Family

All the Things in My Head

By / September 19, 2014

My blogging thoughts have been tangled up this week. I’ve written 1500 words of an essay about Link, impending adulthood, and letting go. But the words aren’t right yet, and I’m not certain I can make the essay public until after Link has already achieved adulthood. It lays him a little bare, which I’m not certain is best for either of us while we’re still in the midst of things.

In theory letting go should be easier because I’ve already done it once. In practice, I’ve intervened and advocated for Link’s education far more than I ever did for Kiki. This means I have many more ingrained habits of thought to dismantle as Link takes charge of his life.

Also impacting this week were several low-level illnesses. Truth be told, they were nothing much, except I apparently have some residual emotion and fear related to the extensive illnesses and absences from last winter. I really wish my brain would stop storing this stuff so that I have to clear it out later.

We’re also approaching the final countdown to the big construction day for Link’s eagle scout project. Logistics for that are filling up my brain and tangling up with the knowledge that every thing I think through is something that Link does not have to think through. Yet not planning creates more anxiety, so I try to strike a balance by planning and then keeping my mouth shut while Link comes up with his own solutions. It is only sort of working, as evidenced by the fact that I snapped awake at 2am convinced that the project was impossible and doomed to utter failure. I couldn’t sleep again until I’d made lists, plans, and contingency plans.

As is usual, the first weeks of school unleash a barrage of requests for my volunteer time. I’m fairly good at dodging these sort of assignments. I’m less good at dodging the guilty feeling that I ought to accept some of them. This is particularly true in the case of my youngest, Patch, who’s in an opt-in gifted class. Somehow my brain says that since he’s getting extra benefits and since I chose to place him there, more is owed from me in return. However I do actively resent when the PTA newsletter uses words that imply “I have other priorities” and “I’m too busy” are inadequate excuses for not volunteering. I also think that weekly emails containing 800 words of specific instructions on how to make my son practice is a bit much for an extracurricular elementary school orchestra.

The good news is that this afternoon I sat down with Link and he wrapped his head around the eagle project task list. We’re in for a work-heavy week, but he’s on board to get it all done. Even better, we brought home the first load of building supplies, 34 wall studs are cut and ready to go. Funny how anxiety backs off when the work actually begins.

Saturday Calm

By / September 13, 2014 / 2 Comments

I had just returned from the grocery store and made all the kids help me unload the car. They were happy to discover that I’d bought some treat cereal, so they sat down to eat it while I stowed all the groceries into the fridge and cupboards.

Then Link turned to me and said, “Where are you going, Mom?”
“Nowhere.”
“Then why did you buy all this food stuff?”

Apparently the pattern lately is that we only stock up on food when Mom and Dad have some sort of big event which means we won’t be around to fix food for kids. Looking back, yup, that’s pretty much how things have gone for awhile. Stock up on easy food. Eat easy food. Stare at bare cupboards and fridge while wondering where all the food went. But we’re entering a period when I’m not going anywhere and the deadlines are no longer imminent. I actually have space in my brain to do things like fold laundry, plan ahead for food, and pick up the house.

I’ve also made some time this week to write fiction. I could get used to that.

Howard still has deadlines and urgencies. He’s got events coming up that will impact his schedule. I know things will come up for me to do as well. (Calendar design springs to mind) But on the whole I get to have six to eight weeks where I can’t see a scheduled business disruption. I mean pre-orders will open for the next book on October 13th for Patreon supporters and October 15th for the public. Pre-order days always throw me off, but only for a day or two. The next major disruption will occur when the books and slipcases arrive. Then my life will be taken over by shipping and holiday stuff until the end of the year.

While I’m having my usual holiday shipping chaos, Howard will be entering a six-to-eight week stretch of few disruptions. It is nice when we can arrange for at least one of us to not be scrambling against deadlines. Makes a huge difference to the state of things here at home.

The family disruptions I don’t get to schedule or control. They happen when they happen. Often they happen at exactly the same time as the business disruptions because ambient stress brings everything to the surface. In the next two weeks we’ve got an Eagle Project to make happen, also we need to stop being sick. Sniffles and fevers abound right now.

Yet despite the illness, life feels poised for a period of calm. Massively Parallel is off to the printer. So are the two slipcases. There isn’t anything more I can do to hurry them up, so I’ll turn my attention to other things. And that feels like a nice change.

Twitchy

By / August 27, 2014 / 2 Comments

So, no secret that 2013 was a rough year for me and the hard lasted until March 2014. Most of it had to do with mental health and physical health issues. (depression, anxiety, panic attacks, C Diff infection, whooping cough, with accompanying doctors, psychiatrists, and therapy) Things have been better since March. Worlds better. Let the heavens rejoice, better. Yet I’ve discovered that all the challenging things set up some emotional landmines for later. Now that school has started, I keep stepping on them.

