Three dead people live with me.
 
I don’t think about them much, unless I’m in the basement, alone, searching for something stuffed in some corner on some shelf. Two of them I’ve never met, and yet they are my burden. 
 
They don’t frighten me, though I’ll admit to startling when I bump the side of a black rectangle box about the size of a football. What they do is make me existentially morose.
 
They had lives and loves and cares and woes and tears and passions and pains and joys, that I know nothing of and that my husband barely recalls. You see, they are his grandparents— my mother-in-law’s parents. And also his father, though I knew him, but not well.

Will I wind up in some box in some woman’s basement someday with a name that only registers because it is the same as her own now?
 
But it is more than the recognition of my own insignificance and mortality that depresses me. It is the fact I must determine what to do with these long dead that sends me to the furthest depths of futility.
 
Why. Why does this fall to the woman? Why have I allowed myself to take these ashes? Why is it somehow expected? We women have a long history of taking care of both the quick and the dead, which can be beautiful and life-giving. Yet when it is forced, when it is subconsciously delegated, when one’s mother-in-law has two sons who never had to lift a finger for themselves in a society where it is the women who arrange things, and so when no woman is available, dead people stay in dusty basements, that is when I call foul.

My mother in law is fairly healthy, whip smart, but not exactly organized (again, her parents in boxes). But she’s nearing ninety. She has not, as they say, put her affairs in order. I was the one to find the estate attorney, to make the appointment I had no seat at, to discuss money she resents me having any say or control over once she is gone. So why do I do it? Why haven’t I learned the two little letters: no?
 
I grew up believing a woman could be and do anything she desired. And while, the essence of that is still true — being a woman does not make one inherently less human, less capable— I know it is not a sentiment I can share with my own daughter. All I have to do is look at the way our almost First Female President was, and continues to be, treated, even by those who claim the word feminist. All I have to do is see that my country chose a man who assaults, excoriates, and cages women, to lead us, to speak for us, to be our face to the globe. All I have to do is watch what this nation and these politicians did to a victim of sexual abuse who was brave enough to try and save us all from a Supreme Court with two sex offenders presiding.
 
This world is not a place for my child to be and do anything. Already her education has been curtailed by four boys—four in a class of twenty-nine—who disrupt learning to the point that the whole class has had to skip science, music, drama, math, because these boys are uncontrollable. These are not boys with special needs. They are white, privileged, smart, undisciplined. And yet it is the others in the class who must adjust themselves to accommodate these boys. My daughter brings noise canceling headphones to class, avoids certain play equipment at recess, and has nightmares. My daughter is the one we will be pulling out of this school. She bends, she breaks. But the boys go on “being boys,” growing up to be men who will still behave like their worst selves. Because we all make room for them.
 
My next novel is about Jezebel, from the Bible, a woman who was expected to keep her place, to mold to her spouse. She refused and was killed for it. And to this day three major religions dance on her grave. So perhaps it is her echo, the threat of joining these dead basement dwellers that keeps me chained to the patriarchy which still reigns in our progressive, contemporary society in my progressive, contemporary city. And my daughter doomed to repeat it.
 
So I sit with the ashes of dead strangers. With no answers. Just the gnashing of teeth.

I’m sure the Duchess of Cambridge has prepared herself for her birth.

I doubt she popped over to the hospital to stick her hand in a cup of ice while William told her to breathe funny and count to three, but I’m sure she’s got some resources. Yet, no matter what hypno-birthing-in-a-tub-he-ha-ha-breathing-scented-candle-meditative-state you’re planning on Your Grace, I have some terrible news: it ain’t gonna work. Your “birth plan” even imprinted with the royal seal, will be tossed out the window. 

Why? 

1. Birth is pain, to paraphrase Westley, and anyone who says differently is selling you something.

It is going to hurt. Badly. And that type of pain puts your brain in a space you cannot predict. I think people in Micronesia heard my screams as I dilated six centimeters in twenty minutes with my second child. This is physical pain that you truly could not imagine. People say “I thought I was going to die” in a tongue-in-cheek way these days, like "OMG, I stubbed my toe on the ottoman and I thought I was going to die." But I’m telling you, I. thought. I. was. going. to. die. Or kill the entire nursing staff because: a) they kept talking so loud b) they kept being so blasted nonchalant, as if women have babies every day or something. 


