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Other People’s Choices

By / November 5, 2014

Years ago I judged my neighbor for decisions I saw her making about her teenagers. It was a very light judgment that I only held in the back of my mind. She never knew about it. It never affected our friendship. I even supported her and aided her. Yet I thought to myself, “I won’t do that.”

This week I find myself making some very similar parenting decisions to the ones I saw her make. I finally understand the troubles which drove her to those decisions. All those years ago, I couldn’t see the troubles, just the decisions that resulted from them. Today I am surrounded by stresses and I have a child who is nearing an adulthood that he’s not yet ready for. Every day I make decisions and I am conscious of how those choices may look to people who aren’t mired in my context. Somewhere out there, someone is judging me. I’m not angry with them for not understanding.(As long as they don’t try to impose their imperfect comprehension on my actions.) I actually hope that they never understand this because having a depressed teenager is not something I wish on anyone.

My neighbor moved away years ago, only a year or two after my judgement of her. I have her number, but to call and apologize would be pointless. What I must do instead is train my thoughts to think more kindly when someone else makes a decision that I don’t understand. They’re probably driven to it by problems that I can’t see.

I’m Excited for the 2015 Out of Excuses Workshop and Retreat

By / October 16, 2014 / 1 Comment

Being writer has a specific set of joys and challenges. One of the biggest challenges is finding out how writing can fit with all the other things in life. I’m quite familiar with this, as my writing is often victim to parental priorities. I know I’m prioritizing correctly, or at least sometimes I do. Other times I feel a strange dual guilt that I’m insufficiently devoted to writing because of the other things in my life and that I’m neglecting everything else because of the writing I do. It is a Gordian Knot; a tangle that seems to have no solution. I’ve come at it a dozen different ways and I’ve tried to share those with others in various presentations and private conversations over the years. I’m thrilled to announce that I’m going to get to do so again. This time I’ll be teaching at a venue that is perfectly selected to both ease, and bring to the fore, the challenges of blending a creative life with a family life.

I’ve been asked to teach at the 2015 Out of Excuses Workshop and Retreat put on by the Writing Excuses podcast team. I’ll be talking to writers and their families about ways they can survive and support the act of creation. The venue for my presentation will be Independence of the Seas, a cruise ship which makes stops around the Caribbean. Why is a cruise ship an ideal venue for this discussion? It is the only workshop I know that actively encourages attendees to bring their families along for the event. This is because cruise ships are designed to house and entertain diverse groups of people. There is childcare and child activities available right there on the boat. The ship is huge with plenty of room for everyone. There will also be attendee-only workshop classes and writing time, spaces that are child-free. This means that it will be a glorious mix of learning, focused creative time, and splendid distractions. It will be a microcosm of how demands for attention must be balanced in regular life. We’ll get to talk about all of that. We’ll have daily examples of how children impact creative work and how the needs of significant others must be weighed against creative time. Then we’ll have opposing examples of how those kids, families, and significant others also make sacrifices to allow for creation. I’m really excited to meet these fellow journeyers, these people who will be with me on the ship, but who are also traveling similar life paths.

I’ve never been on a cruise before. I’m kind of nervous about it. I’ve never thought of myself as a cruise-taking person. Yet the more I’ve heard Mary, Brandon, Dan, and Howard talk about this workshop, the more excited I become for it. For the exact same cost per attendee, this cruise will offer much more than the retreats they’ve been doing at Woodthrush Woods. It will offer more than a hotel offers for small conventions. Instead of having to say “Attendees only” they can say “Sure, bring your kids, bring your boyfriend, bring your mom.” I love that, because the one thing that is most likely to make me skip a professional writing event is if it causes a problem for my family life. The event is still a long way off, not until next September, but I’m already excited to get there. Hopefully some of you can be there too.

