I had this website created a couple of months ago in order to help promote my novel Outtakes From a Marriage, which, for all you latecomers, hits bookstores June 3rd. During a discussion with the web designer, he said, “you really should have a Q&A about your book on your bookpage.”

“Oooh, a Q&A!” I said, “I love that idea. Who’s going to interview me?”
“Well, you know, a lot of authors just write the Q&A themselves,” he said.
“So….I would ask the questions, and then I would answer them?”
“Right,” he said.

So I gave it a shot. I decided the questioner should speak in italics, to differentiate him/her from me, and I would reply in a regular font. I began with:

Q: Why this book? Why now?
A: Well, I knew I had this great idea for a book. And so I thought I would write it ….now.

And that was as far as I got. I guess some people are better at self-interviewing than others. Then I had an idea. I would ask Denis Leary to interview me. This would be great because a) He’s funny and a lot of people know who he is, and b) he and I were sitting in the same room.

He agreed, but only on the condition that I email him the questions, because he wanted to answer during the commercials of a baseball game he was watching. The interview is on the Outtakes From a Marriage page of this website, but I’m posting it here in the hopes that it will whip all of you into a frenzy of anticipation for the book’s release (on June 3rd.)
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After much pleading, Denis Leary agrees to interview his wife Ann Leary about her new novel, Outtakes from a Marriage. (Though the interviewer and interviewee are in the same house, the interview is conducted via email as Denis is watching a split-squad spring training game between the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays and can only really participate during commercials.)

DENIS: So, how did you come to write your novel, Outtakes from a Marriage?
ANN: Great question. Well, I walked into a restaurant with a celebrity one night a few years ago and later I jotted in my notebook the following line: “he walked through the room with his ‘yes, it’s me’ expression…” and those words were the genesis of this book. I wanted to write about how fame changes the way people behave, how people react to celebrities and about the way marriages, like people, age.
DENIS: This “celebrity” you “walked into a restaurant with” – was it Brad Pitt?
ANN: Okay, very funny. I’m trying to get the reader to think I’m always breezing in and out of restaurants with famous people. In fact, I think we both know that the celebrity was you. But thanks for mentioning Brad Pitt. Somebody told me that anytime a person Googles certain names and phrases that are in my site, the Googler will be sent here!
DENIS: Oh. Hey – have you ever met Lindsay Lohan?
ANN: No
DENIS: Tom Cruise?
ANN: Tom Cruise what?
DENIS: How about that Jennifer Aniston pregnancy?
ANN: You can stop now.
DENIS: Okay – moving on. So – the book. A lot of the stuff in the book – which is extremely funny – is based on experiences that seem very real when it comes to show business. Are you worried that some readers may think it’s autobiographical?
ANN: All of the events in the book are fictitious but they are inspired, in some instances from real experiences in my life. Like my heroine Julia, I have access to certain “inside Hollywood” events, but I perpetually feel like an outsider and, like Julia, the amount of elbow-grease required to get me red-carpet ready is astonishing.
DENIS: You’re being hard on yourself. Once they work the hay out of your hair and dig the saddle soap out from under your nails, you clean up real good.
ANN: Why thank you.
DENIS: No problem. So you’re saying ….what?
ANN: You’re really not very good at this are you? I was just saying that in this novel I wrote about an environment and characters that I’m familiar with and hopefully that will make the story more real for the reader. One of the main themes of the book is Julia’s feeling of inadequacy when it comes to her parenting skills and I think many women will relate to her. As you know, our kids went to preschool in Manhattan and the admissions and exmissions nightmare was ridiculously traumatic for me but with time I have been able to see the humor in it and think many urban mothers will relate to Julia’s difficulties with her precocious son’s teachers and school administrators. So the plot is fiction, the events made up, but the characters of Julia, her friends and her children have been molded in the likeness of people I have known and loved (and in some instances loathed) over the years.
DENIS: So you don’t think people will think these are “outtakes” from our marriage?
ANN: Well, the fact that we’re having this romantic Q&A instead of arguing over visitation rights should sum it up for most people. The couple in the book has a marriage that’s in shambles. Our marriage is a far cry from in shambles … isn’t it?
DENIS: We barely ever even argue. Except after couples therapy. And sometimes during the sessions. And maybe right before we go in. But other than that – and when we’re in the car together and I’m driving – almost never. Speaking of shambles – how about Governor Spitzer’s marriage? Now THAT’S a shambles. Just curious, it’s been all over the news today – what do you think the ‘unsafe acts’ the Governor was paying for may have included?
ANN: Probably bondage stuff. Maybe some flogging. Hey, I see where you’re going with this. More hits!
DENIS: Really, last night was enough. Let’s give the welts time to scab over.
ANN: No, I mean hits to my site.
DENIS: Ok, calm down. How many more questions do I need to ask?
ANN: Maybe end with a leading question about what type of person might enjoy the book.
DENIS: Okay, would a penis enlarging, barely legal, hot young girl like the book?
ANN: She very well might, and again, smart idea, but those search words will probably attract nothing but fourteen year old boys. Not sure it’s for them. But seriously, thanks for doing the interview honey.
DENIS: It was my pleasure. Where’s the remote?

