I can now tell you that my children weren’t asleep last night. They were passed out from a sugar overdose. We had accompanying hangovers this morning. Naturally they tried to make it better by ingesting even more sugar this morning. The level of cranky was over the top. Fortunately we’re gradually reasserting normal levels of nutrition and organization. Hopefully most of the cranky will be banished by the time we get around to coloring eggs.
Four kids snuggled together on the floor for a slumber party and they went to sleep! I didn’t have to scold even once. If I could count on that happening every time, they could have slumber parties every night.
My call of “bedtime!” was answered by Patches groaning “Not again!” Yes indeed son, we have bedtime every single evening. It’s just one of those things he’s going to have to get used to. How he’s failed to get used to it in the three years he’s been around, is something of a mystery, but go figure.
Kiki and Link met my bedtime announcement with excitement which at first baffled me. Patches reaction is a much more familiar one. Then I realized that Kiki and Link had hatched a plan to have a slumber party on the family room floor. “It’s Friday mom! There’s no school tomorrow!” Not only that, but it is the beginning of their spring break and the kids are feeling celebratory. They’d even weakened my request resistance by cheerfully helping clean up the disaster area that we call our family room. Now there was all that clean and freshly vacuumed space and they wanted to put it to good use.
The problem with slumber parties is that getting to the slumber part involves much giggling, squealing, and parental intervention. Frequently the only way they sleep at all is when I separate them entirely. I didn’t really want to deal with it. I especially didn’t want to deal with it when they’re all hyper on the abundance of candy they got at the “easter egg hunt” we attended this evening. Attendance at said hunt became mandatory when someone from our church taped a hot pink reminder notice to our door and Kiki found it. Kiki is fully capable of reading, checking calendar and clock, announcing impending candy to her siblings, and whipping them all into a froth of anticipation. There were no eggs at this hunt, just candy. Lots of candy strewn across lawns for kids to pick up by the basketful. My kids are not stupid, they filled their baskets. To give them credit, they then cheerfully shared with kids who came late or who didn’t gather as fast. We still came home with enough sugar for a houseful of headaches. So you can see why the idea of a slumber party did not make me dance for joy.
On the other hand, the kids make this request fairly frequently and it is almost always denied for very sensible reasons like mandatory school attendance the next morning. Tonight the sensible reasons had all been dispatched. The kids had been cheerful workers and despite the influx of sugar, they had all completely failed to squabble with each other. I realized that the only reason not to have a slumber party was that it might inconvenience me. Not a good enough reason. So they got their slumber party. I did change the venue to the floor of the bedroom that Link and Patches share. It is a smaller space with a door that I can shut. I also made sure that the kids most likely to squabble were separated by those least likely to squabble. Theoretically the containment and separation of squabblers will reduce the nuisance factor and allow me to maybe watch a movie later. So far so good, but the night is yet young.
We aren’t planning anything big for spring break. I’ve got enough big things looming that I don’t feel like adding any more is a good idea. So it is pretty important to do small special things like this slumber party. We’ll probably rent some movies, maybe have a game night. But mostly this week will be spent out in the yard riding bikes and preparing the vegetable garden for planting. If I pitch it right the kids might even consider that fun. Or not, but at least they got their slumber party.
Today I was informed by Gleek that there are poisonous butterflies that fly over our backyard and drop poisonous gray caterpillars. I think she is referring to the fuzzy gray caterpillarish things that drop from local aspen trees. At first I thought this was part of some game, but she appears to be very serious and terrified of these caterpillars. My efforts to allieviate her fears have been to no avail because she was told about this by the 7 year old neighbor boy who, obviously, knows more about caterpillars than any mom could ever know.
Today was also the day that Patches pointed to a yellow forsythia bush in full bloom and informed me that it is a dandelion tree. He was so pleased to see it and with his own description that I didn’t feel a need to correct it. Besides they do look like dandelion trees from a distance.
