Angst: Part 1

Mary Ellen will be back in town briefly tomorrow and we'll be meeting to go over the menu for the reception following our reading on October 18th. Because we both live in woods opposite directions from Syracuse for the summer, we haven't seen much of each other. We've managed a couple of quick face-to-face meetings -- opening the box of our books that arrived, going to the bookstore to settle on a date for the reading, etc. -- but no time to just sit and think it all out together. We've been e-mailing....but she can't hear the panic in my typed words.

I'm not agonizing over the reading itself.....I'm looking forward to that part. I actually LIKE these poems. We lived with them for so long while we were putting the book together, I had feared we'd end up hating them, but that hasn't happened. It was fairly easy for me to select the ones I wanted to read (even after my brother said he was coming and asked if I'd be reading anything that might embarrass him). Of course, I transferred the poems selected onto individual pages in the largest font I could manage....one of those necessary tasks when your age reaches a speed limit.

It's the party at my place that's keeping me up at night. As you know, we moved across the street in July. Some of the folks who say they'll be at the reading haven't seen the place yet...it was one of those "kill two birds with one stone" decisions of mine to have the party here and not in the Green Street Community Garden. Well that and the fact that I have a bathroom.

Will Rupert the Wonder Dog -- still adjusting to being back among city noises -- behave? Will my mother-in-law teeter about wiping away cobwebs I haven't noticed and complaining that I didn't put out enough food or too much food? Do I have enough chairs? Do I need to make coffee? (never made a pot of coffee in my life...) Do I have enough wine glasses? Will people leave after a short period of time so I may have the meltdown I know is coming in privacy?

And of course, the huge fear: what if nobody comes?