recs! oh my
If you need two hours of soothing, interesting, awesome, adorable and informative animal videos narrated by David Tennant, watch BBC's 2-part documentary Pets: Wild at Heart. Beautiful footage, awesome facts, lots of puppies, and a cool insight into the wild instincts, their origins and purpose, of domesticated pets.
Not super HD links, but convenient enough for watching, links here: episode 1, episode 2.
If you're still in a nature documentary mood after that, BBC's documentary Animal Odd Couples is lovely and happymaking; wherein they travel the world to find inter-species friendships, from lions and bears and tigers who are buddies, to an inseparable dog and doe, to a cat who adopted ducklings. a lot of the footage can be found on short clips on you tube, but the full documentary is here and just generally happymaking.
Reading rec:
I'm just gonna link to
marina's more lengthy recommendation here because it's what made me want to read this in the first place, and after a few days of being unable to put it down, I've finally finished the whole thing. (Uh, that linked rec gets spoilery after four paragraphs, so you can stop there if you'd rather go in blind.)
It is a blog called What Now?: A Candid Account Of My Experience With Foster/Adopting A Teenager in Los Angeles, written by someone who fostered and then adopted a 15 year old teenager who grew up int he foster system. The blog was started just over 5 years ago, and was most recently updated this summer, though current entries are far and in between. It's a fascinating read, an emotional roller coaster. The author is an excellent writer, and a compassionate one, and articulates so clearly both the emotional dynamics between the members of the family and her evolving philosophies on parenting. In the end, it's just so interesting, and such a compelling story, and I wish nothing but the best for everyone involved. Having finished it, I feel a lot like I do after I finish reading a long, satisfying, often-devastating* kidfic.
Here is a link to the first entry, which is, as noted, a very good place to start.
*hockey rpf fans - you know the one ;___;
comments on Dreamwidth.
Not super HD links, but convenient enough for watching, links here: episode 1, episode 2.
If you're still in a nature documentary mood after that, BBC's documentary Animal Odd Couples is lovely and happymaking; wherein they travel the world to find inter-species friendships, from lions and bears and tigers who are buddies, to an inseparable dog and doe, to a cat who adopted ducklings. a lot of the footage can be found on short clips on you tube, but the full documentary is here and just generally happymaking.
Reading rec:
I'm just gonna link to
marina's more lengthy recommendation here because it's what made me want to read this in the first place, and after a few days of being unable to put it down, I've finally finished the whole thing. (Uh, that linked rec gets spoilery after four paragraphs, so you can stop there if you'd rather go in blind.)
It is a blog called What Now?: A Candid Account Of My Experience With Foster/Adopting A Teenager in Los Angeles, written by someone who fostered and then adopted a 15 year old teenager who grew up int he foster system. The blog was started just over 5 years ago, and was most recently updated this summer, though current entries are far and in between. It's a fascinating read, an emotional roller coaster. The author is an excellent writer, and a compassionate one, and articulates so clearly both the emotional dynamics between the members of the family and her evolving philosophies on parenting. In the end, it's just so interesting, and such a compelling story, and I wish nothing but the best for everyone involved. Having finished it, I feel a lot like I do after I finish reading a long, satisfying, often-devastating* kidfic.
Here is a link to the first entry, which is, as noted, a very good place to start.
*hockey rpf fans - you know the one ;___;
comments on Dreamwidth.