Speaking of which, I’ve been having this horrible problem with leg itch. Just my lower legs and only if I lie down. It is SO FRUSTRATING because SLEEPING involves LYING DOWN and the ITCH is so over-the-top that I lie in bed and dream about SCRAPING OFF ALL MY LEG SKIN WITH STEEL WOOL. I went to the doctor and without even so much as a sideways glance at my legs, he diagnosed me with Degenerative Disc Disease, which I have, yes, but wait, what? Itch from my back? The hell? So I spent some hours spelunking the internet and found a grand total of 0 references to itchy lower legs resulting from irritated discs. But what I did find was 10,560 references to leg itch and lymphoma, which I’m now only 7% convinced that I have and will die from. I’m 93% convinced that my problem actually has to do with the fact that I have almost no blood pressure and maybe from shaving I have folliculitis or something that is exacerbated when I’m lying down because that’s the only time my blood actually circulates that far. Someday someone may actually LOOK at my legs and diagnose them with, you know, actual information, instead of standing across the room and shouting, “YOU HAVE A BAD BACK! OBVIOUSLY YOUR LEGS ITCH!” Because, after all, not entirely obvious, is it?

Anywho, who cares? I do, but only when I’m lying down. The rest of the time, I don’t think that much about the itch. That’s how my brain works. If it isn’t occurring in that EXACT SECOND, I’m blissfully unaware of any potentially fatal cancers I may be harboring. Such is life.

But none of that has anything to do with NaNoWriMo, which I am doing and you should, too. Why not? Every person who has ever said, “I’m going to write a book one day when I have time!” should do it because you are never going to have time. It’s like waiting to have kids until you have time and money. When will that happen? Never. Life slips by. Your legs itch, you get older, you’re busy, the kids are shouting at you, and then BAM it’s TOO LATE. Don’t let it be too late for you! Write it! Then you will see exactly what it is like to write a book and all the GOOD PARTS of book writing as well as the sloggy, middle-of-the-book part where the plot gets away from you and the characters all fall into a blue funk and you realize that it’s all a disaster and you may as well go back to your day job, or in my case GET a day job, which is the part where many people probably just go, “Enh, screw it!” because it is hard BUT also it’s amazing if/when you get to the end and if/when it comes out the way you want it to. It’s like what I imagine running a marathon would be like if at the end of a marathon you then had something that you had to sell, which is like a whole other marathon or maybe like a triathalon, with the idea being the swimming, the writing being the bike, and the actual marathon being the whole after-work of it. What am I talking about? I am the opposite of an athlete and I’m currently wearing yoga clothes from head to toe (well, am barefoot, but you get the idea) which are making me feel like an imposter because I have taken exactly zero yoga classes in my life. Why am I outfitted for yoga? No effing idea. It’s comfortable? I like to play pretend?

I can’t stay on topic?

All those things.

As promised by the title, I wind up this post with five components of my NaNoWriMo book-to-be. Components. DO NOT STEAL THEM. I’M WATCHING YOU. Actually the funny part of this is that I never tell people anything about what I’m writing because I think that, for example, you’ll hear the word “octopus” and go, “YES! That is what MY book will be about!” And somehow, through some cosmic fluke, you will write the EXACT SAME BOOK as me and sell yours first. I only fear this because it happened to me once, after two years of research for an adult literary novel about the notorious Brother Twelve written from the perspective of one of his female partner/followers, someone else released the EXACT SAME BOOK. Even in a similar voice to mine, which made me crazy. Well, crazier.

Regardless, undaunted, I give you five components of my soon-to-be massively successful YA endeavour. I have no title yet, so you can’t steal that. But the book will have:

1. A ghost.
2. Hall and Oates.
3. Love’s Baby Soft.
4. A crow.
5. Oliver Peoples eyeglass frame names.

AND IT WILL BE FUNNY.

Write on, dudes.

Speaking of med school, this weekend marks the sixteenth anniversary of the Pizza That Changed My Life.    See, I was at school (UBC) doing premed (a BSC in physiology) crazily hurtling towards my goal (med school).    I was doing all sorts of other things, too.    Like running.   If you know me now and didn’t know me then, you’ve probably just hurt yourself laughing.   I know!   Who WAS I?    I will tell you:  I was a person who did not yet have degenerative disc disease, a fused ankle, and/or falling out lady parts.   I was all YOUNG and stuff.   Also, I had three jobs and went to school full-time.    And a small problem I like to call “never eating”.    Then, one fateful night, I ate a pizza that had been left out for a while.   The pizza gave me salmonella.   My body, which astonishingly was a tiny bit run down, did not know how to compute.   My electrolytes went crazy.   The room went grey and then disappeared.    CPR was administered.   An ambulance took me away.   By the time I’d recovered, I was behind in all my classes and could not catch up.    It was impossible.   I missed midterms and I’d already been barely keeping up with the jobs, the school, the INSANITY that was my life.   I moved home and started writing, only it wasn’t that tidy, I’m summarizing because this is a blog, not my life story, a little book I like to call, “I Don’t Remember All the Details, But…”

