Much to my shock, yesterday I decided to query agents with my new book, even though it’s summer and everything shuts down in publishing world.
I can’t help it, I love this book so much. I wrote something I would want to read. I don’t connect with thirty year old heroines.
I’m not expecting anything, I just felt I owed it to myself to try.
And if by some miracle someone wants to represent me, I will work like hell for this book because I believe in it.
The end.
Happy July 4 to those of you who still think we’re living in a democracy and actually have independence. Oh, and fuck you, Donald Trump and your hideous cult. Thanks for completely ruining America.
Anyhow…
This is exclusive blog content again, for my eyes and probably no one else but that’s the point.
I’m upset.
First the good news. I actually completed my first full length novel in over ten years. It’s called Leaving Candyland and what I hope I accomplished is addressing the dark side of aging with humor. It’s a beach read for women of a certain age, but I hope it’s more than that. It deals with loss and change and there’s definitely a moral to the story.
Now. What do I do with it?
I’m retired. If I try to get it published traditionally, the first thing they’ll ask me is what my marketing plan is.
I don’t want to work ever again. I don’t want anyone telling me what to do.
Also, I don’t want to be rejected. I remember how many times my last book was either ignored or cruelly rejected and opening that email would be a knife to my heart.
So I should self publish it, right? I have almost 4,000 Facebook friends. I could sell it there.
Except…
It’s probably the best thing I ever wrote. I love this book. Am I selling myself short by self-publishing it without even trying for commercial success?
Gah! I don’t know. I’m thinking of asking a friend to read it but I don’t think anyone will be honest with me and they’ll say it’s great even if it’s awful.
Just like I would do if someone asked me. I mean, who is going to say that to a friend?
So I don’t know what to do. I still need to edit it just a bit more but I will wrap that up this week.
So that’s my good news.
I’m in a bad head because I’m hurt and I know there’s nothing I can do about it.
If you look at my social media, I have a very glamorous life. I get to brag about my celebrity kids all the time. To say I’m proud would be putting it mildly.
I’ve come to terms with the fact that Julie moved to Seattle and Eric to Nashville and they’re not coming back. I know it’s the way of the world now.
But it’s really hard for Gary and me on holidays and special occasions. We’re not just alone, we have to watch Julie and Eric celebrate with their partners’ families, who do live where they do.
It’s brutal.
Holidays were so much fun when the kids were here. The house was always packed with their friends and Gary would be behind the barbecue grill cranking out his famous burgers…
I dunno. I guess I thought the kids would be over here for dinner at least once a week for eternity. Now I consider it a great year if I see them more than twice a year.
Again, I love them to the moon and back and I get it, I really do.
The one thing I still had was my birthday because since 2011, Julie and Gary always go to prog rock camp in NY the week before my birthday and Julie drives home with Gary for a few days to celebrate.
Eric is always involved with Natalie’s family the month of August. I accept that because it’s the month Nat’s sister and family visit from Germany and they all vacation together.
Anyway, long story short, Julie casually remarked to me the other day that she won’t be coming home with Gary for my birthday this year because she’s doing something with her partner’s cousins in NY after camp instead.
My heart kind of broke.
I think I’m doing fine and trying to be a better person but I haven’t been able to stop crying. I just feel like Gary and I are getting old and…oh fuck fuck fuck.
How many birthdays does Julie think I have left?
That’s the other piece of this. I haven’t told anyone but I don’t feel well and it’s getting worse. I have an appointment with my cardiologist on 8/3 and I’m scared.
People my age die.
Hopefully this is just me being a depressed hypochondriac. I can still eat, so there’s that.
When I was nine years old, I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. I watched on my parents’ black and white television. I had already been warned by my mother that the Beatles were a dirty word in our house (not for the reasons they were banned in other homes like their long hair and lifestyle), but because rumor had it their music signaled the end of jazz and my father was a jazz musician. Like millions of other kids who tuned in that night, I could barely contain myself. My nine year old body quivered…I can still remember the feeling like it was yesterday. I wanted to dance all over the living room…it was as if something broke inside of me that was holding me back and now I was free to fly. But I didn’t because I was afraid of my father’s temper. So I sat there and watched quietly.
