Um, I have a lot of reading and writing to do. I’m also debating whether the cocktail making “class” we took at a local bar and restaurant counts for this list. I say yes. And you guys? What’s the verdict?

go to Maine
have a Frappuccino
walk by the water almost every day
drink (most of) our wine
read “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”
reread “Wuthering Heights”
make mint iced tea with my mint plant
run a road race
grow and eat our own tomatoes
see the coffee exhibit at the Peabody
publish another first person essay
eat at Lenny’s (again)
go to Poland
see some fireworks
take Nora to the beach
take a walking tour of Yale
read “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
show my parents how to video chat
publish another first person essay
buy some new bookcases
read a non-fiction book
read another non-fiction book
take a class, any class
organize the basement
go to Scranton
bake my own bread
steam my own mussels
see a live concert
have a picnic in Prospect Park
have coffee on the patio

I feel like if she wears this, we will be treated better everywhere we go.

Today is the last day that my parents will live in the Alexandria, VA house that they bought when I was 16. So it’s not my childhood home, but it is the site of a trillion high school memories. I made some of my very best friends in the world when I was in high school - friends I still talk to multiple times a day over email - and we had a lot of fun in that house during our high school years, and while reuniting over Christmas and summer breaks from college. My parents aren’t moving far away, so I’ll still often head to the D.C. area for holidays and visits, but I won’t take the Telegraph Road South exit anymore, past the old site of the Honolulu Restaurant and the Good News Baptist Church and by the weeping willow tree up into our driveway.

This morning I emailed my parents and asked them to perform the following acts of remembrance, honoring my teenage self and beyond, so that I could properly say goodbye to the place that I, for many years, called home:

1. Stand in my room and shed a tear for Jerry Garcia.
2. Go to the site of the old abandoned barn and read an e.e. cummings poem.
3. Skinny dip in the pool.
4. Make ill-tasting but innovative alcoholic concoctions in the drum room - like gin and orange juice or amaretto and milk.
5. After that, have a dance party.
6. Stay up all night reading John Steinbeck.
7. Write college essays in your bathrobe just under deadline, groaning the whole time.
8. Have a family dinner at the dining room table.
9. Watch scary movies in the den.
10. Have a grappa in the living room.
11. Stage a full-scale Christmas dinner, complete with witty political and social commentary.
12. Pierce your ears. Start a club.
13. Book a ska band for the back yard.
14. Walk to 7-11 in the snow, barely avoiding frostbite.
15. Blast Soundgarden in Vinnie’s room. Then the “1812 Overture.”
16. Go for a long run.
17. Make a mixed tape by recording favorite songs from the radio.
18. Play the Jesus and Mary Chain while figuring out what to wear.
19. Write a letter to your boyfriend.
20. Put on bright lipstick. Kiss the wall.

Nora and I are headed to Pennsylvania for a quick trip to visit my grandmother, where we will catch up with family and participate in one of my all-time favorite activities: sitting around over coffee in the morning. For hours. This is what the women in my mother’s family do.

J hates this. We wake up, serve ourselves whatever kind of delicious breakfast pastry my grandmother bought that week and talk forever in our pajamas. Gossip. Life lessons. The good old times, whatever.

After experiencing this for the first time, J was like, “Are you kidding me?” He had, of course, awoken before everyone else, showered and assumed we were going to, well, do something. Maybe that’s the male mentality, I don’t know.

He’s staying here this weekend because he’s got a ton of work to do. So while I was packing this morning, I showed him the bathrobe I was putting in my duffel bag. “Do you know why I’m packing this?” I asked him. “It’s for sitting around in the morning and -”

Before I could get the words out of my mouth he was all but yelling, “OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO BE HERE BEING SO PRODUCTIVE DURING THAT TIME.”

When Nora wants to be picked up she says “hold you,” and what she means by that is “hold me,” she’s just got the pronouns confused. Understandable as I sometimes ask her, “do you want me to hold you?” It’s cute.

Except! Except it’s not cute when she’s yelling it at the top of her lungs after I put her in her crib. “Mommy HOLD YOU, HOLLLDDDD YOUUUUUU.” She’s been doing this recently. In fact, you wanna know what? She’s doing it right now.

