I'm Sorry You Feel That Way by Diana Joseph

2011-08-14T06:26:00.000-07:00

This is the first time since 1992 that it's back-to-school-time, and I'm not going back to school. Nineteen years ago, I'd just graduated from college and I was staying home to take care of my baby. Now, it's because I'm on sabbatical, and in a Whodathunk-It-Not-Me turn of events, there's this baby I'm taking care of.

But I'll be working on other stuff, too. I went to L.A. this summer--and here's another whodathunk-it: I loved L.A. While I was there, I pitched a sitcom. The pitches were fun but developing the idea and working collaboratively on the writing was super fun. I'd never written for screen before, and now I'm hooked.

I've also been going great guns on art projects. I especially enjoying cutting up pieces of paper and gluing them to other pieces of paper. Like this:

And this:

I think I want to be an art major.

Eight Months

2011-07-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

Six Months

2011-06-03T17:26:00.000-07:00

He's all like, what's up, baby.

2011-04-12T04:33:00.000-07:00

2011-02-19T05:35:00.000-08:00

I've got my Etsy shop up and running. I'm selling posters and painted cards. To check it out, click here.

Little Ted wants you to check out my Etsy shop!

2011-01-14T11:18:00.000-08:00

And so ends the first week of this semester, Spring 2011. I'm only teaching two classes, both graduate--Contemporary Prose and Nonfiction Workshop--and I likeboth. I think it will be a good semester. I'm doing some traveling for readings and will post the places and dates soon.

But what's really dandy about this semester is that when it's over I will be on sabbatical. Sabbatical: the loveliest word I know. The time off is going to be so good to have. I've got the book project I'm working on, but I've also got a few other things cooking.

I'm especially excited about my latest art project. I call them Sign Paintings. I started painting them over the summer, and I couldn't seem to stop. Art Therapy, I guess. I've lost track of how many I've done but am guessing it's probably 60-70 so far.

The Boy gussied up these ones with Photoshop, cleaning up the lines and fooling around with colors. He and I have been thinking about setting up an Etsy shop and seeing if we can sell these as greeting cards.

2011-01-14T11:11:00.000-08:00

Baby Teddy, seven weeks, and Colby the Pug, four years.

Life With a Newborn

2010-12-23T10:54:00.001-08:00

We had such good intentions for the baby's first Christmas: cookie-baking, present-wrapping, tree-decorating, general holiday merriment. Discussions of these activities took place before the baby was born, and now that he's here--Mr. Five Weeks Old--we remember our big plans with a large dose of what-were-we-thinking? We consider brushing our teeth a job well done.

But we still kept talking about getting a tree. It's our baby's first Christmas. There should be a tree. Getting a tree was something we meant to do, it was something we kept saying we were going to do.

We didn't. We just couldn't get our shit together. So instead, we rummaged through our stack of canvases and dug out our tubes of paint and here is the baby's first Christmas tree:

A song for the first day of school

2010-08-23T06:10:00.000-07:00

Twenty-Six Weeks

2010-08-14T04:06:00.001-07:00

I've spent my summer in the company of pugs, and I can tell you they are well-suited for a pregnant woman's lifestyle--the short walks, the peanut butter toast, the long naps on the couch (or maybe a pregnant woman is well-suited for the life of a pug.) The pugs are going to be sad when this long lazy summer ends and it's time to go back to school. We all are.

Except maybe The Boy. I think he's excited about college. (He's going to the university where I teach, and he's living at home, at least for his first year.) He's been having that magical summer, the one you only get to have once, between high school and college, when the world is big and full of possibility, and so are you and so are your friends. The Boy has a car, a sound system and a tank of gas, a mechanic, a job selling suits and ties and a collection of beautiful silk ties, some money in the bank, a credit card, a girlfriend and a best friend, energy and freedom and smooth skin and a killer smile and a strong sense that he's got most things pretty much figured out, except what he wants to do with the rest of his life. He is the most alive person I know. He's been exhilarating to watch, to be around even when he's being a little shit and we have that argument about how he can live at home for as long as he wants but he can't treat this house like a hotel.

Okay, he says. Fine.

Fine, I say. Okay.

Some people have asked me how the Boy feels about the forthcoming baby. I can tell you this: he likes it. He likes it because (he thinks) I'll have something else to occupy my attention, someone else to think about besides him. I just can't imagine loving another child as much or liking another child more. When I tell the Boy that, he points to the pugs, and I immediately feel ashamed. There's no denying it: I love the little pug more than the big pig because he's so little and cute. I like the little pug so much more that the big pug seems to have gotten even bigger. "Every time you fuss over Colby," the Boy says, "Bo runs over to his food dish and stress eats. He eats his feelings. It's a good thing you didn't have another baby when I was younger or I'd weigh six hundred pounds."

I'm having a boy!

2010-07-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

2010-06-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

The problem is not that there's nothing going on but that there's been a lot going on. Since my last post:

The Boy graduated from high school; we threw a party in his honor.

I painted my kitchen pink.

The Big Pug tumbled down a bluff; we staged a rescue.

I went to New Mexico where I ate Mexican food for every meal. I love New Mexico. I am determined to find a way to live in New Mexico.

The Little Pug jumped off the roof; we thought we'd be scraping pug brains from the sidewalk but he was fine. He was standing in the front yard, wagging his tail, like hey guys, that was fun, what? didn't you know I can fly?

I love my pink kitchen so much that I plan to paint my dining room turquoise and my living room chartreuse.

I'm writing. I have been writing and writing and working on the Next Thing, another memoir, and while I don't want to give away too much about it, the story has taken an unexpected turn. Every day, I collect more details. Every day, I wonder how things will turn out.

2010-05-03T08:35:00.000-07:00

I just have to get through this week. Cake would make that easier. I wish I had some cake.

2010-04-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

I am scratching and clawing my way to the end of the semester.

2010-04-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

I am crazy in love with the erotic bluegrass band Courtney McClean and The Dirty Curls.

photo by Craig VanDerSchaegen

I've watched the video for their song "Suck a Ring" many, many times.

And I got to meet the band last February at the Best Sex Writing Event--I read, they played, I swooned.

On April 10, 2010, Courtney McClean and The Dirty Curls are playing at The Beat Coffeehouse at 1414 W. 28th Street in Minneapolis. The show starts at 7:30 and ends by 10pm.

They are playing to promote their new EP "Cowgirl The Fuck Up!"

From their press release:
Courtney McClean & The Dirty Curls began in Minneapolis in the summer of 2009 with a simple mission in mind: to create the dirtiest, funniest hillbilly music ever recorded. The band is a three-piece combo, consisting of lead singer Courtney McClean on banjo, Bunny Sparber on bass and backup vocals, and Coco Mault on washboard. All three come from extensive backgrounds in the Twin Cities comedy, improv, theater, and storytelling communities, which infuses their live performances with a theatricality that inspired the Star Tribune to declare them one of the best live acts of 2009.

Their songs are decidedly adult in subject matter, humorously tackling such themes as unexpected sexual positions, erotic feelings for family members, lackluster pillow talk, and the surprisingly extensive double entendres to be found in place names in and around Moorhead, Minnesota. They perform a style of music they have dubbed "Naughtybilly," a heady gumbo of bluegrass banjo, cowboy yodels, country twang, jug band percussion, tin pan alley songwriting, and 70s country rock.

The "Cowgirl the Fuck Up" EP will consist of eight original songs, and will be available at the release party for $5.

If you live anywhere near the Twin Cities, you should go to this. Trust me.

2010-03-27T11:49:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been getting a whole lotta love. Alyssa Marchetti, a reporter for The Daily Iowan, wrote this. Heather Claussen, of the Press-Citizen dot com, wrote this.

And then there's the recognition I've received from the Church of BuVu. I'd encourage you to read about who they are and where they're coming from so you understand why I'm so tickled, honored and delighted to be named their first prophet.

Who has read I'm Sorry You Feel That Way? Five Reactions

2010-03-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

1. Jen, who posted her reaction in an online review

Perhaps "I'm Sorry That You Feel That Way" is funny when read aloud. Or maybe Sarah Vowell owes Diana Joseph, the author of this so-called "astonishing but true story of a daughter, sister, slut, wife, mother, and friend to man and dog" a big favor. I've stretched my imagination, but I just can't see any other reason anyone would recommend this book. To me it was a sad and lackluster account of a woman with no redeeming qualities. I'm sure the author has her gifts, but this book certainly didn't highlight them. To me, it read like a sophomore English major took a couple afternoons and rewrote her journal. I didn't find it edifying in any way, nor did I find it "astonishing," "true," or funny. It seemed to me a collection of one woman's small moments. Mix it with the big moments and add a plot and some style, and perhaps it would add up to something. I'm sorry that I feel that way, but I just do.

2. Philip, a student at the University of Minnesota, who emailed me with his thoughts:

I think your book is pretty great so far, so you can take that for whatever you think it's worth. I think I like it because you remind me of my mom and my old daycare lady, both of whom used to smoke and swear and act like real people instead of like, I don't know, those sweatpants ladies in the bleachers. I haven't finished the book, and so I guess it's entirely possible that, through the course of your adventures, you turn into one of those ladies, which would make this comment a pretty major misstep as far as introductions go, but if you were one of those awful "motherhood is a sacred gift" people, I guess I wouldn't really feel bad about making a bad first impression on you.

3. James, a pastor at an Evangelical Methodist Church in North Carolina, who emailed me:

I am a preacher – I was having my car serviced at the local repair shop and read the reviews on your book. I came home and told my wife I HAD to have your book. She ordered it for me and I am half way through it and I can barely put it down, I have laughed so hard. I am 39 and became a pastor late in life after I went through the wild and crazy days. I feel like we might have hung out at some point in my life. I have a male cat that humps everything in sight and yes he has been fixed. Keep up the good work!! Oh and God Bless!!

4. Caroline of Orland Park, Illinois. She emailed me to report that ISYFTW caused her to lie to her family, and on Easter, too:

I faked an illness today to avoid spending Easter with my family so that I could instead read "I'm Sorry You Feel That Way.

5. Michelle, in California, who I love. She emailed me with this:

I just wanted to tell you how much I loved your book, especially the parts about your father. My father is even less praise-giving than yours, but that hasn't stopped me from trying to garner it all these years. The way you write about your relationship with your son is not only entertaining but also poignant, and since I also have a son his age, I found your honesty liberating. No matter how much we love them, we never get it right. I guess I think that we don't mold our kids; we just react to who they already are.

2010-03-07T13:33:00.000-08:00

You can make fun of me for this if you want to because 1. I would make fun of me; 2. I know this is so high-school-girl's-yearbook but I don't care. Whenever I do a reading, I ask the people at the reading to sign my book.

I took this particular copy of ISYFTW with me when I toured for the hardcover last year, and it's going back on the road with me for the paperback. Two weeks ago, it went to Pittsburgh. Last week it went to the Bedlam Theater in Minneapolis where I read with Rachel Kramer Bussel for her Best Sex Writing 2010 release party.

[Sidenote: If you have not already read Best Sex Writing then you need to. Despite its sexy cover, it is not a collection of erotica; it is an anthology of writing about sex that's sharp and smart, funny and moving, and sure to push even the most been-there-done-that-seen-it-all reader out of his or her comfort zones.]

Tomorrow, this copy and I will be at the Bookcase in Wayzata, Minnesota, and on Friday, we'll be in Boston.

Then we are on a week-long adventure through Iowa, three cities in four days.

If you are anywhere near any of those places, come see me so you can sign my copy of ISYFTW. And make fun of me to my face.

2010-02-28T10:26:00.001-08:00

I spend a lot of time thinking about my friends.

I will focus on a specific person and picture that person's face--color of eyes or crooked teeth or thin upper lip or wildly uncombed hair--and my heart will just about burst over how beautiful that person is. Sometimes I will crack myself up remembering something funny my friends said or some hilarious thing they did.

Other times I will think about what my friends would like to receive as a Christmas present or birthday gift. I do this most often when I am on a flight and flipping through the Sky Mall catalog. There is a ton of crap in that catalog that causes me to think, Oh, this is something so-and-so would like!

And I always mean to take the Sky Mall catalog home with me, to show my friends the gifts I'd like to give. Check it out! I could say. I've turned down the corners of the page and I've circled the thing I want you to have and I've written your name beside it.

That never happens. Because I forget the catalog on the plane or I lose it while I'm traveling or I do get it home but I end up tossing it into the recycling bin because it's been a while since I made my selections and now I'd choose something different.

2010-02-26T05:27:00.000-08:00

Here is the review I'm Sorry You Feel That Way received from Oprah Magazine.

2010-02-25T06:14:00.000-08:00

I love my English 448/Undergraduate Contemporary Literature class with a love that's pure and true. Those students are smart and funny and wise and always interesting. On Monday, I gave them a pretty difficult essay exam, and then I sat at the front of the room and watched them take it. They looked serious, like they were concentrating hard, like they could set the place on fire with how hard they were thinking. I liked how everyone was breathing deeply. I decided I'd honor their hard work by bringing cupcakes to Wednesday's class, which I did, and what I really liked is when I did, everyone seemed happy but no one seemed surprised. On Wednesday, we talked about a poem whose central imagery concerned a penis, how the speaker's use of metaphor and simile suggested that penis is cute and harmless, a "toothless worm" that "stirs in its sleep." We analyzed the imagery and discussed the premise and worked to locate the ideas--male sexuality and female sexuality; reactions and gender; taboos; sex and shame; instinct and emotion; etc. etc.--in a larger social and cultural context.

That's just how things are in that class. Take a hard test one day; eat some cupcakes and talk about penis the next. On Monday, we get to talk about Steve Almond's Candy Freak. I cannot wait.

2010-02-22T18:37:00.000-08:00

About a year ago, I went to Memphis, TN, where the charming Stephen Usery, host of Book Talk, interviewed me. Here is where you can find the podcast from that interview, which, it would seem, is playing this Saturday evening from 6:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. on FM89.3 WYPL Memphis.

2010-02-22T15:37:00.000-08:00

I keep a notebook where I collect stories. I've been doing it for years. I write down interesting things I've seen and interesting conversations I've had or overheard, stuff that happened to me or to the Boy or to both of us, funny anecdotes, transcripts of the arguments Al and I had that were recorded in real time. It's true. Al and I would be bickering about one thing or another and I'd whip out a notebook and write down what he said and then what I said in response. I did this because he'd always deny that he'd said what he'd said. Oh, I didn't say that, he'd tell me. Which is why I took to writing down what he said as soon as he said it and even then he'd deny saying it. He'd tell me there was something wrong with my hearing. Or that I misunderstood him. Or that I only heard what I wanted to hear. I always threatened to get a tape recorder so I could prove I wasn't making up the stuff he said but I never did.

