Why I like your Instagram feed

There are a lot of articles and blog posts out there about Instagram and how to use it. How I use Instagram is by posting photos that make me happy or that make me laugh or that show what I'm doing at the time or offer commentary on it, so I can't really help you on how best to use it to achieve Internets fame and I don't want to. When I'm reading those posts, I never see any of the reasons I personally really enjoy someone's Instagram, so I thought I'd list them here. I like your Instagram feed because...

1. There's color! I love photos that are a riot of color.

2. You show me your dogs, cats, and kids doing cute things. Not your dogs, cats, and kids doing cute things with very little difference between the photo you justthisminute posted and the photo you posted of your dog, cat, or kid doing that cute thing 30 seconds ago.

3. Your photo depicts what you're doing right now, not what you did last night or yesterday. Because it is INSTA-gram, not Sometime Later Whenever I Feel Like It-gram. This doesn't count if you're on vacation with no Wifi. By all means, latergram away once you get back in the zone. It obviously doesn't count for quotes and photos you're using to advertise a blog post or a sale or a charity event either.

4. You recognize vacations as a great opportunity to over-gram. I want to know if I might want to put your vacation spot on my places to go list. I can't know that if you don't show me what a great time you're having on vacation.

5. You don't gather a bunch of items together that are unrelated to each other or your caption, photograph them, and share them as if you have that stuff just laying around in proximity to you while you're taking a photo. I don't really have anything to follow this up with because I seriously don't get why this is being done.

6. You see value in landscapes. Deserts, beaches, open road, lakes, ponds, ocean, national parks, fields, mountains...just nature as you see it, whatever's in front of you. We had no cameras to shoot the landscape is no longer a thing. Show me the beautiful world around you and I will love you forever.

7. You keep the hashtags under 10. The unflattering term hashtag whore exists for a reason.

8. When you participate in throwback Thursday, you actually throw that shit back to years ago. Not like two weeks or six months ago.

9. You share urban scenes. Specifically street art or abandoned buildings or great viewpoints. I dig it.

10. You show me your real life. Not a life you think someone wants to see or a life that's curated or a life that will make you popular on the internet...but your actual life. Sometimes it's neat in the background and sometimes it's not. Sometimes you look smashing and sometimes you look like you just clawed your way through a bitch of a Tuesday. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's complain-y. The accounts I love best always reflect the personality of their owners.

What do you love to see on Instagram?

Happy birthday to my fabulous sister-in-law. Love you Aub!

Show Us Your Books - What I Read in December

New Year, same book link up. New button on the right sidebar if you're interested.

What have you been reading? Lay it on me!

Linkup Guidelines:

This link up happens the second Tuesday of every month.

The next one is Tuesday, February 9, 2016. 

1. Please visit and comment with both of your hosts, Jana & me
2. Please display the button (need it? let me know) or link back to us on your blog post
2. Please visit a few other blogs who've linked up and get some book talk going!

Here's what I read since the last linkup. 

Engrossing Reads

The Girl With a Clock for a Heart by Peter Swanson - My second Swanson novel of 2015. Similar to the first one (The Kind Worth Killing), the end was sort of like the balloon lost its air suddenly. Regardless, I enjoyed this and gobbled it up, frequently wishing I was home reading instead of doing whatever I was doing.

Hidden Bodies (You #2) by Caroline Kepnes - All year I've been pining for this advanced copy of the second book in the You series. The first time it came out, I wasn't really using Netgalley. Well, they re-released it, which I found out because I was on there trying to find out who the publisher was so I could stalk them in true Joe style and get me a copy. It did not disappoint. I still liked the psychotic Joe. He's still psychotic. It was like visiting a fucking crazy old friend. Like oh that crazy Joe - still the same psycho! Joe was just as funny as the first time around, but the shock factor had worn off and it was just like living life alongside Joe. Which is psychotic, but really, really interesting. He's one of my favorite characters.

Black-Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin - I sort of slowly rolled into this book, then all of the sudden the one day, all day, I wished I was home finishing this book. When I was at work and out at night, I was like damn I wish I was reading Black-Eyed Susans right now. And that's what I did that night, stayed up too late on a school night to finish it. There were some holes and weird things, but overall I really enjoyed it and the people in it. It was interesting.

Passed the Time Just Fine

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh - I spent much of my time reading this waiting for something that was surely going to happen soon...and did not. The actual action is quite abrupt and close to the end. This is absolutely a character study, and not a bad one, but I was looking for more of a story.

Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave - I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would. It had some annoying shit that I hate in books - the female lead is painted as overly emotional and unable to see her own path, blah blah bullshit - but I liked it anyway.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff - Given that her novel Arcadia ranked as one of my 10 top books of 2015, I thought I'd love this. I liked it, and liked the second half much better than the first, but I think girlfriend fell victim to some overwriting here. Don't get me wrong - the writing was lovely, but sometimes the story got lost in the quest for the turn of phrase. It turns me off when that happens.

The Family by Marissa Kennerson - Thanks to Karen for this title, given my love of cult books. I found this a little scary and intensely interesting but the ending pissed me off. A lot. And I typically don't have problems with how authors choose to end their tales but this was like what?

The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin - It was beautifully written. It was evocative. I really enjoyed Talmadge. But the plot seemed to take a backseat to the characters and the prose, neither of which were enough to catapult it into greatness for me. It was good. I won't remember it by the end of the year. 

Hard No
No hard nos, per se, but I did start and stop a few books. Some I will go back to, like the next Anna Curtis novel by Allison Leotta, some I might go back, and some couldn't hold my attention past four pages so they might be in the wind forever. 

Non-bloggers, what have you read recently? Let me know what you recommend and what to stay away from. Bloggers, link up your posts below.

An InLinkz Link-up

TWTW - the one where I wanted to be totally lazy but was only a littlelazy

I was supposed to stop at the grocery store on the way home on Friday, but when I got in my car after getting off the train, I was just dunzo. There was much teeth gnashing and hand wringing because I didn't place an order in time for delivery. MFD to the rescue - he hit Target and Giant for me and brought flowers home to boot while I laid on the couch and did nothing with the dogs.

Saturday I met Melissa at the train station and we headed to NYC for Kim's baby shower. It was a nice afternoon with my lady friends of 20+ years complete with inappropriate behavior involving worry dolls. Melissa and I enjoyed a refreshing walk back to Penn Station from Pete's Tavern in Gramercy and made the train home in perfect time.

When I got home, I felt like doing absolutely nothing. I did rally to make a pan of brownies and a scaled down version of cold taco dip for Sunday.

Sunday dawned gray and rainy. I lingered in bed and over coffee before getting my shit together and heading out to Produce Junction. Weekly food prep included egg muffins with green onion, gouda cheese, and tomato for breakfasts; salads for lunch; veggies for snacks; and scrambled eggs and poop soup (ground beef, blueberries, carrots, zucchini, sweet potato, shiitake mushrooms, and coconut oil this week) for the dogs.

MFD's family came over for dinner Sunday. I made pulled pork and pulled buffalo chicken (served on kaisers) and a big green salad along with the taco dip and brownies above and (not pictured) veggie dip. MFD made two pans of macaroni and cheese. Notice him smiling big? It's not because he's proud of his mac and cheese, although he was. He got his temporary caps on his teeth on Saturday. He will no longer be a closed mouth smiler.

Other Sunday things: wearing flip flops and airing out the house in the afternoon on January 10 even though it was absolutely freezing by 7 p.m. This weather is bananas. I used some Amazon giftcards to purchase things for our upcoming trip, and shopped Christa's Scentsy party. Yes, I did take the easy way out and snap photos of my computer screen in lieu of finding cleaner images.

And Geege had dinareena while the family was over.

And after asking for advice on removing gel nail polish at home, I picked it off like an a-hole.

And JLo looked fierce AF at the Golden Globes.

And were you ordering sun hats and bathing suits online and emailing South African drivers at 1:30 am? No? Just me? Please pass the coffee.

And that is the weekend that was. How was yours? This morning I woke up with a fever. Something's been going around my office. A little over a week until vacation. I need to kick this. Elderberry extract, tea, and oregano essential oil all the live long day up in here.

Tomorrow, we talk books. See you here for that.

Linking up with Biana at B Loved Boston for Weekending

Friday Five: People I don't know who make my life better

I could complete a 50 page paper in under five minutes on people who make my life harder and more annoying, but today is Friday and I will turn on the vitamin D lamps instead. Here are some people I don't know know who make my life better:

1. My morning train conductor. His name is Sean and he's the best. Personable, professional, and always there with a greeting, but best of all when SEPTA is fucking up, Sean gives it to you straight instead of not announcing what's going on. If the train was late he even gets on the PA system after every stop to tell all the new people why it was late. Communication goes a long way.

