230. Anxiety, Social Media, and Tracking the Things You Love

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 230 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.  With me today is Elyse, also of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.  She was thinking about New Year’s resolutions and approached me with an idea for a podcast which I really liked.  Her New Year’s resolution is to create less stress around the things that she loves to do, specifically reading and knitting, and it made her start thinking about how social media and connected communities can both enable and hurt her ability to de-stress around the things that she enjoys doing.  So we have a long and somewhat meandering conversation about social media, anxiety, and tracking the things that you love to do.  We talk about reading, knitting, cross-stitching, photography, and how various forms of social media have been making us feel.  We also talk a lot about pets, we name a whole bunch of Instagram accounts that we love, and we talk about organizing digital books and about knitting patterns.

I’m guessing that at some point during this episode you are going to want to get your hands on a pattern or a link or an app, and I will have links to everything we talk about in this episode at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, so do not worry.

This episode is being brought to you by Kensington Publishing, and they would like you to know about Shannyn Schroeder’s For Your Love series.  A rebel, a bad boy, and a ton of fun.  Are you looking for a knight in shining leather?  Sean O’Malley, the hero of In Your Arms, the second novel in Shannyn Schroeder’s For Your Love series, fits that bill to a T.  Sean’s never tried to hide who he is.  He shows it in the motorcycle thrumming between the legs of his tight jeans, the shaggy hair that falls in his gorgeous eyes, the wicked gleam in his smile, but when he helps a girl with car trouble on the side of the road, she makes him ache to be worthy of a serious relationship.  Set in urban Chicago around a boisterous Irish-American clan, In Your Arms is a little gritty, a little messy, and a lot steamy.  In Your Arms is part of Kensington’s Zebra Shout imprint, which features rising stars of romance in print at an affordable price of $4.99.  It’s available now on kensingtonbooks.com and wherever books are sold.

I also want to tell you about two things:  (1) our iTunes page at iTunes.com/DBSA.  If you are an iThings user and an iStores shopper, this is a good place for you, ‘cause all of the recent episodes and books we talk about are linked on that one convenient location!

And if you are a fan of the podcast and would like to support it, I invite you to have a look at our Patreon at patreon.com/SmartBitches.  Monthly pledges starting with a dollar make an enormous difference, and I am deeply grateful if you’ve had a look, if you’ve made a pledge, if you’re helping me plan this year’s podcasts, or if you’re thinking about taking a look at it or you’ve shared the link.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

The music you’re listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater.  I will have information at the end of this podcast, and like I said, we talk about so many different things, so there will be plenty of links and resources for you, including knitting patterns – never fear, knitters! – in the podcast entry.

So now, without any further delay, on with the podcast!

[music]

Sarah:  So you wanted to talk about the idea that sometimes tracking what you read or what you knit and, and putting your collection of, of tasks and books in a place that’s public creates pressure, and then maybe you shouldn’t Goodread and Ravel-, Ravelry.  Good, Goodread and Ravel-read?  Ravel-read’s –

Elyse:  Ravelry?  I don’t know what the – I think it’s just Ravelry.

Sarah:  If you combine them, would it be Ravelreads?

Elyse:  Ravelreads?  Yeah, that would be, that would be an amazing website, actually.

Sarah:  Right!  [Laughs]

Elyse:  That’d be pretty fucking phenomenal.  Yeah, no, I was thinking about, specifically about 2017 resolutions, and I was looking at my Goodreads for 2016.  You know how they’ll do the thing where, like, look at your year in books and how many books you read and all of that.

Sarah:  [Laughs] No!  I cannot look.

Elyse:  I, I had to look, because the, for, it, it was the shortest book I read – I think it was twenty-seven pages long – so, like, the, the main photo on my page was Passions of the Wereshark, which was super appropriate.  So, no, and then it asks you to set your goal for 2017, and I was thinking about the fact that social media, in terms of hobbies, is really a great thing, but that it also creates kind of a pressure to quantify what you enjoy doing, and by quantifying it, you take some of that enjoyment out of it.  Or, alternatively, it’s just possible that I’m so talented at being neurotic that I’m capable of producing anxiety surrounding my own self-care hobbies.  So, I mean, that’s an option too.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Okay, well, if that’s a, if that itself is a quantifiable identity, I think I’m there with you, because –

Elyse:  Okay, good.

Sarah:  It’s not just you, because I, I don’t, I don’t remember numbers.  Like, I can’t remember phone numbers as numbers.  I remember them by the pattern they make on the phone –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and if I’m ever navigating New York City, I’m completely fucked.  I have to write the street names out as words; otherwise I just, I can’t remember them.  So holding numbers in my head is already very difficult.  When it comes to counting up the total number of books I read, I know it’s a lot, but I don’t need to know the final number, ‘cause I won’t remember it anyway, but the other thing I have is that I’m terrified to use Goodreads because I fully expect that any social media site, like Facebook or Goodreads or whatever, owns my data.  I am aware of this when I sign up.

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  But I also operate with the assumption that at some time the privacy settings will probably change in a way that I don’t like, and things that I didn’t mean to make public will be public.  The last thing I want is for what I’m reading or the notes I take on a book that is not a review to be made public, because that could just, that could be so crushing to someone.  Like, if I leave my notes, I leave very brief notes.  Sometimes they don’t even make sense, but when they do make sense it’s like, very short and could be very brutal –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and I don’t want to ruin anyone’s day when they’re on Goodreads and be like, ah, fuck, Sarah’s reading my book.  Like, I don’t want to screw up somebody’s Goodreads usage.  And I’m probably inflating my own importance by a large margin; I fully acknowledge that.

Elyse:  No, you’re not.  I think –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  You, you aren’t!  I realize that’s not reassuring at all – unlike you, I guess I don’t give a shit about ruining other people’s day, because if I, if I give a book a bad grade, like, who the fuck am I?  Right, like, why are you getting upset about what I think about a book?  I’m, like, I’m the least important person ever that’s going to be reading your book.  Also, no one knows who I am, so I think I have a little more anonymity in that respect than you do?

Sarah:  Right, and I’ve also, I’ve also received email from publicists – who are doing their job; this is not a bad thing – but I have received email from publicists who say, I saw you mention this book on Twitter, or I saw you mention this book on Goodreads, and I wanted to reach out with you, and I’m like, okay!  The things that I do are, are –

Elyse:  Noticed.

Sarah:  Yeah!

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And, and I fully, like, it’s sort of like giving my information to Facebook.  I understand!  I get it.  This is, this is a thing I’m aware of, and it doesn’t bother me, and I’m not angry about it, but I don’t want to fuck up someone’s day because I had to DNF their book for some reasons that a lot of the time had a lot to do with me and very little to do with the book, you know?

Elyse:  Yeah, I think that fewer people know who I am for sure.  The, the thing that makes me nervous on Goodreads from a professional standpoint is that I do keep track of what I read, and I don’t foresee myself getting rid of Goodreads just because I read so much during the year for Smart Bitches and for other outlets and just for my own pleasure that I can’t remember everything I read, so when we get reader emails like, can you recommend a book where the hero and heroine are snowed in together, something like that, I have to go back through my Goodreads to see what I read to remember, like, oh, yeah, that book and that book –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – and that book, ‘cause I, I just can’t remember off the top of my head.

Sarah:  Oh, I, I don’t remember titles and authors, so I’m completely fucked.

Elyse:  I also use –

Sarah:  All right, so it’s yellow, and there’s a tree.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  And there’s a, there’s a flower that’s kind of orange, but it’s in the lower left corner, not the lower right.  If it’s in the lower right corner, it’s a totally different book.  See, this is a bad idea.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Right.  I also use my Goodreads for tax purposes, which is probably bad.

Sarah:  Wait, what?  [Laughs] You, you have to explain that!

Elyse:  Okay, so, so I, every year – and I’m going to be doing it this week, ‘cause I’m off of work – every year Elyse compiles a giant box of receipts and shit that she then hands to Korry, who’s the most amazing account ever, who then takes my box of sadness and turns it into a usable tax document.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  But I don’t remember all the time what I read or who I read it for or if I bought that book or that book was given to me, so I go through my Goodreads list, and I print it out for the year, and I start highlighting stuff.  Okay, I need to go onto Amazon and find the invoice for this eBook because that’s a deductible expense.  Oh, yeah, I did read for this person, and that, I need to include that invoice, so I’m not super organized when it comes to my own personal reviewing taxes, and some places give you W-2s and some of them don’t, and like I said, I just put together a box of what would give me diarrhea and hand it to Korry, who’s super excited about making it, you know, appropriate for the IRS to receive.

Sarah:  So Passions of the Wereshark fulfulls, fulfills many purposes in your life.

Elyse:  Right, so Passions of the Wereshark, I got paid for that, so I have to claim that income, but also, I bought Passions of the Wereshark, and you better fucking believe I’m deducting that ninety-nine cents, right?

Sarah:  Right?  Oh, I, I hope that whoever gets that in the IRS is really excited.

Elyse:  I knew Korry was going to be my accountant when I walked in and he had framed vintage Marvel comic book covers all over his office, and I’m like, you, sir, will understand me.

