Making Awesomeness

I miss being here. I miss my blog. I sometimes justify my absence (to myself, I mean) by noting how the pace of life seems to have quickened and I have no time to sit in this meditative state (because that's the state I'm in when I'm typing into this little box on my screen) for whatever it is—fifteen minutes, thirty minutes—writing mostly about nothing at all. But then I think: how could the pace of life be any more quick than it was when I had three children under the age of three? All of which is to say that I have no reason whatsoever to not be sitting here for a few moments. So I'm sitting here. For a few moments. And what I'd like to say is this:

• This weekend Cecilia Brainard and I will be representing Angelica's Daughters (and Cecilia will also represent her new collection Vigan and Other Stories, which I'm looking forward to snatching up) at the LA Times Festival of Books and Philippine Expressions Bookshop's Author Night. All the details here on the Re: Angelica's Daughter's blog! If you're in the area, come to the Festival; it's so fun. You know what else is fun? The Festival logo:

• Don't laugh at me. You mustn't laugh. I'm taking a dance class. And, well, you know what? Go ahead and laugh; I don't care. Because it's super fun. And extraordinarily sweaty. And about 40 kagillion times better than engaging with a piece of machinery whilst being forced to stare at a bank of televisions that are probably all telecasting Donald Trump's face, and more specifically his mouth, out of which spews ridiculous allegations about the President. I would much rather be dancing while Jennifer Lopez exhorts me to "go hard and get on the floor." And then she gets very clever and says, "If you're a criminal kill it on the floor," and so I kinda do pretend I'm a criminal. I draw the line, however, on her directive to "pick your body up and drop it on the floor." I'm too old for that shit. And for some reason, all of this is reminding me of the time Gura Michelle photoshopped my face onto Shakira's body.

• I'm back to writing grant proposals for school because guess what? The need for outreach doesn't disappear, and the need to bring our Spanish-speaking families into the fold of our school culture doesn't disappear, and the need for their kids to receive the help they need to succeed at school doesn't disappear. Unfortunately, what has disappeared is the money that anyone can spare us to do the work. So, grants. I just wrote a big one, and we'll hear in July.

• I, your Nesting Ground Mistress, am working on a biiiiiig project. Something out of my comfort zone (seems to be a theme with me these days. see: dancing), something that could succeed brilliantly or...not, something I've been working on for 18 months. Let's just say I feel the need to make. So I'm making this thing. And I'll tell you all about it in soon. Meanwhile, I will share my mantra for all this:

That's pretty good advice for just about anything, actually.