Emerging from the Hormone Fog ... and Writing!

Woohoo! Today marks Day Three of actually raising my butt up outta bed when A. leaves for work! He's leaving close to 5:40 a.m. these days, which is later than my starting time this past spring, but who cares! The fact that I'm conscious and don't feel totally hungover when I wake up AND that I want to write -- I wrote both yesterday and the day before, people -- speaks volumes. Take THAT, hormones! I guess my body is finally beginning to adjust to this pregnancy thing, which is sooooo cool.

I'm not one of those women who loves being pregnant. I like the squishy adorable baby part at the end, but I cannot stand being ruled by hormones. It totally sucks that you can be conscious of being a raving lunatic and yet somehow unable to cease being that raving lunatic when you're riding a hormone surge. Or to be aware that, in some parallel universe, you'd stop the words coming out of your mouth, but that you're stuck in this universe and in this universe you're saying stupid hysterical shit that will make you cringe an hour (or a day) later. Or that in that same parallel universe, the Little Tiny Something that's upsetting you now, as you weep or rage in the midst of your hormone high, would remain a Little Tiny Something and not appear the Big Horrible Big Deal that's making you weep and rage so that your husband looks at you like you've grown three heads . . . and then walks away slowly, without turning his back to you, like he's afraid one of your three heads will extend on some kind of creepy dinosaur neck and devour him if he doesn't watch out.

Sometimes, being a woman is the worst. (Shut up, A.P.)

Actually, I haven't had too many of the moments above this time around, but the sleeping thing was killing me. (Notice the optimistic past tense!) I wanted to sleep all the freakin' time. And the result is that I'm getting fatter than I should be this early in the game because I haven't been exercising regularly. Yesterday I actually ran in the afternoon. It was awesome. I'm not sure my body has fully registered that I asked it to move for a stretch longer than 15 minutes, but whatever. My legs may not work later on this afternoon, but it will have been totally worth it. I'm so much happier (read: less anxious) when I'm exercising. And less fat!

***

Now, to finally talk, for a few seconds, about writing.

I'm close -- I think -- to polishing the MS and sending it out into the Big Bad World. Yesterday I finally finished this prose poem that I began somewhere at the beginning of the month. I wrote it as a prologue to the section of myth poems, at A.P.'s suggestion, and after having feedback from C.M.H., who wasn't really feeling the myth poems as much as the rest of the MS. With the addition of this prose poem, I think it works. Hopefully it will give the reader an idea of how to read the poems that follow. 

C.M.H. even suggested making the myth poems their own book. I'm not crazy about that idea (a chapbook, maybe, but not a full-length manuscript) -- although I might submit the MS to publishers in two versions, depending on the requirements of the publisher. I'll submit it as a 50-some page version (just sow and myth poems) to those publishers who look for manuscripts with less than 70 pages, and as the full version (all 77 pages) to those publishers who don't have restrictions on length. I might as well see what will happen, I guess.

I'm scanning the last chapter of the fairy tale -- finally -- and as soon as that's complete I'll kind of examine the poem as a whole, identify its weakest parts (in terms of meter, music, etc.), tweak them (hopefully for the better), and be done -- really done -- with writing the fairy tale. Then I'll print out a copy of the full MS -- which is a monster, from my perspective, considering my past collections of poetry have only ever reached around 50 pages and this MS is close to 80 -- and proofread/copyedit the hell out of it. Then I'll save a PDF version and the oh-so-much-fun submission season shall begin.

It's so nice to be productive again. I even sent out a submission to a magazine on Tuesday night, so there's my one submission for July. I'm beginning to take care of some school-related business, too, which is good because that shit is happening soon. August is going to go by in a blink, I just know it.

***

It's funny, how you realize certain things very suddenly and emphatically: Like, my daughter looks a lot like my husband but more and more she's acting like me. (Poor him! Two of us around!) This summer, I purposely didn't sign up for any graduate courses or writing conferences or overload courses or any real committed extracurricular activity. I thought, my kids really get a bum deal during the school year because I'm so busy with work that they aren't allowed to have half as many playdates as they want or do all the activities they want . . . and when I say kids, I really mean Little Miss Talkalot, because The Boy is still pretty content to stay at home and follow his sister around. Anyway, I just wanted to make up for the crappy school-year chaos and give the kidlets a really fun summer.

So when Little Miss Talkalot was presented with all of these different kind of summer fun things to do -- enrichment courses at a local college, musical theatre camp (you read that correctly), karate, programs at the library -- and she wanted to do everything, I said yes to everything.  And the result is that we've been just as crazy as we were in past summers . . . only this time it's because of her schedule, not mine, which should bring some comfort I suppose, except that I see her slowly morphing into her mother, and I think, poor kid. I totally understand her wanting to do all of these things, to try everything, to be everywhere, but it's exhausting. And sure, that could just be the pregnancy hormones talking, but I have a feeling it's actually that more logical, non-hormone-ruled part of me speaking. The sensible Debbie-Downer part of me, that says: Careful. You can't do everything. This will end in disaster. And also: Wear a helmet.

So next summer: Only one camp for the little girl, I think. And maybe the same camp for The Boy, because he might be old enough for the enrichment program, which is super-exciting to contemplate. (Driving to one place and one place only! Joy!) This resolution will probably be really easy to stick to, as Vampire Baby will have made his/her way into the world by then (knock wood), and I'll be fairly immobile for several months as I become, once again, and for the third time, food.