Sandra Tayler

This evening I was informed by Gleek and Patches that their security blankets are in fact snakes. They had each carefully rolled the blankets into tubes and had declared one end of the tube to be a head. Gleek’s snake was extra special because it had two heads on one end and a tail on the other. All during bedtime snack they regaled me with instructions about how to properly address these snakes. Apparently snakes require extra politeness. In fact, Gleek’s snake required me to learn a special gobbledy-gook language. At least the snakes made putting the kids to bed easy. I carefully picked up the snakes one at a time and announced it had fallen asleep. I then asked the owner of the snake to help me tuck the sleepy snake into bed. Once the snake was settle, the child needed to crawl in bed too so that the snake wouldn’t get scared. It worked. They went to sleep with no complaints at all.

My kids get swim lessons every summer since I’d really like for them to not drown. Locally swim lessons are run in two week long sessions during which the kids attend every week day. I’d much prefer going once a week all summer long. Oh well. The kids love swim lessons. My feelings are more mixed. Getting four kids ready to go anywhere is a challenge even when it doesn’t require all of them to change clothes completely. So for 30 minutes prior to departure I scramble to find all the necessary swimsuits, swimdiapers, shoes, robes, goggles, and hairbands. Supposedly when they come home from swim lessons they remove all of these things and hang them carefully in the bathroom, but it never quite works out that way.

Once the kids are all appropriately acoutured and accesorized, we enter the blast furnace that I like to call my minivan. Outside temperatures are 100 degrees. Inside-the-car temperatures are probably around 120. I suppose I could run the engine earlier to cool it down in advance, but that wastes gas and with all the other stuff I never think to do it. Last swim session was in June and was in the morning, so the hot car wasn’t as much of a problem. This time around we’re heading out at 3:45. Right when car temperatures are at thier peak. I get daily complaints from the kids about the heat in the car. They somehow expect me to magically not make it be so hot. All I can do is crank up the A/C and suffer with them.

Our local fitness center is the location for swim lessons. This summer they’re doing major reconstruction of the entrance, so we’ve been trouping all the way around the side of the building to a temporary entrance. It is amazing the daily rituals that have formed around this expedition from car to swim lessons and back. Kiki and Link exit the car at a dead run. They want to get to the building and out of the heat as fast as possible. They aren’t allowed past the front desk until I arrive with proof of swim lesson registration, but this does not bother them. They entertain themselves by “hiding” in plain view on the stairs. Every day as I enter the building they jump up giggling, delighted to have surprised me yet again. Gleek sometimes runs ahead to join Kiki and Link for this fun. Other times she sticks closer to me. My pace is slow because for some reason the juniper bushes that line the sidewalk on this hike are facinating to Patches. Every day we have to stop multiple times so that he can carefully pick a berry and throw it to the back of the patch. Again. And Again. And Again. There is a Very Important game associated with the berry picking and throwing, but I’ve yet to figure it out.

During the swim lessons I get to go upstairs to an observation area. From this perch I can observe how my kids are doing in thier lessons. Kiki and Link are both doing great. They’re beginning to learn strokes and I’m fairly confident that if they were dropped into the middle of a pool, they could get themselves to the edge without drowning. Gleek’s class is fun to watch because all the kids are so energetic. Particularly Gleek. She is not motionless for a single moment of the 30 minute lesson. She is constantly doing flips underwater or splashing her peers. At least this year she is following instructions and staying with the group. Last year her teachers had to physically hold on to her to prevent her from wandering off and drowning. Today it was really fun watching Gleek learning backfloat. I could see the teacher saying “Chiiiicken, Aiiirplaaane, Soldier” trying to teach the rythmn. Gleek got the positions perfect, but it was more Chicken!! Airplane!! Soldier!! than the smooth rythmn her teacher was trying to teach.

Patches has made the most swimming progress this summer. For the entire first session he refused to do anything other than stand in the shallow water and play with toys. He would scream in terror any time the teacher tried to pick him up. I spent most of that session wondering why I’d spent money on swim lessons so he could play the same way he does in the bathtub. Since I didn’t want a repeat of that, I made sure to take him swimming several times between sessions. On those occasions I grabbed him and took him out into the deep water despite his terrified screams. Within 5 minutes he calmed down and within 30 minutes he was begging me to take him out into the “big water.” Apparently breaking through that barrier was enough. I watched him today with his teacher doing airplane floats on his back and kicking as fast as his little legs would go on his kickboard. He isn’t a baby anymore, he’s all skinny and preschoolerish.

