It’s GROWN UP KIND OF PRETTY’s launch day, so of course my mental illness number is so high that my main goal for today is to get all the way through hot yoga with no public weeping. If I can make it to the end, I will lie down, flattened and soaked in my own greases, stinking, trembling on my mat, and Isobel will come around and put cold towels soaked in lavender water on everyone’s eyeballs.
I hereby give myself permission to weep silently and peacefully into my cold towel. If I don’t publicly weep until my cold towel is over my eyes, I am calling today a mental wellness win.
Maybe I should set the bar higher and decide not to publicly weep AFTER, either.
WHY IS LAUNCH DAY SO LARGE AND LOOMY? It’s a weird kind of hopeful hell, though it should be neither, it should be nothing, because on launch day, historically, categorically, provably, inevitably:
ABSO
LUTELY
NOTHING
HAPPENS
It’s not like theatre, where opening night is OPENING NIGHT and your mom is in the audience and you know by the end of act one if it is going well, if people will talk, if your run might get extended. You KNOW.
Launch day is just the day where your book enters the world, and begins the LONG process of trickling out, reader by reader, into the world. Reactions are delayed and diffused.
You spend a couple of years of your life, trying to get this story out, the one that is currently haunting you, to get the CORRECT words down on the paper instead of the stupid damn WRONG ones, the words that make a path that might lead others to the place you see so brightly, so clearly, so beautifully in the confines of your most private brain. And then one day you think, “This is as close as I can get it.” And the book is done.
Then the book goes away from you for a year or more, while you wrestle with whatever story haunts you next, and then BANG! Launch day comes, and with it the sudden dizzying stomach drop of knowing, ITIS OUT THERE, for good or ill, that the people you made up and loved and sheltered are launched and in the world now, that you no longer own them, they are no longer so YOURS in the same way, and you have to let go and hope that they will find good homes in the minds and bookshelves of other people. That you did your job right. That people can follow your path and come to see that place that stood so shiny and truthful in the eye of your mind.
The largest pleasures and pains of being published happen before — when the reviews come in, and THANK GOD this book has had a DELIGHTFUL critical response—reviewers are telling people to READ THIS BOOK. Then the reaction that REALLY counts—the reactions of your actual readers —- happens LATER, and you learn of it in diffused ways, as sales numbers come in and are good or bad, as letters from readers come in, either lovely and heartening or enraged.
On Launch Day, you mostly sit around in your pajamas, trying not to eat starches, trying to wait for a respectably late o’clock in the day before you declare it is cocktail hour. You know. Like any Wednesday.
SO it isn’t about that—it isn’t about the reactions. I think it is about control.
Launch is the day you actually have to let the story go. You know, the one that drove your life like your life was its car for two years. Let it go. There’s a synonym for LAUNCH DAY that I think is a better word, a word that catches what it feels like: Release.
I love this book. I am proud of this book. I think it is funny and hopeful and I bravely went down deep into the salty black mines of my own mental illness and tried to make it also truthful as I used the tale to wrestle with the questions that drive my life. And today, I have to stop all that, and set it down, and walk away, and see who picks it up.
Launch—-no, release—- is the day I have to abandon Mosey and Big and Liza and Roger and Lawrence. Today I will declare that noon is probably five o’clock somewhere, and I will wait, and let go of things, and hope. These people, this story, today I know and feel and accept that they aren’t mine. Not anymore.
Oh My Best Beloveds, something AMAZING happened today.
Remember in the way-back-back of 2006 when I asked you to give me your email addresses if you wanted to be on the list to get my BRAND NEW EXCITING COMING VERY SOON ANY SECOND NOW REALLY newsletter that I promised to send out whenever I had a new book release? So you would know?
And you sweetly sent me your email addresses, and then I had several more books release without ever sending a single newsletter, and the years rolled by, and I entered my forties kicking and fussing, and we changed presidents, and My Space died an ignominious ugly-backgrounded death, and Nathan Fillion got a new TV show, and even though I had several more book releases, I never, ever sent a single newsletter, or wrote an FAQ, or stuck to a diet, or became a better person, or did EXACTLY ANY of the million things I said I would do?
WELL LOOK. I ACTUALLY DID THIS ONE. I MADE A WHOLE NEWSLETTER WITH PICTURES AND LINKS AND THIS MORNING AT 8 AM IT WAS SENT OUT so it really already happened and I actually did it.
