Last Saturday, I spent six hours removing a layer of July from my house. I put Killz on the ceiling where I had *thought* I'd shut the bathroom sink off after hand-washing the swimming suits. I scrubbed Okie dust off the windows. I attempted to open the door that's stuck shut because our house has settled due to lack of rainwater on the foundation. I scrubbed the floors.

Then, because Beloved had taken the little angel to one place I have absolutely zero desire to visit -- the Missouri State Fair -- I went to the swimming pool by myself with John Irving's In One Person. I stayed there for three hours, and in that time, I fell back in love with the writing of John Irving after several novels of "is what we had lost forever"? My John Irving high lasted through date night at Cafe Verona --  where we ate in the little courtyard and the waiter explained the locks hanging from the wrought-iron gates were engraved and hung on people's anniversaries to signify their forever love -- and well into the next morning, when we had a lazy breakfast and headed into the Plaza to get something I needed at Barnes & Noble and maybe browse with my gift card they gave me for Mother's Day, which was at least 50 95-degree-plus days ago.

The Plaza killed my high. I never actually *shop* in the Plaza, which for the uninitiated is a high-end four blocks of shops and restaurants. I love hanging out at the Plaza, but I never buy anything anywhere other than Barnes & Noble, because I don't have $375 for a handbag. We went into at least ten stores, but I realized I have grown really, really bad at shopping, because we've been trying to save money for so long I now fully understand that I really don't need anything and want everything. And everything I want costs more than the balance of the gift card. But everything I need I already have.

It's a quandry.

I ended up in H&M staring at all the cheap crap and ill-fitting clothes that would look good on my daughter but not on me and realizing there was not one thing in the entire Plaza that I wanted to buy. Then I saw a $12 white, gauzy scarf, the exact kind of scarf one would wear if one were riding in an open convertible and wanted to avoid mussing her hair, even if that convertible were built in 1997 and even if that woman were also wearing yoga pants. 

I bought the scarf and we drove home, and I realized I'd forgotten that feeling of wanting to be a better writer that I'd pulled from John Irving's words. And it made me mad -- the Plaza made me mad -- myself made me mad -- I went from feeling inspired and content with my lot to grouchy and jealous of other women's shoes in one hour flat.

The next time I go to the Plaza, I'm spending the entire gift card at Barnes & Noble, and then I'm getting the hell out.

Why do it to myself?

Halfway.

The average lifespan in the United States is 78.2 years. I will be 39 on my next birthday.

Halfway.

There is a part of me that feels as though I could go tomorrow having lived a full life.

There is a part of me that prays every night I will live to be the little angel's mother for a long, long time.

---

I have so many friends who have already lost parents. I have not lost mine.

I have so many friends who have lost children. I have not lost mine.

The average number of close friends people have is two.

I have more than that.

I am blessed.

Because I know and care about so many people through the wonder of the Internet and my job, I am subjected daily to their sorrows and their strengths. I realize, perhaps more than any generation before me, how completely normal everything that happens to me really is. I have bad days, I have good days, and that is normal. The universe is chaotic, and peace comes from within. I believe in God, but I also believe my God is both empathetic and hands-off. We learn from our chaos. We get another day, but the next day might suck. If we didn't have the low points, we wouldn't appreciate the high ones. There is a need to balance darkness and light.

---

My daughter is upstairs sleeping. I wanted her very badly, and then I didn't want more children. I hope she will not be upset with me when she is halfway, and I am as old as my parents, and she is looking upon potentially being the only one left when we are gone.

I pray she will have more than two close friends. I pray her friends will be her sisters and brothers, because even though I treasure my sister more than I can say, I'm also thankful for the other friends who have stepped in when my relatives can't be right by my side. I think people get planted for us when we need them, virtually and physically. I believe in paying it forward. I believe in answering the emails I get weekly from women struggling with eating disorder recovery. I believe in the woman I saw in the Serenity Suite crying for Susan Niebur when I didn't realize that was what she was upset about. I was talking with my friends when she started crying, and I hope she doesn't hold against me that I didn't realize what she was doing. I didn't lose Susan in that I didn't know Susan well, but I've lost my own Susans and I understand that pain. I'm sorry, blonde woman. I hope you don't hold it against me.

