Writers Friends and S--t at Work.

This week has not been a great one. As usual, I have taken on too much responsibility at work without even stopping to consider how I will finish everything. Then there's the work that certain *&^^%*!s dump on me.

It is so tempting to drop this job. I am underappreciated, underpaid, overworked, underrecognized. There is asbestos in my office, there is asbestos dust on my poetry notebook, and I have been slighted two times this week. But--I have my kids in this montessori school I wouldn't be able to afford otherwise, and despite all this, I still care very much about my students, even when they don't show the kind of enthusiasm they should when I talk about Whitman and Dickinson as I have been for the last few days.

A few of them make up for the rest. I have this one brilliant student who is a trumpet player. The other day he said,"Walt Whitman is kind of like Miles Davis--they both pull everything into their poetry/music."

Really, it's hard to argue with that.

Last night I heard from an old friend who had been in Thailand for the most part of a year. I had no idea. How is it possible to have a friend in Thailand and not even know about it. Welcome back AR! I thought she was joking, and that when she said ". . . . and then I went to Thailand" she was using Thailand as a metaphor. She came back just before Christmas because she got run over with a mo-ped.

Ah, writer friends.