Kiki, Link, and Patches are easy to get ready to leave, but Gleek fights for every extra second she can spend in the water. Once I’ve got my hands on her the battle is over and she knows it. She also knows that I’m fully dressed and not likely to jump into the water to grab her. She will milk every mommy-hepless-on-the-side moment that she can get. All the time she is declaring that she wants to show me “one more thing!” while staying just out of my reach. The swimming teachers are usually highschool students and are hesitant about disciplining young children. They’re not sure what to do about this child who refuses to leave during the time that they need to be greeting the next class. I find I can usually solve the problem if I just ask the teacher to bodily pick up Gleek and hand her to me. This has occasionally ended with me hauling a screaming tantrum to the car, but not lately. Kids can sense when parents are afraid they’ll make a scene. Gleek now knows that scene or no scene, she WILL get out of the water at the end of the lesson.

Dripping wet and wrapped in robes, all four kids make the trek back to the car. Patches accompanies Link through the boy’s dressing room. This makes both of them feel grown up to go solo through that “boys only” place through which mom is forbidden to go. Link usually directs Patches by plopping a hand on top of Patches head and turning Patches head the direction that Link wants Patches to go. I call it Noggin Navigation. For some reason they both love this. In the lobby of the building Kiki claims my car keys and the two older kids dash ahead to the car. Gleek, Patches, and I follow behind more slowly. There are berries which must be thrown.

Upon arrival at the car I have to coax kids into seatbelts and settle arguements about who gets to sit in which spot. I then sit in my seat and try to figure out where Kiki has hidden the keys. She is very ingenious and always has a new spot. Fortunately she is also smart enough to realize that mom is hot and tired, so she shows me the hiding places very quickly. But she grins ear to ear, very pleased with herself. The car is no cooler for the drive home, however the kids don’t complain because they’ve all been chilled by the cool water. I haven’t been, and so I roast. I confess I am frequently cranky by the time we all arrive home. I’m hot and tried and I have to get wet bodies into dry clothes before they sit on furniture. With all that accomplished I sigh with relief and sit at my computer to see whether email has arrived in my absense. I just need a few minutes solitude before the cries of “I’m hungwy!” begin.

The last few days have been full of phone calls, most of which have been telemarketers. These calls always interrupt something and then it takes me a minute or more to recollect myself and get going again. I’ve been wishing they would stop. This afternoon they magically did. Of course they also took my dial tone and internet connectivity. I was facing the dilemma of needing to use a phone to inform my phone company that my line is broken. Fortunately I have a cell phone. The outage lasted about 3 hours. That was about 21 hours less than the customer support tech led me to believe. This is good. Without internet connectivity I can’t see when Howard posts new stuff to his blog.

Howard called me this evening. Apparently Comic Con is going really well. We may actually profit from this venture. I did not expect that at all. I’d actually budgeted for a sizable loss from his attendance at Comic Con. Profit is much better. It always makes me antsy when I watch our financial reserves dwindle. Howard sounded tired but cheerful. I wanted to keep him on the phone and just talk. I miss having him here to talk to. Unfortunately he was too busy to chat for very long. Sigh.

There are only 5 weeks of summer vacation left. During that span I need to get bedtime back to an earlier schedule. The last couple of nights I’ve let the kids all stay up until dusk. Then I look at the clock and realized that it’s 9:15 and all of them should theoretically already be in bed. This happens every summer. Every summer I plan to get bedtime settled at an earlier time. Every summer I fail to do so and we simply have to readjust once school starts. I’m both excited and aprehensive about school starting again. I both love and hate the schedule it imposes.

I keep sitting here hoping that brilliance will strike me, that suddenly I’ll remember an event from the day that I can craft into a clever anecdote or a useful insight. It appears that all of my creative brilliance went into this morning’s completion of a story draft. It makes me a little sad. I really like to have fun entries here when Howard is gone so that he can read them and think of us. Today all he really gets are a couple of mediocre musings and me wistfully missing him. Hi honey, I love you!

I’m feeling really happy right now. This is despite the fact that my kitchen is filled with dirty dishes rather than clean ones. I’ve done some weeding today. I started the laundry. Howard posted a picture of the Blank Label convention booth which clearly shows the yards of drape and tablecloth I sewed all day on Monday, and it looks good. It doesn’t just look good, it has garnered compliments which Howard passed on to me. All of that and I finally finished the first draft of a story that has been languishing for more than a year. I just need to tighten it up a little and then it will be ready for others to read it.

I’m feeling chipper enough that I might even go tackle those dishes.

Some days don’t seem like anything special. Today was one of those. It was just a midsummer day. The temperatures were lower because a nice thunderstorm blew through. I’m glad to be back below 100 degrees. The kids played pretty well all day long. There were squabbles, but nothing major. A few things do stick out.

