Down-Time



We took the week off. It is Thursday and today is the first day I did not check my work email-it seems I had to wean myself from my day-job. Mike and I took a mini vacation to Winstar World Casino (the house won) and puttered around the house, exploring places around town and coupledom. Our daughter has two more years before she goes to college (knock-wood, cross your fingers, all prayers taken) and this was our first glimpse of empty-nest. It was wonderful-though I began to miss her just about the time she came home (5-days). I am not yet ready for the empty-nest but I am no longer afraid that Mike and I will not have anything left to talk about when Rach is no longer the main focus of our daily life. We, I believe will transition beautifully to talking about our cats, our garden and our lives. Perhaps even be able to take little trips here and there; and simply enjoy each other. I drug Mike out to several stores looking for the perfect pens for my doodles. I am still having difficulty in finding the right tool, this doodle a combination of a calligraphy pen set (0.8 and 1.3 mm) and a refillable gel rollerball(0.7 mm); neither is perfect. I like the fluidity of the calligraphy pen and the control of the rollerball. I also find I like the thinner lines but have issues when needing to color in large areas with the pens beginning to tear the paper. I am using drawing paper; however the caligraphy pens tend to cause it to lint, so next trip to Michael's I am going to spend some time on the paper aisle.

This week marked a year long hiatus in submitting poetry for publication (other than my chapbook); a hiatus that evolved out of a busy schedule and a conscious decision to refocus my energies on my family and job. Initially it was not intentional it was coincidental; however as the months rolled on and I tried and failed to break out of my poetic hibernation I decided to embrace this hiatus. To take a step back and to re-evaluate. Even though I did not actively pursue publication, I did write a bit here and there and I am in the process of pulling all of my poems together from the last year to actually see what I have of any merit. Once it is dusted off, I shall see what if anything I will do with it. I am feeling a need to reconnect with my words. I have a draft novel started and not finished that haunts my dreams, the characters still vibrant and alive in the recesses of my gray matter. I have two draft chapbooks and an outline for full-length collection buried somewhere in my archived Word files. I am officially breaking my hiatus but for now I am unsure in what shape and form it will evolve, perhaps a bit like my doodles, a series of the loosely connected or more likely in the largely unconnected.