Month: August 2012

Organizing the House

By / August 21, 2012

In the past six months my house has grown steadily more organized, clean, and attractive. I still have a lot of work to do, but improvement is visible in almost every room. I’m glad for this. The push toward organization and beautification began last fall when I sat in my messy office and pictured what it would be like if I broke down a wall. I was deliberately shaking up my thought processes at around that time, forcing myself out of old patterns without being sure what the new patterns would look like. I stared around at the jumble in my office and started picturing what my ideal office would be like, how it could be arranged to provide space for the things which make me happy. My office was a box, and I was able to see how to break the bounds of that box to create something new. I gave myself permission to really own the space and turn it into whatever I wanted. The vision was exciting and all the other organization flowed from there.

July was the month of extended family in my house and the family reunion of 35 people in one cabin. I found it fascinating that I responded to the over crowding by organizing, cleaning, and getting rid of stuff. There were days when it was really compulsive, I had to keep picking up, scrubbing, imposing order on my surroundings. As compulsions go, I’ll pick cleaning over piling any day, but it did trigger a concern for me. As my house gets more organized, I notice the small messes more. I couldn’t have noticed them before, because they were buried in the large messes, but now I see them and they bother me. I need to clean them up, make my surroundings more lovely. Then I remember the old adage “a clean desk is a sign of a sick mind.” I’m not sure that being compulsively clean is mentally healthier than being disorganized and jumbled all the time. I guess time will tell if my recent push toward organization is me becoming healthier or just a different manifestation of my particular neuroses. I strongly suspect that the influx of school things impinging on my time will test my intention to make my surroundings lovely.

One of the hardest parts of my new-found organization is keeping my hands off of the spaces and things which belong to my kids. I want to organize all the things, however if I swoop in and clean up their messes, they will never learn how to do it for themselves. I’ve found a lot of growth in examining how I relate to spaces and things. If I clean up after them constantly, they will never have the chance to learn those lessons. This is why I spent an afternoon sorting with Gleek. We began with a trash bag, a donate box, and a bribe. She could have a small new toy she has been wanting if we could clear the floor, fill the garbage bag, and put some stuff into the donate box. I was pleasantly surprised with how willing she was to get rid of stuff. Even better, I learned a lot about her and what she values. Things which seemed like junk to me felt like treasures to her, and once she explained why they mattered, I could see the value. Because I let her make all the decisions, she was willing to listen when I asked her if she really needed to keep some of the items. The end result was a room where I can now clean the carpet. I need to go through the same process with Patch next. Hopefully listening to how he relates to his things will help us create an organizational scheme that lets him keep his things organized for more than three days. This approach to helping my kids I learned from watching Hoarding: Buried Alive. I can’t watch very much of the show, too depressing, but a few episodes were instructional.

The open question is whether I’ll continue to have emotional and physical energy for organization beyond maintenance now that school has begun. Time will tell I suppose.

Ready or Not. Again.

By / August 21, 2012 / 1 Comment

My sister dropped her oldest son off for college last week. I’ve watched her this summer as she rode emotional arcs related to having her first child leave home. My daughter is only a year younger and I’m afraid I patted myself on the back a little about how sensible I was being about her entering her senior year. I honestly felt no apprehension. I even wrote a post or two in that vein. My smugness was justly rewarded when I waved the last of my kids out the door for their first day of school, turned, and smacked right into a wall of grief. It was actually more subtle than that metaphor implies. I was aware of something filling my head, so Howard and I had one of those conversations where I begin talking with a tiny thread of thought, spooling it out until suddenly I find that I’m holding an emotional tangle instead of a simple thread. All my thoughts unblock and I learn things about how I’m feeling by listening to the words which fall out of my mouth. The key sentences today were:
“I don’t want this part to be over. I’m going to miss this part.”
I meant this part of my life when all my kids are at home. Later I spoke words which I liked even less, because it implies a level of control freak in my psyche with which I am not comfortable.
“I’m going to miss being in charge.”
As much as I complain about it, I like being the organizer of our lives. I have all my people gathered close to me under one roof. I know I have to let them fly free. That is the point. It is what I’ve been aiming toward ever since the first minute I knew I was pregnant. But I grieve because this era of my life is going to end and today felt like the beginning of that end.

