ode to the red sox

Oh, my Sox, I’m loathe to say,

Have broken my heart another day.

2011 season’s sudden and bitter fall,

In all estimation, is the worst of baseball.

The Spring, per usual, was lacking grace,

But fortitude steeled upon every fan’s face.

Papi’s homers sang past the Green Monster

And Gonzalez surprised with his hutzpah.

Pedroia and Ellsbury, ah my boys, are

The hardest working players in pro ball.

The beauty plays it as an art.

The littlest player pumps the biggest heart.

I love the rest of the guys, too,

But here’s the thing, you know it’s true:

As much as our team plays as a team like no other

These two play as determined brothers.

For most of the season we were number one

Then September stole all the fun,

With so many of our players on the DL

What could we do? What the hell?

Three weeks of watching torture,

The Yankees circled like vultures

And right at season’s end,

We began to rise, a bit slowly, but rise again.

Terry Francona chewed his gum,

He chewed and chewed until we won.

Extra innings lay in Papalbon’s hand.

Then we tied and lost again.

And then that Tampa Bay,

Who are these guys anyway?

I couldn’t watch, my husband yelled

How on earth? Again, I ask: What. The. Hell?

We rollercoastered our way through the final few.

The Yankees were rough, Tampa Bay, too

We took both series’ last games, and didn’t whine.

Then we lost to the Orioles in the bottom of the ninth.

A short season this year, tis true,

Maybe I’ll cower with the flu.

While other teams’ fans raise up cheers

I’ll stay away from October play, cause:

THERE’S ALWAYS NEXT YEAR.

quiet & things

Back from camping, this week was mostly much needed downtime. 


My writing group had a lunch meeting after a hiatus period due to travels of each, and surgery of one. We had a logistics meeting discussing where we all were at the moment in writing, how we want the group to function, and dare we invite some new blood in after loosing two members to moves somewhat cross-country in the past year. We all agreed on new blood, some of us moaned about the current transitory state of publishing world, the other members all recently submitted works and are in that sea of rejections and non-responses. I ended up being the cheerleader to keep them all from quitting writing, and thankfully it worked. They are all too good to not be read out. 


One had to remind herself of why she writes besides trying to publish. I not so eloquently put it, "If I'm not writing, I am miserable to be around. Might as well shoot me it the head." And the rest, thankfully, recognized that in themselves.


Speaking of writing and rejections, I saw a bit of an interview last night in which the author of The Help claimed to have received 60 rejections over the course of three years. Now she's a best selling author with a highly anticipated film on its way to release. 


So there's always hope.


I had one good writing session this week. Polished up another chapter. I am hoping to get more in this week, especially while the boys are out of state with their father. I really want to knock this revision out and get it in the same state as my writing group compatriots. Although, if I feel as hopeless as they did before my cheer session, maybe not. Who am I kidding? I want to get the book out of my hands and into the public. And I have other starts and ideas to work on.


It's quiet. Too quiet. I find it disorienting, though it is what I loved most about my pre-motherhood. I really loved just curling up with a book because I felt like it and no one interrupted me for anything darn thing. Or just going outside for a walk to clear my head. Not that it needed much clearing then. And writing for endless hours because my head had empty rooms to wander around in.


Now I want to be interrupted. Curses.


I miss the boys. I miss my grown up talks with my really perceptive teen. I miss Captain Comic yelling and stomping through the house because I am ruining his life or crushing his dreams because I won't buy him a real movie camera. Hm, just Googled, looks like that would run me about $67K, used. I would sooner replace Big Bertha, my rusty year 2000 minivan, and the fence. Or maybe try to put in that second master suite to the house.  Or sock it away toward the kids' college educations, half of one of them anyway. I miss how he always makes me laugh.


Other than that, I have been battling weeds and squash bugs, a Normandy style invasion of which destroyed my beautiful squash plants, again. And Toots and I have been having fun with each other and with friends. 


So this Saturday is an extra quiet one, and I almost - note almost - feel a smidge ho-hum. 

to sleep, perchance to dream

Honey put Toots to bed last night and found he had to fold the quilt in half to fit in her crib.

This morning, I heard her stirring and went over to her crib to take her out. 

Me:  Did you have a good night's sleep with your new quilt?
Toots sleepily with fingers firmly in her mouth: Mm-hm. But I had dweams.
Me:  What happened in your dreams?
Toots: It had cheese in it.
Me: Was it good cheese?
Toots perking up, but fingers still in mouth:  Mm-hm!

This was her first unprompted telling of her dreams.  I believe the quilt had something to do with it.

Today's plan

is to plant the phlox I bought yesterday.  They look lovely in the pots I purchased  strategically placed around the bushes and side of the house where I want them to be in the ground. 

