4. The great outdoors. I spent many a family vacation either camping, staying in a cabin in the woods, or doing some natural variation thereof, and I can't help but think that it's stuck with me considering my affinity for hiking, biking and various other kinds of ings I prefer to do outdoors rather than being trapped inside at some stuffy, meat-market gym. I love the beach, I love the mountains, I can spend hours in a car en route to spending time at either or both... and though I never appreciated those trips when I was a kid, I sure as hell do now. (Hence why my 4th is being spent camping... with a bunch of actors. This oughta be good for some kind of blog fodder next week.)

3. Queen Street. I grew up in Edmonton (the mall!) and Calgary (the Stampede!), but never really felt at home in either. Nothing felt quite right until I moved to Toronto 13 years ago and lived in various spots all hovering around Queen Street. When I went back for a visit last July, sure, some things had changed... but on the whole it was exactly how I remembered it: vibrant, fun, packed with people, a real community feel - exactly the things I love about where I live now. You could walk everywhere and run into everyone, shop for anything you could possibly need from groceries to clothes, and then hit a pub or club in short order. One of the best summers of my life was the last one I spend combing Queen Street with pals before I split for San Francisco. I'm always gonna love it.

2. Certain TV shows. I'm sorry, but it needs to be said: a lot of Canadian TV was crap. But the stuff that wasn't? Gold. Say what you will about The Beachcombers, but it was the first Canadian TV drama I got hooked on as a kid, largely because there weren't many other options on the grid at the same time, and I found myself fascinated by the concept of a dramatic show about... logging. Seriously. But then I discovered Degrassi and that all fell by the wayside. Degrassi was the shit to me, because it dealt with so many things that so many people didn't want to talk about. I salute it for that, and for provoking my first incident of yelling "NO WAY!" at the TV when, during School's Out, Caitlin said the word "fucking" on national television. (I still love that the CBC didn't censor that.) Of course, I grew up on the Friendly Giant, Mr. Dressup, the Polka Dot Door, Today's Special, Jeremy the Bear... but Degrassi and The Beachcombers were the two shows that really made me pay attention to TV in a different way.

1. Shar and Renee. Two of my oldest and dearest friends, residing on either coast. They have seen me through all kinds of bullshit, been there during the best and the worst without judgment, always treated me with love and respect, visited me in my new homeland, welcomed me to stay with them when I went back to theirs... and the country is a better place with them in it.

And Alanis just came on iTunes as I finished writing this. How's that for synergy?

Happy b'day, Canuckland!

Note the word "tried."

I wanted to sleep in the worst way. My entire body was exhausted. I believe my brain was, too... and yet, falling asleep and staying asleep felt like an exercise in futility. No matter how much I meditated or listened to hypnotherapy CDs, I couldn't get to that blissful state that usually locked me in dreamland for a reasonably uninterrupted eight hours of zzzzz's. My brain was jumping all over the place. I was having disturbing dreams. And then, last Friday happened.

I'd made the decision after I finished this most recent script that aside from rewrites on what I've already done, I needed to take a break. I've been really proud of the work I've done - especially on these last two, in which I essentially opened many veins and really jumped into some deep emotional crap to create them (as evidenced by this last post.) At one point I'd told Sharolyn that I felt like I had tapped into this crazy energy that really connected me to the way I felt at the time something really profound was happening to me that I wound up recounting in one of the scripts... and I felt the person I was writing about, too. Almost like they were there with me. It was insanely intense and unlike anything I've ever felt before. And it wound up helping me write something that I had no idea I was capable of writing.

So following last Wednesday, I started feeling really depressed. I was drained. I went to my acupuncturist and when she nailed my energy point, I nearly leapt off the table. "I don't get it," I told her after I finished howling in pain. "I mean, I'm kind of sleeping but not really... and yet, when I hike I feel fantastic."

"Yeah, that's not real energy, though - that's just auto-pilot. It's like false energy, not root energy," she explained, and started telling me I needed to meditate before bed. I didn't have the energy to tell her it wasn't working.

By Friday I was sinking further. I really don't have anything to feel depressed about right now, yet that morning I found myself sitting at my computer answering e-mails, and I started to cry for no reason whatsoever. I thought maybe I was going through some kind of creative postpartum depression and rallied myself for a hike. Predictably, I felt great while hiking... and then when it was over, I felt drained all over again. I just wanted to go hide in a cave with my favorite comforter and pull it over my head.

On the way home - head down in "Don't bother me" body language - this guy walking past me grabbed my arm. I looked up and took my earphones out of my ear.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Why?"

He looked at me for a moment, unsure of what to say next because really, how do you respond to that? And then he pulled one of these out of his ass: "Hey, don't I know you? Yeah, you're, like, from Russia or something!"

And I said, "You don't know me." And I kept walking, sticking my earphones back in my ears.

A flash of fear washed over me. I knew he'd started following me. I'd hoped he'd get the hint and go away, but no. He followed me for two blocks until we came to a stop at a crosswalk. He walked right up next to me and started nattering again, and I took my earphones out and said, "What?"