Longing for Calmness

By / September 24, 2014

In a few days Howard will depart for the Writing Excuses retreat in Chattanooga Tennessee. I am not going this year. This is a fact that I would have expected to make me feel sad, but right now I’m in the part of the school year where I want everything to hold still and fall into a recognizable pattern for two weeks in a row. We do have the school start and end times as a pattern, but so many other things are in flux. We had Salt Lake Comic Con. Then we had sickness, which led to school absences, which led to make up work. We had the elementary orchestra start up and first it was on Wednesday morning, but then it moved to Friday morning, and there was a mandatory meeting which was only attended by about one fourth of the parents with kids in orchestra. Then it was mid-terms with accompanying parent teacher conferences. And of course there is the eagle project which was mixed in with everything else. So right now I’m very glad that I will spend next week at home instead of adding further disruption.

My tune will likely change when I see tweets and pictures from the retreat. It is in a place I love with people I love to be around. I’ve been seriously short on socializing with friends and so I’ll be sad to miss that part. I know I will because of late I’ve felt quite covetous of social media posts depicting gatherings of writers. I’ll get another turn to go to this sort of event. In the meantime, I’ll hope that next week is unremarkable and calm.

Salt Lake Comic Con 2014

By / September 8, 2014 / 5 Comments

Salt Lake Comic Con is so big that it is impossible to write a single summary which encompasses all of what happens during the three days. (Four if you count the set-up day.) I have friends who were miserable throughout the event and other friends who had a fantastic time. Some of the miserable people were made that way by decisions that were beyond their control. Some of the happy people experienced serendipity that was likewise out of their control. In many ways planning to exhibit at an event this size is like planning an outdoor event. You prepare all you can, but you have to deal with the on-site weather once you arrive.

This is how I plan ahead to figure out what to bring.

I make little papers to represent tables and furniture. Then I slide them around until I’m happy with the configuration. Once I’m at the booth it is just a matter of putting the tables where I pictured them.


Every show we have something that sells better than expected and something that doesn’t move at all. This year the run away seller was the Shadows Beneath anthology. Halfway through the show we had to go and get more from the Dragonsteel folks. The other delightful surprise was how well our booth-mate’s books sold. Brian McClellan shared our space and he sold out of books on Saturday morning.

Here I am with Brian. Howard had stepped out for a minute.

On Thursday Howard was able to get some work done in the quiet hours before the crowds arrived.

For the vast majority of the event traffic near our booth moved smoothly. Things did get pretty crowded mid-day on Saturday.
This was taken from our booth space.

This was taken from the green room looking over the wing where our booth was located. (Ours is far out there in the distance.)

Also taken from the green room, looking across the other wing where the celebrity signings were located.

As is usual for Howard and I, our favorite parts were when we get to participate in interesting conversations. Sometimes those happened in small groups at our booth, other times they were when we participated in panels. I was particularly happy that there was a Writing Excuses panel where they didn’t have to record, they just got to talk. Mary was much missed in the conversation.

I was very fortunate in my co-panelists. They were all interested in sharing good information and making sure everyone got a chance to talk. This is not always the case. The only challenges with my panels were things outside the panelists’ control. They were the “weather” we had to manage. In one a loud speaker next door was booming through our wall. In another we were next to a zombie apocalypse live action roleplay, so we were treated to periodic screaming.

But the super mega challenge was the one where the fire alarm went off. I was moderating and it took me a moment to realize what was happening. Lights along the wall started flashing and a polite voice said “An emergency has been identified in this building. Please cease operations and exit the building.” Within a minute we determined that, no there was not really an emergency, we could stay. (Some child pulled the fire alarm.) Yet the emergency message repeated over and over for the next five minutes as we tried to talk intelligently in spite of it. I think we succeeded and the panel managed to be beneficial anyway.

Really that is the miracle of an event like this. Hundreds of thousands of people gather. They get in each other’s way. They cause problems that others have to solve. But then there are the people who move through the event making it easier on others. People band together to rescue each other; whether it is loaning tape, finding a child, or making a joke to cover fire alarm confusion. The building was full of heroes and many of them were not wearing costumes.

Naturally the costumes were fun.

So much attention and effort goes in to creating them. I’m happy that the creators have a place to come where their work can be appreciated.

This one made my kids very happy.