(Quiet aside: Here you understand the “I” in all these sentences actually means “my friend Alison,” but, um, shut up. Because a NEWSLETTER EXISTS and WAS SENT which, admit it, you NEVER thought would happen on ANY planet.)
Not the actual wolf who mauraded them. More of a representative wolf.
Sadly, since I collected the addresses, a couple of the subscribers joined a cult that doesn’t allow reading, one went to prison for what can only be described as a spectacular act of cannibalism, and four were killed by marauding wolves.
But the rest of them, I dearly hope, are still there, still reading, and maybe they are still failing to accomplish everything on their to do lists, too, and so are you, and yet here we are, still managing to lead satisfying, peaceful lives. Yay us.
Anyway, the main point of it was to tell people that A GROWN-UP KIND OF PRETTY is out, and if you are HERE, reading this, then you already know all about it and where I am going on tour and how to participate in The Virtual Booksigning and allll that jazz.
But, in a couple of years. SOMEONE ELSE’S LOVE STORY will be published. There is a slight but ACTUAL possibility that I COULD very well send out another newsletter then. If you would like to be told when that frabjous day approacheth, Shoot me an email and I will add you to the list. Should you sign up, don’t lose any sleep worrying you might get OVER-SPAMMED. So far my output is … 1 newsletter in 6 years, and Alison actually did the whole thing and told me about it later. Heh.
The The BookPage review for A GROWN UP KIND OF PRETTY is up, and lovely, saying things like engrossing and etc, but I have to admit my mind boggled a little bit when the review promised that my fifth novel features, “a forest sex lair.”
A FOREST SEX LAIR! Below is a screen capture of some images that come up if you google the words “forest sex lair.”
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. I was quite charmed with all these as I was nervous to google those words, but LUCKILY the vicious thorny anti-porn walls erected by the parental filters I have on my computer HELD! I was afraid I might see things I might never unsee, and instead I got… Lurch. Who I always thought was kinda hot, to be oversharey, but I think I may be alone in that. Is he the first thing that springs to your mind when you hear the phrase, “forest sex lair?”
When I first read the review, I have to admit, I was giggling over that phrase, thinking, “Oh BookPage, what did you SMOKE? And what book did you read while you were smoking it?”
And then I did a little internal double take and thought, “Oh wait, THERE ACTUALLY IS A FOREST SEX LAIR in the book.” A pretty prominent one. I might not have CALLED it that in my head but, when I think about it, the phrase is just awfully darn …accurate.
SO yeah, I am going to own that phrase, and own it proudly. MY NEW BOOK HAS A FOREST SEX LAIR, and if THAT doesn’t get you to run right out and get a copy or participate in the Virtual Book Signing, I just do not know what will. Maybe another screen capture of google image results, from lower down?
YES! FELLOW GEEKS WHO CLOCKED IT! That is a still shot from LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM, and I LOVED that movie! I saw it when I was a wee lassie and never realized til NOW that that was Hugh Grant in there, so young he looks like a poufy haired fetus, fighting demon-worm puppets in a bar, though later he in the film he will fight real ones in what I can only describe as an underground sex lair. This was before he was four weddinged and one funeraled into stardom on myside of the pond. LOOK here he is, square dancing!
By the way? Yes. This is scattered and insane. I am freaking out over book release. I keep half writing Kudzu entries and forgetting to finish them and starting a new one the next day. Looking in the management part of the blog, I have the following entries half written and archived, waiting to be edited and posted:
A Farewell to Mollusks
Fatter Than Thou
Ansley…Dog or Metaphor?
I think that last one has a pretty weak title, comparatively speaking. Maybe I should change it. “Ansley…Dog or Forest Sex Lair?” comes to mind.
Or I could make it sound more touching and instructive, like Marley and me except the dog doesn’t die at the end because it is a blog entry, not a book. I could call it.
“Ansley…the Dog Who Caused Me to Grow as a Person.” or
“The Dog With The Pink Socks Tattoo” or
“Everything I Need to Know I learned from a Seventeen Pound Dog with an Overbite” or
“Tuesdays with Ansley”
How about this:
If you title it, I will finish writing it…Maybe. I’m a MESS. Please send chocolate. Or sedatives. Or sedatives dipped in chocolate. Whatever.
