don't have three clean litter boxes sitting around. But if you're at any animal hospital or rescue, that's the best option. These tubs are a little too square.)

The cat gets soaped up in tub one, then rinsed in tub two, and rinsed again in tub three. Then it's into the towel and you're both glad it's over. This cuts down on the stress of having to constantly monitor water temperature, and you also don't have to worry about the sound of the rushing water bothering the cat.

After the bath, Guido did more grooming than he's done in the last year.

Obligatory Photo

These big tree ornaments are far better than the blow up dolls other people put on their lawns.

Oh, Hey, Speaking of the Holidays...

Do you read cozy mysteries? Ready to curl up with one for the holidays? Check out these indie books! My own novella, Death Trims the Tree (by Tess Baytree) is a part of the promo.

Christmas is here!

Ready to Sculpt

This year, my birthday gift from my mom (via the check she sent) was an online class on sculpting. (The polymer clay class here: https://verdantsculpts.thinkific.com/courses/polymer.)

I've never done any sculpting, and I'm not particularly good at any visual art, but what the heck, I've got #5 self-confidence, so sure, this is totally something I can do. (To be fair, the description does say the course is suitable for beginners, so I didn't just do my usual thing of skipping all the boring pre-requisites in order to fail spectacularly.)

This is how far I've gotten:

Guido was helping with the photo shoot. And by helping, I mean he refused to get out of the way. I fully expect the same level of help when I open the packages.

The instructor suggests watching all the videos first before starting, and for once, I'm following directions. This has been the progression so far:

1. Him: I'm not great at drawing, so I find a picture of the animal I'm going to do and start by tracing the shape at the finished size using tracing paper.
   Me: Holy cow, I can probably do this!
   
   
2. Him: Then I draw lines for the armature.
   Me: Still on board!
   
   
3. Him: Then I twist the wire into shape.
   Me: I think I can do that.
   
   
4. Him: Then I add a layer of epoxy clay to stiffen the armature.
   Me: Okay.
   
   
5. Him: Then I start building it up using Sculpey.
   Me: ... How did it suddenly start looking like a real animal? (I'm betting this is where mine completely goes off the rails.)
   
   
6. Him: And now I start adding details.
   Me: Holy cow. This is fun to watch. Mine will never end up like that, but this is really cool!

Anyhow, assuming the first four steps aren't harder than they look (which... they might be), I should get to step five before I create a horrific monster instead of the cute sculpture I'd intended.

I still have a couple more videos to watch before I begin, but this will be fun. And memorable, though possibly not in a good way.

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I do like all the leaves and berries falling from trees right now, even if they do make it harder to walk the dog.

Lemontina

Perhaps you've heard of a lemontini, aka the lemon drop, which is a vodka cocktail that has a lemon flavor. I'm not a big drinker so I've never had one, but it sounds pretty good.

That's not what we're talking about today. No, today's topic is the Lemontina. (Name courtesy of my friend Hilary, who doesn't have two kittens with ringworm living in her bathroom probably until the end of time.)

Please don't dunk me!

Her official name at the shelter is Tina. She was one of two unrelated kittens who came in with ringworm at about the same time. Keeping kittens separate is always sad — they end up poorly socialized and don't grasp the concept that biting others can hurt — so the shelter bundled them together to be fostered together.

Problem 1: Ringworm

Yeah. I knew that one going in. She had bald patches, though her other fur hid them pretty well.

Problem 2: Her right eye

I'd had her a couple days when I had the whole "one of these things is not like the other" thought. One eye was the normal kitten blue/green. The other eye was darker. Cats can have differently colored eyes, but I could also see a little wispiness on the cornea. And changes in the color of the iris can be a sign of uveitis, a form of inflammation that can often be caused by more systemic illness.

I was pretty sure this hadn't just happened because she wasn't squinting or showing any pain, and she could see just fine. In my defense, the kitten has ringworm, so I wasn't handling her as much. I felt better when I sent my "uh, is there something wrong with her eye?" email, and got back the response that nobody had noticed it in the shelter, but her eyes were different on her intake photo.

I was told the shelter's vet thinks it's a congenital abnormality.

Problem 3: Her weight

Margo was a week or two older than Tina, and a bit bigger, but they were close enough that it shouldn't have been a problem. Except then this happened:

This shows their daily weight in grams over the first week, Tina on the left, Margo on the right. Margo gained 210 grams. Tina gained 52 grams.

There was nothing obviously wrong with Tina — she ate and she had normal poop, but she just... didn't gain much weight. By the end of the second week, Margo was twice Tina's size.

Problem 4: Her leg

About that time, I was emailing the foster coordinator the latest update when I saw that Tina was only using three of her legs. I'm still not sure if Margo played a little too rough or if Tina got her leg caught on something, but she wouldn't put any weight on her right rear leg.

She's too small to safely anesthetize for x-rays, and too wiggly to get a diagnostic x-ray when she's awake. Plus, there's not a lot you can do to fix things at that age — a splint that slips can cause more harm than good.

I was told to keep her in a confined space, which was kind of funny since she's living in the bathtub and it doesn't get much more confined than that.