But after last night's spontaneous girls' night out adventure loaded with laughs and friends, and making new friends and generally having a ball, after yesterday's relatively perfect day of lack of planning leading to gardening and then some, I may just lay back down in the chaisse lounge out back with a book and my red sox cap pulled low over my eyes, after I settle Toots down for her nap.

(please settle down for nap, Toots, please, oh please oh please?)

I think I need one, too.  I was up way past my bedtime.

to write in the midst of it all

Creative Construction is a great site for mothers who are trying to juggle being an artist of any form with being a mother and the demands of working or SAHMing or wherever you are on that spectrum. It has been instrumental for me in getting started back to writing anything again after a huge dry spell period in which I had a myriad of other things going on. I realized that what I needed to do regardless of being in the midst of - you guessed it - Life, that what I needed more than anything was to write.

First I read and commented on others' posts . Then I started posting some blogs periodically there, then I found my way back to a huge old project, which is now a completed first draft of a middle reader novel with a scientific hole in the middle. Then I started writing this blog, because I was drained re: the novel, but recognized I still very much needed to stay in the habit of writing. I seriously suggest that if you feel even the slightest notion to be creative in the midst of everything, to go there, to do it, to let go of the things in life that will be there anyway regardless of whether or not you take an hour for yourself, or even ten minutes, and do what you love.

I am now feeling like I could go back in and take a look at what is missing and try to at least hobble something together out of the void, with all my little research materials. And what I don't know, I can fake well enough that I can send this out to agents, etc and if I get a contract out of it, I can ask for assistance from contacts they may have to clarify what I would like to have in better detail. I think I can do that now. It's been a good couple of months since I closed the last chapter and sent it out to a couple of trusted readers. They've returned it well-marked, but also with kudos that I wrote a good story that really should see print, and not just because they are friends of mine, but because they are serious readers and know a good story when they see it.

So, as soon as C goes down for her nap, and I get that next batch of laundry in, and something resembling a meal in front of me, I will creak open the slightly rusty manuscript and give it a go.

What is your dream of what you want to be doing outside of your daily norm? If you still don't know...hang out over at CC for a while. You will likely find it there.

The Next Big Thing

Why is it even when I have several projects I could be working on, narrowed to two that I am working on (read procrastinating) that I generally have at least part of my writer's eye on The Next Big Thing?

This is also true in the home improvement arena, you should see what I've come up with for the addition now that we are paying a mortgage and have a yard of our own rather than renting a condo.

I mean I could also be focusing on getting those wonderfully folded piles from last week into dressers before starting this week's loads. But I'm already a day late anyway, and have no earthly idea how it is that I wash the same five outfits per family member twice a week and there are still piles of folded and sorted laundry sitting from two weeks ago.

I'm planning next spring's gardens while the plots are currently filled and continuing to fill with weeds. I really need to buy more sand to add to my clay soil which needs to be turned and covered, with compost, too, before I start plotting next year.

I am also dreaming baby names, when I know, logistics and physicality have set in stone that C is the last of my progeny. I am thinking of new baby names instead of being present with the three kids I have now.

I can use the baby names for characters, but that is the only technical resolve I have for this dilemma I have that the next thing is better than the present. It's sparklier, it's as tempting as a dessert sitting on the counter while I'm preparing dinner.

Something about the new, the imagined, the dreamed is much easier because I can keep my hands clean thinking about it while the dirty work of the present is a constant.

Maybe I just have trouble with finishing, with letting go, with saying finally, for the last time, that this version of the poem, the children's novel, the article is good enough just the way it is.

I'm sure there is a psychological disorder with a big fancy name for this. It has conveniently slipped my mind.

Glamorous

Sunday was Sophia Loren's seventy-fifth birthday. God, she is still gorgeous and sexy, but I fell in love with her in movies from the fifties and sixties I used to watch with my mother. I think she looks her most sexy and powerful and a woman to reckon with in her role as Dulcinea in Man of La Mancha opposite Peter O'Toole. Of course I'm in love with Peter O'Toole, too, but that is a story for another day.

Mostly, people associate Ms. Loren with sophistication and glamour. I recently realized that she was from the same area of Italy around Naples as my in-laws. She has the same big green eyes and arched brows as my mother-in-law. So while I have always wished that I were her to some extent...at least as glamorous and self-possessed, now I like to dream that my daughter may share some distant DNA with my one of my greatest screen crushes and idols.

I like to go back and look at her as Dulcinea, where she was about as undone as she could ever be and still absolutely to die for. Sophia had to be the impetus to put Rachel Welch in a fur bikini a few years later in a little B movie that made the next generation drool and put the poster on their bedroom wall. The resemblance and oozing sexuality are uncannily similar.

I still fantasize that someday, I can walk through a room that suddenly hushes, and not because I am crazily tap dancing a shuffle-ball-change out of there after tripping over myself.

*photo credit unknown or i would say. from promo material for Man of la Mancha