Courtney

I am getting toward the end of writing the first draft of POSITIVELY, but I’m not there yet, so I’ve been kind of absent from Live Journal.  Even though the absence is my fault and for a good cause (at least I hope so!), I am bummed out by it.  I really love getting messages in my inbox that someone has commented on something I’ve written.  It’s hard to get comments when I don’t post anything new.

Now I’m trying to think of a really clever, funny story to make up for the fact that I haven’t posted – one that is exceptionally comment-worthy.  But I gotta be honest:  I can’t think of anything.  Maybe it’s because I have a cold again; maybe it’s because I’m consumed with POSITIVELY; maybe it’s just because I’m kind of boring.

Speaking of boring, I’m trying to think of something meaningful and clever to get my mom for Mother’s Day, but I’ve only been able to come up with lame ideas for that, too.  I had thought of something I thought was really funny – I wanted to get her a copy of that new picture book, MY BEAUTIFUL MOMMY.  In case you haven’t heard of it, it’s a book for young readers about plastic surgery.  I thought it sounded hysterical.  I read about it in Newsweek, of all places.  But it doesn’t seem to be available anywhere.

We’re spending Mother’s Day weekend in Lancaster, because my Faux Pa’s granddaughter (that would make her my faux niece) is being bat mitzvahed.  A few of the characters in POSITIVELY are named after my niece, her brothers, and their parents.  (This is part of my attempt to be the favorite aunt.)  I had hoped to bring a copy of my draft manuscript to Lancaster with me but I’m not sure it will be done in time.  I am giving my niece a copy of Siobhan Vivian’s excellent book, A LITTLE FRIENDLY ADVICE, which Siobhan signed for her– I’m hoping this will make me seem even cooler.  I can be the cool aunt who puts her niece and nephews’ names in books and hangs out with other authors who write really great books.

My goodness, this is such a boring entry.  I’ll try to be more interesting next time.  In the meantime, if you think of any good Mother’s Day substitutes for the brilliant but sold-out MY BEAUTIFUL MOMMY, please let me know.

My friend Jake Glaser's television appearances continue!  He was one of the guests on The Rachael Ray Show last Thursday.  (John Krasinski from The Office was the other guest that day.  Coincidentally, I read something about John Krasinski on Meg Cabot’s blog last week – she said a friend of hers had seen him on the street. I came really close to leaving a comment that said I had an idea of why he was in New York, but I restrained myself.  After all, I didn't even get to see John Krasinski myself.)

The taping of Jake’s segment was done over two days – the first day the field producer filmed an interview of Jake, and then shot footage of him skateboarding, meeting with someone from his mom’s foundation, and having dinner with his cousin and me.  If you watch the segment, you can see me very briefly.  I’m the girl in the green sweater at dinner (and if you look VERY closely, you can see Jake’s cousin, who is sitting next to me, looking at the ARC of MY SO-CALLED FAMILY – it’s the book’s television debut!).  Then you see me again sitting next to Jake at a conference table.  We’re passing around a mock-up of an invitation for a big Foundation event.  

Two days after that footage was shot, I went with Jake to the taping of his actual interview with Rachael Ray.  I had to take a day off of work to be there, but I decided to go anyway; after all, when’s the next time I’ll get to hang out backstage at The Rachael Ray Show?  (I would've loved to get a picture of Rachael Ray with my ARC -- if you read the blog, you know how obsessed I am with taking the ARC's picture.  But there wasn't time to do so, and it wasn't really appropriate anyway.)  So I sat behind the set with a couple of the producers and watched Jake's interview on a monitor.  They flashed childhood photos of Jake in the background.  It’s always emotional for me to see footage of Jake’s mom, Elizabeth, on the screen.  She died over thirteen years ago.  It really doesn’t feel like it’s been that long, and I loved seeing the pictures.  They showed her giving a speech, and she was wearing reading glasses that I remembered seeing her wear.  I had forgotten all about her glasses until I saw that video.

