I found the children and the people less rude this year, than they were last year. 

We had fun, the girls rode all sorts of rides, we had funnel cakes (nummy).

I forgot sunscreen.

I look like a tomato.

Pregnancy is my Kryptonite.  I become pregnant, and I forget everything.  I fall, I drop everything, I need a constant reminder of what is going to be happening soon, or I forget.

Yet, I love it.  I love knowing something is growing inside me.  It's vaguely alien looking right now, but it should have arm and leg buds or even more right now--could have the beginning of it's webbed hands.  Of course, I can't feel anything right now, besides the occasional nauseousness, which is lessening, thank God.  And of course, tiredness.  I can't stop sleeping.  I seriously go back to sleep five hours after I wake up, and sleep for two to four hours.  Then I wake up, and go to bed five hours later.  I love sleep, though, so it's no skin off my back.  Makes reading things a bit difficult (for instance, I'm "editing" my friends book/reading it, and I'm on chapter four after a week.  I've read up to chapter 9 or 10 before, via computer, but this is the paper version, and it is taking me longer than I hoped.) 

As to that story I have to say I noticed a lot less purple marks (mine) after chapter two.  Is everyone's first chapters messy?  For those of you who are published and are reading this, how many revisions do you go through before the first two chapters are less introduction and more story?  I think that's the problem for those, and I don't even know if it still is a problem, as she's revised since she sent me that file.  It's almost a losing battle, but I figure I'll get the jist of it.  Gyst?  I don't know.  This screen is really bright and my eyes are tired of looking at it.... which is why I printed up her 184 (194?) page story.  It's not double spaced, but I didn't want a 400 page thing to read.  Anyway, I figure I'll get the details of the story, which won't change too much I am sure, and then I get to read her query letter and try to help with that.

Her book is chic-lit, which I admit, I know nothing about.  It seems a lot of the books I've been reading that I thought were romance (I swear, it's for research!) are actually chic-lit by the definition given by Wikipedia.  I've always looked down on the term chic-lit.  I find it extremely sexist.  If a man writes a book about a man who is in his early twenties and hip, ect, it's just considered literature, isn't it?  It's not called, "He-Lit," or "Man-Lit" is it?  Why can't it just be literature?  I hate uppity people who say literature is only this type of writing, or that type of writing.  IMHO literature is all writing.  The degree of goodness should have nothing to do with the fact that it is literature for literate people who enjoy reading.

I sincerely hope she gets published/picked up by an agent.  I want to be jealous, but how can I be?  She has accomplished what I haven't--she's finished something AND has went on to start other things.  I get five chapters in and then I start something else.  I really need to get down to business.

And now, to wrap up this pregnancy journal with something that actually has to do with pregnancy--baby number five will be making it's grand debut around March 17th (beginning of finals weeks lol), 2009.  I have four girls.  I won't mind five girls, but I really really would like at least one boy.  So, those of you with super powers, make it so.

Gracias para todo!

Dawn

Sabrina Baby Bunny by *damina on deviantART

I'm dyslexic.  I was just playing with a link.  S'all

As posted by Susan Marie Groppi earlier today, Strange Horizons's 2008 fund drive is underway.  You don't have money, but want to win a prize?

Blogger Incentive Prizes!

Posted by Susan Marie Groppi

2 June 2008

Okay, so I'm only on my third post of the fund drive, and I'm already starting to be exhausted from using all of these exclamation points. Sorry about that. I am, in fact, actually very excited about the fund drive, but I don't know that I need to show it quite! so! punctuationally!

That said, more exclamation points are on the way, because we have one more category of special bonus prizes: blogger incentive prizes! (If anyone has suggestions for a less business-y marketing-speak name for these prizes, let me know, please?) Promotion is the lifeblood of our fund drive--if people don't know that we're asking for money, and offering them fabulous gifts in return, how are we ever going to make our goal? In past fund drives, people have been really wonderful about helping promote the fund drive by mentioning it in their blogs and whatnot, and this time around, we want to show our gratitude in a more tangible way. How? With another prize drawing! (I do love me a random number generator.)

We have a set of four special bonus prizes, one for each week of the fund drive. Each week, one of these special bonus prizes will be given to one lucky person who helped out the Strange Horizons Fund Drive by mentioning it (and linking to it) from their blog, webjournal, or other exciting form of website. That's right! Just mentioning the fund drive, and linking to it, can win you a prize! Later today, I'll make an announcement of this week's blogger incentive prize, so you'll know what you're trying to win. (Speaking to more lofty goals, you should help promote the Strange Horizons Fund Drive because you love Strange Horizons and want us to be able to continue to pay our authors! Speaking more practically, though, these are pretty great prizes, and so simple to win.)

(Now back to me speaking.)  So do it.  :)

I can no longer retain information about books. I can no longer recall something I read a week ago in class. Something is broken up there. I hope it gets fixed this summer.

I am supposed to write a final paper in Brit Lit and I have no idea what it will be. I wish Dr. Flinn would just point at me and say, "Dawn, your topic is this.... discuss!" Then, maybe I'd have a chance. As it is, I just can't think of anything. Critical analysis isn't fun anyway, and it isn't something I care about, at all. I just hope I pass.

The final will be a few questions chosen randomly out of the study questions. I never read those, because they are confusing, and make me feel stupid most of the time. Well, not never, but I don't read them while I'm reading the book. I can't remember so many things, I don't know how I will do on this final. I am sad.

