I can’t tell you much about the iPad yet, except that it’s pretty and I’m desperate for someone to take a picture of me holding it and talking like I think it’s a giant iPhone because that is FUNNY to me, peeps, it just is.   You take the funny where you can find it.   Otherwise, those laugh lines turn out just to be wrinkling decrepitude of an unfun nature.   I wanted to type “unfun decrepitude” but was too lazy to backspace.   What does this say about me?   My fingers are not wrinkled.

My dad is cleaning out my Grandpa’s basement.   My Grandpa died many years ago and my sister has been living in his house since her son was five or so, and now he’s 20, so it’s been a long time.   I never remember the year that things occur but let’s say it was fifteen years ago, just for the sake of argument.   And why you would argue with me over when my Grandpa died is a deep and confounding mystery.    Anyway, Dad laid out on the deep freeze a variety of glassware and china that once belonged to Granny and Grandpa for us to help ourselves to if we wanted, and amongst these treasures (mostly green-tinted glass and very small coffee cups) was a very tiny and very heavy pair of miniature cowboy boots.

It was the only thing that wasn’t actually a vessel for food or drink.  I know what you’re thinking!   It’s a SIGN!   From Grandpa!   Because I said that the next book that I sold was going to net me a pair of … cowboy boots!   See how surreal life is?

No?

You think it’s just coincidence?   THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES MY FRIENDS.    Except when there is.   But that’s different.

I will report back on the iPad and it’s uses and whatnot as soon as it actually works here in Canada which won’t be until May 28.   In the meantime, it’s really fun to just pick up and hold against my ear and shout, “CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?”

PS – That guy on the infomercial promised that the SlapChop was going to make me thinner, but so far, no love.   Maybe will sue them for false advertising.   I’ve used it three times!  That should be worth at least a dress-size.

1.  I think, “I have a blog!”

2.  I think, “Wow, I haven’t blogged for a while.”

3.  I think, “Gosh, I should blog, but first I’ll stare at Twitter for 45 minutes and try to remember why I follow this religious zealot who insists on tweeting his every meal.”

4.  I feel guilty about not blogging.

5.  I feel like I don’t have enough time for a “proper post”.

6.  I hate myself a little.

7.  I hate myself a lot.

8.  I blog something inane that amuses me (and probably only me) and then remember that it is FUN.

8.   Conclusion:  BLOGGING IS FUN!  I LIKE TO BLOG!

But I have no time for fun because, as the title subtly suggests, I AM VERY BUSY AND IMPORTANT.  I am.  Ask my new agent, Colleen Lindsay, of Fine Print Lit.   That’s right, I have a new agent.   Confirmation that I am both BUSY.    And… IMPORTANT!

That’s from The Rules.   In case you didn’t know.  Did you ever read The Rules?  No?  Well, neither did I because, well, of course I didn’t.   OK, fine, I did buy The Rules.   But it was remaindered and 75 cents and I bought it as a joke and I didn’t read it.   Well, I did read a bit of it.   And the gist of it was that if you act BUSY AND IMPORTANT then men will love you and somehow, I don’t know exactly how because I skipped all the middle parts, you end up living in a large house in Dallas, Texas, silently seething with resentment because your wealthy now-husband is having an affair with his secretary.   Or maybe I’m confusing two books.    Bad book mash up, FTW!

I don’t want you to think I bought The Rules thinking I would follow them and earn myself a man to make pot roast and martinis for, I DID NOT.   I bought it for someone else.   Anyway — and you’ve probably heard this story before, but I’m repeating it anyway — around the time I bought The Rules (for 75 cents!) (remaindered!), I was forced (mostly against my will) to go to Toronto.  I like Toronto just fine but I’m a horribly wimpy person who is scared of flying.   So there I am,  a person who owns The Rules (as a joke!) and who is convinced that she is going to die in a plane crash who has to go to TO.   What’s a person to do?

Obviously I became extra-afraid because if I were to die in a plane crash (inevitable) and my family was to clean out my apartment (at the time, I lived in the world’s smallest condo), what if they were to find The Rules sitting there on my bookshelf like I’d bought it intentionally?  What if they were to think that I was a person who thought that buying, reading and following The Rules was a good idea?  THEY’D BE GUTTED.  Destroyed!  It would be too depressing to get over.   There I am, dead.   And there they are, having to come to terms with the fact that I’m not only dead, but when I was alive, I was an idiot.   That wouldn’t do.

So what I did was I packed The Rules.    Then I thought, “Well, if the plane goes down, the luggage may not burn up in the ensuing fireball and my luggage may be returned to my family and (see: above)…”   So I put it in my carry on.   Then I thought, “What if I’m getting something from my carry on and the person next to me sees The Rules in my bag and immediately thinks I am the kind of person who reads The Rules?”   Then I got anxious.   So what I did was, when my seatmate was in the bathroom, I snuck the book out of my carry on and put it in the seat pocket in front of her seat so if they plane DID crash, they (whoever “they” are) would think it was HER book and I would die with my pride intact.

