Webbish6

This is Glenn. Think good thoughts for Jeannine; she was admitted to the hospital tonight with pneumonia. She is stabile now and resting.

Update: Hey guys! It’s Jeannine, finally healthy enough to be sending an update from the patchy hospital wireless, but wanted to say thank you for all the well-wishes and let you know I’m still in the hospital, waiting to hear from doctors on exactly what’s up with the pneumonia and hoping I can go home soon! I really appreciate your good thoughts and prayers. I finally got a few hours of sleep last night, the first I’ve had since I caught pneumonia, so I am very grateful. On the poetry side, I’m trying to write a poem involving the words sleep deprivation, supersoldier, and infiltrants. (They did a chest CTscan looking for “infiltrants.” I was delighted to learn a new interesting medical term…though I guess I hope I don’t have any of them, since they are cells or body fluids that have passed into a tissue or body cavity.)

Back from a very hot and dry Seattle (92 high!) where I was very happy to get to see some of my poetry friends (Hi Joannie, Kelli, Annette, and Lana!) My friends are definitely the thing I miss most about Seattle.
My upper respiratory thing of course came back with a vengeance the morning I had to fly home. The last time I flew with this kind of sinus infection I burst an ear drum, so this time I loaded up on Sudafed, ear planes, nasal spray, and brought hot tea on the plane. It still hurt so bad I wanted to cry like the chorus of three babies that were wailing around us the whole flight. Boo on bad health, I say! Isn’t it time for me to get better? I now have the choice of moving to some very strong (read: bad side effect) antibiotics or some very strong (with side effects) steroids. Of course, you can’t take these particular antiobiotics with the steroids because they interact (there’s interesting interference between floroquinolones and steroids and NSAIDS, by the way, if you ever want to look it up…)Too bad that homeopathic stuff never really works with me. If I could buy stock in green tea and elderberry syrup…
Anyway, had a pleasant surprise waiting for me in the form of a contributor copy of “What We Eat When We Eat Alone: Stories and 100 Recipes)” by Deborah Madison and Patrick McFarlin. It’s a gorgeous, witty book full of delicious recipes, but it also has, incongruously perhaps, my poem “Spy Girls” in it, complete with a lovely illustration of a futuristic spy girl eating ice cream all alone. Really, I love illustrations – I wish publishers would illustrate all my poems 🙂
In other news, I’m eating soup and frozen sorbet, trying to work through my mental fog (over a 100 degree fever, etc.) to try to finish grading final papers. Isn’t it reassuring to students when you say stuff like – yah, I’m grading your papers through a haze of illness! LOL.
And I’m getting to know my new group of students in the Advanced class as well.
In geekier news, I was sad that ComicCon was already sold out, but bought tickets to go see Hayao Miyazaki, one of my top poetry muses, at Berkeley when he comes to give a live lecture, and booked a screening of his new movie, Ponyo by the Sea. If you haven’t seen Miyazaki’s masterpieces – my favorites are My Neighbor Totoro and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind – you really are doing yourself a disservice. The best animated movies that have been made in the last thirty years, by far.
Well, I’m off to my chicken soup and popsicle. You guys be good! The sun is out in San Diego, and cross your fingers that this darn episode of evil upper-respiratory stuff will leave me soon for good!

At May 31, 2009
By Jeannine Gailey
In busted water mains, spring in Seattle, travel woes, work worries
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Two hour delay yesterday on the Alaska flight to Seattle, a shaky flight, then we checked into our hotel only to find that the restaurant was closed for “maintenance” and then when we turned on the shower there was no water. Apparently a water main for the whole building broke last night and they promised to have in on by 6 AM the next morning…which of course is just what you want when all you want is to shower and brush your teeth. (Hope they comp us for that.) Still fighting off an upper respiratory infection, so it’s extra liquids and antibiotics for me.
However, this morning the sun is shining and we saw a family of tiny ducklings and a heron flying over the water. It is much warmer here than it has been in SoCal, and Mount Rainier looks beautiful. I’m hoping to score some local cherries at the market. Seattle is so beautiful in the light. It’s still spring here, the rhododendrons and water iris (even some yellow roses) are blooming. Spring here is much more of an event than in San Diego. No spring rivals Knoxville’s or even Richmond’s, but Seattle’s is soft and the birds are singing outside my window (eating spiders off the balcony, I noted.)
Meanwhile, today I am working on grading my class’ final paper and their last workshop and starting a new class this week while I’m on the road for Glenn’s work. I’m also hoping to print out and send out my newest book MS a couple of times (I packed envelopes and SASPs…there’s dedication, right?)

At May 28, 2009
By Jeannine Gailey
In evil virus, May gray, Seattle trip, teaching worries
1

Sorry I haven’t been blogging more – not really any exciting news, been evil sick for two weeks, and you know how fun that is to blog about 🙂 I’ve missed a couple of readings I wanted to go to, too. Whatever evil upper respiratory thing is going around, it takes you down and out for more than a couple of weeks, and antibiotics haven’t even made a dent. I was really thankful my teaching gig has been online, especially with the broken foot earlier and now with the virus-from-hell. I can still grade through the haze of cold medicine and tylenol.
I’m getting ready to start my new class, so I’m trying to make preparations for that as the students in my current class turn in their final poems and papers. Cross your fingers – I built the new class from scratch so I hope the students like it!
Still haven’t been submitting much, but I have some ideas for submitting…and I revised my third book manuscript a little for the next round of contests coming up in June.
I’m leaving for Seattle in a couple of days for Glenn’s work trip, so hopefully I will be slightly more well by then. Slow going. I heard it’s been sunnier there than here in San Diego anyway, so maybe the change in locale will actually help! It’s misting outside right now and in the low sixties. Practically regulation NW weather…
Looking forward to seeing a few friends and checking out the bookstores (especially Open Books) as usual. If any of you Seattle-type friends want to get together for lunch next week, give me a buzz…

Dreaming of Joss Whedon-brand Soda!

Last night I had a series of recurring dreams in the form of a commercial, where Joss Whedon dressed up as a soda bottle or a soda-delivery truck, and people gave him a thumbs-up. Then, the tagline was “Joss Whedon soda, as refreshing as…” and then different things. The one I remember was ‘as refreshing as a Sally Fields acceptance speech.” (Featuring a current Sally Field joking about how there’s botox now, so she has fewer wrinkles than she did when she made her first speech.)
Should I go get a job as an advertising exec now?

Vague Discouragement in Poetryville

I’ve been sick for two weeks, so that may be coloring my disposition about this, but I’ve been writing a lot and not sending out much – no book contest entries, no poetry packets. I have all these poems sitting about but I can’t seem to get the “right poem to the right magazine within the right sub dates” equation to work. I mean, right now I’ve got a lot of, say, Japanese-themed persona-poem haibun, for instance, and who really publishes stuff like that?
I like my books, but I don’t feel confident others will like them, and don’t have the extra money for fees (California is very expensive.) So they’re languishing.

Rescuing sick sea lions

Yesterday, we were driving by the beach and saw what looked like a very sick sea lion (with all these people coming up really close to it and like, poking it and stuff, which always makes me angry) and we called it into, not the park rangers (which we might have done in Port Townsend) but to the only people who rescue distressed animals out here: Sea World. They picked up the sea lion within hours.