Shipping · and · Handling

After we got home from our big book tour I had to do a few cakes (and cupcakes). Some of them worked out okay but something was off. Me, I think. I had a few cake mistakes. But first, here are some pics of owl cupcakes that came out really cute and great


Here is a birthday cake I did for my boss that came out good, too. I made the crazy cake topper with toys and wacky stuff glued to an IKEA bowl.

Maybe I got cocky or maybe I was just tired but the princess castle cake I had to make for my doctor's five year old did not work out!
I guess I should've watched a video on youtube about how to make a castle cake instead of assuming that I could figure out stable castle cake architecture.

I tried eating it to console myself

but it tasted gross so I had to throw it out on the backyard in a cake fury.

I felt better after that. I ended up having to buy a princess cake at the last minute from Randall's, because, really, how could I have disappointed these two?

Especially when one of them controls my anti-depressant prescriptions.
I made this next cake for cousin Catherine's fortieth and it was okay. I was hoping it would look like a fairy wearing a big pretty cake dress but it came out looking more like a fairy stripper jumping out of a big cake. Cousin Catherine liked it anyway.

The last cake mistake happened at work. I was flipping a layer of red velvet cake out of the pan while I was telling a long story and

Boom!
When I got home I still had cake crumbs between my toes.

Bankruptcy court is way more fun than it looks!

Especially if you bring me and Billy's dad!

Part Eleven

We left Pisana and Denitza in stupid Columbus, Ohio and started our long drive toward home. We stopped in Nashville and stayed a night with Carly and her mom. The visit was way too short but we did manage to get some good cake, see Carly's neat stuff, and lie on the living room floor and watch TV.

This cake was orange flavored and tasted like a Dolly Madison Zinger. Do you remember those? I think they had Snoopy on the package.

I was so tired by the time we got to Nashville. It was good to just hang out with My Carly and My Jeet Jeet Cotter and My Big Orange Cake.

Isn't Carly beautiful? Every year she gets more and more beautiful and funny and confident. Billy has known Carly for 12 years and I've known her 8. She is one of the family. Here we are at Thanksgiving at the Cotter's house in '06

I love Carly very much. She is like our little sister. I wish we were all gangsters so I could call her our homegirl, because really, that's what she is.

Not only is Carly our homegirl, she is a fashion design student and all-around great artist. She has a wonderful collections of vintage stuff that she finds at thrift shops and flea markets and the occasional spendy antique shop but most of the time she scores incredible shit at GoodWill because she's got a crazy good eye. I love this collection of little vases on her desk

This is a shot of her work space. She is working on a small collection of clothes for a school project based on this board of swatches.

We got to see some of the pieces, the dress, the skirt, a blouse and they were gorgeous. I can't wait until I am rich and I can commission Carly to design my wardrobe. She'll have to do it even if she's all famous and in demand because, like I've said, she's our homegirl.

Carly brought us Starbucks in the morning. I can't tell you how much I liked to wake up to a nice hot americano without having to drive for miles and search the Starbucks location finder on the iphone. It surprised me how many wide swaths of the U.S. are bereft of a single fucking Starbucks. South Dakota? No. Southern Minnesota? Not a one. Miles and miles across New Mexico? Nothing. And let me tell you this in case you haven't discovered for yourself, McDonald's lattes suck. Billy and I made sure to get coffees again as we left Nashville that morning because we were pretty sure a lot of our drive toward Shreveport would be Starbucks free. And it was.
We got to our very last stop on our tour at around 10pm. We didn't have a booksigning but that doesn't mean it wasn't an event! After all these years, we finally got out to visit Billy's Aunt Harriet and Uncle Al's place in Shreveport. I'm having a boy who cried wolf moment right now because I'm sure you might be a little cynical at this point about me and my constant raving about the amazing fantastic larger than life wonderful weirdos we spent time with on the tour but I'm going to go ahead and rave about Harriet and Al. Once you see the pictures, you'll know I'm not kidding around.
Harriet and Al are AMAZING! They are like rockstars. They spend nine months of the year travelling the world. They don't loll around on cruise ships either, they trek and climb and dance and have adventures. They go to village weddings in the Himalayas and Chinese sculpture ateliers, and take their grandchildren to the Galapagos. When they are at home, they party. Harriet is a great cook! The night we arrived we had jambalaya and salad and garlic bread.

After dinner we tried on hats from all over the world. Here are Harriet and Al telling us about the hat he is wearing:

I can't remember where it was from. This one is a Tibetan helmet made of metal

This one is African

I got to try one on from Tibet.

Did I mention that Harriet is a fantastic cook? Yes. Here she is cooking polenta for us the second night.

