Well, dear web, tomorrow is the big day. My book, Outtakes From a Marriage will finally arrive in bookstores. Where you may purchase it. It makes a great gift . Father’s Day is just around the corner. Or just buy it for yourself. You deserve it. Not sure why I’m writing in fragmented sentences. Just am.

So, I arose this morning and headed uptown to the fabulous Paul Labrecque Salon for a blowdry. I needed my hair to look very stylish for the photographer who was going to take my picture after my 1:00 interview with Christine Kearney from Reuters . After my Reuters interview I was scheduled to meet with Nadine Rubin from Page Six Magazine at the W Hotel. On my way uptown, my super publicist Beau Benton called me to say that I could skip my hair appointment because Reuters wasn’t able to find a photographer for the shoot.

“Oh well,” I said, “I’ll have it done anyway for the Page Six thing.”

“They weren’t able to send a photographer either,” Beau said.

I had no idea my book would create such a stir. I decided to go ahead and get my hair styled anyway and the lovely and talented Star Wright gave me one of the best blowjobs of my life (that’s what Brian and Paul, the salon owners call blowdrys - honest).

Then I met with Christine from Reuters and Nadine from the New York Post's Page Six Magazine. Here I am with Nadine:
"

Both Christine and Nadine were smart, funny and sexy. They both had foreign accents which heightened their smart/funny/sexiness to dizzying levels and I was desperate for them to like me. I could see us being friends, had we met in some other capacity, so I did what I do whenever I meet exciting friend-prospects. I overshared.

I confessed. I gossiped. I swore. I talked and I talked and I talked and I talked. Sometimes they forced me to pause for a moment while they tried to ask a question but I usually interrupted their questions with premature answers, then talked circles around my half-baked answer, then asked what the question was again, and when they tried to ask it, I interrupted them all over again.

My damage-control email campaign is about to begin.

Today I did a radio tour. I sat in a studio in Times Square and was interviewed by DJs and talk show hosts in radio stations all over the country.

Most of the interviewers were nice. The most interesting question? What's it like having Dennis Miller mouthing off around the house all the time. I said that I imagined it would be a living hell. Then I said that of course, I could only venture a guess, as I've never met Dennis Miller. The poor man had just spent ten minutes thinking he was interviewing Dennis Miller's wife. He began stammering his apologies and it became clear that he had no idea whose wife it was that he was interviewing and I felt so sorry for him that I ended up repeatedly apologizing to him for not being Dennis Miller's wife.

When I got home I told Denis - my Denis - Denis Leary about it and he insisted that I have met Dennis Miller and I said that wasn't Dennis Miller, it was Jay Mohr and Denis became very annoyed because I really never have any idea who anyone is. Once, I was seated next to Moby at a dinner party. This was years ago and I had spent the summer listening to a Moby CD that Denis had made me, but I had no idea what Moby looked like. So, like I said, at this dinner party, I was seated next to a very sweet, slightly nebbishy-looking guy who seemed a little out of his element. Meg Ryan was there, Jon Stewart, Nora Ephron. I think the party was for Barry Levinson. Anyway, my sweet dinner companion was concerned that there wouldn't be anything for him to eat as he was a vegan. He was just so quiet and unassuming that I realized he was probably quite overwhelmed by the dazzling luminaries in the room and I decided to take him under my wing. I asked one of the wait staff to prepare him a salad and then I explained to him who all the important people were. At one point I asked him what he did for work. He told me that he was a musician. "How nice," I said, imagining him in an orchestra pit, his upper lip quivering above a flute, or perhaps on a subway platform strumming on a mandolin. When we left the party, Denis and I shared a ride with Jon Stewart and his wife Tracey.

"What was Moby like," Tracey asked.
"Moby was there?" I asked, in all my innocence.

Yes, it was Moby whom I had lectured on the ins and outs of fame. And it was Moby whom I had urged to send Denis a "demo CD" of his music, as there was always the chance DENIS MIGHT LIKE IT AND USE IT ON HIS SHOW! Uggggg, I'm blushing bright red just typing this now.

I thought that the folks at Random House weren't selling enough books, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and help them move things along. Here I am pushing a cartload of my novel Outtakes From A Marriage from the warehouse.