Except not really because there is no small amount of horrifically bad writing on my computer that when I die, someone will likely read.   The shame!  So actually, what I need is for someone to agree to delete the entire contents of my macbook (except for the pictures, of course) in the event of my sudden demise.   Sign up in the comments, please, for this urgent duty.

I leave you with this picture of The Birdy.   It has nothing to do with this post.   I just like it because it beautifully captures her mood of late, which is something like the eye-rolling haughtiness of a teenager combined with the violent rages of a toddler, plus a hefty dose of cuteness.

So the other day I was on one of those Twitter chat things with other YA writers and someone suggested that to write YA you have to be, you know, Y, yourself.   And if you aren’t Y, then you are… irrelevant.   IRRELEVANT!  It was like a giant hand reached out of my screen and punched me square in the nose, sort of like a sucker punch, but one that was so powerful I was knocked through the back wall of my house like a cartoon character and then run over by a passing bus.

Seriously?

Irrelevant?

And I thought I was just getting good.

For about a week, I let this bother me.  After all, I’m only in my thirties and TRUST ME when I say I remember all the thoughts and feelings of being a YA much like it was yesterday, probably because just yesterday I had a very YA feeling about how my belly folds weirdly when I sit down and if only I had a better, flatter stomach, I’d totally be invited to be on the cheerleading squad.   Well, not exactly like that, but close enough.

Seriously, peeps, I do not think I’m irrelevant.   But having someone who is younger than me and actually hasn’t been published yet, who really isn’t an authority on anything, tweeting in 140-characters or less about my lack of relevance is sitting uncomfortably in my stomach.   So what I did this week instead of finishing BOOT GIRL was to go back to my adult novel.

After all, I’m an adult.

So it wasn’t all bad, that punch in the nose and subsequent flattening, because I did get a lot done.

But now, it’s Saturday, which means that the sprogs are otherwise occupied and I am sufficiently recovered — although still a bit swollen — to go back to what I should be doing, which is writing YA, if only I can get my aged, arthritic knuckles to type out the words.

Mostly, I feel the same as I did when I started writing YA waaaaaaay  back in my 20s.

Except for the strands of grey leaping into my hair, I think I look the same.   This is because my eyes are failing at exactly the same rate as my wrinkles are formng, so I can’t really see them.    Bonus!

Anyway, can’t go having grey hair just yet and I’m too cheap/poor to pay someone else to colour my hair,  so the other day I went out and dilligently spent an hour choosing the EXACT RIGHT hair dye for my hair.  Then I brought it home and threw the instructions away, as you do, if “you” are “me” and have coloured your hair dozens of times before.   Also, apparently, I did not think it was strictly necessary to read the labels on the various tubes and bottles in the kit.   You know where this is going, right?

So after 30 minutes of sitting with the conditioner mixed with the toner on my head and saying, “Wow, this smells great!”, I went to rinse and condition in the shower.   Which is when I squirted the raw, untoned dye onto my head.   Because that other tube?  That WAS the conditioner.

After frantic rinsing to get the burning, toxic goo out of my hair,  I had really soft, still grey-highlighted hair.   Not all my hair is grey.   Just a bit.   I don’t want you to be picturing me wrong and I KNOW you are now desperately trying to imagine how awful I look with an entirely grey head.   Answer:  No idea.

Needless to say, I was pretty depressed and my hair stunk which it will do when you squirt a tube of undiluted dye on it.   So back I went to the store.   Only — gasp! — they did not have my carefully selected colour/brand.   The horror!   The horror!

I commenced looking for something similar.   It took ages, peeps, because every time I found one, there was only one box and I need two because I have long hair.   Such are my bourgeois problems.   FINALLY I found THE ONE!   Hidden!  Behind some other ones!   I was on my knees looking for the second box which I knew would be hiding back there somewhere when an ELDERLY WOMAN SNATCHED THE FIRST BOX FROM MY HAND.

The hell?   Aren’t elderly people supposed to be kindly and gentle?   Instead of chasing her down, wrestling her to the ground, and grabbing it back, I just watched in shock as she hobbled/ran to the counter to pay.  FOR MY PERFECT COLOUR!   In my defense, she was very wiry and moved fast.  I probably couldn’t have caught her anyway.

The whole thing sapped the life force out of me and instead of continuing to care what my hair looked like, I grabbed two boxes of a colour called Coffee Cream because it was on sale for six dollars.

ON SALE, for the record, is not a reason to buy hair colour that will be on your head, oh, FOREVER.   But the elderly woman sapped my spirit!   She did!  I blame the elderly!   ALL OF THEM!

Then I brought it home, followed the instructions and turned my brown hair…

entirely black.

That’s right.

And what’s WORSE than the fact that I look like Morticia Adams is that NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON HAS NOTICED.   That’s right, I went from mid-brown with reddish tint hair to BLACK HAIR and no one, not one single person, noticed.

Which brings me back to the person who suggested that thirty-somethings were irrelevant to YA writing.   Hey, not only are we IRRELEVANT, but we are also INVISIBLE!   Which is actually totally awesome, so take THAT, young person.    THAT doesn’t happen when you are sub-20.

