I Have No Time For Consumption!

Sicksicksicksicksick. Faithful readers, I am currently in Cali, dying of the black lung. Or actually green lung, judging by the appealing pond-scum shade of the slime I am coughing up. Ew. I just grossed myself out. Apologies. I have been living with boys.
So yeah.
In all honesty, I picked up a wicked case of Pneumonia. Gross. But I went to urgent care and got myself some penicillin, so in a few days I should be Aces, and no worries.
Consumption aside, I have been having some awesome good times.
Thursday I flew down to NC for Writers'Forum. Ktbear picked me up at the airport and bought me a sammich. That was spectacular. Then I went to her house to play with Journey Dog and get styled up by Andrea. I looked, if I do say it myself, smokin' hot, which is totally Andrea's doing, even if she did spit on my eyelid. Apparently, that is the price of fashion. Eventually, Martha Mae and Lil Jeffie showed up, and we high-tailed it down to the LBG for the pre-show dinner. At first, we were really excited, because we were confronted by fancy salads, with chicken and strawberries and other weird stuff. We thought, "Man, if our salads are this fancy, dinner should be sweeeeet!" Turns out, the fancy salad WAS dinner. People, I don't even like lettuce. That's OK though, cause I was waaaaaaaaay too nervous to eat much.
I was reading with Carlos Reyes, who is absolutely my favorite living poet, and probably the only man I would marry without significant monetary compensation.

Me and Carlos

Much to my dismay, in the three years since I saw him last, he married someone else. Can you even believe that? This he tells me at dinner right before I am to read. My heart was bruised in a way that only whiskey could cure. I told Martha and she told Jeremy and he arrived 10 minutes before my debut with a hip flask of Jack, and thus, a beautiful friendship was born. I'm still not over Carlos, but I'm considering marrying Jeremy.
So I drank half the whiskey while the introducer was introducing me, and I took the podium glowing with liquid confidence.

Liquid Courage!

I read "Big Smile, Scabby Heart," then "Each Midnight," cause they were short and sweet and "Big Smile's" kinda funny and nervous and I was feeling pretty funny and nervous. And then, (this was another Andrea idea) when I was settling and the whiskey was working its edge-brightening magic, and everybody was easing into the nighttime and the story telling, I hit them with the first 3 pages of "Doll," and just when everybody was leaning in and feeling cold and concerned and hooked, WHA-BAM! Sucker-punched! I left them hangin' and sold like, 7 books right then. Andrea's such a smarty-pants.
So as not to be mean and to brighten things up again and lead into Carlos, I read this wicked-funny poem Peppers and I wrote the week before, called The Passion of the Produce," which is every bit as sexy as you think it might be. Everyone smiled big, I sat down, and finished my whiskey while Ian Pratt made eyes at me from across the room. Well played!

Readin'

Carlos read beautifully, as he always does, and I was so glad I had to go first, so I could sit back and close my eyes and ease into his voice and the soft alcohol and Andrea's warm hands on my shoulders. Reading Carlos, I like his English poems, their sharp-edged, soft hearted images. But I mostly love when he reads in Spanish. The sounds I don't understand make amazing pictures on the backs of my eyelids, dusty, dark, spicy pictures somewhere between deserts and oceans, between dawn and midnight.
If you get the chance to hear Carlos read, you should go, and not just cause I want to marry him.
After all that, my entourage was tuckered out. Even though I was buzzing with mischief, they coaxed me back to the Mabry Manor for some chilled out R&R. It's a good thing too, cause 1)People were getting arrested on campus that night and, with my luck I woulda been amongst them, and 2)I got Pneumonia the next morning.
(Props to Andrea AGAIN for not being among the arrested! Man, that girl was ON IT all weekend.)
The next day we went back to Raleigh and after some relax-o time, threw Lil Jeffie a rather nice birthday party. At his request I cooked up some fish n chips (and it even turned out good, who knew?) And a bunch of peeps came up, and I think there were beers and some kind of ridiculously complicated game for smart people that the majority of us were too drunk to play.

Party People: Martha's Arm, Jeremy, The Girl with Matt, Matt, Andrea, Lil Jeffie's Very Skinny Leg

This is where my memory gets fuzzy. Not from drinking, but from lack of sleep and sickishness. Because at this time I thought the Pneumonia was just a wicked bad cold, and I was trying to solider through. Solidering through turned into talking with Jeremy and Andrea till 3 or 4ish in the am, at which point my voice gave out for good, and I put myself to bed on Martha's floor. After that I seem to recall a lot of transferring from floor to bed to floor to bed again. I have no idea what that was all about.
And then it was time for breakfast. Martha found us a for-real diner, who knew they had those in Raleigh? Breakfast was great. Ktbear joined us up again, and we all went to some lake to walk around. I wanted to walk around the lake real bad, because we had a puppy with us and all. But then we were walking and I thought maybe I was going to die.
But I didn't die, and then there was diner at Lil Jeffie's Mom's house. It was delicious I'm pretty sure. Spaghetti. I dunno. I was concentrating on not dying, and also not telling people I thought I was dying, cause I was pretty sure I wasn't really that sick and only just being a baby. Then Ktbear took me back to her house to take care of me, cause she kinda guessed that maybe I had one foot in the grave. Yay for Kt, and Journey Dog who is seriously the world's best cuddler. Andrea kept Martha and Lil Jeffie occupied, and everybody was happy.
Sunday morning I was on a plane to Cali and that was fairly excruciating. I was just trying to keep my eardrums in my ears.
Bean and Papabear scooped me up and brought me home to chicken soup and a basket full of of drugs.
And that's been pretty much it. I'm recovering slowly but surely. We had a teeny party for Papabear's 50th yesterday, and then I went to bed. I didn't even eat cake or drink any vodka, which should impress upon you how crap-tastik I feel. Who gets Pneumonia anyways? Ugh, I feel so lame.
Still, for most of the weekend, I think I partied like a champ. And it was fun. Way too short a visit, but superfun. Who doesn't love Lil Jeffie? I can't think of a single person. That kid is the bees knees.