How delightful to see I’ve reached 800 subscribers, wowza!
I’m very grateful you’ve chosen to hang out here with me in the mess that is my life (which is also my title for an eventual memoir, MY MESS IS A LIFE). I appreciate anyone who takes time out of their lives to read anything I’ve written, so thank you for including me in your lives.
Eight hundred is a lot of you! That’s roughly 200-ish more than people who have bought my rock and roll love story, The Sound of Settling. The current totals are 613 copies sold, with just over 29K pages read. A thousand of those pages have been read in April, so that’s almost three books completed in just the first nine days!
As it’s my birthday month (she’ll be 55 on the 26th, y’all), my goal is to make April my best-selling month thus far. It’s only $10 on Kindle, and FREE if you have Kindle Unlimited. I also get more royalties from the Kindle than the paperback, but anyway you want it, that’s the way you’ll read it (yeah, I’m clever like that).
Also, just recommending The Sound Of Settling on your socials (via this post or one of my bajillion tweets about it) would be great. I’m trying all the time to get that elusive publishing deal, but James Comer is in my way, so I have to keep waiting.
My beloved book will also be on the Small Press shelves at Powell’s before my birthday, which is definitely something to celebrate.
While we’re boosting my writing, there’s still room for you in Heavy Meddling, the follow-up to The Sound of Settling if you upgrade from your free subscription. Founding subscribers get their names in the book as a character. Yearly subscribers get to come up with a song title and I’ll write lyrics for it for one of the bands in the book. You’ll all be in the acknowledgments! And if you can only swing the $8 subscription, you’ll at least get to comment and commiserate with me.
The last six weeks have been rougher than I’ve been sharing. First, I had that bout of RSV in mid-March that kept me housebound for a good 12 days. It took me a while to regain my appetite and get myself out of the house, which I started doing over the final weekend of March.
Just when I was feeling back to what’s normal for me, I did some real damage to myself.
Today is Tuesday, April 9th, and I haven’t been able to sit down at my desk since last Friday because I forgot that I’m old and delicate.
I had decided I needed a proper desk chair, not the world’s most exciting purchase. But considering I’d been sitting on a yoga ball for years and I had almost fallen off it in one direction or another, I thought I’d treat myself to a proper chair because I was worried I’d fall off one day and break my neck or something.
These are the kinds of things people who live alone think about. “How long before anyone realizes they haven’t heard from me?” is one question that looms large anytime I trip over a cat or slip just a tiny bit stepping out of the shower. “How long before anyone finds me?”
Anyway, I thought it was time for a sturdier chair as I also have started adapting The Sound of Settling into a screenplay, which is THE SLOWEST PROCESS EVER, and so comfort is a priority.
The one I chose is commonly called the “criss-cross applesauce” chair, which went viral on TikTok a few months back. If you search it on the TikTop shop, it’s priced at anywhere from $50 - $100, with shipping in the astronomical range of $40 and higher.
My mother taught me how to find a bargain, and I certainly did. I found it on Amazon for $55, free shipping. All the unboxing videos I’d watched made it look super comfy. And—most importantly for this single woman who owns one screwdriver—super easy to assemble.
It arrived a week sooner than expected, yay!
But then I learned that those unboxing videos all lied to me, boooo!
Allow me to show rather than just tell.
Anyway, today is the first day since Friday that it’s not entirely excruciating to sit here at my desk, criss-cross applesauce style. I’m trying to maintain with just ibuprofen instead of the muscle relaxants I had on hand thanks to the last time I yoinked my delicate self like this. It’s fun to be on a Flexeril high for a little while, but I’d like to still get stuff done while trying to heal. Instead, it’s been a lot of very sudden couch naps that have lasted longer than a nap should. We need a name for a daytime sleeping period that extends into the three-hour range. Mini-coma?
All I know is, there wasn’t one thing I put on the TV since taking to the couch that I haven’t had to go back and re-watch thanks to being on pain meds. But I can now tell you A LOT about Heartstopper, Manhunt, and Palm Royale.
I was all prone and ready for the Rapture which didn’t happen yesterday during the Eclipse. Maybe all the clouds in Portland hid me from Jeebus and his Magic Tractor Beam, I dunno. I bet Donald Trump was disappointed that nobody got Raptured because now he really won’t be able to do anything about his criminal hush money trial starting next Monday
All the MAGAts are big mad about being wrong about both Sky Daddy and Donny Delay. All I see in my Twitter feed are people with names like “Insurrection Barbie” still claiming Trump won in 2020.
Remember when the first thing you saw in your timeline was based on time and not an algorithm of what it thought you should see? You saw the most recent tweets first, and then you had to go see what the accounts you were following had posted to get caught up.
Free Speech Champion Elon Musk has ruined everything that made Twitter enjoyable for the sake of doing it. We’ve known this since he began his shitass reign of terror, but now it’s also sworn testimony.
Fuck that guy. I want Mark Cuban to buy Twitter and give it back to us. I’ll only ask for a small referral fee so I never have to worry about money ever again.
Hey, I’m MANIFESTING here.
Congrats on 800 subscribers. Wanted to subscribe for a month ended up subscribing for a year. And continuing making a ton of typos in my OWN Substack. Trying to figure out how to finish my substack commemorating 6 months of Netanyahu dragging his feet but having issues.
"MY MESS IS A LIFE" love this title!
Happy birthday month Tara, you're a rock star!