Flotsam

My plans for the week got derailed a bit when Simone threw up last Tuesday night, taking her virus airborne and infecting Scott. Why a sick husband should cause more challenges and disruptions than a sick child is a mystery I am not qualified to solve, but there you are. Our household descended into chaos, and I was just beginning to claw my way out yesterday when I stupidly decided to call my clinic about the weird pain and numbness I’d been having in my calf-y shin area since the day before, and the nurse I spoke to more or less insisted I go to the ER at once. It turns out that when you add calf pain, numb skin, a clotting disorder, and lots of recent air travel, you get MA’AM, I NEED YOU TO BE SEEN RIGHT AWAY MA’AM ARE YOU HAVING ANY CHEST PAIN?
(I wasn’t having any chest pain, but while I was waiting for an ultrasound I had a panicky moment in which I was convinced that my heartburn was something else, and then all at once I seemed to be having trouble breathing and had to talk myself down from Pulmonary Embolism! to Highly Suggestible.)

As irksome as it was to spend four hours in the hospital on a Monday on which I had multiple deadlines, I will admit that it was nice, for once, not to be the alarmist. I only called the clinic in the first place because of a rule I have—it’s complicated, but basically I use a formula to weigh the embarrassment/inconvenience of a thing against the awfulness of the possible outcome of NOT doing it (and the likelihood of attendant guilt/thoughts of if only). It’s the reason I do not drink and drive, even a little, even though it results in a lot of securing rides just to go out for dinner. (I know it’s legal to have a small amount of alcohol before driving, but the way I look at it, should I be in a car accident and hurt someone, how would I feel knowing that I’d had a drink, however small? Short of buying a personal breathalyzer, how can I know that the wine I am certain has failed to render me even tipsy hasn’t impaired my reflexes?)
Anyhow, I used this system to decide that though I felt silly calling about my leg, I’d feel much sillier if I didn’t and then had, say, a massive stroke. And you know the rest.

Happily, I am clot free, and the doctor’s best guess is that my knee’s sac of joint fluid got pinched off and ruptured, sending knee juices (hope you’ve already eaten!) into my calf. The human body is truly a revolting contraption. This is an injury common to arthritics and sporty people, neither of which I am, but it’s what we’re going with for now. Of course, just to keep things interesting, I woke up with a fever last night and seem to have contracted whatever the rest of the family was infected with, which I predict will subside just in time for Simone to start preschool (whole ‘nother post, that) next Tuesday and bring home a fresh crop of microbes.

None of this was what I meant to write about, however. In Seattle, I promised my lovely readers I would do another Google search post, just for them, and that I would do it by the end of August. Imagine my surprise to realize that the end of August is NOW, and so this morning I propped my feverish, tingly-legged self on the couch and, for the first time in ages, reviewed my analytics. I limited the search to the past month, and scrolled through the 500-or-so search terms that had led people to my humble website. There were sad, worried queries about IVF or miscarriage, practical ones about girdles and bikini waxes and my book, but…where were my face sleepers, my girls with organisms?
They were nowhere to be found. There was nothing. Not one amusing search. The closest I came was a house does not rest upon sand but rather upon a woman which, I will admit, sounds awfully uncomfortable, but I suspect that this is merely a misremembered quote.

A few months ago—okay, six—I went through my analytics, and though I didn’t have time to write a post, saved some of the choicer search terms in a Word document. There were the disturbing [“fresh beat band" +"mindy cohn”] and electric boa constrictor corset. The oddly ethnically specific swedish flashers and adorable yet poignant how to write a true story about myself. There were the earnest and misguided is my house hunted and should congratulations be all caps before first name with exclamation point. There was meerkat bathroom habits. There was what may have been a search conducted by an alien coming upon a human baby for the first time (screamy creature), and the eerily appropriate solipsistic whimsy, which domain name I should probably just go ahead and register, already.

Now, though…nothing. Mostly variations of my name and my blog name: alexa flotsam, alexa floatsom, alexa half baked, alexa simone preemie book. Is this the price of mild success-ishness? I remember installing my first stat program and seeing my first bizarre Google search, back in 2006: getting sex from strangers in the woods. I suppose it’s a good thing, that more people are actually coming here on purpose, looking for me rather than amorous woodsmen. But…at the price of meerkat bathroom habits? Is this a sacrifice I am willing to make?

THURSDAY.

• I have a longstanding love affair with The Warwick Hotel. If I had my way, I would live there—as Cary Grant did for many years—but in this as in so many things I have been thwarted, and have had to settle for the occasional brief stay whenever I visit New York. This last time, I reserved The Hollywood Suite for a night to host my book party, a suite with an honest-to-god TERRACE. Heather was with me when I checked in, and once we saw the view, our cameras came out with a fierce quickness, like something out of an old Western.

In one direction, you could see all the way to the river.

And here we are, pretending to be the Other Half that presumably is accustomed to such accommodations:

The hotel room was full of surprises—part way through the evening we discovered a whole second bathroom in what I had assumed was another closet. This struck me as more luxurious, even, than the terrace: two whole bathrooms! I never!


Also, once it was dark, I noticed what I am pretty sure was the Bat Signal.

{fig. 1: Something terrible has happened at the Commissioner’s Ball!}

• The party itself was perfect. I’d been certain that I would, at some point, be arrested, on account of I was unclear on the legality of bringing one’s own food and alcohol into a hotel room without paying graft to the catering department, but somehow I escaped with my criminal record unblemished. There was wine, and there were cupcakes thoughtfully arrayed upon every surface by my beloved friend Fernanda. I got to meet Jonna, which more or less made my weekend (and for her own sake, I hope she wasn’t kidding about the “come to Boston!” invitation, because otherwise it’s going to be terribly awkward when I show up, bag in hand). I met Holly, whom I’ve long felt I already HAD met, simply because we’ve been reading each others’ words for so very long. I was happily reunited with and surrounded by many dear friends (TOO MANY FOR THOROUGH LINKING, god help me), friends like Linda, who are close enough to dispense with small talk entirely and open with a remark about my breasts. It was wonderful.


{Ed. Note: Cupcake photo courtesy Heather, photo of books courtesy Leah.}

• Speaking of being reunited (and it feels so gooood), when I was in New York for BEA in May, I was reunited (cause we understooood—sorry, I’ll stop now) with one of my very best friends from college, Ashley. That is a story for another time (it’s the story that involves me being mistaken for a Soiled Dove, which tale I never did get around to telling), but this time, Ashley brought another of my closest college friends, Abby, along with her.

The strangest thing about meeting up with friends from college is the way that even if it has been ten years (my god, can that possibly be right?), somehow, it feels as if no time has passed at all. Except, of course, that we have matured greatly since our school days.

