My job will be sending me to grad school in the fall: I’ll start Eisenhower School in August and for the next ten months, my only job will be school. I won’t have to report to my office, or answer emails, or do anything other than school. It’s an amazing opportunity and I’m excited about it. This will be the first time ever I’m not working full time while going to college. Yes, I worked full time during my undergrad and my first two graduate programs. So this third grad program will be different: nothing but school for the duration. The only downside to this is because it’s an accelerated program I can’t take any leave during it. I’ll have the usual Federal Holidays off, and a two-week break at Christmas, but that’s it: no other leave/vacation is allowed. Because of this restriction, and the insane amount of hours I’ve been working and traveling, I decided I needed to take a chunk of leave this summer. As such, I embarked upon a month-long break. But of course being the Type A woman I am, I made myself a long to-do list of things I needed to accomplish while on leave.

I started with ten days in Maine. The first week was spend at the Poetry Residency at Maine Media, followed by a few days in Acadia National Park. Jay flew up that Friday night and we spend the weekend hiking and exploring the park. Acadia has been on my list for a while so I was glad to finally cross it off. Also, it’s beautiful and has some excellent hiking so it made for a great weekend.

Hiking up Beehive Trail

Once home from Acadia I moved on to the next item on my to-do list: adopting a dog.

I said goodbye to Daisy at the end of January. At fifteen years old, she had a long, wonderful life but I was still devastated when she died. I felt like part of me had died too and I vowed to take a long break from being a dog owner. But then…well, then I realized that there was a dog-shaped hole in my heart and there was only one thing that could adequately fill it: another dog.

I began looking through the local rescue websites and shelters. Every dog looked like it could be my next. Every dog tugged at my heart a little bit. Eventually we settled on a 16-month old boxer mix we named Piper.

Piper with her favorite toy

Piper is super sweet but has some anxiety – originally from the south, we live in a much more urban area than she’s used to and as such, all the big-box trucks, delivery vehicles, etc. scare her which has made our 4-miles of daily walking quite challenging. We’re working on it and hopefully she gets less anxious over time. But she’s still the best doggo and I already love her.

Happy faces

When I haven’t been walking Piper I’ve been working on my next manuscript. With Beautiful & Full of Monsters now under contract with Vegetarian Alcoholic Press and a release date set for March 2020, I have moved most of my efforts to my next collection, which isn’t yet titled. I’ve got a bit more work to do before I sent it to publishers, but it’s coming along.

Piper helping with my manuscript

Next week I’ll return to the office. It’s been wonderful, having a month off – not being tied to my work phone or answering emails every evening. And I scratched through my to-do list, making it a very productive month.