2. Even if you get an epidural, as I did with my first, there will be pain involved. 

They’re called needles. And they’re as long as Estimate, the Queen’s winning horse’s, legs. And then you get all loopy and can’t go to the bathroom…it’s very undignified.

3. Because of the above, your reaction to birth will not be as planned. 

The first go ‘round, I realized in the midst of our birth class that my husband counting in my face and telling me how great I was doing annoyed the be-jesus out of me. Yet, when he did or said something funny, it was distracting. Great! So off to the hospital we went, suitcase full of Eddie Izzard, The Daily Show, Hot Fuzz, and, just in case, the entire Harry Potter DVD collection. But I did not watch a single thing the entire time. Little did I know that would be the last time in five years I would ever be able to watch anything start to finish without interruption. The point being, I thought I would want one thing, and in the end, I just wanted it dark and quiet and peaceful. And I wanted that baby out. 

4. You will agree to interventions you don’t want because what you really want is a healthy baby. 

I didn’t want pitocin – the drug that helps to induce contractions – as I had heard it statistically leads to more C-sections. Someone on the internetwebs said that. But my first child was taking her sweet time. My water broke and apparently there’s a time limit to how long a kiddo should be hanging around womb side after the pool’s drained. So we got the dreaded p-word in my system and things started to move. But not fast enough. My baby’s heart rate was faltering – decelerating. I didn’t want to use any means other than my killer kegel muscles to get her out, but without a suction, I would not have a scrumptious near five year old bounding about my house.

5. Your discarded birth plan means bupkis.

Do not, for one instant, berate yourself for not having the birth you dreamed of - or others dreamed of for you. Whether it was covered in rainbows and unicorns and lavender and ended in ecstasy, or it was forty hours of pushing followed by a c-section, what you will have (hopefully – we’re praying for you!) is a happy healthy baby and a happy healthy mommy. Being one of the most famous women in the world is hard enough without adding weight to the schmucks who will try and critique how your baby came in to the world. So hold your head high. You've just birthed an heir and in an instant, become a mom.


*note: this is a re-post from pre-George's birth. 

We had to tell our daughter 
The Big Secret.

A swift catalogue of Rockwell-esque memories flashed through my head: my mom calling “Santa” when I glared at my peas; the Space Needle’s red blinking light becoming Rudolf’s nose; nestling all snug in my bed listening intently for reindeer hooves; the empty cookie plate and drained glass of nog; willfully disregarding Santa’s handwriting being exactly. the. same. as my mom’s. The list, like Santa’s, goes on and on. There’d be no Santa bribing, no hiding elves on shelves, no racing to bed on Christmas Eve, no Miracle’s on 34th Street, or 26th Street, as the case may be. No…magic. 

But what price my little girl's sanity?

So we pulled the plug. Opened the can of cranberries. Let the cat out of the stocking. It involved this hopelessly boring video, that really did not need to be made. Who doesn't know how to dress like Santa? What rock do you live under in which you don't know what Santa looks like, but have access to YouTube? 

Anyhow, now she’s in on the big hush-hush – and has been admonished to Tell No One.

But it still makes me sad. Part of childhood is wonder and discovery and adventure and believing in things we grown ups are too boring to ponder let alone be charmed by. Have we taken that from her – taken away part of her imagination? Her fantasy?

Last year, she got one look at the Santa whose knee she was supposed to sit primly upon, and promptly applied herself to my leg like Kate Winslet on a floating door. She wailed. We cajoled. We now have a picture of her clinging to my neck while I sit on said Santa’s knee in jeans and unwashed hair with my husband looking drunk behind us all. Santa looks like he’s hoping for time and a half.

