I finally finish updating the newest donations and what happens? Due to my amazing karma, our bathroom plumbing has erupted and our office carpet is soaked in some nasty-ass water. Every towel we have is now being used to hold off the flood until Roto Rooter arrives (good thing we're getting married because these towels are gonna be goners).

There go my evening plans.

The blog's discussing politics and film while sending books to a city in need. You guys are smart and nice. What more could you want?

What? Your own blog for donations, letters, news and wedding tips?

Done.

I totally understand. Please pass the word along, if you can. You link to me, and I'll link to you!

Post in the comments here where you've linked to the book drive and I'll make a list of supported sites.

Thanks! The books are already starting to come in. Also like last year, if you'd like to remain anonymous, just let me know in the email. (Anonymous donors are still eligible for the contest.)

Here it is. This year's pamie.com book drive.

Let the weeping of librarians begin!

Two screenwriters talk food between note sessions with producers:

STEE: What are we doing about dinner tonight?
PAMIE: I don't know. I think we're out of food.
STEE: We have some chicken nuggets, I think. Chicken strips. And couscous. I'm just thinking out loud. That's the bad version of dinner.

Please spend money on Fahrenheit 9/11 this weekend. Not next week, not on Monday -- this weekend. It's the only box office figure that matters.

Yes. I still work here. And I intend, despite my shamefully lengthy absence, to walk around like I own the damn place.

It's been a really busy couple of weeks capped off by a horrific last few days. Were I to have posted, it would have read, "Wrote recap. Wrote recap. Wrote recap. Bought Swiffer. Rinse and repeat." The "rinsing" would have been done with the new Swiffer. Because that thing rules.

And now, the quote of the day, compliments of Tracie, as we try to shake off some bad news about our neverending efforts to become Broadway staaaaahs: "After the nuclear holocaust, there will be cockroaches, Cher, and Monica the Musical." Amen, Potes.

I'm back. I swear.

About three months ago I had a girlie infection and was given antibiotics. About four days after that I couldn't breathe, ached all over and had a fever. I felt like I had the flu, but without any phlegm or coughing. I didn't feel sick-sick, but I felt miserable. I didn't know how I could have caught something when I was already on antibiotics. Then I did a little research on the Internet and saw that I was having the exact symptoms of an allergic reaction to the antibiotic. I called the pharmacy and they said that was impossible, and that I would have had the symptoms sooner, and that I probably have a viral infection in my lungs and I need to see a doctor immediately. Because it was late at night (and I was at work on The Bachelor), I knew I had to wait until the next day. I said to the pharmacist, "I'm going to not take the antibiotic tonight. If I feel better in the morning, what do you think I should do?" He said, "I think you should then tell your doctor that you're allergic to that antibiotic."

I was better in the morning. I've been meaning to tell that story for a while now. I don't know what it proves, other than you know your body better than anyone else can, so trust your hunches.

My life is one doctor's appointment after another these days. I'm seeing a surgeon this afternoon so she can access the abscess. "Don't panic," my doctor said to me after handing me the referral. "I just want to make sure we're catching something early rather than too late."

She's worried that I might have deep tissue damage. Here's what's so crazy. I'm just going about my day, minding my own business, not living in a hospital or suffering through a disease and then BAM. Hit with this. I didn't really do anything, other than perhaps I worked out so often that my body was too tired to fight the bacteria that...

I don't know if that's true. I'm just trying to Wonder Kill. I have no idea how this happened, and according to the doctors and the Internet this is a common thing that happens to everybody and I shouldn't be so alarmed. But then how come whenever I fess up and say to someone, "I have a staph infection," (which makes me feel like I just said, "I'm a dirty, dirty girl") they go, "Dear Lord. What the fuck is that? Did you just give it to me? Did I give it to you?" If it's that common, why haven't I met someone who got one, too?

There's a certain point when you get so tired of being in pain and dealing with gauze and bandages that you curl into a ball and whine and moan and be a huge baby. Then there's a point when you realize that's not going to help anymore, and that's when you pick up some knitting needles.

I read the whole Sedaris book. I didn't even take the Vicodin when I needed it because I wanted to be able to keep reading. That's probably the mark of a good book. I wish I hadn't already read some of the stories in the New Yorker. Stories about The Rooster crack me up so much that I have to put the book down and laugh for a while. I am sad that the book is over.

I made a stee Sims, but he kept peeing his pants and crying, yelling at me that he was bored. The real stee is much less trouble. Although he does sometimes pee his pants.

I was playing the scary Japanese girls ghost videogame, but I'm not very good at fighting the ghosts and I got killed about twenty minutes after the last save and I don't feel like repeating that twenty minutes again.

I got some writing done, which is unbelievable, but I did. Not a lot, and it's all kind of baby steps, but it's more than I felt like doing. Today I will try to answer all of this backed up email. There's a lot of it. I'm sorry I've been neglecting some of you.

I found a pattern for making cat toys on knitty.com, and I was all set to make some until stee reminded me that we already have three hundred cat toys. So I continued working on the bag I was making, and now I'm almost halfway finished.

What does the Vicodin do for me now? Gives me crazy dreams. Dad's in a lot of them, which makes sense as yesterday was Father's Day. He's always standing in doorways cracking jokes. I don't know what that's about. But he's always leaning in, checking on me, making some joke about the situation, and then walking out. I guess that's how I saw a lot of him when I was in high school, as I never left my room and he rarely left his recliner. He'd lean in the doorway, crack a joke about calculus and then walk back to the living room. It's comforting that he's visiting my dreams that way.

I had a dream that Chris and Allison decided to install a museum in part of their new house, but the art was all drawings their friends have done jokingly over the years. They had some dumb-ass scribble I did on a piece of paper, and Allison thought it'd be funny to grade all of the artwork in their museum. She gave me a 32 and wrote on it in chalk, "Day-Glo colors? Is this 1987?"

At the back of the museum was a dog dyed the color of the Earth. He was brown near his head and then kind of a frothy white around the middle and the back of him was ocean blue. He was beautiful.

I know reading about other people's dreams can be incredibly boring, but sometimes remember that this is also my journal. Allison's Museum cracked me up when I woke up because it seemed so logical, the way Chris was explaining it to me.

My cabin fever gets to me, so yesterday I tried to work out the parts of me that aren't suffering from the abscess. Stupid. Today all of me hurts.

House stuff. All good news, but it deserves its own entry. We are the J.Lo of escrow.

What else? Wedding stuff. Reading bridal magazines tells me that by now I should have already bought a dress, hired a photographer and found a florist. I've looked at dresses, I think I'm doing my own flowers, and I have no idea how to find a photographer. But the location has been chosen and is just about set, the save the date cards have been sent, we're working every day on some other decision that needs to me made, and it feels like things are running smoothly. That probably means I've forgotten something huge, I'm sure, like somehow I forgot to tell my mom or something.


I'M SO BORING.