Month: October 2007

Last night at 3 am, Kiki woke up after a nightmare. She couldn’t get back to sleep because she kept hearing noises that sounded scary. After about 30 minutes she abandoned her 12-year-old pride and called out for me. I talked to her about the dream. We discussed how it is hard to shed such a dream and how when we feel afraid, our minds try to create reasons for the fear. Kiki is prone to dramatic reactions. She really has grown amazingly capable at reigning herself in, but it is a struggle for her. Sometimes it is a struggle for me. I could tell that she was not going to go back to sleep if I left her in the room by herself. Left alone in the dark, she was just as likely to work herself into a frenzy of fear.

This was when I had one of my brilliant parenting moments. In order to respond to Kiki, I’d had to extricate myself from Patches who had crawled into bed with me. I thought about how much better I sleep when I’m not crowded by a preschooler. I thought about how when Howard is away on a trip, having a child in bed with me makes me less afraid and more able to sleep. It makes no logical sense. The child is not going to protect me. The opposite in fact, but having someone there makes me feel safer.

I scooped Patches out of my bed and tucked him into bed with Kiki. This worked wonderfully since neither of them wanted to be alone with the night. They snuggled up together and both fell right asleep. I crawled back into my bed and slept as well. Yay for happy solutions!

My boys have a huge closet. This closet is full of shelves, more shelves than two boys need. I appropriated the topmost shelf, which they can’t reach anyway, for my craft storage. This is all well and good, except that my boys floor has been a disaster for weeks and yesterday I had to get into the craft supplies. The sound of toys crunching under my boots was the last straw. I stalked out of the room and returned with plastic bags.

I try to honor the property rights of my children. But there are limits. When their stuff no longer fits onto the shelves something has to go. I started by collecting a bag of outgrown shoes. Then I collected a bag of garbage. Then I collected three stacks of books. Then I collected a bag of toys that never get used, but get thrown onto the floor because they’re on top of toys that do get used. Once I’d hauled all of that out of the room, I could see where to begin. There was much sorting to be done.

One of the key problems in the boy’s room is that Link is a keeper. He needs reasons to get rid of things. I am not a keeper. I have to have reasons to keep things. Time after time I would hold up an object trying to negotiate. He never uses it, it is just in the way. Link would get wide-eyed and insist that this construction paper house was truly important. I had spread these treasures out on the floor so that we could see them clearly. I really wanted to be able to scoop the whole mess into the trash, but I didn’t. Instead I took a moment and looked again with Link’s eyes. The objects were all transformed into things with massive play potential. True he didn’t play with them much, but he might play with them. They might be the essential component to an as yet uncreated game.

We compromised. I got a file box and told Link it was his keepsake box. He charmingly transformed this into “Keep Safe box.” That was the label we put on the side. Then we put in the box all of the things that Link does not use, but that he is not ready to get rid of. The box will keep them safe and they will not be cluttering his room. The box went under the bed. Six months or a year from now, we’ll haul it out and Link will find new joy in his forgotten treasures. By then he’ll have acquired new treasures that he wants to keep safe. At that point he’ll have to make some decisions, because he is only allowed to have one “keep safe” box and the box is completely full. If he has more things to keep safe, he’ll have to decide what needs to go. It shouldn’t be too hard because that empty egg carton he put in there takes up a lot of space.

Now the boy’s room is clean. I can reach the craft supplies. More important, the boys can find the toys they like to use, because those toys are no longer buried under the detritus of games past.

On my kitchen wall I keep the family calendar. It is where I coordinate all the events of our lives so that I don’t forget any of them. Each family member has a different color of pen, so I can tell at a glance who is affected by the note. For the past month all of the days have been filled with rainbow scrawls written in tiny letters to fit around the other things. For the past month there has not been a single day with nothing written on it.