We chalked it up to being That Year with That Photo which we will someday show her fiancé as she glares at us with betrayal and vengeance. Yet here she was, a year later, my sweet little girl, shaking, tears pooling in her big Susie Loo Who eyes. Not in front of Santa himself, but by just looking at last year’s picture of her  - er, us - with Santa. And while we have a “therapy jar” along with her college savings fund, I did not want her to have post-traumatic-stress about Christmas. Because, much to the chagrin of the Grinch, one cannot hide from Christmas.

Cut to last week, driving to preschool. Ex nihilo, she says, “Mommy, don’t tell me mermaids don’t exist because I want to believe in them.”

That’s all I needed to hear. Too bad mermaids don’t have a holiday. But maybe we could make one… I see lots of water on the hardwood floor and more money in the therapy jar.

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This is the third day in a row I have growled at my five year old. Not so much growling like a wolf, though my rage-y animal side wanted to rip something open with my teeth. Luckily it was a twice baked almond croissant and not anyone's throat. More growling demanding of swift action. Basically losing any semblance of cool I have. Which is not much to begin with as my high school cheerleading squad will tell you. 

And whilst driving like a greater short-nosed fruit bat out of Mordor to get to damnable zoo camp - which has a drop off "grace period" of five flipping minutes, elst you search the zoo for your grousing child's group of campers - I realized, not for the first time, that there must be a better way. Why must every morning start with Mommy trying to find her calm? And every evening end with something alcohol imbued?

To save you time and money, I've gone ahead and read every book and article on parenting out there, and guess what? I'm doing it wrong. Totally and completely wrong. And so, probably, are you. All of our children are destined to be sociopathic axe murdering materialistic narcissists who leave us languishing in nursing homes be-decked with bunk beds the moment we retire. Just so you can be prepared and all. 

According to one theory, I should let my daughter go to zoo camp sans shoes so she can experience "natural consequences." Problem being her natural consequences impinge on the entire class. Not to mention would get me reported to CPS. Besides which, she could give a naked mole rat's arse if she doesn't have shoes. It would be unique at first, then it would be something she could complain about. For the rest of her life. 

Another theory says I should just let her be "unschooled" and go throughout her day as she wishes - she's a kid! Barefoot is wonderful - look at the Aborigines! Childhood is so fleeting! She will learn all about science and reading and social dynamics and math just by being her! 'Course, if I let her "find herself" all day, it would involve binge watching My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. And Mommy would die a little. 

F-that, says the Tiger Mom. She should have been up, dressed, eaten and practiced her violin three times by the time we left the house. Zoo camp? For sissies. Quantum Robotics Chess camp. And she should take the city bus to get there.

Oh, come now, there's a middle ground, right? What about the "good enough mother?" Ah, the illusive unicorn of all parenting. Ultimately, most mothers are the good-enough mother, trying our damnedest to care for our kids, trying to hold it together, and trying not to lose ourselves in the process. But the good-enough mother isn't celebrated. Perfect Pintrest Cupcake Mom, sure, but me in my second-day yoga pants, greasy ponytail, harried frown lines and goldfish filled lunchbox Mom? Yeah, not so much.

And you know what? There's nothing wrong with any of these parenting models. Hell, there's nothing wrong with Perfect Pintrest Cupcake Mom. What's wrong is that the collective We have decided to judge each other - and more importantly ourselves - by an impossible scale. When our kids drive us to growling - or wanting to fill our pockets with rocks and walk into a river ala Virginia Woolf - the important thing to remember is that we are OK. And OK is great. We are allowed to mess up and apologize. Allowed to make kick-ass cupcakes. Allowed to never ever make kick-ass cupcakes. Allowed to need some alone time. Allowed to let binge watching Dinosaur Train happen so Mommy can make dinner. Or check her email. Or shower. Or just sit and have more than one complete thought.

What's wrong is that we keep telling ourselves we're doing it wrong. 

And you're not. I'm not. We are the parents we are. We love our children and we are doing the best we can. The last thing we need is internalized shame in our parenting. The last thing we need is another article telling us the "best" way to raise our kids. You are the best way. You.

So what am I going to do tomorrow morning? When shoes are not on and whining ensues? I will say this, in paraphrase of Stuart Smalley: I'm good enough, I'm strong enough, and by God I don't give a naked mole rat's arse who doesn't like me. I like me. My kids like me. Even if I growl. And that is enough. 

