Month: October 2013

Halloween Costumes

By / October 30, 2013 / 1 Comment

When I was little, Halloween was magical. Around the time my age hit double digits it started to be…complicated. I believe this is a common experience as children begin to be self conscious. In my case I was frustrated because no one ever knew what my costumes were, and I found them hard to explain. This is because I never chose to be a commonly known character. Instead I would create a character based on half a dozen worlds that I’d read and synthesized. Why could no one see that my long blue dress and cloak obviously meant that I was an empath who rode a winged horse? They would ask “what are you?” in a confused tone of voice and I wouldn’t know how to summarize, but I knew they didn’t want to hear the whole back story. When I was a kid among other kids, they understood that costumes had stories. But by junior high, they stood there in a yellow crayon outfit and stared at me like I was the weirdo. That was a difficult year and it put me off costumes for the rest of junior high.

Halloween became a big deal again after I met Howard and got married. It started small with just some stage make-up. But the seeds of the next year’s costume were planted until the pinnacle years when we had a group of six people and our toddler all dressed up like post-apocalyptic cyborg survivors. And then like medieval warriors with a preschool dragon and a baby dragon. We got professional photographs that year and had a great time. Then our Halloween loving friends moved away and somehow our Halloween efforts dwindled. The creative energy that we used to spend on costumes got spent on other things instead. I’m not going to complain because I like Schlock and I’m not sure it would have begun if we’d had a full-blown costuming hobby in place.

Today I went to our church Halloween carnival and for the I-don’t-know-how-many-th year in a row, I was boring. I didn’t wear a costume at all. I think I started being Halloween boring when Gleek was a toddler. I had three kids and it was challenging enough to keep track of them without adding complicated clothing. I always ended up toting their discarded props and trying to juggle all of their things plus a heavy cloak or a long dress stopped being any kind of fun at all. I used to make jokes about being dressed up as the storage closet because of all the things I ended up carrying around. Not only that, but there was never time to think up something to wear when I was so completely occupied with supplying four outfits to the exacting specifications of my children. I still enjoyed Halloween, but from a spectator role.

A few weeks ago I ready this Hyperbole and Half piece about a dinosaur costume. Not only was it really funny, but it made me think about identity. I have come full circle to a place where I am again friends with people who love costuming. I admire their brilliance at conventions and yet have never planned to don a costume “That’s not me” I thought. “I’m not a costume person. I am a writer person.” Yet I used to be a costume person. I used to be willing to put on a different identity for the span of a day just so that I could play. True, I was always a little awkward with it, unwilling to fully own an outfit, but at least I put the outfit on. The tale of a little girl and her dinosaur costume made me re-consider the power of costume and how being something else for a while might teach me something about who I am when I’m wearing my regular clothes.

Also, I’m tired of feeling boring on Halloween. I can’t guarantee I’ll follow through on anything. My life is full of projects and any costuming project is pretty far down the list, but when Howard dons his steampunk clothes I’d kind of like to have an outfit that matches. Perhaps this next year I’ll learn how to play dress up again. And maybe I’ll learn a better answer to the question “who are you?” or perhaps I’ll be the beneficiary of a world that is more open to adults in creative costumes.

The Jay Wake Book is Complete

By / November 4, 2022 / 1 Comment

Those who want their own copy of the Jay Wake Book may get one in either pdf or print format. For PDF I recommend downloading the low resolution version first. It is much smaller and will allow you to see all the pictures and read the words. The high resolution is sharp enough for print, but much larger in size. If you prefer your books on paper, that print link will take you to the print-on-demand site Lulu. You’ll pay $28.22 plus shipping. All of that price is the cost of full color printing. No funds go anywhere else.

It was an honor to work on this project. I’ve loved seeing all the ways that Jay’s friends see Jay and the ways that the celebrate him. I hope that even those who have not had the chance to know Jay will take time to look at the book.

To those who contributed to this project: Thank you. To those who read the book: thanks go out to you as well, through you we’ll keep the celebrations of Jay going.