The other day I was taught how to look at my “web stats,” that is, how to see the amount of traffic on my website. Guess what my new obsession is? It turns out, there are more than just a few relatives looking at my blog each day – I’m getting lots of hits, which thrills me, but it was suggested that I blog about my book Outtakes From A Marriage more, since that’s why I started this whole blog in the first place. And I will.

But first, I have to blog about Daphne, because I just realized that, though I’ve featured her photo a few times, I haven’t really introduced her properly. I love my two children equally, but among my dogs, Daphne is my absolute favorite (the other dogs seem fine with this). Anyway, here she is on a recent hike:

We got Daphne in …brace yourself …be ready to hate me/report me to PETA/send me death-threats…A PET SHOP. There, I’ve said it. Yes, I know that pet shops are the scourge of society, that the puppies come from inhumane puppy mills, that they’re bred willy-nilly, etc. I know.

Now, be ready to move me a notch lower in your esteem, when I tell you that she’s a LABRADOODLE. That’s right, the ridiculously yuppy/trendy hybrids that are seen, suddenly, running across every other suburban lawn and trotting around urban dog parks. I know. I get it. I suck. But I didn’t go to a pet shop looking for a Labradoodle. I went there looking for a dog brush. This was four years ago and I was at the dreaded mall with my kids. They were shopping for video games and I was killing time. I walked past the pet store and decided to stop in and pick up a brush. It was shedding season and we had wolfhounds at home. When I walked in, one of the workers was walking past with this very floppy, scruffy, blonde puppy in her arms. I think you know what happened next. I asked if I could pet the puppy, I asked if I could play with the puppy. The puppy was keen, alert, made eye-contact, attacked my shoelaces.Within the hour she was seated between my kids in the backseat of my car, and to this day there’s no place else she’d rather be.

While I was contemplating the purchase of this puppy, I weighed out all the moral implications. I had scolded friends who had bought puppies in pet shops. But this puppy had already been born. She had just arrived at the pet shop the day before and who knew how long she’d have to stay in her smelly cage, her wet nose pressed up against the glass. I could see how bright she was; what if stupid people bought her? What if they were cruel and left her chained up in the scorching sun all day? Again, I know – not the right logic. Anyway, puppy mill or no, this dog is a genetic marvel. Her IQ is off the charts. And just look at her!

