My Vida Loca!!! (Part III)

So...

My week had been a little unnerving... to say the least.

I'd lost my wallet. I'd blown a tire. I had a couple of health issues. I was pissed off about some stuff going on on the job. Other stuff was bothering me. I didn't list everything because that would be damn near 10 posts. All kind of sh** hit me all at once.

*Ladylee grabbing a punch bowl and doing a "Florida Evans".*

Damn, Damn, DAMN!

I was NOT a happy camper. I haven't had a drink in 5 years, and I was seriously contemplating finding a bar and having some Scotch, or something STRONG as hell. The diva in me cried a few tears (but only for a few minutes, now... Had to tell myself to "big up!"). It was only Wednesday, and I just wanted my week to be over.

I was not happy.

So that Wednesday, around noon, "Milk and Cookies" called me at work. He was at my house, and he asked how far it was from my home to my workplace in Midtown. I told him approximately 4.5 miles. He said he was going to walk. I laughed at him. I thought he was joking. But lo and behold, he shows up at my job, an hour and a half later, sweating profusely (I think it was 90 degrees that day in the ATL). He was a couple of shades darker after being in the sun. That gave me the good laugh that I needed.

It was approximately two in the afternoon, and we'd finished up our work in the lab that day. I'd been training someone for a couple of hours, and that was over too. So we were all back in the lab, listening to music (yeah, we ALWAYS have one of my mixtapes on FULL FULL BLAST), joking around with my brother. I watched as my coworker Que did her militant black power thing and tore him up for deciding to go active in the army.

Poor Milk and Cookies. He took the verbal beating like a man, though!!

Anyway, I decided to check my email. You've got to understand, me and them baby OGs, DJ Diva, Serenity23, and the retired blogger Ladybug have a huge email thread going all day long. I needed to catch up on that thread, especially since I was feeling a little down. My girls always know how to cheer me up...

I open my email. In the middle of the thread, I spot an email from Tayari Jones.

Now if you are a faithful reader of my blog, then you know she is my FAVORITE author (click here for post).

Big digression needed here.

Now, the week prior, Que (my coworker, another Tayari Jones fan) emailed me something about a Decatur book festival. I perused the names, and noticed it was a bunch of white folks I had NEVER heard of. Since I ain't all that diverse (yeah, I admit it), I kind of blew it off.

I looked over the author list again. There were a couple of names I recognized, one of them being my favorite author, Tayari Jones.

So you know what's up, right? This meant I was going to go to this festival, you know. I was gonna find out the time and place of her reading, go, and then get the hell out of dodge.

In addition to this, my coworker "By" came over to my desk sometime earlier in the week, all big and proud, chest poked out, and tapped me on the shoulder. I thought he was running up on me about some work-related stuff. (The Horror!)

"What man?!" I yelled. I had no idea what I was doing when he interrupted me. It could not have been work related, because I was a bit too skittish. I was probably burning some CDs on my laptop, or on the email thread with my blog fam, reading a book, yacking on the phone...something non-work related.

He tossed a newspaper article about the Decatur Book festival on my desk. "There you go right there, Ladylee," he bellowed, tapping the newspaper. "A book festival!!!"

"Man, I already know about that. Tayari Jones will be there. I already know. You are late! Now get the heck on!!!"

He looked sad. I'd hurt dude's feelings. He knew I loved to read, and he knew that everyone around there, had been reading and discussing my manuscript chapters at one time or another. He'd even taken a few chapters home to his wife. Everyone around the job knows my passion for reading and writing, even him.

I decided to be nice, since he wasn't bothering me about work related stuff.

"Well, thank you By for the article. That was very nice of you to think of me... I really do appreciate it...Now get the heck on, man!!!"

"Just thought you wanted to know about it, girl!" He walked away.

I picked up the article, and perused it. Now, I needed that article. I wanted to go to her reading, but I was thoroughly confused about the location. I am not all that familiar with downtown Decatur. So the article gave me a slight idea of where to go.

You gotta understand... I LOVE Tayari's writing. Goodness gracious. I'd been screaming for a damn week, to anyone who asked me anything about books or the festival...

"Tayari Jones is coming to town, Tayari Jones is coming to town!"

I pimp her books like a pimp pimps his prostitutes or a dope dealer hustles drugs. I am the self appointed bootleg "Work for free" ATL arm of her public relations conglomerate. (And she knows it.)LOL!

Since I read profusely, people are always asking... "Suggest a good book for me, Ladylee!"

"Um," I usually say, scratching my temple slowly, a soft frown lighting my face...

"Have you read any books by Tayari Jones?"

Let's just say that I made a decision that I was going to get to her reading, even though I still wasn't sure of where it was being held, come hell or high water. I haven't paid much attention in the past to author readings, but since I've spent the last year and a half TRYING to bang out a manuscript (which is at about 600 pages right now), and I see the difficulty of it all, I go see my favorite authors when they come to town out of RESPECT.

So... no more digressing here... just trying to give you a "brief" background of my loyalty and love for any and everything that Ms. Jones writes: novel, short story, anecdote, blog entry, a quick email, the freakin' alphabet...

Get the point? Good... let's continue...

So like I said...

There is an email in my email box from Tayari Jones. Now this is nothing new. I am a regular on her blog, and, unlike her lurkers, I leave comments. If she emails me about a comment, I am quick to ask writing questions, and she is always quick to respond via email. (I would never email her straight out.... LadyLee can't STAND bothering people.) She is not all stuck up and snooty, and she has always been quite helpful to me. So we do have a very minor email thing going on, and she will email me if I am MIA on her blog. So I thought that this new email was a reply to one of my sarcastic or snide comments on her blog... (I wasn't gonna open it, really. I thought I'd pissed her off or something. She has a pink fur coat that for some reason she is fond of, and I made a comment about it possibly being um... "ho stroll" gear. LOL, I was wrong for that!) .

I opened the email and read the following:

"Ladylee, where are you? I need your help, I am stranded. (404) 555-1234."

What the hell?????????

"to be continued in "My Vida Loca, part IV"