Month: March 2009

I keep feeling like I’m forgetting something, something important. What??  Oh well.

I just updated the blog for Unbelievable. I’m trying to do that more often now that some people are actually looking at it. I noticed it’s getting a little traffic lately, which is great.

This is the back of the main branch of the New York Public Library, the one with the lions out front. I’m often coming up to it from this side.

It’s like landmark city here: the library, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building.

Meanwhile, I am feeling very seriously stressed, frazzled and overwhelmed.  I feel like I shouldn’t complain, lots of people would kill to do the things that are making me feel this way.  But I am a wreck.  It is what it is.  I’m going to transcribe some interviews, I have to do that, but after that I’m taking the rest of the day off.  I might go jean shopping, I might work on choir pieces, I might get into a nice bath with a bunch of magazines and stay there until I’m a prune.

I was taking a picture of my new necklace to show everyone and look who immediately jumped up to check it out.  That’s Buddy sniffing a picture of Buddy.  Finney’s picture is on the other side.  (That Glamour Magazine on the left is in my soon-to-be day off future.)

To have one of her necklaces made go here.

I took this picture of the Empire State Building looking through the trees of Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library.  Sigh.

Tuesday is my pub date.  TUESDAY.  I have literally been talking about this book for years and now it’s here.  On Tuesday.  Tuesday!!  I wish I could relax for two seconds and enjoy it.

Oh!  Oh!  I got the Betina Wasserman necklace I ordered with the pictures of Buddy and Finney. I thought it was going to take a month!  I’ll take pictures of it later and post them.

Head long into the darkness??  I took that coming home the other night from my monthly MBSR meeting.  I love being at the front of the train, looking out the window into the track tunnels.  If you look down at the rails, it’s dizzying, like being on a carnival ride.

Meanwhile, still freaking out about getting everything done that I need to get done.  So hi and bye!  I’ll be back later. 

Literally and figuratively.  No matter how much I do each day, my to-do list never seems to get smaller.  But today I’m going to work all day long until I collapse on the couch tonight (to watch Grey’s Anatomy, please say it’s on tonight).  Here’s what I have to do:

– Get questions ready for interviews I’m conducting tomorrow (for an NPR piece I’m doing).
– Get interview answers ready.  I’ve learned that I blank out when people ask me questions. So what I do is figure out what people are likely to ask me beforehand and come up with answers.  I read this over whenever I’m about to be interviewed.
– Get pictures copied.  When I’m invited to do a reading I like to do a Powerpoint presentation with great pictures instead.  Readings are dull unless the reader is someone like David Sedaris. I’m not David Sedaris. Not every place has projectors however, so I’m making packets of pictures to hand out for those places.
– Pick readings.  For places that insist I read.
– Practice Powerpoint presentation.
– Pick outfits for readings and presentations.
– Get caught up in email.
– Talk to Betsy about my next book.

This is a picture of the windows at the Tenement Museum. The artists are Sook Jin Jo and a group of students from the Jacob Riis Neighborhood Settlement House.  I like how the reflection of the snow from across the street looks like clouds.