I felt silly going to the doctor. While I was in the ultrasound room, though, with the lady checking all along the big vein or artery or who knows what from my groin to my ankle and frowning and highlighting things and thumping my calf and listening to my pulse, my heart raced and I had to consciously breathe. So even though it will be a needless expense, maybe it wasn't a needless expense. 

In the end, this doctor trip was more for my anxiety disorder than my leg, though. No blood clot. Just #catastrophize.

I have, however, run 11 miles since the doctor, so there's that.

The leaves haven't even turned yet, but last night I found myself lying on my daughter's bed with a frowny face.

My husband walked in. "You look upset."

Me: "Yes."

Him: "Should we move out?"

Me: "No. I mean, maybe. But I think it's just me. You moving out might not help, so you should stay."

Him: "Gotcha."

I proceeded to try to explain that it's October and October means cold weather is coming, and I'm at the first revision stage of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, which feels like getting all your syllabi on one day and wondering how the fuck you're going to get all that work done in one semester. And maybe I was having a There's No Point to Any of It day, the kind of day where you realize you're just going to have to make the bed again tomorrow and you can be a totally awesome worker and then you'll retire and three years later the entire department will have turned over and someone will ask who the hell made the decision for the border to be goddamn orange and if you do publish books, they'll eventually go out of print, even the ebooks will find a way to go out of print. One of those days.

I felt like when Louis CK tells Conan about that time when you're in traffic and you have the forever empty feeling because it's all for nothing and you're alone, and Conan looks at him like, I'm not sure I want to admit in public that I know exactly what you're talking about. Can someone please hand me a smartphone? I need to check Twitter.

Yeah. I had one of those days yesterday. I'm still trying to shake off that feeling that really nothing I do is important or worth doing and really, I'm pretty sure that's just my fear talking and I should just revise anyway, because that's what you do in order to occupy yourself until you die.

KIDDING.

Sort of. Because even if that's what it is, maybe that's still something worth doing. 

"Mama?"

"Mmmm-hmmmm?"

<insert question I didn't listen to>

"Mama?"

"Mmmmm-hmmmm?"

"How come every time you're not really listening to me you say 'mmmm-hmmmm?'"

"Because right now I'm trying to manage my emotions."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm mad about something, but it doesn't do anyone any good for me to be mad, and I can't change the problem by being mad about it, so I'm trying to just process the mad so it will go away. It's okay for me to feel mad but not to act on it. Do you ever feel that way?"

"You mean like when I got mad about Tiny? And then you got mad at me for acting mad?"

Yup, exactly, kid. Modeling desired behavior fucking sucks. 

My parents and sister were down last weekend. Right before they left, my mom looked at me and said, "You seem happy." And she's right -- I am happy fairly consistently right now.

I would say I'm in a good place, only I no longer believe in good places and bad places, only places. One might think I'm happy because my novel just came out, but in actuality, I got totally anxious and angsty when I signed my contract, so good things happening for me professionally don't necessarily translate into good things happening to my mental health. I'm sure that seems ridiculous, but it happens all the time. Look at how many people -- particularly creative people -- fall apart a little right after they get a break. I think change is hard no matter what type of change it is, because it's fucking scary. Putting out a novel means I have to up my game next time, and people will read it and maybe hate it and talk about it -- so many things for my anxiety to grab onto.

I'm actually shocked I'm happy right now. Even though that sounds ridiculous.

Last Saturday I woke up snarly and snarled at Beloved and the little angel before I took her to ballet. As I was sitting there waiting for ballet to be done, I realized how familiar that snarl had felt, how I used to an extremely frequent snarler, and how I had committed to myself and my husband a few years ago to really stop snarling and try to look at the world more optimistically. I'm by nature melancholy, and it's a real effort for me to instantly see the good instead of the bad. However, I've noticed the more I work at it, the easier it is. When I snarled, he responded with, "Why are you yelling at me?" and I didn't know the answer to that question. I think I surprised him because I have not snarled quite like that in so long.

I sat there worrying I'd introduced a new tone into our house that was going to creep back into our lives. I texted him, called him, made sure he knew I didn't mean it and wanted to start the day again. And then we did, and my family showed up, and my mother's takeaway is that I seem happy.

I've learned to work toward happy. I still have mood swings, sometimes very bad ones, but I try not to show my irritability or randomly thrash those around me when my heart beats fast and the hair on the back of my neck stands up for absolutely no reason but my body chemistry. I pray with my daughter, and we talk about the best part of the trip instead of what went wrong, and I pet the cats and wish for the thousandth time I could invent a purring, warm neck wrap to wear around when they aren't available. I try to take advantage of sunny corners the minute I see them, even if it's just for a few minutes. I try to do one thing at a time and give that one thing my full attention.

