Mamie keeps yelling, Blog! at me.

Which is tricky, because I’ve been writing something else. And we all know how well I multi-task. Sometimes, I have to tell people on the phone, Sorry I trailed off just then, I had to put down this book.

Besides that, there is nothing terribly exciting happening right now. Unless you count my father making up social security numbers for the kids. I needed the numbers for my taxes.

These are not the right numbers, I told him. I spent hours on the phone with the IRS and Social Security Administration. These numbers don’t belong to them.

I was afraid of that, my father said.

The kids have been calling to prove that I didn’t make them up. Kan told me not to cry because we’re not just best friends, but best sisters. And then Aaron recited ‘i carry your heart with me’ by ee cummings. Seriously.

Meanwhile, I’m spending my time in coffee shops, where the women beside me are saying things like, She’s just got so fat. Or alternately, My yard boy’s name is Clemente. He has clippers. He has trouble understanding things, so you need to speak loudly. But Clemente has clippers.


What else. Something embarrassing usually works. When I walked into the theatre with Mamie, I somehow fell under a seat and couldn’t extricate myself. I kept partially getting up, only to fall down under the seat again. It went on like that for ages. Also, Ledger was brilliant. It was heartbreaking to watch him, but he was brilliant in that movie.