I've noticed in the past few years that my BlogHer conferences tend to have me scheduled within an inch of my life. I confess I did this to myself even before I became a BlogHer employee*, but last year -- my first conference actually working for BlogHer -- oh, Lord, it was even worse. (And I mean BETTER when I say worse, but the scheduling was worse.)

Was this last year? Or two years ago? I don't even know.

Yesterday I laughed until I cried when I realized I tried to schedule taping a two-minute video interview on top of my appointment to give a pint of blood. Can you imagine? Actually, I can imagine, and someone will do it and put it on YouTube by noon on Saturday.

SUSPECT HIM.

So this year, I decided to pour some ethanol on the flames of already the craziest weekend of 2011. I'm bringing not only Beloved but also the little angel. We're taking our family vacation in California starting Sunday, so what the hell? Why not have them show up right in the middle of 3,000 bloggers? Yo, ho ho!

 

'Cuz I always miss these.

Though the little angel begged to go to Sparklecorn wearing the high-heeled wedge sandals the neighbor gave her that I refuse to let her out of the house wearing, though she whined and complained that she wanted to eat CheeseburgHers at midnight, though she insisted she absolutely needed to inhale her way through the free samples of the expo, I did not buy her a ticket. She and her father will be mailing home my swag visiting the seals and the tide pools and frolicking about San Diego while I work hard meet everyone update the website  speak on a panel about owning your beauty go to parties see old friends -- but the one thing I won't be doing this year is missing my family. We'll see how that works. Because every year, that's the only bad thing about BlogHer -- by the third day I'm literally aching for my other two people.

So if you are at BlogHer and you see this wee one wandering about the lobby, give her a shock and tell her you know her mommy.

Stay classy, San Diego.

* I have never regretted running myself ragged at BlogHer. It got me a job, a book, and numerous other writing gigs and contacts. It's totally worth it to treat this conference as the business opportunity of your life.

"You know," he said, "if you put up your finger, sometimes they'll land on you. That way they have a place to rest all the way out here."

We bobbed in our life jackets in the middle of the lake, the boat floating nearby. A dragonfly hovered around the little angel's head as she stared at it, fascinated, then looked to the horizon near where the baby eagles made their nest as if measuring the distance in dragonfly wingbeats. She held her finger up a little higher.

"I think I just saw lightning," his wife said. "We'd better go in."

The clouds held pink as the sun sank to the horizon. We swam toward the boat, slowly, regretfully.

As she paddled, the little angel held one pointer finger up to the sky. Just in case.

---

Do you love character-driven novels? I loved the older heroine in The Beach Trees and how her story influenced the main storyline from a character development point of view. My review is up at BlogHer Book Club today.

We've had a lot of hail and strong wind this year, and our roof has been suffering.* We had an insurance adjustor out last week to discuss things like the ping-ping-sized hole in the plastic thingie that covers the basement window, the hits and splits on the wood shake shingles and the water spots inside the house.

But last night -- LAST NIGHT -- the neighbors had a kickin' party with lights, a DJ, about fifty people and at least a thousand dollars worth of firecrackers. Though I'm a fan of firecrackers myself, when we pulled back into our driveway after annual trip to see the local professional display, I thought our normally quiet cul-de-sac had been bombed. Chunks of reinforced cardboard lay scattered across my lawn and the cement was littered with casings and mortar chutes. The haze made it difficult to see the children racing around holding lit punks and shouting with pyro-induced glee. I saw another of my neighbors who I knew better standing across the driveway.

"What's happening?" I asked.

"I think they have a half-stick of dynamite in there somewhere," he muttered.

After they set off some rockets that blew straight for me, we took shelter inside, where I shut off all my lights and waited them out, until they finally took a leafblower to the cul-de-sac to clean up the mess.

This morning, the little angel led me outside to show me all the parachutes she'd spied while eating her breakfast. I looked up to see at least six more parachutes on my roof.

I want a new roof, people. But, like, not that bad.

* A source of anxiety for sure, but not *the* source

Today the little angel and I and two of our dear friends ventured down I-70 to Heins Farms, a working dairy farm about an hour outside Kansas City. They supply Roberts. We had a grand old time, extended NY subway version to follow, but please to enjoy this cow video for now.

Here's a link to all the cow pics and videos that I took while on the Heins farm.

And!

• Why Vampires Make Bad Boyfriends -- my review of Deborah Harkness' debut novel, A Discovery of Witches, for BlogHer Book Club
• Like Jane Austen? The folks at Penguin and BlogHer are giving away five sets of two awesome books: A Jane Austen Education and Jane Austen: The Complete Novels (yes, it's all of them in one book). Comment to win!
• There's still time to sign up for my author/blogger workshop this Saturday at The Writers Place. Hope to see you there!
• Tonight Jill Miller Zimon and EM Zamotti will be live blogging the Republican debate at BlogHer. You can feed your tweetstream into the live blog or just read Jill from the left and EM from the right. Should be entertaining, to say the least!

The other night, the little angel wanted ice cream. We hauled out some sort of chocolate brownie something from Blue Bunny.

"No," she said. "The brownies taste bad in that ice cream."

"Well, then we should call them and tell them that."

Her mouth dropped open.

"Seriously, that's what you do when you're not satisfied with a product."

So we looked up the 800 number on the package and called them.

Beloved introduced himself.

