I spuddle.

I was going to write a post called, “What To Buy For Your Wife For Mother’s Day Or Just Generally What To Buy For Me If You Want To Buy Me Stuff And Why Would You Because — Honestly — Do You Know Me Well Enough To Want To Buy Me Stuff? Not That I’m Saying You Shouldn’t.” But then — THEN! — I was thinking about something else and decided to write about that something else instead. It’s not quite the last-minute vis-a-vis Mother’s Day yet so that can wait until later, like maybe Friday. We’ll see. You’ll just have to obsessively keep checking back or maybe subscribe to that RSS feed up there, not that I have the faintest idea how to do that myself. Can you subscribe to your own feed? Oooh, look! I posted again, let’s see what I have to say! (Sometimes I re-read old stuff that I’ve written and I can’t remember writing it and it’s sort of fun in a “Do I have Alzheimer’s or maybe a brain tumour?” sort of way.) (Sometime it’s not even that old.) (Like sometimes it’s my most recent tweet.) (Not to worry though, I’m sure it’s nothing to be concerned about.) (Let’s hope.)

What I’m going to talk about is — surprise! — me. In the context of writing books for kids and young adults and actually also adults and also picture books (sales: pending) (hopefully)(please, Universe, give me a break). You can go to my other site if you are so smitten with my blog writing that you can’t live another second without purchasing every single one of my books, which number somewhere around fourteen (or at least that’s what I always say when people ask how many books I’ve written and I’m a bit scared to count in case it’s actually eleven and I’ve been rounding up).

Here is my issue: Because I write for a young audience, this blog that you’re reading right now where I write things like “You just POPPED my fucking EYE, you ASSHOLE” might be deemed inappropriate by, I don’t know, publishers or parents or teachers or even the kids who might never have seen the words POPPED and EYE in the same sentence and might then have nightmares for the rest of their lives. And I worry, but not as much as I worry about Cancer and death in general, just a bit, that maybe I shouldn’t write things like that and instead I should write about puppies and unicorns and Hannah Montana and that Disney movie with the singing that everyone is so crazy about (I should see what it is first, probably) so that kids love me more (or so that kids think I am also a kid, just a tall and oldish one with wrinkles and some crusty bitterness around the edges from being cooked for too long, who is cool and writes books after I’m finished my homework). But then I think, “That’s ridiculous!” I do. I think that. You are probably thinking that right now. Or maybe not.

I (sometimes) (not as often as I’d like) go around and talk at schools, invariably about my hair and my insecurities and that time I got meningitis and the boy I dated when I was fourteen who gave me a hickey that took about six months to heal and how the Ouija Board freaks me out. Maybe that isn’t appropriate either. But it is, sort of, for my YA audience. Not the picture book audience. But I don’t talk at their schools. At least, not yet. Because those books are still pending publication. But once they are published, should I stop swearing? Or just stop talking about my hair? Or maybe not mention the appliances because my audience of kids doesn’t care about my appliances?

But! There’s more! I also write adult books. I’m writing an adult book right now, albeit mostly in my head. Once THAT is done, wouldn’t it be inappropriate to be talking about puppies and unicorns and Hannah Montana? Or would it? Does talking about having kids alienate pretty much everyone because it’s annoying? Or is it endearing? I mean, my kids are pretty cute when they aren’t screaming or barfing or hitting things or each other or me. Should I talk about news instead or world politics or maybe just do blog recaps of The Bachelorette? (I’m going to do that, by the way, unless I’m too lazy, which is also possible.) Or maybe I should talk purely about writing and how I like to leave it until the last minute and stay up all night for weeks at a time behaving generally badly and eating horribly until I finally form an actual book?

But no, because that would suck.

I think you can see how this whole situation is confounding. I just want everyone — EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD REGARDLESS OF AGE — to love me and everything I write, without exception, including that ten page fax I once wrote to the Chief of Police after I got a traffic violation because the policeman in the car behind me felt like my minivan (which I drove only before I had kids, now I drive a much cooler vehicle, I swear) was emitting too much exhaust and it was “polluting the air his kids breathed”. That was a pretty good letter. Really. I’d post it if I still had it around.

So, problem: It’s impossible to be appropriate at all times. It just is.

