I'm Going to Live Forever

It's been a whirlwind month around here. My book comes out in a month (although, psst, if you're in Australia it's available for you on May 1 which, if you're there, is today—click here), and I've been a little busy. I remember when I first signed my contract and opened my day planner to pencil in my pub date which, at that point, was seventeen months away. I remember thinking, why so far away? We could publish this tomorrow.

Shh, listen. Do you hear that? It's the faraway sound of publishing people scoffing at my inexperience.

I had no idea how much there was to do in the meantime. Seventeen months is nothing. Developmental edits, copyedits, proofreads. Cover concepts, rounds and rounds of designs and redesigns. Reaching out to other authors for advance reads and blurbs, having galleys printed and sent away for trade reviews. A million (like, actually) other conversations and meetings and decisions that I wasn't privy to (thank goodness). 

And now, here we (almost) are. My author copies—softcover, hardback, audio—came in last week, and I'm trying to calm my nerves and plan a launch party. But also, life is just humming along like it always does. Sully and I have been playing a lot of Candyland. I tweaked my back today, picking Scarlett up.  Our furnace quit yesterday. Barclay and I hang out and talk about stuff that's not business or publishing-related. It's a very calm, ordinary time, with undertones of TERROR AND FEAR AND EARTHQUAKE LEVEL TREMORS IN MY HEAD AND HEART. 

It doesn't help that this is how my brain is: I think to myself, This might be okay. People might like my book and say nice things about it. 

And then I'm like, Maybe they'll say very nice things.

And then I'm like, MAYBE JIMMY FALLON WILL CHOOSE IT FOR HIS BOOK CLUB IF THAT'S STILL A THING JIMMY FALLON IS DOING THESE DAYS.

And then I'm like, But not everyone likes even a good book. Even a very good book has people saying bad things about it. And if people say bad things about a very good book, man alive, what will they say about my book?

And then I'm like, I'M GOING TO DIE BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO SAY AWFUL THINGS ABOUT MY BOOK AND IT'S GOING TO FEEL LIKE THEY ARE SAYING THOSE THINGS ABOUT ME AND THEN MAYBE THEY WILL JUST START MAKING FUN OF MY PICTURE IN THE BACK OF THE BOOK ALL OVER THE INTERNET. 

It's this drastic shift from a true thing to a possible thing to a ridiculous thing.

Yesterday, as Sully and I were leaving Canadian Tire, a car drove past and Sully said, "Phew. I'm glad that car didn't run me over. I'M GOING TO LIVE FOREVER!" 

And it was one of those moments where I was like, yes, this is my child. And I need to remember not to go from, That car didn't run me over to I'm going to live forever in one second flat. And if any of you want to hold me accountable to that in the coming months, I'd appreciate it.

First Spider on the Ceiling Day

You'd think the spiders would move in when it got cold outside. Maybe they do, maybe they're just really sneaky about it, but I don't really see them around in the winter. I don't see them until First Spider on the Ceiling Day.

It's exactly what it sounds like: it's the day, every year, usually sometime in March or April, after the temperatures have crawled above zero and held for about a week, that I see the first spring spider in my house. It is always, always on the ceiling of either my kitchen or my living room.

(But of course, First Spider on the Ceiling of Either My Kitchen or My Living Room Day is kind of a mouthful.)

Guess what yesterday was?

I always spend the days immediately after First Spider on the Ceiling Day with my head tipped back, anxiously scanning the room for the Second Spider on the Ceiling. There's never only a First Spider.

(Otherwise the day would be called, just, Spider on the Ceiling Day.)

This is kind of an appropriate week for the First Spider. It fits.

A few days ago, I was home alone with Sully and Scarlett. I was in the bathroom giving Scarlett a shower, Sully was playing LEGO in his bedroom, and I heard the back door open. It's a loud door; our house shifts in the winter so the door hangs a little crooked and you have to throw your hip into it to get it open. It scrapes on the floor. You can't quietly open that door.

I heard rustling and footsteps and thought, huh, Barclay's home a little earlier than I thought he'd be.

I wrapped Scarlett in her towel and carried her into her bedroom. I called to Sully, "Is Dad home?"

"Yep."

I nodded to myself, talking quietly to Scarlett about what we were going to do that day as I dried her off and picked out her pants and shirt.

Barclay wasn't there when I came into the kitchen a few minutes later. "Barclay?" The living room was empty too. I peeked around the corner. The back door was wide open. "Barclay?" Down the stairs. Out the door. "Barclay? Where are you?"

That was when I noticed the car wasn't parked outside. Which meant that either Barclay wasn't home yet, or that he'd come home, opened the back door, and left again—which, why?

Another thought crossed my mind then: maybe Barclay hadn't opened the back door at all.

"Sully!"

Sully came out of his room, still holding the LEGO car he'd been building. "Yeah?"

"Did you open the door?"

He shook his head. "Dad did."

"Did you see Dad?"

"No. I was in my room." He held up his car. "I just heared him open the door."

So there I was, standing in the kitchen, staring at the wide open back door and thinking, Someone opened the door. Someone has been here. Or, worse, Someone is still here. In the basement.

Reading this back to myself, I think of every scary movie I've ever seen, where a woman is just standing there, waiting, while her soon-to-be murderer advances toward her and the audience thinks at her, Run. Why don't you run away? I think some people think that the filmmaker does it to build tension, but I think they actually do it because it's realistic.

I was frozen, staring at the open door directly at the top of the basement steps. Straining to listen.

Scarlett chose that moment to start crying. Wailing. She was sick, poor kid, and she wanted her blanket. She wanted her blanket more than anything else in the world, and the more I stood there not getting her blanket, the harder she cried. But the blanket was in her bedroom and, honestly, I wasn't going further into the house to get a blanket. I picked her up and tried to comfort her, grabbing my phone off the table. I called Barclay. He didn't answer. I called him again. He picked up on the fourth ring.

"WHERE ARE YOU?" I hissed.

"Is something wrong?"

"I THINK SOMEONE'S IN THE HOUSE BARCLAY THE BACK DOOR IS WIDE OPEN AND SOMEONE CAME IN AND I THOUGHT IT WAS YOU—"

"Wait, what?"

"COME HOME."

Scarlett was crying into my shoulder and Sullivan was staring at me with dinner plate eyes and I was suddenly thinking that I should maybe, you know, get out of the house. But my feet stayed planted in the kitchen floor like I was a big old tree.

Then Sully said, matter-of-factly, "Mom, no one's in the house."

"What?"

"I opened the back door."

"You said Dad opened the back door."

"No," he was shaking his head, still clutching the LEGO car with both hands. "I heared Dad open the car door. Outside. So I opened the back door to let him into the house. But then he didn't come into the house so I went back to my bedroom."

So that was what had happened, and everything was fine, and Barclay arrived a few minutes later to no emergency at all and I felt dumb for overreacting and freaking everybody out and also dumb for not getting the kids out of the house when I legitimately thought someone was in the basement and ever since, even though I know there was no one in the basement, no one in the house at all, I can't help but jump a little when I'm home alone and hear a creak.

And now I'm checking the ceiling for spiders.