Organization

Things I have done today

By / June 29, 2010

Packed my oldest son off for a week at Scout Camp. This included last minute scrambling to find lost uniform bits and pancakes with smiley faces.

Breakfast and scripture reading. (Managed to not spill on the scriptures, which is a good thing.)

Howard and I had a quick discussion about some business propositions and what the responses should be to various requests made via email.

Answered a whole pile of email. How big is a pile? Well right now I only have 9 messages with stars next to them because they need my attention asap. First thing this morning there were three times that number, plus a dozen emails I hadn’t even read yet. And a dozen more in the “answer when convenient” category. I can vaguely remember when getting an email was an event instead of commonplace.

Did a quick scan of Livejournal, facebook, twitter, CNN, and my blog reading list.

Processed merchandise orders. Filed the ones which have to wait for shipping day (orders containing RMS). Packaged the ones that go into the mail today.

Arranged tickets for Howard to attend Worldcon in Australia during the first week of September.

Emailed Worldcon/Hugo folks to let them know that Howard will be there. Hopefully it will not be too late for him to get on some programming.

Fed pancakes to my other kids.

Quick meeting in the kitchen with Howard where we divide up the tasks for the day. Howard will be drawing pictures for QFT. My list is long, but the meeting helped me prioritize the critical stuff to the top.

Purchased Dealer room space at Worldcon in Australia. Also contacted the international freight broker to begin figuring out how I am going to ship merchandise to sell in Australia legally. We’ll also have to figure out how to file the necessary sales tax on things we sell. Also we need to predict how much we will sell so that Howard does not run out, but also does not have to haul stuff home. Eep. I’m going to ignore this task for the rest of today. It is full of daunting.

Contacted some business partners to discuss contractual issues.

Picked up four large banners from Alphagraphics. These will hang behind our table at GenCon. Howard looked them over and approved them (in yet another quick meeting), which was a huge relief to me. I handled contracting the images from Jim Zubkavich over at Udon and did all the approving. They are beautiful. We are happy.

Paid for the next three months on our two storage units. I may have to visit them again later today.

Bought basketry kits from the Scout office. My two youngest were jealous of the project that Link was working on in advance of Scout Camp. Now they get to make baskets too.

Did this week’s accounting work. It was pretty light, just receipts to enter and a single bill to pay. Next week the accounting will include quarterly reports on royalties and quarterly tax reports. Whee.

Wrote more emails.

Lunch (while listening to a teenage girl tell me why her life is overwhelming.)

Sorted t-shirts into three piles. One for shipping day at Dragon’s Keep. One for shipping to GenCon. One to stay here and fill orders as they come in. Created an inventory sheet for the shirts I am shipping to GenCon. I erred slightly on the more-than-I-think-will-actually-sell side. I hope my educated guesses about sales are better than the ones I did for Balticon. We could have sold twice as much there if we’d only sent it.

Ran out of steam. Wrote a blog entry and clicked stuff on the internet. It is now 2 pm. Next I intend to catch up on Doctor Who so that Kiki and Howard can talk about the finale without ruining it for me. After that I hope to get back to work putting together the freight shipment for GenCon. It needs to ship in the next couple of days. And of course I still have laundry, dishes, children, and QFT layout.

Edited to add:

Doctor Who was interrupted by basketry. The kids required more help than I expected. As in, I had to sit with them until the baskets were done 90 minutes later.

I went back to Doctor Who for a bit, but stopped to do dishes, cook dinner, and eat.

The evening was consumed by QFT instead of GenCon. And I mean completely consumed. I just finished the work and it is now 2 AM. QFT is looking better all the time, but it is still not done. Tomorrow Howard and I will sit down for a meeting to discuss the remaining white spaces.

Influx

By / June 21, 2010

This is a week of things coming into my house. Later today I will be acquiring Niece1 and Niece2 who will both be staying until Thursday. Niece1 is the same age as Patch and will blend right in with my kids. Niece2 will be reminding me what it is like to be a toddler-mommy. I’m looking forward to it, even though I know it is going to complicate many other things.

From a different source we will be acquiring a parakeet and two rats. The rats will not actually be staying in my house, but my kids will be making frequent trips to the neighbor’s house to visit and care for them. Hopefully the parakeet will be happy, with our crowd.

Tomorrow will bring a big truck with four pallets of books. These will fill our garage for the next couple of weeks.

