I can’t get over how bereft I’m feeling right now…I spoke to Jay today and later to Bobby, about tweaking some events in Seattle.  Bobby told me he was worried about David’s health, and also told me how much they missed me in DC and how David was just now singing my praises.  And here I am weeping like a big stoop.  I miss him.  It seems so dumb, but I really do.  His voice rings in my ears.

This was a week where I just didn’t do all that much except knit and watch movies.  My mother-in-law was in and out of the hospital — she’s in rehab now, for back pain from degenerated vertabrae.  They’re not gonna operate on an 84-year-old woman who weighs a fast 90 pounds, so they’re mostly just medicating her.  My father-in-law is fairly helpless without her at home…plus today is their wedding anniversary, 65 years.  Rough time.

I managed to relax myself over the week, but I’m starting to get charged up for work again because the Lynch book is on sale and the Boston Post and NY Times pieces came out and the tour starts in a week and a half and the book is SELLING — #94 on Amazon.com right now.  I couldn’t be more excited.

Big resolution for 2007:  lose 50 pounds.  I weighed in at 190 this morning, so we’re looking for 140.  It was doable ten years ago — I lost 30 pounds in six months.  That’s the big one.  Also, stay with three times a week exercise as much as possible.

This is me trying to figure out what to do with my time off.  I’ve been so wound up that I’m not sure how to have spare time.  Part of me would just like to sit around and knit.  Part of me would like to go into Manhattan and see INLAND EMPIRE.  Part of me thinks I should go to the gym.  My blood sugar looks good these days, but I haven’t managed to lose much weight.

I could go into the village, see INLAND EMPIRE, go to the gym near there, and pick up that extra skein of Noro Silk Garden at The Point.  Or I could go for a nice walk around here, get a few things I need on Avenue U and then come home, knit, etc.  I could also go to the Brooklyn branch of my gym and then come home and take it easy.

None of these are really floating my boat.

On top of it all, I actually have some spending money available and a lot of pot.  Good for all kinds of adventures!  I could even do something like go to Kings Plaza and buy some corduroy pants.

I don’t wanna move.  And even though that’s a perfectly legit vacation sentiment, it doesn’t feel right.  Phooey.

Linda’s coming in from Jersey tomorrow and we’re going to get together, maybe the Museum of Modern Art.  Such things do get me off my ass.

In general, I’m feeling good these days, what with gym and proper diet and all; I’ve even (finally) dropped a couple of pounds.  But today, I’m just beat.  Too busy, too much stuff. 

I’m going to try to get four things done this weekend:  (1) gym (2) shopping (3) seeing new Lynch film Inland Empire (4) going to a memorial service on Sunday for the founding librarian of my grade/high school.  I’ve been avoiding all kinds of school reunions for 20 years now, mostly because I’ve felt so very less-than when I think about my high-achieving peers.  But I actually do have a job I’m proud of, and I’m also very appreciative that they’ve actually scheduled a memorial for this hard-working and much put-upon woman.  (She was for many years the wife of our philandering founding headmaster.  I don’t think his behavior was a secret to any students or parents, and it just amazes me that his wife continued to work in the same building for all of those years.  About ten years ago, he finally left her for a former student from my graduating class — yuk.  The board finally retired him a couple of years back.)

Let’s see how much of it I actually get done.  Right now I just feel like sleeping all weekend — at least, after I finish watching the second disc of the second “Evening with Kevin Smith” DVD.  Kevin Smith just kills me — super-funny dude and great storyteller.  His movies are a mite uneven in my opinion, but mostly good to great.  My favorites are Clerks, Dogma, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. 

Will and I have a tentative date for a week from today.  See if a little time off has made any difference.  I’ve told him that I’d like to try it (1) just being ourselves (2) without pre-planning any of the acts:  spontaneous, him and me…you know, just something a little more real.  He agreed, tho I’m sure he’s itching to get back to the way he likes things.  Leo and I went to his & Sherry’s Thanksgiving weekend party again this year, and it felt warm and pleasant with Will and me, all OK.

After today, only two more weeks until my week off.  They’re giving us the entire Christmas week as paid holiday time.  Nice.  Leo doesn’t have all that time off, so I imagine I’ll be doing fun alone stuff like the gym and maybe a movie or two if I’m not too broke.  Sleep late, cook more, compose playlists for my mp3 player.

