Month: July 2009

Reunions after an absence are one of the most emotion laden times in life. Today I was musing on how these greetings are so often set against an inhospitable background such as a crowded airport. I mused on this while sitting in a noisy McDonald’s Playplace while waiting for my brother to arrive with Gleek. She arrived to interrupt my musing, all tanned and sun bleached and grinning. She hugged me tight and said “I missed you!” softly then she let go and dashed off to play. This left my brother and I to visit for awhile before we sorted out which kids were to return with him (his daughter and her friend) and which ones were to come with me (all of mine.) Gleek had a good adventure. She got to travel places with Grandma and Grandpa. She got to visit lava hot springs. She did crafts and acquired new shiny things. And she is very obviously glad to be home. We’re glad to have her.

With all of us here I found myself naturally planning snack and bedtime, which is something I haven’t done for weeks. It has me longing for a more stable routine. We’re halfway through the summer now. All of June was spent scrambling to meet business obligations. For the first time I can look ahead and think about the small things I can be doing to make sure that this summer is satisfactory for the kids. I called Link’s bestfriend who moved. There will be a get together with him sometime this week. There should also be some swimming that is not attached to swim lessons. There should be park trips. Beyond that, I need to sit down with the accounts and figure out what my budget is for summer fun. It would be nice to visit the local museums and zoos, but that can add up. Also, I need to not over schedule. I want to plan fun stuff with the kids, but there are business tasks yet to do.

Some day I’ll master the whole balancing life and work thing.

There is something about beautiful clothes that makes me happy. Note that I don’t say expensive clothes. I don’t care what the clothes cost, but I love when the lines and the colors work together to complement the wearer. When I was a teen I spent significant amounts of energy selecting clothes so that they were both useful for their intended purpose and were aesthetically pleasing. Then I got married and started having kids. I had less disposable time and energy. I selected clothing for comfort and washability, since trying to maintain any other clothing criteria seemed an exercise in frustration. But I retained the longing for beautiful clothing. I had this buried dream of Howard and I dressing up in formal clothes and going somewhere together. Going to a fancy restaurant did not fit the bill because I could not justify the expenditure of time, energy, and money for and event I created alone, particularly when I knew that I’d only get Howard to dress up because he was humoring me. So the dream languished and I more or less gave it up.

But then Howard became a cartoonist. And then he decided to discard his hawaiian shirts and t-shirts for sharp dress shirts. And I love the change. And then he got nominated for a Hugo award. And suddenly here was a ready made occasion for which Howard wants to dress up and which we can attend together.

Strictly speaking, formal wear is not required for the Hugo awards. I attended last year and there were far more people in t-shirts and jeans than in fancy clothing. But I looked at those who were wearing ball gowns and tuxedos and I wished that I were more dressed up. I wanted to be one of the beautifully dressed people with an escort to match. Howard and I do not have to dress up, but we want to. I want to, just for the sheer pleasure of wearing beautiful clothing to an occasion where other people are also wearing beautiful clothing. We also want to dress up because it is a way to honor all those efforts which made the Hugo awards possible. It is a way to honor those who were nominated. We make the effort to dress up because the occasion is special and may be singular in our lives. The category for which Howard is nominated is not a permanent category. Even if it is made permanent, there is no guarantee that Howard would be nominated again. So we intend to dress beautifully.

Howard and I went Tuxedo shopping today. I loved being part of that process. He picked out a sharp tuxedo that looks really good on him. It is nicer than the suit he wore to our wedding. I am really looking forward to dressing up and going out together. Just thinking ahead to it makes me happy.

It has been at least a year since I first became aware of Lolcats. When I first encountered the pictures of cats with misspelled captions I didn’t think they were at all funny. But over repeat exposures I learned the dialect of the humor and now I appreciate them. By “dialect of the humor” I don’t just mean that I gained the ability to decipher the misspellings, but I also learned how the misspellings and the pictures and general knowledge of cats work together to make an individual Lolcat funny (or not funny. Many of them are still meh.) One particular lolcat meme has been very useful to me as a means of expressing my own experiences. It is the “I haz a” meme. The final word may be sad, or happy, or warm. The usual way to express that idea would be to say “I am sad, happy, warm.” Except the phrase “I am sad” implies that at this point in time sadness is my defining characteristic, which may not be true. If I am not completely sad, I have to say “I am a little bit sad” or “part of me is sad.” These statements are longer to say than “I haz a sad.” Taking out the grammar and spelling errors, “I have a sad” implies that I own this small sadness which is separate from myself, but which affects me. This is a very useful way for me to picture emotions which are a piece of my current experience, but which do not dominate it.

