It took me months and months to tell my mother I had gotten weight-loss surgery, and I still regret that. The only reason I emailed her, the morning I was going in, and told her that I had to be operated on, I was okay, I have a stomach ailment, was because my boyfriend at the time told me he really, really didn't want to have to call her up out of nowhere and tell her, Um, your daughter's dead. Sorry, bye! And uh, I kind of didn't blame him.

But I was terrified to tell her, and there was no good reason for that--my mother is not a terrifying woman. She is, perhaps, the furthest thing from terrifying you will ever meet. She is very petite and very beautiful. She's got tiny hands and a loud voice and a louder laugh (I got that from her), and she loves to be silly. She is very silly, but so remarkably strong, very brave, ridiculously organized and efficient, kind, and compassionate. She's never been a gourmet cook, but she is a hell of a crocheter. My mother is an amazing woman, and not terrifying at all, and I was still absolutely unable to tell her what I was doing; months later, I was completely unable to tell her what I had done.

When we were at the Salt Lake City library the other day, we walked past a block of small storefronts before we reached the main entrance. We were on our way to get some food into J before the film meeting, because there are cute little cafes inside the atrium (seriously, how cool is this library? SO COOL). There was a comic book shop and some other shops that I didn't pay any attention to at all, because I had spotted the words "Writing Center" and I said "Oh my god! A writing center! Can we go in, please? Can we? Is it okay? Do we have time? Do you mind? Can we?" and J said yes, of course, because he is a gentleman.

It's a small, bright room, with wooden floors and a couch, a couple of computers, and then a long, beautiful polished table set with chairs and a giant library of reference books. It's a cozy, quiet little place and I fell deeply in love with it before I even knew anything about it. Because it's a writing center! For the community! Where you write! Communally! It sounded okay to me, so far.

Beth, in the comments yesterday, nailed another problem--sometimes, there is just no happy medium. I was so looking forward to a complete day of absolute silence. Me, the cat, the laptop and a maybe a handful of books. No television, no music, and the only interaction that would take place would be my ass interacting with the couch and my mouth maybe interacting with a sandwich around noon. If I was absolutely forced to, I would maybe go down to the store and get myself a soda of some kind and enjoy the sunshine, but that was totally optional. The only obligation I had was to be very, very still, get my work done, and be alone.

But I laid down with my laptop, and then got back up. I washed the dishes. I picked up my phone, and almost called Jayrad and asked him what he was doing for lunch, almost called E's mom to see if she wanted to get coffee. I thought about trying to catch A. before he left for work, and suggest maybe we go out for ice cream. I got through my next batch of emails to return, and they were all ridiculously long and chatty and endless and yakkity yakkity and I kind of cringed, listening to myself, but sent them anyway. I wanted to make half-a-dozen phone calls but realized I didn't actually have anything to say and I really didn't actually want to talk to anyone. I was feeling listless and lonely and alone, and that is a very irritating combination.

The weekend was wonderful, but I bumped up against my absolute limit for social interaction several times, in rooms full of extremely rowdy boys wrestling and shouting and knocking things over, and people running and dropping things and moving things and someone always being next to me, talking about something, asking a question, requiring focus and attention and interaction. The older I get, the more I realize that I have a problem with focus and attention, which makes interaction, you know, slightly difficult.

With a great deal of effort, I can drag my mind front and center and focus my eyes and be a reasonable human being with a normal attention span, who takes a great deal of pleasure in the people around her, and delights in the big and beautiful great human carnival we call life, et cetera, et cetera. But it wipes me out. Sometimes I have more stamina than other times, but however long it takes, my battery ends up drained and if I do not retreat and stare off into space for awhile, my head is going to explode and no one wants to clean up that mess, believe me.

This was the weekend of the 48 Hour Film Project, the brief nationwide fit of insanity where amateur filmmakers are given--go on, guess how long--to write, shoot and edit a movie in an assigned random genre, which must include Project-dictated elements: a line of dialogue, a character and a prop. It starts Friday night at 7 p.m.; the clock ticks over at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, and then you fall over and die because holy crap, that is not a lot of time to do a movie in.

On Friday evening, J. and I showed up outside the very beautiful SLC library to collect our genre, and to find out what elements we would be forced, reluctantly and at gunpoint, to include. It was a courtyard full of really astonishing people; the number of male ponytails took my breath away. 1987 called and asked for its aesthetic and self-loathing back, and the guy heading up the project was wearing Birkenstocks with socks. Could you ask for more from your 48-hour film project? You certainly cannot.