It goes like this:
Child expresses a resistance to a homework assignment. I am suddenly mired in the memory of hours-long homework confrontations. For a moment I’m convinced that we are doomed and the next months will be uniformly miserable.

Child has a fight with a friend which reaches the physical altercation stage. I know it is driven by stress and anxiety in both kids. They fight because they both have similar issues and neither one wants to back down. I come away from the discussion/apology very afraid that the stresses which drove this confrontation will then poison the entire school year and we’ll be back to panic attacks at school again.

Child calls home because he’s not feeling well. I am suddenly angry and ready to cry. It is only the second week of school and we’ve barely had time to catch our stride yet we’re already going to have to play catch up.

The reality is that the child did the homework after only a little grousing, the arguement was resolved and then forgotten, and a single day of missed classes is fairly easy to catch up.

In each case my emotional reaction to the event is far out of proportion to the event itself. There are a dozen more examples that have happened in the last week. It feels like I’m jumping to duck and cover at any noise. I’m twitchy and it is annoying. Yet I can feel that a few months of stability will even it out. I really want those months of stability and I don’t know if I get them. The mix we’ve got of mental health issues, business stresses, and school, may just mean a bumpy ride for quite a while to come. Until then, I try to flinch less often and recover quickly when I do.

Back To School Scenes

By / August 25, 2014

“So is Patch your youngest?” his new teacher asked. She’d pulled me aside at back to school night for a moment of quiet conversation.
“Yes. He’s the last of my kids you have to deal with.” I said with a tone of voice and a smile that turned it into a joke. Sort of. I thought about it afterward, wondering where the words had come from. I mean them in the moment I spoke them. I was apologizing for inflicting my children and their individualized bags of challenges upon her. The other thing I said to her, which I’ve thought hard about later was “Don’t worry. Patch isn’t like Gleek.” I wanted to reassure her, because she is the teacher who helped me with Gleek’s lowest and darkest moments during her sixth grade year. It is hard for me to picture her facing another child of mine with anything but trepidation. Because that year was hard on all of us and this teacher was on the daily front lines.

I have to stop apologizing for my children. Their existence needs no apology, even if they create troubles for others. I also have to stop trying to reassure the school staff that Patch is not Gleek. The comparison only reminds everyone about the difficulty and it is unfair to Patch. That difficult year is done and I am the only one who has brought it up. I have to let it go. This is Patch’s year. I need to let it be as easy or as difficult as it is without comparison to anything else. It looms so large in my mind that I am still reacting to it and I need to stop.
*
“Are there any states that don’t have g in them?” Gleek asked before realizing it was a silly question.
“How do I tell if a function is odd or even?” asked Link.
Patch did not ask any questions. He just scratched his pencil across pages, getting the work done. All three kids sat in the kitchen during the same hour and did homework. It was an event stunning because of the lack of conflict. Yes, they distracted each other with random out-loud exclamations, but the work got done. I don’t know if this will become the pattern for the school year. Usually I have to separate them because distractions lead to stress and arguments. But it was lovely for today.
*
The email was titled “The List.” It was things that Kiki needs for school which failed to make the trip with her. Heading the list is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Apparently this is a college must-have for her group of geek-girl roommates and friends. Most of the other things are small items, things which can go into the package along with the DVD sets. I don’t mind. I like hearing that she’s happy and has fun plans with her friends.
*
I tore through my list of things to do, eliminating items quickly. Having five uninterrupted hours makes a huge difference in my work day. I didn’t feel it last week, there was too much going on emotionally for me to work calmly. This week feels calm in comparison. I’ll take it.

Kiki Gone to College Again

By / August 24, 2014

I began to feel it on the first day of school, but it wasn’t complete and so I was unsettled all week. Saturday, late, after I dropped Kiki at college, after I came home, after I spent several hours working on the nearly complete Massively Parallel, after everyone went to bed and I stood in the kitchen alone, that was when it all clicked and settled. Life mode shift is complete. We’re back to school mornings, three kids at home, one who communicates by computer, and working while the kids are out of the house.

This summer felt like a gift. Kiki came home and made family life and work life easier in a dozen ways. We had three adults in the house and that simplified many things. The kids were happy to relax and take things easy for the summer. More than once I found all four kids playing a game or watching a show together. It made me glad. I stored up that gladness, because in the next year life will change again. I suspect many of the changes will be good ones, but they may take Kiki elsewhere next summer. Or perhaps she’ll come live with us again. We might have another summer that feels like a gift. But it will be a different gift than the one we just completed.