Oh, and next time I see you purchasing hair dye in Zellers?  I’m totally going to snatch it from your hand and make a run for the counter.   That’s the kind of privilege we old folk get to enjoy.   It’s true.   Ask anyone.

So I wrote that book.   (OK, OK, I HALF wrote that book and am writing the rest, I am, seriously, for real, AS WE SPEAK, except not really right now because obviously am blogging and not writing a book).   Then I wrote another one called THE KING OF BANANALAND VS. THE PORTAL OF EVIL.   And that was pretty fun, so I started writing another one called [INSERT SECRET TITLE THAT I DON'T WANT YOU TO STEAL HERE], but I shelved that one for a bit because while it was also fun, I wasn’t quite ready for it yet.   For one thing, it stars actual grown ups, and I’ve been writing about the young uns for so long that grown ups feel very intimidating with their quirky maturity and rational thoughts.   So I rewrote an old book called THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ME.   Then I wrote something else called [CAN'T TELL YOU OUT OF FEAR YOU'LL STEAL IT, TOO] [HA HA, I'M SO PARANOID], which is almost — but not quite — finished.    I’m not showing off, or I am, but only a little, I’m just saying that literally EVERY SPARE MINUTE that I have has been spent writing or procrastinating which is really a huge part of the writing process, so you have to make time for it, too.

This has come at a bit of a cost.   For example, I don’t have much time to see friends — probably I don’t have many left because I’ve really been writing to the exclusion of much else, apart from the 12-14 hours a day I spend entertaining/disciplining/chasing/yelling at/wiping up after my kids and the hour I spend watching completely brainless reality TV shows like ANTM or Amazing Race.   I don’t get my haircut.   I don’t get a manicure.   Well, that’s a bad example because I never have, but you get my drift.   I don’t go for a walk by myself or go to the gym or do other normal person stuff because on some level I feel like I have to be writing all the time until I get a new agent/another contract/a paycheque.   Why am I telling you this?  OH, COME ON, you know blogging is my substitute for therapy.   I don’t go to therapy.  I AM BUSY WRITING.

Another thing I haven’t been doing is reading.    I know, right?  Double U Tee Aitch?  (Spelling out letters amuses me!  I am easily amused!)   I used to read a minimum of four books a week.  I’m not exaggerating.   Lately, I’ve been reading only YA and MG and that feels like work because someone on my Twitter stream was yapping on about how you have to read heavily in a genre in order to be successful in it — which is rubbish because I’ve been successful in these genres for a long time without reading it much — but I felt like “Hey, I read it on Twitter, so it must be true!”  I’m sort of an idiot like that.   Anyway, for a while I read some YA and MG, usually just the first few chapters because honestly it’s not “escapism” when it is also your job and if you are me then it opens all sorts of doors for the Insecurity Fairies to fly into your brain and sprinkle their “YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE DOING” dust on every surface, leaving you in the fetal position wondering if you actually have the skillz now to get that job at MacDonald’s that you failed to get when you were fourteen.

I can honestly say that reading other people’s YA and MG does not make me a better writer.   Instead, I worry that I’m inadvertently stealing someone else’s voice and/or that I suck.  No one wants to feel that way.  And it’s making me sort of not love reading because I feel like I’m doing it because I ought to, not because I want to.

So what I did today — and on Saturdays, Mr. Spuddle takes the sprogs and deposits them on his mother’s floor where they play with a myriad of My Little Pony toys ecstatically for eight continuous hours, returning home at bedtime high on sugar and the adrenalin rush of having successfully lifted the pink poodle from Grammy’s My Little Petshop playset and managed to get it home without being caught — was NOTHING.  ( They usually take three hours to put to bed after that, but no matter, I’ve had a day “off” which I invariably spend updating my blog and Twitter and also, yes, writing writing and more writing.)

Today, I went shopping.   I had to return some jeans that were made for someone who is not shaped like a large C with a bulge in the middle, which actually is what I look like due to a lifetime of bad posture and weird protruding belly, so I exchanged them for kids’ shorts because the kids are not shaped like large Cs or even small ones, and thus deserve clothing more than I do.  Then I went to the library and spent an entire hour selecting 75? 60? some alarming number? of books for the kids and for me.   You know, picture books for them (we burn through about fifty a week), and actual adult hardcover books for myself.    Then when I came home, I felt guilty for NOT WORKING and panicked and did a bunch of work and then I realized I was getting all wound up and anxious and my shoulders were somewhere near my ears so I CLOSED THE COMPUTER.   I did.   And I watched Project Runway.   Then I made a grilled cheese sandwich.   Then I went downstairs and got a beer out of the garage — they’ve been there since last summer — because I’d sort of forgotten that I kind of like beer.   And I chose a book from my library pile (How To Talk To  Widower — Jonathan Tropper).   And I sat down and decided to just sit.   And read.   And drink my beer.

Then I knocked the beer over and it spilled all over the floor which is just Fate’s way of telling me that I’m a lazy good-for-nothing and I should be working.   So I mopped that up and then I tried again.   Then I thought, “Hey, I should blog about how I’m taking a day off from writing*.”

And I did.

The End.

