Sorry for the radio silence. This has been a week. And not the good kind. It started when Brian and I spent Sunday in the vet’s office with a very sick dog. I was babysitting the pack of two for my mother when she was visiting in Nipomo. Spunky, golden Molly waddled out of the bushes Sunday morning, threw up on the red bricks of the patio twice, and then collapsed. We spread a sheet in the back of our white Chevy Malibu and took her right in. She’ll live, but she needed surgery for the plastic shards of the dental floss box that she ate, as well as all the floss that tangled in her tract. She’s already been informed that she’s not allowed to eat weird things anymore.
Monday culminated in probably the worst rejection I’ve ever received. My senior thesis will not be published. The representatives from the journal were not just discouraging. They were outright vitriolic. They were mean-spirited and self-righteous in ways only academics can achieve. I cried a few times. I tried to figure out if it could be re-written. Without the funds of the school behind me, additional research to do re-writes will be nigh impossible. I don’t know any Deaf historians who would critique it for me, and I hate asking favors of even people I know.
I called it a day on non-fiction. I read Neil Gaiman’s Make Good Art and was able to edit four chapters of my novel. I realized how much I enjoyed being a historian again, if only for fifteen minutes or so, and how much I’d like to go to grad school.
Halloween opens at Disneyland today. The new fiscal year starts in 2 weeks. To say that I have been busy at work would be an understatement. I have been running around frantically, arms full of costumes and fabric and shipping documents, and still failing to get a full third of all the things done. At the second job, I still can’t figure out how to order office supplies. I don’t have paperclips, or even a pair of scissors. I have to go three buildings over if I need to use the copier. I can’t get the temperamental data reporting system to work for me, either.
Brian read Clutter Busting by Brooks Palmer for book club at his church this week. Then he made me read it too. It’s been a good thing, but we spent most of our time this week talking about what is emotionally wrong with us that we have to collect all this stuff. Clean out day is Sunday, and I have a feeling we’ll be trashing a lot of things.
I hope this weekend is better. I don’t think I can take another week like the one I just lived through. I’m charging on, though. I’m making good art.
Casey E. Hamilton 