It started in the 5th grade. My first experience with sexual assault. Perhaps assault is too strong a term, with too many legal connotations, but if the state of my tiny psyche has anything to do with it, it felt like assault. 
See, I was in plays since the third grade. I loved it - everything, the smell of the pancake make-up, the paper-mache sets, the elaborate costumes. In fifth grade, our class did a play based on Free to Be You and Me, and I was cast as the "Lady's First" girl. While I was getting ready to go to the show one night, I got a phone call from a boy in my class. He was breathing heavy. He used the "c" word. Mentioned pubic hair. Giggled. He gave me a name, which even at the time I knew was not the correct name, but that didn't stop me from feeling weird around a kid named Matt for the rest of my school career. (Sorry, Matt. Not your fault, dude.)
I remember feeling my heart stop, feeling all the fluid in my body run to my feet. Then feeling my heart start up again, fallen sparrow fast. I had to go perform that night, thinking all the while that this guy was watching me. Had to go to school on Monday, knowing he was somewhere, maybe sitting next to me. 

Yes, yes, it was a crude school boy prank, c'mon, get a grip, right? It's not like I was molested. But here's the thing. That phone call, that "boys will be boys" phone call fundamentally changed me. Changed how I viewed the world, my place in it. How I viewed my safety, my body, my girlness. That was the assault. 

Here I was in a play celebrating the goodness in each of us, and on the inside I was growing smaller. Growing afraid. 

I've never told anyone this story. Including my mother, who I'm sure will immediately upon reading this respond with indignant horror on my behalf, followed by sadness that I'd kept it a secret, followed by the guilt that claims all mothers, that she wasn't able to shield me.

The reason that I did not tell her is because I was ashamed. Embarrassed. Sheepish. These emotions are not at all logical. What on earth does a little girl have to be ashamed of when a boy makes a call like that? And yet that shame hung on me like a prophet's hair shirt, tucked away underneath so no one could see. 

Since the tender age of ten, I have encountered a smattering of "little assaults." Guy edging next to me in a darkened bus stop and masturbating, guy flashing his flaccid bouncing penis as I walked to the grocery store, various cat calls from cars. Each one, to different degrees, forcing me back to that place of fear. That place that tells me the very fact I am a woman is dangerous to me. And sends me head long into that second assault, shame. 

My friend, producer and host Katy Sewall, just recorded two remarkable episodes on assault for her lovely podcast The Bittersweet Life. All of the episodes are sublime, but the recent ones on her and her co-host Tiffany's experiences of assault abroad struck a strong chord. It was not just my empathetic anger, it was how admittedly embarrassed  Katy was to share her story.

As if anything, ANYTHING Katy did or said was at all to blame for this a-hole who cornered her in the bathroom. But I recognized that shame. The almost apologetic tone in recounting her story.

And yet, she, we, have nothing to be embarrassed about. Nothing to apologize for. These men and boys should be the ones feeling shame, feeling degraded, feeling fear...(of course, many of them do and that is why they act out in this fashion, but that's for another blog post).

So why? Why do we feel this way?

Katy and Tiffany touched on it. I think we feel shame, because in some deep place within us we feel we have failed. Failed in our "duty." 

Western culture, and probably others, teach girls to be people pleasers, to stuff their own wants and desires in order to serve the greater good, to serve others. We are taught to be helpers, not to make waves, to give others the benefit of the doubt. To above all, be polite. These attitudes are so deeply engrained we often don't realize them until we're in a place where, by God, we should damn well be much more than impolite.

I remember when the guy flashed me, in broad daylight, on a fairly well trafficked road. I was trying to think how to respond - and I distinctly remember thinking "But giving him the finger would be rude." 

What?!?! How in hades was I concerned that my response to this jerk was polite or not? How did that even enter my head?  