Our cat brought a live mouse into the house Friday night. We were sitting and visiting with a friend in our front room when we heard a noise at the door. I opened it and the cat darted in before my brain had the chance to process that she had something in her mouth. She took it under Kiki’s chair and let it go. We all jumped up. There was chaos because the room was full of Kiki’s stuff, all packed to go to college the next day. The mouse ran under the piano and escaped. Our cat has brought us live gifts on three or four occasions. The most memorable of those occasions was the day that Kiki left for college last year. She brought Kiki a mouse as we were packing the car. I’m not sure what it is about packing up Kiki’s stuff that makes the cat think gifts are in order. I expect that in the weeks to come the cat will follow me around more. She misses Kiki when Kiki is away.

On Saturday afternoon I trailed through the grocery store after Kiki and two of her roommates. Having a full kitchen is new and Kiki is excited to be cooking for herself. My head was full of advice: buy this, that’s a waste, stock up on this. I bit my tongue and said very little of it. Kiki has a lot to learn about shopping and cooking, but she’ll learn it best if I get out of her way. What she needed was to go through the store with her roommates and have conversations with them about food. They’re all learning together. I watched Kiki with her friends both at the store and then back at her apartment. I realized that I was superfluous. Last year I helped her unpack her room, we went together on half a dozen errands, and then I finally departed. This year I could have dropped her on the curb, but having my car to transport groceries was appreciated.

I sat by myself in the women’s meeting at church. All summer Kiki has occupied the chair next to me, and today it was empty. I felt that emptiness and I hoped that she was having a pleasant time with her new ward full of college students. I remember that when Kiki first graduated and joined me in the adult meeting it felt a little bit like an intrusion. I was glad to have her there, but I also felt one of my children impinging on time that was usually child-free. When she came home for the summer I didn’t feel that at all. I was just glad to sit with her, another grown-up who I like joining me in a grown up space. She’ll sit with me again when she comes home for the holidays. I look forward to that.

I am profoundly grateful for the feeling that all is as it should be. Last year when I dropped off Kiki I had nearly a week of high anxiety while my brain recalibrated to her being gone. The three younger kids all went through grief at her absence in various ways. This year we miss her, but we are not grieving and that is much nicer.

The Onset of School: Told in Two Days

By / August 19, 2014

Monday Night:
School starts in the morning, which means that this evening I need to remember how I’m supposed to run a school night bedtime. This is difficult when there is a lot of “Do I have to?” floating around in the front of my brain. I know I’m going to enjoy having the structure back once I remember how it goes. I also know that 6:30 is really early, particularly when I’ve been having trouble falling asleep until 1 am.

The kids are ready I think. Last night Gleek was trying on clothes and checking in the full length mirror for effect. Patch went to his school open house, where he discovered that he’s grown quite a bit more than most of his friends. I think he’s going to be one of the taller kids in the class, which is a strange thing for a Tayler kid. Taylers run short. While at Patch’s open house, I also got to confer with the two other mothers in the elementary carpool. It’ll be nice to have a carpool again. Last year Patch was the only kid from our neighborhood at that school. I did enjoy the solo time with him in the car, but it is going to be nice to have fewer trips to take per week.

I’m also quite pleased that the school principal greeted Patch by name. He was greeting many of the students, so it is possible that the principal knows most of the students. It is also possible that Patch is remembered because we had a meeting about him last spring. Patch gets anxious about things and this is the school that vividly remembers Gleek’s in-school panic attacks. So we had a meeting aimed at helping Patch to learn the necessary coping skills for his anxieties. Also, I like a principal who is out and among his students instead of shut in his office.

Tuesday morning:
We do remember how this goes. I can feel the fatigue behind my eyes because my body is not used to waking so early in the morning. The kids are going to be harder to wake tomorrow, but they all went off to school happy and optimistic for the day to come.

We had ice cream for snack last night. It seemed like a fitting end to summer. Then the kids put themselves to bed while I went to get Howard from the airport. That, too, makes life feel routine.

There is a difference between the quiet house of no one home and the quiet house of people doing quiet things. I can feel the difference and I’m glad for the space of no one home. I love my kids. I love being around them, but all my hours and thoughts are divided when they’re home all day. With them at school, I can put away the Mom hat and focus on other things until the afternoon. I’d forgotten how nice that feels.

Howard unpacked his suitcase and his brain last night. We sorted through the GenCon thoughts and made notes for next year. This was a really good year for us. I will use some of the quiet to do the accounting. I will also use some of it to write.