I'm planning to push the cart up and down Canal Street and sell the books to tourists.

Just kidding! That's actually the load of books that arrived at The View today. Each and every audience member received a copy. I pushed the cart there from my house. I ordered all these books from Amazon to lower my sales ranking and then I had to do something with them.

Kidding.

But we did go on The View today. I was UNBELIEVABLY nervous. Had a little panic attack in the Green Room, Denis later told me that he didn't think I'd be able to walk to the stage. I was freaking out. Right before we went on, I ran to the bathroom and forgot that the sound guy had attached a microphone to my bosom which was attached to a wire that ran down my top which was attached to a square receiver thing that was clipped to the waistband of my pants. SO, when I unzipped my pants, guess where the receiver thing almost ended up? But I am deft of hand and snatched it up just before it splashed into The View's toilet. The sound guy rigged me back up and told me that the thing has fallen into the toilet many times. Great.

It was a blast. I love The View. Everybody was so unbelievably nice. They really chat you up in the Green Room to try to make you feel relaxed. When we were finished with the segment, Whoopi pulled me aside and said that she had read the book and that she had loved it and and was now desperate to read my first book! I can't tell you what it feels like to have Whoopi Goldberg gazing into your eyes and softly purring those words in that quiet, sexy voice that she has. It was heaven. I was dying.

I can't bear another overly made-up photo of me on my blog so I am posting a photo of some beautiful flowers that I saw today. They are planted along the West Side Highway, just north of Canal Street. I was in the back of a Town Car when I took this picture. I was being driven, thanks to my publishers, as I had several press appearances today. My driver was named Abid. He asked me what my book was about and I said that it was a novel about a marriage. He told me that he had been in his marriage for 23 years, and that his had been an arranged marriage. Abid is from India. He is a Muslim. He met his wife fifteen days before they married. He did not love her when they married, because he did not know her very well, but he loves her very much today. We talked about our sons, who are close in age. We talked about Obama and our hopes and fears for him. I was tired and found Abid to be a very soothing companion, as he spoke encouraging words about the institution of marriage, about the nature of women and about the exciting prospect of having a great American president again someday.

Tonight I will be on the ABC News "What's The Buzz" program at 6:00. I taped that earlier today, after appearing on the Today Show (but before my interview with Paper Magazine). Also, at 6:00, I will be on Candace Bushnell's Sirius Radio show, Sex, Success and Sensibility. It's on Channel 102 on Sirius. If you're not a Sirius subscriber you can go to this link for a 3-day free trial and hear me with Candace on your computer tonight.

Tomorrow, Denis and I will be on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program and then I will be on the New York morning show, CW11.

Denis and I were on MSNBC this morning, talking about... one guess.

Before you click on the link, beware. It's long. The producer had told me that a member of Joe Scarborough's family had just had a premature baby so just before we went live, I told Joe about my book, An Innocent, A Broad,, which was about our premature baby and he thought I wanted to talk about that, because he's such a nice guy, and so Denis, mercifully managed to steer the whole thing back to Outtakes From a Marriage. You'll see. I'm a spaz. My hands go flying all over the place and my hair's a mess. You don't even need to watch it. You've seen enough, trust me.

I just found this video of us on Today in which I have much better hair than the one below. So just watch this and skip the other.

Kathy Lee and Hoda are funny. Before they started shooting, Kathy Lee made a very funny Mister T joke. I laughed too loud, for too long, my foot jiggling madly. I was a nervous wreck. You can't believe how nice the people who work on these shows are though, seriously. When you arrive they make a HUGE deal. We love you, we love your book. Here's our segment producer who loves you. Here's the sound technician who loves you. There's the crowd on the sidewalk! They love you! So by the time the camera is rolling you've completely bought the whole "you're the most loveable thing that's ever walked into this studio" trip and it really helps make you feel less awkward.

Wondering why I keep looking off to the side? That's where the monitor is and I was mesmerized by my own image on television, being the media-savvy gal that I am.

Every year I hang flowering baskets on our front porch.

And every year, a sparrow builds a tiny nest amidst the blooms in one of the hanging baskets, and there she lays her eggs.

