Tales of Angry Dante

Once upon a time, I used to hang around the biggest sourpuss in the world.

Grr! said the crabby ex-Florentine.

1)  One time Dante was traveling through Florence wearing armor to protect his throat and arm -- not surprising, because he was a soldier in his youth.  He saw a donkey driver transporting garbage, "who was going along behind the donkeys singing the book of Dante, and when he had sung for a bit, he hit the donkey and said 'Arri (Giddyup).'  Dante dealt him a forceful blow on the shoulder with his mailed fist, saying, 'I didn't put that Arri in there.'"

2)  When Dante was passing through the Porta San Piero, he "heard a blacksmith singing as he beat the iron on his anvil.  What he sang was from Dante, and he did it as if it were a (popular) ballad, jumbling the verses together, and mangling and altering them in a way that was a great offense to Dante.  He said nothing, however, but went into the blacksmith's shop" and started throwing his tools of the trade into the street: the hammer, the pincers, the scales.  The blacksmith cried, 'What the devil are you doing?'  Dante said, 'If you do not want to have me spoil your things, don't spoil mine.  You sing out of my book, but not as I wrote it; I have no other trade, and you spoil it.'  The blacksmith, vexed, gathered up his tools, and thereafter stuck to singing songs about Tristan and Lancelot. (Though I am sure the Tristan and Lancelot line is mere conjecture.)

This is a post brought to you by Procrastination: because the best way to deal with work is to ignore it.

1) from A Day in a Medieval City by Chiara Frugoni and Arsenio Frugoni
2) both stories are originally from Franco Sacchetti's Novelle.

I'm so bad about keeping up with the blogs!

Ya think?

This morning I was up with baby, who is 10 weeks old now. He's getting pretty good at the smiling thing and has figured out how to bring his hand to his face to suck on his fingers, but he hasn't quite figured out how to move his thumb away from his hand. He keeps trying to suck his thumb but it just stays squished against his palm and he's going, Aw, come on! and I give him a pacifier but he spits it back out because he wants that dang thumb.

But I was just singing an Earth, Wind, and Fire song to the kid and he was grinning and grinning and it was pretty awesome.

And then I had to go to work! which was not so awesome, but ya gotta eat.

I got stuck on Meira's story because I still have no idea what the plot is and I don't know where anything is going, or how these dual narratives -- actually more than two -- are fitting together. I'm working again on Butterfly Chaos, and have been flailing at it over the past couple of months, but I am FINALLY starting to get deeper into the story and it's like, holy cow, it took long enough.

I'd like to get Butterfly off to agents soon. I hope it works out this time. At least I won't be submitting stories whilst hormonal and pregnant, because geez, that just sucked! Shoot, I'm just glad to be unpregnant! Also I
can tie my shoes.


Well this was random.

Baby!

Here's our newest resident, born Sunday, Aug. 5:

We are pretty darn happy about his arrival.

Still waiting on the baby.

Most of my waiting is done between 2 and 5 a.m. when my body says, "Hey, I am wide awake, let's get up!" and I try to talk it out of this silly notion, but it will not be swayed, and so I end up eating a bowl of cereal (because my body is always hungry about this time) and looking at the internet (though you would think I'd know better).

If baby doesn't show up by August 3 then we're going to induce. This pleases me very much. I am tired all the time during the day, partly due to this insomnia thing, partly because a squirmy baby inside very cramped quarters is a tiring thing, and ... well, once he comes out that will be a different kind of tired altogether, BUT at least I would be able to lay on the floor and straighten out my back without getting my intestines squished!

Here within a week our home will have a tiny new occupant, and it is the oddest thought in the world. My brain is having a hard time wrapping around it. The house is a mess. My brain apparently is electing to ignore that.

I'm still writing, though the work is sporadic.

I have graduated from Hamline and it was pretty awesome. I'm pretty sad that I won't be going back next summer, though. I really like seeing those guys and I am going to miss the whole crew.

Okay, I'm going to try and go back to sleep, since I am seriously tired and it's 2:30 a.m.

Oh, I didn't mention that I was pregnant? Well I am.

Apparently I'm going to give birth to a ninja here in August. He certainly is squirmy, and once in a while he unleashes DragonFist! and then I sit up and take notice.
Perhaps I should not drink two cups of tea per day. But it's soooooooooo good.
In other news, I'm back to revising Butterfly Chaos. I'd like to revise five pages/day so I can get through the whole thing by July 1, when I can then freak out about going to Hamline for my last residency. I will graduate two weeks before baby is due. This should be a very interesting residency.
I'm also working on a story about a girl who turns into a raccoon and acts like a raccoon and does raccoonish things, or at least her human side is working hard NOT to let her do some of those raccoonish things, i.e. eating baby rabbits, trash, or taking a nap in the fridge right in the butter dish. I'm shooting for 500 words/day on that, but having a hard time keeping on schedule with that due to the 5 page/day thing.

I'm not sure who took this pic but it is a true look at what it means to be a raccoon.

Perhaps I should be writing my novels instead of writing long-winded blog posts. Yes, that would probably be a good idea.