I love that little bugger, I mean the mp3 player, which is a SanDisk 512 mb.  It holds somewhere around 100 songs which is plenty when you figure what I’ve had before were cassette and CD walkmans.  I have an insane amoung of music accumulated on my hard drive at home, like 7,000+ songs, so I’m starting to plow through the things I’ve never listened to — bands I’m investigating, other music by favorite artists, new genres.  Because it holds so many songs, it seems to work for all occasions because I can always forward to something I like if something I’m not in the mood for pops on. It’s teeny and easy to operate.

I seem to be more about creative at work than at home. I knit a bit and haven’t touched jewelry in weeks.  Mostly I create mailing lists and publicity schemes.  I seem to be good at what I do.  Ben — we still stay in touch — thinks I may get the Lynch book on the New York Times bestseller list.  That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

The gym is starting to be something I enjoy again, and I seemed to have reasonably good strength and stamina right off the bat.  I can already do 30-40 minutes of aerobic workout (usually divided between an elliptical trainer and a recumbant bike), and on my last visit, started weight-training my upper body.  I must be doing my stretching right, since nothing’s really hurting too badly.  It definitely helps keep my blood sugar low, and I find my appetite is somewhat decreased after I work out (!). 

I hope I get some kind of a raise at some point…I’m not sure if that happens at year-end or after my one-year anniversary.  It does kind of suck to be so hand-to-mouth with money even with both of us working full-time and permanent.  My benefits are great, but that doesn’t always work when you run low on cash.

My brother & family came into town last weekend, so I got to see the little guy.  Leo didn’t feel like going out on Sunday night so it was just me.  At 3-1/2, Walter is just crazy about me, and generally a friendly, happy, easygoing little boy.

The important things are more or less under control:  my eating, the Lynch tour.  Money could be better, but what else is new?  I joined a gym and went yesterday, first time in quite a few years.  I took it easy and mostly did stretches and aerobic stuff (a respectable 15 minutes on the elliptical and 10 more on the recumbent bike), plus a pathetically small number of crunches (20 regular, 10 obliques).  But it was a start.

I have a little extra at-home time this morning since I have a podiatrist appointment in the neighborhood at 9.  The fungal shit on my feet seems to be almost gone.  I love my podiatrist, a cheerful Jewish woman my age who confessed to being a Deadhead.  Gotta love it.

And speaking of old-old-school music, it seems that one of my great adolescent crushes, Donovan, is going to be on the tour with David Lynch, and will be doing a few concerts as part of the whole clusterfuck tour, which involves Lynch’s book, movie, and Foundation.  First gig with Donovan will be right here in New York, and I’ve been promised a front-row seat and hanging-out privileges.  I was nuts about Donovan a few years before I became aware of Will and Milo…long time ago.

So, the main things that have happened since I last wrote, and I know
it’s been a long time, are these:  I was diagnosed with Type II
diabetes, I met David Lynch, and Ben left the company. 

Not surprised about the diabetes –my dad’s had it, diet-controlled,
for 30 or 40 years.  And I was told I was borderline after a blood
test a few years ago.  But I just wasn’t ready to quit sugar
yet.  So my psychiatrist, actually, was blood-testing me to check
my fluoxetine levels, and to see what drug would be all right for me to
add for mild bipolar, and the lab reported a blood sugar level of
394.  So he called me and sent me the result and told me to see my
regular doctor immediately.  My doctor retested me and got a
fasting level of 250.  I learned I’d also had some symptoms — the
extreme thirst, and a fungal infection on the soles of my feet that I’d
taken for psoriasis.

So I’m taking a daily asprin against blood clots, glyburide in the
morning to stimulate insulin production, and a second blood pressure
med called lisinopril.  I’m taking additional trazodone for my
mood disorder, and clonazapam as needed for bad mood swings (that weepy
shit).  The podiatrist had me mixing three creams, rubbing them on
my soles before bedtime, and wrapping my feet in plastic wrap. 
The opthalmologist found no diabetes-related eye trouble, but did find
that the pressure in my eyes was a bit high, so I have drops for
that.  And I have a monitor to test my glucose, which I do about
three times a day  I have been very good about my diet, and
recently am getting fasting levels around 95-130, and after meal levels
of around 140-180.  I haven’t lost any weight yet, but when I get
paid on Wednesday, I’m joining a gym.  $76 a month is gonna hurt
(I do, however, get a low initiation fee through my job). 

