Paperback cover

The cover remains the same--the design was too good to change--but the Richard Ford blurb has been swapped out for one from Steve Almond.






The paperback will be released on February 2, 2010.

The last time I quit smoking, I was thirty-three. I made it happen with help from an MD with a mullet who hypnotized me in a one-on-one session. I smoked a cigarette in the parking lot outside his office before going in; when I came out of his office, I didn't smoke for three years. When I fell, I fell hard. It was like I'd never quit at all.

Over the past several months, I've been thinking about quitting again. I've been thinking about it a lot. The thought makes me nervous anxious fretful. I keep putting it off: I'll quit after I finishing writing this draft; I'll quit after I write that article; I'll quit as soon as it gets too cold to smoke outside. But I can always come up with a new reason to put off the quit date. I've smoked three cigarettes today, the last three in the pack. What if I don't walk over to Kwik Trip to buy a new pack? What if I quit right now? What if I just get through the rest of today?

UPDATE
It's 5:28, and I still haven't smoked, but my God, I feel so so mean. Like I could punch a hole in the wall, berate at a kitten, and stick my foot out so the kid running by ends up kissing the sidewalk. I feel irate, evil and mean mean mean. But I haven't smoked.

My essay "The Devil I Know is the Man Upstairs" is listed as a Notable Essay in the 2009 Best American Essays. I think this is in large part because Sam Ligon, genius editor of Willow Springs, where the piece was originally published, worked with me on it. Writer friends, you should send your best work to Willow Springs. Sam Ligon rocks.

Here's a longer clip from the In the Flesh Reading:

We're five weeks into the semester, and it has been frantically, frenetically, fantastically busy around here. What would I give to have just a few of those days from last summer--the ones where I drank slow cups of coffee, did slow loads of laundry, gave over an hour to scrambling an egg or shaving my legs or watching that spider spin a web across the spindles of my back deck?

At least fifty dollars. Maybe even more.

Last week I went to New York City where I did a reading at the Happy Endings Lounge for Rachel Kramer Bussel's In the Flesh reading series, but a few hours before I left, the toilet broke. It wouldn't flush. So I took the lid off the tank--as if I possessed a plumber's knowledge--and maybe I did if only for a moment. Because I figured out the problem was with the...I don't even know what to call it...the rubber flapper thing that lifts so the toilet can fill with water? The rubber flapper thing wasn't working, it had spliced off from this length of chain so it wasn't lifting anymore. So I somehow--as if I possessed a handyman's skillz--jerry-rigged it with a paperclip: I straightened out the paperclip, I pushed one end of the paperclip through the rubber flapper and I twisted the other around the chain, and holy moley, it worked. I couldn't believe it. And though I'm trying not to see that paperclip as a metaphor for so many of the things in my life that are jerry-rigged, it's working still.

I had a really good time in NYC. My friend D. drove down from Maine and seeing her filled me with something like joy. Hi hi hiya, I said to her. Hi hi hiya, she said to me. We seem to communicate most clearly and effectively in nonsense words and baby talk.

Photo by Anya Garrett, taken during the September 17 In the Flesh reading. Anya is an amazing photographer, and if you want to do something very cool, you should vote for her. She's a semi-finalist in AMC's Mad Men contest. Check it out here.

While in NY, I saw a psychic, a really good one, the best, the real deal, and over the past two years, I've seen enough psychics to know (I'm working on writing about psychics.) In fact, this was my second time going to him; the stuff he told me last time was so mind-blowingly right-on that I couldn't resist another visit. He gave me a pretty happy reading this time around, too--a really happy reading that I'm not going to jinx by revealing too many details--though he did suggest I start lying about my age. So on the advice of my favorite psychic, I am now 35 years old.

Here's a clip from the reading that my friend Austin taped:

I'd like to know how it's possible that I have this much shit to do, and it's only a week into the school year.