My favorite part of the piece was later, when Jake was being interviewed by Rachael.  She asked him what his life was like, and he said, “It’s the opposite of all this.”  I assumed he meant that he usually isn’t being shuttled around New York City in town cars, and being interviewed on television.  But it reminded me of something he said a few year ago, when he was speaking at a Foundation event.  He said something like, “My mom worked really hard so that I could just be an ordinary kid.”

Well, Elizabeth, he’s not exactly ordinary; but still, I think the hard work paid off.

After I left Brody’s apartment, I met up with my fellow 2k8 class member, Jody Feldman, and we took a picture with both of our books.  

I am so star struck by writers, including the 2k8 members; the fact that I am one of them is just plain weird.  I have read 9 of the books so far, and everyone is so talented.  But I think I acted cool and normal in front of Jody.  Then I gushed about her book and made her sign it for me.

I’m hoping to meet the entire class by the end of the year, so I can have my entire 2k8 book collection signed.  In the meantime, I am reading the blog and pinching myself that I’m part of this.

My friend Jake was on TV today!  He was on the CBS Morning Show – you can see it here.

He’s also in People Magazine this week – the issue with “Hollywood’s Hottest Bodies” on the cover.  The article about him starts on page 111.

I met Jake about 16 years ago.  His mother, Elizabeth Glaser, was the co-founder of the Pediatric AIDS Foundation.  She had lost a daughter to AIDS and was infected herself.  Jake was also HIV-positive, and Elizabeth and two friends started the Foundation to try and save Jake’s life.  In 1991, when I was 13 years old, I read about Elizabeth in People Magazine and decided to start volunteering for the Foundation.

Elizabeth died in 1994, when Jake was 10.  It is hard to believe how long it has been.  Now he is 23.  I can remember being afraid to ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up; and now he is a grown up.  He did such a great job on TV this morning.  He sounded very wise.

Jake would probably be embarrassed to know I’m posting about this, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t read the blog so it’s okay.  When I saw him for dinner tonight, I made him pose with one of my ARCs – I’ve been taking pictures of all my friends with the ARCs.  It makes it feel just a little bit more real.  (Note:  Jake did not wear the ski hat on TV.)

I have a very busy weekend ahead of me.  First of all, I have to get back to writing POSITIVELY.  The deadline to hand it in is getting closer, and I took last weekend off from writing because of my parents’ party, along with the fact that I had a cold.  I just don’t write well when I have to blow my nose.  But now I am better.  I turned my computer on early this morning to get the Internet browsing out of the way so I could get to real writing.  Also, my friend Nicole is in town from California.  I have been canceling plans with friends on the weekends, because that is the time I feel I should be writing, but since Nicole lives 3000 miles away, I am making an exception.  So we’re going to have brunch today.  On top of that, I finally got Sheryl Crow’s new CD, and now that I have it, I know I have to listen to it on repeat until I memorize all the words to all the songs.

This is going to sound really dumb, but I feel like Sheryl Crow is a good friend of mine.  I have never met her, but a few years ago I had a dream that she was dating my uncle.  She hosted a big barbecue for the whole family and helped resolve a family feud that has been going on for so many years I barely remember life without it.  In the morning my alarm went off and I immediately thought, “Oh, I’ve just got to call Sheryl and thank her!”  But then I woke up all the way and I realized I didn’t really know Sheryl Crow.  I couldn’t call her since I didn’t have her phone number, and my uncle was too old for her, and anyway, she was dating Lance Armstrong at the time.  So the feud endured, but I put on one of Sheryl Crow’s CD’s and felt better all the same.

