I’m a bit late with this because everything has been a bit upside down, but things are finally starting to feel a little bit better and so I am back to tell you about my favorite new July books!
And if you’re a part of Nightmares from Nowhere you’ll be getting The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a multigenerational horror saga cast over three timelines by the author of Mexican Gothic. Riveting!
I haven’t been able to read much lately but I can also recommend these two new July releases:
Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez – An eerie, hypnotic debut about friendship, desire and memory set against the sultry backdrop of Florida’s swamplands.
Proof of Life by Jennifer Pastiloff – How to let go, let love, and stop looking for permission to live your life.
I have not been ignoring you but my blog has been broken and giving error messages every time I try to write, but I think maybe it’s fixed? I guess we’ll see if this goes through.
I’m too tired to be entirely cohesive or funny but I wanted you to know that Hailey is home from the hospital (YAY!) and feeling much better. They still have lingering headaches and their eye became crossed from a 6th cranial nerve palsy (aka “wonky eye”) that basically just meant that they had so much spinal fluid pressure from the meningitis that it fucked up their eye. The drs think that it might fix itself with time but for now H has to wear an eyepatch and switch it every 4 hours to try to build the eye back up and we plan on covering one with rhinestones as soon as we are slightly less exhausted. Still lots of therapy and drs appointments ahead but I’m just so happy to have them home.
Hailey: “Hot gay pirate summer can commence!”
We still don’t know what caused it but they ruled out a million things after the spinal tap, including typhus and rickets…WHICH IS CRAZY THAT THOSE ARE EVEN A THING ANYMORE. At a certain point I was thinking they were going to start testing Hailey for “wandering womb” and “too many novels” but eventually they just classified it as “cryptogenic meningitis” which sounds like something you’d get from bigfoot but apparently just means “We don’t know what the fuck this was and we are giving up and would like you to go away.”
This week is a lot of work, follow-ups, medical stuff and another endoscopy to make sure my cancer is staying lazy and I felt like I was doing really well until Victor said he was worried about me and that he wanted me to go with him to Vegas this weekend so I can get away and just rest in the room and I had a panic attack just thinking about leaving Hailey even though they are fine, and I suspect this is a little ptsd and a sign that I absolutely need to get away or that I will never leave Hailey’s sight for the next 10 years. One or the other. That sentence was too long but I am too tired to fix it so instead of rewriting it I am going to go sit outside and breathe deeply for a few minutes.
Thank you for listening and being there. It meant a lot. It still does.
It’s been a very rough week and I’m lightly exhausted so instead of writing a real post I’m just sharing the letter I sent everyone on my art substack. Sorry. Any week with spinal taps in it doesn’t count as a real week.
Hi friend,
I’m writing this from the hospital where I’ve been with Hailey this week. They aren’t sure what’s wrong with them. They thought viral meningitis and then bacterial meningitis and then back to viral and now they’re testing for West Nile and typhus which I didn’t even know was a thing anymore. I’m too tired to make much sense and I’ve been too distracted to draw so this week’s art is the piece I’ve been working on that isn’t finished.
Hailey is finally sleeping, thank goodness. The morphine is helping a little tonight. I have all sort of stories to share but I can’t concentrate and need to curl up on this impossibly comfortable hospital chair (that was sarcasm) and try to sleep. If you’d like to send positive thoughts or prayers I will 100% take them.
I stopped at home today to grab a shower and noticed that the roses in the front of the house were blooming. I’m not sure when they started but they’re lovely and a form of art themselves. It’s nice to know that even when I can’t create, the world is creating for me.
several people suggested I use it for storing the Xmas tree but the built-in bookshelf is built over half of the “door” so it’s too small to put fit anything through it. I could barely squeeze through it and got stuck coming back out, which would have been an embarrassing way to die. Still no clue what it was. Grow room? Murder Pantry? Unfinished cabinet to A cut-rate Narnia? Panic room for cats? Discotheque for toddlers?
In other mysteries, I have been flooded with the weirdest sort of spam comments lately. They’re specific to the post but then absolutely insane at the end and they are cracking me up. A few new favorites:
”I’m so sorry to hear about your cancer diagnosis AND ENJOY THE HOT SLUTTS IN ATLANTIC CITY TONIGHT!”
”Your book roundup lists always make me smile. FOR RECURRING TESTICULAR PAIN NEAR MUMBAI PLEASE VISIT.”
Is it some kind of AI? No clue.
This one is less of a mystery and more of a question…I’m refreshing my taxidermy outfits and can’t decide if Claude works as a showgirl or if he should stay with his old stand- by. Please sound off.
So. I’ve been busy with PET scans and CAT scans and tests and moving houses and stressing out about cancer and this all culminated into one of those panic attacks where my chest hurt so much I thought I was literally having a heart attack and it was a very hard week. BUT…
I heard back from my oncology surgeon and he said that he had very good news because the scans showed that my organs were “grossly normal” and “unremarkable” which seems like a very insulting way to give good news, BUT I WILL FUCKING TAKE IT.