Portrait of the Big Pug as a Handsome Man

2010-02-07T10:44:00.001-08:00

The big pug has this new thing: he comes into the kitchen where I am at the table prepping for class or following Ted Casablanca on Twitter or staring at the clumps of dust on the blades of the ceiling fan, thinking about how that dust looks like fuzzy gray caterpillars, and then he looks at me, sighs, turns, sits. His back is to me. And that's where and how he stays until I leave the room. I can't figure out what he wants, what this means, what he's trying to communicate. Maybe he thinks he is my first line of defense against any aggressors like the cat or the little pug. Probably he just wants a back rub.

Or a potato chip (though he's on a diet and isn't supposed to have potato chips.) Or to be taken to the dog park (though we already went to the dog park.) Or to be lifted onto my bed (because he's too fat to get up there himself.)

The big pug is only half pug; he's also half black lab. I adopted him not long after my marriage ended. You can find the story of how he came to live with me here. You can read about the crime he committed at Petco here. You can read about what happened when I contemplated eating him here. You can read about how he's been on a diet since February 23, 2009 here. You can see pictures of him behaving lasciviously here.

That's a lot of links to posts about the big pug, and to be honest, I hold myself back. I could write so many more. But 1. I'm pretty busy keeping his Facebook Fan page current; and 2. I don't want people to think I'm weird. I just really dig this dog. Except of course when he is doing something that gets on my nerves which is pretty much every day.

This is an oil painting of the big pug, painted by Brian Frink of Poor Farm Studios. I cannot believe how much I love this painting. I told the Boy that someday, I will be dead, and this will be his inheritance, that he will have to hang this painting in his house, no matter what his wife's feelings about it are, because this painting of this dog says something about this time in our lives when I was unexpectedly single, when my son was almost grown and moved out of the house, when I was about to turn 40. When I got a little wacky about how much say the dogs have over my life. And how that--all of that--was okay.

If you're interested in commissioning Brian Frink to paint your pet, you can reach him here.

2010-02-06T10:32:00.000-08:00

It's true that I like guys so much I wrote a whole book about them. But I'm also friends with people who have vaginas. A short essay I wrote about one of those friends is in the March issue of Marie Claire (which I just bought at Cub Foods.)

My essay doesn't seem to be available online but if that changes, I'll post the link.

Yes.

2010-02-01T06:49:00.000-08:00

"For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell. It is the only light we've got in all this darkness."
--James Baldwin

From My In Box

2010-01-29T09:56:00.001-08:00

Dude, it's not nice to call my cat a bitch, you know. She is really very sweet. To me.

Basically, it's a super invasive pap smear. I will spare you the details.

I'm writing a story about the fact that several academics have work in this year's edition of the Best Sex Writing series, dispelling the myth that university professors only write dull, dry research- heavy tomes. Are you available to speak with me by phone about this?

I just wanted you to know that whenever I go to the bathroom, I think of you when I see my oak toilet seat. And I wanted to also let you know that it's the best toilet seat I've ever owned.

I think I done confused myself.

Then, this kid in the back raises his hand and says that the basis of this activity is relying on the fact that Sigmund Freud is a sane man -- which obviously he can't be because he smoked crack. I wasn't sure how to respond to that. Anyway, we are reading Othello next, and I feel good enough about teaching Shakespeare.

His eyes have to feel more "liquidy and shiny". Plus I have to make him hairyer. Sorry for the made up words. The pattern on the fabric needs to be defined just a little more and I have to get his snout a little snoutier.

I hope you like it and its what your looking for.

If I was a guy, I would have a terrible time masturbating into the cup because I would worry that I had to fill the thing--there is just so much room inside the cup!

Do you think it's weird if I make my children call you Aunt Diana?

2010-01-26T04:36:00.000-08:00

Another awesome review, this one from Blog Critics.org.

2010-01-25T05:55:00.001-08:00

A very kind--and unexpected--review of I'm Sorry You Feel That Way in The Daily Kos. I absolutely LOVE this quote from it: "The main draw is that she's funny as hell. I mean that: Funny. As. Hell. And totally un-PC and at times quite appalling."

Diana's Gratitude Journal, #1

2010-01-24T09:32:00.000-08:00

2010-01-18T04:20:00.000-08:00

Several years ago I went to see a doctor then a dentist because my teeth were bothering me. My teeth felt strange in my mouth, I was too aware of my teeth, I was too aware of how each tooth fit into my gums. When I thought about my teeth--which was all the time--they felt cracked and chipped, broken and in shards though when I checked out my teeth in the mirror they were not cracked or chipped, broken or in shards. But it felt like they were. And I kept thinking they were. I thought about my teeth so much that I was too distracted to think about other things. Thinking about my teeth was driving me crazy, and since there wasn't anything physically wrong with me or my teeth, according to my doctor and my dentist, I went to see a psychotherapist.

I have a history of obsessive thinking, of anxiety, of panic attacks, and of depression. So it was not a surprise when the psychotherapist, upon hearing about my teeth, wanted to know what else was going on in my life. She suggested that feeling like my teeth were chipped and cracked just might be my subconscious trying to tell me something. A metaphor, she said. She wanted to know what did broken teeth mean to me, what did I associate with broken teeth.

It wasn't a hard question. I knew exactly what broken teeth meant to me. They meant hell. People in hell are weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth, and hell is another subject over which I have obsessed. For as long as I can remember, since I was a small small child, I've worried about hell, about going to hell and being in hell and spending eternity wailing and weeping and gnashing my teeth.

What else is going on in your life? the psychotherapist wanted to know. What's making you feel like you're in hell?

At the time I was pretty anxious and stressed and unhappy, worked up about a lot of things, obsessing over everything, soothed by nothing. Except this one thing: the realization, the understanding, that this business with my teeth, this weird feeling about my teeth, was just a metaphor. Knowing that soothed me. Because I'm an English major (okay, these days I am an English professor but I still identify as an English major as in Of course, I look for the deeper meaner of the Harold and Kumar movies! What do you expect? I'm an English major!) I take a lot of comfort in metaphors. Metaphors are a way for me to find meaning, to make meaning, to make things make sense, to create order out of chaos. When I realized the weird feeling that my teeth were chipped and broken was a metaphor for hell, I felt better. That weird feeling went away. I stopped obsessing about my teeth. I stopped worrying and fretting about my teeth all the goddamn time. There had been a problem but now that problem was solved.

Which is why this last chapter from the book of Diana Is Neurotic and Insane was so terrible: there were no metaphors, no coded messages from my subconscious, no deeper meaning. I couldn't think my way out of it, I couldn't make meaning out of it. Last fall, I quit smoking, and I think that was the trigger. Quitting smoking meant I was no longer supplying my brain with a steady dose of nicotine-inspired dopamine. So I felt terrible, no surprise. I do have that history of depression.

But what was surprising was just how terrible I felt, and how long I felt terrible, how the feeling wouldn't go away, how wide and deep, big and scary, the terrible feeling could get.

I've been working on this post, writing and revising it, for weeks now. Trying to describe the experience of being depressed, living through depression, living with it, has been giving me fits. I can't sum it up with a tidy metaphor like weird-feelings-about-my-teeth equals feeling-like-hell. I wonder if anxiety is an overactive imagination while depression is a lack of imagination.

Because last fall, I felt too blank to think, too empty, too tired, all tapped out. My arms felt heavy, my legs felt heavy. Things that should have been simple to do--getting out of bed; brushing my teeth, my hair; putting on socks, shoes, a coat; opening the door and stepping outside--seemed hard, really hard. And I was crying. A lot. All the time. Crying about what? I don't know. About nothing, about everything. About how things that should be simple to do seemed really, really hard. I did all the things The Depressed Person is supposed to do if she really, truly wants to stop acting like such a fucking downer: exercise, proper eating, vitamins, soaking in hot baths. I did those things.

But doing those things enraged me. Because a person can't walk off depression anymore than she can walk off strep throat. [Side note: Barbara Ehrenreich is my hero.] I fell asleep crying and I woke up crying and finally one night I called D. crying, hysterical, and she suggested it might help if I go see my doctor.

My doctor suggested if might help if I try this particular anti-depressant. I knew a lot of people who took this same anti-depressant. It worked for them. I thought it would work for me, too.

It did not. Not at all. I'm reluctant to say which anti-depressant it was because my reaction to it seems to be the exception rather than the rule and I know too many people who've responded well to it. I did not. Not at all. I experienced every bad side effect, every rare side effect, every if-this-happens-call-your-doctor side effect. I had wild mood swings; I was manic, I couldn't sleep, I had extreme irritability, I was depressed, I felt paralyzed and overwhelmed and exhausted and so so sad. I felt real dim-witted, real stupid and slow. My short term memory was on the fritz; I'd forget things, big things and little things, like people's names and where I was supposed to be and when I was supposed to be there. I couldn't think of words, of what I'd just been talking about, of what I wanted to say. This made teaching interesting.

Because even though all this was going on, I still went to class. And the simple fact of I'm-still-going-to-class kept me from calling my doctor about the side effects. I kept thinking if I can still go to class, how bad can it be? The people who knew me well caught on that something wasn't right with me, but overall, I kept the crazy under wraps.

Or maybe I just think I kept the crazy under wraps. Maybe I kept the crazy wrapped around me like a bright pink cloak. Maybe I flapped my arms while wearing that bright pink cloak and crying look at me! look at me! So much of that time is blurry.

So much of that time is so blurry that it's tempting to think it wasn't bad at all. Like the impressions I have of it aren't accurate. Like I am exaggerating about how bad it was. I asked D. about it. Maybe I'm exaggerating, I told her. Maybe it wasn't that bad.

It was bad, she said.

I know it was. Because another side effect I had from those anti-depressants was suicidal thoughts. Even though I was wacky and screwy and muddled, I knew right away those thoughts were because of the meds, those thoughts were a side effect of the meds. Still, those thoughts distressed me and disturbed me enough that I finally called my doctor and started the process of getting myself weaned off. I've been completely off for almost a month. I feel almost normal. I feel like myself enough to think what-the-hell-was-that-what-the-hell-just-happened.

I tell students that when they are writing about a personal experience, they need to ask themselves so what? who cares? why is this significant? When I think about what I experienced last fall, I think so what? who cares? When I was writing and revising this post, I thought it--So what? You were depressed. Big deal. Who cares--and even now, as I'm trying to wrap it up, I'm thinking it. So what? You were depressed. Big deal. Who cares?

I don't have an answer to that. Maybe it's because the experience is still so recent and raw, maybe I don't have enough distance from it to look at it objectively.

Or maybe there is a way to think about depression, to find meaning in depression, to make metaphors out of it, but I lack the insight or the wisdom or I just don't know how. [William Styron knows how.]

Or maybe talking about depression is just navel-gazing. It's excessive, self-pitying, self-absorbed. Maybe it's a topic to discuss with a licensed professional therapist, no one else. I know people who think this, but I hope they are wrong. Because maybe not talking about it will cause some of us to explode.

2010-01-14T19:03:00.000-08:00

The Great Lakes Colleges Association awarded I'm Sorry You Feel That Way the 2010 New Writers Award in Nonfiction.

2010-01-11T05:52:00.000-08:00

I have been up since 4:00 this morning. It's because I had that dream, the dream I've had twice a year for the past fifteen years. It's the first day of class, and I'm late, and I don't know where the room is, and I forgot to bring my syllabus, and I feel real panicky. Eventually, I find the room, and the students are there, but they are restless, fidgety, and unfriendly. No one smiles. Even though I'm completely unprepared, I decide to teach, I decide to wing it. I make a joke but no one laughs and I want to write on the blackboard, but there's no chalk, and I'm trying to talk but the students ignore me. They whisper to each other, then they rise, they join hands, they begin to sing. They're singing protest songs, and it is me they are protesting.

Then I wake up.

It's the first day of Spring 2010. If you are off to class, have a good one!

2010-01-08T07:32:00.000-08:00

I try to ignore that It-Is-Winter. I try to not let that It-Is-Winter get me depressed or influence my mood or impact my goings on. I do! I try to get along with The Winter by going out into The Winter, bundling up and taking the pugs for long snowy walks even when the wind chill is minus 27 (I bundle them up, too); bundling up and putting on my snowshoes so I can trudge around Land of Memories or Seven-Mile Creek (an hour of this burns 544 calories. 544, I tell myself, 544, 544); bundling up and clomping through the snow to go to the post office or the bank instead of driving myself there. It seems to me that if you have to live in Winter, then you have to live with Winter, which means going outside on purpose.

I tell myself this is how things are and how things have to be. Because I live in Minnesota where It-Is-Winter begins in October and ends in June. Maybe the locals, the natives, those for whom Minnesota is their Motherland, their heartland, their spiritual epicenter--maybe those folks will pooh pooh me and say I am exaggerating, it's really not that bad, oh come on now. These folks will pooh pooh me and say I need to quit my complaining, It-Is-Winter will make you a stronger person, a tougher person, a better person. To them I say, Bite me, mofos. I am not Laura Ingalls. In fact, fuck Laura Ingalls and her Little House. The Winter is bad and This Winter has been really bad. And it's only mid-January.

This is the front of my little house.

This is the back. I had to shovel out my driveway and I ran out of places to put the snow. So I started piling it against my back fence.

It is winter. Pray for me.

2010-01-04T07:51:00.000-08:00

I used to make fun of dog people.

Dog people take too many pictures of their dogs.

Dog people tell too many stories about their dogs.

Like the one about how the big pug has a prurient interest in the little pug. Dog people will go on and on about how the big pug gets all weird and creepy and intense about the little pug, how the big pug stares at the little pug in a way that brings to mind a pervert lurking around a schoolyard.

And how the little pug seems to like it.

2010-01-01T10:54:00.000-08:00

2009

Things That Happened;
Things I Thought About

My Year Alphabetically

Annoying vs. Irritating
I contemplated this--I even wrote several pages about it in my journal--but I never came to a definitive conclusion about which it's worse to be.

Apricot
The color I painted my office.

