For those of you who may now know, I grew up in and around the rural areas of Northeastern NC. We didn’t have any local TV stations but we picked up what we could off of our large roof antenna from the Virginia Beach area which was a good hour away North (and sometimes an hour the other way into Greenville, NC).

I remember watching the Carvel commercials and wishing I could have a Fudgy the whale cake for my birthday, but there was no way that was going to ever happen since the closest Carvel was somewhere up in WAVY TV-10′s regular viewing area of Hampton Roads.

This struck me last night as I walked into Bloom to pick up Dr. Pepper for Ken and a snack for us to celebrate with.  I was going to get some cookies, but they were out of my favorites, so I stopped by the freezer case near the deli and looked eye to eye with that pink Carvel box.

Ok, it wasn’t a Fudgy the whale cake but it was a small chocolate and vanilla ice cream cake with icing and sprinkles that was just the right size for 2-4 people.  Would it ruin the healthy eating I had done with the day? Yep.  Would it be totally worth it. Yep.

Oh Ikea, how I love thee

And, coincidentally, I must have had cake on the brain because the picture here was taken quite a few hours early while we were shopping at Ikea because I wanted a new Facebook profile picture.

Oh, I bet you want to know what we were celebrating? We really don’t just gratuitously sit around and eat cake every weekend.

Well, I received word that my first full length collection of poetry is going to be published! Until I get final details I won’t go into where and when etc but I am just absolutely thrilled to have had my work selected and I can’t wait to go through the editorial process!

Now, if this wasn’t enough, I also received an email last night that one of my Zombie Girl poems was accepted for publication (see my publications tab for more details).  Regular readers of this site gave me some helpful suggestions on it when I posted and early draft here, so thank you!

These things also tie so well together because now that the first book has been accepted, even though there will be work to do on it, I feel like I am more free to work on what are going to be a 2nd and 3rd manuscript.  Not to mention a bunch of chapbook ideas I have floating around.

Maybe all this excitement (and sugar) was part of why I woke up so early on a Sunday! Oh well, more time to Tweet, FB and read – all probably in that order