I bought a new tablecloth.  It’s really pretty and goes great in my house.  I put in on the table for breakfast on Sunday.  We all sat down to eat but before the children could get started I gave a very firm lecture about spilling.

These children spill constantly.  I know they are not unique in this aspect.  All children spill.  I understand this.  The thing that kills me though is that they’ll stand there, dumbfounded, staring at the overturned glass as it continues to pour liquid onto the table, off on to the chairs and draining to the floor. 

I gave them a lecture.  They were to make a concerted effort to keep their glasses in the upright position and away from the edge of the table. Sassy rolled her eyes at me, and I could tell that The Bandit was not threatened at all. 

I redoubled my efforts.  My Honey watched from the other side of the table.  I don’t know if he new better than me the whole exercise was futile or just a bit over indulgent on my part, but either way he kept quiet and remained vigilant.

Breakfast proceeded as usual.  My Honey and I tried in vain to hold an adult conversation and the children alternated between bickering and giggling hysterically.  The inevitable happened and I saw The Bandit throw some food on the floor.  I don’t know why.  Does it matter? 

I leaned over to grab his arm to stop the hurling of more food and, in slow motion, I could see my hand brush his Elmo glass of orange juice.  And over it went.

And it was all my fault.

Dammit.

My Honey was just grateful that it was me who spilled the first glass on the new table cloth.  This always happens to me.  No wonder no one takes me seriously.

I’ve been suffering from an unusual bout of insomnia.  Well, unusual for me.  I’m sure this is pretty much the same experience regular sufferers of insomnia go through.  I’m a really good sleeper usually.

I’ve had a LOT of stuff on my mind lately: my regular day job is sucking my soul dry and causing no small amount of stress. 

Also, MY AGENT has my book with eight editors – all at the big publishing houses.  I swear to God, every single time my head hits the pillow, I begin having fantasies that involve Avon Publishing.  A person just can’t go to sleep with that scenario running around in their head.

Ava’s husband is still working on my lap top to see how much of the missing middle of Dalton’s book he can recover.  I need to work on that, but understandably I should think, I don’t want to take off with it if any of the data is recoverable.  So I lay in bed and Dalton and Olivia harass me whenever they can get a word in between Avon and MY AGENT discussing the auction of my book.

And my husband’s snoring has ramped up to Richter scale proportions.

And I’m hungry because I’m dieting and bitter about it.

On Thursday night sleep was not forthcoming.  No matter what I did.  The following is a list of things I did while the rest of my house slumbered.

• I got in bed no less than three times.  My tossing and turning and loud, frustrated exhaling was annoying me and I was sure it would disturb My Honey so I kept getting back out of bed.

• I tried the couch twice.  No dice.

• I cruised the Internet.  Often.  There was nothing on.  I don’t understand why I continue to pay the cable bill.

• I called in a prescription renewal at midnight.

• I read.  I’m sure that’s shocking

• At 2:00 I found Sense & Sensibility on cable.  That was exciting.

• I let the dog in and out about 97 times.

• I oiled the bathroom door.  The squeaking had been driving me crazy so I finally got around to doing something about it.  

• At 3:30 I emailed a really cute jacket to Ava.

When 4:15 rolled around, I gave myself a very stern talking-to.  It was either now or never.  So I went to work on 2 hours of sleep.  My Honey and I had a nasty fight at Costco of all places.

I’m quite sure it was due to 6 hours of sleep in the last 67.  In fact, I feel quite sleepy now at 11:11 Sunday evening.  What do you suppose the odds are I’ll go right to sleep?

This may be the smartest thing I’ve read read as attributed to Ernest Hemingway.

“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk.  That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.”

This is excellent advice but, I can’t say when I look back on any of the asinine things I have done that they were promised under the influence.  I drank A LOT when I was younger.  By the time I was legal, I’d more or less given it up – or end up in rehab – the choice was clear even at 21. 

I doesn’t matter, though, because my personality is such that I love a challenge, don’t ever tell me no, and I’m always up for something fun.  In fact, I have no problem being the designated driver.  The risk lies with the drunk people in my car not because they are in danger of vehicular mayhem.  The mayhem I get them into is of an entirely different nature. 

I don’t need alcohol to come up with crazy ideas – ideas that make GREAT stories later, and I can be quite persuasive.

For example, stone cold sober I dared people to go bungee jumping.  Of course, I regretted that moment of rash stupidity standing on the edge of a building 17 stories from the safe Las Vegas street.  But I did it and I have video proof.

It was me, without one single drop of mind freeing alcohol, who prompted my girlfriends and me to hustle our butts down to the tattoo parlor and get our belly buttons pierced. 

Not even one of my tattoos (yes, Ken, there are multiple – it’s all part of that “black sheep” thing) involved alcohol.  One involved a dare of sorts – I don’t think Tim and Kurt believed I’d go through with it.  The fools.  They should have known their best friend better.  Two others involved men in my life telling me I couldn’t have a tattoo, and the other two are intensely personal.