"I'm sorry, I thought I knew you," he said. "This town can be really small sometimes. You looked familiar."

"It's okay," I said, and put my earphones back in.

But he kept nattering. And then he said something bizarre.

"You know, there was a homicide down the street," he said.

At this point I'm thinking, Really? This is your game plan? To follow me for two blocks when I've made it clear I want to be left alone, and now you're going to talk to me about murder as some kind of pick up line? Needless to say, his approach came off as more than threatening. So I turned to him and said, "Look, I'm sorry, I'm just busy."

And he went off. "Oh, I get it - it's because I'm black, isn't it? If I were blond haired and blue eyed--"

"The fact that you went there just proves that you and I have nothing to talk about," I said, cutting him off. At this point the light had turned and I crossed the street, and promptly ducked into a store and informed the woman running it that I was being followed and threatened, and that I needed to hide out for a moment to make sure I was safe. And then I sat there and shook for a bit. And then I went home.

The next day I called my energy worker and told her how I felt like I was going insane, and how I was attracting people who were fucking with me, which isn't the norm. I knew I was off kilter and not myself, and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. And she said to me, "Okay, what I'm seeing is you haven't disconnected from the energies you tapped into to write your screenplays, so all those people are swirling around you and taking over, and there's no more room for you. It's why you can't sleep, it's why you feel disjointed, and it's why you feel like you're stuck."

I knew exactly what she was talking about. The things I've been dreaming, some of the thoughts that have flitted in and out of me... they aren't mine and don't feel like me at all. And I forget when I'm in the middle of doing a creative project that there are certain things I have to do on an energetic level to take care of myself - chiefly among them, Epsom salt baths and periodically doing a scrub with lemon and sea salt. It all sounds odd, I'm sure. But for some reasons these things work for me, and when I do them on a regular basis, I run in peak condition. The problem is, when I need it most - in the middle of a creative boom - is usually when I ignore protocol. And then I wind up in trouble.

So now I'm in that mode that we've probably all found ourselves in - where you've eaten like shit for a month and suddenly your jeans don't fit, and you're going, "How the fuck did that happen?!?" Except for me, it's energetic. I did a massive cleansing in my apartment on Saturday that knocked me on my ass, and Sunday I felt more even keel, and was capable of my first decent night's sleep in about two months. Day by day I've been feeling better and more like myself, but naturally, I'm frustrated that I'm not back to 100% already now that I've figured out what the problem was. I'm recognizing that it's probably going to take a month of hard work to get me back up to par, so I've been doing my best to balance my responsibilities with taking good care of myself.

I've read a lot about this sort of thing recently - in fact, in one article Johnny Depp was talking about how after finishing a particular movie, he wound up super sick and drained from playing a character that required him to tap into some pretty dark stuff and he found it hard to shake. I get it. I get why screenwriters are paid so much, and in turn, why actors are paid so much. Getting deep into a character is intensely hard and draining work, and you can really fuck yourself up in the process if you don't take care of yourself. Actors and performers going mental, writers becoming recluses and addicts... it makes sense. I understand it. And I have such a newfound intense respect for everyone who envelops themselves in this craft. I'm watching movies and TV in a whole new way. I'm seeing my actor friends in a different light. I'm reading up on my heroes and learning from their processes differently, too.

For all the bullshit that seems to go on in Hollywood, the creative process behind it is a pretty fucking fascinating thing. Which is a good chunk of the reason why I want to be a part of it. The other reasons? That's a discussion for another time. I have a date with my bathtub, some salt, and Tori Spelling's memoirs.

I'm gonna be honest and tell you I really don't know what to write about today, because my life as of late has been the following: hike, write, eat, sleep, lather, rinse, repeat. Thankfully there were some social moments in there, or else I probably would've come completely unhinged. Actually, I think this past weekend taught me why a lot of creatives develop substance abuse problems. Spending that much time in your head writing about emotionally ugly things can really screw with you, and yet can create some of the best material.

(As an aside, I had a moment while working on this particular script where I was thinking I should drag out the appropriate songs from my youth - the tunes I'd listen to when I'd break up with a boy or something. Y'know, stuff like "Could've Been" by Tiffany and "Foolish Beat" by Debbie Gibson, or even better, "It Must've Been Love" by Roxette. But now I hear those songs and laugh my ass off at how melodramatic I was back then. Kind of breaks the mood, you know? That said, "Somebody" by Depeche Mode will always floor me, teenage angst be damned.

Anyway. I digress.)

So there I was, in dim light with my gut-wrenching playlist writing about gut-wrenching things, thinking, "Piece of cake, I've lived through this - it'll be easy to mine for content." Famous last words. I mean yeah, it was easy to mine for content, but the difference was being able to say what I really wanted to say about it, with the character I was writing for being the age I was when I was going through it. And then all of a sudden I was back there again, really and truly. It was like I was feeling that pain for the first time.

