Author: DWDLLC

I gutted out today’s school visit (thank you, Lenape and sorry about the frog voice) but I felt like the walking dead when it was over. I knew I had more than just a cold. The beastly germs in my lungs were churning up a foul brew, the color of which you do not want me to describe. And it was getting hard to breathe.

Doctor’s diagnosis: nasty bronchitis, complicated by asthma.

Doctor’s advice: crank up the asthma meds, add a few others, lots of water, rest, and do not – under any circumstances – go to the conference in Maryland this weekend.

So both my body and my spirit feel really bad. I hate, hate, hate being sick, but it feels awful to have to back out of an engagement at the last minute. If I had any energy, I would rant and rage. But I don’t, so I won’t.

The last time I got sick like this, I ignored the doctor. That’s the time I wound up in the hospital, and it set off a chain reaction of illnesses that lasted more than two years.

So I am following the doctor’s advice.

*grumbles*

*coughs up lung*

*stops grumbling*

Did you read the last line in yesterday’s post?

Guess what?

I got sick.

Getting closer and closer to the end of this spring marathon. Today I spoke at West Broad Street Elementary in Souderton. It was a little weird visiting an elementary school after having been in so many high schools the last couple of months. I felt like a giant, Gulliver maybe.

And, as fate demands, a germ slipped through my careful defenses of vitamins, veggies, and tea. Something is trying to grow a colony of yukky stuff in my lungs. Ack. So let me post some photos and go to bed.

For my third presentation at North yesterday we thought 15 students were coming and then all these guys showed up. It was fun. (I am still dreaming about the food in the English teacher’s lounge, BTW.)

These second graders at West Broad showed me their haiku because I told them the first time I got excited about writing was when I learned to write haiku in second grade. They were SO EXCITED. It was like being around puppies. Second grade was the best. I wish I could go back. I used to love sharpening my pencil so I could smell it. Yes. I am a self-confessed pencil-smeller.

Now I am going to bed to think healthy thoughts – I will not get sick – I will not get sick – I will not get sick…

I promise I’ll post the photo of the third group tomorrow. I came home to a ton of paperwork and am still not done. *grumbles*

But I can’t go to sleep without saying thanks to all of you for a great day.

I’d say “You rock” but that would be completely cheesy and cliched. How about “You rawk”?

Probably not.

But thanks anyway for a terrific day. And thanks to the library “mice” and thanks to the English teachers who had an absurdly fine potluck lunch in their staff room.

All this public speaking is fraying my mind around the edges. I am an introvert when I’m not holding a microphone. (Do not hand me a microphone. Please.) Pretending to be an extrovert is taking a toll. I find myself making bizarre lists.

So here is my weird list of things to do. I came up with it while eating leftover goulash for dinner.

1. Enter a bass fishing contest.
2. Visit Iceland in the summer.
3. Grow my own popcorn.
4. Create weird artsy-fartsy tile masterpieces on random walls of our house.
5. Visit Iceland in the winter.

Once I shut up for a month or two, I might return to my senses.

Or not.

What weird thing is on your to-do list?