*letter of resignation.

I know I've been a bit scarce of late, for reasons that are both within my control and without. The work has been piling up—this week marks one of those remarkable times when my triumvirate of jobs all come due at the same time, a cheery tapas cookbook and a March issue of one magazine and a March/April issue of another magazine, and trust me I am not complaining about my overabundance of occupation, but it was all very hamster-on-a-wheel.

The side effect, oddly, of that meticulousness, the scanning of black-and-white pages for errant apostrophes and misplaced modifiers and "witlof" where "Belgian endive" should be, is a curiously mad creative twirl. It's like a mini mania, filled with crazed pronouncements like, "You know what? I think I'll change all my money into Sacagawea dollars and then use it to buy a big box of hair. WAHheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehooooooooooooTHUD."



They should probably have me tested.

But then Tuesday arrived, a day so terrifically awful it could only be surpassed by Wednesday, and I got sad and sadder and found myself without even half a Sacagawea to rub together and maybe cried a little bit in the liquor store.



I joke a lot here about the sagging Woodside, but there are days I'm genuinely terrified that the old homestead is going to get so depressed as to end it all and go all last-two-minutes-of-Poltergeist on me. I dreamed this week that I went outside to use the hose and discovered that the whole structure had shifted off its foundation.

You think that was a metaphor?

I've never been any good at the waiting game, preferring a kicky combination of denial and fear that leaves me in a crouched position, waiting to pounce on bad news with a screechy but largely unsatisfying "IIIIIIIIIII KNEW IT!"



So even though my furnace took a flying leap and cost me all my remaining pennies, and circumstances are conspiring to make me lose all my remaining marbles, I'm going to do what I have to do when the sky starts falling: put on my helmet.



Because there are days when my head is in the universe's pinball machine, when I'm walking uptown on a crowded sidewalk when everyone else is headed in the other direction. There are days when I get right pummeled, and on those days I'm generally a ratty-haired, mascara-smeared, wild-eyed crazy person.

But today I feel determined. To return to my comfy creative swirl, even if I can't afford it right now. To make my bedroom wall



a photo wall.



To give the doddery Woodside's Black Bean exterior a yellow door.



In Decisive Yellow, because ... well because.



I understand it's terribly out of character for me to be decisive about anything, but today I have a message for the world:

No. No, I do not accept your terms. I am not going anywhere. I know I upset the balance, somewhere along the way, and you're going to throw a lot of fury and tree branches at me. But the Woodside and me, we're here for the long haul.