14 October 2001

(it's e. e. cumming's birthday, so i thought i'd celebrate. but not very much. did you know he wrote some really racy stuff? i was on an e. e. cummings binge in college, because he was my favorite poet as a child before edna st. vincent millay and emily dickinson were, also a bit after, and i found the stuff of his i hadn't read as a kid. went around asking people if they knew. jen was the only one who cared and didn't know, though.)

I had a very good time last night, celebrating having sent out Reprogramming. David and Mary Anne and Avi and Tim and Heather came to Au Coquelet to hang around and talk and drink nummy beverages (in my case, an almond roca steamer, which Heathah introduced me to long, long ago, much to my delight). And then David, Mary Anne, and Avi accompanied us to Long Life, where we met up with Zed and all had noodles of various sorts. It was all very good, and I have to say: Mary Anne knows how to congratulate. She brought me pretty flowers (pictures may be forthcoming if I get off my butt) and The Telling. What a lovely Mary Anne thing to do! I didn't expect any of that -- I just wanted to be with people and be happy to have my book out.

Actually, happy to have my books out, at this point.

Karina said she thought she'd be in a pretty angry stage just now, about the Delacorte rejection. Maybe I'll get there again, but I was angry for about five minutes. I'm still annoyed, of course -- I still think that rejecting somebody's book after 10 months and very large revision requests, without telling her why, is not very cool, hell of a way to run a railroad. But I am focusing as hard as I can just now on being proud of myself that I got things out again this fast. And there was no rejection on Reprogramming in the mail when Mark went to put the Fortress stuff in the mail, so the worst has not happened this weekend.

I am, however, being disobedient to the Mary Anne.

I was coughing when we were standing in the BART station last night (surrounded by mad, quacking U of O fans), and Mary Anne said, "No coughing!" So I didn't keep myself up all night coughing, and I woke up feeling pretty good and aware that I had not been coughing. Then I tried to breathe in deeply. Oh. Perhaps I ought to have been coughing. (We're remedying that now, certainly.) And then I rolled over and moved my head about an inch off the pillow. Um.

So the moral of the story is that I'm feeling great as long as I don't try talking, breathing, or moving my head at all.

And in this case, it's really annoying to be a morning person. Because the little morning person voice in my head just now said to me, "And just think: you're a morning person! This may be the best you feel all day!"

I begin to understand why morning people are often instructed to shut up.

So I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm supposed to go to a writers' group, and they're supposed to crit one of my stories. Right now I have very little voice, and then there's that whole moving my head and breathing thing. I would have to move my head over to Avi's, which is a big long way. Even if I don't have to get there by anything head-powered. They have a story of mine, though, and I'd like to get feedback on it. I don't know. We'll see. I was also going to call C.J. this afternoon and see if he's feeling better, but I don't think croaking at him would be particularly encouraging. Ah well. I'm going to get breakfast and read some more of one of the three books I'm trying to finish just now. Be well.