Obviously.

• When nearly all the guests had gone, Abby and Ashley remained, and we had a dance party. Heather was still there and joined in. She kindly refrained from mocking us, though I did notice her videotaping—I assume because the sight of three 30-year-old white girls dancing to Biggie for hours and hours was too absurd to leave undocumented. That video is probably in a locked safe deposit box somewhere, in case Heather should ever decide she needs the sort of favor only blackmail could induce me to perform.

FRIDAY

• I woke up at 7am after three hours of sleep and gathered up the case of empty wine bottles and consolidated the trash and then got carried away and cleaned the whole suite, including scrubbing the stone of the terrace on my hands and knees. Sure, I could have left a crumb or two for housekeeping, but it was so satisfying to clean a space thoroughly and know that no baby would come behind you and muck it up again. However, I left the picture frames as they were—askew—to show that Something Had Happened there the night before. Then I had breakfast on the terrace (pretending that I was in White Collar) before sadly bidding adieu to the ample lap of luxury and shuffling across the street to the Hilton for the rest of my stay.

• I finally met Lawyerish, and didn’t steal her baby. I can’t tell you the restraint this required, because that baby was indecently delectable. In the end, only my unwillingness to add to the mountain of “UNHINGED INFERTILE WOMAN KIDNAPS INFANT” storylines so popular on television crime shows kept me from it.

• Sometime after lunch, I saw Eden mention her room number on Twitter—to someone else, mind you. Eden and I’d had IVF retrievals (and thus due dates) two days apart (though Simone undershot hers a bit, obviously). I was eager to meet her in person, and since her room number indicated we were staying on the same floor, I figured I’d pop down the hall and say hello.
As I neared her door, however, it occurred to me that “Hello! We haven’t been formally introduced, but I saw your room number on Twitter!” might be an…unsavory way to open a conversation, so I began composing an email, only to realize that an email that reads “I’m standing outside your door RIGHT NOW” was even worse. I gave up and knocked, and when Eden opened the door she greeted me with a grin and a hug that were just what what BlogHer is really about. Discovering over and over the alchemy that turns people you have only known online into real friends, or, more accurately, reveals that actually, they always were.

• Friday night I hit the inevitable wall that approaches the day after you stay up until four a.m. dancing and then neglect to sleep in, and so I skipped the parties and crawled into bed with delicious room service.

SATURDAY

• I really, really missed Simone this trip. Last year I was fine, both for BlogHer and the nine days I spent in Switzerland. People would say “Oh! It must be so hard to be away from your baby!” and I would just cackle and roll around on my big, fluffy hotel bed. This year, though…this year, it was rough. At some point I got it into my head that it would make me feel better to get her a present, and I knew just the thing: a new baby, one with longer hair, long enough that she could indulge her sleepy fetishistic hair rubbing proclivites even while my head and I were far away from her. Alas, I ran into a familiar problem when I tried to find a doll that passably resembled my daughter. I don’t know why I get so stroppy about the glut of blonde haired, blue eyed dolls, but I do, and so first thing Saturday morning I walked twenty-some blocks uptown to Mary Arnold Toys and found my brunette quarry at last. The walk along the park was beautiful, and when I decided to take a cab back downtown I discovered that nowhere are taxi drivers so responsive to even the suggestion of a raised arm than the Upper East Side.

• My signing at the BlogHer bookstore was wonderful. They sold out quickly, before I had signed more than ten or so copies, so either the bookstore didn’t order that many to begin with or they sold most of them the day before. Either way, a success. My friends came to lend support:

• Next I took the train downtown (I even helped a frightened-looking tourist decipher her subway map and saw her to her stop, thus performing my good deed for the day) to Joe’s, where I met Ashley, Abby, and another college friend I last saw a decade ago: Tony.

{fig. 2: Yes, gentlemen, he’s available}

• After a delightful conversational interlude, Abby, Ashley, and I started off toward the train, and had a picturesque New York moment when a very excitable man began running along beside us. He had a lot to say.

“CUNTS! Hey you! Cunts!”
We kept walking, as one does. It was a beautiful day. The crazies were in bloom!
“You UGLY! Ugly HAIR, ugly BODIES, ugly CHEEKBONES…ugly, ugly, UGLY!”
We kept walking, trying not to laugh because They Don’t Like That, but this only infuriated him further. He waved his arms and spit upon the ground, shouting:
“NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE YOU FOR YOURSELF!!”

(Which, as I pointed out, is highly illogical, as I would think that ugliness would virtually guarantee that if anyone loves you, it is for yourself—because it’s certainly not for those substandard cheekbones.)

We stopped at Gray’s for hotdogs, and encountered another persistently sociable gentleman on the platform waiting for the train uptown, but he was easily put off when we began discussing Abby’s parole officer. It was all just like old times.

• The three of us made our way to The Volstead, where I finally met Alice. She is one of my oldest Internet pen-pals, and yet like Pyramus and Thisbe, circumstances have conspired to keep us apart. UNTIL NOW.

I’d imagine the picture is blurry because we are vibrating with glee.

(That night I also met the truly lovely Jenny, whom I can only assume I hadn’t encountered previously because we both spend so much of our time at conferences hiding in bathrooms/corners/hotel suites with our respective anxiety medications.)

• I knew I had an early flight in the morning, so I said my goodbyes. I was sorry to be missing the big Saturday night parties, and frankly felt pulled all week between the conference and the city, as if I were trying to have two separate weekends at once. There were friends I didn’t get a chance to talk to, others with whom my conversations were far too brief. It’s always this way. But in the end, I saw familiar faces, discovered lovely new people (Susan!), and left already counting down to next year.

Next up: Tales from the road…

I don’t have time for a proper entry, but as much as I enjoyed the responses to my last one, I feel compelled to state that I did not intend to create a meme per se, with everyone logging their numbers in the same categories I used to sum up my past five years (categories to which, I admit, I gave relatively little thought), and am anxious to assure you that these are not categories I would necessarily hold forth as definitively defining. Whether you have had children needn’t be a measure of what you have done with your fifth of a quarter century, and “men married”…well, I would never. Maybe you married a woman, or would have married a man but for the preposterous one-penis-per-union marriage laws currently on the books, or perhaps you didn’t feel compelled to marry anyone at all. It is none of my nevermind, certainly (and extra points to those who recognize the movie reference). It may be a silly point to be driven to clarify, but I am sensitive about such things. Having children is not a prerequisite for fulfillment and marriage is not a prerequisite for anything save a host of unfairly hoarded legal benefits. (And if any of you felt chagrined about not having had a single kidney stone, rest assured that I’ve heard you can live a full and happy life without ever passing a calcified anything through your ureter.)