"We have a problem. My daughter and I like to buy your ice cream, in many flavors, but she is REJECTING the brownie chocolate ice cream."

He took a deep breath.

"She says the brownies taste bad."

"That's the problem. We have a large carton of this ice cream, but the brownies don't taste good."

And then he hung up and we had a good laugh.

Imagine my surprise when at nine the next morning, the phone rang. Area code: 712. Wells HQ, on the phone.

The woman was very pleasant. She asked for the lot number and some other information from the bottom of the carton. "It's possible there was something wrong with the brownies," she said finally, taking the entire situation very seriously. "Would you like a coupon so your daughter can try a different flavor?"

Of course we would like a coupon.

When the little angel got home yesterday after a very exciting day at summer camp, I told her about the call and the coupon.

"See?" I said. "That's how it works."

Usually.

Well played, Le Mars, Iowa. 

Friday was the last day of school for my school district. I happened to find myself behind the bus for the middle schoolers on its last trip home.

As I hovered behind it, anxious about all the things I needed to get done before the end of the day, a boy got off. He whipped around the front of the bus and stood in his driveway, watching it leave.

And as it pulled away, he threw his backpack on the ground and started dancing.

It sprouted before everything else. It was pretty close to where I knew there was a coneflower.

But as it grew, I felt edgy. It doesn't look right. It looks broad-leafy.

It looks like a weed.

But I don't know.

So I keep watering it, waiting for it to flower so I'll finally understand.

But it makes me nervous to water it, because if it is a weed, it's putting down roots and stealing nutrients from the flowers around it.

Have anything like that in your life?

---

In keeping with the backyard theme, check out my review of the Backyard Guide to the Birds of North America on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

Glass vases held live tulips and flickering candles. The high school gym, a charity-auction prom, thudded with live music. As I bobbed back and forth on the dance floor, I felt my tights working their way down to my knees. Wasn't feeling like such a hottie, no, not really owning my beauty. In fact, I was wondering exactly how stupid I looked dancing in my glasses and the old-lady top that was the only thing that vaguely went with my most comfortable boots.

I remember when I used to flail with abandon in college -- the only time in my life when I really felt comfortable dancing in public, and always because the dance floor of whatever smoky bar I found myself in was always packed with other people, also dancing, and usually more drunk or high than I was.

Somewhere in there I became self-conscious, uncomfortable changing in front of my friends or using a public bathroom or dancing for a good cause.

Beloved gave me the chin-up-the-little-angel-is-probably-fried-in-the-auction-daycare wave. I looked over at my closest friend. "I think we're going soon," I mouthed over the music. She peered at me. She could've been my sorority sister -- my age, from Iowa, someone I would've been friends with in college -- all of them were. She bumped me in the hip, still glorious.

"Dance until you have to leave, Rita!" she yelled.

Hi, I'm Rita, and I like to exercise. 

There, I've said it.

I will actually create chores just so I can exercise while doing them. Which explains why I shoveled the back deck while it was still snowing yesterday.

I've been working out at least three times a week since I was 17 years old. I'm coming up on 20 years of jogging, elliptical machines, stairmasters, step aerobics, kickboxing and Jane Fonda. I did Buns of Steel. I did Tae Bo. I've seen beautiful people sweat near ocean backdrops to the Foo Fighters. I've run 5ks and some-more-ks, though I'm generally not fond of running and will never even try to do a marathon, because I happen to like my flat feet to remain attached to my body. I've run bleachers. I've climbed all the flights of stairs in my office building. I've attempted gymnastics, Pilates and the full fish pose.

And I'm so bored.

I'm bored with my workouts. I alternate between fighting the others for equipment at the tiny workout room sponsored by my housing association (for which I'm very thankful, trust me, but there are only six cardio machines for many, many, MANY people), doing exercise DVDs at home and shoveling snow.

This weekend, there were two bouts of snow shoveling and a trip to Tunnel Voyage (you try hauling your 35-year-old ass two stories up a McDonald's-Playland-style hamster tunnel for an hour and see how you feel). Also, I purchased myself some new workout DVDs and signed up for belly dancing aerobics. (Stay tuned for my month-long series to start on Thursdays this week.)(Here. At this blog.)(Because I feel like it, it's January, and I'm bored.)

I'm not going to review the DVDs, but suffice it to say none of them involve Jillian Michaels or her rock-hard abs. One is a crazy-intense-looking cardio tape and the other is a ballet workout. Ever since the little angel started ballet lessons, I've found myself longing for more leg strength. It would be truly awesome to be able to hold my leg out perpendicular from my body. Because then every time I had a bad day I could hold my leg out and be like YEAH, WORLD, BUT CAN  YOU DO THIS?

So I've done one of the ballet workouts. It consisted of floor barre and standing workouts. It is fortunate I took ballet in my childhood, because the very-fancy-sounding narrator never explained how to do any of the moves, all of which were described by their ballet names in French. And the mute dancers never explained them either or demonstrated them beforehand. Which is why I fell on my face once and nearly lost an eye to the TV console another time. However, after I was done, I realized I had that slow-burn yoga feeling and was genuinely very tired with a fast-beating heart, though I don't actually remember breaking a sweat. Weird.

We'll see if I can walk tomorrow, because it's supposed to snow again on Wednesday. I may have to dig myself out so I can make it to belly dancing.