Allen Bubble

I love revising. I really do. But sometimes it’s such a challenge revising rhyming stories. It’s like working on a puzzle. I pore over my rhyming dictionary and online thesaurus and the words start to blur. I jot down lines that don’t have anything that rhymes with them. I rack my brain and rearrange the words. Nothing works. And then suddenly, I have a new idea for how to phrase something and it all fits together and it’s just the best feeling. And I think, why didn’t I think of that to start with? I sent my revisions are off to my agent and she liked what I had done. So now, the story and its companion will be ready for submission to editors. In addition, my agent is preparing to submit two picture books that we’ve been working on for the past year (although I’ve been working on one of the manuscripts for two years now). I’m really hoping there will be some good news soon!

My husband and I decided that we’re not sending our son back to preschool (at least until things seem safer). It’s so sad because it may mean that he doesn’t get to go back to his beloved preschool ever again. So my sister-in-law and I have decided that our twice weekly play dates will be preschool for the boys. I even named it—Allen Bubble Preschool. It’s been really fun doing projects with the boys even though they spend a lot of time screaming at each other and trying to hit each other.

 Last week, we measured out how long different dinosaurs were and did a bunch of fun experiments with baking soda and vinegar (the classic “volcano”, baking soda and drops of food coloring with vinegar dripped on top, and inflating a balloon). This week we made homemade bubble solution and twisted pipe cleaners into various shapes to see if we could get bubbles to be anything other than spheres. We also did a cool color mixing experiment (if you have food-coloring at home, you should try this--it's super fun to watch). And we made “comets” out of foil and ribbon and threw them at “Earth”. Since our preschool is play-based, we mostly just let the boys play and try to keep them from killing each other.

What I’m reading: I finished reading The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie since I did enjoy reading The Murder at the Vicarage. Continuing with my Christie theme, I’m now reading The ABC Murders. I’m also reading a book that a friend from high school wrote. I’m about halfway through United Scenes of America by Bryan Starchman. He had planned to write about several-months-long road trip to all 50 states and the trip was underway when Covid struck. The book details the journey he took before turning back home. I read aloud Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink to Zachary. I read this book soooo many times as a kid, but it’s probably been nearly 30 years since I last opened it. He loved it. Literally the minute I finished reading it, he said, “Let’s read it again right now!” But instead we started reading the first Famous Five book by Enid Blyton. So many books. So little time.