mimsy and outgrabe

So many things I feel like writing about this week. Partly wanting to apologize to the universe for the temper tantrum I threw last week in my blog post; partly wanting to reaffirm said temper tantrum and say eff you to the universe; partly wanting to talk about teaching and The Overwhelm and how I've felt more down this week than any week since A. left for Puerto Rico, even though nothing really has changed. Partly wanting to talk about writing and writers I love and things that make sense to me and my obsessive need to archive or hoard all of those things I love. I've just about come to the end of my latest journal. I keep a notebook for lists and notes on meetings and plans for work and homelife, but my journal is a combination of a reader's notebook and writing pad. I draft the beginning of poems by hand almost always, and so this is where the really bad stuff gets its start, and stays -- usually, but unfortunately not always. When I work on my play(s) I draft by ...

This week has not. been. great. I was wait-listed by one of the residencies I applied to --  which is not the best outcome, obviously, but not the worst. They can accept 40 artists for residency and they had 285 applicants. So I suppose to have made the waiting list when they have a 14% acceptance rate is pretty good. (I did the math there correctly, right? Remember, I'm a poet. Numbers are not my language.) But the next day I was rejected by another residency I was really hoping to get . . . because they offer a family-friendly option, where you can bring your partner and kids. The kids are occupied from 9 to 4 in a kind of summer camp, your partner gets to do whatever he or she wants during that time, and the artist gets to go their studio for those hours and work on their project(s). It sounds like heaven. But heaven said get the hell out of here, Sarah Kain. So . . . no summer residency in Vermont. (Insert sadface emojii.) These rejections, while naturally disappoin...

Little Miss Talkalot is almost thirteen now and is slumping more and more into that sullen nontalking teen thing, so the name doesn't really suit her anymore. It IS, however, really really apt for her sister, who is no longer as vampire-like as she used to be (a huge surprise to everyone).  Soooooooo, the little one is going to be referred to from now on as Little Miss Talkalot the Second and the big-but-not-as-big-as-she-wants-to-be will go by Little Miss Tween (up until, of course, the day she actually turns into a teenager). Little Miss is not necessarily supposed to be a condescending diminutive but more of a nod to some favorite, exceedingly-bizarre books from my childhood, the Little Miss and Mister books by Roger Hargreaves. And sure, for some reason the Misters never had "Little" added to their names and that's sexist and terrible but really, they're just incredibly strange British children's books and their strangeness is kind of wonderful and i...

This week classes began for the spring semester at Stuffolk. It wasn't a bad week. I'm cautiously optimistic about the semester. My students seem engaged and respectful, which would be marked change from at least two of my classes last semester. I have a ton of prep still to do, mostly in making sure the Blackboard course spaces are aligned with the new semester and that my handouts and rubrics and all that junk have been updated. Our HUM 121 students making a very unofficial Sol LeWitt. Today I have the privilege of being the "Mystery Reader" at my youngest's preschool in the morning (those kids are the cutest, so it really will be the highlight of my week), followed with a day of writing letters of recommendation for three students. I am behind on lots of different tasks, but there's absolutely nothing I could have done differently. I've been working my ass off for the past few weeks; like, hyper-focused on work. My hope, my aim, is to sacrific...