I wanted to get all of Harriet's talents captured in this picture. Her cooking, her painting (she did the floor mat), her incredible body (she's a ballerina who has been conditioning her body for almost sixty years) and her leopard pants and joyful fun personality. Can you see it? She also designed the whole house starting with the space for that great commercial range.
I wish I had taken more pictures of her paintings. Her work is beautiful and lately she has been doing a series of glazed oil still lifes that describe mathematical theories. Oh, did I mention that Harriet is a mathematician? She got a patent for her geometrical learning puzzle. Can you even believe these people? And guess what else? They have two new kittens!!

I don't know what else to say about Harriet and Al besides the fact that they were so much fun and so kind and generous to us and that Al is the only person on earth who can actually shock me with his dirty talk and general blaspheming. Al's mother read to him from the bible every night when he was a little kid. He knows the whole bible and so his blaspheming transcends the usual liberal secular artsy jaded you and me kinda shit. Let me tell you, vodka, scripture, and Al make for one fun and naughty evening!! I'm so happy we got to spend some time with them before they left for the Amazon for a month.
Billy and I got home on September 27, a month ago today. We immediately got in bed and threw out all the bills. The Cotters had filled our fridge as a welcome home surprise! We were so happy to be back with our coffee and our awful little cat and our bankruptcy.

The End

Part Ten

This is Denitza with her cat Pisana. They took care of us while we were in Columbus, Ohio. On Thursday this week I went to a poetry reading at a little place by my house and I felt sad. I felt actual longing. I wished I could've called Denitza to come meet me and have a coffee and hang out at the reading. I wrote her an email expressing my heartbreak instead. Denitza was our third couchsurfing host and evidently some kind of soul relation of mine. I love Denitza and let me tell you what, Pisana is also a darling of my heart. They were both so vibrant and funny and intelligent and sweet. I hate that they live in stupid Ohio so far away. Fortunately Denitza is getting her doctorate in psychology and when she's done she's going to move to Puerto Rico and start a retreat/healing center of some kind and make jewelry and do art and dance and Billy and I will visit every year. She will also cook! Here are some pictures of the dinner we had together at her house:


We had grilled sausages, grilled peppers, grilled eggplant, feta covered in olive oil and Bulgarian spices, and a delicious chilled cucmber soup with homemade yogurt and fresh dill.

For dessert we had coffee made in this terrific little stainless pot and bowls of vanilla ice cream topped with raw honey, chopped walnuts and currants. In the morning, we had fresh bread Denitza made in her bread maker while we slept. Denitza loves appliances! She had everything! Even one of those electric deli slicers with the spooky circular blade. She was a tiny bit annoyed that I bought the ice cream because of course she has an ice cream maker!
Here is a picture from her bathroom

Isn't that a great idea? Denitza invented this and I think she will be okay with sharing it. She stuck little hooks on the wall and used binder clips to hang her tubes of stuff and, she pointed out to me when I was raving about how clever I thought this was, the clips also help push out all the stuff! Denitza is a woman of many talents! Before she came to the U.S. she had her own business installing car alarm systems in Bulgaria. She also has a crazy green thumb --- look at her plants!



And when she's not managing a research project, going to school, seeing psychotherapy clients, growing vegetables, cooking and baking, hosting travellers, making jewelry, working out or creating innovative bathroom storage, she likes to relax with her boyfriend and a nice 2000 piece puzzle.

Really.

Part Nine

On our way to Pittsburgh we stopped in a little rural Pennsylvania Dutch town. God it was cute!

I heart Pennsylvania Dutch cute stuff! I also really love circles, have I mentioned this before? I love all the shapes a lot but circles are my favorite! I love designs within circles and designs made of circles. I love mandalas, 18th century Japanese family crests, medicine wheels, and I love spheres (3D circles). So of course I freaked out a little on the Pennsylvania Dutch Hex signs.


The images and patterns on hex signs all have meanings and that is another thing I really really love. I heart symbology! Especially cute folk art symbols that mean things like prosperity, good harvest, and protection from boils. I almost bought a hex sign trivet and kitchen towel set at the gas station in this town but I restrained myself and just got an expired diet coke. I did get a bag of these adorable little golden pears at a farmstand though.

They were delicious! They are called Sugar and Spice pears because people preserve them with sugar and spices and, according to the farm lady, are delicious as a dessert by themselves or in cakes or on ice cream if you like that kind of thing which she actually doesn't but she told me that everyone will tell you they are fabulous like that. She and I agreed that they were perfectly fine as is even though I said I can't see how adding a ton of sugar and cinnamon could be bad. She didn't really want to talk after I said that. Sadly, I did not get her picture.
Pittsburgh is a great town. I couldn't believe how much I liked it there. Before I visited, my mental/emotional reaction to the idea of Pittsburgh was kind of yucky--- devastated steel mill, mean old guys, racial tension, etc. How wrong I was! Pittsburgh is an incredible city that was all fucked up and blighted and awful but it has had this gorgeous resurrection and we loved it. There was a moment when Billy and I were sitting on Sheila's (our host) little deck looking out at the Alleghany River and we had a serious "Should we move here?" moment.

