Uncategorized

Blink.
And a week has gone by. It was a week full of things, mostly good, nothing truly awful or unmanageable. Except there is that part of my brain that howls at me from the darkness saying that I have failed at everything.
I have lists of the things I could have done better. I don’t want to have these lists, but they show up in my head unbidden. I argue with them, but this does not dispel them. So I wield a pen, which is mightier than a sword, and write the list down.
Things I Could Have Done Better.
Those words are writ large across the top, with capital letters for all the words as is proper for a title. I write each thing, pinning it to the page in dark letters against white. It is permanent there. Others could walk by and read it. That feels far more vulnerable than keeping the failures tucked out of sight in my mind.
But
when I pin a failure to the page, it stops nibbling at me. They all do. It had gotten to the point where I felt crowded out of my own brain. Thought clutter.
The list is long. As I keep writing, my eyes wander back upward to the things already written.
I really couldn’t help that one. It seems silly to blame myself for it. And this one, yeah it would have been better if I’d done it, but the reason I didn’t was because I was managing a much more important task instead. I only have so many hours each day. There are more tasks than hours. If today I succeed at work tasks, I fail at eating healthy. Something has to give.
The ones that grieve most fall under the column Parenting Failures.
Then I cast my mind backward, and I am glad for the small scale of these failures. In the grand scheme “I forgot to make the kid do her dishes” is a failure with minimal consequences.
There are things on the list that matter. Failures I must attempt to remedy.
For now, with the failures trapped on a page, I can move onward with more space to think.

Today at church I had a friend come to me to discuss our mutual assignment. She basically took it out of my hands and said “Let me do it this time. I know how busy you are. Is there any way I can help you?” I didn’t have an answer other than “thank you” because all the answers to “how can I help?” require complex thought and untangling one task from another.

Later in church another friend came to me. She teaches my 16yo at church and had noticed that 16 had been absent more often than she’d attended lately. It is what happens when the mental health meds aren’t working as they need to, so you decide to switch. But then there is this dip in the middle where the old meds are fading from the system and the new meds haven’t yet begun to work. So we talked about how my friend could help my daughter.

After that, a third friend came up to give me a hug and say “are you okay? I know you have a lot going on.”

At which point I begin to wonder “wait, how do they all know?” I scan my memory for what I’ve written on my blog, on Facebook, on twitter. For a moment I worried that I’d been dumping too much stress and emotion online. Yes some of the things are there. Different things in different places, but even if someone were diligent about stitching those pieces together there are many things that never go online at all.

I’ve come to the conclusion that news travels in old fashioned ways, person to person. My church is structured to facilitate quiet, back-channel communication. Sometimes that can feel gossipy or cliquish, but done right it is a great help to those who need it. Though it is strange to have multiple people offering to help and to realize that there was almost certainly a conversation concerned about me and mine. It is both heart warming and uncomfortable to be seen as needing extra attention.

I still don’t have answers for these friends, some of whom I’ve only known for a few months and others that I’ve known for years. There are so many things that I can’t easily hand off. The things that I can, have pretty much already been dumped or hired out. What I probably need most is someone who will listen for hours and help me untangle all the thoughts in my head. Only then will I be able to identify pieces that other people could do. This is why I’ve scheduled therapy. It’ll begin next week.

I don’t want to be spending that money right now ($90 per session because my deductible is so high it is unlikely to kick in at all this year.) But I’ve been putting it off for four years. (Since February of 2013 when all four kids melted down almost simultaneously.)

This afternoon Kiki needed my help unpacking. She’s home for a week of spring break. Kiki didn’t need me to actually touch anything. All she needed was for me to sit in the room with her while she put things away. Somehow having a witness in the room let her sort a mess into a tidy space. I suspect this is what the therapist’s job will be with me. They will sit while I pull out old boxes of emotion and open them up to see what is inside.

I can say that being seen is far better than not being seen. I’ve had that experience at church too. There were middle parts of those four years where I tried to reach out and ask for help, but either I wasn’t specific enough about what I needed or someone else did not follow through. It is often hard to be specific when seeking help.

That is a thing I need to remember in years to come, when I know that someone is in a stressed place and I want to be helpful, it almost certainly starts with listening. Ask for details about the things in their life, and somewhere in what they say will be a piece I can take out of their hands and do for them. The burden of finding what to do needs to fall on the helper because humans under stress are not good at identifying what they need. Also there are huge social stigmas around asking for help.

For now it is just good to have friends who see me and all my things. Not being alone with the things is a huge help all by itself. And now I can add three people to the list of those I can call if I manage to identify a specific thing that I need help doing.

This is Cecil.

