Had breakfast this morning with Nerdy Apple Bottom. Our view, we agreed, did not suck.

I'm sitting here typing in my Grateful Dead t-shirt and glasses. I should be in the shower. I need to leave for the airport soon.

But the strangest thing happened yesterday. Two phone conversations I had in the past six months turned into something. Not by me -- I just happened to be the person listening raptly on the other end to the aspirations, to the story -- but still. It is so cool to see plans unwind as they do.

So! First, see my friend and colleague Kim Pearson's mind-boggling post about how ankylosing spondylitis has changed her worldview and then back again. I honestly did not think she would ever write this post, and it is so inspiring and so humbling. I'm so glad she did. Also, I love seeing her doing the electric slide.

Second! I've gotten to know Kamy Wicoff over at She Writes over the past few years. I'm so impressed with what she's doing and what she's done, and this latest contest for fiction writers is such an incredible opportunity.

And now, um, SHOWER.

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.

I don't watch Project Runway. Anyone who has ever met me knows I get all my fashionable clothes as hand-me-downs from my best friend and all my unfashionable clothes from TJ Maxx and the local Goodwill. 

It seems nearly every blogger in my pledge class has gone style on me. Their blogs are hip, they have sections for fashion or home decor or what have you, and even though I know I would never want a section on Surrender, Dorothy for such things, there are days when I look at my blog and understand exactly why I am not financing my vacation home with ad revenue. 

AWKWARD SEGUE TO HEIDI

Since I don't watch Project Runway, I didn't realize that Heidi Klum kicked off this season by getting all nekkid for her ad campaign.

This is what is accompanying my Blues Travelor on Pandora this morning. I looked up before my second cup of coffee and was all WHOA NAKED PEOPLE TOO EARLY IN THE MORNING.

And then my next thought was WHAT IN THE HELL DOES NAKED HAVE TO DO WITH SCISSORS?

WHY DID SHE WRITE ON HER ARM? IS SHE DOING A TRIATHLON WITH SCISSORS? IS SHE GOING TO RUN WITH SCISSORS? HAS SHE LEARNED NOTHING?

HER HAIR IS THE SAME IN EVERY PICTURE IN THIS AD CAMPAIGN. AND HER FACE. ONLY SOMETIMES SHE HAS CLOTHES ON AND SOMETIMES SHE DOESN'T.

WHY ARE THE SCISSORS LONGER THAN HER ARM?

WHY AM I SO IMMUNE TO NAKED HEIDI? SHE IS NAKED. RIGHT THERE. NAKED. THIS IS GROSS. I'M NO PRUDE, BUT SERIOUSLY CAN WE KEEP THE NAKED PEOPLE BEHIND SUBSCRIPTION-BASED PAYWALLS WHERE THEY BELONG SO MY DAUGHTER DOESN'T HAVE TO SEE HEIDI WITH HER BIG SCISSORS BEFORE 8 AM?

My thoughts this morning are in all caps. I am soo ready for vacation.

Every year I think summer goes too quickly. But this summer is passing with very alarming speed. In July, I asked where June had gone, and it was a sincere question. Now next week is August and BlogHer '11 and the week off I thought was so so far away and then after that the little angel will be back in school, and I'm sitting here staring at the calendar vaguely remembering trips back to Iowa and fireworks and watering plants and a few languid afternoons treading water at the swimming pool and little else -- it's an actual blur.

I sometimes wonder what's happening to my memory.

Clearly the problem is rushing. When I rush, I don't really live in the moment. I started out summer doing a great job of not rushing, but in the ensuing months, life happened and it all went ass over ankles out the window.

I had a dream last night I looked outside and it was sleeting. In my dream, somehow I'd missed my last chance at sailing and biking and Halloween and Labor Day and every fun thing about fall, and I was spitting mad that it was winter. (I hate winter. I try to be more loving toward winter, but it's a really tenuous relationship necessitated by my insistence on staying in the Midwest.)