Where do I begin? She’s got a great sense of humor. For example, she likes carrying stuff around and when she wants to get my attention she will offer me a sock or something. If I’m busy, I won’t really respond to the sock, so she looks for something really funny to carry to me, like an over-sized stuffed animal or a small piece of furniture. She knows she’s being funny when she does this, because, as she approaches, her entire hind end wags slowly at her own gag and her eyes narrow with mirth. She knows I’m about to start snorting with laughter, and this makes her laugh with her body, the way dogs do. She will go to give me the thing and when I reach for it, she will turn away so that it’s just out of my grasp – another favorite joke of hers. Like most dogs, she doesn’t understand one of the basic tenets of comedy, which is that a thing is usually only funny the first time. Daphne thinks it’s just as funny the fortieth time and has no idea why I am not still hooting with laughter when she tries to hand me the sofa cushion again and again and again.

She also thinks it’s very funny to push the laptop off my lap. She does this when she’s lying next to me in bed and I’m trying to write something. First she’ll just tap it once or twice with the tip of her paw, and when I smile, she thumps the bed with her tail. Then she taps it a little harder. Once, she accidentally closed the laptop doing this and apparently she found my reaction very amusing ( I thought I had lost something I had written and was spazzing out) and ever since, she’s been trying to repeat the joke. Usually, she succeeds in knocking the laptop off my lap.

And she’s smart. She understands everything I say. She is at my side, always, when I’m home, and would like to go everywhere with me when I leave.

Sometimes I can’t take her along, so when I walk through the house and she sees by my energy, that I’m about to leave, she becomes giddy with anticipation and begins to prance alongside me. I will then say to her, in the same tone I would use when speaking to any human, “Oh, sorry, I can’t take you with me,” and she will stop dead in her tracks, her whole body sagging with disappointment. We can be lying in bed together and I will say to her, casually, “Well, I guess I’ll go take a shower and then let’s go into town. I need to get some gas,” and when I go outside, she’ll be sitting next to the car, all ready to go. I have a convertible and she spends her entire summer in the driveway, seated in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, waiting for me to get in and start driving. Did I mention that she can open doors? She can. She knows how to hit the handle of all our storm doors with her paw and then, when it unlatches, she pushes the door open and out she goes. She only wandered from the property once, during her adolescence. She was picked up by the dog officer and spent the night in the pound. I don’t know what happened to Daphne when she was in the can, but she was apparently scared straight because she has never strayed again.

Oh, I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there. She’s a dear friend, my Daphne. Now go check out my book!

Last night we attended a screening of Recount, the new HBO film about the 2000 election fiasco in Florida.

The film stars Denis, Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson among many others, and it was directed by Jay Roach (Meet The Family, all the Austin Powers movies). The performances are all wonderful, of course, with that cast, but what really makes the movie outstanding is the great script, written by a formerly unknown screenwriter named Danny Strong. If you go to the HBO/Recount website, you will find an interview with Mr. Strong, which I found very interesting.

Here are Kevin, Laura, Jay Roach and Denis.

I was nestled in among the photographers, and journalists, as usual, listening to their comments about the stars who lined up for photos. I love Laura Dern’s smile so much. Every muscle in her face smiles and somehow, it breaks your heart to see it – or mine anyway, because it always reminds me of the many fragile yet courageous characters she has portrayed so brilliantly over the years. In Recount, she does a scathingly funny and dead-on Katherine Harris (Florida’s dull-witted state Attorney General). Denis plays Michael Whouley, Gore’s Chief Field Officer and a key Democratic strategist from Boston. Denis and I went up to Boston last fall so that Denis could meet him just before shooting began. Whouley is a very private man but a powerful resource for Democratic campaigns. Kevin Spacey plays Ron Klain, Gore’s Chief of Staff. Tom Wilkinson plays James Baker.

Who else was there? Naomi Watts, Mike Myers. My friends Bob and Nancy. All sorts of studio and industry executives. A giant who worked for security and whose picture Denis forbade me to take. The man was a living, breathing giant, I tell you, standing right out in front of MOMA, talking into his sleeve. Now that I think of it, there must have been some important politician there last night because there were quite a few people talking into their sleeves.