He is little and cute, which is not an adjective one usually thinks to use when describing a snake, but it applies here. I’d always put reptile pets into the same mental category as fish: interesting, but mostly decorative. In the week that we’ve had Cecil, he’s been far more fun than I’d have thought. For one thing, he’s so tiny. As I watch him move, part of my brain keeps wondering how something so small can be alive.

Here is a size reference. My daughter’s hands are on the small end of adult sized.

She loves her snake. He spends a fair amount of time outside of his tank either being held or curled up in her shirt pocket. He likes pockets. They feel safe, dark, and warm. Of course after a while he gets too warm and then he wants to go on adventures. We’re looking forward to watching him grow from his current 15 inches to full adult size which can be up to five feet long. It’ll take a few years, but we don’t mind.

And since I know there are people for whom snakes are inherently creepy, here is a picture of a sleeping cat who is of the opinion that my purse is not going anywhere for a while.

Email. There is always email. This weekend much of it was about tweaking Planet Mercenary art and fine tuning some of the design elements for Planet Mercenary layout.

Reading twitter and the news while being simultaneously pleased that people are stepping up to protest because of their convictions, and being appalled at how my country currently appears to the world at large. I have a Facebook friend in Australia and watching her react to the news from America has been painful. There was an entire thread of Australians saying “well, guess I’m not going to visit the US ever again.” The things happening in my country are too scary for them to want to risk coming here.

Buying groceries at the store where prices are unchanged, people are calmly picking up food they need and luxury items they want. No sense of panic or urgency, just people doing their regular shopping.

Waking up Saturday morning with a crippling sense of self-doubt. It suddenly seemed obvious that I had failed at everything I’ve been trying to accomplish and that anything which seemed near completion would actually prove to need total, massive revision. Howard talked me through enough so I could function. The feeling faded by late evening.

Church was utterly normal. People gave talks on kindness and service without any reference to politics or world events. This was both a relief and a frustration. Events in my country are big enough that they should be changing everyone. We could use reminders about Christ saying “I was a stranger and ye took me in.” Yet I know for a fact that my church congregation has people on both sides of the ideological debates and I really did not want heated discussion to chase away the solace of church worship. I dearly love some people on the opposite side of ideological divide from me. I do not want to fight with them. Bridges not walls.

Laying on the floor next to my teenage child’s bed because she is currently curled up in a ball underneath that bed. She can’t come out because her left eye feels all hollow and everything in the world is poking at her brain. So I keep her company until the noise in her head calms down enough for her to emerge. Down there on the carpet I pondered what to do to help her, whether her medicines need to be changed, and the fact that the carpet really needed a good vacuuming.

It is all such a mix of things heartbreaking and things boring, things complicated and things simple, things routine and things unprecedented. I’m worn out with it all. So I drag myself out of bed each day like tiny Steve Rogers standing back up in the alley saying, “I can do this all day.” Sometimes winning comes from just refusing to stay down.

I’ve been pulling 10-12 hour work days to get the Planet Mercenary editing done. Also the Pristine Seventy Maxims book shipping. And we’re prepping some new merchandise for pre-order. Then there is the homeschooling and regular parenting. And I’m expecting the Defaced Seventy Maxims books the first week of February. At a minimum, I expect this state of busy-ness to last for the next three weeks until LTUE.

Have you heard about LTUE? It is a Science Fiction and Fantasy conference with an emphasis on teaching writing and art. If your near Provo the weekend of February 16-18. Both Howard and I will be there. I’m on some interesting panels and I’ve got a presentation about picture books on Saturday.

All the cracks between the stuff in the prior two paragraphs have been filled up with thoughts and emotions about American politics and world politics. Howard and I have been married for 22 years. We’ve had more political conversations in the past six months than in all the prior years combined. My head swirls with thoughts and fears. Some of them rational, some of them less so. I’ve done a fair bit of writing about all of it, but until I’m certain of what I want to say, I hold off on saying most of it on the internet.

This I am certain of: If you are an American citizen, please be actively engaged in making sure that your representatives are representing you accurately. Pay attention to how they vote so you can be informed next election on who you want to vote for. I don’t just hope this for people who agree with my opinions, but also for those who oppose them. We need an era of civic engagement when the average person is paying attention and holding elected officials accountable.

Outside the weather is cold, gray, wet. That is not helping the moods indoors. I range from determination to anxiety as I contemplate all the tasks I must do this month in order to keep all the necessary business things moving forward at the pace required to meet deadlines. There are external factors in all of those deadlines. I already know which deadlines to let slide if I have to in order to meet more critical deadlines, but I don’t want any of them to slide. They’re there because I want things to be complete.

