Uncategorized

Journal Rambling

By / February 1, 2005 / 6 Comments

Every so often I click to check my LiveJournal UserInfo page.  At the top is a list of Friends.  Mostly it is full of relatives and close friends, but a few are people that I first met here and with whom I have had the opportunity to have a second point of contact. 

Also on the page is my Friend Of list.  I sometimes look at that ever-growing list and wonder who are these people who have decided that my journal is worth reading regularly.  On days when I’m feeling bored or clicky I sometimes browse through their journals to try to find out.  I did that just this past week.  I found that I’m not the only one with DVD player woes.  I found a fascinating discussion on the need for community in religion.  Perhaps the most surprising thing was the discovery that there are people who have me listed as a friend and don’t also have Howard listed.  This means that there are people here reading this entry who didn’t come via Schlock. I’ve had people tell me that my rambles were enjoyable, but somehow I still felt that whatever small fame I attained here was still mostly reflected glory.  Now I have proof that at least some of it was my very own little light.

One of the things I found in my journal rambles was a Writer’s Challenge.  This person challenged: “Describe a room so that the person who owns it is described without actually being present.”  That interested me so much that I decided to take up the challenge.

…

Journal RamblingRead More »

Sickness of assorted flavors

By / January 30, 2005

Today Kiki has a miserable earache. Link and Gleek have sniffles and coughs. Patches has a perma-drip nose. I elected to keep all the assorted germs home from church. It was pretty obvious that they weren’t feeling well because after breakfast I sent everyone back to bed and they didn’t argue about it.

I’m also suffering from the same cold that the kids are. I was pretty useless yesterday. Today I treated the fatigue with Caffeine. By the time Howard got home from church I had the entire kitchen spotless. Now the caffeine has worn off and I’m tired again. I need to declare naptime for Patches and maybe get one myself.

Birthday– The day after

By / January 28, 2005 / 10 Comments

My birthday is over for another year. I’ve successfully reached 32 years old and I’m headed for 33. This is good because I certainly wouldn’t want to go backwards and give up all the stuff I’ve learned.

Today put on my new ear rings and sang Les Miserables at the top of my voice while stowing away puzzles and books and DVDs and new kitchen implements. Thus all the gifts have been scattered to their appropriate locations. At first I was a little saddened by this disbursment of my birthday celebration, but then I realized that every time I come across ANY of the things that were given to me yesterday I’ll get to relive some of the joy I felt yesterday. Having little dollops of joy spread through the house isn’t a bad thing.

Howard gave me all the names that are associated with the gifts so that I can write Thank You notes. There was only one name I recognized (Thanks bbullock). I probably know some of the rest by their online names, but most of them were simply Schlock fans who have never been near this journal. They were sending me presents in appreciation for the work that Howard does on Schlock. It makes me feel good to know that Howard is creating something that touches so many people. It makes me feel good to support that effort. In all, today is a happy place to be.

Train of thought

By / January 28, 2005 / 15 Comments

This morning while eating his breakfast Howard looked up at me and said:
“We need to rent Fiddler on the Roof so that we can yell ‘The Gripping Hand!’ at Reb Tevya.”
“What?”
“In the movie Reb Tevya says ‘on one hand, on the other hand, on the other hand’ we need to yell ‘The Gripping Hand’ at him.”

Howard’s train of thought runs through some very odd places.

Of Purple Rabbits

By / January 27, 2005 / 3 Comments

I chased a purple rabbit through a hole in my backyard hedge this morning.  It was an odd experience because my backyard has never before had a hedge and usually the only signs of wildlife are deposits left by the neighbor’s dog.  Yet this morning both the rabbit and the hedge were there.

Beyond the hedge was a world filled with fairies, unicorns, centaurs, children lost on islands, and a secret valley full of bird-winged people.  The very landscape was strange; lush valleys sat high atop volcanos, and a river ran with liquid rubies.  It was completely unearthly … and totally familiar.  I used to live in such places before my mind filled with grades and SATs and mortgages and diapers and laundry.

