We have spent every night this past wk working on getting these books to you and although I did my laundry last Sunday I still haven’t put my sheets back on the bed. A trail of clothes and towels are spilling out into the kitchen and I sort of kick them back into my bedroom in the morning and pretend it doesn’t matter on my way out the door.

I’ve started to make a list of things to do once we finish—get a haircut, go to the Y, go rescue my bike from where it’s been locked up for about two years now (okay, I am never going to do that), and I can’t wait to have sheets on my bed and go see Eat, Pray, Love with only a minor sense of irony (we always joked that you can’t masturbate ironically, but I’m guessing you can’t sob ironically either)(stay tuned to find out!), but also oh, then it will be over.

This weekend we had a few friends over and we drank wine and put the books in envelopes and talked about how we were almost finished and then remembered that we were almost started; that this isn’t even out in the world yet and believe me we sorted these goddamn things by zip code tonight, all of them, in an hour, because I want you all to have them so badly. I wish I could snap 3 times (okay, I always want to be snapping three times) and you could have them, and not just because I DO NOT WANT TO DRIVE 600 BOOKS TO THE POST OFFICE, but also you need them you need them you need them!

This fulfillment part—this supposed-to-be-hellish part—has been one of my favorite parts (I say that truly every week with every new thing, I know, I know). Maybe because we are closing in on it being out there or maybe because it is so tactile and there is a right or wrong answer (um, is the book in the envelope? Good job!), maybe because we can sing and laugh and call every thing and person we deal with a bro and yell and drop kick boxes of envelopes and make great friends with this woman at the post office named Dora who had a Dora The Explorer poster in her cubicle and I swear she is a United States Postal Worker Who is Helpful, that is she is a rarity, a diamond in the rough of bulk mailing, a lady I called today just to chat. [okay: LIE, I did have a question, but seriously, thank you Dora the Mail Explora’], but MAINLY, MAINLY, MAINLY it is so fun because you are all real human people, and we recognize all of your names by now, and we have our favorite strangers with funny names or weird, surreal-sounding addresses, and we squeak when we come across you, and when we see your name come out of the label printer—oh! we yell, an old college roommate! oh! a kid i went to elementary school,with! Oh, this is the guy who was in the tinychat and said that funny thing about etc!—and I’m thinking, Um, can we write everyone a note? Can we hand-deliver each of these? Can I drive a bookmobile all over the country and/or world and like, go hang out at the laundromat while you read it and then get coffee with you after and be like, I KNOW, RIGHT?

And so the books are all packed and sorted and I just need to take a day off this wk and reserve a zipcar and drive your bitches to the damn bulk mail sorting place in these huge postal SACKS [turns out now we know our most popular zip codes: manhattan, brooklyn, san francisco, los angeles, mpls, chicago, and seattle] [cool, right?] and then we move this show over to our shiny new to-be-launched tumblr blog, designed by the one and only Peter Vidani. In the meantime, the writers have their books and we’ve been getting these emails and texts and posts that buoy us, that get us through another trip to the post office or another god forsaken hilarious attempt at mail merge and we think, oh, it is so soon and so real and I think the first time I cried (in a good way) (major distinction!) was when I saw our Goodreads page:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8540473-coming-crying

Shut up, I can’t help it.

MISS YOU GUYS. IT’S COMING. I’M CRYING. WE’RE ALL LOL-ING OUR WAY THROUGH THIS. <3