Moving Away from the Manuscript

Welp, I spent this weekend going to the pediatric dentist and soccer games and then nursing a "vicious case of the sniffles" (A.'s charming and übersympathetic way of describing my head cold). Somewhere in there, though, I managed to do a tiny amount of laundry AND prepare the final onslaught of September submissions to magazines and book publishers. 

I'm really hoping something good comes out of all of this submission-preparing, or -- when all of these magazines and book publishers start sending out their rejections around the same time -- I'm going to have a very depressing couple of months. Perhaps the advent of Vampire Baby will dull the feeling of rejection, though -- he/she seems to be amplifying all of my current emotions, however, so I fear that I may not take the rejection well and will end up burying my face in several tons of ice cream and/or candy featuring Red No. 40, at which point I'll blow up all Titanic-size and give myself a raging case of gestational diabetes. 

This morning I haven't done much of anything writerly, other than draft an email I'll send to my chapbook publisher once my sister/designer-of-the-book-cover lets me know if we have anything to send to her yet. Not that we're pressed for time -- the chap isn't coming out until March 2013 -- but Margaret Bashaar sent out an email to all the HGP authors at the beginning of September asking for updates, and I want to respond to that email before the month is through.

I think I'll be moving forward with projects that don't involve this manuscript very shortly, though. I have a lot of grading to do today, on my first non-duty day that doesn't feature a meeting or doctor's appointment, as well as a lot of laundry and bill-paying (finally! "We have until three to pay it!"-- Best in Show, anyone?). But I think I'm going to try to sneak in some reading for that Poetry of Witness essay I imagined writing waaaay back at the beginning of the summer, and maybe later this week I'll actually venture to write some of it. Or, at the very least, email the people I'd like to interview.

Now it's time to go wake up The Girl, who, as usual, stayed up far too late messing around with her toys in her room when she was supposed to be asleep, and is now running late. But at least it's Monday, and I can drive her to school, which buys us all a little bit of time.