* To make up for this transgression, you KNOW I’m staying up late all week to meet the word count.   But still, it’s a day for ME!   Well, not exactly for ME, but for all of us in the house who enjoy clean laundry and wearing socks.   (I bought socks for the kids.  That was the “shopping”.  I realize I made it sound more fun than it was.  But I also bought Easter stuff!) (Also for the kids.) (OK, fine, I ate some of the candy.) (Yes, I do feel sort of sick now.)

The first time it occurred to me that I was afraid of heights was in 8th grade gym class when for some misguided reason, the teacher picked ME to demonstrate how easy the uneven bars are to twirl around.    Apart from being afraid of heights, I also do not twirl.   When you look at me, I LOOK like a sort of normal person who may be able to do an adequate amount of twirling, but I can’t.   I don’t know why.  My center of gravity is like a lead weight the size of a goat that I keep in my feet which pretty much insures that they are always touching the ground.   But back in 8th grade,  I was nothing if not intimidated by teachers and game to “demonstrate” my magical gymnastics skillz which had maybe just been dormant up until that exact moment.   I always sort of thought that I could do things, like “skate” or “do a cartwheel” but the fact that I actually COULD NOT was just some kind of trick and that I would be able to perform these feats in the exact right circumstance.   Ha ha!  I WAS TOTALLY DELUDED.

So up I went and standing there, four feet above the ground or whatever it was, I FROZE.   Like I absolutely froze.   Why am I telling you this story?   No idea.   Regardless, I couldn’t feel my legs.  It was too high!   I was expected to go HIGHER and then TWIRL AROUND?   UPSIDE DOWN?   GIVEN THAT I CAN’T EVEN TWIRL AROUND A BAR THAT IS ONLY THREE FEET OF THE GROUND?   GIVEN THAT I HAVE NEVER SUCCESSFULLY TWIRLED?

NO WAY.

I can tell you it was the world’s longest demonstration of how to stand terrified on the lower bar of the uneven bars while the teachers — who were idiots — said things within my earshot such as, “What is WRONG with her?   What a weird freak.”   And then — I do not make this up — the virtually THREW me over the top bar, made me let go, and DROPPED ME ON THE MAT EIGHT FEET BELOW.

When I got my breath back, I said in my best affronted twelve-year-old voice, “HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF FEAR OF HEIGHTS?”   I would have used the latin word, and in fact probably did because when I was twelve I was both smart and slightly obnoxious, but now that I am no longer twelve, I don’t remember it.   Anyway, I flunked that part of gym class.   Fear of heights was just not a good excuse apparently for inadequate twirling.

But that was a long time ago and having dutifully avoided anything that is more than three feet off the ground since then, I’d somehow forgotten how freaked out I could get exactly.

Which is why I found myself yesterday afternoon climbing the world’s tallest concrete staircase (with gaps!  gaps everywhere!  open balconies!  nothing to hang on to!) on my way to fall to my death slide down an overly big waterslide (click that because there is a youtube video of the EXACT STAIRCASE THAT I AM TALKING ABOUT) because The Bun really really really really felt bad (why?  WHY?) that usually Daddy took him and THAT WASN’T FAIR that Mummy never got to have any fun.   I was up for it because it looked, from the bottom, like a really solid staircase and my PRESCHOOLER wanted me to and damn it, I would not let him down because I used to be scared of heights a long time ago when I was young and silly and knew random latin words.

It was only when I was ON the staircase in a line up of about fifty jostling pre-teens that I realized that this little niggling memory I had of being afraid of heights was for realz.   People, if it had been possible or even slightly socially acceptable, I would have starfished myself to the wall and refused to move until they sent the fire department to save me.   IT WAS SO HIGH UP!   OMG!   I’m not exaggerating!   And!   To make matters worse!  NO ONE ELSE WAS AFRAID!   They were all dangling over the edges!  Unafraid!  Having fun!  EVEN MY FOUR YEAR OLD!   Everywhere I looked was DOWN!   A LONG WAY DOWN!

So naturally, my brain compensated for this terror by immediately supplying me with earthquake footage.   You know the type, where the staircase peels away from the wall and all the people are crushed horribly under the fallen concrete and there is NOTHING TO HOLD ON TO and my boy!  MY BABY!  Would fall all the way to the concrete pool deck!

He did not help matters by repeatedly throwing himself against the rail and going, “LOOK MUMMY LOOK AT THAT!” and forcing me AGAINST MY WILL to look at some tiny speck in the pool a million miles down.

By the time I got to the top, my legs were shaking so severely that I nearly blacked out, which would have been embarrassing and probably also fatal because “unconscious” and “waterslide” are not a good combo.    But I managed to sit down and slide and I didn’t die and yay for me.

I guess that’s it.   That’s the punchline. I did not die.  AND I had so much adrenalin coursing through my body that my asthma cleared right up.   Fear, FTW!

I’ve forgotten why I thought this would be a good blog post.  Maybe I just wanted to give you a break from saving the whales.  But really, you SHOULD save them, damn it.   Because it’s important to me.   True.

It’s killing me.

So this is me, slowing down.   ON THE RECORD.