I also have a planner. It is correlated with the calendar on the wall. In the planner is the minutiae of task lists and errands and chores. All the events from the calendar are there, along with reminders to do laundry and visit the post office. Each day gets a whole page of the planner. For the past month all of the days have been filled with notes and lists to check off. Each day I check of 3/4 of the things on the list. Then I turn the page and transfer the incomplete things onto the next page. The next page is usually already full and the incomplete tasks have to squeeze around the things already there. None of the past month’s pages are empty.

For the past month my life has had no spaces. We run from busy task-filled weeks, into busy event-filled weekends. There have been few spaces to pause, take stock, and breathe. The one exception is the retreat I did last weekend. It made me realize what I have been missing. I’ve been missing days, hours that have no check boxes associated with them. I’ve been missing doing things just because I want to rather than because they need done.

My state of mind was clearly illustrated by my computer desktop. I’m in the habit of leaving things I’ll need around the edges of the screen. It keeps them where I will not forget them. But the shortcuts and files and folders begin to accumulate and the space in the center gets smaller and smaller. This also manifests in my house which has been accumulating clutter. I have not had the space to look around and see what needs done. Things only get done if they are on the To Do list. And even if they’re on the To Do list, they only get done if they manage to seem more important than everything else there. Things like sorting the non-legos out of the lego bin don’t even register as important until the bin is so choked with toys that the kids haven’t been able to use it for weeks.

My retreat and this week have made me realize that I need to defend the blank spaces on my calendar with vigor. Next month has lots of empty days. I really need to keep some of them empty. I need to make sure that each day has an hour where I’m not required to be efficient. One hour out of the day where I can do something that is not in my planner or on the calendar.

I need to make space in my life.

Many times in my 12 years of motherhood, I have attempted to read books aloud to my children. I’m not talking about picture books. The kids always love picture books and will sit still for those. Or rather they’ll climb all over me and fight about who has the largest portion of my lap while I try to reach around them all to turn pages and speak loud enough to be heard over the din. But I wanted to be able to share more than picture books. I wanted to read novels. Fun stories that they aren’t yet able to read for themselves, but which I hope they will enjoy. Heretofore I have had only limited success.

Such reading is very difficult if there is a toddler or baby around to object to everyone paying attention to anything not the toddler. But now for the first time since I became a parent, I have no baby or toddler. The youngest of my kids is now old enough to pay attention to a story with no pictures. However none of them are old enough to consistently sit still and pay attention if they have nothing to keep their hands busy. I solve that problem by reading during bedtime snack. I throw food in front of them and then hurry to read aloud while their hands and mouths are busy. Sometimes we only get a single page read. Other times we make it through a whole chapter.

The kids accepted this new habit of mom’s without objection. They listened to Peter Pan some interest, but when I began reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, they began to be enthusiastic. Now they come running for snack and Harry Potter. I expect that we’ll make our way through all of the books. At least I intend to try. I’m interested to see if they remain as enthusiastic when we’re reading the books for which they have not already seen movies. We may take some breaks from Harry Potter to read other books. But the key is that we’ve found an enjoyable ritual that my three younger kids all love. Kiki does not sit and listen. She prefers to wait until I am done reading. Then she snatches the book and reads the entire thing all by herself. Then she reads the next Potter book and the next. Since I’ve started reading Sorceror’s Stone, Kiki has gone through the whole series twice.

I’ve been having so much fun reading to the kids, that I decided to read aloud to Howard as well. I’ve been trying to find a way for me to participate in his painting hobby so that the time he spends painting can be together time for us. I don’t really want to paint myself. There isn’t room for two at his table anyway, but there is plenty of room away from the table. This evening I sat in the other chair and read aloud from Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians.

Reading aloud is fun. I just wish my voice didn’t wear out so quickly.

The report from the heart monitor came in and the news was good. My heart is completely normal and healthy. There were definitely some palpitation events. Apparently one of my ventricles doesn’t wait its turn sometimes. But “sometimes” is less than 1% of the time. Having ruled out heart damage or defects, we’re moving on to blood work. We’ll be testing for menopause and hypoglycemia. In the meantime I’m going to continue to eat right, sleep well, and get some exercise since those things have already proved effective in making me feel much better.

