A Whidbey MFA Visit, Hospital Trips and More

Looking forward to escaping out to Whidbey Island to the NILA program to be a guest faculty member (along with friends such as Donna Miscolta and Daemond Arrindell) and teach classes on persona poetry and PR for poets as well as give a short reading. It should be fun! And I could use some fun because…

While the house was on the market last week, I picked up a seriously violent stomach bug, so getting out of the house for each showing and inspection and such was sort of miserable – I was just in a cloud of “I don’t feel well enough to stand” the entire week (but I did lose two pounds. Why is that always my silver lining? Nearly died of pneumonia – but I lost two pounds! What is wrong with me??) Immediately after I got well from that, while we were negotiating paperwork with a prospective buyer, Glenn started having stomach trouble, but his was more serious than mine, and required a visit to the hospital for lots of tests and it turned out several sort of serious things were wrong. Sometimes “healthy” people are people who just haven’t had enough CTscans or blood work! I forget that with us in our forties, men are suddenly susceptible to a host of strange maladies. Anyway, I’m way worse at being the one worried about a sick person than being the sick person, if you know what I mean. The men in my family need to settle down and start being healthy again! Anyway, my sweet husband is home resting, on antibiotics, and hopefully on his way to feeling better too (dude turned down morphine at the hospital like a champ! I hate that stuff too!) Plus now we have to send him to a couple specialists. I’m the one usually doing the specialist merry-go-round, and these are specialists I don’t have any experience with. And we were confronted with the fact that being a one-car household sometimes sucks, like if you both have doctors appointments at the same time in different places.

So it’s been a trying last week with no luck finding a new house, which means we may need to look at renting somewhere one-story-like soon. You know, not stressful at all. Just kidding, totally stressful. Plus, I think I’ve been sick with something or other most of this summer, which makes you feel like you’re missing out on something as it drifts into mid-August. I wish I could say I was turning this all into material, but I’m not sure that’s true – I’m just skittish and unsettled, without the well of creativity that stress sometimes brings. I’m hoping Whidbey, with its beautiful landscapes and opportunities to talk writing, will bring me back to my usual, normal, still-kind-of-skittish-but-more-creatively-productive self.

Wish us some housing, health, and happiness luck!