I'm baaaack.

In the last installment of this blog, I had a final draft due. Between then and now I took puppy to day care one day so I could really get to work. However, the idea of her not in the house was so liberating that I dust busted EVERYWHERE. (Puppy hates the dust buster, so I can never do it with her around.)

I would have vacuumed, but that signals more of a commitment to housekeeping, whereas a dust buster says, "Just this one area, and then back to writing."

After a series of up-until-4 a.m.-ish writing/rewriting/writing/whining/writing/editing/editing sessions, I proudly e-mailed SO TOTALLY EMILY EBERS to Cheryl Klein at 3:37 a.m. on Friday morning. Then I crashed. Then I went to Target for FOUR HOURS (my equivalent of a spa treatment). When I got home, there was a message from Cheryl saying the manuscript never arrived. It was after hours in NYC so I couldn't get a hold of her.

Panic. Fear. Shame. Befuddlement. Perplexamentos.

I prayed I hadn't sent it to the wrong person. Like maybe the IRS man who's mad at me because I made a lame joke on the phone. ("Maybe the check wasn't credited to my account because someone had a nice lunch on me!" Silence from him. Then I got a lecture about how that did not happen. Would not happen. And was not funny.)

So I resent the manuscript to everyone I've ever met at Scholastic, hoping one would find its way to Cheryl. Luckily, it did. But I didn't find this out until Monday because, because it's been really hot here in Southern California.

It's been so hot that I . . . packed up the family and we went to the DESERT where it was 108 DEGREES!!!

Had a great time. We went rock climbing and, and various intervals, Teen, Hubby, Son and Moi were each stranded on a different VERY HIGH BOULDER with no way down. We went exploring caverns and learned that Oliver Stone filmed a dream sequence from THE DOORS there and defaced National Park property and is now banned from the park. Forever. We went to Amboy, the town someone bought on eBay. We took pictures of the shoe tree. (A tree with about a hundred shoes hanging from it.) And we ate a lot of French fries.

On Monday I was able to check e-mail and learned that EMILY had been caught in Cheryl's spam filter. While I was relieved, I was also concerned that the computer was making an editorial judgment about the quality of my writing, thereby deeming it spam-ish, and therefore ucky. This still vexes me.

Well, it's Tuesday. And we're back from the desert. It's 90 degrees today and that's nothing compared to where we were! Tomorrow I write my speech for the ALA/Booklist "What's So Funny" forum in New Orleans. davidlubar, Mo Willems, Jack Gantos and I are speaking. (Note that I am the only chick.) I really, really, really hope that the IRS guy is not in the audience. I'll let you know if he is.