Probably none of this bothered you at all, because you were too busy wondering the same things as everyone else: does Jodi live in a mansion, or is she just really hard on couches? And why do Lu’s answers make one feel so depressingly inadequate?

This final bit is entirely unrelated, but as long as I am up, allow me to offer some guidance on a matter that seems to have discombobulated the media. I am speaking, of course, of rompers—specifically about who ought to be wearing them. Personally, I would have thought that the name alone would be enough to clear up any confusion (How old are you? Would you say that you romp, nowadays? I thought not.)

Alas, this is not the case, and so I offer a photograph of a romper in—or on—its natural habitat:

You’re welcome.

An unidentified woman in underpants, having consumed one ladylike gin and gingerale, wanders into her living room, where her husband reclines on the sofa. She sprawls beside him.

“I wish I had a million dollars,” she says, apropos of nothing and everything, “If I just had a million dollars, everything would be great.”
Her husband pauses the television.
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“I said ‘great,’ not ‘perfect.’ I know money has limitations, but in this case it would solve all of my major problems.”
“And you’d need a million dollars.”
“Fine, 500,000.”
“There is no way that you are suddenly going to get your hands on $500,000.”
“300,000. That’s my final offer. That’s as low as I can go.”
“I’m not—”
“10,000. 10,000 dollars.”

A few minutes later, her husband reaches for the remote. She muses aloud:

“We should get a metal detector. I’ll bet there’s all kind of valuable stuff around here. It’s one of the oldest neighborhoods in St. Paul. We could find F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, like, fountain pen. He lived down the block, you know.”
“And you think F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fountain pen is just lying in the grass somewhere?”
She snorts.
“Well, no. We’d have to dig, obviously.”
“How would we know it was his?”
“It would say.”
“It would say. It would be labeled? It would say ‘F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Fountain Pen?”’
“No! God! Don’t be stupid. It would say ‘Scott Fitzgerald,’ or something. Engraved. Or maybe we’d take it to an antique dealer and they’d recognize it from an old photograph.”
“Uh Huh. Maybe we’ll find F. Scott Fitzgerald’s rare old 50-cent piece, too.”
“Oh, stop. Now you’re just being silly.”

She’s quiet again for a while. But not long enough:

“I mean think about it. Think how many pens we lose.”
“Simone,” the man mutters.
“Even before her. We must lose dozens of pens a year! Why should things have been any different back then? And HE was probably DRUNK, knowing him. We can figure it out with Math. If we calculate how many pens we lose a year on average and how many years F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in the neighborhood…the place must be CRAWLING with pens! People would pay for those,” the woman finishes, sagely, adjusting her underpants.
“And he lost all these pens outside, did he?”
“Maybe they fell through the floorboards. And then there is erosion, or a mouse carries them out.”
“A mouse carries them out.”
“Where are OUR pens? You explain it. I’m just saying: metal detector. It would be an investment.”

Oh, how I envy the reasonable. The reasonable are able, as their name suggests, to see reason. They know that just because they are emitting coughs of the sort which, when heard in a movie, suggest that the character coughing will be dead before the credits roll DOES NOT mean that they, themselves, are in danger of departing for a less corporeal plane. They know that even though they have been sick for a long while—a whole week, now—it is unlikely that they will go on being sick forever and ever and evermore.

The reasonable do not believe that antibiotics are Out to Get Them. Should they be prescribed amoxicillin for a sinus infection, their third in a year after nearly three decades of pristine and healthy sinuses, they are not inspired to concoct elaborate conspiracy theories, nor are they heard to remark tearfully about their health Obviously Going Rapidly Downhill, and Probably It Won’t Be Long Now.

Yea, though it was a full week ago, the reasonable have no trouble remembering “what it feels like to be well.”

The reasonable see no reason why two months of immunological pratfalls shouldn’t be coincidence, and are not disposed to sudden wee-hour convictions that their children’s current illness will one day be looked back upon as a warning sign they tragically ignored.

The reasonable do not ask their significant others to lay a hand upon their foreheads every quarter of an hour to confirm that they are still, indeed, warmish.

The reasonable do not find that spending all this time in bed makes one really crave madeleines, nor would they rationalize a sudden spike in cake consumption by remarking upon the body’s ability to communicate its dietary needs, for the reasonable would know better than to entertain the specious premise that whipped cream has antiseptic properties on a cellular level.

The reasonable would spend more time catching up on correspondence and less wondering whether, if they WERE dying, some foundation might work on their behalf to entice members of various World Cup teams (a proportional international contingent) to visit their deathbeds in order to massage them with therapeutic oils while wearing only the flags of their respective homelands—miniature flags, the sort you wave at parades. The reasonable would not abruptly end a blog entry because of a coughing fit.

I woke up on the morning of my signing feeling deranged with nerves, missing the shuttle when my shaking hands resulted in a dramatic mascara wand mishap and I had to wash my makeup off and start from scratch.

Here I am, averting my eyes so that you will not see the CRAZY! in them:

It helped that it was a beautiful, if blisteringly hot, day, and that I had a view of the Chrysler Building from my hotel room window. So much prettier than the Empire State Building. Height isn’t everything, you know.

It also helped that in the cab on the way to the convention center my phone buzzed, and I got the following photograph via text from my mother-in-law:

This baby has only a bucket to shield her from the elements. A naked baby doll and piece of discarded Tupperware are her sole companions. For only three cents a day, you could at least buy her a bigger bucket. Won’t you please help?

Javits Center is huge. HUGE. This shouldn’t have been a surprise, but when I entered to find myself in what appeared to be a multi-level warehouse the size of two train stations, with banks of escalators before me carrying bookbag-laden people from floor to floor, I was rendered motionless, and tried to look nonchalant while I waited for my publicist to fetch me. My publicist, Nicole, is a tiny and formidably accomplished seventeen-year-old. Oh, ok, she is older than that—eighteen, maybe. I kid, but she doesn’t seem old enough to account for her job experience and easy, confident competence. I’m a little intimidated by her, honestly. She is one of those put-together people who instantly make me feel I am about to trip over something or possibly accidentally set my handbag on fire.

I was fetched, and given my badge.

You will notice it says “AUTHOR.” (Do you think real author-authors get to a point where they can see themselves referred to as “AUTHOR” without an internal giggle of disbelief? I doubt it.)
I also took a copy of the special “Show Daily” edition of Publisher’s Weekly, a giant glossy thing that looks like this:

…and which I opened to find a full page ad taken out by Perseus (my publisher, or rather Ur-publisher) to promote their author events. Like mine.

See me? Above EMPIRE OF ILLUSION and next to ALEX AND THE IRONIC GENTLEMAN? Also, please note that the sort of border at the top of the page made up of tiny little book covers has mine in it. This was all very exciting.

