Into the Wild Wood and Home Again

It's Monday, rainy, chilly, and a bit dark. Suits my mood, in a way. The weekend was good, but my brain is tired, and I have a full day ahead of me: work, phone calls, Holly duty, house chores, papers to grade that I ignored...  I'll manage, but I'm pre-tired.  And we have another week of interruptions: five kids on a field trip today, two tomorrow, Wednesday's holiday, and then we start all over again...for two days. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but all I can say is, I sure hope they don't stick a meeting in there. We try to do too much. Yes, kids need field trips. They need all the enrichment we can figure out how to stuff into their short time with us. And there's clubs, athletics, and heaven help us, they take a day off for a 30 minute dentist appointment. But we also have academics to focus on.  Don't look to teachers when it comes to those all-mighty test scores.  But I'm ranting, which is not helping anyone at all.  Good stuff is bou...

I've been in a writing slump-- anything I've worked on lately has been pretty basic, flat, and not poem-ish. I have some drafts, but I'm not that excited about any of them yet. Which is why it was so exciting to wake up at 4am with an idea nagging at me, shaking my brain awake. Well, actually, it seems my brain was sort of awake, working anyhow, on how to fix/improve the draft I wrote yesterday after spending the day in my writing class. It's a class focusing on fairy tale tropes and language, and I found myself writing a short story yesterday instead of a poem. This in itself is interesting, because I cannot for the life of me write short fiction. That said, the prompt for homework was to pull from the three earlier drafts and create a poem (there were a few constraints, but you get the idea). I wrote. I erased. I fretted. My brain defaulted to rhyming couplets, which is usually a sign that I can't get through a block in my brain. So, I wrote 22 lines of rhyming co...

Slow start to my day-- intentionally. I slept hard for much of the night, which is good, because my sleep has been broken a lot this week. No idea why, just was, but I feel like I actually slept a bit. Amen.  I got up at the usual time, but I'm being slow to get going. I had breakfast. I started the dishwasher. Yup, and read the paper. Sent a few silly reels out there to friends and family. Now, I'm going to do the socials thing, then head to the shower. Simple. I like it. And today through tomorrow, I'll be spending a quantity of time online with people I like in a writing class I've been super excited about. Not bad. I may or may not get papers graded-- I already warned the kids they might get them a day late. I will, however, make time to watch football, to go to church, and to put away the grocery order when it gets here. Yes, I succumbed to the bougie habit of getting things delivered today, mainly because I just do not see how I could be making dinner after my cla...

Hey, lookit that! It's Friday! It's been a long week in a lot of ways. And I have a writing class all weekend, one that I'm super excited about. Maybe I'll get out of my writing cesspit. I have not written one darn thing I'm super excited about in ages-- yes, blurts and really sloppy drafts, but nothing I am burning to get to. So, let's hope for the best this weekend.  And I still have house chores and errands to get to, so I'll have to wedge those in. And grading essays, though those might get shifted. We'll see. Ah, the life of a living poet, eh? We just do not have the financial flexibility for having staff. Sigh. (insert laugh) Today, though, I will go to work, come home to quickly have G put the winter tires in my car, trundle down the road, and get those put on. We are living on borrowed good weather, I suspect. Though the reports are saying a "warmer" winter-- but that, to me, means icy slop. I hate winter driving. I'd love winter if...

So, in addition to all the good news politically yesterday, I also found out I've been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. I'm still flabbergasted, gobsmacked, and in general, rendered mute. Well, not really mute. But wow. Me? It seems that St Cecilia and the Muses have joined forces of late to drag me out of the imposter syndrome I am usually swaddled in and they are showing me that maybe I don't suck at this.  Anyhow, wow.  And I'm now in the process of finding poet friends to blurb the new book.  I feel all hat-in-handish again. Please, sir (or ma'm), could you read my little manuscript and tell the world some nice things?  So awkward. If you know of anyone who would like to do that, let me know. It's really cringey to ask. And I didn't sleep worth a tinker's dam last night. Up every single hour, at the least. And of course I have a long day ahead: work, Holly time, dinner... I'll be dead in my chair by the end of Jeopardy, I'm pretty sure. I hope...

As Pete Buttigieg said, and I'm paraphrasing, it's not that more people became democrats, but more that people want positive, substantial change. And now that the ball has been tossed to the blue side of things, it's time to get to work. This is a sacred charge, and it cannot be fumbled. It's time to let younger, more energetic folks lead the way.  But the vote across the country reads like a solemn referendum, not a victory as yet. No more sending the House home when things get interesting. No more obfuscation. No more slash and burn of things that help keep people alive. The list of things to do is a long one, and I hope that the focus does not shift to retribution alone (although accountability is on the list, near the top). There's work to be done. And now, there's a chance to get it done.  Curbing AI. Ending this horror show in the Middle East. Restoring some dignity to the daily lives of the people who struggle the most. And for heaven's sake, restorin...