Showing up for the Dead: A review of "From Here to Eternity"

The publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, provided me with a free, advanced copy of this book for

Now that's a good cover!

review.

Caitlin Doughty is one of those writers (one of those people in general) who in my eyes can do no wrong. I am a Caitlin Doughty fangirl. Telling people you are a fan of an author is a sentiment easier to convey rather than exclaiming: "I'm a big fan of books about death and dying!" Let me tell you: admissions like that don't often land well in conversation.

Other admissions that don't sit well:
Acquaintance: "Hey, what are you reading and giggling about over there at the lunch table?"
Me: "A research facility in North Carolina that is composting donor bodies."

*crickets* 

Sugar Detox Day 5: The Teeth Gnashing and the Rage

Today is Day 5 on a 21 Day Sugar Detox.

I hate the word "detox." This sugar detox is also no carb, low carb whatever I don't even know

Do you see these snacks? I can't have any of these snacks.

anymore because I have a headache. A headache they say will go away by Day 5. That's nice. My headache started on Day 5. You know what would fix that headache? SOME CARBS!

Oh, did you like carbs? Did you spend the last seven years cleaning up your diet so the only cracker you can eat is a Triscuit?  Because a Triscuit only has three ingredients and no HFCS.

Sorry. None of that here!

How about a tortilla?  Can I have that?

Nope!

You can have guacamole! BUT NOT TORTILLA CHIPS! Well, wtf? Am I suppose to just eat the guacamole straight out of the bowl with my hands? You can have kale chips! *death stare*

I swear someone needs to invent one of these detoxes for a Mexican.

A First Novel

The other day I was updating my "To Be Read" (or TBR, as my fellow book addicts call it) list with a book from an author I thought I had read before. The title of his first novel sounded familiar so I popped over to Amazon to check if I had read it.

What follows is the description for the book:

"A Scandinavian tourist visiting a small, often-overlooked Greek island encounters a community bound by religion, ritual, and superstition, and everyone involved is transformed by the experience. A first novel."

I noted on my Fb that this description did not help me at all to remember. Furthermore, what is with that little "A first novel." tacked there on the end?  Is it an apology? Because you know how first novels can be sometimes.

How Target Became My Happy Place

Target used to be just a place to me.

It was a place my brothers and I went when we were bored: "Hey, you want to go poke around at

A future TargetExpress. Now you can live even closer to a Target than I do!

Target?" and it was a place to buy toilet paper and toothpaste.  Over the years they have undergone major re-branding and are now the go-to shop of basic bitches everywhere. But I missed a lot of those years (and designer capsule collections) when we moved to Ohio.