June

And another three months have passed by ... but this time I have a pretty good excuse.  I welcomed my little boy into the world during a St. Patrick's Day blizzard here in Maryland (not a particularly common occurrence.)  Despite the leonine weather conditions at his debut, he is a little lamb, the sweetest-tempered baby I've ever seen -- although, in stature, he may be leaning somewhat toward the leonine side.  His height and weight measurements were off the charts at his one-month checkup, but after his second-month, he's back to being just a bit tall, which is good enough, I think.  His sister is petite, and if he is aiming to be a giant, it wouldn't be long before people were confused as to which is the older.  At least my brother and I were grown before people started making that mistake.

In poetry news, I just found out the other day that I made the short list for Kore Press's First Book Award.  Since I had already seen the winner and two other finalists announced earlier and thought that was the last I'd heard of it, I was actually rather psyched to see my name on the short list.  Winning is nice, but "almost" is still encouraging.  There isn't always a lot of feedback in the writing world, so this sort of thing is what makes it easier to persevere.  There's another contest deadline coming up, and I'm kind of excited now to polish the thing off, add a few new poems, maybe subtract one or two more, and send it out again.

I also just saw the cover for the issue of the Free State Review where my poem will be appearing this summer ... excited about that, too!

I had been feeling a little discouraged lately about the writing endeavor ... there is never enough time to do as much of it as I'd like now.  I did manage to write a new poem recently, though, and am fairly pleased with it.  I've actually written three since March, which isn't bad, actually.  Not really bad at all.