I’m not all that bothered by not being able to eat sugar or much
starch  I eat some fruit and some dried fruit and sugar-free fudge
pops and sugar-free yogurt.  I drink a lot of green tea and herb
tea and flavored tea, hot and iced, plain or with a bit of
Splenda.  The worst thing so far was not being able to eat dessert
at the Gramercy Tavern (Lynch lunch) or Dani (lunch with the other
publicist, Lee, and our publisher after Ben resigned).

We take you to the Gramercy Tavern now, for lunch with our Barnes &
Noble rep, fours Barnes & Noble events and marketing people, Lynch
and his assistant, publicist, literary agent, and agent’s son, the
editor of the book and me.  (I arranged a similar lunch in Ann
Arbor for Lynch and folks from Borders, and when he’s on tour in
Seattle, he has a lunch and “fishbowl” — a Q&A with employees – at
Amazon.  This here is big-league publicity work, giving the big
chain booksellers a little treat to make them feel like members of the
team and get them to push the book a little more.)  You can
imagine that the B&N people in New York are rather jaded; I’ve been
told they’ve had lunches with folks like President Clinton and
Oprah.  But they dug David.  David is amazing.  He’s one
of the nicest, most accessible guys you can imagine, and he is utterly
brilliant, big-time genius. 

What impressed me the most about David (who came back to the offices
for a meet-and-greet with staff and signed galleys for anyone who
wanted), is that he has the ability to be totally focussed, which is
probably attributable to TM.  So every person he talks to, even if
it’s someone who gets 2 minutes of his time while he signs their
galley, feels he’s totally paying attention to them and totally
interested in the fact that this person, say, copyedited the flap copy
for his book.  It *really* makes the person feel very special, and
I sure can say that firsthand, because I spent a whole lot more than
two minutes with him and really felt like we bonded.  It’s
probably safe to say that we got along.  He’s a very perceptive
and sensitive dude, and it’s a real dream that he’s so willing to
publicize his book, along with his new movie. 

Mostly I deal with David’s publicist, Todd, who is another very open,
charming guy.  I’m touring David to five cities, five bookstore
reading/signings (1 Borders, 2 B&N, 2 indies), and the NY Times Style section is doing a big piece and the Sunday Boston Globe, and we hope more to come.

The lunch at the Gramercy Tavern was interesting and successful, and I
had booked a beautiful private room.  It was my first time at this
ultra-high-rated place, and since I couldn’t eat sweets, I splurged
with an appetizer of seared foie gras, which I’d never had
before.  The first thing I thought when I tasted it was how much
my mother would have loved it; she adored nicely crisped steak or lamb
fat.  Me too.  There’s a word I’ve heard used over the last
year, which I of course can’t remember now, in Chinese cooking, which
means a taste that is rich and savory.  That’s sseared foie gras
for you.  Lovely salmon for the main, and just cappuccino to
finish up. 

Ben got tapped to be publisher of a new US book publishing arm of a big
UK corporation.  It’s just starting up, so he wasn’t able to bring
any of us.  I was sad and even pissed off.  Plus we have a
hellish winter season up ahead, and  the other publicist, Lisa,
and I had to split up his books.  They did get us a temp for three
months to help with mailings and such, but we have an insane work
load.  Our publisher is looking for a new supervisor for us. 
He’s made it very clear that he adores Lisa, Lee and me and that we’re
staying, but it’s still a bit nervewracking.  But we get great
support from him and I get a lot of support from the editor in chief,
who edits a bunch of the spiritual authors (including Pinchbeck and
Lynch).

Pinchbeck, BTW, is in his sixth printing and has national TV coming up:  The Colbert Report on December 14.  He’s continuing to do a lot of events on his own, and continuing to sell pretty well.  My Power of Kindness
author, Piero Ferrucci, is up for a Books for a Better Life award in
February.  We are thinking that this book may continue to build
and may kick some ass in paperback; the publisher loves it as much as I
do, and he says that the president of the entire firm does too.

