#uncoffeed...

 It is hard to dress your kids, send them out the door, put them on the bus, especially when they are your stories and poems. People are going to look at how they're dressed and judge your parental skills. You want to keep them home safe. Don't do it, though - find a new metaphor.  I  use Lottery Tickets - it's a gamble. At some point I had to give myself the credit I want so desperately from others (and sometimes receive.) I am good at things. I can string words together. Ask my daughter - I can tell a story. Her friends still drop into a conversation: "So what's your mom been up to...does she have any stories?" Remind me to tell you about the laundry room some time.   That's @lia's favorite. But submissions, though...this is something you have to do for yourself.  You have to do it because once you've sent out that story or painting you bled, sweat, and cried over - once the kid is on the bus - you get to relive all the thrill and trepid...

Yesterday was a really big day for me, with lots of love in my direction.  For starters, it was the first day of a new year in my tiny Annandale cottage. I moved here after studying the Art Of War as it applied to an amicable divorce. I made careful calculations, but I still wasn't sure what I was getting myself into - only what I was getting myself out of. And I nailed it, or at least I'm still afloat. We had King Cake  at work, and I got the baby.  I didn't find the baby; the baby was presenting himself, emerging from the cake like a c-section and not really hiding at all.  But I got the baby because nobody else was as excited by a Gold Baby Jesus in a King Cake as I was.  Also I received an email from Joe Maita of Jerry Jazz Musicia n. My very short story was the first-ever winner of the Jerry Jazz fiction contest in 2002. When I submitted for contest 47, he wrote to ask if I were the same Deb Ewing. How freaking awesome is it to be remembered? I tell ...