Month: September 2007

Choices

By / September 29, 2007 / 2 Comments

Sometimes we have to choose between important things.

This evening was a general women’s broadcast for all the adult female members of my church. It is an annual event which is very spiritually filling. I love going. But today was a day full of events. Howard cooked 5 dutch oven pizzas for a crowd of hungry men on a shooting trip, then came home and scoured out all the ovens. It was an exhausting effort for him even though he enjoyed it. I was gone to a baby shower even before he returned. I loved the baby shower. It was a chance to meet some new people and visit with a few familiar friends. And there weren’t any compulsory baby shower games, just pleasant visiting and yummy food. As I drove home from the shower I found myself saying out loud that I didn’t want to go to the broadcast. This puzzled me because I usually love it.

Then I arrived home. Gleek was bouncing off the walls bored because she’d been trapped inside all day by sleeting rain. She was solving her boredom by irritating Kiki. The kitchen was filled with the shrapnel from three or four semi-supervised craft projects. Link was hungry and needed help cooking. Patches was also hungry. Patches and Gleek also wanted to take a bath. They needed the bath badly. Howard was hiding from the chaos in his office, too limp to move much.

I surveyed all of this and realized that I’d expected to find it all. I knew that I was coming home to chaos and that abandoning it to head back out, would be abandoning my post. I would have loved to go to the women’s broadcast tonight, but my family really needed me here. They needed me to run the bath water. And negotiate the Bead Crisis. And cook food. And wash hair. And clean up the kitchen. They needed me to be cheerful, and competent, and restore a sense of order to a day already slightly askew and poised to go seriously awry. So I stayed home.

Sometimes the pressure of so many needs feels as though it will crush me. Sometimes I feel trapped by it all. But today I did not. Today I was happy to feel so needed and essential. I think some of the difference is that everyone was willing to let me go. They were willing to muddle through so that I wouldn’t have to miss the broadcast. But there have been so many times that Howard has dropped everything to meet my needs, it would be wrong of me not to do the same when presented with the opportunity.

It was definitely the right choice. The moment I announced my intention to stay home, all of my people relaxed a little. Gleek in particular expressed gladness that I would be staying. She needs me more than the others I think. She depends upon me to reign her in when she can’t do it for herself. Thus she misses me more when I leave. The following hour was a chaos filled with request upon request as everyone simultaneously turned to me for things they needed. The hour after that there was calm and clean and peace.

I’ll listen to the broadcast off of the internet some other day. For today my family needed me more. Since my religion is founded upon the family I think this means I have my priorities straight.

House cleaning

By / September 29, 2007 / 10 Comments

Sometimes inspiration coalesces rather than strikes. That was my experience as I contemplated the state of my house and my lack of time and energy to accomplish everything. I realized that I was doing too much picking up after the kids. This sort of maid work is a poor use of my time, and yet it needs done. The obvious answer is to make the kids pick up after themselves. Unfortunately this often takes more effort than just picking up after the kids, which is why I haven’t been making the kids do the work. I pondered this situation over the course of several weeks and a plan slowly came together in my mind.

I realized that I needed to institute a system of rewards and consequences. Not just for the kids, but for me as well. If there is no reward for me in making the kids do the work, then the system will have a very short lifespan. One frequent mistake in trying to institute reform is to take on too much at once. Total reformation can work if you have time and energy to really focus on it. I have too many other things, so I needed to pick a few areas of focus.

I decided to stop the accumulation of clothing on the bathroom floors. Those piles of shed clothing grow until I scrape up the archeological layers and put them in the laundry. I put up a sign in each bathroom that announced “Clothing is not allowed on this floor. If I find your clothing here, I will make you clean it up and assign you an extra chore.” That extra chore is the reward for me. By enforcing the rule I get some small task done by someone else. This makes the effort to make a child work, worth it. The extra chore is also a consequence for the kids. Ideally they’ll just stop leaving clothes on the floor and enforcement will never be necessary.

The front room is also a big clutter accumulator. The kids walk in the door and dump backpacks, coats, books, shoes all over the room. The same rule applies for the front room as for the bathrooms. If I find their stuff there, then they have to pick it up and do an extra chore. I didn’t hang a sign with the full rule on it, but I did hang a reminder sign over the couch. It says “this is not a dumping ground.”

The third area that was causing big problems was the video cabinet where we keep our games and movies. I kept finding discs left laying around with no cases. Controllers were left all over the room where they could get stepped on or broken. Games and movies teetered in great stacks. I cleaned the whole area up then hung a sign that says “put it away or it goes to jail.” In this case “jail” is our jail box. Kids can only get stuff out of the jail box by doing an extra chore. I announced to the kids that I was going to be very strict about movies and video games. I’m no longer warning or giving second chances. If these things are left laying around they’ll go to jail.