After that night, everything changed.
Less than a mile away, a similar scene played out at Gary’s house.
If you are a person of a certain age, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Our favorite Beatle was John Lennon. I’m not exaggerating when I say he’s part of who Gary and I are.
When you’re a kid, you fantasize about meeting your idols but deep down, you know it won’t happen.
If you had told our nine year old or even twenty-nine year old selves that someday we would have a child* who would be friends and play a gig with John Lennon’s child, Gary and I would have rolled our eyes, laughed and said, “In what universe?”
So when I say our brains are broken, I am not joking. Not even a little.
What a crazy, messy, fantastic world.
*Eric also spent a day hanging out with Sean at the Moog factory but I don’t have a pic. Like my mind isn’t blown enough.
Me: What did you do last evening on your night off in Austin, TX, Julie?
Julie: Oh, nothing much, Mom. I played poker with Sean Lennon, Les Claypool and Harry Waters. What did you do?
Me:
Look at my daughter’s dinner companions. Adrian Belew, Jerry Harrison, Les Claypool, Harry Waters, and SEAN LENNON excuse me I need to go breathe in a paper bag…
Tonight in Dallas: Julie Slick, Adrian Belew, and LES FUCKING CLAYPOOL! My daughter and two legends…and I thought the Sean Lennon stuff broke my brain…
Oh my goddess. Julie called yesterday and broke both our brains with stories. I know I’ve said it already, but the Beatles and particularly John Lennon were the closest thing Gary and I had to heroes as kids. For Julie to casually remark, “Sean sat next to me at dinner last night and we chatted about all kinds of stuff, even Paul McCartney!”
I repeat. Brain broken 😎
So usually my blogposts are simply Facebook cross posts since I expect to eventually get kicked off of social media due to my I hate Donald and his evangelical Christian politics but today this is exclusive content here. Why? Because I’m also bored of Facebook and don’t feel like dealing with all the comments. Also because no one reads this blog anymore and I want to write something I don’t want anyone to see, meaning the kids, though it is kinda funny and of course I will tell them but they’re both going on tour next week and I don’t want to freak them out.
But first, if they were still alive, today would have been my parents’ 70th anniversary. Mind blowing, huh. I literally have only ten or so photos total of my family, and this is the only one I have of my mother and father together.
That’s my mom and dad right behind him. Next to my father is my first cousin, Rosalie. She died in 1980 at age 30 from Hodgkins Disease a few years after this pic was taken.
Behind her is my first cousin Robbie. He died at age 48 in 2000 from a heart attack.
Next to Robbie is his mom, my mother’s sister, my Aunt Shirley. She’s the only woman in this photo who lived into her late eighties, dying of Parkinsons disease around 7-8 years ago.
I’m thinking this picture is from right before my mother got sick…she’s still got some weight on her and I am pretty sure that’s her real hair. But oh, she must have been diagnosed with the brain tumor right after this photo was taken and a year later, gone.
Anyway, just recording this for posterity.
On to me and my latest holy fuck moment.
A couple of months ago, I noticed this weird thing happening only when I got into bed at night. When I crawled in putting pressure on my right knee, it felt like I had a tiny shard of glass in my knee. It’s the craziest thing. My knee doesn’t hurt, even if I press on it, but when I put that whole pressure of my body on it kneeling, it feels like I have a splinter.
I even got out a magnifying glass and flashlight to see if I had a piece of glass there but nope.
I told Gary about it after a few weeks of having to get into bed a different way but we were high and we both bent over double laughing about my hypochondria.
But then, honest to god, my big toe on that same foot started hurting and omg, blew up to twice the size of my other big toe.
Again, I told Gary, and because the two of us are total children, we laughed and laughed.
