The night before last I saw a dress rehearsal for The Country Girl, which is certain to be Broadway’s biggest hit this season. It’s directed by Mike Nichols and stars Peter Gallagher, Morgan Freeman and Frances McDormand. The Country Girl is about the wife of an actor and I watched the rehearsal with the wife of one of the actors – my dear friend Paula Harwood Gallagher. Paula has agreed to do a Q&A with me for an upcoming blog in which we will discuss the actor’s wife life. I’ve never been in a Broadway theater during a rehearsal before and it was quite fun sitting up in the mezzanine, just Paula and me. It’s actually hard to decide where to sit in a grand old theater when you can have any seat you want. Some of the orchestra seats had been covered with large make-shift platforms that held Mr. Nichol’s notebooks and coffee machines but the mezzanine was so empty and eerie that I refused to look around for fear I would see a ghost. Then the curtains opened and I was absolutely riveted. The performances in this play are incredible – order your tickets now. Previews started last night, opening night is April 27th.

I had Oprah on the other day. I just had it on, I wasn't watching it. Anyway, as they cut away to a commercial, Oprah said, "Coming up, the words no mother wants to hear from her child..." This interested me because I had already heard the words no mother wants to hear from her child. These words are: "Mom, there's a bat on your pajamas."

This happened a few summers ago now, but I remember every minute of it like it was yesterday. It was early morning. I was sitting at our dining room table in my pajamas, talking on the phone and writing something down. When Devin came downstairs, I stood up for some reason, still nattering away, and she said, “Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!”

I snapped my fingers and frowned - the universal mother’s sign-language for “shut your trap, I’m on the phone.”

“MOM,” Devin said again, her voice rising now. I looked at her, and that’s when she said THOSE WORDS. She was staring down at my thigh, backing up and stammering, “Mom, there’s a …bat on … your… pajamas!”

Time stood still then. I was staring at Devin, blinking, the phone held to my ear. Later, we would puzzle over my eventual response, which was, “Is .. it … real?” For some reason I was whispering and looking intensely into Devin’s eyes, when I said this. I couldn’t bring myself to look down at my pajamas.

“YES!” Devin screamed, and I then I had to look down and there it was - clinging to my threadbare, paper-thin pajama bottoms - a furry, hideously ugly, maniacally grinning brown bat. He gripped my pajamas with claws that came out of – get this – his wings!. He was grimacing up at me! That’s right, he was leering at me with his half-human/half-pig face and the next thing I knew I was standing at the opposite end of our house shrieking my head off and clinging to Devin, who was also shrieking her head off. In our flight through the house I had somehow managed to brush my cheerful, pug-nosed passenger from my pajamas (and drop the phone) and Devin and I just stood there, clinging to each other, alternately shrieking, laughing and crying.

I'm telling this story now because it’s bat season again. The bats are coming out of hibernation and will soon be darkening the sky around our house every evening. Don’t get me wrong - I love the idea of bats. When we bought our place in Connecticut, we were well aware of the area’s bat population and were pleased that our property was inhabited by so many of these useful creatures. According to an article in the local paper, a single brown bat can devour between 3,000 and 7,000 mosquitos in one night. At dusk, Denis and I used to watch them fly out from under the eaves of our old barn and dart about the sky, and we would gaze up at our little mosquito-assassins and smile. In our minds, there was a beautiful symbiosis between the bats and the Learys. We owned the property, but were willing to allow the bats to live on it. In return they would kill all the mosquitoes so that we could sometimes eat our supper outside. We lived under the misconception that there was a mutually understood, unwritten treatise clearly defiining the boundaries of our territories. The bats got the whole outside. The only place off-limits to them was the inside of our house. We knew that bats sometimes carry rabies, but what we didn’t know was that up close, the bat’s creepiness quotient is off the charts, and, like a terrorist, he doesn’t set much store by boundaries. He rules through fear and intimidation and travels about with the smug knowledge that he can go anywhere he damn well pleases. And he does.

NEXT: Bats: Part Two, starring Denis Leary

I found tennis relatively late in life. I wanted exercise, that’s all, and one day, watching my son take a tennis lesson, I thought, now that looks like a good workout. I thought that since I was pushing forty I would probably never be good enough to play any real tennis but chasing the ball around the court for an hour or two a week might help me tone up a bit.

Well, it’s five years later and I’ve just come from my regular Saturday doubles game. Tomorrow I’ll play in my regular Sunday group. Mondays I play in a clinic, Tuesdays I have a regular doubles game. Thursday I play singles with a friend at noon. Wednesdays and Fridays I have no scheduled tennis but I’ll sub if I’m asked. I’m known in these parts as a bit of a tennis whore, because I’m an easy get as a sub. It’s just that I have the privilege of working at home and having kids old enough to take care of themselves which makes me a little more flexible than many people. If somebody needs a sub they know that I’ll usually drop whatever I’m doing and test the sound barrier speeding to the court. I’m obsessed.