It's always the basket that hangs from the same spot on our porch - right near the corner. We're not sure if it's the same spot because it's the same sparrow family each year, or if it just happens to be an ideal location because of the way the porch shades it or something. Anyway, because of the nest, we are unable to water the basket and as the little family hatches and grows, the flowers dry up and die, which seems somehow wonderfully symbiotic to me. I'm not sure if symbiosis is the right word, since only the birds benefit from the relationship. I'll have to ask one of my kids. They go to school. But it's the whole a time to be born, a time to die thing. When the fledgelings are old enough to leave the nest we replace the basket.

WARNING: VERY SAD STORY AHEAD

Denis drinks his coffee on this porch every morning, and - brace yourself, be prepared to report him to PETA, the National Audubon Society, etc - he has a morning cigarette. Relax. He doesn't sit in the chair closest to the nest and there's no proof that second-hand smoke harms bird eggs. Anyway, one morning last week, he was enjoying his coffee and smoke when he heard a little splat. More like a little pat sound, he said. You almost couldn't hear it at all. But he looked over and there was a tiny egg smashed on the porch. It had fallen from the nest. We think the mother must have laid it too close to the side of the basket. As Denis watched (in horror), the mother bird flew down to where the egg had smashed and stared at it. Then she fluttered up to the nest for a moment, then flew back down to the smashed egg. Denis said it looked like any egg that you might break - the baby hadn't even begun to form. The mother tilted her head and stared at the egg with one eye. Then she tilted her head and stared at the egg with the other! Flew back up to the nest and then back down to have another look. It was like she was trying to make sense of the whole thing. It appeared to me that Denis was trying not to cry when he told me about this later. Denis cannot go to zoos, HATES circuses and can't be in the room when Animal Planet is on TV because he can't bear to see any kind of animal cruelty, and even the cruel laws of nature are sometimes too much for him (me too). People are often surprised to learn this about Denis for some reason.

Anyway, the mother seems to have sorted it all out for herself and the remaining eggs are safe and secure. I'll post a photo of her babes when they hatch.

We had a wicked thunderstorm here in Northwestern Connecticut last night and my computer and modem were fried. So no photos on my blog for today. Instead, I will post a very nice review I received from the Boston Globe over the weekend:

"Ann Leary's "Outtakes From a Marriage" is a sly domestic comedy with a razor edge. The author has a keen eye for the excesses of the rich and famous, a subject with which she must be familiar as the wife of actorcomedian Denis Leary. Her experience as a bystander at the celebrity circus serves her well in this engaging variation on the old theme of marital infidelity. ... Readers hoping for titillating insights into the Leary marriage will draw their own conclusions, but "Outtakes From a Marriage" is fiction, and nicely done."

Thanks Boston Globe!

And tonight, I will be reading from Outtake From a Marriage at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble. It's on the corner of Warren and Greenwich Streets. It's at 7:00. It's air-conditioned. It's free. So come on down!

Okay, I've been in a funk all day. Filled with sorrow. I couldn't figure out why and then finally I was able to put my finger on it. I am having a "Too Much Birthday" experience. "Too Much Birthday" is a Berenstain Bears story that I used to read to my kids. It's a complex narrative but I'll summarize: One of the little Berenstain Bears is having a birthday. He has a party. All his friends come to the party. They give him presents. They pay lots of attention to him. He is given a cake and is sung to. Then, he has a complete meltdown and cries hysterically, puzzling his friends and family. This is because the Berenstain Bear is very, very young and has not yet learned to regulate his emotions. His heightened excitement reaches a fever-pitch and then he can't cope.

Well, EXACTLY the same thing happened to me last night. I had a reading at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble. All my friends came. I went to a dinner party afterward. The people at the party paid tons of attention to me. Halfway through the party I realized that I was filled with despair. This was me:

Well, okay, I didn't cry. And fortunately there wasn't a "Search Inside" flag pointing at me (but there might as well be, with the amount of shrink hours I've logged over the years). But I whined at the dinner. I whined to my nice friends. Then I fretted when I got home - fretted and worried aloud to my nice husband and children. Because, I realize today, I am very, very emotionally immature and what is regular excitement for most adults, is just too much for me. So I had some quiet time today. Quiet time and soothing words from my friends, and now I feel better.

I started an Ann Index last week but keep forgetting to update it. Here's today's index.