In Which I am Distracted by GenCon and Summer’s End

By / August 14, 2014

There is this list of things that I’m supposed to have done today. Instead I did things which were supposed to happen on other days, or things which were on no lists at all. Part of my fractured attention is because I’m on-call for the GenCon crew. Nothing has been an emergency, just little tweaks. Yet I’ve spent quite a bit of time using our Point of Sale software to check in and see how things are going in far-away Indianapolis. Things are going well. There really isn’t anything I can do to make them go any better, so logic says I should go do something else. Logic is only winning about two rounds out of three today.

It has been a good day here at home as well. Usually the final week before school starts is filled with squabbling, as if the kids can sense the change in the air and it puts them on edge. Today my kids put all of their squabbling energy into playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl. It was every bit as loud, probably louder, but it is building relationships rather than damaging them. So I let them all shout. Later tonight I’ll cook frozen pizza and all will be happy.

Tomorrow morning we’re all headed to a museum for a family outing. It’ll be good for all of us to get out of the house. Me included.

Space and Perspective

By / August 10, 2014

It appears that what I needed to establish emotional equilibrium was to shut myself in my room for six hours during which no one attempted to talk to me. I slept, stared at the walls while my brain sorted thoughts, did a little bit of writing, and watched some Netflix. After all that I took myself out to a late lunch where I sat by myself and talked to no one in a mostly-empty restaurant. I guess I was in serious need of introvert time, because life feels better today. I may be ready to tackle next week.

I think the other thing that really helped me gain perspective is that I spent part of today working on my One Cobble at a Time book for 2013. That is where I take all of my blog entries for the entire year and format them into a book I can put on my shelf. I’ve been putting it off because I didn’t really want to emotionally revisit 2013. It had some heavy emotional stuff in it, most of which landed (like an avalanche) in March. Today I worked on putting the March entries into the book. Just reading them was hard. I was so worn out. I kept expressing a hope that things would ease up, that I could find some calmness. Instead it just kept getting worse and more. Week upon week until a crescendo of emotional mess during the last week of the month. I would read an entry that ended with a small hope for things to be better and I would cringe, because I remember what came next. That was the month when Gleek was having panic attacks at school and we went through a diagnostic process with her. The other kids were going through emotional transitions with varying degrees of meltdown. Howard started anti-depressants. We were on the final weeks of sending a book off to print and running the Kickstarter for the challenge coins.

Yesterday I wrote a giant post about all the things that are impacting my August. Today I am so very grateful to have that list of things instead of what I had last March. Suddenly this August looks easy. Sure I have lots to do and lots to track, but none of it hurts. Everything hurt in March of 2013. Today I walked around my house and saw the fruits of the struggle we went through during the transitions of 2013. I saw Gleek’s room arrayed and relaxed instead of set up for defense against anxiety. Link’s Eagle Scout project in process is evidence of his reduced anxiety and the fact that he is beginning to take charge of his life. Kiki has stretched her wings and paid for half of her school expenses with her art commissions. Patch is poised for some transition during the coming year. He’ll need help with that, but for once his needs are not over shadowed by the urgent needs of siblings. I’m so glad to be in the middle of this August.

Tomorrow is Monday and I fully intend to meet it head-on and get all the things done.

Stuffed Animals on the Shelf

By / August 9, 2014

This last week Gleek finally claimed her room. It has been the room she slept in for the majority of her life. She shared it with Kiki for most of those years. Last Fall Kiki moved out. Gleek’s stuff sort of spilled across the room, mostly on the floor, but Gleek did not take steps to make the space her own. She pulled out all her stuffed animals and arranged them decoratively on shelves. She hung pictures on the walls. She sorted her bookcase. The room is beginning to feel like a reflection of who she is, rather than a place where she is camping.

I walked in and looked after Gleek was done. The display of stuffed animals brought tears to my eyes. For years Gleek kept all of her stuffed animals shoved into four pillowcases. Sometimes she got them out to play, but they always went back in when she was done. She kept them that way so that in an emergency she could easily grab them all. She lived her life feeling like any moment could be the disaster for which she had to be always prepared. The array of stuffed animals on the shelf means she is not as afraid as she used to be. I am very glad that she is not.

Crunch Time

By / August 9, 2014

In advance of GenCon there are a hundred tasks to be done. Each task is simple taken by itself. The tricky part is remembering to do all of them and sorting them so that they are accomplished during the right windows of time. Merchandise must be shipped early enough to arrive. Ditto Banners. I have to put a credit card on file with the hotel, but that can’t be done earlier than a week in advance. The cash register must be updated. Schedules must be coordinated between the seven person team that is required to run the booth. Each of those listed tasks actually breaks down into a multitude of little steps and I have to remember them all. My task list is always full in the weeks before a large convention.