This week I get to ship packages containing the Pristine Seventy Maxims book. It is the first taste of completion. For some people their Kickstarter will finally be complete. Others will have to wait until next month when the Defaced Seventy Maxims books arrive. Still others will be waiting a bit longer for the full Planet Mercenary book. Fulfilling our promises to all of these people is the primary business task of the year. There are lots of moving parts to making sure that happens.

Sometimes I look at the calendar and despair because a week of the year is already gone. Other times I have to remind myself that I am only just past the first week of the year. I’m not out of time.

Along side the business priorities I have priorities related to family and community. I must set boundaries around these things. I can’t let business swamp family or community, but I can’t allow other things to disrupt business too much. This calls for a hundred judgement calls per day where I have to decide what is most important for the next fifteen minutes.

A new semester begins for two kids on Wednesday. Their schedules are being shuffled around. They can shake off the stresses of last semester and start a bit fresh. For Patch it means three homeschooled classes instead of just one. We don’t know how that is going to work quite yet. The last bits of the old semester caused quite a lot of stress last week. Unpleasantness and disruptions all around. Hopefully we can soon develop a better rhythm.

I’ve also begun my new church calling. I’ve been asked to serve as part of the compassionate service committee. This is the core of service in our congregation. It is our job to identify who needs help, whether it be meals, rides, company, resources, or anything else. Then we try to connect people with the help that they need. Sometimes it means asking others to be the helpers. Occasionally it means being a helper myself. It is important work and it fits right in with my goal to grow my heart. I would argue that helping people directly around us is essential work, particularly when the country’s political landscape is poised for upheaval. Whether the results of that upheaval will be good or bad, it is impossible to say from this vantage point, but I can guarantee that the process will create personal hardship for individuals. Change always does. So I need to be watching and helping.

And the helping will help me. With my heart not feeling quite so tight, I will be less afraid.

I could do with less cold and with longer days. January always gets to me. So I just need to hunch up and plow on through. Each day brings tasks closer to complete. Each day is an opportunity to serve. Each day the sunlight lasts a little longer. I have 22 days left in this month. I need to use them well.

The warehouse is cleared, pallets removed, boxes shifted. I’m almost ready for a shipment of books to arrive next week. I just need to shift a few more things and sweep the newly available space.

I’ve been working hard on Planet Mercenary. Much of what I’ve been doing is organizational. I took on half of the art director job, deciding what art we need done, contacting artists, and assigning work. It seems strange that spending so much time sending and responding to email counts as being productive, but it is necessary.

Work on the house remodel is on hold through the end of January. Both Howard and I need to keep our project energy firmly focused on Planet Mercenary.

Many of the parenting tasks are on hold this week. There are things we need to do in order to help all the people in our house have healthier lives, but we’re not pushing any of it forward during the space between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The new year is coming fast. I drive Kiki back to school on Monday, where she’ll hopefully have a calmer semester than the last one was. The other kids start back to school on Wednesday. It would feel like a fresh start, except that our school district doesn’t end the semester with Christmas break. Instead the end of the semester is a week and a half into the next year. So we always arrive back at school feeling muddled and rushed to get all the end of semester things done.

I don’t actually know how I feel about having a new year. This one was a muddled mess of things getting better on a personal level and feeling more perilous on the public stage. I don’t want to live in dread and fear, but I’m cautious about talking myself into hope and optimism. If things end up being hard, I don’t want to have to deal with cleaning up shards of shattered hope while I’m dealing with the hard. So mostly I’m putting my head down, trying to ignore the change over of the year, and put one foot ahead of the other on all my projects. Bit by bit they’ll all get done. Since all of them are specifically designed to make the world better (even if only in small personal ways) that step by step approach is a “Make the World Better” effort.

My first exposure to Role Playing Games was laying on the floor underneath the table while my three older siblings hunched over Advanced D&D books, rolling dice to kill masses of Gnolls. I was six. When they started up a new campaign, I begged to play. They reluctantly allowed me to. So for me Role playing meant books, dice, hand drawn maps on graph paper, and many loose sheets of paper. Around age fourteen I gave up on Role Play. It was too socially complicated since the only people who would play with me were boys and the vast majority of my peers didn’t understand it at all.

When my children were young and I watched them play, I realized that their free form play was essentially a Role Play without dice, paper, and rules to give boundaries to the mutual story. I remembered my own imaginative games as a child. I was able to imagine so strongly that I could almost see the things I was pretending. I also remember the day that pretending stopped working for me. Two friends had come for a sleepover. We were in the opening negotiations of dressing up and beginning the story when one of my friends paused and said “This is silly.” In that moment I couldn’t see it as anything but silly. Self consciousness banished pretend play forever. I was twelve.

