A lot of people have been asking me why I have fallen off the blog map.
OK, maybe three people have asked but they have been rather persistent. I guess that award-winner on the splendor of Twinkies and other Hostess products two months ago was not enough for you people.
It’s not that I don’t love writing about mostly nothing. There is nothing more freeing for a reporter than to abandon all sense of responsibility and any hint of relevance when she sits down at her computer.
I guess this must be what people get out of tweeting and if I could hiccup in 35 words or less, I might like it. But I mean, really. How could I possibly do justice to the Ho-Ho with those limitations?
So I will now confide in you the real reason I have not blogged much lately.
I’m too tired.

My husband Rick thinks it’s a real problem. Not a medical problem, mind you. That would make him feel really bad if, say, I actually had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It would actually make me feel good to have an excuse for my persistent exhaustion but yeah, yeah, I know, it’s a very serious problem and nothing to joke about and I wouldn’t feel good at all. But I’d like to just have a tiny bit of satisfaction.
I am tired when I wake up, which is when I first start thinking about going back to bed. I fantasize about napping most of the day, even though the rare times when I try, I’m terrible at it. By 3, I am in a daze, completely unable to operate heavy machinery or write a coherent sentence. By 7, I begin planning on going to bed early. And by 7:30, I collapse in a stupor on the couch that lasts for at least 10 minutes until someone needs me.
On weekends, I occasionally try to convince Rick that we should rent a movie and he laughs at me because so far in our 18 and a half years of marriage, I have never stayed awake for an entire movie. But if I’m really persistent, he will usually break down, get a movie I insist we will both enjoy, like maybe “Sex and the City: The Movie” whereupon I watch for approximately seven minutes before falling into a drug-like state that includes drooling and snoring.
Occasionally Rick wins and we get “The Hurt Locker,” both of us thinking that no way can I fall asleep with people getting blown to bits on surround sound, but alas, I didn’t make it to the first casualty.

A week ago, I took my daughter Amanda to an allergist and I ended up making an appointment for myself to come back the following week. I was very excited about this because I have never seen a doctor who asked more questions about a patient’s every twinge and pang and I wanted in.
But I never expected, when I answered his questions about snoring – in my case, apparently loud enough to startle the dog across the street – for him to suggest that I might have a sleep disorder and would be a good candidate for a sleep study.

A sleep study?
I could barely contain myself. I get to sleep and people study me? They encourage me to sleep?
I had a lot of unanswered questions.
Like, “Do they have those Heavenly beds with the comfort pillow tops like Westin hotels?”
“Cable?”
“People Magazine? Oreos?”

Not that I necessarilyto have all those things but it would just make it nicer.
Who would be the person watching me? What if it was some really cute guy? Would I have to go buy new pajamas? Not wash off my make-up?
Would I have to wear those sticky electrode things all over my body that would make it difficult to toss and turn the way I usually like to? Would I end up getting even less sleep? That would stink.
With all of these thoughts consuming me, we were watching “The Biggest Loser” the other night when they showed before-and-after videos and in most of the before, contestants were seen either eating in their cars or getting into bed with alien-like oxygen contraptions over their faces.

I looked at Rick.
“Those are for people with sleep disorders,” he said smugly.
I never thought about that. That could really impair my sleep. I thought they’d just study me and tell me I needed to come in on a regular basis and sleep some more for them.
This was not going to work. And worse, it might even keep me awake at night thinking about it. 
Then again, that would give me time to start blogging again.

