Month: June 2008

Yesterday was a neighborhood potluck picnic in our cul de sac. I love this kind of event. It is wonderful to sit and talk with all the friends that I see in passing, but never have time to really talk to. One friend asked about how Hold on to Your Horses is doing, so I pulled out one of my advance copies to show her. The book kicked around with me for the rest of the evening and several more people read it. Everyone was very complimentary, which was very nice. A couple of people asked when it is going to be available for sale. I told them I expect the truck to arrive next week. I was asked how many books I’d ordered. 2000. I was asked how many I’ve pre-sold. 100. There was a small sound of dismay from the group. Then they ask what I’m going to do next. That is a harder question to answer. Not because I don’t have an answer, but because the answer would require a lecture on basic internet marketing. The didn’t come to a picnic for a lecture and I didn’t want to dominate the conversation, so I mumbled some stuff about blogs and Amazon.com. Then the topic moved on to other things.

Truth is, I’m disheartened that I haven’t sold more copies of Hold Horses yet. I know logically that there is no rush, but I really want this project to be a self-publishing success story rather than the story of a woman who sunk $5000 into printing and now has thousands of books sitting in her basement. I can still get where I want to be, but there is going to be additional work involved. I figure I’ll do my next marketing push after the books arrive. “Buy it now” is much more attractive than “Give me your money and I’ll send you a book in three weeks.” Also, once I have books in hand I can start sending copies to places where the book might garner attention. Perhaps I can volunteer to do an appearance or story time at the library. There are articles that I intend to write, which could potentially help bring attention to the book. 700 books sold is my success mark. At that point, the print run will be paid for and anything beyond that is extra. That is also more than most self-published books ever sell, so I can count it as a success that way as well.

Time to get back to work.

Today I learned that a friend and neighbor was run over by a boat during a youth group skiing trip. He was life flighted to a hospital. His condition is stable now, but it was a very close call. He has surgery ahead of him and then years of physical therapy to recover. He is the kindest, friendliest man I’ve ever known. He took down the fences in his yard and invited all his neighbors to cut through it whenever they wish. He then made the yard into a beautiful park and invited everyone to use it. He always greets everyone with a smile and a joke. If anyone can bounce back from and accident like this one, he can.

Today I am grateful for life vests which keep injured people afloat. I am thankful for helicopters. I’m thankful for first aid training and for paramedic teams. I am thankful for modern medical science. I am grateful that I’m planning to have my children write “Get well soon” cards, rather than re-arranging next week to make space for a funeral.

This morning I shipped files to our printer. It took longer and was more stressful than I anticipated due to needing a full color hard copy that I had to wait for. But I was still done before noon.

All this past week most of my interactions with the kids have been variants of “please go away, I need to work.” Some of the variations were considerably less nice. I knew I owed them some time and attention. I volunteered to take them swimming. This news was greeted with great joy and also the question “will you be getting in the water? It is more fun when you get in.” This plea was not to be ignored. I promised to fully immerse myself in the swimming experience.

The schedule was rearranged when we received an invitation to join relatives to see a matinée of Wall E. It was a great movie pick for us. All of the kids sat still for the entire film, even Gleek. This ranks as a minor miracle. I’d been prepared to haul her out of the film if she was disturbing others. The movie is fun and sweet and I want to see it again because I don’t think I caught all of the depth that is there. Also I want to figure out how they tell a story where the protagonist has a vocabulary of less than 10 words.

Then came the swimming. We got into the pool. Some people are jump-in-the-pool people. I’m a get-wet-slowly person. The kids all jumped right in and began splashing around. Then they noticed that I was not all the way wet yet, so they began to pester me. “You promised mom!” I took the plunge and got all the way wet. That was when swimming started to be fun. I stopped worrying about getting splashed or feeling cold. Instead I splashed and dunked my kids. I took Patch for a spin on his floating tube. I made bridges for Gleek to dive under. I dunked Link when he tried to climb on my back. A good time was had by all, including me.

I need to really immerse myself in activities and play with my kids more often. That would be good.

