Oh lord, I'm feeling rough this morning. And it's cold. I just turned the heat on because I'm a big baby and I got a sunburn so that makes it feel even colder. I also got a cold sore. Motherfucker. Yesterday, when it was forming, I could hardly see, it hurt so bad. I was thinking that if I were a mutant superhero that this would be how the physical change would probably feel--this excruciating popping metamorphasis. I believe I can actually feel the virus (which is a scuttling kind of virus, low to the ground) using its pinchers on all my nerves, all up and down my right side. I went to work yesterday but not today. I couldn't sleep all night and neither could Jeff (he's got a sunburn too and his is way worse than mine) and so we just writhed around in pain on the bed in the cold cold bedroom. So. Home sick. But not homesick. Although, maybe a little of that too.

I left an embarrassing message on the work machine explaining that I wouldn't be in today. I actually said: "I'm being SLAYED by this migraine." I'm such a dork.

This weekend we went out into the world. To a party. I know! We're so crazy! Will's (Jeff's partner) little sister turned 21 and so we went to her party. It was a family thing mostly--cousins and aunts and uncles and grandmoms and such. All the kids (god I'm so silly and old--these kids were all at least twenty) and some of the grownups hung out practicing roping. This one fella showed off all his roping tricks and it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. They got Jeff to try his hand at roping the sawhorse and he got it, first try. And then every other try after that, which is better than half the folks there, all of whom have been doing this their whole lives. Now it's practically all Jeff can think about. He just wants to rope, man. He wants to join the Alan Ailey roping troupe. Tryouts in June!

It was pretty neat to be around those folks. They were country. I couldn't understand half of what they were saying, not because of the accents but because of how they used words. One thing I remember was Will's mom said, about some nasty mean fella, "he's got a real catch in his getalong." I love that.

But then there was the part that made me just want to scream. One of the mommas there was telling stories about her son who is student teaching and all of the sudden, so quick I didn't even have a chance to steal myself against the shock, she starts calling one of the students in her son's class a fag. As in, the FAG and his little "friend" sat on one side of the room and the rednecks sat on the other and the devil worshippers sat in the back. It made me sick. This, from a woman who blushed and apologized for accidently saying damn. Ugh. So what do you do? I feel like I have to do some community service somewhere or protest something just to make up for sitting there and listening to such hatefulness. Me and Jeff are getting a couple of t-shirts made up for the next time we hang with Will's family. Jeff will wear FAG and I will wear DEVIL WORSHIPPER. Yeehaw. I told Jeff to go squeeze Will's butt and tell him he's queer.

When we were driving home we got to talking about how we don't really get out much, me and Jeff, and how that makes the world smaller and more narrow and how we'd like not to be small and narrow, thank you very much. So we are on a new mission to make new friends. Jeff wants farmer friends and I want conservationist friends. I want to hang with some folks and work to clean up the Deep River. I also want to get involved in some community organizing here in Randolph county. Of course that may be too much people time for me, but I think I exist so much in my comfort zone and that, babies, needs a little challenge.

We got part of our garden in on Sunday (from whence came the sunburns). Then it rained hard and maybe killed our baby tomatoes. That's all right--we've only got about two hundred and some more. We got tomatoes coming out of our ears. But I love our two little garden plots. Next we have our bigger plot to put in and I think we're going to do half of that as corn. We're putting down a whole mess of native wildflowers too. I can't wait.

I think I may scrape and paint today while I'm home. Watch Alias. I love home alone days. Solitude is my warm blanket of happiness. That makes no sense. I got a real catch in my thinkalong. Later dudes.