My book review of Marya Hornbacher’s Madness: A Bipolar Life is up at PopMatters. Excerpt:

In 1998, Marya Hornbacher wrote Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, about an eating disorder so severe, she whittled herself down to 52 pounds and was given a week to live. The book stands out in its ability to dig inside the mind of someone with an eating disorder. Hornbacher, who was 23 when she wrote the book, hadn’t yet gotten distance from being sick, and that, combined with copious research, made Wasted a particularly unflinching look at anorexia and bulimia. …

Now, a decade later, Hornbacher has written a follow-up: Madness: A Bipolar Life. The book picks up where Wasted leaves off, covering the last 10 years of Hornbacher’s life, when she discovers that her real problem all along has been bipolar disorder. Everything else—starving herself, drinking, cutting, throwing up—was just a means to control the roller coaster of her moods. As with her eating disorders, Hornbacher ignored the diagnosis for as long as possible, descending into an ugly hole of self-destruction.

Go take a look.

On Sunday, Kyle and I were sitting in our backyard, staring at the ivy. It is Afghanistan Ivy. Some brilliant person planted it back there 20-30 years ago, thinking it would make a reliable, drought-resistant ground cover. And boy is it ever.

See, in California, Afghanistan Ivy is an invasive species. It just loves it here. Nothing eats it. It spreads by root and by vine, both creeping under the soil and up every surface above ground. It winds around other trees like a boa constrictor and chokes them. And, when it gets very old, it grows into a tree and begins to make berries to further propagate itself.

We had two such ivy trees in our backyard, and subsequently, our yard is covered with ivy.

(In this picture, the ivy is choking the tree next to it. I don’t have a picture of the ivy trees themselves, but it gives you an idea of the back fence before.)

I have been dutifully killing it, but it’s coming back already, its shiny new green leaves waving like plastic lily pads at me. So on Sunday, Kyle asked me if I wanted to take down the ivy trees, even though it meant we would have less privacy in our backyard for awhile. I said yes. Or rather, YES. He got out the chainsaw.

I knew that taking down these two large trees meant that I would have less privacy. I didn’t realize how much it would open up the space, or how much sunlight it would let into the backyard. The ivy was dark, heavy, and full of bugs. As the trees came down, my backyard suddenly seemed huge and sunny. For the first time, I liked it back there.

As for privacy, I plan to replace the ivy trees with another tree, maybe an olive or something that flowers. But the truth is, I will probably never get rid of the ivy altogether. Even if I manage to eradicate it from my yard, the house next door has at least two trees of it.

Seeing those hated trees come down limb by sneaky limb was satisfying, let me tell you.

Let me start out by saying that I’m a fan of O’Reilly Media. After all, Kyle has written several books for them. I have gone to the Maker Faire for the last two years. In fact, Kyle had a booth at Maker Faire last year, which I wrote about here. So, having gone and enjoyed it every time–especially the craft fair aspect of the event–I was happy that Marcia invited us to go again this year. She even offered to drive.

The sign that something was wrong started at the freeway interchange to San Mateo, where Maker Faire was being held. Suddenly, there was a lot of traffic. After slowly driving through it for a half hour longer than felt necessary, Marcia and Kyle started suggesting that maybe the traffic was because of the Maker Faire. I didn’t think so. It seemed impossible that this many people wanted to look at crafts and lasers. The whole DIY aesthetic and geekiness that Marker Faire represents still seems too grass roots and small to me to attract this many people. I mean, this was like being caught in traffic for a football game, not a cute little geeky fair.

But when we pulled onto the off-ramp for the Maker Faire exit, I saw that I was wrong. The off-ramp was jammed full of cars and moving at a glacier pace. For an hour and 40 minutes, we sat on the off-ramp. We were trapped. We stopped and started, stopped and started. People were parking their cars on the shoulder and peeing in the bushes. I was dying of boredom. I mean, all I saw for nearly two hours was this:

FINALLY we got into San Mateo, but the craziness continued. Traffic was clogging the streets. There was no where to park. We drove around and around but all the lots were full. My mood started to sour. I can only be in traffic for so long before I start getting upset. I took to desperate measures to entertain myself.

“Help Me! (Trapped in car, can’t see lasers)”

“All these people are coming here? Really?”

Line to get in

At last, we gave up and parked in downtown San Mateo and ate at a taqueria in the back of a Mexican grocery store. Marcia had excellent tamales. The Jesus statue on top of the meat case lifted my spirits.

I would have been happy to go home at that point, but it had taken four-and-a-half hours to get there and Kyle and Marcia still wanted to go, so we walked over to the Maker Faire. Luckily, because Marcia is all connected and important, we had free tickets, so we didn’t have to stand in the line to get in.

Once in, it was… crowded. And yet the faire was pretty much the same. I mean, yeah, they had a few new things, like bands and giant metal statues–

–but overall it was the same. Same giant robot giraffe, same cupcake scooters, same pinball trailer, same $3 water and soda (and $9 beer, I hear). What was different was that somehow–and I admit this is a subjective viewpoint–the joy had been sucked out of the event. Last year, there were people riding around on every weird bicycle contraption you could think of. This year, there were only a few people on such things. Last year, people were so cool and strange that I wanted to take a picture of everyone I saw. This year, while there were plenty of geeky tee-shirts and pony tails, only one or two people struck me as interesting. And also, people were kind of rude.

