Recipe for success

Funny you use that analogy, because it really did seem to me that the whole project was essentially an exercise in endurance. You said to yourself, I am going to go way outside the bounds of my normal existence, even if it drives me insane.

Well, it all goes back to turning 30 and having a profound sense of indecision. For years, I had temp jobs, and I would stay there for a year and they'd offer me a permanent job and then I'd run. I'd think, "Are you kidding? I'm not really going to do this." I had this profound sense that making a choice I was going to have to stick to was like a prison sentence, a condemnation. And later, frankly, I sometimes even thought about the project that way. But at least it was my choice. Ultimately I think we get so scared that our choices are not going to lead where they need to, and we're not going to have the right husband or the right career, that we just don't make any choices at all. For me the idea of making my own choice and seeing it through to the end -- even though there was no logical reason to do it -- wound up being a freeing thing rather than a constraining thing.

Did the people around you understand what you were trying to do?

Not at first. Although my husband got it almost instantly; he actually got it before I even got it. He literally said, two days into the project, "You are going to be famous." And I thought, "OK, sure..." But he just saw it as this wonderful opportunity, not for money really, but as an exciting project. Everyone else was some version of nonplussed. It took my mother about eight months to get over the idea that I was not mentally ill. She kept saying, "Why, why? You're making yourself crazy, you can always stop, you're getting fat, your skin's bad. You should quit!" Really the blog stuff was what helped turn her around, because this support I was getting from strangers made my mom take notice. And then every once in a while, I'd get a reader who'd come to the site expecting some really fancy gourmet Julia Child food blog, and write some nasty comments, and then the rest of my loyal readers, including my mother, would jump on them.

Toward the end of the project, I'd get sick and not blog for three days and I'd get frantic notes from readers asking, "Where are you?" My friend Hannah would call me up and say, "You've got to post. People are freaking out." So that was nice -- a little creepy, but nice.

You attach most of your existential anxiety to your crappy dead-end job. But the fact is that you were a young woman married to her high school sweetheart and living in the outer boroughs -- something that must have set you apart from a lot of your peers. Was the project also a way of getting back in touch with that world?

Absolutely. I had really cut myself off in a lot of ways. And it's complicated, but the marriage had become what we did instead of the city. I don't write about it so much, but it's there underneath. We were completely devoted to one another, but there was also this feeling that I'm in my late 20s, and the marriage was just like the job -- just one of a series of boxes I felt around me. I think the great thing about the project, for both me and my husband, was that it broke us out of that womb we'd built for ourselves and made us interact with each other, and friends, and even the city, in more difficult ways. I was always running all over the place looking for calves' feet or kidneys or sending Eric out for some ingredient. We spent so much time worrying about keeping this fragile little project in place. But my husband got me though this thing. I literally could not have done it without him.

What happened when the project was done and I had the book deal, was that all of a sudden I had my own life. My life was not just about coming home to him at the end of the day and being miserable. And just like French cooking, you can't master the art of marriage in a year, or even seven, but it's nice that it made us engage in trying.

A lot of the comedy in the book comes from the fact that you really make your apartment seem like a hellhole. Now that you've gotten your big break -- and a six-figure book deal -- are you still living in Long Island City?

Yes, but hopefully not for long. But it's funny how making obscene amounts of money is still not enough. Now we've been thinking, let's wait for the next book to come out, and I have this movie money ...

You have movie money? Oh my god, it's worse that I thought. [Laughs]

No, I know, it's ridiculous. I mean, we'll see, but I do have an option.

Who's going to play you?

I don't know -- that's the million-dollar question. I keep arguing for Kate Winslet. I also love Catherine Keener, but she's too old. I actually get much more excited by the idea of casting Eric. I've long had this idea that it should be Don Cheadle, because I have this image of Don Cheadle slumped in the doorway of my kitchen just watching me, exhausted and sympathetic.

No, they're going to give you Steve Zahn.

Yeah, Steve Zahn, right. I did say I would take Jason Bateman, because I have a huge crush on him. I've always had a thing for that buttoned-up guy thing. I just want to unbutton them.

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