Sandra Tayler

Four days to Christmas and school is out. The kids arrived home from school with enough candy to feed all the starving children in Africa. I was too tired to play sugar police and so they ate it all afternoon yesterday. Of course they were all so full of candy that none of them wanted to eat dinner. This morning I slept in and before I managed to make breakfast, they’d already dug into the remains of the stash. The result was a pile of untouched pancakes that sat on the table for hours before I cleared it away.

Fortunately the weather was beautiful today so I was able to shoo the children out into the backyard to run off their sugar buzzes. I was even able to sneak a nap on the couch while they were out. I’m still over tired from staying up too late every night for nearly two weeks. Howard and I binged on CSI every night almost as badly as the kids binged on their candy. But now the CSI is all finished and the candy is all consumed.

In theory this means a return to normality. Only we’re entering the anticipatory can’t-sleep phase of the Christmas season. Tomorrow, Friday, & Saturday all have events scheduled and Sunday is Christmas. I need to make sure everyone gets to bed on time tonight.

4 days to Christmas and I’m feeling pretty blah about the whole holiday thing. I didn’t do any shopping this year. Or rather I did it all last spring & summer when no one else was even thinking about Christmas yet. And even if they were thinking about Christmas, I don’t think that garage sales are really big on the holiday decorating thing. Christmas is supposed to be about gift giving in honor of the greatest of all gifts, but somehow it ended up being all about shopping. Since I’ve skipped out on shopping I’ve somehow also missed out on the anticipatory frenzy that enlivens this time of year.

Anticipation seems to be part of the glow of this season. As the mom I’m usually in on all the secrets. I helped wrap all those gifts under the tree, so I know what is in them all. It is entirely possible to have great anticipation about giving a gift you know will delight. I felt that way about the yummy expensive cheese that a schlocker conspired with me to get for Howard. But I was so excited about it that I gave it to him early. I claimed this was because I wanted it to stay fresh, but mostly it was because I knew he’d love it and I couldn’t wait to give it to him. In retrospect that may not have been wise because now I have nothing that I really look forward to giving. I guess I’ve been thinking about Christmas for so long that everything I’ve squirrelled way seems old and tired to me.

Hopefully this will turn around before Sunday. I actually rather expect it to, but this is in my head today.

Howard and I have had more than a dozen christmases in which to give each other gifts. Mostly the gifts were ordinary. They were things we were glad to have, but don’t really remember years later. A few gifts do stand out. One year Howard gave me a sewing machine and a serger and two tables for them out of a Christmas bonus that was much larger than he’d fessed up to. Another year Howard was drooling over a sword in a catalog without knowing that it was sitting under the christmas tree three feet away from him. I’d ordered it and managed to keep it secret.

I’m usually pretty good at knowing what Howard would like. I’m also pretty good at managing to get it under the tree without him suspecting. This year I know Howard’s heart’s desire exactly. Unfortunately it isn’t something I can wrap. Howard wants cartooning to pay enough money so that we can keep this lifestyle we’ve grown to love. That is the gift I wish I could give.

Movies, games, clothes, are all trinkets. None of that could compare with knowing that a year from now we’ll have started putting money back into savings instead of constantly pulling it out. If we continue pulling money out of savings at our current rate then it will all be gone before next Christmas. Sometimes I contemplate this and I am afraid, not that we’ll starve or lose the house, because Howard would give up cartooning before allowing that to happen, but that we’ll have to give up Howard working here at home doing work that he loves.

When I feel this fear I have to sit back and contemplate the events of the past 18 months. At the time Howard left Novell, we only had enough savings to carry us through 3 months. We knew that before he quit and we prayed and felt very sure that quitting was the right decision for our family. We stepped out in faith and through (non repeatable) circumstances that we could not have forseen we found ourselves a year later with 12 months of savings. I can only hope that next Christmas I’ll be able to look back and see yet another set of miracles. This last year of Howard being a cartoonist has been a gift. It seems greedy to want another gift just like it, but I do.

I watch Howard tweaking the advertising on the site trying to make more money come out. I watch him work, and stress, and be depressed. I wish I could give to him the assurance that it will all be alright. I do feel that it will be alright. Somehow despite everything I’m convinced that cartooning is still the best choice for our family. And somehow I believe that we will get that miracle that will let us continue. I just wish I could see how. And I wish I could wrap it and put it under the tree for him. That is the only gift I can think of that would make him as happy as he makes me every day just by being here.