So, first, we're to be polite people pleasers, but second, we are also to be vigilant of our own safety. This too, is ingrained in girls. I remember as a kid creating escape plans if I ever ran across the Green River Killer. No matter that he killed prostitutes and generally plucked his victims from the street a good twenty miles from my house. In fact, I tried so hard to be safe AND polite, when my parents weren't home and I had to answer the phone, I would turn on the faucet as high as it would go and say my mom was in the shower. Creative, yes, but also ridiculous. And no, my brother didn't do this. He wouldn't have had to. He's a boy.

And that's the crux. I am a woman. And I've had my fair share of issues to deal with because of it. But from now on, I claim no shame. 

No shame. 

There is nothing I can do about the criminals and just plain a-holes of the world. But what I can do is not allow the bastards to get me twice. I will not be ashamed. To go for a run alone, to wear a swimsuit, to have breasts, to expose these self-lies for what they are, to have a voice. 

I will tell my story, and those of my sisters. And I will take what was meant to degrade me to make me stronger. Will you join me?
#BeNotAshamed

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought I'd repost an oldie but a goodie...

I just gave my son a haircut — his first major one to date in his seventeen months of life. (Yes, I’m sure there’s some sort of gender bias there, but his hair was getting in his eyes, and I will not abide a mullet, jazz hands or no.) I swept up his soft little locks with a tiny hand broom and as I opened the trashcan I paused. There was something wrong — something heart-rendingly wrong about mixing in his baby hair with the chicken juice, snotty tissues, and floor scraps.
Look, I know hair is dead, and frankly, sometimes hair is just creepy. But what struck me at the kitchen garbage, breathing in fumes of rot, was that, the act of throwing away his delicate hair felt like I was throwing away him. The smaller him. The crawling-cutting-his-first-teeth-pureed-food-two-nap-snuggle-bug him. In tossing out his hair, I was finally saying goodbye to that season of life, for him and for me.

There have been a lot of blog posts recently about what it feels like to be told “they grow up too fast so enjoy every minute.” Steve Wiens (husband of last week’s guest blogger Mary) had an excellent example here. I’m not a fan of being told this either, especially in the middle of Target when one child is imitating the orangutans we just saw at the zoo and the other is eyeing the massive pink rabbit, face about to crumple into piteous pleading. I know for a fact I will not miss hearing my daughter whine. I also know for a fact I will miss her naïve and boundless joy with the world and her unfaltering faith in me. Both in a few short years, and when I’m 80.

So for the record, for now, standing with the last tangible remnants of my son’s babyhood scattered together with fallen peas, Cheerios, and dust, I soaked in the moment. Flooded with honeyed memories, and knowing, with that mix of grief and thrill, that this too must end. We both must move on to full-fledge, flailing toddlerhood. His hair must go in to the bin, memories into the store of my heart. That hair is a part of him no longer.

When I’m 80, I know I will vividly remember the sound of his chirps and his little clomping, stumbling feet. I’ll be able to feel with my mind those delicate hairs now destined for the dump. I’ll see his happy eyes. I will miss him as he is now. Knowing this inevitability, I’m struggling not to go wrench the trash bags out of the hands of the garbage man, dig through and find this last vestige of my baby, as if holding his hair, I can somehow hold on to him – the little-little-him.

But that would be fruitless. And make me smelly. So in the end, I resign myself to the knowledge of future bitter-sweetness. Future afternoons of a quite house, my frail knobbed fingers, and tears down my wrinkles for little lost hairs, gone to the dust.

Also knowing, with blessed contentment, that I will never feel that way about his diapers.

How about you – what brings back happy memories of your children or your childhood? What was hard for you to throw away? 

I have a Red Room of Pain. Only it’s not red. It’s actually kind of beige, which we need to paint, because beige says “I have given up.” 

My Beige Room of Pain is the bathroom. There are many ways a bathroom can be painful, which I’d really rather not get into, but in general, let’s say American’s need to eat more bran. What makes it my Beige Room of Pain is that I never get to spend more than, say three minutes in it, regardless of the activity, without a small person yelling at me through the door. Hopefully one or both children are not bleeding. Hot enough for ya?

