We’ve now entered Sickness Day Six, but I’m feeling better. Better, but not great. I still sound like a guy, sort of nasal-sexy and I am coughing and blowing my nose a lot, but at least the pain around my eyes has subsided and the congestion in my chest has lessened. I don’t feel like I’m dying anymore and believe me, it was touch and go there for a little while.

I have done no work on my essays, however. This is disappointing. I spent all week doing absolutely nothing and have nothing to show for it. I watched a lot of CSI on Spike TV, a lot of HGTV, some Food Network, a lot of movies I would normally not condescend to watch, and a little bit of House. There’s a permanent indention where I lay all week on the couch, snuggled under the blue on blue ratty blanket. The cats snuggled me off and on and my husband acted as a saint most of the time: fetching water, food, kleenex, Nyquil, you name it, he got it. Thank God for him.

I’ve noticed before that when you are a creative person, you tend to surround yourself with creative people doing creative things. Take my friend Meghan, for example. The only person I’ve ever met that sold awesome art on a commercial level. I’ve met “artists” before, who thought highly of themselves and their work and priced it according to their ego. I don’t like art that I don’t “get,” that requires a critical analysis paper just to make the art mean something. Her art, however, speaks to my inner excitement. She uses cultural icons, appealing textures and colors to create daydreams and familiarity on paper. I like that. I like feeling like the piece is familiar to me. She does that. She also doodles when you sit with her. Her doodles are better than the sketches I really put effort into. It’s amazing. She carries around big bulging bags full of creative wonders and you know that in her head, she’s turning every moment into art. That’s awesome.

My other friend, Lydia, is a costume designer. Very, very different from what I do, but creative just the same. I get smitten by her watercolor designs a little more than the finished product, but that’s what I relate to. How she is able to stitch together real life art is beyond me. I don’t even know how to sew a button. I’ve asked her many times to teach me but the truth is, I avoid learning it because the craft scares me so much. Needle and thread? Pieces of fabric? To create something? Wah? I just can’t get my head around it.

She and I went back to school together 4 years ago at the ripe age of 24, already ancient compared to the other students in our classes who clocked in at the bubbly ages of 18 or 19. Most of our peers couldn’t even drink legally for most of our college career. We also graduated the same semester in December of 2007, so walking at graduation together was a big deal. In January, she participated in a big Midwest competition for college theaters, though the competition’s name escapes me now. She entered two of her play designs, one for a play called “Our Country’s Good” and “The Madwoman of (Insert word I cannot spell Shyoh? Shioh? Shiloh?)” She was pretty freaked out about the whole thing for weeks, so I was happy when the awards ceremony finally came for her and she could have release of her pent up nerves. And as you all know, I don’t surround myself with crappy artisans, so it was no surprise to me that she ended up winning for both plays, and winning the big award that is sending her to the national competition in Washington D.C. She’s awesome. I still can’t sew a button, but she can. So I’ll just cook her dinner and she can sew my buttons. She does it with artistic skills.

It’s good to surround yourself with creative people. Doing otherwise shortens your life span, I swear to God. I used to have a friend that wrote, like me, but more poetically, and created zines and tied together strings of songs to evoke mood, emotion, and memory. No one like her has come again,  and sometimes I think of her and draw inspiration from that memory. I’ll tell you about her sometime, but not now. Not yet.