Pittsburgh is one of the oldest cities in the country and it is where three big rivers meet: the Alleghany, the Ohio, and the Monongahela. A long time ago when there weren't trucks yet, the rivers were the super highways for travel and commerce. I love using the word, "commerce" I feel like a history teacher! Anyway, there are tons of bridges crossing the rivers connecting all these neat old old old neighborhoods. It was so pretty there! The best thing about Pittsburgh however is Sheila! She is my mentor and queen Interplay teacher. She is a dancer, a social worker, a writer, a former university professor, and an all-around fantastic person. She also has super cute dishes (circles)!

Here is a picture of her dancing in the street on her 70th birthday, yes 70th.

Here is a picture of Sheila's George Foreman Grill and her little dog Clancy. Can you see him?


Clancy was smart. He made Billy take him for a walk while Sheila and I were out doing Interplay. He was mellow and left Billy alone for the most part but then he ran up to Billy, stood right in front of him and barked once like he meant it. Billy, who isn't really a big dog person, understood the message and took Clancy outside where he immediately had a nice big poop on a patch of grass (Clancy, not Billy). Billy felt guilty for not picking up the poop but I told him not to worry about it because houseguests don't have to pick up dog poop. While we were on Vashon, I let Rosie (Jude's dog) take a giant shit on Carol's poppies and I just walked away like I didn't see a thing. I think if you're not a trained dog person, no one can blame you for not knowing about the little brown plastic dog shit bags. Am I right? Yes.
We loved being in Pittsburgh but our reading at the Eastside Borders kind of sucked. They didn't have Billy's book in stock, the event chick wasn't even there, they didn't give us free coffee, and when a friend of Sheila's called to ask when we were reading they told her there wasn't a reading at all that night. We were a little pissed. Still, we made the best of it and ended up having a nice time. Sheila and her friend from a writing group were warm and supportive and bought our books and Sheila read a lovely piece from the memoir she is working on right now. The four other people who were in the Borders Cafe were polite listeners and one guy got up and did a rap about vegetarianism curing his diabetes. His name was Veggie Man and I did not get his picture. Strange that I did not get a photo of the fruit lady or the vegetable man. I wonder what that is about.
We had an interesting thing happen at the end of the reading. After Veggie Man did his rap I went ahead and asked the other people in the cafe to introduce themselves and invited them to read or tell a story. One girl said that she had seen us read the night before in New York. She had bright primary red hair and a cute crazy chick look and I thought, "Oh no! Is this Billy's first bipolar stalker girl? Do I even have the energy to stab someone right now?" Fortunately it turned out that she was a reporter from the LA Times doing a story about book tours. We all went across the street to a bar where Billy had the best macaroni and cheese of his life (my tuna melt was very good, too) and she interviewed us. I don't know if we will make it into the final story in her column/blog called, Jacket Copy, but it felt good to be interviewed like we were really authors and not just tired people who didn't rate at Borders.

Part Eight

I love New York City so much! How can you not? We had a wonderful but short visit. We did a reading at KGB Bar and I felt so proud of us! We also got to see an old friend from a writing group here in Austin, Josh Medsker, and one of our favorite people on the planet, cute cousin Ann!
She is a rockstar! Her band, Brief View of the Hudson, plays around NYC all the time! She is also a poet, a graduate student, and lots of fun!

We also met some new people on our way out of town: Angry Man and Queen Baby! Angry Man looks like Billy but he is VERY ANGRY ABOUT THE TRAFFIC! and he HATES DRIVING IN NEW ENGLAND! (Angry Man was in Framingham with us but we didn't know his name then). We met Angry Man officially when he was trying to get on the Holland Tunnel out of town and missed the turn off Canal Street. Angry Man is VERY ANGRY ABOUT THE GOD DAMN FUCKING TRAFFIC IN THIS TOWN! and that is terribly upsetting to our other new friend, Queen Baby. Queen Baby looks like me but she likes the car to be calm and quiet and she wants her soft Hello Kitty blanket wrapped tightly over her legs and she would like a coffee soon and she has to pee and her head hurts and no one understands her and she has to do everything herself and she is sooooooooo tired! Poor Queen Baby! Mean Angry Man!
We were so happy when they left!