I’m knitting again now that the weather’s cooler.  I’m not having
all that much to do with Will; when we started to have two separate
relationships, the sterile public one and the purely sexual one, we
somehow lost all of the affection we had in our one, pre-sex
relationship.  It’s just not warm any more.  And since I
decided I really needed a break from the sex part for a while, hoping
to get the friendship a little stronger, it seems like he’s being
friendly in the hopes that I’ll say Yes again.  It’s all very
sad.  But he’s just turned 68, and it doesn’t seem right to either
of us to totally separate.

I’m still alive and kicking, just working really hard and, these days,
usually cooking when I get home.  We did buy ourselves a lovely
18.2 cubic inch fridge (that’s interior capacity) and it’s a perfect
size for us.  Both of my ice cream maker cannisters fit in the
freezer with plenty of room to spare, and I’ve made a few batches of
ice cream and sorbet since.  (My best new invention in Italian
Blueberry Cobbler, which is vanilla ice cream with a blueberry swirl
and pieces of ladyfingers.)

Status report:  kind of worn-out by and tired of Will, haven’t spoken in a few weeks. 

Work is busy busy busy.  Daniel Pinchbeck still marches on, bless his heart.  They did finally publish the Rolling Stone feature, and the Letterman show has expressed some interest, plus I’ve mailed the book with the RS
piece and a new letter to a bunch of top talk shows.  And the book
is still selling — about 20,000 copies so far, give or take, and in
its fourth printing. 

The Power of Kindness by Piero
Ferrucci has also outstripped everyone’s expectations but mine.  I
had a feeling it might do well.  Our sales force really got behind
it, and although Piero didn’t tour, we did some nice marketing pieces,
including a “shelf talker” — those little thingies that hang over
bookstore shelves to promote the book.  The book has just gone to
a second printing, and Piero has joined the rather elite Penguin
Speakers Bureau (I’m trying to get Daniel on, too).

The Lynch book is a big job.  I have him meeting with buyers from
Borders in Ann Arbor, B&N in New York (I’m going to that one, too,
at the Gramercy Tavern), and possibly Amazon in Seattle.  And
we’re having a little in-house reception for him on Oct. 10, which will
include our department staff, the highest-ups at Penguin, other folks
who worked on the book, the journalists who take me up on exclusive
interviews, etc.  (I just sent out bound manuscripts yesterday,
and I have a nibble on the exclusive from GQ; the offers are in specific categories, so it’s GQ for men’s magazines and Vogue for womens’s, Today and 60 Minutes and Premiere. 
And a huge tour.  My perks may include tickets to the New York
Film festival and possibly free TM instruction. Lynch is all about TM,
and when I expressed interest to his publicist, he said, “I think we
can do something about that.”  The basic course runs $2,500.)

And I’m also working on a gazillion other books.  We’re all kind
of overloaded.  I still love the job, tho there are always tasks I
don’t care for.  And I wish I made more money.  The student
loan people finally caught up with me and will be taking $200 a month
from me, which hurts.  But I’m trying to be responsible.

Mostly I come home, cook, smoke dope, watch movies or TV.  Leo and
I do have tickets for Los Lobos next week, and I’m looking forward to
that big-time.  More news on the home front is that my darling
Tiggy, who has shied away from Leo for two years, finally decided that
he is wonderful, just a few weeks ago.  First she started letting
him pet her, then she sat on my lap for the first time, and now she
sits on his lap, too.  All of our cats are very lovey now.

Leo and I are doing well, I think.  Just had the ninth anniversary
of our meeting, and went to the cappuccino place where it took
place.  We’re trying to arrange some nice activities (like the
concert), and will try to celebrate both our birthdays this year. 
He’s very supportive of me and very appreciative.

I don’t make much time for jewelry lately, but I’m going to make stuff
this weekend.  I have a new design which involves beads inside
hoops — I make the hoops out of three wraps of wire, and am
experimenting with different wires.  I use silver, but also
copper, and black-coated.  I’ve made a few pair of earrings and a
necklace that way, and want to do more in that style.  I haven’t
really sold much but I’ve given away a couple of gifts, which were
hugely appreciated.

