9 lb, 10 oz? Great time to be a grandmother, instead of a mother!

Congrats all around.

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My good news is coming fast and furious... If collecting grandchildren were a competition I might be in the running for first place in the 100-yard dash.
Two and a half years ago we had none. In a couple of weeks, with the arrival of identical twin girls, we will be in humble adoration of five — yes 5 — grandchildren.
Growing old has a shining silver lining...

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Congratulations, Jayne. My granddaughter is the light in my eyes and another one is due in August. It's hard to believe I will now have to share that adoration but I felt the same way when my second child was born years ago.

Wow. Congratulations to all of you. That's a lot of small people with cool poet grandparents!

Sarah-Jane

I am not cool. I am just plain neat. Just kidding. But watch how I do this now.


See? Thanks.

Allen, that is wonderfully super-ambiguous and extremely neat (and oblique). I bet you know about slide rules, too, as well as multiple grandchildren.

My good news is that the quince tree is in blossom. And that means quince jam in September!

Sarah-Jane

My good news is that I begin teaching my own section of college-level Shakespeare tomorrow. I've taught other literature courses, but this will be my first time teaching Shakespeare specifically, and I'm delighted by it.

I have set up The Guinea Pig Gallery :-)))

Driving home, the apple blossom just out in the orchards, the tiny man in the too-high swaying antique tractor, the hedgerows full to bursting of waist-high buttercups. And isn’t it just like lemon-juice squeezed on a cut, that compressed unruly happiness when you least expect it?

Fliss, we cross-posted. The guinea-pig gallery sounds gorgeous. I hope you share a link.

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The good news, though it did not come easily, is that my son and his wife gave birth to Shakespearean twins -- Julliette and Ophelia -- after a harrowing cesarean and rare genetic allergic reaction to anesthesia. After nearly four hours of unconsciousness and frantic scrambling to get things under control, the mom came back from some kind of oblivion and now all is well. The girls are swaddled tight in the NICU. Love survives wherever, however, whenever it can.

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Great news, Jim. Continued good health to all.

A warm welcome to the twins, best wishes to the new mother for a speedy return to full health and vitality, and a high five for the grandfather.

Wow, congratulations and awe after what sounds like a very bumpy experience. What beautiful names for the twins, too.

Sarah-Jane

Wow -- congrats indeed! Although it's a shame that your son and his wife didn't opt for Imogen and Innogen. That might have single-handedly settled a long-running textual crux...

Yes, congrats.


That's delightful, Sarah-Jane. It could just turn into a perfect pocket poem :-)

I'll PM re. the GPG and a couple of other things, after I've had my Fortisip (yum).

Always the bridesmaid!

(In other news, my first book is finished and I'm spending the summer taking a respite from poetry. Phew!)

That's fabulous!

(And who needs a stay at the Ace Hotel anyway?)

Jim, twins are an armful. Glad things are all good.

Walter, is your book as weirdly (I mean that as praise) lexicolic as I might expect? We crave a sample or figgy pudding.

Figgy pudding can't be guaranteed.

John, I was addressing Walter. Do you speak for Boskone too?

Au contraire. Figgy pudding can’t be guaranteed as a general principle. It is known.

John

The old "argumentum ad verecundiam” fallacy, again.

Allen, I see you won't go until you've got some. So be it.

John

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=...AAAAAdAAAAABAD

Several of its poems have been workshopped in non-Met, so you have had your pudding and eaten it too.

Congratulations, Walter - that’s a very good feeling!

John

Oh, but that's very cool. Congratulations (and who wants to be the bride anyway - this way you get the kudos but don't get tied).

I look forward very much to reading your book once it's out.

Sarah-Jane

Hey, come on, folks... this isn't an extension of The Accomplished Members! (See post no.1) We already have a board dedicated to publishing successes.

This thread is specifically for other lovely things going on in our lives.

(Party-pooper) Jayne

I don't think this was an announcement of publishing success, Jayne; more of a whoop-de-doo! at having finished the grunt-work on the book and thus having room for some of those other lovely things.

We can sing it as a sea shanty (all together now...)

Soon may the publisher come
Delivering Walter's encomium
And then, when the dealing is done
He'll put it on Acc.Mem.