Even more exciting was what I saw when the escalator spit us out upstairs onto the convention floor and into the gigantic Perseus area in the center: a long wall of light-up marquee sort of things, like they have for movies.

Holy SHIT, you guys:

From about this point on, I was just a floating, disbelieving, grinning presence. I bobbed on over to the booth, sat at a table, and began signing my name to things. I did this for a couple of hours, and it was wonderful. Some notes:

• They gave me a Sharpie to sign with, which is apparently Standard Signing Equipment, but made me feel a little rude, as if I were defacing the books with graffiti—tagging them, if you will. It felt scandalous to write in someone else’s copy like that. (Of course, I am also the person who gasped and then fiercely scolded a friend when I entered a room to see her book splayed gruesomely on its SPINE.) (I could hear its feeble screams!)
• I signed willy-nilly, on whichever of the first non-text-y pages I happened to open up to, until one woman made me do hers over and informed me that the PROPER place to sign is the title page, NOT the half-title. Remember this, all of you.
• I never did think of anything clever to write. I mostly stuck with “For X” and my name, and added my profuse thanks verbally. (Indeed, I felt misty with gratitude the whole time.)
• Apparently, not every author asks how a name is spelled before signing, which surprised me to hear. I got a lot of “Oh! Thank you for asking!” and a wide variety of spellings. I asked because how annoying would it be, if you are a Cathy, to have a book signed to Kathy instead? My inscriptions may not be clever, but at least they are correct. Maybe that will be my thing?
• If I saw that the person I was signing for was a librarian, I sometimes wrote “Thank you for being a librarian!” before my name. I think I may have frightened a few librarians with my enthusiasm for their profession. (“Oh!” I kept crying gleefully, “You’re a LIBRARIAN!”) In case they are reading now, allow me to explain: When I was in elementary school, I had a particularly wonderful librarian, Mrs. Freuhling, who encouraged my writing—and advocated leniency during the meeting with the principal after I was discovered to be sneaking books home without checking them out. (There was a rule in place that you could check out only as many books per week as the grade you were in, which was not enough to keep me supplied with reading material. I was sneaking the books back INTO the library when I’d finished, but it was slow going, and after I was caught everyone was shocked by the quantity I’d accumulated.) Most importantly, Mrs. Freuhling convinced the staff of the daycare center in which I was confined after school to let me stay down the hall with her, shelving books and learning about the Dewey Decimal System. I spent many happy afternoons filing cards in the catalogues, pushing carts amongst the shelves, and stamping things carefully with the date, and I will always have a bit of cardiac real estate reserved for librarians. My dream job, before the Internet came along and ruined it, was to man the kind of reference desk where a person could wander in (or phone) with some obscure question about, say, renaissance undergarments, and I would find the answer for them. (And while I love computers, I will never forgive them for taking away my precious, precious card catalogues.)
• I felt bad for the pregnant women who picked up a copy of my book, or the people who had me sign theirs to someone they knew who was expecting. (“Maybe for AFTER the baby’s born,” I suggested.)
• Often someone would come up to me and launch into a sales pitch or question, not realizing (despite the stack of books and poised Official Signing Sharpie) that I was only an author and thus of no use to them.
• Sometimes someone would stop, pick up the book, read the back, (“It’s free!” I’d say helpfully) and then put it down and walk away.
• A shocking number of delivery men came by with menus from their restaurants (mostly Chinese, a few Thai). I take it they were making the rounds. How did they get in, I wonder?
• I began the day explaining to everyone who took a copy how ROUGH the ARC was, and how much BETTER the final version is, and how MANY EDITS AND FIXINGS I have made since the galleys were printed, but stopped when it became clear that this was frowned upon by my petite publicity powerhouse, who was also much better than I at summing up the book in a few sentences without stammering or saying disturbing things like “It’s about my daughter’s premature birth and time in the hospital—but it’s funny!” and since she was right THERE I mostly let her field the questions. It is clear that I need to work on being able to discuss my book myself. It shouldn’t be so hard. I did write the damn thing, after all.
• I felt so unfettered and celebratory, more so than I had since turning in the manuscript. I met the most delightful people, too—the sales reps were lovely! And the publisher is this very tall, kind man who said the nicest things about my book. I was struck, again, by how uncommonly lucky I have been. In the cab back to the hotel I kept marveling that any of it was real.

Me, Nicole (my aforementioned publicist), and my editor Jen. Photo blatantly stolen from Running Press’ Facebook page

So, I am back, and tomorrow I will start telling you all about BOOK EXPO! and boring you with tales of New York. Tales of book signings and French 75s and also of being mistaken for a hooker! (Oh no I’m NOT. Kidding, that is. Or a hooker.)

My first day back was marvelous in its own right, however. I took Simone to the park for the first time this season.



The swing continues to be the runaway favorite, though she braved the (smallest) slide as well. Seeing that faltering split second of “am I scared or exhilarated?” cross her face brought me swiftly and immediately back to my own early slide experiences. There was a slide at the playground of the Northeast Child Development Center, a slide I remember as being about 18 or 19 (hundred?) feet tall, gleaming silver, like a broiling, gigantic straight razor. It took me AGES to work up the courage to go down that slide, and after I did I couldn’t remember what I’d been so afraid of—I went back again and again and again. Which is sort of how I feel about a lot, lately. I keep doing things that terrify me—and to my shock and delight, I keep coming out at the bottom, whole and grinning.

When I was a couple of years older than Simone is now I spent a week visiting my aunt in Mobridge(?) South Dakota, where after months of eyeing them suspiciously from afar, I tackled my fear of the Tornado Slide. You know the ones I mean: slides that corkscrew, often partially enclosed. Oh, how I feared the Tornado Slide! This was after I had mastered the regular, straight-edged version: the Tornado Slide was my white whale. I recall sitting at the top, slipping a little, clutching at the sides with my grimy hands and thinking “Alexa, you FOOL, what have you gotten yourself into?” And then off I went, like some kind of daredevil. There used to be a picture somewhere that was taken that week, of me poised in the tunnel of the slide’s entrance, my face shadowed but eyes bright as beads with the thrill of my own bravery.
Tire swings and those whirling-deathtrap-child-turntables were another story, of course, but that’s only common sense.