I’m almost looking forward to them leaving stuff laying around because the extra chores will make my house cleaner.

Return of the writing

By / September 28, 2007

Today I felt like writing. Then I realized that I was afraid to start. I was afraid I’d get seized by the story and neglect the other important things that I finally seem to be bringing under control. It is all starting to balance and I was afraid to try to fit writing back in. I did it anyway because it needs to fit. As usual the process of writing eased my spirit. (Except for the part where I jiggled the plug on my laptop twice and the machine restarted itself. I really need to get a new battery for this thing.) The writing did steal almost two hours, but it isn’t taking over my life. So that’s good.

The rest of the day was spent on Things Which Need Done. It was a very effective day. I should probably get enough sleep more often.

“Scatter Sunshine all along your way”

By / September 27, 2007

There is a hymn we sing at church which includes the line “scatter sunshine all along your way, cheer, and bless, and brighten every passing day.” The tune began running through my head about half way through parent/teacher conferences at Kiki’s junior high school. We had 6 teachers to visit. Each of the classrooms had a large whiteboard. Gleek and Patches were naturally bored at being dragged along, so in each classroom they left little deposits of artwork on the whiteboards. They drew little suns in red and green and blue. The red suns were suns. The blue suns were water suns. Neither Gleek nor Patches deigned to tell me what the green suns were. All these suns shone down upon lumpy water, hills, lava and the occasional fish. The hardest part of the evening was prying Gleek and Patches away from the current art project to travel to the next room. We could have been done in half the time.

Our last stop was the band room. The band room contained an array of impressive percussion instruments. Huge kettle drums, and big bass drums, and xylophones of various sizes, and full drum sets, and cymbals, and bongo drums, and chimes, and a gong, and a triangle they all beckoned to my four bored-and-tired-and-hyper children. It is fortunate that the band teacher has children of his own because there was no way I was going to be able to enforce a hands-off policy. Instead he asked that I enforce a hands-only policy. This prevented the kids from taking the gong mallet to the thin skin of the giant drum. We had to wait for about 15 minutes, but the kids didn’t mind at all. They ran from instrument to instrument, experimenting with all the sounds they could make. I wandered through trying to keep the volume to a minimum and to make sure that no damage was done. As I watched I wished that they had a chance to fully explore, to really make a bunch of noise with these instruments. That stuff was all so cool. I wish I could have played with it too.

We finally departed the school on a quest to purchase a dinner. The conferences had been preceded by an appointment and hours of invoice sorting. I had no energy left for cooking. The kids did not lack for energy though. They all ran ahead of me to the car.

Tomorrow Kiki will go to all her classes and see all the sunshine that her younger siblings left scattered behind. The thought makes me smile.

Times and Seasons

By / September 26, 2007 / 7 Comments

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. Ecclesiastes 3:1

I can not do everything all at once, no matter how much I might like to. I only have space for two or three large things in my life at one time. Howard and the kids always get first priority. Housekeeping, Schlock work, and writing rotate through the large slots I have left. Other smaller things fit into the gaps between the big ones. Lately, it has been all I could do to get the Schlock work done while still meeting the emotional/physical needs of my family. I can’t berate myself for this because I was honestly working at capacity. But I am left with stories I haven’t touched in three weeks and a house in dire need of organization.

I’ve always worked under the theory that if I put the most important things first, then I’ll be satisfied with myself. I believe this to be true. But how do I decide what is most important? How do I decide if it is the right season for a particular pursuit? And what if the thing I want the most, is less important than the other things?

Howard and the kids come first. Always. If they need me everything else gets dropped.

The work I do on the Schlock books is critical. The books would not get mailed if I did not handle it. This most recent book would not exist at all if I had not stepped in to do some of the layout work. For the next book I’ll be doing all of the layout work. Since the books pay our bills, this work is really important. Usually there are gaps in the busy times for book work, but we need to put out the next book fast. We’re hoping to have it out in February. This means that for the next several months I’ll be working on schlock stuff daily. I enjoy working on Schlock. I love being able to make a tangible contribution to maintaining this lifestyle that we love. But all the work on Schlock books necessarily displaces other things and for the next few months it is high priority.

Housework seems like it can be neglected, that it doesn’t have to be a high priority. Unfortunately neglecting the housework quickly results in chaos. When our house is a mess we are all more cranky and less able to do other things. Keeping the house clean enables everything else and so I have to get it done. What I haven’t been doing well, is leveraging the kids against this task. This isn’t just my job, this belongs to us all. I just need to figure out how to get them to help with a minimum energy expenditure from me.

