Rejected but Loved

I love writing.  If I had the time I'd write all day, everyday; in writing I can be a single woman, living in a posh New York apartment, with hair that always did as it was told, skin that was always supple with a hit of glisten on it, makeup that looked professionally applied, clothes right off of the rack of some designer that fit my model perfect body like a glove.  When I write I take myself in a world that I make all of the rules bending things to make them fit me. My guy is a Greek Adonis who always makes me breakfast in bed, says the right things, ignores sports and is an expert in pleasing a woman in bed.  The house is never messy in my world, I wake up and the bed gets magically made while I'm in the shower, the dishwasher is always loaded or unloaded and the carpets never need vacuuming.  There are NEVER toys on the floor in my world.

But then I close my laptop and I'm transported out of la-la land and back to reality where Javier just threw his Wii nun-chuck at Boston because Boston was standing too close to him so now Boston is running around the house screaming like a banshee.  Januari is dripping milk out of her bottle onto her t-shirt not realizing that her milk costs $25 a can.  Ta'keyha, the seventeen-year-old is once again fussing because she can't get the car tonight due to the fact that gas is $3.87 a gallon and is rising by .10 every day.  Peaceful, my eleven-year-old-ex-princess-who-could-do-no-wrong is upset that she has to take a shower because the stench that is coming from her armpits is making everyone in the house sick. Asa, my thirteen-year-old is quietly in the bedroom taking apart yet another expensive skateboard only to put it back together with the wheels from another equally expensive skateboard (I don't understand the logic either) but he is secretly mad that I won't take him to the skate part which the city decided to erect in the wrong part of town.  Finally, my Greek Adonis husband is running around the house like a chicken with his head cut off looking for his work shirt that I told him to put in his dresser drawer last night, but for some reason there is a secret written code amongst men that clothes cannot go in hampers or drawers and that they must put strewn about the bedroom floor at night!

Forget Calgon, I need an actual airplane to take me away.

For peace and quiet I take refuge to my car, on my way out of the door I grab the mail out of the mailbox and to my surprise I get a letter from Parents Magazine whom I sent several article queries to.  With my stomach in knots I quickly rip open the letter and look for only word that I need to see in order to know where I stand with them; and there it is in the first paragraph UNFORTUNATELY.  It was the same letter that I'd received from them four times previously and this letter is the worst because it was a form letter meaning I was not special, they didn't care to explain why they rejected my article idea or even what article they were rejecting only that another one of them has been rejected.  Four down, three to go.   To some this may break their hearts,but I'm a trooper who has been rejected several times so I suck it up, neatly fold the letter back up and sit out in my van for twenty minutes.  I watched the neighbor rake the grass off of his neatly trimmed lawn, I watched a dog bark at the lady who was jogging her infant in a stroller, I watched a squirrel dodge sudden death as it barely missed the wheels of a oncoming truck and I watched two kids ride their bikes. Even though I was rejected I knew that life would go on.

Going back in the house of horrors my husband found his shirt,diffused the teenage bomb by telling Ta'Keyha she could use the car after she cleaned the bathroom and broke up the UFC-style fight that was going down between Javier and Boston.  Grabbing Januari I went inside our bedroom and proceeded to change her onesie for the third time when he came in and kissed me on my neck.  Showing him the rejection letter he said, "well babe, now you don't have to give up focus on your book writing an article."  I put the letter in a drawer full of rejection letters of various types and smiled at him and although he had on his work clothes, hair uncombed, a little night time goo in the corner of his eye at that moment he was my Greek Adonis and at that moment the house was silent and at that moment I realized that no matter how many times I was rejected I was accepted and loved right here where it really mattered.