My little pumpkin is taking care of me

Okay, I've changed my mind since my last blog. I would not rather be sick in Europe; I only want to be sick in my own bed. I guess I have walking pneumonia. It's insane. I just don't have time for this, but I don't have a choice. I am to do nothing but rest. So I have watched some TV, something I never do, and I read a bit of Jake Adam York's Murder Ballads. I started to work on a poem, but I simply didn't have the energy...heartbreaking! I just add to my misery by watching animal cop shows. One woman dumped 13 puppies in a garbage can in wintertime. How am I not supposed to cry when I see dead, frozen puppies? And crying will just make me sicker. Telemachus has taken care of me. He snuggles with me and is a bit more gentle than usual. He knows I'm weak. Here is a picture of him in his Halloween costume. I hope I am feeling better on Sunday so that Telemachus and I can participate in giving out candy for our apartment complex trick or treat.

I'd rather be sick in Europe

I'm really bad at being sick. It's 9:30 in the morning and I am the sickest I have been in years. My voice is gone and my chest is on fire. The last time I was this sick was right before my friend Bryan and I headed to Austria to snowboard. It must have been about four years ago. The picture is me in Solden, Austria, where my friend Bryan and I rode for four days. Notice the red face, a mix between cold air and strep thoat. But no sickness was going to keep me from those mountains. Notice the fluff of white behind me. That isn't snow; it is a smear of cloud that I had to glide through. I hate the use of this word more than anything...but I was "stoked."

Mary tagged me for this

The Rules:

Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your "To Be Read" list.

Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex*
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead*
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath*
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita*
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye*
On the Road*
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

I'm a Pug! Woop - Morphing REMIX

I don't know what's worse, the fact that I am posting the video, or that it illustrates that in my free time I have been watching you tube. People who own pugs are indeed crazy.

Fall Submissions and a Pumpkin Spice Latte

Okay, I sat down today and got busy compiling some fall submissions. After reading many blogs, I felt like a submission slacker. The truth is...it is my least favorite part of writing. My favorite part is right when I finish a first draft of a poem. I don't have children, but when I am done with that first draft, it is a sort of birth.

I told myself that I would do one submission a day for the first three weeks of October. That felt reasonable. I knew I would probably do seven or so at a time and then I could take a week off. Last week I did six so today I had to do eight. It's so tedious and sometimes I just don't know what the hell I'm doing. So much of my work has some smidgen of Vincent in it. I don't want to overwhelm an editor. I have been trying to balance the subject matter.

And then...someone told me last week that I shouldn't mention my education in the cover letter. I never even thought of that. Any thoughts or advice on that?

I have been feeling a bit guilty lately because in my recent publication bios I noticed that I just said where I was from and where I have been published. I never mentioned the NEOMFA program. Is that a no-no? The professors I have worked with in this program have fostered my growth as a writer and as a human being. I wonder if I should make sure in the future that I mention the program. Any thoughts on that?

Another issue that I am interested in investigating is online vs print publishing. I am thrilled that I had work in Diagram. I love reading online journals, but when it comes to publishing, I love to have it physically in my hand. I just love books. Do you think it matters? Is one more legit? Certainly more people will read it online.

I did force myself to submit to two or three online journals. I would love for people to share favorite online journals.

In other news, I got some Starbuck's today. I can count on two hands how many times I have ever had Starbuck's. I purchased a Pumpkin Spice Latte and it was rather tasty.

Two of my favorite things...Bubba and Telemachus