1. My favorite book-buying kid just stopped into the shop again tonight. He bought another Captain Underpants, explaining that his school only has two copies of this particular volume and they are in high demand. I replied that I hate giving books back, that it’s much better to own my own copies. He answered, “That’s exactly why we’re in an economic crisis right now” and then gave me a 20 cent tip.

2. I’m still dreadfully behind in my blog reading. I know you’ll forgive me, but that’s not enough for me. I want to be there, all up in your business. I miss you. And listen, if something huge has happened to you and I’m the dick who hasn’t commented in some way? Never be afraid to email me a verbal slap upside the head. I’m not kidding.

3. Since you were all so curious and supportive about this past weekend, I’ll just tell you: I was meeting with magazine editors. It was like speed dating for writers, like seven job interviews in a row. It was exhausting, terrifying, and ultimately exhilarating. Now you know.

4. The contest has ended! The new owner of Alicia’s beautiful pair of earrings is Cathy at Noble Pig. Congratulations!

5. Finally, the announcement.

If I had to guess, I’d say it’s about 400 square feet. Maybe even 500. I was so excited I forgot to ask.

It is old. It is rich with character and water stains, built-ins and cobwebs. It has freshly scrubbed window sills; a carefully swept pine floor, painted brown. It has stairs for sinking down into inspiration, high vaulted ceilings for dreaming up. It has a donated desk carried in by friends, and a vase-full of fresh flowers delivered in person by my worried but always supportive husband.

The copper key seems to sparkle even more in my palm.

It is a writer’s studio, and it is mine.

After a hiatus, you’d love to come back with a bang. You’d love to hit one out of the park, write the most breathtaking treatise anyone has ever read. Unfortunately, tonight I can barely string these words together, and I hope you’ll forgive me for it. I just needed a place, I just needed a brief second, to catch my breath. To spit some of this poison out where its less damaging to my innards.

I’m overcome by fatigue, by sadness. I’m shuffling through my disappointments like tattered confetti on the floor, like his ashes, spread from an airplane flown low over our town on Friday night. I can’t escape the haunting and sorrow and bitterness in the air all around me. Worse, I’m trapped in the bell jar with all of this, stuck suffocating in some kind of sick snow globe.

I don’t understand people who live in small towns and think their actions are not witnessed, their lies not recorded. I don’t understand how so many people can snap their marriages apart with the effortless ease of stepping on twigs. I don’t understand why I’m feeling so used. I don’t understand incessant racial slurs in front of children. I don’t understand drunken name-calling over the phone. I only understand this: Given enough time, nearly everyone will disappoint you.

Most of the time I appreciate it all so very much, this world in all its painful, breathtaking glory. I swear I do. But sometimes I’m paralyzed, wounded, petty. Sometimes I can’t stop feeling sorry for myself, can’t stop ranting in my head at those I feel have wronged me. And those who haven’t, those who never do — these three beautiful creatures I’m incredibly blessed to share a home with — can’t do a thing to make it better. Not for all the sticky kisses, the breathy mother’s day wishes, the grubby fisted dandelion bouquets in the world — and that is what hurts the most.

.

I thought about deleting last night’s post, but the comments are already too valuable. I wanted to do away with the post not because I regret the message, but because I could have and should have done better. I was tired, and I was sad, and I was angry.

I’m no night owl — I do all of my writing during the day, when the coffee’s hottest and the light is least depressing. It’s interesting the way a post comes out differently when you write it long past bedtime, half dressed and freezing on a living room sofa, cloaked in the heaviest of darkness, the screen barely visible through the tears. I’m going to try to do better right now.

On last night’s post, Elizabeth commented, “How many people are aware that October is Domestic Violence Awareness month? Most people associate this time of year with pink ribbons and fundraising initiatives to support breast cancer research. ” She had no way of knowing that simple sentiment is what started this all for me a year ago.

I’ve bragged endlessly about meeting Gloria Steinem last year. The reason I met her was because she came to town for the 30th anniversary of Domestic Abuse Intervention Services in Madison. Our city magazine scored an exclusive interview, and they gave it to me. I spent 30 minutes on the phone with her, and then she invited me to be her guest at the banquet, and that’s where we snapped that picture. From her, I learned how incredibly pervasive domestic violence is, and how even though we’ve come a long way, an honest community conversation is still very much lacking. I’d also interviewed a close friend who is a TV news anchor for the same article, and she told me how frustrating it was to sit there in the newsroom and listen to the scanners trumpeting all of these arrests and know, because of safety and privacy concerns, that she couldn’t say a word on-air. I learned that in our own highly-educated, affluent, white-collar county in Wisconsin, between one third and one half of all arrests are domestic violence related. But these stories most certainly did not make up one half or one third of the news. They were only reported when someone died. Murder-suicide.

