After thirteen years and more than a thousand rejections, my story rejections have graduated from their manila envelopes to a drawer in a filing cabinet:
Tidbits of Children Being Adorable
The three-year-old to the nine-year-old: “It’s time to dress up! You will be the otter, and I will be the dancing guy!”
The three-year-old has dressed up as Peter-Man — apparently a cross between Spider Man and Peter Pan. Continue reading “Tidbits of Children Being Adorable”
Very Different Kinds of Impediments
It’s really hard to accomplish anything when all these dogs keep shoving their faces between me and my computer, mashing the keyboard and nosing the screen.
Sexism and racism seemed like such wild, out there, sci-fi ideas when I was a sheltered little kid watching Star Trek.
Hardware Store
Wandering through a hardware store, having everything mansplained to me by my three-year-old who knows nothing.
Playing Star Trek and Ghostbusters
The three-year-old: “I want to talk about something–” He spreads his hands dramatically. “They have BORGS in Star Trek.”
The three-year-old seems to have created a Star Trek/Ghostbusters mash-up in his head where he’s fighting Borg and ghosts. Continue reading “Playing Star Trek and Ghostbusters”
Christmas Early
The three-year-old who pronounces ‘Christmas’ like ‘breakfast’ is trying to carol: “Merry breakfast, merry breakfast wherever you are!”
We’re starting Christmas in my house early this year. We need it.
The tree is up. The kids are under it. Garlands EVERYWHERE.
Pearl
My grandmother spent the last week of her life trapped in a nightmare. This morning I closed her eyes.
Kermit, Christmas, and Breakfast
Bonding with my three-year-old over how Kermit is our favorite muppet.
‘Christmas’ sounds like ‘breakfast’ when my three-year-old says it. Thus: “We can have the breakfast tree and put breakfast lights on it!”
Taking a Moment to Prepare
In car at hospital, trying to make myself go in to see my dying grandma. Feel like I’m ten again when my other grandma died of Alzheimer’s.
Paper Woes
Printing out manuscripts to take to my writing group is way harder if I get distracted while they’re printing and don’t notice that the paper has stacked too high, causing the pages to start curling up and then flopping down in reverse order, until there’s too many to do that so they start flipping over the other side of the printer to the floor, and then they give up entirely and jam the thing up, leaving me with a jammed printer and a whole pile of out-of-order pages in varying degrees of crunch-ed-ness.