C. says my insanity is showing because there are ants. There are ants, by the way. If you come here you’ll see them. C. says I’m the only one who knows they’re there, but I promise you … come over right now, I won’t even tell you where to look (Scruffy’s dish). I will just mill casually around whistling and you will right off see the ants.

There are a billion of them all hunched down in cracks, waiting for one tiny thing to drop so they can swarm. All billion. I won’t, I swear, need to point anywhere at all (the cherry on the patio).

Do you remember a television show called The State? It was on MTV in the 90′s, my generation was supposed to love it for its sarcastic wit but I’ve never heard of it, not once. Where was I in the 90s while my generation was so busy loving it? Hey generation, you couldn’t call? You couldn’t invite me over to watch? You couldn’t mention even one episode while we filled our coffee mugs up at work? Anyway, Very Short List brought it up today because it’s now on DVD. I’m sure everyone in my generation will rush out to buy it and then tell me they’re at yoga while they secretly watch it.

Today, if I have time — gasp! an ant just crawled over my keys! — I’m starting my stripper memoir. While you’re waiting for it, here’s a rundown of the ones already there.

(The blueberries are bigger than baseballs, write if you want some.)

G. is reading Hemingway and Bailey’s bartending guide. It’s a short neat little book of the drinks that drunken writers got their kicks from. It’s in a pile of books on the table because I’m using it for reference so now my 7-year-old is reading it, a book about drunks, and well that’s one of the perks of having a writer for a mom. The other perk is video games. Mothers who write, statistics repeatedly show, have a higher tolerance for video games in the home than do mothers who don’t.

It’s Agee, by the way, who drank whiskey sours: James Agee. Think Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, think African Queen. Oh, M. and D., here’s a great pub crawl to arrange — let’s find the haunts of drunken writers and drink their signature drink at each haunt. Can we do that this month? It would be toward the end.

The weather brightened up a bit and it appears Maggie’s run away. Or else she’s snooping in my closet, or chasing birds from the cherry tree, or maybe she’s murdered someone and so lying low. Any of it is good if I’m not disturbed.

This week Crane Flies will be done. Done for good. Well, until the publisher gets it and has her own ideas, or maybe not. Or until I obsess with it for the next 9 to 12 months before it comes out; it’s impossible to stop working on a thing, I’ve found. Even the dumbest things I’ve written that nobody reads, I obsess about. Old emails I wish I could rewrite, Christmas letters, thank you notes stuffed in desk drawers, still, because I couldn’t quite get the right tone.

That, though, is neither here nor there. There’s anxiety in the house, much of it mine and surpressed. To ease it I’ve picked more cherries and I plan to make clafoutis. Clafoutis is hard to screw up and because it’s simple (and the cherries are legion) I plan to make two, and I want a cocktail to go with it, or maybe just a glass of rose, and if you come over, and drink a cocktail, I will serve you ice cream with clafoutis and we’ll talk about insects and dog hair and Robert McNamara because it’s all on my brain.

Oh, and marriage, I still need dialogue, you know. If you are married, or have ever been married, and if at any time in your marriage you spoke, will you please write me here. Tell me the things you said, I need dialogue.

It wasn’t Stein’s line it was Hem’s, he thought it in and about Stein. It was when Hadley and Earnest were getting acquainted with Toklas and Gert and it went like this:

“They seemed to like us too and treated us as though we were very good, well mannered and promising children and I felt they forgave us for being in love and being married — time would fix that.”

Time fixes everything.

I’m looking for a Gertrude Stein line this morning and having no luck even though it’s dark out today and I’m much sharper in the dark.  I sent the line some time ago to C. and she loved it – and I did, too, that’s why I sent it – but now I can’t find it.  I will, though, and then I’ll also send it to you.

The line’s from A Moveable Feast, the Paris book, the one we all love — the memoir that’s been rewritten by a grandson and coming out rewritten sometime next week.  I said I wouldn’t buy the new version (I said this quietly, to myself) but C. is buying it so I won’t need to I’ll just read hers and who are we kidding all of us who said quietly to ourselves we wouldn’t buy it?  We know we’re curious as hell — what does or doesn’t the new memoir now say?