When I started college in 2004 (pregnant with number 3) I was excited. I wanted to do SO well. I wanted 4.0's in everything. That first quarter, that's what I got. I had the baby on June 19th, right after school was out and started summer quarter on the 21st. All of my classes were online. I received a 4.0 in English 201 and a bit lower in the other two, which I think were history and psychology 101. Still, I thought, this is good.

Then I had to take math. So, my gpa went down a bit, but I was still above a 3.7 cumulative gpa and I was happy with that. I joined Phi Theta Kappa mostly so I could get a scholarship to eastern. The first year I went here, I was in honors. My GPA dripped down to a 3.6 and I was booted from honors. No more scholarship.

I've decided I don't care about GPA anyway. I mean, no one has ever interviewed me and asked, "What grade did you get in this class?" They've never asked to see my transcripts, and never have I been asked for proof that I graduated from High School. I'm almost sure that if I say I have a bachelor's degree, they'll ask to see it, but it doesn't matter either. I mean, they hire people with degrees all the time, degrees that were bought on the internet and never do they check that school out, to see if it's legit. Not until some poor kid is running around saying this like, "That's unportant, and unnapropriate."

Teachers make mistakes... but nearly every week I sent my daughter's fifth grade word list back with corrections. Don't test my kid on words and spell them wrong! Jeez. The next year she had the same teacher and she had her in a special group that was given greek roots and they had to do a bunch of stuff with them. I don't remember what.

That's why I hate Spokane schools. They are like, "it's really important that our kids are coddled during Elementary School. Our classes should have less than 20 kids each. They should have the same teacher as often as possible. But after grade school, who gives a shit? Let's throw them in these four middle schools full of thousands of kids, with teachers who say things like, '265 kids come through my class every day, your daughter doesn't look familiar, so I'm guessing she's not failing' when asked how a certain child is doing in their class." He was wrong, by the way, she was failing.

"Then," they say, "let's just go ahead and toss who ever is left into these other four high schools. We have the poor high school (North Central), the rich high school (Ferris), the mix of both (Shadle), and that one downtown (LC). The last one is the best one. What a great location for a high school. Hey, there are hospitals nearby, and mcdonalds. The freeway. That really nice parking area under the freeway--it's so safe. No one slings drugs there."

Everyone called Jance, "Last Chance Jance" I don't know if I'm spelling it right, and I don't care. I think places like that are great. You have more one on one with teachers and students. You work at your own pace. Ect. My cousin went to a place like that, but she didn't graduate. She just wasn't the type.

I'm homeschooling my daughter next year. She's insanely shy and starting new, large schools is extremely painful for her. But, mostly, it's because I'm pretty sure I could teach her better.

I really went off in a different direction on this, didn't I? I guess my point is that I hate Spokane schools and I no longer care about my GPA, only care if I pass. It's a sickness. I'm done. I'm tired. I'm sick of it.

It keeps telling me I haven't posted an entry yet.  I've totally posted an entry.  Haven't I?

In 1995 my husband went to NYC for a week, taking our daughter with him. He was going to come home without her, and she was to stay there for three months. She was two. It was not the best decision I have ever made, and whenever I bring it up, I tend to go off on a rant about it. Let's cut it short and just say they didn't return her until six months later and that was at my insistence. I haven't been away from any of my kids for that long, again. So, he left for NYC, it was the first time we'd been apart for any amount of time in two years. I was sleepless, I was lonely, I was smoking a ton of pot. It was my early twenties, and I worked at hastings. Everyone smoked pot at hastings. I had more connections for pot than I'd had in high school. Though, in high school I never had to pay for it.

It was late, maybe four in the morning, and once more I couldn't sleep. I decided to write. I took out my notebook, or maybe I turned on my pentium, I can't remember. I am not The Woman Who Can't Forget, so cut me a little slack. Suddenly, my mind expanded and I wrote the best poem I'd ever written in my life! It was so great, I couldn't wait to share it. I think I'd posted it on a bulletin board I frequented.

In November of that year I was reading Speculations (Which OMG is no longer in the business, it breaks my heart.) and found a magazine that fit my poem, plus I could email it. Sooner than I expected I received an acceptance letter. It was my first one and I was so proud. Payment was a contributor's copy, and that was OK with me. When I received the magazine, I opened immediately to my poem. I was angry, it was split into two columns and wasn't supposed to be. Plus, it was surrounded with other poems that were no where near as good.

In 1999, I learnt me how to make webpages on Angelfire.com. My first website was born: Damina's First. I posted all of my writing that I could. Including the aforementioned poem. Black Moon Magazine (the one who printed it) had since gone out of business. I found sffworld.com and swiftly became a member, posting some of my writing there, including that damn poem.

I have since deleted Damina's First (mostly for personal reasons, if you ever find my angelfire webpage, you will see that :P) and moved on. However, that poem, and another on sffworld, have haunted me. They are still there, you see, and I can no longer log in to delete them. They changed the way people submit stuff, and my conversation with the webmaster regarding this was cut off mid-sentence. He dropped the ball somewhere, or died.

Every now and then I get bored and google certain phrases in the poem, and I find it everywhere. The kids really like it. They like to say they wrote it, or to use parts of it (and the other one on sffworld) and seem like mediocre writers.

It's not a poem I am proud of. Actually, I now hate it, but it's mine damn it, and I don't want their grubby little emo hands all over it. This is a warning for you, any of you, thinking of posting you poetry online. Remember it, dread it.

Did I learn my lesson? No. haha. I suck.

For those of you interested, it's The Vampire, by Dawn Rusho (my maiden name. I was going to use that as my pseudonym.) and it reeks. I posted it in 2002, so obviously it took me a while to find sffworld. It's missing an apostrophe, and sidhe is pronounced "Shee." Look it up.