zirconium

1. My poem Spelling "For Worse" is up at Goblin Fruit, in both text and audio formats.

1a. I am keeping right fine company on that TOC. :-)

2. Merrie Haskell wrote a novel called Castle behind Thorns. It's about to emerge, it has earned a starred review in Publisher's Weekly, and it will be a Junior Literary Guild selection. (Her second published novel has been collecting recommendations and awards, too, including "the 2014 Schneider Family Book Award winner for middle school for its depiction of a person with a disability.")

3. The Velveteen Rabbi will be reading her poetry in Jerusalem. I am so excited for her!

4. Making manuscripts reader-friendlier. Go me!

4a. Having the chops and experience to recognize typos (especially in Spanish) I wouldn't have caught five years ago.

5. Ripe cantaloupe and canned quail eggs. For when one works flat through dinner and then needs something that doesn't require cooking (i.e., stink up the kitchen) right before bedtime.

6. The sumo tangerine I picked up at a store last week. It was an indulgence, but it was also a great conversation piece, and I am about to candy the peel.

7. Having a dog that gleefully hoovers up vegetable scraps. (I am less enamored of her fondness for snacking on potting soil, but that's because it makes her wheeze.)

8. It is sunny and 55 F here right now. I'll be spending most of the day with spreadsheets, but I think I'll first sneak out for a walk.

9. Particle Fever! (And yes, I wore my CERN jacket to the showing.)

Taking ten minutes to give thanks for ten wonderful things:

(1) The first review of Measured Extravagance, by Marissa Lingen.

(2) It's kass's birthday!

(3) ...and her Hebrew skills just came to my rescue. (So many languages, so little mental storage space...)

(4) Revisiting my memories of Tmol Shilshom (The Day Before Yesterday), a bookstore-cafe she recommended.

From tmol shilshom

(5) Iced coffee and the arago sandwich (bagel, tomato, avocado, provolone) at Portland Brew.

(6) Arcade Fire on the PA system. Remembering four years ago, hearing the same song ("Lies") for the first time in a Kentucky coffeeshop. Thankfulness for that coffeeshop being there when I needed it, there being neither internet nor non-fossilized caffeine products in my mother's house). Thankfulness that I'm no longer commuting between Kentucky and Tennessee.

(7) I'm sitting in front of a painting that contains both the Loch Ness monster and a rubber ducky. (I don't understand yet why it's named after Michio Kaku, but I'll look it up...)

(8) The replacement battery for my laptop has arrived.

(9) Receiving word of a new publisher for experimental poetry. (I participated in a reading with Jane last spring where she channeled Johnny Cash. Has to be seen to be believed.)

(10) One acceptance this week; three rejections. So much gratitude to the people who circulate, promote, and recommend my work; gratefulness, too, at receiving the "no"s, since they let me and those pieces move on.