If you’ve been following me on twitter, you know I’ve been suffering from an OCD/Anxiety relapse. Yes, the INSANE kind I had in my pregnancies. Just ask the TDot Book Club Bloggers. I’m afraid of my blackberry right now — terrified. And I probably shouldn’t have gone to Book Club last night because I was all, “Hi, how are you? I have ANXIETY! I have OCD! I’m CRAZY! I’m CRAZY like when I was pregnant and was, like, calling the FARMERS who produced the cheese that was in the ravioli I’d eaten at a restaurant the week before to see if it was actually pasteurized [this was before I went vegan, of course], and if the farmer said ‘I don’t know,’ then I was convinced I destroyed my baby.” Remember that, Gorgeouses? The TDots were, of course, SO understanding and supportive. It was a good thing I went. LOVE.

I think my favourite “obsessive thought” EVER was The Weevil Incident. I was about 20 weeks pregnant with the Monkey. I was at work, eating a pack of almonds, and I suddenly realized there was a hole in one of the almonds I’d eaten. It was a perfect hole. Too perfect. So, I went up to my colleague at work and told him about the hole in my almond. It’s a “weevil and a mouse,” he said (we’d been working on a book about weevils and flees and such other GREAT subject matter for me and my morning sickness).  “A weevil and a mouse did that,” he snickered, “those almond factories are infested.” Of course, in my MESSED UP, clinically prenatally depressed preggers mind, this was a real possibility. SO I called the assistant director at Motherisk (I had her direct phone number, of course), and I called my family doctor: “Hello!” I gasped, “I just ate an almond and I think there was a hole in it that was made by a weevil and/or a mouse, IS MY BABY OKAY!?” Yes, this is TRUE. TRUE TRUE.

And here we are again. At this time EACH year, it seems, the doom and gloom and freakish obsessions that characterized my pregnancies RETURN. And here I am crazy.

Last night, I was so crazy I couldn’t blog. And, then there was this morning…. I had to go to the office. They have no idea what EXACTLY it took for me to make an appearance there this morning. It’s bad, Gorgeouses. It’s bad. But, I’m getting some help. My doctors are helping me, and CAROLINE DUPONT.

Yes, it seems my ego gets MAD and VENGEFUL whenever I make positive changes in my life. Pregnancy, meditation, yoga, green smoothies…. Ego is NOT happy because Ego is not the centre of attention. Ego is being silenced and Ego doesn’t like it. So, Ego is trying to TAKE OVER and MAKE IT STOP. It likes it when I’m stuck. It hates change. It likes repetition, addiction, certainty. But, screw it. I’m on to you, Ego. Moving on.

And I can tell you THIS BOOK did not help my anxiety. In fact, it may have triggered an episode or two….

I should not be reading books like this month’s TDOT Blogger Book Club Book of the month. Books about a TRUE murder of a 3-year-old “flaxen”-haired boy — OMG, the Rascal’s hair could not be more FLAXEN and his features more CHERUBIC…I SHOULD NOT BE READING THIS. I am NOT A CANDIDATE for books like this. And I should have KNOWN when I picked this book up in the TRUE CRIME section of the bookstore that I am NOT A CANDIDATE for this book. And, indeed, I flinched visibly when the computer directed me to the TRUE CRIME section of the bookstore.

Yes, so this was one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read. Sure, it was brilliantly written in a very detached, exquisitely researched, resourceful, investigative way that self-consciously focused more on detective JONATHAN JACK WHICHER — the inspiration for some of the best 19th-century fiction from Charles Dickens to Wilkie Collins (LOVE) — than on the poor FLAXEN-HAIRED boy who lost his life in the most violently disturbing way. And, see I can’t and couldn’t escape the FLAXEN-HAIRED boy because my mind is incapable of registering such a heinous, gruesome event in a detached way. MY MIND goes straight to FEAR.

Fear. The bane of my existence. My life’s challenge has to be to manage it, understand it, overcome it, teach my kids to overcome it. And so, Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher remains in my basement until I can find a better home for it. Far far away. In fact, I may drive it out to some remote forest FAR FAR AWAY. I’ll put a blindfold over it so IT CAN’T SEE where I’m taking it and, THUS, can’t find its way back to my house ever! And I’ll find an environmentally-friendly way of disposing it forever. So it can’t haunt me like the GHOSTS of poor little SAVILLE KENT and his killers are said to haunt the house at ROAD HILL….

Ahh, good times. And OY! I had so much else to blog about. It’ll have to wait ’til next time. Very good sign that I’m writing tonight. Yay. Baby steps….

Sadly, a lot of that is VERY FAMILIAR…. Damn “What Ifs”!….

Baby steps!

Next month’s book? It’s MY PICK: Annabel Lyon’s highly acclaimed The Golden Mean — so definitely not HORRIFIC, and apparently very SEXAY! Sweeeet.

I was the only person in my entire book club of 12 Toronto bloggers who liked, nay LOVED, Australian author Christos Tsiolkas’ latest tome The Slap.

Maybe it was the exhilaration of it all — the exhilaration I felt when I flipped the final 483rd page of the book exactly one hour before I had to drive 45 minutes to Denguy‘s house for the monthly meeting last night. Maybe it was the 483ish times the author used the c-word (or not, since I don’t think I’ve uttered the word in my entire life). Maybe it was the sexy-hot Hector, the icy cool Aisha, the sweet sympathetic Richie. Maybe it was that tiny detail, when teen-aged Connie gave her friend the stink eye for throwing a cigarette butt in the bushes: “It would end up in the sea. [Connie] got up from the bench, picked up the butt and put it in the side pocket of her backpack.”

