Welcome!

For people who have never been to Laura’s website, hello and thanks so much for visiting! [ADDITIONAL GUSHING DELETED.] If you’re a little confused by Laura’s brant and want to know more about her before jumping, feet first, into her bragging and ranting and sharing her every thought and feeling area, please start at the new section for Laura Zigman beginners called “WHO’S LAURA?” Then, once you’ve gotten the basics and feel somewhat fluent in brantese, please come back here and look around and stay a while!

Laura finally has an idea for a new book.

She’s going to write about failure. Only this time Laura’s book is not going to be a novel. It’s going to be non-fiction: Laura’s true story of her long-term serial-monogomistic love-hate relationship with failure. The title?

FAILURE: A Love Story.

Laura came to this idea (you know how she feels about giving credit where credit is due) after talking a new friend’s ear off about her fascination with failure at the same time that she was talking this new friend’s ear off about needing to figure out an idea for another book. But not another novel. So the new friend put two and two together (while Laura was still way behind, trying to do the math) and told her she should write a non-fiction book about failure.

Laura loved the idea! Even more than she loved failure itself! She loved it so much that she told another friend about it who led Laura to think about how her relationship with Failure (note how failure has now become “Failure,” a proper noun) is, strangely enough, the most successful relationship she’s ever had! Which validated Laura’s deep belief that even though Failure has dogged her and made things very difficult for her, Failure has also been incredibly helpful and generous.

Go figure!

Anyway, Laura couldn’t wait to get started on her new book (she can’t remember the last time that happened), but first she did what she usually does when she gets (or when someone gives her) a new idea: she does a little market research. Which is what she’s doing right now: running the idea past her Brant readers and asking them to keep checking back this week and next week for more about
FAILURE: A Love Story.

*

Laura would like to apologize for and explain her lack of branting this week.

After last year’s outrageously expensive first winter in their new house, Laura finally made an appointment with an HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, & Air Conditioning) company to try to solve the mystery of why, despite how low they kept the thermostat, their natural gas bills had been so ridiculously high last year and why their bills were probably going to be just as high this year too.

Within two hours of the arrival of Andy, The HVAC guy, on Monday morning, he discovered that the boiler was cracked. Laura had always assumed this was some sort of idiom, or figure of speech (“What a cracked boiler he is!” “You want a cracked boiler? I’ll give you a cracked boiler!”), but when Andy stuck a hand-mirror into the maw of the raging boiler’s open belly to show her what he was talking about, she saw the jagged scar he was pointing to and suddenly realized that a cracked boiler actually means that the inside chamber of the boiler is cracked!

Even if Laura wasn’t one of those egregiously dumb homeowners who had no idea where the electrical box was (OK, that’s an exaggeration) or how to flip a circuit breaker (but that’s not), she would have been smart enough to figure out that the San Andreas fault line in her boiler (which she had just been introduced to minutes before by Andy himself — she’d always gotten it confused with the water heater) was a bad thing, though she didn’t think it was an incredibly bad thing since at least it was still working! But just as Andy got up from the floor, the boiler suddenly sputtered and then stopped making any sound at all.

Andy shook his head, then explained in a hushed reverent tone that the crackling-hissing noise the boiler had just expelled like a covert belch was the sound of the boiler cracking completely. Andy tried to explain to Laura that a completely cracked boiler had something to do with steam and water coming through the crack and dousing out the flame for good, but of course Laura didn’t understand what he was talking about because 1) she not good at homeowner stuff and 2) she had already detached from herself like a space capsule off a flaming hot rocket.

Laura could barely believe what was happening and was having a hard time processing what incredibly bad luck she was continuing to have into the new year! She suddenly felt incredibly depressed and defeated, not just because she knew the house was going to get freezing cold — they were, after all, facing their first cold snap of the entire winter! and even some possible snow! what perfect timing!– in the absence of a working boiler, but because she knew in her bones that replacing the boiler was going to cost almost as much as she earned last year.*

(*This is meant to imply that Laura didn’t earn much last year; not that she earned a lot. She just felt the need to clarify that just in case people thought she was complaining unduly.)

By the afternoon, two other HVAC guys — Tom and Mike — came into her house and stared at the now quiet cold boiler. And the more they took measurements and talked in hushed tones about steam heat and radiant heat and water pipes and water heaters, the more Laura wanted to crawl away and into her bed so that she would be frozen solid by the time they were ready with their “estimate.”

When Tom finally did give her the bad news, Laura truly did take to her bed for much of Tuesday and Wednesday (not to mention part of Thursday and most of today, as necessary recovery from the incredibly stressful and depressing week). She also took to her bed because it happened to be warm under the covers, right next to one of the six space heaters that the HVAC guys had lent Laura and Brendan and Benji until the boiler was replaced and up and running by Wednesday evening.

For two nights, the three of them slept together in the big bed, huddling together for warmth against the cold while the space heater glowed red beside them. Drifting off to sleep, Laura wondered if this was what it felt like to be a chicken on a rotisserie. Anything to take her mind off of the check she was going to have to write the next day….

Who knew that book group meetings could take place during the day and in school libraries? Laura certainly didn’t! Until she phoned into the Walllington Jr/Sr High School library and talked to the reading group of teachers who had just read Piece of Work. Laura thanks Elisa DeNicholas, the school librarian, for spearheading the contest-entry and the phone-in visit, and wants Elisa DeNicholas and the other members of the group (whose names Laura didn’t get) that she had a great time talking to them. Since Wallington Jr/Sr. High School is, apparently, about fifteen minutes outside of NYC, Laura could tell the group was just a teensy-weensy bit more edgy than the Colorado gals. Which, of course, Laura could relate to, being the Queen of Edgy herself.