1. a brand new computer straight out of the box is supposed to work, not necessitate calls to customer service. It is not fun to tell kids that the computer they’ve been waiting for will not play their CD games because it doesn’t believe it has a CD drive.

2. Whose idea was it to put the power button conspicuously on the front of the computer and make it glow blue? They might as well have put a big shiny sticker next to it saying “push this button now” because every child within 10 feet will punch that button as they go past, thus interrupting the downloading of files and software onto the new computer.

3. There is probably a way to create a resizable custom design frame for use in photoshop and InDesign so that the corner pieces of the frame are static, but the sides can be made longer or shorter by dragging the sides of the graphic box. I do not know how to do this, so I am left spending hours trying to carefully line up little graphics to make a frame around the footnotes for the Schlock book.

4. Lining up graphics to make text frames is very difficult in low resolution. When you export to a high resolution pdf, you will be able to see how badly you managed so that you can try to fix it, but you will have to fix it in low resolution, so you can’t know if you have done it right until you export to high resolution pdf again.

5. The program which exported to pdf just fine this morning, should not suddenly start complaining of corrupted JPEGs without telling you which JPEG is corrupt. This is particularly true when the document contains over 1400 images, thus rendering the individual checking of the images impossible. Addendum: A program should not complain of corrupt images when what it really means is “I don’t have enough memory to complete this job, please restart your computer to clear out the mess.”

6. The little girl who is always longing to have friends over, upon the unexpected arrival of friends, should not have to be coaxed/coerced into playing with those friends instead of watching videos.

7. I think I’m the media-permissive parent in the neighborhood. Several times now friends have come over here, but announce that their mother said no TV or video games while they are here. I’m in crunch mode right now. I’m all for throwing electronic entertainment at the kids. I’ll repent later and make them read. I know I need to make them turn the screens off more. I should be getting them out of the house and planning fun activities.

8. My kids showed the sweet neighbor girls an online animation which involved stick figures peeing into a pool and then swimming in the pool. The neighbor girls thought it was hilarious (which it was, I admit) and now they will probably go home and tell their mom all about this great video they saw at my house. I will probably be getting a phone call. Or maybe those girls will just not be allowed to come over any more. Sigh.

9. Grouchy mom = grouchy kids. There has been much yelling today.

It defies logic that I can be so physically exhausted from spending all day at my computer. Granted, all of that time was spent highly-focused as I made changes and adjustments to the layout. I had to pay attention and work hard. Now I feel like a limp noodle. Noodles are not notably good at putting kids to bed, so I need to find some reserve of energy in the next 15 minutes.

Tomorrow I get to do the same thing again, although I hope there will be less to tweak.

As part of my scrapbook project I’ve been skimming through journal entries from last year. Mostly I’m looking for anecdotes about the kids that I can pair up with pictures that I have. Today I happened across an entry from this week last year. I was lamenting my lack of organization in my life. I was frustrated by my inability to keep a daily schedule. I was fearful of what looked to be a long and structureless Summer ahead of me. I need not have worried, the summer became packed and stressful shortly thereafter. What I did not realize at the time was that I was in transition. This time last year is when I made the shift into really being a work from home mother. All the years before that I was a stay at home mother. Because I did not recognize the transition until months later, I was confused why all my daily patterns were falling apart. I had no practical experience to guide me in shifting the family schedules to accommodate work. Also I was far too stressed to be contemplative about much of anything. Stress piled on stress from July until the end of the year. I was stressed. Howard was stressed. Friendships were stressed. Finances were stressed. I look back at my self of a year ago and I want to give her a hug and tell her it all works out.

Things are so different for me this year. We’ve all had a year to establish new family patterns around the fact that I have to do work for the business on a daily basis. In fact, the need to structure my days so that business work gets done has solved my usual Summer-lack-of-schedule problem. Usually by the end of June all semblance of a regular bedtime has gone out the window and meals are very irregular. I expected that for this year and it simply has not happened. There are occasional days where everything gets skewampus, but the schedule rights itself in a day or two. Granted, I’ve sometimes struggled to get the work done with all the kids underfoot, but the family schedule has been working beautifully. We still have some stress ahead for this summer. We have three conventions to prepare for, but we do not have all of the other stresses that combined against us last year. We’ve hit a good stride and we just need to keep going.