I have also acquired several stacks of shipping supplies and mailing tubs. To counter-act the influx of chaos, I cleaned my office. Unfortunately the process reminded me that I do not have enough shelves for my books, and that I’d really like to re-decorate the entire room. I have neither time nor money for these projects. I shall have to be content with being able to find the carpet.

Ward Activities Chairperson

By / June 20, 2010

The member of the bishopric (congregational leaders) came to my house wearing a suit. I’d already changed out of my church clothes for the day, but I welcomed him into our front room, which I’d hurried to pick up in the five minutes since he’d called to ask if he could stop by. Even as I’d scurried to pick up, part of my brain had cried “Incoming!” Every Mormon knows that when a member of the bishopric stops by in this way, they are doing so to issue a calling. In Mormon vernacular a “calling” is an assignment or job performed for the church. Most members will have at least one such assignment at all times. I enjoy the assignments I am given. They always enrich my life, even if they also make it more complicated. So I already knew I intended to agree, but I had no idea what I would be agreeing to do. Some assignments are much larger than others.

Fortunately the small-talk went quickly. “We want you to be the Ward Activities Chairperson.” He said seriously.
I smiled and said “Okay.”

The Ward Activities Chairperson is responsible for all the social activities which involve the entire congregation. It means being in charge of the Halloween carnival, the Christmas party, the annual swim party, and any other holiday or potluck which includes everyone. I will have a committee to help, but I am the one who is responsible to pull things through and make sure the events work. Before the bishopric member even left, my brain was spinning plans about how to do this new job. It was delighted to have an exciting new organizational challenge. I planned and scribbled notes for about thirty minutes.

Then I sat down and cried for a little bit. I have all the tools and skills necessary to do this calling well. I like organizing. I’m not afraid to talk to people and ask them to undertake assignments. I know how to network and find people with the necessary skills. I’ve run large events before. But I was hoping to reduce the number of large events I am responsible for, to simplify my life.

The cry did not last long. I moved quickly into the learning phase, discovering the requirements and boundaries of the job. Today I began to build the network I’m going to need, because the social activities are not just parties, they have a larger purpose. They must increase connections and build community within the congregation. It is my job to provide the medium through which connections are made and friendships formed. Sometimes this means I will need to pull people out of their comfort zones and ask them to work together. Other times I need to make events as comfortable as possible so that people are not afraid to attend. It is an interesting, exciting, and daunting challenge.

My governing principle needs to be matching the right person to the right assignment. What is onerous to one person will be fun to another. If I can spread the assignments out in manageable chunks and give people jobs they enjoy, then the events will come together. Even better, more people will attend because they are emotionally invested in the event. At least that is the theory. I’ve got three weeks until the Ward Swim Party. During those same three weeks I’ll be preparing for book shipping, a family reunion, a book shipping event, and a writer’s retreat. I’ll apply my theories to later events, for this one I’ll just scramble to make it work.

Short updates

By / June 10, 2010

This week I have been focusing on getting myself and the kids out of the house more. It is working. We’ve been to a park, a church activity, and gone swimming. I’m beginning to fulfill the promises I made to the kids about how this summer would go.

This week I am also prepping for shipping. Janci and I sorted invoices. I’ve got all the t-shirts and will be folding them tomorrow too. I even placed my first orders for shipping supplies. Next week there will be more invoice sorting. Things are lining up so that we can do the shipping in mid-July.

Howard is working hard as always, trying to rebuild the buffer that took a hit from finishing the book and multiple convention appearances. We’re headed into the home stretch on the current story arc and Howard is placing himself under significant pressure to get it right. I have every confidence in him. I recently re-read the whole story and I kept being amazed at all the little details that he kept track of and brought back around. I was there with him the whole time, reading scripts as he finished them, but I frequently get confused or forget details. But the story really works and is going to be a good book. It is also going to be a really big book.

Our summer life rhythm is creaking along, not perfect, but more-or-less functional. The chore lists need to be tweaked because I can see which jobs are not on anyone’s list. Speaking of chore lists, house chores need to figure more prominently on my to do list as well. After that I can figure out how to give myself quiet spaces in the day. The trip to the park last Tuesday gave me some hints. We were there for two hours after dinner, and for most of it I sat and wrote on my laptop. Evening trips to the park may become a staple of this summer.