Simone was similarly visiting relatives last week, and though she apparently had a lovely time, I heard there was an Incident that began when she was with her grandmother at some sort of Iowan Mall Play Area, eyeing a little boy. Simone’s fascination with other children is intense—probably because she’s scarcely seen any, due to being largely quarantined for the first two years of her life. At the park yesterday, a little girl started swinging next to us, and Simone didn’t take her eyes off her the entire time.
Anyhow, there she is, my daughter, standing on the edge of the Iowan Mall Play Area, watching a boy-child gambol and play with things. Watching, and watching, and finally venturing over to join him. I picture her like a tentative fawn at this point: hopeful, innocent, eager, a little shy. And then do you know what happened?
That little cocksucking hooligan turned to my fawn-daughter and PUSHED HER DOWN. After that, Simone wanted nothing more to do with the Iowan Mall Play Area.

I presume it is only natural that hearing this story made me stop right where I was on the stairs and bend over holding my chest, my poor heart tearing in a way that was physically painful. I presume it is only natural that I cannot think of that moment without feeling a horrible howling draining of my blood at the knowledge that Simone has had her first encounter with Mean, with Rejection. It’s natural, certainly, to hate that I wasn’t there.
I also presume it is only to be expected that after the initial heart-rending had passed, my greatest desire in the world was to drive to Iowa, to this Iowan Mall Play Area, and put that (innocent, I realize, entirely inculpable!) little brat forcefully through a wall. Totally within the realm of normal maternal emotion, right?

Hello! I’m here! Hello!

I cannot believe I just lost nearly a month of my life to…whatever that was. Simone is better, though she still has a bit more nasal effluvia than is customary and the occasional cough. In the process of getting better she passed through a stage of Night Coughing violent enough to result in v-o-m-i-t (LAMBADA, as it is known here). Sometimes once a night, sometimes—if I’d heaved myself up, stripped the bed, and placed new sheets upon it—twice. Once in my hair, which was lovely.

The LAMBADA has ended, but the aftermath remains. Moments ago, just before I decided I’d better write something to reassure you of my continued existence, I was Googling methods of cleaning comforters, pillows, and mattresses. Our mattress very nearly made it through unscathed, because I am fanatical about waterproof mattress protectors, but Simone waited. She waited, biding her time until all our resources had been exhausted and then she struck.
In the course of Simone’s illness, I got ill—and progressed through the customary stages of sore throat, runny nose, congestion, cough, and renewed health/joie de vivre—TWICE. Two full runs of sickness, and for a while after the second one got underway I honestly thought it was going to be like a snake eating its tail and Simone and I would keep passing whatever-it-was back and forth and we would never be well again.

(I WANT MY MAY BACK.)

Anyhow, it’s over, and Simone has been dropped off to spend the week with her grandparents. She’s been there for more than 24 hours, now, and has yet to ask after us. Scott and I are trying not to feel rejected. The cats are delirious with joy at the SPAWNLESS state of the household. There is much laundry still to be done but I will be back to write more tomorrow (and again and again afterwards, for June, since May was unfairly stolen from me). I leave for New York Tuesday and yesterday I tried to buy jeans, which is a whole post in and of itself. (FOUR HOURS OF SHOPPING. AND DO I HAVE JEANS TO SHOW FOR IT? NO. NO I DO NOT.) (I do, however, have a dreadfully painful case of Shopper’s Elbow.)

I will leave you with the cell phone photo I received this afternoon, of Simone wearing new sunglasses, courtesy of her great grandmother. And missing us, as you can see, something terrible:

Tonight I had to break out the Pulmicort, again. Those of you with preemies know already what I am talking about, but for those who don’t, Pulmicort is an inhaled steroid given via nebulizer, one Simone was prescribed in the NICU and continued to get first twice, then once a day until about a year ago, when she was finally healthy enough to do without. Back when it was discontinued there was talk of resuming for the winter, but when the time came Simone was so aggressively well that there was no need. She was healthy enough that her delightfully morbid, reassuringly conservative pulmonologist even decreed she could forego Synagis, the shots she received her first winter to help fight off RSV, and that she had been scheduled to receive this year as well.

It’s not such a big deal, the Pulmicort. I don’t mean to get all dramatic about it. It’s just that it was becoming so easy to forget. I am unfazed by your standard childhood spills and fevers, but this is Simone’s first real respiratory illness, and back to watching for retractions and checking lips and fingernails for a bluish tinge, it’s amazing how little time seems to have passed in these past two years. I had to open new nebulizer tubing, and find the neglected box of Pulmicort vials, connecting the fittings and assembling the attachment and thinking as I have on dozens of occasions, so many that if I had a dollar for each I could by now surely have paid for the equipment in question: why, WHY didn’t I invest in a home pulse oximeter?

She’s fine, really. It’s only a bad cold, and I’m not sure whether her breathing is truly more labored than that of any other congested two-year-old or if I am simply more aware of the differences between my daughter (who is so extraordinarily ordinary! who can identify all her numbers!) and her blessedly normal, normally breathing contemporaries.

Today was a banner day, and not just because Simone has her first really nasty cold, and may well have set some sort of mucous-related record (how can such a small person produce such a staggering quantity, is what I want to know), no, today was a banner day because of these:


Advance Review Copies. Galleys, the things that get sent to reviewers, the things that were printed specially for Book Expo and will be given away willy-nilly to conference attendees, the things I will be signing in PUBLIC in 22 days.

The most important part of these Advance Review Copies is this:

In fact, if any reviewers are reading now (no) I want to remind them of this. Not the “sale” part: I could care less about “not for sale.” Go wild! Put it on ebay and collect your 53 cents! Mazel Tov!
I am concerned with the “UNCORRECTED” portion of the notice. That is what I would like to reiterate. UNCORRECTED. UNCORRECTED. Even more UNCORRECTED than one might be used to, because the Book Expo thing all happened rather last minute, and so there wasn’t time to, say, correct the place where the auto-changing of names to protect the innocent ALSO changed the name of my alma mater to TARA LAWRENCE. Yes, Tara Lawrence. Surely you’ve heard of it?
There have been substantive changes as well, whole paragraphs and sections since cut and bits rewritten and moved so that by the time the general public sees my book it will be much better than this particular rushed-to-press version. Though as someone who recently spent four hours Googling variants of “writer hates own work,” “author judge own work,” “writer critical own first book,” “writers with bad first book,” etc., I may not be the best person to ask about quality, at this point. People tell me they like the book, and instead of feeling reassured, I ask them about their recent head injury. I am told this is a Phase, and that I will shake it eventually.

Nothing has done more to facilitate this shaking than seeing my Advance Review Copies. They look—suspiciously, alarmingly, wonderfully—like books. To me, my book didn’t ever seem like a “book;” it seemed like a Word document, or a sheaf of paper with some typing on it. Reading it bound and printed, however, it seems distinctly book-esque—Tara Lawrence notwithstanding. Reading it bound and printed is the first time I have felt the full genuine thrill I’d been expecting all along.

You guys, I wrote a book.

Here’s the little star on the ARC cover, saying BUY ME!