Besides, the concept (on further thought) strikes me as brilliant.  I’m going to do the same thing.  I’ll write my memoir but not assemble it and shortly before I die I’ll leave it out where you can’t miss it, perhaps on the kitchen counter.  And then you — any or all of you — (once I die) are more than welcome to arrange it and to add things here and there.  For instance if by then I’ve not collected chickens I think everyone knows to add chickens, and for God’s sake make them exotic.  And if there are no good eccentricities by that time at all (I can’t imagine, that though, can you?) then all of you know to add some and to take creative license — nothing’s off limit.   If I’ve included dull rambling stories — like how I lost my keys at Powell’s and then found them — well, obviously, you’ll know when to cut. 

But that’s what I want.  I want others to interpret my memoirs, I want lovers added liberally, and I want multiple versions of it, too. 

It seems, speaking of rewritten words, that I’ve done it, too, with the book — the one about Paris.  Somewhere along the way, since the last time I read it, I decided “the line”, the one I love, was thought of as Hem pulled away on the train, waving one woman Goodbye with his arm on another.  But that’s not the case at all in the Paris book I have, though I like my case much better.  So I may take my own stab at revision — mine will come out in the fall.

It’s dark, I think I mentioned that; I work better in the dark.  The dogs are staring through the window, I won’t let them in — “Go play!  Go play!”  (That’s what I just yelled.)

McNamara died, I hope he died with peace, you might remember from Fog of War he was struggling with that.

Do well and write me back, as soon as you find Stein’s line.

All you really need is someone to adore you, that’s what I think. Dog, hamster, ant, lover … in the grand scheme it doesn’t matter, it’s the act. Adore, be adored, pass it around. It’s all you need, adoration. That’s what I think anyway. Really.

L. went to Stockton for her mother and a woman named Carmendale lived across the street and adored her. Sometimes I wake up fearful I won’t be adored and I’m a lot like L. so I wonder if she wakes up wondering it, too. If she does, I’d imagine Carmendale’s a lovely gift.

Today I picked cherries from the tree in my yard and they were beautiful. Earlier I woke up and had C. here and, well, that was like the cherries, too. Then there were dogs, they were both sweet and curious and there were kids in the pool. There was a new pond, a thai salad, and at the end of it all a glass of wine. Oh, by the way, not just any wine, but the Biggio-Hamina pinot grigio and if you haven’t bought a case of that, plus at least two of the Ana pinot noir, well then you haven’t lived, but I hope you’re still adored.

G. made us all toast for a snack, toast makes a lovely snack. And the sun went down and we had options but chose the movie inside. I wish I could drop in on L. and Carmendale and I wish I could drop in on you and I wish I could figure out some stupid dialogue for this stupid book. We’re watching a bad movie, but we’ll watch Marnie tomorrow. And I really wish you’d come by — I’ll adore you. Plus, don’t forget, I have cherries. (They’re adorable.)

Today it was 5:00, I know you’re wondering.  (What time I woke up).  I’ve got Hemingway and cocktails on the brain. 

Last night I dined with Barbara and Arthur and as usual it was lovely and, as usual, it made me long for New York.   For one thing, B. and A. have a terrace on 53rd street and it’s as long as the apartment and we should all be there summer nights discussing political scandals and baseball.  Also, when B. and A. are in town I pass time the way summer time should be passed.

In the summer, every day, there should be exercise and work and then proper cocktail hours should be observed where dialogue is, naturally, clever.  Following cocktails a simple dinner — a bottle of wine, maybe, opened — and the night should end at a civil hour and the process repeated again.  That’s how summers should go.  Every day.  Unless, of course, you run marathons. 

Hem is on the brain, I’m sure due to many things.  One is P.  He told me Monday that Hem shot himself in the head to get back at his wife.  I thought that was funny.  Another is T., because for some reason I brought up ‘the line’ and now the line’s in my head and while that’s not so odd — it’s a beautiful line, it’s been in my head before — I’ve been wondering what it was that made me think of it and then bring it up.  I ramble sometimes with T.  Most of the time actually; my cherries, for instance, I talked about twice.  Still, what was it — it had to be something — that made me think of, then trot out, that line.  It’s for me to find out. 

There’s also the grandson.  He’s rewriting the memoir, which is fine I don’t care either way, it’s just in the news and probably what started the whole thing, and then somewhere in all of it I picked up Joyce Carol Oates.  She wrote a story, it is Hem on the last day.  Or the last morning, or in the days leading up to the last day — it’s fiction, it uses devices.  I read it yesterday, and then later had cocktails, and that’s why it’s all on my brain.

Next week C. is here, and we will exercise and work and observe proper hours of cocktails.  You’re welcome to observe them with us.