First Day of the Summer Schedule

By / June 1, 2010

I have survived the first day of Summer break, and not once did I have a desire to flee the house. This is a marked improvement over last year. Even more surprising, I feel like our family is falling into a familiar rhythm rather then me having to enforce a new schedule. Perhaps I’m starting to get the hang of this. (Yes I realize I’ve just doomed myself by saying it. Please don’t remind me that I did it to myself when I’m going crazy next week.)

The schedule goes like this:
Mornings I work while the kids go through their list of assigned chores. They have a short list of daily things and a few weekly things which are assigned to days of the week. No video games or movies are allowed. Theoretically this creates a quiet morning conducive to Howard’s scripting and my editing/accounting/lay out. Kids get their own breakfasts (We keep kid-fixable foods on hand.)

Lunch: I fix this at noon. It provides a forced break for me, and an anchor point for the kids mid-day.

Afternoon: Video games are allowed for kids who have finished their lists. Friends can come over. I also need to remember to get us out of the house at least twice per week. Cabin fever is not a good thing.

Dinner: Again, this is my job. I need to plan ahead and fix healthy stuff rather than resorting to frozen pizza like I did today.

Evening: Video games off. Sometimes movies are allowed. The kids need to wind down from the screens and start feeling sleepy. Then bedtime.

Get up the next day and do it again. I liked today. I hope most of the summer can work as well.

Things I learned while prepping for an Art Show

By / May 15, 2010

Preparing eight panels for an art show is at least 40 hours of work. Attempting to cram it into two days means it will spill into a third day and there will be fast food for at least three meals.

During the process I alternate between loving what I am putting together and worrying about whether it is good enough. In the end I am so tired I no longer care either way.

Double sided tape is my new best friend. I especially like type which comes in an industrial sized spool suitable for large projects. I also like artist’s tape. Binder’s tape, which would have been useful, is apparently a specialty item and not available locally.

I need to think twice when I utter the words “I can fix it,” because this is how I find myself hand coloring tape with a sharpie marker to bind the edges of posters whose floppiness I attempted to solve by attaching them to foam core board, only I accidentally cut the boards too small and if I don’t bind the edges there will be tearing. I colored the tape because it was white, and black looked better. Yes I considered electrical tape, but it has the wrong texture and adhesive qualities. Next time I’ll eat the cost of the floppy posters and just pay Alphagraphics to print on something hard.

I am really glad Howard built that 4×6 gaming table. It is exactly the size of the art panels and was very helpful in getting things arranged.

When faced with a room where Mom has filled the table and all other available flat surfaces including several chairs and a couple of large cardboard boxes, the logical thing for a small child to do is build a fort. Forts are especially cool when you can use pieces of cardboard and foam core board that Mom is not using at exactly this moment.

Kids are drawn to big projects and will beg to help. This is particularly true if they think they might get paid for helping. Which they usually do when they help with business work. The help of kids makes the process of preparing items for the print shop go much more quickly.

I don’t know that we will ever have the chance to put together an art show this large again. But if we do, I am now prepared. I’ve got copies of all the panel layouts and lists of what I did.

It is useful to be a collector of shipping supplies. Several times I had exactly the sorts of poster board, plastic bags, pieces of cardboard, colored paper, and large envelopes that I needed.

No matter how complete I think my list is, I will come home and discover I need something else from the store.

We should be stocking small format color prints in the Schlock Mercenary store. They look good and I bet lots of people would love to have them.

It will be interesting to see how much of the art comes back to us. I tried to price things so that they would sell. I certainly hope some of the print shop stuff will. We have things there for as low as $2.

Steaks, boxes, and layouts

By / May 10, 2010

We had steak for dinner tonight and I blame the Mythbusters. We’ve been watching episodes and last Friday we saw one in which the Mythbuster crew attempted to determine if explosives were an effective method of tenderizing a steak. This fixed in the minds of my kids the idea that steak is awesome. Patch in particular requested to eat it. So today Howard indulged everyone’s curiosity and cooked some amazing tenderloin. Verdict: The kids like steak and our grocery budget is doomed.

In unrelated news, I cleaned out my shipping/storage room today. By the time I was done I had a stack of almost 20 boxes which had been laying around empty and taking up space. This happens when I pull the last books from a box and toss the empty box out of the way so I can open the next box. In theory I then grab the empty box and flatten it. But more often than not, the empty boxes get shoved from one spot to another as I’m trying to get at the stuff I really need. But all is orderly now. I have made lovely empty spaces in which I can clearly see exactly how much inventory I have. Answer: Not enough. I’ve got to make a run to the storage unit tomorrow because we need to build some more box sets. There will be shrink wrapping.