The final hours of the convention were very busy for me. At 4:30 I had to move my car to where I could easily load it once the show was done. Then I had back-to-back panels (including the fire alarm one). Then it was time to dash back to the dealer’s hall and tear down the booth. Many people stopped by to see if we needed help. There was kindness everywhere at this event. For the most part Brian and I had it handled. The hardest part was me remembering what came next through my fog of tired brain. It was less than an hour before the booth was packed and loaded into my car.

As we walked back to the convention hall for a final check to make sure nothing was forgotten. I saw a crew loading the Tardis onto a truck.

The workmen have the police box…

And the show is done. All that creative energy has scattered into hiding until there is another event to bring it together again.

Moments that Make the Convention Worthwhile

By / September 7, 2014 / 2 Comments

I was the panel moderator and it was the last minutes when everyone was sharing a last thought with the audience. It came to be my turn and I began to talk. I had a plan for what I wanted to say, but by the second sentence I could tell my words were deviating from my intended course. Yet that third sentence was so obviously right, so necessary that I just followed along with the words to see where they were going. I’ve had such moments before, when I’m given the words that I should say. This was one of those moments. The panel was about structuring life to support creativity and this is approximately what I said:

“It is hard to make space in our lives for creative things. Sometimes it is hard to believe that our creative things deserve any space. Yet the act of creation is powerful and important, even if what we create only ever has an audience of one. Even if the only one changed by it is the creator. This is how the world becomes a better place, one transformation at a time. That’s not what I meant to say when I started talking, so perhaps someone here needed to hear it.”

As I left two different people paused and said they thought it was for them. I know it was also for me, because of late I’ve had a hard time believing that my creative things deserve space.

Moments like that one are why this experience of Salt Lake Comic Con is so different. We came home tired and happy rather than drained and depressed, which is a big improvement over FanX last spring and SLCC last fall. We had a better location, a better network of support with other professionals near us, enjoyable panel schedules for both Howard and me, and we brought our kids with us. That last was something I’ve not done before. I usually try to keep the parenting spaces and the business spaces separate because trying to do both broke my brain. Except the kids are bigger now. They came and they helped work the booth. Patch was excellent at it. He loved telling customers about Schlock, taking credit cards, and interacting with people. Gleek liked those things, but she was far more interested in shopping and in negotiating with me for the most possible things she could buy. However once she had her shiny new things, she settled down. Both kids were really good at running errands and trying to be supportive. Patch stayed for a whole day. When Gleek was offered a ride home with a neighbor, she took it. Link opted out of the whole thing, because he knows his limitations with crowds and this event was likely to make him miserable. Kiki was at college and spent Saturday hiking with a group of college friends.

I leave the convention with a list of what to prepare for the FanX event next spring. I also have a list of all the things that fell behind while I was focused elsewhere. Tomorrow I need to hit the ground running and head out into a new work week.

Unwinding the Stress

By / July 25, 2014

I came out of the theater happy even though I wasn’t certain I’d enjoyed the movie. The summer air was warm even at 1am and the world had that quiet feeling it gets when most of the people in the city have already gone to bed. We weren’t alone at that late night showing, but people dispersed quickly afterward. I felt light and free. The movie (Lucy) wasn’t my favorite, but it had many things to discuss, praise, and rant about, which made it a great movie for Howard and I. We love to dissect movies after we’ve seen them. Howard held my hand as we walked to the car. We’ve been married twenty years. We share four kids, a household, and a business. We slip into business conversations without even thinking about it. Yet sometimes we can shed all of that and just be Howard and Sandra. I wanted to stay out in the summer air and just twirl around in that freedom.

Instead I got to dash back to the theater because I’d felt so free that I’d forgotten to pick up my purse when exiting. I got it back without trouble. Even the dash back to the theater felt exhilarating, not worrisome. It was exactly what I needed after a day which had been filled with flashes of random stress and anxiety. We didn’t linger, we went home and to bed like responsible adults who like their jobs and know they get to do them again in the morning. I suppose in my case it helped that my job for the morning was to take the kids to the water park.

