Day Three Without Coffee

I'm not quite as grumpy as I thought I would be! Though I have had slight headaches and sort of feel prickly in my skin, even though I've been drinking lots of Green Tea. Man, if I ever get cancer after all the Green Tea I drink, I'm suing somebody. It should be noted that I do not intend to go off coffee permanently. I haven't decided how to modulate it yet, but I may only try to drink it weekends...we'll see. I stopped drinking it to give my whacked out body a break from all stressors, so it will be necessity rather than choice.

The Fish handoff to the Russian mafia:

I fell asleep at the chiropractor yesterday. Not DURING adjustments, silly. He has this cool machine that he hooks your troubled muscles up to and it sort of tenderizes you before adjustments. It makes your muscle fire without needing your consent. When Erik went to see him for the first time and had it strapped to his leg, since Dr. T gives you control of the, uh, controls so you can modulate how high the strange pulse is, Erik, of course, had to turn it up to see what would happen, and his leg shot straight into the air. Such a boy. When I first tried it, it gave me an incontrollable case of the giggles. At any rate, with those puppies on my neck and butt, and a hot pad of some kind on my torso, I drifted off to sleep. It was a most wondrous sleep, and I woke to Dr. T's kind, face (strangely resembling, Erik and I have decided, a more square-jawed, better looking Ed Begley)...and then I did that thing you do when someone calls too early and wakes you up, and you pretend to be awake even though you're still stuck somewhere in dreamland where the Russian Mafia was just about to give you the fish handoff, which you had to get into your parents' bed before the world ends...where you say "oh, yeah, I'm awake, no, really, I'm fishing with Russians. What? I said I'm fresh as a rose..."


Sewing Miz Oates

I have the opportunity to interview Joyce Carol Oates for Word by Word and though I've said yes, and we're working on a date, I am, quite frankly, terrified. Mainly because of rumors, shall we say, of her responses to interviewers in the past who had not read all of her six million books. I like Miz Oates' work, but I'll be honest, if I read every book she wrote, I'd have to make her my project for a year. Fortunately her latest book, "Sexy" is slim and doesn't appear to be as...er...loquacious as, say, "We Were the Mulvaney's." I've already received one suggested question from one smart writer friend, but if you have anything you'd like to ask Miz Oates about her work, do weigh in!

No more cement legs!

Recently I bought three new pairs of jeans, all with some form of spandexy-stretch material woven in so that, while they aren't like the stretch pants of my youth, they have a nice amount of give, while still maintaining their shape (they're all Levis). And then I went and put on an old pair of pants that has no stretch, and woah baby, I felt like someone had dipped my legs in cement! It was the oddest experience. So here's to pants that stretch...see, jogging has given my legs new muscles that I didn't realize had developed thanks to the stretch jeans...I highly recommend them.

P.S. If you're anywhere near Marin County and get a chance to pick up a Pacific Sun, you'll find an article of mine in there on a very interesting website, "Buyblue.org" and it's co-founder, Martha Ture.