I am writing this on my blog to remind me (and you, because I am here to TELL YOU WHAT TO DO) that it’s much easier to breathe if you aren’t always trying to do 8000 things in a day and that the world will keep turning even if you are a bit late in your rewrites and the inside of the fridge is sort of gross and you have five bags of stuff to take to donate and the kids want to go to the museum and you haven’t uploaded any pictures for a week and you really should finish that bulletin board project so that pictures don’t have to be taped all over the walls and actually you should most of all be WORKING because the book is due in June and that other one is SO CLOSE to being finished that you should just get it done FIRST and money doesn’t grow on trees which reminds you that  you have to call the tree guy to see about having the trees pruned and that big branch removed so the vegetables aren’t in the shade and ALSO the vegetable garden needs to be cleared out and prepped for planting and what about the weeding and the fact that from the outside, the house looks like a crack den or at least the home of someone so elderly they can’t be bothered anymore with appearances and really you should clean the stairs at least or probably paint them and those dead leaves all over the front lawn are from LAST FALL and it’s already spring and maybe the kids should know how to read already so you should teach them and OMG there is just NO TIME for any of this so instead of doing any of it you should just sit around and feel overwhelmed and then go to the rec centre and check your blood pressure just in case the idea of all that you have to do that you haven’t done (laundry! the dishes!  the beds! the kids’ drawers which are full of too-small clothes! OH AND THE WORK!) is giving you a coronary.

Here’s the plan:  I’m going to do a bit of work while The Birdy watches Shark Tale for the tenth time (she likes the music for dancing purposes) and then we’re going to play/work in the garden.   That’s all.   Our entire day.    Maybe there will be some sparkly princess dresses, too.   And probably Play-Doh.

STOP AND SMELL THE ROSES.   That’s an order.   Granted, the roses need to be pruned first and haven’t actually bloomed yet, but you don’t have to be so literal.   Just go sniff the weeds and try not to feel too depressed about the fact that there are so many of them.   Sniffing weeds, smelling roses =  same thing, really.   But don’t do it very vigorously because the other day I went to blow a dandelion clock for The Birdy (and to spread the plague of dandelions further over our mostly-moss and weed “lawn”) and I inhaled one accidentally and it hurt for about two hours and now I secretly believe that there is an actual dandelion growing in my lung.   You laugh now but will you still be laughing when you see the X-ray?   I THINK NOT.

Well, I bought The Bun this cool science book that he is far far too young for because he was so excited about it that it was impossible to say, “No, I will not spend an extra $10 on an educational opportunity to expand your young horizons!”  (New total:  $60).   Then I bought The Birdy a new dress.   The Birdy is TWO YEARS OLD but man oh man, kid knows what she wants, and in this case, what she wanted was a Laura Ashley spring dress.   I could have said “No”.  Indeed, I DID say “No.”   But that didn’t work out.   It was buy her the dress or let her scream the store down and disallow me from buying all the other things I suddenly wanted/needed to purchase.   Add the dress.   (New total:  $75).

Did I mention that when I woke up yesterday, I reached over to hug The Bun awake and something in my neck went CRUNCH.   I’m not even kidding, it sounded like there was granola in there and a guy with heavy boots who was into that dance style that we like to call stomping, because that is what it’s called.   And CRUNCH.   It was the most painful CRUNCH in the history of all CRUNCHES.   I screamed in pain, which terrified The Bun (but also woke him up, which was good, because we were running late, just like every other morning) and then spent a good ten minutes painfully hoisting myself out of bed while cursing in a child-friendly way under my breath.   The pain was so horrific that by the time I got to Costco, I could only point my head straight forward, except it wasn’t even straight, it was on an angle that I believed was straight but really just made my look like a mystified cocker spaniel.   As a result, it became necessary to purchase a really really big bottle of Tyelenol (new total:  $91).   It’s like shopping for food when you’re hungry.   Don’t do it!

Also, I was hungry.   Add flax bread, Laughing Cow cheese, gallons of grape juice, a lasagne, and a rack of ribs.   Stop at the book table, buy a copy of “Ivy & Bean” because it’s cute.   Mr. Spuddle needs underwear.   Check.   Trail mix is good!   Add that.   And kids need vitamins, right?   Snap.  NEW TOTAL:  $250.   I didn’t even buy yoga pants, which are my normal Costco Impulse Buy.

Le.

Sigh.

Seriously, we’re in trouble with The Birdy.  The girl LOVES her dresses.   She is more passionate about dresses than I am.  On the plus side, I just made $250 selling her outgrown stuff on consignment.   So it’s sort of like her passion for dresses is making me money!   Except not really.   I KNOW.    I’m kidding.

I promised you lumps so I will now make a completely bumpy (ha ha!) transition into the ongoing story of the LUMPZ.   On Thursday, I went in for an ultrasound.   I realize that this will sound demented but when my doctor told me that I had to have an ultrasound I asked neither obvious question:  1.   On what part of my body?  Or 2.  Why?   So no, I do not know what the ultrasound was meant to prove or not prove, but I am diligent in following instructions as though following the instructions will prevent me from getting the thing that we are trying to prove that I do not have by doing seventy-eighteen tests.

