Dear readers, I’m putting myself on hiatus for the next couple of days.   I know, I know, it’s like Thanksgiving getting canceled or finding out there really is no Santa Claus.

See, I’m feverishly revising the book I’ve spent four years writing — I can’t believe it’s been that long already! — which is due-due, not just semi-due or kind of due, but really due to my publisher next week.  Which means I’ll be working day and night and over the weekend….which should be interesting with June underfoot and no family around I can call on for child care, but those are the breaks with marrying a soldier who gets his butt deployed, right?

Hopefully, I’ll be back in the saddle by Monday. I hope.

You know the best thing about blogging in small town?  It replicates a sense of fancy white collar employment — sitting in my office, staring out the window and watching trucks with plates that say FARM USE roll by — pretending I’m on the forefront of media, clickety-clacking on my keyboard like I have something urgent and important to write about — botched chocolate chip cookies and creepy doll shrines among them.  An English degree really does pay off in dividends, people.

Which brings me to the worst thing about blogging in a small town:  You can’t write anything about anyone because every person in town knows who you’re talking about by inference alone.

There have been more than a few times a random person has come up to me and said something along the lines of, “So I read your post about Janie the  other day.”

Me:  ”What?? What post?”

Janie Outer:  ”You know, the post about the lady you think locks her kid in the trunk.”

Me: (uncomfortable laugh) “Yeah, that wasn’t Janie.  That was Janny. You don’t know Janny.  She lives in Frankenfertville.”

Janie Outer: “Yeah, okay.  Well, anyway, you should know Janie’s feathers are mighty ruffled.”  (Only in the country do you hear phrases like “feathers are mighty ruffled.”)

Me: “It’s not Janie!  It’s Janny! I told you!  How did you know it was Janie I was talking about?”

Janie Outer: “Because everyone already knows she locks her kid in the trunk.”

At this point, I usually excuse myself, get in my car and peel out for home where I spend the next 45 minutes revising the post to be about Janie’s incredible parenting skills with lots of references to her  astounding beauty….and pray I don’t run into her at Walmart.

Posts might be a bit sporadic over the next few days.  June and I are taking a little Mommy and Me time.  Silence doesn’t mean I’m trapped under a large piece of furniture. Back soon!

This blog has been crying out for a makeover. Her roots are showing, she’s got a few grays sprouting and she’s been wearing the same three Norma Kamali for Walmart sweatshirts practically everyday for the last two years.  (Oh, that’s me.)  Seriously, the blog needs to get out of her mom jeans and buy a new sweater stat because she’s starting to look like a “what not to wear.”

So I have recruited a certain lovable WordPress pro (my dad) to help me improve a few things since I can barely figure out how to make letters BOLD on my own site, let alone add new pages and post videos, etc., etc.  It’s really quite sad, and made sadder living in a rural community where no one, it seems, speaks tech.

You may notice that the lovable WordPress pro has already changed the font and increased its size after a few vocal, loyal readers complained about the old one. (I have realized that lower case courier looks chic on arty blogs.  This is not an arty blog, unfortunately.) Expect to see similar improvements in the coming days and weeks.

After all, I am here to serve you.  Can I get you some fries with that?

As always, thanks for reading.

June and I leave tomorrow for my home state of Montana, where I’ll be blogging and feverishly working on a book for the next month. We’re staying with my mom and June’s “Nanna” (that’s what mom wants to be called) in glittering meth metropolis Kalispell, a picturesque little town straddling the awe inspiring Glacier National Park and pristine Flathead Lake.  It’s also the birthplace of actress Michelle Williams and me.

Stay tuned.

Number one:  To my four regular readers who log onto this site everyday, I apologize for leaving you with Perez Hilton’s squalid head for the past seven days!!!!  I was haunted by this thought.  It kept me up at night.

Number two:  I wasn’t able to blog because my Mac Book Pro needed a new Airport card — long overdue — and I realized I can’t get into my own blog from somebody else’s computer!?! (Why does technology  punish me so?)

Number three:  Thank you for waiting around for me. Without you, dear readers, I barely exist.  I am but a Walmart bar code on a box of the store’s house brand Wheat Puffs: a cipher of air.

And number four:  That’s all I could think of to write today!! Suckers!!!

I leave you with another pic of my dear sweet Junebug.

We’re going a tad off topic today, so bear with me.

Perez before

Hoo boy.  I recently learned that celebrity blogger Perez Hilton has a new spin off site called Fit Perez, focused on “fitness, health and wellness.”

Oh, that’s rich coming from a guy who has made his entire career out of ruthlessly trashing celebrities — specifically, female celebrities — for the way they look.

On any given day, his parent site “Perez Hilton” is nothing but a bitch-chronicle of the bodily imperfections of Hollywood women–page after page of stars’ cottage cheese thighs, potato heads, saggy cleavage, fat guts, camel toes, batwing arms and wrinkly faces. For me, reading one page of his drivel is a glimpse into the man’s misogony, yet he honestly thinks women will flock to him for toning exercises? Why? Because he recently lost a couple pounds himself now that he’s made enough money bashing women to hire a trainer?  That makes him a “wellness” expert?

Perez after

I’d rather take fitness advice from Richard Simmons, thank you very much.

I’ve noticed that some bloggers add “donate” buttons to their sites, which directs readers to a PayPal site where you’re invited to pour money into the blogger’s coffers. The donations, I suspect, help the blogger maintain total, single-minded commitment to posting about cooking/farming/being a cool, under-employed mom, or whatever, without having to worry about, you know, “working for the man,” “punching the clock,” or any of that other stuff that stifles a blogger’s je ne sais quoi.

It’s a sweet racket.

I’d like to add a donate button to my site. Unfortunately, I don’t know how.  So I invite you, dear reader, to consider this entire post ONE BIG DONATE button.  All monies will go toward financing:

a) a much-needed lip wax

b) Yellow Tail (aka Walmart’s sweetest nectar)

c) a new pair of Uggs

One these things are in my possession, I will be able to REALLY fully commit my creative juices to Rurally Screwed. So, when you think about it, a donation is really for YOUR benefit, not mine. I also wouldn’t mind a gift certificate to H&M and perhaps a new purse.

This story kills me. A Brooklyn-based writer named Jessie Rosen has a blog about — sit down for this — what it’s like to date when you’re in your 20s living in New York City.  It’s called — hold on — 20-Nothings.  20-Nothings was “just optioned by Mercator Pictures for scripted television development.”  What—Mercator never saw an episode of The City, starring fetching Hills alum Whitney Port?  Or for that matter, Friends?  Sex and the City? Why didn’t  they just option the July issue of Cosmo?

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not slinging invective at this writer (even though she does have my first name—I always take note of the non-Jessicas). Reading her story in The Daily Beast was highly entertaining; she’s good at her craft.

My consternation boils down to….em, jealousy, plain and simple.  How the hell does one get optioned?  What exactly does that mean?  Because—and correct me if I’m wrong—isn’t every blog about dating/relationships?  Or cooking?  Or being a cool mom?    Why did Jessie Rosen’s blog stand out from all the zillions of others devoted to the exact same subject?  Maybe it’s because her subject never grows old. Its endlessly entertaining in all of its generational permutations.

Let me just come out with it:  Why doesn’t someone option me?  I mean, come on, I blog about waxing the goat hairs on my chin.  And digging a 200-foot trench in the back yard.  And fighting puss-covered squash buds.  If that’s not the stuff of great television, I don’t know what is.

Anytime you’re ready to talk, Viacom, you know where to find me.