Of course, I immediately started worrying that these results must be someone else’s because I am often “gross” but almost never “normal” and also, shouldn’t the scans have picked up the cancer in my stomach that we know is there? But the doctor said he wouldn’t have expected those tumors to show up on the scans because they are so small and slow-moving (which my neuroendocrine tumors are) and so helps this confirms that they are tiny and lazy and the tests were really there to just rule out that anything is large or growing. CAN I GET A HELL YEAH? Of course, I guess this also means that I could be teeming with teensy, lazy tumors hiding all over the rest of my body but my doctor was like, “OMG, you’re overthinking it, crazy. Celebrate the win.”
Then he mentioned that my scans did show some spinal deformities (probably from my rheumatoid arthritis) and that weirdly made feel better because having too much medical good news was so out-of-character that I was starting to suspect I was in some kind of coma because I was sure they’d at least find a silent twin or some sort of sentient growth.
So the tl:dr is that I’ll have to do endoscopies and biopsies every 4-6 months for the rest of my life to make sure the cancer in my stomach is staying as lazy as the rest of me, but aside from just fatigue and the crappiness of forever-testing, it (KNOCK ON ALL THE WOOD) may not bother me at all.
Aaaand in other good news (Is small, lazy cancer good news? I say so)…I’m 75% done unpacking, the cats are semi-adjusting to the new house, and my editor sent me a letter that she loved the draft my next book. ALL THE WHOOPS!
As proof of life, here is a picture of me unpacking 80 billion books. In my next life I’m going to collect less heavy things, like bags of farts, or scarfs made of cat fur.
Now I’m off to work on book edits. Wish me luck.
PS. Sorry this one isn’t very funny but I’ve had a lot on my plate. I promise I have funny stuff coming once I get past this next deadline.
PPS. I haven’t unpacked the giant hooded cat bed that Hunter S. Thomcat hides in when he’s freaked out so I got another one but I accidentally ordered one that is way too small for him to fit into and so instead he just puts it on his head and slinks around like a very strange turtle…
Last night I was trying to figure out who reminded me of and finally I was like, “OH, FUCKING MOZART!” and then Victor looked at me strangely because without context I guess it sounded like I was just really mad at Mozart and so I explained, “That’s who the cat reminds me of.” And he still looked confused (probably because Hunter wasn’t wearing his bed hat because he wanted me to seem even crazier than normal) and this is exactly why we’re going to re-watch Amadeus tonight.
So I wrote a post about having cancer and then disappeared here for a week. I’M SO SORRY.
I’m still trapped in moving hell and my computer was lost in the gazillion unopened moving boxes but this afternoon it turned up and so I am writing this in the middle on the night to tell you that I am still here and I’m just fine aside from the light concussion I gave myself a few days ago when I was sleeping on the couch (since my bed frame had been taken to the new house) and at 3am I woke up to the sound of Hunter S. Thomcat loudly drinking out of a giant glass of ice water I’d left beside me, so I went to dump it in the kitchen sink but I kept the lights off so I wouldn’t wake up all the way and that’s why I didn’t see the dangerously low-hanging chandelier that normally hangs over the now-missing kitchen table and that’s how I ended up completely drenched in a gallon of icey water and cat backwash as I was unexpectedly punched in the head by my own home, which is exactly the opposite of how to stay asleep.
I’m not sure any of this makes sense but in my defense, it’s very late and I have been concussed by a light fixture that I didn’t even like.
Although, now that I’m thinking about it…I could use your opinion. When we first moved in to our old house I didn’t like this chandelier and was going to change it out but then I got distracted for 12 years. Now that I have to get the house ready to sell I was thinking I should replace it with something less…I don’t know…jestery? Medieval? But the real estate agent said I should leave it because it’s lovely and now I can’t tell if I’m insane. What’s your vote on this? Hideous or lovely?
The Mack Files: Digesting life in bite-sized pieces through the lens of clichés, quotes & “truisms”. Often irreverent, always honest.
Barking at the Moon: If your dog is your furry child, you will laugh out loud at Tracy Beckerman’s book about her family & a one-dog wrecking ball named Riley.
Wonder and Joy for the Wired and Tired: Feeling wired, tired, and stretched too thin? You’re not alone. Re-ignite your sense of childlike wonder, joy, and well-being with this enlightening and entertaining book by Dr. Pam Stephens Lehenbauer, well-being thought leader and author of the blog, Mother Nature’s Apprentice.
Stuff and Thangs from Xanaru: A mostly funny stuff about my quest for happiness through stories, art, friendship, Great Danes, one naked weirdo alien cat and indiscriminate swearing.
How the Hell Did I Not Know That?: Humorist Lucie Frost shares daily Instagram reels with learnings of the day—words, music, whatever–with plenty of laughs and all the curse words.
Beautiful Writers book: Writers! This coming-of-career memoir (w/ the BEST advice from celeb authors, real shit you haven’t heard) is life. A page-turning beach read doubling as how-to. #Magic
Vanilla Hour: A Love Story Across Time by Neer Ya is a literary novel spanning decades and cities, from Delhi to Tokyo to Goa, that follows Dr. Nandini Yadav, a geochemist and single mother, as a school reunion forces her to finally confront the buried secrets of a past love, trauma, and the man whose shadow lingers in her daughter’s smile.
Sunday Comics With Cooper and Fitz: A light-hearted comic strip about two sibling felines and their life with their adopted family: their relationship is complicated but hilarious, and navigating life with humans adds to the fun.