She's getting better! (Sorta)

I've had her for about two months now, and she's finally gaining weight. Her eye hasn't changed. Her leg is a little better, but I think there's probably some ligament damage — it's not slowing her down much, though. She can jump onto the top of the carrier now.

The only real problem at this point is the ringworm. Despite twice weekly lime sulfur dips and daily oral anti-fungal medicine, her last two ringworm cultures have come back positive. She needs two negative cultures in a row to be considered cured. That means she's here at least another month. In the last week she's developed a huge bald spot on her ear.

Fingers crossed she doesn't develop any new problems...

PSA: Lemontina Tina will be available for adoption someday from the Yolo County Animal Shelter. She's very sweet and maybe she's burned through all her bad luck and will have no medical problems ever again! She could be your perfect companion!

Obligatory Photo

Hello, turkeys!

Empathy, My A**

Oh, look, I'm back for day two of Holidailies and I've had sleep AND a bunch of tea, so I'm not just giving away exclamation points today — no, you have to earn them.

(Rereading that sentence, I have no idea what that means. Perhaps I am a little overly caffeinated? Just roll with it.)

The topic of the day is Clifton Strengths; specifically, my top five.

What are the Clifton Strengths?

That's a trick question because I think they're actually the Gallup Strengths now. But anyhow, there are 37 personality traits (aka, strengths). You take a quiz and at the end of it, you have the trait list in the order that you have them, from strongest to weakest. The idea behind it all is that you should lean into your strengths instead of trying to follow a process that depends on your weakest traits.

They also clump the strengths into four categories (executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic thinking).

Is this just astrology with a gilding of pseudoscience?

I mean... maybe, a little? But also, it's not like any one strength is better than any other. And I know I, a person who lives alone in my house with three cats, am definitely stronger at analyzing things (aka, strategic thinking) than relationship building.

So there may be a bit of woowoo in this, but there are also some practical tips for each strength that can help people juice it up.

Who uses this?

I'm guessing big companies, because they love to spend money on shit like this instead of just getting rid of half the management and giving people higher salaries.

But also, writers. Becca Syme has built an empire out of this. Her courses have become so popular in indie writing circles that there's a drinking game involving writing podcasts mentioning Clifton Strengths. Listening to any two podcasts in a row would probably send me to the hospital.

Can this be used for evil?

Probably. After all, big companies use it. That's a sign.

Go ahead, list your top 5 for people to skip over:

1. Empathy (???)
2. Intellection (introspective, need time to think about stuff)
3. Maximizer (like taking good to great instead of meh to good)
4. Learner (the process of learning, not the outcome, is the goal)
5. Self-Assurance (feel confident in their ability to take risks and manage their own lives)

What the hell is "empathy" doing at the top spot?

Right? But apparently being able to sense people's bad moods makes you score high in empathy even if all you do is turn around and leave.

Have all high learner people amassed as many useless degrees?

I don't know, but I bet most of the people with engineering and veterinary degrees probably have learner in the top 10 because there's no other way to explain it.

Is high self-assurance why you make such a terrible employee?

Almost certainly. I hate having other people tell me what to do.

What useful writing tips are there for your top 5?

I'm currently getting the most out of the intellection stuff. Instead of always listening to podcasts or audiobooks when I'm walking the dog, now I listen to silence or ambient music so I can think about what happens next in whatever I'm writing. And instead of waking up by checking my email, I think about what I'm going to write next.

I also had a book recommendation: Creating Character Arcs by K.M. Weiland which I'll be looking into this month. (I started reading it at the beginning of November, but I couldn't do NaNoWriMo and the exercises in the book at the same time.)

Seriously, though, empathy?

Yeah, whatever.

Obligatory Photo

This is the super friendly cat that lives by the park I pass on my walk. He loves people. He loves dogs. He loves everything. I had a hard time taking a photo because he wanted to rub all over me. He has an excessive number of toes.

Welcome to December!

It's time for Holidailies again, during which I dust off the blog and write an entry every day through January 1st.

I'm feeling a little foggy today because

1. National Novel Writing Month just finished yesterday, and
2. My 65# dog developed a urinary tract infection and woke me up every hour last night to go outside.

Basically, I'm too old for those things to happen simultaneously, so here are a bunch of exclamation points for you to add anywhere you think this blog post needs more excitement: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Feel free to use them all.

About Me

Call me Theresa. I'm currently a full-time author (SF/F as T.M. Baumgartner, cozy mysteries as Tess Baytree, and one website for both because I'm lazy). If you read those genres and want to check out my books, great! (I added that exclamation point for you as an example.) If not, don't feel awkward. It's fine, I promise.

I also foster kittens for the Yolo County Animal Shelter. Right now, I have two kittens (Margo & Tina) who have ringworm. Fingers crossed it clears up soon because they are tired of living in the easily-cleaned-and-bleached tub. Here's a link to the kitten cam: https://www.twitch.tv/tm_baumgartner

I'm also a municipal liaison for National Novel Writing Month, which sounds like more work than it really is. Basically, I cheer writers on and try to have write-ins at venues that aren't randomly closed at the time we've scheduled to meet there. (This is a bigger problem than you might expect.)

