Last November, I gave up all the things I don’t really like to do anyway, including eating meat.  Unfortunately, my decision to replace meat with cookies turns out to have been somewhat unwise. 

I could have guessed that I’d made an unwise nutritional decision, but in fact the extent of my unwisdom was brought to my attention by my doctor, who called the other night to tell me I am severely anemic.  (I thought she was calling to tell me that they’d finally voted on a new health care bill and it required all doctors to actually follow up on blood test results that they’ve had since June, but in fact, she managed to stumble on my results without any kind of government mandate.  Whether that gives you solace in your concerns about health care legislation I cannot say. All I know is that I’ve been about the same degree of tired for 14 years, and that hasn’t gotten worse since I stopped eating steak.) 

When I heard about the severe anemia, my first thought was how I could use THAT news to my advantage.  I am here to tell you that in my family it counts for nothing.  My husband first checked, of course, as husbands will, to be sure that the chances are zero that the anemia is related to something that will trigger the need to cash in my life insurance policy.  After that, well, you still have to do the dishes. 

Soon, though, maybe I will be given something that will make me feel totally fired up.  And then look out.  For one thing, I will beging posting at a rate of greater than .7 blog posts a week.   And I will be organizing my bureau drawers and then coming over to your house and alphabetizing your spice rack. 

And this is also to say to the fourteen lovely, lovely blog readers who left comments cheering me on in the quicksand also known as revising-your-novel-yet again:  I ADORE YOU. And my husband, who really just wants to be sure I am well, I adore him too. And those who read and don’t comment, like the lovely Mari (and her lovely soon to be baby?) but hope for the best in the quicksand?  Yup.  I ADORE YOU also!

You know the novel I’ve been writing for as long as I’ve been writing this blog?  The one with forty-four (44) chapters?  The one I’m revising for my agent?  I am just beginning chapter 11.

God.

I have a deadline:  October 7.  Wish me luck.  And know that I am never, ever, ever going to revise this book again.  Well, that’s not true.  If someone buys it,  you’d better believe I’ll revise it again for them.

I don’t know if this much effort goes into every book you pick up at a bookstore or if I am just a slow, sucky writer.  But this is one big thing I’ve learned about writing a book:   that effortless sentence, that flowing paragraph, that interesting, quick aside?  If it’s in my book, you can be certain it took me a really long time to get right.

I suppose that’s one of the great pleasures of your first book, though.  I mean, if you get lucky and someone wants the next one, usually they want it faster than forever.   But I’m hoping with the second one I won’t need forever to get it right.

CalTrans — the mighty California Department of Transportation, home of lighted cones, and hard hats, and workers  in reflective vests  – promised that the Bay Bridge would be up and running by this morning at 5:00 a.m.  That it isn’t ready yet — because they found a crack up there and have to fix it before they let us loose on the bridge — is one of those great moments in steel and glue that, secretly, many people completely love.  Me included.

I mean, look — sure, there are 250,000 people who’d like to get their cars across that bridge today so they can go to the airport, or to work, or to visit someone who’s sick.  But there are another million or so of us who, like the public informaton officer for CalTrans, are riveted by and can barely contain our excitement at, well, the rivets they’re sticking into all that steel so the whole damned thing doesn’t come falling down into the bay.

Who, exactly, loves this stuff?  First, and most obviously, are those who never really grew out of their early devotion to all things construction-related, the people whose very favorite Christmas present was a battery operated crane that they could use to lift pretend girders over the prone body of their father, who’d had a leetle too much to drink at Christmas dinner.  For this group, the sight of all that steel being lifted onto the bridge, and the heroic repair effort that’s being undertaken is Christmas Day, only a lot bigger.

The second group are those of us who drive over that bridge — those of us who aren’t engineers, I mean — who really can’t believe the thing works, and stays up, and is so beautiful while it’s at it.  I’m in that group.

My feeling is that if they need a little more time for the glue to dry on the crack, well, they should have it.  Because I secretly think every time I go over the bridge, “Man, I hope this thing stays up.”  And anything they can do to keep it working, well, I’m happy to let them do it.

But wait!!!  I just checked the website.  They managed to fix it and it’s open!!  Yay caltrans.