Vacation, all I ever wanted. Vacation, had to get away.

So I'm about to embark on a week's vacation because I need to use up my time off before the Man rips it out from under me when I give Ottawa the keys to the street later this month. I am pretty stoked, because ever since I made all those big life decisions a little while ago, I've been in an annoying state of cat-like readiness that has compounded my usual insomniac tendencies to the point where I laid awake last night until 4 AM listening to the wind whip around my windows and worrying that it was going to knock down a hanging basket on my fire escape which would then fall and hit my car. I also had a brief fear that there was a vampire in my storage closet because my cat was acting sort of funny. This is how I roll, people. I need some sleep, the kind of sleep I only get on the foldout couch in my parents' basement. There's something soporific about their house. Maybe it's the cable TV.

Anyway, when I finally gave up on actually trying to sleep, I started reading All The Wrong People Have Self-Esteem by Laurie Rosenwald, an incredible, delightfully neurotic collection of advice-ridden collages for teenage girls. I'd never heard of Laurie Rosenwald until a friend recommended this book to me, but she is fantastic. She combines old photos and magazine clippings and wicked typeface to rail against women's magazines, worry about her lack of activism, and generally obsess about the details of her daily life. I could not sympathize more. I love books that are stuck in the heads of their creators, particularly those that delve into girlhood and the awkwardness of the transformation from girl to woman. Rosenwald's book belongs alongside Lynda Barry's One! Hundred! Demons! and Lauren R. Weinstein's Girl Stories, graphic books that are funny, heartbreaking, and endlessly self-reflexive. Books that make me wish I could draw, or do better collages than the ones I ripped apart my Sassy back issues to create back in 1996. Books that make neuroses-fuelled insomnia feel pretty okay.

Speaking of comic books, tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day. Call your local comic store or library to find out more. Or just listen to Wolverine.