mimsy and outgrabe

This summer has been motherfucking intense.  I'm not complaining. (Yes, you can breathe a sigh of relief.) I'm just trying to accurately describe the period of time in which I required my squishy, ill-used mom brain to be suddenly very active this summer. (I'm in year three of coming off those pregnancy hormones -- fingers crossed that maybe my brain will return to full capacity by the Christmas season.) July's Southampton Writers Conference and its Script Development Lab was extremely useful and productive. (So yes, I'm glad I listened to A. and didn't back out. Don't tell HIM that, though.) My experience with the Script Development Lab this year was really outstanding -- not least because of the feedback provided me by the dramaturg assigned to my play (William Carden of the Ensemble Theatre Studio -- who is brilliant and lovely), and its actors and director, but also because, perhaps, I came to the conference with a piece of writing that is work...

First, the poem: Epiphenomenon by Karen Skolfield. I'm still in recovery from the 12 days of the Southampton Writers Conference. It was a useful experience and I learned a lot about theater and the way playwrights work and how actors approach plays . . . and I enjoyed many of the readings and panel sessions (which doesn't always happen in these things, as you don't really have choices about the events you attend)  . . . but oh my god, I'm exhausted now. More so than in past years when I've attended the same conference. It's either because the Three Kid System is far more difficult than I thought, or I'm getting really old. Maybe it's both. Maybe, also, it's because I know I have so much work to do before I finish my verse play -- in terms of revision, and as I construct the next two acts. The prospect of all that work, at this point, is a little tiring, even though I usually find writing pretty energizing. I guess the stress of the past fe...

So, one thing I'm discovering in The Year+ Orientation to Having Three Children is that, surprise, you have to super-duper plan and prioritize. Priorities go something like this: Are the children dressed? Am I dressed? Does anyone smell or show visible signs of yesterday's sandwiches/spaghetti dinner/backyard dirt pile debacle? Will any of the speaking children complain audibly about not being fed? If the answer is yes to the first two questions and no to the last two, we can leave the house for school/camp/store/violin lesson/sports practice/babysitter etc. The bar is lower than it's ever been before, people. This is probably not a surprise to anyone with half a brain, but you should remember that through the course of giving birth to the aforementioned three children, I've lost an incredible amount of brain power. I believe it was A.P. who pointed out that -- three years after having The Boy -- I was just beginning to regain myself, to become more clear...