Ferris Bueller's Day Off

A friend told me she was in a therapy session recently, and the therapist quoted my blog to her.

Oh god, I thought. I've become Ferris Bueller.

It's a wonder I have any friends left.

These are strange days. Once, I sat in the car pool line, the checkout lane, the crappy waiting room of the kids' medicaid dental office and I dreamed. The dream went something like this:

INT. - NEW YORK PUBLISHING WORLD

VOICE: Who is this Kyran Pittman? Bring her to me!

Yeah, that dream. Sometimes I'd let it play out all the way to the phone ringing, with an editor or agent on the line, but I'd snap out of it pretty quick. Who was I kidding?

"I'm going to be the lady who writes poems for the Christmas party every year," I wept to a friend one day, after another rejection letter arrived.

My queries took on a doomed tone.

"If you are reading this cover letter, you should probably fire your assistant," I wrote to one agent.

Then one day, independent of anything I was doing except writing on this blog, the phone rang.

It was the New York publishing world.

Dreams that come true are both exactly and yet nothing at all how you thought they would be.

It has been exactly as thrilling as I dreamed it would be to break into the glossies, go to New York, see my name and photo on the newsstand shelf, get approached by agents and editors, and begin work on a book. If nothing else happens from here, if it all evaporates tomorrow, if my coach turns back into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight, I still got to go to the ball. It has already exceeded anything I dared dream. I'm very, very grateful.

But there's plenty I didn't see coming. Like how I would be on that fantasy phone call to my New York agent, but still be sitting in the kids medicaid dental clinic (time zone mix-up). Wearing a giant Louis Vuitton bag, for an extra shot of irony. Or how I'd be making a per word fee that sounds great, but spread out over a year is not getting me out of the medicaid dentist's office anytime soon. On a per hour basis, McDonald's would probably pay better. Plus benefits. Or how restrained I'd have to learn to be in speaking about any of this stuff to the people in my life, when my impulse is to grab everyone and say, holy hell, you won't believe what happened to me today. Not everybody wants to hear it.

I couldn't know how incredibly compressed it would all be.

I took a phone call one day that was straight out of that dream script, and what I mostly remember about it was thinking, I have got to hang up on this guy or I'm going to miss my story deadline.

If it sounds like whining, it isn't meant to be. These are the things that make me laugh and keep me grounded. I don't know if they are properly called "ironic," but I think it's what Alanis was trying to get at.

Life is exciting, but my days are really very boring (m-o-o-n spells paradox, laws, yes). I put in several twelve-hour days this week, making what I hope are last revisions on a big article that has not been anywhere near as fun as trying on Prada. Or even getting salt in a paper cut.

And the book. Everyday (everyday, everyday), I write the book.

Not this day. I'm taking the rest of the day off from writing to just be a Mom. I'm going to make the beds, deliver a classroom snack, and take my kids to a Halloween party. I'm even going to dress up myself, if I can find a pair of rimless glasses and a two-piece dress suit. You betcha.