So Much

I haven't been writing. Not only have I not been writing here, on my poor neglected blog, but I haven't been writing elsewhere either.

I attribute this lack of production to two things, one is simply that there's no time. Between the girls and the two jobs and the house and the bills and the groceries and the whatever the fuck else, there's just no time. And even if there were, it would be mentally cluttered time, which when it comes to writing things worth reading, is hard to work with.

The fact that in about eight weeks I will be writing fiction with a regular, weekly deadline, reading and writing about literature and immersing myself in academia is the thing I remember when I feel like I want to write but can't. It helps.

The other thing is a fullness. I might not be writing, but I am gathering. Everywhere I go I see people who inspire me, or disturb me, or delight me. All the while I am thinking, I am mentally cataloging and analyzing, my life, the lives around me, speculating on possible futures. I think this is a side-effect of the impending move - this feeling of simultaneous empowerment and uncertainty. I am on the brink of something. I am anticipating the leap, soaking up the view and immersing myself in the sensation of standing on the edge.

In a network of lines that enlace*

I've been thinking a lot lately about the patterns people create for themselves. And while I dislike passing judgment as to whether those patterns are good, bad or indifferent, it's hard not to see some of them as self-destructive.

In my people watching these days it just seems like people make so many choices that keep them stuck where they are, for better or for worse. Like the teenager that really wants to do something good with her life but just can't seem to keep from sabotaging herself at every step. Or the married mother of four whose husband is so controlling that I wonder how she can function like that.

Maybe my awareness is heightened, maybe I see more in the lives of those I will leave behind because there are so many things in my own future that I can't see. I just know, moving forward, that the patterns that develop over time are the ones that I want to fight against. I want to always be ready to make new mistakes, not the same ones over and over again.

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Side note: Dear bloggy friends, I know I said this before, and I also know that I try to blog guilt-free, but I just want to let you know that if it's been forever since you've heard from me (and for most of you, it has) I have not forgotten you. My Google Reader is ridiculously full but I am determined to get through it one blogger at a time, so please, be patient. Thanks! Love, Nell.

* With apologies to Italo Calvino.

Still no rejection letters

Almost three months ago I sent a short story out into the world. I've done it before, but it doesn't seem to get less scary with practice. This time I approached it the same way I approached applying to grad schools. Instead of sending the story just to the one literary journal I really wanted to be published in, I sent it to a whole gang of them.

The envelopes slipped through the mail slot at the post office, full with their crisp white stories, SASEs, and painstakingly written cover letters. (Why are those darn things so much harder to write than anything else?) Letting them go was like carefully placing a tiny boat in a stream that I knew would end in an ocean full of more tiny boats just like mine only different. But it felt good. My story deserved to end up in that heap of other boats. It deserved not to whither and die in the stack on my shelf.

Yet here I am, three months and no word, she doesn't call, she doesn't write...

For a month or so afterward I tried to forget that they were out there at all, those stories of mine. Then I started looking, checking the mail every day: "I'm expecting some rejection letters," I'd say casually, to anyone who would listen. But they didn't come.

And it's summer, so maybe, even though they were sent within the prescribed time limits, the journal offices are empty, the graduate student volunteers who will decide which boats end up in the trash are out skinny dipping and taking hikes.

Still, it's starting to feel heavy, the lack of rejection letters presses in on me, where are they? I need them. I need to know that I've really started, that this dropping the envelopes in the mailbox is the beginning of something and not the end. I need to know that they made safe passage, even if when they got there, they turned out to be the wrong kind of boat.

skadoosh and other awesomeness

Things are good here at casa de root-mccabe. The house is clean for the first time in weeks, the lawn no longer looks like a tick sanctuary, and last night we went to see Kung-Fu Panda, which was totally awesome. If you have kids, take them to see it, and if you don't, just go already.

It was nice to have a day of familiness, because as great as the Cape was, there's still nothing quite like just hanging out at home, doing house stuff, making food together, not thinking so much about tomorrow or next month, just doing what needs to be done now. Steve didn't get the spoiling he deserved for father's day, but I'll make it up to him (I promise, honey).

Speaking of tomorrow, I registered for classes last week, all except for one which I need instructor permission for. I'll get it, I'm not worried, but you need a little code to enter online and that I do not have. I will be taking an 18th century British literature course, a writing workshop, and a course on experimental fiction about which I am more than a little excited (we'll be reading Barthelme! Barthelme!). We also heard from the graduate housing people so we now know for sure that we will have a place to sleep when we get there. We still might not be able to afford to move all of our crap, but at least we'll have a floor to sleep on with textbooks backpacks as our pillows.

The adventure is moving forward. It's still abstract. It still feels far away. But slowly, slowly, I can feel the wheels beginning to turn.

Olfactory Hallucinations?

Maybe that's all it is, because right now I keep smelling vomit and I'm pretty sure there hasn't been any of that around here in months, but yesterday Steve smelled like cigarettes for some reason. So I told him so.

"You smell like cigarettes."

"No I don't."

"Yes you do."

"Fine, you smell like crack rocks."

Insert feigned indignation. "I do not. What do crack rocks even smell like? Do they have a smell? I do not!"

In the kitchen. "Girls, Daddy says I smell like crack rocks."

Freya, deadpan. "You do smell like crack rocks."


And she knows this how?

Back from the Beach

The bay side of the Cape was breezy and beautiful, the weather perfect, the sea life abundant.

Steve caught a squid. The girls named him Squirty. He was not happy about being captured (repeatedly, since he escaped often) but he was really cool to look at, and he kept spitting water at Steve.


There were also crabs, horseshoe crabs, and hermit crabs, most of them small, a few of them big. We caught as many as possible and Steve only got pinched once.


The girls had a wonderful time, and really only got sunburned right before we had to come home.


Matilda was magical on the beach, confident and at home. The weekend was just what we all needed, the only problem was that it just wasn't quite long enough.

Except I did miss the internet.


More pictures are at my flickr stream. (You have to be a friend to see most of them, email me if you're not already my flickr friend and we'll hook you up.)

Absentee Blogger

You may have noticed that I've been scarce in the blogosphere lately. That's because I am. (Also I get the feeling I'm not the only one.) I have not given up on blogging, but my time is increasingly being spent IRL (that's for you, Steve) as opposed to here, in the lovely and paradoxical world of intimate exposure, shocking banality and publicly revealed private melodrama.

I just wanted to take a moment out of my busy schedule to say that I love all of you, I miss you, I will be here when I can and I hope you understand that at present, I mostly cannot.

In other news, Freya "graduated" from preschool last Friday [pictures], I love my new waitressing gig, Steve grilled the best ribs ever last night, and we're heading to the Cape this weekend for a rare non-camping family vacation, where hopefully I will not need to mentally remind myself to breathe regularly.