This is one of those weeks where I feel like I’m running over a bridge with a freight train at my back; I have to get to the other side, and I cannot – CANNOT – miss a step or slow down or BAM! SQUOOSH! and so I’m racing along, not even daring to catch my breath.

My mom is recovering from her surgery, the one that I’ve been so panicked about, the one that I didn’t fly out to sit by her bedside for, because she asked me not to, and so I get to just feel guilty, and worry. And Emilia just graduated from kindergarten, which was so, so wonderful and heartwarming and pride-making, but also like a punch to the stomach, because, good god, she’s getting SO BIG, and please, could somebody make it STOP, or at least slow down? And I’ve got a bunch of really awesome and really fascinating projects on the go, which are, really, just enormous fun to work on, but also, wow, totally exhausting, not least because they going hand-in-hand with some major life changes, which maybe you’ve heard rumors about – I know that some of you have heard rumors, because I get emails from, like, random media outlets asking me about the rumors, and I wasn’t the one who tipped them off – and anyway, the rumors are true – well, some of them, anyway – but I still haven’t wrapped my head around how to talk about it, and you know how sometimes something is kind of big and you feel like you need to wait to talk about it so that you can do it justice but then while you’re waiting it gets bigger and bigger, or seems to, and then you’re kind of like, well, maybe I’ll just pretend like it’s not something that I need to talk about but then it just becomes this giant glittery elephant in the room? That.

Also, we’re going camping this weekend, in a canoe, to a place where there are bears, and I’m a little nervous about that, and I really do need to get better at compartmentalizing things, don’t I?

Anyway. I’m tired and I have too much to do and now I’m also a big damn tease, and also someone who just randomly throws bears into the conversation, but really, you just have to be patient with me.

I’m just going to post a picture now. A peaceful picture.

Let’s all take deep breaths and think of deep, still lakes, and soft, pudgy toddler arms wrapped around sunburned necks, and sunsets, and the call of the loon. Meanwhile, I’ll take a Xanax. You know, because of the bears.

I know, I know: if you’ve seen one video of small children dancing, you’ve seen them all. But these are my children, and one of them is wearing only sunglasses and a diaper and it is cute, dammit, even if it does turn a little bit violent at the end. So hell yeah, I’m going to make you watch it:

I apologize. Now you have Katy Perry in your head, and god knows that even the most adorable images of flying toddlers in sunglasses don’t make that okay.

That said, it was either that or I was going to make you look at my Batshit Cats Are Batshit picture again, and maybe make you write captions. Thing is, I had already decided that “My Name Is Inigo Montoya. You Killed My Father” was probably going to be the winner, and since I thought of that one it made the whole enterprise seem, I don’t know, unseemly, and so I abandoned the idea.

Mostly. I’m still going to make you look at the picture:

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

I’m working on staging a capoeira cage-match between Jasper – in sunglasses and diaper – and that white cat. I’m going to videotape it and set it to Katy Perry and call it When Honey Badgers Fly/Firework Remix and I’m totally going to make you watch it. You’ve been warned.

****

Random:

1) Thank you so much for the discussion on this post. I’m still grappling with anxiety (bullying! my child! what does it mean? what do I DO?) but at least I’m able to pin that anxiety down long enough to sleep and to laugh and to move forward in life, secure-ish in the knowledge that these are all just trials and lessons and that it only gets worse from here.

2) So some lady has a blog where she just hates on people who put any kid bigger than an infant in a stroller, which really is an awesome use of her time. Shannon discusses it in nicer terms than I would, over at The Bad Moms Club.

3) Are Canadians uniquely tolerant of moms and babies in public spaces? Not really, but it seemed an interesting question to explore.

4) John Cave Osborne asserts that ‘videos of locusts aren’t oozing with tacit yet palpable homoerotica.’ I say John Cave Osborne is watching the wrong locust videos.

5) You really should buy this book. It costs, like, less than a Venti latte at the airport, and although I am first to insist that a Venti latte – at the airport or anywhere else – is worth its weight in platinum, this book really is pretty awesome, and not just because it features an essay of mine, although that’s mostly why I’m plugging it here, because I am self-centred, y’all.

6) I know, Canadians don’t say y’all. I lament that, muchly.

The old saying that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ has always struck me as really misleading. Most pictures you can describe in, like, 140 characters, otherwise why would there be TwitPic and Instagram? And anyway, why ‘a thousand’? If that number is meant to signify ‘lots,’ it kind of misses the mark. A thousand words is not a lot of words. I can easily bang out a thousand words just on the topic of cat barf, about which I know much, having stepped in it three mornings in a row now. And trust me, you wouldn’t want to see a picture of that.

