I did this, and now I'm doing something else.

It just dawned on me that I haven't blogged since I returned from vacation. I am awful. Please, if you care about anything I have to say these days, follow me on Twitter. I am spouting my nonsense there way more frequently. Busy times call for 140-character measures.

Our vacation was very good. Particularily the first half. The first four days featured lots ofsunshine, friends, boat riding, and general merriment. The second three days rained. So.....I am trying to look at it glass-half-full: at least half our vacation was nice, and we did try to entertain ourselves the second half. We went to the Yale Peabody Museum and checked out the dinosaurs and the bedbugs exhibit (featuring a live colony of bedbugs!) (seriously!) (immensely disgusting!), walked around New Havenand had pizza at Pepe's and dessert at Libby's, went to New London, Essex, Madison- all of the lovely Connecticut shoreline towns. But I will not lie - I was happy to come home.

This week I am trying to make serious progress on a writing project for work, and our week got a little shorter when Friday was declared a day off. Whoo! Every night this week I have been cleaning our house and doing yardwork to prep for our big Fourth of July bash. So, yeah, I'm tired.

I promise to post some pics from our vacation this week! I just have to get them off my camera.

What are you up to this week?

I did that, and now I'm doing this.

So! I am back from LA. Oh man, that was epic fun. The schedule was beyond insane, but in the short time we were there we were able to explore downtown LA, as well as Hollywood and Beverly Hills. It was so freaking cool to see all of the iconic stuff- like the Hollywood sign, Capitol Records, the Chateau Marmont, the Walk of Fame, Grauman's Chinese Theater, etc- in person, after seeing it on TV, movies and in magazines my whole life. Plus, palm trees! I adore palm trees. All of the flights were good and the work part of the trip was good and now I am operating on seven hours of sleep since Wednesday morning and I am not so much hitting the wall as I am faceplanting into it.

I leave for vacation at the beach in about an hour, and I'm not bringing my laptop, so bon voyage for now and I will see you on the flip side!

PS It needs to be said that I was soooo exhausted on Thursday night at the airport while we were waiting to catch our 10:45 p.m. flight (that's 1:45 a.m. for us East Coasters!) that I was laughing harder than I have laughed in about 10 years. I was like a lunatic - a drunk, stumbling, hysterical lunatic. People were giving me dirty looks.

PPS I am posing with Johnny Depp's handprints. He's my boyfriend. Didn't you know?

writing this post made this week seem even more ridiculous.

This week feels like it might be one of the craziest of my life. And it goes a little something like this:

Monday: Work as usual. Laundry. Cleaning. Nighttime nonsense as usual.

Tuesday: Work as usual. Pack for epic work trip to LA. Go see my niece perform a song at an event. Go to bed. Don’t sleep because I am worried about waking up early.

Wednesday: Get up at three-something. AYEM, people. Probably not shower. Finish packing. Go pick up Beth (the lucky lady who gets to travel with me) at, like, four-something. AYEM. Get on plane. Stop somewhere (I don’t remember where. DC? Dallas? Somewhere.) Get on another plane. Land in LA. Marvel at sun and palm trees. Crash at hotel. Shower. Wander. Do assorted work-related (read: fun theater stuff) at night. Be jet-lagged.

Thursday: Go to morning meeting for work-related purposes (read: theater stuff). See what LA has to offer in the afternoon and evening. See celebrities. Possibly run off with a celebrity (Jon Hamm? Mark Ruffalo? I'm available!) Hopefully not end up at TGI Fridays. (Because this is what Beth and I do.It is unfortunate. I fear that if we were in Paris, the same thing would happen. I don't even go to Fridays here. Just when I'm in major American cities.) Get on red-eye back to CT at 10:45 p.m.

Friday: Stop somewhere (Chicago? Somewhere?). Get on another plane. Land in Hartford. Drop Beth off at her house. FLY to Jane’s end-of-year picnic at school. If I can’t make it, make sure Greg can (it’s at 11, so we are cutting it extremely close). Come home. Unpack. Laundry. Pack for vacation at the beach. Get dogs’ stuff ready for dogsitter. Clean. Drive to beach. Put sheets on bed. Pass out.

Saturday: Start vacation for reals!


And this is if everything goes as planned. HA HA HA HA OH GOD PLEASE.

GO!

PS If you oh-so-unfortunately follow me on Twitter, you know that I live-tweeted the shit out of the Tonys last night. And my newest love, The Book of Mormon, took home nine shiny awards, including Best Musical. I was super-excited, almost as if I was in the show myself, or a producer or something. But no, no, I am just a tremendous theater dork. Please click on the links below to enjoy three of my favorite parts of the Tonys last night! You won't regret it!

Amanda Day.

