How to Endure and Possibly Triumph Over the Adorable Tyrant who Will Ruin Your Body, Destroy Your Life, Liquefy Your Brain, and Finally Turn You into a Worthwhile Human Being.
At LET'S PANIC ABOUT BABIES, Eden Kennedy and I share our hard-won wisdom and tell you exactly what to think and feel and do, whether you're about to have a baby or already did and don't know what to do with it.
After the publication of Let's Panic About Babies! in 2011, both our editor and agent left the publishing industry. "What's the point of continuing?" we assume they thought. "We have published the perfect book. Our work here is done." And while worthy replacements stepped in right away, some details got lost in the transition. Like the fact that our book was being published in Germany.
Actually our editor had mentioned it as a possibility, shortly before she sailed off into the Great Unknown. Failing to hear any sort of follow-up, Eden and I naturally assumed the Germans were disgusted by our attempts to make light of the baby-making process (insert lengthy German word for "baby-making process."). But apparently it was a go, after all. Which we discovered when these books arrived at our respective doorsteps. Sent by the stork! Der Klapperstorch!
I'm glad to see that HUMOR at the end, there. I mean, what if the Germans took us seriously? And an entire nation believed that someone could mistake a horseshoe crab for their own child?
Here's the best part: according to Google Translate, the German title for our book is THEY ALWAYS COME OUT. I've been reminding Henry of this fact as we go about our day. "They always come out, Henry." "Yes, mom. I know." "Always."
THEY ALWAYS COME OUT is my favorite title ever. Is it too late to change the name of our book? Second edition, maybe?
(p.s.: there's no German equivalent for "Huggs," I guess. Also, that first bullet point is supposed to be "gently bearded," not "friendly beard." Who has a friendly beard? Ridiculous!)
Hey, you! Yes, you. Not those other people. Screw them. This is between the two of us.
First of all, I wanted to alert you to the exciting news that we have begun updating the Let's Panic About Babies site once again, and will continue to do so. This week we have a delightful guide to summer camps. Is your child better suited to Camp Bleeding Fist, or Mario Batali's Camp Abbondanza? There's only one way to find out!
Secondly, I wanted to say: hey, we wrote a book. Perhaps you remember it? Well, it turns out, when you write a book, your work is not done. You have to keep selling it and selling it. And then selling it some more. Keep selling! No you cannot take a break. How dare you.
So I'm trying to think of ways I can tell the world that they need our book, and what better way than to ask you, my people, to help? NO STOP DON'T GO I HAVE CANDY.
(I do not actually have candy.)
Here's what I'm going to offer. I happen to have two copies of David Thorne's new book, The Internet is a Playground. And I am going to give one of them to one of you. Not both. I need a copy for me, sorry. If you're familiar at all with David Thorne's site, you know that he is probably the funniest writer on the web, a fact that makes me very angry. The book is even funnier, goddammit. I highly, highly recommend that you let me give one of you a copy.
(Full disclosure: David Thorne sent me a copy, because he is great, and then the publisher sent me a second copy because I think someone messed up, but I wasn't about to complain about it. He has not asked me to do this giveaway. I have my own ideas!)
To be in the running for this hilarious book, all I ask is that you do something to tell people about our book, and then tell me what you did in the comments. I don't require a grand gesture. Write a review on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Recommend it on Twitter. Mention it on Facebook. "Like" our Amazon page. Throw your copy out the window at someone's head and shout, "Read this, sucker!" For reasons you can I'm sure understand, I'd prefer it if you went the social-media route and not the hitting-people way. It can be whatever you like. Just tell me what it is in the comments. I'm using the honor system, here. I will not check up on you. That is how much trust I have. I am so trusting. Like a lamb. Lambs aren't suspicious, right? I don't imagine they are. I bet they don't even know what the honor system is. They just live it.
The only thing I ask is, don't give me some thing you did in the past, like, "I already told my sister to buy your book. Pay up!" I'm asking for a little something now. Just a little something.
Oh, and if you spread the word in more than one way, you can comment more than once. If you promote the book in ten different ways, you can comment ten times. There's no end to it.