Low Resolution PDF 7MB (Recommended)
High Resolution PDF 72MB
Printed Book

Shooting Video

By / October 28, 2013 / 2 Comments

Video intimidates me, but I shot one anyway because Kickstarter projects do better with a video. The process went something like this: Wait until kids are gone at school and Howard is occupied so that no one else will witness nor tease me about my process (or lack thereof.) Fix hair and makeup. Set up tripod and camera. Shoot a test shot to make sure I know where to sit and am properly framed. Start recording. Sit down and begin talking, then realize I don’t know what comes next even though I thought through everything I want to say. Freeze up and flee from in front of the camera. Pace around the kitchen muttering to myself as I practice all the words. Record again. Mess up often. At each mess up, pause then start the sentence over because through the magic of editing maybe I’ll still be able to use the shot. Nope. Start over with a new take. Repeat until two takes feel acceptable. Watch the video and marvel at the number of times I roll my eyes because I’m trying to remember what to say next. I’ve learned not to Um, but my eyes were all over the place. Bundle everything up and hand it off to someone who has the magic power of editing.

There is a reason I do not video blog.

Shouting Out Some Things I Enjoy

By / October 27, 2013

A Chaos of Stars by Kiersten White
I really liked this book. It falls into the category of YA paranormal romance, but it is far more about family. Also it doesn’t have a love triangle, which is good because those are so often done so very badly. Egyptian mythos and real emotion.

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson
I thought I’d guessed the ending reveal, but I only half guessed it and there were at least five other reveals which were just as cool. Once again Sanderson builds an amazing world and delivers some impressive action scenes.

Agents of SHIELD
I know this one has gotten lots of mixed reviews. I wasn’t sure myself, but it is really growing on me. Rewatching several episodes made me realize that things which I thought were weaknesses were just me not knowing the characters or rhythm yet. I hope this show gets a good long run so that it can finish building the story it has started.

Sleepy Hollow
I’m not generally a fan of horror and historical details are flat out made up about half the time. But I like the characters. I love who they’ve cast. It makes me happy to see a man being “the pretty one” who gets the special soft lighting. The show has promise, I hope it delivers.

The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson
Loved this novella. Loved it. I can see why it won the Hugo. Definitely worth the read.

Vodnik by Bryce Moore
I’m only part way into this, but so far it is building a compelling mythology and has taken me to a very believable Slovakia. I want to keep reading and find out what happens next.

Dancing With The Stars
I’ve been a fan of the show for years. I’m watching the current season as soon as the episodes are available online. I think Corbin and Karina are going to win it. I hope they do. I also hope that Lea and Tony stick around for a long time. I really like them. I’d never heard of Bill Engvall before, but now I like him quite a lot. I’m sad Bill Nye got injured so early. I wanted to see more dances from him. I never thought that I would feel any respect for Snooki, but she surprised me. She’s working hard and spending all of her non-dancing time taking care of her family. Once again Tristan’s partner left early, which is quite sad because I love watching him dance.

Angel
I recently re-watched a bunch of the show Angel. I skipped most of season four because the show really went to a weird place there. But there are some amazing episodes. I highly recommend Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been from season 2. I think it can be viewed as a stand alone episode and it is really good.

What With One Thing and Another, Saturday Passed

By / October 26, 2013 / 2 Comments

One of my favorite moments in the book The Princess Bride is the part where the boy’s father (yes it is a father in the book, not a grandfather) skips a bunch of boring text by simply saying “what with one thing and another, three years passed.” This was not one of my favorite moments when I was reading the book for the first time (after having fallen in love with the movie.) It became a quiet favorite moment many years later when I realized how very useful that storytelling trick is. I can skip the boring bits, simply skim over them, and get back to the important stuff. The only trouble is that no one but me knows I am making a clever reference when I use the phrase “what with one thing and another…” It is not highly quotable nor memorable to most people. It blends into the text of the things I write and no one gets to share a little smile with me and think for a moment about Wesley, Buttercup, and how for about a year when I was twelve I really believed that there was an S. Morgenstern and that I could find an unabridged copy of The Princess Bride. Which means that William Goldman’s own little joke worked on me, so perhaps it is fair to hide a sly reference in my words that no one but me will get. Except you, because you’ve read this, and now you’re in on the joke. It isn’t a big joke, just a little one that makes me smile inside.

What with one thing and another I haven’t had a proper Saturday for a month. The past three were variously disrupted with interesting things, all of which dictated my schedule. This morning dawned with nothing on the calendar and only a list of house things which I’ve been wanting to complete, but haven’t had time to do. So naturally I slept late. Because that is the proper beginning for a Saturday. Then I marshaled my forces (the kids) and compelled all of us to go outside where we made the front of our house look like maybe someone lives in our house. We also harvested walnuts from under the fallen leaves and pears from where they’d fallen on the ground. I discovered that there were still grapes hiding among the vines so we picked those too. I’ve been ignoring these fall things because I was so busy. I didn’t have time to do anything else, or so I thought.