All of that is just an introduction so that I can say “I have a scared.” Yesterday we received 5000 books. So far only about 500 of them are sold. I’m getting ready to ship 1000 of them to a major convention. The sales at that convention will be the difference between an extremely tight budget with a stressed scramble to create the next book, or a more relaxed budget and steady work on the next book. I have been scrambling for months just to keep up with my life. I really want option two, the one with relaxing in it. I want like I want air. But it is all out of my hands. I can spend the time/effort/money to get the books to the convention, what happens after that I can not control. All the logic and calculations say that we will be fine, but I have to acknowledge the fear, stare it in the face, own it, then set it in the back of my brain where it will not interfere with the things I must do.

Our shipment of XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery books arrives today. I had to go rent a second storage unit to house them because the first unit is already full of inventory. I need to do some research on the cost of warehouse space. I’m pretty sure that the storage units are still cheaper per month, but I need to know where the tipping point is.

We’re getting another shipment of books next week. This will be historic since it is our first 2nd printing. We’ve almost sold out of Under New Management which is the first book we ever printed. The first printing was 5000 copies

No word on distribution deals. More waiting there.

My short story “Stories that Bind” is now available in print. A Time To… Volume 3: The Best of The Lorelei Signal 2008 is now on sale.

I now have three stories available at Anthology Builder, which makes me very happy. In the near future I’ll be putting together a custom anthology full of cool stories.

I’ve found fancy clothes to wear on Hugo Night at Worldcon. Now I just need jewelry to match and I need to drag Howard out to rent a tuxedo for the event. We’re both in a strange mental place where neither of us really believes he’ll win, but a tiny voice whispers “what if.” It doesn’t really matter, just getting nominated is amazing and we intend to dress up to celebrate.

I have been spending far more time as a publisher than as a writer lately. Hopefully life will slow down after the big August conventions.

Gleek is enjoying her trip away from home, but we’ll all be glad to have her back.

Summer is half gone and still chaotic. I’m already looking forward to the return of the school schedule, although I’ll miss staying up late and sleeping in.

The phone call came at 10:30 PM. It was a crying Gleek who is off for her first week-long solo visit with cousins. “Mom, I miss you.”
“I miss you too Gleek.”
“Everything is different here.”
“Families are all different aren’t they?”
“Yeah. No one goes outside. I look out the window and it is all bright and shiny and I want to go out, but no one will go with me!”
“Yes that family is more of an inside family. Do you play fun games inside?”
“Big girl plays great games, but the little girl games are boring. And they only let me have one yogurt a day! I miss you! I want to be at home, but I also want to finish my adventure.”
“Isn’t it funny how we can feel two opposite things at the same time? I feel that way a lot when I’m off at a convention.”
“Yeah. I want both things. Does Bestfriend miss me?”
“Yes she does. She came up to me at church and told me that she’d painted a picture of the two of you together.”
“She is like the perfect friend. She plays outside with me.”
“You’ll have fun when you’re back together. When do you travel to the next house?”
“Tuesday.”
“And then you’ll come home on Thursday.”
“On the 10th.”
“Thursday is the 9th.”
“The 10th will be one week, you said I would go for a week.”
“You’d rather come home on the 10th so you have a whole week?”
“Yeah. I want all of my adventure. Bye.”
“Bye honey. I miss you. You can call me again if you need to.”
” Okay. I miss you too. Bye.”

Sometimes they don’t really need me to fix anything, they just need me to listen.

My brain has not been a quiet place of late. I suppose that makes sense because my life has been anything but routine for months. I keep running from one major event to the next with little time to pause and reflect. None of this is news. I’ve been complaining about it for months. But over the last week I’ve finally figured out how much work July will contain and it is less than I’d feared. I’m very glad to have a less stressed month, but I am also very aware that less schedule stress means less money coming in. This leads to a potential financial stress in a couple of months, but I am not going to fret about that now. Pre-orders are still open and we’ve yet to see how books will sell at GenCon.

My house feels empty. My parents were here for almost a week. Before they came I was worried about having guests in the house while we had the stressful week of opening pre-orders. I was worried that my inability to pay attention to my guests would be a source of stress. The opposite turned out to be true. My parents just slid into the household without a ripple. They left me alone when I needed to work and picked up all the household slack that Howard and I were leaving around. But now my parents are gone and they took Gleek with them. She gets to accompany them on a trip through Idaho to visit cousins. This long-promised solo trip is something that Gleek has really been anticipating. I’m glad she gets to go, but the house feels empty. It always feels empty when one of us is missing.