Interestingly, twelve was also when I began to focus more on writing stories. Pretending on paper was much more socially acceptable than putting on dress ups and waving pretend swords in the backyard. When I reached adulthood I recognized that one of the biggest values of D&D and the paper RPGs that followed was that they gave adults permission to play pretend again. I assumed I would see the same pattern with my own children, that around twelve they would swap over to structured play bounded by rules and paper.

I was wrong. Twelve faded into thirteen and then fourteen while my kids still ran about in the backyard with friends. They also took it online, not into the structured mmorpgs that adults gravitated to. Instead places like Minecraft or Roblocks became platforms for role play in the same free form mode that I saw in my backyard. Gradually, with no fanfare, the online role playing took the place of running around in the yard. My kids have participated in role play (which could also be called cooperative storytelling) on Mincraft, Roblocks, DeviantArt, Google Docs, Terraria, Skype, and probably two or three other places that I don’t know about. It seems as long as the program has a way to connect with friends and a chat function, it can be used for role play.

I’m happy to live in a world where imaginative play is not the sole province of children. Play is good for all of us, no matter what our age may be.

This list could also be called, Reasons I am Glad to Live in a World of Modern Medicine.
Pediatrician
Family practice doctor
Obstetrician
Gynecologist
ENT
Many nurses and PAs
ENT surgeon
Radiation Oncologist
Cardiologist
Cardiac care nurse
Pediatric urologist
Gastroenterologist
Ultrasound technician
X-ray technician
MRI technician
CAT scan technician
Phlebotomist
Pediatric surgeon
Pediatric neurologist
EEG technician
EKG technician
Psychiatrists
Pediatric Psychiatrists
Licensed therapists
Anesthesiologists
Pharmacists

All of those for a family of six that is basically healthy. It is possible that some of the things we consulted these professionals for would have resolved on their own without intervention, but some of these interventions were life saving. Without medical intervention I would likely be dead by now, slowly choked to death by a throat tumor. Howard might not have survived his myocarditis in 1999, or his C Diff infection in 2013.

The only point I have here is that I am extremely grateful for modern medicine and I would really like to be able to continue to afford preventative care which allows us to stay well and lets us be contributing members of society. I don’t know what 2018 will bring on the healthcare front. I don’t know how much of my income will have to go toward premiums (in 2017, it’ll be about 25%) I don’t even know if I’ll have the option to purchase a healthcare plan at all. I will be pleased with any political party which delivers affordable healthcare that allows me to see the listed specialists as I need to. I will be angry at any party which makes seeing doctors more difficult and more expensive.

For now I guess I should be glad that the current round of testing and appointments will likely be concluded before the end of the year so that they can go on this year’s deductible instead of the much higher one for next year.

The house is quiet and feels calm in this hour before everyone goes to sleep. Bedtime used to be the most energy intensive part of my day as I attempted to convince small children that they should lay still long enough for sleep to arrive. I spent years laying down with kids, sitting in the room with kids, or sitting out in the hallway being door guardian. None of those things are required anymore. I do have to remind my teenagers about bedtime, but mostly they accomplish it on their own. On the whole, I like this stage of life better. Bedtime was so hard, particularly because it required super-human patience when my energy was already used up.

But I miss reading stories out loud.

I have shelves full of children’s books, everything from picture books to middle grade. They are full of stories. I remember holding those books and speaking the words that made those stories come to life. I miss having faces turned toward the story, absorbing it. I still get to read aloud sometimes, mostly to other people’s children. But I’ve been wondering if there is a way to convince my teenagers to sit down and listen while Mom reads them Christmas stories. I might get away with it because Christmas makes everyone a bit nostalgic.

Christmas is like a time capsule. This year as I pull out the decorations and ornaments, I discover thoughts and emotions that I accidentally packed away in prior years. Remembered joy and sadness come out of the boxes along with objects that haven’t seen the light of day in eleven months. Ornaments bring back memories from decades ago and from last year. This is both a lovely thing and a difficult one. Since last year I was not in a good place emotionally, this year I have more emotion to process than usual. It helps that the home construction is forcing us to change many of our Christmas patterns. The tree is in a different room, there is no piano on which to display our Christmas pyramid. The physical changes we’re making in our house will create a before and after. That too will get folded into our holiday memories.

I haven’t yet pulled out my stock of Christmas books. They used to line up on the piano, now they’ll need to go elsewhere. But I want them out. I want to have those stories close to hand. And even if I don’t get to read them aloud to my children, I can read some of them to myself. I’m looking forward to seeing my friend the Grinch and remembering once again that we don’t save Christmas, it saves us.