I’d come home to a place I thought no longer existed.  All the strange and beautiful residents of those lands looked at me.  Eyes of every shade and shape studied me; asked me where I have been; wondered why I had abandoned them.

The answers I have to give are solid, reasonable.  They sit heavy in my hands, and their very solidity fades the worlds and people, who attenuate so far that the merest whisper of wind could blow them away.  Quickly I shift my solid reasons to one hand and reach out with the other to grasp at the mist.  I realize now that I need both.  I need to be able to fly on the wings of story and I need a solid place to land.  I’d forgotten, but as he did so long ago for my six-year-old self, that purple rabbit has led me through the hedge and taught me to fly.

 

Today is Lewis Carrol’s birthday, so many people are journaling Down the Rabbit Hole.  I wanted to join the fun.  The story above makes more sense if you know that the very first story I ever wrote was entitled “The Purple Rabbit”.

Happy Birthday to Me!

By / January 27, 2005 / 10 Comments

This year I had my birthday pretty much planned before the end of December. I was going to have a small dessert and maybe one gift and we would do the singing and candles and all would be happy. A couple of weeks ago Howard and schlock fans significantly changed that plan. Over the last two weeks we’ve been getting almost daily packages. Howard won’t let me open them, he’s been hoarding them away in his office and Kiki has been wrapping them. It got to the point where another package would arrive and Kiki would happily groan “Another present!” and run off to wrap it.

So I made a new plan. I planned that today would pass fairly normally and then after dinner we’d have dessert and candles, then we’d take the pile of presents and I’d have the kids help me unwrap them all. That plan is still in effect except the “today would pass normally” part. This morning I found a present in my email box. Rowyn made 6 pictures for me to use as LJ icons. Then to ensure that I was able to utilize them all she gave me a paid Livejournal account. It is one of those wonderful gifts that I didn’t even know I wanted, but I’m incredibly happy to have. Now I need to write appropriate journal entries so that I can use all of them. Thank you Rowyn!

Also a big “Thank you!” to everyone out there who sent me presents. I don’t even know who you all are yet because Howard won’t let me look at the names until present time.

Sister Emily’s Lightship

By / January 26, 2005 / 2 Comments

I just finished reading Sister Emily’s Lightship by Jane Yolen.  I
highly recommend it.  It is full of short stories.  Some are
fantastic retellings of fairytales, some are wonderful stories for
kids, some are dark and disturbing, one is downright dirty, but all of
them are powerful and none of them can be easily ignored.

Tayler Family –The Game

By / January 24, 2005 / 4 Comments

This evening went really really well. This shouldn’t surprise me because I’ve focused on the implementation of my plans for several days now. The true test will come on a day that I’m tired and distracted.

Link loved being Kitchen Helper. He came running the first time I called and did all the work willingly. In fact he and Gleek had a fight because she wanted to help and he wouldn’t let her because he was the official Kitchen Helper. Somehow I doubt this level of enthusiasm will continue, but I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

The kids loved the game. They enthusiastically ran through the house trying to find out whether we gained points or lost points. I think I might alter the rules to make it a co-operative game rather than competitive. Rather than keeping individual scores we may just see what the cumulative family score is. Then I can institute a plan where if the family score is above a certain number, then we get a special treat of some kind (Ice cream, brownies, something.) So far it has also had some of the larger effects I’d hoped for as well. Link picked up his clothes off the floor and put them in the hamper because he doesn’t want to lose points next time we play. I figure I’ll give things five days to a week and then we’ll play again.

After carefully orchestrating Kitchen time, Homework time, and Game time I am worn out. Unfortunately I still have to do Bedtime. Howard once told me that I had an effective bedtime system in place with the kids like marionettes. All I have to do is pull a few strings and off they go. It may look like that from the outside, but to me it feels like herding hyperactive cats using only limp spaghetti noodles.