Part Seven
Yardley, PA is right on the border of New Jersey and it is a spectacularly beautiful little town. Every house looked like a Martha Stewart photograph. We could feel and see the money lining the quaint little highway road that ran through the town. We stopped at a Starbucks in the tiny picturesque downtown and sat out back on the edge of a private pond and watched a graceful silent heron catch fish. Billy and I felt like getting to see that amazing bird was worth the entire trip. Nature does not disappoint especially when surrounded by wealth. On our way out of town I saw Cramer's Bakery and I felt that my experience of Yardley would not be complete without tasting the cakes of rich people. Also, I had been nursing this jones for a big cheese danish ever since we drove through Wisconsin. I searched and searched for the perfect cheese danish on our trip but did not find it until after we were home for two weeks and I went to Costco with Julia. Anyway, Cramer's had a pretty good cheese danish but it had an extraordinary thing called a walnut triangle that I knew once I had a bite that it would be the pastry that haunts me for the rest of my life. It was so delicious and buttery, it hurts to even think about now. Cramer's has been in Yardley for 53 years and is still owned by the family who founded it. It's a certified kosher bakery and believe me the ruggelach case was outstanding! Here is a picture of the two cute ladies who helped me

Billy waited in the car because he was over Yardley and wanted to get to Framingham to see his sister Missy and her two cats Maggie and Mischief. We'd only seen pictures of them and we heard from Billy's dad that they are very sweet and cute. We also heard that one of them has a bad habit of tinkling on piles of clean laundry but that did not happen while we were there. Here is Missy with one of her cats
and here is one of them telling us she wants to come in

Missy also has two cute children (and a very cute husband). As far as we know they do not tinkle on laundry, they do far naughtier things!!

Actually, they are settling down some since their active toddler terror years and I suspect that one day they will use their powers for good.

Being at Missy's house felt so good after being on the road. She did our laundry and made homemade chicken soup and did all kinds of wonderful mommy-sister-friend-sweetheart stuff for us. I did not want to leave! The Cotter family (including the extended Dempsey and Etherton families) is big on spoiling and showering affection and bringing you trays of snacks while you sit on the couch under a blanket doing nothing. Can you believe that Missy buys both of our books everytime she goes into a Barnes and Noble? Of course you can! She's a Cotter-Dempsey!

Here is a picture of Missy's cute cute cute husband Brian and his mom(did I say cute an inappropriate number of times? Is it bad to always notice how hot your sister-in-law-type-person's husband is? Is it inappropriate to call him hot? Forgive me.) He's also brilliant and nice and an award-winning science teacher.
I loved meeting Brian's mom, Audrey. She is one of those highly captivating interesting people, I wish I could've heard more of her stories.
We had a wonderful reading at Barnes and Noble in Framingham and some of Billy's old friends came out. It was a special night.
Billy and John Smith
Jen Boyden, Ann Simpkin (who looked radiant!) Audrey and Missy.
While we were in Framingham we got to go visit Jen and her mom at their house in Winchester. They made steaks for us and Jen gave us a ton of cards and presents for early birthday. Jen and I share a crazy Hello Kitty passion and this year she got me some great stuff!

I love this picture of Jen and her cat Patches. Patches sends Vinnie (my cat) cards sometimes.

Here is Jen and her wonderful mom, Laura. They both came out to our reading.

Here is Laura giving Cleo a treat. Cleo was by far the naughtiest most spoiled person we visited on our tour!
I'm only saying that about Cleo because Jen and her mom do not use a computer and they will never read this. Although Cleo is very naugthy and spoiled, he also gives out cards to Billy and I throughout the year. Here is Billy with his birthday card from Cleo


We had a lot of fun with Jen and Laura and Patches and Cleo.

I can't wait to go back to Framingham! I loved being with Missy and everyone so much! I also got a fantastic haircut. I was feeling like I really needed hair help and this is Lisa who gave me a wicked good do!

Part Six
We left Rapid City and the comfy bed and good food and geniuses and Nancy at 11pm so we could get all the way to Chicago in time for our feature at the Green Mill. We got to our dear friend Jim's apartment with just enough time for me to dye my roots and for Billy to get a little nap.

Jim has a beautiful funky apartment with tons of great art, Sanrio stuff, and three black cats. The biggest one, Diesel, is a Maine Coon cat and he is soooo huge! We call him the pony.

The pony liked Billy's suitcase

but fortunately he did not tinkle in it like Jude's Naughty Henry.
I love the pony! I just love being at Jim's apartment. He has great style.

We didn't get to spend much time there though. We had to rush off to the Green Mill and then rush off to Philadelphia super early the next morning. I wish we could've had more time with Jim and the pony and Big Kitty and Jose (the other two cats) and David (a human and fantastic painter and all around adorable fun person). Luckily we all got to eat a nice meal together after the Green Mill.
The Green Mill is a jazz club where Poetry Slam was invented by Marc Smith, a construction worker/poet, in the late '80s. Marc still hosts the slam there and the place is very cool. We shared the feature with a poet from Boston named Brian Ellis. He was terrific and I love his book, Uncontrolled Experiments in Freedom. We also got to see our friend Stephen and meet a lovely new friend Heather (who bought us all dinner!) Stephen gave us his incredible chapbook, Colony Collapse, and the beautifully written, designed, and printed Lammastide liturgy by his wife, Ruby Sara. I kind of got that angry these people are too good competitive writer couple feeling after reading their books. My poor little writer ego --- she is always so bitter and pissed at other people's natural talent. Dark-hearted insecurity aside, I rocked the house that night and felt very good about my performance and my hair. Billy Cotter did not have such a good night, though. He read a long passage from his book and everyone got a little shifting and impatient and Billy sensed this and tried to speed up and then when he was done people came over and said things like, "Hey Man, it wasn't so bad, don't worry." Poor Billy Cotter!