I’m home now. Tired-beyond-crankiness Patches has been put to bed. Tired-to-hyperactivity Gleek has also been put to bed. Link & Kiki are still up because they’re being quiet and I’m not ready to fight another round of “Do I have to go to bed now? I’m hungry! I’m thirsty! Fill my waterbottle! Where’s my blanket? I want a story! The dark spots are scary!” So I am hiding here in my office hoping that journaling will grant me the fortitude to finish my parental duties for the evening.

Tonight was the Relief Society Christmas dinner. I was not in charge, I was a worker bee. For most of the evening I got to sit at a table with my two neighbors who are moving, and visit while eating a yummy dinner. That was really nice, I’m going to miss these neighbors. I hope the new ones will be as nice. The working part of the evening was setting up and arranging the Sharing Table. This is a table where women from the ward bring stuff they want to get rid of, and other women take what they want. It is like a yard sale where everything is free. At the end of the evening I scoop up everything is left and donate it to a local thrift store. Usually one table is sufficient. Tonight we needed three. They were fully loaded and then half emptied. The back end of my van is full of stuff. Helping set all the stuff out and then loading it all up at the end of the night represents about an hour’s work for me. But it is hauling and lifting work. I’m happy to donate that work because I love the fact that we’re able to share with others. More than once I have found a much needed item on the sharing table. In fact 90% of Patches wardrobe came from the sharing table.

My children run rampant while I’m setting up and taking down the tables. They can always sense when I’m too busy to make them behave themselves. Mostly they go up on the stage, turn on the multi-color spotlights and make rainbow shadows. Sometimes they run through the halls screaming at the top of thier lungs. Often they jump off of things. Sometimes they come and inspect the sharing table where they invariably find a treasure that they simply can’t live without. Sometimes they rescue items I placed on the table hoping it would go home with someone else. Tonight nothing was rescued, but Kiki came home with a large wicker basket and a clock. Gleek came home with a My Little Pony bank and a matching cup. Link acqured three chalk eggs which supposedly have rubber bugs inside them. Patches didn’t aquire anything, but threw several tantrums for which I was able to discern no cause other than him being over tired and over stimulated. Being in a childcare room with 25 other kids can be a bit much after awhile especially when you’ve skipped your nap.

I skipped my nap too. I don’t usually need naps. But for the past 3 nights I’ve been staying up for hours past my bedtime because Chalain & Chaliren loaned us CSI season 5. Howard and I know we should go to bed, but instead we talk each other into “just one more.” I intended to nap today, but the nap in the morning during NotMyBaby’s nap wasn’t long enough, and the afternoon failed to provide a good opportunity. I could fall asleep right now, but Howard will be home soon and there are still disks of CSI waiting.

Of course I can’t watch any CSI until after all the kids are in bed. I may be morbidy fascinated by the exploration of human depravity which CSI provides, but my kids would be terrified and nightmarified. This brings me back to where I began this post, enjoying the quiet and pretending that I don’t have two more kids to put to bed. Maybe they’ll be kind and co-operative. Not likely, but I can always dream.

Friday after school Kiki came to the car grinning from ear to ear. She was very carefully carrying a little yogurt container with a snap on lid. There were holes punched in the lid. Since I was pretty sure that yogurt had no need for oxygen I asked “What’s in the can?” Kiki’s grin got wider
“My mealworm!” I suddenly vaguely remembered her chattering about the mealworms that I had assumed were to be an in-class project. No, the mealworm was to be an at home project. Kiki was bringing crawly bugs home in a little jar and was ecstatic about it. “Want to see mom?” Not really, but I dutifully peeked into the opened container. Sitting on top of a layer of oatmeal was a two inch long mealworm. As I pondered the large size of this crawly critter, the oatmeal underneath it began to move. Kiki had brought home mealworms, not just a single worm, but three. This is probably wisdom on the part of the teacher who knows that small critters are apt to die in the care of a child.

I handed the cup back to Kiki who replaced the lid. I figured I could deal with a little science project for a week or so. “So how long do you have the worms for?”
“Oh, until they turn into beetles.” Beetles. Worms are small and slow, beetles…scurry. Mealworms eat oatmeal, but what do beetles eat? And what kind of beetles will they be? These thoughts whized through my head as I calmly asked
“And how long does it take them to turn into beetles?”
“Oh, a week or two I think. I have to keep them at home until January 3. Then I take them back. I have a paper on mealworm care.” A month. She has mealworms as pets for a month. The paper on mealworm care also had the outlines of her assginment. She is to care for these mealworms until Jan 3. Every day she is to get them out and take notes on them. She is to try to teach them how to go quickly through a maze for food and record her observations.

