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It's been really incredible to see how far and wide "Q & A" has traveled online, and the wide variety on people it seems to have touched. Son and my blue haired alter-egos have showed up on such diverse blogs as Mental Floss, NPR's Speaking of Faith to anti-abortion activist Jill Stanek's blog, which seemed somewhat ironic to both Son and me since we're both pro-choice and with my daughter and his sister living with Type 1 diabetes are we're supporters of embryonic stem-cell research. We were even tweeted by Jake Tepper,ABC's Senior White House correspondent, which set my evil twin saramerica's heart all aflutter. It's wild. The You Tube version of Q & A has over 537,000 views, and the Vimeo version has 115,000. Turns out our blue haired selves are viral internet sensations. It's made me wonder if I should dye my hair blue in real life and then my YA novels might make the NYT bestseller list. What do you think?

I guess even if I didn't make the NYT bestseller list I'd get to embarrass the heck out of my kids. Can you imagine my daughter's face if I showed up at her 8th graduation with BLUE HAIR? *cackles evilly, imagining the revenge for recent eye rolling and attitude*

So of course I've spent a time reading the comments on on various blogs and on YouTube etc, many of which say terribly complementary things about my mothering skills. It would be so easy to get, yanno, self-confidence right about now. Or even, dare I say it, a trifle big headed. But fortunately, I have the perfect remedy for that:



Yes, this was awarded to me by Son many years ago. We fondly refer to it as the FAT UGLY MUMMY Award. I particularly love the devil horns and the "I am EVIL" speech bubble, like just in case I missed the fact that I was not his favorite person. I'm seriously proud of award and have kept it pinned up on my bulletin board ever since Josh gave it to me in a fit of anger.

Not to be outdone, his sister has given me several Bad Mom awards and a this:



I can't remember which of the many times I've almost set the house on fire this was for, but I do remember it was well deserved.

It's always good to know where you stand. Last weekend over dinner, I was discussing Pat Buchanan's latest and Son said, "This is why I should be Dictator of America."

Daughter and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. I'm not quite sure what Kerri, our dinner guest, made of all this, but I decided to give Son some rope.

"Okay, Dictator. What's your platform?"

He said that he would close all US military bases in Europe (he happens to be writing a paper about this at the moment) and create closer relations with China.

"How would you create closer relations with China? And how would you do that without compromising our democratic principles?" I asked.

He gave me the "over the glasses look".

"What democratic principles? The US is a dictatorship!"

This is what happens when a merely gifted Mom argues with her Mensa teen so

I wrote double today than I've written any day this week - and I've had a very good week since I switched to first person POV. The MS has really come alive and now I can't stop these characters from talking - in fact they keep interrupting each other so whereas I wrote the first 13,000 words sequentially, now I find I'm jumping from scene to scene as each character starts talking.

Do any of you get superstitious about writing habits? I wear a spritz of perfume every day and generally I switch between two or three fragrances I like depending on my mood. When I was writing LIFE, AFTER I only wore one perfume, Hue Turquatic by MAC, because it seemed like when I wore that I wrote better and it got to the point where I was afraid to wear anything else. With the book I'm working on now, it's Chance by CHANEL. When I switched gears from writing the new book to copy editing LIFE, AFTER last month, I switched perfumes. Do I sound like a lunatic yet? Well, stay tuned...

So like I said, today was a very productive writing day, despite the fact that someone:



woke me up at 5 am, the little rotter. I had a hard time getting back to sleep, because a different character than the one from whose POV I'd been writing from was in my head chattering away. I half dozed for a little while longer then finally got up and showered and started writing.

But it took me until 4pm this afternoon to realize that I'd been wearing my undies back to front all day long.



Oh yes she did! So now I'm wondering...hmm, I had a really good writing day.

Does this mean:

a) I should wear my underwear back to front all the time when I'm writing a first draft?

b) I am certifiably insane

c) I need more sleep and/or

d) I need IV caffeine before I get dressed in the morning

So do any of you have weird writing superstitions/rituals?