We had our only real fight on the trip the next morning at 4am as we drove down Lake Shore Drive trying to get on the freeway to go to Philadelphia. Billy said that he was upset about his reading at Green Mill and instead of saying, "Oh no Baby, you were terrific!" I was too tired and too honest and said, "Well you should've read the part I told you to read. The part you read was too long." Uh oh. We had a hard fifteen minutes in car but then we made up when we saw a Starbucks. Here is Billy after we made up and started a brand new day!

We got to Philadelphia a mere fifteen hours after we left Chicago. We had to run right up to the venue, Robin's Bookstore, and do the reading. Billy had a good performance and so did Ernie Hilbert, another Red Hen poet who read with us in Philly and in Baltimore. My reading was less than fantastic but I had fun playing around with Robin the owner.

I told him that I would put this picture on the internet and start a rumor about our affair. We make a good couple, don't you think?

He's a fantastic lover!
My editor and a co-founder of Red Hen Press, Kate Gale, was at the reading at Robin's. It was good to see her. She gave us glowing introductions and I thought, "Oh, she actually does like my writing."

We all went out to eat at a cute little pub downtown after the reading and I got to meet some indie rock stars --- Laurynn Peacock of Pauw and Me without You and Jason Getz of Mercury Radio Theatre! I took a picture with Jason Getz (who played with the Psalters for years and years) but it is really too dark. I'll post it anyway simply because I am so proud!

maybe if you click on it and look at it bigger you will be able to see it.
I loved Philadelphia! I took a picture of these girls hanging outside the pub. Aren't they awesome?

They were totally sweet, too. In fact, everyone in Philadelphia was totally sweet. Especially Ernie Hilbert and his wife Lynn. They invited us to stay at their house in West Philadelphia and we had so much fun getting to know him and Lynn and their great cat Lester. Lynn is an archeologist! She has an amazing collection of old bottles in her kitchen

Their whole house was gorgeous. We loved being there.



The four of us went to Baltimore together for our reading at Cyclops books the next night. Baltimore is a two-ish hour drive from Philadelphia. We had such a fun time there! We had dinner at an old school middle class dinner place called Obrycki's Crab House.

Of course our reading was tiny, of course we got lost getting there, of course it was in a horrible part of town but that did not keep us from having another weird wonderful little literary adventure. One of Billy's brother-in-law's friends from graduate school (actually his wife was in graduate school with Billy's brother-in-law) came out to the show! His name is Rob and he of course was totally terrific and fun and bought our books and hung out and was just cool and smart and great. He is one of those people who feels like an old friend the instant you meet.

Cyclops is a neat place. It is a bookstore, art gallery, music venue, coffeehouse and home to 31 Tigers record label. We got to take home some pineapples that were left over from the ukelele festival they had the previous night

Speaking of great people, we loved Ernie so much!

He is brilliant! Not only is he a great poet but he is a rare book dealer and he has a Phd from Oxford! He is also hilarious! We LOVE Ernie! The most fun with Ernie and Lynn was the drive back from Baltimore. We ate terrible convenience store food from the Greyhound depot off the turnpike and listened to Ernie regale us with tales of his total hatred for Baltimore. I always enjoy someone venting their crazy spleen but when it's an articulate, well-educated, funny, bitter guy, I love it love it love it! I hope we will get to see Ernie and Lynn again soon.

Part Five

Because we left Missoula at three in the morning we had time to do a minor detour to Devil's Tower in South Dakota. It was spooky! We didn't go right up to it but we did stop at a tiny tourist place to pee.

It was a classic souvenir clip joint with a table inside covered with rocks, just some fucken rocks from the ground, priced to sell. Each rock had a price written on it with a magic marker. Classic roadside capitalism! They were not geodes or petrified wood or anything, they were just some fucken rocks for 1.99-5.99 each. Nice!
South Dakota is very pretty and rural and cell phones just don't seem to work in the entire state. No matter! We did plenty of talking with people in person. We stayed with my good friend Nancy's nephew Mark and his adorable family of geniuses. Mark's wife Mary read with us at our reading. Nancy decided to visit Rapid City while we were there so our reading was filled with her good friends and family. We had a great time except for our "booksigh-ning" at Borders. For some reason the Borders in Rapid City was not willing to let us have a reading at the store. Instead they invited us to sit in the front of the store at a couple of pine TV trays with a pile of our books and an atmosphere of desperation. The only person who talked to us was a 14 year old emo kid who was waiting for his mom.