This is a plain and simple little post that explains the Virtual Book Signing, and explains how (and also why) you should participate in it. (Under why? see: Diabetic kibble. See also: Supporting my work, because you want to allow me the privilege of continuing to write novels because you are a glorious human being of taste and substance.)
On the tour, I will visit Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, N and S Carolina, Louisiana and Virginia. If you live in one of those states, check the locs on The Actual Tour, and come see me! We will have fun. Pinky Swear. If not, you can be a part of The Virtual Tour—you can order a signed, first edition, first printing copy of A GROWN-UP KIND OF PRETTY from The Alabama Booksmith. On February 9th, the day of my Booksmith tour stop, I will sign and personalize all the ordered copies, and the fine folks there will get them out to you.
You will be supporting ME, literally, which means you get to help keep Schubert the one-eyed pirate cat stocked with his UNIMAGINABLY EXPENSIVE diabetic cat food, and also supporting independent bookstores, and ALSO…
Beloveds, I am proud of this book—I think you will LIKE IT, and everyone from Publisher’s Weekly to Library Journal to Kirkus to Family Circle to The Atlantic thinks you will like it. Heck, Book List gave it a you-will-like-this-book STAR and they all called it nice things, like “mesmerizing” and “best yet” and “compelling.” These are very good words that I like to whisper to encouragingly to the cat as he snarfs up his diabetic kibble.
Even if you are secretly illiterate like every teenage guest star on 80’s sit coms turned out to be, a Cig Harvey photograph graces the cover; you need a spare copy just to GAZE at.
There will also be PRIZE DRAWINGS at the event. If you win the grand prize, you will have to wait, but it will be worth it. I am going to give away a copy of Cig Harvey’s YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE AN EMERGENCY. She is the amazing art photographer whose work has been used on my last two covers. Go browse her website and LOOK at the pictures— they set my brain on fire. In the good way. There will also be runner-up prize packets that will include back list signed paperback and a small but probably delightful surprise that may or may not be shaped like a monkey. Also maybe chocolate. I will add a runner up prize for every 25 participants, so the odds never go down. And yes, you get one entry per book, not per order.
This is very late, but Strep prevented me from caring. Or sitting up. I am finally better, and antibiotics are miraculous.
I love to win Christmas.
Okay, let’s be real. I love to win. ANYTHING. I have a problem.
I had to stop playing online Scrabble because it was wrecking me, spiritually, in a Gateway-Drug-to-Murder kind of way, taking me down an enraged path leading through Basement-full-of-the-carcasses-of-tortured-lizards Land and from there, straight into IT PUTS THE LOTION ON ITS SKIN City.
But Winning Christmas, for me, is not toxic. To Win at Christmas is to find the secret thing that the person wants but didn’t KNOW they wanted, or that they KNEW they wanted but didn’t think they would get. I had two nice wins this year.
One involved getting in league with Margaret Maron who I met on the now defunct Lipstick Chronicles. (Do you read her? You should read her. She’s fantastic.) She and I did a book exchange; I sent her signed copies of some of my books in exchange for signed copies of some of her early career titles. Did I mention my mother in law is a HUGE fan? Did I mention she couldn’t FIND these particular titles?
Win.
My second victory was totally dependent on having the best niece on the planet, and not only superior in the general sense, but specifically be a BRIL photographer.
Luckily, I meet these criteria; I have that niece.
Erin took an amazing picture of my dad at the beach sitting in front of the blinds. It’s a little melancholy. Dad is not a sad person—but something about the stillness of it captures something true about him:
Then she took almost the same picture again, but with Maisy off to the side in a state of kinetic dance frenzy:
I had nice sized versions of them printed out framed together for Mom-N-Dad. At first, the lady at the frame shop tried to put them in the wrong order—-Dad and Maisy on top, and THEN Dad alone under. I was like,
“NO NO NO! You can’t put them in that order. That is a SAD STORY about a quiet man and a loud little girl and then OH NO he is all alone FOREVER. It has to go the OTHER WAY. Then it is a HAPPY story about this still man all quiet and then THE LIVING EMBODIMENT OF JOY ARRIVES!”
She looked at me like I had yawped open my maw and spewed a pound of loon-foam down her front, but she reversed them. AND COME ON! You see it don’t you?