Public places like water parks can be highly stressful. For most of my parenting years they were exactly that. Then the kids got older and we became familiar enough with the park that the whole experience was more predictable. I’ve often heard it said that humans seek out novel experiences. Our family does too, but we like the new things to be structured around predictable things. If I have too many variables to track, then I experience stress rather than relaxation. There are times when the stress of new experiences is good. What I wanted and needed was to extend the relaxation which began with the late night movie. So I swam with the kids and felt the sun dry me off. I got just a little bit sunburned in the places that I missed with the sunscreen. We came home ready for a slow afternoon.

I still had things to do, of course. I’d earned a slower day by working frantically earlier in the week, but there were some things that needed to be complete before the weekend. Those things fit into the afternoon between the water park and the church picnic.

Tables were set up in a cul de sac. Some of the men had pulled out their grills and were cooking hamburgers. The members of the congregation had brought their chairs and were mingling around the tables of food and across the lawns. I thought that I probably ought to be reaching out and reconnecting to the many people that I care about who were present. Instead I found myself a quiet spot where I could watch. I wanted to be there, but I had low social energy. I caught up with some friends who came to sit with me. I was glad of that. I also loved watching the multi-generational crowd as they ate and played with the dunk tank set up in front of one of the houses. I’ve lived in this neighborhood long enough to watch some kids grow up and have kids of their own. I loved that I could be part of it, even when I mostly sat and watched.

I walked home in the cooler air of the evening. Our back lawn was soft under my feet. I paused a moment to survey the spot where our deck used to be. I like it better without the deck there. It feels more open. I’ll like it even better when the space is something lovelier than a patch of dirt. Yet it is nice to have a project that can wait until later, when we’re not in high summer. We’ve only a few more weeks of hot summer left.

I’ve been watching the end of July come closer. As soon as we hit August, we’re in the last slide toward the school year. I’ll have to pull out the letters from the school and figure out what they hoped I’d do with the kids over the summer. We’ll have only bare reading logs when the first day of school arrived. The kid read plenty over the summer, but I excused them and myself from tracking or measuring any of it. Today I managed to do the same for myself and it was good.

Deck Demolition the Final Chapter

By / July 14, 2014 / 6 Comments

When we were tearing apart the deck on Saturday, parts of the process made noise. (Hitting a crowbar with a sledge hammer does that.) Several interested neighbors came by to see what the project was. One did even more than that. He asked how we planned to haul away the wreckage. When we confessed that we hadn’t figured that part out, he said “I have a truck you can borrow.” We said we’d probably take him up on it, but the day ended and we hadn’t yet gotten to the point where we were ready to haul.

For us Sunday is a day of rest, so we looked at the mess remaining, but we did no work. At church our neighbor came up and asked again if we needed help hauling. This time he offered not only his truck, but his scout troop to help with the hauling. I’m no idiot. We said “Yes. Thank you.”

I made sure I was outside working before the crew was due to arrive. I wanted to get the last bits off of the house before they arrived because I wanted to be sure that we did as little damage to the siding as possible. While I’m certain that teenage boys would be happy to wield the crowbar, I wasn’t so sure how carefully they’d approach the task. I’d barely stepped outside when I noticed something interesting. The sprinklers had run during the night and our work site now had a wet canal running through it.

More specifically, there had been a slight divot in the ground underneath a major support beam. Overflow from the sprinklers had run into it until there was standing water. You can see the water more clearly after we’d cleared away the debris. That metal bracket in the foreground of the picture is what held the support beam in place.

That water would have showed up three days per week during six months of the year. It soaked a support beam causing it to swell and contract. It made the air under the deck wet and fed all the fungus. I don’t think the canal was there when the deck was built. It was a thing that formed over years as ground shifted and run off patterns changed.

It took three trips to the dump to get everything hauled away. While some boys were helping with hauling, we handed shovels to other boys and had them start digging out the cement footings. Those metal brackets were sunk in cement.

They were big and heavy. But we needed them out before we can use this ground for anything else. One was particularly interesting as they poured the footing right between a concrete pad and a sprinkler pipe. When I first discovered the pipe, I worried that they had poured the concrete around it, but fortunately that was not the case.