So yeah, I lost it. Went to bed. Slept 12 hours. Got up the next afternoon and wrote some more, and managed to go to bed at a decent hour and put in my usual 8. Didn't eat much, but wrote like there was no tomorrow.

I had this moment where I wanted to run from it all and find someone to talk to about it - it took a Herculean effort to get me back to my computer on Sunday afternoon, but I didn't want to quit when it was going so well and take the chance that I wouldn't start again. But the more I thought about finding someone to talk to, the more I talked myself out of it and decided the best thing would be for me to channel it into what I was working on. So I did. And then later that evening I got an e-mail that said the following:

"You're not going to have a lot of people you can talk to about this."

So very, very true. And I'm glad I put it all in the script. But man, am I ever looking forward to getting together with friends to talk about everything but what I've been writing about. Especially because writing about writing is getting a little too meta for me. Time to go experience life for a bit.

Can I just say that this is equal parts shit-your-pants terrifying and scream-your-guts-out exhilarating?

There's no way I would've been ready for this a few years ago. And I'm not saying I'm the world's foremost authority on how to take people cutting up your work, but I think years of working with a bazillion editors has made it easier for me to understand that it's not personal. Or at least, discern between those that are personal versus those that are structural, mechanical, what have you. Either way, scriptwriting has renewed my lust for writing in a way I never thought possible. I've always been passionate about the written word, but not to the point where I've wanted to dry hump my laptop upon completing a key scene. (Okay, that might be taking it a bit far, but you get my drift.)

And the thing of it is, I have no idea where I'm going to land. I'm seriously leaping without a net. There are a number of avenues open to me right now that I'm carefully treading on, which includes the interest of producers, agents, managers and the like, and that feels nice. But I know that there's no deal until there's a deal, and that the way something appears might wind up as something completely different by the time all is said and done. So I'm staying open to what comes, the possibilities that present themselves, the opportunities that arise.

It's kind of funny because to the casual observer, it would appear that there's nothing to get giddy over... and yet, I am. I'm beside myself with glee that I've taken this step, beyond happy that there are people enjoying the work I've done, and joyous beyond compare that I'm just taking this step - this first, teeny tiny step. God knows what's gonna happen when I get to live the dream. I might explode.

I can't wait.

There's just one problem - I really suck at this.

Here's the thing. If I haven't made it evident to you, allow me to be blunt: I fucking love what I do for a living. I feel like my whole life is a vacation. So if that's the case, do I really need to take a break? My body is telling me yes, but my mind is telling me no... and therein lies the issue. My fucking brain will not shut up. It's all excited about everything we've got going on, all the plans, all the ideas, and it refuses to stop chattering at me about it.

Perfect example: last week I finished working on a spec script for one of my favorite TV shows. I knew it wasn't 100%, but my goal was to give myself permission to write like crap (as I learned from reading an article by Jessica Bendinger, who wrote Bring It On) so that I could at least finish what I was working on, then go back and tweak it later. Cut to me laying in bed, wide awake, having the following mental conversation:

Brain: Hey.

Me: What.

Brain: You awake?

Me: Yes, you won't let me go to sleep.

Brain: Cool. So you know that scene where x, y and z happens? I think it'd be better if you switch it around and break it up a little.

Me: Yes, I've already thought of that, but it's time for bed, so let's talk about this tomorrow, okay?

Brain: Yeah, yeah. Right. Okay.

(About 10 minutes passes.)

Brain: Okay, you remember the part where you make the guy-

Me: Are you kidding me?

Brain: What?

Me: We gotta sleep, dude! If we don't, we'll be useless tomorrow.

Brain: Yeah, but if I don't tell you this right now, I'll forget tomorrow.

Me: No you won't. For Christ's sake, you remember every phone number we've ever had since we were six. You're not going to forget a plot point overnight.

Brain: I might. Just to spite you.

Me: Goodnight, and please, quiet down.

Brain: Humph.

(Another 10 minutes pass.)

Brain: Ooh! Ooh! You know what you can do to the part where-

Me: Look, I love you, but SHUT. THE FUCK. UP.

And so it goes. And I know full well that this is how I got sick. The crazy thing is that creatively, I'm still on fire... but I can't do this and run myself down, or I'm never going to survive. So I figure these last few days of May are my way of figuring out the balance - how to nurture rampant creativity, but rest when it's time to rest. How to write like a triathelete, but disconnect from the adrenaline rush long enough to recharge and come back at it twice as hard the next day. This is so not gonna be easy, but it's so necessary.

Here goes. Wish me luck.

I've been having dreams about my ex-boyfriend.

There've been a lot of them over the past few weeks, but I had a couple in the last week that were really insanely vivid and seem intent on sticking in my mind. In the first dream I was in his building's garage, and I was trying to figure out a way to get out without him seeing me. His neighbors all recognized me and were being nice, almost as if they expected me to be there. Then suddenly I saw his car pull into his parking spot, and I was trying desperately to hide... but I remember seeing all these flowers in the car. Like, tons of them, to the point where visibility was likely an impossibility. And as he got out of the car and turned around, I woke up.

