Thursday Thread: "Hello, yes? I'm calling in WELL!" 😂 (And why you should too!)

A Tiny Ode to Mum, One Very Good Book, and the Art of Joyful Rebellion.

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Hello, Lovelies. How the hell are you?

So, my mum wasn’t like other mums. She had a very hard time behaving.

She once called her crank of a boss and declared, “Hello, yes? I’m calling in WELL.”

Not sick. Not sorry. Just… well. And unwilling to waste the day.

She said it with such authority, such gleeful subversion, that the rest of us kids fell quiet in reverence—and then followed her out the door. Into the city. To eat oysters or Greek street food or some rogue Japanese custard she’d read about in the New Yorker. To have a day.

It’s one of the greatest things she ever taught me: That very occasionally… joy itself is reason enough to skip out. That you don’t need an excuse to go savor your life.

And that, dear reader, is exactly the spirit of I See You’ve Called In Dead, the new novel by John Kenney that I read in one ravenous sitting and then immediately bought for three friends.

In it, Bud Stanley—an obituary writer (and emotional shut-in) who’s deep in a post-divorce funk—accidentally publishes his own obituary after one too many drinks. Whoops. 😂

His bosses try to fire him, but technically, you can’t fire a dead man. So Bud buys himself a little time. And what does he do with it?

He starts going to the wakes and funerals of total strangers. To learn how to live again.

If this sounds like something that would have made Nora Ephron clap her hands in delight—it is. It’s dark. It’s super funny. It’s weirdly moving. And, most of all, it’s a reminder that sometimes the only way forward is to disappear for a while. (But like, with snacks.)

It got me thinking:

What’s your favorite way to call in well?

Mine is an art date. Museum brain. An hour of being overly earnest about brushstrokes. Then I make a break for Central Park with a bottle of a bubbly mocktail and some cheese that might get me arrested in Customs. Girl dinner, al fresco!

Or, better yet: a perfect hooky day at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival. Blanket. Books. Brie that melts on contact. A solo picnic so indulgent it counts as a religious experience.

Or maybe, you need to go truffle hunting in Tuscany with a gaggle of Italian eccentrics? That’s totally calling in well.

One time, I called in well to my silly job hawking video games to emotionally stunted incels and busted my uber-depressed thirteen-year-old out of school, and took her on an epic shopping spree to her fave, super sensible Japanese store. For this, I faked my dad’s death and turned on the full waterworks for our squid-demon school secretary. Don’t judge. Seeing my kid’s joy is everything to me.

Calling in well isn’t flakiness. It’s protest. It’s reclaiming your time. It’s giving the middle finger to burnout and buying yourself back with Camembert.

So here’s my question this week:

What’s your favorite way to disappear into yourself? To remember you’re alive? To call in WELL?

Tell me everything. The lazier, the better.

Yours in Midnight Moon (yes, it’s a cheese) - xoxo - Gotham Girl

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PS - I am a human typo. Amnesty appreciated.