As promised, a photo gallery of the little angel's eighth birthday cake.

This was obviously not made by me.

I chopped off the top because it had her name on there and I'm still not into sharing that online. I'm bad with photos, but not that bad.

The number was made from white chocolate, I think.

Mr. Octopus sits on a bed of brown sugar sand. The entire cake was edible except for the toothpicks holding in the treasure chest. Note the suckers on the underside of his legs.

Coral and shells

The treasure chest was made from cocoa Rice Crispie treats.

Nemo. I know -- when she brought it over I just sat and stared at it for twenty minutes, asking her how she made all the parts.

Absolute best part: how much she loved it. Happy birthday to my sweet girl.

I'm still feeling pretty gross, so this is all I've got today. If you're a Kansas City local and are interested in contact info for my amazing baker friend, email me at ritajarens(at)gmail(dot)com.

Over at BlogHer my interview with Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess) is up -- Jenny's book comes out today, I think, and I'm so excited for her! 

This weekend we had the little angel's bday party, and the neighbor made the coolest cake I've ever seen in my life. Like it belongs on Cake Boss. But last night I slept like hell, the cat has a cold and keeps sneezing in my face and I have body aches I think I caught from the little girl who got puking sick the day after my girl's bday party. So, instead, here's a link I wrote to a post on BlogHer for today on why glasses are so damn expensive. Back tomorrow!

crossposted from BlogHer

I stared at the phone in my hand. My sister had texted me two words: MIDLIFE CRISIS. Because I sent her a pic of a convertible I saw while driving home with my seven-year-old daughter. But I bought one, anyway.

A Brief History of Responsible Automobiles

My parents always bought cars with cash. I don't know if they still do, but when we were growing up there were never debts like car payments floating around. Never. I was fortunate enough to drive not one but two used manual-shift Chevy Novas during high school, and when I went off to college, my parents surprised me with a used but still I thought white-hot burgandy Ford Probe. Its doors were tank-like, and it had those headlights that flip up and the seatbelts that move over you instead of you having to buckle them. (If you're under the age of 30, you probably have no idea such a thing used to exist. It did, and it was so awesomely Star Wars I can't even begin to describe it.)

I kept Peg the Probe from 1992 until 1998, when she sadly began a rapid deterioration into Things Were Falling Off Every Day. My father let me buy his car, Priscilla the Prizm, off him for $4,000. At the time, I had this sort of money in my savings account (the young, houseless and childless can be rich) and off I went to move to Kansas City in Priscilla.

In 2005, Priscilla and I were T-boned on a busy street by a SUV that was much bigger than we were. I was pretty distraught, because her axle was bent and JUST LIKE THAT I went from having no car payment to needing a car, stat. By this time, I was married and my husband and I had replaced his Ford Escort with a Ford Explorer, which we owned outright. We liked the Explorer so much we decided to get another one, because the one we had seemed like it would die soon, and then when that car died, we'd just replace it with something more Prizm-like. It made total and complete sense to us at the time -- gas was cheap, we had a baby and a ton of baby stuff and we made road trips up to Iowa at least once a month with all our junk in tow.

In 2008, gas prices did that thing. You remember that thing? When none of us could afford to go farther than two feet? And my husband and I owned two -- not one but TWO -- gas-sucking SUVs. We were spending $150 a week on gas. Ifreaked out and demanded we right our wrong immediately, but when we went to buy a Corolla, the used ones didn't exist. No one was letting go of a small, fuel-efficient car. So we ended up with another car payment and a very sensible, new, very basic Corolla.

Which then got hit by a tornado.

This is what it looks like when the universe is trying to tell you something.

My husband travels a lot for work and has a rental car. We still had the Explorer -- yes, the original one we thought would die. It has 190,000 miles on it, the front passenger door won't open from the outside, the air conditioning no longer works, it's rusting and the leather seats are stained and ripped. But it still runs, so we had lots of time to think about what to do.

Then, last weekend, my daughter and I were driving home when I passed a for-sale sign on a ramshackle midnight-blue Ford Mustang convertible. I stepped on the brakes and whipped the Explorer around. My daughter's eyes widened as I pulled over on the side of the road and called the number soaped across the windshield. Then we drove straight home, grabbed my husband out of the driveway and drove him to see it.

He was understandably flummoxed by my move. Me, who made him return the convertible he rented last year at BlogHer '11 because it was too impractical for all our luggage. Me, who made him give up his beloved, tricked-out Explorer for a teeny tiny Corolla. Me, who once pinned a Debt-o-Meter to the refrigerator to remind us daily of our credit card sins. What the hell was I thinking?

When Someone Almost Dies, You See Things Differently

I was thinking that we were lucky we only lost our car in that tornado. I was thinking I didn't want another car payment, and every sensible, responsible car he was showing me would mean another two- or three-year loan. I was thinking we made so many car-buying decisions in the past based on what the smart, right thing to do was in the case of any emergency, and then along came a tornado to blow up all our best-laid plans.

I was thinking about how we'd already gone through the carseat years.

I was thinking about how many years I have left to have adventures with my daughter.

I was thinking about how much time you end up spending in a car on the weekends getting your responsible adult errands done. And how much time you spend putting off little things that would be fun and not really hurt anyone even if they are a tish off the beaten path.

And I was thinking about my anxiety, and how I always try to plan for every single thing that could possibly happen, and how the older I get the more I realize I can't do anything but pray hard and row for shore. I told my husband all of this on Sunday night.

On Monday morning, he sent me a listing for a 1997 Chrysler Sebring with 71,000 miles on it that we could buy with the Corolla insurance payout, straight-up. No car payment. And the air conditioning works great.

We named her "Vicki."

I slept like hell last night. We spent the weekend outside and yesterday working in the yard, and between the muscle exhaustion and the allergy infusion, I just couldn't stay comfortable. At about 5:45 this morning, I woke up and flopped around again (my poor husband). Petunia stirred from the foot of the bed and walked over my body until she got to my arm. Then she curled up in the circle of my arm, put her paws over my elbow and laid her head on my shoulder. And purred.

And then I fell back asleep. And to think she was months from being put down when we adopted her.

---

Other things I wrote last week:

• Plants toxic to cats and dogs
• Six tips for talking politics with your friends without a fight
• Parents sue school district over a blog and I can't figure out why

On Monday, I went to hear The Book Doctors (Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry) do their Pitchapalooza for the second year. Last year, I just went and watched, not really sure what was going on. This year, I took along my reframed novel pitch to see what they would say.

It was monsoon pouring that night, and the temperature inside Unity Temple ranged somewhere between moist and sauna. I am terrible at estimating crowds, but I'd say the auditorium was about half full -- and it appeared every one of those people had a book to pitch. I got lucky and was selected as one of the twenty-five people who got to read my pitch and get some feedback on it. (This was really, really lucky, because Arielle and David and the people they pick to be on their panel are always nice. I've been to pitching/querying sessions at writers' conferences in which the panel brought "vindictive" to a whole new level.)

As I waited to see if my name would be called, I studied my audience mates. I was there alone, so I had nothing to do but look around. I myself kept rewriting my pitch over and over in my notebook, changing a few words here and there. It wasn't fully baked and I knew it, but I hadn't had much time to spend on it and when you get a chance to get feedback on your writing, you take it. I saw the man in front of me had his pitch all typed out. He was staring a hole through it. The woman beside me was scribbling in a notebook.

If you could've bottled the collective angst in that room ...

I felt a tremendous sense of empathy toward every person in the room. Even though I got one book published, it doesn't get easier. I don't feel any less angsty about my current pitch than I did about my Sleep Is for the Weak pitch. One thing I am able to do better is recognize that the feedback you need is the feedback that sucks the worst to hear. Identifying the problems is their job, fixing them is mine. 

I hate fixing. I wish it would just come out right the first time.

Then again, if it did, I wouldn't know what to do the first time it came it wrong.

It's sort of a vicious circle.

Some of the other writers had shaky voices. One commented about how nervous she was. Even in such a friendly atmosphere, it's terrifying to say out loud what you've been typing and whispering over and over to yourself for weeks or months or years. 

I got the feedback I needed, went back to my seat and waited for my heart rate to return to normal. I looked over at the woman next to me, and she smiled. I smiled back.

I knew she knew exactly how I felt.

---

Speaking of authors, check out my review of longtime reader Shannon Hyland-Tassava's new book, The Essential Stay-at-Home Mom Manual on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

Today I wrote this post over on BlogHer:

Let's say you're walking around SXSW cursing the lack of wifi on 6th Street. And then, suddenly, salvation: You see a woman wearing a t-shirt that says, "I'm Susie, a 4G hotspot. SMS HH Susie to 25827 for access wwww.homelesshotspots.org."

Susie herself is a hotspot, complete with all the necessary equipment. A walking, talking hotspot. A homeless hotspot. Hot damn, aren't you in luck!

Want to read the rest? 

'Cause Beloved had his first freight-train experience last night. Pics on BlogHer -- he's okay, but the Corolla, is, um, not.

Just as ebooks are heating up after everyone got a Kindle Fire for Christmas, I got a letter this week from the publisher of Sleep Is for the Weak, Chicago Review Press. I don't hear from my publisher very often, as my book came out four years ago, and in publishing dog years, that is approximately What-Have-You-Done-for-Me-Lately-thirty. The letter basically told me why Chicago Review Press's distributor, IPG, got into it with Amazon, which resulted in Amazon yanking the Kindle version of more than 4,000 books off its site. My book was one of those books.

I'm disappointed and not really because I'm upset specifically about Sleep Is for the Weak. I still think it's a great anthology, I'm proud of it and all the great writers featured in it, and there are new parents all the time who might want to read it. Since you can't find it in bookstores any more, online is really the only way to shop. BUT STILL. I intend to write more books. I'm disappointed in principle that it's so hard to get a book in front of readers four years after it was published. 

