Today, I blog on the Huffington Post.

I am trying, albeit not very hard, to care about Paris Hilton. I would like her story a lot better if she had been in a serious lockup and not the jail infirmary due to an undisclosed malady.

I have to grasp summer tightly. I think about the cold and I can imagine my way back to winter and it’s horrible.

I’d like to say something about Susanna Moore’s new book, The Big Girls, which I just finished. It’s sort of the same book as In the Cut, but a little more deft. Has anyone else noticed this? Dirty, corrupt but sexy cop; intellectual, troubled, overworked narrator. This book actually has shifting narrators and takes place in a prison, which of course makes me interested because I am fascinated by all things prison. But I’d like to know what Moore’s fixation with sexy, no-account cops is. The cop in this book is like the exact same character from In the Cut. I even imagined Mark Ruffalo playing him.

I’m not sure how these things work, but I submitted my first blog posting to the Huffington Post on Sunday, so it should only be a matter of time. Which is to say someday.

I just got the little card in the mail: The Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything is headed for a second printing.

I’m excited. This means that the first print run is nearly gone daddy gone your love is gone, and the teensy typos that have been irking me will be fixed, and there will be lovely newly printed copies of the book in stores near you very soon, and we’re on our way, baby, we’re on our way.

On the reprint postcard, it told me how many copies are being printed, and how many copies are in print total. I have shied away from any sales figures, so this wasn’t something I was seeking out, but hey now I know. Wow. I’m excited. But I don’t want any more information. My agent got my first royalty statement, and knowing that I don’t want to know anything about sales, asked if I wanted her to send it to me, as is standard. I said I’d rather not know. Lo and behold, the royalty statement arrived in the mail on Saturday; it must have been sent accidentally. I’d like the world to recognize my restraint — when I saw what it was, I didn’t look at it and tore it into a billion pieces and threw it away.

I mean, who cares? Royalty checks, those I care about. But for right now, I’ve got a job to do. I’m promoting the book. I’m a salesperson. I have a product I think is fantastic and I want to make sure I convey that to get it in the hands of as many women as possible. The numbers will make me batty. No one likes a batty salesperson.

While I’m in sales mode, here’s a shameless ploy to get you to buy more copies: If you’re a first edition junkie like me, you can probably still get first printing copies for now, but they’re in short supply, so buy early, buy often, for yourself or your darling daughters/granddaughters/best friends/parole officers/dog walkers, et. al. for soon they’ll be collector’s items. Like save-it-and-you-can-retire-off-its-eBay-value-in-50-years rare.

Okay, fine, maybe not, but a girl can hope. A salesman can drive a hard bargain.

For those who’ve been asking about my Huffington Post blogging, the answer is soon. I’ve been deadline-laden for a few weeks but I’m walking towards the light.

Only now my safety school is…the East River Park Black Fog of Exhaust By the FDR Pothole-Pocked Jogging Path That Goes By the Sanitation Department Trash HQ. I can’t help but suspect that the New York Road Runners’ Club knows about me and The Mile and is in a dark conspiracy with Coach Betts, my high school gym teacher.

Entry Number: 180832,

Dear Melissa Kirsch

Thank you again for applying for the ING New York City Marathon 2007. I am sorry to inform you that, unfortunately, you were not selected in the random lottery drawing. I wish we could accept everyone, but we have to limit the size of the field to ensure a top-quality experience - and I hope you get to experience it yourself one day!

Oh really?!?! That’s rich. I’m a full TWO WEEKS into training for my “top-quality experience.” And I don’t mind telling you that I have a blood blister on my future-bunion from my Dean Karnazes-esque regimen. Oh, I’ll just continue with the remaining twenty weeks in hopes that “one day!” you’ll let me into your stupid marathon. — Ed.

[...]

Finally, I encourage you to apply for the ING New York City Marathon 2008. Did you know that if you applied and were denied three years in a row, you are eligible for guaranteed entry the fourth year? (If this is your third consecutive denial, you may already be guaranteed for the 2008 race! E-mail us with your name, date of birth, and a short note and we’ll check our records and get back to you.)