Tomorrow will also bring a trip to pick up the prints I had made for the Balticon art show. Later this week I’ll be matting things and then taping up a section of my floor to plan how to lay out the art panels.

Speaking of lay out, if you’ve ever wondered what all this “layout work” that I talk about actually looks like, you can go take a look at the flickr set I put together. As I made changes to RMS, I took snapshots of how the changes affected particular page spreads. You can look through the set slowly and read the descriptions. I almost find it more interesting to flip through quickly and watch things shift around fast. The set is here.

In search of pants

By / March 24, 2010

The time has come for new pants. My old pants still fit, although loosely. They aren’t worn out, just worn down a bit. But styles have shifted. My awareness has shifted. And I would like to have some pants that contribute to a feeling of competence and attractiveness rather than just being serviceable. I want some every day clothes that don’t proclaim motherhood quite so clearly. I want a greater variety of professional clothes. Also, on an average day I can count the amount of time I spend outside my house on the minutes of one hour. It was time to go shopping.

Pants shopping is not my favorite thing. I find it more tolerable when I go to Savers with a coupon for 30% off, because I don’t have to deal with quite so much sticker shock. Also I frequently find amusement at the clothes that someone somewhere spent full price on, but which I can laugh at for free. The disadvantage of shopping second hand is that when you find something that is perfect except for being a little too small, you can’t go back for a different size. One of the major advantages is the variety. Very different styles are on the same rack instead of in different stores.

I was in search of pants, so naturally I started by looking at shirts. Some days are good shopping days. These are the days where it seems like everything in the store is just right. Other days I can spend hours flipping through racks without finding a thing I care to try on. Today was a good shirt day. It was not such a good pants day. I still count it as a win when I come home with eight items of clothing for less than $24. Especially when 1/4 of the clothes actually fit the category I went to the store to acquire.

I also came home with an awareness that I don’t really know what I am looking for when it comes to clothes. I kept standing there at the shirt rack, remembering that I have outfits at home which just lacked a single piece to be perfect, but I could not remember what pieces I was missing. So I brought home pieces of new outfits for which I will now have to find additional pieces. I need to approach this whole “renovate the wardrobe” project a little more systematically. I need to go through my closet and make lists. While I am at it, I should probably inventory the kid clothes too. Then I need to carry that list with me and go visit the thrift store every couple of weeks until I’ve filled the gaps.

I know this stuff. I used to do it all the time. It was survival during the lean years. But then I got busy and stopped keeping track of clothing other than to dump it through the laundry machines and occasionally fold it. No wonder my clothes feel out dated.

The Bright Spaces

By / March 12, 2010 / 1 Comment

Our pear tree has gotten tall. It is out-of-control tall. This is presents a problem when it grows pears and we want to be able to pick the pears. The tree needs to be pruned. It needed pruning last year too, but I never found the time.

The pom-pommed scotch pine has gotten tall too. This is a tree that we deliberately shape into twisty branches with poms of needles. We have to prune it yearly to keep the shape attractive. I think we last pruned it three years ago. This year’s pruning will have to be drastic to get the plant back into control.

The wisteria vine along the back wall is falling off. It used to climb up the wall and drape over the top. But then the landscaping company on the other side of the wall came along with a buzz saw and trimmed everything. The vines over-balanced and are now laying heapishly at the foot of the wall. I need to prune them back to give them a chance to grow straight again. While I’m doing vines, I should do the grapes too.

I can see all of these things from my window. They are clearly visible in the bright sunshine which is trying to fool me into believing that the outdoors are actually warm. It is not warm out there. Warm remains elusive. I thought through my schedule, trying to figure when I can get outside with my saw. I decided to make tomorrow an outdoor day, but then I glanced at the weather for tomorrow. Rain. Cold rain. Possibly snow.

I used to schedule my life around the good gardening days. I watched the weather and planned. Every remotely sunny day in early spring found me outside messing with plants and dirt. Last year I missed Spring almost completely. I spent the season in my windowless basement office, scrambling to do the layout work on XDM. This spring is also going to be busy. I suspect that many of our Springs will be busy in the coming years. It seems to be part of the rhythms of the business in which we work. This means that if I am not careful I could miss my favorite season year after year. I could miss out on seeing the blooms grown from the bulbs I planted last Fall.