Recently somebody told me that everything you need to know about life could be learned on the tennis court. His point was that one must always be in the moment; don’t be filled with self-loathing because of that point you just botched. Move on. Be honest, do your best, don’t stand there admiring your last shot, get ready for the next. If the court is so wise, I wanted to tell him, why won't it tell me how to fix my second serve? Anyway, I thought I might use my blog to share any insights that come my way while playing tennis. Today, it occurred to me that what messes up women in tennis, is our biological tendency to want to look at each other’s faces all the time. I love this book called The Female Brain, by Louann Brizandine, MD. In it she talks about how women and men are neurologically wired quite differently. We women need to bond with each other – it’s a primitive drive that was necessary to protect our offspring. Women like to look at each other’s faces and gauge each other’s emotions all the time. On the tennis court, for me anyway, this creates a problem. When I am receiving a serve, for example, I find myself standing with knees bent and racket ready, but when the ball comes rocketing into my court, I have to say to myself, “watch it into the racket” because if I don’t, my tendency is to watch my opponent's face. I have noticed, in mixed doubles, that men don’t do this. Men watch the ball. They have a hunting instinct that makes them want to follow prey and attack it. Women have that too, but the bonding instinct that makes us want to smile at each other all the time can thwart it. Anyway, that’s what I think happens. It sounds much better than the other explanation which is just that I’m a spaz.

Today I received a review of my book, Outtakes From a Marriage from Publisher’s Weekly, which said that I have “an eye for the comedy of manners of the rich and idle.” Well, thank you very much, PW. Now I’ll turn my eye on some of the less idle, like the participants in this past weekend’s Celebration of Young Writers in Washington, Connecticut. It’s an annual event in which famous actors and writers read the works of students ages 5-18. The readers have included Denis, Frank McCourt, Rose Styron, Mia Farrow, Peter Gallagher, Christine Baranski and many others. The event is a fundraiser for the After School Arts Program. Denis hosts the reading every year.

Here he is chatting with the lovely Rose Styron before the event:

We saw Rose again the following evening at the opening night performance of The Country Girl, starring Peter Gallagher, Morgan Freeman and Frances McDormand, and directed by Mike Nichols. Such an amazing performance by Peter, and everyone. There was a press line as we entered.

And afterwards, a party at Tavern on The Green. Here's Denis with Peter Gallagher:

Denis is a little partial to that particular jacket, and that particular shirt, as you can see. If you saw us leaving for the play last night you would have thought I was going to the Oscars (I overdressed as usual, rube that I am) and he was going to a hockey game. I could blog all day about all the wrong outfits I've worn to events. Fortunately, I'm usually cut out of the photographs when they appear in print.

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.

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, humilitaed 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:

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.

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!

In an effort to create a stir about my forthcoming novel, Outtakes From a Marriage, I have spent the last 24 hours cruising around Facebook begging people to be my friends. I’ve turned Facebook inside out on this friends quest and the process has left me exhausted, humiliated, demoralized and with very few new friends.

It all began when my new cyber-friend Doreen Orion told me that she had heard that fellow Authorbytes author Chris Bohjalian (stay with me now), attributed much if his latest novel’s great success to Facebook. This puzzled me. How could my 12 Facebook friends help me sell my book?, I logged onto Facebook and after a little research, I decided that I needed some new friends…fast.

My friend, author Dani Shapiro (she’s my real, very dear, flesh and blood friend), had 112 friends as of yesterday afternoon. Chris Bohjalian had 485. My teenage kids had hundreds upon hundreds of friends. I had a lot of catching up to do. I left no stone unturned. I peered into all my friends’ Facebook pages, scoured my school and community groups and when I came upon a name that even sounded slightly familiar, I clicked on their “be my friend” button.

I was surprised by the people I found on Facebook. I defy you to find a veterinarian who is not on Facebook. My horse vet was there, my dog vet was there. Every vet I’ve ever known was there. And I was equally surprised by who wasn’t there. My book publicist? Not there. Web designer? Nope. But Eddie Brill was there. I was tempted to call this blog entry “Six Degrees of Eddie Brill,” because his Facebook presence is huge. Denis and Eddie have been good friends ever since they went to Emerson College together. Eddie is a comedian who works on the David Letterman show, so he has Roseanne Barr on his list, Matt Dillon, even Deepak Chopra. Every stand-up comedian I've ever known is on Eddie's list. When I found Deepak amongst Eddie’s friends he had 4802 friends. Now he has 4803.

I still have less than 50 friends, so if you’re reading this and you’re on Facebook, come friend me. I'm here

And I still have no idea how this will help me sell books.

