I had a couple of posts I wanted to write, but about 12 days ago I thought it would be an stupendously awesome idea to walk 60 blocks in 15 degree weather from work down to the Jeff VanderMeer reading discussion of his new novel Annihilation at McNally-Jackson in Soho. And that was the end of my sort-of good health, hooray! Since then, I’ve had an ongoing and ever-morphing bout of flu/cold/flu-cold/cold/cough/snot-monster/horking/phizzing/whatthefuckjustcameoutofmythroat. So, yeah, not much done on any front, writing or otherwise.

However!

Remember when I said there was a new infestation in the apartment building? Y’all thought I was probably exaggerating, right? Well, ladies and gentlemen, please introduce yourself to Georgina:

Yep, that’s a grown-ass possum sleeping in our apartment garbage cans. She (or he, I really can’t tell) has been snoozing in them for a couple of weeks now. The super will occasionally come across her when he’s dragging the trash to the curb, and he’ll tip her out and shoo her away, but that’s obviously not enough to stop her from coming back. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this spring, when she gives birth. Because she will, because oh man this apartment building ha ha ha aaaaauuuggggghhhh.

FYI, the thing sort of coming down and wrapping around her is either 1) a downed internet cable or 2) a gigantic biomechanical spider leg. Considering what you know about where I live, I’ll leave it up to you to decide which one it is, but really, seriously, how could it not be #2…

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Shut up. It was either the statue or the possum. We watched scary movies and worked on a fancy wood puzzle. It was nice.

I did see the Royal New Zealand Ballet at the Joyce Theatre, however, so there’s that. Also, I might have spent a few intimate hours with a box of macaroni and cheese and a certain amount of rum, but I’d rather not talk about that. What happens in the shitty ant-covered kitchen stays in the shitty ant-covered kitchen…

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First off: I’d like to welcome the newest infestation to my shithole apartment building. Please give a shout-out to POSSUMS IN THE GARBAGE CANS! Yeah.

Second: I’ve sold three stories so far this year, but sadly cannot relate the details of any of said sales just yet.

Third: Health-wise, I’m doing much better so far this year. Having high blood pressure means I can no longer spend my evenings relaxing on my couch with a bottle of wine in each hand and a bucket of salty foods on my stomach (at least until I’m 85, then I’m going out like a cheese and beer volcano), so I’m actually doing things like eating vegetables and working out and losing weight. Oddly, I feel good. It’s very, very strange.

Four: My short story obligations being finished, I’ll be starting my novel in March. It will be a romantical and wacky tale about the adventures of four three two demon-fucking monster-creating star-crossed college-age frenemies lovers, and if you don’t believe me, please take a look at the photo of my reading list (which you may click to embiggen) below. That is all.

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Was viciously “restructured” from my job at Wolfram & Hart.
Got a new job – with 1000% more stress.
Had a nice hospital visit – that wasn’t covered by my insurance, incidentally…
Am now in debt up to my fucking eyeballs, and will never pay it off.
Enjoyed the onset of multiple health problems that will last the rest of my life.
Turned 50 this year – another birthday spent completely alone. This time, it really hurt.
Wrote almost nothing. Seriously – I wrote less than 10,000 words.
I still live in the worst apartment in the world.

Goodbye, 2013. I have zero fucks left to give.

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Ha, well, after I got my website back up and running, I had sort of a health setback, and wound up at Beth Israel Medical Center for four days. It would appear that I have severe hypertension (re: ridiculously high blood pressure, the likes of which none of the doctors had ever seen in anyone who wasn’t also exploding) and some minor heart problems (no doubt related to working overtime for decades while trying not to leap out of my chest). I started out in ER on a Friday night – a night as apparently alright for fighting as Saturday – and by 4am on Saturday morning wound up in a two-bed room on the ninth floor of a labyrinthine complex at the edge of Manhattan. Very nice views of midtown, I have to add. Nothing I could ever afford in an apartment, and the bill I received pretty much confirmed that…

From there on out it was nothing but fun and games: CAT scans! multiple EKGs! sonograms of my heart and kidneys! Tubes everywhere, running in and out of my veins like the noodley appendages of the Flying Spaghetti Monster! A giant needle inserted into my stomach every twelve hours with anti-clotting drugs! So much blood taken from my veins that the nurses actually ran out of places to stick the needle! And, of course, a blood pressure test taken every couple of hours, round the clock day and night (because sleep deprivation when you’re scared and ill just fucking RULES) – after a couple of days, the skin had worn off on my upper arms from the constant pressure of the cuff. It got so that whenever I heard the creaky wheels of the BP machine – good ole Beepy! – being pushed into the room, I burst into tears. That’s how much it hurt. As a number of doctors pointed out, the hospital environment is not often conducive to making you feel better about getting better.

The result of all of these tests? I’m now on blood pressure medicine for the rest of my life. My eating habits have also changed, drastically, for the rest of my life – super-low sodium, no caffeine, and very little drinking, if ever again (currently I can’t have any alcohol at all). Yeah, I KNOW. And although the tests confirmed that my hypertension hasn’t yet caused any damage to my brain (shut up), kidneys and heart, I now have to live my life under the assumption that at any time, something may show up. I always assumed I’d have heart problems in my future – my family medical history is a pretty strong indicator – but if something happens, it’ll probably come sooner in my life rather than later. But I’m alive, and my heart is no longer trying to shoot out of my skull, so there’s that. The doctors all recommended yoga as well, and maybe meditation. In other words, I need to seriously chill the fuck out for the rest of my life if I want to stay alive.

So, yeah. That was October – the hospital, and then spending the rest of the month just being calm and taking stock of, well, everything in my life. November should be a bit better, right? In the meantime, here’s a link to three photos I took at Beth Israel – there weren’t many photo ops, and most of the time I wasn’t particularly in the mood to record my experience (or anyone else’s, for that matter – a hospital is not the place to even accidentally fuck with people’s privacy). But these are pretty innocuous. And if I divide my final hospital bill in three, I can honestly say that they are the most expensive photos I have ever taken in my life. Enjoy!

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Last December, my website was hacked, and thousands – yes, thousands – of links to various sketchy and untoward websites were inserted in between each and every single line of writing. After a number of attempts to get it fixed, I gave up and deleted the entire site. Most of my posts were mirrored on my Livejournal site, but I’d been blogging since 2006, and a lot of stuff was forever lost in the interwebby mists of time. Oh well. Anyway! Welcome to my new site, design courtesy of Matthew Kressel, now with 150% more misery and ants.

I’m just going to leave this post here for a couple days to let my 3.2 readers know I’m back online, then I’ll start blogging on a regular basis again. In the meantime, here’s a list of all the things currently infesting my shithole of an apartment. We have some new species, so please give a shout-out to:

• Ants
• Spiders
• Centipedes
• Mice
• Cockroaches (new!)
• Silverfish
• Predator (don’t tell me that constant rattling in my kitchen is the goddamn fridge)
• Small devil hiding under the bed
• Bees (yes, they’re back and better than ever!)

I’m also pretty sure there are witches in the drop-ceiling, but that’s another post for another day.