THE ANN INDEX
Days since Outtakes From a Marriage arrived in bookstores: 7
Amazon Ranking: 1013
Number of Facebook Friends: 101
Number of real friends: more than I deserve (sob)
Days since we last saw our cat Sneakers: 10
Current shame level (1=total self-love, 10=total self-loathing): 8
Total number of amusing anecdotes accrued in my lifetime: 5
Number left untold after last week's interviews: 0
Times this week that I have told my funny story about the time that Denis and I drove our own black Town Car to a red-carpet event: 39
Times anybody but me thought this was funny: 1

Dermot McEvoy from Publishers Weekly was kind enough to do a Q & A with me last week. Here it is.

Then, Monday, the Huffington Post ran this:

The Huffington Post headline was alarming and I'm sure captured the attention of many readers who might otherwise have passed it over. Denis Leary's wife skewered him?

I have not kept up with my blog the way I would like to because my computer was destroyed by lightning last week. Actually the folks at the Apple Store would argue that the lightning surge didn’t destroy my computer. It just destroyed my hard drive. The Apple people explained that this could be fixed but that it would cost me $800.

“It’s a deal,” I said, because my laptop contained many pages of my manuscript for my new book, my very busy calendar (kids' doctors, horse dentist appts, etc), all my email contacts, all the photographs I’ve taken in the past two years, all my music, my address book, two ideas I had for screenplays, a multitude of letters, and a journal.

The laptop spent a week at the Apple Store and then I was notified that it was ready to be picked up, and so I did. When I got home yesterday, I plugged it in and waited in breathless anticipation for the desktop window to light up with my beloved array of photographs and documents that I keep there. Instead, I was greeted by a multimedia extravaganza of welcome. There was much flying through galaxies of planets and many light beams shot across the screen, and then I was asked to register my new Mac because they had fixed my hard drive by REPLACING it.

My laptop looks and feels the same on the outside - there are the same scratches on its cover, the same ding on the corner from the time I dropped it from my car onto Greenwich Street. But when I log on, I am met, not with my messy former life – dozens of icons covering a giant photo of my dog's face - but a sterile blank screen. My computer is like a sloppy but beloved friend who went away and returned with very good hygiene but nothing interesting to say.

Now I’m going to spend the morning trying to find the discs to reload Photoshop and my camera software. My hopes are not high, because I am a little bit disorganized.

On Mother’s Day, I paid tribute to my mother, Judy Howe, by showing beautiful pictures of her that had been taken over the years. Today is Father’s Day and I wanted to do the same for my dad, William Lembeck, as he’s almost as photogenic, but due to computer problems I still cannot post pictures, so I will have to present him to you with words.

(Blogger's note: photo problems solved. Here's a photo of My Dad, Mom, brother Paul and me at the Jersey Shore.)

Dad is 72 years old. He has very blue eyes and hair that was once dark, but of course is now grey. He’s tall and lean. He lives in a place called Friday Harbor, which is an island off the coast of Washington. If you want to visit him from the east coast, even if you’re flying, you have to give yourself two days to get there. When we went to visit him last, we took a little seaplane from the mainland, to cut off the hours long ferry ride, and my dad and his lovely wife Terry were waiting for us on the dock. Dad had a wheelbarrow for our luggage. He thinks ahead. He had thought ahead about the hike he would take us on the minute we dropped off our luggage at the house, and the kayaking we would do later. He had a mountain that needed climbing first thing the following morning and a military reenactment that needed viewing at noon. In the afternoon, there was a boat to be ridden and just a short 5 mile hike to a beach. Denis and I and our two teenagers realized that we should have spent some time conditioning for this visit, as we found ourselves, several times, bent over and gasping for breath on a steep mountainside, while "Pop-Pop" scampered up the trail ahead.

Here's Dad after a brisk jaunt to the top of a fortress.

And here's a shot of him next to the Grand Canyon, taken by Terry. If she told me he had just trekked across the canyon's floor from one end to the other, I would be inclined to believe her.

People ask me how my dad stays in such great shape at his age. The answer is that he never sits still. Ever. I don’t think my dad has ever set foot inside a gym. The activities at a gym – riding a stationary bike, lifting weights, etc, would be a little too sedentary for my dad, who I suspect is the genetic source of my extreme ADD.

