Day: April 11, 2007

For better or worse today was a writing day. I kept my promise to pay attention to the kids and respond to their needs. I even scheduled a trip for Patches to the library. He loved the trip so much that he thanked me on the way home by throwing a tantrum because I refused to take him to the store and buy potato chips. Some days I just can’t win. But when I was not paying attention to children I was either writing or doing something that occupied my brain so that I could stop thinking about writing. Sometimes when I’m trying to form a story the wheels in my head start spinning. I’m not getting anywhere, but that won’t stop them from spinning anyway. That’s when I have to read or watch a movie or do something else so that I don’t feel trapped by the story. I end up hating the story if it won’t go forward and won’t leave me alone. The mental breaks are always helpful because usually after the break I get unstuck.

Unfortunately routine household tasks leave plenty of space in my brain for the wheels to spin endlessly. This means that my house is a wreck today. It bugs me that my house can be nicely clean one day and a disaster the next.

This morning Kiki left for a two night stay at a school camp. I’m glad she gets to go. And it may be awful of me, but I’m glad I only have three kids to put to bed instead of four. It is silly to feel that way because Kiki is the easiest to put to bed, but she is also the latest up. Theoretically this means that for the next two nights I get more time off in the evenings than usual. I’m not sure how I’ll spend it. I should probably get extra sleep.

Many thanks to Janci today. She gave me her old IBM Thinkpad. I can now sit upstairs in the sunlight and type away at stories. This is a huge improvement over writing the stories longhand and then typing them into my computer in the basement. If I sit in the basement typing for too long I begin to feel trapped. The Thinkpad is an ancient machine with no battery, no CD drive, and no internet access. The only way to get data on or off of it is by USB stick. I don’t care, it solves a problem and I love it already. Yay free laptop!

There were some tensions inherent in the trip to Seattle. I knew going in that combining a family trip with a business trip was not going to be all roses. The trip was something of an experiment that way. We were trying it out to see if it would work. I knew that if having the family along interfered with business goals, then we would never do it again. To insure that family did not interfere with business, I had to be in full family manager mode. Unfortunately this excluded business manager mode. I could make sure that the kids and I never interfered with Howard doing business, but I could not be doing business things myself because I had to be doing mommy things. There were several times where I wanted to be more supportive of the business goals, but I couldn’t because I was being mommy. Everyone else understood and took this for granted, but it created unresolved internal tension for me.

I solved some of the tension by pre-planning. I had a book full of maps and directions to all probable destinations in the Seattle area. Unfortunately I have limited experience with conventions. All the conventions I have attended took place inside the hotel where we stayed. I assumed the same would be true for Emerald City Comic Con. Thus I had lots of maps and directions leading to and from the convention, but not a single one to or from our actual hotel. In fact we only located the hotel due to the help of Dan, who called around to find where we were staying and get directions.

Another unpleasant discovery was realizing that I’m still not as good at meeting and greeting as I would like to be. Meeting with Schlock fans is fine because they already know who we are and are very ready to be nice to us. That is a very comfortable place to be. But there was a cartoonists BBQ held at Bill Barnes house. At that place I would identify myself as the wife of Howard Tayler and, instead of saying “Ah!” and being glad to talk to me, most of the people said “Who?” I found myself suddenly in the position of having to explain Schlock, and what Howard does, and what I do. I was not comfortable with that. I’m afraid that I was not very good at it either. I don’t think I ever stuck my foot in my mouth, but none of my conversations were fruitful either. I was somewhat glad to dive back into mommying and not have to talk to more people.

Prior to departing for Seattle I made a big push to get my business cards printed. In Seattle I never even pulled one out. I don’t regret having the cards. They will be useful on other occasions. It does show how far I was from thinking business thoughts though. I didn’t even realize that I’d not used any business cards until I was on the way home.

For Seattle, the kids and I had a great vacation. Howard had a good business trip. Unfortunately we weren’t together for much of it. Howard missed the vacation and I missed being helpful to the business trip. It was not a failure, but I think I prefer to try to keep the two more separate in the future.