I’ve never considered myself a good housekeeper. Today I realized that I was wrong. I’m really good at cleaning house. I know how to do it. I just don’t spend enough time being a housekeeper. If I could spend hours each day cleaning my house, it would be spotless. And I would be completely bored. House cleaning is not interesting. In fact many of the tasks of my life are not individually interesting. Apparently I decided to add interest by packing as many as possible into each day. Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t do that to me.

That said, I’ve had a couple of really good days. I got lots of stuff done. My retreat worked perfectly. Now I just need to manage my resources properly and make sure I eat right and get enough sleep.

Gleek and Link brought home fund raising packets today. This is the second time this year that they’ve come home with glowing faces and plans for the marvelous prizes they will win. It has been left to me to explain that there is no way we can sell 10 coupon books at $20 each or 75 items from a catalog. In theory I could help them go door to door to all of our neighbors trying, but the expenditure of time is much too high. Besides I have a moral objection to pushing family and friends to buy things that they don’t need.

I know that these fundraisers work. They help the PTA raise a lot of money which is then put into programs at our school. I like the PTA. I like the programs the PTA provides. But these fundraisers are only successful because they use children as emotional levers on the pocket books of their parents. The fundraising companies do not care about the tears and headaches of the children and the parents. The fundraising companies do not care about the PTA or the school or the school programs. The fundraising companies are there to make a profit. They are quick to point out that half of the money goes straight to the school. I would point out that half of the money that people spend in an effort to help the school goes somewhere else. I do not want to give any money to these companies who prey upon my children and make them cry. It makes me angry that the PTA, which is supposed to be all about providing good experiences for children, raises money by emotionally manipulating them; showing them shiny prizes that they will never achieve. The PTA is making money off of setting children up to fail.

It all makes me mad enough that I called the school to register a complaint. I even left my name and number in case they care to call me back and discuss it. I may even make a cash donation straight to the PTA with a letter containing some of the points in this post so that I make really clear that I support PTA, but not fundraising companies.

A retreat is a time to admit that you are over matched, that you have to give ground so that you can consolidate your forces. A retreat is not the same thing as a defeat. A well executed retreat may actually be the key to victory.

This weekend I retreated. I did no business tasks. I did the bare minimum of writing tasks. Instead I focused on the kids and the house and sleeping a lot. This is roughly analogous to retreating to secure my supply lines. The supplies are secure and they’ll keep coming as long as I do not over extend myself in my hurry to go places. Tomorrow I resume my assault on The Schedule trying to make sure that everything gets done in good order.

I think a key tactic will be to do as my friend Janci has done and make a master plan for the next several months. I’ll assign all the necessary tasks to various weeks. Then I will put aside the master plan and only pay attention to this week’s problems. This will be important because I have so many different irons in the fire.

Howard — time spent, jokes shared, conversations had, etc
Children — field trips, treat days, special events, Holidays, story reading, lessons, tantrum management, etc, etc, etc
Household — cleaning, repairing, maintaining, and washing for clothes, dishes, yard and house
Family accounting — Got to make sure the money doesn’t run out too soon while still paying all the bills
business accounting — ditto on the money not running out
Tub of Happiness — preparing for the mass mailing and book release party
The Teraport Wars — installing InDesign, learning to use InDesign, creating the lay out, lining up guest art, filling all the white space, etc
Writing — write regular blog entries, edit blog entries for a book, submit at least two short stories for publication, finish teaching creative writing, attend my writers group, be a reader for a couple of friends
Social — I have friends I’d like to keep and to spend time with
Health — Pay attention to what I eat, confer with doctor, possible further tests

I do not think I’ve ever laid it all out in a row like that. No wonder I’ve been busy. But seeing all of it does help because each of these things have gaps in them, times where there is not much to do. I just have to make sure that the busy time of one thing overlaps the gaps in several other things. Time to get my planner and start making notes.