Notes

Writing, for me, is like tantric sex, if I knew what it was, I mean. The process is so extremely slow, almost maddening. Every little detail, every word combination, every bit is tweaked and retouched in an obsessive manner. When I am satisifed that the piece is ready to ship, I am so extremly happy, so thrilled and relieved at the same time. And I never think that I will be repeating it. I mean, it's not like 60 minutes on a stationary bike, or getting through a years finances for the accountant. The next venture at the computer will be a new assignment, another piece completely different and maddening and rewarding in its own way.

I understand there is a Rachel Ray Sucks Community, an anti-fan club, as coined by Rob Walker of the New York Times. I am not much of a cook, so I like her. I thought, as lately I keep seeing her face peer out from every book jacket and magazine cover, "Wow, she's shoved Eva Longoria right off the cover of everything." Thank god.

In the Maudsley approach (Maudsley Hospital in London) to treating anorexia, family members take the place of nurses, and encourage and calm the sufferes into eating. Harriet Brown's experience is also in the Sunday Times Magazine, and she talked of separating the demon from her daughter, and teach her daughter to not listen to the anorexic voice. It took me back to working on my father's disease, thinking about him as two people. I sensed that the drug dependency had actually so interwoven itself into my father's neuron efficiency, that the two could no longer be separated, but maybe for me, there was still time to talk to my bad selves: "What? Do you really need to eat an entire bag of all anything? Don't give me that all natural nonsense, either." "And you will drink that red wine because you have no recollection of how awful you will feel in the morning, or what?" "Would it kill you to be nice and bite your tongue, to not have to always say somehting?" I am up for treating the demons, but I will probably invest in a head set so people will not think I am always talking to myself.

Letter to Puppy

Dear Junior Dog,

This is just a reminder that when we are outside, we are outside to urinate. We are not there to sniff air, bitch slap bushes, bark at leaves, bite the tops off boots or listen to passing cars. I have already had children. No one told me it would be like having another. Yet here it is, 4 a.m., and we just came in from a slightly above freezing, soggy backyard waiting for you to do whatever it is you are waiting to go inside the house to complete. We did the same thing at midnight. We did the same thing seven times yesterday. I am crabby. The only difference between a baby and a puppy is that nothing is swollen. My body is fairly intact, except the face, though. I will look deathly tired in the morning. I look deathly tired now. Nothing will cure that, certainly not time. The sooner you learn how much that upsets me, the better. I don't expect perfection. Just ask the kids who decided that I would appreciate an act of emptying nest replenishing. Nope, no perfection. A touch of cooperation and a bit of best effort, sure.

No one told me about your, um, odor, either. When I get to bed I can still smell you on my hands. I wash them again and again, but sometimes I forget and they are already dry and cracked from washing floors after all the accidents. I thought houses that smell of dog smell of old dog, the kind with bad gas and excema. This smell must come from your habit of stepping in everything that passes from your body and quite probably from eating it, too. No one warned me that puppies eat their own excrement. So the first time you turn around to look at it, I was not prepared. I did not move fast enough. I don't know how many other times I have missed that trick, so I have to warn everyone not to accept your little puppy e-coli kisses. Maybe you are a defective one? Is it possible that only my puppy eats poop?

Perhaps you have noticed, too, that since you arrived I have been stuck in permanent gray. I can't get out of sweatshirts, sweatpants, muddy gray boots. And don't get me started on the shower or anything close to a hairstyle. Getting less than awful looking would require me to go upstairs and leave you alone. I have to pull it together when you are asleep and not likely to chew electrical cords and fry, or, oh, I don't know, poop again and spoil your feeding schedule.

I am not sure I understand your leash skills, but I will do some research. "Heel" does not mean sit and stare up at me, with your butterball belly showing and floppy ears lifted forward as if to question my intent. My intent it to walk you and wear you out, out, out. In doesn't mean hauling it at full speed when in sight of a human child, either. The only other mode you seem to have is a slight gravitation pull sideways to the street. I don't see that in the product documentation anywhere. Perhaps another defect.

I hope that you can take some of this to heart and get with the program just a bit faster.

Adoringly,

Your Master