The instruction for the ultrasound was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO EAT OR DRINK PAST MIDNIGHT ON WEDNESDAY UNTIL AFTER THE TEST.   The test was at 11:35.   By 8 am, I was crying because I was so desperate for coffee.   By 9, I was snappish.   By 10, I was downright nasty.   By 11, I was in the car because damn it, maybe if I was early, they would do the thing early and I could go downstairs to Starbucks and gulp down a venti shot of espresso.    I arrived at 11:05.   They were not busy.  In fact, they were not doing anything but leaning on counters talking to each other.   They politely told me to have a seat as though I was a reasonable, coffee-sated person who wanted to sit and read McLean’s magazine from 1989 for 35 minutes.

They proceeded to chat amongst themselves.   THEY COULD HAVE DONE THE TEST!  THEY COULD HAVE!  BUT THEY DID NOT!   By the time I got into the room (11:40), I was in hardly any mood to undertake my usual program of trying to amuse the technician into giving me a better diagnosis, but I was willing to try.    She was not willing to talk.   In fact, she never once looked at my face or addressed me directly.   ALL she said the entire time was, “HOLD YOUR BREATH” and then, about eleventy-hundred seconds later, “Relax.”   “ONE MORE TIME, HOLD YOUR BREATH” – long pause longer than is possible to hold breath for – “relax.”  It would have been boring if it wasn’t so painful and it was painful.   Let me tell you, I have had more than my share of ultrasounds, but these have all been while knocked up.   When you have a baby-related ultrasound, it’s all soft music and warmed gel.   When you have a non-baby related ultrasound, it’s barked orders and ice cold gel squirted on you like bleach cleaner into a toilet.   Then, at the end, she grabbed two of those hospital quality cardboard like brown paper towel things and swabbed at the goo like I was a countertop and she was a sullen, adolescent fast food worker who had just been told his work station was unsanitary.   Then she said, “OK, you go.”   EXCEPT I COULDN’T GO.   Because she was in the way.   The table was up against the wall, the machine was on the other side, and then there was her.  In order to “GO”, I had to crawl up to the end of the table, climb off and clamber over the machine.   Which I did because, damn it, I needed coffee.

And she said NOT ONE SINGLE WORD.

So I don’t know, still, what the ultrasound was for, or what it found because she gave nothing away, no expression of shock and sympathy or even one of outright boredom, just no expression at all.   I’ll find out next week and will advise you right away or some time near then depending on the news and whether it is good or bad.

Then I had coffee.   SO SO SO MUCH COFFEE.   Which gave me heartburn and possibly kidney stones, but did not relieve the GIANT SKULL-CRUSHING HEADACHE.

In my head, that was a much funnier story than it really is because the end of the story is that I’ve now had the headache that the lack of caffeine caused for three days or maybe THIS headache is to do with the neck stomp crunch thing or I don’t know, maybe I’ll just stop typing now.   Why not?   I have other stuff to do!  I am busy!  And important!*

Pass the Tylenol, please.

*Hilarious “Rules” reference which is only funny to me.

Oh, I forgot a bit that I was going to mention about when I was in the waiting room waiting for the lumpz to be investigated, I was reading a book that I brought with me, having exhausted the waiting room’s supply of ONE MAGAZINE.   The book was Maureen Johnson’s The Bermudez Triangle which caused a bunch of controversy because some librarians in schools banned it due to the fact that it has (gasp!) LESBIAN TEENAGERS.   The horror!  The horror!   Only wait, isn’t it 2010?   Are people really BANNING books based on the gay still?   Yes?   I find that really depressing.

Anyway, an old woman came into the waiting room and plopped herself down next to me and struck up a conversation by looking at the book in my hand and gasping, “WHAT A HUGE BOOK!”  I knew that her next question was going to be “What is it about?” and honestly I was pretty geared up for having a conversation about gay teenagers with an elderly woman, but she surprised me by saying, “I READ A BOOK ONCE!”  I don’t know which part of it surprised me most, the way she was shouting right in my face while I was trying to read, or the word ONCE.   So I said, “Oh!”  Which is writer-speak for, “Seriously?  ONCE?  If people like YOU who read ONE BOOK in your ENTIRE LIFE take over the planet, then my job will go the way of the dinosaurs and I will die penniless and alone!”   She went on, “It was 1945!   I was on a cruise on the Panama Canal!  It was a very slow cruise!   Very boring!  So I READ A BOOK!”   She was so happy about it and I was so aghast that what I did was to go back to The Bermudez Triangle without saying anything else but I’m kicking myself, peeps, I am, because I did not ask her what the book was.   I mean, obviously it wasn’t Maureen Johnson and I’m guessing it didn’t have lesbian teens in it, but you never know.   Now I am left wondering, WHAT WAS THE BOOK?   It’s not keeping me up at night, but still, [kicks self]…

2.  I really really like music from the 70s.   When I’m alone, the music channel is set to schmaltzy seventies hits.   If you like me at all, you’ll have to accept that I can get really excited when I hear Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi when I’m at the coffee shop and will hush the children if they are so loud I can’t hear it properly.

