Last night I dreamt of dogs — is it any wonder with this sweetheart in our midst?
Also, I had a recurring nightmare: the loss of my front tooth. In this one, I tug out my mouth guard and the crown comes with it, drops to the floor, and skitters across the room. This is the fourth or fifth such dream. And you wonder why I’ve given up corn on the cob?
Responses to my book continue to be causes for joy. Private messages have been uniformly positive. Thank you one and all!
Also (and this I did not expect), there has been a smattering of grief about not having been able to get an agent or a small press interested in my work. I’m assuming this will fade over the next weeks.
Novel with an old quilt of mine made for a long-time mediating friend in Cambridge Coming to you from Long Island with one of my Katrina quilts And also from New Mexico! hello Marti!This happened to me with one agent
The debate and subsequent drilling down on what Jamelle Bouie has called a “blood libel” has been just spectacularly grim. Dangerous. And you wonder, don’t you, how the Orange Menace’s rhetoric can be at once shocking and utterly predictable.
Apparently, he thinks Haitians come from Venezuela? Just a minor point in his stream of invective.
I’m doing another 25 Postcardstovoters.
My brother’s stroke anniversary is next week. Four years. There will not be cake.
C and his girlfriend come for dinner tonight and there will be cookies. And scallops. Shockingly expensive scallops. I shrugged and rationalized: this is our Christmas dinner.
You might know, I launched a novel. As in PUBLISHED. It’s 321 pages long and you might like to read it. This means I can officially call myself an author now. And, I’ve already earned enough royalties to cover the cost of my ISBNs. Pretty cool.
I signed up for dental insurance all by myself. (Yeah, I know). My new Medicare card arrived. So did my drug card and my Gap policy card. All my passwords are in one folder and I know where to find that folder. I’m on fire!
I finished reading Lonesome Dove, all 800 plus pages. I had to finish it this week because there was no way I was gonna carry it to California.
Can I just say — it’s long, it’s grim, it’s a Western for god’s sake — and it is one of the best books I’ve ever read. I really didn’t want it to end.
Two people from very different walks of my life told me this was their favorite book ever, otherwise I doubt I’d ever have picked it up. Even though I’ve read Stegner’s Angle of Repose twice (and liked it so much I proceeded to read almost everything else he wrote), I was not a fan of Cormac McCarthy and McMurtry’s book was giving me McCarthy vibes.
Anyway. My advice? Not so much that you should read this novel, but that if two people you know without prompting tell you that X novel is their favorite book, run — don’t walk — and pick yourself up a copy.
Another book brag — I was pleased to see I’d read 39 of the NYTimes “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century” list. Maybe I should feel bad that the number isn’t higher? I’m fixing that with my next read: My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante.
(I was late to the McMurtry party and I’m also late to the Ferrante party).
She has TWO OTHER books on the list.
Lastly, can you guess what I’m starting to research with a view toward a second book (I decided against Lucy Audubon).
Hint: the setting is a lot closer than Charleston.
Here’s a partial list of gifts given in The Weight of Cloth:
A Bible / a caramel candy / a pearl necklace / a cotton lawn handkerchief / figs / a packet of candied orange rinds / an assortment of perennial seeds / a turkey feather / three grains of rice / a broom made of dogwood sticks / an alligator tenderloin / a carved wooden bowl / shared tricks on how to foil the patrollers / a tortoiseshell comb / a moss green gown / a set of dainty silver spoons / yardage of lace / a mechanical wooden duck toy / Madagascar rice.
The Weight of Cloth: A Novel is available on Amazon now! A day early. For Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Apple Books, and others, you need to wait until tomorrow.
Drayton HallCollage using image of The Door of No Return, Elmina Castle, GhanaSlave quarters at Aiken Rhett House
I offer this telling in the same spirit that I sometimes collect images of Kimberly Guilfoyle — like, is this shit for real? please feel free to skip. But if you skip, be sure to see book updates below.
Sat down to begin the Plan B Medicare sign up and noticed that the required PDF proving I currently had employee-provided health care was not signed. Ken’s was. Mine wasn’t. Okay. Sent it off to HR in Houston.
This pisses me off a little. Reminds me a lot of our financial counselor whom I have to inform at EVERY FUCKING visit that I’ve been collecting SS since age 62. Why is this so hard to remember? It’s literally his job and he has computer programs to track the data.
It gets difficult to not take this personally. The wife. The non-earning wife.
Fortunately HR in Houston responds quickly with new PDF.
Meanwhile, I have a Social Security account and a Medicare account but now you need to use login.gov.
In trying to set up a login.gov account, they offered first the typical six-digit verification code, but then a longer one that for some insane reason they would only mail to me. It would take a month they said. Well great, because I have two more weeks of employee-provided health care.
I called the number on the website and spent an hour and twenty minutes on hold (because the three times I tried to leave a call back number, I was interrupted before finishing the area code. They couldn’t hear me?) (It’s okay, the wait — I worked on my jigsaw puzzle). Of course the result was a distant voice saying they couldn’t help. “Go in person,” she said.
Mailed verification number? Go in person? Seriously?
So we went to the Social Security office first thing the next day and in a very orderly process got an authentication number in person.
Back to signing up for Plan B.
When we finally figured out how where to apply ( hint: it’s not on the Medicare site, it’s on the SS site), they wouldn’t accept the PDF of my now signed employment verification form.
But wait — first we had to track down the email with the HR PDF attachment. Having not used email on the desktop in months, I had to use two step verification to sign in to Google. By some fucking miracle I could readily find my most recent password. But they didn’t send the code. And they didn’t send it some more. Not in my stated email. Not by text to my phone.
Was I losing my mind? Was this part of a plot to make seniors stroke out and ease the burden on our health care system?
Finally! Finally! Saw that they send a notification (not an email) to the google mail app on my phone. Huh?
Now ready, we filled everything out on the required form but it would not upload the required PDF. We tried and tried. Watched the spinning circle. Walked away from the spinning circle. Tried again.
WTAF? Mercury retrograde anyone?
Finally, started over and it was a go. Probably the form had timed out. Maybe should have considered that sooner.
This was a day and a half process that I thought would take 15 minutes. I’m not stupid, I tell myself. Really I’m not.
Still have to sign up for supplemental and drug plan. Wish me luck.
Meanwhile, this is happening.
Amazon’s mysterious algorithms have me as #1 in New Releases for biographical historic fiction. The book hasn’t even launched yet and pre-sales are barely double digits so I truly don’t get it.
Still it was a thrill, so official looking and all.
You can preorder the EBOOK version of my novel on Amazon, Kobo, and Apple Books. You’ll be able to order the paperback on 9/5.
The Weight of Cloth tab up in the menu is getting lots of my attention. Grooming with related links etc. Check it out. You can tap the link here or go up to menu and tap the link there.
Came across this To-Do list last week and it struck me as a form of found poetry.
Poem: Old To-Do List
Eliminate tabs in manuscript. Three hundred more pages. Make lunch. Make dinner. Cream of celery soup? Moisturize. Walk at least 6,000 steps, 7,000 better. Pick up dog hair — always pick up dog hair. Start a new jigsaw puzzle. Write note to DB. Keep reading about how to update website. Record emails of subscribers. Oh god — 600! Pick prompt for tomorrow. Keep reading DO YOU REMEMBER BEING BORN? Neaten password lists (Ha! Fat chance). Water mosquito plant. Vacuum upstairs rugs. Think about scrubbing the tub. Consider Wednesdays.
