Hey, California, I could sure use a hand, here...
If you 1) live in the California Bay area, particularly Oakland (especially Piedmont and Montclair) San Leandro, Alameda, Albany, or El Cerrito and if you 2) Feel like doing me a solid, then I could REALLY use your help. Please email me at this address, and you KNOW it is important to me, or else I would say something like, “shoot an email to my first name at symbol my first and last name dot com,” or perhaps direct you to my much-lower-traffic contact page. Posting a direct link to my email on the blog makes it one-click easy to respond, but I know from bitter experience it ALSO means spiders come with a veritable FLOOD of emails offering me a huge increase in the size of my non-existent penis. *martyred sigh*
Love,
Joshilyn
In other news, every animal in my house is conspiring to make me INSANE and break my heart. Except Schubert. And okay, probably I cannot blame the one-brain-celled critter who has been so often renamed that I think I will just call him Wholly Innocuous Fish. But Boggart and Bagel are scheduled to be killed and eaten later this evening.
A few years back, my friend Lydia made me a Book Beast. It’s really gorgeous, an animal totem doll with beadwork and tapestry panels and velvet embellishments. I love it. I put it on the family room bookcase, where I display all my own books, their foreign editions, and my most especial personal book collection. All these books are signed AND personalized and were either written by people I love, or they rocked my world with their greatness, or both. I set the Book Beast to watch over these things.
Lydia made several Book Beasts, and each was affiliated with a great writer and had a Magicness sewn up inside that was to do a special thing for the Beast’s owner. There was a Book Beast for inspiration, for conquering writer’s block, for finding a new idea, for commercial success, for finding the right words…My Book Beast was named Emily, and as I now know, her magicness was a copy of Emily Dickinson’s Exclusion, printed on beautiful parchment and folded into an intricate heart.
I know what the Magicness is, because yesterday Emily was vivisected.
I kind of blame me, because I was trying to draft a tricky scene in the new book, and Boggart was playing with this hooty-bird beepy cat toy. I am convinced the hooty bird was hand crafted in the bowls of deepest hell by a chortling minion of Satan because no sentient being who was remotely capable of empathy would EVER purposefully create an object that made those maddening beepo-tootle NOISES. I went and YOINKED that hooting little bastage out of Boggart’s grasp and put it way high up on the shelf. Right by Emily.
I am the one who forgot that Boggart is part furry serpent and part ninja, and crafty enough to wait until I was in the shower, unable to see or hear him, before he went slealthing straight up the wall to snare his hooty bird and drag it away. In the process, he knocked down Emily. Into the waiting maw of Bagel.
I am also the one who got very sick, and put my whole family under extreme stress, and of course we all manned up and powered through it while it was going on. But now that it is OVER, we have all sort of fallen into blubbering chunks and can’t manage things. Our PDSD is manifesting in weird ways, like Saint Scott actually was impatient once, for almost four seconds. Sam’s hard won school organizational habits have deserted him, and he is scattered and pretty much living in detention. Maisy, my girl who was born made of happiness and Sunshine, is WEEPY. And SOMEONE whose name rhymes with Smoss-ilyn (not SMOSH-ilyn) is hella more volatile and quick tempered than usual so that things like people shortening her name to rhyme with SMOSH is making her homicidal…
Hm. Wonder what happened here...
Emily.
Bagel ate Emily.
And as much as I want to blame Bagel and Boggart, it’s my fault.
I am going to send Emily back to Lydia. Maybe Emily can be repaired. I hope so. I don’t want a NEW Book Beast, I want Emily back, even scarred and a little frayed around the edges. She’ll have to be restuffed and she’ll maybe have some dog suck on her magic heart, but still, she will be Emily. And considering how things are around here right now, a broken and reconstituted Book Beast may be the perfect totem for my family as we grab on tight to each other and try to get on with it.
Sounds like chocolate is needed all around your house. It also sounds like the kids are gulp do I dare say it…(shudders) growing up. Time for a new part of the kids’ personalities to show up. Good luck. If you survive the summer with the book release, tour and missed deadline the kids will surely do you in. I doubt fall will be any easier but you never know…
Oh Joss! Sending many good wishes and blessings your way. This too shall pass and all that. I’m sure Emily can be repaired, restuffed and remagicked!
Ooh, I’m sorry, Pretty Tulip! It’s never just one thing, is it?
Big hugs and I know Lydia will be able to heal Emily.
Speaking as someone who just moments ago cleaned up a bathroom garbage can that had been terrier-ed, I would like to say that at LEAST the ONE good thing that you can cling onto is that your friend’s baby’s diaper was unused. The ones in my bathroom garbage weren’t. Nor were the baby wipes, the Q-Tips, the kleenex and many other grosser things. Hope things perk up in FTK land soon!
