it’s what the internet runs on
Hi, I’m Zoe. Welcome back to Miss Misery.blog, where I post my weekly newsletter (which you can subscribe to for free!). How many issues deep are we now? Feels like twenty, maybe thirty? Regardless, I hope you brought your own beer.
Misery and Mystery, A Novel
I recently printed out a spiffy hard copy of my novel manuscript-in-progress at Office Depot. (Helpful tip for aspiring authors: you can do this for about eight bucks if you look up coupon codes and select the cheapest paper.) Here it is, in all its unfinished glory:
Exciting as it is to hold my manuscript in my hands, there’s still a lot of work left to do. I have quite a few color-coded margin notes to scribble. Plus, the final story will end up being about 10-12 chapters long, and right now it’s only 7.5.
Sometimes I wonder if I write stuff like these blog posts to procrastinate drafting the end of my book. But procrastiwriting™ is still writing, right?
Right?
Knitting
Every once in a while I start a project that isn’t a beanie. A few months ago, I took on the mammoth task of knitting a men’s extra-large sweater that looks like it’s wrapped up in an octopus’s tentacles. It’s supposed to look like this:
Awesome, isn’t it? But after buying out half the yarn shop for this knit, I’ve still barely scratched its surface. I suppose there’s no good reason why I haven’t worked on it; I think I’m just overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of precise stitching it requires.
The sweater was supposed to be a Christmas gift to my boyfriend, like, last year. To make it up to him, I’ve started a new project–a cowl this time, and appropriately autumn-themed for his Thanksgiving birthday.
I’ve made much more progress on the cowl than I did on the sweater, and I may actually have it done by Turkey Day. It’s the curse of the knitter to cast on six projects at once, only to finish (maybe) one of them. One reason I like making beanies is that I can usually finish them in a day or two, before I run out of steam. Remember, kids: instant gratification is a drug.
(If you’re interested in keeping your ears warm this winter, I have an Etsy.)
Kitty Corner
Last week I introduced you to my two cats. In this post I’ll spotlight the one and only, Queen of the Scratching Post, Breaker of Toys, Mother of Kittens: Yara!
Yara (A.K.A Yara Bo Barra, Big Bean, and The Large One) was about a year and a half old when my boyfriend adopted her from the Boulder Humane Society. This was several years before we started dating; I’m told she was quite the feisty little kitty at the time (although I’m skeptical, because now she mostly just takes up space). She had been a barn cat in her previous life and had just given birth to a healthy litter of kittens when my boyfriend found her.
“She was just… People would come by, and she was discounted. She was only ten dollars, because she was a barn cat, and she didn’t seem interested in people,” my boyfriend told me in an exclusive interview I just conducted in our living room. “But I just sat down and hung out for like half an hour. I didn’t pressure her, I didn’t make her come to me or anything like that. I just sat down. Eventually she came up, she was interested. I let her sniff my hand for a while, and then she was like, ‘Cool.’ Then she let me pet her, and then she sat on my lap. So it just took a while. It took some patience. It’s like how every dog is a good boy. You just gotta be patient.”
Now, Yara’s pastimes include sleeping in laundry baskets, being graceless, licking everything, and purring really loudly.
We love her a lot.
Shameless Self-Promotion
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Also, my Discord server is always inviting new members! Come hang out. We have (even more) cat pics.
Thanks for reading this week’s post, and remember to have empathy for your fellow humans today.
Miss Misery 