So I declared today "Amanda Day" and took the day off from work. Here is my recipe for a great day off:

1) Fan-freakin-tastic weather. Sunny and high 80s today. Gorgeous.
2) Solo boat time. I went down to our boat and just hung out and read for a few hours. Got some vitamin D the all-natural way. Ate some lunch.
3) Visited my favorite bookstore. I love, love triple-love this place.
4) Got an iced mocha and sat on a bench in the shade outside the bookstore and read the beginning of my new book. The past two books I've read have been for the book clubs I am in, so it was nice to choose something for myself on my own. (Note: I did pick The Weird Sisters for one of my book clubs - and I completely loved it. We have the meeting at my house on Friday.)
5) Sang loud and proud to my new favorite Broadway soundtrack on the way there and back. With the air conditioner on in the car AND the windows open!
6) What is a day off without a trip to Target? Hollow and empty, that's what it is. Somehow I spent $84. I was literally second-guessing the cashier. But no, really, I did spend that much.

Fin.

PS I am noticing all the book talk here. I am such a nerd.

a Monday quick hit

Two things of interest today:

1) I realized I have never, ever, not for any reason ever gone on Craigslist. I don't even know how it works. But it seems to get a lot of people in trouble.

2) I think it's hysterical when Jane calls Greg "Greg." As in, "Greg, where's my iPad?" (NOTE: it is not hers.)

Bonus thing of interest (extreme interest to me, anyway):

I am going to Los Angeles next week for approximately 36 hours. It's for work. I somehow have a situation where I am going to LA for work. This does not happen. It is a stupid amount of travel in two days, but we will have some down time, and we will use it, oh yes we will. And if I don't see at least one celebrity, I will ban LA from my life FOREVER.

(This will be my first time there. Can you tell?)

in which I prove my kid is trying to kill my face.

Edit book: check!

So, I promised you I would tell you about how Jane is trying to kill my face.

Last Wednesday, I was rushing out the door to work. Now, some days I’m in my bat-cave office and I don’t have to see any outsiders. This day was one of the days when I had to see lots of outsiders. I leaned over Jane (maybe to fix her hair or shirt or something) and she jerked her head up fast and hard. My mouth exploded in pain.

“OHMYGOD OH MYGOD is it bleeding?” I said (OK, yelled) to Greg, as I felt around my teeth to make sure they were all there.

“Um, yeah…” he replied. Turns out, my stupid tongue was in the way of my teeth when they clamped together, and the result was a tongue, as one friend put it, “that looked like it went through a meat grinder.”

So yeah. Tons of bleeding. Cuts. Blisters. Wreckage. Slurred speech. More bleeding throughout the day, pretty much whenever I talked. It’s still healing.

When it happened, of course, Jane started crying too, because she also wanted to see my tongue. I poked out the front, non-bleeding part, so she wouldn’t be upset.

One thing about parenting they don’t tell you: when you are in tons of pain yourself, you have to spend your pity-party time making your kid feel better about what just happened. EVEN IF IT IS HER FAULT.

(Important side note: even Greg felt sorry for me. And this is the guy who tells people my labor and delivery was pretty easy.)

Fast forward three days. Over the weekend, we were at the boat. We were walking around the marina, and I bent over Jane to fix her bathing suit straps. WHAMMO. Same hard, fast head jerk. This time, she bashed my nose.

This time, I couldn’t keep myself from crying. It hurt so much, I couldn’t stop myself. I mean, seriously – I heard CRACKING when it happened.

“OHMY GOD, OHMYGOD, is it bleeding?” I wailed to Greg. No bleeding. Turns out, no broken bones, either, but the bridge of my nose STILL hurts, and it’s almost been a week.

Once again, Jane was crying. One again, Greg actually felt sorry for me.

And now it is clear. Jane is working her way from the bottom to the top, in an effort to break my face. And the eyes are next. Help me!

edit.

One of the reasons I haven't been around here much is I have been editing a book for a friend of mine. A couple of months ago, she put it out on Facebook that she was looking for a book editor for a memoir/advice book she was going to self-publish. No one was answering, so I told her that I was, in fact, not a book editor, but I DO edit lots of things for work, so I would have a look at her draft if she still wanted someone.

So over the past few weeks, in the spare hour I have sort-of-to-myself between Jane's bathtime and bedtime, I have been working my way through the book. I have about six pages to go (I know, I know, you're like, SIX PAGES, WOMAN? That's nothing! But it is, when you are editing, especially when your brain is scrambled from the rest of the day's activities). I plan on finishing today or tomorrow, and then I will be back here, rambling about the stupid shit I usually do. For example, I will tell you how I think Jane is plotting the death of my face, and how she implemented phase one AND two of her plan over the past week.

Thank you for your patience and your encouragement via Twitter and comments! I heart you guys big time. Almost as much as I heart the delicious summer weather we've been having 'round these parts.