Smells like spring spirit

We've been landscaping, and so we all smell perpetually like dirt and sweat. It's so lovely, though. I'm not a, shall we say, natural housekeeper, but I love working outside. No green thumb here, my plants are at any given moment considering giving up the ghost for good. But it feels so good to be outside, to be working outside. And I am, at long last, going to have a kick butt vegetable garden. Zucchini, pumpkins, tomatoes, peas, carrots, strawberries, raspberries, cantaloupes, watermelons=AWESOME! And I'm also tired. And waking up with plant dreams at 5 am and not able to get back to sleep. But Maggie's still soo cute, so that makes everything okay.

I got a copy of austenland and it's absolutely thrillling to see it all bound and jacketed and everything. This is when it finally feels real. I truly did not think that this book would ever be published. It was a side project for so many years, just a fun story I kept returning to, quite different from anything else I was writing. It's just so fun to see it coming about. It's just such a gooey chocolate cake of a book for me, a steaming plate of chocolate chip cookies, a carrot pudding with rum sauce. I probably should've gotten a new author photo, though. I was pregnant and didn't want to get new photographs, but my hairstyle is different now, and maybe the flip-out do in the photograph is too passe?

Happy happy Mother's Day to all you righteous women out there! Moms are so cool. Moms run the world. Moms have superpowers. I love you, Mommy! Thanks for putting blankets over me when I was sick on the couch and making bean with bacon soup and jello, and for taking care of all of us brats and not letting on how ungrateful and obnoxious we were. You are bombalicious.