My friend Jerry always comes through for me when I have a raging case of blogger’s block. Like today, for example, he didn’t even know he was helping me when he e-mailed to tell me, in a way only he could, that finding my blog again, after my sabbatical-length break, was like eating a Suzy Q years after stopping cold turkey.I took this as the supreme compliment that it was intended to be, mostly because I too used to worship at the Hostess temple.My mother would be somewhat embarrassed, I think, if she was alive to read this, as I imagine most mothers who were in their maternal prime in the 50s and 60s would be. And my husband’s mother and grandmother would be absolutely horrified as I don’t believe either ever allowed store-bought sweets into their homes (which explains a few things about Rick).My brothers, however, tell me that my mother had no problem bringing Twinkies into our house, though she herself was never actually seen eating one (or any meal, for that matter) and I can’t imagine she ever did sneak a bite as she possessed a much more sophisticated sweet tooth.In fact, my mother can be credited with elevating the Twinkie to somewhat higher standards by freezing them, a precursor, we think, to freezing Milky Ways and Three Muskateers, the thought being that anything tastes better and is more fun to eat when it is cold and also involves the risk of breaking a tooth.Twinkies, as I remember all Hostess products, were best consumed right after school, when a giant sugar rush was necessary and a nice companion to anything on TV from Clutch Cargo to Leave it to Beaver reruns to Gilligan’s Island to Dark Shadows. My husband Rick, a mere baby born two years after me in 1963, watched reruns of “Get Smart” and thought they were original episodes. My brothers, White Sox fans by birth, would even watch the last few innings of a Cubs game accompanied by a Twinkie and a milk chaser.Of course, the best Hostess product ever made was the Hostess cupcake. Even if you didn’t care for devil’s food, like me, the frosting-like cap on top, peeled off and placed to the side to be savored and saved for later, was well worth getting through the rest.But the real delicacy of all Hostess products has always been the vanilla crème center. No one, to my knowledge, including the brightest scientific minds in the country, has ever determined the exact makeup of the vanilla crème and it really misses the point to even wonder about it.My friend Bari is the only known person to actually hate what she called the gooshz in the middle and so, whenever possible, she would let me have it, never an easy proposition. In my mother’s brilliant freezing technique, you would peel away the sponge cake and be left with a vanilla cremesicle.

But any way you ate a Hostess treat, getting to the gooshz was unquestionably the best part, actually doubling as an after-school activity in the event you didn’t have a friend come over. If it wasn’t scooping out the Twinkie, it was unrolling the Ho-Ho, the younger Hostess generation’s cupcake. Created in 1967 (the Twinkie dates back to 1933 and the cupcake’s seven squiggles and vanilla crème version in 1950 – I’ll bet you didn’t know how educational this was going to be when you first started reading), the Ho Ho sits high atop my personal all-time Hostess list and, I’m not embarrassed to admit (well, ok, a little embarrassed), easily leads my list of all Hostess products consumed in adulthood.I do have to say, however, that discovering a few years ago that Ho Ho’s no longer came wrapped in aluminum foil but in some white, plastic, air-filled packaging was a disappointment from which I’ve never quite recovered.Two final Hostess notes — Suzy Q’s? Never understood the point. Seemed a poor cousin to the cupcake. And the Sno ball? The cousin you never spoke of. My brother Richard claimed they had a slight effeminate quality and that anyone caught with a Sno ball in his lunch box would be promptly beaten up.My brother Barry, who passed down his intense hatred of coconut to me, merely shudders at the word Sno ball and like a giant jar of Skippy to the kid with peanut allergies, my mother would never subject us to it.And there you have it.Thanks, Jerry. Feel free to read Melissa’s columns on ESPNChicago.com

I’m not pretending I’m not curious about what Tiger Woods will say in his big press conference, Friday. A statement of this magnitude, after all, needed to be announced two days in advance and I’m guessing that wasn’t done to make sure they had enough time to get extra bagels and coffee. So, yes, I’ll want to hear it.

But do I really require an apology, as all of us – fans, media, family, friends, sponsors, mistresses – are sure to get one? And if I do get one, does it mean anything? It kind of reminds me of when kids are toddlers, still in that biting/hitting phase (except for mine, of course) and no matter what a child does, up to and including taking a large chunk out of another child’s body, there is always the same reaction.“Say you’re sorry,” the mother or preschool teacher will implore of the biter.The little monster will dutifully comply, of course, usually with a big grin, until he gnaws on his next victim five minutes later.