In the end, this post is really about the lack of writing in my life lately. I’ve been blogging, but not writing fiction. I haven’t been writing because when I look logically at the things which I need to do, writing gets pushed so low on the importance scale that there is no time left for it. After all, my writing does not contribute to the running of the household. In fact usually the writing is done at the expense of something else which does directly contribute. I have so many things in my life, that logic tells me I should put the writing on hold for awhile longer. It can wait. …Only I don’t want it to wait. It is the one thing in my life that is truly mine. My writing is not important to the household, but it is important to me. It grieves me to see it languish.

As a member of the household, my dreams and goals and aspirations should have importance. As the household manager I know that my things are the easiest to interrupt or put on hold. My desire to write is constantly weighed against the needs of Howard and the kids. (They always come first, remember.) So when I have a space of time, I have to decide whether dishes or writing is more important. I am going to have few spaces in the next 6 months. I wonder if I will get any writing done at all. I want to. I want to send my words out where they can affect the lives of others. But I am left wondering how my words can possibly be good enough to do that, when they are consistently labelled as less important than doing the dishes.

(Note: All the devaluation of my writing is happening inside my own head. Howard and the kids all believe in it and support it fully.)

For every thing there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.

Am I trying to make it the season for me to be an author when it is not so? Is writing fiction even the correct use for the gifts I have been given? I’ve been given so much. The only way to repay that, is to do what I can to make the world a better place. Am I going about it the way that I should be? Or perhaps I’m all at sea because I am supposed to be writing and I haven’t been. I like that answer. I want that one to be true. But I am cautious to accept it, precisely because my longing for it to be true is so strong.

Times and Seasons

Ebbs and Flows

I’ve had fallow months before, times when I did not write. Usually they are followed by a burst of creative energy where the writing pushes other things aside. I think I’m about due for that. Then all this fretting will be for naught.

Books I have been meaning to get my hands on

By / September 25, 2007 / 3 Comments

For the past while money has been tight. Time has been tight too. As a result I’ve accumulated a list of books that I want to take the time to read. Some of them I want to purchase as well because they were written or edited by friends of mine. My shelf of “books written by friends” is threatening to spill over onto other shelves. This makes me happy because it means that my friends are succeeding in their writerly aspirations. Anyway, the following books have caught my eye. Perhaps you might like them too.

At the top of the list is Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson. This book looks like lots of fun and I know it would appeal to my kids. I want to get it and let them all read it. As an added bonus I can get it signed by Brandon, which is always fun. Brandon has another book out that I also want to acquire Mistborn 2: The Well of Ascension. I loved the first Mistborn book and want to see how the story continues.

My friend Stacy Whitman edited another book that intrigues me, In the Serpent’s Coils by Tiffany Trent. This book is put out by Mirrorstone which is an imprint owned by Wizard’s of the Coast. I’m curious to read it.

There are a whole pile of books by Julie Czerneda that I want to read. I’m not going to list them all. But at the top of the list are A Thousand Words for Stranger and Migration: The Species Imperative 2.

A picture book by Anthony Browne caught my eye. It is called Voices in the Park and it sounds like book I’d really enjoy sharing with my kids.

Terry Pratchett has a new book out called Making Money. I love the Discworld novels. It always makes me happy to read a new one.

Robin McKinley has been a favorite author of mine since I was in junior high. She’s put out a book called Spindle’s End. I love her fairytale redactions, so I want to read this.

That is far from the entire list. I have other friends with books that are still forthcoming. I also have other books which catch or lose my interest. This list fluctuates from month to month. Sometimes I even get to remove books from the list because I actually got my hands on them.

Candle weather

By / September 23, 2007 / 2 Comments

I was standing in the kitchen. The light coming from the window was a soft grey. The patter of rain sounded softly against the windows. A feeling of happiness filled me as I lit a spiced pumpkin candle. The soft strains of Debra Fotheringham’s music blended pleasantly with the rain. My feet did a little dance of their own volition and I sang along.

I was so worried about this Fall. I was worried about keeping up the schedule. I was worried about getting the book done. I was worried about how the kids will do in school. I was worried if the book would even sell. But here I am on the first day of Autumn and all those things have passed. Instead I am happy. It feels like the holidays. Even my kids all noted that “it feels like christmas.” Christmas is a long way off. I have many things to do between now and then, but for today I am content. It is a moment of peace in the midst of my labors.

Tomorrow I will need to teach another creative writing class. Tomorrow I will need to clean house. Tomorrow I will begin sorting invoices for over a thousand book orders. Tomorrow I will continue editing livejournal entries for my book. Tomorrow I will write some fiction. Tomorrow I will begin working on the next Schlock book. Tomorrow I will work in my yard. Some of these “tomorrows” will actually be “later this week.” Some will even be “next week.” Some even further out than that. But for today I have peace and the scent of spiced pumpkin candle.