Organs are fair game again, yes, they’re so rarely out of fashion.  I apologize to you, for my momentary ban.  Please, by all means, bring me your hearts and lungs and rectums.  Please, please, please for crying out loud, on this day of all days, let’s talk about everything as if it all hinged on organs.  Which, arguably, it does. 

You start. 

I’ve had the coverage on because it feels unpatriotic to have a television remote within reach and not.  The sound is down, but I occasionally glance up and I have to tell you – I’ll be deported for this — that while I’m not unhappy, I like our new President, at the same time I’m neither moved or inspired.  Yes, I know, you’re rolling your eyes because I liked Hillary and you think I’m just being petty about that, but she wouldn’t have done it for me either.  It’s just that the goings-on of one little President may not amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, have you considered that?  It might, and it might not.  Hope, fear, yeah, whatever. 

The speech was fine, but they all are.  Teddy’s seizure was unfortunate, but seizures all are.  You see?  It’s cold today, but in winter it usually is.  I still have to drive into Portland soon, I still don’t want to, I’m still looking for a job that pays more than I’m worth, I still can’t find it.  I’m still looking for the cure for angst. 

That’s all.  I had fun at library today, I like stamping books.  Stamping the books at library and getting blue ink on my hands, that’s what inspires me.  The rest is noise.  

I can’t do all the math, it puts my arm to sleep, but if you read this you’ll know, like I do, that Facebook is just like Effexor.  It makes you 3% happier for every two friends who are 9% happy, or something like that, plus it’s free.  So while we’re all here, I have a little lecture for some of you about Facebook.  You know who you are, and in case you don’t, you’ll see I’ve written your name.

Triggertreat:  Where the hell did you go?  Did you drop Facebook?  Don’t you want to be happy?  Facebook makes you happy!  Did you de-friend me?  Are you my first de-friend?  I’m both shocked and awed, but mostly awed.

M., really.  [Sigh.]  There’s no reasonable excuse anymore for you to avoid it.  You and D., both, should Friend me right now and if you don’t by 4pm your time today I’m taking the big Christmas check I wrote out to you back to the bank.

M-III:  Ahem.  Okay, so you set up an account.  Great.  But listen, buddy, I’ve been throwing sheep and octopii at you like there’s no tomorrow and if I give you one more liver we’re both fried.  So man-up, pal, and start passing out organs!

Annie Onomous:  You’re not too old.  How old are you?  Are you older than my mother-in-law who is on Facebook?  Don’t you think playing on Facebook and changing your status every two minutes is more productive than going to the gym or making all those big organic healthy meals?  Think of your family!

H.:  I must insist you get a picture.  It can be of a flower or even a crane fly, I can send you one.  The blue shadow just feels so impersonal, it’s not warm and bubbly like you.  And I want to see your first status on there before your birthday.  I will connect you and Annie, above.  I think you could mentor her.

C.:  Nothing, nevermind.

The rest of you:  If you think you need a lecture, email me here.  I have to get more coffee and work out, so that’s all I have time for right now.  Anna you’re not on the lecture list because I think you’re coming along just fine.  I’m also pleased with how A. jumped into the game, even updating on his phone while crashing my car. 

Oh, right, Brad and Aubrey:  I want soup for lunch, you’ll need to bring it to me.  It has to be broccoli soup from The Sage on 3rd street; a bowl, I think, is $3.50.  Then you can change your status to:  “Aubrey Merdalo and Brad Jackson are bringing Teresa DiFalco her soup.” 

There.  Peace and love, and nothing more.  But maybe a little bit less.

So A. and I have come along way since those shaky early days of Facebook.  Last night, for instance, we got in a fight, about Mad Men.  A. won’t watch it and this says to me that he doesn’t value our marriage or the children it produced or even human life, really. 

So today, rather than refold all of his socks in the way he doesn’t like (what I normally do after a fight) I sent him an invitation to the Mad Men group on Facebook!

Do you know what A. did back?

He sent me a Facebook message!  It was this: 

“Ha ha, cute honey.  Go rent the first few episodes, let’s go from there.”

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  No, no, not Arby’s, a book: 

How Facebook Saved My Marriage and Helped Me Watch Mad Men Again! 

Right? 

I’m seriously brilliant. 