Kiki loves this assignment. She loves her mealworms. She’s already given them all names. (Lazy, Sleepy, & Workout) She even constructed a playground out of construction paper. The playground is elaborate, it includes a maze, a pipe-cleaner jungle gym, and a tunnel. She plans to let her mealworms out to play every day.

I know that mealworms are harmless. I know that if these mealworms escape the worst thing that will happen will be that they crawl into some odd corner to die. But I grew up in California where finding mealworms meant that it was time to throw out the flour, or oatmeal, or breakfast cereal. I have memories of pouring myself a bowl of cereal only to discover crawly things in it. I’m not afraid of Kiki’s mealworms I actually find them morbidly fascinating, but they’re bugs. In my house. On purpose. That just feels wrong somehow. Hopefully this experiment will go well.

Last night was our ward christmas party. Last year the ward party was all about Santa, and the Polar Express I wrote about it (http://www.livejournal.com/users/sandratayler/48105.html) and my frustrations with it. Last year I went to a church function where Christ was absent. This year it was Santa who was not invited. Yay! I’m so glad. He wasn’t even in a back room, he wasn’t there at all.

The event began with a mad scramble to provide costumes. I dressed Kiki, Link, & Gleek in tan shirts belonging to Howard and I. On the kids they made good tunics. Then I raided my store of fabric for sashes, headbands, and shepherd style headdresses. Kiki liked her outfit and decided that she was a shepherdess with powers. Patches watched the proceedings and declared that he wanted to wear his Link Costume. He even located his sword. Fortunately before I had to argue about not being a green elf, he decided to go with the theme of the evening. I took pictures of them all together. They were adorable, except they kept adopting fighting poses. Oh well.

Once we arrived at the church, the festivities began in our chapel where a man who has deeply and intricately studied Jewish culture gave a little presentation about Jewish beliefs. His point was that Jesus Christ was Jewish, his customs were Jewish and understanding Jewish beliefs can only help us understand Christ better. I’m afraid I can’t remember or correctly spell all of the things which he showed to us. I wish I could because I have no desire at all to be disrespectful to any people so dedicated to their beliefs. He showed us the caps and prayer shawls and explained their reasons. He showed, but did not wear because it would be disrespectful, the scriptures which are placed in the palm of the hand and on the forehead. He had torah scrolls, a menorah, a mezzuzah, and a shofar. He even blew the shofar (a horn made out of a ram’s horn) at the end of his presentation. I think that is the loudest sound I have ever heard in our chapel even including that one time that Gleek screamed. Hearing the shofar and picturing an army of them marching and blowing I can suddenly visualize the walls of Jericho falling down from sheer sonic resonance.

Then we walked through the back of the Chapel where we paid our “taxes” (A can of food for the Utah Food Bank), and into the Gym which had been decorated as the Bethlehem market place. We sat on a blanket on the floor and went to various stalls to purchase food with the play money that had been provided. Patches wasn’t used to this method of eating dinner. He’s been to buffets at the church before and is used to each person filling thier plate with as much as they want. He was a little frustrated to hand over a coin, bring back a plate and then have to divvy up the spoils. Fortunately there was enough to go around. Especially when he managed to snag extra cookies. He spent most of the evening hanging out with me. The older kids snarfed their food and ran off to play, but Patches sat with me. We talked about cookies and meat and sharing. He’s my sweet little buddy, it was fun.

Gleek was highly excited by the whole proceeding. She had a hard time settling down in the chapel. I fully expected to have to haul her out for irreverance since she was walking on benches, climbing over benches, and jumping on benches. But once the presentation started she sat perfectly still and listened to the whole thing. I was very impressed. Well, she wasn’t perfectly still. Her legs went kicketykicketykicketykicketykicketykick the whole time. If I’d taken a picture of her, no matter how quick the shutter speed those legs would still have showed up blurred in the picture. When the whole crowd began filing through the tax line, Gleek wiggled her way through the preschool size holes in the legs and got past the tax man without paying a thing. She then spent the next 30 minutes running full speed in circles around the periphery of the gym. Since she was careful not to run into people, and I was too tired to make her stop, I just let her run for awhile. Eventually she slowed down enough to eat, listen to stories, and play the dreidle game that was provided.