There are many jokes about working for yourself. “Best thing about working for yourself is that you only have to work half days and you get to pick which twelve hours.” It is the sort of joke which is funny because it rings of truth. In theory our lives are supremely flexible because we set our own schedule. In reality there are hundreds of constraints telling us what must be done, when it must be done, and how it must be done. Work and family things don’t blend together, but they do tangle up and often interfere. One thing that has surprised me in the past year has been the re-emergence of Saturday as a housework day. Back when I was not working at business and was instead working on keeping house and raising small children, I used school-free Saturdays as a time to set the house in order and to teach the kids about housework. Then everything got muddled up with work spilling everywhere. But lately I put down the majority of the business work on Friday afternoon and don’t pick it up until Monday morning. It creates a space where I can look around me and realize that I want to sweep the front walk because those grass clippings have been there for two weeks and they’ve clumped up against the front steps so that everyone tracks some into the house. It is the sort of little task which theoretically should just get done in one of the spaces of the days, only the days keep running out of spaces. Or I run out of energy. Often the latter.

I picked up the pears by myself, crouched under the low hanging branches, not willing to kneel lest I discover my knee in the midst of mushy rotten pear. My hair often caught on branches over head, pulling strands loose and occasionally depositing twigs. One of which I discovered later when an acquaintance stopped by, and mid-chat I touched my head to realize that perhaps brushing my hair after the pair project would have been a good idea. The acquaintance was too polite to mention my birdnest-like hairdo, so I just put my hand back down and ignored it as well. Half of poise is deciding that these things are irrelevant. Before that conversation, there were pears, and I was by myself picking them up carefully because wasps like rotting pears and I do not like getting stung. The sun filtered through the yellow, orange, red leaves above me. Sometime next week all those leaves will be on the ground and finding the pears would be much more difficult. My back was aching because I’d done more physical labor that day than I’ve done in quite a while. I was glad because sleep has been elusive as my brain ran overtime considering projects. Devoting myself to clean up and harvesting was setting me to rights in more ways than one.

The kids complained as they pulled the husks off of walnuts. They don’t even like walnuts much and they’d already done quite a bit of work. Though Gleek admitted to enjoying the “cute little worms” she sometimes finds in the husks. The kids don’t even like eating walnuts much, but I do. I sneak them into cookies sometimes or crumble them on my salads. I give them away to neighbors. The walnuts are quite a bit of work because once the slimy husk is removed there is still a shell to crack and the nutmeat to pick out. Lots of packaging and work for something so small, yet having the tree makes me happy and I like having food that grew in my yard. Perhaps I should instead have made the kids help me with pears. They love to eat pear butter, except wasps would have led to kids not helping at all.

The harvesting activites have added to my list of projects for next week, yet they have lowered my stress level by reminding me of things that I love. I can see it in my thoughts and manifested in this post where I abandon the tightly focused presentation of small ideas and instead am content to drift from topic to topic. The whole thing is really one long digression, but then the title of the post should have been a clue. What with one thing and another Saturday passed, which means that this whole post could be skipped by those who just want to hear news of projects. The day was a pause, a side note. It did not forward the plot. The fact that I wrote it makes me remember why I wanted to find that mythical unabridged version of Princess Bride. I knew that the things which had been cut were probably boring, but I still wanted to see them. It was during the same era of my life that I read the 1500+ page unabridged Les Miserables and was fascinated by its meanderings. Sometimes the pauses and the digressions are the point.

Schlock Moving Day November 2nd

By / October 25, 2013

We signed the warehouse lease. I’ve arranged for light, heat, insurance, and mail delivery. The time has come to move all of the stuff. (Stuff being tons of books from the storage unit and many boxes of other merch from my basement.)

If being part of the Schlock Mercenary shipping day sounds like fun to you, email schlockmercenary@gmail.com for specific details and addresses. We’ll start work at 9:30 am and work until we’re done or when I have to return the rented truck at 3. As usual we’ll provide food and gifts of merchandise. We’ll need to limit the number of volunteers to around 10 people or we’ll start to have crowding and transportation problems.

NOTE: This will be hours of heavy lifting. I mean literal tons, thousands of pounds of stuff. If you have a bad back, bad knees, or other easily strained body parts, please wait for an alternative volunteer opportunity.

For the amusement of those far away, but who wish us well, I will be sure to write about the fun and post some pictures. After I’ve rested.

