Catch up

My son will be spending the whole week in Cleveland and I have committed myself to doing some major catch up while he's away. There are many things to do;

• Get issue 03 of Weave finalized and sent out to the printer (!!!)
  
• Work on my 4 drafted poems
  
• Write up an evaluation for one of my interns (this really should be the first thing listed)
• Do some housework. The husband would be so pleased.
  
• Read! I have a book on Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist poetry that I'm really enjoying, that whole literary theory thing to plug away at, and more poetry than I can realistically shake a stick at.
• Do my best not to go overboard purchasing books this week. I can only read so many at a time.
• Obtain cover art for my chapbook. Very important.

There's also (conveniently) a poetry reading to go to on Wednesday, time to spend with my friends, and exercising that must be done now that I'm not constantly coughing.

It's good to know that even when I don't have a 4-year-old to worry about I can still run myself ragged.




Other Lovely Things

• If you haven't done so yet, you should head over to the Tilt Press website and purchase their 2009-2010 chapbook subscription -- and not just because my chapbook will be a part of it!
• GUD is having a pumpkin carving contest. Had I any skills at all I would enter this. You may have skills. You could enter. You could win books.
• There's a nice review of Weave issue 02 up on New Pages.
  

Small Children and Writing

Over the next two weeks I will have my son with me full time. On one hand this is absolutely wonderful -- we get to work on potty training (something I question his father's devotion to), we get to do fun things together (this weekend we went to the aviary and went out for ice cream with my friend Crystal), and Ben tends to be an all-around good time. You know, except for that potty training thing that we're still having trouble with. It's always something. Before it was sleeping through the night. Now it's the potty. In fact, I am currently sitting with Ben as he sits on the potty.

Now to the down side -- I fear I will get no writing done for the next two weeks. As I've lamented in previous posts it's not like I have a terribly high writing output to begin with, and I fear that none will get done at all these next two weeks. Perhaps I should be working on poetry rather than a blog post?

I'll probably stay late after work, go to a nearby coffee shop and write until the daycare is about to close, and perhaps I'll get a little bit in after he goes to bed. I'll manage. The weekend is usually when I write (this is when his father spends time with him), but his father will be at a convention next weekend and needs me to watch him, and this weekend I got to have him for the 4th of July (and he wasn't at all scared of the fireworks, though he did repeatedly tell my husband and I that we needed to be careful not to get burned by them), so it is to be busy busy mommy time!

Do any of you with kids have any tips on balancing having a child and getting writing done? He's 4 so he's not really all that able to entertain himself most of the time. I haven't had to develop these skills because of my arrangements with Ben's father, so any advice would be appreciated.