Bit of an update

I apologize for the dearth of posts these days. It would seem to be a good thing — that life is too busy to take the time to talk about it -- but most of the busy-ness is just the business of living, working, driving to work and back home and staying awake, evenings and weekends busy with meals, laundry, po biz, and so forth. Rarely do I get the luxury to just read or write. Sometimes I write in my sleep, restlessly composing, waking up so tired I can hardly drag through the day.

Work has fallen off for John, as it usually does during periods of economic difficulty. Who wants to pay for photography when they can have their brother-in-law take the picture? Someone actually called John the other day, balking at his day fee and threatening to go to Sears. John tried to explain that they wouldn't get the same quality from Sears. I told him to just tell the caller to hold up their cell phone and smile. Sure. Why not? Meantime, we've closed the photo studio and saved 2K a month. John is attempting to work from home, his workstation set up in the dark basement!

And I've got too much work at work, while the management encourages us to take unpaid vacation. Facebook friends in academia talk about summer vacation. We contemplate the San Francisco summer — unrelenting fog. For that reason alone (well, aside from a paycheck), I don't mind the long commute south each morning. At least I see sun, smell the jasmine blooming outside the office.

We are set to go away for four days next week, however, for John's mom's 90th birthday. There will be a big party in the Boston area, relatives flying in from Ireland and all. Except the young man who was supposed to dogsit has bailed. Our dog is 14 years old, sweet and delicate, and John and I baby her night and day. Greta is on painkillers, can't do stairs or hills (and we live on a 14° hill), and needs to be assisted in and out of a car. So I'm trying not to panic as we contact everyone we know, hoping that someone will want to stay here for four days, high on a hill in San Francisco, with a sweet little mutt.

This morning, yoga class (with a substitute) was cancelled. I tried to do yoga at home (and did eventually), but first I had to deal with downward facing dog — actually more like dog in relaxation pose. Cellphone picture below.




Now you see why I don't post more often. Maybe I will have something interesting to say sometime soon.

Some News

Some news has been brewing for some time. I've been shy about hinting, but today the announcement has been made. My book, finalist yet again, has been selected for publication by Dream Horse Press. I'm happy, feel they will do well by my book, as well as a (very) small press can do, and I'm happy to save those godawful contest fees for a while. (Though actually, I have another --new-- book -- that still needs work, waiting in the wings, though I have already sent it to two places.) But Conjugated Visits, formerly known as Demimonde, which will be published by Dream Horse Press in 2010, is my first, for a long time my only baby, and I feel funny, no longer wondering and worrying about its future.

Not counting putting together the final manuscript, deciding on a photo for the cover, and then learning all that publicity stuff, which I've never had to pay attention to.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda

I miss Fella!

I meant to post something after leaving VCCA that summed up my experience there -- a wonderful place -- fun, pretty, inspiring, and the only time in my life that I've had 18 days (minus the travel and acculturation time) to just write. I left on a high after a ten-minute reading the night before that even offset a quiet departure and a very long flight, one leg of which was between two large men who could have benefited from showers.

I miss Eduardo, my VCCA buddy. Despite his remorseless teasing, he introduced me to place and people and helped this introvert fit in. And we had a lot of fun snarking about fellow fellows, fellow poets, fellow bloggers, and whatnot late at night.

Since coming back, I've had some second thoughts about the manuscript I put together there -- although I'm still glad I did it. Being back to work has been relatively easy. My sweetie, who missed me while I was gone, has been tres sympathique. My dog has been her quirky doggie self.

I have managed in the last two months to lose my watch, break my glasses (at VCCA) and today, spill a cup of coffee on my iPhone. I don't know what all this "means" but I hope I'm done with it.

My windowbox also greeted me.

More from VCCA

More from VCCA

I keep on thinking I'll post the blog at night and then don't, so I'll make an attempt now. It's 9:30 in the morning and I'm eager to get to the studio and see what disaster I wreaked last night when I started reordering the new manuscript. One of the new poets here asked me the manuscripts title, and it was the first time I said it aloud, and it was weird. See, I'm too unsure of it to even post it here.

Well, as some of you already know, we had snow on Monday (?) and since then it has been melting and freezing and so forth. I've taken some pictures with my iPhone so will post them here now.

VCCA post

I've been here for four days and I haven't posted -- but I've been having a great time and getting a lot done. Right now, I'm sitting around, post dinner, post ping pong, with Eduardo Corral and Deborah Ager.

I'm going to post some photos:

What's on Your Desk?

Here are some of the things on my desk:

1) A glass paperweight that used to belong to my mother, weird but unique
2) No fewer than five notebook / journals hardly written in
3) Squiggly dry seaweed driftwood
4) Two pieces of other driftwood
5) Two fabric lizards, lounging
6) Files and paid bills and letters held up by a pair of spherical wooden bookends that belonged to my father.
7) A black Santa Clara pottery bowl filled with shells and stones
8) A metal candy box filled with same
9) A small black plastic dog -- were two, one has gone missing
10) A glass jar filled with batteries to be recycled
11) Stationery boxes
12) Stapler, pens, pencils, and assorted crap

If you want to enumerate what is on your desk, consider yourself tagged.

Forgot a title

So much has happened in the days since my last post, but not much has happened to me. I resist posting here the same news everyone posts. And my own life is boring. So what does that leave? Good luck, every last bit of it, to our new leader. I have faith in you and know you will work hard for us.

Work has been very busy, and I struggle to stay awake on my long drive home, often waking with a jerk after I've swerved out of my lane. (Yeah, I know that's awful. I'm working on it!)

I look forward to leaving (on the red eye) for VCCA in less than a month. I've been through Virginia but never to Virginia, so I can't visualize it, don't know what to expect. I plan to shape a bunch of poems into BookNext (which also needs a real title) and make some decisions about Conjugated Visits. For two and a half weeks, I will answer only to myself.