I listen to her music a lot while I’m writing – Sheryl, Carly Simon and Madonna are the three most played artists in my apartment.  Sometimes when I’m working on a particularly tough chapter, I have to turn the music down so I can concentrate all the way.  But usually I keep iTunes open, and the music playing softly in the background, like a movie soundtrack.  I made a playlist especially for POSITIVELY, which I call “The Emmy Playlist” – Emmy is the name of the narrator in the book.  There’s a line in one of Sheryl Crow’s songs that I think is all about Emmy, and writing in general:  “What is yours you’ll never lose, and what’s ahead may shine.”

So far I know the words to about three of the songs on Sheryl Crow’s new CD.  There are 11 more songs to go.  I have my work cut out for me.

I got a cold in Chicago – I was there last week and it was VERY cold.  I dressed as warmly as I could, but it didn’t work.  This makes me quite sad.  I hate being sick.  I guess no one really enjoys it, but I think I’m particularly bad at it.  I’m not stoic at all.  When my ears hurt, I want to cry.  I’m drinking lots of orange juice and taking massive quantities of Airborne.  Incidentally, there was a story on ABC News tonight about Airborne not actually working the way it’s supposed to.  Every so often there’s a report on the news that I think is meant just for me, and this was one of those times.  I was literally about to take my next Airborne dose when Charlie Gibson started talking about how it all may be a placebo effect.  Well, I subscribe to placebos.  I don’t care if it’s real or in my imagination, as long as it does something.

I didn’t get any work done this weekend, because we had a big family party, and then of course I was sick.  But today I did get an email from Barnes & Noble’s online store that my copies of The Gollywhopper Games and A Curse As Dark As Gold are on their way to me (along with Sheryl Crow’s new CD), which made me feel better.  I think books have medicinal qualities, and these are the two latest releases from my Class of 2k8 classmates, Jody Feldman and Elizabeth Bunce.  Their books have barely had any time on the shelves and they are already receiving all kinds of acclaim.  I am so proud to be in such company.

And here’s another person I’m proud of – my friend Michelle O’Neil.  Stop by her blog if you get a chance – she’s doing an amazing thing for a family affected by autism.

I’m off to take more Airborne and go to bed.

My first book comes out exactly eight months from today.  In the meantime, I now have a website:
http://www.courtneysheinmel.com/

It was designed by the wonderful Lisa Firke.  Feel free to check it out.  There are loads of surprises (not really, but there are lots of pictures).  It's all things Courtney, all the time.

I'm also told if you google my name, it will help "spark" google to pick up the website in searches, so feel free to google away!

About two and a half years ago, I was watching my favorite show, The Today Show, and there was a segment about a woman named Kelly Corrigan.  It was October, breast cancer awareness month, and Kelly had just finished up treatment.  She had brought her father to Today with her, and she told this great story about how he used to wake up her when she was a little girl.  He would go into her room and throw open the window and shout out, “Hello World!”  (You really had to hear her tell the story; it wasn’t at all annoying.  It was, I thought, the way every kid should be woken up in the morning.)  Kelly seemed like the kind of person you want to be friends with.  In fact, Katie Couric seemed to feel the same way.  She kept Kelly and her dad talking on the couch for fifteen minutes, which is like a month in TV-time.

I remembered Kelly’s name and I googled her a few months later.  It turned out she had a blog, so I signed up for her blog updates.  I was thrilled when I read that she had a book coming out, called The Middle Place.  Better yet, it was a memoir.  At some point I emailed her about it.  When she got her book galleys, she let me read an advance copy.  And she asked me to send her a copy of my book, which made me feel like a real writer.

I met Kelly in person last summer, which was incredibly exciting because by that time I had finished her book, and it was wonderful.  It was about the year she was diagnosed with breast cancer; but it was really about being in “the middle place” – the years when childhood and adulthood overlap, and needing to go home even when you need to grow up.  The book was funny and sad.  Kelly was upbeat, but still utterly relatable.  While I was reading it, I called my best friend and read a couple paragraphs to her out loud.  So when I was visiting my dad in California, I took Marachel and Lily to Berkeley for the day.  They played with Kelly’s kids, and we all had dinner.  When Kelly’s book was published in January, I asked if she would be willing to do a book club reading the next time she was in New York, and she said yes.  In the meantime, her book got onto the New York Times Best-seller list, she was on The Today Show again, and there were tons of reviews of her book in magazines, on blogs, and in newspapers.

