the dog days are over

NICK AND ELLIE ARE DONE.

There are no more words.

Today was pretty brutal -- for all of you who are wondering, idly, why I don't write forty pages every day, it's because the first five pages are reasonable, the first ten pages are mostly manageable, and every ten-page increment is carved out of my brain in such a way that those processing centers are truly no longer capable of processing anything. I drove home last night in a daze, thankful that I could use cruise control (and, btw, I saw FOUR FUCKING DEER by the side of 280 at one a.m. last night -- if I had hit one in California, where I have never seen a deer on the freeway before, I would have been truly upset). I woke up this morning in even more of a daze. Everything felt foggy and weak...and yet I had to rally because I had lunch plans that required me to be coherent and presentable.

So I showered, put on a cute skirt (old) and some brown sweater leggings (new) (oh, and a top, also old - I didn't go to lunch like a bare-breasted fertility goddess, although someone there apparently thought I left my job to have babies rather than write books, so maybe I'm exuding some pheromones). And then I drove down to the water to have lunch with Gretchen, one of my former directors. She was in fine form, and it was good to catch up with her and talk about life. Then I had a second lunch, which just consisted of drinking a diet coke while Katrina ate her first lunch. Then Katrina made me a latte (fancy), I came home and took care of some calls and errands, and then I stared stupidly at my laptop trying to figure out how I was going to think clearly enough to finish this book. Clearly that didn't go well, since when I decided to make a piece of toast with peanut butter, I dropped the bread on the kitchen floor, then picked it up and rinsed it off before putting it in the toaster. Weird.

By the time Terry got home at seven, I was basically nonverbal and unable to tell her anything at all -- so I stopped pretending and came upstairs, where I slogged, successfully, for five hours. And now, the book is done and off to my agent, and I am going to sleep the sleep of the just, then get up tomorrow and try to tackle everything I need to do before I leave for Iowa in five days. And maybe I'll celebrate the book being done -- or maybe not, since it won't feel real until my brain is functioning again. Goodnight!