It has now been over 9 months since we adopted our little kitten Tywin! Can you believe it? I thought I'd use this post to share life lessons I've extracted from having him around:

1. Nap anywhere you'd like, whenever you'd like.

 Cats don't beat themselves up for taking naps. They don't lament the could-have-been productive hours spent chasing z's. They don't awake from their slumber with a sense of guilt, admonishing themselves for midday laziness. They just sleep. 

(In this pic, he's sleeping on my legs that are wrapped in a blanket)

2. Anything is a toy once you set your mind to it.

If you are an indoor cat (as Tywin is), you're entire life is, really, quite confined. You don't get to gallivant around Europe backpacking with your boyfriend. You don't get to try a new restaurant every weekend. I mean, really, you don't even get to catch the birds you longingly watch out the window. But, that doesn't stop you from making the most of your surroundings. A shoe string? A toy! A nectarine? A toy! Behind the toilet? A place to explore! A box? A new piece of furniture!

If only I could view slight changes to my environment with as much enthusiasm.

3. Cats don't have body images issues.

Cats do not look in the mirror and immediately start to pick apart their own appearance. In fact, cats don't really understand the concept of mirrors, from my experience. They do not count the calories of their dry food, or turn down any offered treats. They don't get mad at themselves for eating an astronomical amount of wet food (really, I didn't mean to give him that much that one time). Cats just eat.

Well, it's seeming I'm hitting the critical limit of sharing too many cat pictures in a single post—so I'm going to share two more and call it a day. If you're considering adopting a cat, I highly recommend it. Also, if you're in Madison, feel free to email me. I volunteer at a shelter so could help you out (I am a big fan of #adoptdontshop)!

Happy Thursday, friends! xx

p.s. Still hungry for more cat pics? Here's my 2 week update (he was tiny!) and my 2 Month Update.

My new favorite funny website: FONY

As you hopefully have picked up by now with your incredible deductive reasoning skills, I love my cat, Tywin. Since adopting him with my boyfriend in October, I've grown increasingly obsessed with him.

Now, I'll refrain from launching into a diatribe on why cats > dogs (Umm....#1 you have to take dogs OUTSIDE? It's like negative 19 degrees out there, you guys! I'm not going out there unless the apartment building catches fire, and even then I'll probably savor the warmth and only relocate when a muscular* fireman carries me out.)

*From a practical standpoint, he'd have to be muscular. 

I'm many things, but "dainty" isn't one of them.

But, I actually believe being a dog person and being a cat person is NOT mutually exclusive. Same goes for being an elephant person or a donkey person...why can't we all get along?*

*you may notice I'm a bit of an idealist. :)

Regardless of where you stand on the polarizing cat/dog issue, I'm hoping we can agree on this: My new favorite website, Felines of New York, is hilarious. An example post:

The Humans of New York posts have consistently been my favorite thing on my facebook newsfeed and now there's a new contender with FONY! FONY also has a facebook page & instagram.

Follow along, since everyone needs a laugh, cat person or not.

But, fair warning, if you spend too much time looking at cat pics online, your cat might get all emo and jealous:

p.s. Another funny tumblr, just for kicks.

Wednesday Wordplay: Work Hard, Complain Harder

I have a confession to make: I am incredibly self-conscious about my limited vocabulary. I actually never really worried about it until about half-way through my 3-year career as a software implementer (being an English major in college didn't phase me.) Until my job, I had never met so many people with such expansive vocabularies. Sure, there were a few co-workers who "word dropped" aka intentionally used a bigger word than necessary to flaunt (or somehow prove) their alleged intelligence. But not most people. Most of my co-workers just naturally spoke at a much higher reading level than I do.

Someone saying "I made an ostensibly innocuous change in the system that ended up corrupting thousands of records" was commonplace.*

These sentences had me scrambling to google words that I didn't know how spell. I do the same thing when I read - constantly googling words to get definitions. I then screenshot the words. My phone (out of storage!) is filled with words I don't know, that I'm trying to learn. I have to choose which screenshot to delete every time I want to take a cat picture.

Life truly is full of difficult choices, you guys.

When Tywin hears the vacuum in the hallway. All business.

But I haven't really been retaining much, and I want to prove that even though I'm now on the wrong side of 25 I'm still capable of learning words. (Especially since I'm aspiring to be a writer - my vocabulary bothers me a lot!) I know if I blog about words I'll remember them. I essentially remember every sentence I've ever typed on this website. I can quote blog posts I wrote nearly 4 years ago.**

So, this Wednesday Wordplay series is for me to learn, but if you want to follow along, you may learn something too! Just don't make fun of me if my words are SO easy that you can't believe I need to learn them. Baby steps! We all have our strengths and weaknesses. I'm really good at getting lost in cities and complaining about business travel, for example.

This week's theme: words to improve your complaints about work. We all know part of having a job is complaining about said job. These five words will help you relish in complaining (just remember to complain out loud amongst friends not online in writing amongst potential employers.)

1. Insufferable: adjective. Not to be endured; intolerable; unbearable.

Don't say "That meeting sucked" say "That meeting was insufferable." Your co-worker who is so rude you can't stand being around him isn't a moron. He's an insufferable moron.

2. Inveterate: adjective. 1. Settled or confirmed in a habit, practice, feeling, or the like. 2. Firmly established by long continuance, as a disease, habit, practice, feeling, etc.; chronic.

Is your boss a misogynist? No, he's an inveterate misogynist. (I've never had a misogynistic boss who was stuck in his ways, but if I did, he would deserve this powerful adjective.) Timmy has the inveterate habit of oversleeping and coming in late to work.

