mimsy and outgrabe

I finally finished scanning the fairy tale. Now the real work begins. I'm going to do a little overly obsessive logging of the "stats" and come back to post more later. What an effin' mess.

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 y...

I feel like I should put some kind of disclaimer on this blog . . . not much is going on lately. I've been incredibly sleepy lately, and indulging that sleepiness, so that I'm actually logging about 10 hours of sleep a night . . . which is just incredible for me. (Usually I get about 6-8 hours  . . .) I've had lots and LOTS of kid time lately. Little Girl's camp doesn't begin until next week, so I've been full-time mommy for about three weeks now. Because I've been sleeping in until I hear the pitter patter of little feet (or, more aptly put, the stomp stomp stomp of those little feet), I've relinquished the two hours of quiet, in-my-head time that I find necessary to do any real writing or reading or reflecting. It's not terrible, though. I'm finding it difficult to push through this exhaustion thing -- hell, I'm even napping when The Boy naps during the day, so that's about 1 to 2 more hours of sleep -- but I've been spen...

June is a slow month for blogging, I guess. Actually, it's a slow month for everything. My house is still disaster-ish. My article research is underway, as is the revision of the fairy tale poem, but I'm making progress very slowly. And this week has featured a special hiccup in the form of pink eye (both the boy and I contracted it). It's kind of amazing when and where inspiration hits and a poem demands to be written. Take, for instance, yesterday. The boy was supposed to go to daycare -- his last full week -- and I was going to go into the office for a meeting and to take care of a slew of little tasks that need attention before the end of the month. But then the boy woke up with goopy-eye, which prevents him from going to school, and I woke up with . . . a poem forming.  I began the poem after my husband left for work and while I still had a silent house to myself. I finished drafting about 12 lines, the first strophe of the poem, when the house awoke -- girl,...

The surest way to keep a project going is to make up your mind that the project is finished. At least, this is the way of things in MY world, which is a contrary world and a confusing one at that. Yesterday I resigned myself to certain facts: one, that poems for the fairy tale (those "interruptions") and the myth section of the manuscript were not coming as easily as they did a few weeks ago, and two, that the deadline for my sabbatical report was fast approaching and I needed to print out whatever I had so far and begin writing the report. These were fictions more than they were facts. Actually, "fact" number two is still pretty much true -- I DO need to start writing that report -- but I woke this morning thinking about beginning my revision of the first two scenes of the verse play, and ended up writing another interruption poem. I'm happy with the result, but I find the situation laughable. The verse play is never going to be written, at this rate. So...

Little Miss Talkalot is Little Miss Very Sad. Because she's caught some kind of virus replete with fever, she missed the Valentine's Day celebrations at school yesterday and she's missing today's 100th day of school celebrations. (Apparently, there's always something to celebrate in our elementary school, which really isn't a bad way to live life, is it?) A. stayed home with the girl yesterday, and today it's my turn. I'm missing two meetings and cancelling the same class I had to cancel on Friday when the boy was diagnosed with strep throat. This season of illness is kicking my butt. It's been a week since I assumed the new administrative role and yet I haven't really had a chance to fulfill its duties. But at the very least, I can say that I'm not falling behind in four classes, just one. Also, it's just really weird to see my daughter so sick. And it's not that she's near-death, but that we're just not used to seeing ...

I'm due for my beginning-of-the-month Survey of Completed Sabbatical Work, which more often than not tends to be part of my Continued Sabbatical Freakout. So here I am, ready to take stock of what I accomplished in November -- but surprisingly, even though this precious writing time is dwindling away, I'm significantly less freaked out than I was a month ago. I'm not finished with my Fairytale Poem -- but I've made good progress. I feel so much more sure of myself since I returned to the original storyline and began working revisions of those original lyric poems into the narrative. I realize that last sentence kinda sounds like a recipe for disaster, and I suppose it's very possible that the project could, indeed, turn out to be a disaster, but I'm confident that it won't. For now I'm confident, at least. I finished reading Blank Verse: A Guide to Its History and Use by Robert B. Shaw yesterday, and I would like to go on record as saying that Robe...

Today was good! I managed to turn in the freelance reading group guide I was a business-day behind on (if I'm not careful, they're not gonna use me anymore), AND finish my latest myth poem, AND get the oil changed in my car before our trip to Virginia tomorrow. I felt so productive I'm taking a little time-out, although this could be a bad move because there's a pile of clean laundry downstairs that's about 4 feet deep and needs to be folded. How DOES one household generate so much laundry? Oh, AND, I'm writing in my blog while the boy takes a late-in-the-day nap and the girl does . . . wait, what is that child doing? Why is it so quiet in here? *Pause for investigation* She's playing Angry Birds while her brother naps. Phew. So anyway, where was I? Writing about writing in my blog. Oh yeah -- THERE'S another accomplishment. (To tell you the truth, I'm feeling a little guilty about letting her play video games, and then admitting it online, but ...

Today brings me one poem closer to manuscript completion, which is, you know, a good thing. A couple of items of interest/concern, however: 1. Today I wrote some lines that actually scared me. A little. I don't want to be too dramatic about it, so maybe, instead, let's say that I was exceedingly uncomfortable with those lines. Now, I've been in enough writing classes to know that those kinds of lines are usually the ones where you're taking risks, and usually risk = good & praiseworthy & character-building if nothing else. Well, I'm not so sure that applies to me here -- in fact, I'm sure it doesn't. These lines could turn out to be perfect crap by the time I reread them tomorrow (or this evening, more likely, 'cause I'm kinda obsessive like that). And there's a good chance they are crap -- they won't just magically turn into it! Anyway, my concern, or interest, is in the fear/uneasiness. I think that I was uneasy with what I wa...