Today I was also tired, insomnia and the bio-rhythmic upset of getting up three hours earlier than during the summer, did not help any. I also felt silly to feel grief about something which has not actually happened yet. My daughter has a full year of high school ahead of her. She may well decide to live at home and attend one of the two universities within twenty minutes of our house. I could be years away from the first one flying off. I’m surprised to feel grief over this. I really thought I wouldn’t.

The good news is that the grief will pass. It is probable that any later sadness I feel on the matter will be less because I addressed some of the emotions today. This is why I did not attempt to hide from it. The feeling exists inside me, I acknowledge it and try to incorporate it, even if I feel silly or cliche about it.

My four kids came home from school happy. Kiki had nothing but cheerful words for her classes, even the dreaded physics class. She got a pair of science teachers she really likes. Link has concerns about his yearbook class. I’ll keep an eye on it to see if it needs adjusted. Gleek spent most of the ride home providing a comparative analysis of last year’s teacher and this year’s. Patch just says he liked his teacher.

We’re off and running; happy or sad, ready or not.

The Eve of School

By / August 20, 2012

Summer is not gone, but it is waning. I can see it in the walnut husks on the tree that are beginning to crack and blacken. Soon walnuts will litter my lawn and deck. I also see it by the grapes growing heavy on the vines. Any day now the local robins will discover they are there and begin raiding. The signs are all around me, but summer still has some scorching hot days in store. What we’ve run out of is summer vacation. That is finished, complete. Tonight will not be one of staying up late just because. I will be carefully managing bedtime because this is the first school night of the year.

I remember when the onset of summer vacation felt rife with possibility. I made long lists of things I wanted to do, places I wanted to take the kids. Summer was play time on a grand scale. Once I began working, that changed. I could no longer alter my schedule around that of the kids. I had business obligations which did not defer to vacation, in fact some of the business tasks increased because of summer. Those big summer conventions take a toll. Instead of contemplating summer as a wide open possibility, I know in late winter what things must get done during the summer months. I do lots of spontaneous day trips for the kids whenever a free day hits, but we don’t plan and promise in advance. An unexpected result of this is that here I am, at the end of the summer, without a list of things I meant to do and didn’t. I haven’t spent these last few weeks frantically trying to finish items on that list. Instead I sit here on my porch, done with things of summer, prepared for things of fall.

It is possible that my feelings of completion have more to do with resignation. Ready or not, school will begin. I did not feel ready two weeks ago when I rounded the corner into August, I did not want to think school thoughts. But then later that same day, I did. It was like I found the drawer where all the school thoughts were stored. Once found, I was able to air them out and see what needed mending. It also helps me feel complete that I’ve done so many house tasks that have been waiting. I finally took a saw to the dead tree in my front yard. It has been rendered into a log, a stump, and a pile of branches. I’ve been staring at that ugly, dying tree for years and now I don’t have to anymore. Granted, I still have to clean up the tree shrapnel, but the major work is complete. The same with the summer conventions. In the next couple of weeks I’ll finish off these odds and ends of summer and we will fully transition into a different rhythm of life.

I am done with summer. I am ready for school. But there is a large part of me that wishes for a pause. A space in which I could spend two weeks to unfurl all those summer possibilities which we were too busy to contemplate this year. A space with the difficult pieces of summer complete, but the difficult parts of school put off for a bit. I would dearly like a pause. Perhaps I’ll find some of that in the writer’s retreat at the end of September.

Venturing Forth at the End of Summer

By / August 17, 2012

I never intended to make a tradition out of End of Summer outings. But somehow we keep having an outing with the kids and I toward the end of August. Three years in a row makes it a tradition right? This year we ventured to the Tracy Aviary where we found ducks swimming in pools of light.