Don’t you?
Anyway, it was a BIG win, as it combined the talents of Dance-licious Maisy and Photo-genius Erin (who happen to be my parents’ two favorite girls), and ALSO it had Papa in it (everything is better with Papa in it) and also, PS, TOLD A HAPPY STORY. Mom is so taken with it she is rearranging all the office stuff to showcase it. HEE.
SO I was feeling pretty smug. Feeling like, A WINNER IS ME. Feeling like, I came, I saw Christmas, I conquered.
Then Scott SMOKED me.
Now understand, Scott and I are… a frugal people. Sale rack hounds. Outlet roamers. Heck, we like hand me downs. We don’t care about name brands. We drive our cars until they LITERALLY start leaving huge chunks of engine in the road behind us. We have never bought a new car, and we could win ten mil in the lottery and STILL we would not be physically able to face driving off a lot and losing five thousand dollars in Immediate Car Depreciation. We LOVE to travel, but we Captain Kirk our budget hotels and hoard sky miles and eat cereal for breakfast in the room so we can spend on SEEING AND DOING while we are in the exciting place.
Remember when those BIG HD TVs that are all flat and fancy first happened? They were five thousand dollars, and Scott would stand in Best Buy and look at them with the hunger-eye of the true techno-phile and say, “I can’t wait ‘til something better happens and makes these babies obsolete.”
Granted, there are a few things we will shell out for, because we think it is worth it: Local produce. Organic milk and meat. Our kids’ education. Supporting local charities and outreach programs. Good seats at the theatre. Books and art by writers and artists whose work speaks to us.
And so, for Christmas, he got me a thing I desperately wanted, but did not dare to ask for, even. And it is probably too NICE a thing to go in our cess pit chaotic hole of a dog infested, cat saturated, kid filled house. BUT OH HOW I LONGED FOR IT IN MY COVETEOUS HEART.
It came with a limited edition signed print of the VERY photo that was used for the cover of A GROWN-UP KIND OF PRETTY., so I am counting this, somehow, as this book’s Fic-Fact. But really it is a FACT-FIC, because instead of an art object coming out fo the book, the book came out of the picture.
Whenever I got STUCK writing it, I would go look at the picture until I UNSTUCK. All that burgeoning and yearning and offering, the crisp gingham skirt spreading in a fan, the fresh, sweet, hopeful sexuality of it, yet with the slight browning hint of decay and ruin where the air has JUST begun to touch the flesh of the fruit, the temptation inherent in it, the original sin APPLENESS of it all… OH, how I LOVE this image.
Reader, I married it.
I mean, no, Reader, I framed it. Here it is, next to the cover so you can see both:
Scott won. If you celebrate the holiday, I have to ask: Did you win Christmas this year? Or did someone win it and make your Christmas morning? DO TELL.
Alanis Lyrics---It's like your current least fave bacteria is your fave color.
I have to tell you how Scott won Christmas, but I cannot because of my New Year’s resolutions. Namely the FIRST one, which was:
Do not get strep throat.
Status: Failed. Already. I am sitting here bleary eyed and sweaty and chilled all at once, with glands the approximate size and hardness of walnuts, digging through gites-for-rent in Paris and Provence (aka French House pR0n) on Home Away.
So I will have to tell you about How Scott Won Christmas later, when I have 3 or 4 non-fever-inflamed brain cells. (BY THE WAY! I thought I was going to win Christmas, but he trounced me.)
"Go for NPH"
Resolution 2: Answer the phone by yelling GO FOR BARNEY into it.
Status: Partial Success: I am 3 for 10 on that, having remembered to yell GO FOR BARNEY 30% of the time. Okay well maybe not REMEMBERED. I admit I check caller ID and CHOOSE when and where going for Barney is appropriate.
WHICH BY THE WAY IT TOTALLY DID. This is SUPER excellent, because The Independent Bookstores have always been amazing to me, handselling my work, word-of-mouthing my backlist…
It just feels good to know that they liked this book enough to write in the reviews and votes that put the book on the list. (Sample: “This is a fast-paced and enthralling read that pulls you in and won’t let you go until the very end.” — Morgan Kiedrowski, Next Chapter Bookshop, Mequon, WI”)
That stuff matters, especially NOW, as I deteriorate into a puddle of BOOK RELEASE MENTAL ILLNESS. And Strep.