Now I’m working insanely.  New books have been added for 12/28
publication (so we can meet a goal of x number of books out there by
year-end), and it’s madness.  I am now lead publicist for nine
books being published that day.  Granted, four are reprints of old
inspirational books that can be publicized as a group, and two are
paperback reprints.  But one is also the David Lynch book.

I had an awfully good time with my friend in Jersey, who I will call
Patty for now because it’s easy to remember. I think Patty is a little
depressed living in the ‘burbs.  For one thing, she hasn’t worked
in nine years or more.  When she was about to go back to work
several years ago, she came up pregnant for the second time at age 47
(!!!), and now her son is 3-1/2.  Daughter is nine.  Patty,
who for some time would not date a non-Jewish man (while I dated every
color of the rainbow), married an Irish guy from Jersey who hates New
York City with a passion.  Patty lived in Forest Hills all her
life until she married her husband.  Forest Hills is a
neighborhood in Queens, NY, which was a very nice Jewish middle-class
neighborhood for a lot of years.  These days it’s very Russian,
but Patty always lived among her own kind.  Well, anyway, where
she lives now is really heavily Christian, which is weird for her, and
really white, which I don’t think she minds but which I found
bizarre.  It’s way the hell out of New York, and Patty won’t drive
on highways (like a good city girl, she learned to drive really late
and is nervous about driving that fast).  So she really only gets
around locally.  Plus they are temporarily without a second car,
so she now doesn’t get around much of anywhere without being driven.

A lot of the other at-home moms around there get together in various
ways, but it’s generally around things like scrapbooking or (shudder)
bingo.  She is friendly with a couple of neighbor women with whom
she goes to horror movies, which is also not Patty’s thing but more her
thing than bingo or scrapbooking.  Her neighbors are just not as
cool as Jannah or her neighbors, and I’m not sure what that’s about,
just what the difference is.

Patty was actually thrilled that I brought reefer, since she doesn’t
know anyone there who smokes or how she’d ever get any.  (The kids
were with their grandparents when I was visiting, so that wasn’t an
issue.)  Her husband had a rather roller-coaster time with booze
and drugs as a youth and quit them all, on his own, at age 21. 
She said she probably hadn’t gotten high since the last time she got
high with me, which might well have been my batchelorette party (we
didn’t smoke at the wedding).  Also, we hadn’t visited since I
started making jewelry, so I let her choose a ton of stuff; I think she
ended up with three necklaces and maybe 15 pair of earrings.  (Her
husband, predictably, gives her the sort of dinky-ass boring
gold-and-diamond stuff that you get at Zales or whatever,
mass-produced, you know the deal.  But she was really into my
stuff and chose some pieces that were a bit wilder than I would have
expected.)

I did love hanging out with her; we were estranged for a couple of
years between her wedding and mine, and since then haven’t seen too
much of each other.  But really, we know each other so long and so
well.  We’re very different kinds of people in a lot of ways, and
I think at times I’ve dwelt heavily on the differences.  But now
what I mostly feel is how much I love her and how comfortable I am with
her.  I’ve known her almost 40 years and she’s the closest thing I
have to a sister.

We are finally, finally buying a fridge this weekend.  The plan is
to go to Sears on Saturday and pick one out, then get it delivered one
day next week, since we’re on vacation.  I miss cooking.  I
really look forward to shopping and cooking.  I made a chicken
dish at Patty’s on Friday night, and was surprised at how much I
enjoyed making it and eating my own cooking and how impressed Patty
was.  I guess she doesn’t cook from scratch too much.  Right
now, our  fridge holds milk for about two days and says “I think I can” when it makes ice.

I’m looking forward to making some jewelry next week.  Other plans
include the beach, and seeing the Holmes Brothers on Thursday
night.  I know the Holmeses from the early 80s, when they played
at my favorite divey blues bar.  But unlike a lot of bands and
musicians I “knew” from those days, they were really my friends,
particularly Sherman.  When I got sober and stopped coming around
the bar, Sherman was the only person from that scene who picked up a
phone and called me. In the olden days, I used to carry the tip can
around the bar for them.  Now, they’re so in demand
internationally that they’re out of the country about 225 days a
year.  They’re still amazingly talented, they were always tight,
and I’m so very happy for their success.  Sherman’s about 70
now.  It’s going to be good to see him; I invited him and Pinkie
to my wedding, but he was away.

