mimsy and outgrabe

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...

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...

Columbus is so much more glamorous than I could ever be, you guys. What is it with this place? So much art, beautiful streets with eclectic little stores, amazing food. Just amazing. Are you hungry? Get thee to Columbus. Also they have umpteen breweries around which is making A. very happy, but even he admits that the food trumps the beer in this magical little city. The line for this place was crazy long. I mean, have I left the conference strip? No. Do I have any real sense of the true Columbus, OH? Absolutely not. But these few city blocks have been really, really good to me. Oh yeah, and the art conference! SECAC is a pretty low-key, feel-good, celebratory event so far. Really cool panel topics and presenters, with very welcoming and friendly attendees, so my imposter syndrome is dissipating somewhat. It may rage back in full form when I enter the room where M. and I are presenting later this morning, but for now, I'm finding it a pretty cool experience to be ...

This week was chock full of incidents that have made me seethe with anger and defensiveness and resentment and then, ultimately, just kind of sink back into a weird sort of ambivalence about other people, because ultimately, there's not a damn thing I can do about the way they are going to act.  Also, anger and defensiveness and resentment is exhausting. Also, I do not have time for that shit.  The small-child's worth of grading has been (finally) organized and I'm slowly but surely turning it into the size of, oh, a smaller child. It's still pretty damn big. But at least I'm making progress, and there's the chance that by the end of the weekend I *might* have a small-child's worth of graded assignments to hand back.  That would be awesome, wouldn't it? Just let me dream, haters. Today I'm going to soccer games, the dentist, and a wedding. WHAT IS MY LIFE. Tomorrow I'm participating in a Making Strides walk at the college. ...