There was a Bikram Yoga studio on my way home from the train, when I lived in San Francisco. I would pass it every night, and swear I wouldn't peer through the windows because it is rude, to spy on people when they are vulnerable, in their workout clothes and sweaty and going ow ow ow, or wondering how their ass looks. Because that's something that's hard not to do, when you're in an exercise class. Or so I've heard.

I'd peer through the glass every single night. Sometimes, just a glance, and I'd see uplifted arms and gleaming skin and looks of concentration and determination and once, outright agony. Sometimes, I'd stop, and I'd get very close to the window and watch, because I was fascinated. I had never done yoga (never had, actually, until I moved to Utah, and if that's not counter-intuitive, I don't know what is), but I thought I might want to, or could do it, that it would be good for my body and my beautiful spirit and my crazy head, right? That's how yoga goes. It fixes you from the inside out.

I'm sitting here surrounded by mounds and mounds of fabrics--weird prints (bananas!) and pretty prints (flowers!) and vintage sheets and a big pink shawl. There are piles and tubes of interfacing, a whole box of zippers and buttons, and I finally found where the hell my rotary cutter went. The cutting mat is propped up against the fireplace, and the clear ruler has fallen over onto the floor, and there is a pin cushion on the coffee table, two pairs of fabric scissors, a couple of fabric markers, a tub filled with spools of thread, and a seam ripper. If you didn't know any better, you'd swear I was a seamstress, and about to embark on making my masterpiece.

Really, though, I'm just pretty sure I'm going to sew my hand into something. It's been a couple of years since I've tried to sew anything, and even when I used to sew things, they weren't especially pretty. My straight lines are kind of crooked, and my curved lines veer off into outer space, and I'm pretty sure I've never figured out, exactly, what a dart is. That's what ninjas use to try and kill pirates except they fail, right?

Of course, a great deal of it is the sun talking. A bike is the most perfect transportation solution for me! I should not get a car, which is terrible for the environment and increasingly expensive in a number of very troubling ways, including ethically, environmentally, and physically speaking, even! I just paid my taxes and cannot afford a car anyway! Not to mention the fact that shopping for a good used car that will not blow up, explode, detonate or die quietly in any number of ways smacks of a great deal of effort and also exceptional luck, of which I have a very small-to-nonexistent amount. This is why I do not push my luck. This is why I need a bike!

When I first moved to Littletown, here in the heart of Utah, I was pretty convinced that I would die horribly and alone without owning a car; that I would be isolated, cut off, dependent, and always out of milk. It turns out that--well, it would be very convenient to have my own wheels, to be able to make a grocery run without scheduling it with other people and hoping the dwindling of my supply of yogurt coincides neatly with their requirements for whole wheat pasta and US Weekly. It would be nice to be able to run up to Target whenever I needed to, to be able to head out to the coffee shop that's a bit of a hike without making elaborate plans, to be like, totally free! It would be nice. But I am, as ever, surprised at the difference between what is nice and what is necessary.

It is sunshiney and bright and warm and springy and I'm in love with my little neighborhood today. This is not a perfect place--it's got some sketchy houses, and sketchy streets, and weird people standing around and I might have heard it called the ghetto, once or twice, but it doesn't look like the ghetto to me. Not my street, with the lined-up trees doing that exploding-into-life thing that they do, come the change of seasons, and the park all green and flowery and the sun and the shade and the heat and the light and the so-pretty houses designed by students of Frank Lloyd Wright (that is a true fact!) and the fact that it is just a perfect day, and on a perfect day, you love everything and every one.

I went for a run this morning, for the first time in about a week, and it nearly killed me, but I was smiling all goofy, the way I tend to, because everything was just so pretty and it was so warm and perfect and mild and maybe I couldn't breathe, but I would die on a perfect day (instead of a rainstorm, and that's so completely okay).

This is it. This is the week that everything changes, that I take the bull by the horns and reach for the stars and live my dreams and be every single thing that I can be. Last week, I was the old, imperfect Anne who waffled, sometimes, who was weak of will and feeble in purpose, who spent more time sleeping in late and lolling around in bed with a pillow on her head, avoiding life, things that smacked of effort, and responsibility. That was last week. This, here, this is the first week of the rest of my life of absolute perfect perfection.

This is the week I will arise with the birds, at dawn, and prepare myself an herbal tisane in a china cup. I will sip it slowly at the table by the window, meditating on the changing light over the mountains, breathing slowly in and out, really feeling the air enter my body, inflating my lungs, the roar of oxygen through my veins, filling up my head and rushing through my brain. I will carefully clean out my teacup and wipe it dry, then lay out my yoga mat and slowly, as my living room fills with light, I will perform my sun salutations, warming my muscles slowly and feeling the stretch zing along my tendons and elongate my muscles, strengthening my sense of smug and contented self-satisfaction.