Dear Ms. Agent (to whom I mailed my movel because you looked so nice in your firm’s bio picture):

I just wanted to follow-up with you regarding my novel (which I know you thought was AWEsome!) that I sent to you some weeks ago. Frankly, I’ve been so busy I forgot to follow-up with you properly (or stalk you via [...]

Instead of giving my kids the “sex talk” when the time comes, I’m just going to give them this list.  It’s a list of some of the places they’ve thrown up.  Because sex = children = puke.  They should know right up front what they would be getting into and they should keep their pants on.

In my hair.

Down [...]

I have either set myself up for a very fun year or for a bleeding ulcer. My friend Becky and I have agreed to chair the school auction for next year. Everyone who has found out that we’re chairing the auction has either laughed or gasped. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Right now we’re [...]

We took the kids to the Rec Center again. Because (it’s fucking cold and if we don’t get out of the house we will end up giving the children “swooshies” where we put their heads in the toilet just for kicks) we’re all active like that. 

So anyway, I’m sportin’ my black sweatpants from 1992. These [...]

These are conversations via email with my mother. This little exchange happened while she was at work (she works for the governor) eating way too many sweets.

MY MOM:  I am very very sick – you need to come get me and drive me home. Someone brought cookies and someone brought spice nuts.  There is groaning and [...]

Doesn’t the mind reel? I won’t even bother telling the tale of why I wouldn’t tuck her in. Or why she envisions me wearing gaucho pants and Tammy Fay Baker’s make-up. I think it’s just enough to share the truth with you people. And the truth is: I do almost all the work in this [...]

**** Stupid novel.  I think I need a whole new kind of query letter.  I need to shake things up in that staid literary world. Cut through the bullshit. Something more like this:

Dear Ms. Agent (who looked totally nice in her firm’s bio picture):

I am querying you because you’re obviously young (or that’s an old picture) and I think [...]

I said out loud to my husband, “You can NOT have Suck my dick  as your ringtone on your cell.”

When all was said and done I had removed seven pairs of my kids underwear from the dining room table. Why?

I was sick with a fierce cold/sinus infection situation. And [...]

My children are Difficult and Cumbersome.

Wait. I have to tell this from the beginning. It’s been a long cold wet winter. I mean not-normal kind of cold. Climate change, get the eff out of my backyard and go melt Antarctica already. So as a way to get the kids out of the house and moving in [...]

I don’t want to go to the Amish. They aren’t allowed to have electric lights or drink alcohol or use deodorant. Is that the Quakers? No I’ve been to the Amish villages, I’m pretty sure it’s the Amish that don’t use deodorant. I wonder if deodorant is the work of the devil too. Just like zippers.

Anyway, [...]