I invited some friends for book club, and they invited their friends, and the crowd got too big for my little apartment.  Thankfully, my mom and Faux Pa live in New York City, too, and they said we could have it there.  We brought in a couple dozen folding chairs.  When Kelly walked in, everyone was so excited to meet her.  She seemed really famous all of a sudden.  I watched her walk around the room and introduce herself to people, and I felt proud that I sort of knew her, and that she was there talking to my friends.  Later, she read a chapter from The Middle Place out loud and answered questions.  Then she signed everyone’s books.  As I do with all my favorite books, I got two copies for myself.

I had a seriously good weekend.  Actually, everything started to be seriously good even before the weekend.  On Thursday evening, I went to Simon & Schuster to drop off my first pass, and my editor showed me this:

It is the most beautiful book cover I have ever seen.  I think this is what it must feel like to have a baby, sort of.  I just look at it and think it is the most special, lovely, amazing book cover ever in the world, and I can’t believe it is mine.  I love the girl they picked for Leah, and I love the colors, and I love the way my name looks across the front.  MY NAME!  ON A BOOK JACKET!  My editor gave me a printed out version of the cover mounted on black poster board.  I propped it up on the shelf next to my bed.  I wanted to stay home and stare at it for a few days, maybe a week or so.

But I had to go out, and on Friday, after work, I met up with some of the members of the Class of 2k8, who were in town for the SCBWI conference.  (It is one of my goals to meet all my fellow members of 2k8 – I had previously met Daphne Grab, Liz Gallagher, and Zu Vincent.)  Here’s a picture from Friday night, from left to right:  Kristin O'Donnell Tubb, Donna Freitas, me, Marissa Doyle and N.A. Nelson.

We had such a wonderful dinner, and it was cool to get four people closer to my goal of meeting everyone.  Marissa gave me a button with the 2k8 logo on it, which I pinned onto my purse.  Then, as if that wasn’t enough, I got to spend Saturday morning with this little guy.

He’s my godson, Brody, and he just turned nine months old.  I played with him, fed him some gross peas, and ate a cupcake that he is too young to know he should insist I share with him.  Then I went home, packed up, and met three of my closest friends for a kind of reunion/retreat weekend.  One of them is Brody’s mom, Amy, who I love dearly and thankfully get to see all the time.  The other two are our friends Lindsay and Melissa.  We love them too, but they live outside New York City, so we don’t see each other as much as we want to.  We met in law school, and ever since our graduation in 2002, we’ve talked about taking some kind of trip all together.  We just never got around to it.  So finally we decided to check into a hotel in New York for a night, go to a really great restaurant for dinner, and just hang out like we used to.  Lindsay took this picture of Melissa and me at Nobu last night.  We pretended it was my birthday.  (I don’t know why, but it got us free dessert.)

So now I just got home, and I’m exhausted but very, very happy.  I keep thinking about that Carly Simon song, when she sings, "These are the good old days."

I just logged onto LiveJournal so I could tell you about the fabulous Class of 2k8 contest, but now the halogen light in the corner of my room is making weird noises, so I’m sort of distracted.  It’s kind of crackly, but very faint crackly.  It doesn’t smell smoky or anything like that.  I changed the bulb not too long ago – like maybe two weeks ago.  I know you’re not supposed to touch the glass part of halogen bulbs while you’re installing them, so I was very careful about it.  I held onto the edges . . . but I guess it’s possible that my finger brushed against the glass.  Could that be why it’s crackly?  I hope it’s not about to explode.  I have heard scary stories about halogen lights – how they can catch fire if they come too close to a piece of fabric.  Also, the Bed, Bath & Beyond store near my apartment no longer sells halogen lightbulbs.  I don’t know why, but I’m wondering if it’s because of the fire explosion issue.  It meant that I had to walk several blocks farther from my apartment to buy replacement bulbs this last time.  Now I have three extra halogen bulbs.  Maybe I should just toss them and replace the lamp altogether.  The crackling actually just stopped.  I’m afraid to leave the room now with the light turned on.