Two days ago I had my first experience with someone knocking on the door looking for work. It was a little scary. I was very aware of the possibility that this was a scam attempt or a fishing expedition to scope out our house for theft. On the other hand I was very aware that this man, his wife, and baby might really be so hard pressed for money that knocking doors was the best option. They did not want charity. They wanted work. I did not let them into the house, but I did give them some work in the garden. He worked hard and when he was done the rest of the yard lived up to the flowers my mother planted. I think it has been years since the exterior of my house was so nicely groomed. I paid him for the work and he left me his name and number so I can call him if I have more work. It is possible that the tale of woe was fabricated, but I received fair work for the money I gave, so I don’t much care. It was a chance for everyone to come out ahead and I think we all did.

Over the last few weeks I have been using my down time to watch The Office on Netflix. The show is sometimes painful to watch because some of the characters are extremely hurtful to other characters. Most of the hurt is unintentional, but that does not make it less painful. For me the most fascinating thing to watch has been the evolution of the series itself. It starts out as a faux documentary about an office full of caricatures who interact with each other in amusing ways. But then there will be these small brilliant moments when a new facet of the caricature is revealed and suddenly instead of a caricature, there is a person I actually care about. The annoying people remain annoying, but somehow it becomes affectionate annoyance. I understand how these people still work together despite all the pain. All that said, I’m not sure whether or not I’ll be watching season five when it comes out. I’ve loved watching these characters grow and the next logical step is for some of them to move on and leave the office. Unfortunately due to the nature of serial entertainment, those characters can’t be allowed to leave. They must stay, trapped. In order to retain character tension, the relationships must be broken up and reformed. If no one is allowed to move on, then the illusion of life which I’ve loved is destroyed. Instead of The Office it becomes more like Sartre’s No Exit. I’m not sure if I want to watch that.

Yesterday I had no work to do. The internet had gone into hibernation for the holiday weekend and I’d already answered all the email. Not only that, but my house and garden were both in beautiful shape due to the intervention of others. I ended up sitting down and playing Fable 2. I think that is the first time I’ve really played a video game in years. It was fun. But I also got up from the game with an awareness of how expensive video games can be for me. They don’t want to just stay in the leisure time. Instead I want to start stealing time which should be spent on other things instead. Also there are already five people in this house negotiating for turns with the game. Adding a sixth doesn’t seem very helpful. It is possible that my character will languish in neglect. But perhaps I’ll find the odd hour here and there when I can putter in a video game universe.

Our Fourth of July celebrations were extremely low-key. Howard and Kiki spent most of the day either groggy or sleeping after their all-night game session. Link, Patch, and I just hung out at home. At dusk we joined some neighbors for fireworks. Our contribution was a box of party poppers left over from New Years. I did not have to plan or organize anything which made it a nearly perfect holiday for me. It was good to have a real break.

The calendar for July is largely empty. I have been diligently keeping it that way because I knew that there would be XDM shipping in it. Now that the first day of orders are in, I can see that it will be a small scale shipping rather than a large one. This frees up the rest of the month. Howard is going to have the space he needs to build up buffer in advance of the August conventions. This is good. I will have time to get back to some of the household tasks that have been ignored. I may even have time to tend the flowerbeds that my mother planted for me. I may finally have time to clean up and have a space before diving into the next big thing.

I had written off the yard for this year. Every time I walked up the front steps I could see the towering weeds drowning out the flowers. Whenever I thought about it, I wanted to cry because I love flowers. It is not that I couldn’t find time to weed. It is that once I start weeding, I’ve opened the door to gardening thoughts. Once I begin weeding, I want to plant and tend and construct in the yard. Small scraps of time spent weeding would only cause me to grieve for all the things I do not have time to do. So I schooled myself to ignore the weeds. Mostly. Except sometimes when I would see them and feel bad that my house looks so unkempt, and I would worry what the neighbors must think about looking at the mess. The fact that I have wonderful neighbors who really don’t mind does not stop me from minding on their behalf.

Yesterday I emerged from hours of accounting to discover that my mother, who is visiting, had wandered outside and began weeding. She had cleared a large swath of the front flower bed. There were my perennials, visible again. She cut a huge swath through all the weeds, clearing two long beds and three tree circles. She single-handedly filled up our huge garbage bin.

This by itself was a gift beyond measure.
But then she bought flowers.
She bought flowers to plant in the clear spaces she created. For the first time in months my yard has beauty.
Just thinking of it makes me want to cry.
I have flowers.