Big Love
D. and I spent hours debating who we'd want to be our husband, who we'd want for sister-wives, whether we'd rather be first wife or second or third. We rarely agreed.

The Boy
He isn't as easy to trick, manipulate or boss around as he used to be. He turned 17 in April, and we seemed to have entered a phase in our relationship where he thinks I am a well-intentioned fuck-up, inept but cute.

Book I Read That I Hadn't Read Since Age Fifteen
Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews. I couldn't believe how vividly I remembered it. I couldn't believe how much I still loved it.

Cessation
I smoked a cigarette on Sunday, October 18, 2009, and I haven't smoked one since. My doctor says this is a good thing, but I'm not so sure.

Crepes
The Boy was obsessed with crepes--talking about them, Googling recipes for them, making them, eating them. This obsession came out of nowhere, lasted about three days, then disappeared.

Divorce
It was final on December 18.

Doctor
I finally found a good one. I like her, but she thinks I'm Difficult and Disagreeable. She's never said as much but I can tell.

Dog Park
I went there a lot.

Eggs.
I ate them scrambled, usually with some kind of cheese.

Five Hundred Days of Summer
I thought Summer was cloying and annoying and grating and irritating and kind of a heartless bitch even if she was upfront with Tom about not wanting a boyfriend. Others may disagree.

Fondue Pot
I received one from The Boy as a congratulations gift for writing a book.

GPS, Garmin
I got it for my birthday, and it's changed my life.

Hair
In 2009, I grew out my hair and then I cut off my hair and then I thought about my hair. Should I grow my hair long? How long? If I grow it too long, will I look like a country music star? Should I cut it short? How short? What should I do about my bangs? I am always growing out my bangs and then when they're grown out, I get bangs cut again. I don't think I have ever maintained a hair cut; I think I have only work on growing out hair cuts.

Hard
Some days it wasn't easy but I always got out of bed.

I'm Sorry You Feel That Way
Some people liked the book; other people did not. To the first group, I say thank you! and to the second, I say, well, okay, then.

Job, a Dialogue

Me: How'd the interview go?

The Boy: They asked me the same thing everyone always asks me.

Me: What's that.

Him: They asked what's your strength.

Me: What'd you say?

Him: That I'm a people person!

Me: What else did they ask you?

Him: They asked what's my weakness.

Me: What's you tell them?

Him: I told them the same as I always say. That I don't have any motivation.

Kayne, Kitten
I love that line in his song "Heartless" when he says How could you be so Dr. Evil. The Boy and I sang that to The Kitten when she bit us or knocked over a glass of water or hissed at us for looking at her.

License, Driver's, Minnesota
In October, I passed the test.

Lie, A Dialogue

The Boy: How'd you even get a virus on your computer?

Me: I think from an email one of my students sent me.

Lighters
It amazed me how, when I was still smoking cigarettes I could never find a lighter but once I quit smoking, I came across lighters everywhere.

Love
I didn't get cynical about it.

Mantra
Adios, motherfucker(s) was what I said in my head when dealing with a particularly unpleasant person or group of people. I discovered that if I repeated it enough, it sounded like poetry.

Morgan Freeman
I bet someone $20 that the voice-over narrator in Five Hundred Days of Summer was Morgan Freeman. I was so certain of this that I even tried to raise the wager to $100 but I was so confident, so convincing, that the other person backed down. The next day, when I looked it up, planning to send the link in an email as proof so I could collect my $20, I discovered that Morgan Freeman is not the narrator. Some other guy--I don't remember who--is the narrator. I never 'fessed up my mistake or paid up the twenty bucks.

Mother's Day
The Boy and I hung out in his room where we watched Role Models, a movie that made me howl, I thought it was so freaking funny.

Nutella, A Dialogue

The Boy: Nutella is so good! I can't believe I've gone 17 years without knowing about Nutella. Why didn't you ever introduce me to it when I was little? I could have been enjoying Nutella all my life instead of not knowing about it until age 17.

Me: How did you find out about Nutella?

Him: I have my ways.

Me: Nutella is nasty.

Him: Nutella is chocolatey hazelnutty goodness.

Me: Nutella looks like baby poo.

Him: You've never tried it! You should try it! You'll probably change your mind.

Me: I don't want to.

Him: But it's delicious! I don't know why you think you don't like it. Here, I'll put a little on a spoon so you can try it again.

Me: No. Don't.

Him: It's just a little. A little on a spoon. C'mon. Just give it a try.

Me: No! Stop harassing me about Nutella!

Him: Open your mouth. C'mon. Choo! Choo! Here comes a little choo choo train! Come on! Don't be so stubborn.

Me: Go away!

Him: Come on, now! Choo choo!

Me: You are insane!

Him: Insane for Nutella! I could be their company spokesperson! Come on! Just try it!

Me: If I try it, will you go away?

Him: Yes.

Me: Bleh! It's disgusting!

Him: You love it. I can tell by looking at you that you love it. You just don't want to admit that you love Nutella.

Me: Dude, I swear to you: I do not love Nutella.

Him: You don't know what you don't love. Hey, I bet Nutella cheesecake would be delicious. Let's Google it!

Oh, how nice!
What I said every time I found out someone I knew was having a baby.

Other writers:
I met some excellent writers who also happened to be excellent people.

Julie Klausner, author of I Don't Care About Your Band.
This book of essay is hilarious. My favorite part is when she says that after the first time she gave a blow job, she was so happy that she wanted someone to give her a high five.

Cathy Day, author of Comeback Season and The Circus in Winter.
When I read Cathy Day's books, I think about how much I want to be her friend.

David McGlynn, author of The End of the Straight and Narrow.
The best collection of short stories I have read in years.

Steve Almond, author of Candy Freak; My Life in Heavy Metal; Not That You Asked.
He's writing about candy, about politics, about masturbating in a hot tub. He's writing about love.

Kerry Cohen, author of Loose Girl and Easy.
If you've ever been lonely, read Kerry Cohen.

MaryElizabeth Williams, author of Gimme Shelter.
The girl can do the hard work of simultaneously educating the reader while telling a story.

Midge Raymond, author of Forgetting English.
Another amazing story collection. Exotic settings, lush descriptions, characters who'll break your heart.

Sam Ligon, author of Drift and Swerve; and Safe in Heaven, Dead.
All of the stories in Drift and Swerve should be read, but the four Nikki stories in that book should be read and reread and then read out loud to yourself and to others. That's what I did.

Rachel Kramer Bussel, editor of Best Sex Writing 2010.
This isn't a collection of erotica (though Bussel has edited a number of erotica anthologies.) It is a collection of smart, interesting, provocative, well-written essays about sex, gender, race, power, politics, etc.

Pet Finder dot com
I stopped going there because it only got me in trouble.

Pork
I stopped eating it

Pugs
I already had one pug. Then on a beautiful fall day while browsing Pet Finder dot com, I came across another at a shelter in Milford, Iowa. Then I had two.

Sometimes I cursed them. Damn you pugs to hell! I cried. It was because they were pestering me to take them to the dog park or give them a bite of my sandwich. The big pug was especially irritating because he'd moan or huff or groan or whine. The little pug manipulated through steady eye contact and tail thumping. They might chase each other to get my attention. They might tongue kiss each other. The big one might get intense and creepy and pervy and hump the little one. Damn you, pugs! I'd shout, would you just give me five minutes? but you can't negotiate with pugs. They want what they want when they want it. Why do I put up with them? I think it's because of how cute they look in sweaters.

Quiet
There were days when I didn't speak except out of social obligation. It felt so good to be quiet, to be stingy with my thoughts.

Rotel

On December 31, 2009, there were nine cans in my pantry.

Seattle
I went there and loved it there. It felt like home and I wanted to never leave.

Semi-colons
I made an effort to use fewer.

Songs
I was obsessed with certain songs. My taste is frequently debatable.

Suckas!
What I thought every time I found out someone I knew was having a baby.

Teaching

I was happiest teaching a course on Writing the Humorous Essay.

Tires
I bought four.

Toldja So
I never looked at porn on the Internet because I was always afraid I would get a virus on my computer. Then one day I told myself that was silly, plenty of people look at porn online every day and don't get viruses. So I went online and I looked at porn and guess what: I got a virus on my computer.

Tote Bags
I lost interest in making them.

U-Haul
In July, after packing one with my friend D.'s stuff, I went home and cried and haven't really stopped.

Value
Cub Foods had twelve packs of Coke products on sale 4 for $8.00. I thought that was such an amazing deal that I kept going to Cub and buying twelve packs of Coke products. I bought Coke, Diet Coke, Nestea, Schwepps Ginger Ale, Sprite, Diet Sprite, Barg's Rootbeer, Minutemaid Lemonade, and Fanta Orange pop. I bought 16 twelve packs and the kicker is I don't drink pop.

Writing
I wrote an essay called "Bullets Going Through Objects in Slow Motion" that will appear in Willow Springs' next issue (I think this essay will be chapter one or two of the next book.) I wrote a piece for Country Living magazine and for Marie Claire; these should be out some time this spring. I've got 3 or 4 more drafts of essays in various stages of shitty/not-so-shitty.

X-ray
It had been years and years since I went to the dentist. Which is why when I finally did drag myself there, they took X-rays of my teeth. And I'm not going to pretend I was okay with them doing this, that I was brave about it, I was tough and strong and adult. I cried, okay? It was terrible, and I hated it, and I'm never fucking letting them do that to me ever again.

You
You know who you are.

Zeitoun
by Dave Eggers is the book I was reading on December 31, 2009. I was on page 128.

2009-11-17T11:22:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-20T10:51:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-10-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-12T09:03:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-03T05:52:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-23T17:38:00.000-07:00

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:

2009-09-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-08-17T05:27:00.001-07:00

School starts one week from today.

2009-07-15T14:28:00.000-07:00

Would you like to see my Worst Review Ever?

2009-07-14T09:14:00.001-07:00

I don't like when the dental hygienist asks questions.

2009-07-12T05:28:00.000-07:00

Here's an overdue shout-out to Chrissy, Lindsay, Monica, Natalie, and Ashley, a book club in Atlanta I had great fun chatting with on Wednesday night. The subjects we discussed included the following: Facebook stalking, bridesmaid dresses, the nature of friendship, gender-specific behaviors, journaling/blogging, reality television, and Michael Jackson. We talked about the book, too, but they were so easy to talk to that I hit the wokka button, and next thing you know, I'd yapped their ears off.

A subject that I successfully refrained from bringing up:

It wasn't easy to keep myself from telling them all about the pug. Especially since just that morning when I took him for his walk, he 1.) mounted a hosta and crapped on it; 2.) gave a little kid a big sloppy wet smooch; 3.) hunkered low as he approached a sack of organic potting soil as if to attack it; 4.) scuttled through tall weeds. Then it was time for a nap.

2009-06-29T07:10:00.000-07:00

Look, this isn't going to be a great post because I got nothing. Seriously, nothing to report. I hardly leave the house except to walk the Pug. I could write a long post about the walking the Pug: how he goes ape-shit batty when he sees me put on my shoes; how he gets himself work into such a spazmatic tizzy that he yips and moans and whines for at least the first two blocks; how his ears bounce as he weeble-wobbles down the street; his strange habit of mounting the low-growing shrubs in front of the Lutheran church before he pees on them. The Pug and I are so tangled up in each other's lives and emotions that I don't know what kind of separation anxiety is going to go down when school starts this fall.

*

It's pretty bad to resort to dreams for material, but I guess I could write about how I had a dream about how I went to the Albertson's in Grand Junction to buy a pack of cigarettes while wearing just a tee shirt and a pair of polka-dot undies. Even dreaming, I knew it was socially inappropriate to go out into public in that outfit, I knew I shouldn't do it, but I just couldn't bring myself to put on a pair of pants. So I got in my truck and drove to Albertson's, got to the electric doors, and stopped myself. I thought, I can't go in there! I don't have any pants on! So I stood outside the doors trying to figure out a route back to the truck that would shield me, you know, hiding myself by darting between cars. After several minutes of plotting, during which time people walked past me, and I felt pretty sure they saw my underwear, I dashed back to my truck. Once there, I thought about how there should be a No Shame, No Pants Day, a national day where no one is shamed for not wearing pants. I felt positive if I made that into a status update on Facebook, that No Shame, No Pants would catch on internationally. Then I woke up.

*

There is how I saw a psychic in Minnetonka who told me she saw me surrounded by little dogs, lots and lots of little dogs. She suggested I adopt a terrier. She also told me my spirit guide's name is Marcus.

*

There's how Mary Roach's book Spook is really, really good. So is Season Three of Big Love.

*

And this: I love people who like my book. I love them a lot.

2009-06-20T08:36:00.001-07:00

You already know how much VH1 and E! TV I watch, and if you don't already know, it's a lot. A lot a lot. I sit on the couch with my remote control and I flip back and forth--channel 41, channel 44, channel 41, channel 44. I watched all the cycles of Rock of Love, Flavor of Love, I Love NY, I Love Money, Daisy of Love, Keeping up with the Kardashians, The Girls Next Door, Charm School, Sober House and Celebrity Rehab; I watched True Hollywood Story--yes, even the ones about Miley Cyrus, about Kelly Ripa, about Saved by the Bell, and Rapper Wives. I watched 101 Cutest Child Stars, 101 Hottest Hollywood Bodies, 101 Most Memorable Things that Happened on the Internet.

All of it is mind-numbingly dumb and even sort of boring but it doesn't ask much of me, the viewer. I can zone in and zone out, which exactly what I want to do while I do my homework, check my email, update my Facebook status, and look up random shit on Wikipedia. I think what I like is the white trashiness of these shows, the familial dysfunction, the gossip, the intrigue, and the opportunity to comment on oh, yeah, Bret Michaels is totally wearing a wig, and Holly Madison is my favorite Girl Next Door while Kloe is my favorite Kardashian, and Flava Flav reminds me of a California raisin.

So I was sad the morning when I turned on the television and channel 41 and channel 44--Vh1 and E!--were fuzzy, snowy, not coming in. Neither were certain other channels: not CNN, not Oxygen, not Lifetime. In fact, I wasn't getting any channels between 20-100. But I was getting channels under 20 and over 100. It was baffling, but it had been raining a lot. I chalked it up to the weather.