So Happy Anniversary of my Near Death Thanksgiving!    To celebrate, while Clayton and the kids ate at his mum’s last night, I opened the fridge and thoughtlessly re-heated some pizza that I thought was from the previous night.   THAT I THOUGHT WAS FROM THE PREVIOUS NIGHT.   It didn’t taste great but I was writing and not paying that much attention.   After the first piece though, I had a thought.   That thought was, “HOLY HELL, WE DIDN’T HAVE PEPPERONI PIZZA LAST NIGHT.”    This is what happens when you never clean out your fridge.   YOU CAN GET YOUR PIZZA LEFTOVERS CONFUSED AND ACCIDENTALLY EAT WEEK OLD PIZZA ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE WEEKEND WHEN OLD PIZZA NEARLY SENT YOU STRAIGHT TO THE PEARLY GATES WITHOUT PASSING GO OR COLLECTING $200.

Now?  I have a stomach ache.  I do.   It could be entirely psychosomatic or I could be about to die.   Either way, happy thanksgiving!   I hope you’re having turkey, unless you’re American, in which case you probably are not.   But maybe you wish you were.   I really have no idea.

*I am looking for a new agent.   I have made a list of agents, starting with the one I most want to have representing my PLETHORA OF BOOKS and working down the list from there.   I submit.   And now I wait.  But!  It’s just like how it isn’t cool to wait for the phone to ring when it’s a BOY, it’s also not cool to check your e-mail 750 times a day to see if an agent has responded to your query yet.   So even while you check your e-mail for the 751st time, you have to pretend to yourself  (because no one else actually cares or notices) that you aren’t checking to see if the agent has responded to your query, you are just casually looking, because checking SO OFTEN seems desperate, and everyone knows that agents — much like boys — can SMELL DESPERATION and you are not desperate, you are merely… curious.   Curious to see which agent in the Great Big Sea of Agents is going to be the one who is going to become WEALTHY AND SUCCESSFUL from the strength of your multiple book sales.   Curiousity.   Yep.   That’s all it is.

Go forth and read, here.

This post brought to you by my other blog.

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.

1.

Are you kidding me with this book? I have not once got past the part where the baby becomes a teenager. That tears me apart. Someone once read it all the way to the end to The Bun — without crying! We’ll just call that person “random psycho”. — and The Bun still asks pretty much every night when I’m going to be a baby again so he can carry me around. Cannot even describe this book without heaving great gut wrenching belly sobs.

2.

Maybe this one will leave you completely unmoved, but if so, that simply means you have never owned a dog. If you have owned a dog, currently own a dog, think in the future you may own a dog, be warned. If your dog has just died, AVOID. This one will leap into your tear ducts and do the hokey pokey and your kid will ask you why your eyes are leaking so vigorously all over the page because he does not understand what is sad about Heaven. The Bun is now excited to GO to Heaven, where he’ll be able to throw a ball for Tika, who is surely getting lonely up there with no one to play with.

3.

Oh sure, you’ll think it’s just a book about a guy teaching his kid how to ride a bike. The Sad in this one sneaks up on you, but it will get you. It’s about how those kids are going to Grow Up and Ride Away from you. A thin metaphor but I can’t even type this without crying.

4.

This one has a lot of different covers, some of them appearing more toddler friendly than others. It may be toddler friendly but it is not grown up friendly. You would have to be a stone cold robot to be unmoved by this classic tale of How Hard Can You Cry While You Read A Children’s Book Anyway and Why On Earth Would You Pick It Up Again Even Though It Was A Board Book And You Thought Maybe They Edited Out The Sad In A Book Clearly Designed For Those So Young They Still Are At Risk Of Eating The Pages.

5.

Yes, yes, they are going to grow up and leave us and get old themselves and then DIE. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. The passage of time is beautiful and thank goodness there are picture books to remind us of that. I’m only being a bit sarcastic.

******

There you have it. All five of these made me cry and they will make you cry, too. Don’t get them all at once. That would be too much. The only other time I’ve cried so hard in a surprising way (i.e. I didn’t have any idea I was about to be crying, it was an unanticipated attack of the Sad) was when I went to see the movie Dodgeball and one of the previews was for that wretched Nicholas Sparks’ debacle called “The Notebook”. I never did see the movie, but that bit in the preview where he says, “I read to her so she remembers.” That totally got me. It got me again! Just now when I typed that, I welled up a bit! Maybe I need some mood balancing medication. I should look into that.

I’ll throw an honorary mention to that scene in Finding Nemo where Ellen’s character Dory is swimming around the chain and Nemo’s dad has just swum (swimmed? swam? I’m having some kind of grammar-block tonight) away, leaving her all alone, and she’s just there SWIMMING AROUND THE CHAIN. Because home is where HE is. Brutal.

I weep. I actually like weeping or would if I ever did it properly, in the true sense of the word. Weeping is such a pretty word and a pretty thing to do and does nothing to describe what I actually did in all these situations, which involved a madly trembling chin, streaming snot and tears, and some kind of bizarre hiccoughing sound.