Things Falling Into Place and Psychology

By / October 24, 2013

It has been two weeks of things falling into place. The first warehouse I toured turned out to be the one we needed. The lease was signed two days later. Business insurance looked to be complicated, but then it wasn’t. An appointment got cancelled in the middle of a busy day. I thought I’d have to spend time waiting around for a delivery truck, but the shipment of Tub of Happiness got held up in LA and won’t arrive until next week, which is far more convenient. The psychiatrist’s office had to reschedule Gleek’s appointment for several weeks later, which gave just enough time for the school year to settle in more. We have things to discuss. Then at church a conversation with Gleek’s youth leaders led to a recommendation for a therapist who does art therapy. Gleek’s first appointment is next week. I could continue the list. Last Spring was full of turmoil, road blocks, and struggles. During those struggles we laid lots of ground work and things are falling in to place now.

Today was the meeting with Gleek’s psychiatrist and next week is her first session with a new therapist. I feel very ambivalent about both of those things. There is a part of my brain that wants to argue about expense and effort. She’s doing really well right now. She’s mostly happy. She’s got straight As in school. Okay, I’d like to see her socializing more with people face to face instead of online, but surely we don’t need a therapist for that. These thoughts burble in my brain, trying to get traction. Yet I know that Gleek has lots of things to learn about how to handle her stresses and emotions. Things are good now because she’s not being challenged. She is not under stress. This means that now is the time to be working on things so that when the next stressful time hits, she has skills to manage it. It is logical. I’m pretty sure this is the right course, but I don’t want to do it. Therapy is hard. We have to face things instead of letting them slide. Surely I have enough projects going on without adding another one. Yet I can’t but think that so many of the other things are going so smoothly to make space for this and for things like this.

Gleek is not the only one with things to work through. Her struggles last Spring significantly undermined my confidence in my parenting. The attendant therapy sessions did not fix that, because over and over I was shown how things I was doing fed into and exacerbated Gleek’s stress. The biggest change that took place was in me. I shifted my management of things, set some new boundaries, and rearranged schedules. Then the troubles evaporated, which is good, but I wish I could feel like they went away because Gleek learned something rather than because I did. Of course if I was the one creating the problem, then maybe it isn’t laying in wait to ambush us. Maybe it is actually solved. Any time a child is in crisis, psychological experts look to parents as part of the solution. Unfortunately finding solutions also creates guilt, because I didn’t figure it out sooner. If only I’d been better. If only I was able to be consistent instead of letting the rules go blurry and putting them back later. If only, if only, if only. Those “if onlys” don’t help, but I have to see them and work through them in order to get rid of them.

The take away from the consultations this week is that Gleek needs more stress in her life. She needs the good kind of stress where she goes to an activity, tries new things, and meets new people. Gleek is happy about this prescription because she wants to take a gymnastics class. So I’ll add that to my list of things to set up. She’ll be less happy about the second half of the prescription, which is to limit her time spent in electronic worlds on the computer. She needs time to be bored and to find good ways to stop being bored. Fortunately adding fun activities will cause the second to happen very naturally.

The good news is that I don’t have to create an extensive plan and execute on it. I just need to figure out what comes next and do that. For tonight, it means putting kids to bed. Tomorrow I’ll be spending my morning work hours setting up utilities for the warehouse. After that I’ll be crafting the Kickstarter information or pounding my way through some book layout. The good news is that tomorrow is both Friday and the end of term, so the kids are all pretty much homework free for the weekend. Step by step we do all the things, working and guiding things so that they fall into place.

Patch’s High Intensity Schooling

By / October 22, 2013 / 7 Comments

I chose the school program that Patch is in with my eyes open. It is a gifted program, academically accelerated. Since it is an opt-in program the teachers ask a lot of parents in the way of support. In making the choice to put Patch and Gleek into the program two years ago, we weighed a lot of factors and ultimately decided that this was the best possible one. Even though it would sometimes be hard and other times it would be harder. So I choose this. I’m not sorry I did it. I know that it is still the right choice for our family. But I’m still going to complain a little.

Monday an explorer story was due. In order to write this story, Patch had to read a biography about the assigned person, include three try-fail cycles, have at least two characters, one character required to be native, and feature the major geographical landform for which the explorer was famous. Pretty exacting, but doable. Particularly since we’ve known about it all month. Patch was assigned Louis Hennepin, about whom no one has ever written a biography. Hennepin is usually a footnote or paragraph in books about La Salle. So we checked out an encyclopedia of explorers where Hennepin was mentioned more than once. Patch wrote a two page story.

