Huge Thank Yous

Last week my friend G called me and sent me an email saying he needed to see me; it was important. The first thing I thought, because I'm paranoid, was, oh hell, what have I done now? Lengthy thought reassured me that I had, in fact, done nothing. Than I thought, oh hell, I bet Drinking Liberally is imploding and he wants me to help him save it. Lengthy thought on this reassured me that G knows I never go to DL anymore and also am way too busy to do anything about it imploding or otherwise. Than I thought, huh, I bet he's finally running for office and wants me to leak it somehow. This made very little sense but some so I left it at that and we agreed to meet at my house last night at 8ish.

Well. At 8ish G appeared with the other Hooligans, A & F, in tow. This was weird. My house is not exactly up for company right now since pretty much everything is in boxes except for some excess dog hair that isn't packed yet. They filed in and handed me a package.

I opened it. Holy shit. They made me a book.

Specifically, they made this blog into a book and if my camera wasn't at my mom's house (this whole two houses situation, by the way, reminds me strongly of a children's book by Erica Jong, yes, that Erica Jong, called Megan's Book of Divorce which I read many times to my daughter back in the day and in which Megan laments that she has two houses and never knows what is at one house and what is at the other and right now I deeply sympathize with this. ) I would take a picture of the amazingly beautiful hardcover book entitled The Hangover Journals with, oh my god, my name right there on the cover like I actually wrote a book, a real book and oh my gods and small deities, nature storms and water spirits, apparently, I did just that. While I wasn't looking.

This is the nicest thing, I think, that anyone has ever done for me. They dedicated it to my mom, which got me all teary eyed for a moment because I had long had plans to make this blog into a book specifically for my mom but the bowdlerization of the word fuck always got to be too much for me and I would bog down and not get it done. Thus, having the book at last, with Mom's picture in it but no Mom to show it to, made me weep. But happy, sweet tears, because, oh my god, the Hooligans made my blog into a book and gave it to me in memory of my mother and all I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you, y'all are the sweetest three guys in the history of the universe and I love you all. Thank you. I still have no words. I still don't know what to say but that I am honored and humbled and just, well, thank you.