Well, hello, hello

This is my very first blog entry and I'm really fighting the urge to start off with the the phrase, "If you're reading this..." which is clearly overblown. Am I caught on a stormy sea? Am I a settler with a dwindling supply of salted pork? Am I in the Blair Witch Project?

If you're reading this, you probably know me as Jennifer from Brain, Child magazine. If you read that, you probably know that I've been working on a book called PRACTICALLY PERFECT IN EVERY WAY, which is about my two years of taking self help advice to become a better, happier person. (It comes out May 17.)

Anyway, I've started this blog because, although the book is out of my hands and possibly even be printed right at this very moment, I'm still kind of writing it in my head, filing away things that seem very relevant to the ideas of self-improvement, happiness, luck, and individualism. The idea is I'll write about these things. Later.

Right now, I have this low-grade obsessiveness about the book. It's on Amazon. It's been up there for a while, at first just with an ISBN and a place holder, then with the cover. Recently, a description of it popped up, along with list of books that people who liked this book also like. (Which is an excellent idea, by the way. The video store Erol's, circa 1984, used to do this and I was so sad when they stopped. Also about Erol's? They had a section called "Martial Arts," that I always misread as "Marital Arts." In other words, soft p0rn. I was always embarrassed for the people slobbering over what turned out to be the Bruce Lee oeuvre.)

Anyway, this list on Amazon includes not one but two books about Sex and the Single Mother. I can't see a good reason for this, seeing as I'm a longtime practitioner of the Marital Arts, and there's nothing anything in PRACTICALLY PERFECT about sex and single motherhood. (Not that I begrudge single mothers their sex.) But I can't wait to tell Brandon, my husband. Especially because we've recently had this long string of increasing tawdry horoscopes.

At first, I'd get one that was something innocuous like, "Partnerships, love take center stage." They grew a little more pointed: "Focus on love, partnerships today." But then they started getting increasingly desperate. "THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE BEFORE YOU START SOMETHING NEW!" the newspaper astrologer begged me last week. Saturday, Brandon got something like "You have to keep your secret a little longer."

Very Melrose Place, huh? I'll keep checking back. I hope Amazon starts suggesting Dr. Kimberly Shaw wigs.