Jossssss,
I’m right there with ya, sister! Only I have a cat, I said A CAT, that chews up shoes!! Even the dog looks at me and says “See Mom, it’s not me, it’s her!” Won’t play with a bell-thingy or a feather stick or a fake mouse, but she’ll chew up a pair of shoes in a heartbeat. Argh!
Watcha’ gonna do? Keep lovin’ them ’cause they love you. (I think.)
Oh I hope Lydia can patch up Emily. I’m certain she can. After all, Lydia is magic. I hope things settle down at home soon. Hang in there!
Oh Ms. Josss, I’m so sorry you’re living in this mess right now, but take some comfort in that you are possessed of such talent and humor you made my tea come out my nose just then…
I empathize, sympathize, and enjoy your tale very very much.
Pat pat pat…
I received a collection of Raggedy Ann stories for Christmas when I was six (yes, I still have it). In one of the stories the nursery was being painted, and a painter played with Ann, throwing her in the air, until she landed head first in a can of paint. He took her home to his wife who carefully took her apart, cleaned her and reassembled her. She put a little candy heart that said I LOVE YOU inside Ann’s body, and that’s why Ann was especially happy. In another story, Ann is carried away by a dog and dropped in the river. When she got back she told the other dolls that the candy heart must have melted all through her body because she wasn’t a bit angry at the dog.
Think of the vivisection of your book beast as the freeing of all of the goodness that is Emily. Maybe she needed a change. Maybe her old magic needed a little sprucing up, and this is the way it had to happen.
Aw, giving your family hugs with a tear in my eye.
Ew, and Jerajenn made me remember that I used to have to HIDE used sanitary items from my old cat. Ew, ew, ew!
Blessings. Hair strokes all ’round–even for the evil animals. I bet Lydia can patch her up, and send her home frayed but whole. . .just like the docs did for you.
Oh my! That is a very destroyed book beast. But I too have faith in Lydia’s healing abilities!
Oh, poor Joss-not-Josh!! I am sorry that Emily had her insides scrambled, and wrought out onto the carpet! (And your line is: “Emily? Did she just say ‘EMILY’?! What about ME?!?!” which, I hope, places the focus right back exactly where it should be, and points out the poetic but terrible way things seem to parallel each other in Jackson-land.)
This next part is trite, obvious, and not-at-all-witty; look away! With love comes the greatest happiness, beauty, joy, and inspiration; the price of that is the risk of pain. It is only because of the deep, true love that you and your family share that your illness could create such disruption. That same love will get you all through.
Nuff! Nuff! I am getting gooey stuff on my paws!
There must be something in the air that is creating monsters out of our pets! The Evil Cat-Beast and Ferocious-Wild-Indian-puppy (successor to the Sweetest of All Possible Sweet Dogs, who passed away and left some impossible shoes {shoes?? } to fill) have both been driving me buggy with their insanity, disobedience, and thoroughly DISGUSTING behavior.
And I know that this will not make much difference to you, but for me…! Whee! My vacation in the Carolinas coincides nicely with your book tour, and minor tweaking has enabled me to attend on June 4 or 5 or BOTH! (Of course, if Fortune or need requires that you tuck the children under your wings and cluster together with Mr. Husband, postponing the book tour, I shall use one of the other methods of getting an autographed copy of your book, and meet you at another opportune moment!)
Good grief! I should get a blog of my own. (Wait.. I have one. I just never write in it…)
Sending little waves of be-happy your way,
Jennifer
Dear Ms. Mixx,
You are incorrect. It makes a huge difference to me. YAY! Hope to see you at Malaprops!
J
Isn’t it strange how powerful an illness can be? Praying for deepest, sweetest peace to descend upon your family… and knowing that lydia can definitely fix poor emily.
Well, erm, compared to Emily’s injury, and you and your family’s “…grab(bing)on tight to one another and get(ting) on with it,” I figured that, from your perspective, getting to meet another fan-who-reads-your-blog-as-well-as-your-books was a little less…significant. Even if that fan did distinguish herself as having one of the higher Mental Illness Numbers by offering you a Wasp for adoption.
From my perspective, it’s total WHEE!
Jennifer
I will tell you why — tour is a blend of The Most Fun Ever and Longing For Death.
Sometimes events are great and a buncha readers show up and it is a lively and fun. Sometimes NO ONE SHOWS UP and you and the store owner blink at each other and you both feel awful and try to be perky. Takes a lot of tour stress away to know in advance at leats one friendly face will be there…and I have SO MUCH FRICKETTY STRESS RIGHT Now it is a wonderful thing to be able to set some aside.
In that case, I will do my Very Bestest Best to bring my sister with me. (Sadly, she has a much lower Mental Illness Number; but she is still fun!)
Yar, send her up.
At least you know I really DID put some literary crap inside. This time I’ll sew up something even MORE tricky inside her.
The funny thing to me about that picture is that the tail is placed in the right spot, just detached. Hehehe.