Laura LUVED talking with “The Bookie Cookies” book group in Pueblo, CO. They were fun, lively, smart, and not all angry and pissed off and bitter the way we are here on the East Coast! In fact, Laura was so taken with their Colorado-ish behavior that she swears the next time she’s in Denver she’s going to make a side trip to Pueblo and glom on to one of their book group meetings.

Thanks again to the actual Bookie Cookies for such a great conversation* (*euphemism for Laura Talking Their Ears Off):
Bama Morgan, Sue Romero, Donna Leinberger, Lauri Jones, Joan Robbe, Deb Wallace, Pam Trinklein, and Gloria Eller!

Laura got terrified yesterday after realizing that she can’t just go on “Google Images” and cut and paste anything she wants into her brant. She got even more terrified when she tried to understand why she can’t do that and failed (she understands the concept of Public Domain but not it’s application to the world of blogging). So Laura was so nervous about getting sued that she has stopped trolling the Internet for visual enhancements to her brant despite her deep love of visual brant enhancements (”brant-hancements”). Unless she can get a hold of “Copyright Infringement For Dummies, the only brant-hancements her brant will have are photos she herself has taken.

Well, it only took two days — two — for the “cheap” coffeemaker Laura bought to stop working. Or, to be more exact, to make a whole pot of coffee filled with grounds and sludge — and so she had to concede defeat to Brendan, who wanted a higher quality coffeemaker all along.

And so they are now the proud owners of a “Cuisinart DCC-1200 Brew Central coffee maker.”

Laura took one look at the NASA-like control panel on the DCC-1200 and realized she would not be making coffee any time soon (waaaaaay too complicated).

But the coffee Brendan makes in the DCC-1200 is fantastic.

Okay, Laura wishes she could have thought of something better for the headline like “Clever in Cleveland” or “Classy in Cleveland” but Laura didn’t want to sacrifice precision for aliteration since clever simply wouldn’t have done this group justice and Laura hates the word classy since it sounds like something cheesy someone might say when receiving a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Creme. Word choice aside — although Laura has to be on her toes here because many of the women in the group below are teachers!!! — Laura had a fantastic time on the phone Thursday night with this group of young[ish] women from Cleveland Heights, most of whom are single and two of whom are married.

They were fun, hilarious, intelligent, game, and they asked terrific questions, and since there was a nice mix of marital status and age in the group, they seemed to get most of Laura’s jokes and cultural references. They were also the first to admit that they could all relate to the topics of Laura’s previous books — dating and getting dumped; worrying about not having kids; being insanely jealous of a boyfriend’s ex — which made Laura immediately feel comfortable. (Laura loves when women admit to being as crazy as she is she was; it really makes her feel connected!) They had so much to talk about that Laura thinks the phone call lasted over an hour (the usual is somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes) — even though she must admit that a big portion of that time was spent talking about the incredible beauty and talent of Hugh Jackman (it’s not Laura’s fault — Tara started it!).

Laura has been asking the book groups she phones into to email her a photo of their group because she is nosy not just so she can post it on her brant for all the world to see and also so she can have it as a kind of keep-sake of some really nice book-self-promotion-memories. The real reason Laura asks for the photos is because she really wants to see the people she was talking to — what they look like, where they were when she did the phone-in, what their age range is — because Laura is actually really curious. That is, she is really curious about the people who read her books. In fact, Laura wants all book groups to know this little known fact:

Authors are just as curious about book groups as book groups are about authors!

So the photo and information about the book group members came courtesy of Mandy Geil (camel-colored turtleneck) in an extremely timely fashion (gotta love teachers for punctual multi-tasking!), so thank you Mandy! Laura just doesn’t want to take credit for factual and informational reportage on the group’s members she didn’t actually do, and she also likes when the information is in the group’s own words since it helps show the group’s true personality.

[The Cleveland Book Club, January 2007]

“So top row from left to right: Sherri Bellini (teaches gifted program and likes Goldfish for breakfast with her son); Sarah Lambert (1st grade teacher); Connie Preisel (literacy coach who is organizing the 3-day walk for breast cancer…you should join us!); Christine Dickson (kindergarten teacher, married to Blake, a lawyer).

“Front row left to right: Shari Kern (works at Fidelity and it was her office we called you from…she explained her job to us during our call Wed. night and I didn’t completely get it!..teaches fitness classes); Mandy Geil (me…I’m a Speech/Language Pathologist…been dating the same guy for almost 9 years); Julie Beckles (2nd grade teacher, married and mommy); Tara Keller (asks the BEST questions! and knows everything about the “stars”…5th grade teacher)

“We are mostly single with a couple of exceptions, and we are all in our 30s or very early 40s. We work in 2 different school districts on the east side of Cleveland…Christine works in Shaker Heights and the rest of us (with the exception of Shari) work in the Cleveland Heights/University Heights school district.”

*

Besides saying that if she’s ever in Cleveland she’s going to take the Cleveland Book Club up on their offer to visit them, Laura can’t help but end this entry with a shallow yet complimentary question: Do you think any of these Cleveland women ever take a bad picture? I mean, aren’t they just some of the most photogenic gals you’ve ever seen?