But as long as the crackling is over with, I WILL tell you about our 2k8 contest – here’s what you have to do:  click on this link.  Then you can participate in a very cool “virtual” scavenger hunt, and win books from three 2k8 authors.  Speaking of which, I just finished two books by my 2k8 classmates – I HEART YOU, YOU HAUNT ME, by Lisa Schroeder, which is a novel written in verse, and it is so lovely, lyrical and heartfelt.  It will make you cry, but in a good way.  Then I read THE OPPOSITE OF INVISIBLE, by Liz Gallagher, about friendship, and a major crush, and Seattle, and art.  The book feels completely real, and the narrator, Alice, has the truest, clearest voice.   

The light is making a whole different noise now.  It’s even fainter, but it’s driving me crazy.  It’s like something out of Edgar Allen Poe.  I’m going to go investigate . . .

I have several friends with books coming out THIS WEEK, and in celebration, I just ate a pint of Haagen-Dazs ice cream.  Yes, it is barely past 10 o’clock and no, I didn’t even wake up that long ago, but it was the coffee-flavor, which means it’s the morning flavor.

A little about the books and the reason why the ice cream was in order – two of them are the debut novels from my fabulous Class of 2k8 classmates, Liz Gallagher and Lisa Schroeder.  Their books should arrive any day now from Barnes & Noble.  

I’m just so excited about Liz’s book, The Opposite of Invisible, which follows a Seattle teenager as she wrestles with the difference between a crush and love, and love and best friendship.  The one and only Jerry Spinelli called Liz “a writer to remember,” and you can’t really get a better endorsement than that.  Then there’s Lisa’s book, I Heart You, You Haunt Me – it’s a novel in verse about love and grief in which a fifteen-year-old girl’s boyfriend, who is dead but not gone, is keeping her from moving on.  Young Adult (& Kids) Book Central gave it 5 STARS and said it will “keep readers enthralled from start to finish.”  This reader cannot wait to read it!  

Liz and Lisa are the first 2k8ers to have books actually published, and I’m sure it will be well chronicled on our new 2k8 blog!  

My friend Kelly Corrigan also has her first book coming out this week – it’s a memoir called The Middle Place, and I was lucky enough to get to read an advance copy.  Kelly was a young mother going through treatment for breast cancer when she learned her father, George, had bladder cancer.  But the book is not at all depressing . . . and besides, it’s not even just about illness; it’s also about being a daughter, a wife, a mother, a member of a family.  Kelly weaves together stories of being a kid and being a grownup, and what it is to straddle that “middle place” between childhood and adulthood.  She is smart, interesting, hysterically funny and exceedingly real, and trust me:  she tells great stories.  I absolutely LOVED this book.

Okay, I have to get back to work now.  I know I’m not really going to get any writing done this week.  I’ll be too busy reading.

Have you heard of this new video game called Rock Band?  My best friend Arielle has it.  She lives down the hall from me, so the other night, she invited me over so we could play.  She gave me the choice of guitar, drums or microphone.  I picked the mike because I’ve always wanted to be a singer, even though I’m pretty much the worst singer anyone has ever heard.

We started with the song “Should I Stay or Should I Go Now,” because I knew all the words and Arielle thought it wouldn’t be too hard.  She played the drums.  To play the drums, she sat on the couch in front of an actual sort of drum set with four color-coded drums.  Her husband, Greg, played the guitar, which was color-coded too.  It was all hooked up to the TV, which flashed the colors so they knew what keys to hit.  It also displayed the lyrics so I knew when to sing.