Sarah:  Okay, seriously, he sounds like a potential romance hero.

Elyse:  I would date him!  I mean, I wouldn’t –

Sarah:  Right?

Elyse:  – ‘cause I’m married, but if I wasn’t married, I’d date him.

Sarah:  [Laughs] I, yeah!  I’m thinking, like, I would read a contemporary romance about a, an accountant who’s excited about his job, has Marvel posters on the wall – oh, yeah!  That sounds like a completely decent human being who would be interesting to talk to.

Elyse:  And he knows that I have tax anxiety because every year I’m convinced that somehow I’ll owe the IRS a million dollars, even though it hasn’t happened, and/or get audited.  I literally walk into his office, and he gives me a bag of popcorn and a diet Coke, and he’s like, just sit here and be quiet; it’s going to be okay.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  We got this.

Sarah:  So your neuroses are multiple levels.

Elyse:  I, I am a very neurotic person, yes.

Sarah:  It’s good that you own it, though.

Elyse:  Oh, fuck, yeah, I’m crazy as shit!  I forget what TV show or book it’s from, but my best friend, who is also fairly neurotic, we’ll text each other when we’re, we know we’re doing the crazy thing, and it’ll be like, my crazy matches your crazy! ‘cause she gets it.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Complementary crazy or complementary levels of anxiety is very important.

Elyse:  Yeah, I’ve gotten better at – I mean, it was, dealing with anxiety as a younger person was very, very difficult for me –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Elyse:  – and as –

Sarah:  Ditto.

Elyse:  – as I’ve reached my mid-thirties, I’m at the point where I’ve realized I’ve survived all the things that have previously scared me for the most part?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  So I’m better at acknowledging when I I’m just being wacky in my head and obsessing over things.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Elyse:  And I –

Sarah:  I grew up with a skewed sense of what I should be worrying about?

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  And so once I broke out of that and then also reached an age where I have renewed my annual Give-A-Shit card at a lower and lower rate with each additional year of life, I realize, oh, I don’t have to worry about that.  That’s bullshit.  I don’t care.  I, you can’t make me care.  Like, I really seriously do not give a shit, but the things that I do worry about I’m better able to handle.

Elyse:  I’m better able to acknowledge that certain things are out of my control, and I think –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – to a large extent, my anxiety is just a function of genetics.  I mean, when I was a kid, I would have been probably, like, elementary, middle school age, I mean, I remember my mom having to take me to a psychologist because I would wash my hands so obsessively that, like, the skin on my hands was just raw –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – all the time.  So I have always had kind of OCD tendencies, but as I’ve gotten older I think I’ve just gotten better at managing that.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.  So when you look at things like Goodreads and it’s like, set your goal for next year, does that give, does that give you worry?  Does that make you think, like, oh, what’s, what’s enough?  Who’s doing what?  Am I reading more than this person?  Does that, does that trigger your anxiety in a sense of, like competition or comparison, or is it all internal?

Elyse:  Well, I think, I think it does trigger it.  I mean, I have – so, so to clarify, I have a, like, kind of a generalized anxiety where I will obsess about, did I lock the door?  Every morning I am convinced, even though he has never tried to get outside, that my cat somehow snuck outside while I was walking out to my car and will freeze to death between, like, the time I go to work and get home.  Dewey has no interest in going outside.  It’s fucking cold outside.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  In fact, when you open the door and he’s in the hallway, he puts his ears back and wrinkles his nose and his eyes like, what the hell is out there?  Why did you do that to yourself?

Sarah:  [Laughs] My, I used to have a cat who got out once, and the, the moment that he got out, there were six inches of snow, so he landed in six inches of snow, was completely horrified, freaked out, and ran back inside, and never went back outside again, and then when we adopted younger cats, one of the younger cats was like, you know, I think outside sounds great!  And he would hit him and smack him away from the door –

Elyse:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – like, you don’t know what’s out there, man!  You don’t understand!  It’s cold, and it comes up to your armpits, and it’s wet!  Just don’t even do it!  It’s, like, really hot outside!  No, trust me, it’s snowing.

Elyse:  My mom had a really stupid Boston Terrier who –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Bless Reggie’s heart, we loved him so much.  He was a good boy.  He was so stupid though.  He might have been the stupidest dog I’ve ever met.  Like, he would go behind the couch and whine because he was stuck, ‘cause he was too stupid to back out.  He tried to turn around and he couldn’t, ‘cause there was no room back there.  That’s how stupid Reggie was.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  And in the summer we would let them out the back patio door, ‘cause they’d go off the deck and go run around in the yard and stuff, but in the winter there’d be too much snow, and when my stepdad would, like, blow the snow in the driveway, he’d make a little space for the dogs to go in the front yard.  So in the winter you’d let them out the front door to go to the bathroom, and every time, Reggie would run to the back door like, no, no, no, we go out this way!  It’s warm out there!

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Elyse:  It’s warm out the back door.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.  We don’t want to go out there; it’s cold.  If we go to this door it’ll be a –

Elyse:  It’s warm.

Sarah:  – whole other universe.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  There’s summer in this door.

Elyse:  Oh, Reggie.  Fond, fond memories; rest in peace.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  I mean, he was one of those dogs that you just, you looked at him and, like, nothing was looking back at you, you know?

Sarah:  [Laughs] I love dogs like that; they’re so good.

Elyse:  And he was.  He was just, like, the sweetest little boy.  He was happy about everything.  I wrote, this is, why, I – we just always talk about things that don’t relate to the initial podcast topic, but anyway.  My mom thought that it would be funny to take the dogs to a dog psychic, who would then tell her what the dogs were really thinking and feeling, and I’m like, your dogs like to eat bird crap off the sidewalk, so I kind of think this is a waste of your money, but, hey.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Wait, wait, wait!  She found a dog psychic?

Elyse:  Yes!  This woman was, she, she is actually, apparently, like, travels around the country and stuff, and she was in our home town, so we took Buddy and Reggie to the dog psychic, and Buddy was the smarter dog, and she had all kinds of things to say about him, and actually some of them were – I don’t believe it was real; I think that she was picking up cues from us or whatever, but she was pretty skillful at what she was doing – and then she gets to Reggie, who is standing in this office that were in, like, licking the wall, which is a thing he did a lot, and she looks at him, and she goes, hmm.  There’s not a lot going on with Reggie, but he’s happy!

Sarah:  [Laughs] Oh, no!  So he’s happy; not a lot, not a lot going on in there.

Elyse:  No.  Nope.

Sarah:  Bless him!

Elyse:  Bless his little Boston heart.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So you were talking about general anxiety.

Elyse:  Sorry.  So, so I have generalized anxiety that’s crazy, but then what I do is if, if you give me, like, a target to hit for anything, I become obsessed with hitting that, so when I –

Sarah:  This is why you’re in sales!

Elyse:  This – I’m not actually in, well, I’m in operations, technically, not sales.

Sarah:  Yes, but you have sales targets.

Elyse:  I have sales targets.  This is why –

Sarah:  I’ve heard about the cowbell.

Elyse:  You’ve heard about the cowbell, and this is what, like, my boss has had, he will talk me down, like, on a bad month.  I’ll be like, we were two hundred thousand away.  I can’t believe this.  This is keeping me up at night.  He’s like, Elyse, chill the fuck out.  I’m like, no, no!  This is really bothering; my skin is itching right now.  I don’t know why I’m itching.  He’s like, Jesus Christ.  So –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Yeah, so I have to hit that number.  I become – if you give me boxes to tick, I have to tick all those boxes or it drives me nuts, and you better tick ‘em in the right order.  So for my, I did podcast notes, like a professional, and I wrote that I –

Sarah:  This is not a professional podcast.  What are you thinking?  I mean, any minute now a dog’s going to vomit or something on my end of the show.  Like –

Elyse:  Well, it’s 2:18.  Dewey eats at 4:00, so he’ll come up in a few minutes to remind me so he doesn’t starve to death.

Sarah:  Oh, well, this is good!  This is good.

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Okay, so you took podcast notes, which is pretty awesome.

Elyse:  I did.  Well, I wrote, I basically went through all my social media anxieties and listed them out, which was actually very healthy.  So I wrote that for Goodreads the benefit is that you remember books, you find books you might not otherwise have seen, and it allows you to connect with readers, and then I wrote that it creates, the cons are that it creates competition among yourself and others in terms of reading and that I think for me grading books is pretty easy, ‘cause I’m used to it at this point, but I think for a lot of people that’s really hard.  You know, why do I have to assign a, a star value to this book?

Sarah:  Oh, yes.

Elyse:  Why do I have to quantify it?

Sarah:  That’s the, that’s the biggest challenge with the RITA reader challenge when we have people come and do guest reviews.  The, the number one piece of feedback that I have is the text doesn’t match the grade.

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  And it’s, it’s interesting; people are, are very comfortable explaining all of the things that they didn’t like, but when it comes to assigning the grade, that is, that is really difficult!