He irritated me but he did take a good picture of us.

Billy thought if we changed the names on our signs that we could fool people into buying our books.

It didn't work. I think it was because he misspelled Stephen King.
We left Borders after an hour and walked outside into a sudden drenching rain storm. Thank God for Nancy and her family and friends waiting for us at the cafe reading!


Nancy's people were lots of fun and everyone played around with us during the reading. Nancy put on my Hello Kitty ears and gave out impromptu shamanic readings to winners of our raffle!

After the reading we went home to Mark and Mary's house and ate yummy foods and listened to Sam the twelve year old play classical guitar!


I really meant it when I said Mark's family are geniuses --- I know I tend toward the effusive so you were probably thinking I was just saying "geniuses" to be nice but really, these kids were amazing! I really loved Ellie who was eight or nine going on a hundred. She was just so wise and over it.

Matthew the oldest (15) was also incredible. He hung out with his four year old brother and played video games and made heart wrenchingly funny and wise stop action animation! I liked how sweet he was to his little brother and how much open teen disdain he had for adults.

They were such a beautiful kooky family and our bed there was big and comfy and they bought a huge box of cheesecake from Costco for us. We hated to leave!

Part Four
The drive from Seattle to Missoula was long but so beautiful. It was all mountains and trees and shimmering bodies of water and old school ski lodge/campgrounds. I loved this sign at a truckstop/campground in central Washington

We got to Missoula just before our event. We had time to stop and buy some treats for the reading at a fancy little bakery on the same street as the bookstore. I was so tired and weird from the long drive that I couldn't do bakery math. They had big cookies for $1.25 each and that seemed really expensive to me --- if I bought like 15-20 it would be a lot of money so I decided it would be way better/cheaper to just buy one cake than a whole lot of expensive cookies. I bought a beautiful german chocolate 9" round cake for a mere $48!!! Once I got in the car with the cake I realized the error of my tired tour math. I was pissed! I don't have a picture of the cake because it made me so angry! I rebuke you forty-eight dollar cake!
The eight people at the reading really enjoyed it though.
Here is a picture of Garth, the owner of the store (Shakespeare and Co.) and his beautiful and smart employee Kate

This is Chris who told us a crazy story about murdering the guy who stole his brother's band equipment and hiding the body in an industrial relish vat at the food processing plant where he was the operations manager in the 1990's.

Murderer or not, he was a really nice guy and he bought both of our books and gave us a crime novel he loves.
We spent a short night with Andy, our second couchsurfing host, in Missoula ---we had to leave at three in the morning because we had to get to Rapid City, SD the next day. Andy was adorable. He loves to garden and he raises chickens and turkeys and giant vegetables. This is a picture of one of his smaller onions

It was the size of a grapefruit!
Andy sent us off with four jars of homemade jams and preserves. Isn't that sweet? Couchsurfing people are the kindest most generous weirdos in the universe!

Part Three
Our host in Portland was a lovely brilliant Interplay leader named Cassandra. Instead of going deeply into Interplay and how much I love it and how it is life-saving and life-affirming and fun and all that I will just put this link here and hope you will check it out www.interplay.org or even better come to an event or workshop with me sometime! Okay, so Cassandra is an accomplished poet, musician, and all around amazing lady. Her house is a four storey modern fairy forest castle type thing --- all gleaming wood and huge windows looking out onto a hillside covered in gigantic pine trees.

The house is filled with art and musical instruments and best of all Shusha the blonde bombshell!

Our event in Portland was at a wonderful shop called Reading Frenzy.
Harlan works at the shop and makes amazing posters for all of their events. I bought two of his zines --- one is a strange comic about cute fuzzy creatures in tribal warfare and the other zine is a true fanzine style zine filled with illustrations of Fugazi. I heart Harlan!!

We were totally thrilled to see Marissa!! She is one of my favorite people in the universe. When she was a little girl she wrote a book about a horse called, "Pretty Beautiful Wins the Race". Isn't that the best book title you ever heard?

We also love love loved getting to meet Steph LeBlanc! She is the artist who painted the cover of my book!!!!! She is beautiful and nice and smart and funny! I feel so lucky to be connected to her in this kooky way!

All in all, our visit to Portland was fantastic except that Billy fell in love with Cassandra

and I fell down the stairs at Cassandra's house when we were leaving and twisted my ankle! I had to keep ice on it all the way back to Seattle and since it still hurt by the time we got back to Vashon, I decided to keep it up and miss my spot at the Seattle Slam. I hated to miss the reading but by morning I was ship shape!
We left Vashon and headed to Missoula Montana on Thursday morning. We hated to leave Jude and the people!! They took such good care of us


The only person who was kind of naughty was Henry
He was adorable and cuddly, Yes,

but guess who decided to fill Billy's overnight bag with tinkle?
Naughty Henry!!
Rosie was fantastic as always and posed with us for this weird picture that Billy and I will use for our album cover if Nurse (our pretend band) ever makes an album.