---

Halfway.

When I thought on goals for my life in high school, they were grandiose. This year marks my twentieth high school reunion. I have reached an age in which many professionals look like teenagers to me. I wonder if the people I bonded with in high school will come back or if they will stay secure in their new lives and their new selves, not wanting to be reminded of who we were at eighteen. I don't hold it against them if they want to forget. I was sick when I was eighteen. What does anyone know of me then? I don't even remember it myself.

Have I gotten old?

I am only halfway.

---

Last weekend, I listened to Katie Couric talk about how much more she has to contribute now that she is in her fifties than when she was in her twenties, and I understand. As much as I miss the elastic skin of my twenties, I don't miss the angst. I don't miss the uncertainty.

I wonder if I will feel even better about who I am in another twenty years.

I wonder if this website will still exist.

I wonder if my novels will be published.

I wonder if my daughter will still want to be held by me.

I wonder if I will be the person I want to be.

---

I am halfway, and for some that would seem a bad thing, but for me it feels glorious. If I am lucky enough to achieve the average lifespan in the United States, I will have another whole 39 years to become twice as good as I am tonight, twice as meaningful. My words will hold twice as much weight as they do tonight. My grandparents lived to be fifty-something and eighty-two or eighty-three, three of them. I never met my maternal grandfather, but my other three grandparents were strong well into their late seventies and early eighties. They had so much to tell me in their last years.

I am halfway, I hope. And I have so much more to learn.

So ... if you don't like sponsored posts, which I totally get, come back tomorrow because I have something more normal for me planned then. 

Most people who visit Surrender, Dorothy already know that I work for BlogHer. And so, of course, any time my colleagues in the publishing network want to try something new, I always volunteer. I say YES WE SHOULD ALL MAKE MORE MONEY. It's not always a popular opinion in the blogosphere, but I think art + commerce = novels, so why not have art + commerce = Rita's Blog.

Anyway, today I'm talking about Olay and Proctor & Gamble. Proctor & Gamble has an ecommerce initiative I'm trying on for size. It's an online store, and if you buy things there, I get paid a little bit, very much like the mphoria store in my left sidebar. So far, I have not noticed the ability to buy tile for Chateau Travolta's kitchen floor, but that's where all the extra income in my world goes -- toward stimulating the home improvement sector's economy.

Here's my story about Olay. When I was in college, I went to this bar in Iowa City called Joe's. It's still there. It's actually where I met Beloved for the first time, but this time wasn't that time. This time I was there and drunk, I believe, and I ran into a woman who told me she was thirty. THIRTY. And I was all, "Why aren't you wrinkled?" Because I, in my 21-year-old stupor, thought anyone over the age of 25 was wrinkled. Now I realize we all look fabulous forever, right? I mean, I'm 38 and I look amazing. (cough)

So this ancient 30-year-old pointed at me with her beer bottle and said, "START MOISTURIZING NOW." And I was so moved by this statement, that the next day I went to the drugstore and stared at the wall of moisturizers. The only one I'd ever heard of was Oil of Olay, so I bought a bottle. I have put Oil of Olay on my face every day for the past 17 years. It seemed counter-intuitive, because I actually have oily skin, but I realized it was helping even out my skin tone. My guess is that parts of my face were all THERE IS NOT ENOUGH OIL HERE WE MUST MAKE MORE and once I started moisturizing, my oil glands felt comforted and stopped overreacting. Because yes, even my oil glands overreact. #catastrophize

The product I've selected to tell you about in the P&G store is 

Olay Regenerist Skin Care Starter Trio Pack

It says "great value" right there!

I just copied and pasted that because I can't spell "regenerist" on my own. I think they might have made that word up. I haven't used this particular pack, but I have used all of the lower-priced Olay products and they are all great. I also appreciate the price point. You can pay the GNP of a small African country for skin care products, but I'm frugal and don't do stuff like that. And, you can get 10% off your order if you go through my awesome link on that huge type from now through August 31, 2012. There is free shipping on any order over $25. And I'm supposed to tell you P&G is an Olympic sponsor so there is a lot of cool Olympic-themed stuff in there, like this.