I woke up angry and blinked and looked outside and realized it was already 88 degrees before 8 am, and I was happy about that. It is mind-meltingly hot, and it has been for weeks, and it will be 100 degrees today and 102 tomorrow and I'm GLAD. It means I didn't miss everything, and I still get to go to BlogHer '11 and then take a week off (blessed, sweet week off, I'll miss you Internet, but I won't be here the week of August 8 because clearly I need to live in the moment away from distractions) and have my end of summer. I still get to experience the evenings when the light turns gold and the air finally starts to cool off and the last few barbeques are enjoyed with friends and their end-of-summer, we-don't-really-tan-anymore glow.

This morning was all Marley's ghost for me. THANK GOD. I almost missed it.

My flight out to LaGuardia was delayed by three and a half hours on Tuesday. Two hours in the Kansas City airport, forty-five minutes on the tarmac in Kansas City, and the rest sitting on the tarmac in New York. By the time I found myself in the taxi line, it was 1:30 a.m. and the line was at least sixty people deep. The temperature congealed above ninety degrees. I watched some people ahead of me laughing to each other, and despite my intention of keeping a good attitude, I couldn't wrap my head around how anyone could laugh at that point in the trip. I stumbled into my hotel room at two bells, texted Beloved and fell into bed.

The next morning I felt much better, despite having way less than my requisite amount of sleep and a half-functioning window unit air conditioner on the 16th floor. I even figured out in my haste booking the trip last week, I'd confused Midtown East with Midtown West in my favor and instead of having a twenty-minute walk, I had a ten-minute one. Two days flew by.

My story really starts when I tried to leave on Thursday afternoon at five. I walked out into a sweltering New York afternoon. The heat index was well over a hundred, and the haze seemed to be leaking out of everyone's pores. I found myself nearly in the street trying to catch a cab at West 43rd and Fifth Avenue, along with every tourist in New York City. I expected it to take a while. I've been to New York before; I lived in Chicago for fifteen months. I forgot, though, the helplessness I would feel when I realized after fifty minutes of standing on that street with my arm in the air that I might not get a cab, that I might not make one of the last flights back to Kansas City, that all the adrenaline I'd used up powering myself from the moment I found out last week I had to take this trip until that very minute might be for nothing if I couldn't get myself home in time to get up, unpack, repack and drive to my in-laws' house in Iowa on Friday morning.

I started to sense my defenses crumbling a little. Then I felt someone staring at me and looked over my shoulder to see a small blond woman with a very large camera click-click-clicking away. I scowled at her and turned my back on her, waving my arm harder, thinking if I could just get a cab I could get away from this weirdo taking my picture. She kept circling around me to get different angles as I tried to ignore her. Finally I looked right at her as she pointed her camera at me. "You aren't putting these on istockphoto, are you?" I asked in exasperation, pissed that talking to her required me to take my attention away from the cabs that kept rushing by with other people inside them.

She smiled. Her accent was thick, European. She tried to show me the photo. "It's just so typically New York," she said, as though that meant I should be happy to be featured. "These are really very good." I saw the desperation on my face in the photo. Yes, I thought. That is typically New York for me. Every time I am here I am worried I will never escape. I want to like New York and Chicago, I really do, but I am accustomed to big sky and big horizons, and the street feels so confined to me, so crowded. Instead of seeing it as a challenge, I always end up seeing it as an ant farm.

I abandoned my spot on the street and tweeted my desperation. My friend Karen told me to find a hotel and get in their cab line. I couldn't find a hotel. I was by the library. As I tried to cross the street, a cab finally slowed, and a minute later the cab driver was berating me for my stupidity in apparently not allowing twelve hours for myself to catch a cab and get to the airport at rush hour.

"What, you thought you'd just walk onto the street and get a cab?" he said.

"No, not exactly. I admit I was surprised it took 57 minutes."

"You're going to miss your plane, you know." I'd told him my flight was at seven. It was at 7:40.

We drove in silence for a little bit.

"Okay, it's not really at seven. It's at 7:40."

He laughed. "Oh, you thought you'd make me go faster?"

"Well, you thought I was stupid, anyway."

He laughed and laughed. "I think you will make your flight."

