I’m working on a new novel and I’m sometimes led to interesting places while doing my “research” (procrastinating). The book I’m working on is set in a small town in New England and it involves a psychiatrist and a scandal. There is also a theme that involves witches, but you know, the modern kind. Anyway, my internet meanderings led me to this article that was published in TIME Magazine in 1956. You can find it here.

I cannot urge you strongly enough to open this link. It’s an article about a psychologist in 1956 who published a paper in a journal of psychology about modern day witches. This doctor used, as case studies, six young female patients “all of whom were loathed by everybody, including the analyst.” He referred to these loathsome patients as modern-day “hags.”

“ Stein's half-dozen "witches in modern dress" were all youthfully slender, lively of expression, some of them bucktoothed and "prancing" of gait. Although they were married and active sexually, they secretly dreaded the sex act and remained "psychically virgins." They had a "miniminy mouth"; that is, they were " 'mim,' prim, reticent, shy, affected." They tended to be frigid, attract weak, boyish men, hated kissing on the mouth (a witch's kiss was believed to draw out the soul). Often they had affairs, mainly with married men. They hated and hurt men, yet believed they were of loving disposition; they were charming, and yet tortured men.”

This Stein fellow had six of these bucktoothed, prancing, miniminy-mouthed hags in one practice? Honestly, while reading this it occurred to me that I bear more than a passing resemblance to these poor women. I’m not loathed by everybody and I do not have buck teeth, but the prancing gait thing worries me, because I do have a rather animated walk and although I certainly don’t “dread” the sex act, I do consider myself a psychic virgin. I like to think that I’m charming and yet that I torture men, but in reality, especially in recent years, men really seem to take little notice of me at all. The piece is fascinating to me, though, because it was really not written that long ago. The shrink actually used the word “hag” several times to describe these patients. Read it, I’m telling you.

They’ve found another one. It’s been all over the news. They keep showing clips of her standing in front of what seems to be an ordinary suburban home, but when the front door opens, her awful secret is revealed. This sweet, innocent-looking old biddie hasn’t seen fit to throw anything out since the Nixon administration. She’s a hoarder and her grown-up children have ratted her out. It’s a disease, they say on the morning news, on CNN, on CNBC - a disease that creates chaos for those around the hoarder. How did her life get so out of control? To find out, I’m told, tune into Oprah Winfrey later today. These news spots about hoarders used to be a wake-up call to me and I’d spend the next several days trying to unearth my office from years worth of old manuscripts, bills, Christmas wrapping paper, empty hampster cages, sports bras, Easter baskets, dog bones, waffle irons, saddle pads, and magazines. Oh, and catalogs. Hundreds and hundreds of catalogs. Now, I’m so far gone that when I see a fellow hoarder being carted off, my eyes dart from side to side and my heart races. Is that a car I hear pulling up outside? A news van? Oprah’s limousine? I envision myself being led outside to a waiting team of behavioral psychologists, while men in hazmat suits and gas masks bravely enter my home.

I’m really not as bad as the people who end up on Oprah, but I’m getting there. I have children and sometimes they have friends over. Sometimes these friends have parents who pick them up and stop in to chat. I can’t bear the shame of a filthy home so I do what any sensible person would do. When I learn that somebody is about to arrive at my house, I run around grabbing newspapers off the floors, cable bills out of the sink, dog bones off the sofa, socks and sports bras off the kitchen table, etc., and I toss them into the only downstairs room with a door – my office. Then I close the door. When the person arrives, they see a relatively tidy home. I’ll sort out my office later, I tell myself.

I have sought help. I’ve watched the Oprah episodes, I’ve even watched home-improvement shows devoted to cleaning your home and organizing your life, but the extent to which they try to simplify the whole problem is absurd. The solution, according to the experts, is to throw stuff out. Throw out all the catalogs, more are coming, said some house-organizing fanatic on one of these shows. Right, I think, and never find that set of barbecue tools with the industrial-sized tongs I saw in one of them. I know it was a 2006 catalog but I’m not sure if it was Hammacher Schlemmer or the one with all the gardening stuff. I must have those tongs! I’ll never find them if I throw away the old catalogs.

In two months, my daughter will be getting her driver’s license and in order to do so, she will need to show her birth certificate. Her birth certificate is in the office … someplace, and she’s been pestering me about finding it. So, after watching the morning news and processing the shame-by-association, I decided to just get it over with. I would clean the office. Now, five hours later, although I am not even halfway through, there are five contractor sized garbage bags filled with junk in my front hall, and I have learned the following:

A) I have ADD

B) The accumulated stuff was/is crazily organized by stratum. It’s like an archeological dig. The top layer was all stuff from this month, the next layer last month, dating back to the turn of this century. It occurred to me that I should leave everything just as it is. When I want to find the title for our pick-up truck, for example, I need only to figure out what month and year we bought it, and then I can instantly thumb through the pile until I reach that date, and there it will be.

C) I have really bad ADD.

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.

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