Can I go lie down yet?

By Cornelia

I just emailed the revised draft of my second Madeline Dare novel, The Crazy School, off to New York. That was fifteen minutes early, if you don't count the extra month's extension I was granted to finish it.

I am now sitting at my desk-cupboard in the northern end of our living room, here at the Chateau Ultra-Trashy, and I admit to being afraid of peeking behind me to fully take in the state of the house and my life.

There are probably six buckets of laundry (clean) sitting on the dining room table, with another six of dirty on the floor beneath it. There might be one or two teaspoons in the kitchen that are not crusted with stuff, but I doubt it.

I owe about 50 gazillion emails to friends and family. My children are probably three feet taller than they were the last time I actually checked on their wellbeing. I may still be married.

The coolest thing in the house, however, is the "Author Deadline Survival Pack" which arrived in our mailbox the other day from Heidi Vornbrock Roosa.

The contents of this:

• A small greeting card, its exterior imprinted with a sepia-toned photo of a distant lobster boat on a placid bay at sunset, below the words, "Believe in Yourself. Believe in Your Abilities. Believe That Things Will get Better." The interior, meanwhile, inscribed with the words "Do you think of vomit when you read this?" in Heidi's own hand, above the officially printed words "I DO. HANG IN THERE."and a list of the rest of the package contents, with an explanation of the purpose to which each item is meant to be put.
• One Magic 8 Ball-- for all those tough editing questions
• One pack of caffeine pills--self-explanatory ["Jet-Alert" brand, by the way... double strength and apparently "SAFE AS COFFEE!!!"]
• One "supporter" [i.e. jockstrap, "Youth - Large/X-Large," not to mention ANTI-FUNGAL PROTECTED] - don't know how it works, but since you might need some support in a time like this, I thought you could give it a try .
• One Power Bar - for you - let the hubby and kids scrounge in the fridge.
• One delightful bar of chocolate to congratulate yourself [Ghirardelli "Espresso Escape," 60% Cacao Dark Chocolate with Finely Ground Espresso Beans].

So I would just like to say that Jet-Alert is great stuff, I am wearing the supporter on my head, and the Power Bar was nutrient-packed--THANK YOU HEIDI!!!!

I have a feeling that if I risked looking in the mirror at this point, I'd find Tom Waits staring back--as photographed by Dorothea Lange. So I think I'm just going to lie down on the sofa now and hope this Jet-Alert wears off sometime before Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, here is the first sentence of The Crazy School:

Halfway to Christmas, Forchetti stated the obvious: “You can’t teach for shit.”

The last sentence is one word long. It starts with an F and ends with a K. It is not "Firetruck."

As for the words between, I'd rate them, overall, somewhere on a scale between "weasel vomit" and "forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."

Your mileage may vary.