diy: adorable bralette

i was just in aerie yesterday and i noticed how adorable their bralettes were. unfortunately, i am poor. BUT, with this great (and simple) diy, i could make my own!

geek love book review

i just finished reading geek love by katherine dunn. it was amazing. i'd heard about it from kaylah's post at the dainty squid. i decided i'd scour eBay and pick one up fairly cheap, and i ended up paying five bucks total for it. best five bucks i've spent in a while.

geek love is about a the binewskis, a travelling carnival family. they decide to breed their own family of oddities. yeah, sounds crazy? they have a boy with flippers, Arturo, siamese twins, Elly and Iphy, an albino hunchback, Oly (who narrates the story), and Chick, who is normal but for his telekinetic powers. Oly tells the story of how her family came to be, how it came to end, and everything in between.

i'm not gonna lie. this story was amazing, but perverse and horrifying at times. there was a time when i was eating pizza while reading and i had to stop eating. but it's just that good. it's definitely not a story for you if you don't like the bizarre, and can't stomach a little gore.

the generic man

i discovered the generic man after seeing a post on art of wore. i had originally just wanted to take a closer look at the men's multi colored oxfords (which i can't find on the site), but then i noticed the women's styles and i fell in love.

can i just have a pair of each? please? pretty please?

great sunday

i had a fantastic day at my mom's yesterday. my darling niece was up visiting with my stepsister, and we had a delicious lunch. they don't come up very often so i was pretty excited to see them.

how gorgeous is this child? even covered in drool she is so cute. and that's a lot coming from me. i normally do not think children are cute at all. to be honest i think a lot of them are hideous. sorry.

lunch! a delicious black bean burger topped with tomatoes. and potato salad. i love my mother's potato salad. i specifically requested it today. :) my stepdad made a big deal about the baked beans "not being real baked beans" because they were vegetarian..oops!

and caramel apples! mumma made some and the caramel was really good. i, unfortunately, can't usually mix foods together nor am i fond of apples, so i didn't like the apple part.

and adorable izzy, trying to sucker me into letting her on the porch.

and d! he's not to fond of stairs since he's got a prosthetic hip, but he wanted some love, too. and he's fully recovered from being hit by a car!

tomorrow mumma and i are having a girl's day out. she just got a new fj cruiser and has to drop it off for protective coating, so we're gonna take the little loaner and hit up the town. can't wait!

oh frank

"don't you know, little fool, you never can win?
why not use your mentality, step up, wake up to reality?"
but each time i do just the thought of you makes me stop
just before i begin 'cause i've got you under my skin

sleep

i have a lot of sleep issues. i'm lucky to sleep two hours straight without jolting awake. my quality of sleep has slowly deteriorated since middle school, becoming just this little bothersome thing that must happen at night (or in my case early morning to midday) or i'll die.

when i was younger (as in under the age of fourteen) i was a fantastic sleeper. i could sleep thirteen plus hours at a time and a bomb could go off and i wouldn't flinch. i could sleep through the entire night and never wake up feeling like i'd had ten minutes of sleep. now i'm lucky to get ten minutes.

i've always been a night owl but i haven't always been able to function without sleep. when in school if i got less than seven hours i was worthless and dragged through the day. now if i get seven hours of sleep i'm bright eyed and busy tailed and fully prepared for whatever is thrown at me.

it's a vicious cycle, however. less sleep makes me anxious. an anxious or stressed kate beckons for night terrors and nightmares to come about. i've been plagued with nightmares my entire life, some of them vivid and terrifying. i've woken up so scared i couldn't get out of bed, and many times i am fully convinced someone is in my house. i have a lot of dreams about being chased, from which i wake up exhausted. it's apparently very tough work running in dreamland. after i moved out on my own the dreams lessened radically. i'd gotten away from a rather negative environment and it helped tremendously. i'd have the dreams every so often when i was unhappy or anxious about something. now i've gotten them down to about once a week, perhaps milder ones more often, but i'm able to deal with them. i've had no night terrors in a few weeks, and i can watch horror movies again.

other than terrible dreams, i experience sleep paralysis occasionally. depending upon waking or just falling asleep (mine is usually upon waking) it basically means you become aware that you're awake before your body can release your muscles from the paralysis that REM sleep uses to keep you from knocking yourself out while you hug those giant furry bunnies in your dreams. it's fairly terrifying when you first experience it. i always wondered if i didn't stay awake if i would be paralyzed forever. nope. i wouldn't be, but before i realized what exactly was happening i thought it was a serious issue. now i just fight back the initial panic and blink and tell myself to wake up.

and now that you've heard all about my sleeping habits, as i'm sure you were dying to know, i think i just may go to bed! fingers crossed!

thriftcore

i love finding fantastic new stores with amazing selections of thrifted and vintage finds. thriftcore is just that. this store is amazing! i stumbled upon it when i opened my storenvy store, and i'm so glad i did!

how amazing is this bag?! e.t. terrified me as a kid, but this bag should be on it's way to my house this second. and i may have mentioned this bag in a tiltw post, but i don't care!

ah! such kitschy cuteness.

i adore these fox glasses.

in a lot of ways i feel like etsy has become overrated, and i think it's great that there's somewhere else shop owners can go that's not overrun with thousands of sellers with overpriced goods. storenvy is free so you can focus more on the product, rather than covering your fee losses! and if you'd like to know more about thriftcore, you can read the blog here!