In March, I planned the kids' camps for the summer and specifically planned two weeks when they were both in camp thus giving me two full weeks to write poetry. Last camp week I wrote half an hour a day. This week nada. What could I have possibly been doing?

Driving David to and from camp: It actually hasn't been so bad this week.

Exercise: I've put in four hours of jazzercise or zumba, one hour of blues dancing, and one hour of lindy. I was supposed to go to hip hop tonight but that got cancelled.

Work for pay: I've worked for pay 16 hours this week and add another 5 hours for commuting. My normal work week is 2-3 hours. So, lots of money, no poetry.

Planning Rose's birthday party, our trip to Crater Lake, and my new class for the fall, which included a one hour meeting with a colleague and then there's all the time I just spend worrying about how I need to be planning.

Preparing my book for publication: This kind of counts as working on poetry, but it was more about deciding whether the titles were going to be centered or left justified. Plus, I can't take much credit for this; John did most of the work, bless his heart.

Getting the car's windshield replaced: In our house, managing the car maintenance is my job, and since the crack was getting larger daily, it seemed prudent to manage it now.

I fully admit that 95% of these were choices. I could have not exercised or taken all these jobs. Making this list is just a little reminder to myself that maybe, possibly I should prioritize poetry.