Another New World Order

By / January 23, 2005 / 5 Comments

Last May I instituted some significant changes in how I ran the house and the kids. I called it the NewWorld Order and wrote and entry about it. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/sandratayler/2004/05/30/)

Our lifestyle has changed significantly since I put those new rules into effect. The kids have grown and changed, Howard is home alot more, I’ve neglected my duty to maintain the law, and so it is time to institute another New World Order.

The first step is to be more dilligent enforcing the rules I put into place last May. The kids need to be doing their five morning things and one chore every day. I need to make sure they don’t get to play with electronic entertainment or friends unless they do.

The second step is for me to stop doing their Saturday morning work for them. I’ve set up the system. They know what they have to do before they can play with friends or electronic stuff. If I help, I end up doing most of the work while listening to complaints about how they need help because it is too hard. If I refuse to help I’ll have about 2 weeks of whiney unpleasantness and then they’ll do their work solo without complaints because they know that complaints just add to the length of time without reducing the work load. (I’ve gone through this process before and yet I keep forgetting and helping too much.)

Those steps are simply reinstituting things I’ve been enforcing more often than not for the last 9 months. Here comes the new stuff.

Step three. Kiki, Link, and Gleek are each assigned a night to be the official “Kitchen Helper”. The Kitchen Helper sets the table for dinner, helps prepare dinner, helps clean up after dinner, helps load the dishwasher, and helps sweep the floor. I’ll never have kids capable of doing these things if I don’t spend some time and effort teaching them.

Step four. Every day I need Gleek and Patches to have a quiet time where they practice sitting still. I’ll start at about 2 minutes and gradually extend the time. While they are sitting still I’ll read from pictureless storybooks so that they learn how to sit still and listen. This is specifically aimed at teaching them how to be calm and quiet in public places like church.

Step five. I’ve spent some time creating cards for a game over the past few days. The game is Tayler Family Trivia. On the cards are questions like “Where do we keep the scotch tape?” or “How do you clean a toilet?” Each correctly answered question gets 5 points. There are also Bonus cards. Bonus cards say things like “Get 5 points for every empty garbage can in the house” or “Get 10 points if you did your 5 morning things today”. There are also Oh No! cards. Oh No! cards cause people to lose points for household infractions “Lose 2 points for every piece of your clothing left on the floor” I intend to introduce this game tomorrow. Then we’ll play it again in another week or so to see whether we can improve our scores. Hopefully the game will have kids noticing when they put clothes on the floor or if garbage cans are empty. I read an article on this game by a woman who said it made a huge difference in the behavior of her two kids.

Two old things and three new ones are more than enough for me to try to keep track of. Especially since I’ve got to maintain things like homework enforcement, regular meals, and regular bedtimes.

The Shower

By / January 22, 2005 / 4 Comments

Patches had an unpleasant dose of reality this evening. It began when Kiki and Gleek decided to shower together instead of separately. The shrieks and giggles (and splashes and puddles) from the bathroom convinced Patches that “Shower” was the coolest thing going this evening. So when the girls got out and I sent Link in for his shower, Patches was right on his heels to participate in the fun. I helped Patches undress amid giggles and joyful cries of “Show-a”. Then he took one step into the shower and under the stream of water. Water-in-the-face is cause for major Patches sadness these days. He never used to mind and in fact used to shower with me very happily. I don’t know what changed, but somehow Patches remembered “Show-a” as a happy-fun place and completely forgot the water part. Tears ensued. Many tears. I rescued him from his terror-frozen position in the water stream and wrapped him in a towel. He was angry with me for removing him and cried “Show-a!”, but when I offered to let him get back in, he didn’t want anything to do with that watery chamber of fear. For the next 15 minutes while I dried him off and dressed him Patches continued to cry for the lost joys of “Show-a” and the way it betrayed him. Fortunately a snack, a story, and a bedtime made everything better.