Eleventine

Taking a break from editing to do a little scribbling and catch-up here. My online journal turned 11 years old on April 20 — entirely coincidental that it shares a date with Stoner’s New Year, as I was always far more into ingestible hallucinogens than smokeable euphorics, but it does make the occasion easy to remember. Eleven years ago I was in Boone North Carolina, living at the house on Jake Miller Road with my friend D and the rest of the boys, trying to direct my life post-college-graduation, hoping to be a published writer someday. I’ve been documenting my life online, with varying degrees of completeness, for nearly a third of my life now. At some point the future happened. Now I’m just living in it.

The beginning of the week was a bit rough. My kid’s school is closed for spring break, and we had to finish the May issue of the magazine, so we had the combo of deadline pressure AND all-officeboy-all-the-time. He was pretty good, considering he was bored senseless much of the time and everyone was too busy to play with him much. We got the issue finished on Wednesday, and then: my four-day weekend began. (With Thursday my delayed day off, and today a holiday.) Oh bliss. Well, work-and-bliss.

Yesterday morning began inauspiciously. My son started the day by throwing up, but didn’t seem sick otherwise, and didn’t repeat the unpleasant exercise — still, it lent a tinge of worry to the morning. While the boy breakfasted and played and so on, I revised my story “We Go Back” and sent it off to the editor. Let’s hope it meets her liking. Then I turned my attentions to the beautiful day and set off with my son. We went to the library and the playground and the post office and got some groceries. Thanks to the existence of the $1 a scoop ice cream place (four quarters gets you a good-sized cone) I was able to bestow infinite joy on my child despite being pretty broke. He had a scoop of banana nut. Oh, to be three years old, with so many ice cream flavors yet to be tasted…

In the evening, after the kid fell asleep, I tackled the simpler of the two editorial letters in my inbox, and got one novel revised and sent back. One down, one to go. (At least until I get the third editorial letter I’m expecting, probably next week. A writer’s work is never done etc.)

The kid doesn’t seem sick today… but he woke up around 4:30 a.m. and couldn’t be coaxed back to bed for more than half an hour. So… a rather earlier start to the day than I’d envisioned. I decided to take advantage of all these unexpected hours by working on the other novel edits, but my brain is protesting. Coffee may be in order.