Or at least ducks who obligingly swam right in the sun’s reflection. When they went fast it looked as though they were scattering light behind them.

We also got to meet Andy, a giant condor out for a walk. He was as big as a medium sized dog. I kept thinking of dinosaurs as I saw him stalk along. He’s fifty years old and being slowly rehabilitated so that some day he’ll be able to fly over the heads of guests as part of a bird show. I hope to attend that show someday. Big bird.

We had a good time. Even during the parts which were boring, too hot, and full of rush hour traffic. Outings have frustrating bits. The kids are ready to head into school next week. Gleek did her summer assignment. Link assembled his binder. Patch put his things together. We’re ready for the next adventure.

Being Between

By / August 17, 2012 / 2 Comments

For the first time all summer, I find myself between. There is no more work I can do for GenCon and I can’t yet begin post-GenCon accounting. I’ve mailed all the things to ChiCon, but have to wait for Howard to get home before the final preparations. I’ve finished off the house organization projects which got shuffled aside during the crush of other things, and I’ve not yet decided what house project to tackle next. I’ve let go of my summer plans, but won’t embark on school schedule until next Tuesday. I am between. In some ways it is a lovely space, but staying here too long would not be good for me. I like moving forward.

Yesterday I read a letter from a friend where she lamented that every year she intends to plan and prepare better for the beginning of school. Then every year she ends up dealing with the same frantic scramble to get everything done. I read her words and realized that one of my focuses over the past six months is that I’m trying to be less prepared. I live much of my life planning for the future. I’m paying attention to thing I need to do today in order to prepare for events a week, a month, a year in the future. I’ve slowly become aware that the world is full of people who do not do this. I regularly see something coming, stress about it, plan ahead for it, and then move onward; only to find that others hit this same emotional process weeks or months later than I do. Several times I’ve had to straighten out a financial misunderstanding because I’ve paid a bill so early that the recipient mis-filed the payment. I plan ahead. Much of this is my job. I am the one to reserve a hotel room in February so that Howard has a place to stay at GenCon in August. I make sure that merchandise arrives where it is supposed to and when it is supposed to. I create schedules out of nothingness and then remind everyone to adhere to them. I intend to keep doing my job, accomplishing concrete tasks on a think-ahead timeline, but I want to shed all the needless stewing over possibilities.

My kids start school on Tuesday. Beyond reminding myself what the wake-up, drop-off, and pick-up schedule needs to be, I am trying not to think about it. Entering school will expose my kids to new information and people. They will shift and grow in response. Some of that growth will be painful and difficult. Tantrums and meltdowns are coming. I know it. If I sit down to think about it, I could predict what those crises would be, but then I would begin planning how I could respond to these hypothetical crises. After that I can imagine that the child does not like my response and reacts poorly. I could stage an entire melodrama in my head with branching possibility trees, a choose-your-own-adventure of parental stress. Except when school really does start, odds are that my kids will depart from the script in the first five minutes. All my fretting, planning, preparing would then be discarded because we’re going somewhere else. Instead of trying to improve my predictive abilities so I can better plan, I’m trying to trust that I’ll be able to deal with whatever comes when it arrives. Some things are concrete and life will be better if I plan ahead for them. Other things are in flux and I need to leave them alone until they are concrete. Living in flux is where I have to exercise my faith; faith in myself, faith in God, faith in the family members around me. Faith is often hard, I want to be able to predict and plan, as if I could plan life into calmness. Controlling something that is in flux is like trying to grab a fist full of water. I need to learn how to open my fingers, let the water flow past, and wait for something solid to grab.

So I am between, and will be until Monday. I will do the few small concrete tasks which are nearby and then I will endeavor to fill the remaining space with something enjoyable. Perhaps I can make something lovely out of these last few days of summer.