The song started.  I gripped the mike.  Arielle and Greg played their instruments, and then the lyrics started running across the screen.  My palms were sweaty.  I was embarrassed to sing in front of Greg.  Arielle already knows how bad I am, but he didn’t know quite how bad.  But I sang anyway.  Then all of a sudden there was some sort of electronic screech, and the “fans” on TV started booing.  Greg turned to me:  “You failed,” he said.

After a couple more failures, Greg ended up going into the other room to watch a movie, but Arielle said we should try some more.  We could still play with two players.  I took the drums, and Arielle took the mike.  The colors came up on the screen.  I started hitting the drums, but not in any particular order.  I was too stressed out to pay attention to what colors I was supposed to hit and when.  I failed again.  “I have NO rhythm,” I told Arielle miserably.  “You sure don’t,” she said.

Eventually I took the mike back and managed to make my way through four or five songs without failing.  Arielle was proud . . . that is, until I insisted on trying to sing “Should I Stay or Should I Go Now” again, and I failed and failed and failed.  The dog walked out of the room, like even he didn’t want to have to listen to me.  I couldn’t make it through more than 41% of the song.  Arielle thought maybe that song in particular was just really hard to sing, so we switched places and she took the mike.  Of course she made it all the way through the song.  She started calling me “Number 41.”

It had been a long night, even though it wasn’t even an hour.  “I think I’m going to go home,” I told Arielle.

This is when I have to remind myself that I can do other things.

I have a friend who is in his second year of law school, and today we started talking about how we will have to take the bar exam in a year and a half.  He said he tried not to think about it too much, because it made him scared.  I told him not to worry.  I said, “I really had a good time that summer.”  I meant it, too, and he looked at me like I was crazy.

This goes back to something my dad taught me when I was young:  one of the greatest skills we possess as human beings is our ability to forget.  We simply don’t have the room in our brains to remember every single thing we do, day in and day out.  We can’t possibly store every experience, every sight, every sound.  We also forget pain, which, my dad explained, is why women often have more than one baby.  

And I guess that is also why I am able to look back sort of fondly on the summer I took the bar:  I don’t remembering the studying as much as I remember being with my friends.  I took a nice long walk through Central Park to bar review class every morning, and then home again in the afternoon.  And thankfully everything ended exactly as I wanted it to.  I only remember crying twice, and both times were at the Javitz Center, on the day of the actual exam.  When I walked into the testing room, I was overcome by the enormity of it.  The room looked like an airplane hanger.  There were thousands of people.  Before the actual test started, my friend Lindsay came through the crowd and hugged me hello.  My eyes started to tear.  “Don’t start,” she told me.  “You can’t start now.  You can cry when it’s over.”  I cried again a few hours later during the lunch break.  I made the mistake of sharing answers from the morning session with a couple friends, and of course my answers were different from theirs.  I stood up and walked away to cry alone.  I felt like I was doomed, like I was failing at the most important thing I would ever do – which seems so ridiculous now since I am no longer practicing law and likely never will again.

But other than those two times, I don’t remember tears.  I remember being elated when it was all over, and I remember the night I heard that I passed the bar.  

There’s a song that Barbra Streisand sings that I’ve always like – “Time Machine,” from her “Emotion” album.  She sings, “In my mind, I can travel back in time, relive the memories that kept my faith alive.”  I’ve always loved that line.  I think that is why I love writing, too.  But it occurs to me now, when I think about the bar, that one of the things I love best about reliving moments is that I am often able to relive them exactly the way I want them to be.  It also makes me feel very lucky to be a writer.

The other day my friend Amanda told me to save the date for her wedding – August 16^th, which happens to be Madonna’s birthday.  This made me think of Lily.  Last summer, when I was in California, I took Lily and her sister, Marachel, to see my friend Kelly.  Upon learning that Kelly shared a birthday with Madonna, Lily exclaimed, “Oh, you lucky child chosen by God!”

