I am packing extra liquids as I write this. Every bottle of moisturizer in the house will be in my luggage.

I’m off to the land of the giant ferris wheel — Wildwood, New Jersey.

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Whew, when I return, I’ll have to get caught up on all of the new subscriptions. Thank you to those of you who’ve renewed and those of you who’ve subscribed for the first time. We love you!

I often wonder how my friends with bands booked tours and managed to connect the dots between locations. It’s really a talent. I’m not sure I have that talent, but I supposed I’ll be developing it as time goes along.

Have you created a tour to promote your book? If so, would you share advice in the comments below?

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On another note, for you parents with toddlers. Check out this site with activities for toddlers.

Can I step out of this blog post for a minute to say that Sarah Manguso has some gorgeous dresses? Check this out —>http://www.sarahmanguso.com/about.html And then take a look at the latest P&W for more groovy shots of her.

The whole reason I’m writing this post is to talk about the writing process. Manguso says that she wrote her memoir in a series of vignettes while at an artist’s colony. She made rules for herself that included not worrying about what order she wrote the vignettes in and writing 1000 words per day. In one month, she had the book.

Lest that sound oversimplified and make you feel bad you’ve taken 10 years to write your own book, keep in mind everyone has a different process. Also, the article mentions she’d had these ideas in mind for seven years, so ideas had been percolating for a long time.

I really, really like this idea of writing vignettes. Without calling it that, that’s what I’d already started to do with a prose book idea I have. I decided there were not enough books on a topic I want to know more about, so I’m writing one.

Vignettes are manageable. When balancing a FT job, mothering, wife-ing and all my other -ings, vignettes seem downright easy.

I had not been making the writing a regularly scheduled event. My life is rather unpredictable with a schedule that changes a little bit each day, and I’m not sure schedules work well for me anyway. I’ll give it a go though.

What do you think about creating a book by writing vignettes? What are your thoughts?

When I sent this poem to them, I felt like their magazine was the right place for the poem. Every time I feel that way, the poem in question gets taken by the magazine in question. I don’t feel that way often, but it’s a thrill when I do.

Yay to Jay Robinson and Mary Biddinger and the other folks I’ve not virtually met yet and who accepted my poem.

Now that notebook is filled with notes of who owned the linens, the 150-year-old china, and so on. It’s also written with the start of essays about the “end-of-life process” as hospice social workers call it. I have opinions on death. I have a lot to say about doctors and nurses and about people calling a spade a spade. It’ll feel good to get to this prose.

Before prose, poetry.

First, I’ll look back at those five drafts and see what, if anything, can be made from them. At the time, they seemed like they could go somewhere. I’ve been tricked by the muse before though.

I’ve flown to Florida so many times in the past three months that I know the gate folks. I even know the security folks at the Melbourne, Florida airport, and they are far nicer than any other security folks I’ve met.

At BWI, I was somehow seen as a threat and flagged by the airline to be screened.

They placed me and O in a pen where O said, “this is fun, mama!” She liked the swinging glass doors. We played pat-a-cake and sang songs while waiting for the guard to get around to screening us.

I got a pat down.

Then, the male guard had to swipe all of my luggage with a dirty looking cloth.

He said, “which pieces are yours?”

I said, “this, this, this, this, this and this.”

He said, “who else is traveling with you?”

I pointed to O, who smiled broadly.

He said, “wow.”

I said, “that’s traveling with a toddler for ya.”

This is how I did it. I wore the toddler on my back. I carried a 35-lb car seat in one arm. I held a rolling suitcase with a small gym bag on top of it in the other.

We did fine until I had to take off our shoes (O’s and mine), remove the laptop from the suitcase, extract baggies of liquids for inspection — the $6 suntain lotion deemed a threat and thrown away — remove toddler from back, remove baby carrier from back and keep toddler from running through the checkpoint without me.

Someone gave me a cart to use. In all the commotion, I forgot it and hauled the 100 lbs worth of stuff down to the gate.

Miracles! The flight attendant picked up my car seat and put it into the window seat. I got it strapped in and we got all of our bags settled.

Then came a voice: “I think you’re in my seat.”

The flight attendant put O’s car seat in the wrong seat.

The woman whose seat we’d taken by accident said, “aren’t you the one that got the extra screening and now this?”

Yes, yes, that was me.

When I got on the flight to come home, the flight attendants said, “nice to have you back.” Did I detect any sarcasm? I don’t know.

Are you wondering where to send your work? I discovered this forum with lots of calls for submissions.

Barn Owl Review posted an interview with Bernadette Geyer. I found this via Mary Biddinger’s Facebook page. I can’t say FB never brought me anything useful.

I’ve retreated to my hallway — no windows — and am waiting for the storm to pass. The sky is an angry black and the winds are 50-60 mph. I went outside to bring in the marigolds. DH called from the road — further west — to warn me, but I was still surprised at the speed with which the storm picked up. It went from a touch of grey to 60 mph winds in a few minutes. The wind was so strong that I had trouble opening my front door.

This is scary, but it’s also a bit of a thrill. I know that tornados have narrow paths of destruction — nothing like a hurricane — but I’m still listening for that characteristic train whistle sound and the green western sky. If I see that, I’ll freak.

I’ve seen a tornado once. That was enough.

A few of my poems make a guest appearance in the latest issue.