2. My friends at the Dunkin Donuts on 16th & JFK. I go there every morning. I never have to order, they know me and what I want. When someone new starts as cashier and asks me what I want, everyone else chimes in over me. We exchange pleasantries. I head to my office with a smile every day.

3. People who know and practice public transportation etiquette. They respect your space, don't clip their toenails on the train, know you don't give a shit about their one sided cell phone conversation, let the people sitting in the seats ahead of them out when the train stops instead of rushing out like they are very busy and important like the President of the United States heading to the War Room for a Defcon Whatever Number is Most Critical meeting.

4. People with great big uninhibited laughs. I don't have to even be looking at someone who has a great laugh to smile when I hear it. You're having a good time? Something is funny? I love it. Laugh it out.

5. Curtis, the shuttle bus driver at the park & ride. Also known as the friendliest man ever. He greets everyone effusively and considers them a friend immediately. Even if my day has sucked, I have to smile when I see Curtis grinning from the driver's seat, crowing, "Hellooooooooo young lady! How was your day? My friend my friend, come on up!!"

What relative strangers fill these five slots in your life?

Thursday Thoughts: Mine are not together yet, but carry on.

1. I usually start the new year with my poop in a pile ready to get down to business. As discussed yesterday, in the opening week of this year my poop is more like a Jackson Pollock painting. I've been holding my planner in a kung fu grip so I can get my shit together before vacation in a few weeks.

Via 

2. Last weekend we went to the shore to take pics of the house so we could list it on VRBO. If you know someone who's looking to rent in the southern Jersey Shore region, specifically in Ocean City, please share the link with them. Thank you! Outtake: MFD also decided to winterize it...and turned the water off before he told me he was winterizing it. Then as soon as I found out the water was off, I had to go to the bathroom because that is always the way.

3. Countdown to Africa: 12 days. This week I got a typhoid shot and picked up my prescription for malaria and cipro. And fought with MFD about if we needed a yellow fever shot or not. He says no, I say why not. So if all you see from Africa is photos of us being detained in the airport, you know who to blame. Just kidding, the CDC agrees with him. People who have survived 14 hour flights - please share your tips! And drinking booze and taking pills don't count. If you have noise cancelling headphones that didn't cost an arm and a leg, hook a sister up with a link please.

4. Did I tell you guys I got a bluetooth type device that is going to tell me where my keys are every time I lose them? Stay tuned to see if this works. I really need it to work based on all the key fuckery that I subject myself to.

5. Just a reminder as we start a new year:

6. So I broke my gel nails on vacation only rule and got them over Christmas. Now I want to take them off and I have to do it at home so I'm avoiding it. People who remove at home, any tips?

7. I finished Making a Murderer this week. I have some opinions about innocence in regards to these two subjects of the docuseries, but most of the takeaway for me was about fair trials and preconceived notions we might go in with, regardless of our role in the system (judge, law enforcement, lawyer, accused, juror). What an eye opener about the legal system and what people are up against - especially uneducated people. One of the many lawyers said something in the last episode that has really stuck with me about how you think the system works until it works against you or someone in your family, and then you really see the cracks. And that it could happen to any of us. I'd like to share more thoughts but I don't want to ruin it. Watch it with an open mind!

8. The next Show Us Your Books is on Tuesday. I had a little over two weeks of meh reads - I bounced back and forth between a few books that were not really lighting a fire under my ass. I picked it up this week with Black-Eyed Susans. We also have a new button if you're interested, and you can get it on the right sidebar.

9. Blah blah I know. Look, us looking gross with our dogs over the holiday slow time:

10. I'm putting my money where my mouth is in regards to raising money and awareness for homeless youth, one of the most under-served age groups in the homeless population. On March 18 I'll be joining friends for Covenant House's Sleep Out to Support Homeless Youth. I'll be sleeping outside to raise awareness and money for homeless kids - homeless teens on their own often slip through the cracks with few places to turn - they are the most under-served group in the homeless population. Covenant House is the largest privately-funded agency providing food, shelter, immediate crisis care, and essential services to homeless youth in 27 cities in North America.They strive to move each young person forward down a path to an independent adulthood, free from the risk of future homelessness. I need to raise $1,000 for these kids by February 19. Thanks to the generosity of my people, I am within $200 of that goal. Any small amount helps. If you can donate, please click here. p.s. did you know you can age out of participating in this? You can. I'm in the last year of eligibility with my old ass. Thanks to Catie & Joe for opening my eyes to this opportunity and for the invite to join their team!

11. Ecard of the week: