This past week I’ve been checking in with my kids’ teachers. I’m not really concerned, I just want to have a feel for how life in the classroom is going for them. When I reached Gleek’s teacher I could tell that she wasn’t certain of the reason for my call and she really had nothing specific to say about problems in the classroom. This makes me very happy. It means that Gleek is not one of her problem kids. This is such a relief after last year when Gleek had such a hard time.
Hurray Howard’s new posters are selling! This means that we don’t have to watch our money slowly dwindle while we struggle to get the next book ready to go. I am very happy about this. We have long needed to do things to make our income more steady. The downside is that I’m personally busier with all the shipping. I suspect that will continue to be true as we add more merchandise to the store. I’ll take busier if it gives me a chance to eliminate some debts and squirrel away savings.
The kids did not have school today. I had a plan for us all to get out of the house so that we wouldn’t drive each other nuts. Then it snowed 8 inches this morning. I braved the snow twice. Once with Gleek to get breakfast donuts. Once with Link and Patches to the dollar store to buy birthday gifts for Gleek. Both times the roads were coated with snow and slippery. We all stayed in for the rest of the day. Unfortunately the trip to the dollar store also resulted in Link becoming the proud owner of a whoopie cushion and three cans of silly string. I’ll just let you picture three of my kids and two neighbor kids shrieking with glee as silly string goes everywhere. There was much clean up. There was much whining about said clean up. There was much grumbling from me when I had to do the post-cleanup clean up. We have 14 foot ceilings and I had to scrape stuff off of them. And then later we were all treated to Link putting on a “fart show.”
I have a nice house, but today it felt far too small.
You’re giving up your dreams. You lost yourself before, you’re going to do it again.
No I’m not. Having a stable family and a well run home is every bit as much my dream as being a published author. It would be foolish of me to neglect the dream I have, to chase one that I may not be able to obtain. Besides, I have time later, when the kids are older, when this dream has changed, that I can chase other dreams.
You are trapped. You are burdened by hundreds of daily tasks which bore you. You are not free.
Is anyone really? I suppose it is theoretically possible to be free of obligations to others, but most of us are wrapped firmly in a web of interdependency. I stand at the center of a family. I am so wrapped with strings that I must be careful of my movements lest I warp the whole web. But this is MY web. The design is mine and it is beautiful. I do not want a hole in the middle of this beautiful weaving.
But what about that poem, Millie’s Mother’s Red Dress? You’re becoming that mother. The one whose children grow up to be louts because mother never did a single thing for herself. You have to make time for you.
I find it interesting that even taking time for myself becomes something that I do for the good of the children. Apparently not even “time for me” is really just mine. I do take time for myself, both for my sanity and for the benefit of the children. I have little slices of time many times daily. I will not be greedy and stomp my feet wishing for more. Instead I will be patient knowing that there will be the occasional day where I can have my fill. Too much time for myself leaves too many things which are important to me undone.
What about your gift? Your writing can not reach out and help others if you never write.
True. But despite my shift in focus, I haven’t exactly stopped writing. Mostly I’ve been writing blog entries, but that’s still words written. I’m submitting a story for publication tomorrow. I’ve got an outline for a story for next week. Biggest of all, I’m pressing forward with the publication of Hold on to Your Horses. By April I will have a book that I wrote in my hands. The writing isn’t exactly languishing now is it?
But you should…
No. We’re done now. I have better things to do than wallow and fret.
In four weeks BYU is hosting the annual Life The Universe and Everything Science Fiction and Fantasy symposium. This year I get to a panelist for two discussions. They wanted to put me down for three, but the third one was scheduled for the middle of dinner time on a school night and I had to give that one a miss.
So at 6pm on Friday February 15 I’ll be helping discuss Publishing Fiction on the Internet. Then at 7 pm I’ll be helping discuss Publishing with a Small Press. (Apparently the panel schedulers have decided that I’m a publishing expert. I’ll do my best to pretend they’re right.) I don’t have a specific location for these events other than “somewhere in the Wilkinson Center.” I do know however that it costs nothing to attend and LTUE is boasting both Orson Scott Card and Gail Carson Levine as guests this year. So it’ll be worthwhile to make the trip even if you don’t want to hear me ramble about publishing.
http://www.ltue.org/home.html
Today I focused my attention on the house. I started by cleaning the kitchen because when the kitchen is clean everything else seems more possible. The rest of the day was spent organizing my office and the storage room. We’re planning to start producing merchandise other than books and I really need a place to put it all. The time has come for my office to eschew doubling as a guest room and admit that it is just an office. The futon has been evicted and shelves were put up instead. I’m still not done in there, but it is a start.
The futon is currently taking up space in the family room. Howard and I had discussed putting it in the front room, but after watching the antics today I don’t want it there. The kids were all very excited about the new family room furniture. First they discovered that if they hit the mattress, dust came puffing out. Then they discovered that they could lift it into a bed or fold it into a couch. This was highly amusing to them and highly nerve wracking to me. I kept hearing Thump-CRASH as they switched it back and forth. The frame of the futon is metal and made a lovely CLANG sound. I could just picture smashed limbs and I forbade them to fold it out anymore. I declared it to be a couch and only a couch.
But this was not the end of the fascination with the futon. The kids discovered that if they pushed the mattress out of the way, the back of the couch configuration made a great jail. They would stand on the mattress with their backs against the slats. Their hands would be shoved behind them through the slats as if they’d been handcuffed. We had four neighbor kids over and this whole elaborate game evolved including the jail, a jailer, and 6 kids all being pokemon, or unicorns, or whatever. It was cute to see them all lined up there, but extremely chaotic and noisy.
They climbed. They jumped. They argued. Fortunately no damage was done to either futon or kids, but it was a close thing multiple times. I think the futon needs a new home and we need to invest in an airbed for guests.
Patches is the only person in our house who can’t read. He feels this distinction strongly and has been trying to work with letters and writing for months. I saw him wanting to read and write, but I was too busy to give him more than cursory help. Yesterday and today I sat down with him and we started working on reading. It made him so happy.
I have piles of early reading materials. I collected it all when I was working to teach Link to read. Reading did not come easily to Link. He needed lots of practice at very easy levels, but the stories were so simple that they quickly bored him. It was a very different experience teaching reading to Patches. With Link I cut each lesson in half because it was too much for him to take at once. With Patches I’m actually skipping material because I can tell that he’s already mastered it and doesn’t need to practice more.
I wore out on reading before Patches did. He sat down with a book and carefully learned all the words in it so that he could read it himself. But he wasn’t just memorizing, he was paying attention to each written word and matching it to a spoken word. This kid is going to be reading in no time at all if I just keep making time to work with him. I intend to keep making the time. This is what Patches needs right now.
We haven’t yet gotten comfortable with our shifted priorities and schedule. Not everything fits yet. Grocery shopping for example. I have to find a place to fit that in where it won’t disrupt some other important thing. The waiting until we run out of milk completely and then running to the store grumpy isn’t working well. Also going to the gym is physically exhausting, which changes what we’re capable of accomplishing during the rest of the day. My pace isn’t frantic or heavily stressed, but I do have to keep moving steadily all day to get things done. I’m hoping that habit will make everything work more smoothly, but we’re only two weeks in. We haven’t achieved habit yet.
Despite the kinks in the new schedule, I am filled with a sense that we’re on the right path. I feel strongly that we just need to stick with the new schedule and everything will turn out all right. I can already see shifts in the kids’ behaviors that are a reflection of the shifts that I’ve made. I’ve talked more with them about their lives in the last two weeks than I did during the months of October, November, and December combined. I’ve noticed that very little substitutes for proximity and availability.
I’ve learned that Kiki has been helping a friend deal with some girls who pick on her. Kiki also told me about an event in her German class where she got the approval of all of her peers by angling the teacher into letting them finish a movie. Link told me how he really likes his resource class because it gets him out of composition. He explained how writing is hard and math is easy. Gleek snuggled and cried over the fact that there was an assembly and she did not get picked to help demonstrate despite the fact that she was working her very hardest to be good. Patches revealed that he is upset and nervous about being in charge of the song for Family Home Evening next week. A little practice and talking eased his mind tremendously.
It is like they’ve got all these thoughts and stories and hurts balled up inside them and I’m slowly managing to pull them out. I can see the kids unclenching and relaxing into this new way of being. I am here for them in a way that I have not been for months and they are really glad. This is the right path. I can tell.
This afternoon Gleek climbed into my lap as I was browsing the lol cats at icanhascheezburger.com. She was instantly entranced with the amusing animals. I scrolled through the pictures so she could see them all. Then she started reading the words in the captions. At first she was thrown off by some of the odd spellings and pronunciations, but a couple of them had her giggling so hard that she nearly fell off my lap. She demanded to see all of them. We clicked through a couple of pages until my patience was wearing thin. There is only so much lol humor I can take in a single sitting.
In order to appease Gleek’s continuing demands for more, I printed out two of her favorites so that she could share them with her siblings. That was the first error. Gleek returned with Patches in tow. Then I had two kids demanding more lol cats. I printed out a third page to get them to let me work for awhile. That worked for a time. But shortly Gleek was back in my office. She had put the words of the captions to the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and now serenaded me with lol cat humor. All the kids thought this was the height of humor and cleverness. The song has been sung repeatedly throughout the afternoon. The show has even been taken on the road to perform for the neighbors.
Tonight at bedtime Gleek was making a plan to print out ALL of the lol cat pictures and sing them. We’re going to have an operatic length Ring of the Lol Cats.
This morning I watched as Link and Gleek ran from the car into school. I watched as Link purposefully shortened the stride of his 10 year old legs so that six year old Gleek could stay ahead of him. Letting her reach the school building first is a small kindness he does for her and for me. The excitement of getting to the building first has her jumping out of the car and running for school instead of clinging to my waist.
Our dishwasher’s motor died Sunday night. The nice dishwasher repairman will be bringing us a new one, but until he does we’re washing up by hand. Every night as I fill the sink, Gleek scoots up a stool and does all of the washing for me. She loves it. I love it too because the job is so much more pleasant with two of us.
Kiki has to give a talk in church on Sunday. This will be her first time speaking in front of the entire congregation. I’m very pleased that she is working on the talk already and very impressed that she is trying to make it reflect her own thoughts rather than just finding a story to read out loud. I hope this is a good experience for her.
In the car one day Patches and I had a delightful little conversation which started by him asking “When I grow up, can I be your friend?” I answered that I would love for him to be my friend. He smiled satisfied and started rattling off that he would come visit me and we would play games together. Then he paused for a moment and added that he would need to find a mom first so that he could be a daddy. But before he did that he needed to grow up first. And when he grows up, he will need to shave, but he will keep the hair on his head and just use haircuts. He paused a moment more and declared that he would shave his head too. I was suspicious of this last and mentioned that it was possible to be a dad while still having hair on your head. I pointed out that his friend’s dad has hair. Patches responded “Then I will just use haircuts, but I will shave beards.”