Happy New Year

After a challenging Christmas, our New Year's Eve is turning out pretty great. Woke up this morning to Willow eating spinach. That's the first time since she was sick that I've seen her really eat anything on her own, without us putting it in her mouth with a syringe.

So that's the first thing I saw this morning. Then, through the morning, she tried to eat treats but couldn't get her mouth to work right because she's still pretty sore and raw inside. I imagine it's not easy to eat anything that isn't soft. So we've been soaking her food to soften it, and she's getting syringe-fed this stuff called Critical Care, which is like a high-fibre super solution that gets them as much nutrition as possible into just a few drops. We're still gonna do that until we see her actually eating regular food. I think we can start to lessen the amount we try to give her soon, though.

She's coming out to visit and seems fairly normal again. She's obviously still hurting, but degus are remarkably good at hiding illness and pain. It's a survival thing in the wild. They get sick and hide it until it's almost too late. We're so lucky we caught her feeling bad when we did, because she was in rough shape. She's still not great, but she's doing much better today than she was yesterday, and I'm very hopeful.

So that's one reason this New Year's Eve has been good. Another reason is that my mom got Sandra this cloud light kit thing for Christmas, and we set that up today over our headboard, and it's really cool. It's basically just a bunch of polyester flossy stuff, like from inside a pillow or stuffed animal, and you glue it to the wall in the shape of a cloud, with a long string of LED lights behind it and pulled through.

Surprisingly, it looks just as cool as I imagined it would. I'm seriously impressed with this thing! Here's a video of it!

It's even groovier than Davy Jones, man.

Something I got for Christmas was this book.

Here's why I have this book.

When I was a kid, I had a comic book that I read over and over. It was a black-and-white horror anthology magazine-sized comic, kind of like EC, but a little trashier and cheaper. I loved the art in it (even if the lettering is goofy). Most of all, I loved one story in particular. It was about killer mermaids. I don't remember anything else about it beyond that the mermaids friggin EAT PEOPLE. It was rad.

So it was one of those things where I remembered the story, but not where it was from. So a few months ago, I got a bug up my butt, and started hunting for that story, and found the comic. It was called Mort Todd's Monsters Attack!, and it apparently had at least three issues: two featured Freddy on the cover, and the third had Jason. It was the 80s after all. I also discovered that a collected edition of those three issues is readily available online and can be delivered to my house for Christmas. IT DID NOT DISAPPOINT. Looking at this book ripped me back in time violently and aggressively. I got whiplash. Nostalgia whiplash.

I love me a scary mermaid story. I need to sit down and read the rest of it, because it all looks amazing.

Now I gotta track down the A Nightmare on Elm Street comic books that Marvel put out around the same time. Because look at this cover:

That's a sick painting. I'm gonna figure out who did it. BRB.

Okay, got it. Joe Jusko. Okay. Well, cool. Guess I know that now.

Alright, you rascals, it's time for this guy to do some fiction writing. What do you think I do? Write letters all day?