love nostalgia

So I have a new cat! I'm calling her Rita (her original name, Czarina, just seemed a little too much for me, but I still feel bad about changing it), and she's a super cute cuddly little fuzzball. She actually looks kind of like Skip but in reverse: light where he's dark, but similar fur and little smaller. She's missing the tip of one ear, which the adoption lady said meant she used to be part of a feral cat pack, but you'd never know it. She is so snuggly and loving already, and it's been less than a day. I also suspect she might be a lap cat, which would be a real change; Skip loves to be petted, and he'll happily lay next to me, but he hates being held and will run away if you try. He's still pissed off about the interloper and growling, but I'm sure he'll come around. When I get around to charging my camera batteries, I'll post a picture.
But really, I want to write about vampires. At the urging of a co-worker, I'm reading (I'm slightly ashamed to admit this) the Twilight series that everybody seems to be making such a fuss over. It's not... good, exactly, but it is very enthralling in that trashy way. For me, it's like junk food reading, which I've actually been kind of needing lately. If you haven't heard of it, the basic premise is like many a high school romance except that the boy is ... A vampire! Oooh, way to change it up! It's silly. But what the author does well, at least to my deeply romantic brain, is to catalogue some of the ways you feel when you're falling in love. It's like the book form of those first months where everything is just awesome and you feel fantastic and happy most of the time. (Or at least I do, and I assume others do too? That whole honeymoon phase concept can't have been invented by me.) Even as she writes the cheesiest actual words (the narrator refers to her vampire love as "angelic" on a regular basis, for example), the feeling is instantly recognizable. For me, still struggling somewhat with heartbreak and suffering from rather severe love nostalgia, this is extremely appealing. I spent the entire first book giggling and feeling jealous of first kisses and acting like a giant cheeseball. But now I'm into the second book and there's more actual plot (not my favorite literary device) plus heartbreak, and it's just depressing me and reminding me that the writing is not why I was reading. I'm going to slog through so I can finish and feel all gooshy again and then move onto something a bit more highbrow. But for now, once I get past this plotty bit, I'll secretly revel in my lowbrow trashy vampire romance.