For those of you interested in the recap of the Politics & Prose reading, read on. For those of you who like before and after haircut pics, read on. For those of you who want to see a man playing a zither, sorry, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Having only 18 hours to prepare for the reading after I returned home, we wisely spent the first five trying to keep our eyes on our kids who were running around the living room, delighted to be reunited with their toys and still living in Alaska time. I say trying, because I thought I was watching them horizontally from the couch when suddenly a poop appeared in Alden’s potty and a I woke up to her yelling, “I need a wipe!” in my ear. Whoops. After they finally went to bed, as the sun began to rise, I took a quick catnap before heading off to get my hair cut. Matthew wisely made the appointment for me with Brian at Studio B when he got back, knowing that the tundra look would not fly in the big city.

The Tundra Look:

Big City Style:

(Can you believe these pictures were taken mere hours apart? It’s amazing what some product, a good cut, and a flat iron can do. If you’re anywhere near the area, I highly recommend Brian. He always manages to give me a haircut I can take care of, even though I am completely hairstyle handicapped.)

Once that order of business was taken care of, Matthew presented me with an outline I was supposed to follow closely during our presentation. This being a most prestigious bookstore, he was concerned with my tendency to spin us off into tangents that are hard to recover from. The first three lines of the outline are as follows:

I. INTRODUCTION
A. Wendy
B. Selves

I gleaned from this two things:
1. That I should not begin speaking before Wendy introduced us, and
2. That once Wendy was done introducing us, it was ourselves that were supposed to start talking, and not someone else.
It was clearly critical that I stick to the outline.

As Matthew feverishly packed, I read over the outline again and again to make sure I had it in my head and thus would not disappoint Matthew with any of my curveballs. At some point, I must have also fallen asleep, because suddenly it was time to head west into the setting sun. Except that because Matthew is always concerned about arrival times and traffic and logistics, we left at 3PM when the sun was still blazing and the dashboard thermometer read a whopping 106 degrees.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by an official-ish sign on the front table, announcing the details of our reading.

Pleased that all the info seemed correct, we headed to the back to meet up with Mike G. and Wendy to start setting up. Because of Wendy’s striking similarity to Matthew’s favorite Mary-Louise Parker, I took this picture for posterity. See how starstruck he is? Sorry, Mike G. I would have taken another picture with you, but you don’t look like any famous hot actresses.

Though we expected a modest crowd, we still brought a ton of books, so it took about as long to set up as it took to do the whole reading.

Once we were set up, a remarkable thing happened. People showed up.

Many, many more than we had thought. It was extremely gratifying. I suppose this is what happens when one gets the opportunity to read at a top-notch place like P&P. We were delighted. In the following photo, you may note that not everyone in the audience was delighted, but perhaps that was because I said I was going to post this photo on the blog and that anyone in the audience who was there with a secret lover should know that.

It was actually, in all honesty, a fantastic audience who followed up with some great questions, and who enthusiastically chatted with us when all was over. We really were so thrilled with the response. Thanks to all who showed up.

And thanks to those who got us there in the first place, our new friends from P&P, Mike G., Sara and Wendy:

We decided there was only one way to make the evening more perfect:

Bravo, I say, bravo.

For those of you interested in actually hearing the talk, it’s already up online HERE. I haven’t had a listen yet myself, for fear of mortification. Someday I’ll be brave enough. Someday.