Summer Highs, Writing Lows

June is the month of my rejection. Three rejections to be exact, with several more submissions drifting out in the abyss that is the world of publishing. It's common, since judging someone's writing and deciding if you are willing to take a risk is a pretty subjective experience. Not all of these were a rejection of the book, at least. One was a short story entered into a literary magazine contest, another a submission to a writing conference (no week-long writing escape for me this year!) and one was the first fifty pages of the novel, drenched in my blood-sweat-tears. Icing on the party cake was the shut-down of one of the regular magazines I wrote a column for.

No, this is not a pity party. This is more like a reckoning with my writing life. Am I strong enough to keep putting myself out there? Should I shelve the book and start a new one? Concentrate on magazines or newspapers? Get a (eek!) real job?

Of course this all happens a couple weeks after the boys' preschools have us send in what summer hours they will attend, if any. I kept them in for the same three half days a week, thinking it would be good to keep them in a routine and that I had a right to some sanity and writing time. Now dollar signs are flashing in my head.

It will be interesting to see where I find myself at summer's end...

Confessions of a Reformed Mommy

I turned into one of those moms that I secretly talked smack about while my boys were still cooing and crawling about in pools of their own drool. I became one of those moms that buckled in the name of convenience. Convenience over common sense.

Yes, for months, I had a television in the boys' room.

This was not a decision without resistance. My sister has had a tv in her daughters' room (complete with cable!) for years. We let the boys lay in our bed and watch tv on those nights when we have company and it's just easier to let them drift off to a nice movie instead of dealing with the constant requests for more milk and midnight snacks. My husband convinced me it would be temporary, we'd just put the tv in there for one particular weekend when we had a lot of company and older kids playing video games in our room while the adults watched some play off sports.

What the heck has happened to the former Santa Cruz student who believed tv was evil and went years without cable, instead favoring friends and radio music and board games?

Anyways, that weekend with the tv in the room stretched into months. I vowed to move the monstrosity into the playroom once we had the masses of toys organized. Ha! I vowed until I was out of breath, yet took no action.

Until this afternoon.

Since the tv in the room, the bedtimes have stretched later. The tv viewing times have stretched longer and the book reading has dwindled. I became someone I never thought I would be. The tv truly became my babysitter.

Last night when I got home from my tennis lesson (yes honestly, don't laugh about the tennis...that's another post in itself) past 9 pm the boys ran rampant demanding another two hour Scooby Doo movie. As if!

I finally got them corraled into bed and payed dearly this morning when I had to get them up for preschool. I literally dragged Bobby out of bed at 8:20. Mind you, school started at 8:30. A morning of orders barked, faces wiped and limbs shoved into clothing ensued. And the whole drive to school involved a breathless, pissy lecture about the evils of television before bedtime.

When I picked them up from school hours later, I had them help me clear out space in the playroom for the tv. We dusted and hooked up the various parts and said goodbye to nighty-night tv.

Thanks to my succumbing to the easy way out of bedtime, which turned out not to be so easy after all, I now have to retrain myself, my husband and my kids how to go to bed the right way.

And yes, Shane is still up instead of in bed with his stack of books, riding his scooter around the house like a banshee.

It's going to be a long week...