The article with my Gloria Steinem interview ran in the October issue last year, right alongside a stunning portfolio profiling breast cancer survivors (written by someone else.) I thought to myself, why can’t we do an article just like this for domestic violence victims? But I knew why. It wasn’t safe. Where would I find women who were safe enough? Brave enough? Whose situations were uncomplicated enough? It would never work.

I decided to try anyway.

Thanks to the help of a prominent local advocate, seven women — seven women — agreed to be photographed, agreed to use their full names, and agreed to let me tell their personal stories. The article will be on newsstands before the month is out, in time for Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

This is the cruel, hard fact: One in four women will be a victim of domestic violence in her lifetime, according to a 2000 report by the National Institute of Justice. Tell me, do you know four women? Believe me, the men and women who are victims of abuse are all around you. They look exactly like you. They are sitting next to you at the PTO meeting and they are pumping gas in the next stall and they are your sons and daughters’ friends and they are your sons and daughters. And it’s not always easy to tell. And it doesn’t start out violent. Men don’t walk up to women and punch them in the face, to have women say, “Gosh, you’re romantic, let’s get married!” It is slow, creeping, insidious, until you wake up one day and find you are not the person you once were, and you have no idea how you got here. It has happened to me, and since starting this article I have learned that it happened to many, many people I thought I knew. Listen to me: Every nine seconds in this country, a woman is beaten. How many seconds did it take you to read this post? If you read fast, maybe you can do it in a two minutes. 120 seconds. That’s 13 women while you read these words.

The several months spent living inside the words of these wounded women have not been easy. I’ve mentioned before the unfortunate tendency I have to sponge up the emotions of the people around me, and the interview and writing process for this piece affected me deeply. It cut, and it itched, and it burned. But it also healed, and it evolved, and it surprised. These women were such a gift to me. Their stories are now forever entwined with mine, deep inside.

That’s what brought me to my knees about Viviana. I did not know her. She was not one of the women profiled in my article — but she was exactly like them. She lived in the same town as my seven women. She volunteered with other victims, just like my seven women. She had managed to leave her abuser, just like my seven women. She knew several of my women, and they knew her. To me, reading that article, it was like I’d lost one of mine. And in addition to the mourning, part of me felt a sick lump of fear forming in my stomach for my new friends, and what the exposure from this upcoming article could mean for them. Bravery is not a strong enough word. It just isn’t. So, please: we owe it to them to listen.

In my article, I speak these women’s names, because the fact that they are using them is the most powerful thing of all. That’s why Viviana’s name squeaked painfully out of me last night, why I whispered it over and over again. Why I’ll continue to whisper it in my heart, along with the seven others I’ve come to know as well as my own. Why I’ll continue to listen for their stories.

May they all be heard.

When I was a kid, I was snooping around my father’s office and found a newly-purchased book about gifted children. Naturally, I assumed he was trying to understand his enigmatic daughter. For three full days I was flying higher than Willie until I mentioned it to dad, and he told me he’d actually bought it to learn more about himself. That he was the gifted one, the one who’d skipped third grade and all. Lesson painfully learned? When you’ve got it in your head how great you are, never allow others the opportunity to open their mouths in your presence. This nugget of wisdom has served me well over the years, at least when I’ve remembered it. Which is basically never.

My last post has left me exhausted, exhilarated, and mildly panicky. I never expected such a response, both in quantity and quality. I don’t know exactly how many readers I lost, but it looks like I actually gained one, and I was only dropped from one blogroll that I know of. Oh, and I pissed off someone in Massachusetts BIG TIME, but I don’t think that person had ever visited before. My money says they damn sure won’t again, ha!

All in a day’s work.

In other news, I was tagged for a meme today by the supercool Well Read Hostess, and for once, I actually felt like doing it — partly to lighten things up around here, and partly to change the subject. I mean, nobody will leave a hateful anonymous comment on a meme post, will they?? (Yes, Ray, I realize by saying no one will leave me a hateful comment I’ve just swung the door wide open for you. I can already see your bloggy head poking through. You’re like a monkey I just looked directly at.)

