Make mint iced tea with my mint plant

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.

Hot summer day thoughts on writing for free, and online

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.