Elyse:  It feels very final, and I think I’ve had to come to a point in my own life where I realize that I’m not actually that important and nobody gives a shit what I think, so –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – if I give it four stars and maybe it’s not really a four-star book, the, the end of the world isn’t going to happen.

Sarah:  And the converse of that is that even though I know what I do online is noticed by different people, I’m often also frequently wanting to reassure people, no book has ever lived or died on what one blogger said.  Like, no individual person has that kind of power.  If it was, if it was true, then they would all be being blurbed by the person who has that power.  Like –

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  – no one person can make or break a book.  It, it’s just not possible, I don’t think, although, although someone, someone is listening to me like, no, I know exactly how to make that happen.  Please don’t tell me; it would make me really nervous.  But anyway.

Elyse:  Well, that’s why I pretend in my head that five people listen to the podcast.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Elyse:  It’s Kat, Kat and Kat’s kids – hi, Kat’s kids!

Sarah:  So that’s – hey, guys!

Elyse:  That’s three.

Sarah:  That, yeah, okay, so that’s three, right.

Elyse:  It’s my, my husband will listen when I’m on the podcast, and then Orville, ‘cause he’s got to do his sound editing.

Sarah:  Yeah, he’s right here on the Futon of Concealment –

Elyse:  Right, so it’s five –

Sarah:  – waiting for his job time.

Elyse:  Five people listen to the podcast, and that is it.

Sarah:  Okay.  That’s fine.

Elyse:  And that’s how we do it in my head.

Sarah:  [Laughs] So you –

Elyse:  The one that, the one that gets me really paranoid on Goodreads, and this is super crazy, so – I review for you, and I review for a couple other places, and on a couple other places I don’t necessarily review under my byline, and I have to be anonymous, and when I get sometimes ARCs from really big-name authors, like, way in advance, they send me stuff with legalese that’s like, if we find this on the Internet we will take you outside and break your knees, right?

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Elyse:  I am so paranoid that someday, because I had to sign a, like, nondisclosure agreement, someone will match my Goodreads profile to what I’ve been reading.  I don’t think it’s even possible, but I’ve got, like, this person imagined in my mind, they’ve got, like, a murder board on their wall with, like, fucking string, like, tying things together.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Oh, God.  I, I don’t want that to be true, but given the Internet, it might be.  I don’t know.

Elyse:  I, I don’t think anybody really cares, to be honest with you –

Sarah:  Probably not.  Like I said –

Elyse:  – including my boss – [laughs] – so –

Sarah:  – no one person makes or breaks a book.

Elyse:  No.

Sarah:  I mean, look, think of all the authors who have done some most heinous shit; they’re fine.

Elyse:  Oh!  Think about the celebrities who’ve done super-heinous shit.

Sarah:  Hey, we live in a world where Snooki is a New York Times bestselling author, and I have come to be very okay with this!

Elyse:  Bless her heart.

Sarah:  [Snorts] Bless her heart indeed.

Elyse:  So then there’s the Ravelry anxiety, and Ravelry –

Sarah:  But, and that’s different from the Goodreads anxiety, right?

Elyse:  Well, it’s not really anxiety, strictly speaking.  It’s just that Ravelry, while being – for those of you who don’t know, Ravelry is a website for knitters, and it’s a free subscription if you knit and crochet, and there are all sorts of super, super amazing features on Ravelry.  There, you can buy patterns from them; there’re a lot of free patterns; they have a lot of forums, so if you get stuck on something, people are totally cool helping you.  The knitting community is very much like the romance community; they’re very helpful, and it’s very warm and positive.

Sarah:  It’s a whole lot of women.

Elyse:  It’s a whole lot of women.  There’s advertising for certain designers, for people who do, like, indie dyers of yarn and stuff, so I literally wrote Ravelry benefits:  find patterns, get help with projects, find cool indie yarn.  Cons:  it’s like Goddamn heroin, do you know how much yarn I own?  Yeah, I don’t know either, but it’s a lot.  So –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – Ravelry’s just fucking expensive is what it is, because even though I have boxes and boxes of yarn, I go on Ravelry and I see a thing and I’m like, I need this to be part of my stash.  I’ll never get to it, but I need it.

Sarah:  So it’s like a, an acquisitive thing.  It’s all –

Elyse:  Must have now.

Sarah:  – finding, like, oh, I like this, this yarn; I like this color; I like, I like this pattern; I, I like this –

Elyse:  Yep.

Sarah:  – variegated color, and this looks really, like it won’t make me itch, and you have to have it.

Elyse:  Exactly.  Exactly.  Although one thing I discovered on Ravelry that I didn’t realize that’s super, super cool:  you can stash your yarn, which means that you can keep, you, you enter in a record of the yarn that you own, so, you know, the, the brand, the weight, the color, the dye lot, all of that, and I couldn’t figure out, other than for keeping track of your own inventory, why that was a thing that people did, and then someone contacted me through Ravelry and said, hey, I started on this sweater, realized I’m short on yarn, went to buy some, it’s not being made anymore, you have two balls of it, how much can I pay you for this?  And it’s actually a really cool way where people buy and sell yarn or trade yarn so that if you start a project for something that they don’t make anymore or that dye lot’s been discontinued, you’re not completely fucked; someone will help you out.

Sarah:  That’s cool!

Elyse:  It is, it is very cool.

Sarah:  And of course you need to match the, the dye lot and everything; that’s really important, ‘cause otherwise you’ll, it’ll change color.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  Wow!

Elyse:  The color won’t be an exact match.

Sarah:  Nice!

Elyse:  And so, they only run so many dye lots at a time, obviously.

Sarah:  Right.  I, I just do –

Elyse:  So –

Sarah:  – oh, I do need to tell you, there is a person who listens to the podcast – I won’t give you a name ‘cause it’ll freak you out – but she listens while she’s dyeing wool for yarn.

Elyse:  Oh, that’s super cool!

Sarah:  Yeah!  Which is why I’m always like, if you want to buy the books that we talk about and you’re currently dyeing wool and your hands are purple and you can’t write them down, this is where you go find all the books we mention.

Elyse:  Right!  You, you can’t dye wool and –

Sarah:  Book shop.

Elyse:  – Amazon at the same time.

Sarah:  No, it’s –

Elyse:  No, that’s a recipe for disaster.

Sarah:  Unless you’ve got that voice command Amazon button box thingy.

Elyse:  I’m not convinced it’s not listening to me all the time.

Sarah:  I just assume that it would be.

Elyse:  Right, well, I for one welcome our Cylon overlords, so –

Sarah:  [Laughs] So what kind of anxiety does, does Ravelry give you?

Elyse:  Just financial anxiety, because I buy a lot of shit because of Ravelry.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  I literally have enough yarn that if I stopped buying yarn today and lived to be ninety?  Be fine.  No worries.

Sarah:  Isn’t, isn’t that a knitter philosophy though?

Elyse:  That’s a, that, it’s, it’s called, like StABLE: Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy, or something like that.  It’s very common.  It is very common; in fact, it is also very common for knitters and quilters to will their items to other knitters and quilters because you have so much shit, and you want it to go to a good home.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, my gosh.

Elyse:  Yes.  My husband –

Sarah:  That’s kind of beautiful, though.

Elyse:  It is!  My husband’s aunt is a, she’s a very crafty person, and she does a lot of knitting groups and stuff like that, and she was contacted by a gentleman whose wife had developed dementia and had to go to a nursing home, and she had so much yarn he didn’t know what to do with, and he was like, what do we do with this, and they’re like, we will come and take it off your hands, and it will all find a good home.

Sarah:  Aw!

Elyse:  So.

Sarah:  I, I, I know that there are people who go to yard sales looking for, like, really good seasoned cast iron pots and pans –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – but because to someone who doesn’t cook, that’s like, oh, my God, it’s heavy and it’s dirty; get it out of the house.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  To someone who cooks it’s like, oh, my God, that’s gold mine.  I, I, I think it’s really cool that there’s a way for you to pass on your stashes of yarn and fabric and whatnot.  I, I have gotten pretty good at limiting myself to, I will only have the embroidery floss for the project that I’m working on at this time, and when I start a new project I’ll, I’ll check what I have, and then I’ll go buy more, and I know that there are times when the floss goes on sale and it’s, like, twelve cents a skein or something.  I don’t let myself go, even though it doesn’t take up much room.  So far –

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  – I’ve been okay, but I can very easily anticipate myself heading into a place where there’s a whole wall of my closet that’s nothing but floss.

Elyse:  Well, and the thing about knitting is that it’s very easy to buy yarn not knowing what you’re going to make with it.  You don’t necessarily have to have a specific project in mind, and part of it, part of buying yarn, that’s part of the fun is, I don’t know what I’m going to make with this; I need to figure something out.  So, or then when you find a pattern you like and you realize you have the perfect yarn for it, it’s almost like an orgasmic experience.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Like, oh, my gosh, I have this pattern, and I know exactly what I’m going to make!

Elyse:  Yeah, the stars are in alignment; it’s beautiful.

Sarah:  Well, whatever the yarn was that you made the fingerless owl gloves with?