I’ve raced cars – professional cars on professional race ways and hot rods on deserted roads in the middle of the night.

I’ve proven to be an excellent shot with a .45 Magnum, Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry weapon, even though I’m sure I’ll never own a gun.  All because some asshole doubted I could do it.  It wasn’t at gunpoint I made him eat crow, but he ate it nonetheless.

 I like the incongruity that these things bring to the table when you meet me.  I like to be unexpected.  I love to tell a good story.  I quite honestly have “start a bar brawl” on my list of items to do one day – keep that in mind if we go out.

But honestly, with all the things I’ve done that were either brave or stupid or, most of all, tested my mettle, there are two things that very clearly stand out in my life.  By far the bravest things I’ve ever done, and consequently the things I am most proud of, are being brave enough to get pregnant again after the loss of my first child at birth and writing a book.

The first thing is obvious.  Getting pregnant with Sassy was absolutely horrifying and by far the most concentratedly terrifying 7 1/2 months of my life.  I trod a very thin, thin line, held together with baling wire and spit, terrorized at the thought that it could happen again and being powerless to control the outcome.  Hysteria was always just a heartbeat away – literally.  The pregnancy with The Bandit was different.  Scary but, tempered with the knowledge that it had worked out once, emboldened with trust that I could do it again.

Writing a book isn’t the scary thing.  Letting people read it is.  It’s an intensely personal thing to dig this out of yourself and get it down on paper.  To allow people to read this thing you pulled from inside, is incredibly intimidating.  Opening yourself up to criticism for something you hold so close is not for the faint of heart.  People have opinions and I hate knowing those opinions matter to me.  Even now, having two novellas published and a book an agent loves – loves enough to stake her much respected reputation on representing, seems to barely give validation. 

Holy Cow! When did this silly post turn into a confessional?  Maybe I should just go have a drink, huh?

What the hell is with greeters in every single store?  It used to be just Walmart and they didn’t bother me much because I make it a rule not to shop in there.  I have my reasons – and you should too.  But this isn’t a political blog so, I’ll shut up about that.

Now there are greeters everywhere.  You can’t shop without being accosted.  When we go into Blockbusters the teenage staff hollars at you from the counter.  Subway actually yells at you the minute you walk in the door.  I’m in Target at least once a week – sometimes more – and you can’t walk down the aisles without the red-shirt brigade stopping you. 

“Can I help you find something?”  Really?  In Target?  I’ll bet I can tell them where a few things are in that store. 

I work for a very, very large bank – in the mortgage department.  I walked into my local banking branch today to make a deposit and wasn’t even five steps in the door before some little schmo jumped me. 

“How can I help you today?” 

First off, you can get the hell out of my face.  “I’m just making a deposit,” I told him as I veered around his skinny little road block.

“Let me escort you to the teller line.”  Seriously?  Little man had better get his hand off my arm.

“I’m fine.  I sincerely doubt I”ll get lost on the way across the room to that large area defined by the velvet ropes.”

The worst of it is Safeway.  I rarely shop there.  Wanna know why?  Those people are like cult members at the airport.  I’ll get asked 15 times if they can help me find something from the front door to the milk and back up front to the check out line.  By the 3rd or 4th time I’m not able to control the irritation in my voice.  7th and 8th or so and I’m rude and snarky.  11th – 15th and I’m not even forming words, just growling.

I don’t want to be bitchy.  Well sometimes I do, but a person can only take so much.  Customer service needs to back the hell up and give a shopper some room.

This is bound to make anyone feel better after a rough day.

After an excruciating day at work, one that was so bad in fact, the only reason I didn’t kill someone was because then I couldn’t go to Disneyland in November.

More about that later.  For now, let me wallow in the misery that is mortgage banking.

However, on the way home I saw this bumper sticker.

“Rescue is Coming”

Surely they know what their talking about right?  Right?

RIGHT?

I don’t know what’s going on with me lately, but I’m an incredibly forgetful mess.  It doesn’t even seem to matter if I put reminders in my phone, on my desk calendar, post things on the refrigerator and tack sticky notes to the front door. 

This morning I remembered the biggest thing I’ve forgotten so far.  When I dropped the kids off at school and left The Bandit at kindergarten it occurred to me that I was the snack mom this week.  And I’d signed up for cricket duty too. 

What, pray tell, is “cricket duty” you ask?  The Bandit’s kindergarten class room is like a petting zoo.  There’s a turtle, a guinea pig, two giant assed bearded dragons, a tankful of fish, and two fairies, William & Gwen, that live behind cute little doors up on the wall.  The lizards, Spike & Zippy, eat crickets.  Each week a parent is in charge of feeding them. 

