Hey, my dear friends! Today is my one year anniversary of blogging! I have so much to be thankful for; most especially for all of you! I’m sharing a little bit about how I got here (eek! 😬) and also giving back some of the love I’ve felt from you all over the last year with an International Giveaway! So please read all the way to the bottom to enter! Lots of photos inside, too! Kittens!

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“And so stand stricken, so remembering him!” Edna St. Vincent Millay.

How did I get here? Why do I blog? 

I’ve had the above quote drafted as a post for almost a year. Like many of us, I started blogging to keep me busy. My soulmate kitty of sixteen years, Bailey, was ill and getting sicker by the day. I started blogging on May 3, 2018, and Bailey passed away four days later. I had a post drafted about Bailey, and I could never bear to finish it.

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I tell you all of that to say this blog got me through a rough time, and it’s gotten me through a few more since then. And it’s not just the blogging that gets me through. It’s the support of all of you. Not a day goes by where I don’t pinch myself thinking about my dear friends who chat with me daily, tease me about mountainous TBRs (or lack thereof, in some cases- you know who you are!), share my posts, the ones who stop by to like them, and the entire sense of community we have here. It’s an amazing thing, and I imagine it’s helping many people and not just me.

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Personal Update: 😬

A quick update because I’ve sporadically told a few of you here or there, and I don’t know where else to put this because I don’t often blog about personal things! Bailey’s littermate, Coley, my cat of almost 17 years, passed away on Christmas Day, just seven months after Bailey. She was the sweetest, most talkative cat I’ve known, and I miss her like crazy, too. The holidays were tough for our family.

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I went to the Humane Society at the end of December “just to look” and came home with two kittens and a hairless (from a flea allergy) adult male I was worried no one would adopt because of how he looked. At the suggestion of my vet, I had the cats’ DNA tested, and my handful of a hairless cat is a Bengal (the vet knew based on his personality and behavior, even if he was hairless). My kittens are Abyssinian/Maine Coon, and I’m so in love with all three of them. Like blogging and reading, they keep us busy and out of trouble! (While they constantly stay IN trouble! 😂). The kittens are Charles “Dickens” and “Harper” Lee, while their older brother is Hemingway. Literary kittens. Ok, that’s my personal update for the year. 😂 Thanks for reading! ♥️

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Twitter Jail:

It figures the week of my anniversary I would land back in Twitter jail for the first time in a couple months. I had been so careful, and it took me two full days to notice this time. 😂 I’m going to cut back on the liking of shares and daily thanking because I think I do those things too fast, and I don’t really know how to slow that down. I will absolutely NOT be cutting back on the sharing of your blog posts because that is the most important thing, and I will do my best to thank maybe in a weekly post like some do? Also, I’m sorry I’m silent right now on Twitter, but some of you have shared that’s the quickest way to get out of jail, so hopefully it’s just for a couple more days! 🤞

~INTERNATIONAL GIVEAWAY~

I have a little giveaway as a thank you to all of you who follow my blog. It’s open internationally because I have just as many good friends and followers out of the US as within the US, and it’s important for me to acknowledge every follower. I want to give away some books and a couple surprise bookish goodies. New followers are welcome to enter as well! ♥️

Thank you all for being here, for being YOU, for supporting me and my little blog, and for being my friends. I’m grateful for each and every one of you. ♥️

Please enter here: a Rafflecopter giveaway

You must live in a country where either Amazon or The Book Depository are availble to you. The only sponsor of this giveaway is yours truly. I’ll pick the lucky winners on May 14, 2019, or shortly thereafter.

 

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Happy Reading, my friends! Thank you all! ~ Jennifer THR (Oh, and I realize this looks like a cat lady’s blogiversary post, and hey, I guess that’s what I’ve become! 😂)

Hemy’s fur is still growing back in. We don’t know just yet what his top coat pattern will be! It’s fun to watch it evolve!

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