This used to be a blog about books

And it might be again, someday.

For a while, I was here practically every day, opining about reading, and authors, and books. Books are my world, you see, the one thing that I can usually count on, the one thing that never lets me down.

You know what does let me down? My stupid, neurodivergent brain.

I saw this tweet last year, and it resonated with me so hard. I decided that there is a bureaucrat that is in charge of the Neurodivergence Desk in my brain. Her name is Donna. And things like books, and TV shows, and movies, well, they all have to be signed off on by Donna before I can touch them. So, when my housemate asks me if I have started the bookclub book, the shorthand we have adopted is ‘No. Fucking DONNA won’t sign off on it.”

And then, at a certain point, Donna stopped signing off on the blog.

And now, it’s nine months later, and for nine months, this has quite literally been a blog about nothing, and now, Donna also isn’t signing off on any books, so for right now, it’s not a blog about books either. It will be again someday, dear readers, I assure you. But today…this week…this month…this summer, it’s likely a blog about change and loss and anxiety and grief.

Let me catch you up. My husband died nine years ago this coming July. He died suddenly, and unexpectedly, and in remarkably good health, except for the singular thing that killed him. It was a physical ailment, but one that the doctors in the ER described as “an inconvenience.”

I can’t tell you how that phrase haunts me, nine years later.

But he died, apparently of inconvenience, and left me with his two-year-old dog, a beautiful, smart, funny, kind, goofy Golden named Jake. Jake was the reason I got out of bed in the early days, and the only thing that made me smile most days for a very long time. Jake was my salvation and my best best best friend.

And in December, he also died of something, something that should, in fact, have killed him…but less than a week after a routine surgery had gone well, and less than a week after being pronounced ‘a healthy, healthy dog.’

And then my cousin died, the one closest to me in age, also suddenly, and without preamble. She was fine, she was sick, she was dead. Three weeks, end to end.

And my dear, darling friend Walter died of complications from his virulent multiple sclerosis, which is also a disease that I happen to suffer from. Suffer with. We suffer together, me and my MS.

But it killed Walter, and I always thought that it wouldn’t kill me, but now…I mean, why not me?

And then we had a catastrophic house flood, and there are people right now, as we speak, tearing my house down to the studs. The mitigation team has packed up my belongings, and I am in a hotel with my housemate and our cats for god knows how long. And it’s fine. We are warm and dry and safe and we escaped with enough stuff to be comfortable here. It’s a nice hotel. I am privileged to be able to hunker down in such a place.

But it’s been a LOT, y’all. A lot. And one of the things that therapists talk about is writing your grief, and, well, I have this space to write in. So, this is me, writing.

And what I am really hoping is that if I write enough, it will goose Donna into releasing the new Lucy Score book from her particular kind of ADHD purgatory, and maybe then I can write about it a little.

In the meantime, I might talk about some other stuff here. You know, while I wait.

So. Hi.

I missed you guys.