We cleared an accident -- lightssirenscarspeoplewavingarms -- and barreled over a bridge. We arrived at the airport at 6:30. I would've made the plane probably even if it was at seven, ironically. I made it through security faster than I thought I would, all of us stinking and sweating in the cattle line. I stood behind one of those ethereally thin young women who turns to the side at the last minute and you are shocked to realize she is at least eight months pregnant and you can't tell from behind.

The flight back home left on time from LaGuardia for the first time in my fifteen-year business traveling history. When I got back to my car at 10:15, I actually had to sit in the seat and pump myself up to drive the 45 minutes home, the last leg, I told myself, you can do this. It's the last part.

When I walked in the door at 11 on Thursday night, I thought of that woman and her camera and wondered if my photo would remain in her private collection or find its way onto the Internet, forever marking me as a cog in the New York machine, a typical scene.

If that was a typical scene, it makes me sad. Because I was nervous and annoyed and very, very sad at that moment, thinking I might miss my plane despite all my planning and three days of carefully orchestrated timing, despite the extreme energy it had taken me to plan the trip at the last minute, pull myself through the meetings with good cheer and quick decisions, navigate unfamiliar subways and streets late at night, sweat with the rest of the city -- that I might be undone after all that by the lack of a taxicab ... I hope that kind of quiet desperation is not stereotypically New York.

I went out to look at my flowers and tomatoes when I got home, even though it was dark. They bloomed quietly, the only sound the cicadas and tree frogs. Despite the oppressive heat, I could see stars. No one tried to take my picture. And I went back to being my kind of anonymous. The kind in which I realize people might try to take my picture if I go to BlogHer '11 or stand on a street corner in New York, but no one will here, because I am just not that interesting, not part of the scenery, and that is absolutely fine with me.

---

Ever since I started working on my YA novel (I'm still plugging, still plugging -- querying is The Suck), people have told me I should read Sarah Dessen. So I did -- see what I thought of What Happened to Goodbye at BlogHer Book Club!

I am preparing for a last-minute business trip (read: what, my toenails look like I live in a cave and I'm not sure what I have clean to wear), but today when I picked up the little angel from summer camp, she said:

"Mommy, I have a green band! I can swim in the big kid's pool!"

And we did a little happy dance around the parking lot.

And I told her over and over again how proud I am of her.

Then we went to swim lessons and made a bunch of extra sandwiches for lunches and picnic dinners at swim lessons while I am gone, and she helped me pack, and the Celebriducks had a show in the bathtub in which the Celebriduck Dorothy may or may not have sung an extremely off-key version of Over the Rainbow.

That's the best way I know to celebrate. Hope you're having a good week. Posting this week will most likely be bizarre as I attempt to navigate the NYC subway system on less sleep than I would prefer. This month is totally bizarre for me.

Also -- I saw all your comments about ladybugs. I went to Ace Hardware after swim lessons, but alas, no ladybugs. WE WILL PREVAIL. The search continues.

The ladybugs I ordered from Amazon arrived a few days ago in the midst of a nose-clogging heat wave. I waited until the little angel got home to open them -- I was so excited and sure she would be, too.

We pried open the package to find a little plastic container filled with wood shavings and 1,500 dead ladybugs.

I shook the container, hoping some would crawl out from under the wreckage.

The little angel shook her head santimoniously. "Their legs are all curled, Mommy. They're dead."

I actually refused to believe this. "They can't all be dead."

I shook the container again.

"I told you not to order live things off the Internet, Mommy."

I stared at her. Since when is my seven-year-old lecturing me on purchase behavior? WTF?

I stalked inside and pulled up Amazon, determined to return the stupid dead ladybugs. Let them have their funeral at an Amazon warehouse. The Amazon return process is pretty amazing -- you fill out some stuff and a Fed Ex guy shows up with a return label and you just hand him the box. The problem is you have to select a reason for return. These were my choices:

I chose "does not work properly."

Because they were dead.

But any of these would've worked, really. Different from what was ordered? Yes. Different from website description? Yes! Missing parts or accessories? Like a heatbeat?  YES! I could go on and on.

So now I guess I have to find some local ladybugs. Any ideas?