Or maybe I’m just a dark and twisted horndog.

But the book won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. Are the Australian literati, then, also dark and twisted horndogs?

I don’t know. Why don’t you read it, and let me know what you think. THEY hated it. I loved it.

And yet I wonder if I would love ANY book right now. Because reading is such a LUXURY for me these days.

So, I suppose if there’s any time to read the new Tori Spelling book, NOW would be the time?

Yes, I’m so grateful just to be READING again — to relax and escape for a while, even into Tsiolkas’ dark and twisted world of horndogs, a world totally removed from my own. Maybe that’s why I loved it.

It was a good escape. And a good accomplishment. 483 pages. Unlike changing diapers and waking up in the middle of the night to get the monkey WATER, I didn’t HAVE to read it. But I did. And it felt GOOD.

On to our next book club book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher — chosen by Ms. Mamalooper, who has returned to blogging after, ohhh, 6 months’ hiatus. But, FIRST, a book of my own choosing (for, yes, my goal is to read TWO books this month). It’s a book by one of my favourite authors, highly recommended by my mother….

I can assure you there won’t be a single c-word in this one, and I will still love it.

And I can’t wait to get lost in it. Tonight. I hope. After I put the kids to bed, and wash the dishes, and write tomorrow’s bTrendie email alert, and write three articles, and answer 483 emails.

Guess who went out with some fabulous bloggers Wednesday night? Give up? ME. I know, you never would have guessed. First BlogHer, and now TDOT book clubs. I am SO OUT THERE. No longer hiding behind my screen pressing keys, drinking chai. I am OUT THERE. And I love it. I love meeting bloggers because — would you believe? — they are just like me. Well, we’re all VERY different, but we’re all the same in the sense that we’re (for the most part) a transparent people, sensitive, inquisitive, definitely quirky, and we love a good story.

It’s been about, OHHH, four years since I’ve read a book. When I was pursuing a PhD in English lit (COUGH), I often asked myself WHY THE HECK DO PEOPLE READ. I wracked my brain to find the answer. I was such a kid back then. I had no idea. I really didn’t. Because now, the answer is easy: people read to RELAX, to broaden their horizons, to enjoy language, to escape, step into someone else’s life and gain perspective on their own, etc., etc.. As soon as I picked up this month’s book, Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan, my old “why do people read” question was answered.

And then I googled the real-life people this book is about: Mamah (pronounced “Maymah”) Borthwick and Frank Lloyd Wright — lovers in a dangerous time. And, BOY, did I regret it. What was at first so enjoyable THWACKED me with anxiety for the full week or so it took me to read the book. (Remind me, WHY DO PEOPLE READ?) So, if you’re going to read it — which you should because it’s BRILLIANT — don’t google, or DO google and appreciate the freakin’ irony the whole way through.

Talk to me in a few months when I’m over it. The big question in the book, which you can all ponder, is “would you leave, ‘DESERT,’ your kids for love — for love of a ‘genius’?” NO! NEVER! NOT EVER. Not even in 1909. And I can say that for certain even though I’m in 2009. FOR CERTAIN.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Petitegourmand, who truly is PETITE (adorable), officially brought me to the TDOT BOOK CLUB when she approached me at the gym last month — just after hotarse kickboxing instructor’s class: “Are you Halley? Haley? Ho? Haley-O?” Hee. We clicked immediately, of course. Bloggers often do that.

Look how CUTE in her swanky studio kitchen….

Not only is she petite, but GOURMAND…. Look at this FANCY!

And then there are the OTHERS….

And they are going to kill me for posting this terrible picture. But that’s NOMO with eyes closed in the blue (ha!), KAREN dipping, the “token” BOY DENGUY looking frightened in the back there, and SANDRA barely visible in the back mid sentence. I didn’t get ANY great photos of the group because I was drinking vino. But, missing from this pic, a whole lot of bloggers: Kittenpie, B*Babbler, Mad (all the way in from New Brunswick), Lisa B and, via twitter, Sandra and Julie (with new baby! CONGRATS!). Whew! That took a long time. Tired.

We had all the best intentions….

…but there was so much ELSE to talk about (so much). In a nutshell, some of us hated Mamah. Some of us hated Frank. Some of us thought Robert Downey Jr. should play Frank in the MOVIE, and others thought John Malkovich. We all loved the book. We all loved a night out, away from the kids, with interesting blogging peeps and, of course, BOOKS to caress and flip hands through.

The next book on our list is another heavy one (wish me luck): Burnt Shadows, by Kamila Shamsie — an apparently very “ambitious” book. I was going to read a light Candace Bushnell novel in between these heavies, but I could barely open the book. Besides, PetiteGourmand told me to read The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield, and she and I are petite hotarse-kickboxing-teacher-loving twinz, so I listens. I hear it’s AMAZING. Am excited.

And, now I leave you for a day or so, as I drive avec ma petite famille to the country house where we’ll be for a week while big BURLY man with black belt in karate cat sits for us. I’ll still be blogging and working, and definitely reading, and NOT drinking chai lattes because there is NO STARBUCKS in sight for, like, TWO HOURS. And LORD HELP ME if I drive two hours to get a chai…. It’s been known to happen.

I wrote this whole post in my underwear.

Love!

xo Haley-O