And Then There Was Vomit

Sorry for the gross title (not really sorry). Did I lose anyone? No? That's why you're my people.

My 3-year-old has been a special kind of awesome lately. The ladies over on Rants from Mommyland mentioned a "cupcake baked by the devil."

Yup.

One of my friends pinned an article on Pinterest about how to manage your anger toward your children and I seriously raspberried the computer screen. Then I crossed my arms, stomped my foot and tossed my hair (I have an excellent tantrum teacher). It was just one of those days.

So today. We went to the Y, the boys had gymnastics and then I promised the kids the BLOCK ROOM. The block room has padded walls and floor, which is a good thing because it is filled with foam shapes of various sizes all ready to be stacked, rolled on, leaped over and generally made mayhem with. The block room is my children's favorite place.

Three-year-old played beautifully in the block room. She ran. She leapt. She didn't fall apart when the crazy boys (it was full of crazy boys, not just my own) knocked her down. At one point she ran up to me and asked, very concerned:
"Mom, are we real?"

Yes.

"Am I real?"

yes.

"What about daddy?"

I'm not sure if she was really pondering the existential nature of life or not, but apparently learning we were indeed real made her feel all kinds of better because she was charming! She hugged. She kissed. She listened.


And then there was vomit.

And when the dust had settled and she was in the bath and I had a second (while watching her thankyou) I checked some of my places online and discovered an old acquaintance had died in a terrible accident, and another friend-of-a-blogger-I-have-read was killed by an infection after giving birth. This is in addition to the other tragedies I've learned about this week (and there have been MANY).

And I hugged her little face and decided maybe the anger articles was worth reading after all.

Disappointment and Perseverance

PS--turns out, neither of the words in the title of this post are ones I can spell correctly without help.

Got a rejection yesterday. From an agent who I'd done two revisions for, who had my MSS exclusively for ten months.

It stung.

She didn't give lots of reasons, other than she didn't feel it was competitive enough. Or, strong enough to be competitive. And I can respect that, as a reason. I have lots of other conflicting emotions about the way she (and, to be honest, I) handled the whole process. But the bottom line is, she didn't love my book. It wasn't what she thought it could be. Is she right? I wish I knew.

The adrenaline rush of bad news was pretty productive. I revised my query and sent out a new batch (and got a rejection--with a nice PS!). It feels good to have it out there with other agents, even if just queries are out there. Meanwhile, I need to work on my WIP, and I am so much more motivated than yesterday.

So, I'm not giving up. Not on writing. Not on Webs. But...

What if she's right? What if it isn't competitive? What if...

And its always the what ifs that'll kill you. In writing. In life. And, I've decided, oh well. I mean, what? I fail? Isn't that the point I'm at right now? How will continuing to try make it more true?

I'm simplifying. The tricky bit about writing is it takes time. Time you're not cleaning, playing with kids, or doing any of the hundreds of other things I've got on my plate. People suffer. Okay, mostly my husband suffers. Is it fair to him? To me? How much time do I dedicate to something I may not get anything out of.

So I've decided to (drumroll) cut off (or at least way, way down) the tv. I mean, if its time I'm worried about what sucks more time than that? And no more web surfing. No MSN Entertainment. No Yahoo! OMG. And, maybe, for a bit, no more twitter? We'll see. Time is a funny thing. Some people cross-stitch. Not that I have anything against needlework, but I'm not sure eighty hours on an I-love-you-beary-much picture is really a more productive waste hobby than writing something maybe no one will ever see.

So I write. More. And I'm kind of happy again. It is nice not to have a feeling like the other shoe is about to fall. You know what? It fell. I survived.