Lily is ten years old and, as she likes to point out, I am three times her age.  Nevertheless, she and Marachel, who is twelve, are two of my closest friends.  Here’s another ultra-cool story about Lily from last summer:  Lily had a birthday party to go to, and I went to pick her up at the assigned pick up time.  I parked in the parking lot, but I couldn’t find my way to the pool.  A man saw me wandering around the building and asked if I was there for party pickup.  He said he was picking up his daughter, and he would show me the way.  As we walked inside he said, “Now the problem is going to be getting the kids to come home with us.”  I tried not to look too smug, since I knew it wouldn’t be a problem for me.  I just smiled and nodded.  He was ahead of me when we walked in, and he called to his daughter, who whined about not being done swimming.  I scanned the area for Lily, but she spotted me first.  “Courtney, I love you!” she shouted.   She shot out of the pool in a dolphin-like fashion and raced over to me.  I noticed, as she got closer, that she was being trailed by a line of other kids.  Lily threw her arms around me, and then she stepped aside and said to everyone, “This is Courtney.”  The other kids looked at their feet.  They mumbled “hi.”  A couple of them seemed to be blushing.  Lily turned back to me, “I just have to get my stuff.”  A few minutes later we were walking towards the car and I asked Lily why all those kids came out of the pool to meet me.  “Oh,” she said, somewhat nonchalantly, “I just told them that you’re a really famous author . . . and that you’re my friend.”

Recently, my friend Amy’s three year old son, Madden, decided he didn’t really care for anyone who wasn’t Amy.  To most other people around him, this was a bit irritating.  For me, it bordered on devastating.  You see, it was my goal early on in Madden’s life to be his favorite of all of Amy’s friends.  Up until a couple months ago, it seemed like I had succeeded.  When he was very young and barely spoke a word, he knew my name (or a version of my name – he called me “Gook”).  He loved when I came over to play, rushing over to show me his newest cars and trucks.  He let me put him to sleep at night, and would ask me to sing “a Courtney song,” and when I finished, he would ask for “another Courtney song.”  And just this past summer, he chose to leave Amy behind and come with me to get a sandwich at the supermarket.  I was waiting in line at the counter, and Madden was walking around next to me, muttering something I couldn’t hear.  “What are you saying?” I asked.  “Madden loves Courtney,” he replied.  Then it became a chant, louder and louder:  “Madden loves Courtney!  Madden loves Courtney!”

My, how quickly things change.  Now when I come over, if I say hello to Madden, or touch his cars and trucks, or even look at him too long, he bursts into tears and runs to Amy.  “Don’t worry about it,” Amy said.  “He’s like this with everyone now.”  Don’t worry?  Does she know me at all?  At first I thought I could make Madden like me again if I made him jealous, so when he was crying I picked up his baby brother.  I bounced the baby on my lap, and said how much I loved him.  Then I glanced over at Madden to see if he was watching, but he had just moved farther away from me.  I didn’t know what else to do.  Later on, Madden asked Amy for a cookie and Amy told him he couldn’t have one.  He paused for a second, thinking, and then looked over at me.  “Court?” he asked.  I loved that he called me “Court.”  It was his nickname for me, back when he still liked me, and I seriously considered giving him the cookie just so he would play with me again.  But I knew that would not go over well with Amy.

So the next time I went to visit, I brought cupcakes with me.  I walked in the door, and Madden started crying.  He slid off the couch and curled himself around Amy’s legs.  “When is Courtney going home?” he asked.

“If I go home, I can’t give you the surprise,” I told him.

He seemed to let go of Amy just a little bit.  “What surprise?” he asked.

I pulled the cupcakes out of the bag, and Madden looked at me like I had just pulled a rabbit out of a hat.  He ran to his chair at the dining room table and let me sit next to him so we could eat our cupcakes together.  When Amy’s mother came over a couple hours later, Madden told her all about his surprise cupcake.  “Who got it for you?” his grandmother asked.  “Courtney,” he said, and he grinned at me.  