I ran to Target and picked up some snacks – enough for today and tomorrow, and managed to sneak into the classroom and leave them while the kids were all out at an assembly and only got to work 15 minutes late.  Pretty good, I’d say.

When I picked them up from school, The Bandit was carrying a clear plastic

See the weird tubes

 box with odd tubes inside.  He kept insisting that we, WE mind you, needed to catch a bunch of crickets and put them inside.  Yeah.  That wasn’t going to happen of course.  We got to the pet store and the three of us trooped in: me in my work clothes, Sassy in her school uniform, and The Bandit in his karate gi.  We brought the mysterious cricket box with us.

“We need fifty crickets,” I told the fish guy at the store.  “Does that sound like  a lot?”

you can tell none of these kids are mine because their hair is brushed.

“Nah, that’s normal.  They’re over here.”  He led us to a big box full of egg crates and about a gazillion tiny crickets.

I looked at the box warily.  “You’re going to get them out, right?”

“Sure, I can do that.”  He laughed at the mom doing the heebie jeebies over the crickets.

“I think they go in this box, right?” I showed him the mysterious box. 

“Yep.”

“Can you make that happen?”  I really didn’t want to mess with these crickets.  One cricket in the living room is pesky.  Fifty wee crickets hopping all over you is another thing entirely.

Mr Smirky put the crickets in the box and we went up to pay.  As we walked down the aisle, I laid down the law.  “You do not take the caps off the tubes.  You do not open the box.  You do not drop the box in the car.  You don’t mess with the crickets in any way.  You got that?”

“Yeah, Mom,” The Bandit agreed to the terms, but I had my suspicions about his full commitment to the rules.  He has a tendency to forget once his curiosity gets the better of him.  He wanted to keep the crickets in his room.  Yeah – I nixed that idea right away.

When My Honey came home from school, I showed him the cricket box from where I stored it on top of the refrigerator.  Out of sight – Out of mind.  When I brought the box down to eye level, all the crickets were gone. 

GONE!

I hope and pray they are all in the tubes.  My Honey says they are but he might be telling me that just to keep my hysteria down to a controllable level.

We went out to dinner on Friday evening.  Everyone was in a good mood – which was nice.  I was totally shocked when the kids ordered chicken fingers.  Not.  When we go out, they only ever eat chicken fingers, mac and cheese and, on the rare occasion when they get a little crazy, grilled cheese.  I will say, however, they both generally order fruit with dinner as opposed to french fries – especially the boy.  He’s a fruit freak.

So My Honey and I were sitting at the table Googling what actually qualifies something as a fruit or a vegetable.  It turns out it’s ridiculously complicated and gave me a headache.  Do not leave me a comment about fruit vs vegetables – it turns out I don’t care that much.

Our waitress walked by and The Bandit yelled to her, “Hey woman, I need more strawberries.”

It didn’t matter that the waitress laughed, I was embarrassed.  “He’s fine,” I told her while I shushed him.

“I’m not fine,” he insisted, “I’m a strawberry lover.”

“I’ll get him some more,” she said, still laughing.

“No, really, he’s fine.” I repeated.  My Honey was trying to stifle laughter.

“I AM NOT FINE.” And he didn’t look fine either.  He looked like he better get some strawberries and get them now.

“It’s no big deal.  I’ll bring him some more.”

The waitress did indeed bring him a plate of strawberries and he ate every last one of them. 

Let’s hope this doesn’t become a habit.  Pretty soon he won’t be a cute five year old maniac, and he won’t like his strawberries so much when the kitchen staff spits on them.

This is the joke The Bandit made up at dinner.

What’s red and purple and red and purple and red and purple?

Give up?

A lion running through a blueberry bush.

Hilarity ensued.

So much hilarity that his father and I were cracking up just at how much the boy amused himself.  Of course, the joke doesn’t make any sense, but I defy you not to laugh if you picture my five year old jiggling in his chair, snorting away in glee.

I was on a business call at work today – an important call – when my cell phone rang.  The caller ID told me it was my literary agent.  I could barely get that other person off the phone fast enough.

I can’t tell you how much I love saying that: My Literary Agent.  I feel like I should only write her name in all caps.  Today’s phone call put me right back in that giddy place I was in last month.  She was calling to give me an update.

I need to back up a bit and give you the scoop on what happens now that she has my book.  Together we wrote a pitch – a less wordy, very descriptive, three paragraph synopsis enticing an editor to want to read my book.  Like what you see on the back of a book you’re considering buying, only more in depth.  A long teaser if you will.  Then she sent that to editors she feels will be the most interested in my book.  The editors then let her know if they’d like to read the entire book.

WELL.  Bantam asked to read my book.  Bantam. Oh ho!

Other editors have the pitch as well – HQN, Berkley, Avon, Pocket. 

I’m going to lose my mind.