Here is the very first page of text, as close to a sneak peek as y’all are going to get. I’ve blurred it a bit not to be all artistic-like but so that I don’t have to sue myself, which I sense could get extremely messy:

Here is a shot of the beginning of Part I, Chapter One (I have resigned myself to the fact that no one will find this part title quite as amusing as I do myself). I like that one of the few phrases of the first chapter you can see clearly here is “tumbler of pus.” It gets things off to a pleasant start:

Here is the last page:

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, here is a glimpse of you, in the Acknowledgments. You appear in the book-proper as well, but I wanted to show this page (or at least a part of it) in particular, to say that I know how much I owe you, and how grateful I am, and how much better my life is with all of you in it.

Look at that. Who’d have thought?

• Ahhhh. I had forgotten how satisfying it is to rant, just a tiny bit, to the Internet. Thank you all. Also? I got part of the bathroom done today, so that’s something. Though if I keep going at this rate, I will be finished on…November 6th, or thereabouts.
• I am going to start potty training Simone tomorrow. Hold me.
• No, seriously. I have no idea what I am doing. Any thoughts re: keeping the potty in the bathroom vs. in the play area where Simone spends most of her time? My plan—excuse me, “plan”—had been to leave it in the bathroom, watch her like a hawk, and just plop her on it every 30 minutes after her first wet diaper/pull-up. Maybe first I’ll let her see Hair Baby have a go, for inspiration. I’ve heard that some believe one ought to let the child roam nude and free with a potty nearby, but…really? Your advice is, as always, appreciated.
• GOD, I hate using the word “potty.” Can’t we say “small toilet” instead? In fact, it’s decided: I refuse to be held hostage by relentless diminutives just because I have a toddler.
• The few times we practiced, I noticed that Simone isn’t exactly adept at sitting down on the small toilet herself, and often misjudges where the actual SEAT is, resulting in her being startled by the weird front pommel as it assaults her from behind. I find this endlessly amusing.
• I have decided to combat my feelings of overwhelm by making a MASTER LIST of all the things I need to do—book related, other-work related, house related, Simone related. It will be a long list, I think, but it needs to be done. As a reward, I am going to make another list, of things I WANT to do this year, for kicks, things like “make pickles.” Yes, it’s already May, but I was otherwise occupied for the first four months. I will post the list, and report back/cross things off as I finish.
• Is it sad that I am rewarding myself with list making?
• I am thinking of starting Simone in a sort of preschool-y program for two-year-olds this summer, now that she is QUARANTINE FREE and allowed to run about with the great unwashed as much as she likes. She loves other children, but has only actually SEEN other children on a handful of occasions since birth. Didn’t I tell you about the time we had a playdate at Julia’s and Simone was so discombobulated with delight that she spent the whole time kissing poor Edward right on the mouth? Anyhow, for the regular school year session I am planning to send her three days a week, but in summer there is a two day option that I thought would be a nice transition and would give me some extra time with her for the next few months—I can do my work in only two days for a while, and I want to soak Simone up as much as possible now that the deadline-enforced baby-drought is over. But the registration forms say something about how the more days a young child attends the easier the adjustment, and now I am all uncertain. Is that true? Simone IS clingy, lately. Then again, she is used to having the nanny while I work, so it isn’t as if she’s unfamiliar with this sort of thing. Thoughts?
• I should probably tell you there are goats there, at this preschool. Though I maintain that this is not the reason I chose it. Not the only one, anyway.
• My daughter is obsessed with the alphabet. Thanks to neglect and Sesame Street, she can identify all the letters save “W,” which she pointedly ignores. Except for the other day, when she told me it was “elephant.” She said it with confidence, too—I think hoping that if she seemed as if she knew what it was I’d be thrown off my game and start wondering whether she wasn’t right after all. She’s also big on numbers, and points them out to me helpfully at Target, which is how I found a hidden pocket of $5 toddler jean shorts. The moral of the story is that children can be useful, if you play your cards right.
• Speaking of which, I may teach her to count them, if I can only get her to stop announcing the numbers aloud. Surely even the meanest Vegas pit boss wouldn’t break the kneecaps of a poor innocent baby who was only having a little fun?

Things have been trending pleasantly uphill, here—spring is springing, and all that—but Wednesday night veered sharply off course. It was a night of mysteries: How do children know what would be the most inconvenient time for injury or illness? What counts as “illness,” anyway? If a baby falls into a wooden footboard, does it make a sound? (Yes.) Why, when we hear about celebrities buying preposterously expensive items for their offspring, do we never hear about anyone installing one of those convenient pull-shower set-ups, like the CDC uses? Something like they had in Silkwood, only without the painful brushing/eyeball-scouring component. And faster, and automated, with a dryer—like a human carwash. If I were a celebrity parent outfitting my ostentatious nursery, that would be the first thing on my list.

Scott and Simone and I were supposed to go to Iowa this weekend, but Wednesday I had the brilliant idea that I should stay home to give our apartment the thorough enema of which it is so desperately in need. The past…while has been rather gloomy and fraught around here, what with the book finishing and Domestic Difficultying, and now that things are brightening up a bit and the finally final FINAL round of edits has been sent winging editor-ward with my first-pass pages, I have a tremendous urge to clean and cull and organize and bleachify. It is more or less impossible to do this effectively with a two-year old on the premises, and a weekend to reset and get caught up on all the tasks that have remained juuust beyond my grasp sounded impossibly ideal.

The “impossibly” part came later that night—or, more accurately, early the next morning. Simone kept waking up and kick, kick, kicking at my back, pulling my hair and whining. She felt feverish. Around 2:30 I provided the bottle of milk she so piteously requested, and after she’d sucked it down I changed her diaper and carried her out to the kitchen to find the thermometer. Her temperature was only 99pointsomething, but I was holding her on my hip and considering the Tylenol when she stopped talking about the alphabet and pointing out my body parts (“ABCD! MNMOP! NOHse! Eyye! NUH-PUHL!”), gave me a funny look, and sprayed both the surroundings and my person with an impressively forceful and horrifying quantity of hot, curdled milk.

It was bad. Oh, it was bad. Bad enough that I had that moment, the one where you freeze because your brain has basically destroyed itself like the computer in War Games given the impossible Tic-Tac-Toe of finding a place to begin addressing the disaster. I’ve had that moment a few times since becoming a parent, most memorably after an incident involving a violent diaper blowout amid an intricately wrapped baby-wearing device. This time was worse, and the smell was making me nearly-retch myself—only a little, delicately, like a cat with a piece of hair in the back of its throat—but eventually I pulled it together enough to bellow (less delicately) for Scott. Honestly, I am not afraid of baby fluids, but this was…you will have to trust me, it was a ROUS compared to the ordinary white rat of child-vomit.

