Someone asked me today how my book tour was going, and I found myself answering, “I’m alive.” As soon as I said it, I realize how negative that sounds. When someone asks how we’re doing and we say “I’m alive,” it implies that we’re barely more than dead. But when I said it, I honestly meant that I feel super-duper alive -- in the full realm of human experience way. As in, I feel real. I feel raw. I don’t feel numb or flatlined, in any way.

What this means is that I’m good -- and bad. I’m giddy and grieving. I’m excited and disappointed and passionate and sexy and self-reflective and curious and frustrated and open. I feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. I feel called and appreciated. I am ALIVE. What more can we as humans ask for?

I had my apartment professionally cleaned for the first time today. This is something I thought I would never do. Right after I gave birth, five months ago, people kept telling me earnestly, “Don’t worry about the housework. Really, it can wait.” Clearly, these people had never visited my house if they thought I was concerned about the cleaning. It’s not like I’m growing penicillin in the kitchen (as far as I know), and that skunky smell in the bathroom is from an actual skunk who sprayed outside the window last night (I swear). I’m very neat, actually, and I’m great about doing the laundry. But the dust bunnies and I have a kind of tacit agreement; it’s akin to the “fish and guests start to smell after three days” axiom, except that the dust bunnies get to stay way longer.

You’re not supposed to decide what your child is going to be when he grows up, and certainly not when he’s only five weeks old. But I’ve decided: my infant son is going to be a foley artist. You know, one of those people who make the sound effects on radio dramas. I realize that, in the 21^st century, this pretty much limits him to the one remaining gig on A Prairie Home Companion, but I think he’s got a pretty good shot. In the middle of the night, he makes the most incredible sound effects. He does a convincing runaway stallion, the creaky basement door from a B horror flick, and - his best one by far - the bad boy peeling out of his girlfriend’s driveway in his red Camaro. It’s as impressive as it sounds. But there’s one problem with his budding talent: I can’t sleep through it. At all. As if the sleep deprivation from being up when he’s awake weren’t bad enough, I’m also up when he’s asleep.