A few days later, I was still sad because my channels still weren't coming in. And the fuzzy, snowing VH1/E! wasn't just impacting me, either. My friend D. felt the loss. When D. comes over, she usually sits on the couch, too, The Pug in between us, and she watches with me, and our eyes glaze over, and our breathing becomes slack-jawed, and we don't talk much until it's to say do you want to go to Dairy Queen during the next commercial. Because from my house, Dairy Queen is a skip away. Then we eat Blizzards and we flip between VH1 and E!. Once, just once, we tried to watch something smart. It was a documentary about quantum physics that neither of us could wrap our minds around. About fifteen minutes into it, I got sleepy and D. got antsy, and VH1 was playing Pop-Up Videos, and that's what we watched, even though that episode of Pop-Up Videos was from 2003, and I'd seen it at least a dozen times before.

Since it wasn't raining anymore, I told D. there must be something wrong with my television since I couldn't get our channels. Did you pay your cable bill? she asked.

Of course, I had--it's automatically deducted every month. There's just something wrong with the signal or something, I told her. Maybe it's because of the switch to digital or something. Or maybe the boy messed it up somehow when he messed with the DVD player.

What are we going to watch? she said. We flipped through the channels I did have and settled on a certain kind of show that I never watch. Ever. It was called C.S.I. or maybe it was called Special Victims Unit or maybe it was called Cold Cases or maybe it was called MOST BORING TELEVISION SHOW EVER. It was about some girl who played tennis and then she was dead, somebody killed her, and then the police interviewed a bunch of people in their investigation to find out who did it. They acted like each person they talked to was indeed the killer until the moment that person gave them a piece of information that lead them to some other person. Then the cops talked to that person as if he/she was indeed the killer until that person gave them a piece of information about some other person.

I couldn't believe I was watching this. I can't believe we're watching this, I told D.

D. said sometimes she watches one episode after another; she falls into a trance, watching the formulaic plots and the oh-so-clever one liners, and the intentionally intense, hyperbolically serious deliveries.

You need to call the cable company, D. said.

Which I did. Yesterday. I called the cable company and I talked to Jeremy who first walked me through the process of unplugging my cable box so he could reset the signal. When that didn't restore my channels, Jeremy asked me what cable package I had. Did I have basic cable or did I have extended basic.

I told him I didn't know, but that for the four years I lived here, I had the cable that included VH1 and E! and since I seemed to have developed this habit of hassling people who work in customer service by talking talking talking to them about everything there is to know about my life, I told Jeremy all about how much I love VH1 and E! and how happy I'll be to get those channels back.

Jeremy said he understood. He did some tapping on his computer and said Hmmmmmmmm. I hate to tell you this, he said, but I think I found the reason you're not getting your channels. VH1 and E! are part of the extended basic cable package; you're only paying for basic.

I had a hard time wrapping my mind around quantum physics so what Jeremy said blew my mind. How could this be? I asked him. Somebody made a mistake, he said. But it's been four years, I said. Four years ago, somebody made a mistake, he said. But, I said. But-but-but, I sputtered.

Jeremy said I could get my channels back if I upgraded to extended basic, and when I asked him how much that would cost me, and he said well, I was paying 25 dollars a month for basic, and extended basic would be 40 dollars more, so $65 a month for me to get back my VH1 and E!, my eyeballs rolled back in my head, and my head spun around on my neck. That's like 800 bucks a year! I told him. For television!

Jeremy said my estimation sounded right.

Eight hundred dollars a year! For television! Who pays eight hundred dollars a year for television? That's crazy! I told Jeremy who stated it wasn't crazy if I loved VH1 and E! as much as I claimed I did.

I was about to argue that this wasn't fair, and it wasn't right, and I shouldn't have to pay that since I hadn't been paying that when it occurred to me that what I'd done was call the cable company to complain that I was no longer getting free cable. I called the cable company to insist on free cable.

I'm sorry, I told Jeremy. I'm being unreasonable. I know that. But I'm at a loss here. I don't know what to do.

That's when he asked me if I'd ever seen any of the shows on HBO. The Wire, he said. Big Love. Entourage. A lot of his customers really enjoy True Blood, he said. He offered me HBO and Cinemax for five dollars a month, and while I'd heard people talk about the shows on HBO, how good those shows are, how well-written, how well-acted, I was never much interested in them. If I was interesting in quality, I wouldn't be hooked on Rock of Skank Bus 3. But I didn't want Jeremy to think I was crazy. So I said okay and I stayed up late late late into the night last night watching Big Love through HBO On Demand. They only offered Season Three, which meant I had to Wikipedia summaries of episodes from Seasons One and Two, which helped some, but nonetheless, while watching I felt like I'd walked into a conversation that started without me a long time before.

2009-06-08T18:28:00.000-07:00

I've heard from a lot of readers. Their responses to the book have been sweet, funny, smart, moving and incredibly flattering. But this one, this one is my favorite:

hi my name is josh im in gr 8 and im reading your book for a book report and i had to do a biography and i chose yours because it didnt seem boring like all the others, and i have to say that your son reminded me of me. all in all i loved your book and its definatley my fav book of all time

Tote Bag Nation

2009-06-08T18:14:00.001-07:00

This is Winchester, a St. Bernard from Pennsylvania.

Tote Bag Nation

2009-06-08T18:02:00.001-07:00

Brian of California--a Borders employee, he made ISYFTW his staff pick.

Tote Bag Nation

2009-06-08T17:52:00.000-07:00

Carolyn, a reader in Illinois who has the same birthday as me. Carolyn teaches 8th grade, and in the background is a mural of literary reductions her students have completed on over 200 books.)

2009-06-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

I have always had a sizable crush on Isabella Rossellini, and this only makes me love her all the more. This is good, too. Actually, they're all good.

Here's a big thank you to Melissa at the Eden Prairie, MN Barnes and Noble

2009-04-28T10:54:00.000-07:00

Tote Bag Nation

2009-04-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

Kate of NYC uses her tote to haul home her groceries.

2009-04-26T21:26:00.001-07:00

In his book Love’s Executioner, Irv Yalmon, this really interesting psychologist, discusses four existential concerns—death; freedom; isolation; and meaning—and those are the very concerns I get myself into a tizzy about all the time. I worry that every mole, every sniffle and sneeze, every headache or bout with indigestion means I, or someone I love, is probably dying. I fret over the push and pull between embracing the freedom of becoming an authentic self and my responsibility toward others. My mind goes round and round wondering if it’s selfish to want to both connection with others and separateness from them. But it’s that fourth concern—the idea of meaning—that gets under my craw. I’ve got this Pure O-obsession with the desire to make meaning. I want things, my experiences, my relationships, both present and past, to make sense.

Take this anecdote, for example. I could think all day on what it means, what it reveals about my son and me, what it says about power dynamics and competing philosophies. The Boy and I have had the kitten for a year and a half now, and while this sweet sassy ball of fluff has brought all this energy and light into the house, her presence continues to infuriate our older cat. In fact, the older cat is so peeved that every night she hops into the kitten’s litter box where she leaves a big old nasty deposit, and—this is the best part—she doesn’t bury it. She just leaves it there to show the kitten: this is what I think of you.

There’s a turf war taking place in our house. Territory is being claimed. Lines are being drawn. I look at that nasty mess in the litter box and see a metaphor. “Wouldn’t it be fantastic,” I asked the boy, “if we had that kind of power? If we could go to the bathroom, that most intimate space, at an enemy’s house and leave a little something there for him to find in the morning? Wouldn’t that send the clearest of messages?”

“It’s cat shit,” my son, the literalist, said.

2009-04-19T07:50:00.000-07:00

I didn't sleep so well last night, and this morning I'm feeling pretty grumpy so when the kitten starts up with her game of morning merows -- Merow! she says, and she turns over her water dish, Merow! she says, and she knocks a book off the shelf -- I merow back in the same snide pissy whine. Merow, says she. Merow, says I. Then she jumps in her litter box and proceeds to dig through it, sending the granules flying. Merow! she says, Merow! I tell her, and it must make me think of the Ludacris song "Stand Up," because I am singing when you merow, I merow! (Just like that!)

Which makes me remember how the Boy, a fifth grader at Holy Family Catholic School, and I were driving home from school when he started humming that song, then singing it, but the words were slightly different. Instead of when I move, you move (Just like that!), the boy was singing when I pray, you pray (Just like that).

And when I asked him what'd you do at school today? Sit around and pray? he said of course he didn't sit around and pray, there were morning prayers, and prayer at lunch, and another prayer before the last bell, but his day also included social studies and language arts and math class.

Good for you! I told him. Social studies, language arts, and math class AND praying three times a day, he must be exhausted.

Then he said actually, he prayed more than three times a day, he talked to God all the time. Don't you? he said.

And I said something snide and pissy like of course I do, right now I am praying that God will get this light to hurry up and change, it's been red forever, and I'm tired of sitting here.

And that was the end of that, though I never thought of Ludacris in the same way again. And I never thought I gave the boy a good answer. Instead I gave him the snarky answer, a real merow of an answer. Merow! I said, and when the light finally turned green, I hit the gas to burn rubber, and I high tailed it through the next light which, as I approached, was yellow-turning-red. I clearly remember looking over at the boy in the passenger's seat to see what he thought of my antics, which were usually good to get an exasperated eye-roll or a a sigh and a head shake, but he looked calm. Peaceful. Serene, even. He was ten years old. What business did he have with serenity? Was he praying? Had he just prayed? Did he pray for things or just about them?

I'm Sorry You Feel That Way book trailer

2009-04-16T07:29:00.000-07:00

2009-04-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

I've given my son permission to cut his Fifth Hour physics class. He has that class right before lunch, and he says he needs the extra time to get to his girlfriend's house before she does. He plans to surprise her with flowers and chocolates, macaroni and cheese that he's prepared himself, and a formal invitation to the prom. It's already been established that they are going to the prom together--she bought her dress, he rented his tux-- but he's never outright asked her. She told him he needs to. She told him his invitation had better be good.

I like this girl. She's smart and funny and she's not going to settle. But her spunk and sass have created a good bit of anxiety in my unromantic son. He's been fretting about just how to go about The Asking for weeks now. Some of his ideas were quite grand (renting a billboard) while some were cute-but-dumb (spelling it out in elbow macaroni.) Now time's up, and he's decided on flowers and chocolate--a bit cliche unless you're a high school boy in love with a high school girl.

I think it's sweet, but admit I am not thrilled about him cutting out of physics. While my son has his talents, mirror-gazing and Halo-playing among them, when it comes to physics, he's no rocket scientist. So I'm faced with a choice: do I choose rocket science or do I support love? Both are outer worldly, but which better serves him in the long run?

You'd think that as a college professor I would stress the importance of education. Screw that. I am a fool for love.

But am I making the right choice? Am I setting a bad example, a bad precedent? Should I slap my hand against the table and give my son a stern lecture about his imperfect G.P.A. and less-than-proper study habits? In comparison, surprising a girl by mixing butter and milk into a box of Kraft seems trivial and maybe even bone-headed.

I'm probably making the wrong choice. But that's been my experience with parenting this boy for the last almost-seventeen years. Do I follow my head or do I go with my heart?

I'm Sorry You Feel That Way is a collection of essays about men and boys I've known, and several of the essays are about the boy I'm raising. I have not been a perfect mother. I've often veered back and forth between too-much and not-enough, between absolutely smothering that kid and not being able to remember the last time I took him to the dentist. I've had a lot of ambivalence about the job: I adore my son but he drives me koo-koo bananas.

Take today's situation: I gave him permission to cut physics without too much hesitation, but when he mentioned 1.) he'll need a ride to his girlfriend's house and 2.) he doesn't have any money to buy her flowers (okay, he didn't say this, but I'd bet on it), I started dragging my feet. Outright lying to his school (we're explaining his absence by faking a doctor's appointment) is something I'm apparently okay with, but inconveniencing me, well, that's another matter all together.

"You better not poke around getting here; I don't live my life waiting for opportunities to drive you around," I told the boy. "And don't think I'm spending a lot of money on these flowers. I don't see why I have to finance your love life. And anyway, when are you getting a job? You need to get a job."

My son leaned down to kiss me on the cheek. "Bye, Mom," he said. His eyelashes are long and his cheeks are pink and he's the most beautiful boy I've ever seen. He and I both know already I'm just a lot of hot air, I will shell out the cash to buy flowers for him to give to some other girl.

UPDATE: The Boy paid for the flowers himself.

2009-04-11T13:15:00.000-07:00

ISYFTW totes are in transit! I mailed a bunch of them out this morning, a task that required parallel parking, which is no small feat for a person who also hates merging, driving in reverse, and left-hand turns.

Please consider sending me a picture of you and your tote; I will post it on this blog.

2009-04-09T19:43:00.000-07:00

Here's an interview I did with Deborah Harper at Psychjourney

Tote Bag Nation

2009-04-08T10:34:00.001-07:00

Lesley and her tote went to Nigeria...

...and also to London.

Tote Bag Nation

2009-04-08T10:30:00.001-07:00

Amanda of Winona, Minnesota poses with her tote and I'm in the picture, too.

Tote Bag Nation

2009-04-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

Justine and her tote landed in San Miguel de Allende.

2009-04-05T21:41:00.000-07:00

The book makes its first television appearance (I, however, look good on the radio): click here.

2009-04-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

To listen to the interview I did with Stephen Usery for his show "Book Talk" on FM 89.3 in Memphis, click here.

2009-04-05T06:56:00.001-07:00

I love teaching. I love standing in front of a roomful of students—whether it’s their very first Introduction to Creative Writing class or a Graduate Workshop—and doing whatever I can to convince my students that their stories matter. That their stories are interesting. That they are interesting and their lives are the stuff of art. What absolutely slays me is that we so often don’t know the ways we’re interesting. We take our experiences for granted, or we think what we know is what everyone already knows. And while it’s true that there are universal experiences—everyone has the story of how he or she first learned about sex, for example—the details that of experience, the specifics are what make it fascinating. One of my student’s sex talk consisted of a pop-up book her mom left on her bed. A pop-up book! Another student’s sex talk was his dad saying, “You know not to get anyone pregnant, right?” The sex talk my father gave me—“Don’t be a pig,” he said—was so weird and great that it became the story that opens the book.