One day, last fall, my friend Paula and I were in ABC Carpet and Home in Manhattan. Paula is an interior designer (among many other things) and so I was running around with her, envying her very fun job. Anyway, we hadn’t seen each other for awhile and as we walked up the stairs from floor to floor, we were chattering and laughing with such gusto that we barely registered the fact that there were all sorts of men and women on each landing. They were all dressed in suits, talking into their sleeves. Finally, we walked into the Bath and Bedding floor and Paula grabbed my arm. “It’s ….her!” she said. “It’s Laura Bush!” So I turned and there, no more than three feet away from me, was that walking zombie Laura Bush. She smiled toward me – I can’t really say she smiled at me, because that would require some focusing of the eyes. Whatever medication cocktail sustains her these days (can you imagine trying to dull that level of shame?), has turned her eyes into two flat, glassy, unfocusing pools. One eye seemed to be a little crossed. It was hard to imagine that she wasn’t seeing double. And yet she smiled toward us, and we smiled back. And then she floated off, buoyed by her assistants, and tailed by her huge Secret Service staff.

I couldn’t stop thinking about poor Laura after that. No wonder she’s never interviewed or allowed in front of the cameras. I wonder when they decided it was time for her chemical lobotomy. Does she agree to the drugging, or does George slip her a mickey each morning? Laura, if you’re reading this, do what Jack Nicholson did in Cuckoo’s Nest. Hide the pills under your tongue and then spit them out. Later, you can sneak out a window. I know tons of nice guys you could date, not everyone will reject you. Many people marry losers and go on to meet great men later in life.

I’m fascinated by the women behind certain men, so much so that I wrote a novel about one. Yes, that’s right, I wrote a novel called Outtakes From a Marriage, which will hit bookstores June 3rd!

People often ask me if I miss living in the city. My friends tell me they think it must get terribly depressing to be “stuck” up here in Connecticut all winter long. “Yes,” I tell them, “it’s awful. You’d hate it!” Then I receive all sorts of sympathy and attention and kindness from them, because it seems that nothing pleases people more than discovering somebody else’s regrets and I’m happy to let people savor their action-packed city life at my expense.

“We’ve thought about moving up there, but I think I would need more …stimulation,” people have said to me. I’m never really sure how to respond to this, but have often been tempted to say, “well, I’m a simpleton, so watching grass grow is about all the stimulation I can handle.” Instead, I say, “It’s mind-numbing. Really, you’d hate it,” because the truth is, I don’t want neighbors who are running around jonesing for stimulation all the time. I like neighbors like this:

I have this little nervous condition that offers me stimulation-a-plenty, so I need neighbors like this guy, who lives down the road. He’s a Scottish Highland calf. He likes to ruminate. Me too. Every day I drive past his field and sometimes I have to get out of the car for a proper visit. I have often wanted to offer him a treat, but am against feeding anything that has more than one stomach, plus I really don’t know what is safe or unsafe for cows to eat. But this handsome chap doesn’t need treats – he seems to thrive on compliments. He always wanders over to the fence and waits for me to start in with my gushing praise.

“Good God,” I always say, “you’re making me sick, you’re so cute!” and he blinks and tosses his bangs. “Okay, get in the car,” is what I want to say to him then. I want him to live in our house and sleep in our bed with us. I want to frolic with him in a meadow, then I want to curl up on the couch with him and watch an old movie.

This gorgeous redhead lives at another farm in town. She’s part of a small herd of Scottish Highland Cattle at Maple Bank Farm, which has been owned by the Hurlbut family since the 1700s.

Here’s a photo of their farm stand:

They sell fresh vegetables, homemade pies, yarn spun from their sheep’s wool, homemade jams, flowers, plants, fresh honey, maple syrup, apples from their orchard, fresh blueberries, fresh eggs and the most delicious sweet corn on earth.

Not that you were asking, but I came up with the name of my new novel,

after Denis and I watched Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage, one night last winter.

Scenes From a Marriage was recently re-released on DVD. It’s very long, as it was originally a series on Swedish Television. It’s shot like a documentary but it’s a drama. Like a Christopher Guest film – only not funny. And artfully shot. It’s beautifully shot (okay, it’s not like a Christopher Guest film at all.)