Anyway. I was thinking about the stories that pictures tell as I reviewed my Instagram stream from this weekend and realized that anyone scrolling through those pictures would think that I’m raising my children in the wild and letting them drive cars and possibly also putting them to work as psychics. Which is totally not true. I only keep them out of doors in daylight hours – they’re free range – and they only work as psychics when they want to.

There’s probably a lot of money to be made in toddler clairvoyance, but I’m totally not interested in my exploiting my kids like that, and I would totally expect you guys to get that. Still. I thought that it was worth clarifying.

Anyway. So that took about 100 words, explaining that the picture of my toddler grasping a Psychic! Deals! advertising sign was in no way a solicitation of business for his spiritual advisory services. Which puts paid to that whole ‘thousand words’ thing, I think.

Being a parent means never having to say you’re sorry for making your children pose with giant dead-eyed Furries.

I’m on my way to New Orleans today, to speak at the Mom 2.0 Summit. That’s awesome and all – I’ve never been to New Orleans, so that’s exciting, and Mom 2.0 is always fantastic – but honestly, I’m getting a little tired of airplanes.

Anyway. Random whatevers:

1.) This post almost made me cry yesterday, just from the sheer truth of it. I know something of what she describes – not all, because I’m not the primary breadwinner in our family, but some, a lot of some – and I also know that what she describes can bring a woman to her knees. I’ve seen it bring my sister to her knees. It has my sister on her knees right now. My sister didn’t join us at Disney World last week, because she just… well, she just couldn’t. She’s barely had the strength to stand. It’s a long story, one that you’ve heard parts of, but yeah. We can talk more about that later. Liz reminded me of why that conversation is important for so many women, and not just those like my sister. And I’m grateful for that.

2.) I’m also grateful for all of the joy of last week. So much joy. What does one do with so much joy? One analyzes it.

3.) Speaking of joy: this is one of my favorite photos from last week. We all felt that way, all the time. Okay, the kids felt that way all the time. I lagged periodically.

4.) I also love this picture, because, BOOTS.

5.) ACCESSORIES.

6.) If the volume of email that I’m receiving in response to this post is anything to go by, it seems that there are a lot of you out there who’d like to talk more business. It’s still a topic that makes me a little squirmy, but it’s a squirminess that’s worth getting over, I think. If you have any specific questions you’d like me to address – no, I won’t be discussing how much I earn – leave a comment at that post and I’ll try to answer what I can, like, next week or something.

7.) It’s Anti-Bullying Day today. Wear pink. I am:

8.) Be joyful. You never regret being joyful.

This basically sums up everybody’s mood around here:

We’re still all recovering from various plagues, and I’m still in that weird dark place of sickness and self-doubt, although it must be said that as the fog of sickness lifts things are becoming that much more manageable, because, really, self-doubt is like old hat to me. I can handle self-doubt with my eyes closed. I am CONFIDENT about my ability to navigate self-doubt. So even if you toss some anxiety and melancholy into the mix as well, so long as I’m well enough to drink coffee and move about independently I can probably manage. Throw in some cupcakes and I’m practically functional.

Anyway.

This morning I’m on Canada AM on CTV, talking about social media and parenting, and if you’re just reading this now you’ve probably already missed it, but whatever (oh, hey! you can now watch the video of the interview at the Canada AM site, HERE.) If you’re in the Toronto are, you can come hear me prattle on about it at a special session for Social Media Week. The bonus of coming to hear the Social Media Week talk is that you get hear Kyle and Emilia – yes, Emilia – weigh in on the subject as well, and very possibly chew me out publicly for documenting the entirety of their lives on the Internet. It should be a rollicking good time.

Or you can just stay on your couch and read the archives of this blog and get the gist.

(And then, if you’re feeling really super extra enthusiastic about the radical social potential of mom-blogging and/or warm and fuzzy about my personal contribution to that enterprise, you could go vote for me in the Bloggies – I’m a finalist for Best Canadian Blog. Or you could just do it because, what the hell, you’ve got 45 seconds to spare and that’s not enough time to watch that Super Bowl Volkswagon/Darth Vader commercial again.)

… he rested.