This is my 50th blog entry! To celebrate my sticktoitiveness (don't know why spellcheck is underlining that - it must be a word, I use it all the time) I am not going to write a new entry, but instead, will bask in the sun in my insular Tahiti, while rerunning my very first blog, which was all about how I was not likely to keep up with the blogging.

Here it is:

APRIL 1, 2008

Big Plans

I’m a famous quitter. Ask my family. They’ll tell you about all my big plans. If I had done half the things I planned to do, just in the last five years alone, I’d be a goat farmer, a maker of organic goat cheese, an organic poultry farmer, a volunteer EMT, an importer of Irish Sport Horses, a best-selling novelist, a campaigner for immigrant rights, a Labradoodle breeder, a teacher of English as a second language, a daily trampoline jumper, daily tread-mill jogger and the host of my own talk show. Each of these grand plans was presented to my husband, children, and whoever else would listen, with the same degree of gushing exhilaration as the next, and there was a time when they, too, would get whipped into a lather of excitement over each idea. But no longer. Over the years, my family has learned that there’s no point in preparing the backyard for goats or fantasizing over puppies and sport horses because once I begin to process the actual details of each thing, it always seems easier to just hold-off.

“Really?” my daughter now yawns, “An EMT? Good luck with that.”

“Sure,” my husband will mumble vacantly, staring at the TV, “goats are nice. Why don’t you get started on that?” There’s no need to go into it further with me because they know that as soon as I begin to uncover the minutiae about goat stink, or nightly EMT training sessions, the whole thing will be pushed to the back burner.

So, when I told them that I was starting a blog to go on my new website, a website created to help promote my forthcoming novel, Outtakes from a Marriage, they had a good laugh at my expense. Even a friend with her own blog urged me to be realistic about it. “Everyone plans to blog daily, but sometimes it’s hard to keep up. You really have to commit to it,” she said.

“I’m committed!” I declared, and who wouldn’t be committed to the rosy future I envisioned for my fledgling blog. When I thought about my blog, I could see it, fully formed, a computer screen filled with thousands upon thousands of my very own witty observations and poignant reminiscences. I imagined people quoting my blog, stealing all my funny material from my blog, gathering around the office water cooler to talk about my latest blog. There would be controversies over my blog. When my audience grew, there would be advertisers, book deals. And of course, my own talk show...

That was a month ago. Every day since then I have not started my blog. Because, again, when I took a good hard look at the details – the logistics of blogging, I started to become a little more realistic about the whole thing, and honestly, my prospects as a successful blogger look bleak. First of all, in order to have a blog entry each day, one must write each day. Although I think constantly about writing, the truth is that I often don’t write at all, for days on end. Now, not only will I not be writing my new novel while I’m parked at Marty’s the local coffee shop, swilling coffee and gossiping with my neighbors, but I’ll also not be writing in my blog. Well, I’m going to give it a shot anyway. I will write in my blog each day, even if it’s just a sentence. Then, when people ask that intensely annoying question – “Have you been writing?” I can, for once, say yes without lying.

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.

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.

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

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!

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?)

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.

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!

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?"

Have been a little overwhelmed and haven't been able to blog very much. So here's a photo I took in Marblehead recently. It's a cove at the bottom of my mother's road.

I'm not a beach person. I prefer a cove. I've been calling this beautiful inlet "Doliber's Cove" for years. Recently, I was corrected.

"That's not Doliber's Cove. Doliber's is the next one over," my stepfather scoffed.
"Is it Grace Oliver's Cove?" I asked.
"You're thinking of Grace Oliver's Beach. That's not Gracey Oliver's beach."
"What's it called?" I asked Steve, who's been pulling lobsters out of that cove for many, many years.

"Well it's .... Brown's Island Cove,' he said. 'That's what we've always called it, anyway."

I watched a hurricane from this cove once - well we watched it as long as we could, until the waves started pounding the seawall and then thundered over onto the road. I have swum there at night in the nude. When I learned I was pregnant with our son, I walked to the cove and wondered how the water could be so still. I was full of joy and I stood in the gentle surf and felt the water clasp my ankles and then let them go, again and again and again.

In honor of the Fourth of July, I’ve decided to print an excerpt from my memoir, An Innocent, a Broad. For those who haven’t read it, (and judging by my royalty statements, that probably includes you) the book is about the time that Denis and I went to London for a weekend and stayed for six months, because I went into premature labor with our first child, Jack. We had arrived in London in March. By July 4th, Jack had been born and was out of the hospital but still wasn’t healthy enough to travel by plane so we rented a flat in Islington. Denis did stand-up in London comedy clubs at night and wrote his one-man-show, “No Cure For Cancer,” during the day. I nursed our baby every fifteen minutes, all day and all night.

