Off to spend the night in Southern Wisconsin to visit w/mom and my aunt. Absolute last minute, I decided to reserve a hotel room for the night so that I can do a chill meander home rather than head back after dinner. I have some errands I need to do in the Western suburbs, so this makes a certain level of sense. Also, I can sleep in without Wink being a dick.

Side note: I think we do need to pop Wink back up to the higher dose of steroids. She's vomited more and if I have to put up with her being hangry 24/7, I want her to be able to keep it down.

I've also caught up on my "reading goal" for the year. As mentioned, I'm having a bit of an issue reading much in the way of traditionally published stuff. I've been predominantly listening to audiobooks (13/15 books I've read this year have been audiobooks) and managed to speed through a couple last week.

I managed to finish one of the books that's been on my 'indefinite pause' shelf for quite a while, so yay for me! NGL, "Batavia's Graveyard" by Mike Dash is an absolute slog. Plus the last chapter's definition of psychopathic traits in people was... a bit much in the current climate. It's also a bracing reminder that the Netherlands were just as colonial-minded as the rest of Europe and just as shitty to people as England AND Spain AND Portugal AND Sweden.

I also sped through "Rebel Girl" by Kathleen Hanna. I was a smidge too young for the art/punk/music scene of the late 80's/early 90's, but very much came up in the aftermath. Hanna's life was a hard sit and the book is a hard read in some parts, but I did really enjoy the overall read. She's got a pretty specific voice and it was interesting to get more context in book form as I'd watched "The Punk Singer" a decade ago. It had been featured on a podcast I'd been listening to at the time (the documentary arm of "What Are You Doing Movie?" that ended in ~2015 or so?) and the editor was interviewed about the film. And I was so interested in the weird BTS stuff that I tracked down the movie. Anyway, good for Hanna. She's a person doing her best.

Now, due to road trip, I am back on my weird spirits history bullshit. Got "Bourbon Empire" on deck and it's apparently about how Bourbon got classified as a "It's made in the US if it's called bourbon!" drink. Like Champagne or Tequila, etc. I had zero idea that bourbon is corn-based, but this explains why my body tolerates it as an alcohol so well. Generally corn, rice, and and barley are my more tolerated carbs, while potato, wheat, juniper, and sugar cane are no bueno for me. TBF, I paid zero attention to alcohol for the first ~22 years of my life and am a Cider Person if I care about booze at all. I'll talk heritage apple varietals all damn day, but please miss me with still drinks, plz.

I'm also looking forward to tonight so I can make some progress on my fiction book. I'm reading "Lightning in her Hands" by Raquel Vasquez-Gilliand, which is the second of her adult romance series. I really do love this author a bunch (she's a poet and you can tell!), but this series is a bit of a hard sit for me. There's a whole lot of generational trauma here, but it's not a brand I feel super cathartic about? I have 100% been working through my daddy and personal issues with fanfic over the last few years, but this series does not fall into that "working through it" groove. Not to say it's a bad book! It's just with the character that I'm absolutely going to have the hardest time being sympathetic with/to for reasons that go opposite to my own damage. But! It's good for me to read challenging things! And I want to try and bop through it by the end of next week as that's when it's due.