In the second one, I was out somewhere... a lounge, some reading event, something social. I spotted him, he spotted me, and it was one of those things where I didn't feel like pulling a Miranda and running in the opposite direction was a reasonable reaction. So, I gingerly approached and we traded pleasantries, and then the conversation quickly grew serious. He told me that his mother had moved to his neighborhood and they had a falling out, and they weren't speaking (totally odd, as his mother is an incredible woman and highly communicative.) He was really upset about it and I was consoling him, and he kept saying, "Don't leave. Don't leave." And I woke up.

Needless to say, I was completely unsettled. I grabbed my dream dictionary and looked up the things that stuck out most to me: the flowers and the ex. The entry for "flowers" told me that they signify a new beginning and new growth, to which I was like, the hell? How can I have growth with someone I haven't had a conversation with in two years? Unless the growth is mine alone, in which case, go me. The entry for "ex" said, and I quote, "You are still searching for your ideal lover." THANKS FOR THE FUCKING NEWSFLASH, DREAM DICTIONARY.

I really don't know what else to say about this, because it's so baffling to me. There's no doubt that he was a huge part of my life, and that I loved him more than any other man I'd ever loved before. The entire time I was with him, all I could think about was how I didn't deserve him. And how someday he was going to go away. That wasn't the reason why we broke up, though. I'm not saying that our relationship wasn't fundamentally flawed from the beginning, because it was - on both our sides. But I can't talk about his side, because I don't know it - I only know mine. I'd be a liar if I claimed that it didn't make me sad to think about it. But what really makes me sad is how broken I was before it, during it and after... and how adept I was at masking it all.

I remember right after our split that I only allowed a couple people to see what a total fucking mess I was, although in retrospect, most of my actions during that time were probably pretty telling. I was drinking too much. I was blatantly hitting on - and making out with - acquaintances in hopes that it would get back to him and hurt him. I was being a party girl. I totally reverted to wounded teenager behavior and acted so embarrassingly abhorrent... ugh. It makes my skin crawl and I find myself overcome with the desire to take a Silkwood shower whenever I think about it.

But the thing of it is, if I hadn't gone through that relationship and the subsequent fall-out of it, I wouldn't be where I am now. And the other thing of it is I think that he came to me to force me through that growth. I honestly don't know that if I met him today that we'd have had any kind of relationship at all, because clearly it was who we were four or five years ago that attracted us to one another. Maybe we were supposed to be a catalyst for one another. Actually, I suspect that that's the case, as I've never sunk so low and stayed there for nearly three years, only to find a way to break free and start ascending in a way I never thought possible. I can only hope that the same has happened for him.

There are things that I might always miss: the heated discussions we'd get into on the phone about life events that he would derail by asking "what are you wearing?", our adventures all over Cali and New York (and once, the Bahamas), the way he'd challenge me (even when it pissed me off), how he'd squeeze the most ticklish part of my thigh and wouldn't stop when I squealed in protest, how he made an effort to befriend my friends, the insanity of our chemistry. I don't think I've ever experienced anything as amazing as the feel of his skin under my hands, or the physical connection we had once it was linked to the emotional. For me, it was of mythic proportion. But to an extent, it was also built on deception. I wasn't authentically me. Not like I am now.

A friend once asked me if he was the one that got away, and my answer was this: if he were the one, he wouldn't have gotten away. He was as close to a Vaughn or Angel as I've ever come... but I've gotta think that if he were my match, he'd still be here somehow. And he's not. So maybe I'm just going to miss those things until I meet the real deal. Because I finally have faith that I deserve all that, and more.

So. What to write about. Oh, I know: a tale of girl getawaying and the joys of Mercury Retrograde!

Our grand master plan was to drive up the coast and enjoy the ocean scenery before cutting inland. Attempting to do this without a solid map led us on a wayward jaunt through Oxnard, and what was normally a four and a half hour trip took nearly seven. Good start! But we made it there all the same, and were taken to our awesome bungalow overlooking a golf course. We immediately started cooking up plans on how to fuck with the golfers. Some of the ideas we came up with:

• Screaming "You suck!" right at tee off.
• Sounding an air horn intermittently.
• Standing on our patio pantsless with the binoculars.
• Making signs advertising a car wash, then waving them around while wearing bikinis.

We lost interest in the golfers, though, by the time we made it to dinner and discovered that our hotel encouraged the making of s'mores in their entryway fireplace for dessert. So rather than go for a chocolate molten lava pate thing to end our meal, we went old-school and fired up some balls of sugar - that I'm totally not allergic to, nosireebob - for placement on Keebler graham crackers and Hershey's squares. Had it not been for the loud talker with a proclivity for verbally abusing his girlfriend who decided to join us and use it as an opportunity to tell his lady love how everything she does is wrong, we woulda stayed there all night.

