the wheel is turning March 7, 2008

I got my first MFA letter yesterday – rejection from Iowa. Not all that surprised, not at all hurt. If I had gotten in, it would have been the biggest monkey wrench to the whole process. I am terrified of tornadoes and I have had no real desire to move to Iowa City. I would have probably turned into a Van Gogh character in all those corn fields, running around without an ear and writing sad letters asking for more paint.

But now that I’ve received the first letter, I know the rest will be coming soon. And like an idiot I left my cell phone at home today so I can’t even use that comfort to tie me over until I can check the mail. People are already saying they’re getting phone calls and letters THIS MORNING from other schools I applied to. Have I mentioned that this is all insane? I bet my new tag cloud consists of: crazy, insane, madness, MFA, poetry.

To calm me, I thankfully have my other best friend from childhood coming to visit me this weekend. Maureen. I also found great comfort in taking a walk yesterday with an R.E.M. live album on full blast. (iPod) I walked past a dead squirrel in the road. He looked peaceful, and I couldn’t find where he was wounded. His eyes were open. Dead things with eyes open are easier to look at than dead things with eyes closed.

This weekend I’m going to call a number I picked up from a flier for a Hemingway cat someone has to give away. Last night I dreamed I was saving a litter of kittens from rattlesnakes. All the cats were in a basket of rattle snakes and I was carefully removing them before each strike. All the cats were black and gray. I woke up with lion mane hair. This happens often.

consumption March 2, 2008

from this weekend

• whole wheat pizza with mushrooms
• bagel with egg and turkey sausage
• black bean quesadilla
• Wendy’s #2 combo (my gosh, it had been a year or more since I had one of these. I do not feel guilty in the LEAST)
• coffee, tea, coffee, tea, coffee

+ :

 

twice watched (I learned a lot such as what “stet” means and that I like Alec Baldwin):

& the reading & listening to:

& the gut-wrenching:

the waiting period begins January 29, 2008

So, I am officially done with sending out grad school applications. (Well, there may still be some mailing to be done as inevitably things I mailed or requested to be mailed by others have disappeared into the ether or been intercepted by pterodactyls or what have you.) Other than feeling like I lost a kidney in this process, I’m a relieved that I now have 3-6 months to do other things with my late nights and weekend afternoons than remain scrunched over inarticulate essays trying to explain why and how I came to write poetry while I am actually not writing poetry because I am stressing too much over how to explain how I write poetry in order to get into a program that will give me more time to write and study poetry. SIGH.

I am now in that dreaded waiting period, where I wake up in the middle of the night heart-pounding over potential typos or blank lines on forms or writing sample wrong moves. And Lord help the person who keeps me from checking my mail six days a week. For some reason – I checked all 5 calendars in my possession for noted holidays, and there were NONE – my pothead mailman did not pick up my bills yesterday so I had to leave a mean note “MAIL NOT PICKED UP OR DELIVERED ON MONDAY JAN. 28″ on this post-it my mother gave me that also reads “NO OUTFIT IS COMPLETE WITHOUT CAT HAIR” so I’m sure he’ll peg me as crazy cat lady and add some extra grease to my Real Simple magazine when it arrives. (Sometimes just flipping through Real Simple makes me think my life is Real Simple.)

I’ll also be checking here on a 100 x a day basis, and using this as a back-up.

But anyway, to keep my mind off all this nonsense and to use my time wisely, I have formulated a mental and now written list of things to accomplish without guilt in the coming weeks, months, days. They are:

• Write/read more poetry, yada yada yada
• Clean out guest room and host more out of town guests (you know who you are!)
• Vacuum every living/nonliving surface in my apartment with my new vacuum cleaner (I must say this is very therapeutic)
• Tear up gardening bed that has now turned into a litter box for the feral outdoor cats
• Plant new seeds in pots ONLY
• Watch more movies
• Sell some CDs/buy more LPs
• Yard sale
• Start new drawings and/or paintings project (it would be really nice to sell some work on etsy or perhaps have a gallery show but right now that sounds a little too ambitious)
• Write more letters to out of town folks
• Keep up with my 4x a week gym thing
• Spend more one-on-one time with my broads
• Learn how to make bread (and do it)
• Take at least one extravagant trip out of town to somewhere I’ve never been (we’ll see.)
• Not take life too seriously

Decked out December 10, 2007

Christmas has interrupted just about all poetry writing and MFA applications, but everything is OK. The holidays are always more important to me, and even with the set backs I’m still moderately on track. (Meanwhile, I’m really proud because all my Christmas shopping is complete and mostly wrapped, except for one specific gift that requires that I go to the mall, something I’ve been avoiding all season.) As far as applications, I have 4 down, 6 to go, and the remaining ones are not due until Jan. 15. I’ll be taking vacation time around New Year’s to recover from Christmas and to finish and mail everything. I also talked one of my editors out of my freelance duties for Jan. (phew!) And by the time I’m done with all the holiday cookies and casseroles I’ve been baking, I’ll have enough food to get me through the winter and hopefully keep me out of the kitchen (cooking is my ultimate procrastinating task). Then the poet will emerge again, and tackle all those ideas that have been dangling around like ornaments in her head. Jingle jangle.