As anyone who reads my Blog knows, I am annoyingly optimistic...

BUT I am in the depths of angst right now - an uncomfortable but not unknown geography to me. I have convinced myself (and yes as the adorable husband in all goodness and love keeps saying, "it's only been ONE week.") that no one will publish my book, that I can't write, that I should stick to articles and be glad people give me money for them, that I have no expertise about anything worth writing about, that the agents who asked to see my first three chapters were only being nice, or were charmed by my admittedly adorable self... and the list is longer. A pond, no a lake, no a fucking sea of self pity!

I, who have so very much to be grateful for, should be ashamed of myself, and I am. Last night after we were shown to our suite/apartment at the Carmel Valley Ranch, I burst into tears and nothing the adorable husband said could comfort me or make me stop -and he did try everything.
I felt terrible and guilty (another very rare emotion for me) - the adorable husband works so hard, and looks after everyone, especially me, and here I am on the vacation he wanted (he didn't want to go to a city or out of the U.S.) being a pissy, horrid, ungrateful, person. Which of course, made me cry harder. Because he did ask me, and I said this would be fine. I was lying, but that's what you do sometimes when you love someone. But you DON'T then act a total twit and make them feel terrible for doing what you said was perfectly fine - you don't unless you are a horrid selfish person.

I don't like it here. I don't like paying an exorbitant amount of money to stay somewhere that is not as nice as my own house! They lied on the web site (Carmel Valley Ranch). This place, which was advertised as renovated, is old (the chair in the bedroom has a stain! of what is the worry). The room service menu is limited, very limited, and we are big room service people on vacation. The television has no movie channel, no pay-for movie channel - which is the only TV I watch. How can you run a resort and not have pay-for movies and a spa that only does "plain" manicures - which meant that I had to rip the lovely gel covering off my nails last night (after the crying jag, I guess I thought I deserved the pain) which was applied in NYC and I just loved. I had not found anyone nearby in Houston who does the gel manicure (it's new) and I did not even consider that I would not be able to have it done at a place that is advertised as posh (and cost it) as this one! I mean it's a resort-spa! Would you not think that would mean they would do all sorts of wonderful 'spa stuff'? If I had I would have made the time in Houston to have the gel applied. So now I have serviceable once more, but quite unattractive set of nails... See what I mean, a real twit I am!

The adorable husband is sleeping in, as I also kept him up all night with nightmares (not an unusual occurrence but don't you think I could have abstained after making him so distraught earlier?). I shall be amazed if I'm still married when this vacation is over. I wouldn't marry me.

So there you have it - the confession of an absolute twit and horrid, selfish person. Now you know the truth, or at least the truth right now. Sigh.

Epilogue: What a lucky girl am I. So... this morning, moments after I finished constructing my hair shirt and was buttoning it up, the adorable husband made his appearance. He assured me all was forgiven, he loves me, and isn't going to trade me in for a better model. He also pointed out to me, and rightly so, as I had come to the same conclusion during my morning meditations, that we all have some nasty tapes from our childhood that play in our heads in times of stress - it does not make them true. And I, because I spent quite a bit of time with the monks exorcising my demons from the past, I did not recognize them for what they were yesterday. I, you see, have never failed at anything I really wanted to do - that makes failure more terrifying not less - and I really very much want to be an "author" not just a writer. So you mix all that up in a bag and throw in a disappointment like the Carmel Valley Ranch (which by the by the adorable husband says he does not like it either, they misrepresented it in their website and on the telephone with him. So we are leaving. We are going to see Carmel today and have lunch. He will play a round of golf tomorrow, to justify lugging his clubs all the way here, and we will go home. Like I said, what a lucky girl am I. I love my husband.