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  Okay, I have to tell everybody about these fingerless gloves.  They are, they’re fingerless gloves, right.  They come about –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – hmm, four, five inches up my wrist, and they have a perfectly sized thumb hole, which his super awesome, ‘cause my hands are itty-bitty, but it is a really soft but warm, blue yarn, and the pattern has little owls worked into at the top and at the bottom.  I love these things.  I wear them all the time.  They’re sitting on top of my sound box.  This yarn is wonderful!  It’s super soft, it doesn’t itch, and it’s, and it’s really warm.  I love it!

Elyse:  I can tell you exactly what that is for the knitters out there.  That would be, the pattern is called Owlings by Kerrie James, like O-W-L-I-N-G-S, and I think it’s free.  Let me take a look.  It is on Ravelry – everything’s on Ravelry, by the way.  Everything.  Let’s see if it’s a free pattern or not.  It is a four-dollar pattern.  It is completely worth it.  It’s good for, like, beginning cabling, but the yarn I used is Tosh by Madelinetosh.  Tosh DK merino.  It’s very, very, very soft.  Yes, Madelinetosh Tosh Merino DK, that is the name of the yarn.  DK is the weight of the yarn.

Sarah:  I have a whole travel wardrobe that is merino wool.  That stuff’s amazing, because –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.  It’s beautiful.

Sarah:  – it doesn’t itch, it’s very forgiving, and the thing about merino wool travel clothing – I don’t know if you’re aware of this – is that not only can you wash it in the sink and dry it on a clothesline in your, in your bathroom in the hotel room and it’ll be dry by morning, no matter what it is, but it doesn’t absorb scent, so you can wear things over and over and over, and they don’t smell, and they don’t get gross, and they, they wash very easily, so if you’re traveling and you have, don’t have the ability to do your laundry every night, you can keep re-wearing things that are made out of merino wool much, much longer than something that’s, say, cotton.

Elyse:  Probably my two favorite yarns that I would use the most often, I think, are Madelinetosh’s Tosh DK, the merino, which is a, like I said, a DK weight, and then there’s also Malabrigo Rios, which is a worsted weight yarn, and that is also a hundred percent superwash merino wool, and same thing; it’s very soft, it’s very durable, it doesn’t itch.

Sarah:  It is amazing that at this point the things that I look for in clothing are, do my boobs fit in it, does it itch –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – is it machine washable, and is it warm enough for whatever it is that I’m doing?

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  Itching is crucial.

Elyse:  Yeah, that’s huge.  I know –

Sarah:  Especially for you, because you’ve got, like, a hyperactive nervous system.

Elyse:  I do.  So one of the things that’s really fun with fibromyalgia is you don’t want anything touching your skin that’s really tight.  Waistbands are the bane of my existence.  I love wearing leggings now, just because the waistband doesn’t bother me, where, like, the waistband on slacks or jeans kind of rubs.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  Bras?  Just give ‘em up, man.  I’m going to burn all of ‘em.  Fuck it.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  I’m going to go braless for the rest of my life.

Sarah:  Have you thought about jumpsuits?  Overalls?

Elyse:  Jumpsuits would be ama- – I want to live in the future where we all wear, like, that Star Trek jumpsuit, ‘cause it actually –

Sarah:  Right?

Elyse:  – looks really comfortable.

Sarah:  Oh, it would be like wearing pajamas!

Elyse:  All the fucking time, yeah!

Sarah:  I’ve been using Poshmark to sell some older handbags and shoes that are really nice that are in good condition, and when you go on Poshmark, if you like something or you tell it what brands you like, it’s going to show you in your feed when you log into the app, here’s all the things of the things that you like that are on sale, and for some reason, Poshmark is convinced that I need a jumpsuit, which I don’t, and all I am seeing are high fashion jumpsuits.  Now, I cannot wear these.  I know that these will look terrible on me.  They look so comfortable?  Oh, my gosh.

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Like, I super want one, even though I know it would look terrible on me.

Elyse:  I could not wear a jumpsuit because I’m oddly sized.  I’m a –

Sarah:  Ditto.

Elyse:   I’m a petite, ‘cause I’m 5’2”, but I have a really high rise, so I can’t actually wear petites.  I just have to hem the shit out of everything.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Elyse:  It’s either hemming or camel toe.  Those are my two options.

Sarah:  [Laughs] That’s, that would be a really good personal blog:  The Hem and the Camel Toe.

Elyse:  The Hem and the Camel Toe.

Sarah:  So, what is your anxiety then with Ravelry?  Is there a –

Elyse:  Just –

Sarah:  Is it just, oh, my God, I’ve got so much shit, I’ve bought too much?

Elyse:  It’s, I’ve got so much shit, I’ve bought too much, and there’s so much cool stuff, and there’s so much stuff added all the time that you want to do all of it?  And you just don’t have the time.

Sarah:  Right.  You know, do you, do you feel the same way about books?  Because I will curb my spending on books.  Like, I now have a, a routine where, if a book is on sale, before I just click, you know, two dollars, one-click buy, don’t worry about it, I look to see if it’s in the, in my library; I look to see if it’s in Hoopla, I look to see if it’s in a place that I already have access to it for free or that I’ve already paid for –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – before I buy it.  But I haven’t reached a point, and this may be a professional side effect, where I look at the books I own and go – especially with eBooks – yeah, I’ve got too many.  That’s too much.

Elyse:  I’ve never, I’ve never hit that point.  I mean, I’ve hit it with the, fuck, now I have to organize my Kindle or, you know, that kind of thing.

Sarah:  Or, oh, my God, all of these books are in a box, and I can’t lift it?  Then I feel that way.

Elyse:  Yes, yes.  Our –

Sarah:  But I also got rid of so many of my – I culled my paperback collection down to, like, ten total paperbacks that have sentimental physical value because I’ve pretty much duplicated everything digitally and backed it up in, like, nine places.

Elyse:  Yeah, I, so, I think for me the anxiety with books is that I always feel like I’m not reading enough, which is ridiculous, because I read a lot, but I feel like I should be reading more.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah, I have that same guilt.

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  You should be reading!  You should be reading.  No, my brain needs a break, actually.  My brain needs to be looking at small Xs made of red embroidery floss right now.

Elyse:  Right.  So I feel like I’m not reading enough, and then there is sort of, like, I, I may never get to all of these books.  Like, I think for me what happens is when I finish a book that I really enjoyed, I go through this period of, what am I going to read next, where I am, like, spoiled for choice, so it’s not that I don’t have anything to read; it’s that I’m almost paralyzed and cannot pick between all of the wonderful options that I have.

Sarah:  Oh, yes, I have that same anxiety when I read a book that I really enjoy, and I’ve read so much that I get to a point where I’m like, okay, what if I read all the really good books for a while?  Like, this one isn’t working for me, this one isn’t working for me, this hasn’t measured up to that one that I loved.  What if, what if I read them all?  What if I read all the books that are really going to, like, make my, my entire brain light up?  What if the, what if I read all of them?  This is terrible!  And then I find one, and I tell myself to get a grip.  But it takes a while, that period of finding that book that makes me super happy!  That can be alarming!

Elyse:  Well, and I think that as someone who reads professionally too, I try to balance what I’m reading so that I’m not focused too heavily on one subgenre or with one author or one theme, and so that kind of becomes a little bit difficult too, ‘cause maybe you want to binge-read all the things, but I also know that I have to come up with content, and I probably can’t review twelve books by the same author in a calendar month.

Sarah:  Yeah, that would be tricky.  Unless you’re deliberately going to do a small review for every book in a series.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  Which can be helpful, but also, I think content like that, a lot of the time, speaks most to the people who’ve also already read all those books –

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  – more than it does to someone who’s never read the series, because then if, with some series, you read the synopsis of book three and book four, you’ve spoiled the hell out of book one and two.

Elyse:  Unless you were doing, like, an author’s guide or something –

Sarah:  Yes, that would work.

Elyse:  – for someone who was really prolific.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yes.  Imagine the three-dimensional book that’s Nora Roberts’s author guide.

Elyse:  I did an author guide for Google for Maya Banks, and she writes across so many different subgenres that, you know, it was actually pretty fun to do.

Sarah:  That is fun!

Elyse:  ‘Cause she’s got historicals, she’s got contemporary erotic, she’s got romantic suspense; she really does all of the things.

Sarah:  Yep.  It’s true!  So when you’re using social media to track the different things that you do, is there anything that helps that anxiety?  Like, for me, I noticed, I wasn’t using Goodreads, but then I was looking track of the books that I wanted to read and review at certain times.  Like, I don’t like to read too far ahead of release date because I, I have to write the review shortly after I read the book; otherwise I don’t remember what the hell it was.  So if I write the review and the book doesn’t come out for two months, I can’t talk to anybody yet, ‘cause people can’t buy it, and if you talk about a book that people want to read and they can’t buy it, it’s awful.  You feel bad because you can’t go buy it.

