over the cliff

My mother has been complaining that I don’t update my blog enough. I don’t know what she’s talking about…

No doubt you (all 3 of my faithful readers) have been wondering what I’m up to. Perhaps you thought I was busy writing of the great American novel.

Curing cancer.

Alphabetizing my socks.

Shaving “Raketenpanzerbushethunk!” into Demos’ fur.

No, it’s not a real word, Oliver. Stop fretting that I knew something you didn’t.

In truth I have been doing none of these things. Instead I house-sat for my Aunt and Uncle, wrote lots of bad poetry at Starbucks, went vineyarding with Adam and Elena and helped (very little) them move into their new house, read the first 10 pages of half a dozen books, and did NOT go to Katie’s wedding.

One of my best friends from High School got married. And I didn’t go. I think I officially fail as a human.

I’m also not really quite sure if I ever told her definitively that I wasn’t going to be able to make it. [Insert expletive and plague on both of my computers here]

In case she ever googles her own name and comes across this: Katie Brinkley I adore you and I hope you and Jonas (ha! I didn’t call him Sven for once) are very, very, very happy. And tell him that he better treat you right or I’ll drown him.

In other news… Sara and Elena came over the other day and we had a submissions party–hopefully the first of many. Because I am psychotically OCD, I created a Poetry Bible filled with information on journals (stated response time, average response time, ranking, and manuscript guidelines), contests, market statistics, submissions log, and copies of the poems I’ve sold. To give me hope in my many hours of despair.

The sad thing was in the 4 hours we spent drinking wine and eating cheese straws… all I managed to do was print out everything I have, spread it out on the floor, and wish that I’d written better stuff.

But today I printed, stuffed and mailed packets to Poetry, Missouri Review, Mid-American Review, and Margie.

I also sim subbed the heck out of everything. I had to print out a sheet with a list of the poems that are at multiple places so that when I get rejected from all of them… I can check them off one by one. Double points to the journal if I cry.

And that has been my life. But for now, I must pack.

Longer update later. For now: Just sold “Lower Schoolers Explore the Universe” to Strange Horizons. This makes me happy since now I can pretend that my first sale to them wasn’t a fluke.

Some cute pictures, so I don’t lose them.

Puppy
Kittens
Kitten
Baby Seal

Brawny Man Commercial

The deer are coming! The deer are coming!

You just can’t make this stuff up.

I’ve seen the TV spot for it a couple of times and thought it was a joke… but it’s not!!!

Trailer

Before I begin, I’d like to warn you that you might want to skip this entry. It won’t be pretty.

I’m not kidding. It’s about car accidents.

On the way back to Carbondale on Sunday, I was stopped in traffic along I-40 near Asheville. After about 40 minutes of stop stop go… I reached the overpass where I saw maybe two dozen people standing near the railing and watching something. A few more minutes of stop stop go and I saw the ambulances. And the firetrucks. And the car in the woods, burnt to a crisp.

I looked it up that night online, and the next day, and today… to see if I could find any information on the wreck. But I couldn’t. It bothers me that I can’t find out for sure if everyone survived. Maybe that explains why last night I relived the day my brother drove us into the woods and the car burned to a crisp.

Now for the not so pretty part… for some reason in this dream, I became obsessed with my injury. I wanted to see it, and I wanted it to be absolutely horrifying. Thus I was disappointed when everytime I looked in the mirror, it was all stitched up. Then I started running my fingers through my hair–it’s a nervous habit–and for some reason everytime I did that, my hair became more bloody (btw… I was also a blonde for some reason). So I kept doing it. Then I looked in the mirror, and I realized that this action had somehow gotten rid of the stitches, and now where my forehead met my scalp was separated. Oh and I was a brunette again. I stood there, looking at myself, right hand pulling the hair away from my forehead and consequently pulling my scalp away from my forehead. There was… a hole. In my head. Bloody. I wanted to touch it. Then I woke up.

I was going to do a nice long update about tons of random stuff… but I don’t feel like it. Instead, I’ll just ask that you send happy thoughts in the general direction of Greenville, NC where Oliver is completing a schload of physics problems. He posted one in an IM to me. It did not look like fun.

We were pulled over by the US Coast Guard today on our way back from Big Rock. In the 10 years my father has owned Sleigh Bells, he’s never been stopped. I took lots of pictures which I’ll post later. Good times.

Featuring Principal Firebush

…do not collect $200.

I received my first ever rejection from a literary magazine. As far as “We hate you and your writing sucks” slips go, it was pretty polite. It wasn’t a torn off corner of a sheet of paper with the word ‘No!’ written on it as if I were some puppy trying to grab food off the table. They didn’t send back my manuscript with cat vomit or coffee stains on it. They didn’t say “Save the literary world. Die now.” Just a simple “Thank you for sending us your work, but we cannot use it at the present time.”

They were also relatively fast. 32 days. Pretty damn snappy for a lit magazine. I sent batches of poems off to Ploughshares and CrazyHorse at the end of March which I probably won’t see again until September. By then I’ll probably hate everything I’ve written and crawl back to my parents to see if Medical School is still an option.

In other pseudo-writing related news… I read book 3 of Goodkinds Sword of Truth infinitology. I still hate the names he gives groups of people, and his dialogue reminds me of that play in Kindergarten we did about Egyptians making bread, but it was readable. So I ordered book 4 and told Oliver that if I don’t like, it’s his fault. He doesn’t seem to think this is very fair.