Sending Howard to a Convention

By / August 15, 2012

Wind rushed past the sides of the van as the wheels rumbled down the freeway. Howard and I were on our way to the airport so that he could board a plane to GenCon. He would be gone for a week, I wanted to spend the thirty minutes of drive talking. I wanted to be with him as thoroughly as possible to make up for having to do without him. But I was tired. I cast about in my mind for conversational topics and kept pulling up the equivalent of tin cans and old boots. It wasn’t that my head was empty. My head was over-full with thoughts about the convention he faced, the things which could go wrong, possible ways to address the things which could go wrong, and then further along the causal chain of could-go-wrong clear out beyond the bounds of rationality. I looked over at Howard. He gripped the steering wheel and occasionally expressed frustration with the drivers around us. He was as full of stress as I was, yet the only thing to do was drive Howard to the airport and deal with everything beyond that when it came. We’d spent all morning scrambling with last minute business tasks. This was our chance to shed all that and be Howard and Sandra together, if only we could dodge the business thoughts and talk about something else. I commented on how the smoke from distant fires collects in the Salt Lake valley. As we descended into the valley I peered across to the barely discernible mountain ridge on the other side. Then I sat back and realized that Howard and I had fallen silent again, surrounded by thoughts we weren’t saying. I could feel the edges of business anxiety in my head. I wanted to be chatting and laughing with Howard about something cheerful, but the best we managed was a mellow companionableness as we drove down the road.

Howard hugged me tight before rolling away with his two suitcases, one full of clothes to wear, the other full of merchandise which arrived too late to be shipped. I did not stay to watch him enter the airport, the curb was needed for another farewell. The drive home from the airport was also silent, until the fourth time I had to drag my brain back from a path filled with useless worry. Then I turned on music and sang loud enough to drown out my thoughts. I continued to distract myself until late in the evening because my brain was ready to believe that I’d committed a failure of paperwork which would render Howard’s convention trip into an utter disaster. I fell asleep convinced that I’d be awakened at six in the morning by a panicked phone call.

I woke at eight, no phone call had come. Email gave me a quick note from Howard “Nice hotel and a good night’s sleep. So far so good, off to the convention center in 20 minutes.” He’d successfully arrived using the flight I’d booked. He’d stayed in the hotel that I’d reserved. Neither of these things had resulted in catastrophe, my weight of responsibility felt lighter. All the various preparations I’ve made since last January will either work or they won’t. It is all out of my hands. I am so happy to have it all out of my hands. I’m certain the booth set up brought its frustrations and stresses, but I did not witness them or be stressed by them. Instead I get to see Howard’s tweet at the end of the day “Rocked the booth prep for GenCon today. Planning to totally rock the show tomorrow.”

In comparison with Howard’s day mine is tame. He helped assemble the miniature shop in which he will live and work for the next five days until he disassembles it and comes home. I spent the day putting things in order, building shelves to store t-shirts, stretching out in my spaces. Sometimes when Howard goes on a trip, I sort of gasp with relief and collapse into a pile of post-convention-preparation uselessness. It is a definite “cats away, mice will play” feeling. For the span of time while he is gone, I can take more time off of work. Sometimes it worries me that I feel relief to have him gone. Then there are other times when I miss him terribly and can’t go to bed before early morning because the house feels wrong without him here. Today I went about my work and in the quiet spaces I missed Howard in a quiet way. My meanderings kept carrying me back to the kitchen and the flowers he bought for me on Monday because Monday was a rough day. Then I discovered the treat he hid for me to find. I’ll be glad when Howard can come back home to relax with me. Though it is going to be several weeks more before that occurs.

