Life's been good to me so far

I think I'm gonna get to a point that I post here and it cross posts to the blog, so both places get all the entries. For now this is all that's happening (lj only).

Bizarre experiences in blogging:

1. David, my old friend who recently got back in touch? He's living with his brother and sister in law on the other side of the country. Botched surgeries came up in conversation and David said, "Yeah my friend had a sponge left in her during a c-section in Boston" and the sister in law said (this is paraphased) "Wut you know altarflame?" Basically she was reading my lj the whole time we were going through our myriad fiascos that year! She educated him on booju, which makes me lol forever at the craziness of our small small world.

2. Apparently my grandfather is reading with a great deal of skepticism (this is me waving at you, Pa!). My mother keeps calling me saying things like, "Pa printed out pages of your journal and highlighted parts that he thinks mean you and Grant are in trouble", and "He doesn't understand how you can afford x, y and z". Pa, print and question all you need to, just stop sending her my way about it so I don't have to hear. Or, write me an email, I am always happy to talk to you. I love you but this thing where she calls me up because people are up in arms and want further explanations is getting annoying.

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Grant has two very promising interviews tomorrow. He also has a job lined up to start February 1 if they both fall through, and nothing else comes up, but we are really hoping something else does work out because the fall back job - though positive in some ways - also has some issues.

Overall I am feeling pretty good about money. With the Carmax check for the Prius cleared we've been able to pay December, January and February's mortgage payments and catch up the electric bill to a zero balance and do all sorts of things we've been putting off (like getting 5 birth certificates at $45 per copy so that they're here for school records in a few months, and spaying the cat). There is still a lot left for living off of and getting a less cool second car, and Grant is making more money at his part time job than usual as the guy is being nice giving him extra hours while he's "unemployed".

Grant is also being nice - awesome, in fact - giving me many hours each evening to focus on market research, combing agent listings and crafting query letters. I really appreciate this as we aren't usually in a situation, with available time, for it to be possible, and we may be back in a place where it isn't again soon. For now, though, I am making really exciting progress.

Writing a query letter to an agent is like writing a research paper for school - they want to know comparative titles in the genre as well as what makes your book different from the others already out there in that genre. They want a tantalizing description of your work that would be appropriate for the back of the book on a shelf. They want compelling bio information and proof that you are marketable and they want it spaced properly, and it has to all fit on one page, with a wowing sample attached. It is really exhaustive work rewriting and editing queries for a project for the first time (or in this case four completely different projects), BUT - I have a lot of hope about it, because once you have that first draft at a point you feel good about, you can basically just customize the queries you have written to send out over and over to different people. So even assuming the agent I am querying first here rejects me, it will be a simple thing to keep sending queries out to new people constantly until someone eventually accepts something.

I'm grateful for email - this was a much more time consuming practice (as in waiting for replies) as well as way more expensive, when it all had to be done through the post office.


I've lost 13.6 pounds this month. Still holding strong with Eat to Live. ETL kind of flip flopped with writing and is now the thing I'm 2nd most excited about, because I plateaued for a few days. Then I lost another half pound, though, and am hoping I'm out the other side of the dead spell and about to see daily decreases again...I'm torn every day between not being able to WAIT for it to be February so I can eat what I want to eat, and really not wanting it to be February yet because I need to lose way more weight before the end of January :p Grant being home is wonderful because he cooks all kinds of awesome things for the rest of the family and I don't have to deal with that; but it's also terrible because he COOKS ALL KINDS OF AWESOME THINGS FOR THE REST OF THE FAMILY! He made these tantalizing loaded potato skins today and I had to ask Aaron to eat one, and moan, and tell me about how awesome it was so I could live vicariously.


Today was a day for reorganizing the library with extra shelving units we brought over from Grant Sr's (things we left there when we moved out that have been sitting empty) - our books had exceeded shelving capacity. It was a day to listen to a lot of Sublime and Prodigy. G and I took just Ananda and Elise out for a bit, and when they were all in bed the two of us went for one of our late night, half hour long power walks... one thing I really love about Bob living here is being able to do things like that.

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Kid Updates:

-Ananda is 5' even now, suddenly curvier, and basically has her earbuds in and a book in her hand 24/7. She does all of her chores without complaint and looks forward to Annoying Orange updates on Fridays. She does a lot of independent Abeka and Kumon schoolwork and is frequently either carrying, playing with, reading to, or helping Elise...otherwise she's locking her out of her bedroom.

