notes & things | 7/3/2025
The past two weeks have been about restoring order and getting organized after the chaos earlier in the month as the wedding loomed. There are still moments where J and I look at each other and say "Wow, hey, we're married." which seems a strange thing to be, esp. since other than the certified copy of the wedding certificate that arrived in the mail just yesterday, not much else about our habits and routines have changed. This feels bizarre and good at the same time. As someone who never really planned to marry, and realize doing it for the first time at 51 is not very common, I find myself staring at the rings on my hand and marveling at how much the me of even a decade ago would have been shocked to find us here, and yet, we are. When talking about getting hitched last week with family and friends, I admitted that for years, our attitude was ' Things are great, why get married?" Slowly, over the past few years, it became a question of "Things are great, why not get married? I admit the co-habitating thing was one hurdle in my head, but its actually been a delight the past two years as we've wrapped our lives and routines around each other. I once said I could never imagine living with a partner. Now I'm not sure I would want to live without him. No one is more surprised than me.
In other news, we have tumbled into July, with the 4th looming at the end of the week. J will be hosting a rooftop karaoke gig in the heat, but I am going to be tucked safely at home in the A/C writing much as I do most days. Normally, I might consider taking the day off, but I am definitely not feeling like America should get a birthday. Maybe more it should be locked in a closet to think about what its done. We are going to try making brats in the air fryer on Sunday perhaps, but that's as close to bbq-ing as we plan to get.
I've been working on things for the Patreon relaunch this month, including designing some fun postcards (you can actually get a sampling of them if you pick up a copy of WILD(ISH) before the end of the month. ) Also some small botanical prints I created on the the leftover stationery from the wedding invites. I am still reaping both rejections and occasional acceptances from that last mega-round of submissions., including some poems in Collidescope, which picked up some of the swamp bird girl poems. (another couple are set to appear soon in Fantastic Other.) I have been targeting more horror and sci-fi/fantasy publications of late, and am finding that the ratio of yesses to nos is the same as other submission patterns in the past, which I suppose really reinforces how much of a numbers game it all really is. I have been writing a lot in the past two months, more even than usual, so its nice to get these out somewhere besides just in e-zine form. As part of the Patreon launch, I am planning some more interesting physical projects, of which some of these recent poems will be a part. .
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