Listen, we’re married 50 years. Gary knows I am a hypochondriac and it really was funny.
Until the pain in my knee and toe woke me in the middle of the night and in a haze of sleep thought OH MY GOD WHAT IF MY WONKY HEART THREW A BLOOD CLOT AND IT’S IN MY LEG AND I’M GONNA HAVE A STROKE AND OR DIE.
So I got out of bed and hobbled downstairs in the middle of the night and sweating in terror, and googled “Why does it feel like there’s g…”
Before I could type the word, Google finished it for me.
“…glass in my knee”
I was like OH MY GOD, IT’S A THING?
Yes, apparently. Along with the second symptom, a swollen big toe.
And the words CALL YOUR DOCTOR!
Fuckkkkkkkk.
So what these symptoms mean is that my kidneys are producing too much uremic acid. The glass in my knee is actually a crystal my kidneys are producing in this condition and said crystal is lodged in my knee.
The reason for too much uremic acid?
Could be diet.
Leading bad foods? Red meat, alcohol, fructose syrup, and too much dairy.
Welp, I don’t do the first three items at all. Dairy, yes, but only 2-3 times a week.
Anything else?
Why yes. Leading cause is taking statins to lower your cholesterol.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner.
Long story short, I have gout. Gout is actually “bony arthritis.”
Here’s the hilarious part. I got terrified when I first got diagnosis because I get so scared at the doctor I got confused and thought gout was goiter and I thought I was going to grow a second head out of my neck like a circus freak. 🤦♀️
Anyway, I am fine. I’m cutting my dairy yet again and taking another new daily medication. That makes six. Yay me.
Haha so glad no one but me still reads this unless I link it somewhere. If you stumble on it, please don’t tell me 😂
Last night when I couldn’t sleep—and yes I’m back to that again because I stopped listening to my husband’s assurances that Donald will never be president again and I seriously don’t think I will survive if that happens—anyway, last night when I was staring into that 2:00 am darkness with the pit of fear in my belly, I started reminiscing on being a kid growing up in the sixties and what terrified me back then.
My number one fear, and I don’t say this lightly, was falling into quicksand and being swallowed up.
Never mind that I grew up in a fully developed residential Philadelphia neighborhood. I was convinced every puddle was a death trap.
Clearly, I watched a lot of cartoons. I mean, I have no other explanation. Which brings me to my number two fear, that a masked robber would climb up a ladder and open the bedroom window directly above my headboard, jump in and steal my Barbie dolls, and hit me over the head and try to kill me so I couldn’t identify him in a lineup.
Never mind that our home was a two story row house, the back of which was on an incline and faced another row of two story houses…in other words, no one could climb up said ladder without being noticed but it’s moot because no one would want to. The neighborhood was basically lower middle class, which in the sixties meant your annual income was around $10,000.
To be honest, I didn’t even have real Barbies, I had mostly dime store knockoffs.
Heh. The dime store.
Oy I am so old.
My final fear was being bombed by the communists, but only because we had air raid drills at school where we had to huddle in the gym. I have to admit, I wasn’t nearly as afraid of the atomic bomb as quicksand and burglars since I was pretty sure between the cement windowless walls of the basement gym and staying quiet and perfectly still like the teacher instructed, I would be safe from nuclear disaster.
Anyway, this morning in the light of day I don’t feel as anxious, I know as long as I stay away from the news and live one day at a time, I will be fine.
I’m not gonna worry about Donald, anyway. And my husband assures me that our Social Security checks won’t stop next month when the evil Republican Congress tries to cause a default because President Joe will save us.
Okay, whatever you say, but aren’t you also the person who’s been telling me since January 7, 2021 that Donald is going to jail?
Oh well. Like I said, I’m really not gonna worry about that or anything. I can’t, I will go insane.
I’m gonna enjoy my Mother’s Day weekend and eat lots of cake and french fries.
I just really wanted to share my fear of quicksand.