For those of you with record-breaking periods. FTW! ha ha ha 

Either way, START MOISTURIZING NOW. Especially if you are older than 21. My tip from me to you. And if you need some P&G stuff, by all means, buy it through this link so I can rip up my lineoleum a little sooner. (And tell your mother, who probably moisturizes, too.)

I've been gone! All week! To BlogHer 2012! Here are my thoughts as they fly through my head.

• So honored and proud to work for BlogHer. The conference just gets more amazing every year in terms of programming, which is my favorite part.
• Very excited this year there were at least as many women of color speaking as white women, maybe more -- Polly didn't have the final numbers. This is hugely important, and might perhaps be the biggest win of the conference for many reasons.
• Martha Stewart, Katie Couric, Soledad O'Brien, Christy Turlington Burns and Malaak Compton-Rock all live in person.
• The sitting president of the United States addressed BlogHer directly on live video. I'm pretty sure I never thought that would happen in my life, and it made me feel very heard and respected. Thank you, Mr. President.
• I thought I would not like the fashion show as I am not a fashionista, but it was amazing in the way the first community keynote that became Voices of the Year was amazing -- I just saw what it was supposed to be and loved it.
• The Voices of the Year community keynote continues to impress me and inspire me to try harder with my writing. 
• I had so much fun laughing with so many friends and meeting new people and putting faces with email addresses. There is truly no replacement for meeting people in person, and I'm so glad when I'm able to do it.
• I got to share my hotel room and my experience with my awesome sister despite her having the worst travel experience I have ever seen go down in my entire life -- six-hour delay coming out and cancelled flight going back. Boo, United! 

I'm back at the office today and working frantically on some exciting things for BlogHer, so this has to be short today. More soon!

Hi everyone! I'm at BlogHer '12. I'll post when I get back!

The kitchen is the last room not in the basement that needs to be remodeled in Chateau Travolta. The country rose wallpaper has been scraped off, the dark wood wainscoting pried from the walls, one arch put in, the walls painted, new windows installed. We still need to replace the half-hanging-off cabinets and the counter top and the back splash that is half-missing and covered in clear packing tape above the stove. Oh, and the tile. The linoleum is still missing a chunk from when we installed tile in the half-bath.

And for the past year or so, we haven't had blinds in the bay windows or above the sink. There were blinds there once, aluminum Venetian blinds stained with rust and bent in places. When the man came to replace the windows, he pulled them off, and I just threw them away, thinking we'd buy new blinds soon.

"Soon" turned, as it does, into seasons passing and nights growing shorter and an entire winter of eating dinner in front of windows that became mirrors at six in the evening, of learning to be fully dressed and wearing a hat when I came downstairs for breakfast on weekend mornings, to being on display for the two families living behind us. Not that they are total spies, but how could you not look in at night when the lights are blazing and there we are, living our lives like television characters?

I hated it. So in February, we got the windows measured for shades. I wanted Roman shades, not being aware that Roman shades cost more than a new sidewalk. I readjusted my expectations and picked out some pretty woven roller shades at half the price of the Roman but twice the price of What the Fuck.

And we waited for the money tree to grow.

Then earlier this summer, an unexpected freelance gig came along, and lo and behold, it paid EXACTLY the amount of the shades. Which I totally took to be fate. So we ordered the shades.

A nice man and woman came to Chateau Travolta yesterday and installed them. I gave them cinnamon rolls left over from the cul-de-sac sleepover last Saturday. And then I drew my shades.

I was shocked at how boxed-in I felt. Apparently I'd grown accustomed to having the world see in, because it meant, too, that I could see out.

Last night I found out about an unexpectedly large bill. I'd just returned from CVS, where I spent twenty-five minutes combining coupons with weekly deals to save $23. The pointlessness of blowing all that time to save a few bucks only to find out a mistake had cost us hundreds totally deflated me. And it was 107 degrees at 7 pm.

I sank to the kitchen chair. Tears sprang to my eyes. "I think I'm going to throw up," I said.

I sat there, breathing deeply, trying to calm my anxiety, when my daughter appeared at my side and handed me the teddy bear that lives in her room but was mine when I was her age.

She patted my arm and went upstairs to shower.

Wow.

