Headaches and Cupcakes

Well, my dears, it is so cold again that up in my office my fingers are stiff and almost unusable. I feel as if I have the digits of a robot; no flow and ebb, no warm core. I'm layered in sweaters and socks and slipper-boots. I am a frozen puddle, no river, no creek rolling over stones and turtles. I think I'd like to be a water bug with legs as thin as eyelashes, skating the golden/green lips of the stillest part of the creek, deep mud down below and sky, so far away, held in the arms of a sycamore tree. And the river and the water bug and the sky and the white sycamore, all whispering to each other:
Hot day, hot day, hot day, cool river. . . .

And here I am again, complaining about winter when we're about to topple into spring if I can just be patient enough--well, whether or not I'm patient, spring will still arrive--and the lilac buds are just greening and the tulip leaves are like fists of ribbons, and the sun is somewhere far above us, in the mouths of the clouds--if only they'd spit my sun out, roll it out on their tongue like a glowing lozenge. I'd like to hold the sun on MY tongue, and swallow it, and beam out all my orifices--SHAZAM! and breathe it into chilly people and the beaks of tired birds and into the ears of the sidewalk, so cracked and gray is the sidewalk right now!

Friday does this to me, you know. Last night in the middle of talking to dear Martin, who is at a conference in Indianapolis, my eyes went to Vegas, all twinkling and crazy, and I spent the beginnings of a migraine drinking tea, eating a cupcake and watching TV with my mother, after which I dropped in bed uncommonly early and slept it away. And this morning only the bolts of a headache remained clattering around in the back of my skull and all seems to be well again.

And beer is in order this afternoon, partly to celebrate another story being taken at another journal.

So hurrah, and Happy Friday and Friday libations to you, my dears.