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  So I will schedule in, this book comes out at this date; here’s when you should read it.  This book comes out this date; here’s when you should read it.  But I was afraid to put all that on Goodreads, ‘cause like I said, I presume that at some point the privacy change, or things are going to change, and all of the stuff that I’m using for my own internal use will become public, so I have a notebook where I write down the things that I have taken on to review, but I also put an app on my phone and didn’t connect it to anything else.  Let me see if I can figure out the name of this thing.  It was, like, free and basic and cheap.  It’s called Book Tracker –

Elyse:  Okay.

Sarah:  – and I have no connections.  I have not, like, signed up for any kind of connection, I’ve not added any friends, it’s, it’s totally on my phone, but what I can do is color code the things that I’m reading so if, if I finished it, it’s green; if I DNFed it, it’s yellow; if it’s in progress, it’s orange; and if I – and I have two, I have two levels of DNF – if I finished it more than fifteen to twenty percent in, then it is a hard DNF, like, I got far enough, and I know this isn’t working, but if I start it and I’m like, I’m not in the mood for this, that’s, that’s me, that’s not the book.  You know what I mean?

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  So that’s two –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – that’s two different shades of orange!  Like, I have, I have color-coding needs that I didn’t realize until I downloaded this app.

Elyse:  I still use Goodreads because, again, I’m pretty sure that nobody cares enough to pay attention to what I’m doing.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Which is fine.  I think it, I mean, it’s useful for me to go back and remember stuff, is really what I use Goodreads for.  I break down what I have on my Kindle in terms of what’s coming out by month, so I have folders on my Kindle, January, February, March, April, May, so that I know in January I’m going to start reading out of the February folder, and I –

Sarah:  Right.  That’s kind of what I do.

Elyse:  Right.  So I’m always kind of a month ahead of myself, and then anything – and then I also have it broken down by category or subgenre, and if I really want to read something, then I don’t put it in any folder, so when I open my Kindle it’s just kind of hanging out there, and I can see it right away.

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  I have yet to figure out how – I have a, this is my second Kindle.  My first Kindle died a horrible death, and I –

Sarah:  I’m so sorry.

Elyse:  I, I know.  It was, I mourned.  It was tough.  I had folders on that Kindle that show up when I try to put something in a folder on this Kindle but aren’t on this Kindle, and I’m sure there’s a way that I can sync my folders, but I’m too lazy to actually figure out how to do it, but it annoys me all the same.

Sarah:  I totally get that.  I wish that Kindle folders were more, more simple to use.  They are very clunky and cumbersome –

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  – and I wish that it was easier to organize your books on your Kindle.  I actually have several categories.  I have by the month in which I’m going to read it, and then I have anytime.  Like, this book has been out for so long, it’s either already been reviewed on the site or it’s not something that’s of interest to the site audience, or it’s just completely outside of my –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – other reading responsibilities.  I don’t want to call it work, ‘cause it’s not actually unenjoyable, it’s pretty enjoyable, but I have, like, the anytime reads, and then I have a whole, whole book of – [laughs] – it’s, the folder is called Sorbet.

Elyse:  Okay.

Sarah:  It is all palate cleansers.  It’s books that I can invariably reread that will reset my brain, that are always enjoyable, that no matter how many times I’ve reread them they still do the magical thing, so the Sorbet folder is its own thing.

Elyse:  So I have by genre, so contemporary romance; I have crazysauce, that’s a folder I have; erotic contemporary, you get the idea; and then I have by month, and I, at the end of every month I have to clean out that folder, right, and then I also have folders for books once they’ve been read –

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  – and who I read it for, so that I remember again –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – when it comes time to submit invoices.

Sarah:  Yep.  Who, who you read, what, for whom.  Yep, that makes sense!

Elyse:  Yep.

Sarah:  That makes sense.

Elyse:  So, one thing that drives me nuts, because I can’t remember titles or authors, is that when you get an eARC and you download it –

Sarah:  Sometimes it’s not filled in.

Elyse:  – there’s no – well, not only that, I can’t remember titles and authors; there’s no cover.  I will remember the cover.

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Elyse:  I won’t remember the title or the author, so I’ll look at it and be like, what book was this?

Sarah:  Okay.

Elyse:  That I thought I needed to read.

Sarah:  My problem is that I need the cover, so what I actually do is download the book and then upload it into calibre, which is an eBook library software –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm?

Sarah:  – and inside calibre, you can ask it to go and find all the metadata for a book, which includes the book cover, so when it includes the book cover, I get the cover and I can, like, modify the information.  Sometimes I can even edit the title, so then it’ll be like, you know, romance blah-blah-blah, and then in parentheses the release date so that I can –

Elyse:  Okay.

Sarah:  – see in the title what the date is.  That’s super handy, but that’s an extra, like, six steps every time I want to add a book to my Kindle, whereas with, with, you know, NetGalley or getting a digital ARC or even buying the book, hitting one button and knowing you have it is often preferable.

Elyse:  I just heard a sweet little meow in the background.

Sarah:  Did it – yes, it is time for Orville and Wilbur to have their dehydrated meat nuggets of joy so that we can give Orville his medicine.  If we’re really lucky, he will drop a massive bomb on the carpet later.

Elyse:  Sweet.  I am babysitting tonight for a friend of mine who’s out of town, and she has – well, catsitting, but they’re baby cats.

Sarah:  Oh, baby cats!

Elyse:  So she has two adult cats and two kittens, and I’m so excited to spend the night and just, like, lie in a blanket of cats –

Sarah:  Aw!

Elyse:  – and they’re, they’re still, like, the babies are still, they’re in that really cute phase where it’s like, play, play, play, boom, I just feel asleep exactly where I was sitting.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  Right, there’s no transitionary –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Elyse:  – period.

Sarah:  And kittens are nuts.

Elyse:  They are.  They’re, like, on –

Sarah:  They are on crack.

Elyse:  Yes.  But they’re so frigging cute!

Sarah:  They really are.

Elyse:  So I’m bringing my Kindle and my Benadryl.  It’s going to be amazing.

Sarah:  That’s really all you need!

Elyse:  It is!  It is, and we’re going to, I’m going to snuggle cats and read and maybe watch the Golden Globes.

Sarah:  This sounds like a really good plan.

Elyse:  It’s going to be the best night ever.

Sarah:  And you’re on vacation, so you don’t have to go to work tomorrow.

Elyse:  Oh, I’m so excited about that too.  I think we should talk about Instagram.

Sarah:  You know, I ha-, that’s really interesting.  I have a note here about Instagram, because for me lately, Instagram is the opposite of anxiety-inducing.  I go on Instagram and my feed is all pretty nice, lovely things.

Zeb:  Woof-woof, woof!

Elyse:  My stat that is – hi, puppy!

Sarah:  Zeb!  It’s okay, it’s fine.  I, it’s part of the podcast at this point!  Anyway –

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  – go ahead.

Elyse:  So I, I put in my notes here that for 2017, pretty much the only reason I still have Facebook, and I very rarely do anything with it, is to communicate with a couple of relatives that I have that don’t email but do Facebook messenger?

Sarah:  There are people who only live on Facebook, it is true.

Elyse:  Right.  But I don’t, Facebook, to me, is just a fucking dumpster fire, and then Twitter this year has become, I – [sighs] – I don’t know.  I feel obligated to be aware of what is going on in the world and be outraged by it, but at the same time it’s so stressful and anxiety-inducing, and Twitter is just, like, a constant feed of rage and –

Sarah:  Anguish.

Elyse:  – and anguish that I have a really hard time with it.

Sarah:  Twitter is –

Elyse:  There was –

Sarah:  Twitter has evolved into a place for, for grieving, which is entirely excellent and good, but it is also, I think, okay for that to overwhelm you and to need a break from it.

Elyse:  I mean, there was, I think it was a couple nights ago, I did a – do you do the social media thing before you go to bed, where it’s like, I’m lying in bed, I need to check Instagram, I need to check Twitter, now I can fall asleep.  I was looking at Twitter before bed, and people were talking about pre-existing conditions and health insurance, and –

Sarah:  Yeah, I saw that conversation.  That was a little anxiety-inducing.

Elyse:  I mean, I had to, I, I, like, my heart was literally pounding.

Sarah:  Yep!

Elyse:  I, like, I felt myself, there was an actual panic attack happening –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  – and it was like, okay, I need to shut this off, because like a lot of people, I’ve been very fortunate in that I have always had employer-based healthcare, but I have a condition that, should I ever lose my employer-based healthcare and not be able to afford COBRA, I am completely fucking uninsurable.

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  So, and my husband too, so that’s always been, like, this fear kind of wiggling around in the back of my mind –

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  – and –

Sarah:  It’s the big doom cloud.  It follows you around.

Elyse:  Yes.  So that’s the thing that I cannot, you know, I, sometimes I have to stay off of Twitter for that, that reason, but Instagram, Instagram is amazing.  So my Instagram is all, like, adorable fucking animals –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  – really cool shit that people knit, and then I, like, comment, like, that’s so beautiful!  You’re so talented and amazing!

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  And book stuff and Celeste Barber who is – I don’t know if it’s Celeste Babar or Celeste Barber; let me look – who is the most amazing woman I’ve ever – are you aware of her?

Sarah:  Mm-mm.