Indie Next List is a great reason not to fly myself ALLLLL the way across the ocean and drown in the Rhone. Which is a lot more romantic-seeming than drowning myself here, in the Hootch, but Scott says I am not allowed to do EITHER> He is a resolution thwarter. For example, he pre-thwarted:
Resolution 3: Go live in France and eat nothing that isn’t SOAKED in truffle butter until my heart explodes.
Status: ABANDONED. Because Scott did not care for it.
Scott: I don’t like that one.
Me: No worries. I never keep my resolutions.
Scott: Don’t care. Ix-nay on the death by butter.
Me: So can I at least—
Scott: Also I call no drowning in any rivers. No matter how exotic the locale.
S So, NEW Resolution 3: Learn to speak conversational French with an APALLING HICK GEORGIA GIRL ACCENT.
Status: Got a book on tape from Audible.
Currently listening to French.
Currently saying French things.
I think we can put a BIG BEWINGED DELIGHTFUL NAKEDLY CHERUBIC CHECK MARK on at least a part of that one.
I may not be able to say more than 9 words so far, but trust me, the hick accent part? Got THAT nailed.
Below is my favorite post I ever did on TLC, moved over here, since TLC will cease to exist at some point in a POOFING “no one is paying for this” way… ALAS! ALAS!
Perhaps I should call you OTHER fat girl at Hot Yoga, as I was there too, easing back into my Fat Down Dog, forward to Fat Plank, then melting and pushing up to Fat Cobra, etc etc, all the way through my big fat hot Vinyasa flow. (This should be a movie—My Big Fat Hot Vinyasa Flow—I would SO go to see that.)
Is it wrong that I am half in love with you? For being fat and at Hot Yoga? For shaving your legs and getting a GOOD pedicure and putting your big ol’ ass into yoga pants ? For unrolling your mat and claiming your space, a rounded duck standing defiantly on one squatty leg among flamingos.
Were you as happy to see me as I was to see you? I think you were. You kept PEEKING at me, under your armpit and between your thighs, when you should have had been looking at your Drishti, only to find I had abandoned MY Drishti and was misaligning my spine to peek at you.
We both tipped over out of tree because of it. But it was okay. We were a secret club of Fat Girls at Hot Yoga. We understood each other.
I miss you, now that I am back home in Georgia. I am ALWAYS the only fat girl at Hot Yoga. I am sure it is exactly the same for you—-You might think there would be more of us fat girls here in Quasi-Rural Georgia than in New York City.
Well, okay. There are, actually, but I am the only one in CLASS. We sometimes have one girl who THINKS she is another Fat Girl at Hot Yoga. She is not, God bless her. She is only mentally ill. At my Hot Yoga here, all the regulars are very beautiful and sleek, like otter puppies.
Yoga people. Honestly. They are long and loopy and bendable and glorious. I wish I was one, but I froth and churn and fail at cleanses.
They seem so at peace with their physicalness, living inside bodies that look like loops of strong ribbon. Meanwhile, I am at war. I am at war with my body.
Oh Fat Girl at Hot Yoga in New York City, are you at war with yours, too? Has it let you down? Are you angry with it? I am. Righteously furious, actually.
This stupid body has failed me in so many ways these last two years. It has been endlessly sick. It has required surgery and bed rest and vicious medication that got me well, but made me feel sicker.
I AM VERY ANGRY WITH IT for being sick, for getting fat, for not doing what I SAY.
But I am nice to it anyway, three times a week, at Hot Yoga.
Fat Girl, I saw you in New York, and I thought, GOOD FOR YOU. You are trying to find a way to be stronger, to live in yourself, to like your body enough to give it that seventy-five minutes of movement and acceptance. To just take care of the damn thing, even if you ARE mad at it. To treat it like an exasperating, ugly, ill-tempered little child—one you secretly adore.
At the start? Every time? I set my intention and it is this: For the next 75 minutes, don’t look around, don’t compare, don’t list all the ways you are not good enough to be here, and don’t hate yourself. Just Breathe. Just Breathe. Just Breathe. Just be in your body and remember how good a place it is to be, really.
For the first half of class, I remind myself that this body is not some shabby rental. It is home. No matter how mad I am, it is home.
