Friday, July 24, 2009

Negotiations

There are things that need to be done in order to keep the peace in a family. Tomorrow, one of our peace-keeping deals will be to get L baptized. Rather than subject Meredith to my mother's scorn, we've both decided to go to Asuncion Catholic Church and spare my son from, in my mother's point of view, eternal damnation.

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So things have been busy around here. Guests are coming for this momentous occasion. My aunt from Long Beach, CA, will be getting a vacation from her eroding state to visit a northerly eroding state.

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Sorry, cynical and snide today. I'm actually moodier in person. Ask Meredith. She knows.

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I'm going to send bits of my chapbook off to journals later this week. As I was prepping my submissions log for the oncoming Fall rush, I noticed something--a little less than half of the poems that were taken in 2007 to 2009 were taken by online journals. The bulk of my acceptances are with the more traditional print journals, but more and more of my stuff can be found online these days. Just a little something that caught my attention.

My bosses at WWU don't care, either way (or at least that's what they say).

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The reason why it could be a concern is that I go up for tenure this year. I don't foresee any major difficulty . . . I just have to keep doing what I'm doing.

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Current spin:

Julie Peel. More Summery music.

4 comments:

Marianne said...

Your "mother's scorn" -- what a wonderful description. Whatever helps you write, yes, even if it involves *negotiations* is good.

You'll get tenure. That's my prediction, and I have very good ESP.

Kelli Russell Agodon - Book of Kells said...

Oliver, I had both grandmothers freaking out because we had a 2 month old baby who wasn't baptized. They were talking about kidnapping her and taking matters into their own hands, which got me moving.

There are still a lot of Catholics who panic about "limbo" and unbaptized children.

Congrats on the baptism. I actually really enjoyed our daughter's and in the end, was glad I did it.

Cindy said...

If my mom were your mom, she'd just baptize your son in the middle of the night, like a citizen's arrest. Without telling you. So much easier!

:) It's happened.

marybid said...

Oliver, I am quite certain that your Mama baptized him long, long ago. We do it in the hospital with Evian. Several times, just in case! And then, of course, the baptism with huge party and baby wearing lots of gold jewelry. Sometimes it's so fun being Catholic...