But as it was we had sangria waiting, and movies, and discussions and whatnot. And the next day I had a yen to hike the looming hillside that we were warned was "tougher than it looks and a butt burner." Sounded like my kind of hike. So the following day after a massage that left us mush mouthed, Retta and I got dressed in our hiking gear and started out. First we called the spa to let them know where we were going - the Lion's Head trail. They said, "That trail is closed because it's not clear."

Surely you see what's coming.

Yeah, so Retta and I venture out using the oddly-drawn and not totally cohesive map that we got at the spa, and went in search of the trail head. It took us 20 minutes to find it, and at one point came across turkeys on the golf course that I was tempted to race after... but then we found the starting point and we were on our way. Now, the trail we were allowed to take was open, and actually merged with the Lion's Head trail. So when we got to the merge point, it didn't seem so bad, so we made an executive decision: we were doing Lion's Head, if only because our egos - and butts - demanded it.

The trail - which was actually quite clear - took us up to nearly 1200 feet in elevation, giving us an incredible view... and the further we went, we were still able to see that the trail circled the property we were staying at. The problem was at some point it was supposed to cut downward toward the winery and lead us back to our room, but somewhere along the line we missed that turnoff point, and the trail took us down the other side of the mountain and spit us out in a farm. On said farm was a large moving truck that had the following spray painted on its back door: "MINE. So that means don't fuck with it." Duly noted.

Three hours. We had been gone three hours. It was starting to get dark, we were walking at the side of the road like a couple of hitchhikers just begging to become the plot of a horror movie, and all we could do was laugh. Eventually we called the hotel to come get us, which they did, and then we proceeded to order a ton of food from room service to make up for the caloric deficiency we were experiencing from our endless hike.

And yeah, I guess there's a lesson to be learned about listening... uhm, what was I saying? Oh yeah - I climbed the mountain. Goal attained.

At last week's Cabal we didn't do anything overly constructive (on purpose, anyway - one of us had a rad breakthrough on some writer's block), but we did discuss what each of our work days are like. As one put it, "It really helps me to know what it's like for you guys to work versus what it's like for me to work, because I already know what it's like for me to work." This prompted one colleague/friend and I to exchange glances, as just the day before we'd discussed how much we enjoyed having the opportunity to work in our ginch, or - if it's particularly swelteringly hot - naked.

Case in point: last week I went on a bender. Not a drinking bender - a writing bender. These happen to me at least once a month where I become so inspired by something I'm working on that I don't answer my phone, e-mail, pay attention to Facebook, Twitter, or even leave the house. And if I change clothes, it's a fucking miracle. I have no idea how this trend started with me, but sometimes I can get into such a creative groove that I fear doing the slightest little thing will throw me off.

So yes, for two days straight last week, my workday looked like this: eat, write for two hours, take an Alias break, write for two hours, eat and take an Alias break, write for two hours, take an Alias break, write for two hours, take an Alias break, write for two hours, eat and go to bed.

Now. You'll notice that nowhere in there did I say "get dressed," "do hair," or "shower." Believe me when I say I'm ashamed to admit this, but yes, when I get into a groove, I sometimes find I have to force myself to shower... but I will let it go for a day or three, just in case. I don't know what it is about the smell of my B.O. that signifies accomplishment - maybe because it reminds me of the first race I ran and medaled in (which, honestly, everyone medaled in - it was like the Special Olympics), maybe because it tells me I'm so freakin' busy being creative that I can't take a shower. Whatever it is, I know it's gross. But it's tradition. So the man who marries me needs to be aware that for at least two days out of every month, I will smell like rotten onion soup. (That said, for the right man I might convince myself to break protocol and shower through a streak. I dunno. We'll see.)

This isn't to say that I always write while sitting in my own filth. It really is a once-in-a-while phenomenon, though I will cop to not making much of an appearance effort unless I know I'm going into a meeting. Every once in a while, when I get bored of looking at my casual image in the mirror, I will start my day with a blow-out and closet consultation as if to convince myself that I work in an office environment that necessitates such attention. But on the whole my work wardrobe consists of yoga pants, jeans and t-shirts, wifebeaters and the like. I have been known to get up, change out of yoga pants into gym gear, go hiking, then shower and change into fresh yoga pants to sit at my desk and work. (Strangely, my UPS and Fed Ex delivery boys don't seem to mind.)

Yeah, I leave the house, and get to do neat-o things, and interview fun people, and attend fun events... but on the whole, it's just me and my computer. And yeah, the underpants/naked thing. It's been known to happen on occasion, but because I get deliveries on a semi-regular basis, it's kind of a pain to run for my robe repeatedly throughout the day when I could just be semi-decent and answer the door. That said, I have been known on occasion to strip down at my desk when I come home from a long day of running around, and it's often done while checking e-mail. And I think that's largely because there's something about my desk that signifies a comfort zone to me. (Go figure. The place where I feel most figuratively naked makes me want to periodically get literally naked.)

Aren't you glad you know what my inner sanctum is like? Should make for some interesting visuals as you read something I wrote in Business Traveler (or any of the other peeps I write for.)

Oh, and it probably goes without saying, this is way NSFW. I'm gonna get crass up in here.)

