Whenever I want to feel happy,

I look back on my portraits of Miss Eva.

Come on, now.  Tell me you are smiling, too.  I know you are.  Could a child be more joyful?

Today I worked very hard with my gimpy arm in this ugly half-cast.  Corporate work, mostly.  Emails here and there.  Lots of things to do, plenty of them.  And then, at one point, I stood up.  I had just spelled Frankfurt as Frankford and decided enough was enough.  I walked the first 80 pages of my adult novel out of this room (the novel that had been 270 pages, before I tossed it entire).  Went to another room.  Sat on the couch inside gray, rainy shadows.

I did not know if my skinny 80 pages, 19,000 words, would work.  I sat for two hours holding my breath.

I am breathing now. 

And so my mood improves, and Miss Eva improves it even more, and in precisely an hour from now I'm going to get even happier, because I'll be where A.S. King will be, reading from her brand-new novel, Everybody Sees the Ants.

We have challenged each other to a game of ping pong, Mrs. King and me.  Right now, though, the ball is in her court.

Find her there, Chester County Book and Music Company.  West Chester.  7 PM.