So here I am, up and about. Yesterday I tried actually to stay put in bed, and I managed to do so most of the time. Today I have made it as far as the livingroom bigsoftchair.

But soon I must shower the film of illness off my skin and out of my hair and dress myself in layers of black turtlenecks and heavy denim and make my way to the Bookworm to try to catch things up there. The LibraryFriends have sold a book and I must track it down in their storage and ship it. The sweet developmentally challenged couple who volunteer for the Thursday four-hour shift in the Buck-a-bag Book Trailer start work at noon and usually need some reassuring.

And I'm sure there's sorting to do.

Yes, I'm still coughing a little, still filling great bandana-handkerchiefs with nasal effluvia, but I can't stay in bed forever.

So here I go. In a minute.

The world out there for several days has alternated moments of sun with longer moments of gray and snow - dry graupel snowpellets that sublime quickly into the cold-desert arid air. We had some pleasant windbluster and naked trees tossing and bending. Soon it will be too late, too warm, to gather balsam poplar buds for salve-making. It may be too late already. I'm sure the balsam is thick and heavy on the buds this year, because this past January gave us so many weeks of below-zero temps.

But I don't even know where to find balsam poplars on this side of the Warners, here on the plateau. I had a whole forest of them around my little house on Little Dream Farm, but that was long ago, in the SurpriseValley over the mountains 30 miles from here. When I bought this little house, I bought two saplings to plant in my back yard, from the ForestFarm catalog. But hungry towndeer persistently gobble them to the ground. So.

I have 20 minutes now to pull myself together. OK then. Nice visiting with you.

Several weeks of foolish common viral illness. Flu, then head cold, then almost well but not quite, and so then bronchitis and some days of fearful bedrest imagining a lurking pneumonia (an old enemy from a former life). Now the lingering cough and return of the headcold double-blast. How much phlegm can the body of a stupid poet generate? Gallons, certainly, by now.

I have had to get substitutes for my this-week's shifts at the FriendsOfTheLibrary used book shop I coordinate so I can concentrate on really getting well. Although of course I spent every day here catching up housework put by in my bookshop frenzies elsewhere. On the weekend I drove to a remote ranch and bought many near-new and vintage volumes for my own business, and another canvasbagful from a sale in town. I had a fever but went out anyway - such opportunities are rare hereabouts - and I have paid for my folly healthwise while benefitting in terms of business: every purchase was a gem, worth its weight in dollar signs.

I've got to get well, though, and so today I'm back in bed with cough drops and lomatium tinctures and my trusty Vicks Vapoinhaler. And every cat and dog in the house, and brotherB frantically crayoning his colorbooks across the room. Last night as I got in bed he said, "Sore throat? Drink water ..." motioning at the same time with his big flat fingers in his peculiar pidgeon-sign language. His concern is worth worlds. And I take seriously his health advice, always. His instincts are good.

I do have a book to mail today, but maybe husbandSkip can take it to the post office for me later. Meanwhile I try to lower the flame on my hyperactivity and keep still, keep still, drink water, pet pets, read Robert A. Johnson's Inner Work on using dreams and active imagination, keep Eno on the headphones, and daydream that soon I will resume writing, soon I will make a garden.