I read Fifty Shades for work – no really, for work. You can listen to the podcast and everything. There were many, many things I did not understand about that book: the popularity, the seemingly excessive use of ellipses…the physics involved in some of those positions. But one of the things I found most puzzling was why anyone would ever give up their liberty for the whims – and often painful whims – of another. Why would someone volunteer to be diminished in such a way?

Well last week, while spending two of my allotted three minutes in my BRP brushing my teeth, I came across this article in Vanity Fair about a French dominatrix and her submissive. I again shook my head in patronizing pity for any person who would deem themselves so unworthy as to, in paraphrase, do whatever someone else wants, when they want it, all the time.

The submissive in the article says, “I have given myself to her body and soul…and her pleasure is also my pleasure.” This stopped me in my tracks, causing a stream of Tom’s of Maine drool to run onto my chin. I realized, that is exactly what I have done. I have given my life up for the sake of two, quite demanding, people. 

Now, when I got married, I vowed myself to my husband and he to me, but he’s an adult. Perfectly able to feed, clothe and otherwise take care of himself, despite his protestations. So I did not realize the real depth of living at another’s mercy until I had kids.

Especially newborns. At every cry I jumped – what did she need? Milk? Diaper? Was she cold, gassy, bored, frustrated, constipated, tired, hot, what? what! There are plenty of parenting books about attachment vs. crying it out, etc., but all I know is that when my kids cry, my body’s instinctual response is to make it stop. 

Yes, crying is an annoying sound, as anyone stuck on a plane full of other people’s children can attest to. But more than that, when it is my child, there is a deep sense, in the very core of each and every cell of my being, that I must respond in care to that cry. Immediately. A friend once told me that the chemical released in a mother when her child cries is the same as that released during torture. I think she read this on the internets, so it’s totally true.

Of course the glaring difference between parenthood and S&M is sexual desire and violence. Baring the way my children came about in the first place, there is no sexuality involved. And baring the way they came into the world, no violence. If there was, I’d rightly be in jail. But the idea of giving oneself completely and fully to the whims – not just needs – of another person feels exactly like the contract I inadvertently signed when each of my children came shoving and screaming in to my life.

Now, if my daughter said, “Today, I will eat nothing but Goldfish and brownies” I would not allow her to do that…ok, maybe on her birthday - and when the dominatrix says this, she get’s what she wants from her submissive. Right? Am I over simplifying? Am I going to get angry emails from doms and moms everywhere now? Certainly there are things I can and will refuse my children as I’m hoping to mold them into good “global citizens,” but right now, in the midst of it, I feel much more dominated than dominating. 

And so it goes. The proverbial whip doth crack and off I run, soothing and wiping and feeding and refereeing, all the while, in desperate need of a shower. And even knowing this, knowing the black hole my adult life would disappear into, I had another kid. So I ask myself, why would I voluntarily give up my own freedom for the caprices of a tiny dictator?  I can’t answer that right now, I’ve only got three minutes. 

Kate Middleton is officially "in the green."

No. Not outfits. Generally, when one hits thirty-seven weeks in pregnancy, the baby could come at any time, and, if it does, doctors don't try to impede it's entry into the world. Certainly, conventional wisdom says first baby's come late rather than early, but that didn't stop my first born from making an entrance a week early - causing Mommy to miss Michelle Obama's Democratic National Conference Speech in 2008. Of course, I was making my own history at the time.

All that to say, the world-wide media is behaving like horses who smell the barn, pawing the ground and snorting random and/or made up details as we all await the blessed news - or at least the precursor to it. One of the strangest and giggle inducing one so far is the prediction of what the royal baby - child -teen - adult will look like (photo below from huffpo UK).

Unlike the old jokes of inbreeding and attractiveness, William and Kate have some pretty darned gorgeous genes pooling together in that royal belly. But come now, what is that hair on that baby girl? It's like a strawberry jello-dyed Joyce Dewitt.


And just in case the paparazzi doesn't follow his/her every move and s/he someday commits some heinous crime, we've got police sketches all ready.

What are you doing while awaiting the big news? Next week I'll have a Royal Baby Name Bracket for you to fill out and share my own winners. In the meantime, let's send all our good wishes to the duchess. I advise her to walk around that huge palace they've got.