(Everyone enjoying their dinner? Good!)

Thank god I sleep more or less in the nude—it makes clean-up so much easier. In fact, new parents, I have two pieces of advice for you: do not unnecessarily clothe your baby or yourself, and LEATHER COUCH. (No, seriously: LEATHER COUCH.) I swabbed myself down while Scott de-chunked the floor and cabinets, and we both consoled Simone, who stood nearby, signing and saying “Sahw-ee! Sahw-ee!” despite assurances that it was okay, she was okay, all manner of things were okay! It was both pitiful and disturbing because she kept at it, all but asking if we could use the slenderer cane this time, since it was an accident and everything. I’m afraid I may have passed on the gene for being perpetually effacing—though you would think that such a gene would be recessive, and that even a pair would spend so much time saying “After you!” “No, after YOU!” that they’d never get around to expressing at all.

But the night wasn’t over! On our way back to bed, Simone tripped? Stumbled? Attempted to take her own life? and landed nose-first onto the sharp, IKEAwood edge of the bed. It was dark, and I couldn’t tell at first whether any damage had been done, but as I picked her up and she howled, something wet ran onto me. This time, it wasn’t vomit.

(Poor thing. Can you imagine? “From the diary of Simone, aged 26 months: Today I learned that nine comes after eight, that “s” and “x” are actually two separate letters, and that sometimes, after life knocks you down, it likes to give you a kick or two, seeing as you’re conveniently at foot-level.” )

I rushed her to the bathroom and attempted to corral the bleeding with tissues, but she was having none of it, preferring instead to smear gore around on her face, the bathtub, and my thighs. I wanted to clean her up once it had stopped, but she was against that as well, and Scott urged me to let her be. “She looks like a Blood Clown!” I argued (she did, too), but I was informed that there were no such things as Blood Clowns, and anyway, Simone could be bathed in the morning.

In the morning she still had a low-grade fever, and I thought for sure that any hope of my Risky-Business-only-with-cleaning-instead-of-hookers weekend was lost, because this is how it works, with children: as soon as you make a plan that mandates their health, they are stricken mysteriously green/sniffly/broken. But by evening the fever was gone, and so this afternoon Simone and Scott left for Iowa. I still have no idea what the fever was from or whither the lone episode of vomiting, but I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if I suspect that this is where the answer lies (her two-year Satan’s Kernels are working their way through).

Anyhow, here I am. Alone. Alone! All quiet save the sound of the teenager next door screaming, and I quote: “WHY CAN’T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE! IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU! IT’S NOT YOUR PICTURE! IT’S NOT YOUR GRADUATION!”
(And…door slam!)
I have toys to sort, but I am writing to you first. I’m warming up, you could say, because tomorrow is May 1st, not only my half birthday, but also the beginning of the exercise I am undertaking to get myself back into the habit of writing here: I will be posting DAILY, all month long. That means that even at Book Expo, on the Wednesday I spend putting my terrified scrawl to review copies as one of my publisher’s two featured authors—the other being Kathie Lee Gifford, who is promoting her new children’s book (for children, by children?)—I will be posting, even if only to babble nonsensically for 1300 words as I have done just now. (Sorry about that, by the way.)

On Sunday, I took Simone to see her Nani, who is visiting from Zug (is it just me, or does that sentence sound like something an alien would say? Zug being a small but densely populated planet several lightyears from Earth, obviously).
Scott and I don’t celebrate Easter, per se, but it seemed unfair to deprive Simone of Swiss chocolate just because her parents are heathens, and so we called it Zombie Day.
Zombie Day! When we celebrate the resurrection of the dead by eating candy in the shape of rabbits!

It was a beautiful, temperate Sunday, and we spent it outside. Simone was exceptionally well-behaved—I am thinking particularly of when my brother’s roommate commanded one of the dogs to sit, and Simone obediently dropped to the floor of the deck, cross-legged and docile. It was a pleasant change from the day before, when she threw a flailing, boneless fit at being barred from entering a restaurant kitchen, and then lost her temper again when I refused to buy her a set of chairs (all four for only eight hundred American dollars!) that we passed at a sidewalk sale.

There was the traditional Zombie Day dancing, of course, and two whole dogs. Best of all, my mother was on hand to treat Simone with the appropriate deference, a deference she rarely receives from her own mother—me with my stupid typing and shortsighted prohibitions against eating matches or washing one’s hair in the cat fountain.
You could learn a thing or two from her, Simone seemed to say, giving me a look over the decorative bell her Nani was proffering for ringing.

It was a successful celebration. Everyone left with more chocolate than they’d had on arrival, their vitamin D replenished and brains still uneaten. Miracle enough, for me.

I turned in my manuscript for the final time on Monday. By the time I sank into bed that night I had been up for 41 hours, but I didn’t care. I was done. Donedonedonedonedone.

Not that there isn’t plenty I’d still like to fix, some of which I probably will (on first pass pages), but the advance copies being printed for BOOK EXPO! and for reviewers will have my manuscript as it stands. That this inspires only standard nausea and fleeting disappointment—rather than the conviction that no choice remains but to change my name and start a new life in the lesser Antilles—is an immense relief.

The first thing I did on The Day After was fingerpaint. Well, technically I merely assisted, but still, it was glorious. I’d never had the chance before: instead, Simone painted with the nanny, and I’d emerge from my office/hovel to look wistfully at them for a minute before returning to my work.
Now though, weekends have meaning again, and I can work without feeling I am neglecting my baby and build Duplo towers without feeling I am neglecting my work, unless it is between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on one of the three days a week I have designated for toil. I’m even going to start leaving the house, from time to time. Because I can. Because I’m DONE.

I haven’t known what to post because just typing the news didn’t seem like enough, but I couldn’t think of any alternatives. Maybe an entry that explodes in riotous, celebratory horns and noisemakers and spurts of real confetti when you open my page? Is there html for that? < !>? < omfg>? < koolandthegang>?

The best I can do is a video of Simone dancing. Note the modified Robot she does to Ring My Bell. You can’t teach that kind of awesome, friends.

Celebrate from Alexa on Vimeo.

#1. Though at 17 I could often be heard declaring Sleep for the Weak, at 30, all-nighters result in the (temporary, thank god) loss of what I estimate to be nearly 80 IQ points.
Par example:
I did not sleep Monday night. At all. I was up editing as the clock marked the passing of my deadline and the beginning of The Unnatural Time (Midnight), and still I typed, growing ever more unhinged, until about 10 in the morning yesterday. I hadn’t finished, but finally sent the file to my editor anyway: I had no choice, and besides had reached the point where I was so tired that I had the urge to cut whole scenes, just because I couldn’t bear to work on them—in fact, did we need that chapter, or the whole part about the baby? BURN IT ALL! I sent an email along with the manuscript, an email I will never reread, as I am pretty sure it contained the ramblings of a crazy person, a tired, sobbing crazy person with an IQ of 80.