Mind and Body

By / August 14, 2012 / 2 Comments

Hi! I drank caffeinated soda this morning. Can you tell I’m on caffeine, cause I can totally tell I’m on caffeine. I can tell because the clouded and lethargic thoughts of yesterday have turned into the sharp, focused, and highly distractable thoughts of today. I chose caffeine this morning because Howard leaves for GenCon in just five hours and yesterday I accomplished none of the preparatory tasks I was supposed to complete. Some of that was because of pre-convention stress and denial, but the larger part was something physiological. There is a bug which has mowed down Kiki, Link, and I. Link fell asleep while playing a video game and stayed asleep for the next sixteen hours. Kiki and I did not fall asleep, we just felt like going to sleep, or like crying about everything. We’re sick. It will pass. Unfortunately I have to fulfill my role as talent wrangler and business manager before I can collapse into sleep for sixteen hours like Link did. So I am medicating myself with caffeine in the hope that I can consolidate my limited energy for the day into a small enough time span to get the necessary work done. After that, I’ll collapse into a heap and watch movies for the next day or two. This is the theory, thus far my brain on caffeine has scampered like a squirrel across the necessary tasks, but has also darted all over the place composing parts of blog entries (such as this one), done math to figure out how old my kids will be in 2020 when WorldCon may take place in New Zealand, contemplated a major clothing sort, planned how to repaint my bedroom, and made a list of things to do today. At least I’m moving, which is an improvement over yesterday, but it does highlight the connection between mind and body wellness.

This time last year I experienced a major physiological and psychological event. I had a panic attack during the Hugo ceremony. The experience threw me out of balance, or rather, it demonstrated in a not-to-be-ignored way how out of balance I had been for a long time. I’ve spent much of the last year trying to find the hundreds of small ways that I’d pulled myself out of kilter and to set myself to rights. The process has been slow and has required me to rearrange my physical spaces in order to figure out my emotional spaces. I’ve had to isolate stresses and determine why they are stressful. I’ve deliberately shaken up my usual patterns of behavior and thought, making a River Song journal, maintaining a Pinterest board, eating new foods, going new places. Then I watch my reactions to these new stimuli to see if they will lead me to hidden pockets of grief which have been driving my behaviors. I’ve learned that my body will tell me when I am stressed even if my mind is too busy to notice. When my teeth ache, it is because I’m pressing them together subconsciously while sleeping or doing other things. I do that when I’m carrying suppressed stress. This means that aching teeth is a sign that I should stop and dig around in the back of my brain to see what else is going on. There are other physical signs, I’m actually kind of amazed how accurately various kinds of stress manifest as different aches or strains in my body. Paying attention to my body teaches me things about myself.

The life benefits of good diet and exercise are commonly known. There is, naturally, much argument about the definitions of “good diet and exercise.” This is because bodies are different and the perfect diet for one person is not ideal for another. Some of my experimentation in the past year has been figuring out what forms of nutrition to which my body best responds. I’m also observing how stress changes my food cravings, or perhaps eating poorly alters my stress levels. I’m still not certain of the causality. I just know that times of high stress correspond with high chocolate and ice cream consumption. When I am stressed my nutrition deteriorates because I’m less able to spend extra energy planning healthy food. Stress shuts down the food planning circuits in my brain. This means I need to create some optimally healthy for me default meals and turn them into brainless habits during times of lower stress. I think my ideal diet is lactose free, lower carb, and reduced sugar intake. When I’m on this diet I think more clearly. When I’m exercising regularly, this is the diet I crave. Mind and body feed back into each other so that everything either falls apart or works smoothly. I fall into bad patterns and haul myself out of them over and over again. Though, hopefully, my pattern cycles are actually a spiral where I am gradually bringing myself to a healthier place for both mind and body.

I’ve often wished I could separate body chemistry from my ability to think. I usually lament this when I’m dealing with an excess of emotion due to thyroid imbalance or hormonal fluctuations. I can’t separate them. Everything is entwined, which makes change difficult and complex. All I can do is pay attention to the things my body tells me about my mind and vice versa. I can make sure that I don’t try to use a short-term emergency fix, like caffeine, as a long-term solution. And with that thought, I need to take my distractible squirrel brain and apply it to the problem of putting the appropriate clothing and supplies into Howard’s suitcase.

