Yesterday has mostly…

Yesterday has mostly disappeared into the bad-cold-haze. I met with a student at the new cafe that opened across the street, I do remember that. (Birchwood Cafe -- good Assam tea with free refills of hot water, decent hours, decent food if a bit pricey, quiet enough to write in, for now at least, yay!). That was nice, talking first about his story and then about writing and books and teaching and travel. Fun.

And then Lori came by to work. But she was in a finishing-her-MFA funk, and I had been up since 3:30 a.m. for no good reason, so I was purely exhausted, so mostly I think we sat on the couch and chatted. But the dogs played like crazy fiends, and were clearly desperately in need of the mutual exercise, so that was good. And chatting was good. Although I'm not sure I convinced Lori to send her manuscript to the big first book contests, because she seems to have decided it's not good enough. Why do writers do this??? Let the damn editor reject your damn work, dammit. That is not your job.

To be fair, I do think there's an argument for not always sending your stories to the top tier markets if you're pretty sure they won't be taking said stories. We all have limited time, after all. But there's only 3-4 big first book contests, and if you've spent two years writing your first book, it seems worthwhile to at least try them there. Or am I just crazy here? (I submitted Bodies in Motion, but withdrew it when HC decided to publish it.)

After that -- I honestly have no idea what I did the rest of the day. Dealt with some urgent Kriti publicity materials. Made a doctor's appt. Napped. Took Tylenol to bring down my fever. Cursed the fact that DayQuil is banned to me right now. Sneered at the notion that Sudafed might help. Got cranky when sick baby leaned heavily into me, whimpering her demands that mama make it better right now! Leaned heavily into Kevin, whimpering my demands that Kevin make it better right now! Was briefly comforted by Kevin heating up some pierogi for me, before sinking back into lassitude and misery. Eventually, I went to sleep.

Thankfully, last night I actually slept ten hours, and woke up feeling not-tired for oh, the second time in the last four months. It's an astonishing feeling. Let's hope it lasts.