4 May 2004

I promised my mom I'd go in and see a doctor (and I don't think she meant "take Stella out for lunch") if I wasn't feeling better today. So far today I think it would be sophistry to say that I'm feeling better. Better than last Wednesday or Thursday, ohhhhh yeah. But better than yesterday or Sunday? No. I still have no voice. I'm still feeling like I was beaten with a stick. I'm still coughing a bit and needing to lie down every so often. I'm still able to nap, and for me, that's a big thing: I'm usually really bad at naps even when I'm sick.

So I guess I have to go see the doctor, but the truth is, I don't know what the doctor will be able to do for me. "Yep, you sure are run down. Yep, that cough doesn't sound like fun, but it's productive, so not coughing is also a pretty bad idea. Hot beverages, vitamin C, popsicles, get some rest." This is my theory of what they will tell me. I promised my mom I'd go, but I really doubt that it'll do any good, and to add to the fun of the whole situation, we don't have our new insurance cards yet, and I don't have a doctor. I have a gynecologist here, but those bits are fine, so I don't think that would help, and -- oh, glory hallelujah, I had a really good cough and my voice is back. It's got a little rasp to it, but it's definitely my voice and not a torturous whisper.

Now let's see if I can keep it, having scared it into showing up.

The big question, if I have my voice, is whether I'm driving down to St. Pete tonight. I'm supposed to. My old department is having a career night sort of thing, and we all know how I love my old department. (Non-sarcastically. I do. They're great guys.) But if I'm going to be entirely inaudible or fall asleep on the table, I don't think that would do them any good with their career night. So we'll see how I'm doing in the late afternoon.

I'm a little baffled, because I got a "person not known" return-to-sender from the post office on an agent query. And I just checked that particular agent's webpage, and the address is exactly as I wrote it on the envelope. And she's updating her webjournal and talking about work and all of that, so I know she didn't just quit and run off to join the circus. Umm. Soo...now what? I'm confused. I'm going to try re-sending the query, but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't have been delivered last time, so I don't see any reason why it should this time. I shall use a white envelope instead of a yellow-brown one this time. See if that works some postal magic.

I read Peter Dickinson's The Weathermonger yesterday, because I wasn't always in a situation where I could take notes, and Feud in the Icelandic Saga is the sort of book that may require notes of me at any time. I'm still reading that one, and also Michael Bishop's Brittle Innings, again for the non-note-taking moments. I gave my mom Brittle Innings because it was a fantasy baseball book, and I've now borrowed it from her and am thinking that despite being a fantasy and about baseball, it is not a Mom Book. Sorry, Ma. (Not really a Me Book, either, but not far enough in that direction that I'll stop before I finish it.) Not every present can work out as we intended, I suppose.

My book piles are smaller than they were when I got sick, smaller by a greater degree than if I hadn't gotten sick, because Wednesday night and Thursday have been balanced out by all subsequent days. But they're still large. Definitely large. And I have some library books to fetch for my contract work, and I should do that as soon as I'm able -- in fact, I should probably do it as a trial run right after lunch, because if a trip over to the library three minutes away is enough to knock me totally flat, I'm not doing an hour drive down to St. Pete and then some activities and then an hour back. So there's that. (I've been feeling grody enough that a shower may knock me flat anyway, but I need the library books, so there you have that.)

(What I dislike about MS Word, number 673: the fact that it pops up the date every time I type may. May! It's a very common verb! Argh! I'm also unfond of the novel/November pop up.)

Mark called our Congresscritter and our Senator this morning to talk about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. I just hope others are doing the same. I hope others are calling for investigations and justice and asking our Congresscritter to do something more productive with his time than slam John Kerry. Considering that our Congresscritter is on the Armed Services Committee, for heaven's sake! You would think those folks would have their hands full about now. You would think they should. Anyway, I don't have a lot of confidence that Mark's phone calls will turn the Congresscritter around and strengthen Senator Dayton's resolve. But I do have a lot of confidence that they wouldn't have been affected at all if he'd done nothing.

Well. So. I'm trying to balance my urge to Get Things Done! Now Now Now! Quick, Before I Get Worse Again! and my urge to actually finish getting better and keep my voice and so on. The current plan, now that I am clean and fed, is to go to the library and pick up the books they're holding for me for my contract work. If that goes decently well, then I'll evaluate whether I should be heading out for St. Pete or not. I'd really like to go, and I told them I would. But these are also the professors who shooed me out of class without letting me argue when I was sick ("Go on!" Tom would holler, flapping his long, long, skinny arms, "Go! Go! And don't breathe on anybody on your way out!") and offer to take me to the doctor or the pharmacy or the grocery store or wherever else I needed to be. I don't want to drive down there and make Tom flap at me. So I'm playing it by ear.