I know some people probably think I should go get her and some people think I should leave her there until she falls asleep, and the truth is that J and I probably fall somewhere in between those two parenting camps (check my other blog for a post about this very subject). Partly this is because we’ve got a really good kid. This new development is so difficult for me precisely because Nora never does this. It’s a stage - of that I’m sure - and one day soon we will get our perfect little kid back.

But for now, it’s total agony. I get this knot in the pit of my stomach when she cries like this, cries that are made worse by the fact that she’s capable of putting her feelings into sentences now. “Mommy hold you.” “Mommy’s bed, no crib.” We’ve been traveling a bunch and I’m sure all the transitions aren’t helping, plus I know that as she gets older she’s going experience new challenges. See, I realize there are reasons. But that doesn’t make it easier.

Add to that my own stresses regarding the aforementioned traveling that we’ve been doing and that is coming up. Don’t get me wrong, we love that stuff, but as much as I do it, traveling makes me anxious. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s all the packing and upheaval. And if there’s a plane involved and you have to arrive at the airport several hours in advance, forget it, pass me the Xanax. Since a doctor’s probably not gonna go for that, whatever, I’ll settle for a martini.

And then there are my current feelings when it comes to the fact that I’m not working much, which I won’t even go into again, but you get the picture. More stress.

Nothing major. A toddler yelling. Some silly feelings of inadequacy on my part. The normal insanity of a busy summer. But over the past few days I got to feeling all tense and annoyed, like I had no control over anything going on in my life. Like I had too much going on but somehow wasn’t taking on enough. I think it’s normal for everyone to feel this way from time to time, and possibly beneficial having to dig your way out of it.

Anyway, after going to the gym this morning, I took Nora to the local Starbucks so I could have a coffee and she could have a snack, thus keeping ourselves occupied until nap time. When we got there I picked out a cup of fruit for her - the kind that’s in sealed plastic - and because she doesn’t understand modern commerce or patience, she was like, “Mommy open?” in this sweet little voice, that proceeded to rise 8 trillion decibels over the next 30 seconds while I paid for everything. As we waited for the coffee I decided there was no harm in letting her hold the fruit cup - maybe it would calm her down a little - but what she did was very loudly proclaim “MOMMY OPEN,” and when I said, “Hold on a minute,” she started running across the Starbucks with the fruit cup, until she stopped dead center of the people reading and studying and being generally civil, and she chucked it with all her brute baby force onto the floor. Then looked at me like, “See?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Especially when I realized that this one particularly studious looking guy staring at his laptop, who I was all worried about disturbing, was playing a computer game. The workout, the look on my child’s complacent little face. I felt like I was breathing normally again. It gets stressful, true. But it all gets better.

When I got home I put Nora down for her roughly half-hour bout of screaming, “MOMMY HOLD YOU,” before she passed out. I sat at my desk, answering emails and preparing to write blog entries and I typed a letter begging my husband and parents for something they couldn’t do, just to get a little bit of sympathy on the matter. “She’s doing it again,” I wrote. “Make it stop.”

My mother, who knows all, replied, “You have to be strong.” Exactly, I thought. The trips and the transitions will go just fine. You have to be strong. What a simple mantra. And before I knew it I’d finished writing down everything that was worrying me, realized it was no big deal and Nora had fallen fast asleep.

In this post I was simply going to point out that the series finale - last show ever - of “The Hills” airs tonight and that I’d be watching it. And then I thought maybe I’d mention a few favorite moments. Maybe get a little nostalgic.

But then I did a search of my archives for posts I’ve written that include the words “The Hills” and…there were a lot of posts. A whole lot. Kind of an embarrassing amount. Like when I announced that I’d be live tweeting during the premiere. Or when I thought about Spencer. Or when we all commented about how J actually loves the show, despite saying that he hates it.

And more. A lot more posts.

So, farewell to “The Hills.” It appears that I’m gonna have to get a new hobby.

Ok guys, I’m just going to go ahead and admit it, I’m a bad napper. Real bad. Despite the fact that my parents are both pretty practiced at the art of napping - my father more of an extended afternoon napper, and my mother the queen of the twenty minute power nap - I’m no good at it myself.

The problem is that when I lie down to take a nap I start analyzing the hell out of everything. What I want to do is successfully take a power nap, because that’s the only kind of nap that’s an ok idea, in my opinion. The reason I think that way is because, let’s say I take a long nap, a one, two or - Jesus - three hour nap? Well, I wake up from the nap and I want to kill everybody. Not kidding.

