mimsy and outgrabe

This week delivered a wonderfully surprising sinus infection (yay spring! yay compromised immune system!) that made me feel as if my brain was trying to escape my head through my eye (we can't really blame my brain for wanting to leave, can we?) -- which did all sorts of inconvenient things to my productivity ... so I'm behind in almost everything: grading, festival prep, applications for conferences and grants, household/children maintenance, etc. I do try to be conservative when it comes to taking antibiotics but after 24-hours of a headache that made it difficult to see or think, I decided to go to the doctor and ask for something. Because who has time for this? And it turns out that -- sometimes -- a good ol' blast of antibiotics to your system is just what it needs. Sometimes.  I can think again! And now that I can, and I'm facing all of this. . .  stuff . . . that I'm supposed to finish by the end of the day/month/semester, I'm also thinking abou...

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...