So no, I don’t need to hear Tiger say he’s sorry unless, perhaps, it is accompanied by racking sobs and so convincing a performance that it moves me to tears as well. And somehow I don’t expect that.He does owe his wife an apology but sorry, I don’t really care that much about that either. Certainly, I do not celebrate another woman’s pain. But I have to wonder, aside from marrying a professional athlete in the first place, if there wasn’t some sign, some warning, some little indication before this past Thanksgiving that something was amiss. Say, I don’t know, the fact that your husband always spoke in a husky whisper whenever he answered his cell phone on the road.They are saying that Elin Woods’ presence or absence will be very telling, Friday. I’m not so sure. I mean, even if she is planning to stay with her husband, why go through the indignity of standing there next to him when she could be hanging out on the yacht or something? I’d be on the yacht in a heartbeat.Friday’s apology/statement (naturally, there will be no questions allowed) is really not as big of a deal as it appears.

Rather, it was inevitable unless, of course, Woods planned to live underground for the rest of his life. There was going to be a re-entering into public life and onto the PGA Tour and thus, there was going to have to be THE press conference. I just wonder if Woods is actually naive enough to think this will put the whole situation to rest.And I wonder if his fans are naïve enough to buy it.

Went for a massage today. I like to say that, kind of casually, as if it’s part of my weekly routine. Not that it wouldn’t be a part of my weekly routine if I had a little more disposable income and had not inherited my mother’s guilt complex.Whenever my mother tasted something or experienced something or was given something really extraordinary, she’d say, “That’s too good,” suggesting she was not deserving of anything as decadent as a piece of Godiva chocolate.That’s how I feel about massages.They are just too good.I went today because I have been more stiff and sore than usual and because my husband was starting to pressure me about using the gift card to a local spa he gave me two Mother Day’s ago. Rick hates gift cards.

He’s always convinced the place is going to go out of business before we use them, so this particular gift card was making him nervous.It’s not that I didn’t want to use it. It was easily in the top five gifts he has ever given me, ranking slightly higher than the TV he got for our bedroom last year. “I knew you wanted it,” he said, grabbing the remote.I remember the first time I got a massage. Well, I sort of remember. I was covering some team somewhere some time ago when I was stranded by a snowstorm and figured I’d give it a try. I remember afterward asking everyone I knew if they got massages and wanting to talk to them about how unbelievably great they were if they did. I got a lot of strange looks.But I didn’t get my second massage for years. And when I finally had another one, I did the same thing I did today. I talked through the whole thing and almost ruined it.I kept thinking about the poor girl giving me the massage. Wasn’t she tired from rubbing people’s backs all day? Her fingers and hands had to be in agony. Mine would be. And who did I think I was just laying there, enjoying myself, when I could be making it a less tedious experience for her?I know, it’s a sickness.The funny thing is, I don’t particularly like when strangers talk to me. On airplanes. In waiting rooms. And especially during massages. Once, I had a lady masseuse who kept yelling at me that I needed to breathe. I mean, the woman never shut up. Over and over, “Breathe, you have to breathe, don’t forget to breathe, it’s very important to breathe. You’re not breathing.”  I wanted to actually stop breathing altogether just to spite her.Today’s woman was fine until I started bothering her.It wasn’t like we talked about current events or our families, but we did touch briefly on her migraines and on whether her husband rubs her back when she points to an especially painful spot and begs for just a little help. I told her mine tries, for maybe 10 seconds, then begs off with the lame excuse that he’s afraid he’s going to do some damage, like he’s Lou Ferrigno.