The film, Scenes From a Marriage was made in the 70’s, and my first thought, while watching it, was that the clothes and hairstyles reminded me of my parents and their friends during that time. As the drama unfolded, and this couple’s marriage was revealed as being hopelessly frayed, I became riveted. These people really were like my parents and their friends. And also, I realized, like Denis and me and our friends, and probably all married people, everywhere. I watched it all in one sitting, on a winter night in front of a dying fire. Denis fell asleep during the first 15 minutes and slept right through.

I borrowed something from the film. The Liv Ullman character, at one point, tells her husband of a love affair that she had with her psychiatrist and a shrink/love interest found his way into my novel soon after.

Anyway, Netflix it if you’re a 70s junkie like me. I love 70s films. I watch Klute every couple of months and delight in it anew each time. I watched Klute for the first time, years ago with my sister Meg, and to this day, when I see Meg’s name on the caller ID, I answer the phone, rasping “Bree Daniels,” in Jane Fonda’s sexy whore voice. Meg does the same thing when I call her and it shames me to have to tell you that we actually laugh until we can’t breathe every single time we do this. What can I say; we’re simple people. Anyway, I’ve seen Rosemary’s Baby countless times. For some reason, I find it soothing. I could recite The Godfathers I and II – every word. Our friends Richard LaGravenese and Ted Demme made a documentary called A Decade Under The Influence about 70s films. Netflix that too while you’re at it. Anyway, there’s something very comforting to me about the style of certain 70s era films, even the scary ones.

Okay, I have to list a few more: Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Sting. Dog Day Afternoon, and my all-time favorite – Paper Moon, starring our friend Tatum O’Neal , who is now a star of Rescue Me.

Outtakes From a Marriage hits bookstores on June 3rd.

My mother is in Colorado, visiting my brother, but it’s Mother’s Day, so I thought I would dedicate today’s blog to my dear mother, Judith S. Howe.

My mother is extremely charming. She has an old-fashioned sensibility when it comes to manners and applies them to modern situations, often with interesting results. For example, once, one of her grandchildren persuaded her to take them through the drive-through window at McDonald’s. Judy drove up to the speaker, and said, smiling brightly at it, “Hi, I’m Judy Howe! I’d like two orders of Chicken McNuggets, please.” Then she waited in the traffic line and when it was her turn, she pulled up to the window, and said, gaily, “Hi! Judy Howe!” I’m not sure if this story is as funny in blog form, because you have to get the accent with it. She talks a little bit like Katherine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story.

Here’s my mom with my brother Paul and me, during my very short career as a natural blonde. My mother was about 24 years old.

Here she is with my brother and sister and me, on the beach in Bay Head, NJ. I guess it was the early 70’s. In those days they didn’t know how to diagnose and treat ADHD, so if you were saddled with “special” kids like us, you just had to tough it out.

Okay, this is my mother sitting between Denis and me at our rehearsal dinner, the night before we were married. I don’t think I have ever seen a photograph that better captures the look of sheer terror on a grown man’s face as vividly as this one does. Seriously, Denis looks like he’s just soiled himself. And, I have no idea what was going on with my hair. It was the 80s? Everybody had bangs like that?

She’s not the type of granny who sits around knitting. Here’s a recent photo of her sporting around in the surf with a bunch of dolphins.

I know. She’s beautiful. Mom, I love you. Happy Mother’s Day!

In an earlier blog, I shared the little known fact that the men and women on the other side of the red carpet (photographers/journalists/cameramen) are usually far more attractive and entertaining than the actual stars themselves. Today, I would like to share another secret, which is that the behind-the-scenes workers on any television or film set are usually: a)more educated, b)more hilarious, and c)just all-around happier than not only the stars, but also the general population.