I don’t know if other people feel this way. Do you? Like you want to kill everybody when you get up from your long nap? That you wake from your deep slumber to discover that, DAMNIT, it is the same day, but it feels like a different day, HELP ME I feel so weird that I could punch someone right in the face? Does that happen to you guys?

I’ve taken some naps like that when I’ve been short on sleep from the night before, and every time I take one of those naps I swear I’ll never take one again. That I will only power nap. But, like I said, when I try to power nap, I start thinking, and I start worrying that my power nap will turn into a long, kill-everybody nap, and then I figure, “Screw it, this isn’t a good idea.”

Anyway, last week I took one of these long naps. I was really tired and Nora was asleep. I just got right under the covers and it felt so comfy and cool, and I thought - deluding myself - this is no big deal, I will just sleep for a little while.

Cut to two hours later. Nora’s crying and I awake suddenly and, literally, can barely move because the sleep I’d just experienced was so deep and extreme and awesome - except not all that awesome because I suddenly realize I have to get up and care for a child and I could not hate the world more. World, I hate you.

I was in such sad shape that I actually went in to Nora’s room, got down on the floor and lay there for a few minutes as she looked at me quizzically through the bars of her crib. I told her, “Mommy just needs a few minutes, Nora.” I think she got it, or she saw the insanity in my eyes or whatever.

I finally managed to get her up and get both of us downstairs where I sat there in my zombie-like state while she played with her toys. All I could think was that I needed some iced tea. I know, that’s a really weird thought. Especially because I don’t drink iced tea all that often. But that was the only way. I needed a cold glass of iced tea - not coffee - or I was going to die. Or at the very least have a truly horrible afternoon.

Because this was such an urgent need, I summoned the strength to boil the water and steep the tea, and when it was cool enough I poured it into my big glass pitcher. I added lemon and lots of mint from my mint plant and after letting it sit in the refrigerator for a little while, I filled a glass with ice and poured myself some.

That iced tea was everything I thought it would be. I did it. I made mint iced tea with my mint plant and not only way it delicious, but it saved my life.

I’ve been thinking about blogs lately, and about how maybe I hate them.

Ok! I’m kidding! I don’t hate blogs, despite the fact that I read very few of them and have been having a bit of a love/hate relationship with my own recently. Why? A few reasons. For one thing, I had a talk over email recently with a family friend and accomplished journalist about the whole act of writing blogs, for the general public and for free, and how it’s a little bit of a strange, and possibly insane, endeavor. He shared with me the wonderful Samuel Johnson quote, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Which is a great, albeit slightly depressing, way to look at things. I was like, “Yeah, totally, money!” and then hung my head in sorrow when I realized how very, very much I write for exactly zero dollars.

Because, you guys, I have zero dollars projects piled up in the annals of my to-do lists like nobody’s business, which is precisely why I haven’t done a lot of the things I’ve promised people I’d do. I enthusiastically tell them I will write things, and read things, and edit things and collaborate on things - because I really want to do those things, from the bottom of my heart, only to be reminded of my reality from week to week. That I have to concentrate on the things that I am paid for during Nora’s afternoon naps and the one day a week she is at daycare. Also, vacuuming. I’ve gotten really into vacuuming.

I scold myself a lot for doing things like watching TV with J at the end of a long day, instead of trying to further my career. But I’m not sure I’m being fair to myself when I think like that.

However - HOWEVER - after a couple weeks of sulking about how maybe I’ve put my best stuff out there for free on the stupid Internet and how people should pay me tons of money, I don’t know what happened, but I kind of got over it. Yeah, I do still want my writing in honest-to-God print because, I don’t know, I like print, call me old fashioned. And yeah, I am gonna send my stuff out to publications with check-writing capacity in a guerrilla warfare type attack, but the stuff I’ve done for free - vomit alert - makes me a better person. And yes, it is better and more worth it than watching TV at the end of the day.

But I still want to rent the entire series of “Battlestar Galactica,” J, you’re not getting out of this. Stop getting documentaries about birds and environmentalism and put it on our Netflix queue.

Thoughts on it all? The Internet? Print? Having a blog? Writing for the pure passion of it? Please share your comments, and I promise to contribute to the conversation this time. You can consider that another summer goal.