3.  I spend a lot of time before I start a new book finding The Thing on line that I’m going to reward myself with when I’ve finished writing it and have SOLD it.   Yes, I have to sell the book to earn the reward.   Which is why I’m terminally depressed about how the Frye For The Ages boots at anthropologie sold out before I could sell (OK, and finish) (in the other order, obviously) WHAT YOU DON’T EXPECT.    Which I’m working on right now.   Or would be if I didn’t have to spend so much time finding a comparably lovely boot to focus the sunshiny rays of my love upon.   I am thinking that the Frye Carson is going to win the day for me, but SO MANY COLOURS TO CHOOSE FROM, it will take several more days/weeks of staring at them thoughtfully to decide.   Which is good because it’s going to take several more days/weeks for me to finish this book.    So you see how it all works out for the best in the end.

4.  I have a weird weakness for digestive biscuits.   I’d forgotten this until someone gave me a giant tin of assorted biscuits for Christmas and I meticulously cut through all the layers to pick out all the digestives.   They TASTE healthy, but they are not.    I may as well have a weakness for fudge that has been fried in fat.    On a related note, I’ve started weighing myself every day again, a sure sign that either I’m about to go nuts about my weight and/or I’ve become my mother, and also a good way of knowing this scientifically-proven fact:   Eating twelve digestive biscuits in one day can lead to weight gain of a full pound.

5.   I am not psychic, yet I know what happens at the end of The Bachelor because I read spoilers as though they are the next testament.   But I will not spoil it for you, my pretty peoplez.   (Also, I find it amusing to randomly end words with the letter ‘z’ instead of ‘s’.   Even though if other people did it, I would probably find it annoying.)   (I am trying to be a more tolerant person though in 2010, so maybe the New Me will not be bothered by other people doing something as irritating as ending all their pluralz with z!   It’s a new day!    It’s a whole new me!    Or, you know, some facsimile of the old me with slightly different hair and a really nice pink coat.)

The thing with blogging is that it’s like exercising and if you don’t do it every day, it starts to seem impossible and HAS actually been impossible in the last week or two because of Christmas (which makes EVERYTHING impossible) and sick kids, really dramatically sick, complete with high fevers and disturbing hallucinations.  (“Who is that girl, Mummy?”  ”What girl, sweetie?”   “The one who is standing behind you.”   IN HER ROOM.   IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.    WITH NO ONE AROUND.) (Is possible that house is haunted and actually this is not the first time I’ve thought so, but that’s another post that I may never get around to writing.)

Speaking of exercise (were we?), I have started exercising again. I had literally not exercised in 2009 AT ALL, period.    I was waiting for MRI results to say what exactly was wrong with my back and under a doctor’s advice, was laying off exercise until diagnosis so as not to aggravate a possible disc.   But then!  I had the MRI and it said that lo, I have a disc, and I asked my doctor what sort of exercise I could do and he shrugged and said, “Oh, I wouldn’t aggravate that disc.”  Which is not advice so much as it’s a generic, answerless response containing no information.   My doctor treats me for all things by hovering in the doorway of the examining room while I sit on a chair ten feet away.    He is constantly looking back over his shoulder as though someone is about to come up and tap him and demand he perform something urgent STAT, such as an emergency tracheotomy using only a Bic pen on someone who is suffocating in the lobby.   As a result, I never really know anything about whatever I think I’m asking him about.    So without any medical advice whatsoever, I’ve started going down to my stinky weird basement every day for half an hour and rowing 5k or doing a couple of miles of stairs (my rowing machine is set to kms and my stairmaster is set to miles and I have no idea what the conversion is, so there you go) and shouting at the children to not pull each other up and down the Total Gym on the slidey thing because they ARE going to get hurt, yes I mean it, yes you will, I TOLD YOU SO.    Then I stop exercising when they start climbing up my legs like tribbles or some other alien type creature that climbs on you while you are trying to row without rupturing your damaged, herniated disc.

Does this make me a better person?   I have no idea.