The publishing industry is the craziest industry ever, and it's the only industry I know of in which a store can buy stuff and then if it doesn't sell, the publisher has to buy it back and the author doesn't get paid -- even though it was initially sold to the bookseller. You don't get paid until Amazon buys your book and Amazon sells your book. Otherwise Amazon can buy your book, you can get super-excited, and then six months later Amazon sends back your book and all those numbers disappear from your royalty statement. It's crazy-making, and I didn't know that's how it worked until after I got my first royalty statement from Chicago Review Press and called them up to get the most frustrating math lesson known to an artist. And though I'm using Amazon as an example, it's not just them -- it's every bookstore. This is how the industry operates. Books get about two months on the shelf, and then if they're not flying off, well, they can and do get sent back. I'm constantly thankful my book was published in an era when the Internet existed to continue to sell my book after it disappeared from bookstores in the teeny tiny little parenting section that has about six shelves for every book ever written on the subject. Or maybe instead what I really find: Three shelves of baby journals, two shelves of books on getting your baby to nurse or sleep and half a shelf of humor books and books written by Jenny McCarthy with maybe one copy of Anne Lamott's amazing Operating Instructions. I totally get shelf space. I also totally get that new books come out all the time, so bookstores have to keep things in rotation. Which is why the Internet is so, so important to authors.

The publishing industry already has incredibly low margins for publishers and authors on top of the crazy-ass sell-back clause. What happened with IPG, again from my letter:

IPG, our distributor, could not in good conscience accept Amazon’s demands to the detriment of publishers and authors. As a result, Amazon is choosing not to purchase our e-books at terms that are in line with the rest of the industry and are acceptable to all our other customers. Amazon has removed our Kindle editions from their site, though the print editions of our books are still available for sale on Amazon. IPG is taking a brave stand against Amazon’s predatory pricing, along with other major players in the industry. We support them and hope that you will too.

But, you know, lest we feel too sorry for IPG, the distributor isn't too focused on ebooks, according to them: 

Some of the small presses that work with distributors don’t sell many e-books. IPG president Mark Suchomel told Crain’s that e-books make up less than 10 percent of IPG revenues. 

I'm glad it's not hurting IPG's bottom line too much, but the authors might feel a little differently about that.

And, since Chicago Review Press published my book, I can't just decide to publish it as an ebook if I want or distribute it in any other fashion. From a letter from IPG to its publishers:

7. Seriously consider the implications of this action for the long run. If we don’t hold firm on your behalf, your margins will continue to erode. IPG will continue to represent you well to those customers that are happy to buy from us at reasonable terms. If you or your authors were working directly with any large vendor, you would not have the opportunity to push back on or even have a conversation about terms. Your continued support is appreciated.

8. If anyone from Amazon calls you, please let them know that you are distributed by and contractually tied to IPG.

According to the letter, you can still get Sleep Is for the Weak in any format other than Kindle, and even if you have Kindle, you can still read it. Side note: you can email yourself almost anything on a Kindle, although a small fee applies. I email myself updated revisions of my new novel all the time because it's easier for me to find problems when it already looks like a real book. Here's how to find Sleep Is for the Weak electronically, from the letter:

All of Chicago Review Press’s titles remain widely available in both print and electronic editions (EPUB and PDF formats). You can find them at your local independent bookshop, www.indiebound.org, www.BarnesandNoble.com, Apple’s iTunes, Google Books, www.ebookstore.sony.com, and elsewhere. The only format you will not be able to buy—temporarily, we hope—is Amazon’s proprietary Kindle format. Although, if you have a Kindle Fire, with just a few steps you can download almost any e-reader app and purchase EPUB and PDF editions that can be read on the Kindle Fire. You can also purchase both print and e-books directly from the IPG website (www.ipgbook.com). 

I'm just disappointed. It's so hard to be an author anyway, and to have your book on the virtual shelves when it's not on the physical ones and then have it removed feels just horrible. I understand why IPG did what it did, and its negotiating power is one of the reasons I wanted to be traditionally published. If it were just me against Amazon, how would any negotiation go? Amazon's not evil, IPG's not evil, Chicago Review Press is not evil: No one is sitting around rubbing their hands together thinking how they can crush the souls of writers. They're making business decisions. Because bookselling is a business. It's tough to have your art be part of a business sometimes.

In the end, books are as good as their distributors. There are many, many incredible books by even well known authors that simply go out of print. I have hope that the increase in ereaders will allow books to stay in print longer electronically and be easier to access years later. The events of this week make me wonder, though. 

Late yesterday afternoon, I wrote a reaction to a recent Rolling Stone article about a school district that enacted a policy unofficially called the "No Homo Promo." It was meant to bar teachers and administrators from discussing homosexuality at all in the schools. It resulted in teachers and administrators ignoring bullying, which led to a suicide cluster in the district.

Here's an excerpt:

More than anything, kids need to know they are lovable and that they can trust the adults in charge of their lives to look out for their best interests. They are deserving of respect and the protection of adults just by existing. They don't have to do anything to earn it. It is their right as children to be protected until they are old enough to protect themselves. We as a society agree on that -- we have adifferent court system for kids, we have laws about sex and abuse and child labor. We as a society agree children are different than adults.

It's long, but if you're interested, read the rest on BlogHer!