Tag Archives: Small Children

08.31.18
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Monkeyshines

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“I’m done with this, Mom.”
Well, I am definitely NOT.
This tiny George will stay
On my shelf’s specialest spot.

Clutched in your chubby hand,
He went everywhere that year.
He convinced you to speak monkey
Until the doctor checked your ears.

He was lost and found and lost,
But we never left him behind.
I searched the zoo for a monkey
That was not so easy to find.

He dug dirt with his head,
Stomped dinos with his feet.
He sat at the dinner table
And pretended to loudly eat.

He led armies of animals at war
Across the old orange carpet,
Until the opposing General Giraffe
Fell down the counter escarpment.

He watched himself with you
On those days your nose was runny.
He never failed to laugh at himself.
He was oo-oo-ah-aah funny.

You haven’t carried him for years.
You’d much rather have a phone.
But I will carry the you that did
Here in George’s forever home.

When my son was two, he was in the habit of carrying a plastic animal or two everywhere he went. He was also a huge Curious George fan–so much so that he spoke a mixture of Monkey and English for a long time. His doctor told me that we really needed to encourage English, and I countered that bi-lingualism was all the rage. This little guy was a cake topper I found on Amazon. He’s seen some things, man, but since he only speaks Monkey, we’ll never know.

The things that adventured with your kids have special places, just like their friends steal pieces of your heart later. This little time capsule sits on a shelf where I can see him while I work. The kids may be on to the things that they should be, like ditching mom and dad to hang out at the camp park, or cutting holes in skirts to make “dresses” that are two inches below her navel, but George is happy to remind me of a time when I could sit with a child on my lap and watch a monkey get into shenanigans. Ooo ooo, ah ooo ah AH.

Ps. This is the last day of August! Thanks for hanging out for the poems, some were less bad than others. I really have to get to work on final revisions to my short story compilation, Bitches and Dead People, and I’m six chapters into the sequel to The Tiny Giant, working title “The Hunted Giant.” I’ll continue to update here on any book releases and if the mood strikes me…I might have another poem in me someday. This year was hard, and given that I’ve done this 92 times, I’m going to be satisfied with that for a bit. Probably until next August, when I’ve forgotten how much work it is and convince myself that it’ll be “fun.”

10.02.17
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Light Bright

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cherish the old soul
but diamond dust in my eye
her shiny new one

I am lucky enough to have one of each–a wise little old soul and a sparkly new one.  These littles with the newly minted souls burn fiercely, and she gives me hope that we will find our way, that the mistakes of our past do not have to be repeated.  Love big, cry hard, laugh loud, and try all the things.

08.29.17
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Almost

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now that you are eight
you pedal-fly and don’t look back
but you’re only eight

I’m posting from a campsite again. This year, the medium boy has a level of independence that leaves me anxiously waiting to hear his bike bell and know that he’s fine. We let the line out, then pull it back a little, let the line out, pull it back again. For him, this is exhilarating and scary and slightly difficult to navigate. Is he ready? Am I ready? Almost.

08.26.17
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Subpart D, Paragraph 2

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don’t get your shoes wet
small lawyers got around that
technicality

I don’t actually begrudge them this particular adventure–I’d be worried if they didn’t immediately and desperately want to play in every creek they see.  He was waging a losing battle against the water skippers, flinging mud and small stones only to watch them regroup in an instant.  I believe next time he will request a flame thrower.

08.24.17
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Backseat Blitz

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Our summer traveling in the car
Started out kind of rough.
The squabbling children escalated
Until I’d had more than enough.

They screeched and fought every minute
With intent to harm and disturb
Until I PULLED THIS CAR OVER RIGHT NOW
And sat them down on the curb.

I gave them quite a lesson there
Right by the side of the road.
They thought they might be walking home
From a two towns away zip code.

I let them back in on conditions
Which since then, they’ve mostly met.
Like all siblings, they bicker,
About things they should just forget.

This normal silly bickering, though,
I find easier to survive.
In an imagined car of silence,
I switch to internal drive.

It turns out, I’m not quite able to compose a rhymed English sonnet in iambic pentameter while I’m driving.  I was in the car for 5+ hours today, and while I usually do compose verse in my head on the road, keeping track of the syllables and rhyme structure without writing anything down was too much.  So I let my brain make this, not at all inspired by anything that did/did not happen in the backseat today.

Also…this may/may not be a completely true story.

08.23.17
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The Wee Knight

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potty poem

I found this little vignette all set up for me, and the play on “throne” was too delightful to pass up.

As a side note, I apologize for the crappy quality of the poem type.  I had to insert that as a picture translated through three programs, because I could not get the formatting to work no matter how much HTML I crammed in there.  An hour later, I decided that it added a certain “vintage” quality to the poetry and it’s actually the best.

I promised myself that I’m going to write a sonnet for tomorrow, just because I haven’t done that since high school.  Dusting the rust off the iambs right now.