* When you've passed that threshold into the part of discussion that pretty much seals the deal, but nothing has been said yet, sucking the juice off her fingers after she squeezes lemon in her drink is hot. (If she's into that. )

* If she's responsible enough to tell you about her STD ahead of time, it's reasonable to decline relations, but obviously way cool if your response is, "We'll just have to play it safe." That said? If your version of "play it safe" is "she does everything while I do nothing," move along. Sex is a give and take, man. She's not a live-but-passive sex toy, so don't make her feel like one.

* If you don't have condoms, get them. She'll wait.

* Going to that whole "playing it safe" thing again? Sticking a finger in her ass doesn't count.

* If, after a long day followed by too many alcoholic beverages, you are unable to get wind in your sails, don't turn it into an international incident. You're not the first dude it's happened to. We know this. And while we're slightly disappointed, we know it's not the end of the world. Besides, miracles happen after water and a nap.

* However! If, after water and a nap, your game plan is solely to tit fuck her, know that this is a condiment and not the main course. Yes, it's fun for you. But other than a mild enjoyment of you getting pleasure out of it, it's pretty fucking boring for us.

* To reiterate: sticking a finger in her ass is not the only way to pleasure her. Pull something else out of your bag of tricks. Like that old standard, "penis in the vagina." Besides, how would you like it if all we did was stuff a digit up your bum and called it fun? (Actually, some of you would probably love that. So lemme repeat: give and take. Variety is the spice of life. Blah, blah, blah.)

* The answer to "Do you want a towel?" is ALWAYS yes. While at some point in the day we will likely take a shower, we don't want to wear your crusty man chunder around our necks until then. Don't ask. Just get the towel. It's gentlemanly (at the very least.)

This one-nighter PSA has been brought to you in partnership with NBC's The More You Know.

I'm in New York while I write this, greatly enjoying the silence that has followed an evening of catching up with friends (and making new ones - Brian, I'm looking in your direction...) So while I'm technically late on my deadline, it's only 10 in California... so I'm still keeping up on my promise! But because I'm up so late on a school night - and one where I have meetings in the morning and afternoon - I feel it necessary to keep it short. Why? Because I've been up since 4am.

Anyway. So I'm packing and eating at the same time, and it takes me until I get to terminal 3 at LAX to realize that I've dribbled yogurt on my shirt and pants, and it's now dried to a fabulously white crustiness, kind of like... dried yogurt. For the most part I was able to cover it with my sweater, and by the time I made it to the gate and boarded, I'd given up on caring. Most people on the plane were comatose and could give a hoot that I'd missed my mouth this morning.

And then I spent five creatively-charged hours crammed into the middle seat on the plane, working away on my laptop. I took a slight Alias break at one point when I was reaching the brain explosion moment that comes when I break through - and then write - a massive part of the script I'm working on, but then something miraculous happened. Usually I need a day or two to recuperate when I do one of those, but this time? An episode of Sydney Bristow's antics later, I was back in the saddle. It's been a long time since I've been this excited about writing something... and you know, even if it goes nowhere, I'm still excited that I get to write it. The process is unlike any other that I've ever experienced before. I love it.

I landed early, gunned it to my hotel, had just enough time to change for a business dinner, then met Sandra for drinks and deep discussion. My trips to visit Sandra always wind up bearing something tremendously amazing afterward... and I have no doubt that this trip will be the same way - and not just because I got notice from my editor that we'll be attending a premiere at the Tribeca Film Fest.

And this is barely even day one...

• Operation: Kill Cold is still in effect. I went to The Torturer (my acupuncturist) yesterday and said, "Please get rid of this - I can't take it!" So she cupped me and sent me home looking like I'd given myself hickeys with a vacuum cleaner attachment. I'll admit that I felt much better this morning when I got up, though I did feel a bit like I was running out of steam in the afternoon. I've been put on house arrest til Friday, which I ignored today, I admit. At least I'm honoring her No Working Out rule (much to my chagrin. There's hills to be hiked, dammit!)

• Last week I was having a conversation with my dad, and I'd said something to him like, "Oh, I figured you would've read about XYZ in my blog." And he said, "I stopped reading your blog after you told me it wasn't real." I started to protest and began to explain to him that it's not that it's not real, it's just not my whole entire life... until my brain jumped in and said, Doofus, if thinking it's not real means he won't read it, LET HIM THINK IT'S NOT REAL. Right. So, yeah. TOTALLY NOT REAL.

• My dreams have been really vivid lately, with a lot of them telling me - according to my dream dictionary - that I'm going through a transitional phase that's really good, and essentially ditching a lot of bad crap out of my life that doesn't serve me anymore (but you got the gist of that from my last entry.) Last night's was a little less clear. I dreamed I was on a horse and someone else was riding along with me. We were going up all these hills, one right after the other, and finally my horse was like "Fuck it, I'm not doing this one." So it stopped and kind of wandered off to the side for a break. Next thing I know I'm futzing with a remote that won't do what I want it to do with my little mini-DVD player, and I remember there being a bunch of people around that I knew... and that was it. I woke up. The dictionary says that horses represent energy at our disposal... so maybe the dream was telling me I've climbed a crapload of mountains, and now it's okay for me to take a bit of a break and... enjoy some TV?