By the second half, I always come to understand that it is more than home. It is more than where I live.
It is me.
I am it.
I remember my husband likes it. A lot. I remember it twice performed a function that was nothing short of miraculous, growing two exceptional babies entirely from scratch. My brain is a piece of it, and my brain is where the stories come from.
This is what I get from Hot Yoga, Fat Girl. I am not sure what you get. I hope the same thing. I wish ALL the Fat Girls would come to Hot Yoga and get this, get these minutes where we forget —if only for a little while— that our value as people doesn’t go down when our pants sizes go up.
And also? Selfishly? I DO wish at least one more would come, so I would have someone to peek at under my armpit, to give that little tip of the chin, that little nod.
Fat Girl at Hot Yoga Solidarity, baby. We aren’t perfect, but we are HERE, busting out of our yoga pants, ducks among flamingos, trying to take care of ourselves.
So I noticed that the two main ballerinas in BLACK SWAN had made almost exactly the same movie, FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS and NO STRINGS ATTACHED in which Natalie Portman OR Mila Kunis, but not respectively, has convenient but contractually loveless sex with Justin Timberlake or Ashton Kutcher, but not respectively, and they all four OF COURSE fall for each other, but in PAIRS, not a Big Love way, because while that is a near-perfect example of exactly how love does not work, it IS how chick flicks work.
Interestingly, my theory is that chick flicks are like this for CHICKS, but not because a lot of women actually think love works like this, nor do they really wish love worked like this, but because a lot of women think that they wish love worked like this.
OH ALSO this ties into my TWILIGHT theory, of why TWILIGHT was such a huuuuuge big thing: Because the men (OKAY, Sparkley Vampires) in that book do not behave ANYTHING like how men actually are, and they do not even behave anything like how women wish men would be, but they behave exactly like women think they wish men were. That said, I listened to THE HOST on Audio and really liked it EVEN THOUGH THE MEN IN THE HOST ARE THE SAME NOBLE (but less sparkly) BREED. And here I briefly interrupt myself to give unsolicited advice:
DEAR YOUNG UNMARRIED TWILIGHT READERS,
Don’t trust a man who SAYS he luffffs you, who wants to marry you, but doesn’t try, at least a LITTLE bit, to incite you on toward the next base in whatever game of backseat baseball you are playing. Now, of course you should INSTA-DITCH any guy who starts PRESSURING you in ANY ugly or uncomfortable way, but a girl likes to be asked with…a bit of fervor.
Bluntly: If he DOESN’T want, avidly, to get into your pants, you are headed for an unhappy marriage. JUST SAYING.
Love, Me
ANYWAY, this is the dumbest premise for a movie I have ever heard, and so I could NOT believe they made it TWICE, much less starring the A list ballerinas from BLACK SWAN.
It’s like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon where Kevin is replaced by LITERALLY THE DUMBEST PREMISE FOR A MOVIE I HAVE EVER HEARD, and the degree is ONE.
So I thought I would watch both while I was wrapping presents and compare them, hence the title, but unfortunately I forgot that I very seldom enjoy Chick Flicks. OOPS. SO I watched about ten minutes of one, got bored, watched ten minutes of the other, got boreder, and put on DIE HARD which has a love story but adds in other things I really like, namely, gunplay and Alan Rickman.
Digression: If you do like Chick Flicks, more power to you. I am NOT a movie snob. Oh yea, sure, I heart David Cronenberg, and I am not afraid of subtitles, but a strong majority of the films I watch are not at ALL highbrow.
It’s just Chick Flicks aren’t my kind of fun; I like rubber puppets eating people, preferably in space. Not because I think rubber puppets eat people in space, and not even because I WISH rubber puppets would eat people in space. Not even because I think I wish they would. Just because we all have a taste for our own little pleasures, and rubber puppets are mine.
Chick flicks are not; too much QQ not enough Pew Pew.
Digression: My friend Gray James found a book review blog where the writer refers to the romantical vampire genre as “Nom Coms.” HA!
Upshot: I could not do the comparison. So I could not write the entry. I Pinked Socked my OWN self, but good.
