5 May 2004

The good news is that I got my library books and finished writing "Five Brothers Underground." The bad news is, I did not get down to St. Pete. Going to the library wrung a good deal of voice from me (How? It's the library! It's not like I was declaiming speeches in the map section!) and even more of my energy reserves, while returning a small bit of the fever, so I came home and faceplanted into the futon. Ughhhhhh.

I keep feeling a bit better every morning. My voice is husky but present. I have enough voice to make phone calls without baffling the recipient of the calls or convincing him/her that a prank call is in progress. I have enough energy that I might leave the house again today. I'm trying to evaluate that based on how I feel rather than on what I think needs to get done. Because yes, I need to buy Mother's Day presents, and yes, we need groceries, but we can get those things tomorrow or Friday if we have to, and someone else can get them if we have to. I pride myself on doing what must be done, but I need to focus a bit more on defining my musts more realistically at times like this.

I read chunks of Feud in the Icelandic Saga and Brittle Innings yesterday, but I also flipped through The Berry Bible and copied out some recipes, and when I was recuperating upon my return, I read Garret Freymann-Weyr's My Heartbeat, cover to cover without pause. I like her stuff a lot. Her characters are the kind of characters I missed desperately in YAs: the kind of teenagers who do stuff well. I don't mean the kind who get good grades or are on Student Council, but the kind who are serious about something and trying to do it the best they can figure out, even if they're changing their mind about whether they want to or not and how. Good, good stuff. Also, she doesn't succumb to unrealistic melodrama when dealing with teen sex and sexuality. Nobody is staggering about clutching their bosom and shouting about how they are slain. It is not, in fact, a Shakespearean tragedy if the protagonist's older brother is trying to deal with being gay. It is a human event on human scale. It has a sense of proportion. It's good.