I lost my camera. Not my deluxe Nikon but the little point-and-shoot I used to keep in my bag so I could photograph random occurrences for your enjoyment. It must be here somewhere! Yes, I have checked all my coat pockets!

Okay, I wrote that before I’d actually checked all my coat pockets. I was hoping that if I wrote that about the pockets I would then be able to walk over to the closet, feel out all my jackets, and there it would be. I guess I will go back to trying to bend spoons with my mind instead.

Goddamnit. $200 out the window. SIGH!

Earlier in the week I gave myself permission to pick all the good particles out of the Cheez-It party mix. Now all that’s left in the box is those anemic little pretzel twists you get twelve of on a five-hour airplane ride.

However, I have taught myself to make coq au vin.

There’s not a lot going on around here, as you might have guessed.

I guess I’ve been busy trying to finish the new book proposal, and I’ve started posting five days a week at MamaPop. Would you like to know who Drew Barrymore’s dating? Have you seen Christina Aguilara’s boobs? I’ve rather gleefully become part of the problem. In my defense, having grown up within an atmosphere of quiet intellectual snobbery, getting paid to write gossip is actually pretty liberating. I rationalize the project with the observation that some of the smartest people I know watch the dumbest TV shows. Is there some sort of inverse correlation between having a giant IQ and Tivoing “Rock of Love”? You see how my position is now completely justified.

I’ve also been idly wondering if, despite my inability to will my camera to reappear, I’ve developed a superpower that lets me choose where to have stress symptoms show up in my body. It used to be that when I’d get really freaked about something my front right incisor would throb; it’s like my mind would distill all my anguish into one little point so I wouldn’t have to think about solving the actual cause of the stress, I could instead focus on making a cute little hypochondriacal dental appointment. Except that after the tooth was declared robust my stress spent a couple years crippling my lower back before migrating south to morph into ugly patches of eczema on my shins, showing up on what an acupuncturist would identify as my “gallbladder channel.” After lots of nasty-tasting herbs the patches have faded, only to be replaced these bizarre achey throbs in the very same spots. So upon reflection I don’t actually choose the new spot where the symptom shows up, I just manage to disable the old one. I guess I won’t be levitating any time soon, either.

Here’s a new picture of Peewee!

Puppy Kryptonite

We figured it was about time to get him used to a collar and leash. Adorably, as soon as we put the collar around his neck he froze as though it were a kryptonite rosary. He sat in that spot for like two hours.

* * * * * *

You know how if you signed up for NaBlo and posted all thirty days in a row you might win a randomly-drawn prize? Well, some people decided not to claim their prizes. They never even bothered to write and say, “Sorry, I’m going to decline your prize, why don’t you give it to someone else?” How hard is that?! However, not being one to sit on her fanny and pout, Erica is running a contest to try to re-give away the prize she offered for NaBlo, a blog makeover, to somebody who really wants it. Go here to enter.