And here's the tune to help us with our melodious unanimity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLiNQhQr4G4
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Well, OK... but I've changed post #1 to read publishing or literary successes, which is what I should have put in the first place. The Accomplished Members deals with all that kind of stuff.

I started the Good News threads with the intention of more specifically hearing personal and family good news, to cheer us all up, ... and which we otherwise wouldn't know about :)

Jayne

... which reminds me, our son got married last 14 February, pandemic time. Our new daughter-in-law is very nice and they just visited us in Texas. That was pleasant!

Regards,
John

A Valentine's Day wedding, John. That's very romantic!

I have my first live poetry reading for over a year tomorrow afternoon, to the staff and residents of a lovely care home, in the garden. It was postponed last Friday as we had torrential rain all day long... but tomorrow is going to be a lovely sunny day.
I shall do a few magic tricks too, in between my poems.

Jayne

Poetry and magic go very well together, I suspect. Have a wonderful time!

John

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Jayne, I admire you. That's my good news : )

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Ah, Jim, thanks. That's so lovely of you... and has made my day :D

Looking back over this thread, it wasn't good news in the usual sense when I broke my neck, but I'm fully recovered, which is good news. How's your back doing these days? I hope things are better for you now.

...And how's the little one born last year? Grandchildren are such a delight. Monday is my favourite day of the week when I look after 3 year-old Oscar.

Jayne

Oh dear; did you break your neck, Jayne? I'm relieved you're okay now :-)

The good news here is that I've accepted an invitation to return to the Versus Arthritis Publications Review Panel. I hadn't been able to assist for a while due to being overly arthritic, lol. Anyway, meds for autoimmune arthritis are working so I'm back now :-)

I hope your poetry reading and in-between tricks went well <(:-)

Well, this is very small good news, but it restores my appreciation of cybersomething. A month ago I got an odd email purporting to come from my book publisher Kelsay Books. Simultaneously, some of the functionality of this iPod that I’m using was damaged so that I could not use certain features on Eratosphere. I swore, in a very Victorian way, and asked Alex Pepple to check things out. He courteously and promptly answered that everything was good at his end and that I had a problem that I would have to fix myself. Things were only somewhat wonky, and so I plowed on, swearing in a Victorian way now and then. Today, Suddenly Everything Was Good. I’m not sure what happened. There’s a small hunch that I deleted the malware almost by accident while choosing files to back up. Otherwise, thank you cybersomething, I’m not a Victorian today. Small news, yet good news for me.

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That's good news Allen. I've been there too, swearing like a sailor on a whaling vessel, suspecting everything, paranoid that I'm one step closer to watching my entire life go up in smoke. Thank God for the Cloud.

I realize your situation was likely different, but so often what ails my cyber experience is corrected by shutting down and starting up. (I almost never actually "shut down" my laptop. Not many people do. We just simply close and it "sleeps"). My most recent cyber poltergeist has been the disappearance of my mouse arrow when it is inside the window. I must grope my way to the outside of the window by swiping up until it suddenly re-appears in the bar above the window and then it remains visible as I swipe down. I've surmised it's a glitch triggered by automatic updates that happen overnight, presumably to fix glitches.

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For those who care I will send the very best: I was using an iPod when the crap came in, and it affected only the belt-buckle sized iPod that I carry around. This Problem came in a package that I am convinced was innocent at both ends (mine and Kelsay's), in which Kelsay offered an alternative to PayPal (or a personal check) by using another pay service called "Square". The sample invoice from "Square" was for someone else's book (a good poet, by the way, known to many here), despite Kelsay's statement that it was for me, and which invoice disappeared soon after its arrival. [!!!] But, Bingo, I couldn't access a couple of standard Eratosphere features that always appear at the top right of this screen. That was it...? Everything else on the E-ball worked as before, and all other sites as well. I pondered and squandered and wondered and thundered. I don't think Kelsay had a finger in this rotten little pie. Maybe "Square" didn't either. If I were to name a suspect, I'd love to say Google. But I can't say. As to why, I can't say why either. Commercial espionage maybe. Yet why me? Just because according to a biased witness I'm handsomer than some guys even now? On a whim I excluded certain files from a backup. It was gone. But I've no assurance that was what removed the crap, any more than I know whence it came. Shee-it.