Great! By 2010 I should have paid off my Nike +iPod running sensor with special attachment for non-Nike shoes! By 2010 I will be so old and grizzled from three long years of constant marathon training I will have crickety-crackety knee sockets and gross sinewy calves like the speed-walking ladies in their visors and fluroescent pink shorts, I will have wraparound mirrored sunglasses and skin like an old saddle. I’ll be able to limp my way across the Verrazano Bridge on my stumpy buniony feet, just for the glory in participating in the sack race you call a marathon.

I don’t need you people. I don’t need you one bit. I can run 26.2 miles FOR FUN, my Road Running friends. I don’t need a cheering section or a water stop or the streets of the city closed off or a finish line in Central Park. I can run a marathon any day I want on my very own TREADMILL in any of dozens of air-conditioned branches of the New York Health & Racquet Club! Oh, you’re not a member? Well, I hope “one day!” you get to have THAT life-affirming experience. Don’t hold your breath, New York Road Runners Club! Did I mention NYHRC also offers a summer booze cruise around Manhattan, open only to its exclusive cadre of members? I don’t mind telling you that said booze cruise includes NOT ONLY a cash bar BUT ALSO a breakfast buffet! You heard me! Don’t believe the signs outside every branch of my special Club advertising a price-slashing sale every day. Not true. — Ed.

Thank you so much for your interest in the ING New York City Marathon. I wish you a summer of healthy and gratifying running.

Sincerely,

Mary Wittenberg
President and CEO, New York Road Runners
Race Director, ING New York City Marathon

Okay, super-secretly, I’m relieved. Phew! Close one! Now I can go back to my three-mile jaunts around the housing development. Or do I continue with the training because I do really want to run a marathon and lord knows I’m not getting any younger? What to do? Relief! Disappointment! Relief! Disappointment! Oh, Mary Wittenberg and the New York Road Runners! Quit playing games with my heart! — Ed.

Remember Cowboy Junkies? What happened to them? Springtime, it’s hard to just be in it without saying “soon it will be too hot to bear.” It’s in the 70s every day and we lurch towards summer, dread and anticipation, layering clothes for air conditioning as if going on trans-atlantic flights.

Spring in New York: I’ve been to two Yankee games. A friend’s mother passed away. There are people running faster and slower than me, and they’re all on the path by the East River, gumming up the works. Something about an afternoon spent doing nothing. Sometimes I go out in shorts even though no one wears shorts here. My pedicure is chipped and my ingrown toenail is back again with a vengeance. There is so much work to do. The construction continues. The radio interviews, the difference between hope and expectation.

In New York, on a random Friday, you could walk into the Union Square Barnes & Noble and find Al Gore. I dreamed I went on a book tour with Oprah and Ira Glass. I talk a lot about Al Gore being president.

It’s like 1999, but with less certainty.

Darling “Kidde” brand Carbon Monoxide Detector, I’d totally forgotten you were there. What a surprise, then, to awaken to your deafening screech! What a treat to actually sleep through an hour of your shrieking while integrating it into a dream in which I’m trapped in a cave with about 500 different smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, radon measuring devices from 1961, and am trying to figure out which one is making that noise. Silly me, it was just you, Carbon Monoxide Alarm!

What does this mean? Of course it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the batteries are low and I’m not dying a slow death from poisonous gases. But something tells me that the Kidde Carbon Monoxide Alarm exists for a reason. And I can only rashly jump to the conclusion that that reason is that the demolition site I like to call my country estate is emitting some sort of hazardous situation that is killing me softly with its toxic fumes.

What is going on: BookExpo happened, where I autographed trillions of books, Jewish Book Council Author Two-Minutes-In-Heaven Talent Night happened, some parties, some Seattle friends, a strange urge to write fiction (indulged yesterday when I also woke early, not to an alarm but possibly from the emerging onset of carbon monoxide poisoning that caused me to bolt upright at 4am). Radio interviews. Jackhammering outside. Nerves.

My publisher, Workman, threw a fairly magical party on the roof of Rockefeller Center. There’s a reflecting pool up there. I may never see the city so regally again.