There were no further exciting flora or fauna discoveries. I’m fine with that. Though we did manage to unearth the dryer vent.


We’ll need to clean it off and put a vent cover on it so that rain and snow don’t get inside. We also found out that Doritos bags can last a very long time.

The boys of the scout troop were great. They worked hard and didn’t complain, not even when they had to help lift concrete into the back of the truck. I offered to pay money into the troop fund, but my neighbor said that the troop needed the service hours. So we fed the boys donuts and Gatorade. The ground is cleared, ready for whatever comes next. I really didn’t expect the job to go this quickly. I’m feeling very grateful for good neighbors and good young men who are willing to donate their time and effort on short notice.

Howard thinks we should throw down grass seed and just add the space to our lawn. I haven’t quite given up on the idea of a patio. Either way, it is a project for a different week and probably cooler weather.

The Mother at the Pool

By / April 10, 2014 / 1 Comment

The other mother at the pool reclines in her bathing suit. She reads a magazine, often looking up to engage with her children in the pool. Other times there have been more people, today it is just me and her with four children in the water. I sit in the shade, fully clothed. My laptop is open and I type. I don’t don’t know if she is judging me for the choices I display. It hardly matters. My imagination supplies judgement for her, giving her a critical voice. I am obviously a workaholic who can not leave her computer at home. Or I am the disengaged mother, more interested in updating facebook than spending time with my kids. She has no way to see that I am a writer. I’m stealing this time to craft stories, because all writing time is stolen from something else. Each moment I am aware of what I neglect.

Along with the guilt for not treasuring each splashing moment with my children is the litany of how I should write differently. If I write fiction, I’m aware of the blog post that did not happen. If I blog then some part of me mourns the fiction time. Then there is the incessant knowledge that I ought to write more letters to my Grandmother, my daughter at college, my parents, siblings, friends. My head is so noisy with self-judgements, it is a wonder that I can find words at all.

That tanned mother on her lounge chair with her magazine likely has no thoughts about me, other than to tell herself what I think of her. So young mother across the pool, enjoy your quiet hour, because motherhood does not often supply hours when the kids are happy and need nothing. They can entertain each other for a time, my kids and yours, while you read words and I create them.

Women’s Support Group Meeting

By / February 20, 2014 / 2 Comments

A sign on the table in the middle of the meeting circle admonished us all that the words spoken there were not to be shared elsewhere. I will honor that, because it is a vitally important part of what makes those meetings safe. But what I felt during the meeting is mine to tell.

I walked into the wrong room first, before I discovered the right one down a hall. I’d nearly not come. I’d nearly gone home because I made a wrong turn trying to find it. I found the wrong classroom. Then I walked into a meeting where I hoped to be anonymous and immediately recognized someone other than the friend who had invited me. It was a women’s support group meeting focused on many issues, including perfectionism and anxiety. I went because my friend felt inspired to invite me and then the thought would not leave me. Go to the meeting. So I went, even though I felt awkward and out of step with these other women who already knew the format. It was a meeting patterned after addiction recovery meetings. There are aspects of that pattern which felt strange to me.

I began to cry almost the minute I walked into the room. I can’t quite say why, except that I knew this was a very good place, a place of healing. I was there because my Father in Heaven knew how much I’ve been struggling with weighty emotional matters in the last year. He knew I needed to be healed. He knew that six weeks of sickness had buried my spiritual senses under a layer of depression which had congealed. He sent my friend to me and then sent me to that meeting in order to crack through that layer. It was scraped away and I came home able to see my beloved family members clearly. I was more peaceful than I have been in a long time.

I can’t say why the meeting had that effect on me. It happened separate from the words that were spoken, none of which I can really remember now. But I could see when the words of one woman describing her experiences healed or helped another woman. I don’t know that I’ll make attending support meetings a regular part of my life. I do know that I really needed that one on that day. I also know that I needed to bring home the manual they offered and that I needed to write about the experience, because there may be someone else who needs this sort of support and they need to know where to go.