(I need that thing that forces you to solve math problems before you can send email, except I am actually quite good at math even when my mental status is compromised, so maybe instead they should have one of those problems with a bunch of squiggles where you have to choose the next squiggle that is part of the pattern, the kind that involves spatial relations and turning things in your mind.)

I ought to have gone to sleep then, but I didn’t, which is why the following exchange occurred around 7:00 last night:

(In dim BEDROOM, ALEXA removes pants)

SCOTT: What’s that on your leg?

ALEXA: Where?

(ALEXA twists around to look, sees silver-dollar-sized BLACK SPOT on rear thigh.)

SCOTT (peering): Does it hurt? Oh—it looks like it might be ink. I can’t tell.

(ALEXA stumbles desperately from room to find better lighting, head craned backward toward BLACK SPOT all the way. SCOTT follows. In BATHROOM, SCOTT examines ALEXA who clenches fists and turns head away, eyes closed.)

ALEXA (shrill, fearfully): IS IT NECROSIS?

Necrosis. NECROSIS. Because that is the most likely explanation, surely. Maybe from sitting on my ass for six months.
(Scott is never, ever going to let me forget this, by the way.)
(It was an inkstain)

#2. Even if, once you arrive at the gorgeous Hotel Palomar in Philadelphia (for a planned weekend of medical curiosity museums and shopping and massages) YOU NEVER LEAVE THE HOTEL AGAIN, INSTEAD SPENDING THE ENTIRE TRIP SITTING ON YOUR BED WITH A LAPTOP, EDITING, you can still have a good time, if your best friend is there to help. You can even have a good time delivered, these days, in the form of lobster quesadillas and the incomparable Heather Barmore.

#3. Philadelphia has astoundingly tasty Thai food. Obviously, I discovered this before my arrival at and hermitage in the hotel, when I met with my lovely, lovely editor and publicist and accompanied them to lunch. It’s probably unhealthy, how often I have thought of that lunch over the past few days.

#4. My publishing company believes in my book, fervently. I kind of love them for that. I had a strong urge to kiss the marketing director.

#5. I miss cities. I relished the brief time I spent out and about in Philadelphia, (Ahem. That would be…the walk from my publisher’s office to my hotel). It was raining, but I loved it still. I am never afraid, walking in a city, even if I have never been there before. There is so much to look at, and so many people, and you are never really lost, because there is always someone to ask for directions. And did you know you that from 30th street station in Philly you can be in NYC in an hour and a half by train? And that I made the acquaintance of a little town that is so improbably charming I am seriously considering moving there, and THAT town is only 20 minutes from Philadelphia, also by train? Oh, how I love trains.

#6. I love having a real best friend. I love having friends. I think I even have more than one. Some people really seem to like me, I think. Or so they say.

#7. When it is or isn’t “over” has nothing to do with the vocalizations of a zaftig female. It is not over when the schedule says it will be. It is not over when you turn in the manuscript, or on the deadline for incorporating your own and the editor’s changes. It’s not over when the book goes to the copyeditor, or when you receive the copyeditor’s edits, or when you accept/reject them. It’s not OVER, motherfucker, until you must relinquish your baby to design at last (next Monday!), so that they can get started on the real, live advance reader’s copies for BEA.

#8. I AM GOING TO BEA. THE BOOK EXPO. MY BOOK WILL BE THERE, BEING EXPO’D! AS WILL I! It is in New York, in May. I have dreamed of attending for ages, because oh, all the books! Does it make me a nerd if I have a BEA poster above my bed?

I am not sure whether it’s that my brain has been frizzled into a gray matter lardon or what, but I have been trying to post something here since Monday and failing, again and again.

Maybe it’s because I want to be able to write a straightforward FIN! HOORAY! DEADLINE VANQUISHED! sort of entry, but I am just not feeling it yet, and suspect I won’t be for another week, when the editing is complete. Right now I’m still terrified by the state of my manuscript, and fighting the urge to don a trenchcoat, scarf, and sunglasses before leaving the country entirely, leaving a trail of sweat and vomit in my wake. After I pressed ‘send’ Monday night, I surprised myself by bursting into tears. Some of that was probably just my emotional spit valve, releasing the stress that had been building for six months (and isn’t THAT a lovely metaphor!) but much of it was plain old sorrow that my book wasn’t ready and fear that it won’t be in time and that the best part about it will be the (oh so lovely) cover. And look at that, I’ve mentioned four distinct bodily fluids in one paragraph.

I shall defer my FIN! HOORAY! DEADLINE VANQUISHED! celebration for another day, but I do have something else to celebrate instead. Let’s call this the OMFG celebration, as it concerns the news that landed in my inbox this morning, the news that my book is officially available for pre-order on Amazon. Look over in the sidebar, if you don’t believe me (you have to look waaay down, because for some reason my sidebar is getting uppity with me when I try to edit it). My book has an ISBN and everything, and seeing the title in type other than my own is enough to make me believe that this will happen, my editing will be finished and my book will be a physical thing, with that delicious, familiar, book-y smell.
(Do they make air-freshener in New (or Old!) Book Smell? If not, they should. Someone get on that).

The best part of all is that after the book’s title on the Amazon page is my name, and after that, in parentheses, it says Author.
Hand to god, you guys. AUTHOR.

THIS is enough to make me believe in just about anything. Unicorns, a satisfactory outcome to the health care debacle, a race of helpful badgers inhabiting dressing rooms in order to offer scrupulously honest opinions upon your ass in those jeans: anything is possible. Butterfly in the skyyy, I can fly twice as hiiigh—I’ve got the world on a string, and it pulled me deliriously back here to tell you about it.

While I was busy working I kept this insane notebook full of things For After. Things to do, things to write about, pages and pages of notes and lists and reminders. Now, alas, I don’t know where to start, and am so sick of myself after six months of memoir-writing that I can’t imagine my thoughts about Aaron Sorkin’s weird Platonic fixation on male friendship, or my latest beauty discoveries, or my ANYTHING, being of the slightest interest to anyone.

A few months ago I signed up for formspring, and then realized that if I didn’t have time to wash my hair I certainly didn’t need another online writing venue, but now I think it will be a perfect way to ease back into this blogging thing after my long absence. You can ask me any question you like, and I will either answer on formspring or write about it here and leave a link to the post. Here is my formspring page.
(I reserve the right against self-incrimination, though I am unlikely to actually exercise said right.)

I missed you! I am so glad to be back!