Penultimate splash.

Hey 2011, thanks for the memories! Next year I vow to incorporate some new vegetables into our lives, to maybe give brown rice another try, to drink less diet soda, to be thankful more often. I would like to simultaneously be more aware and less aware.

I would like to write things down. I would like to jump back into my current book projects without trepidation. I would like to remember how little time I had to get things done over break, and therefore make better use of the time I do have. Syllabus-related anxiety dreams may go away once I figure out what books I'm using this summer and fall.

Thank you, 2011, for bringing Saint Monica and The Monkey & the Wrench into the world. 2012 will have O Holy Insurgency, spaghetti squash, more tea, more happy, some moving forward with life (see aforementioned more happy), heaps upon heaps of gratitude for all of the above.

Bright, All Is.

It's Christmas night. We made it! I am feeling tremendously relieved and a million times more motivated than I did 24 hours ago. I just may be able to get a few things done over break, after all. This year the kids were visiting their dad for Christmas day, so we had a relaxing and quiet grownups holiday involving my mom's fabulous cooking (and my dad's panna cotta, surrounded by fresh pomegranate juice, procured in a process which my mom described as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and finally she made my dad finish the task outdoors due to the pomegranate gore). Between the four of us, I believe we read every page of both the NYT and Plain Dealer at least twice. Now the kids are home and in bed, and I am ready to charge into this week like nobody's business. I guess the universe gave me the gift of motivation this year. Thanks, universe.

Status update.

Um, yeah, so I have officially submitted my final draft of O Holy Insurgency, complete with blurbs and marketing questionnaire and so forth.

Champagne! Or champagne-ish!

And now it's time to really start figuring out what comes next.

Here's an Akron alley shot from today.

Snowflakeless, etc.

Yeah.

The end of the year as we know it.

A break is not a break if you have to keep waking up at 6 to get your kids off to school. Thus, my break will not truly break until tomorrow morning, when my kids hopefully make themselves breakfast and let me sleep in a little.

And then, the shopping...

I was feeling super disoriented, then looked at last year's archives and realized I felt this way last year, too. Note to MB of 2012: you will not get extra work done over winter break. No extra reading, editing, junk drawers, painting, edgy and comic novel written, etc. Don't even try.

I still don't know what day it is.

It hit me that AWP isn't super far away.

I need to write my panel paper!

I can't seem to read The Cat's Table at any time when I'm not semi-comatose, so my reading has slowed down like everything else. So far it's not making me break through the wall of tired.

Speaking of which, it's time to call it a night.

Chainbreaker.

Around this time of year I tend to issue challenges such as:

I will write three new poems before the new year.

Will you write three new poems before the new year?

Ideally, I'll write more than three poems before the new year, but it's hard to know how exciting this break will or won't be.

I just wrote a new poem. I've been averaging one poem every 1.5 weeks. That is not very good, for me.

I sat down this afternoon to write one of the more unpleasant poems of this book. And then I ended up making it nice.

Stockholm Syndrome by Poem.

Whatever. I'll take it.

Fall 2011 semester is done. I'm finishing up rec letters and some editorial projects, and then it's all snowmen and snow ma'ams and popcorn and laziness. And BOR typesetting. And, hopefully, new poems.

yes + no

It's been raining all day, but this time last year we had snow. I wrote a new poem today, organized some existing poems, punched holes in some existing poems, and upbraided myself a little (sometimes I think I write silly poems because I don't like writing somber ones, and right now I am writing kind of a non-funny series of poems, but some of them are humorous, only not the one I wrote today).

Classes are done for the year, but grading is not. Just getting started on a new poetics project. Wondering why there's so much damn laundry in my house all the time. Glad I made the cat stay indoors today.

12

Holy crap it's DECEMBER now. I've been thinking it was December for weeks, but now I am right instead of wrong. I just went to type "Winter 12" in the tag box and typed WINGER instead. Thank you, unintentional and horrifying musical allusion.

Anyway, it's December. I taught my last class of Fall 2012 today. I have, as they say, my work cut out for me. Big projects, small projects, projects that don't know they are projects, projects that shouldn't be projects, oh yeah. Still not writing, but feeling a hell of a lot more contemplative lately, and that is a good sign.