Also, I will give you a bookplate sticker, specially inscribed to you, that you can put in your copy of Let's Panic About Babies. You have a copy already, I'm assuming. (I mean, you can put it in The Internet is a Playground, but I think we can all agree that that wouldn't make any sense.) If you don't, you can stick it on your shirt. And pretend I made you a custom t-shirt. I really don't care.
I will randomly choose a winner from the comments. Winners can be from ANYWHERE, none of that U.S./Canada nonsense. The winner will be announced next Thursday. Thank you in advance for your patience and for being the best, etc. etc.
I have returned to my family! They missed me more than they even know. My son was compelled to issue fart noises (from his mouth, thankfully) for three hours straight to make up for all that I was denied during my two weeks away. Scott declined to join in, and for that I love him even more. He cleaned the house before I arrived and bought flowers and wine. That's LOVE, people. I'm so happy to be home that I almost don't mind how much pet hair I forgot there is on everything.
(Oh, lord, the pet hair. It's not like it's Scott's fault for not keeping up on pet-hair removal. It almost doesn't matter no matter how much you clean, and knowing that leads you to give up. The pets are competing to see how much hair they can get to cling to everything. And have I told you that Charlie's hair is, literally, barbed? So it hooks into rugs and pillows and you cannot vacuum it out, oh no, you have to brush it out and then vacuum and who has the time for that? He should pay me to clean up his mess. His pointy hairs even get stuck IN MY SKIN sometimes. I'll get what I think is a splinter and it's a dog hair embedded in the ball of my foot. The cat, meanwhile, is too fat to properly groom herself, so enormous wads of cat fur will periodically eject from her bottom half and land on my face while I'm sleeping.
And yet for some reason we keep them around.)
It's time for a quick run-through of Part I of our incredibly fun book tour/Mom 2.0 trip. Shall we? Let's do.
First of all, Portland. It appears that no one is in Portland. We would walk and walk and walk, and no one would be around. We feared that maybe a zombie virus had taken over, but then we did run into a few people and they were alarmingly cheery. Portland's zombies are ruddy-faced (for zombies) and unfailingly kind.
I didn't take many pictures in Portland, or at all, really. I brought my smaller and less-good camera, so I wasn't thrilled by my photos. And I know you all expect NO LESS THAN PERFECTION FROM ME. But then Eden kept taking pictures of all the mossy trees? And I just go along with whatever Eden does.
Susan Getgood from BlogHer held our hands for the Portland leg of the book tour, which was kind of her, especially since there are two of us and if one of us had one free hand we might get into mischief, so she really had to focus. You can imagine how tough it was for her when she drove us to the reading and I kept trying to unbuckle myself from the car seat. I might have asked some uncomfortable questions about polyamory, as well. Don't ask me why. It's in the air in that city. (That's your new slogan, Portland! "Portland's Polyamorous!" Email me and I'll tell you where to send my check. And no, I won't accept your BeaverBucks or whatever your Oregon currency is. You have special currency there, right, Oregon?)
The day of our Portland reading, without fail almost every single person I knew from Portland sent me a tweet and/or email letting me know that DARN IT that day was the ONE DAY they had some other obligation, wouldn't you know it? But good luck! Most of them had reasonable excuses (most of them) but the collective effect was discouraging.
I might have hyperventilated a teensy bit.
Despite my worrying/panting into a paper bag, we ended up with an enthusiastic crowd-let in Portland. And they laughed at our jokes, which proves they were drunker than we were. Also, the people at Powell's were so goddamn thoughtful and enthusiastic I kind of want to move to Portland just to hang out with them. Maybe they'll be like that every day, for me! I can get the author's discount all the time, right? I'M A GODDAMN AUTHOR.
Next stop: Seattle!
Eden drove the rental car, as I am a delicate creature who can't put her hands on a steering wheel without suffering an attack of the nerves. In return I entertained her with tales of ex-boyfriends and my boisterous version of Wham's "Young Guns (Go For It.)"
(I know all the lyrics. Not to brag.)
(We didn't know George Michaels was gay, you guys! In his denim capris! And are those…espadrilles? Toe shoes? Some kind of festive combination of the two?)
