Looking Up

Today, instead of receiving rejection, I received two dozen daisies from my husband.

Ultramarathon Man

Tonight's Tri Club meeting came in the form of a movie premiere. "UltraMarathon Man," which follows Dean Karnazes as he runs fifty marathon in fifty states in fifty days. Which begs the question: what leads someone to attempt something so nutty?

I think the reason lies in the fact that those of us living the good life--people with good health, enough food, potable water, safe shelter, a stable government--have the luxury of pushing ourselves to achieve things that don't have to be done. For Karnazes, it's incredible displays of athletic endurance. For my husband, it's round the clock science. Me? Writing stories.

I suppose I bring this up now because I've been taking a lot of literary rejection lately. Usually I have a thick skin for this type of thing, but it's wearing on me. It makes me wonder why I want to publish. The whole process kicks your ass like a long-distance race.

Tell Me a Story

For better or worse, you can keep a lot from a child. In my classroom this morning for Rolling Readers, rather than explain that I hadn't brought the promised Indiana Jones book because I've been laid up with a nasty stomach flu, I simply said I'd brought something else that I thought they'd like. Not a question was asked. My stomach was a conflagration, but I was still able to do all the characters' voices to perfectly hyperbolic pitch. Next week? Indy for sure.

A belated congratulations to my workshop mate, Brian, who recently placed a story.

Happy long weekend!

"Native Speaker" by Chang-Rae Lee

Eh....This book is nowhere near as good as A Gesture Life or Aloft.

Sea World

My friend Becky loves her job as much or more than an election precinct trainer. Bryan, his mom, his uncle, and I went to Sea World today. Becky works as an orca trainer and graciously hooked us up with park passes, a tour of the back pools (complete with feeding snow to whales), and lunch beside another pool.

Becky had perviously told me that, depending on which part she played, this year's daytime Shamu show could have her doing quite a bit of dancing. For the one we saw, she was able to skip the dancing and instead swim. Which included a spectacular dive off the whale's snout. And I thought the swimming she did at Shores, or at Ironman Wisconsin, was cool.

John tossing a snowball to a whale.

Voter Training

I had training today for the June third election. It was mostly the same, but what's different makes a difference. Precinct trainers really love their jobs, and I appreciated their enthusiasm. If we had to be stuck together on a Saturday with less-than-fascinating material, it helps to make the best of it.

"Black Lagoon Favorites" by Mike Thaler

My first children's book review!

At this morning's Rolling Readers session, I read the stories in Black Lagoon Favorites, which follows a young boy's wild, worst-case-scenario imaginings of his school's employees. The kids in Mrs. Jefferson's class loved them, and in fact had requested these Black Lagoon stories. Before starting this reading gig, I was stressing about choosing books that would be age-appropriate. Second-graders are usually eight or nine years old. Would a book intended for six-to-eight be an insult? Would nine-to-twelve be boring? It turns out what matters to these kids is, beatifically, a good story.