“Alex, when we move, can I just tell people I’m a housewife?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Of course, I’d be a lousy housewife. I sort of am a housewife, but I know I do a bad job — I’m too lazy.

It’s awesome, though, because Alex says that I’d stress him out if I wasn’t a little lazy, if I was always running around and cleaning. Even the days I’m “on,” like when the cat ate half a spool of thread from my sewing machine and we had to rush him to the vet, and I cleaned like . . . well, like my grandmother . . . to remove any other dangers, Alex was glad when I stopped and went back to our normal routine of lazy video game playing and making our friend Chris help with (read: do all of) our dishes on the weekend.

Anyway, I want to pass myself off as a housewife from now on (even knowing the stigma attached to it) because there’s just something awful about telling someone you’re a writer and always having them ask how it’s going. Because what are you going to say? “I wrote half a scene this week and ended up scrapping the entire book because it wasn’t working and I wanted to rip my hair out”? Yeah, that’s a conversation — for mental patients, maybe.

Maybe that’s what writing is — a profession for crazy people. Maybe all writers are just nutjobs dedicating themselves to their insanity. God knows it’s what I feel like. Completely insane, and completely unable to stop.