These are the three stories I encourage my students to tell:

1. The story you don’t want to tell your friends.

2. The story you don’t want to tell your mother.

3. The story you don't want to tell yourself.

But my biggest teacherly concern is convincing my students that being a writer goes hand-in-hand with being a reader. I spend a lot of time yapping about the absolute pleasure of reading, reminding my students that it’s good when a book is challenging or fills you with anxiety or rage. When a book gets you all riled up. When you wish you could call the writer up and say look here, pal, you got me thinking. Emily Dickinson said, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry,” and I say yep. Good writing blows my mind, too. It’s all about communicating with a reader. The writer starts the conversation with what he or she has written and the reader says something in response. For me, a good piece of writing will lead me to two reactions: recognition—I know exactly what you mean, or revelation—I never thought of it like that. But the best writing gives me both.

Book Clubs!

2009-03-30T10:38:00.000-07:00

I did a phone-chat with a book club in southern California over the weekend. (Hi Laura! Hi Teresa!) I thought it was a lot of fun, and since writing is such a solitary job, it's great to hear what readers have to say and learn what readers are curious about.

So if your book club is reading I'm Sorry You Feel That Way, and you're interested in me talking to you, drop me an email at

imsorryyoufeelthatway at live dot com

If you're within a reasonable driving distance from southern Minnesota, I can be there in person; if not, I am a chatty Cathy on the telephone.

Tomato, Tomahto

2009-03-29T15:01:00.000-07:00

A woman in Montreal says my book is terrible. A preacher in North Carolina says my book is his favorite. There's a reader who says I have no redeeming qualities. There's a reader who says I am funny and smart and full of life and love. One reader says I'm glib about being a terrible mother while another says the love I have for my son is clear.

The conclusion I've come to is this: some readers like my book but some readers don't.

I think this is where 15 years of teaching at the college level comes in handy. I'm used to being reviewed. Fifteen years is thirty semesters, and at the end of each of those semesters, students in my classes fill out anonymous class evaluations. Thousands of students have rated, critiqued, evaluated the job I did--did they learn anything; was the course well organized; did I seem interested in teaching the class; was I enthusiastic, did I seem like I knew what I was talking about, and so on. My students never give me high marks in organization (and they're right, though I always try to be organized, I really do try! and fail) but the majority of them rate me well in everything else.

Except for one person. There's always one person every semester who's not happy with me, one person who gives me zeros in all categories.

And sometimes that person writes in a comment, too, to further express his or her dissatisfaction.

My favorite of these was this: "Every time Diana says good morning it makes me want to vomit."

I'd only been teaching a year or two when I got that comment, and I remember it made me feel 1) amused; and 2) sort of bad. I talked to the guy who was my department chair about it, and he said, "Well, it looks like you pissed someone off. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It means you've done your job. It's not good if everyone hates you but it's also not good if everyone loves you. If you haven't pissed at least one person off, then you haven't done your job."

I think that's true for writers, too.

2009-03-27T14:47:00.000-07:00

"Spanish Final": a short film by The Boy

2009-03-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

I love people in Denver, Colorado. Here's why.

2009-03-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

When I clear away all of my thoughts, push away all the noise and chaos of my thoughts, there's always a song playing underneath it all--like I've got a 24 hour dee jay on duty in my head spinning records at all times. Sometimes the song stays with me for days, but other times, the dee jay will lift the needle mid-lyric and put on something else. Something random. Right now, inexplicably, that song is "Angry Young Man" by Styx, but when I woke up this morning, it was Gloria Estefan's "Words Get in the Way."

I don't know what this is all about. It's not like I even those songs. I don't remember hearing them recently, though I can imagine that maybe "Words Get in the Way" was playing at the grocery store while I was shopping for kitty litter and cheese ravioli and it evilly worked its way into my subconscious.

It's not like I am fanatic about music, either. It's good to dance to, and it's necessary for road trips, and when I was a teenager, I listened to it a lot more than I do now. These days I like quiet. I need silence. There are times when even the sound of the cat purring can irritate me. Or the jingle-jangle of the pug's tags can drive me to distraction.

My students and I have talked about the idea of a soundtrack-in-your-head. Some of them know exactly what I'm talking about while others say they don't have one. I wonder why that is and what it's all about.

I hope his spelling/grammar have improved

2009-03-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

I was going through some old Word Document files, and I came across this. I pilfered it from the About Me section of The Boy's MySpace page--back when people still used MySpace. I'm guessing it's from fall of 2006. The Boy would have about 14.

It's pretty self-explanatory, though the lines in red are me adding my two cents.

My name is THE BOY. i hate muffins. i hate pancakes. i hate hippies. i hate emo people. i pretty much hate breakfeast. i like doughnuts. i like bagels. im short. (That is due to his father's faulty DNA) i hate rich stuck-up people who think there better than everyone else. i also hate people who think their smarter than everyone else. i like my friends. i partys. i like soda. i like gum. i like mints. i like ramen. i like music, mainly system of a down. i was born in Pittsburg. my birthday is 420 (april 20th). i dont really have a favorite color. i hate gothic people. i hate people who smoke. i hate it when im bored. i used to play guitar. i used to play drums. i like pepsi and hate coke. i hate drugs (not pharmaceuticals but like cocanie and weed etc.) i frequantly download songs and movies off the internet (for free) if you have a problem with that go to hell. i hate wooden pencils. i hunt deer, again if you have a problem with that i dont f*cking care. i hate it when people exaturate everything. i hate it when people use sarcasim for every little thing. i hate it when people hate your mom, or your face. i hate inside jokes that people never explain. i like gambling. i moved here from colorado. i lived in syracuse, new york. my mom is an english prof. she taught donovan mcnabb (quarterback for the philadelphia eagles)when he went to syracuse. (It's true. He was in my Freshman Comp class at Syracuse when I was a TA. This may be the only thing about me that normal teenage boys think is slightly cool.) i like subway. i hate mc donalds and burger king. i go to west. i live like a block away from west. i hosted the first annual ramen feast on 9/19/06. i like ice cream. i hate the feel of news paper. i like money. but not enough to be greedy about it. i like traveling (on airplanes). i travel (on airplanes)alot. i like popcorn. i hate "movie theature" pop corn cause it tastes like paper. my family is messed up. (Well, THAT's certainly true. On his father's side) im a half-uncle. i hate crooked cops. i fall down my stairs alot. some might say im accident prone. i hate chain emails/bulletins. i hate it when its really hot out. i hate being sick. i like snow. i like rain. i like thunder/lightning storms. i like oceans/lakes/waterfalls/rivers/streams/creeks/ponds (What about puddles? Does he like puddles? I should ask him.). i like mountians. i like skiing. i like koolaid. i hate it when people are mad at me. i hate secrets. i hate people who f*ck things up (Me, too.)

From the reading in Denver, at the Tattered Cover on Colfax

2009-03-24T15:14:00.000-07:00

2009-03-24T04:15:00.001-07:00

This picture makes me want to acquire every My Little Pony there is, even if it means whacking some little girl on her little head with a little broom then prying the Little Pony out of her sticky little hand.

And I don't even like My Little Ponies.

I just like acquiring. I like having one of every thing in a set. I collect snow globes; Barbie Dolls; husband and wife folk art figurines (I picked up a pair in West Virginia made out of coal.) I collect tiny carved Buddhas; pink Pyrex dishes. I seem to be acquiring more and more items that have skulls on them. It's a sickness, this need to gather dozens and dozens of like objects and arrange them just so, and I'm not the only one. People collect coins and stamp and Star Wars figurines, but what about the weirdos who collect those freebie disks AOL sends you in the mail? Or airsickness bags? What about arenophiles?--they haunt beaches scooping up sand and storing it forever in small, airtight containers.

And that's just collections that begin with the letter "A."

The Boy has it, too, the sickness. I got to realizing this when he cleaned his room and hauled boxes and boxes of stuff down to the basement. Beanie babies and Pokemon cards, Lego sets and Pogs. The things of his childhood, his fleeting passions contained in cardboard and sealed up with masking tape.

I wonder what this urge to collect is all about. I wonder if it has something to do with a longing for order, if it's a way to impose order on chaos. If you see the world as a chaotic place (and I do), then collecting lets you be the master of a tiny, more manageable world, one you can make less wild, one you can insist makes sense.

Starred Review in Library Journal

2009-03-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Brinkley - Library Journal

Despite the mouthful of a title, there isn't an excess word in this smart and tightly constructed debut. Fans of David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell will appreciate Joseph's portraits of the men in her life. From her young son's trench foot to her blue-collar father's attempt at a sex talk, these impeccably detailed stories are as heartfelt as they are trenchantly funny.

Review in Wisconsin State Journal

2009-03-23T11:59:00.000-07:00

Writing teacher's memoir full of heart

Jeanne Kolker
State Journal
March 13, 2009

Diana Joseph's memoir carries this hefty subtitle: "The Astonishing But True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man & Dog." It's a collection of essays about the men in Joseph's life, but even more than that, it's a glimpse inside a complicated, hilarious, depressed, sometimes depraved and painfully honest mind.

Joseph's style is easily compared to that of David Sedaris or Sarah Vowell, as the latter discovered Joseph's work in a writing contest. Each chapter is written almost like a letter to an old friend, and each revolves around a particular male in her life, be it her father, ex-husband, son or dog. It's through these disjointed tales of men, boys and mongrels that a picture emerges of the woman writing these most personal of letters.

Joseph teaches creative writing at Minnesota State University in Mankato. In one story she comments on the superficiality of her friendships with colleagues at her job at an unnamed college, where part time she teaches composition to freshmen. She's invited to dinner parties with nature-loving cat people, and she feels as though she doesn't belong.

"When people weren't talking about their cats, they were repeating what they heard on NPR, or recounting what they saw on PBS, or reporting what they read in The New Yorker. I wanted to write my name in Cheez Whiz and dot the i with a heart. I wanted to tug down my neckline and hitch up my skirt and talk about something I'd learned on 'The 700 Club' or 'The Oprah Winfrey Show.'"

She insists in every entry that she's just your average woman who's fallen in love with the wrong man on a regular basis, who takes offense at the term "slut" because she fears it might describe her. Her take on relationships is sometimes funny, but most often an essay ends on a poignant, sad note. She's seen a lot of heartbreak in her life, yet the one constant and constantly entertaining figure in her life is her son, whom she only refers to as "the boy." He's a teen who embraces capitalism and the NRA and professes his hatred of Bob Dylan and hippies.

It's the boy who provides many of the laughs: he got trench foot from wearing the same pair of soggy socks day after day. Her father also provides some comedy, insisting on going shirtless at all times, even on Christmas and his daughter's graduation.

While the stories aren't necessarily heart-warming, there's a lot of heart in Joseph's book (Putnam, $24). She tells of mundane experiences, like watching her aging in-laws scream at each other from their matching recliners while a Lifetime Original Movie plays in the background. It's a scene many will recognize, yet Joseph paints the picture with beauty and sadness. She sets scenes that most anyone can identify with, but processes them in a way few would consider. For a book with such a wordy subtitle, the writing is sparse and direct, drawing a reader in and not letting go until the final, striking vignette.

Review in Philadelphia City Paper

2009-03-23T11:58:00.000-07:00

I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother and Friend to Man and Dog
By Diana Joseph > Putnam
224 pp. > $23.95

Once in a lifetime, if you're lucky, you fall in love with a man who's big and strong and never wrong. Whatever his failings — and they are many — he is yours and you are his. You never quite get over your father, but you move on to other men — men who don't measure up, or hurt you in the same way Daddy did, or find tricks you never imagined you'd fall for. Diana Joseph didn't set out to write a memoir that revolves around the men in her life, but after she sensed a pattern to her essays — first one about her son, then his father, then her own — she kept going. Each chapter of I'm Sorry You Feel That Way reveals something about its author by studying one of her intimates, but because life is the way it is, the monkeys don't wait patiently in their cages for their names to be called or exit on cue. Old resentments against her ex resurface in her relationship with her kid, just as childhood memories of church influence her feelings about the friendly Satanist who lives in her building. It's those complications that make these guys so relatable, so realistic. We all have a good friend who needs a kick in the balls sometimes; we all have a boss who makes us feel special or like shit, depending on his mood. And if we didn't already know these guys so well, Joseph's wry observations would make us feel like we did.

-M.J. Fine

Karl Bennett vs. The Fireman Merman

2009-03-22T08:54:00.001-07:00

Last September, my first husband, my that-was-then husband, the Boy's father, was coming through Minnesota on his way back to his home in central New York. He'd been in Colorado. He goes to Colorado every fall to hunt mule deer and/or elk. A few times, the Boy has gone with him, and during one of those hunting trips, the Boy bagged a mule deer, which he then dressed--which actually means the opposite: it means gutting and skinning--and he brought home a cooler packed full of meat, which we slow-cooked in stews or sliced into slivers then fried in butter. I don't love deer meat but I've eaten enough of it that I like it okay.

I don't think the Boy loves venison all that much, either, but he knows the rule: you kill it, you eat it.

His father follows that rule, too, and he has another: you kill it, you hang its head on the wall. (If you've read "What's (Not) Simple," the essay in the book about this man, you know his aesthetics include deer heads, lots of deer heads.)

I don't much like that rule. So imagine how unthrilled I was to find the skull-and-antlers hanging in my pretty blue dining room. The Boy's father put it there when he came through Minnesota last fall. I'd left the house for the day so the two of them could spend some time together and when I came home, my framed watercolor of flowers was propped against a chair and Bambi's mom was hanging on the wall. My former husband knew I would turn up my nose at this decorative choice, he knew I wouldn't like it, he knew I'd raise a fuss. In fact, he was counting on it. I know he thought hanging it there was pretty hilarious. He was hoping to get my goat.

Which is exactly why I left it there. And every time the Boy snickered then asked me how I felt about the death skull, I said I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't want to give either of them the reaction they wanted, a satisfying reaction, one where I squawked or fussed.

My friend Jess gave me this for Christmas last year.

It's a fireman merman Christmas ornament! Isn't it awesome? I loved it so much that when Christmas was over, I didn't want to pack it up. I wanted to be able to see it all the time. So I found the perfect place for it.

I think I might be the only person in the world who has this. I like that. A lot. And I cannot wait for the next time my ex visits Minnesota.

Does anyone know if they even still make Twix Java?

