First Submission

I have to share. I actually, really, actually, submitted poetry for publication for the first time since eleventh grade. And eleventh grade was quite awhile back, folks, so rusty doesn't even begin to describe the way I felt about all this yesterday as I got started.

I hemmed, I hawed. I decided against it. I talked myself into it. I put it off until the last, last, possible moment. I harassed friends and family on extremely short notice for opinions and editing advice. I literally forced myself to do this.

Why? I asked myself this as I groaned through my seventh revision in twenty-four hours. As I stared at the computer screen, toggling between fonts, I tried a tactic my mother taught me. I muttered "What's the worst possible thing that could happen if I hit the send button?" My husband replied "We could all blow up." Hmmm. Well, that brought me back down to earth.

I may have shared this before, but there is a solid steel block on my desk that my mom sent me a few years back which has this engraved into it:

What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?

This makes me pause on a regular basis and think about whether or not I have the courage to do something that feels hard. Today, I decided that even possibly not failing, was a good enough reason to try. How will my children learn courage if they never see me try hard at something that scares the living wits out of me?

I'm not expecting to win this contest, but I am expecting it to be the first submission of many. After all my hysteria (and if you know me you know I love a good dose of hysteria in my projects), right now I just feel happy. And relieved. And accomplished. You know those writing goals I started out with after the retreat in October? I am actually making progress! How cool is that?

Christmas

We arrived home from our delicious and delightful trip to Connecticut at about 5:30 this morning. It was an amazing and magical adventure (even if Continental airlines has made a permanent enemy out of me) and I can't imagine not going back east much sooner than the six years we waited this time! It will take me awhile to sort it all out and share it, but it really, really was wonderful and the time we spent with my sister-in-law and her husband was priceless.

We're holding off for the big Christmas "moment" until after nap time--partially since my husband is still asleep--but as he'll be home for the next week, we have lots planned, such as:

+Cookie, truffle, and rice krispie treat making, gingerbread village making (thanks Allie)
+Getting into the rhythm of snow-cocoa-snow-cocoa (the outdoor time will come in short spurts since all our snow clothes are currently vacationing in some top secret Continental airlines location)
+Sending the rest of the Christmas cards (once the luggage with them in it arrives)
+Hors D'oeuvres and sparkling cider galore (standard fare here from Christmas to New Years)
+Writing time for me since my husband is home to adore the children--will I submit poetry by the end of the year or won't I . . .

Anyway, you get the picture. It's a happy picture for me! And don't worry, photos (and details of the enmity between me and Continental) will be forthcoming :) Wishing you all a lovely day today and hoping you a fab week of festivities as we celebrate the mountain of December and January holidays!

Hope & Misery Abound

"Victories in life come through our ability to work around and over the obstacles that cross our path. We grow stronger as we climb our own mountains." -- Marvin J. Ashton

Yes, I am still sick. This would be the misery part. I'm on antibiotics though and it's now been three weeks, so I'm hoping it clears itself up this week and leaves me able to breathe in peace!

My husband was out of town Tuesday through Friday last week at a conference for work. I missed him terribly, both because I adore him and because it was horrid trying to deal with the kids alone all week when I felt so rotten.

Tuesday I woke up and got the kids dressed and breakfasted and decided to go lie down for a bit. This was a really stupid idea, and I'm playing the sick card as an excuse for my temporarily feeble decision-making capabilities.

When I got up, refreshed and feeling positive about my ability to handle the week with the kids, I first encountered a strong smell. It was not an unpleasant smell, but if I could smell it through this massive head cold then you know it had some serious power behind it. It smelled like . . . barbecue . . .

I was then confronted with my small son, slathered in something frighteningly thick and brown from fingers to wrists and looking like a little ghost--caked in a white powdery substance from the neck up. Then I saw the living room and I was not well pleased. My delightfully creative children decided to give themselves and the house a . . . spice rub.

The main ingredient was this, which is one of my favorite things to add to chili. This was the brown stuff Bear had on his hands. His head was covered in a mixture of cream of tartar and powdered sugar and dampened for maximum pastiness by organic lemon-thyme cleaning spray. Floors, walls, furniture and accessories, all "rubbed".

I thought about taking photos, but frankly I was too sick to do more than send Princess to her room while I gave Bear a bath and then baby-gated him into the hall while I spent 2 hours cleaning. I did get Princess out for the last half hour and have her help me vacuum and scrub, but most of it was too much of a mess for little hands to be of much use. Everything cleaned up fine except for the ottoman which I think is a lost cause. They used it as a palette and it had the hickory salt, cream of tartar and curry powder ground into it. We're going to smell like a smokehouse for months.