We actually have two large conventions coming. Salt Lake Comic Con follows GenCon by only two weeks. It is a slightly simpler convention to prepare for, partly because it is local, partly because we have a smaller booth and smaller crew (only four people.) Also some of the work done for GenCon can double for SLCC. We’ll just use the same banner, for instance. Yet there are some time-sensitive tasks related to SLCC that I must also track.

During the week between these two large conventions, my kids will start school. For the younger three, this means we’ve been doing wardrobe assessment and discovering that most of them need some new clothes, underwear, or socks. They’ll use the same school bags that they had last year, but we’ll stock them with new folders and binders. I’ve also been having the kids sort and organize their bedrooms so that they’re both mentally and physically organized for the school year to come. On top of that, Patch had some over-the-summer homework which we ignored until this week. For Kiki “starting school” means that she’ll be packing up all of her things and on the Saturday after Howard comes home from GenCon, I’ll be driving her back to college. Kiki does her own packing and organizing these days, but there are a few tasks, such as making the tuition payment, which require my participation.

Speaking of kid things, between now and the end of August is the time frame that we’ve declared for the completion of Link’s Eagle Scout project. We made a fantastic start with selecting the project, getting it approved, and clearing the site. Then for the last week we’ve been stalled, waiting for someone to get back to me with information. She never did. Instead I had to go shake the information out of an entirely different person and unfortunately the information wasn’t “Sure you can have a donation of materials.” It was “Before we can consider your request we need you to get tax ID numbers for Habitat for Humanity and your scout troop.” The request is reasonable, but it means I’ve left messages with additional people and now I’m waiting for them to call me. I hate waiting. I also hate not being able to clearly see how this project will fit with all the other things. Am I going to spend portions of next week helping Link set up construction help or am I going to spend the next week helping Link figure out how to secure funding? I can’t know until people return my calls and we then go petition in a written letter for a donation of materials.

To make the next few weeks even more interesting, we’re trying to push to send Massively Parallel off to print by August 30. I approve of this push. We need it to line up the Holiday season in the ways it needs to go. It means a pile of work for Howard. It also means work for me, but we’d really love to have the book done in time to let people buy it for Christmas.

I have another book I’d hoped to have ready for Christmas, the Cobble Stones holiday-themed book. There is still time, but my timing sense is telling me I’m already late in prepping it. I should be half way through sending it through writer’s group and I haven’t submitted any of it because I haven’t yet revised any of it. Because I’ve barely had space to do anything that wasn’t already on my task list. It seems like all the minutes of all of my days are spent juggling my priorities so that nothing falls apart. Writing so seldom gets juggled to the top. I know the common wisdom is that I must then seize the time for writing. That is the writer-correct thing to do, but I get very tired. Except tired isn’t quite the right word. I’m not sleepy, I just run out of focus. Writing flows when I have spaces to think and consider. I haven’t had those lately. I probably won’t have them for weeks more. So instead of having words flow naturally out of my thoughts, I have to find the force of will to untangle them from the rats nest of other thoughts which haven’t had time to settle.

Other things that are taking up space in my brain this month:
We’ve had to renew our life insurance policies. This required meeting with an insurance agent whose job it is to first make us very afraid of death and then to convince us that we should salve that fear with large policies. We opted for a policy that will give us two years to find a new normal rather than the set-for-life policy which would have cost more than we can afford annually. Then we had to answer health questionnaires over the phone which made us realize that we’re not the golden life insurance prospects that we once were. It costs more to insure us now. On Monday a tech is going to come and do some blood tests and other basic health measures. After which the insurance company will tell us how much we’ll owe as an annual premium. Whee.

We’re going to have to find a new health insurance provider between now and December 31. We’re probably going to end up enrolled in an ACA program. I’ve barely begun to think about this, but knowing I’m going to have to figure it out looms in my head a little.

We ought to meet with an estate lawyer and set up a living trust. I mean, while we’re dealing with thoughts of mortality, life insurance, and health insurance. Why not just get all the unpleasantness managed.

Last week Howard and I had a meeting where we laid out a timeline on the Schlock RPG, which is a project that requires a Kickstarter. Next year could be one that is completely taken over by running and fulfillment of Kickstarter promises. That’s fine. I’m excited by the things which we might get to make. This combined with everything else means that next year’s schedule is full. Already. Which is a daunting prospect when I’m only nine days into a month that promises to be packed to the gills all the way to the end of it.