Book Tour With My Mom

Day one: Chicago!

I’m writing this to you all from my hotel room bed, in my hotel room bathrobe, slathered in the VERY VERY fancy hotel moisturizer. But let’s back up! Why am I so tired in the middle of the afternoon? Because my mother and I are on our book tour, and kid book tours are grueling AF. I’d like to see, oh, (insert fancy author name here) go from elementary school to elementary school and see how they do!

I didn’t bring the cat.

We launched the book at home, at Books Are Magic. See cute mom above, flanked by me and Jessica Love, who drew the Gaga of our dreams. The next morning, it was off to the airport, where some nice people shared their glasses with us. Cool! I couldn’t tell you how those eclipse glasses protect your eyeballs if you gave me a million dollars. I loved seeing everyone’s colander pictures! Colanders! How the hell does THAT work? I love it.

One quick milkshake and Gaga was ready to roll.

I love to watch movies on airplanes. They always make me cry. Movies make me cry at home, too, but somehow I always cry more on airplanes. I have seen the Tom Wambsgans Pride + Prejudice a thousand times so it really only got me in the very end. This is not my favorite version (Ehle/Firth 4 ever), but I do love a Wambsgans.

We started the day at Hamilton Elementary School with these wonderful women—Erin, a romance novelist, Jen, a teacher and librarian in training, and Suzy, who has owned The Book Cellar for 20 years. TWENTY YEARS. Look at Suzy’s shoes.

I won’t show you pictures of other people’s children because that isn’t cool, but I will tell you that they were adorable and my mom and I were hilarious and we heard a lot about cats and birthdays and it was great.

Then Bill, our intrepid driver, took us all over town signing stock, which had mixed results. (Shout-out to the Barnes and Noble that only had one copy of Gaga Mistake Day and didn’t know or care who the hell we were for keeping us #humble.) Finally we landed at Shangri-La, Women And Children First, where we had conversations about books and bookstores and bought lots of stuff. Bill also told us about driving Donnie Wahlberg around which as you may know is extremely relevant to my interests.

We loved them! Cute booksellers forever. Abortion is healthcare! Hell yes it is. And then we went across the street to a beer garden and ate a giant meal and Gaga had a beer in the middle of the day and that brings me to this current moment and the hotel robe etc. Tomorrow we hit more schools and more bookstores! And also probably some frozen custard. If you know where we should eat dinner, please tell me in the comments.

Endless love to my homies at The Consistency Project for our suits, which make getting dressed for tour so easy. Look at how cute Gaga is drinking a beer in the Chicago sunshine.