-Aaron has found some new friends down the block and is over there with them everyday now. It's an 11 year old girl and 8 year old boy who seem REALLY nice (way nicer than the bullying across the street neighbor that is the bane of this property...) They play basketball and box ball and dodge ball and man hunt and sometimes 1-3 other kids from around here join them. This has totally revitalized him - he's like a different kid all of a sudden. He was having sleepovers twice a month with some friends and having Darian over here or going to PATH every week, but clearly he needs a lot more kid time with kids who don't make him miserable. I think he felt trapped in our yard like he had to hide behind the bushes by across-the-street bully kid :/

The two of them have had their biking horizons expanded to include a great big 6 block grid, when they're together, and are loving it.

-Isaac has regressed to a level of misery and nonsense that has me wracking my brain like "IS THIS A GLUTEN ISSUE? IS THIS SOME UNDER STIMULATION? WHAT IS THE PROBLEM I THOUGHT TYRANNY WAS PAST!!!" Basically he cries about everything, often for long and exagerated time periods, and he is randomly mean to his siblings again, and...I don't know. Maybe it's just the Isaac cycle I used to always talk about in a downswing and I should be thankful it's been so long. Perk: He's more affectionate than he has ever been.

-Jake is wonderful. He does his chores consistently and relatively easily, now, finally, and he tears up big plates of raw vegetables and loves doing schoolwork and is generally the freaking bees' knees. He's good to our pets and to his siblings and still has this grumpy edge and scowl of doom that are to die for adorable.

-Elise is a nightmare at bedtime, and extremely hyper/loud sometimes, but she's talking more everyday, and she's ADORABLE, and I can't believe she's really the youngest and getting so big. She talks about wanting to go to school everyday and plays independently or with Jake and Isaac (unless she's harassing Annie) constantly. She's VERY strong willed and stubborn.

The three little kids are always doing something together. Today they each had bags full of random things and were pretending to travel and have travelling adventures, all day. Last night Jake and Isaac had an epic plastic sword fight battle while she stood by dressed as a princess and cheered them on alternately.

Alright, I am OUT. It is way too late and I'm far too tired.

So. I've blogged, I've wrote peoples' term papers, I've written my own school papers, I've done under the table writing for my mother in law, for the local newspaper. I won some writing contests when I was in elementary school and got into one of those vanity publication anthologies, with a poem, when I was 12. It's all very "big whoop", if you know what I mean. I have ALL THIS completed Real Writing writing that just...sits on my hard drive.

Tonight I actually formally submitted my first piece of writing for publication. By email query, with it all attached as a document, and. Well.

Three hours later, I open my inbox - IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT - and there's an acceptance letter from the editor.

WHAT?!

I've been bracing myself for sending out hundreds of queries with nothing but rejections because that's how publishing is, and trying to get used to the idea that perseverance is a big part of being a writer. This is nuts.

It's not "a big deal". It's a little 350 word thing for a trade journal, tailored specifically for one of their ongoing features. It only pays copies. And yet...

...

!

So here we go.

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Being published in Midwifery Today is a huge credit from the perspective that it's another little piece of clout in my query letter for a c-section book.

What I'm really working on right now is querying agents who represent in the memoir genre, because I have this old thing, Cracked, that I have drug back out, along with this new book I'm writing, that I really believe in actually, about all the ways surgery effects you that nobody talks about. The validation and exploration of what it means - having been cut open and sewn shut, especially over and over. It's narrative and informal and I really think it's good. I want to write a real, educational book on birth choices and avoiding intervention that's marketed towards pregnant women, something much less tongue and cheek, and I have a title and a chapter by chapter plan for that...but I think I have to get through the former before I can stand to delve too deeply into the latter.

Also my collection of short stories is almost done. And as soon as I can get anyone to bite into one of the nonfiction books, I'm going to whip that thing out, because, well, I really think it's good. And if I actually can finish and sell that...

I think often about how funny it is that I really ramble on with no editing here, and don't know how anybody even believes I call myself a writer :p I don't think I'm the best writer of all time. But I do think I'm good...when I'm in that zone, channeling it and making it happen. Which is really not how my lj entries go.

So. Bed, Mass, query agent, Grant going to get my brother while I educate the children and clean the house, bed.