I'm Okay. Really.

For those of you who have called, emailed, texted, or commented to ask, the following all apply.
Yes, I'm okay.
No, I'm not mad at you.
Yes, I'm really okay, not just saying I am.
No, we're not in a secret fight.
No, Polly. We didn't break up. You should still buy me a birthday present.

Sorry I fell off the planet for a couple of weeks, but for you Ya-Ya fans, to quote Vivi, I dropped my basket. I got some news a couple of weeks ago that threw me for a loop and I just shut down. After a week of nearly continuous meltdowns, I shook it off and got back to normal. (Thank you, Prozac, for the recuperative powers you offer. If this happened a couple of years ago, the meltdown might still be going on. There was no "shaking it off" pre-medication.) So I had to spend all of last week doing all the things I didn't do the week before, when I was coming home from work and going directly to sleep. But I'm back in my groove now. Which means you all once again are a captive audience to my babbling.

The weekend before last, I went back to Woonsocket. The spontaneous tears stopped the day I knew I was going to see my mom. A coincidence? I think not. I swear, that women has some kind of old-world healing magic she's not aware of. (Either that, or I've been reading too many Nora Roberts trilogies lately, and I want to believe my life has magic too. Odds are, it's the latter.) I parked myself in my parents' house for 3 days, and left only to go to mass, Target, and to see Ella (my holy trinity of feel-good outings).

We had a joint birthday party for me and my godson, who turned thirteen.

And by joint party, I mean he got to choose what we were eating, he got all the cards and presents, and I couldn't eat the ice cream cake because it was chocolate, so I had to make my own.

In my family's defense, I didn't get presents because my birthday isn't for another couple of days and they didn't want me to have nothing for my actual birthday, the food Jeremy chose was exactly what I would have picked, and I made my own cake because I had something specific in mind and wanted to see if I could figure out how to make it. But still...

When my niece got to my mom's house, I was completely fascinated by her teeny little baby belly. Evidently, I was a lot less subtle than I thought, because after a minute or so, my mom said, "If you're done staring at Jenn's stomach now, I could use some help." Um, oops.

Then on the way back to New York, I stopped in Connecticut to visit one of my sorority sisters and her new daughter, Anna. She snuggled up on me and slept pretty much the whole time. Yeah, I hated every second of it.

So I think we've got the formula down. If you've got a sad Bookgirl on your hands, add downtime, family, and a healthy dose of baby love. The rest will take care of itself.