Now for the hope part. October is almost over and I am busy, despite the illness trying to get ready for November which brings the beginning of NaNoWriMo and CU lecture writing, Thanksgiving, my sister's birthday, the holiday selling season on eBay and the start of my own holiday prep list (which promises to be as lengthy and glorious as it always is).

Call me an optimist (or totally unrealistic), but I'm excited about everything I plan to pack into the last couple months of 2008! I love the holidays that are part of this time of year and the busyness that accompanies them, and I have hope that I'll manage to accomplish enough of what I want to be pleased with the effort and the results.

Tomorrow my plans are to pull out the sewing machine and begin work on Princess' Orange-Yellow-Pink Fuzzy Spider Costume and do a lot of laundry and work more on a story called "Worry & Care" that I started two years ago. I've only got a few chapters left I think before it's done and I'd adore having it finished this week. Here is the quote from the first chapter that the title comes from. It sums up my current state of hope.

Faith is not without worry or care--faith is fear that has said a prayer.

–Author Unknown

Miss me?

Wow--8 weeks, that is crazy! I hope to never leave y'all hanging for that long again. Things have been pretty wild here. Currently I'm sick--coughing and hacking sick--and it's been a full week so I'm dreaming it'll be over soon.

Princess' party was spectacular and we had a wonderful time with the family and friends who came (and there were plenty)! The cake turned out very well, although I was sobbing and hyperventilating over it as I decorated the ladybug, and the weather was PERFECT! Thank you to all who came, and I promise that the Thank You notes are coming soon. Tiffany was the absolute lifesaver--she's a new friend that I don't know well, but I give a fair amount of credit to her for offering to help and then showing up and doing whatever needed to be done! On the way home Princess said, "Mom, it was the most stupendous party anyone has ever had!" And that's what I wanted :)

The garden has been ignored for most of the time I haven't been here. Infestations increased and it was way, way too depressing for me to deal with. The potato crop was huge (like, hundreds of potatoes) and every single potato had bugs in inside it. I do have one little pumpkin which was actually turning orange last time I looked and I will take a photo of for you this week.

Mouth healed, it's all good, and gratefully they don't grow back so I NEVER have to have it done again.

I'm writing pretty much every day, though not as many words as I'd hoped. I went last weekend, before the sickness took hold, up to the mountains to a beautiful lake to a real live writer's retreat! I met lots of amazing women, a number of whom had published actual books and learned a lot. I came home totally inspired and with some clear thoughts about directions to take my various writing endeavors. I also joined the writer's association that sponsored the event (I'm in their newly formed online chapter) and can't wait to jump into their conversations and critiques. Here are my plans:

1. I am going to keep writing fan fiction. I've met a lot of great people through reading and posting fan fiction, I still love the characters I am playing with and frankly, it's fun. It also helps me hone my writing skills for my other projects, so it's even useful.

2. I'm going to work on a couple of original fiction pieces. The story I started for NaNoWriMo last year, and the one I am starting in a couple weeks for this year's contest. I may need significant encouragement on these, so please poke me now and again about them, okay? I do want them published eventually (I think), but first I want to actually complete a novel-length work of totally original fiction. Wow. I said it out loud.

3. You've heard me moan about poetry some and I've decided to do something about it. I'm taking down everything I've posted online (so read fast if you want to take a look), investigating previously published markets for that stuff and writing again. I even finished a new poem and a half this week! Official publication is what I want for these babies, at least some of them, so harass me about submissions, please.

In other news, we've started kindergarten for Princess and I'm loving it! I'm officially a home schooling mama now and it's so cool. Insane, but cool.

My husband has started school again and is taking an accounting class twice a week. So far, he's scored the only perfect 100 of the class on his first test and we're all holding together on those nights when he leaves home early and gets home late.

The Bear seems less of a baby each day. He's on another teething jag and he's managed three new ones in the last week and a half. He is now an Eleven Tooth Boy with a reasonable (given my family's propensity for toddler baldness) amount of hair. His sister likes to call it silvery-gold. I just call it mama-melting. He makes me laugh a lot and it's weird because he's almost a carbon copy of me at this age and some days I get this weird deja vu feeling--like I am actually looking at myself.

August stuff...

The weather has been dark and cold today and pretty dreary a lot of this week. I've been inside a lot and haven't gotten photos of the garden yet.


Yesterday when my husband got the vacuum cleaner out we weren't sure how Bear was going to react to it. His sister is still frightened by it at almost 5! He loved it. He literally chased his dad around the house shouting "car car car"! It was the funniest thing I'd seen in awhile.