Parenting Then and Now

By / August 13, 2012

When my kids were little it was my job to figure out what they needed and provide it to them. Once they hit the teen years, what they need is to know how to figure out what they need and then figure out for themselves how to go get it. In theory this gives me less to do, but the emotional reality is that watching someone struggle and having no useful way to help is hard.

No one is actually struggling this morning, but a piece of my brain is convinced that they will be as soon as school hits.

Conversations with My Kids

By / August 12, 2012 / 3 Comments

Kiki was very animated as she detailed the plans her friends have for a post-high-school-graduation trip to Disneyland. Her description had all the earmarks of a sales pitch. I could tell that she was framing the projected trip to be a safe and well-planned as possible. She wanted permission to go. She finished and waited with bright eyes for my answer.
“You’ll be eighteen next May, whether or not you decide to go on this trip is really up to you.” I said. “But you’ll have to fund it yourself.”
It was a quiet sentence, one I hadn’t anticipated before hand. When the words were out of my mouth, I felt the truth of them and was startled not to have a stronger emotional reaction. Next May Kiki will be legally an adult. Contemplating it doesn’t feel scary, because it is only a small step from where we are already. She’s an amazing person.

Link was asked to give a talk in church, which is something that he dreads. He and I discussed this at length and I tried to help him identify the feelings he’s filled with lately. His emotional repertoire has tended toward sullen and angry of late. He recognizes this and doesn’t like it, but isn’t sure how to make it stop.
“You realize we couldn’t even have had this conversation six months ago?” I asked. “I’m actually really impressed with you right now.”
A hint of a smile quirked the corner of Link’s mouth. The remainder of the conversation was not smooth and did not end in sunshine and puppies, but at least he heard those words. He was less pleased with words about weak things becoming strong and the fact that Moses wasn’t a great public speaker either. Perhaps he’ll never give another talk in church, but I fully mean for him to be able to self-spectate the reasons why.

Long ago I wrote a blog post where I looked forward eagerly to having adult conversations with my kids. Here I am. It isn’t always easy, but it is pretty awesome.

Clearing My Head of Shirts and Shows

By / August 11, 2012

The last of the pre-ordered shirts went out this morning. Now I only have regular orders to fill. I’m glad to have the work. I’m also glad to be sending things out of my house. During the moments when I was too physically tired and brain dead for t-shirts I noodled around on Netflix and ended up watching a couple of episodes of Hoarders. I found the psychology involved fascinating, both the revealed motivations of the hoarders and my own psychology as I watched. I came away wanting to organize and de-clutter my whole house, which I suspect is a common reaction. Hoarders is fascinating in part because it is a magnification of things I do all the time. My house gets cluttered and messy. I don’t always clean it up quickly. I stack boxes in corners until I have time to deal with them. However I’m also aware that there is a fundamental difference. I am not a hoarder. I’m more likely to get rid of something and need it later than I am to keep something I’ll never use. My spaces get messy, particularly when I’m in the midst of a project, but then I clean it all up to make space for the next project.

In happier viewing, I watched Captain America: The first Avenger. I’ve seen it before, but this re-watch made me realize that I’ve crossed the line over into being a Captain America fan. I need to see Avengers again. I also watched Mirror Mirror for the first time. I really liked it. It was lovely, occasionally clever, and interesting. My feminist brain was not quite sure what to make of it, as the text of the film had messages of female empowerment, but Snow White herself was self-effacing and submissive through much of the film. I’ve decided to take the submissive aspects as a deliberate character choice rather than a social statement. Even a shy girl can learn to be strong and do it in a way that does not change her into someone else.

Having cleared my brain from shirts and shows, hopefully I’ll be ready next week to prep kids for school, ship the last of the merchandise to WorldCon, put Howard on a plane for GenCon, and (hopefully, maybe) open up my writing thoughts so that I have an answer for the question “What are you planning to write next?”