Don't Shoot!

Although I like pretending that I am a scary bear, I am really just a big nerd in a moderately-sized woman's body. The little seal next to me is a snow sculpture.* I fear that with the recent discussion of Gov. Sarah Palin's love of hunting, people might accidentally blow us away with an AK-47 while hunting for wolves from helicopters. I just want to be clear that I am not, in fact, a scary bear.

Speaking of bears, Theo enjoyed his guest post stint this past Thursday so much that I decided to create a new feature called Theo Thursdays. Every Thursday until the election (or until Palin drops out), Theo will post an environmental message on CUSS. He is very excited about this opportunity and hopes you will enjoy it. We both hope that it will not need to continue after early November because Barack Obama will be our next president.

Speaking of bloody "sports," anyone who is interested in submitting an essay for a potential anthology about periods has until September 15 to do so. Check out Congratulations, You're a Woman Now! for details. I think it will be an awesome book along the lines of Sleep is for the Weak. We want to capture a diverse range of stories and experiences, so please spread the word.

*This photo was shot in Cooperstown, NY in February 2005. Husband and I went up there to celebrate our 10th anniversary of being together. I think it is clear that we are well suited for each other, as only crazy people go to freezing Cooperstown in February. We thought it would be fun to participate in their winter carnival and also see the Baseball Hall of Fame, though. As part of the carnival, we took a walking tour across a frozen lake, which was awesome. At the Hall of Fame, I posed for a picture with Curt Schilling's bloody sock. (I hoped that the pig who "donated" his/her ligament to Schilling's ankle would also be honored, but the museum seems to discriminate against non-human baseball heroes.) We had a great time.

Book Party and Belated Birthday Wishes

Today's my book party! Other than the fact that I look like a bloated version of the villainess from Superman II, I'm excited. Fun shall be had.

Also, I want to wish my cousin Rebecca a happy belated 21st birthday! The big day was last Saturday. I'll never forget the day she was born. Our family friends were visiting us (the Reisman clan) from Florida, and we were just getting ready to go out for the day when the phone rang. I was already outside, waiting in the driveway, and when I heard the news, I ran around the lawn like the lunatic I am. I was so excited to finally have a cousin! Anyway, Rebecca's been living it up in Dublin all summer, so I'm looking forward to seeing her in a few weeks when she returns to the states.

My family is here until tomorrow (which explains my blog absence for the last few days). In the meantime, I encourage everyone to submit a period story to Congratulations, You're a Woman Now! so that I have lots of good reading materials for when they depart.

Submit Early, Submit Often: Congratulations, You're a Woman Now! Anthology Wants Your Stories!

Earlier this year (or maybe even at the end of last year), I read the most hilarious blog post ever from Jessica (no link 'cause she made her blog private since then, sorry) about how she began menstruating at a young age and nearly missed out on a big gymnastic competition because she didn't know how to use a tampon, but then the hippie neighbors down the street helped her learn how by employing the mortifying technique of live demonstration. The whole thing made me want to read more stories about what happened when women first got their periods, learned how to put in a tampon, bought pads, etc. I was sad that, although there are whole collections of essays on women's funniest romantic catastrophes, women of all ages have no book to turn to when they want to laugh, cry, or nod in empathy when it comes to this rite of passage we generally share.

Then the little hamster who powers my brain woke up from his long nap, stretched, and ran really fast on the wheel. Gears turned, lights flashed, and I realized that I could help put that book together. I posted an inquiry about it at CUSS, and people seemed into the idea. My buddy Alex even agree to be a co-editor. She commissioned an awesome logo, got her tech guy to put a website together, and Congratulations, You're a Woman Now! was born. (Or should I say we got our collective first period?)

So what are you waiting for? Time is running short. The deadline to submit your thoughtful, hilarious, educational, moving, and/or horrifying essay about what happened when Aunt Flo came to visit is September 1. Yeah, that's less than four weeks away. Or something. (My shitty homemade datebook only goes through August 14 right now.) Details are to be found at Congratulations, You're a Woman Now!, so check it out.

We already have one rocking essay, and it will look really lonely if it is not joined by yours...

You're a Woman Now, so Demand to Read about It

Since Husband is in San Francisco for work (poor dude got back from London on Sunday night and took off for the West Coast bright and early on Monday morning), he doesn't need the car to drive to his office in Connecticut. I decided that I will take advantage of the availability of our automobile (which I always think of as his since his work pays for it and I never drive it for a variety of reasons, the primary one being that I hate driving and fear the maniacal NYC traffic) and motor up to see Alex. We plan to work out more details for my idea to put together an anthology of first/early period stories, tentatively titled Congratulations, You're a Woman Now!.

Not long after I first conceived of the need for an anthology of this nature, I emailed my friend who also served as my agent for Off the Beaten (Subway) Track and told him about it. Oddly, he was not nearly as enthused about the idea as I was:

I've read a few proposals for this very idea for an anthology and think it is a tough one. The problem is 1) to put an anthology together for sale you need some pretty big names, or at least recognizable. 2) the subject matter for most people is a bit squeamish, even for girls. I had two female interns read the proposals and both did not like... I could be wrong, so if you're passionate about it, sell me on it.

My initial reaction to his response was not constructive ("Well, those female interns are obviously cunt-face bitches who read shit like Devil Wears Prada while staggering around in their pointy-toes stilettoes getting snatch waxes, so they wouldn't know a good idea if it hit them in their Sephora-made-up faces."), but then I buckled down and realized that what my friend was saying is that I need to show that girls aren't squeamish about their first periods because the topic is fucking funny in retrospect. I think the outpouring of interest that is still emerging on my original blog post is a good indication that people do want a book like this.

Anyway, the goal is to come up with a framework for proposal submissions, a plan for compensation, and a website that organizes the whole thing. In the meantime, the more I hear from people who are interested in reading a book of funny essays about the early days of getting a period, the better. (For an example of the types of writing that would be in the book, see 1980 was an interesting year by Jessica.) The first battle in the war for this book is to demonstrate that it is a commercially viable product.