I don’t think I’ve ever had the stomach flu, like, ever. Maybe I had it once or twice as a kid – I have vague memories of sipping ginger ale and nibbling saltines while clutching a bucket and watching Family Feud – but never as an adult. The only times in my adulthood that I’ve found myself curled up on the cold tile of the bathroom floor, struggling to keep my insides inside, were during that really bad stretch of morning sickness that I went through while pregnant with Jasper, and maybe after one or two or eleven occasions of debauchery in my twenties. Until now. Now, I seem to have been attacked by an evil stomach bug that I’m pretty sure implanted some demon flu-monster hellspawn in my stomach lining which my body is struggling mightily to expel. That’s stomach flu, right? It’s horrible. It’s torture. It’s making me feel very, very sorry for myself.

It also means delaying, further, the processing of thoughts coming out of TEDWomen and the sharing of my Celestial Soul Portrait and reflections on the holidays and what-not, which is the sort of thing that, if left untreated, can weaken one’s internal narcissist system, which can be fatal to a blog, so. I’d better get better.

(If you’re looking for something to do in the meantime, you could check out this giveaway/contest – open to Canadians! – and win – odds are pretty good on this, actually – a Sony Bloggie video camera or other awesome stuff. Or chocolate. Also, I’m looking for recommendations on where to donate a Intel-powered notebook, just to keep the balance of giveaway mojo tilted toward the side of good. I’d like to give it to a women’s shelter or some similar organization, but I’m open to suggestions. Leave a comment here.

And if you have any suggestions for surviving and recovering from stomach flu – and/or narcisso-deficiency syndrome  – those are welcome, too, and might get you bonus chocolate.)

So I’m trying to renovate this old blog, but it turns out that knocking down walls and building extensions onto virtual spaces isn’t all that much easier than doing so in brick–and-mortar spaces, so there you go. If I could, I’d just set up a few extra chairs and throw a sheet over them and say hey guys! I made my fort bigger! but it seems that there’s no HTML code for ‘sheets’ and ‘chairs’ and that a virtual blanket fort isn’t really a thing, so I kinda have to go with the whole complicated hire-a-professional enterprise and hope for the best. I should probably figure out how to do this stuff myself, shouldn’t I? I don’t even know that I could if I wanted to. I’m about as technically skilled as a drunk Luddite. So.

All of which is to say is, I’m a bit distracted today, and so I’m just posting a picture of Jasper in the blanket fort that he and Emilia made on Saturday after we refused to give them building permits for constructing a turret above their bedroom – Emilia saw Tangled last weekend and wants to leap out of windows on a hair-bungee – and took away their hammers. That will have to do for now.

(If it doesn’t, and the Bad Mother withdrawal just hurts so bad, you can ease the discomfort by revisiting this Win A Windows 7 Phone/Fight Cyborg Hamsters! post – you can comment every day until November 29 for a chance to win a phone or chocolate – or you could weigh in on the Are You A Mommy Blogger debate, for panty-twisting shits and giggles. Or you could visit the Bad Moms Club and consider the unbearable lightness of Wubbies, and/or settle for once and for all the question of whether children really are like zombies.)

(And if you’re still battling the craving, you could go here and vote for me in the People’s Choice category. Because you are people, and I am a choice. Very simple math there.)

No, Emilia is not dressed as Jesus. That would have been pretty funny, but I still have enough of a hangover from years of being raised Catholic that I would worry about being smited (smote?) (smitten?) for impiety. She was a cave girl, via Jasper’s Bam Bam costume, which he rejected in favor of last year’s ill-fitting fireman costume accessorized with his sister’s bright pink ankle socks, a choice that we didn’t understand until we witnessed him devote two-thirds of his trick-or-treating schedule to systematic jack-o-lantern safety inspections at every house in the neighborhood (“ooh, Mommy,” he’d say, kneeling by a particularly brightly lit gourd, “PUMPKIN. TOO HOT.” Then he’d try to blow it out.) Clearly, he had a mission, and so he wasn’t so much donning a costume as he was putting on a uniform and pursuing a vocation. We never did figure out the pink socks, but I think that that choice is best left unexamined.

Anyway, yeah: Emilia went as a cave girl, but ended up looking more like a very tiny Jesus with blunt-cut bangs and a leftover steak bone shoved in his robe belt, which is, I imagine, exactly how Jesus rolled. But you didn’t hear that from me.

/looks anxiously at the heavens.

(I dressed up as the ladies of the YummyMummyClub dressed up as me, because, you know, what’s not awesome about meta-costuming?)

(I also dressed up liked this for the Blissdom Canada costume/karaoke party. I’m thinking about adopting it as my regular look, because, seriously, I think that it’s just ME.)