Dishwasher, Story, Smelly Shoes

All I've been doing since last I blogged is emptying the dishwasher, filling it, emptying it, filling it, etc. etc. Or at least that's what it feels like I've been doing since last I blogged. But the thing about being one with my dishwasher is that performing an empty or fill task provides the optimal amount of time needed to mull something over: a problem, an idea, a solution. I often stop midway through the process to write something down, and I'm wondering now if that's why I put my desk in the kitchen in the first place. Which leads me to...

I'm working on a project with my friend W., but the scope of it doesn't really have a place here at Nesting Ground, so I will just say that it's taken up much of my allotted daily brain function. I muse on this project throughout the day. I fall asleep thinking about it, wake up thinking about it, and trip on my words when I'm talking about it because there is so much to say. I'm looney excited about said project, and I can't wait to see if we can pull it off.

Speaking of pulling something off, I'm pleased (and relieved) that my story "The Left-Behind Girl" was just accepted for publication in Philippine Speculative Fiction V, forthcoming in February 2010, and edited by Nikki Alfar and Vin Simbulan. Thank you so very much, Nikki and Vin. This turn of events makes me happy. Happy like...little kid happy. Bag full of candy happy. Jeans fitting perfectly happy. House nice-and-clean happy. Hot biscuit happy. All socks accounted for happy.

Now, though, I must balance the happy with the not-so-happy. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Vida's super-stinky shoes. They were purchased the week before school began, and they were the kind of adorable that makes me sigh. Now they are so smelly and disgusting, that just knowing they are visible if I care to peek out of the corner of my eye is making me queasy. I'm going to go and throw those shoes away now, and I have no doubt that I will spend the rest of the afternoon facing the wrath of my tiger-like 9-year-old daughter, but so be it. I cannot abide them.