Dad has spent his retirement pursuing his lifelong dream of acting. He took to the stage in college, but then embarked on a corporate career in marketing and although he did a little bit of community theater acting when we were young, he was too busy keep up with it. Now he stars in one or two shows a year, which really cuts into the mountain climbing, kayaking, hiking, bicycling, tennis playing, sailing, etc.

He's my Dad, and I love him. Happy Father's Day, Dad!

Check out this interview I did with Rebecca Carroll from Paper Magazine last week.

I've met quite a few interesting people in the days since my book's publication date but Rebecca is definitely one of my favorites. We bonded over coffee. We talked about our kids, our moms, our husbands, how fragile we are sometimes, our writing, our New England childhoods. Oh, and we talked about my book a little too. Rebecca is FASCINATING and I hope to get to interview her when she starts promoting the book she has up her sleeve.

I have done a couple of book signings this past week. Here I am at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca.



And here I am at my favorite bookstore, The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Connecticut. That’s Fran Keilty, the shop’s owner standing next to me.

I never know what to write in a book I’m inscribing. My instinct/desire is to write something along the lines of: “Thank you so much for buying my book. I hope you like it, I’m really sorry if you don’t. Really, don't feel like you HAVE to buy it. But if you do, I can’t thank you enough! You’re so nice. I like what you’re wearing. Thanks again. I love you, Ann”

I recently asked a couple of writer friends what they write when they sign books. One said to always remember that the book you’re signing might end up for sale on a sidewalk one day. Then she said that a book she had once inscribed to her aunt turned up on eBay! The other told me that she simply writes: For (the person’s name) and then signs her name.

So on Saturday, I kept these authors' words in mind. No more offering love, praise, free sex to the book buyer. I simply signed my name. Okay, I used the word love a few times, but only for people I really do love - my daughter's former teacher, the guy who lives down the road whose name I forgot, everybody who said they loved my first book, a woman who bought TEN books as gifts because she thought I was so amusing on Morning Joe, and a woman who thought it was going to be Roxana Robinson signing books that day (she bought my book anyway, how could I not love her for that?)

Here's the link to the Los Angeles Times piece that ran today:
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/

Also, check out Choire Sicha's blog about my blog. Choire was the writer who interviewed me for the LA Times. I really like Choire, whose name is pronounced like this. He interviewed me at my house and insisted he didn't mind my dog placing her muddy muzzle on his lap all afternoon.

So, I blogged a while back about a bird that had built a nest and laid her eggs in one of the hanging plants on our porch. There was a very sad story involved, unfortunately, but I am happy to report that the first of the surviving eggs hatched today. That bright red thing in the center of the nest is baby's open beak. The other eggs have yet to hatch.

Okay, just everybody relax. My camera has a very good zoom lens. I wasn't close to the nest at all. I've been trying to photograph the mother bird for days, but was unable to. Today my daughter went out and got this beautifully framed shot in one try.

I believe she is some kind of a sparrow, but if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me. We were trying to think of a name for her over dinner last night. Because of the unfortunate egg incident, names like "Dropsy" and "Butterfingers" were bandied about. There was some speculation as to whether the falling egg was an accident at all and somebody suggested "Mommy Dearest." But her nest is right outside my office window and I get to watch her every day and I can see that she's a very good mother, though I sense this might be her first brood as she has been a little overdramatic during the gestation period, checking the eggs every minute or two, frantically moving bits of nest here and there. She's a hoverer and a fretter, that's clear. I think we'll call her Jane Sparrow. Plain Jane Sparrow.

Just this, today, an Edith Wharton quote:

"I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawingroom, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes."

I don't usually post two blogs in one day, but one does not appear on television and in print on the same day, everyday (or at least this one doesn't.)

This morning, I was thrilled to discover that USA TODAY had run a very nice feature story about Outtakes From a Marriage.. Now, the photograph is perhaps not the most flattering, I usually leave those extra chins at home, but Donna Freydkin, the reporter who interviewed me for the piece wrote a lovely feature, so thanks Donna!