Take Lorraine Coppin, for example. Lorraine works as a Wardrobe Supervisor on Denis’s series, Rescue Me. Lorraine showed up on the set one morning in a gown. Why? Because she had been to a great fashion-industry party the night before and realized as she was leaving the party (at 4:30 in the morning), that her purse was missing. In true Holly GoLightly form, she wasn’t too terribly concerned and decided that since she had no money to get home, she would just walk to Union Square, where a van usually picked up cast and crew to go to the Rescue Me set at 6:00 AM. As she strolled through Manhattan in those darkest hours before dawn, a car pulled up and the driver asked her if she needed a ride.

Lorraine looked the man over very carefully, then asked, “Are you a murderer?”

“No,” said the man.

Satisfied, Lorraine hopped in and not only did the man deliver her in one piece to Union Square, he asked her out on a date!

How Lorraine got into show business: Lorraine’s cousin was a script supervisor who worked on The Bernie Mac Show, and on various films. One day, Lorraine got a frantic call from her cousin. They were on the first day of shooting an independent film, and the Set Costumer was a no-show. Lorraine had attended Rice University with the intention of becoming a lawyer, but had always been interested in fashion. She had worked in the Men’s Department of Barney’s and had become quite adept at dressing men. So she said, “I’ll be the Set Costumer.”

She showed up that day, figured out what she needed to do, and she did it. Then she showed up the next day and then the day after that. The production was so pleased with her work that they asked her to go to Los Angeles with them to finish the shoot, and she gladly agreed and off she went to LA. Now, Lorraine had not been paid for her work and, she naively reasoned that since she was learning as she was going along, perhaps she wasn’t supposed to get paid. In fact, one of her job requirements on that job was to repeatedly rub lotion into the shoulders of Antonio Sabato, Jr. It defied logic to Lorraine, that anybody would need to be paid to rub lotion into the shoulders of Antonio Sabato, Jr. Finally somebody realized that Lorraine had worked for an entire month without pay and she received back pay and the rest is history.

This is Lorraine outside the wardrobe truck. The photo doesn’t do her justice. She’s gorgeous.

The other women who work in wardrobe wouldn’t allow me to take their photos but I did get them to admit to something I had long suspected, which is that the men of “Rescue Me,” could out-diva the Desperate Housewives any day. “Go talk to the ladies in make-up,” they laughed.

When I began this blog, just over a month ago, I made a commitment to myself to write in it every day. Of course, I had little confidence that I would actually do it. I even blogged about my lifelong habit of making all these big plans, and then not following through with them. But, with the exception of one or two days when I was either in the car all day or too busy to sit down and write, I have kept up with my blog. Recently another author asked me how I do it and I explained that I do it out of shame.

Every morning, I wake up around five (I have an old dog with bladder issues who must go out), make coffee, then nestle back into bed with my dogs and my laptop. Usually, the day before, I will have thought of something very clever to blog about, so I will quickly type up the blog – just as I’m doing now. Sometimes the blog was inspired by a photograph, so I will spend some time reformatting the photo. Then I copy the whole thing onto the blog page, and preview it. My blog software allows you to have a look at it all formatted along with the photo before you “publish” it onto the web, and I often chortle with delight at my own wittiness, or blink back tears reading my tender reminiscences. Then I click the “publish” button, and magically the blog appears on the web, for all the world to see.

This is the exact moment that the shame sets in.

Immediately, I log onto my website and view the blog there. It always looks slightly better on the real blog page, for some reason and I breathe a sigh of relief until I start noticing all the typos. I fix these, which takes a little time, have one last look, and then get out of bed so I can drive my daughter to school (my son, who goes to a different school, drives himself). On the drive back from school, I worry that the blog was a little too _____ (fill in the blank: corny/dumb/incoherent/smug/other). When I go home, I log on again and decide that it is one or all of these things. But it’s already up. It’s on the World Wide Web. It’s like graffiti in the bathroom in high school saying, “Ann Leary Sucks.” It’ll stay there until the janitor cleans it up or until I cover it with more graffiti. Graffiti that says, “No she does not!” My next day’s blog is the covering-up graffiti. In my mind, it will hide the shameful previous day’s blog. There have been days when I almost posted two entries in one day, so desperate was I too hide a bad blog.