One of the biggest disappointments was the craft fair. Last year, the Bizarre Bazaar was full of awesome crafts. I walked around and got idea after idea. This year, the overall quality of the crafts seemed lower. While there were some repeat crafters, the new stuff slipped into more predictable craft territory: baby booties, cards, cutesy pillows, etc. And anyway, I couldn’t even look at the booths because they moved the Craft portion of an event into a small building and it was so crowded, you could hardly walk.

(Sample of the crowd in the Craft building)

That said, I’m glad I went because I got to hang out with friends. There were a few other cool things:

1. Giant metal statues, as mentioned before.

2. A DIY mushroom farm where you can grow your own mushrooms at home. Kyle and I bought one. We are growing shitake mushrooms on our kitchen counter now.

3. Goats

4. Various lasers, Tesla coils, robots, et. all.

5. Pops! by Krystina Castella, a book about making popsicles. I was so impressed, I went right home and made popsicles with fresh lemon and grapefruit juice.

Kyle kept saying that I thought Maker Faire wasn’t cool anymore because, like an indie band geek, I didn’t like that my little “discovery” had gotten so popular. Maybe so. It amazes me that that many people wanted to go to it, and I suspect the reason is hype more than anything else. Or, it could simply be that I resent sitting in a car for five hours.

Still, I don’t care if it is a little snotty: like a good restaurant or an indie band, some things start to suck once they become popular.

Poynter has an interesting little contest going on–six-word journalism mottos. Some are pretty funny–”Dirty commie latte-sipping liberal scum”–and some are kind of depressing–”Stop the presses! Oh, you did,” “They’ll miss us when we’re gone,” and “We’ll always have Paris … or Britney.”

Of all of them, the one I most relate to is: “But this IS my day job!”

(Side tangent: I think it’s kind of silly that people think print is going away. It’s clearly not, it’s just readjusting itself to include the new media. Also–and I say this as someone who writes for three blogs AND supports herself a professional writer–blogging is not the same as writing. Bloggers are not “authors.” Gawker writers and PerezHilton are not the same as journalists. Please, please, please, can we stop moaning about this subject on every writing/lit blog out there?

Everything is going to be fine.

There. Six words.)

After about 4 years, my spider plants are finally reproducing. I can’t get over how lovely spider plant blossoms are. They are like a cross between an orchid and a jasmine blossom.

I have the cover story in the Pacific Sun this week. I interviewed novelist Anne Lamott and playwrights Laurel Graver and Ann Brebner about the adaptation of Lamott’s novel, Hard Laughter, into a play. I really enjoyed writing this one–all three ladies were just delightful to talk to.

In another article, I interviewed Albert Flynn DeSilver, the first Marin County Poet Laureate. As part of that, I got to go to see Billy Collins read some poetry at the Marin Academy High School.

I lead a good life.

Read about Hard Laughter here, and the poet laureate here.

Once I painted the guest room, I began the search for a comforter or duvet for the bed in there. I quickly discovered that comforters are:

a. Expensive
b. Ugly

The ones I liked were, without exception, over $230–a good deal more than I would be willing to spend on an oversized pillowcase. On top of that, the room was yellow, which proved to be a difficult color to match accessories to. If you go yellow on the bed, your room becomes nauseatingly cheerful. If you go away from yellow, you risk clashing or fighting with the color.

Finally, I decided to make the bedspread. After a lot of shopping, I came upon this beautiful French-navy-and-white heavy cotton at Joann Fabrics. It was $30 a yard, though. Apparently my expensive taste doesn’t just extend to bedspreads. However, I happened upon it when it was 50% off, so it ended up being $15 per yard. So, I bought a large panel and framed it in this off-white cotton poly, which was going for $2 per yard.

So overall, I got a darn nice bedspread for $60-$75. It still wasn’t free, but it looks as good as most of the ones I saw in the stores–AND I have enough cotton/poly left for curtains and pillows.

Last night I went out to Cajun food with Justin, Marcia, Stephanie, and Kyle. It was a lot of fun. I had never had crawfish before. Tiny lobsters! I enjoy food that takes a lot of work to eat. Justin has some pictures on his blog.

Crawfish from last night’s dinner. Photo taken by Justin Watt directly before consuming said crawfish.

Apparently, I live in the fourth greenest city in the U.S. They ranked the locations based on “energy policies, green power, green buildings, and the availability of fresh, locally grown food.” Well, we certainly have the last thing. It’s very easy to eat locally here, and I do. (Sometimes very locally.)

For some reason, Petaluma is tied with Santa Rosa on the list. I’m not so sure about that. Santa Rosa isn’t really green. It’s more of a murky brown with a greenish tinge on top. Kidding! But hey, thanks Country Home magazine for the thought.

This has been an insane week. I am glad it’s almost over. A lot of things happened this week, many of them cool. I got to:

• Interview the novelist Anne Lamott
• See poet Billy Collins read at the Marin Academy
• Eat tapas in San Rafael with Kyle
• Interview the playwrights who are adapting Lamott’s book for stage
• Take Kyle to the airport for his stint at Penguicon
• Watch Kyle tech-edit a chapter for a new publisher
• Write a book review for the San Francisco Chronicle
• Pay my taxes (not fun!)
• Have the Word Pirates over to plan our upcoming reading for May 15
• Celebrate the Word Pirates’ second birthday
• Re-edit an article that an editor had some questions on (also not fun)
• Interview people about the upcoming Marin Poet Laureate
• Write a couple of articles
• Get a ride in Marcia’s new car
• Make a bedspread for my guest room (pictures coming)

Next week looks a little saner. I have two articles due and am having dinner with friends. And that’s it. Whew.