Last week as the Northwest Washington State Fair on we took the kids and went on Saturday. Princess' favorite thing was getting to milk the pretend cow and the souvenier she chose to bring home is a wooden King Cobra almost 3 feet long. I am so not into snakes, but she is still delighted with it (I had to kiss its nasty little head at quiet time) and that is what counts! My husband and Princess both got to be party of the Imagination Circus show and it was lots of fun.


I went back to the mouth surgeon on Monday. He thinks I have a strained muscle and possibly an infection. I'm now taking muscle relaxers (which totally wipe me out) and antibiotics (which make me feel sick), but hey! At least he actually looked at me and had an idea. I'm not in as much pain, just feeling crummy.


If you're so inclined, it would be lovely to have you pray for sunshine for Princess' birthday on the 30th!

Here and update, there an update, everywhere an . . .

Well, we're half way through August! I can't believe we only have 2 weeks until Princess' party. The creation of all things buggy are underway. I am thrilled my family will be coming up to visit again, and Mom will be here for a couple of weeks. Sadly, they just announced the church summer barbecue is happening the evening of Princess' bash and I am sad about that . . . I'm not sure people will skip free food at the lake to hit a pinata at the park with us. Plus, I am late getting the invites out--they were supposed to be out last week and last week was rough and so I didn't do it. Sigh. More cake for me.

I'm writing a lot of fanfiction these days and my goal of 1000 words of creative writing a day is proving sufficiently difficult. I hit 2550 total last week and 1484 this week. Better than it has nothing though I suppose, so I'll just keep at it. I have a couple months left to practice before NaNoWriMo.

The garden is a discouragement and a thrill . I went and picked peas and beans this morning. Lots of green tomatoes & unripe bell peppers, some not too big corn, tons of yellow crook neck squash, moldy cabbage and Brussels sprouts which I am just going to pull out and try again next year, blight-covered potato patch which I am going to mostly dig up this week and hope the baby potatoes are okay underground, nice self-seeded sunflowers and lots of rotting baby zucchini and pumpkins. REALLY unhappy about the rotting/blighted/moldy stuff.

The mouth surgeon was not helpful--told me to take ibuprofen and come back in a week if it still hurt. Did not even look at my mouth--couldn't they have told me that over the phone? So I didn't go back in because it had stopped hurting, yeah! Last night I am eating dinner and I hear this HUGE "crraaacckkkk" and feel like someone just stabbed me in the jaw with a tent stake. Not the joint, it is actually lower in the jaw where they took the wisdom tooth out . . . took the maximum amount of proscribed ibuprofen and it didn't put even a dent in the (excruciating) pain. So I suppose I get to call them again tomorrow--it has been six weeks since the surgery and it just seems like this is weird, weird, weird.

Galactastic!

Well, my mom's visit was great and Bear's party was as perfect as a party can get. I actually got everything done on my party to do list, my family was a great help with the slave labor aspects of the celebration and Baby Bear absolutely loved having the house filled with people who loved him! Frankly, I did too :) I managed to put together a scrapbook (my first clumsy attempt ever) of Bear's first year and I really like how it turned out. Here is the moon and stars cake I made (blueberry moon and strawberry stars). Stressful to make, but I'm quite proud of it now that it is all over!

Mom helped with some garden stuff and I have corn and peppers and amazing things out there right now folks--I'll take you some new photos this week!

Bear's been most happy the last few days because Saturday we took the baby gates down and he is now allowed to roam the ranch. This has resulted in taking Oscar the garbage can out to the garage to keep him out of it (the lid was no deterrent), replacing the spices back in the cupboard 4 times, putting the dishtowels back in the drawer 3 times (after removing the child from drawer), and being puzzled by the fact that the kitchen drawer latches that STILL keep his sister out of the butter knives are apparently useless in keeping him out of the butter knives. The kid has a long reach.

Last night I posted my first fanfic chapter since January! Yeah me! Close to 1800 words, so a little smaller than most, but it felt great and I was happy with it. I also have chapter eleven done and am started on chapter twelve. Maybe I can get back into the writing and reviewing groove and that will motivate me to work on more of my completely original fiction. I am plotting in my head for this year's NaNoWriMo. Or maybe even some new poetry, although I continue to feel unsettled about that these days. Should I try to be famous or just connect with the masses . . . that is the eternal question for me & poetry.

Today I was chewing pizza at lunch and I heard a loud cracking sound and a shooting pain in my jaw. I can't think this is good. Back to Dr. Oral-Maxillofacial Surgeon on Thursday. Yuck.