Once in a while, you get to be on top of the world; other times, it feels like life is kicking your ass. This last week was one of those second ones.
I have never had food allergies, but Sunday I had an anaphylaxis allergic reaction to a cup of tea and half a cookie. I wound up in the hospital, on an IV, and then for four days had purple hives and couldn’t eat anything, even chicken broth or ginger ale, without my mouth and throat swelling up. Good times. It was very scary and not something I’d like to repeat. I now have an epipen and a big old bunch of allergy tests to take. It might have been the bergamot in the tea, but I’m also getting tested for everything else: vanilla, tea, milk, eggs, wheat, citrus.
Anyway, I’ve had so many health setbacks lately, I just thought – wow, I had better get going with this poetry thing. No more wasting time!
On top of the 1001 doctor appointments, I’m going to try to read some chapbooks for a contest and be an excellent thesis advisor. And try to remind people that I love them more often. And send out more poetry. Do the stuff that I need to do. Because in the end, it’s poetry and people that matter to me.
It looks like I’m going to have to port my blog as well, as blogger is no longer supporting people like me who use the FTP option, Dang! Just what I needed to mess with, along with my taxes and surprisingly complicated and expensive physical therapy bills. (California has the worst system for billing, it’s way worse than Washington where insurance billing was fairly simple, and my insurance doesn’t cover all the PT here I’ve needed like it would in Washington. Yes, one more reason I’m considering relocating to the wild wet Northwest.) See, that’s all the junk I don’t want to worry about, but the stuff that keeps getting in my face and taking up my time.
In good news, look for Mary Biddinger today on Verse Daily!
In other news:
My poor sweetie has been so sick, the doctors think he has ‘walking pneumonia.’ I took him to the hospital for chest x-rays today. He’s on the same antibiotics I was taking last week, and they gave him an albuterol breathing treatment at the dr office. Think good thoughts for his speedy recovery!
Still don’t know where I’ll be living after the end of May, and still interviewing for jobs. I wouldn’t mind some good thoughts in that direction too!
In good news, Smartish Pace, after having a review I’d written since 2005 of David Lehman’s last book, finally published it this week! There’s a link to it on the front page, and here’s a direct link:
http://www.smartishpace.com/home/dynamic.html?reviews_lehman.html
I’m finishing up a review of Ivy Alvarez’ Mortal as well. And I’ve started up a (still, fairly lame and new) blog for Crab Creek Review, whose web site has proved more challenging for me than I expected, due to its programming – a Unix server, old PHP programming, old server-side includes – I’ve programmed web pages with Microsoft technology for so long (um, 15 years?) it’s a shock to my system! I’m not even sure exactly the way to change the price of the subscription because I’m not sure of the code in the order form! And the CSS form looks like something I’ve never seen. I don’t understand having a CSS – I mean, there’s barely any style to the Crab Creek pages right now, why do they need such a complicated style sheet? I could remake the site from scratch, like I don’t already have enough to do…