As you might have guessed we’ve been spending more time outdoors this week. I decided to finally tackle some of the gardening work rather than wandering around seeing how much there was to be done and feeling overwhelmed. Once I got out there and started working the job no longer seems impossible. The list of yard things I’d like to have done is endless, but then chore lists always seem that way. If I accomplished everything I want to do, my yard would look like something out of a gardening magazine. Not going to happen this year. This year I’ll be lucky if I can keep the vegetables alive.
One of the amusing things about parenting is listening to myself talk to my kids. I’ll be having a conversation which makes perfect sense at the time, then later I’ll think about what I said and laugh because it sounds so ridiculous. I’ve collected a few of these gems over the years.
“Gleek can be an ice cube if she wants to!”
“You tell me what you’re thinking about for breakfast and I’ll tell you why you can’t have it.”
“Doggies with no pants can’t use the computer.”
“Will you shut up so I can tell him to shut up!?”
“If you say ‘please’ one more time I’m going to put you in your room and make you stay there.”
“Let’s go find you a sword that won’t make people bleed.”
I have had several people mention setting up an amazon wish list for Kiki’s upcoming birthday. I have mixed feelings about this. One voice shouts “Do it, you’ll get stuff!” Another mutters guiltily about not asking for charity. A third voice tells me that some of you have honest affection for my kids and it would make you happy to send something. A fourth voice informs me exactly how expensive some of the items are, and that putting up a list would be outright greedy. There are other voices as well, but they’re hard to hear because none of the voices are taking turns. All these voices yammer in my head and I find it hard to come to a decision because they fluxuate in relative volume.
My kids already have a wishlist. Mostly I use it for reference as I’m hitting garage sales and trying to find creative ways to supply things for less money. Nothing on the list falls into the category of “need to have” which is why I’ve not spent the money to buy any of it. But everything on the list is something that one or more of my kids would enjoy.
I’m going to attempt to assuage all of the voices in my head by saying this: If you really want to peruse the taylerkid wishlist, email me at sandratayler at livejournal dot com. I’ll reply with a link to the list. I will not be at all hurt if no one emails.
The next two weeks will be mostly ordinary. A few unusual things will happen. Kiki has a drama class performance and Howard goes to Penguicon. I do have to babysit NotMyBaby for one week while his new sitter is out of town. I’ve also got a dress to sew for a neighbor and a dress to sew for Kiki. And I’ve got to do all the preparatory stuff for mailing over 1000 schlock books once they arrive. More mailers and labels need to be orders, mailing lists need to be managed, etc. Also I really need to get outside and get the yard ready for planting because in May I won’t have time to think about gardening.
Hmm… that doesn’t sound very ordinary. That sounds crazybusy.
Kiki’s birthday is in May. It comes right after the books arrive. That will be a crazy time, not at all suitable for fitting in a birthday party. So she and I have agreed that there will be a quiet celebration on her birthday and her party-with-friends will be moved to the first week of May. She wants a slumber party. (Insert parental cringing here.) So I have three weeks to arrange Kiki’s birthday presents and party. I’ll have to dig into my box of potential gifts and make sure that I have enough to make her birthday a happy one for her. With life so stressed we may just have to spend money rather than being creatively frugal.
The second week of May books arrive at our door and I’ll be crazy busy trying to get them mailed out. Once all the books are mailed we plan to have a book release party to celebrate. That will probably happen during the third week of May. The fourth week of May I haul all the kids to my brother’s house and dump them on my sister-in-law so that I can attend three days of Conduit with Howard. It will be the first convention appearance where books will be available and it feels important for me to be there.
After that May will be pretty much over and I hope to collapse in a heap.
As of this morning we have pre-sold over 1000 copies of Schlock Book #1. This is an incredible relief to us. It doesn’t mean that I can loosen our tight budget, but it does mean that Howard doesn’t have to start looking for a day job. Our financial state is still like that of a video game character using ice arrows to cross lava, but we just smashed a pot and replenished our supply of ice arrows. Not only that, but up ahead I can see another pot labelled “Schlock book #2.” We get to keep going and that makes us happy.
It would have been nice if we could have gotten the book out sooner, but we simply didn’t have all the pieces we needed to make it happen until this year. Because some of you may be interested in what I mean by “all the pieces” I’ll post them below.