I’m winning him back, slowly but surely.  Last weekend, he did not cry at all when I was there, and even sat on my lap and posed for a picture with me.  Sure, he sat on Amy’s lap longer.  But I’m bringing him brownies this weekend.

Earlier this week, I went back to my old high school for the alumni book club.  We read a book a month, and then meet with a teacher to talk about it.  I guess it is a testament to how nerdy I am that I paid to belong to this club, but I love going back to school.  I love being a student again – if only for two hours each month.  The elevators look exactly the same, and this makes me very happy.  Riding up in the elevator to the seventh floor, I pretended that nothing had changed.  It worked too:  I felt like I shouldn’t even be in the elevator – I should’ve been taking the stairs like students are supposed to, and if I got caught, I would have to wear my uniform on Friday.

We talked about To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf.  I hadn’t read the book since I was in ninth grade, and I read it again just like I used to read for school – I underlined passages I thought might be discussed.  I took notes in the margins.  Ordinarily, I never do that to books:  most of my books look like they belong in a bookstore.  Their bindings are unbroken, and they are regularly dusted.  The rest of my apartment may be a mess, but my books are pristine.  Anyway, at book club, even with my underlined passages and margins of notes, I felt nervous about not being smart enough, and I was scared that I would be called on and say the wrong thing.  Also, my edition of To The Lighthouse was different than the teacher’s, so whenever she referenced a passage in her book, I had to try and match up the pages in mine to find it, and I was a little behind.  But it all worked out.  I participated in class, and I think I even said a couple smart things.  I was definitely not the star pupil, but I didn’t feel like a complete idiot.

My school’s book club has inspired me to go back and read some of the books that were my favorites in school.  I am reading Beloved, by Toni Morrison now.  Next I plan to read selected stories from a collection by Willa Cather.  I can’t wait to read “Old Mrs. Harris” again.  I remember it as the best short story I ever read.  (I also remember it as one of the longest short stories I ever read – I think it’s about 50 pages long.)  And of course I have to get started on reading the next book for my school book club, because we are meeting again in December.

I bet you didn’t know that you’ve been reading the blog of the sister of the third most beautiful non-celebrity in New York, or something like that.  That’s right – my very own sister, Alyssa, was picked off the street and photographed for this month’s Esquire Magazine.  There is actually a little tiny picture of her in the magazine, part of the feature called “Women We Love.”  How cool is that?

In other cool news, I’ve felt completely like a real writer this weekend, as I am literally surrounded by the copy edits for My So-Called Family, and the marked up manuscripts for Sincerely, Sophie and Sincerely, Katie.  I’m sitting in the middle of my bed with it all spread out around me.  I had to make myself a schedule so it would all get done.  I’ve been pretty good about it:  going through my list and checking things off as I complete them.  I even did my laundry!  But right now I’m taking a break and watching the second half of The Holiday on one of the movie channels, since I only saw the first half when it came out last year.

My dad is in town from California, so the beautiful (and now famous) Alyssa and I will be driving up to Westchester in a little while to see him.  He’s cleaning out my grandmother’s apartment – she moved to California a few months ago.  Last weekend my mother and I went to my grandmother’s apartment to pick up a couple things.  A bird had somehow, inexplicably, gotten in and was flying around my grandmother’s bedroom.  After we ran around in circles and screamed for a few minutes, I went back into the bedroom and very bravely opened up a window while the bird made squawking noises at me.  I haven’t felt that brave since I cooked the lobsters at my friend Amy’s apartment last New Year’s.  But no one, besides my mother, seemed all that impressed.

Anyway, I’m going to finish up watching The Holiday, so I can check that off my list and maybe even do a little more editing before my famous sister calls and says she’s ready to go to Westchester.  Since she’s a celebrity now, I’m pretty much at her beck and call from here on in.