I just threw a sheep at RSG and ML to kick off their campaign, I think it’s an ancient tradition in Toledo.  And, hello, I threw octopuses at a whole bunch of you this morning … no one’s throwing anything back, I’m not doing this for my health. 

I accidentally threw Cindy McCain at myself, I didn’t mean to.  It wasn’t pleasant.

This isn’t about throwing, but did you know that Gustave Flaubert had a three-day writing block while writing Madame B.?  And that in the midst of it he had great tantrums, chewed up the rug and bashed his head on the wall just to get eight lines?  And did you know that it was Oscar Wilde who said, “I spent the morning putting in a comma and the afternoon taking it out.”?

Hmm?  Did you?  I’m just saying.  I’m not doing so bad.   

A. not only accepted me as a Friend, he married me.  I thought that was sweet.  So I tried to give him a shark, but the shark was a dollar so I gave him a barf bag.  I don’t know where everything went.  Yesterday there were so many gifts, today barf bags.  Colleen sent me a box of wine, which I appreciate.  C. still hasn’t thanked me for her bone.  Facebook etiquette’s not what it was when I was a kid.

I’ve been working madly, it’s grueling this stage.  The first ten years are easy.  I’m neglecting everyone, I don’t call or write, I wish you’d come see me and bring gin gimlets. 

I just asked A. to be my Friend, I couldn’t stand it anymore.  I was just adding all of you, after all, to get his attention, to get him to notice me.  Still, it might have been hasty.  I just thought since Jane was sending me organs that I’d send him a liver, I’d already sent Julie Nipp two livers (accidentally, sorry Julie!) and I thought it might be fun to send one to A. 

I get it now, Facebook.  It’s about sending livers!

And also about getting poked, Lisa Austin poked me, I might poke her back.  RSG sent me Flair and I don’t know what I did with it, and there was something else I got and I don’t know what to do with that either, I can’t even find it.

G. and I are going to get vegetables, it’s CSA day.  We have tomatoes and peppers and eggplant and five other things.  I’m in no mood to cook.  Oh, here’s something, this is rich.  The carpet guy came today.  Well, first, before that, a dog, apparently, is too much for me.  This whole place, with the bugs and men and iced tea, it’s all too much, but Scruffy, I think, will have to go.  So the rug guy came, he practically lives here.  He did the rugs in the front room — an area one and smaller one by the door — and then he did the whole thing upstairs.  (Except for the bathroom because it’s tile.)  Anyway he came and cleaned the rugs and now I’ve walked into the other room to see them and the small one is wet.  Yes, with pee, it’s wet with dog pee. 

I know I’ve done it all wrong, it’s not the dog’s fault, it’s me.  I haven’t taken him to the same spot in the yard, or put down papers, or stuffed him in a crate.  But I let him out, we go on walks, there were a few months where I thought we had licked it (not literally.)

And yet.

I’m walking on pee.

I’ll tell you tomorrow if A. let me be his Friend.

And whether I ended up cooking.

And what the five other things are from CSA.  If you’re interested. 

A.’s (my) niece has 564 Friends. 

I have .64 cents in late fees at MovieTime video.

I’m writing about Elvis, the monkey at Alf’s and you could help me a LOT if you know him and tell me stuff about him here.

Don suggested flushing the bees down the loo.  I can see that, why not?  Less ghoulish than the disposal. 

I think I’ve kicked my block, I thought you’d like to know.  It took a moth.  Well, a moth and some Amazon sample chapters of writing books. 

But mostly the moth, there was a pretty dead moth on the floor (it’s a morbid house) and the rest is history.  Well it’s actually present right now, but it will be history when I tell the story in 10 years.  Or even next week.  Not much of a story, though, I doubt I’ll tell it.

Also, I forgot to tell ML that her favorite advisor had a barfy wedding story in the Times.  Here it is, ML, read it and knit.

Ba-dump ching. 

Um, okay so this … is not me.  And it’s not my sister-in-law (“Theresa DiFalco”) either.  What’s with all the Teresa DiFalcos?  I am not her.  I’m me.  And, also, I was never “furious.”

Remember those two things, they haunt me. Even though she is probably perfectly nice, and someone maybe ought to have been furious, still, neither thing captures me at all.

Well, whatever, I’m tired.  I made peach salsa from the peaches my mother picked off her tree.  I served the peach salsa tonight with scallops.  The scallops were so-so.  I’m on a salsa kick, I made some regular tomato salsa yesterday.  A big giant bowl of it.  I have tomatoes, that’s why, I have about a million.  And also, I like salsa.  So in those particular conditions, what the heck would you do.  Huh? 