This morning Gleek told me all about her wonderful dream where she had lots of magic wands. She used them to make rainbow shoes for me. Then she used another wand to make me a rainbow dress that was so shiny it made more rainbows. Then she made Yoshis for everyone in the family and she “dinged” them to life and we all rode around on Yoshis. It sounded like a truly wonderful dream and she was snuggly/happy while telling me about it.

I didn’t get much done today. I’m still trying to fight off the tendency to enter a holding pattern when Howard is out of town. I find myself spending too much time online as if somehow that will make me feel closer to him. Or at least to someone grown up. I need to get more sleep tonight rather than staying up past midnight because I don’t want to go to bed without him. Having Howard away probably does nothing to increase our risk of being victimized by crime, but I sure feel safer when he is here. Weird.

My sister in law came over today. She wanted to see the livejournal book I created using Lulu.com, because she has a project for which the same solution might work. She was really impressed with the book and really impressed with my intended project of creating a storybook of stories that my kids have written. After listening to my description of getting Patches to tell a story, she mentioned that she should probably do something similar for her three year old. I know why she hasn’t. The same reason it took me this long to do a project like this. She has a baby in her house. When I had a baby I never had time to sit down with a toddler and write what he said as he drew a picture. I’m so glad I can do it now. I’m really enjoying collecting the stories and I’m going to love surprising my kids with the books. I may even make the finished book part of Christmas, but I’m not sure.

One of my neighbors is moving away in a little more than a week. Her son has been Link’s best friend since before they can remember. It’s going to be hard on Link. It is going to be even harder on the boy who is moving away. It’s also going to be hard on me. These last few weeks I’ve spent lots of time visiting with this neighbor and I’ve learned lots of things about her that I’d simply never known. She has really been through alot in her life and has come out smiling. She’s a good friend and I want to keep in touch for my own sake as well as for the boys. I hope the new neighbors will be as nice.

A Door in the Woods by James Dashner is the first in a series of four young adult books. I’ll be honest, if I didn’t know James personally I probably would not have finished this book. It is written in the first person and contains many of the problems that irritate me about works written in first person. However as the series progresses, James’ work improves dramatically. By the end I’d stopped mentally editing and just enjoyed the story. It is definitely juvenile wish-fulfillment fiction, so I am not the target audience. Kiki is the target audience and she loved the whole series without reservation. She loved them so much that she checked them out of her school library even though we already had copies from the public library. She didn’t want to have to share copies with me. Getting to meet the author was icing on the cake for her. If you have a child aged 9-14 who enjoys fantasy, this is a series I definitely recommend.

On the Devil’s Payroll by David Fuller is a courtroom mystery/drama. Again it is a first work and it suffers from some editing issues and quirks. The characters seem to spend a lot of time drinking coffee which as a non coffee drinker has me wondering whether people really drink that much coffee or if the main character is caffeine addicted. The minor editing issues did not prevent me from enjoying the story or the characters. David Fuller was the first self published author I ever knew and his courage to follow his dream gave me an entirely new look at self publishing. Watching David’s journey through self publishing is part of what helped me to consider self publishing Schlock Mercenary. Go check out his book and if you’re interested, buy it from him directly. You save money and he gets more for his efforts.

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson is a fantasy that blew me away. I cannot believe that this book is Brandon’s first novel. It fully deserves the publishing contract and accolades that it has recieved. I picked it up because Howard sat next to Brandon at a book signing. He seemed like a nice person and the book intrigued me, so I got a copy from my local library. It was worth the two month wait to get my hands on it. I’m afraid this book was so enthralling that my children were mildly neglected until I finished reading it. I’m seriously considering re-reading it before returning it to the library and I’ve added it to my books-I-want-to-own list. You should go buy this book so that Brandon can continue to write full time and make more wonderful books for me to read.

The following is a collection of thoughts on communication. I was trying to sort out some interactions that I’d seen between other people. I’m curious to see if my collected thoughts make sense to anyone else or if I have some faulty premises. All statements and opinions are subject to change upon reciept of further information.

Every communication that we make with another person has a text and a subtext. The text is comprised of the words that are spoken and is in the control of the speaker. The subtext is created by the listener who is affected by body language, tone of voice, and past interactions. Text is where information is passed. Subtext is where relationships are formed and broken.

An example text with possible subtexts:

“Why would you want to do that?”
(Because you always make stupid decisions) created by a son who’s mother has been critical in the past.
(I think what you are doing is stupid.) created by a wife who secretly wonders if she is making the right choice.
(Because I’m curious about you and I want to understand) created by a friend who trusts the speaker.