Therefore, it falls to you to save me from this inadvertent sockery:
Did you see either movie? HAVE you heard a dumber movie premise? What was the dumbest movie premise you ever heard? Am I dead wrong and we should have a BIG DISCUSS now, because you feel this IS this how love actually works? Do you wish rubber puppets would eat SPECIFIC people? In space? Who? If Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman were playing Mary Ann and Ginger (not respectively) in a movie in space, which one should eventually blow the final rubber puppet out the airlock and survive?
Consider this my Holiday Greetings and Christmas Cards to all the people I did not mail Christmas cards to, which includes…everyone on the planet. Yes. I suck. BUT!
I used to BUY Christmas cards and not send them, so now I just skip right to not sending them, so at least I suck in an ecologically responsible tree saving manner. And I got you the above pic. It’s from the shadow-play nativity—that’s Maisy Jane as a Wise Man, kneeling to present gifts to Joseph, Mary, and what looks like a thirty foot Baby Jesus — as played by a six year old boy named Todd because the toddler-Jesus escaped into the darkness of backstage.)
And it’s a metaphor. Because things don’t go perfectly, ever, and yet, look, life is still so so sweet. Happy whatever you celebrate in this glorious time.
Yesterday I braved Target because I was out of milk and meat and wrapping paper and wine, and I could have eaten dry cereal and soup and wrapped the last gifts in butcher paper, but did you catch that last part? OUT OF WINE! So Target. You can get ALL those things there.
Halfway through the madding crowded lunacy of Target two days pre-Christmas, my phone rang. When I left I told Scott to PLEASE call me if he thought of ANYTHING we needed because I have NO intention of darkening the door of anyplace where goods and services are sold until December 19th, at the earliest.
I assumed it was him, and I did not check caller ID. I had my earwig in just in case he called. I simply pressed the button on it and yelled, GO FOR BARNEY.
Wow, was the lady from church that I barely know surprised. Heh. Of course, if she doesn’t FREAKIN’ ADORE DR. HORRIBLE (also known around here as The Glorious En Pea Aitch) it’s not like she and I are ever going to be truly CLOSE.
After I hung up, Maisy Jane said, Why did you yell GO FOR BARNEY to answer the phone?
Me: It is my New Year’s Resolution. I decided am going to answer the phone by hollering GO FOR BARNEY into it.
MJ: Momma, but that’s not really giving something up.
Me: *puzzled look*
MJ: You have to give something up, for God, like a sacrifice. Not yell, GO FOR BARNEY.
Me: That’s LENT, hon. New Year’s Resolutions are a different animal. Resolutions are when you promise to create a new good habit or break an old bad one in the New Year. And THIS Year, I resolve to answer the
phone by yelling, GO FOR BARNEY.
MJ: *worried* That sounds terrible. How long do New Year’s Resolutions last?
Me: *darkly* In my experience, no more than a day or two.
ALAS! I could not find a video of EN PEA AITHCH saying it, so here is Barney’s video resume:
DO NOT FORGET VBS!
The Virtual Book Signing is going on RIGHT NOW. If I am not coming to a town near you on The Actual Tour, you can still get a signed, first edition, first printing copy of A GROWN-UP KIND OF PRETTY from The Alabama Booksmith. You will be supporting ME, literally, which means you get to help keep Schubert the one-eyed pirate cat stocked with his UNIMAGINABLE EXPENSIVE diabetic cat food,
You will also be supporting an AMAZING independent bookstore, and ALSO, look, Beloveds, I am proud of this book—I think you will LIKE IT! So you will get a book I think you will really enjoy (and everyone from Publisher’s Weekly to Library Journal to Kirkus has so far agreed with me—they think you will like it.
Heck, Book List called it “a mesmerizing tale” and said, “This is Jackson’s most absorbing book yet, a lush, rich read with three very different but equally compelling characters at its core.” Then they gave it a you-will-like-this-book star.
Even if you — like every teenage guest star who ever graced an 80’s sit com — suddenly turn out to be secretly illiterate, a Cig Harvey photograph graces the cover; you need a copy just to GAZE at. *emphatic nodding*
It’s GROWN UP KIND OF PRETTY’s launch day, so of course my mental illness number is so high that my main goal for today is to get all the way through hot yoga with no public weeping. If I can make it to the end, I will lie down, flattened and soaked in my own greases, stinking, trembling on my mat, and Isobel will come around and put cold towels soaked in lavender water on everyone’s eyeballs.
