No More Pencils, No More Books...

No more children's dirty looks.

Head Start let out for the summer, so I won't be cleaning up any pee from now on, unless it's my own. As much as I complained about it while I was there, it was an experience, to be sure. I now know tons of things that only kids can teach you. For one, I know that being in a preschool classroom definitely isn't for me. I also learned how to quickly identify visible diseases, and how to cope with mono (sleep and be lazy).

There are a ton of little scraps of construction paper scattered around my desk and in boxes that are full of little things the kids said throughout the year that I thought were funny or interesting. For instance:

"There's that noise again! It sounds like EVERYTHING!"
"Fish like water better than air."
"U is for Uniporn!"

Etc., etc.

I am working on goals for the summer, mostly writing-related, but also moving-my-legs-more-related. I only have to get 14 more rejections before I make my quota for the year.

Will and I plan to write and illustrate a kids book about ducks, which will probably not be as cool as this kids book about going to sleep. My Uncle Mark emailed me a pdf of that book earlier today with the message, "I think you are completely capable of writing kids books when the poetry isn't kicking in..."


Of course I'll try my hand at garnering some more acceptance letters during the summer.

And during these vacation months, some of my writing will go live into the deep abyss of the interweb. Right now I have a poem up in the current issue of elimae. In August, you'll be able to find one of my poems at Right Hand Pointing. And in July, I'll have something up at decomP. AND I just got news that one of my poems will be published in next year's issue of RHINO poetry. But that's not for, you know, another eleven months. So don't bust out the streamers and confetti just yet.

If you have a kids book or poem idea you'd like to commission, my whole summer is wide open, and I'm already practicing complaining about how bored I am. Shoot me an email. We'll make something awesome happen.