The list of what a productive, healthy, happy human being must do everyday to be productive, healthy and happy, is multiplying like gremlins. Or tribbles. (
Insert own cuddly-but-deadly monster here.)

We’re supposed to exercise at least thirty minutes a day, sleep eight hours a night, cook our meals from wholesome, local, organic sources (which involves finding/buying those ingredients – which is a whole other blog post I’ll get to some day), walk 10,000 steps, meditate or pray, stretch, not eat sugar of any kind, read all labels, store nothing in plastic, and check and respond to all emails, Facebooks, Linked Ins, Twitters. We need to shower, brush our teeth, have languid meals to aide digestion, and I haven’t even scratched the surface on what Dr. Oz and Martha Stewart might add to this list. But I’m sure it would involve a chartreuse smoothie and your own bee colony.


If you have small children, you do all of these things covered in other people’s poo/snot/oatmeal, with nary a moment of mental silence to complete a sentence out loud, let alone in your head. Unless that sentence is, “Please, for the love of all that is holy, move your little a#$.” I seem to complete that one a lot. In my head. Please don’t call CPS.

I was at a writer’s seminar and heard the speaker say that “to be a successful writer, you must write every day.” At this moment in time, my youngest was four months old and I was getting so little sleep I had fainting spells. After the talk, I lamented with my fellow writers, knowing that even with some child care, there was no way on this not as green earth as it used to be that I could write every day.

“Even emails count,” said a trying-to-be-helpful woman. “Use every chance you can to write well.”

Ok, that’s doable. Maybe five out of ten emails I could take more than a nano-second to compose and send. I was feeling a bit better. Then, up strolled a late-middle-aged, tweed be-decked man.

He: “Saying you can’t find time to write every day just means you don’t really want to be a writer.”

Me: “Well, I take care of my four-month old, a three-year old, and I have two other jobs, so it’s not so much commitment but time in the day.” Polite laughter.

He: Patronizing chuckle. “I wake up at five every morning and write for three hours. That’s the commitment I make.”

Me: “Yeah, I’m up at 5am every morning too. Breastfeeding.”

But Tweeded Man has a point: writing every day does help one’s craft. Exercising every day does help one’s bottom, sleeping eight hours a night does help one get off Zoloft. Your own bees do make better honey.  But right now, in the midst of little-little kids, work, writing a novel, and not enough disposable income to employ both Mr. Carson and Mary Poppins, I’m in chaos mode. (Case in point, my four-year old has interrupted me six times in the last fifteen minutes. So much for her “quiet play time.”)

So sadly, I can’t spend twenty minutes crafting a two-line email. Instead, said email will have typos in it and only half the letters that should be capitalized will be. Because I’m typing one handed. With the other, I’m stirring the Seattleite-obligatory from-scratch-organic-happy-meat-home-canned-tomato ragu, I’m using my foot to play ball with my one-year old, and I’m trying to Love & Logic/Emotionally Coach my four year-old through her denied request for more goldfish.

I don’t see this as failure.

When I do get time to write, I throw all of myself in to it. I work. Hard.  But just because it’s not every day, nor will it amount to 10,000 hours any time soon, I don’t see this as giving up. This is not lack of taking my commitments seriously. This is endurance.

With a book titled Heirs & Spares (available June 4th), you better believe I'm on the Duchess of Cambridge baby watch with the best of them.

According to E Online, Kate Middleton is craving spicy food. Reading between the lines, all this article really says is she went in to a shop, complimented the cook and got some veggie curry in the deal. It's not like she's been sending out Prince William for Thai at 3am.

Having gone through morning sickness myself, curry or crumpets, I'm glad to see the poor woman can actually eat again.

What did you or your spouse crave during pregnancy?  When I was pregnant with my daughter (during the two week period I wasn't nauseated or having horrible heart burn) it was apple turnovers and lemon meringue pie. And for my next pregnancy, I didn't need an ultrasound to tell me he was a boy: all I wanted was meat, beer, chips (or crisps, depending on one's side of the Atlantic), and peanut M&Ms.