And even then, sometimes it still doesn't work. Sometimes I find myself deep breathing and staring at the wall without knowing why, and in those times I've learned to ask myself what human need could be met right in that moment that would make me feel better. Am I cold? Am I stiff? Am I thirsty? Am I tired? Would I like some music, less music? Are my clothes itchy?

I tell people I spend as much time managing my anxiety as some people do managing diabetes or asthma. I no longer look at these little breaks as wasting time, because that makes me more anxious, and the faster I can get things under control, the more productive the day will actually be, the more creativity I will be able to bring to my work. If I am not anxious, I won't foist that tone on my household.

And so when my mother told me I seemed happy, I actually took it as a compliment more than an observation. I haven't always been a happy person, but I'm working toward that. I want to be a happy old person one of these days.

---

• The Obvious Game review and giveaway on What If No One's Watching?
• The Obvious Game excerpt and giveaway on A Dream Within a Dream
• The Obvious Game excerpt on Book Maven's Picks
• Interview on I Like These Books
• Review on author Kelly Hashway's blog

I'm headed out tomorrow to join my friend Erica at the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting in Seattle. Through a series of fortunate events, it's going to be an extremely inexpensive trip for me, so I figured why not? I really have no business being there, as I'm not a librarian, but it seemed like a good way to meet librarians. Librarians and book bloggers are about the best word-of-mouth referrers an author could ask for, and librarians often double as book bloggers, so, there you go.

Except I'm feeling shy.

I've been going to blogging conferences for seven years, and I haven't felt shy at them in six. I thought I was past shy.

This whole book thing has been such a roller coaster. I go from being excited it's finally coming out to worried nobody will read it to freaked they will read it and they'll hate it. I worry it won't sell and then nobody will buy my second book. Then I think publishing will probably change so much by the time that book is ready that the rules will all be different, anyway. It feels like the rules of publishing in some ways are changing on a daily basis and in other ways 50 Shades is still on the bestseller list, inexplicably to me, and nothing will ever change at all for the little guys.

This particular adventure is so personal to me -- it doesn't really matter to anyone else. I mean, it's nice and all, but my personal and professional lives have not changed just because my novel got published. That's what's so weird about the whole experience -- the anxiety I feel is mine and mine alone.

I remember walking around BEA last year when I was asked to speak at the BEA Bloggers Conference about book marketing because of my role in the BlogHer Book Club. There were hardbacks just stacked in the booths, free for the taking, and eventually I stopped taking them because they were so heavy to lug around and get home on the plane. I left someone's blood, sweat and tears in a stack on the floor because it was heavy, or because I didn't like the cover, or because I just wasn't in the mood.

When I go to the library now, I don't see shelves of books, I see shelves of dreams.

So I'm worried about tomorrow and this weekend, although I can't figure out why. I guess I have a few days to figure it out. I've been moving so fast for so long, maybe I'm just afraid of having time to think about what to do next.

Last night I found out about an unexpectedly large bill. I'd just returned from CVS, where I spent twenty-five minutes combining coupons with weekly deals to save $23. The pointlessness of blowing all that time to save a few bucks only to find out a mistake had cost us hundreds totally deflated me. And it was 107 degrees at 7 pm.

I sank to the kitchen chair. Tears sprang to my eyes. "I think I'm going to throw up," I said.

I sat there, breathing deeply, trying to calm my anxiety, when my daughter appeared at my side and handed me the teddy bear that lives in her room but was mine when I was her age.

She patted my arm and went upstairs to shower.

Wow.

Today is Beloved's birthday. And today a crew of twenty or so men showed up at our house at seven in the morning to begin replacing our roof.

The roof is wood shake, which is the worst kind of roof ever. It's expensive, it's flammable and it rots. Ours is crumbling to bits and got slammed by the hail earlier this summer to the point that we were getting water stains on the ceilings. The first insurance inspector who came said it wasn't bad enough to replace. Beloved was livid, so was the roofer, a readjustment was arranged, and lo and behold, the second adjustor agreed: New roof! Paid for by the insurance company!

I've been in a half stage of shock since Beloved told me we were getting a new roof. We've been through a lot of money and broken house issues in our ten years of home ownership, and really, I've stopped expecting insurance companies to replace anything. I'm all GET OFF MY LAWN about it in a way I never thought I'd grow -- so jaded, just like my father when he talks about parking in Omaha. I'd accepted when the sweating man huffed his way up my stairs and examined the water stains located right above my winter sweaters (is there anything so vulnerability producing as having a stranger perspiring all over your wardrobe?) that we were screwed, there would be no insurance money and we'd probably have to take out some sort of horrific loan we don't qualify for or have buckets in every bedroom to catch the water when it rained. This is my best talent: catastrophizing. I don't even stop for the mid-level crises; I go straight to the bone splitters.

The longer we've been together, the more I've ostriched about money and house-related problems. After a while, I -- feminist still -- relinqueshed the checkbook and all the balancing and math that goes with it -- to Beloved. Every time I see him sit down with a stack of bills I half-heartedly offer to help and pray he says no, which he always does, whether he wants to or not (I'll never know). When I see those numbers fluctuate, I am suddenly incapable of seeing the big picture and become positive we will be living in a van down by the river in forty days. I don't know why. I just do.