I deleted all my boards off Pinterest a few months ago, because I was pinning mostly public art and got freaked out about copyright. You really aren't supposed to pin anything you don't have permission to pin unless you took the picture yourself, and everything I was pinning was art, so I got nervous.

I recently read a great article somewhere (I've forgotten where) about starting a pinboard for your books, if you're an author. I think that's a fascinating idea. Probably even more fascinating considering two of the three books I'm pinning for aren't published yet. Either way, it'll be fun for me. Let me know if this would make a book come more alive for you, and if you want, follow my boards! I haven't pinned much yet -- I just started. It'll happen the way the books themselves happen -- slowly.

This past week has been extremely draining for me. Yesterday morning I was in such a dark mood I actually cancelled meetings so people wouldn't have to talk to me. 

Last night, I went to an Indigo Girls concert in Kansas City. I named my first horrible and forever unpublished novel after a line in an Indigo Girls song, and I moved to Kansas City after really listening to "Least Complicated." I like a lot of music, but there are certain singer/songwriters who capture the human condition so eloquently it takes my breath away. Listening to the music last night reminded me that I have a thing that I do that can bliss me out as much as the bass player of the back-up band, The Shadow Boxers. (I wish I had taken video last night, because I have NEVER seen a bass player this jacked before. I found a video on their YouTube channel, though, because you really need the visual to understand this post.)

It wasn't just the bass player, though -- I don't know how young these guys are, but they looked a lot younger than my 38, certainly younger than Emily and Amy. And when the audience sang along to some of the Swamp Ophelia songs, the guys looked like they were getting a straight dopamine drip. The wheels turning, yes, this is what it can be like after all that hard work and heartbreak. As artists we get so few of those moments and so many of the moments of rejection and struggle. You have to bottle the good moments in your head and sip slowly so as not to use that joy up before you really, really need it.

I desperately needed that reminder last night that I can access my shot of bliss when I want to, too. I just have to sit down and search inside myself for the writing. I'm lucky and blessed that I know how to find my joy -- I just need to clear my schedule and make time for it more -- not just here, though I love writing here -- I love talking with you guys -- but the fiction. The new novel. (The second novel is with editors, it's a long story and there's too much uncertainty, which is why I never write about it. Honestly, it pains me to talk about it, because I've come so far in these past three years, but will it be far enough? I can't explain how painful and important this is to me.)

I can't remember what made me remember the poem I wrote right before I graduated from the University of Iowa OH MY GOD SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO, but I mentioned it to my friend Kristi last night in reference to some song lyric, and this morning I looked it up to see how much it sucked. It isn't my best work, but I can clearly see what I was thinking back then, so I thought I'd share it here in honor of the happy boys of The Shadow Boxers and my hope that people sing their lyrics with fervor. Good luck to you and keep loving life.

The Last Day

The last day of college collected no knowledge

different from all of the rest.

To the edge of ability

I tested virility

can't say it was the best.

The snowflakes come swirling with dreamlike unfurling,

covering the entire town.

Hot water rises with scented soap prizes

as I try to steam straight my gown.

They gave me two stars to represent wars

I fought with words and with pen.

To get their attention, attempting dissension

and failing to score in the end.

My work here is done.

My words have not won

the battles that ignorance wrought;

my lofty ambition

achieved no sedition:

I fear education is bought.

But hope will still flower

far from the tower

of ivory I've never seen --

thoughts of the younger

still here will blunder

and sleep in the places I've been.

And then while I was searching the Mac for "places I've been," I found this other one also detailing my obsession with other people who have lived where I've lived. What are their stories? Do they wonder about mine? What do we leave behind? A song? A poem? A smile?

Places We've Been

Lofted bunk on a college campus

somewhere in the Middle West,

I carved my initials in the closet

near where you rest your head.

First-floor walk-up in Chicago,

the corner of Clark and Halsted streets,

no parking, disposal or air conditioning --

do you find it had to sleep?

Historic building in Kansas City,

the very first space I called my own,

I taped poems to the cabinets

and never answered the phone.

Haven't built a house, always filled a space

vacated by somebody else.

I smell you, sometimes, before I drop off

to sleep, in the places you've been.

Today's a tough day. Hang in there, Aurora. Everyone go find your bliss -- every day is a gamble and a gift.