I also felt it was only polite to ask her about the various muscles to which she was causing such  deliriously exquisite pain. She seemed to appreciate this and shared some very interesting information about where the tendons attached to the bone, something that should come in handy next time I am taking my masseuse exam.Of course, there is the slight possibility that she might have been annoyed that I was talking and throwing off her concentration while she was trying to find my scapula, but this never occurred to me at the time.  And so I killed the next few minutes conducting a survey on the gender preferences of most massage clients. Apparently, both men and women prefer to have a female doing the massaging. I can’t speak for everyone, but I do know that the one time I had a masseur, the pain was not the good kind but rather the painful kind that made me want to call for help and had me cursing him for the next two days.I am guessing men, much like George Costanza, simply don’t like other men touching and rubbing and I can understand this. But what does that say about women who prefer a woman masseuse? It’s kind of like the theory among t
he uninitiated and really stupid that women sportswriters are in the business so we can ogle naked men in the lockerroom. If that’s what they think about sports lockerrooms, what does it say about the male sportswriters in there?You can see now why I can’t completely relax and enjoy my massage with such deep thoughts.Like I said, it’s a sickness. 

Anyone still out there?Re-entering cyberspace, I think, might be more challenging than entering it the first time. Technically though, I never really left, going from the  Chicago Tribune to my blog, which kept me sane after being laid off from the Tribune, to ESPNChicago.com, which saved me.

I began my blog in the weepy hours after being pushed out by the Tribune last April and kept writing as I stopped crying and started to see the hope and humor again, through my first months with ESPN. And then I stopped.I still do not know exactly why I stopped. But I am flattered by the handful of you not including those directly related to me, who noticed. I hope you find me again. And though I can’t promise anything, I hope not to take a three-and-half month break again.

For a while, I know I felt that if I was not doing something productive every waking hour that I was a slug and would never be gainfully employed again. Then, when I was gainfully employed again, I discovered the utter sense of comfort I got from taking a few hours off and not feeling guilty.At about that time, I also re-discovered our couch in the family room and how much I loved it – and the furry purple blanket my daughter Amanda brought home a few years ago as one of the truly great bat mitzvah giveaways. And then I remembered why my husband rarely rents movies as I drifted off to sleep each night, a deep, almost drugged-like state in which I could hear myself snoring but I could not do a thing about it.

It also was then that I couldn’t imagine how I would ever find the time and energy to write a blog again.But I did miss it.  Like an old friend who you stop calling for no particular reason, then a few weeks turn into months and you reach that uncomfortable stage when you’re almost afraid to call, not remembering who called last and if it’s your fault so much time has passed, I am hoping that as I do start again, I will find that my friend(s) are still there for me.Writing columns again on a regular basis for ESPN has been a joy I thought I might never experience again. I do it now with a light-heartedness, even for the heavy subjects, I have not had in a very long time. Maybe it’s because I am no longer under strict space or time restrictions. Maybe it’s just because it’s a terrific positive atmosphere. Or maybe it’s because no one really writes to me anymore.There is no e-mail address at the bottom of my columns and I have made no effort to correct that. While I have always loved hearing from readers, even critical responses, the advent of blogs and the increase in Internet traffic has lent itself to people who can spontaneously reply from their desks – or dark caves, as the case may be  — anonymously, of course, and with spewings of racism, sexism and just general hatred that I really grew tired of reading.I just figured I’d cut down on that a little and it seems to have worked and I feel much better. In fact, e-mails like the one I got this morning in response to my [U.S. Olympic speedskater] Shani Davis column calling me a “barren lesbian freak” hardly ever happen anymore. So things are great.But I do love hearing from people who read my blogs, particularly since they seem only to be nice, normal, literate people who would never think of calling a writer a “barren, lesbian freak” even if somehow that was an appropriate response.The other thing is that I find I am talking to myself much too much without a blog, particularly in the shower when I am a literary savant, every story flowing through my brain with just the right touches of humor. Of course, by the blow-drying stage, I’ve lost it. But where else but here can I talk about Amanda’s turnabout dance (I called it the “Sadie Hawkins dance” recently and she looked at me as if I was wearing a bonnet and hoop skirt), my continued eating problems (I bought a Valentine’s Day cookie cake as if we were having a party – we’re not. Cake is now gone), my 11-year-old son suddenly caring how his hair looks (I can cry), the new Superdawg grand opening (like a drive-thru bar mitzvah), and many funny facets of my life that have been lost forever in this three-and-a-half-month black hole.So I’ll be back, promise.