And I'd like to understand the impulse--my impulse, I'll own it--that, in spite of having this much shit to do, lead me to:

1) instead of doing the shit that needs done, spend hours on Petfinder.com;

2) come across a picture of a black pug at an animal shelter in Milford, Iowa;

3) squeal at the cuteness, the glorious, God-given, absolute friggin' cuteness of the Milford, Iowa black pug;

4) decide to drive to Milford, Iowa just to have a look at him;

5) speed to Milford, get stopped for speeding, panic, admit to the cop that I don't have a current driver's license and here's my passport instead, panic, and somehow, somehow, end up with only a warning;

6) decide my run-in with the law and the fact that I didn't end up in jail is a sign that bringing this black pug home from the shelter in Milford is what the universe wants me to do;

7.) bring the black pug home.

His name is Colby.

I woke up this morning, shivering. The Kitten was sitting on my chest, grooming herself, and the house was freezing because, I discovered, someone-not-me had turned on the air conditioning. I can't imagine why my son thought it was hot enough to require central air unless, of course, it had something to do with the Nutella crepes he fixed himself sometime around 1:00 am. Unlike me, The Boy can afford to make crepes at 1:00 am since his school operates on a far more civilized calendar than mine. He doesn't go back until after Labor Day; I went back on Monday. As of today, Fall Semester 2009 looks like this: one week down, fourteen to go.

I'm actually happy to be standing in front of a class again yapping about writing, I like my students, and I like what I'm teaching (a graduate course on form and technique in prose; an undergraduate introduction to creative writing class; and a class called Writing the Humorous Essay) but still. That was the fastest-moving summer ever. I spent July working on new essays, and managed, somehow, to get stuff done, in spite of my whining about it. One of those essays received a fantastic edit by Sam Ligon, one of my favorite and best editors. Sam is the guy behind the literary magazine Willow Springs, and that's where the essay will appear sometime in the near future.

But mostly, I spent July in a state of moping and mourning because that's when my friend D. moved. To Maine. Which is too far from Minnesota for me to call her up and say do you want to go to Target? Do you want to go to Hobby Lobby? Do you want to take The Pug for a walk? Do you want to go to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard then come over to sit on the couch and watch Sandra Bullock movies with me? I took D.'s moving pretty hard--I knew it was inevitable, it was coming, she was moving at the end of July whether I liked it or not--and I was depressed about it even before we packed her stuff into the U-haul. I was depressed about it back in January and by July, I'd gotten myself worked into a tizzy. I had this recurring dream about a mouse in my bed, a varmint crawling around under the covers, and I'd wake up crying D.'s name. Deeeeeeeeee! I'd cry.

I've written and deleted, written and revised, written and rewritten an essay about D., being friends with D., about a thousand and seventeen times. I haven't gotten it right yet which is okay, I think. I think it's even good. It means there's nothing simplistic about this friendship, about how well and truly we know each other.

I will tell you this: a source of contention between the two of us, an issue we have, has to do with The Pug. It has to do with when D. and I would go for a walk, how it was inevitable: The Pug would crap, always once, usually twice, sometimes more, and I'd hand D. his leash, so I could clean up after him. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was when I'd wander up someone's driveway, or walk across their yard or neb around their garage looking for their garbage can so I could throw away the bag-of-crap. My logic was that homeowners would be grateful, they'd rather I put my dog's crap in their garbage than leave it in their yard, but D. didn't see it that way. She thought I was trespassing. When I was in the act, she'd cross the street like she wasn't with me and thus couldn't be considered an accessory if I got caught. It got to where I felt gleeful about edging closer and closer to strangers' houses so I could throw away my dog's shit while my best friend pretended not to know who I was or what I was up to. Hey, D.! I'd call. Watch this! Watch! Watch! She'd refuse to turn her head, and after I replaced the lid on the garbage can, I'd jog to catch up with her, and we'd resume whatever conversation we'd been having like nothing happened though it happened every time.