So I go through all these mental contortions over the blog, feel exposed, de-gloved, humiliated by my own self-reporting, until it dawns on me that, for all I know, nobody reads the stupid thing. I know my mother and sister read it, and I get the odd email from good friends saying they’ve checked it out, but even my husband and kids are too bored to log onto it on a regular basis. Mercifully, I have not yet learned how to see how many “hits” I get in one day.

So, my blog is a daily exercise in overcoming the fact that I’m an outrageous egomaniac with a staggering inferiority complex. It works for me.

Here’s the view from my bed/blogatorium. My legs are on the right in grey sweats:

This is Daphne after she’s pushed the laptop aside with her paws:

This morning I was searching an online image database for photographs (for book publicity) and I found many photos I had never seen before, including this one:

This was probably the first time a professional photographer ever took our picture (besides our wedding). The date on the photo is January 1, 1992. I was twenty-nine years old, and although you can’t tell from the photo, I was pregnant with our daughter, Devin. We were at a party celebrating the opening night of Denis’s one-man show “No Cure For Cancer,” which he was performing at the Actor’s Playhouse in the West Village.

Denis had originally done “No Cure For Cancer” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, a year and a half earlier. We had been temporarily stationed in the UK, for reasons surrounding the birth of our first child, Jack, that are detailed in my book, “An Innocent, A Broad.” When we returned to the US, I had assumed that Denis would go back to work in comedy clubs, as that was our sole source of income at the time. Denis, instead, chose to do “No Cure For Cancer,” off-Broadway. This made me concerned. I was pregnant and hormonal, so by “concerned,” I mean, actually psychotic with anxiety. We had incurred a lot of debt, living in London and now we were trying to live in New York on … I don’t even know what we were living on. I’ll have to ask Denis. I do know that a few weeks before this photo was taken, we received, within one 24-hour period, a notice that our insurance was about to lapse for non-payment (we had a baby and another on the way) and a summons that was delivered by a very frightening man, ordering us to vacate our apartment within 30 days, because we were several months behind in rent. Unfortunately, my poor mother was visiting when these notices arrived and she was beside herself with worry. Anyway, it was a VERY stressful time in our marriage.

I had been against his doing the show from the beginning. I thought it was too big a gamble. What if the critics hated him? What would we eat? Where would we live? But Denis kept saying, “This is it. It’s our chance. I don’t think I can work in comedy clubs for the rest of my life.”

So in the photo, like I said, we were at the opening night party. The show had finally opened after many weeks of rehearsal. It had sold out. Critics were raving. Agents were calling. We didn’t know it then, but within months we would be on a movie location in Mexico with two healthy babies, all our debts paid off. I can’t begin to describe the joy and relief and heady exhilaration of that time – of all of it – our sweet-smelling babies in our bed in the mornings, Denis’s energy, the sudden media attention, the show – but I think the photo says it all.

Denis’s hair is all sweaty and he’s rethinking the show, sorting out which material worked best (I recognize that look). I was so proud. I had been wrong about the show. He was so tired, so exhuasted, satisfied. We were so young.

Driving home the other day, I saw a pair of cardinals. It was a dreary day and cold and there was a dull drizzle that had churned our failing dirt road into mud and left my horse field a boggy marsh.My mind was spinning dark truths at me (cost of replacing road/nobody will buy my book/someday I will die/there are demons who lock children in cellars).

Suddenly this bright red pair of cardinals was swirling across the road. They were like a pair of cartoon hearts flitting in esctatic spirals around each other. Across the road they frolicked and into my neighbor’s field. They bounced and flit about the wet spring grass, then fluttered up into the branches of a thin sapling and suddenly the branches were bouncing and swaying with this bright tumbling fruit. I stomped around in the sodden weeds trying to get a picture, but they wouldn’t hold still. I finally got a shot of this guy as he rested on a wire fence. I wish I was a better photographer. In real life, he was better.