Where was I? In a car! We were driving to Seattle! Eden and I spent the three hours chatting happily and agreeing that we were perfect travel companions for each other and would never fight, ever. (You'd think that was some foreshadowing. You would be incorrect!)
And then we got there. Met by the glorious Jory Des Jardins of Blogher, who was probably clued in to the fact that we had been discussing polyamory and drinking way too many mixed drinks in Portland. She didn't let on, but we could see it in her eyes. The fear/curiosity. She said it was from the cold medication she was on. I still have my doubts.
Seattle is beautiful. We were there for approximately 30 seconds. Many of my favorite people in the world live in Seattle, and they all showed up to the reading. (AHEM, PORTLAND.)
That's Tina Rowley, aka My Favorite Person Who Is Not a Family Member or Eden, on the right! And her charming friend on the left! Oh, I should have written down names.
But we had to leave Seattle! So quickly! And then we were in San Francisco, where we had a few days to catch our breath, hang out with Maggie and other beloveds (Heather Champ! Holly, way too briefly!), and read in both Burlingame and San Francisco proper.
In Burlingame we read at Books, Inc., which was one of our favorite destinations. The store manager (Hi, Earle!) was so kind and he gave us GIFTS, you guys. Gifts! We both got tote bags, Moleskine notebooks, and dark chocolates. I ate all of mine before we had even left the store. I have a self-control problem. Eden is probably gazing serenely at hers right now. Maybe she's letting one of the dark-chocolate discs dissolve on her tongue over the next twelve hours. This is how she messes with my head.
And then…the next day? A couple of days later? We read at Green Apple Books in the city, and we had a teeny space to read in, but I like that because it makes even a small crowd look like more then we can handle. This particular reading came with groupies!
These adorable daughters of Jenijen were Eden's groupies alone, I suspect, but they let me sign their t-shirts and..faces as well. I was so Henry-deprived by then I practically threw myself at them and maybe I tried to smell their heads a little, shut up, I can't remember.
Here's the post-reading brunch-up. Lisa Stone was there to make sure we didn't polish off too many mimosas and take our tops off, Eden.
I loved these two. That's Kat on the left, and her hilarious friend whose name left my head almost immediately. I was too dazzled by her dimples.
Self-photobombing. It's a thing. (That's the lovely author of Suki Cooks, by the way.)
That's it for our BlogHer-sponsored leg of the book tour, aka The Part Where We Had Cheerleaders and Awesome. Next up: Chicago and Minneapolis. Which city won? You'll have to read tomorrow to find out.
We're in Chicago, I think? I've lost all sense of time and place. No, I'm pretty sure we're in Chicago. The Midwest, certainly. I know them from their accents. Their adorable accents!
Tomorrow we go to Minneapolis. No, wait, we're flying tonight. Whoopsies. Tomorrow we read in Minneapolis, anyway. Actually we'll be in Roseville, at the Barnes & Noble in the HarMar mall, I think it's called? Don't make fun of me if I'm wrong about this, Minneapolis. Or, you know, make fun of me. As long as you show up! At 7 pm, or preferably a few minutes earlier!
After Minneapolis, we head to the Mom 2.0 conference, where we'll learn how to construct and operate titanium-exoskeletoned mom-bots. You've seen the Stepford Wives, right? It's like that, only we're in on the plan.
Actually Eden and I are leading a workshop on Saturday, which we've cleverly titled "Let's Panic About Writing." We will be discussing writing, writer's block, and so forth. It will be illuminating. If you're attending the conference, you can join us! You're so lucky.
We're sitting in our hotel restaurant right now, waiting for the time to come when we can go to the airport and sit over there. Our lives have become a really boring parade of sitting, walking, and then sitting again. And then standing! Aaaand then sitting. I have no idea what I'm saying. Hold me.
Eden's been sharing our tales of the road, along with photos and EVERYTHING. The cable I have that purports to send pictures from my camera to the computer has ceased functioning, so I must wait until I return home. But just so you know, I have pictures. I HAVE THEM! Kennedy's just winning at putting them up first. Not that this is a competition. (It's a little bit of a competition.)
December 6, 2012