2009-03-18T19:36:00.000-07:00

Dan is my kind of guy, and by this I mean he is a guy with opinions about candy bars, very smart opinions, as evidenced in the following email:

Diana,
I'm not sure if you're all about freezing candy; it happens to be a practice I engage in frequently. The Twix Java happens to be a fantastic candy bar to freeze. The method does some freaky-good things to the caramel. If you're opposed to freezing candy due to dental limitations or personal preferences, please disregard this e-mail; otherwise, I recommend you try it.
Dan

Regarding this practice, I say yes, Dan, oh yes. I am most assuredly all about freezing candy, and freezing the Twix Java is the smartest suggestion I've heard in days. But, friend, while I can imagine--I can almost know--the chewy pull freezing would grant the caramel, I am also here to tell you, I'll never know it. Because the Twix Java wouldn't last in my freezer long enough to reach a frozen state.

Jon and I got to drooling over the Twix Java especially when I pitched forth the idea that it be chopped up and mixed into cheesecake then the cheesecake be drizzled with chocolate. A vanilla wafer crust, said Jon to which I said that's right, and I told him of candybar-inspired cheesecakes from my past: Heath Bar; Yorks Peppermint Patty; Snickers.

Which got me to thinking about Eric who always bought Snickers bars from the campus vending machine because they weigh more than other candy bars, and Regis who thought heaven was melting a Snickers in the microwave then eating it over ice cream, and how in 1998, when I was twenty-seven years old, broke and separated from my first husband, I was trying to scrape together enough cash to make my car payment, pay for day care and rent, but mostly I wanted money to pay a lawyer to file the papers that would get me a divorce.

I adjuncted for fifteen hundred bucks a class, but I also landed this weird little side job. I found myself ghosting writing a novel that was Bildungsroman/love triangle/thriller/murder mystery; it had subplots involving corrupt cops and a bank heist, a puppy mill, and a kind-hearted nun running a nearly bankrupt orphanage. The imagination behind this very complicated narrative was an old fart, a retired rancher named Pat Rich. People called the English Department all the time looking for help writing their books, but Pat Rich was the first one who didn't flinch when I said it would cost him $25 an hour. (I bet he would have paid even more.) Pat Rich wore a baseball cap set back real high on his head, and sometimes the Boy-- he was what? four or five years old at this time, sometimes he would set his own baseball cap back high on his head and cry look at me! I'm Pat Rich!

Pat and I met that spring once or twice a week in the coffee shop across the street from campus, and I would try to talk to him about how writing is a series of choices and every choice the writer makes has an effect. I was even more earnest then, only two years out of grad school, but Pat Rich didn't give a shit about choices or effects or my MFA or that my teachers had been Tobias Wolff and Michael Martone and Melanie Rae Thon. Mostly Pat wanted me to remind him of where the story left off the week before, and then he wanted me to shut up and write down what he wanted to have happen next.

I guess I wasn't even really a ghost writer. I was more like the person who took dictation and then I was the person who typed it up. A secretary like from the 1950's, I guess, is what I was. Pat Rich paid me cash. He carried the cash in a briefcase, a briefcase full of cash like what the family hands over to the kidnappers, and I'd take that cash -- it was never less than $250 bucks; I always told him at least ten hours as the time I put into his book for a week and at first, when I was still trying to help him write a good story, that was true -- I'd take that money to the bank, but not before stopping at the Conaco station for a scratch-off lottery ticket and a Snickers.

I've been trying to remember the last time I ate Snickers, and I don't think I've eaten one since those days dealing with Pat Rich. I didn't see his book the whole way through; summer school started, and I was teaching three sections in one session, and I couldn't keep on top of all the reading and still get his typing done, and he got pissy about it. The Boy and I would see him a few months later at Red Lobster, and he looked right past me, like I'd never spent hours and hours listening to him tell me his crazily complicated story about the sweet nun who was in love with the Mexican-American whose father was an illegal alien who picked peaches in the orchards in Palisade, Colorado.

I think Pat Rich was the closest I've ever come to having a sugar daddy.

Anyway, I bought myself box of Twix Java back in fall of 2007--there were 36 in the box--and I gave that box to a friend (who shall remain nameless as this person claims not to have a sweet tooth, which I think means he/she doesn't deserve a name) and I said do not ever give these to me. Not even if I demand them. Not even if I make threats. Not even if I cry. Instead, I want you to dole them out one at a time whenever you think of it. Surprise me with one every now and then. Because I can't think of anything better than something sweet when sweetness isn't expected.

But it's been seventeen months. There's only one Twix Java left. And I haven't seen Twix Java in a grocery store or a gas station or a vending machine for a very long time. The last one in the box could be the last one I ever have. I can't help wondering if I will, when the time comes, joyfully savor the experience or if I'll just gnaw on that candy bar knowing this is it, this is the end, there's no more where that came from. If I'll turn sweetness into bitterness in no time flat. I bet I will.

People who've read the book sometimes want to know about the Boy

2009-03-16T06:44:00.000-07:00

People who've read the book sometimes want to know about the Boy, how does the Boy feel about the book, what does he think about it.

I think of the book as a photo album, and the essays are like photographs, pictures I took at a specific moment in time. In the book the Boy is little--five, ten, eleven, thirteen--and now he's almost 17. The Boy is handsomer than ever, but trench foot is no longer a problem. Politcally, he's become more Libertarian than Republican. He doesn't hold my hand in public any more, but the other day when I picked him up at the airport, he waited patiently while I slobbered kisses on him.

When I was working on the book, I told The Boy I was writing about him and my life and our life--"You can read it if you want," I said, "but you should know there's stuff about my sex life in it"--he said he wasn't interested. Then the review in Entertainment Weekly came out. That's when he got interested. He said he wanted to read the book.

"That's good," I told him. "I want you to. But you should know that when you read this book you're going to find out things about who I am as a person, and usually people don't know who their parents are as people until they're a lot older than you. Some people never know. And once you know something, you can't not-know it."

He said that was fine, and he took the book to bed with him that night.

In the morning, he came downstairs and said he'd read the book.

"What'd you think of it?" I asked him. I was anxious about his reaction. More than anyone else in the world, I care what he thinks.

The Boy shrugged. "There were things about your sex life I didn't need to know," he said. Then he brought up those gold bars his father bought during Y2K. The Boy said he remembered those gold bars. He wondered if his dad still had them.

That was it. That was all he had to say. Though just yesterday he bought me a fondue pot and said it was my good-job-for-writing-a-book present.

What's interesting to me is how we respond to a book read at a certain age, and how that response can be so different later. Like Catcher in the Rye. The first time I read Catcher in the Rye, I was fifteen, and I fell madly in love with Holden Caulfield. I wanted to know how come I didn't know any boys like Holden Caulfield. I thought he was intense and passionate and angsty and so alienated. Then I reread it at age thirty, and I thought this kid is bipolar, this kid has A.D.D., if he was a kid today, they'd have him on Riddlin and Prozac.

I also loved Flowers in the Attic at age fifteen. I loved that book a lot and read it over and over. I haven't read it since 1985, but I remember its story vividly, I remember being scandalized by it but also completely caught up in it. Sometimes I think about rereading it now, but I'm afraid to. I'm worried that the Adult Me will roll her eyes at the Teenage Me and ruin Flowers in the Attic forever. Adult Me ruined my reread of Kerouac's On the Road in the first ten pages.

So I expect the Boy's reaction will shift and change as he gets older. Maybe someday he'll reread my book and have questions for me. Maybe someday he'll reread it and get angry with me or say he's so ashamed or ask how could I do this to him. Or maybe he'll understand something about his mother he didn't understand before. Maybe someday, he'll have a child of his own--a daughter, I always imagine him with a daughter--and that will change his reading of it yet again.

I'm a real nice lady

2009-03-15T21:01:00.000-07:00

I think up thoughts for the pug, and then I say out loud what I think he's thinking. When I rub his ears and his belly or when I give him a section of my orange or a hunk of cheese, I say, oh, that's nice, lady, you're a real nice lady.

I was in Nice-Lady mode yesterday at the juice bar (which I have been told is not a juice bar, a juice bar is a strip club, and I was in the place up by campus that sells smoothies, but not this kind) and heaven help me, I just started yucking it up with the college girl behind the counter, asking her did she have a nice spring break (she said yes), and did she go anywhere (she said yes), and where did she go (Florida), and how was that (good), and was she happy to be back in Minnesota (not really), and was she ready to go back to classes on Monday (no), and did she have a lot of homework to do over break (not too much), and my students have papers due on Tuesday, they must really be mad at me (that will be $4.47.) I felt bad for her because she was only answering my questions to be polite, and I felt bad for me because I could not stop asking them.

Then, this morning, the phone rang. It was Wells Fargo.

Me: On a Sunday morning???

Wells Fargo woman: Yes, we work on Sundays.

Me: Well, that is ridiculous! I am so sorry you have to work on a Sunday!

Wells Fargo woman: Yes, well, I'm calling because someone was trying to use a debit card belonging to you in a vending machine that doesn't accept our debit cards.

Me: Did this happen in central New York?

Wells Fargo woman: I don't know. The vending machine offices are in Pennsylvania.

Me: It must have happened in central New York. My son was in central New York last week. He was visiting his father. Whereabout in Pennsylvania?

Wells Fargo woman: I don't know.

Me: I bet it was that kid of mine! I bet when he was in central New York, he tried to use that debit card and when it didn't work the first time, he tried it again and again, over and over.

Wells Fargo woman: I don't know.

Me: Do you know Albert Einstein's definition of insanity?

Wells Fargo woman: No.

Me: Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Isn't that the best definition of insanity you've ever heard?

Wells Fargo woman: Well, we just wanted to let you know.

Me: Thank you! What kind of vending machine was it?

Wells Fargo woman: I don't know.

Me: He probably wanted some mints!

Wells Fargo woman: Thank you for banking with Wells Fargo and please let us know if there's anything else we can help you with.

Me: Oh, you've helped me plenty already today! I really am sorry you have to work on a Sunday morning!

Wells Fargo woman: Thank you and have a nice day.

Me: Bye-bye now!

When did I start ending so many sentences with exclamation points? When did I start hassling people who are just trying to do their jobs? How did I become so aggressively nice? Is it because of Minnesota? Have I become a midwesterner? I noticed that when I was in Seattle, I ate like a vegetarian; I'm not a vegetarian. When I was in the south, I started slurring my speech like I had a southern accent; I was in the south for less than twenty-four hours. Now I've got this pathological friendliness going on. I bet I would adapt to life in prison no problem.

There was a time when I thought the midwest was the strangest place I'd ever been. I moved to Minnesota from western Colorado, and when the realtor was showing us houses here I felt freaked out because none of the houses had privacy fences around the yard. In western Colorado, everyone's house has a privacy fence. There are clear boundaries there. Your neighbors can't see what you're up to. When I first moved in my Minnesota house (which now has a partial privacy fence) the neighbor next door left a basket of blueberry muffins on my front porch. I immediately threw them out because I questioned her motives. I couldn't figure out what she was up to. (These days neighbors here don't talk to me much but that could be because of a number of things including the couch on my front porch and the four dead Christmas trees in the back yard.)

Book tour stuff

2009-03-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

I'm home! I'm home! I'm home! I had a fantastic time out and about, but I am ecstatic to be home. The pug greeted me with enthusiastic grunts and yips and howling and the kitten ignored me, squawking when I picked her up and held her tight, her tail flicking like a whip or a snake about to strike. But still, she followed me around, and when she sprawled out across the steps I was walking down--I always think she's hoping I'll trip over her and break my neck or end up unconscious so she and the pug can picnic on my remains--I knew she was secretly happy to see me.

This has been an amazing week, fun and happy and overwhelming and exhausting. I had all these big plans to take pictures of everything, and even brought my camera--I even brought batteries for my camera--but of course I hardly took any pictures at all. As soon as I find my camera (I am operating on the optimistic hope I didn't leave it in a hotel room somewhere) I'll post what pictures I did take.

I also had all these big ideas about posting blogs while on the road. Which didn't happen. I could say I didn't have time, but that's not entirely true. Because I don't think I slept last week. Which would mean I had plenty of time. I just spent that middle-of-the-night-time pacing and thinking thinking thinking in a Pure O-Obsessive kind of way about everything.

A couple of people asked me if I felt nervous to read or nervous during Q&A or nervous about interviews, and I have to say I did, but not until after they were over. I felt fine beforehand and fine during, but afterward--when it was too late to do anything about it--I was a nervous wreck, rehashing what I said and what I wore and wondering if I remembered to suck in my gut, wondering if my breath was bad, wondering if I said anything stupid and assuming I did, for sure I did, of course I did.

Remember the Chris Farley Show on SNL? Where he interviews people (I love the one with Paul McCartney) and he asks an awesomely bizarre question then curses and berates himself afterward? I felt like that.

Anyway, here are some highlights:

Thursday, March 5
This was the reading at the Mankato Barnes and Noble. LaRae Bisel was my host (she was supremely awesome) and a bunch of students, current and former, showed up, and a bunch of friends and colleagues and even people I didn't know, and afterward, I went home and was so wound up and super-charged that I couldn't even settle down to watch Sober House. That should tell you something: I was too excited to be soothed by Dr. Drew Pinsky.

Friday, March 6
This was the book release party at the What's Up Lounge. My friends Dawna and Nate flew in from Pennsylvnia; my friends Luke and Val drove up from Kansas City, and Aaron Hubbard, Noble Lord of the What's Up Lounge, let us be real wild--"real wild" a subjective term when it's applied to nerdy English major types dancing to Madonna and the Backstreet Boys--and when Aaron turned on the fog machine, lower-case "real wild" became upper-case "Real Wild."

Saturday, March 7
I read at Magers and Quinn on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis--this is a beautiful bookstore. My host Aaron Rosenberg could not have been nicer--he let me have the big I'm Sorry You Feel That Way poster AND he told me he was late to work because he was reading the book. The crowd could not have been friendlier, either.

Sunday, March 8
I flew to Seattle where my old friend Nate Liederbach and his wife Michelle picked me up then took me to Olympia (remember that song by Hole called "Olympia"? I kept hearing it in my head.) I have to say I love love love Olympia: I love that their city buses are pink and purple; I love that everyone looks so fit and hip and hippie; I love the bowl of seafood chowder I ate and could have eaten more of. I did not love that no one smoked except for me and a homeless guy hanging out outside Starbucks.

Monday, March 9
First, I read at South Puget Sound Community College, where Nate teaches, though a student named Jessica who is mother to Robert, the world's most laid-back baby, organized my reading. Jessica was nice enough to let me hug Robert and tickle his feet and sniff his head; Robert was nice enough to put up with it.