Beloved taking over the checkbook and bill balancing put a roof over my head, a layer between me and the harsh outside world. I'm fine with shouldering all things parenting, with scheduling haircuts and dentist appointments for my daughter, with knowing her shoe size at all times and exactly how many minutes it takes to pick her up from wherever, where all her friends live and with whom she's allowed to go past the end of the cul-de-sac. I can be a big girl about my career and my health and my extended family. But that one thing for which I really do need a roof is money.

I'm sitting here listening to those twenty men ripping the house apart -- literally -- and trying not to think of them punching a hole in something or falling off and landing on the cement or dying of heatstroke or smashing my tomato plants. Beloved told me to go work at Panera or the library today because it would be so loud. I'm sure he understood that I wouldn't leave because I have a sick need to think it'll all be all right as long as I'm here while it's happening. But the truth is I wouldn't know what to do if something went wrong.

There are things in life that I know how to handle and things he knows how to handle, and I hope that I am his roof sometimes. My family always told me to marry someone I secretly think is better than I am, and I did.

Happy birthday, Beloved. Thank you for being my roof.

---

From my BlogHer Book Club review of The Kid: Read, then, so we will make better choices than the characters in The Kid. That we will pause and consider what a person might have been through before we judge. That we, at least, will not see the world in black and white, because it is never, ever black and white -- which is the message I took away from The Kid, a story in which the main character never really even knew his name, never knew if he was crazy or sane, never knew who his father was, never knew who was related to him, never knew anything for sure except that pancakes tasted good and dancing was a release and that he could teach himself to do the splits with practice and discipline. Read the rest.

Hey, there! I wrote this post about connections between eating disorders and postpartum depression last week, but I didn't get the chance to tell you about it. Here's an excerpt:

Pregnancy brings on a lot of changes quickly -- both physical and mental. It's no surprise to me that women previously diagnosed with eating disorders are at a higher risk for postpartum depression, but recently Stephanie Zerwas of the University of North Carolina flipped it around and looked to see if women who came in for postpartum depression and anxiety had previously suffered from an eating disorder. Thirty-five percent of them had -- compared to seven or eight percent in the general population. Eating disorders, then, could be a risk factor for postpartum depression.

Stephanie is the associate research director of UNC's Eating Disorders Program. It comprises both research studies and treatment programs with inpatient, outpatient and partial hospitalization programs. Her special interest is eating disorders during pregnancy and postpartum. She and other researchers have studied 100,000 moms and babies in Norway, looking at moms who had eating disorders right before becoming pregnant and the later outcomes for both the moms and the kids.

Read the rest at BlogHer.com! Back tomorrow to tell you about last weekend's accidental home improvements.

This week, some stuff happened that caused me great anxiety. As the stress washed over me, I tried to ride it out like a wave. I tried to put it in perspective. And actually, for one of the first times, it worked. Not to say I haven't gone back and forth a bit, but life is like that, and human beings aren't static -- nothing about us is static.

I talked to a few friends and family members about my reaction, which I have learned in the grand scheme of things is actually more important than the event -- the repercussions of my reactions last far longer than the crises. The general consensus seems to be that 2011 Rita is really handling things far better than 1992 Rita or even 2007 Rita. Wow, 2011 Rita, they said. You get down with your bad self.

I thought this morning as I was driving home from dropping off my girl at summer camp that great friends are like that: They are our mirrors. My friends reflect back to me not a glamorized version of myself flawlessly executing under any degree of pressure, but the real version, the version who sometimes wins and sometimes loses but is always someone they regard with love.

Because they accept me with all my flaws, it means even more when they tell me they are proud of me. Because they have seen every iteration -- in one case, every iteration since I was three years old -- they are even better judges than I am of my progress or lack thereof.

Having these people in my life -- my husband, my family and friends -- brings forth the best me, better behavior than I would exhibit left to my own devices in the depths of my psyche (which would far prefer a bag of Doritos and a stack of John Hughes movies or perhaps a baseball bat and some windows). I recognize all the time that wanting to show these people I love that I can do it keeps me moving forward most of the time.

It's weird that I was thinking all this before this latest series of events occurred when I wrote my review of Terry McMillan's Getting to Happy (it's the sequel to Waiting to Exhale) for BlogHer Book Club. Even then, I wrote:

And that's what I found with the women of Getting to Happy. You get to happy, then you get to sad, then you fight your way back to happy again. The triumphs don't last any longer than the falls, but the reverse can also be true.

Normally I would've tried to find some witty way to tie back this post to a review that I wanted to tell you all about anyway, but today it's so organic as to be shocking even to me. We are all trying to get to happy. And it, by definition, is elusive, because it, by definition, is relative.