My Pets

Let's face it. They're far more interesting than I am. Ordered by descending age:

1. Freeway - the 20-something cockatiel. Likes to chirp loudly when I'm on the phone.
2. Guido - 19-year-old cat. He's reached the screaming houseplant stage of his life, when he mostly sleeps, I make sure he has enough water, and every once in a while he springs to life and howls his opinions about whatever he's mad about. (Long-time cat owners know this stage well.)
   He has lymphoma (of course) and may not be around much longer, but who knows? He's had lymphoma for four years and he's still here. I love this little jerk.
3. Georgie - 10(?)-year-old dog. The one who kept me up all night. Aside from that, he's a good boy. He's also just stupid enough that I can mold cheese around his antibiotic capsules while he watches, and he's still excited that I'm giving him cheese. Let's hear it for dogs that aren't rocket scientists.
4. Gin - 3.5-year-old feral cat. She lives in the house, but I can't get near her.
5. Tonic - 3-year-old feral cat. He's Gin's son. To him, I am the devil. Luckily the house is big enough for the ferals to avoid me. They seem reasonably happy.

Plans for Holidailies

I have a list which is six topics long and I've just used one. So this will probably get random pretty quickly. I mean, one year I blogged about things in my hotel room, so this isn't unprecedented. If that scares you off, godspeed, my friend.

I'll probably talk a bit of indie author shop and maybe play around with the 3D modeling program. Plus, I'm taking a sculpture class — no, I've never sculpted before, so this will likely be a complete disaster, aka perfect for blogging.

Obligatory Picture

Random sight from a walk in my neighborhood. Click on it to make it bigger. It's kind of cool.

Holiday Gift Guide

Background

I signed up for the Amazon affiliate program a while back for writing/marketing reasons. In case you're not familiar with it, if you click on a link and buy something at amazon, the person who created the link may get a few cents. (It doesn't change the price the end user pays.)

Every month Amazon tells me I didn't make enough for them to bother transferring money to my account.

From time to time Amazon sends me mail full of things they think I should tell my millions of followers to buy, as if I have a lifestyle blog showcasing articles like "10 Patio Umbrellas to Match the New Season". Their suggestions are pretty ridiculous.

But this seems like something to be mined for comedy gold. So I'm going to write the article they think I should be writing with their category suggestions... except with things that I would buy.

Once again, these are all affiliate links. If you click on them and buy something, I might get a commission. But it's not enough money to really get excited about.

Customer-Favorite Gifts

Some people hate them, but I got this air fryer for Christmas and I use it nearly every day, for everything from homemade pizza to fried tofu. But wait, you say. Isn't this just a small convection oven? Yes. Yes, it is. But I don't have a convection oven and this thing is the perfect size if you live alone. https://amzn.to/3V3ZQbJ

Electronic Gifts

This is the camera I bought for the kitten cam (https://www.twitch.tv/tm_baumgartner). My current kittens are a bunch of hooligans — I finally had to mount the camera on a weighted box so they would stop knocking it over. I've already gotten far more than $35 of entertainment out of this. https://amzn.to/3ElsVt1

The other thing I bought recently was this alarm clock that gradually lights up the room. I was too cheap to pay for the expensive brand, but this is better than nothing. Be warned — the user interface is horrendous. If you can get past that, it's useful. Because getting up when it's dark outside is bullshit. https://amzn.to/3C9cFJb

Fashion Gifts

This category... I'm just going to lean into my status as a crazy cat lady / kitten foster. That's fashion, right?

I love this cat litter. And it's easier to pay for someone else to carry 40# to the door instead of hauling it across my yard from the garage myself. https://amzn.to/3CdYWAC

I absolutely would buy this at the grocery store if my grocery store reliably stocked it. The 19-year-old cat finds dry food too much effort, so canned food it is! https://amzn.to/3SFsAG7

For those kittens that are supposedly weaned but don't seem to be eating, chicken baby food works like magic. Plus, it can be loaded into a syringe if necessary. https://amzn.to/3V9aXjJ

Beauty Gifts

Got me here. I don't use much that qualifies. Oh wait, here, does this count?

B12 gummies. Think about it if you're a vegetarian. https://amzn.to/3ECpPBp

Home Gifts

Furniture in my house is mostly just for the animals even if it didn't start out that way. But I did buy a big magnetic whiteboard recently, and it... seems to be working? I put my weekly tasks on there and it helps me remember I'm supposed to do them. https://amzn.to/3SHKoQL

Toys Gifts For Everyone [sic]

Books are pretty much the only things I buy for myself in the entertainment category. (So go buy my books!) But I bought these for the cats...

Springs! Cats love them. Kittens love them. One person recommended getting two bags in her review and she probably has the right idea because they fit under the couch. Whoever cleans out my house after I die will probably find 50 of them. (Springs, not kittens.) https://amzn.to/3fJt67l

Summary

Did I do the capitalism right?