And, I also had the great pleasure of appearing on Better Connecticut with Scot Haney this morning. My fellow Connecticutites (Connecticutians? Connecticats?) know Scot as the meteorologist/comedian/vocalist extraordinaire from the Channel 3 morning news. Denis and I have been Scot Haney fans for years. How can you not love a man who bursts into song in the middle of a holiday forecast, repeatedly meanders into the traffic forecaster's shots and whose voice threatens to dissolve into sobs when he reads a report about a lost pet? So, when I saw that he now has a morning talk show, I asked my publicist if she could get me on, because I HAD to meet Scot Haney. Between bookings for The View, TODAY, Extra! MSNBC, etc, I received word from the publicist about Better Connecticut. First they didn't know if they could have me on. Then they booked me! And then, later the same week... they cancelled me! I don't know what Connecticut luminary bumped me from my coveted spot next to Scot Haney, but I decided I was out of luck. Then, last week, great news again! Better Connecticut would have me on their show after all!

So this morning I did it. It was a blast. I do love that Scot Haney!

Blogger's note: Sneakers has been missing for weeks. We found his remains yesterday. A coyote got him, as we suspected. I miss him terribly. He had this weird meow that sounded like a human voice and he used to follow me around the barn muttering things at me that I couldn't entirely understand. I understood his tone, though. Sometimes he was cheerful and just chit-chatty. Other times, he was cranky and insistent. You really miss a cat like that. So this post is a reprint, it originally ran in April.

Meet Sneakers. Sneakers is our barn cat. He may look cuddly, but he’s not. Trust me. I know him well. In order to survive, I’ve had to learn to interpret his every expression and anticipate all his needs. In the photograph above, he’s saying, “Put the cat food down …and nobody gets hurt.” He is the king of the barn and has trained me, and all other humans who enter his kingdom, to treat him with a fearful reverence.

Sneakers has his own apartment in the barn. It’s a tackroom that we keep heated for him all winter long. He has a little swinging door through which he enters and exits his apartment, and in which he is liable to get stuck if he doesn’t do something about his ballooning weight. Sometimes in the mornings, if I am very sleepy, I start feeding the horses before I have offered Sneakers his breakfast. Sneakers corrects me when I do this. He always asks politely first. He purrs and rubs against my ankle once, purrs and rubs against my ankle twice, and if I don’t drop the grain buckets and race to get his food, he dig his claws and teeth into my leg and tries to flay my flesh into ribbons. I have scars from this. I’m fully trained now, so he only has to purr and rub my ankle once and I obediently flip open a cat food can and present it to him with a flourish. Denis has a hockey rink near the barn and sometimes he needs to hook up hoses to the faucet in the barn. Sometimes one of his hockey buddies will offer to do this and the guys allow him, because it’s always funny to see a big hockey guy come running, screaming from the barn with a hissing, spitting cat attached to his shin guards.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I'm in my beautiful hometown of Marblehead, Massachusetts. I drove up yesterday because I'm doing a book signing today at the Spirit of 76 Bookstore, from 2:00-4:00.

This morning I went down to the landing and saw a lobster boat unloading its traps.

Then I walked down to the cove near my mother and stepfather's house. This is Brown's Island which sits right off the cove:

When the tide is low, as it is in this photo, you can walk right out to Brown's Island and barely get your ankles wet. When the tide comes in, it's a good long swim back to shore. When I was a teenager, I went to a few parties on Brown's Island and there were times that the tide rolled in with the night and when we were ready to leave, we were forced to whip off our clothes and swim to shore under the light of the moon. I have teenagers now, so I hasten to add that we NEVER consumed alcoholic beverages at these parties. What did we do? Oh, I'm sure we had a campfire, sing-alongs. The usual. Moon-Doggie would whip out his bongos and we'd all dance and get crazy. Good times.

I spent the weekend in Marblehead signing books and catching up with old friends. I also met a “medium” who talks to dead people, which gave me some fodder for the book I'm working on.