Today I decided to harness the power of my minions children and declared that the house must be clean. I put out an array of encouragements (stars! for your chart!) and consequences (No video games or friends until it is done.) Then I dove into my basement office to do some necessary work. I emerged to discover a sparkling clean kitchen courtesy of Kiki and three other kids playing happily in the midst of the mess. I’m glad they were happy and let me work, but I would have been much gladder to come upstairs and discover that they’d happily cleaned house. I am once again reminded of the fact that I can’t make them want what I want them to want. (Say that three times fast.) They wanted to play more than they wanted stars, or friends, or video games.

At times like these I’m faced with a choice. My kids were playing happily. Happy kids mean that I can get work done and I had lots of work left to do. BUT if I let them continue to play instead of working, then I do not teach them how to be good workers and or to contribute to our household. This is a fence I sit on often. Sometimes I come down on the lenient side, just letting them play. They are children after all and they only get to be kids once. Other times I am more strict and I break up the games to enforce work. This waffling on my part is not ideal. If I were more consistent about making them work, they would be better about doing the work. But then I look at Kiki. Once I get her to commit to a job, she does it quickly, efficiently, and without complaining. She used to be just as hard to motivate as the other kids. So I’m hoping that this is primarily a developmental thing and that the other kids will finally figure out that if they just get to work they could be done in 10-20 minutes rather than having the job loom all day long. Some days they seem to get it. Mostly they don’t.

Today I came down on the stricter side. The result is that we have a clutter free house. Floors have been vacuumed and swept. There is still much scrubbing that could be done, but there always is. Scrubbing is for a different day. Today I’m happy with clean floors and my own task list accomplished.

What I really wanted to do this afternoon was get away from my house without any kids. Unfortunately I was at home with just Gleek and Patch who are not old enough to watch themselves. Howard, Kiki, and Link had all made their escapes while I was still working. I realized that my desire to get out was strong enough for me to deal with two kids in public spaces, so I took Gleek and Patch to the library.

For awhile I had to give up taking my kids to the library. It was an exercise in frustration because the younger versions of Gleek and Patch would express their excitement by running and jumping and shouting to hear the echo in the children’s section. Naturally they always ran in opposite directions so it was nigh impossible for me to adequately supervise both of them. Kiki would go off by herself and fill her bag with books. Link would have to be argued into picking out a single book. I would just grab books at random hoping they were good for Gleek and Patch. I always came home exhausted and frustrated. Then I got busy and so finding the time to be frustrated by taking my kids to the library was a very low priority.

Today’s trip to the library was very different. Gleek has learned to read. Prior to this trip all the books on the shelf were no more than a pretty decoration. This trip Gleek was on a mission. We have the first book of the Jewel Kingdom series, she wanted to read the rest of them. It warmed my heart to see Gleek very seriously walk up to the reference desk and ask the librarian for help. Unfortunately our library did not have this series, but the librarian helpfully suggested a different series. We found it and Gleek scooped several volumes into her backpack. Later she found another book and asked the librarian about that one as well. For the first time in her life, Gleek was more interested in picking out books than in jumping off of the stairs.

Patch picked some books too, but the highlight for him was the time in the courtyard. Our library has two wings separated by a little courtyard. It is a small lawn surrounded by buildings, bushes and trees. In the lawn are square stepping stones. Patch loves to jump on these. Gleek does too. We spent a good thirty minutes letting the two of them run around. They found a dead bird which prompted conversations about how it might have died, why we should not touch it, and how much we like birds. We also found a charming little caterpillar which we relocated from a hot brick wall onto a nice tree trunk. Several times the two kids took themselves inside the building for a drink of water.

When we checked out, each of them proudly presented their library card so that they could check out their own books. Our library will issue a card to any child who can write their name. These kid-cards are linked to a parental account. They feel so grown up checking out their own books. Then they carried them to the car. That is the only limitation I place on number of books. They have to be able to carry the books themselves. This is necessary because I had my own bag full of books. The kids were so good that I had time to do my own browsing and book selection.

I think weekly library trips just made it back onto the schedule.