Part Two
It took fourteen hours to get to Seattle and then an hour or so to get to Vashon Island to Jude's house. Remember Jude's house?

It is finished now and very comfortable and beautiful!

Jude made amazing food for us --- all locally grown vegetables and farm fresh eggs and bacon from pigs who were raised in flowering meadows of clover and massaged with essential oils and serenaded with classical music before they were slaughtered by a very nice guy named Brandon.

Everything on Vashon Island is very special! Including Stranger than Fiction Books the beautiful little magical bookstore where we had a reading.
Mel, the owner, is quite a handsome fellow and a marvelous poet. He read one of his gorgeous spooky murder pieces from the perspective of the victim of Leopold and Loeb. The lovely and talented Tara Hardy joined us and performed a magical piece about the strenuous personal emotional work involved in creating world peace. Tara is quite a stunning motherfucker!
I was delighted to see her again after so many years! My good good old good friend Leland was there too. I loved seeing him and hearing about his experiences quitting smoking at a Vipassana retreat.
The little event was intimate and magical and I even got a magical gift from Mel's girlfriend Jennifer(a for real witch and potion maker)who had such a magnetic thing about her, I felt pulled into her atmosphere when I met her eyes. They are (like everything on Vashon) a very special couple! I'm so grateful we got to have our event there.

Billy did a reading at Bumbershoot Festival at Seattle Center and that was fantastic! We felt like a rockstar entourage getting his badge and our free passes and hanging out in the green room at the theater with the other McSweeney's authors who were part of the show on the literary stage. Here is one of my favorite pictures of Billy from the whole trip:
He had just gotten his artist pass for the festival. He really rocked the house during the reading and the panel discussion with Starlee Kine, a wonderful writer and producer from NPR. I loved her whole thing, her look, her voice, her sense of humor and warm intelligence.
I especially loved that she was wearing gray pantyhose, not tights, pantyhose. It represented a fashion independence I really respect.
Here is a picture of people waiting in line after the show to have Billy Cotter sign their books!
Billy Cotter is a rock star!

Part One

We drove a lot! We ate fast food! We forgot to take pictures at Arches National Park in Utah but we made sure to take a picture of this:

I don't remember why.
We left Austin on September 1 after waiting all morning for a check from Billy's publisher that did not come. We had to have our cat sitter forge Billy's name and deposit the check for us while we were on the road. Our first stop was Sialia's house in Santa Fe. We didn't have an event there but we did get a good nap and delicious food and almost twenty four hours solid of show and tell. Sialia's house is incredibly interesting

and it is filled with incredibly interesting things

and Sialia herself is incredibly interesting

So needless to say, we talked and talked and talked and got an amazing tour of downtown Santa Fe and ate delicious French pastries at a bistro that our mutual friend Linda demanded we go to while in Santa Fe and we saw art and even got a private tour of the Palace of Governor's Museum print shop where the head curator/printer is a friend of Sialia's so he generously spent a long time showing us letterpress poetry broadsides and limited edition prose poetry books on handmade paper and did I mention that Sialia's bf Jake is an adorable metalsmith who is into making pizza and that Sialia's parents are incredible artists who have a studio/home/gallery filled with found object assemblage pieces, giant abstract expressionist paintings and books made of silk, bone, and chiclets? Really, it was all just too gorgeous and bizarre and lucky. We left Santa Fe feeling like we got a strange and powerful blessing for the whole trip.
We left for Salt Lake City in the middle of the night and got there just an hour or so before our reading at Sam Weller's Books. We stayed with our first Couchsurfing host, Rachel.

Rachel was totally nice and totally weird and we felt perfectly comfortable staying with her even though we'd never met and had only ever exchanged two emails and one strangely tense phone conversation before we got to her house. Rachel is an active Couchsurfing host and traveler. Two Czech girls had just left her house the morning before we arrived. Rachel is awesome and interesting and kind. She came to the reading with us and showed us around town. This is the motorcycle she rode across the country last year:

Rachel is an ex-Mormom like almost every other person we met in Salt Lake City. Everyone loved to tell us that the closer you get to the giant Mormon temple downtown, the freakier and more naughty the people are. The temple was pretty spectacular --- we didn't go in or anything but you can't miss it if you go through down town SLC. Is it sort of Vatican City lite. Rachel's neighborhood was adorable, a perfect urban neighborhood filled with unique hundred year old houses, cafes, a real grocery store,wacky neighbors like this lady who let me take her picture while she watered her koi pond.

and the cutest bakery ever


But the best part of Salt Lake City was our visit to Sam Weller's Zion Bookstore. It is an 82 year old store owned by the founder's grandson Tony Weller. It has three storeys and all kinds of spooky rooms and tunnels and ghost stories and secret areas. Our actual reading was very silly and small --- eight or nine people total, six of them store employees--- but still fun and a crazy love fest. Here is a picture of Tony the owner and John the event coordinator. They were terrific and gave us tours and Mormon gossip and coffee.

