Susan Senator

Well you crazy mama
with your ball and chain
–Mick Jagger

I woke up looking like Cyclops, with a puffy zit in the middle of my forehead. I said to Ned, “Do I look weird?” And he said, “Why, cause of the pimple? You gotta stop picking it.”

Which made me laugh because I spent a lot of yesterday picking that thing every time I stopped to think. I am trying to get organized over my second book, which I am calling Booky (and I’m sure the editor will have a better suggestion, like “scrap this thing.” ) because the real title blows foul chunks.

Aside from the title, I had a good idea which was to add to the bullet lists bits of research I have dug up here and there about happiness theories. So I’m doing a bit of reading now about that and I found that an old Penn prof who lived in our dorm is the Father of the particular theory I’m interested in (Hey, great syntax, Writer Breath! This reminds me of that joke where the southern lady asked a snooty professorial type next to her, “What time we landing at?” and the prof answers, “It is grammatically incorrect to end a sentence with a preposition.” To which Southern Lady replied, “What time we landing at, Shithead?”)

The mind wanders far too much sometimes for real writing. So yesterday, every time I stopped to think, my finger would wander to the invader on my forehead. To stop myself, and to dry it up, I coated it with a dab of mud mask from Israel. But I forgot about it, and Max sat down across from me and did not say a word. But he seemed to be grinning a bit, but I thought that was because I was hassling him about eating too many Goldfish. No, it was because Crazy Mama was at it again. My creative process is an ugly thing, my friends. You shouldn’t know from it. But now you do.