Five minutes ago, it was Friday night and I was cleaning my house at 10 p.m.

Then it was Saturday, and five of my friends and I threw a shower in the morning and a bachelorette party in the evening for our bride getting married in two weeks. I laughed and cried alternately and with equal force for more than 24 hours straight as the seven of us worked through the happiness of the upcoming celebration and the grief of concurrent personal tragedies.

Then it was 2 a.m. on Sunday, and I was drifting off to sleep in my friend Kathy's house on my air mattress.

Then it was noon on Sunday, and I was hauling downed tree branches out of the yard in preparation for our end-of-summer neighborhood barbecue. That my daughter and her friend unexpectedly invited more people to than I realized. Note to self: Don't hand a seven- and eight-year-old invitations and tell them to go deliver them unsupervised. It was, of course, totally, fine, but the shock, I tell you.

Then it was 9 p.m. on Sunday, and we were dragging back inside the tables and food and laughing about nine kids playing swords and shields while hiding behind the protection of every umbrella in my garage.

Then it was 11 p.m. on Sunday, and I was realizing how many memories we packed into two days, and their bulk shoved aside any other thoughts in my head.

Then it was 8:30 a.m. on Monday, and I sat down to write this. I'm literally shocked it's already today. My conscious mind is still stuck back on Friday night, which is the last time I wasn't swept along completely in the moment.

Life isn't always linear. Not really.

Yesterday I had an appointment to take about twenty in-various-stages-of-empty paint cans to the city. I'd had to make the appointment online twice, because the first appointment had to be cancelled due to my last business trip to New York.

Beloved really wanted those paint cans out of the garage. And because I know if I do this for him, he will finish the arch in the kitchen I love him, I willingly and endearingly agreed to do it.

Of course, the appointments are only in the middle of the workday.

Of course, they are located in bizarre and hard-to-find areas on the edge of hell.

Of course, they are staffed with burly men in bright orange t-shirts who wear mirrored fuck you sunglasses and won't take your even close to empty paint cans even though that can't possibly be good for the environment.

They gave me back half my paint cans! They didn't even open them to see if they were all the way empty!

Me: So can I recycle these here?

Them: No.

Me: What am I supposed to do with them?

Them: Take the lids off and throw them away.

Me: Seriously?

Them: Yes.

Me: !

Them: .

Me: Okay, do you have a dumpster here?

Them: No.

Me: You are seriously going to make me put these back in my car and drive them home to take up half of my garbage can after I brought them all the way across town to be recycled properly?

Them: Yes. Next, please!

I got back in Beloved's truck. The air conditioning doesn't work in his truck. I was wearing jeans. And the heat of my sudden, irrational, mind-bending rage was also keeping me warm.

I have no sense of direction and the GPS was hanging from the cigarette heater thingie and I couldn't hear it with the windows down, so of course I made a wrong turn and ended up getting lost on the way home from the edge of hell. I pulled into a large industrial parking lot to turn around, and ...

I spent about five minutes turning furious cookies in Beloved's truck.

Then I drove home, got the garbage can off the curb, tossed the paint cans in and went back to work.

Beloved brought me Culver's and took the little angel away for two hours so I could finish working. I have no doubt my chances for that arch are very, very good.

Just don't tell him about the cookies.

I went to see Sapphire read from The Kid a month or so ago. I already had a copy of the book for BlogHer%20Book%20Club, but I got another one to give away on BlogHer.

Here's an excerpt from my post:

Sapphire started out as a poet, and as she read excerpts from her book, her voice changed, her meter changed, rising and lowering, now chummy, now threatening. She's a powerful performer, perhaps as powerful a performer as a writer, or maybe they are impossible to separate. She says she never cared about her poems as much as she does The Kid, though.

"It's going to take people a while to get this, but I know I have done something good, something strong," she said.

(It's a heavy, heavy dark book.)

So, if you're interested, go enter -- there are a few more days before we shut down the giveaway. I'm sorry I forgot to say anything earlier, but I was, um, on vacation. If you've read Push or The Kid, perhaps you'll join me in being somewhat amazed at the sunny nature of her autograph.

On the first day of our family vacation, my husband rented a boogie board and my daughter dug holes in the sand.

I lay faceplanted on a towel for two hours, stress radiating off my body and seeping out my pores. 

As I lay there, scenes from the previous few days played out. Thoughts of things I should've done at BlogHer -- people I should've met, things I should've said, posts I should've written -- rattled around. Every once in a while, my husband or daughter would come up to me, puzzled at my muteness. I'm normally an energetic person. Instead, I just lay there like a beached whale. Every once in a while, tears trickled out onto the sand.

After the beach, we drove an hour and a half up the coast and I fell asleep somewhere near Miramar, the hard, shuddering, paralysis sort of sleep, the sort I had every night during my vacation. Did you hear the people next door slamming doors? No. Did you hear the storm? No. I heard nothing. I slept the sleep of the dead.

Last week, I built a levee: No email. No Twitter. No blogging. No Internet.

I kept it up all week long, even after we came back home. I took my daughter shopping for school supplies. I went sailing with my husband. I sorted through the clothes I'd worn at BlogHer as though they were someone else's from a different lifetime.

While I was faceplanted in that sand on the beach, I asked myself why modern life is so much, why it all never ends. Maybe it's laptops, I thought. No, maybe it's email on our phones. Or the economy. Or the flexible nature of modern work, yes, that's it!

Maybe. But I don't have to have a blog. I don't have to write a novel. I don't have to volunteer on an arts board. I don't have to work beyond forty hours a week.

I don't have to have any friends.

As we were leaving San Diego, I asked my husband about the sea walls. They seemed pretty short to me, fairly useless against an ocean. He pointed out how far they were up the beach. I thought about the flooding along the Missouri River, how difficult it is to contain surging water.

I have shitty levees in my life.

Yesterday I picked back up the reins after a week away. At five I picked up my daughter and took her to meet her new teacher for second grade. We went to dinner. I gave her a bath, complete with a Wizard of Oz Celebriducks singing contest. I called my parents.

I didn't look at my laptop or my cell phone even though it literally made me nauseous not to do so.

I know from looking at my inboxes this morning that the email piled up against that levee last night. Even now -- by taking the time to take my daughter to summer camp and write this post -- it's threatening to spill over.

Should I move it farther up the beach? Build it higher? Take it down and let the world overwhelm me the way it did right before vacation? My sandbags never seem to hold for longer than two days, and I often grow weary of rebuilding.

I'm home but still staggering with re-entry. Look! Shiny!

Me and my manager, Julie Ross Godar -- we are the Editors of BlogHer!

Annual Bossy pic.

It's me and Erin Kotecki Vest! She made it!

Then these guys showed up, and we left on vacation on Sunday morning, and I haven't looked at the Internet since then. I hope to catch up soon -- hope everyone had a great week.

Fascinated a little by this.

She's okay -- just a little cold.

Awesome dueling My Little Pony unicorns at Sparklecorn 2011.

It was a fun party.

This super-cool art is almost hidden on the way to a parking lot. I can't wait to show the little angel.

The Twizzler artist caught in action. There's also a statue of liberty and a space needle. I asked her how she got this job and she was all, "I have no idea."

The two tattooed men in the pool were not enthused when twenty women took over the jacuzzi area. I was trying to figure out a way to photograph them nicely when Morgan Shanahan offered to pose. Thanks, Morgan.

After a long day of networking and behind-the-scenes BlogHer duties, I wasn't sure I would make it to the People's Party. Until I heard there were puppies.

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.