The first obstacle to book publication was Howard’s early artwork. The stories in Schlock Mercenary have always been good, but distributors and readers would have had a hard time accepting that the stories were good when the art looked so unprofesssional. Howard gradually improved his artwork to a point where he felt like it was good enough. He even hired a colorist (Jean Elmore) to give Schlock Mercenary a polished look. When Jean had to quit because of a repetitive strain injury, Howard had to learn how to do the pretty colors himself.
The next obstacle was time. Howard was working 50-60 hours per week for Novell, 10-20 hours per week on the comic strip, and trying to squeeze in family and relaxation time. There was no time left for Howard to be working on putting a book together. When Howard quit Novell, he suddenly had the time, but our family had a serious lack of money. That first year was spent on commercial projects and learning how to live lean so that we could keep our bills paid.
Finding the right partnership was critical as well. At first we hoped that Keenspot would be the right partnership, but we found that we disagreed with the way that the Keenspot business was run. Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games offered to help us publish the schlock book. This offer was a godsend. The SJ team helped us see how the book needed to be formatted and had all kinds of useful marketing ideas. When we discovered that we couldn’t afford to let a distributor take any of the book profit and decided that we had to self publish, Steve Jackson and his team didn’t hold any hard feelings. More than that, they sent us all the files they had put together and gave us excellent advice about order fulfillment.
Joining Blank Label Comics was critical as well. I have to admit that I had reservations about Howard joining another webcomic collective so soon after we left Keenspot. I quickly realized that Blank Label Comics was a very different endeavor. The support from the fellow cartoonists there has been amazing. I watched several of them as they went through publishing books and I began to see how it could work. Steve Troop even volunteered to help us with the layout. Communicating with these other cartoon professionals helped us realize that we’d come to a place where we were really ready to publish and mail the book ourselves.
There were so many pieces that had to fall into place. I’m amazed that it has finally all come together. Schlock Mercenary is poised to fly and carry our family along with it.
Link is sick with a fever today. When kids are sick they seek comforting activities. Link chose to pull out the Nintendo 64 games. They are comforting to him because he is good at them, they have happy memories attached, and they tend to be less complex than the gamecube games. I walked past as Link was playing Super Mario 64 and was ambushed by the following memory:
Link was just under 4 years old. He’d just begun to be able to play video games, but the Nintendo was new and we didn’t have very many. We solved this problem by renting games from Blockbuster. Super Mario 64 was one of the games we rented and returned. Several months later we rented Mario Kart. Link loved driving the little karts around, but on one particular course he kept driving off the road and up to a castle. We finally figured out why when we heard Link talking to the Mario on the screen. He was begging and trying to convince the MarioKart Mario to get out of the kart and go into the castle. He knew there was a game where Mario went into a castle and he wanted to be able to play that game. Nothing we could say would convince Link that this wasn’t the game where Mario went into the castle. He could see Mario and he could see the castle. He was sure that if he could just convince Mario to go into the castle he could play that other game. His frustration only ended when we returned Mariokart to the store. Fortunately his birthday came shortly thereafter and we gave him Super Mario 64 and he was finally able to make Mario go into the castle.
Last Saturday I spent all day and all night in the hospital taking care of Gleek. At one point I remember looking around the hospital room and realizing that I wasn’t feeling that “this is a terrible place” vibe that I’ve always had about hospitals. I didn’t want Gleek to be sick and I would have preferred to be someplace else, but the hospital itself was not filling me with angst. I was too busy to pay more than passing notice to this thought.
Today it hit me. Hospitals have not always filled me with dread. They have only done so since since surgery and radiation therapy. Perhaps I didn’t mind the hospital last Saturday because of all the emotional purging I did last January. I opened up and emptied out those reservoirs of feeling and now when the hospital subconsciously reminds me of those events, I have no angst threatening to burst free. All that blogging seems to have done me at least that much good. Maybe I’ve also short circuited the midwinter=bad as well.
It is nice that hospitals can just be places instead of bad places. It is also nice that when I was stressed over Gleek I did not have old emotions lingering close and adding to the unpleasantness of the experience.