Elyse:  Celeste Barber, like the two elephants from the children’s book?  She is a comedian who takes photos – I will send you one.  Okay, so I just sent you one of her Instagrams.  She is a comedian who looks like an actual normal human being, and she recreates ridiculous celebrity Instagrams with, like, shit lying around her house.

Sarah:  Oh, my gosh!

Elyse:  She is fucking hilarious.

Sarah:  Ohhh, I know what you mean.

Elyse:  Absolutely hilarious.

Sarah:  Yeah, I’ve seen this.  This is wonderful ridiculousness.

Elyse:  Like, there was one of, I think it was Chrissy Teigen, and she’s, like, cooking dinner while holding her baby and sipping this cocktail, and the, the photo that the comedian did was, like, she’s drinking straight out of a bottle of [yellow tail], right?

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  So it’s all –

Sarah:  That is awesome.

Elyse:  It’s, it’s just, I don’t know.  Instagram makes me happy.  It’s all, it’s all happiness, it’s all comfort, people doing what they like, posting happy photos of their pets.

Sarah:  The thing for me with Instagram is that I, I have challenged myself to take a picture of something every day, and I also think that the best camera is the camera that you have with you, but because I’ve challenged myself to take a picture of something each day, I’m paying attention to what’s going on around me when I, you know, go walk the dogs or when I take out the trash.  I’m paying attention to what’s visible and what’s around me and what I might want to take a picture of, so I have a really good time with that, but I also feed my pictures into my Facebook feed, and I’ve had a couple people tell me that it’s really, really nice to just look at pictures of pretty things in, in amongst the other outrageously awful things that are being talked about on Facebook, so I realized that I am getting the same amount of comfort out of imagery –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – that is nice and peaceful and enjoyable as other people are, so my Instagram feed is books and other readers and reviewers, people who decorate baked goods really quickly –

Elyse:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Like, I don’t eat pastry, I don’t eat any of this – I make it all the time, I don’t eat it.  I can watch people decorate cookies for hours, literally hours.  I have an app on my phone that I installed before the election, so probably September.  It’s called App Detox, and you tell it what apps you have on your phone and how much per day you’re going to be allowed to use them.

Elyse:  Okay.

Sarah:  So forty-five minutes for Twitter, there was another one I set a limit on, I forget which one, and I had to put – oh, it was Tumblr – and then I had to put a limit on Instagram because I got my RescueTime report, which is an app that tracks your computer usage on your phone and on your computer, and it’s part of how I judge my productivity for the week with the site, because, you know, sometimes Twitter is actually for work, and sometimes it’s not.  Sometimes the Internet is for work; sometimes it’s not, so I have to sort of gauge my productivity in weird ways, and RescueTime started telling me that I was spending, like, four hours a week on Instagram, and I was like, I need to stop looking at cookies.  There’re a lot of cookies I’m watching being decorated.  But at one point I was in a waiting room with my younger son, and I don’t remember, it was some unpleasant waiting room, like maybe he was going to get a shot or something, and I’m like, all right, you want to see the greatest videos ever?  And he’s like, yeah!  And I’m like, all right, so I start showing him all of the, the cookie decorating videos, like SweetAmbs on Instagram decorates gorgeous cookies.  They’re just, they’re just beautiful.  This woman can do things with royal icing that I didn’t know could be done with our current state of gravity?  Like, it’s amazing.  So I’m showing him these videos, and he’s like, all they are is decorating cookies?  I’m like, yeah.  He goes, this is incredible.  Like, I had just opened up a whole corner of the Internet to him.  [Laughs] It was all cookie decorating, and I find that incredibly soothing!  Hence four hours and having to limit myself to how many, how many I can watch.

Elyse:  So I just had a thought as you were talking about how you commit to taking a picture a day?

Sarah:  Uh-huh?

Elyse:  Someone out there needs to write me a murder mystery where a woman is killed and they have to figure out what happened to her by going back through her Instagram feed.

Sarah:  Ohhh.

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I’ve seen a bunch of crime episodes where someone inadvertently captures a murder in the background of a picture, or –

Elyse:  It’s creepy.

Sarah:  – inadvertently grabs, like, a, a picture of something, and then in the background in tiny, tiny, tiny, little detail – because, you know, the picture that you take on your phone now is, like, the size of, like, your house – the, the, in the background is, like, a crime detail that is the only thing that can implicate this one person, so all of a sudden they’re being stalked and attacked, and they don’t know why, and it’s all because of this one picture, which, I mean, come on, just higher a hacker off Fiverr, break into the person’s phone, and delete the picture.  Come on, there’s no need for, like, crime and mayhem.  Of course, that would be a very short television episode.  Going back through somebody’s phone history, I bet someone’s had, had to do that.

Elyse:  Oh, I’m sure.  My fa-, some of my favorite Instagram accounts are IG_Scotland, which is just all really beautiful pictures of Scotland, and I need to go there now.

Sarah:  Mmm.

Elyse:  There’s also Bodega Cats of Instagram, which I find, like, there’s something so delightful about a cat sleeping on top of a box of Ho Hos.

Sarah:  Oh, totally!

Elyse:  In a shelf.  It’s just, like, yes.

Sarah:  So in terms of social media and hobbies, does using Instagram make you take more pictures?  Or does it just help you enjoy other people doing the hobbies and things that you like to do as well?

Elyse:  Weirdly, I feel no pressure from Instagram.  For me, it’s more taking it in than creating content, although I do find it really interesting – I was talking to my husband last night about this – that there is this huge thing on Instagram of people taking really amazingly gorgeous photos of YA books.

Sarah:  Mmm.

Elyse:  I don’t know if you’re aware of that.  It’s like –

Sarah:  Yes, they’re staging them.

Elyse:  Yes, like, but they’re not, it’s not publicists.  It’s just readers who are doing this.

Sarah:  Mm-hmm, yep.

Elyse:  And it’s really interesting to me, because I kind of wonder, some of these people are putting out so much content that it’s really, really beautiful, but I’m wondering, are you actually reading the books that you are putting out there, or are you just –

Sarah:  Here’s a thing that I have and a thing that I staged?

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I don’t know.  I think it’s really interesting, though, because the, the root of sharing has to do also with self-reflection.  You share things that reflect on you as much as they say something that you also want to say.  So when you share something it’s not just, you know, in a lot of cases, I agree with this, I like this, this is cool, or, especially if you comment, this is amazing; it made me cry.  It reflects on you in a certain way that most people are conscious, unconscious of when you share certain things.  So when you share a picture of a book that you’ve staged, what – I, I always look at that and go, that’s so cool!  Where did you get those pinecones?  Why did you get those pinecones?

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  Do you have pinecones?  Like, just sitting around?  That’s amazing!  I mean, if I wanted to photograph every book that, that I get, it would be, like, and here’s some cardboard, a cat-hair tumbleweed, and my kitchen counter.  Although, although, I did once get an ARC that came with a lot of paperwork, like, do not, like, lay-down date was this date, which I think is the date you put it out in the bookstore?

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  Do not display before this book, before this day, and I clearly got one for a bookstore or something, so I took a picture of it in my microwave, I put it on the shelf, I put it in the fridge –

Elyse:  [Snorts]

Sarah:  – I put on the porch, I took a bunch of pictures, and I’m like, I am displaying this book all over my house, and I sent it to the publicist, who was like, you are a nutjob.  But it did look really good in the microwave.

Elyse:  Sure.

Sarah:  That’s what we should do:  we should do ridiculously staged pictures of romance ARCs.  Like, here’s one in the medicine cabinet!  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Yeah, I mean, you look at these staged photos, and I’m like – ‘cause I do take a lot of pictures of books, but it’s usually, like, either the stack next to where I sit on the couch, which is like my tower of future reading for actual paper ARCs –

Sarah:  But you also do take, you also do take really beautiful pictures of, like, your book –

Elyse:  Oh, thank you.

Sarah:  – on a wood table with a coffee cup.

Elyse:  Yeah, it’s usually what I’m, I’m reading and eating at the same time, and then, like, Dewey’s paw is in the photo somewhere, because God fucking forbid something not actually involve him in some way.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Where’s my cock ring?  I want my cock ring!

Elyse:  I, I have, I have, like, a, I use the Layout app to compile all the Goddamn photos I have of Dewey lying on what I am currently reading, ‘cause he does this thing –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – that if you are reading, it doesn’t matter if it’s the Kindle, a paperback, a hardcover, your iPad, if you are reading and he wants something, he lies down on top of the book.  Like, he has learned, I’m just going to – and he stretches his body out, like, makes it as big as possible –

Sarah:  Oh, God!

Elyse:  – and then –

Sarah:  Orville does that!

Elyse:  – and then looks at –

Sarah:  It’s like he –

Elyse:  Yes!

Sarah:  – turns into a yeti, or a yak!  It’s like it’s, he’s huge!  Where did you put all that body?  How is it here now?

Elyse:  Well, cats, as you are aware, are both a liquid and a solid –

Sarah:  This is true.

Elyse:  – and so I think he just kind of melts.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Yes, he tot-, I, Orville melts.  Wilbur just stretches.

