Yesterday and Wednesday I was off from work to add a Part II to my novel (fingers crossed, it was a specific request). On Wednesday, even though I forced myself to ignore my work email, I checked my personal email and immediately fell down the rabbit hole of responses and responsibilities and lost almost two hours.

Yesterday, I took a complete and total Internet hiatus. No blogging, no email (!), no Twitter, no Yammer, no Facebook, no LinkedIn. I did text with my sister a little, but I also actually spoke to her on the phone for more than an hour. And last night I called my parents and told them a bunch of things I'd forgotten to tell them in the mad rush of email that is usually my life.

My life is email? Yeah, it kind of is.

At the same time, I'm reading Super Sad True Love Story in fits and bursts, which is a novel about a bunch of people trying to stay young forever who spend their lives completely immersed in little personal data devices that hang around their necks.

A while ago, the little angel asked me if I loved my phone more than her.

The last two days while I've been off, she's gotten off the bus at home instead of after-school care, and we've set up the sprinkler and invited friends over to run through it. The weather has been glorious.

Today I'm back online, back at work, back on email. And I'm determined to not become a Super Sad True Love Story character.

But it's hard, in this world we live in. It's hard.

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?

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

I'm on the board at The Writers Place in Kansas City, and I've gone and found myself chair of the marketing and membership committee. And guess what? We're having a spring happy hour on Thursday, May 26 from 6-8 pm. Free beer and writers! You know you want to come. I'll be sitting at the door making meaningful eye contact and silently brainwashing you to become a member so you can get reduced prices for workshops, a tax deduction (TWP is a nonprofit) and the pride of knowing you're a member of such a venerable organization.

Here's some background on The Writers Place:

The mission of The Writers Place is to promote writers and their work, to nurture an interest in writing and literature in a large, diverse audience and to contribute to the quality of cultural life in Kansas City and throughout the Midwest.

In addition to the spring happy hour, I'll be putting on a workshop called Writers Can Be Bloggers, Too on Saturday, June 18 from 1-3. It's $30 for nonmembers and $20 for members, and I'll be looking at blogging from an author's point of view -- pros and cons/how to get started and some more advanced social media techniques for authors who already have a blog and/or social media presence.

Hope to see you there! Here's how to sign up if you're a nonmember or a member.

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Speaking of writing and books, I'm giving away a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card this month on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

I hardly ever check Facebook (I admit it -- I'm just not really a Facebook person). So I probably took a few days to respond to my friend Jenny's mail, but when I opened it, I was touched by her heart and her family's goodwill.

Jenny and her family are collecting books and school supplies for Hackleburg, Alabama, which was recently flattened by a tornado. Here's the logo her son drew.

Jenny's currently got a bin sitting on her front porch in the Kansas City metro area, but since I'm not sure I want to just, oh, post her address here, please email Jenny at jennymeade311@gmail.com if you want access to that bin. I'm sure she'll only have you body scanned once.

Jenny writes:

If you live outside the area, I urge you to start your own collection, or go here and donate in other ways. If you want to know more about Hackleburg, Alabama, visit this Facebook page.

I know there are lots of other little towns with massive destruction like this one. I know there are more people who need help. I know there is much to do. I am one woman, we are one family, we are four states away, and this is what we can do. Do something, whatever you can do.

I remember posting my husband's essay about Parkersburg, Iowa, in 2008 after he received this text from his brother: "f4 tornado hits parkersburg. town gone." At this time of year, I always hear people from other areas of the country ruminating on tornados. They are fascinating and terrifying in their randomness, and when they hit, time after time, it's tempting to succomb to tornado and disaster fatigue and stop doing. I know I feel that way. I am sick of the disasters, sick of the sad stuff, sick of digging deep.

That's why I love what Jenny is doing. It's not hard to weed through your kid's bookshelf (which I am doing this weekend, Jenny) and find some great books to donate. You'd do it anyway. Smart projects take the behavior people are going to do anyway and turn it into good.

Like rebuild. Looks like the Parkersurg city-wide garage sale is this Saturday.

It's always worth it.

I was in the shower last night, getting ready for bed, when Beloved walked in. "You're not going to believe this," he said. "Osama bin Ladin is dead."

I peered through the fogged-up glass, watching the rivulets run down. I could barely see Beloved's face. He doesn't walk upstairs when I'm in going-to-bed mode to tell me just anything.

At first, my mind wanted to close it off like it was no big deal. It's been so fucking long that we've been hunting bin Ladin, through two presidents and a gamut of emotion for me and the rest of the American people.

I didn't know what I felt.

Part of it was anger in thinking with this guy dead, another guy will just pop up. (Or will he? We didn't actually get another Hitler.)

Part of it was relief that at least this particular asshole was out of commission.

Part of it was fear of retaliation, a desire to duck below the windows every time a car drives by.