3. Screed: noun. 1. A long discourse or essay, especially a diatribe.

Google says "a long speech or piece of writing, typically one regarded as tedious." (dictionary.com and Google don't exactly matched up.)

(Note: this word also has many alternate definitions regarding Building/Construction, but I don't care about those ones.)

Did anyone read that screed the boss emailed us yesterday? The meeting only got worse when Tony launched into a political screed that was totally off-topic.

4. Milquetoast: noun. 1. A very timid, unassertive, spineless person, especially one who is easily dominated or intimidated.

If John wasn't such a milquetoast he wouldn't get so much work dumped on him.

5. Defenestrate: verb (used with an object). 1. To throw (a person or thing) out of a window.

Susan's presentation made me want to defenestrate my laptop. Alex's presentation made me want to defenestrate him.

That's all for today! I hope complaining about the work week just got a little more enjoyable. :)

--

p.s. Since complaining about work is a universal bond (like smiling), I wrote this piece for Thought Catalog: The 5 Types of Annoying People in Meetings

p.p.s. "Complain Harder" Image above from unspirational instagram - follow along for a good laugh. Cat pic from my instagram - follow along for a good cat picture!

p.p.p.s. I can't believe how worried I am about using a word incorrectly in those sentences :) Just let me know, I'm obviously just trying to learn!

*For legal reasons, I should say that just the large, impressively spoken words are common place, not the record corruption.
**But I don't because I get that no one cares. :)

3 (more) Memoirs to Add to Your Bookshelf

...or should I say burgeoning memoir collection? First off, thanks for all the recommendations after my 3 Memoirs to Add to Your Bookshelf post. The recommendations I received fell into 2 distinct categories: funny or very, very serious. I chose to read some funny ones first, but am equally looking forward to tackling some of the deeper reads.

So the theme of this post: funny memoirs written by successful women in show business. What could be better? 

1. Bossypants by Tina Fey

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This is a must-read. Fey inspires all with her incredible story–from growing up near Philadelphia, to commuting on the L to work at the YMCA outside of Chicago, to getting her start on Second City, to SNL, to 30 Rock and more. She shares honest insights about motherhood (and pressure from outsiders to have baby #2) which are refreshing. Throughout the whole book, her heartfelt accounts make her seem so down-to-earth. (Fun fact: Tina Fey doesn't have her driver's license.)

My favorite piece of career advice from Tina:

"My unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism, or ageism, or lookism, or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: "Is this person in between me and what I want to do?" If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you're in charge, don't hire the people who were jerky to you." Amen.

Pro Tip: If your company gives you money to buy "Professional Development" books (no idea which company I'm alluding to) I've heard you can get this one approved. If you've already read it, it makes a perfect Christmas gift for a sister, mom, or girlfriend in your life. Because everyone knows Professional Development money is best spent on others.

2. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

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Mindy is younger than Tina (so doesn't have motherhood aspects), but traces her story from childhood embarrassments to her Dartmouth days, to barely-getting-by in Brooklyn, through breaking into the comedy scene. I found many of Mindy's passages hysterical and earnest.

She did have a few chapters that I felt were kind of "fillers." Example, we'd be tracing the story of her struggling in Brooklyn and suddenly: a chapter on her feelings about proper karaoke etiquette. But some of these more conversational chapters (that didn't really move along the "plot-line") were pretty hilarious. The "Types of Women in Romantic Comedies Who Are Not Real"chapter was dead-on, where she compares romantic comedies flicks to sci-fi movies (existing in an alternate (but still enjoyable) world) And she did have an entire (albeit short) chapter entitled "Why Do Men Put Their Shoes on So Slowly?" which is a question I've been pondering myself for many years now. I'd read Bossypants first, but this second. We can't all be Tina Fey, and I think Mindy has a long, successful comedy career ahead of her.

Fun note: Tina and Mindy BOTH have chapters on the horrors of magazine photo shoots. So if you've ever had fantasies about being shot for the cover of a mag (and you're not a size 0), I'd recommend reading at least those chapters and squashing said fantasies.

3. Seriously...I'm Kidding by Ellen DeGeneres

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This book was a little less memoir (not a lot of details from Ms. DeGeneres' life, unfortunately) and a little more "series of funny blog posts (a la karaoke chapter from Mindy's book.) But, in true DeGeneres style, some of the chapters were laugh-out-loud funny. Quite literally. I read this on the plane rides from San Fran to Madison, and was actually laughing out loud in my seat. Oops.

Just like on her talk show, DeGeneres manages to be funny without being vulgar. I always find that so impressive (it's not an easy feat.) This was probably my least favorite of the three, only because I wanted more actual life information about beloved Ellen. She did go into her thoughts on being an American Idol judge and mentioned she is from Louisiana (I had no idea!) This book is more of a "if you want to laugh on an airplane" read than a "must read" -- but it's still better than the trashy mag you were going to read.

And you thought you'd make it through a whole post without a picture of Tywin.

What are you reading now? I'm really enjoying A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. It's a throwback about a family living in poverty in Brooklyn in 1912, but so fascinating. (The poor immigrant family lives in the same (now-nice) neighborhood that Mindy Kaling couldn't afford to move to when she moved to NYC -- what are the chances?)  For my next memoir I'm thinking of checking out the (much) more serious Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Chang. Lena Dunham's Not that Kind of Girl and B.J. Novak's One More Thing are also on my short-list, since I was lucky enough to get both of them for my birthday :) Hope everyone has a great Monday!