Recent Reads: Things Have Gotten A Little Bit Dirty

Radio silence, then two blog posts in a row?  I am on fire this week!

I have been reading/listening to a lot of books in 2016.  Partially, because I need something to pass the time on those 5 hour cross-country flights for work, and partially because I joined a book club.  I have to admit, I am not much of a joiner.  I generally don't like having commitments to places that I need to be (outside of work).  I like the freedom to plan my weekends as they approach.  However, my friend has been a member of this book club for eight years and was persistent that I come.  I was a little afraid that reading a book because someone said I had to would feel a little too much like school.  So far this has been a good experience, and I have met some interesting people.  We'll see if I still feel this way in a few months.

As you can tell from my reading list, I have recently discovered the author Penelope Ward, and have devoured everything she has written.  Her books fall under the "new adult" category, which comes after "young adult."  These books have all been juicy, fun reads, but definitely not for kids under the age of 18.

I finally read Will Grayson, Will Grayson (it was the last John Green book on my list), and I have to say, I really didn't care for it much.  The same can be said of Burnt Mountain, which had me all the way up until the final chapters, where is just fizzled out and died.

One of my favorite books listed here was The Basic Eight.  It was really well written, and the characters were well developed.  It had the kind of twist ending that you don't really see coming until right before it does.  I recommend reading the summary, if you want to get an idea for how amazing this read really was.  I also really enjoyed Pretty Girls (and the accompanying novella Blonde Hair, Blue Eyes).  They are the kind of books that scare you because you know that this kind of thing really happens.  Definitely not reading you should do right before you go to sleep.

Have you read any of the books on this list?  What's that last good book you have read?

A Little Bit of Surgery

*Taps mic*  Is this thing on?

I am not quite sure how so much time has passed since my last blog post.  April, August, hey, they both start with an A.  Maybe no one will notice?

For those of you that are keeping tabs on my dog situation, not much has really changed.  We did meet with a new behavioral specialist, and they gave us some great advice.  They also offered to put the dogs into their intensive behavioral modification program to try to make things better, but they couldn't guarantee anything would actually be better.  It was a very expensive program for no promise of returning to our old normal.  For now, that is on hold.  Somehow, we are managing in our "new normal."

Unfortunately, we did find a suspicious growth on this little knucklehead.  We had dealt with mast cell tumors before (Meatball had a major surgery to remove three before we moved to Atlanta).  So we took her to our vet, and they recommended removal.  I was super-terrified about the whole thing, since Petunia suffers from the occasional seizure, and I wasn't sure how going under would affect her. Luckily the operation was quick and without incident.

This is Petunia the night of.  She was a bit out of it, and really just wanted to snuggle under the covers and be alone.  She snapped back to her old hyper-active self a few days later, but it was hard to see her so uncomfortable.  She is usually very velcro dog, who needs to be under foot all of the time. Happily her need for alone time was short lived, and she is currently sleeping on my foot as I am writing this.

Her surgery wasn't quite a week ago, and we are waiting on the results of the biopsy.  In the meantime, she is getting lots of playtime and extra chewies.  I am also snuggling her a little bit harder these days.  I'll give another update once we know the results.