I’m terribly bored and I’m trying to write and I’m not managing either thing well, you can see that I’m sure.  I should take Scruffy for a walk, will you come with me?

Speaking of Scruffy.  A friend of mine should be Scruffy’s doctor, but he isn’t.  I didn’t know him when I got Scruffy, and well, Scruffy’s delicate, very sensitive to change.  But besides that, this potential Scruffy doctor — let’s call him ”Vet” for simplicity – did the most amazing thing Saturday night.  He went to dinner with me and A.  That’s not the amazing part, though.  Nor are the cigars and martinis and wine and pasta and swervy back roads.  No.  The amazing part is that we kept Very Tall Vet up until late in the morning, after 2.  And on his way home, long after A. and I were both soundly passed out, he stopped at his office to treat a diabetic dog.

Seriously. 

I don’t know.  I think he’s a hero, an unsung one.  Next time he comes over I will sing.  That’s all I’m saying.  Well that and my job totally sucks this week.  I’m in the lurch.  Loo-de-doo. 

M-III has yet to Friend me like he promised.

I upped my usual dose of coffee this morning and am now onto Coke.  (Diet.  You know I don’t like sweet.)

My laptop is hot, it flashed a snide little note about temperature and then shut itself down, I’m not pleased.  I could work on A.’s laptop, I suppose.  I mean I am, already, I’m doing it now, but there are inconveniences. 

I could write in my head from the pool but there are leaves in the pool and remember?  I’m tired.  I don’t have what it takes to get them out.  Moxie, it would take.  Some sort of zest for life that this morning I’m missing. 

There are foul-smelling things in the refrigerator, I put a note up for the other employees.

There are foul-smelling things in the litter box, and also there are bees.  Everywhere.  I’m not sure how they relate to the smells.

I’d like gardenia-scented candles for Christmas if you don’t mind.  And a cooler laptop.  And a tall dark man (hint, “A.”) to sweep the leaves from the pool.

Some of my new boy Friends on Facebook said nice things to me.  So, um, thanks Chris!  And tell Colleen to be my friend, too!  I’ve lifted my “No Girls’ ban, it’s open enrollment now. 

M. sent the greatest email yesterday and I’m going to print it.  Without his permission, of course, so please if you read it do not say anything about it to M.  There were two parts, I might not print them both, but here’s the first:

I thought of you yesterday when I read John Updike’s New Yorker (cover: McCain playing Monopoly) profile of William Maxwell.  Maxwell entirely rewrote some of his novels several times, often taking years to get them ready.  I realize, as I write this, that you have already spent several years on TGW/TFPoH.  Anyway, it made me think of what you’re going through.

Something else, definitely (I hope) NOT what you’re going through, is the description of Maxwell’s suicide attempt when he was 19.  What struck me was that he attributed his attempt to reading too much Walter de la Mare, which gave him a poetic idea of “life after death.”  (page 72).   

Wait …

When time permits, I usually read The New Yorker literally cover-to-cover … Walter de la Mare … didn’t I read something else about him 15 minutes ago?  Sure enough, in Alice Munro’s short story (p. 67!), the narrator comes across (and reprints verbatim) a poem by Walter de la Mare.  About death.

WTF??

Is this the annual Walter de la Mare issue of The New Yorker?  Is this a coincidence?  There are no coincidences.

Wow.  First, thank you M.  Now I’m obsessed with Walter de la Mare!  And M. is right, everyone.  There are no coincidences.  One or more of Walter’s four children has become short on cash and launched a surreptitious campaign to make us want to immediately buy all his books.  Look closely at the glass of whiskey in your magazine ad.  You’ll see a very obvious sillouette of Walter de la Mare carved into the ice. 

Second, I barely work on TGW at all, I merely talk about it.  So technically I’ve invested 10 minutes so far on this book and am not yet suicidal.  Even though, yes, it’s been over the course of 50 years. 

Third, there was a funny cartoon (I only read the cartoons) by Roz Chast in the McCain Monopoly issue about a married couple’s Silent Fight.  Did you see it M.?  Wasn’t it funny?

I’m still tired so I’m going to do jumping jacks.  The second part of M.’s email is about women and if my energy surges, I’ll post it.