Ask Ayelet Waldman. (Whom I can’t really relate to at all, come to think of it.) The whole beginning of this post was just an awkward set up so that I could rant for a minute about Ayelet Waldman, who is married to Michael Chabon, who is ten kinds of Total Awesome Dudeness. I could list them, but I don’t need to because everyone in the entire world knows that Michael Chabon is Michael Chabon. I feel badly saying what I’m about to say about his wife because I like and respect him and did I mention that I like and respect him? Because I do.

But Ayelet Waldman. Oh, man. She is going to sell a LOT of books based on her compulsive need to publicly discuss how she loves her husband so so so much more than her kids (and has she mentioned their hot hot hot sex life?) that she could stand it if she lost a kid, but not if she lost her husband, but she isn’t BOILING HER KIDS’ HEADS in the pasta water so she’s not actually hurting them. Oh, Ayelet Waldman. Where do I begin? Because guess what? I think there is a teensy little risk that you are hurting your kids by discussing how you felt ambivalent about your daughter when she was born and she had a big nose. The fact that you felt ambivalent makes me wonder if maybe you had a bit of PPD actually, but I’m not a shrink, I just pretend I’m a shrink and then make snap judgments about people and diagnose their neurosis and quirks and feel like I know them really better than they know themselves even though I couldn’t pick them out of a line-up because I’ve never even seen a picture of them. In any event, no matter how you feel about your husband (and I sort of love him, too, so I get it), why oh why did you feel you needed to do a public compare-and-contrast between the love you feel for Michael Chabon and the love you feel for your kids? That’s the part I don’t get. And I really don’t get why — now that they’re old enough to Google you — you wrote a book that is going to be forever linked back to your ill-conceived diatribe about how if your kids died, you’d be pretty sad but would get over it, but if your husband died, you wouldn’t because you really do love him so much more than them. Because that’s a fucked up weird statement, no one is asking you to choose or compare, for Gods’ sake, so stop DOING it already, and it’s also untrue. I don’t think you could know what you’d feel until it happens, and I sincerely hope it doesn’t, because, well, MICHAEL CHABON. But maybe it will. Maybe something will happen and he’ll die and you’ll have to pick up the pieces and carry on and it’s probably a pretty unsettling concept to your kids that you wouldn’t or couldn’t cope with that. (Not to mention how completely and totally skeeved they likely will be to know so much about your “torrid” humping.)

FYI, no matter what your kids say about how it’s great that you talk so ENDLESSLY about this issue and how they understand, they don’t. They are not equipped yet to understand. BECAUSE THEY ARE KIDS. Your youngest kids presumably just recently learned to walk upright and wipe their own bums. They don’t understand much beyond the basics at this point, unless they are abnormally mature, and I’m not saying they aren’t because I don’t know them, but seriously, they aren’t. I know this because I’m equipped to understand but I don’t understand. I don’t understand mostly WHY you felt you had to say what you said (and then repeat it ad nauseum). (Except I pretty much get that it’s to sell books and controversy sells books like hotcakes.) (Do they really sell that well?) (And why can I never generate any good controversy?) (What’s wrong with me?)

And also? You are not guaranteeing anything by publicly lavishing love on your husband and because it’s being repeated everywhere by your publicists or whoever it’s starting to look a little psycho and like maybe you should talk about your hair instead.

What was I saying?

Oh, I was wondering if my blog was weird and creepy in the context of letting my kids (and kids who might Google me) know that sometimes when you grow up — and someone had to say it — you have major home appliances that BREAK. They fucking BREAK! And you have to buy NEW ONES!

Then I realized that the whole thing is ridiculous. Someone has to tell the kids about the Kenmore Canyon-Capacity Washer and it may as well be me. At least I’m not boiling their heads in a vat of pasta.

Oh, and for the record? I totally love my kids (AND my husband-like person) WAY more than I love Michael Chabon. Now excuse me, because I’m going to think for a while about The Most Controversial Thing I Could Ever Say So I Can Get On The Oprah Show And Pimp My New Book And Get All Famous And Stuff And Make A Bunch Of Money At The Potential Expense Of My Kids’ Psyches.

Filed under: Books, Me, Myself and I