I love Curtis Sittenfeld’s New York Times Book Review essay from 2006 on visiting book groups.  I have had the great honor of being asked to a few book group discussions about Please Excuse My Daughter and it’s always a real treat. Even when it’s bad.  I went to a book group in New Jersey with about twenty women who all seemed like they could have been me.   At the end of the talk one of the women who wasn’t a normal member –a visiting guest– raised her hand and said, “Are we allowed to say we don’t like the book?”  To which I said, “Of course!” But what I really meant was, “No.”  Her comment was that “some of the middle was boring”. I nodded my head as if I was going to take that nugget of wisdom back to my lab and suck out the  parts out that didn’t grab her dumb, under-conditioned head.

That said, if you ever want me to come to your book group, I’d be happy to.  Just don’t invite that woman.

I recently heard about a friend of a friend who was having an affair.  A really major hotsy-totsy, bed and breakfasts, Cancun beaches and Calypos cover-ups affair. I’ve been obsessing over this woman that I’ve never met.  I just keep thinking, “How on God’s green earth does a married woman with three kids in school and dogs and laundry have the time for an affair?”

The way I see it, even if I wanted to have an affair, which I DO NOT, I simply couldn’t fit it into my schedule (my husband was filled with glee when I told him this).  I am jiggidy-jam-packed with kid/dogs/gym/household/facebook/school trips/work/food-prep.  I was up in the middle of the night last night going through my day and thinking, Okay if someone put a gun to my head and said, “You’re going to have an affair with me,” the best I could do was give them the third Wednesday of the month from 11:45 -12:10 and I would be eating my Balance bar for part of that because it would cut into my lunch time. So if they still wanted me with mouth-full and chocolatey teeth, I guess I could do it. But I would need to stop for a bottle of water.

I’d really rather not, though. I don’t like deception, I am not crazy about strangers, I adore my husband and I just think if I had an extra twenty-five minutes in the third Wednesday of the month I could find a better use of that time.  Like thinking up a project to do with K-Fed.