There were numerous shipwrecks and pirates and witches in Marblehead's early history, so of course there are lots of ghost stories, as pirates and witches aren’t much for keeping a low-profile in the afterlife, but instead enjoy shrieking at boats at night and, and casting lights on old cemeteries and chasing people up and down stairs. This medium, whose name is Maria, sees ghosts everywhere, all the time, and is very casual about the whole thing. I told her that we have a ghost in our house in Connecticut, and that everybody sees and feels her fabulous other-worldly presence, except for me. Denis sees this ghost all the time. I'm really annoyed by this because I like to think of myself as a very sensitive person, but I have never noticed this ghost. Even our dog Lulu can see her, it seems. She (Lulu) stares at the exact corner of our living room, where Denis tells me he always sees this gray lady pass by, and she growls and raises her hackles in a very suspicious manner (Lulu, not the ghost). When Lulu does this, I always run over to the corner, hoping to feel a chill or a draft or the hair rise on the back of my neck, or something, but apparently I'm too obtuse. It makes me feel, I don't know, rejected ... snubbed by the supernatural.

Anyway, as I was reviewing Marblehead history, I came across the story of the “Old Spite House” which was built on Orne Street in the 1700s.

According to Wikipedia, "In 1716, Thomas Wood, a sail maker, built a home in Marblehead, Massachusetts that subsequently received the sobriquet of The Old Spite House. One theory has it that it was inhabited by two brothers who occupied different sections, wouldn't speak to each other, and refused in spite to sell to the other.[6] In another explanation for the presently occupied, ten-foot (3 m) wide home that is just tall enough to block the view of two other houses on Orne Street, the builder was upset about his tiny share of his father's estate and his revenge was a house to spite his older brothers' views. The Old Spite House still is standing and occupied."

There are a number of "spite houses," in this country, I learned this afternoon. My personal favorite is the Richardson Spite House that was built on Lexington Avenue between 82nd and 83rd Streets in 1882. Click on the link, go ahead, it's a great story.

This morning I'm heading into the city to tape an edition of NPR's "Fresh AIr" with Terry Gross. I'm a huge fan of Terry Gross and am very excited but also anxious about doing the show. I was told that I would be asked to read from my book and have spent the better part of the morning ruling out various excerpts. I can't read the opening chapter because there's too much dialogue and I'm no actress. Whenever I read dialogue aloud, I would like to adopt the persona of the character and try to say the words as she or he might, but just as I begin to form the words in my mouth, I am overcome by a dizzying self-consciousness and I switch course and read the language with all the pizzazz of a third grader reading a term paper about road construction. All the female characters sound like me and all male characters sound like me. The children sound like me and so do the drunkards, elderly and demented.
So I ruled out any parts that have too much dialogue. Then I ruled out some rather funny parts because, taken alone, they sound ... not so funny. Ruled out any parts that described fictitious famous people because I've run into trouble recently with people thinking I was describing real living famous people. The hairdresser and dermatology scenes might make the book sound too chicklit, while the flashbacks, taken out of context, make no sense. I finally narrowed it down to three words in the middle of the book: "Babies change you." I would like to read just those three words because, really, no truer words have ever been spoken.

Residents of Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood left their apartments yesterday and found that Jay Street had been hit by a bomb. There was debris strewn all over the street and sidewalk, ash and soot covered everything. A fire escape had fallen onto a car.

Being New Yorkers, most people just looked up and down the street for the familiar film crews and catering wagons, and then they trudged through the "ash" and "debris" and went about their day. Because it wasn't the site of a terrorist attack, it was a Rescue Me location.

I don't often visit the set but Denis told me that it was going to be a very exciting day with stunts and special-effects and car chases and buildings exploding and, indeed, there was lots to see. Here's the beginning of a police chase scene:

There were dummies lying around on the ground. This one spent the lunch break leaning against Ladder 62 truck:

And there were handsome actors all over the place. This one spent his lunch break chatting with his wife and daughter:

I don't want to give anything away but Rescue Me's fifth season will be explosive, to say the least.

A few months ago, I was introduced to a woman named Lisa Bannon. We were both picking up our dogs from the groomer and Lisa told me that her book club had read my first book, An Innocent, A Broad. My immediate reaction was to spell out my name for Lisa, as I was sure she was confusing me with some other author. My first book, from what I can see on my confusing royalty statements, couldn't possible have sold enough books for a whole book club to have read it. Did they share one book, passing it from one member to the other, I asked Lisa. DId one member read it aloud while the others sewed, like they did in "Gone WIth the Wind?" No, Lisa informed me, they had each bought and read and enjoyed my book.
So I told Lisa that I had a new book, Outtakes From a Marriage coming out and that if her book club wanted to read it, I would come and meet with them, and last night I did just that.