It will be a laid-back week.  Can’t hardly wait. 

Currently reading:  Lisey’s Story by Stephen King, to be published
in October.  Ben snagged me a galley, bless his heart.

It’s not so much that I’m working a lot of extra hours, but I’m putting
my whole self into this job.  And we’re heading into a really
insane season.  We are publishing a ridiculous number of books
this fall, and five were just added to 12/28, to boost our 2006 figures
somehow, and we were already pubbing eight titles that day. 
Granted, a few of them are paperback reprints, but still.  We have
only three publicists, and that’s counting Ben, who’s also an editor
and publicity director, and me, who’s also Ben’s assistant. 

I’m going to visit my old friend in Jersey this weekend, the one who
isn’t Laurel, first time I’ve seen her in a few years.  Strictly a
catch-up visit.  Leaving Leo at home for this one.  But Leo’s
coming with me to Hannah’s on the 25th, which is the end of our
vacation week together.

That writer guy wasn’t for me.  Too shallow and too damaged, tho I
still like & admire him for being talented, interesting and
funny.  Leo is very needy, still, and driving me a little crazy as
he often does when money is tough.  Money has been tough because
our fridge is nearly dead and we basically have been ordering in nine
meals a week, which is killing our money.  We’re a little over a
week away from buying a new fridge.  I get paid on the 15th and
we’re going to Sears on the 19th and hope we can get it delivered
before the 25th, when we’re on vacation.  Then there will be much
shopping, cooking, and taking of lunch.

Will and I are finding our way back together, in fits and starts. 
We’ve agreed to an “as ourselves” date a week from Friday, tho he’s
still trying to plan all the moves ahead of time.  We’ve had
lunches, talked some, and I’m starting to experience moments, just
flashes, of affection again.  This had been absent for a time, and
whether it was really gone or whether I was just doing a damned good
job of suppressing it, I can’t say.  Don’t know. 
Did someone ask if Will and I liked to role-play?  ooh, you gotta
read back to over a year ago, when he and I broke up for eight months,
but before that, there’s a couple of years of way serious role-playing
pretty meticulously chronicled.  In brief, he has very specific,
vanilla sex with his wife, so that’s one thing we don’t do.  We’re
mostly pretty much Dom/sub, tho we’ve reversed it here and there. 
He’s very fixated on “forced” blowjobs/face-fucking, and we both love
it when he butt-fucks me.  So we generally make up a scenario that
leads us to that kind of thing.  One we’ve repeated is “The
Strange Man,” where I’m me and Will plays the strange man, someone Will
has lent me out to, and I’m to obey him absolutely.  There’s one I
love where we’re a teenage couple who finally get to make out in a
bedroom when someone’s parents are out.  I connect heavily with
horny teenagers.  A classic is The Shady Masseur, which I’m sure I
don’t have to explain.  There’s one that involves a pony that Will
carried around for many years before he finally got to do it, involving
a cute little pony and a sadistic vet who also happens to love sucking
pony dick.  I really loved that he shared something so out-there
with me, and I got very enthusiastic about it, and it was quite
memorable.  There’s also one where I’m a hooker named Cherie (I
have a nice voice for that one, soft and a little southern). 
Actually, when we were having lunch the other day, and were talking
about the just-ourselves session, I said, “I thought up a good one, for
some other time:  The Passed-Out Prom Date.”  He just lit
right up.

I have to go to bed soon.  Never enough time.

Oh, but I did think I should at least list some of the books I’ve read lately:

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by I don’t remember but it’s the #1 paperback on the Times bestseller list
Persian Girls by Namid Rachlin

That’s a little pathetic that I’m not remembering what I read before
Memory Keeper’s Daughter.  The books are in the room where Leo’s
asleep.  But I’m about to finish Persian Girls (both of those
books are excellent).  Oh, I also read that Jeans book that just
came out.  I do end up getting access to almost anything I want
from our publishing house, tho not always right away.  I even
score things from other houses, but not regularly.  (I got a
galley of Stephen King’s next novel today, the one pubbing in
October.  I consider that a biggie.)

Oh — I also read Pizza Face by Ken Siman, which I also liked.