Then, that night, Sam Ligon and I read at Swing, a wine bar overlooking Capital Lake. Sam is the editor of Willow Springs, the literary magazine that first published "The Devil I Know is the Man Upstairs, one of the essays in the book. You want Sam to edit your work--he and I must have passed that essay back and forth at least five times, trying to get the ending right--and you want to read Sam's books, Drift and Swerve and Safe in Heaven Dead.

I also love Sam Ligon because he smoked cigarettes with me.

You also want to eat at Swing. Trust me, you want to eat at Swing. And you want to do a reading there: everyone is friendly and fun. I like doing a reading at a place where people can get liquored up while you are reading: they think everything you say is so interesting and also hilarious and then they buy your book.

Tuesday, March 10
I have known Nate Liederbach for years--when I was teaching at Mesa State in Grand Junction, Colorado, he was teaching at Western State in Gunnison--and though we haven't had a lot of face-to-face time, we've racked up hours over the phone. In fact, when my telephone rings at some ungodly hour, I always answer it because it is Nate, who is the wind beneath my wings and the voice telling me that I remind him of Emily Dickinson if she'd spent some time in a tanning booth.

Nate drove me to Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle, where Tiffany Sabatini hosted my reading. I loved Tiffany: I loved her glasses, I loved her hat, and I especially loved that she loved her I'm Sorry You Feel That Way tote bag.

The Elliot Bay reading was special, too, because of the people who showed up for it: an old boyfriend from my freshman year of college was there; one of Andrew Boyle's friends from high school was there; Midge Raymond, author of Forgetting English was there; and Allison, one of my students at Minnesota State was there. It was spring break, and Allison and one of her friends were doing the college-kids-get-on-a-train-and-go-places spring break trip, and they landed in Seattle on what just happened to be the day of my reading. It was so unexpected to see her in a place so far from home, a place that wasn't Armstrong Hall--I couldn't get over it.

Also, can I just say something about the hotel in Seattle where I stayed? I stayed at the Inn at the Market, the most beautiful hotel I have ever stepped foot in. When I went to check-in, I was informed that the manager, David Watkins, upgraded my room, and that I'd be sleeping in the room where Paul Newman once slept. Do you think I made sure to sit in every available seat in that room? That I made sure to touch foot in every inch of that room? That I laid in bed and hung out in the bathroom thinking Paul Newman stared at this ceiling, Paul Newman did his thing in this bathroom.

David Watkins also left me with a coffee cup full of Seattle Chocolates, which were delicious enough that I ate six, and between the sugar rush, feeling wound up by the reading, and trying to see what Paul Newman saw while also invoking his ghost, I was too excited to sleep.

Wednesday, March 11
Denver, Colorado. My friends Danielle and Brenidy picked me up at the airport, and took me back to Brenidy's house where we talked about how although I packed a suitcase full of different outfits, many changes of clothes, I wore pretty much the same thing for every reading, and how though I packed three pairs of shoes and three pairs of jeans and at least five black tee-shirts, I somehow didn't think to pack socks or underwear.

I read at the Tattered Cover Bookstore on Colfax where Pat Walsh was my host. I loved Pat because she was warm and gracious and because she made me giggle when she suggested Julia Louis-Dreyfus, aka Elaine from Seinfeld, could play me in the ISYFTW movie.

Just like in Minneapolis, and just like in Seattle, people turned out for the reading, and a lot of those people were friends of friends. I owe my friends Dawna and Nate, Sarah, Sharon, and Tom bottles of Jameson Irish Whiskey for the arm-twisting they must've done to put their friends in my audience.

Thursday, March 12
I read in Oxford, Mississippi. I flew in to Memphis where I was picked up at the airport by Ron Shapiro. You know how you can meet someone for the first time and tell in the first three seconds that you're going to get along fabulously, that you're going to be friends immediately? I felt that way about Ron. When we crossed the state line between Tennessee and Mississippi, he honked the horn.

The reading was hosted by Lyn Roberts of Square Books, and this was no ordinary reading: I got to be a guest on Thacker Mountain, their radio show, I got to be the writer sandwiched between musicians, I got to read in front of a live audience of two hundred people. I got to envy the citizens of Oxford, Mississippi which is a city that welcomes and supports writers and musicians and artists. I didn't want to leave.

Especially after hanging out with Lyn--who I adore--and Richard and Lisa Howorth, who own Square Books and I want them to let me live in the bookstore, and Gary Short, a poet who teaches in the MFA program at Ole Miss (I am currently reading his collection 10 Moons and 13 Horses, and even if poetry is not usually your thing, I promise you will love these poems) and Lee Durkee, whose novel Rides of the Midway is another reason I can't sleep--I am loving this strange and lyrical story. I had such species recognition with this group of people. I had these conversations where I was nodding and laughing and listening to stories and thinking you are my kind.

I did not want to leave.

Friday, March 13
I left. I flew back home and when I opened the door to my house, the pug greeted me with enthusastic grunts and yips and howling. It was nice to sleep in my own bed (and not feel haunted by Paul Newman.) The Boy is still at his dad's house in central NY--he's been there all week--and he comes home tomorrow. I'm anxious to see him so I can ask him did he have a good time at dad's, and he can say he guesses so. I can ask what did you do at dad's, and he can say he doesn't know, nothing, he didn't do anything at dad's. I can tell him I missed him, and he can ask if it's okay if he hangs out with his friends, he hasn't seen his friends in a week, he misses his friends.

I want to move to Minneapolis, I want to move to Olympia, I want to live in Seattle, in Denver, in Oxford, Mississippi, and if I can't take up residency in those places, I at least want to return to them; but it's also so good to be home.

Review in City Pages

2009-03-08T04:24:00.000-07:00

Jessica Armbruster

A chain-smoking dad who rarely wears a shirt. A college professor who tells lame jokes and loves Hawaiian shirts. A teenage boy who plays video games until 4 a.m. and loves the NRA. These are but a few of the men in Diana Joseph's life. In her memoir, I'm Sorry You Feel That Way (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam), she tells the hilarious, endearing, and enlightening tale of her life through a series of essays that focus on the men in her life, including her father, her son, an ex-husband, her boyfriend, and others. Joseph reveals truths about the world she comes from with a wink, candor, and an affectionate nod to the flawed people in her life, including herself. Though she has published a variety of fiction and other works, it was her short essay, "The Boy," that caught the attention of Sarah Vowell, leading her to win the Kentucky Women Writers Prize for Creative Nonfiction. She currently teaches in the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Review in Entertainment Weekly

2009-03-08T04:12:00.000-07:00

Book Review

I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing But True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man & Dog (2009)
Diana Joseph

Writer: Diana Joseph; Genres: Autobiography, Nonfiction; Publisher: Putnam

A- By Tina Jordan

The book's title, I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing But True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man & Dog, might make you wonder if Diana Joseph defines herself by men, but the answer is, resoundingly, No. She's just been surrounded by scads of them her entire life. And so the stories of her childhood, her adolescence, and her adult years emerge not as a straight narrative, but through chapters dedicated to her relationships with the opposite sex — with a couple  of dogs and cats thrown in for good measure.

Chapter 1 goes to her dad, an auto-body shop owner who never wears a shirt and smokes two packs a day. Then there's Vincent, the bad boy of her 19th year, who drank, shoplifted, and emblazoned her name on his demolition-derby car. Her first husband. Her son, a right-wing Republican, who informed her at a tender age that he hated NPR and Bob Dylan. Her Satanist neighbor. And so on.

As Joseph describes these boys and men, it's she herself who emerges most clearly. I'm Sorry is full of quirky details and remembered snippets of conversation, most of it revealing in its everyday ordinariness. It turns out you can learn an awful lot about a person by what her dad chooses to confide in her, or what her brothers tease her about. I'm Sorry might sound like a sideways swipe at a memoir, but nothing could be further from the truth — it manages to be nostalgic, sad, and pee-in-your-pants funny. A–

Review in Daily Candy, Philadelphia

2009-03-08T04:09:00.000-07:00

No Apologies

“I’m Sorry You Feel That Way,” by Diana Joseph

With memoirs, there’s a fine line between wading through memories and doing a cannonball into the pool of self-indulgence.

But in Diana Joseph’s new book, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way: the Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog, there’s no trip to the mental hospital/spiritual guru/homeless shelter. She’s just a regular chick who chronicles her life and loves in prose that gets to the point.

Joseph’s fears of being labeled loose by her father and son, anxiety about her divorce, and identification with her stuffed dinosaur-humping puppy may have you thinking, Hey, that could be me. She makes no apologies and explains how her relationships — rather than confining her — made her an intelligent (and sometimes terrible) woman with a wicked sense of humor.

It’s a great example of the ordinary being related extraordinarily.

Without going off the deep end.

Review from the L.A. Times

2009-03-08T04:06:00.000-07:00

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-diana-joseph1-2009mar01,0,4765901.story

From the Los Angeles Times

BOOK REVIEW

'I'm Sorry You Feel That Way,' by Diana Joseph
Candid, insulting, hilarious: a collection of essays sure to offend the faint of heart.
By Steve Almond

March 1, 2009

I'm Sorry You Feel That Way:
The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother and Friend to Man & Dog

Diana Joseph

Putnam/Amy Einhorn Books:

208 pp., $23.95

Here's a quick way to determine if you're going to enjoy Diana Joseph's essay collection, "I'm Sorry You Feel That Way." Read the following:

"Yesterday my son was turning the pages in his eighth-grade yearbook so we could play a game I came up with called Guess Which Kids Are Retarded. The boy thought the game was terrible, so cruel and so mean that I should have to pay a fine, I should have to pay him ten bucks every time I was wrong."

If you find that paragraph offensive, you will hate this book.

If you know you should find this paragraph offensive but secretly find it hilarious, you should buy this book. Immediately.

Joseph is compulsively honest in the face of potential embarrassment. The dozen short, sharp essays here offer an overview of her eventful life, with particular emphasis on her fraught relations with men. She recalls her upbringing in a working-class Pennsylvania family dominated by a father who emphasized that it was her highest calling to maintain her virtue. We all know what that means.

"I was nineteen years old," she writes of one ill-fated relationship, "just arriving at that place some women go to invent complex inner lives for a certain kind of man, one too emotionally vulnerable to manage this kind of work on his own. I would be a savior, a fixer, a social worker, because Vincent Petrone needed me."

Joseph eventually disentangles herself from the aforementioned Mr. Petrone, but winds up getting pregnant on her 21st birthday and marrying the father. The union doesn't last long, although the son it yields becomes the leading man in her restless and improvised life.

Among the many pleasures of Joseph's writing is her refusal to traffic in the gushy bromides of motherhood. She is openly baffled by her child, disgusted by his atrocious personal hygiene, offended at his indolence yet at the same time needy for his love and approval.

She is also brutally candid about her deficiencies as a parent. She struggles to make ends meet. She worries that she neglects her son during periods of depression. But she never allows these doubts to curdle into self-pity. For a girl who grew up "with a talent for histrionics," her prose is stripped bare of sentiment. Instead, she employs a plain-spoken, often terse style that relies for its effect on the precision of her insights.

In one essay, she introduces us to her younger brother, a cop who brags relentlessly about his sexual escapades. "When I tell him, 'Travis, you are disgusting,' " she writes, "he sings in a high-pitched voice, 'Kinky sex freaks,' then in his regular voice he says he wishes he knew a nice girl, he asks me do I know any nice girls, do I know any nice girls I could introduce him to, any nice girls he could meet?" It's a moment of exquisite tenderness, as the mask of male vanity slips to reveal an aching loneliness.

Joseph has the ability both to discern and to forgive our darkest motives. When she complains about her common-law husband's neurotic housecleaning to his aging stepmother, "Kathleen patted my hand. 'Oh, honey,' she said. 'It will only get worse!' She lit up a Virginia Slim 100. With smoke swirling around her face, she looked wise. She also looked pleased, like she was glad to be delivering the bad news. It meant she wasn't alone."

Joseph tells us that her "main issue was, or to some extent still is, a kind of eternal hiccup of the crowded mind." The sense we get by the end of the book, though, is that her anxieties have a great deal to do with class.

Joseph is not showy about this. She barely acknowledges her transformation from wage slave to professor. But it's clear that the struggle has saddled her with the guilt of an impostor. Recalling a recent party, she writes, "They didn't know I didn't belong at any gathering where people took tidy sips of wine, then remarked upon its bouquet or nibbled on stuffed mushrooms or spread a thin layer of hummus across pita bread. When people weren't talking about their cats, they were repeating what they heard on NPR, or recounting what they saw on PBS, or reporting what they read in The New Yorker. I wanted to write my name in Cheez Whiz and dot the I with a heart."

This is as close as Joseph comes to anger. Like the best storytellers -- fictional or otherwise -- she treats her people with compassion. She manages to be very funny. But she refuses to reduce her family to a comedy routine. Her stories are often sad, but she never lionizes suffering. Instead, she sifts through the ruins of her romantic and emotional entanglements, with an eye on the absurdities we endure in the name of love.

"I'm Sorry You Feel That Way" is sure to offend the faint of heart, but it's hard to recall another collection of essays, or a memoir, with more natural charm.

Almond is the author, most recently, of the essay collection "(Not that You Asked)."

2009-03-06T11:11:00.000-08:00

Mankato folks who are 21+:

We're having a book release party at the What's Up Lounge tonight at 7:00. There will be pool-playing. There will be dancing. There will be cupcakes. But mostly, there will be fun to be had by all. Come out if you can!

2009-03-05T04:42:00.001-08:00

Today's the day.

I would think it cool if you bought a copy of I'm Sorry You Feel That Way.

I am the quiest I've ever been

2009-03-03T05:58:00.000-08:00

I am the quietest I've ever been. I put my shoes on quietly, so as not to alert the pug that I'm going somewhere awesome, like Kwik Trip, without him. After slipping into my coat (this enormous bulky Columbia jacket I picked up at the thrift store for fifteen bucks; it still has Mount Kato ski lift tags, from March 6, 2004, attached to the zipper), I hang out on the couch, silently flipping through the channels, hoping the pug is fooled enough to fall back asleep. He's a sly one when it comes to eating what's in the litter box, and while he knows shoes mean I'm leaving, he hasn't put two and two together yet when it comes to me hanging out in my coat. Getting past him is hard only because it's time consuming.

