So I came home to find these waiting for me on pub day...

Well, the cat's always waiting for me because he's an indoor cat and hasn't yet figured out how to unlock the door, but the four exquisite bouquets of flowers? Not really a daily occurrence.

So today was the day -- the pub day of Cindy Ella. The whole thing has been so surreal that I don't quite know what to say other than...the whole thing has been so surreal.

Seriously, I think it's safe to say this is the happiest day of my life. Sure, a large part of that is because A BOOK WITH MY NAME ON THE SPINE IS IN BOOKSTORES ALL OVER THE COUNTRY (actually, no, not really, but more about that later) but, to be honest, the reason I'm so happy isn't even about the book. I mean, it is, but in a roundabout way. The reason I'm so happy is because all day I've been getting the sweetest emails from people from all eras and aspects of my life..all the way back to people I've known since fourth grade, to friends of my dad's whom I've never even met.

Honestly, that's the part that is just so incredible -- this overwhelming sense of gratitude for all these people who have been so supportive of me and my writing these last six years since I left my expense account-Manolo-Blahnik-shorn existence and believed in me on the days when I didn't believe in myself.

I'm telling you -- I'm the one who feels like a princess today.

Okay, so I was hoping to put a picture of my book on the shelves of my local Barnes & Noble up here today, but it's not in the stores yet -- at least not in the three Barnes & Nobles I went to today, so I can't do that. I guess I could if I went in there and put my own copy of the book on the shelf when no one was looking and then took a picture but that would be cheating. Not to mention kind of pathetic.

But people ordered it today on Amazon which was just so cool.

I'm running out of steam here but I'll tell this story before I float off into my bedroom and go to sleep (as if I'll be able to come down from all this adrenaline any time before 2:00am!):

So I get home and all these flowers are sitting there next to Pete, my most favorite doorman in the whole world. As we're oohing and aahing over how pretty they are, this woman who's a true New Yorker of a certain age (read: like 65ish) waddles into the lobby and in her New York-tinged/not-meaning-to-sound-annoyed-but-sounding-annoyed-anyway accent says "Oy, you're going to tell me that someone ELSE died?" (I did not know this, but apparently two tenants died in the last two weeks which would be alarming if they hadn't been super old) and Pete (who, although he's a hot-blooded, macho Latin man, tends to get as emotional as I do when I'm at the height of my PMS) says "No! These are HAPPY flowers!" To which the woman of a certain age and a very different generation lights up and says "Ohhh...did you get engaged?" To which I, a woman not yet of a certain age and of a whole other generation, say "No--I had a book published today!" Which I guess wasn't nearly as impressive to her as an emerald-cut diamond because all she said was "Oh" before she waddled towards the elevator.

It was all very New York.

I'm thinking it's not reading as funny on the page, but when I told my friend Amy it was.

As was the fact that Pete and I aren't exactly sure if the daffodils belong to me. The other three arrangements do, as they had cards that said "Dear Robin" but the daffodils are a mystery. And Pete said "Go ahead and take them -- if it turns out they're for someone else, you can just bring them back down and return them."

So as I write this, one of my cats is chewing on the leaves of an arrangement of daffodils that may or may not be mine. For some reason that also strikes me as very New York, although I can't for the life of me tell you why.

And now I'm going to bed. I'm too tired to even write about the reading at NYPL last nite. Tomorrow I'll do that.