• In just over a week's time I'm going to be participating in my first official BSP.

• I have the great fortune to be working with two really gifted writers, helping them both reach the next point in their careers. Both have an incredible passion for their gifts, both soak up the information we exchange like sponges, but one loves to fight me. I feel like I'm the damn Writer Whisperer when I work with her, I swear. One afternoon I gave her my advice on something and she kept railing at me so much about it that I had to ignore her IMs. Next day she messages me and says she wanted me to know I was right, and I was so elated that I yelled at my computer screen, "DAMN RIGHTS I WAS RIGHT!" We went to a spa event together and when I told her, we both laughed about it enough that we nearly wet our respective pants. So, clearly she knows she pushes me, and I know I push her... but I love that she's so dedicated to what she's doing - and on such the right track - that she pushes back. It makes for an interesting dynamic. Working with both of them is awesomely rewarding on a lot of levels, and helps inspire me, too.

• It's been about two and a half months, and though it doesn't consume me the way it did the first month, I still miss my dear departed kitty. Aw crap, here come the tears. Medic!

That's enough out of me for today... more work to do, and not enough hours in the day!

And you know what? I couldn't be happier. But man, did it ever take a long-ass time to get to this point.

And that was supposed to be the turning point: getting back into my own living space. Literally everything dropped into place at the last freakin' second in such a way that was so agonizingly nerve wracking that I seriously questioned if I deserved it... which was a big problem in of its own right, but we'll address that at another point. Going back to getting into my current living space, yeah, I loved it to pieces, but from the moment I moved in I was starting to wonder if I could really keep it. I spent my first two weeks here sleeping on an air mattress because while I scraped together every penny I had to rent it (thanks to some very generous benefactors... you know who you are...), I didn't yet have the dosh to spring my belongings out of storage. Finally everything moved in, finally I was getting settled... except I felt unsettled. A lot.

January started with a pretty rude awakening when a freelance client I worked for pitched a fit and decided the work I'd done was unworthy - long after I'd done it - and didn't send me a check (or it got "lost in the mail" as I was told... whatever, the point is I didn't get it.) The result put me behind in rent, but thankfully something else came in at the zero hour. But I was still having the same problems - clients not paying, or paying super late (if at all.) I had tons of work, and it was work that was okay, but not entirely challenging me on a wickedly fun level. I'd been running in circles trying to change both those things, exploring avenues I'd never explored before in an effort to try to dislodge something and get it moving... but to no avail. I turned to my therapist, my energy worker... and yeah, we were able to get through some things, but it was getting to be a dark, dark time.

So there I was, three weeks ago. I hadn't paid my rent for March. I had to write my landlord a letter explaining my situation - complete with e-mails from people who had been promising to pay me, and were drastically late in doing so - begging for some kind of stay of execution. If I didn't have money to pay rent, I reasoned, I sure as hell didn't have money to move out. I was existing solely on quick-cook oats, which was pretty much the only thing left in my pantry at that point. And I was getting deeply annoyed by people offering unsolicited advice about how to find a job, as if I had no clue how to send out resumes. And yeah, I know people were trying to help, but goddamn - I've been gainfully employed since I was a teenager, so clearly I know a thing or two about finding work... and we're in a recession. It's not the easiest time to find a gig, you know?

(Ha, so you probably know what's coming up next.)

Yeah, so I'm sitting on the couch watching Alias (hello, late on the bandwagon, but how awesome is that show?) eating my quick-cook oats, and I looked skyward and said, "You know what? I can't do this anymore. I can't worry like this. It's killing me. So if I wind up homeless again, fine. I'll deal. But I'm through with panic and all that. It's on you now. You get me out of this." I finished watching Alias, and I went to bed.

Now, here's the key thing that happened with my little mini-monologue to the universe - I meant it. With every bone in my body, every fiber of my being, I meant what I said. I was full-on white-flagging it. I was done-diddliy-un with freaking out about money, and freaking out about work, and freaking out about how I was going to eat... I just didn't have the energy for it anymore, and quite frankly, I wasn't completely against the idea of selling oranges under the 10 freeway like I'd joked about many times over the past three years of struggling. At least I'd be getting more vitamin C and D, you know? But in that moment, I was so over this bullshit that not another possibility popped into my head outside of letting it all go.

The next morning - yes, literally - I awoke to find an e-mail in my in-box from someone who had found my professional profile online, and they were looking for someone with my capabilities for a blogging project on AOL (who, yes, I already write for, but there's so many facets of the company that trying to work your way through it gives you a wicked Rubik's Cube headache.) Long story short, I got hired days later for a gig that is essentially full-time freelance (if I want it to be), allows me to travel, gives me creative freedom, and the benefit of awesome people to work for. And all of a sudden, the floodgates opened. More and more work offers have come in, editors at mags I really want to write for started taking my pitches, non-paying clients started paying up.