Here is John reenacting the good old days of employee bongloading in the basement which I'm sure never happens anymore.

This is the spooky tunnel where shoplifters are brought to be threatened and insulted until the cops come.

This is the upstairs bookbindery and letterpress printshop where Billy experienced unbridaled lust after the gorgeous bookbinder chicks and had to confess to me in the car that he had exchanged flirtatious energies with not one but two of them!

Can you blame him? I said, "Right on Billy Cotter! You go ahead and flirt and make eyes with the cute bookbinder girls! It's your freaking book tour for chrissakes!" Then I issued dark threats about the roadside consequences of any real infidelity while on tour. I had a crush on Esther in the rare book room. Isn't she beautiful? She had on really good knee high boots with that great outfit.

I did not feel guilty about flirting with her because we had true love and appreciation, not dirty man lust like Billy Cotter and his bookbinding bimbos.

I'm working the poet-bohemian housewife corner.

Someone just asked me to write this down for her (actually, she asked me weeks ago but I finally got around to doing it today) and I thought it might be of use to some of my single lj friends. I used this spell to find JeetJeet Cotter and my dear friend Julia used it to find her sweet husband Andy and my old Seattle friend Katie G used it to get her amazing husband! And guess what? All three of those men had jobs!!! Whoohoohoo! So! please use the spell or share it freely. Feel free to change pronoun/gender, it will still work like a charm!
1) Write down a description of the kind of man you are looking for. Use positive, affirmative language only and write down the description as if he IS your man. Describe the man you truly want, not a man you think you can get or deserve.
Here is an example of the wrong way to do it:
"I just want a nice guy who won't fuck me over all the time."
Here is an example of the right way to do it:
“My man is a precious, delightful guy. He is tall and handsome in a unique way. He laughs a lot. He is kind to people.”
Try to think of the essential qualities that are most important to you and describe those as vividly and truly as you can.
Try not to be overly specific about silly outward things like, “he drives a 2007 maroon colored Chevy S10 pickup.” Instead focus on what is behind those things, or the essential characteristics that are important to you. You could write, “My man has a reliable, attractive vehicle, he takes good care of it and he loves to take me on long rides into the country.” See the difference? The first description of his car is meaningless, it says nothing about the kind of man he is.
2) Describe a typical day in your relationship. Again, use positive, affirmative language in the present tense.
Here is the wrong way to do it:
“I would like it if I had a guy who brought me flowers once in a while.”
Here is the right way to do it:
“My man calls me every day at lunch. He always says some sweet thing about how beautiful I am and how he can’t wait to see me.”
Really try to imagine a whole day and also special days like birthdays and holidays. Also, write about how you handle tough times together, when one or both of you are having a bad day.
3) Write down all the things that you give to him. Be specific and write in the present tense in a positive way just like the previous two parts. “One of the ways I give love to my man is by really listening to him when he talks about his day at work.” Or “Every week I make my man the most beautiful yummy Sunday breakfast”.
The really important thing about this part is to focus on the ways you WANT to give to a man rather than the things you think a man would want or would keep him with you. Imagine all the fun and wonderful ways you could share your gifts with him.
4) After you have done all this thinking and writing (and it may take some time) read the whole thing, keep it with you for a while --- a month or so --- and read it a lot. Change things as they occur to you, add things, take things out, etc.
5) When the month is over (or when you feel that all the writing is done) write at the end these words:
THY WILL BE DONE.
THANK YOU.
And then sign your full name.
6) When you are ready, let go of the actual pages that you wrote all this down on. Some people burn it. I threw my book in the Puget Sound in Seattle. Don’t just put it in your drawer. Get rid of it --- throw it in the lake or ocean or river or burn it.
7) Get on with your life and know that when the time is right, your man WILL show up!!!

Can you believe we've been together for nine big ones?We went to the Imax and saw "Wild Ocean 3" yesterday with our darling friend (and great photograper) Eva. Today we are celebrating by drinking too much coffee and cleaning the house. I know it doesn't sound terribly romantic or ecstatic but I really wouldn't have it any other way (to be honest, I wouldn't actually mind skipping the cleaning part.)

Writing! Going for walks! Drinking coffee! Taking trips! Interplay! Making big drawings! Visits from Carly and Sialia! Jude moves in to her house! Books get published! Drink more coffee! Have little parties! Get a new president! So many things to enjoy! Yay 2009!