A relationship will thrive when the subtexts are positive. A relationship is doomed when all of the subtexts are negative. If there is a mix, then the relationship will fluxuate depending upon the balance of negative subtexts to positive.

One solution to a problem with negative subtexting is to get those subtexts out into the open, turn them into texts where they can actually be discussed. That takes a lot of bravery and trust.

Unfortunately I cannot always take the time to turn subtexts into texts. Sometimes the relationship isn’t worth the effort. I don’t care if a grocery store clerk snips because she created a subtext I didn’t intend. Other times I would very much like to turn subtexts into texts, but the other person will not cooperate and merely creates new negative subtexts based on the attempts. In those cases all I can do is try to control my behaviors and the subtexts I create in response to the other person’s texts. Eventually, hopefully, the positive reactions from me will encourage the other person to create more positive subtexts for the things I say.

I can choose what kind of subtexting I want to attach to the statements of other people. Benefit of the doubt is a good thing to give.

This morning Gleek fixed her own cinnamonsugar toast. She was very proud of this accomplishment and announced it in a loud voice. Patches instantly cried “I want toast! I want to fix my toast!” and ran for the bread cupboard. He retrieved a slice of bread and placed it on the counter. I slid a plate underneath and then observed with amusment as he created a sculpted landscape out of soft butter. He then placed a cinnamonsugar mountain in the middle of his landscape and announced “I did it!” He then ate his creation with relish.

I’m hoping that I can take a page from Patches book and create something that I’m pleased with, that I can consume with relish. Only I don’t want toast, I just want a really good day. Yesterday was not such a good day.

I know some people who are embarassed by almost anything. I don’t get embarassed very often. I think it is because the root of embarassment is caring what other people think about you. Self evaluation has always mattered to me more than societal evaluation. There are always exceptions of course. Today held a shining example of a truly embarassing moment. Howard and I had brokered a deal with the Young Men’s activity group in our ward that we’d make a donation to their budget if they would come and dig eight post holes in our front yard. Our baby grape plants need structure to support them. The teenage boys and their two adult leaders arrived on schedule. I remained in the front yard to help out and give directions. I’d already layed out the posts where I needed the holes. Gleek and Patches were “helping” as well, mostly by drinking up all the lemonade. That’s the backdrop to this alarming display performed by yours truly.

I stomped on a shovel with my right foot to drive it into the dirt. The shovel twisted under my foot throwing me off balance. I stepped to the side to regain my balance, but instead of the ground, my right foot encountered one of the posts. The post tipped under my foot and threw me further off balance. My weight had already shifted to the right foot, so in order to remain upright I had to twist and bring my left foot across, causing me to pivot. I was halfway through the pivot when I realized that Patches was right where I needed to step. By this time everyone else realized that I was in some kind of trouble and I had their full attention. I could not miss Patches. I tried, but center of balance was a long gone memory. I collided with Patches causing his begged for lemonade to spill all over him. I managed not to land on him by taking a couple of staggering steps and rolling. During this last maneuver my carefully bound hair came completely loose. I ended up flat on my back 15 feet away from where I’d had a little shovel bobble.

There was a very long moment where everyone in the yard wondered what on earth had happened and wondered if I was injured. I sat up, saw the stares, and did what any mortally embarassed person would do. I hid. In this case I hid by hyper focusing on Patches who was sitting on the lawn crying and dripping with the remains of his beloved lemonade. By paying attention to Patches I didn’t have to actually look at any of the folks who witnessed my bizarre acrobatics. Once Patches was settled with a fresh cup of lemonade I went into the house to regain my composure and to tame my wild hair.

I suppose I could have stayed in the house and made Howard go out to finish the supervision, but this was my project. I was the one who knew how things needed to be done. Besides the best way to erase and embarassing moment is to confront it directly in the presence of the witnesses. If I stayed in the house those teenage boys might have found humor in telling tales of what that wierd Mrs. Tayler did for no apparent reason. Instead I went out and made a story of it, describing it in much the same ways that I did above. At least this way if they tell the story, it will be my story and I can laugh with them about. But I don’t think they’ll bother to tell it now because instead of a bizarre event, it is now just one of those bobbles that happen to us all.

Anyway, I now have posts in the ground and once I get the cross pieces installed, my grapes will have a place to grow.

Today my kids all had money burning holes in their pockets. Barnes & Noble lured us in to the store with a summer reading program and we departed with four purchases. It concerns me a little that my kids all seemed to feel that it was constitutionally wrong to walk out of the store without spending money. It makes me very very glad that they’re all so willing to pool their money to make sure everyone got what they wanted. In all it was a good outing although I could have done with fewer toys in the bookstore and some lower prices.