I'm not gonna lie. I cried, I was so happy. And then I called my accountant and said, "Help me not screw this up again!"

I'm by no means out of the woods yet - I have A LOT of things to pay off, and I'm still behind on a lot. But the noose is loosening, and for that I am forever grateful.

So I guess the whole point of me posting this is for those of you who are having trouble to know that it's not the end, even when you think it is. Something comes out of left field and scoops you up just before you become shark feed. It's possible. Really.

And I'm not going to apologize for being ridiculously happy with my life right now. I put in a lot of hard time to get to this point. And now? I'm going to enjoy the hell out of it.

Allow me to explain. (And no, this is not an April Fool's thing.)

"Define aggressive," I said.

"Well, you know," he hedged. "They might bump you around a bit, or fight with one another over you."

I frowned. I'd never heard of this before, so I shrugged it off and continued waiting for dinner to arrive. Because it was taking longer than... well, anything ever in the history of the world, Allison went to a nearby computer terminal to check her e-mail and Facebook. When she returned, she delivered news courtesy of a friend in the know: "They will try to hump you."

Jess and I froze in place. "They will..." I managed.

"Try to hump you," Allison finished. "I was talking to my friend who lives here on Facebook and he was telling me that the dolphins get worked up and try to hump you."

I was trying to stay unconvinced, expecting this was something I could look up on Snopes when I got back to the condo. And sure enough, the second Jess and I got back indoors we raced to my laptop, where I looked up "dolphins" on Wikipedia and found a study that referenced incidences wherein dolphins showed sexual advances to humans when they'd been lonely in captivity. Jess read it while I was washing up for bed, and happily announced that the incidences of dolphin-on-human action was relatively low, according to this study. A few moments of silence went by, and then I heard the dreaded, "Uh oh."

"What!?!" I called from the bathroom, panicked.

When I walked back out to the living room, I discovered that Jess had Googled "human dolphin sex."

Now. I don't know if you've ever Googled such a thing - and really, why would you? Then again, I know nothing of your sexual preferences, so by all means, carry on if that's your thing. But that said, there are a number of questionable things that come up, like news articles with the title "Swimmers Escape Rape by Dolphin who Seem to be Swingers" and YouTube videos of... well, this and this, which prompted Jess and I to dissolve into a mass of giggles and nerves as we contemplated the possibilities of losing our bestiality ladyflowers in an unfortunate swimming accident the next day.

You can probably guess what happened - nothing. We swam safely and porpoise molestation free, and I have to say, it was probably one of the top ten coolest things I've ever done on one of these trips. I think the most memorable moment came when I was swimming off to one side all alone, and suddenly found myself in the midst of nine of them, all swimming, playing and racing around me. On one hand it was kind of scary, considering each one weighs roughly four to five hundred pounds and they tend to be a little rough when playing with one another. But on the other, they're just so graceful and peaceful, and not to sound like a cheesy cliché, but being around them does have that magical feel about it.

So yeah, that was my near dolphin sex experience. And now whenever I sign on to YouTube, it suggests I watch videos of interspecies sex.

Sure enough, I woke up this morning feeling scratchy-throated and foggy headed, exhausted in a way that dictated I sleep all day if possible. So I went to breakfast and begrudgingly bowed out of visiting Mayan ruins and charming shops, tucked myself back into bed, and slept. I awoke long enough to eat lunch and update my Facebook status (because that's super important, don't you know), and went back to bed again. As I write this it's nearing 7pm and I've just woken up long enough to put in an order for dinner. As soon as I'm done eating? Yeah, back to sleep. The good news is I feel a lot better now than I did this morning. I can only hope this means I will be able to join the crew for horseback riding and hot springs tomorrow.

I hate being sick on a trip. It's only happened to me twice before, thank goodness. The first time was when I was in Finland, preparing for an all-night party during the summer solstice when the sun doesn't set for 24 hours. I got my cold the day I boarded the plane and did much%

The past two weeks have been such a roller coaster that I wish I'd had a barf bag with me, but alas, no such luck. (For the record, I don't get sick on coasters. I love them. But when you're stuck on one for two weeks straight, it tends to fuck with your equilibrium.)

I don't really have the time to explain right now, and I don't really feel like I'm ready to. I'm still processing. But suffice it to say, I had a moment this evening where I looked around my apartment and realized: my life isn't just changing, it's changed... and a lot of things that previously seemed so distant in possibility are now suddenly within reach. Or maybe they're already in the palm of my hand. Yeah, I like the sound of that better.

Tomorrow is meetings and packing, Wednesday is Miami, Thursday is Honduras. I'll definitely be blogging from there. But for now, I need to spend the rest of my time kicking this potential cold's ass before it threatens to take me on hardcore. I refuse to be ill while ziplining through the rainforest and swimming with dolphins, dammit. Not gonna happen. So it's back to the couch for me.

More soon. How's your week so far?