I am trying not to think about the pages I sent off in the mail this morning. To whom. For what. To what end. I can’t let my thoughts linger on them because I have been known to get swept up, up, and away, and then the fall is that much harder. I won’t talk about them until there is an outcome, and maybe not even then. Bring it up and I’ll talk instead about the weather.

This should be my new method: complete and total misdirection.

Q: What, I didn’t know you were a writer! Are you writing a novel?

A: (pointing wildly) Oh my god, over there . . . was that a mouse?!

Q: So do you have an agent yet?

A: (pointing wildly) Oh my god, over there . . . was that Paul McCartney?

Et cetera.

Also, I have not yet been able to submit my stories. I have the envelopes. The SASEs. Now I have the stamps for the SASEs. What I do not have are the photocopies of the stories because the Kinko’s on Astor Place has a collection of the worst self-service copiers I have ever known. Three are always broken at any given time, and the ones that do work are either (a) prone to copying horizontal lines straight across your pages for no reason other than they don’t like you, or (b) commandeered by a girl copying flyers for her rock show, which, personally, I think is worthy of the hogging of the one good copier, so I don’t hover and just let her be.

Could a badly copied story ruin a person’s chance of publication? A part of me doesn’t care. Another part of me sort of does care. So I am opting to put this saga aside and deal with it tomorrow.

Of course, this is the way I handle most things in life, for example, my finances. My mom calls it my Scarlett O’Hara. I do the same with the dishes.