Day 15 of Giving: Open your home to small, furry things.

Shira and Dexter

If you and the kids or you and the spouse or you and the kitchen sink were thinking of adopting some kind of purring, woofing creature at any point in the near future – now is probably the time.

Before we talk about why it IS the time, let’s talk about why it MIGHT NOT BE the time.  This is a very important discrepancy:

WHY NOT:

-DON’T adopt an animal, or worse, buy it from a pet store if you are looking to surprise your son/daughter/boyfriend/girlfriend for Christmas.  In addition to it being like handing someone a present and saying “Here, this poops, you clean up after it!” it’s also not the kind of thing that is healthy to ‘surprise’ someone with.  After all, you wouldn’t surprise someone with a baby, would you?  No, I think not.  Whether you admit it or not we’ve all seen “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant” and, well, you get the idea.

-DON’T adopt an animal because it’s cute.  I have a secret – I am the innkeeper for two very adorable, yet very neurotic, goofy, clumsy, sneaky, obnoxious, cuddly cats.  Sure, Cash is little and Yuna is fluffy and it’s oh-so-adorable until one of them is scratching at the bedroom door at 5am (boyfriend allergic, no sleeping with them!)  At that time of the day they are like little demon shadows whose sole purpose in life is to keep me from beautiful, restful sleep.

-DON’T adopt an animal ‘because it’s Christmas’ because guess what, it’s not going to be Christmas in 6 months and you’ll have a considerably larger pet at that point who may or may not understand that while they grew exponentially, your lap did not.  Which is kind of cute…but…see above.

Classy Cashy and Taudrey Audrey

OK, that wasn’t so bad.  Time for the DOs!

-DO adopt an animal if you and your son/daughter/boyfriend/girlfriend have discussed responsibilities including vet visits, walks, feeding, litter boxes, pooper scoopers, and the average lifespan of Fido and what that means for your traveling, housing and schedules for the next 15-20 years.

-DO adopt an animal if you’ve been thinking about it for awhile, and not just when you saw the weird cage full of cats at Pet Quarters on your way back from the Christmas Tree Shops.

-DO adopt an animal from a shelter, NOT A PET STORE!

-DO adopt an older animal, they’re quite mild-mannered!

-DO adopt an animal if you have $500-$1000 cushion between you and poverty.  Because kitties and puppies do get hit by cars (this happened to me) and they do fall from great heights (this also happened) and eventually your mother is going to be tired of fixing your cat for you (this didn’t happen, thankfully, my mom would literally go to the poor house for her animals, be they hers or anyone else’s)

-Lastly, DO adopt if it’s the right thing for you and you’ve thought about it.  December’s cold, and January only gets worse and you think you get stir crazy in the middle of winter?  Trying living in a little cage during the solstice!  Dark, dark dark.

Mysterious, Fluffy Yuna.

What are some of your favorite animal rights organizations in Southern Maine and surrounding?  I love these guys:

Click to be taken here!

December Kick-Off: 25 Ways to Give Without Really Trying

L.L. Bean Nalgene tree a couple years ago...

Call it…a happy holiday ritual.  Or chalk it up to my need to regroup and refocus at the beginning of winter, the end of a year.  However the story goes, Audrey gets really methodical this time of year.  Married with an effort to do a better job of tending to my little blog garden in my personal patch of the interwebs, this month I’ll be bring you 25 Ways to Give Without Really Trying -or- 25 Ways to Show People You Care About (Including Yourself) That You Actually Really Do.

None of this really has anything to do with money (er..until sometimes at the end of the post).  Which is funny, because here is the perfect internet forum for me to generate revenue for myself on top of the day job (which is essentially a warehouse sized closet, which I will have to tell you about later!  It’s terrific).  So while I’m out busting my buns making monies at craft fairs and holiday events I’ve decided to use the internet for good this year…not that I’ve ever used it for evil.  That I can remember.  (Hint:  never Facebook drunk).

So, without much further ado, WAY #1!:

Visit with someone. For me, my friends and family are a diaspora of busy-body workaholics.  As you can imagine, this doesn’t leave a lot of time to visit with each other which, c’mon people, is really what this time of year is all about.  Even if just for the body heat!

Shira is so god damn gorgeous.

It doesn’t matter how close or how far away they are.  Last year, Shira and I were planning on visiting Jet in California.  That woulda been nice.  But the months zoomed by and we all forgot.  Well, I live in Portland and Shira’s in Boston and even THAT has been a struggle.  Seems forgivable?  Leshbomb lives TWO BLOCKS AWAY from me and we haven’t had a visit since our impromptu get-together one night when I ‘had to get out!’ and she ‘had to get a ride!’ home from a night of clinicals at the hospital.  That was…two months ago?  Seriously, what is stopping me from walking up there with a plate full of gluten-free cookies and saying a quick hello?

L to R: Shira, Jet (in frame), Audrey

Think of someone you adore, close, far, or really far away.  If they’re tooooo far away why not try a phone call just to check in and see how their life is going?

In business news today (because obviously I can’t go without) I was featured in this bone-chilling but completely beautiful treasury on Etsy:

“Bare Branches” pin, $3.

http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4cf6f217567a8eefab459eb7/baby-its-cold-outside