Elyse:  So, yeah, and he gives me this look like, you will now pay attention to me, not the thing that you are currently paying attention to.

Sarah:  Have I told you about coming in the house?

Elyse:  No.

Sarah:  Okay.  So, my younger son’s bus stop is at the end of our cul-de-sac, so I have to walk up, like, you know, four houses, stand there, wait for the bus, walk back, so maybe ten minutes.

Elyse:  ‘Kay.

Sarah:  The dogs are convinced that when I leave I’m never coming back.  If I’m out for five minutes, if I go to check the mail, if I go to take the kid to the bus stop, if I walk outside to look at something, I’m gone forever.  And then I come back in, and it is cause for mass rejoicing.

Elyse:  Yeah!

Sarah:  These are, these are clearly rescue dogs.  So it’s a big deal every time I come in the house.  I’m totally used to it, and I’m like, okay, let’s greet!  Which has become my command for, don’t jump on me; I’m going to pet you –

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  -but let’s greet means stay down and I will pet you and everything, so we’ve got this whole routine:  Let’s greet!  Hello!  You’re, I’m so excited!  I came home!  I was gone for six whole minutes, and now I am back to hang out with my dogs, and they’re, like, butt wiggling and moaning and twisting, and then one throws himself down on his back and puts his paws in the air so it’s bellies and butts and butts and bellies!  Wilbur has figured out that there’s petting every time I walk in the door, and because he has zero fear of the dogs, he now pushes them out of the way so that I will pet him, and now I have this diplomatic tangle, because I only have two hands –

Elyse:  [Snorts] Right.

Sarah:  – and I have three butts that are demanding attention here, so I have one dog and one cat, and the other dog gets mad, so I pet the dog, and then the cat’s like, what about me?  It’s now stressful for me to come in the house, ‘cause I don’t have enough hands.  [Laughs] I need to take a picture of this.

Elyse:  My mom has two, my mom has two rescue dogs, and they are the exact same way.  She can go get the mail and come back in the house, but mom is home, and they freak out, and she has to –

Sarah:  Right?!

Elyse:  – sit down, she has to sit down on the chair –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  – that is strategically placed by the front door –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  – so that they can both get petted until they feel, like, suitably calmed down –

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  – and one of them spins in circles until you give him love.  Like, he’s so excited he can’t stand it.

Sarah:  Yep, I have that.  Zeb will do that, and Buzz will throw himself down on the ground and put his paws in the air because it’s time for belly rubs, and belly rubs are the greatest thing ever.  It is just ridiculous.  But, yeah, I have, I have a diplomatic problem now ‘cause of too many, too many butts, not enough hands.

Elyse:  You need to learn to pet with your foot.

Sarah:  I might fall over –

Elyse:  It’s, like, a –

Sarah:  – but I’ll give it a try.

Elyse:  I, like, I feel like some yoga work is required for this.

Sarah:  Or I need to become the heroine of Christina Dodd’s Castles in the Sky [Castles in the Air] and just have three hands!  I mean, there’s a reason –

Elyse:  Wait –

Sarah:  – that’s my avatar all over the Inter- – you don’t know about this?

Elyse:  What the fuck?

Sarah:  You don’t know –

Elyse:  No!

Sarah:  – about Castles in the Sky?

Elyse:  What is this?

Sarah:  Okay, all right.  I have to figure –

Elyse:  She had three hands?

Sarah:  Okay, I actually own copies of this book, because it’s, it’s my avatar on the Internet, because, you know, if I had three hands I would get all kinds of shit done.

Elyse:  Did she have three arms or just three hands?

Sarah:  Three hands.  Hang on.  I’m going to send you a, a copy of the image.  Yeah, here we go.  There’s one with arrows; I’m going to send it to you.  Let me put it in the show notes in case, so I don’t forget.  You read?  Here we go.

Elyse:  I’m ready.

Sarah:  All right, so it’s an older cover, but the illustrator –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  – the illustrator drew –

Elyse:  I thought you meant – okay, so I, for people listening, on the cover they clearly fucked up, but she has three hands.  I thought you meant in the book, like it was some sort of birth thing where she was born with three hands, and I was so confused.

Sarah:  [Laughs] No!  No, it’s just the, the cover, she had three hands!  She’s my idol!  You don’t understand.  Do you know how much I would get done if I had an extra arm?  Someone has three arms!

Elyse:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Yeah.  So I own several editions.  If I see them on the Internet I, I buy them, because she’s got three hands!  What could possibly be better than that?

Elyse:  I can’t breathe.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Isn’t it hilarious?

Elyse:  Speaking of Instagram, mine is going to get, like, super real tonight, what with all of the kitten shenanigans that are going to be happening.

Sarah:  Oh, I am so here for that?  So here for that.  What is your, what is?  ‘Cause people are going to be like, I want to see kittens!  What is your Instagram?

Elyse:  Fuck, I have to look!  What is my Instagram?

Sarah:  I think it’s @elyseindeed.

Elyse:  Yeah, I think it’s the same as Twitter.  Yeah, it’s @elyseindeed.  E-L-Y-S-E.

Sarah:  And I’m @sarah.wendell because I wasn’t smart enough to pick a pseudonym on the Internet.  Yeah, @sarah.wendell.  Okay, seriously, Fitzwilliam Waffles has posted another picture of himself with my “Romance or GTFO” sticker, and I’m so happy.

Elyse:  Okay, all listeners, you need to immediately fucking follow @fitzwilliamwaffles on Instagram.  It is the official dog of The Ripped Bodice bookstore.

Sarah:  Yes.

Elyse:  He is adorable.  He looks like a, what is he, a Corgi –

Sarah:  I think he’s a Corgi-Pomeranian.

Elyse:  – Papillon.

Sarah:  I think he’s a Corgi-Pomeranian mix.

Elyse:  But his name is Fitzwilliam Waffles, and he has the best Instagram ever.  I would just, I would just watch him all day.

Sarah:  So Ins- –

Elyse:  I would watch videos of Fitzwilliam Waffles sleeping all day.  He’s so cute.

Sarah:  Instagram has become so much of my happy place in part because of Fitzwilliam Waffles.

Elyse:  Right?!

Sarah:  He’s just adorable.  Also, the “Romance or GTFO” stickers, I am, I am so proud of those.  Like, I can’t even tell you how excited I am about how they came out.  I’m so excited.

Elyse:  I can’t believe they named him Fitzwilliam Waffles.  How perfect is that?

Sarah:  Right?  It’s like they were meant to be a bookstore people.

Elyse:  I, can you imagine?

Sarah:  I’m doing show notes, and I was like, what was the other thing we talked about?  We talked about knitting, we talked about cross-stitching, we talked about photography, oh, reading!  Reading!  Yes, we also talked about reading.

Elyse:  Yeah, that’s a thing we do on the site, I heard.

Sarah:  That is a, we do a few reading of things.  Little bit of reading.

Elyse:  We do!

Sarah:  Yeah.  So –

Elyse:  Can we talk about how excited I am to be reviewing The Bachelor for you?

Sarah:  Oh, my God, yes, it’s awesome!  It’s so awesome!

Elyse:  Monday nights are the best nights ev- –

Sarah:  Are you, like, looking forward?

Elyse:  Yes!  Yes, I –

Sarah:  Are you looking forward to the next episode?

Elyse:  I sent Rich the grocery list today, and it’s, like, everything we need for soup, and I’m like, buy the biggest fucking bottle of Kraken rum you can –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – and a lot of Coke!  Not Diet Coke; it’s got to be fully leaded.

Sarah:  Wait, no, there were, there were, there were, there were cocktail recipes in the comments for the first one.

Elyse:  There were, there were.

Sarah:  You going to make some?

Elyse:  There’s something called a – Dread Pirate Rachel recommended something called a Dark and Stormy, which is black spiced rum, ginger beer, and a lime, and a lime, apparently, is integral, you need to include the lime, and I’m probably going to do it Monday because that sounds like something that – I’m, I’m a lightweight, so I’m going to get drunk enough off of that that it’s a good thing I’m not working Tuesday.

Sarah:  Yes, I think that that is true.

Elyse:  But I, I also have to, I also have to maintain my sobriety during the show so that I can – or at least, mostly my sobriety – so I can actually, like, write something about it and upload images successfully.

Sarah:  [Laughs] As opposed to the end of the year podcast where your notes were like, fuck this, fuck all this shit, Elyse drops mic.

Elyse:  Pretty much, yeah.

Sarah:  [Laughs more] Awesome.

Elyse:  Are you aware of the Australian The Bachelor situation?

Sarah:  Oh, where the two women fell in love with each other and were like, fuck this?  We’re going to live together?

Elyse:  Yes.  Yeah.

Sarah:  That gives me so much joy.  I couldn’t possibly –

Elyse:  So –

Sarah:  – have more joy.

Elyse:  My, my hope against hope for this season – and it’s clear that they are trying to up the diversity in the cast – the issue is that pretty much the second runner up always get their show as The Bachelorette, right?

