Lara Zielin

STATUS: Ready to detox.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: The fun continues with the English instructional videos. Only this time it’s technically Spanish they’re teaching. But who really cares when  phrases like “you bucket of bolts” are tossed around in a scene with an air gun.

So, sorry if this blog post scares the pee out of anyone who reads it. But it changed the way I look at most everything, so I figured it was worth sharing.

Recently I was reading 2007′s The Best American Magazine Writing, a compilation of great stories by the American  Society of Magazine Editors, and I came across the story “Plastic Ocean” by Susan Casey. The story originally appeared in Best Life magazine, and I’m so glad they’ve put an electronic version of the story online.

The short version of the story is that plastics are killing the environment–and people. Harmful plastics leech from our water bottles, our pills, our packaged food, and more – eventually getting into our body where they wreak havoc. On average, a single person tosses about 185 pounds of plastic out each year, which is really the only solution since the product can’t easily be recycled. It’s much cheaper and easier to create new plastic than it is to recycle the old.

I’m not a doomsday-er and I fully realize there are a lot of harmful things on this planet. But what I didn’t realize was exactly how bad plastics were, and what they’re doing to our bodies and our planet. They’re so common, and yet so destructive. Don’t take it from me, though. Read the online version of the article. And then trade in your plastic water bottle or Nalgene bottle for one of these. It’s at least a start.

STATUS: Back in the saddle.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: For those who want to learn English, here’s a Japanese instructional video. I personally wouldn’t have thought to include aerobics in an English lesson, but I have to admit it adds to the overall effect. Today’s blog title comes straight from this three-minute clip of pure brilliance.

The big news is that I’m back to work on my second book. What happened to the first book, you might ask. For now, DONUT DAYS remains in a bit of an editing limbo. There are several factors at play here. First, the book got pushed out to the summer 2009 list, which takes some of the pressure off the editing process. Summer 2009 is a long time from now, and considering the fact that I got my contract a year ago, it seems like a dinosaur’s age. BUT, while publishing moves very slowly as an industry overall, I certainly played a part in the delays. Editing is hard and I haven’t been able to do everything my editor, who is really fabulous and smart, has asked me to. So, it’s kind of a perfect storm of delays, which, actually, I’m okay with. I know, I’m Little Miss Impatient most of the time but in this case, I feel good about the timing. I was way stressed there for a while, trying to get all those DONUT DAYS changes in, and I didn’t feel 100 percent confident about the text overall. Best to wait and put out a fabulous product versus rush it.