Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy

What a great couple of days! I say that despite that my brain feels squashed thin like a sheet of microscope glass from breaking down what I know about writing into semantically thin pieces of proscuitto. Writing a how-to book is an exercise in learning just how it is you think and learn and attempting to translate your own thinking/learning process to others in a universal way (and learning that you think in a strange cryptic language something like ancient Sanskrit). We won't even talk about what's happening to my eyesight, but as a hint, I'm sitting about five feet away from my computer screen in order to not have a blinding headache (hello far sightedness!)

It has been a great couple of days despite that the summer-like weather is turning the trees on my street bi-polar (Shed leaves! Shed leaves! Wait--don't. Do! Don't!) not to mention the birds and the insects buzzing around like a bunch of drunken children with no idea of what has happened.

Why has it been a great couple of days? Honestly, I don't know. Tracing it back to its source I find these possible causes:

I took a whirlwind trip to Petaluma on Weds and saw friends I haven't seen in ages, as well as wrote with my writing group--an insanely nurturing experience that felt like I could see color again after a temporary blindness.

Then I picked up the phone yesterday afternoon and was greeted by a woman in French. My cousin Martine! (My father's first cousin). I visited her and her family when I was twenty-three and we lost touch only in the past few years. She got my phone number from my grandfather. I felt like I was in some cool greek myth where I was doomed to understand the language but never to speak it. Oh I pulled up some garbled words, enough to convey that I was married, happy, living in California and do not have any babies. It was a pleasure to hear from her, and amusing to experience my mind grasping after words it could not translate. Fortunately Martine was in the same boat as she speaks no English. And now we have exchanged email addresses and are back in touch.

Then...well last night was really a blast. At BookSmart we hosted the divine Patry Francis, who has been my blog buddy for over a year now, and whose gorgeous, thrilling book The Liar's Diary is just out in hardcover. (And my friend Laura came, though i know she'd worked a long day--that's a good friend). Patry's on this cool tour of her own design all the way from Massachusetts. We had a nice little crowd, people were engaged and I felt that glow that I used to get in LiveWire's heyday. I'm easily stimultated by the right kind of activity.

So I guess that the weather, my recent interactions, the reality that I am very close to the end of Make a Scene and my general attitude shift have created a kind of non-chemical high.

Oh, and I just found out that my little bro got into the college of his choice--and I am so, so happy for him (and a little freaked out that he's finally old enough to go to college).

And I wrote this post rather than the chapter I'm supposed to be finishing. Procrastination--my best friend and worst enemy.

JPR