Here we are at the lovely Woodward House restaurant in Bethlehem, CT. The book club members are, from left, Lisa Henry, Marta O'Leary, Michelle Casey, Lisa Bannon, that's me and Kim Pugh on my left. I've actually known Kim Pugh for years (and suspect she's the reason they chose to read my first book, God bless her). Anyway, I can't remember the last time I've had such a fun night out with people I've never met before. One of the Lisas has a son at Yale and another at Trinity. The other Lisa has a Dutch Warmblood stallion that she keeps in her backyard! You have to be a horse person to understand how cool that is. I was full of questions about the logistics of keeping a 1200 lb testosterone charged, ungelded beast and she told me about her feeding and exercise program and also shared the fascinating yet disturbing fact that stallions are able to pleasure themselves, thus easing the sexual tension for everybody. Michelle, who is moving to Cape Cod today, has a beautiful 4 1/2 year old son named Samuel who was born in Ethiopia. Kim, who looks young enough to be in college, has a son Jesse who is starting high school. And the beautiful Marta is so sweet that she was blinking back tears while Michele discussed her moving plans, because she hates goodbyes. I enjoyed these women so much, and they said such wonderful things about my books, that I suddenly hated goodbyes too, and if it was up to me we would still be sitting in that cozy dining room talking about me. Thanks for a wonderful evening Lisa, Kim, Marta, Lisa and Michelle!

Allow me to introduce Pete. Pete lives at North Forty Farm in Roxbury, CT. He's one of those rare and wonderful dogs who can smile:

Pete's a boxer-mix. He weighs over 100 pounds. I'd estimate that fifty pounds of that is head. When you first drive up to North Forty, if Pete hasn't met you before, he will usually rise from his bed next to the riding ring and give you a few short woofs. He's an impressive looking dog, with those big jaws, and if it weren't for his slowly wagging tail and his affable smile, you might think twice about getting out of your car.

Pete's owner Mike is in the army. When he is away, as he is most of the time now, Pete lives with Mike's parents Mariann and Larry. Mariann and Larry dote on Pete, and when they're not busy grooming and cleaning and mucking and tending to all the other duties involved in running a small horse farm, they are brushing out Petey's coat or fluffing up one of his many dog beds.

The other day, Mariann told me that Mike was coming home for the weekend. Pete was lying at her feet. "Yes, Daddy's coming home," Mariann said, and Petey lifted his head and stared off down the driveway, his ears alert, his tail thumping the ground, his mouth turning up, ever so slightly, at the corners.

I was very pleased to wake up this morning and learn that Outtakes From a Marriage is listed as #1 in today's New York Daily News list of "sizzling beach reads."

I have featured most of our dogs and our cat on my blog, but realize the only horse I’ve blogged about is Mark. (More on Mark here, if you're interested. And here.) We have three other horses, so today I present Snoopy.

Snoopy is a draft cross. He was born in Montana. I bought Snoopy when he was three years old, which is technically still a colt. Even at that young age I could see that Snoopy was a very laid-back individual, which was what I was looking for. I wanted a "guest horse" that anybody could sit on and go for a quiet ride without fear of getting bucked off and run away with. A "husband horse." My friend Jen found him for me.

Snoopy is what they call an “easy keeper.” When horse people say that a horse is an "easy-keeper", they are really saying that the horse is a fatty. Nervous and high-strung horses, no matter how much you feed them, tend to look too thin because they burn off the weight pacing and worrying. Snoopy doesn't have this problem.

Snoopy is a gentle giant. My daughter Devin took him to 4-H camp when she was only ten years old and he showed all the fresh ponies how to behave like a gentleman. I have hunted him, paced him, ridden mile of trails on him and Devin has shown him. Snoopy prefers Devin to all of us and he's her horse now. Today we went on a long ride along some of the beautiful country lanes in our town, Devin and Snoopy and Mark and me. Snoopy is a bit of a couch potato, he felt that the hills were a bit much for him, so he did a one-horse performance piece at the end, to demonstrate how exhausted and overworked he was. This was the finale:

"I'm dead. Are you happy now?"