The group meets on Wednesday nights at 7:30 in the Mountain View high school seminary building just west of campus. All women are welcome.

I came home with peace of heart and some direct inspirations about how my hours need to be arranged in the next weeks. I feel so much lighter.

Horseback Riding, Barn Community, and Parenting

By / February 11, 2014

I sat wrapped in a thick coat, scarf around my neck, gloves on my hands, because the arena is not heated. In front of me is a vast swath of soft dirt pocked with the prints of the horses who have been exercised that day. Gleek sits astride one of those horses, riding in a circle on the end of a lunge line while her teacher holds the other end and calls instructions. Around and around they go, walk, trot, canter, and Gleek begins to learn the rhythms she needs to make with her body so that they match to the horse she is riding.

“She’s got a really good seat Mama.” The woman has come up to me while I was focused on the rider in front of me. I’m surprised to be addressed, because I’m in full self-erasure mode. This time with the horses is Gleek’s time. I drive her here. I observe. I do not insert myself into any of the conversations. Gleek’s interactions with the horses and with her teacher are what matter here.
“Thank you.” I answer, glancing at the woman. She isn’t really focused on me, she’s watching Gleek and the horse. I’ve noticed that among the people around the barn. Almost all of them will stop to watch horses and riders in motion. This woman isn’t really engaging with me. I’m “Mama” the sideline sitter for my daughter’s display. The woman just wanted to make an observation to an audience before she moved away to ride her own horse.

I watch Gleek as she bounces up and down, posting to the rhythm of a trot. This is not the first time I’ve been informed that Gleek has a good seat or a natural seat. I watch, trying to see what they see, but my eye is uneducated. I see my daughter on a horse. Sometimes I can tell that she is trying too hard, not letting the motions flow naturally. Other times I can tell that she’s getting it right. I listen to the calls of the teacher and I watch, but half the time when the teacher calls out “There! That’s much better!” I can’t see any difference. I don’t know enough to tell a good seat from a bad one. I can’t tell if these horse people are truly impressed or if they’re trying to be encouraging to a beginner. Either way, I’m glad for the encouragement. Each time we come, Gleek is showered with compliments that are interspersed with gentle education and corrections. It is exactly what she needs and she loves it.

The first few weeks Gleek announced “I want my own horse” as we departed the barn. I agreed that it is a good dream, but made no promises. The conversations have shifted. Now Gleek says things that start with “If I get my own horse…” She has begun to see how complex owning a horse truly can be. You don’t just go buy a horse, we need to understand what sort of a horse will meet our needs and allow Gleek to do the things she hopes to do. That means that we first have to figure out what sort of a rider Gleek is. She needs several years of riding instruction before we can truly know. Horses also require lots of infrastructure and a community of people who are willing to trade off work. We’re beginning to see how such communities work. We’re beginning to understand the ways in which life would need to wrap around horses if Gleek wants that for herself. She has so much growing to do in the next few years, it is tricky to predict what will happen.

I don’t know what these horseback riding lessons will bring. I do know what they are giving to us right now. That is all I really need to focus on. So much of parenting anxiety is generated by attempts to predict the future. Parents feel compelled to do things now because of college applications or impending adulthood. But the future is never exactly what we think it will be. When Kiki was in high school we made choices that went against the standard college prep advice. Those choices did affect her options, but she ended up at a good school that is perfectly suited for what she needs. It is far more important for me to see Gleek as she is now rather than to try to adjust now because of some imagined future.

In another month the weather will be warmer. I won’t have to huddle inside my coat on the horseback riding days. I’m also slowly learning the names of people and horses around the barn. This is part of joining the community. I will need to participate as well as Gleek. Each time we come, Gleek is smoother in the saddle. She’s begun to hold the reins as practice for the future when the lunge line will be removed. Slowly and carefully Gleek is learning skills and most of them have far more to do with self control than with controlling the horse. Around and around she goes, walk, trot, canter, learning to move with the horse. I watch because the process is interesting and because the older she gets the more I become audience to her show.