Hi All, Sorry I haven’t posted in ages. I’m busy, busy, busy listening to the Cubs kick the Cards butts working on my revisions of Restoring Harmony and cutting like crazy! And guess what? It’s going to work! I’m very excited. But that’s not what this post is about.

Hmm…if I don’t write fast, I’m going to have to amend my Cubbie statement since they just walked a guy in the 9th, and then hit Albert Pujoles with pitch…

Anyway… Tomorrow is my 41st birthday and I decided that for my birthday present I am going to teach myself math. Wow! I know! You’re all jealous, aren’t you? Here’s what happened. A while back someone tweeted that “Winnie Cooper got married”. I remembered Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years, so I clicked on the link to see what the actress, Danica McKellar looks like as a grown up (gorgeous!) and discovered that she is a mathematician and she wrote several books. The first book is what you would call MG non-fiction and it’s called MATH DOESN’T SUCK. It got me thinking about how my husband loves to do crosswords during breakfast and I really need something to do so I don’t accidentally talk to him before his coffee kicks in (not a smart move, trust me).

Crosswords are not the answer for me. In fact, I almost flunked high school French because my teacher realized that some of us were so swamped with homework that she decided to make French homework easier on us and give us crosswords instead of anything more taxing. Heck! I can’t even do crosswords in English, let alone French, and I ended up with a D. Yeah…a D. I’m not proud of it, but wait…we were talking about math.

Anyway, I’m not any better at math than I was at French that year (My agent is probably reading this and laughing at me because I’m always trying to slip French into my books and he’s always making me cut it. I got better and did really well in college, so stop laughing, Michael!).

So at the wise old age of nearly forty-one it occurred to me that when they told us in junior high that we should pay attention in math class because we’d need it our whole life, it turns out they weren’t lying! I use math all the time. In the kitchen when I cook. In my knitting. Even in editing (if I cut 54 pages, how many more do I have to cut to get to my goal? The answer is none because I’ve already reached my cutting goal, plus I’ve cut 5 extra pages!).

Here’s my plan. Each morning during breakfast, I’m going to work with this book MATH DOESN’T SUCK. At least until it’s due back at the library. And then, if I’m still going strong, I’ll buy the book. Here’s what I learned already.

I’ll use the number 18 because it’s my favourite.

18=2x3x3 That might not look that impressive, but it is. I factored the #18 down to its prime numbers. Yeah…I’m cool. Oh, and the Cubs won!