Fall Semester 2009: the fastest I have ever known. I can't believe next week is Thanksgiving. I can't believe how much school-stuff I need to get taken care of between now and then. It's been a good semester, really good--I've liked my classes and my students, our readings and our discussions; I've been intellectually interested and challenged and engaged--but I'm ready for some unplanned days. Days that don't come with a ready-made seemingly-endless Get-This-Done-And-Pronto list.

In the meantime, there's this: "The Devil I Know..." received a special mention in the new Pushcart Prize anthology.

And this: Today is Day 31 since I last smoked cigarettes, and to be honest, I still am feeling pretty crappy. I'm seeing my doctor tomorrow to talk about it.

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.