So that’s how this post started out, actually, as a meme. But then I felt guilty for responding to this meme when I haven’t to all the others. So then because I am an obsessive freakadelic neurotic I decided I would find all the old entries you’ve done that tag me for memes and I would link them all here and give lovely shout-outs to everybody — ooh, plus those sweet bloggy awards two people gave me many moons ago I’ll finally post those and thank them too! — and so I went to my “incoming links” thingie on my stats but then I realized they have to be current to find them all so then I launched into some major Google sleuthing but thank heavens I am having some sort of glucose crash that’s bringing on a debilitating and distract-able mood that I’ll just call “clarity” for now and I scratched that idea after about ten minutes. Then I went back to the original meme and tried to focus but I found myself answering “your mom” to like every single question and that’s when I finally quit. And that’s why you don’t see a meme here. But I am grateful to be tagged. I am. I’m just incompetent. I wear myself completely the fuck out. Daily.

But really? Thank you, all of you, for still being my readers.

Really.

Oh, and Dad? ;P

On Thursday I drank this magical potion and teleported through my laptop screen down the rabbit hole. It was so stunning that I regret to inform you I can only describe it with an amalgam of Alice in Wonderland and Poltergeist and Star Trek references, so here begins the most ghastly and expansive mixed metaphor in creation. You’re welcome.

The whoosh was deafening and I tumbled, slick with sweat, until I found myself on my ass, dress over head, at The People’s Party. It was too-small and low-ceilinged and dark but for the thousand sparklers pressed to my face, and it burned in the most exquisite way. Suddenly there you all were, my Google Reader sprung to life, Twitter Live. You really do exist in the flesh and this hasn’t all been some strange pixelated dream and it was dizzying and terrifying and exhilarating all at once. For an hour or so I felt so scared.

And then I let go.

I have heard there was drama, though I suspect much of it occurred in the overblown aftermath. I have heard there was Swag PR Sponsorship Overkill Roadkill, but I stuck to the ditch on those streets and so I didn’t smell it. I have heard it was ultimately overwhelming for many, but I didn’t feel it because for the first time in my life I didn’t over-analyze. I didn’t plot escapes to my room with MTV and a bottle of wine and no pants. I went with it. I lived completely in the moment. I followed the beacons of my friends old and new, familiar and un, and how you shined, how you shined, how you shined. For three straight days I participated fully in the magic and it honest-to-god was just that; magical. On Friday night a couple dozen or so of you stood up shaking before 1500 people and read the most unbelievably flat-out fucking amazing posts imaginable, and I wept. I was so moved. And that, my friends, is what this is all about for me. Not free stuff, not traffic, not status. How I felt listening to your words is why I am here, and while I’ll stay until the last of you goes home. It was the sweetest most fluid reminder, and I got punch-drunk on it.

I didn’t bring my laptop. I didn’t bring a camera. I clutched my crackberry like a pacifier but I tried hard not to suck on it. I spun on raucous dance floors. I took the small print on invitations literally, and without shame. I carved out chunks of sweet dark chocolate time with some very special people, and I won’t link to them — they know who they are. I laughed until my guts ached. I split a sandwich with a bum. I didn’t sleep before 2am three nights in a row. I didn’t skip a single session. I let glorious predator shoes devour my innocent and unpracticed feet. I got lost in the city, quite literally lost, eight or nine times.

But I kept on walking.

I honestly had the most amazing time. I’m not going to preach that BlogHer is what you make of it and only what you make of it, though I believe that is mostly true in life. The reason I won’t say it is that I get how complicated it is. I do. Usually the only people who say that are those who can walk into any room and be bodyslammed with love. They are the main characters, the Alice’s and the Carole Anne’s and the Spock’s. I admit I felt like one of them this weekend. I have never been so tightly embraced in all my life. I am grateful, and I had more fun than I ever imagined I would, but I won’t pretend that everyone can possibly share my experience. It seems important that I say this.

Though it feels good to step off this spaceship, to press back through the looking glass, to be sucked from the vortex of my screen and plopped back in my living room, I will miss it. I will forever remember the moment that each of you became living breathing flesh before my eyes and my god, how glorious you all looked. Every single one of you.