The Bloggess

I have always been lightly obsessed with birds, and it’s gotten worse as I’ve gotten older, which I can only assume is another sign of perimenopause that no one warned me about. (Seriously, a friend of mine told me that some women’s labias can just go missing in menopause. What in the actual fuck??) Sorry. This is supposed to be about birds…not labias. I am out of my ADD meds, as you can probably tell.

Anyway, recently Victor bought me one of those bird buddy feeder cameras and I love it so much, but it has a number of problems, including an AI robot identifier that seems to have never seen birds before:

“No, buddy…pretty sure that’s not a pelican perched on the hummingbird feeder.”

More concerning though was when I would see birds at the feeder but the bird buddy wouldn’t turn on to record them. I told Victor that it was faulty because I’d just stuck my whole head in the feeder and it didn’t turn on or give me a notification that anyone was there, but Victor was like, “That’s because it’s smart enough to weed out anything that isn’t birds” and I was like, “WELL, HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS THEN?”

And he just sighed deeply, which I took as an acknowledgement that I was doing trouble-shooting much better than he thought I could. But it still wasn’t working properly so I got an old taxidermied bird from my shelf and waved it in front of the cameras to see how long it would take to set the cameras off and after about 20 minutes my arm was falling off but it finally triggered and Victor texted me a picture and was like, “See, it’s totally working. There’s a bird out there now.”

And then I sort of questioned if he was paying attention at all because how often do you see a raggedy-ass bird carrying a branch and a human hand (not often, hopefully?) and so I brought it back inside and sent this picture from the kitchen:

“I CAUGHT HIM AND HE LIVES WITH US NOW. WELCOME HOME, FLAPPY GILMORE!”

Then Victor did another deep sigh and moved the wifi thingie closer to the bird feeders and that seems to have fixed the problem, although Victor pointed out that the new problem was that I’d been maniacally waving a dead bird around in the backyard for 20 minutes and that I’d probably freaked the fuck out of every bird in our neighborhood, and that’s fair but also I’m pretty sure pelicans are unflappable. (No pun intended.)

And then a few minutes later this series regular landed and it gave me almost the exact same wtf look that Victor gives me and that’s probably pretty fair all things considered.

And I did feel a little bad, but then I saw this:

That is a terrible picture of a hawk standing at my curb and staring at me. Then he saw that I was looking and he refused to make eye contact and was like, “I’m just waiting for my uber, lady” and I’d like to think that me swinging a large dead bird around in my yard for 20 minutes convinced him it was not worth the effort to stalk my little finches and Squirrelly Jackson. I mean, it can’t hurt.

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Wow. That was a crazy one. Sorry. Someone take me to pick up my ADD meds.

This is less of a post and more of a rant that I just need to scream into the void, so feel free to ignore because I don’t think there’s a good solution here and I’m sure I’ll be fine.

So, I’ve been taking brand-name cymbalta for my depression for years and years. It’s not a cure but it helps keep me out of the deeper holes and when I tried switching to the generic (duloxetine) several years ago I fell into a very deep depression and so my dr switched me back to the brand name because although generic versions are very similar, they aren’t exactly the same and some people can have different reactions and it wasn’t worth the risk of seeing if that depression was just something that might have naturally happened with the brand name or if the generic just didn’t work for me. Taking the brand-name cymbalta is a pain-in-the-ass because my insurance makes me go through massive hoops and even when it’s covered I still have to spend thousands of dollars each year out-of-pocket for the non-generic penalties but it’s worth it and I’m lucky that I can afford it, BUT I just heard from my pharmacist who told me that the brand name cymbalta has been discontinued and is no longer available.

BRO, WHAT?

My pharmacist managed to find one bottle in Texas but I’m writing this here in case maybe you are a fancy pharmacist reading this and know of a secret stash of brand-name cymbalta somewhere I could order, or if maybe you’ve had a similar problem and had a good experience with a generic cymbalta that is closer in formulation to the brand name than duloxetine?

(Insert lightly panicked sigh here)

I suspect there is not a good answer for this problem and so I’m going to cross my fingers that the generic works. Giant shout out to everyone else out there forever working on the bullshit that comes with just trying to survive your own damn body. I SEE YOU, FRIEND.

A tiny list of things:

1. Last week my doctor did 25 stomach biopsies on me AND DIDN’T FIND ANY ADDITIONAL CANCER. CAN I GET A “HELL YEAH”?
2. Hailey is feeling a little better each day and is rocking the eyepatch.
3. I think this cookie called me crazy.

4. I can’t remember what 4 was supposed to be.

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!

For the Fantastic Strangelings Book Club we’re sending you American Mythology by Giano Cromley, a quirky, charming, frightening and absolutely heartening book. Plus…big foot.

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.

Happy reading!

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.

Sending love,

me