And part of it was curiousity over what will happen to Osama bin Ladin's soul.

Mostly, I was tired. The news didn't make me jubilant, it made me feel exhausted. I knew the world could be a brutal place prior to September 11, 2001, but I didn't internalize it until then. Since then, so much has happened on U.S. soil, both natural and man-made -- Katrina, the BP oil spill, the recession -- it has often felt like one flight of bad news after another since that day -- really bad news, end-of-days kind of bad news.

I don't think I'm the only American who hung that stinking wreath of excrement around Osama bin Ladin's neck, let him represent all that was wrong with humanity.

Now he's gone, so perhaps I'll have to look harder into all that is wrong with the world -- and that makes me tired.

So I went to bed and I prayed for Osama bin Ladin's soul. I prayed he knew not what he did.

The little angel wanted us to tape the royal wedding. So we did. When I came downstairs this morning, she was already dressed and glued to the set.

"Did you watch Princess Diana's wedding?" she asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Well, it was on at like four in the morning. And I really didn't care."

She narrowed her eyes, trying to gauge if I was joking.

Just then, Meredith Viera (wearing a ridiculous hat that appeared to be free-climbing the side of her head), mentioned "Princess Katherine."

So now she's gone from Kate to Katherine?

Just like Katie Holmes went from Katie to Kate when she married Tom Cruise?

As though maybe they weren't good enough the way they were?

It's one thing when you change your own name. It's a completely different thing when someone else changes your name for you.

Good luck, Princess Kate. You're going to need it.

Remember when I wrote about the Santa/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy mess?

After the Easter weekend, I went into the little angel's playroom. Ma had drawn a picture of a bunny on the little angel's white board when she left. The next day, Ma's bunny was replaced with a headline, "Things I Believe In," and three pictures: Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

We've talked about whether or not she should believe in them several times since the kids at school told her they weren't real, and both Beloved and I keep turning the conversation into a question for her -- what do you think? Neither of us wants to lie to her, but neither of us sees the harm in a little magic in childhood.

But this picture -- this picture made me sad, a little. The clinging, the need to write it out, to validate something I know won't last much longer. Often I'm shocked that she's seven. Birth to three seemed to take ten years, but three to seven shot by in an instant. I just taught her about Santa, didn't I? Is it really time to let it go already? We were just getting good at it!

It may seem contradictory that I'm writing about letting it all go as she's drawing pictures of it on her white board, but I see the pictures as evidence of her internal struggle. Are they real? Aren't they real? Should I believe the other kids? Why are my parents being so wishy-washy about this?

And there's a big part of me that just wants to get it over, to tell her it's a lovely fairy tale, that yes, it's us, it's always been us. Who could love you more than us? Who takes more satisfaction in your joy than us?

But that's another message that loses its magic if you shoot it straight. She needs to figure it out on her own.

This morning, I went to take a picture of the white board. Three dirty tissues lay on the floor, and it was all wiped away.

I opened the door to see a slight man standing on my front step. "I was driving by," he said, gesturing to his truck, "and I noticed your trees could use thinning."

I stepped outside, noting the woodchipper hitched to the back, the phone number on the side. "How much?"

He threw out a number, too high. I called Beloved, master negotiator. A few minutes later, my husband sent me to the ATM for the final amount. "Hurry," he said. "It'll go faster than you think."

I laughed. Surely they couldn't trim three trees that fast? But when I looked outside, the man on the doorstep was already 20 feet in the air. Three huge limbs lay on the ground. I thought about how long it would take Beloved and I to cut down such limbs, to drag them away. They must've weighed as much as a man.

I got in the car.

By the time I got back, the little man had moved to the front. "How much off this one?" he asked.

"As much as you can," I said. "I keep worrying that one's going to smash my car."

My sister and the little angel and I went on an errand. We were gone maybe twenty minutes, and when I returned, the man and his truck were gone, the trees transformed -- gone were the tributaries of tiny branches and left were the strongest limbs.

I pulled up to the house and sat there, staring at the tree, thinking how much I longed to trim my life like that, strip it to its skeleton, slash and burn the dead branches that come crashing down every time it rains.

With all the clutter gone, I could finally see my house.

Yesterday, some kids told my daughter that Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny are all frauds. She asked the lunch lady, and the lunch lady told her that her sons still believed.

The little angel cried a little bit and decided she didn't want to play with those friends just then.

My husband told me this story after our girl went to bed. I asked him what he said. He had told her that people believe all kinds of different things, from religion to politics to bunnies. You can still like other people even if they didn't believe the same as you do. I thought this a brilliant response.

I personally can't stand the Easter Bunny because Easter is the most important Christian holiday -- there is no Passover Chick, and I don't see why we need a bunny. I've never really leaned on the bunny and would be relieved to just tell her it's us, man, it's us. We know you like chocolate.

So she still believes. For now.