For starters, because the world really feels awfully grim on the regular these days, it is important to laugh. As such, I beseech you to read this Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America. Now, I actually love birds and enjoy watching them every day. But this is HILARIOUS. It's like the Williams-Sonoma Hater's Guide but for birders. It took me about five tries and more than twenty minutes to make it the whole way through because I was laughing so hard I was wheezing and crying. I am not kidding! It really picks up on bird 3, the white-breasted Butt Nugget, so don't sell yourself short by quitting early.

It is also important to share love and peace in all ways possible as often as possible, because doing so is a helpful counter to wanting to make targets from approximately twenty politician's photographs each day and then play many rounds of darts. I present my love and peace pie. We ate it in less than a day which says something both about how much we needed such positivity and also about how good pie pretty much always is.

Nutmeg came home with a bloody paw earlier this week, and after a limp emerged a couple days later, I made an appointment with the vet. Poor love got his paw stuck somewhere and ripped a nail clean off in getting free. Because cat nails grow directly from the bone, the trauma of the nail loss broke or fractured his toe. You would never have known by how composed and wonderful he continued to be. I swear he feels this cast is worse than the limp. :(

Look at his whiskers shooting forth from the cone of shame. Sad.

Fortunately, he hasn't even tried to sniff his bandage so he does not have to wear his cone anymore. It's really the saddest, most pitiful accessory. He could not access his food with it on and obviously felt his balance was terribly off.

We have taken to calling him Peg Leg Nut, and I have carried him like a baby pretty much exclusively since the cast was put on because his hobble is too depressing to watch. I even slept downstairs with him last night as I didn't want to worry about him trying to get upstairs to find us. And what if he needed anything?

I have taken to calling myself CAT LADY.