Sarah:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  So the alleged winner gets to take home that fucking guy, which, bleah, and the runner up gets her own show, so clearly you want to be the runner up, right?  But a woman of color never gets that far –

Sarah:  Hmm.

Elyse:  – and it’s super shitty, and I’m like fingers crossed that we might actually have a black bachelorette coming up.  That would be amazing.

Sarah:  That would be so great.

Elyse:  I started watching that show almost by accident.  It was on, I think I was, like, knitting, didn’t feel like changing the channel, and Rich is sitting next to me; he’s like, what the fuck is this?  And we tuned into, like, one of the craziest episodes ever.  There was this woman who just would have these epic meltdowns and then go from, like, sobbing hysterically to being fine in two seconds, like, to the point where it was actually frightening?  And that was the season where the bachelor was a born-again virgin, which I cannot, that cracks me up.

Sarah:  Yeah!  That’s a thing.  And it’s weird because, you know, virginity is a construct.  Just don’t have sex.  It’s okay.

Elyse:  I –

Sarah:  You don’t, I –

Elyse:  Right, that’s called celibacy, and it’s cool.

Sarah:  Yeah!

Elyse:  It’s totally cool.  So, yeah, I’m super excited to be reviewing The Bachelor in all its crazy glory.

Sarah:  I have to tell you, it’s not that I don’t like reality television.  I don’t actually like reality television because I feel like, to, to quote Linda Holmes, a lot of American reality television is cast based on the severity of an individual’s personality disorder –

Elyse:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – and I don’t like shows where people, people behave cruelly to other people for comedy.  Like, I have family members who do that at family gatherings.

Elyse:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  I don’t need to spend my leisure time walking that, looking at that.  I mean, if you want to be a human malignancy, that’s, that’s cool, but I don’t necessarily want to tune in, so, hence my love of The Great British Bake Off because they’re actually there to, like, bake shit, and then they help each other and it’s super cute.  So when you proposed this, I was like, is this the show where they, like, make women compete for a guy who’s not all that?  And then you were like, yeah, and I want them to be friends, and to hell with that guy, no one actually wants to win, and I was like, oh, oh –

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  – okay.  This is the lens through which I can appreciate this show –

Elyse:  Right, so here –

Sarah:  – so thank you for that.

Elyse:  – here’s what I contend, for those of you not reading:  no one wants to fucking win The Bachelor, right?  ‘Cause nobody gives a shit about that guy.

Sarah:  This guy lost, like, three times, right?

Elyse:  Right, nobody cares about him!  You know why you go on The Bachelor?  You go on The Bachelor ‘cause the longer you last, you get to travel the world in luxury style on ABC’s dime, drink a shitload of booze that they pay for, and meet, like, thirty other fascinating women.  Like, it occurs to me that they’re doing the parade of women for the first episode and they’re like, this woman’s a doula!  This woman works in the NICU and saves tiny babies who are born too early!  This woman’s a lawyer!  This woman’s twenty-three and owns three businesses!  And then they’re like, and then this fucking guy.  And he’s, like, standing in the corner picking his Goddamn nose, right?  Nobody’s fucking here for him!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Nobody cares about him!  We’re here because we want to get to episode five where we get to go to St. Tropez, right, and then, you know, we get to be – like, I, it’s got to be the best slumber party ever.  I want to believe in my heart that they just compete on camera, and then they all have a really good laugh.  Chris Harrison comes and he takes the bachelor back to his holding tank, and the women have a great fucking time in, like, Aspen or wherever they are, ‘cause nobody cares about him.  Like, they probably do Ro Sham Bo for who has to kiss him, like, fuck, one of us has to make out with him in this episode.  Okay, rock-paper-scissors, let’s go.

Sarah:  [Laughs] Okay!  I, I can totally see that happening.  I can totally see that, no question.  All right, anything you want to say about what you’re reading?  ‘Cause this is going to be a fun episode.

Elyse:  It’s going to be really long.  I’m sorry; I’m so long-winded.

Sarah:  That’s not a problem!  No one minds!  No one ever minds.

Elyse:  That we know.

Sarah:  Well, not that we know of.

Elyse:  Of the five people that I think listen to the podcast, no one minds.

Sarah:  There’s only five or six total, right.

Elyse:  I just finished a really amazing book that unfortunately I can’t talk about in any detail without ruining it, but it is amazing, called The Missing by Caroline Eriksson, and it’s spelled, like, the Swedish way, ‘cause it’s a Swedish author.

Sarah:  Oohhh!

Elyse:  Translated into English, and it is a psychological thriller filled with Not Sorry Not Sorry.  It’s so good.  I want to talk about it.  I can’t talk about it ‘cause you have to, everything has to unwrap organically for the reader.

Sarah:  Right.

Elyse:  The premise of it is a woman and her boyfriend and his daughter are on vacation, they’re camping, and they go, they row out to this very small island on a lake, and she decides to stay in the rowboat and just chill while they run around and look at stuff on the island, and they don’t come back by dark, and she can’t find them, but there’s no way off the island, and it’s a tiny little island, so where they fuck did they go, right?

Sarah:  Ohhh.

Elyse:  Yeah, and I can’t tell you any more than that without ruining it.  I will say it is, it, it gets to be a dark book.  There is some animal abuse that happens off stage; you don’t see it happen, but you know that it is a thing that had happened.

Sarah:  Bleah!

Elyse:  That, if I had known walking into it, I would have had a hard time with that one.  I just kind of skimmed that part.  But it is so good, and I am looking forward to you editing that review and sending me a message on Slack saying, okay, so what happened?

Sarah:  [Laughs] ‘Cause you know that’s what’s going to happen.

Elyse:  Right, ‘cause I have –

Sarah:  I do all the site editing.  I’m like, oh, okay, so, so who did it?  Who killed who?  What happened?

Elyse:  So, right.  Whenever I review scary books, Sarah messages me, and I have to tell her what happened.

Sarah:  Yep!  Totally.  Absolutely.

Elyse:  I’m the scary book spoiler.

Sarah:  Yeah, because I’m not going to read it!

Elyse:  Right!

Sarah:  I’m definitely not going to read that.

Elyse:  But it was really, really excellent.  I love that we have the tag in the system now, Not Sorry Not Sorry.

Sarah:  Not Sorry Not Sorry!  I think there’s going to be a lot of Not Sorry Not Sorry.  Like, rage and no regrets.

Elyse:  I’m there for it!  So, yes, that, that I recently read, and it was really, really good.  And then I’ve got just tons of stuff that I’m going to read this week ‘cause I’m off of work, and I’m so excited.  I’m just going to hibernate and read, ‘cause it’s really fucking cold out, like Wisconsin cold, like negative twenty-five, legit cold, so I’m going to stay inside and eat a lot of soup and read a lot of books.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s episode.  I hope you enjoyed our meandering conversation through many topics.  As I mentioned in the intro, I will have links to all of the things that we mention; not just the books, but also the social media, the Instagram accounts, the knitting patterns, the yarn.  You know, all the important things!  I’ve got you covered.  Do not worry.

But I do want to tell you that this episode is being brought to you by Kensington Publishing, and they would like you to know about a very specific book.  Are you ready?  Are you listening?  You should be listening.  Here we go.  Okay.  A rebel, a bad boy, and a ton of fun.  Are you looking for a knight in shining leather?  Sean O’Malley, hero of In Your Arms, the second novel in Shannyn Schroeder’s For Your Love series, fits that bill to a T.  Sean’s never tried to hide who he is.  He shows it in the motorcycle thrumming between the legs of his tight jeans, the shaggy hair that falls in his gorgeous eyes, the wicked gleam in his smile, but when he helps a girl with car trouble, she makes him ache to be worthy of a serious relationship.  Set in urban Chicago around a boisterous Irish-American clan, In Your Arms is a little gritty, a little messy, and a lot steamy.  In Your Arms is part of Kensington’s Zebra Shout imprint, which features rising stars of romance in print at an affordable price of $4.99.  This book is available now on kensingtonbooks.com and wherever books are sold.

I also would like to tell you about the music that is playing.  This is “Fishing at Orbost” by the Peatbog Faeries from their album Dust.  Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater, and you can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  You can find the Peatbog Faeries on Amazon, iTunes, and on their website.

And speaking of websites, we have an iBooks page, or an iTunes page that connects to iBooks and also to the podcast area.  It’s pretty rad!  You can took a look at iTunes.com/DBSA.

And if you’re thinking, I really enjoy this podcast; it would be cool to support it in some way, you can totally do that!  Patreon.com/SmartBitches.  For as little as one whole dollar a month, you can make an enormous difference, helping keep the show more, or at least marginally awesome.  Mostly awesome?  Let’s say mostly awesome.  Help me upgrade equipment, do more live shows, hopefully figure out how to do a call-in show, because that would be completely rad, and also commission transcripts for past episodes.  I am super appreciative that you are listening and that you are part of the podcast community, and I’m super glad that you’re here, so thank you very much.  And if you have a look, thank you again!

And in the meantime, on behalf of Elyse, myself, everyone here, and all of the animals, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[mellow music]