Getting past The Boy is easy. I can scuttle to Kwik Trip, buy a pack of smokes, and scuttle back without him ever noticing I'm gone. With The Boy, the problem comes when I want to smoke a cigarette. Indoors is out of the question (though for the week over Christmas when he was at his father's, I smoked in the house nonstop: while watching Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew Pinksky; while soaking in the tub; while reading in bed; while frying eggs like I was a short order cook in a dingy diner.) Smoking on the front porch is an option, except for when his friends are coming and going. Smoking on the back deck is best, though not comfortable--it's cold, it's cold, there's no place to sit, it's cold.

I have become hyper-aware of other small inconveniences and a few larger-sized ones: the cats' nightly spat; how every morning the kitten tips over her water bowl; that my pants are tighter than I like but cookies are more delicious than ever; how falling asleep at night comes regular, but staying asleep through a night is rare. I wake up and everything is quiet (not counting the pug, whose breathing is heavy like an obscene phone call.)

Everything is quiet except for the boom boom boom of my panicky heart and the noise in my head. I lay awake and think, I am having a heart attack, I am having a panic attack, I am losing my mind.

I think about this: the last time I hung out with a baby, I held his rattle near his mouth, then jerked it away. Then again: I held his rattle near his mouth, then jerked it away. I repeated this action several more times--I got nowhere; the kid would not latch on--until I realized I was trying to play with him the way I play with my dog.

In April, The Boy turns seventeen. It's been a long time since I hung out with a baby. Last night, he caught me smoking. I was in the living room, bottle of Febreeze in one hand, Camel Light in the other. I thought The Boy was tucked away in his room for the night. I knew it was risky, but I thought I could get away with it. As soon as I heard him creaking down the steps, I tried to crush the cigarette, hide the ashtray and spray Febreeze at all once. The Boy just shook his head. I'm sorry, I told him. I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I told him I wouldn't do it again, I won't smoke in the house, I'll go outside, I'll quit smoking, I swear! and The Boy patted me on the shoulder. It's cold outside, he said like he understood these things. Like he understands something about me, he has some insight into me that I don't have.

2009-03-01T18:28:00.000-08:00

Since I've said mocking things about The Boy's hair...

...maybe I should take a moment to remember the things I used to do to mine.

P.S. These things involved hot rollers and Aqua Net. Lots and lots of Aqua Net.

2009-02-23T05:19:00.000-08:00

It was back in November that I gave The Boy some serious money and the link to L.L. Bean and told him to buy himself on a winter coat and a pair of warm boots. It's February. He still doesn't have a coat, and the boots are a pair of bedroom slippers, really warm, he says, because they're lined with lamb's wool. He wears them to school every day.

And the pug is on a diet.

Bo came to live here back in October weighing forty-two pounds; he now weighs fifty-three. He measures at thirty-six inches around, and I can't keep him off the back of the couch--he's the fifty-three pound anvil on the back of the couch, a thick slab of black dog. I can barely slide my finger under his collar to pull him down and his tactic is to resist anyway by making himself limp dead weight.

It's not his fault. It's mine: I like to feed people. Like my friend Jorge pointed out, anyone living with me would pack it on. It's even worse since I've been trying to lay off the cookies--winter belly is the curse of living in Minnesota--so I overstuff the pug as a way to keep from overstuffing myself.

The Kitten has also fattened up. She's got this plump gut-pouch that sways as she runs through the house. Bo and the Kitten and I watch The Boy eat cheese raviolis, Hershey bars dipped in Jif peanut butter, bags of chocolate chips, plates of nachos, piles of mashed poatoes. The Kitten tries to eat off his plate, Bo licks the floor around his feet, I lace up my shoes and head off to the gym. We all curse the skinny boy and his pencil sharpener metabolism, and a few days ago when he told me he needed lunch money, I asked him what did he do with that money I gave him to buy a coat. It's been months, I told him. Where's the coat you were supposed to buy? What happened to all that money?

He mumbled something about he-hasn't-found-one-he-likes, he-tried-to-buy-one-but-they-didn't-have-his-size, he's-going-to-get-one-soon.

Well, okay, I said. You should have plenty of money. Just use some of your coat money to buy lunch.

He comes home from school at 3:15 shivering and ravenous and pestering me about when's dinner.

I'm not on the cover of Rolling Stone

2009-02-22T15:30:00.000-08:00

but I did get a shout-out in the March/April issue of Poets and Writers.

I am the gullible sort

2009-02-18T09:20:00.001-08:00

I am the gullible sort, easily led astray, the kind of person who, when someone says "Let's," replies, "Yes! Okay! Let's!" So I'm going to come right out and admit it: I got suckered in by those 123FreeCreditReport dot com commercials.

You know, the one where the guy sings about how he married his dream girl, he married his dream girl, but she didn't tell him her credit was bad. That song earwormed its way into my subconscious and one day I found myself deciding I wanted very much to live in a pleasant suburb, and not in the basement at my mom and dad's.

So I went to 123FreeCreditReport dot com, and I learned that in order to obtain my free credit report, I had to give them a credit card number. Because to get your free credit report, you have to become a member of 123FreeCreditReport dot com to the tune of $14.95 a month, but you can cancel anytime.

Which is what I did on Sunday morning. I looked up my credit score, then decided to cancel my membership.

This is where things got complicated. I had to do a lot of searching on their website to find a phone number to call in order to cancel. Then after I found the phone number, I had to go through some automated rigmarole before I reeled in a customer service agent.

His name was Jim, and I was on the phone with him for eight minutes and fifty-three seconds. His job was to try to talk me out of canceling my membership, and even Jim understood his is a cruddy cruddy job, one no sane person could have much enthusiasm for. Jim was obviously reading his end of the conversation from a check-list that went:

1. I am sorry to hear you are thinking about canceling; may I ask why?

2. Are you aware that it is important to protect yourself from identity theft and monitoring your credit score every day will allow you to do this?

3. Your membership doesn't expire until March 13. Why don't you maintain your membership until then?

4. To keep you as a valued customer, I will offer your membership at 50% off (when I asked if that price was indefinite, he sadly told me, no, it was only for three months.)

I was home alone on Sunday morning, but I wasn't bored and I wasn't lonely, and I'd spent all morning doing my Sunday morning routine which is going through my address book looking for friends to call. I called this person and then I called that person, and it's safe to say that I spent close to four hours talk talk talking to people, not to mention all the people I called Friday night and throughout the day on Saturday. So I should have been all talked out.

But while I was talking to Jim--my end of the conversation was mostly just saying things like no, I want to cancel my membership and yes, I'm sure I want to cancel my membership and thank you, but I really do want to cancel my membership--I pictured myself as the backup singer in a music video. Like Jim was the rapper, all decked out in grille and bling, and I was the sexy writhing girl wearing a shiny bra and little panties that say HAVE SOME across the seat, and Jim rapped and rapped his various points while I writhed and repeated the chorus. I got a case of the giggles. A bad case of the giggles that I think disrupted Jim's reading of the check-list. And I got to enjoying our conversation so much that I was almost sorry when he finally gave in and gave up and gave me what I wanted: a cancellation.

And then I had another vision of myself, some insight into my future: I am going to be the kind of old lady that likes--no, loves--when telephone solicitors call. A few years back, when I was working on the John Kerry campaign, I had to call registered Democrats in Mesa County and encourage them to get out and vote. I ended up on the phone with the kind of old lady I am certain to become. She assured me she was going to vote for Kerry. She told me she's voted straight Democrat since 1953. She told me her daughter lived in Denver. She told me she has a little dog. Every time I made a move toward ending the conversation, she piped up with another self-revelation that required a response: I've got the gout! George Bush is a crook! My son lives in Tempe! When I finally got off the phone with her, some of the other campaign volunteers expressed sympathy but I honestly didn't mind talking to her. I thought she was pretty cute.

When Jim finally understood that I wasn't going to stop writhing while singing I want to cancel, ooohhh baby, yeah, I want to cancel, I told him thank you for being so kind and helpful. I fought the urge to tell him Jim, I have a kitten! Jim, my son's goldfish died! Jim, I have to go to a meeting at 9:30 tomorrow morning! I love you, Jim! Jim, you're a nice guy with a cruddy job!

Tote Bag Nation

2009-02-15T16:04:00.000-08:00

It's true: I have been building up my stock of I'M SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY totes bag in preparation for my book tour. I figure I have made fifty-three billion of them. Come to one of my readings and see me foist a tote on an unsuspecting book store customer. Buy a copy of I'M SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY, and you just might end up with one of your own.

Me and The Boy

2009-02-11T08:10:00.000-08:00

Someday he'll be embarrassed by that hair.

Hot off the presses!

2009-02-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

Excerpt

2009-01-19T09:22:00.000-08:00

Here's the opening to "Mary, Queen of Arkansas," one of the essays in I'm Sorry You Feel That Way.

At age fourteen, what I wanted to be most of all was applauded, and if that wasn’t possible, I wanted to be a girl in a Bruce Springsteen song. A Jersey girl. A girl named Sandy or Wendy or Candy or Cindy or Sherry, Rosalita or Crazy Janie or Mary, Queen of Arkansas. A girl idolized by an intense and poetic man who had curly dark hair and brooding dark eyes and who wore a clean white tee-shirt every day. I spent hours in my bedroom, kneeling as if in supplication before my Emerson stereo fully equipped with AM/FM radio, cassette player, and turntable. I played the warped and scratchy Springsteen albums I bought at a garage sale.

Since the albums most likely to be found at a garage sale are The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Sings Christmas Carols; Midnight, Moonlight and Magic: The Very Best of Henry Mancini; and Bagpipes of Scotland, Volume 4, Springsteen albums are a major score even if they are, as these were, in rough shape. But I didn’t care because, to me, that made them seem more real, more true, more authentic. More like the kind of records Springsteen himself would own. These records were naked. They weren’t in sleeves, and they didn’t have covers, and the name Jack was written in black marker on the red Columbia label. Jack left his albums behind because he’d moved out in a hurry, but such haste was necessary because Jack had been caught cheating. His wife, a woman I'd never seen before and would never see again, told me about it. The consequence of Jack’s adultery was that his wife wrote “10 cents” on jagged pieces of masking tape, then sold for dimes the things Jack loved best.

As I flipped through Jack’s record collection, Jack’s wife, a pudgy brunette who was setting up their baby’s playpen in the driveway, called out that her soon-to-be ex just loved Springsteen, but since she hated Springsteen almost as much as she once loved her cheater-for-a-husband, she would let me have all five records for a quarter.

Jack’s wife was gabby. She asked me how old I was, and what grade was I in, and where did I go to school, and did I have a boyfriend. She told me to guess how old she was. When I guessed thirty, an answer that never failed to flatter any adult who was being coy about age, she said not for three more weeks.

The albums included Greetings from Ashbury Park; The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle; Darkness on the Edge of Town; Born to Run; and Born in the U.S.A.

Jack’s wife was also selling the contents of her junk drawer, but she hadn’t bothered to dump the odds-and-ends in a box; she’d just brought the junk drawer itself outside and put it on the ground next to the mailbox and beside a wooden coat hanger. A geezer and a blue hair, obviously married for a hundred years or more, were rummaging through that drawer. Otherwise, it was just me and Jack’s wife.

“You’re still young so you don’t know anything,” Jack’s wife said, plopping her fat bald baby in the playpen. “So I'm going to give you some advice. You want my advice?"

I said okay. I was sure there was nothing this lady could say that would ever have anything to do with me. Jack’s wife and I had nothing in common, and I didn’t see how we ever could. Love had let her down, and she’d let herself go. She had a droopy chin and a lot of black eyeliner around her eyes and she was wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers tee-shirt that was much too big for her. It hung past her shorts, like a little girl wearing a nightgown except she looked too tired in the face to be a little girl. When her bald-headed baby spit out its pacifier, and the pacifier landed on the driveway, Jack’s wife picked it up, popped it in her own mouth, then plugged it back in her baby’s.

"Two things I want to tell you,” Jack’s wife said. “First of all, take your Pill. Always. Don’t be sloppy! Take it at the same time every day. Don’t forget to take it!” She lit a cigarette. “Second, don’t get married. If you do the first then the second should be no problem.” She took my dollar, handed me back my change, then asked did I know anyone who liked to read because if I did there were a whole bunch of paperback James Bond books on that table over there. “For cheap,” she said.

For a girl like me – a girl growing up in a western Pennsylvania Rust Belt town; a girl whose old man goes to work clean but comes home dirty, whose mother keeps one eye on The Young and the Restless while folding the laundry and running the sweeper; a dreamy and moody girl, melancholy and full of angst; a girl with a talent for histrionics, sentimentality and exaggeration, who knows in her heart she’s too lyrical for the nitwits tugging at their testicles and sniffing their fingers in English class but too ornery for the mama’s boys who would never dream of changing their own sparkplugs, not that they’d even have at hand the tools necessary for performing such a task, not that they’d even know how to change their own sparkplugs let alone their oil or their brakes – a honey-tongued, blue-collared bastard like Bruce Springsteen is hard to resist. At age thirty-two, I would proclaim that it’d take a whole lot more than pretty words to make me lay down, but when I was fourteen years old and kneeling as if in supplication before my Emerson stereo, I listened to Springsteen in the privacy of my bedroom, the curtains drawn, the shades down, my heart pounding. Behind a door that was closed then locked, Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen demanded to know if love is wild and if love is real. He was pleading to give him one last chance to make it real. He was promising to liberate me, to confiscate me, he said, "I want to be your man,” and even if I wasn’t perfect, I wasn’t a beauty, I didn’t need to feel bad about it because in his eyes, hey, I was all right. He accepted me just the way I am. Springsteen swore he loved his girl so much that he wanted to die with her on the streets tonight in an everlasting kiss. There was something dynamic and sexy, beautiful and brave about such a man. I wanted to marry him or someone exactly like him. At age fourteen, I wrote down the things Springsteen said in my diary, then I lifted the needle so I could hear him say them again.

By age thirty-two, I had some things in common with Jack’s ex-wife – motherhood, divorce, part-time income generated from garage sales. What happened to the girl I used to be? Love had let that girl down. She’d been sloppy about taking her Pill which meant she ended up married, then divorced. She didn’t believe in Springsteen anymore. In fact, she thought Bruce Springsteen was full of shit. For many years, she could only listen to him if she was drunk.

Tote Bag Nation

2009-01-08T06:17:00.000-08:00

Dan's bag is hanging out at O'Hare.