Well, friends, I survived speaking to 800-some kiddos on Friday. 
It was — dare I say it — fun.
Seriously. 
I mean, I was so tired you coulda wrung me out like a sponge, but really — the energy of that many little ones is kind of contagious. (Or maybe it’s just that it sent me into a sort of delirious altered state…)

The Children’s Book Festival is a joint effort by Corpus Christi’s public library and the local community college, with an emphasis on the word effort. They bus in 1,300 pre-K and Head Start students, funnel them through the author’s tents for readings and frivolity, hand them an orange juice and a free book, and send them on their way. It is Herculean. They’ve done it eight years running now and they’ve got it down to a fine science. I was wildly impressed. 

After that, because I didn’t have laryngitis yet, one of the librarians drove me to Flour Bluff Early Childhood Center, where I spoke to two different groups of kindergartners. They hugged me after the readings, and one little guy named Jared gave me a lucky rock.

Whereupon I hopped in my car and drove four hours north through endless swaths of wildflowers, which is how it is in Texas in the springtime. I had the whole space to myself and lots of Lucinda Williams and Angelique Kidjo on the iPod. And did I mention it was my birthday?

So, yes, wring me out like a sponge. 
But it was fun.

And today, since I still don’t have laryngitis, I’m going to do a reading at The Blanton Museum of Art. You remember awhile back when I shared a villanelle I’d written in response to a lithograph at the museum? Well, today I’ll be part of If These Walls Could Talk: The Blanton Poetry Project. Readings, tea, big ol’ beautiful pieces of art projected on the wall behind us. Doesn’t that sound fine?

And then, this week, three school visits — Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. 
Somewhere in there I should… you know…write a little.

The laryngitis thing? 
Stay tuned.