Tomorrow the explorer game is due. This is a board game based on the story. It must have a map, the major landform, give information about the landform, and information about the explorer. Playable by 2-4 kids. Patch likes this sort of assignment, which means I did not have to do nearly as much work as I expected. Mostly I helped make sure all the information things went into the game.

Two projects in a month is fairly standard for this class. Usually there is a lighter one in the first half an a bigger one for the second.

Next week Booko is due. This is bingo filled out with books that Patch has read. Since he enjoys reading, all we have to do is make sure he can get five in a row. This month was Mystery, poetry, 900s book, Beehive award book, and Story collection. Then there is a book report on the genre of the month. These book reports can be anything from shooting a video commercial to bringing in treats based on the book. It isn’t hard, it is just a project we need to remember to get done.

Next week is also Halloween. The kids are requested to wear costumes based on characters from books. This is one way for the teacher to acknowledge that Halloween has become tricky ground for 5th graders and to give them all a socially acceptable excuse to still dress up. But, putting together a costume is an additional project.

Then there are the regular rounds of spelling, math, writing etc. Most of which Patch can accomplish in 20 minutes or less on a daily basis. If Patch pays attention to homework and projects for an hour per day, he can definitely keep up. No problem. In fact he has enough hours to spare that I sometimes feel guilty over the quantity of time he plays video games.

Guess who has to make sure that hour per day happens every single day? Most days I’m fine with that. All I have to do is nudge and Patch goes and gets his work done. The projects require more focused attention. Which is hard to come by on a day like today when I’ve spent all of my energy making sure all of my own projects are being moved forward. Add to that the impending end of term on Friday, which means making sure that Link and Gleek are on track. Which they are, but Link also has about an hour of homework each day and half the time he needs me to participate in some way. I suspect that I’ll be able to back off as the year progresses, but for now, this is how it is.

It is a lot, all of this school support. Yet when I think about what my kids get to do, I know I’ve chosen right. Patch got to make a game. He got to write a story. Later in the year he’ll participate in writing a declaration of independence, write and perform an opera, and a hundred other amazing things. Those things would not happen for him without this high intensity program. The idea of doing such things on our own is attractive, no grades, no pressure, but the truth is I would never get them done. I am far too pressed by projects to voluntarily pick up more. I have as evidence the past few summers when my children did almost nothing academic because I was too busy with business things and with being so very glad to rest a little bit.

So, the abundance of projects is driving me a little crazy this week. Next week will be better. By the week after that, many of the projects will have begun to clear. Just because something is hard, doesn’t mean it is the wrong choice.

Picking up the Pace on all the Projects

By / October 21, 2013

A few weeks ago I posted the first sketches from Strength of Wild Horses. Today I got to peek at the first finished pieces.

Isn’t it beautiful? Look at all the colors. Angela’s use of color astounds me every time. I’ve seen scans for about a third of the images. I am so happy to see each of these pictures and really excited to see the rest. The rest are coming soon. This means that tomorrow I have images to start putting on the Kickstarter page. Of course tomorrow I’m also making sure Kiki gets back on the bus to college, talking to insurance agents on the phone, working on LOTA, going my visiting teaching, helping kids with homework, and attending pack meeting. In fact all my days for the next few weeks are like a spinning plate act while I try to keep all of the projects on track so that they can hit their deadlines.

I don’t mind. All of the projects are happy ones, and Strength of Wild Horses is probably the happiest of all, because it is mine and Angela’s. Just look at the beautiful picture that Angela made. There are going to be thirty more like it. I am so excited to be putting this book out where other people can love it too.

Spending Saturday

By / October 19, 2013

Saturday evening with my four kids downstairs shouting and laughing over Super Smash Bros Brawl. Mid battle my two daughters start singing a song together, one with a familiar tune, but non-standard lyrics. It is a pretty good conclusion for a day which began with me getting up before dawn to find the Greyhound stop where Kiki would get off the bus. Our day has also included some design work for me, Art work for Kiki, homework for Link. We took a break to watch giant robots punching giant monsters and to marvel at the tactical idiocy which did not have humanity setting up a patrol to guard the sole entrance from the monster realm. I mean, why let the monsters get a mile from land before trying to destroy them? Granted, they would still have had problems, but lots less property damage and many lives saved. It is a good thing that the monsters and robots are so fun to watch. Anyway. We probably could have spent more time outside in the beautiful weather. So many of my neighbors spent the day clearing their yards an preparing for winter. That would have been a good use of time. Yet it has been a good day.