Bubble Man   5:03 p.m.

a piece of work

In the Mail Today from Meg

Windy. Freezing. Low low tide. Hardly anyone about except for Tom & me and Scooter Man. 

An hour later and he's still scooting. Peter & Carmen run up! We say hello and I scoot home.

A Note from the Publisher

The most exciting thing happened today. The doorbell rang. It was UPS delivering a copy of my book! Just one. I'm not sure yet whether it's a proof or not––but it is a real book, in the flesh. The printer did a great job, I think, only he got the endpapers backwards and put the red ones in the back and the violet ones in the front.

Do I not have the sweetest damn publisher in the whole damn world?

Here's another sample spread for you to see.

preview

Enchanted Evening on the Beach

Peter and the Woof

And Anne, too!

Why I Married My Husband

I came out of writing group last night practically in tears. When I got home Tom woke up and asked me how it had gone. I said not so good.

"Why?"

"Well, some people read poetry. The people who read poems usually read 3 or 4, and they pass copies of the poems around right before they read. You're supposed to write your comments on your copies of the poems as they read them. When they've finished reading, everyone critiques the poems on the spot. I can hardly get through one poem. Then before the next person reads, you're supposed to turn your copies back in to the person who's just read so they can see your comments when they get home. So when it was time for me to pass my comments back, I'd look down at my copies and all I would see would be lines and squiggles where I had been pretending to write. So I hid my copies in my folder. It's hard for me to understand poetry."

"Don't you read your poems?"

"Yes, but my poems rhyme!" (sob).

"Next time, before you go, let me see what you're taking to read. I'll take all the rhymes out."

"Will you really? OK."

"And remember. No capital letters."

"You're right."

"And no punctuation, either."

Magical Field Trip

To see Jasper Johns at SFMOMA with Gina (only I liked Takashi Murakami better than J.J.).

THEN!! to the Contemporary Jewish Museum to see the Ezra Jack Keats exhibit. So good.