We were broke. I was a new mother and I was homesick. I was SICK with homesickness. Before that trip to London I had never felt particularly patriotic. You really have to be in a situation where you can’t get here, to appreciate how heavenly it is to be here. In America, I mean. So here’s my little excerpt:

“By the time the Fourth of July rolled around, I imagined that if I ever did make it back to my beloved homeland, I would sink to my knees and kiss her hallowed earth. On that day, I was watching a documentary about Elvis Presley, and he sang a medley that began with “Dixie” and ended with “God Bless America.” Although the only southern state I’ve ever visited is Florida, when Elvis sang “Dixie,” my heart ached for the old times there, and by the time the King finished his mournful ballad, I was sobbing. Right around then, Queen Elizabeth was visiting the United States and was taken on a tour of a Philadelphia housing project. The press followed her into the home of one of the residents, who decided that the best way to greet a famous queen was to give her a big ‘ol bear hug, which sent the queen into a state of shock and was the subject of headlines in the UK for at least a week. To me, the encounter said volumes about British-American relations, and I felt very much like the affable but clueless American woman in the news.

I wanted to go home. I wanted to drink strong cups of brewed coffee and talk on the phone with my mother about nothing important. I wanted to order a sub or a slice to go and drink lemonade made from real lemons and eat fresh corn on the cob. I wanted to meander down a familiar street with my baby in a stroller and know that there was a possibility I might run into an old friend.

An older English doctor I had met at the hospital told me that she’d done one year of college in America. She reminisced about the way she had wanted to be able to walk like the American girls. “The way they ambled along, swinging their arms – I really wanted to emulate their uninhibited style, but I couldn’t.” Now I wanted, more than anything in the world, to go home and move freely and unabashedly like the American girl I used to be. My American, pre-baby self was recalled in my mind now, like a dear, departed friend. Like a dead friend, really and just as we usually retain only rosy memories of our dead friends, when I thought of my former self, it was always in glowing terms. I recalled with affection the girl who loved dogs and horses and dancing at clubs and watching old movies. I remembered how I used to walk home to Charlestown on the North End bridge and how I would smile flirtatiously back at the leering longshoremen and construction workers who shouted unprintable things at me as I passed by. I remembered how I used to wake up on Sundays and buy coffee and the paper on the corner and stop at the local bakery for fresh, hot sticky buns to take home to Denis. I remembered the summers when Denis worked comedy clubs on the Cape and how the club owners put us up in fly-infested cabins for a week and we would swim and eat fried clams and drink beer and stay up all night playing gin rummy and then making love. When I was young, I always thought of myself as worldly and wise beyond my years, but now I was a mother, and I saw my former self as I really was – hopelessly innocent and naïve and unfinished - and I desperately wanted to be that way again."

Yesterday I learned how to use the recording equipment for my new NPR radio show, In House.. Marshall Miles of WHDD patiently showed me how to use the digital recorder and the editing equipment. He made it all look so easy. I admit it was hard to pay attention as I kept daydreaming about all the fascinating people I was going to interview, and how quickly the word was going to spread about In House and its insightful host, Ann Leary. I thought about how I now need to fashion a radio voice and how I no longer need to worry about my hair. I was sent home with my recorder and microphones and later, I tried to interview my daughter as she drove us to dinner, but I couldn't even get the recorder to record.

I went to Marblehead the other night to meet with my sister's book club.

Here they are, the members of the ...I forget the name of the book club but it's an abbreviation that stands for something naughty. Can you believe how tan and gorgeous and sporty-looking they all are? I felt like a sickly, pale-faced consumption victim in their midst. See if you can guess which one is my sister:

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Ooops, the photo's too big and it cut the club in half. Here are the rest of the gals:

I am terribly sorry that you've been unable to hear my IN HOUSE radio interview
with author Dani Shapiro, as there has been a problem with the link to the radio site. Problem should be resolved today. If you live in Northwestern CT, you might have heard it as it was broadcast on Saturday, but otherwise you should be able to hear it here soon.

In the meantime, we have arrived at our vacation home. It's not really our home. We rent it. But I LOVE it here and have spent the past 24 hours trying to think of ways that we could live here. It's just my favorite house in the world. It's been owned by the same family, I think, since they stepped off the Mayflower and paddled out to this lovely island (they seem like sturdy stock, these owners, if they bear any resemblance to their cousins who live next door.) We could never afford to buy this house, but nonetheless, I have been fantasizing about all sorts of way that I could come to own it. I could seduce the owner, I suppose, and marry into the property, but then I'd have to give up him:

He looks so nice with a tan, maybe the owner would marry both of us. I think that's legal in Massachusetts.

Here are the girls rowing around the harbor, right in front of the house.

Here's the view from my window this morning:

Oh please, dear landlord sir, please let us spend the rest of our days here. What could you possibly want with this haunted old place. Only we love it enough to be its rightful heirs. We will devote our lives to its upkeep. We will take in orphans and raise them here. We will commit ourselves to the preservation of the house, its beac