Today I have a bright space, a sunny day, even though it is not truly warm. Today I could go outside and work in my garden. I could also go back into my basement and do more layout work. There is always work to do. I need to plan my schedule so that when I happen upon the bright spaces in my life, I can drop work and go enjoy them. Because bright spaces do not wait for me. The joys of my young children will not wait for me. The moments when my teenagers need help will not wait for me. I must organize my life so that I can seize these moments when they arrive. Then I run outdoors to work in the sunshine.

Managing Homework

By / March 3, 2010

Helping kids with homework is easy. I don’t mind answering questions or explaining concepts. Weathering the emotional drama of homework time is exhausting. Watching kids trying to avoid their homework is a fascinating psychological study. Most evenings we go through anger, depression, denial, anger, repression, displacement, avoidance, and anger. Did I mention the anger? I get to be the recipient of much of this anger, although sometimes the kids lash out at each other instead. Then I have to step in the middle and remind everyone that the real issue is not who was looking at whom, but the fact that there are two math assignments yet to be completed. Then both kids glower at me and get back to work for approximately two seconds before busting out in a new direction.

Homework time used to be after dinner. I liked to let the kids come home from school and play. I figured that they had been sitting still long enough and they deserved some time to relax. But this year after dinner homework time abruptly stopped working. Most of this is due to the fact that I now have four children bringing home work that I need to supervise. (In prior years I only had two because Kiki’s homework load was light enough that I did not have do pay any attention to it and Patch was not in school yet.) It turns out that I am incapable of helping four children simultaneously. Every time I tried to focus on one child, three kids were free to pick fights in my peripheral vision. The other problem that manifested in the after dinner homework hour was the lack of enticements to get the homework done. The kids knew that after homework came bedtime and the imminence of bedtime was not encouragement to work fast. This had not changed from prior years, but with my attention split four ways the dawdling increased dramatically.

I began to divide up the homework. I made Link get his hardest work done as soon as he got home. He protested this change vehemently, but gradually came to accept it. Kiki and I are still working on some kind of a pattern for her. The challenge there is that I’m trying to teach her to take charge of her own homework rather than waiting for me to declare what she must do. We’ve made progress, but it is a one-step-forward, two-steps-back, three-steps-sideways, one-step-forward kind of experience. Oh, and every misstep causes tears. When I manage to get Kiki and Link through with their work in the afternoon, then I only have two homework kids in the after dinner hour. Unfortunately I am also exhausted and not at all interested in fighting more homework battles. Specifically, I don’t want to fight with Gleek. Patch loves homework, except on the rare occasions when he hates it. But Gleek is often more interested in Patch’s homework than her own. She alternates between giving him the answers, which doesn’t help him learn, and declaring that the work he is struggling to do is easy. Then there is anger. And hitting.

In all of this I think the poor pencils have a harder time than I do. Pencils get broken in half, thrown across the room, chomped to bits, and erasers torn out. No wonder we have trouble finding a “good” pencil when the time comes for homework. One simply can not do homework with a “no good” pencil. Obviously. And so I put pencils on the grocery list yet again because we went through our stock from last fall’s back-to-school sales much faster than I anticipated.

I’ve tried separating it all out so that the kids do homework solo, but they all seem to require me standing nearby. And where the mother is, all the kids will naturally gravitate to be fed snacks. And so I’ve given up on having a system at all. Each day has its own set of variables and I try to fit the homework in around them. I look at the quantity of homework for each child. I look at the after school activities which are scheduled. I look at the evening activities. I assess the states of the children and figure out which ones will most harmoniously work on homework together for this day. The answer will be different tomorrow. On a good day, I do all this by instinct without even thinking about it consciously. On not so good days…homework doesn’t get done.

I feel guilty when the homework piles up. I feel like I should do better. But no one can be at their best all that time. And part of my brain stomps her feet and declares how unfair it is that I have to pay attention to this at all. It isn’t my work. They should just do it. But they don’t because they are kids. Half of the point of homework is learning how to handle regular unwanted tasks. And I must teach it to them. By example. Which means the foot-stompy part of my brain can stomp all she wants and I’ll help my kids with their homework anyway. Because it is the right thing to do.

I just wish it were not quite so exhausting.