Perfectly Imperfect is Here

So this is the week.  It's here.  My new solo effort book hits stores on Tuesday and it feels a bit like giving birth.  I'm waiting for my water to break or for the day of induction to roll along.   I'm excited that it has gotten good reviews so far-- that people have smiled, nodded their heads, laughed out loud and cried.  One of the greatest honors as a writer is to connect with people and to evoke emotions that draw common bonds around us. Heck-- I'm mostly just happy to make people laugh. As I set out on the book tour, kicking off this week with my first reading at  the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble in New York, I know I have to pace myself.  A book tour is an endurance test or travel and strength, interspersed with wonderful moments of connecting with the reader.  I will look forward to seeing old friends, meeting new ones, hopefully hitting chords with Moms and sisters, girlfriends and daughters, friends and wives and all their men too!  this is not just a woman's book. I probably won't get a chance to update my blog much on the road, perhaps on some of the weekends in between-- and I wont get a chance to log onto comments often.  Somehow my computer doesn't like being away from home-- weird things happen in my email that take me too much time to un-do (I told you I was a techno-peasant).   But I do promise to check in and let you know how it's going. My scheduled appearances are listed on this website and I hope you'll encourage your friends to turn out for the readings in the various cities I'm headed to. I'm excited, anxious, thrilled and incredibly happy.  I also feel very, very lucky. Lastly-- I hope those of you who twitter and who care about our wounded troops will go to tweettoremind.org and sign up to donate a dollar for each of your tweets this Memorial Day weekend......  We all need to come together to help our wounded families heal.

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In Praise of Girlfriends

I wrote an essay this week for the website WOWoWOW.com   it says it all so rather than reprint it here, I'll post a link........    http://tinyurl.com/cblf9h Also- the May issue of  Ladies Home Journal is featuring an excerpt from my new book.  I'll be on Good Morning America on Monday and the book is out Tuesday, April 21.  This is like giving birth.   Enjoy the blog!   >

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The Joy of Doing Nothing

I don't often do nothing.  I don't know how to simply do nothing.  My husband  says he has never seen me sit completely still and watch a movie.  I always have to be in motion somehow-- accomplishing something-- putting pictures in a scrap book or folding laundry. I don't know if  people still darn socks, but if they did, I suppose I'd be darning socks with one of those wooden  eggs.   But as an overachiever, Type A list maker, I'm going to say right now that we all need to learn how to do nothing.  Sometimes, anyway. Right now, I'm at a little farmhouse in upstate New York where I spent every summer of my life. This is a place that slows me down.  I believe that we must all have a place that takes us down a few paces, slows our gait, forces us to take a deep breath and notice the color of the sky. Right now there is a fire going.  We took a steep hike up to the top of a mountain.  We'll play a board game later.   And so we are watching a movie -- Disney's "Ice Princess"  about a brainiac who decides to become an ice skater.  I'm telling you all of this to prove that I am, in fact, paying attention.   No multi-tasking here for me.    "You don't have your lap top Mom," my daughter said to me approvingly and I snuggled closer on the couch. This was how I wanted them to remember me, not hunched over emails or distracted and fractured into little pieces and pulled in 20 directions. I'm smart enough to know that I have too many demands on my time to do this every day.  There are meals to cook and dishes to wash, homework to help with and doctor's appointments to drive to.  Oh, and there is my job too.  Can't forget about that. But just for this weekend, I am "most revered Mom."  I've hiked and I've baked and snuggled and walked the dogs.  I've sat through a  movie with a plot so predicatable we made a game out of guessing the next lines.  And right when i finish this blog, I'm going to go and do nothing again.  And I'm happy to report it feels pretty darned good.

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