03.17.17
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Published: Sally the Sad Shape

Sally the Sad Shape is available!  I’m very proud to launch this little book, the first in the Moodrangles series, books about big emotions for smallish people.  Sally is a little shape in a very sad mood, and she tries everything to change it.  It isn’t until she makes a new friend that she learns to see her mood in a different light.  I wrote this book to let preschool and elementary aged children know that being sad is something that we all go through, and not something that they have to “fix.”  The charming illustrations by Steve Ogden Art and use of humor make it an entertaining read for kids and adults.  Available right now at Amazon or autographed through the Little Voices Publishing website.

Writery Stuff:  I’ve learned an enormous amount about self-publishing by launching this little book.  I haven’t found the downside yet.  I’ll let you know if I do.

02.27.17
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Waiting Is Boring, I Think I’ll Start a Business: Little Voices Publishing

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Unsurprisingly, sending queries to agents is a long, drawn out process.  First, the agents you find in your genre have to be accepting queries and submissions.  You find the magic window, and send whatever combo platter that particular agent is looking for–one wants a #3, the next just wants a letter a la carte, the next wants the whole thing translated into Esperanto.  Then….you wait.  If you’re doing it according to industry guidelines, you don’t have it out to 100 agents at once, just a handful.  You get those responses or wait for a reasonable amount of time…and then you send some more.

The Tiny Giant hasn’t been out to many people so far, and I’ll let that run its course.  You have to.  Traditional publishing is still the best scenario–they have resources, you have ideas, they can help you get the best version of your ideas to the most people.

That doesn’t mean I sit around waiting for six months, though.  In the event that I don’t connect with just the right agent at the right time for magic to commence, I’ll pay a professional editor and self-publish The Tiny Giant under my brand spanking new publishing imprint: Little Voices Publishing.  Self-publishing is in many ways indistinguishable to the consumer now–you can set it up on Amazon, it can be an e-book, it’s print-on-demand and shipped directly with their free Prime shipping.  The days of buying 100 copies from Vanity Press® and trying to hawk them at the Grange Hall are behind us.  If you build your small business, and someone wants to come buy you out later…well, that’s fine too.

The cost of having this little business is not small.  I have applied for all of the licenses and permits, and I’ll have a pile of additional paperwork to do at the end of the year.  I’m still up in the air with City Hall about an environmental impact study they said I had to do if I wanted a business license.  I think City Hall is going to rule that I don’t need a business license at all, since I don’t really produce anything.  (I would be insulted, but that’s the easiest option and saves me $45.)  Then there’s the time involved.  There’s a website (http://www.littlevoicespublishing.com) and a Facebook page I’m building and updating.  I might even get some ding-dang paper business cards done.  None of this is writing stories–it is a J-O-B.

All of that infrastructure is nearly ready.  Then I’ll just let it sit there and…..ha ha ha, no, I won’t.  That would be fine if I had no other ideas, but lack of ideas has never been my issue.  In March, Little Voices Publishing will launch the first book in the Moodrangles series, Sally the Sad Shape.  This pause…it’s an opportunity, and I would be a fool not to use it.  Written by me and illustrated by Steve Ogden (Magnificatz), Sally the Sad Shape is a charming story about a mood that we all experience.  The Moodrangles series intends to honor the complex emotional lives of children with humor and empathy.  I’ll update here with more details when it’s available.  Until then…I have some more website stuff to put up, and those business cards to design, and copy to write for the Amazon page, and, and, and.  It’s real, it’s fun, and it’s turning out to be really fun.

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08.27.16
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1979: The Mucil Age

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Was there any finer adhesive
Than sticky brown mucilage?
Your paper, your fingers, your desk, and your hair
Could all play a part in collage.

Kids today only use “school glue.”
There isn’t even paste to eat.
We must send 48 glue sticks
To stick the damn kids to their seats.

There’s disappearing purple and staying purple
And teeny, weeny sticky dots.
But for me, mucilage was king,
Because mucilage was all we got.

Note: Sort of like government cheese, mucilage was much more common in the 1970’s. As a child who was often bored with the lesson, I experimented with viscosity, drying time, and bond strength by gluing my hand to the desk. I’d also glue my fingers together and pull them apart slowly to watch the mucilage form tiny tendrils that finally….SNAPPED. This was likely a less charming habit than it seemed at the time, but I was quiet and at my desk, so that was a plus.

About that picture: As punctuation to an unrelated conversation, I announced, “Well, I guess I’d better glue my hand to a piece of paper now.” My husband was nonplussed, which seems odd because he has met me before. After he was insufficiently impressed by my indoor shots, I took my hand modeling gig outside for the neighbors to wonder at. So…that’s a piece of paper glued to my hand and photographed while hoisted skyward. Hi, neighbors. Just me again.

08.25.16
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Premourning

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sometimes I miss you
even though you’re exactly                    there
because you won’t be

Note: I drove home alone from the beach today, up Hwy 101 from Manzanita to Hwy 26. It’s a corridor like the ones characters in movies drive through to show that they’re leaving one part of their life behind and approaching another. With the “Stranger Things” soundtrack as my own personal backdrop, I let tears roll for the last first day of kindergarten, and the piece of me that will bounce off into the world in the most official of ways. I call this process pre-mourning. It doesn’t seem to help, really, but it’s a bit like those patent medicines that claim to shorten your cold. Prove it didn’t!

Also:  I know, I know, I counted the middle line on my fingers, too.  Remember, it’s “Bad” Haiku Corner.