On that same subject, except not really the same at all, I got pulled into a debate on these here internetz in the last few days about fatness and thinness and the relative fault of people who are fat and thin and who should/could exercise every day and why and how when fat people say that thin people are lucky it either is or isn’t anything to do with luck.   It got me thinking about a whole bunch of things, mostly about judgement and about how harshly we judge each other and ourselves about our bodies and how we can somehow take someone else’s body and make it about ourselves.   I’m pretty sure this is basically a girl-thing, I don’t think most men run around with a list as long as we do of what makes us/others OK (exercise! diet! ability to fit into jeans from highschool!) and what makes us/others failures (fat!).   I actually don’t think that fat is a failure or that fat people need to start starving themselves and exercising every morning at 5:00 am.   Unless they want to.   I think people are fat for a lot of complicated reasons to do with health, and yes, luck, and mental health, and circumstance and on and on.   Besides, I don’t recommend the starving part.    Ever.   Maybe they don’t want to exercise at 5:00 am.   Maybe they like themselves just the way they are.    Maybe they do exercise but it isn’t instantly visible to an outsider.    Maybe — just maybe — it’s none of anyone’s business but their own.    It struck me, in this debate, that a lot of the thin women who were commenting and saying that yes, yes, those fat girls needed to stop making excuses and start exercising, damn it, a LOT of these women in their paragraphs of response mentioned how they themselves had eating disorders, they were recovered/recovering anorexics/bulimics/exercise bulimics/etc., and it made me think, is that really “better” or is it just a different kind of eating disorder?   Because so many of us, whether we are fat or thin or fat-thin or fit-fat or whatever, have eating disorders of one type or another.   We eat too much or not enough, or we exercise too much at the expense of some other part of our life, or not enough at the expense of something else.    We are motivated sometimes (mostly, I’d wager) by fear, fear of getting fat or being perceived as unfit or being regarded negatively.   Fear of judgement.   Sometimes we’re motivated for the “right reasons” and sometimes we aren’t, either way, it isn’t obvious from the outside.   Ever.    What looks like health can become scarily consuming, you don’t know what dark forces are driving other people’s actions.   It’s hard to be a woman, is what I’m saying.  It’s hard to find balance and I think most of us have a hard time with it, I know once I start exercising I start feeling anxious as hell if I miss a day, and somewhere, underneath all the good parts about improved health and whatnot, there is a dark part which is the tiny seed of obsession that grows if I let it and turns the whole “healthy” thing into something that takes over and becomes everything.     I don’t know what my point is, which is why I’m posting this here instead of on the other thread, because it doesn’t have a pithy point or clever conclusion, I guess it’s just that I think that fundamentally something that looks “healthy” on the outside, may be completely messed up on the inside and something that looks “unhealthy” on the outside, may actually be just right.

So ANYWAY it seems like if I take this precious half hour and exercise, the half hour I might have spent blogging vanishes, so I have to choose between being flabby or being verbose, which is a hard choice except it’s not right now because I’m so exhausted all the time that I need to exercise just to give me a small bit of extra energy which I need because man oh man, I am spread THIN and that is nothing to do with my weight, which is low right now due to anxiety and exhaustion and hopefully not the fault of the LUMPS and whatever is causing them.

I’m without a babysitter right now for a variety of reasons and without a babysitter, I am stalled completely on the books I am meant to be writing, need to be writing, am under contract to be writing, want so badly to be writing.     So if I don’t open my computer, I’m not reminded that I’m meant to be writing and it’s overall easier to go to the basement and row while watching romantic comedies on the old TV/VCR and contemplate whether or not I’m having a heart attack actually for real or if it just feels like I am.    I am SUCH a hypochondriac these days, triggered by the LUMPS (still awaiting more testing, FYI) of course but spiralling into everything else, like right at this moment I have a weird cold feeling travelling down the big fat vein on the side of my neck which I secretly (or not secretly at all) wonder if is a clot bound for my heart and my INSTANT DEATH.   Then all that time spent exercising in 2009 (at least 8 hours!) will have been a waste.

ANXIETY.   Oh, screw you, Anxiety.   I’m not up for you.

In other unrelated news, I got the JCrew pink coat for Christmas and I love it so much, I can hardly stand myself.  (You can’t have one, unless you already do, because it is sold out.)   I would be wearing it right now, with my pyjamas, if it wouldn’t be a weird thing to do.   I also bought — with my Christmas money — this Roots bag (in black).  It is neither of the ones I posted, but one that’s sort of a cross between them both.   It is bigger than I thought it would be but I like all its pockety goodness.    I am always losing things in my large purses.   Also, it smells good.    Very very good.    If you like the smell of leather.   If you don’t like the smell of leather, then I cannot advise you any further.

More unrelated things:

I was putting The Bun to bed the other night and he likes to say things that are very profound right at bedtime, mostly centered on how sad he will be when I die.   He’s done this since he could talk, I don’t know why or where it came from, but the conversation usually is about how his heart will break into a million seventeen eighty pieces when I die and then it will dry up and he will die, too.   But a few nights ago, he took a different approach.   I think he’s decided that Heaven is actually like a big UFO, sucking people up into its belly.   Am not even really sure where he got his Heaven imagery from as Heaven isn’t something we really ever discuss, except for when Clayton’s good friends, the Jehovah Witnesses, interrupt our Saturday with their annoying magazines.   But anyway, there it was, his idea that hey, if there is no Heaven, then no one dies, right?   So he said, “I hate Heaven.   Let’s take it down.”   I don’t know why that’s funny to me, but it is.   Am thinking of getting him his own Twitter stream.   THAT’S GOOD STUFF, PEOPLE.

The Bachelor starts this week, I think, but am too lazy to check.   Yes, I will be blogging this season.    Yes, I will keep you in the loop.   What I’ve heard so far?    Jake freaks out!  Is it a breakdown?   Will there be DRAMATIC SOBBING?   And someone runs of with a member of the crew!  Who is it?  WHO?   Oh, sweet rumors planted by the network to make us watch what is likely to be the Dullest Season Ever!    I can’t wait.    Can you?

I HATE HEAVEN.   LET’S TAKE IT DOWN.

So good.  Maybe if I get The Bun his own Twitter stream he could get a book deal like that Shit My Dad Says guy.    A really good book deal.   I mean, who wouldn’t buy THAT?