All Giddy with Summer Tidings (and a little codeine laced cough syrup)

70º ~ a blissfully perfect spring day if a bit cloudy, all the windows thrown open, both cats and humans basking in the sweet breezes


Helloooooooo?

Helooooooooo?

Is anyone still out there?  I hope so.  I confess it's been a bit too long, but you all know the drill: end of the semester brouhaha.  Plus, my end of the semester cold.  I made it all the way to the last day of classes and then I lost it, coming down with a serious head cold.  Luckily, when the cough sank into my chest and kept me from sleeping the last two nights, I discovered that I had two nights worth of codeine-laced cough syrup left.  When I looked at the date on the pharmacy label, it turned out I had the same cold almost exactly one year ago.  Hmmmmmm.  Silly germs!

With great fanfare (or at least what serves as great fanfare here at the desk of the Kangaroo), I punched in my final set of grades this morning, and like magic, I felt like I lost 10 lbs.  Happens every semester.  Wahooooooooooo!

I spent the rest of the morning working through the piles of papers that had accumulated over the last couple of weeks.  One priority task was to revise the poem I drafted way, way back at the end of February for The Book of Scented Things, an anthology of poems inspired by perfume samples.  As the official deadline for poems is coming up rapidly, I am so, so thankful that I drafted what I did back then.  I know I'd be panicking if I had to start from scratch today, as my poems really do need to sit for a bit.  In fact, I re-read the draft yesterday and knew immediately that the ending didn't work.  I fumbled around and came up with an "idea" for how I wanted the ending to function, but I couldn't find the words.  Today, with some time and some silence, I worked it out.

I think the anthology is supposed to be out in fall of 2014, which seems an interminable wait.  I am so curious to find out what the other poets came up with and what scents they got to use.  Wouldn't it be cool if the book had a scratch-n-sniff feature for each poem?  (Probably cost prohibitive, but a girl can dream.)

So, what plans for the summer?
1. Deal with manuscript #2.  Break it down into two chapbooks. 
2. Give manuscript #3 (fever book) a thorough going over and keep sending out.
3. Read and read and read from the towering stack beside me.
4. Write and write and write and see if the angry sisters are still angry or if it is time to move on to other voices.
5.  Submit some poems.

Let me just say it one more time:  Wahooooooooooooooooo!