Link & Kiki became good helpers. I ended up giving them money to go and buy the goods we needed to feed our family. They loved it. The novelty of dividing food and eating it on the floor was sufficient that I didn’t have to argue with any of the kids about eating. After they ate Kiki & Link both disappeared into the crowd. This didn’t bother me at all because I knew pretty much everyone in the crowd, the crowd wasn’t all that big, and I knew they wouldn’t leave the building. I caught sight of them periodically during the evening. Once I saw Link and a group of other boys in bathrobes all laying on the floor playing with their dreidles. It was good to see him playing with peers. Once Kiki came up to me and showed me that she’d aquired a handful of the play money. She’d been standing innocently near the cookie booth and some people assumed that she was the cookie seller and started handing her their coins. Since this was after the point in the evening when it was obvious there would be extra food, all the food had become free and the sellers had gone to go be with their families. Kiki got to keep her coins, in fact all the kids acquired coins once they were told that they could take them home. Link and Gleek did so by grabbing handfuls of bags off of the tax collector’s tables.

The program for the evening was a reading of Luke 2 while ward members played the parts of Mary, Joseph, shepherds, etc. It was kind of neat to be sitting there in the marketplace while they walked through. Did I mention there was a “well” in the middle where people got water? The set up was amazing. The kids were good, we learned some things, fun was had, and I came home feeling spiritually full instead of empty. This was a good christmas party.

The following are some news items which may be of interest, but somehow I haven’t gotten around to writing about:

1. Kiki’s hamster escaped last week. The hamster was probably loose for two days before we even noticed. This demonstrates the level of care and attention said hamster was recieving lately. We’ve set out food to try to entice the hamster to locations where we can recapture it. But all the food has gone untouched. There have also been no other signs of hamsterly habitation. No droppings, no chew marks, no scritching noises. At this point I consider the hamster gone for good. We won’t be replacing the hamster anytime soon. The kids liked the hamster, but they really don’t seem to miss her very much. The hamster simply wasn’t much a part of our daily lives.

2. A couple months ago I submitted a short story to Intergalactic Magic Show. It was rejected this past week. I find that I’m not upset about the rejection. I simply don’t have any emotional energy to spare for caring about writing right now. All my creative time is being spent finishing up christmas gifts.

3. Kiki is learning to sew using my sewing machine. Suddenly I know how I am going to feel when I turn over a car to one of my kids. Here is this expensive machine that I use all the time and really enjoy and I’m letting a child use it. I know a car will be worse, but letting Kiki sew without standing over her shoulder is really hard. On the other hand the only way she’ll learn how to sew is by doing it. She’s interested and wants to learn. I need to not hold her back because I want to defend my sewing machine from my child.

4. We had our first big snowfall yesterday. It absorbed most of my day one way or another. My morning outing with Patches to the library took longer. Then we walked to pick Gleek up from Preschool. That was fun tromping through all the fresh snow. Patches and I carried umbrellas and had a very serious conversation about boots and umbrellas and the fact that snow is white and cold. Unfortunately the walk was a little longer than Patches tolerance for cold, so I ended up carrying him most of the way home and then snuggling him on the couch to help him warm up. His poor little hands were like ice. Later there was driveway shovelling and slow careful trips to pick up Link and Kiki from school. The snow is all still there, only now it is sunny and colder. Lots of cold today.

5. Christmas preparations are coming along nicely. I have a few home made christmas presents that I’m working to finish up. Most of the work is going into three stuffed dragons that I’m making for my three younger kids. Kiki already got one for her birthday. They are close to finished, but I definitely have to put in some work on them regularly to avoid a last minute up-all-night marathon sewing session. The tree is up, christmas candles fill the house with nice smells, and Howard keeps playing the Grinch song at full volume. tis the season.

6. NotMyBaby went on a trip with his parents this week. It was nice for me to have a break, but I’ve noticed that the house hasn’t been as clean. Knowing that I’ve got NMB coming pushes me to do dishes, sweep floors, and pick up toys so that things look nice when his mom drops him off. It isn’t that I suspect her of judging my housekeeping skills, but if my house is always a disaster and I look unkempt it would be very natural for her to start wondering about the quality of childcare her son is recieving. There is also a safety factor. We have lots of little toys that we don’t want NMB putting in his mouth, so those have to be picked up before I can turn him loose.

7. That’s it. I’m done with news for now. I’ve got to go and get some housework done.