Workshop

I had the first two chapters of my book workshopped today. I'm still buzzing with the adrenaline rush. Now I'm at home, working quickly while the critiques and great advice are still in my head and while I have a couple of hours before picking up the girls.

It's so amazing to hear someone else read your words. Carol Lachapelle gave loving enunciation to the first pages until an unsupressable cough benched her and then Sue Roupp, who just returned from hearing all these great poets at the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Fest in New Jersey took up the manuscript with lots of dramatic pauses and emphatic inflection. Hearing people read my work gets me so high that it makes me laugh quietly at the backstory, at the obscure and private machinations of my process. It's usually one of the tragic spots where I snicker which reminds me of our artist friend Micki, who would giggle as she described her latest work with taxidermy and sexual aids.

While Carol and Sue were reading, my cell vibrated three times. I had locked the back door because there was a break-in across the street yesterday and I forgot that the babysitter was planning to return home after ballet to grab Mia's lunch and the backpacks. Thank goodness it was a glorious day, with clear skies and cool, not cold temps. Yesterday would have been disastrous. I sent her to the neighbors for the spare set, but there were too many locks, too many keys. "Take them to McDonald's," I told Joanna, giving up. I heard the girls' "Yays!" in the background and I snuck back into the conference room to hear another intimate moment of my past read out loud for the crowd.