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It is the dark side of 4am and I’m awake. I used to be asleep, but around 2am something woke me. I should have been able to roll over and go back to sleep, but instead my task brain woke up and tried to sort out all the things I have to do. The list is long and so anxiety started to kick in because I knew that every minute I spent awake without getting things done meant that I would be even more sleep deprived and my list would not get any shorter. So I got up and began clearing things out of my email boxes. I can’t do all of the email related tasks, because some of them require printing or rummaging in the file cabinet, both of which are activities which might wake Kiki. But the clutter is cleared up and I feel like I have a better grasp on what is actually urgent.

On Saturday I drive Kiki to college, which is an all-day project. I’ve been looking forward to it, but it means that Saturday is unavailable as a catch up day. Or a catch-my-breath day. I feel like I’ve been running flat out since school started on Tuesday morning. Every hour had some urgent task, school supplies to acquire, gym clothes needed, disclosure documents, friend conflict to negotiate. And then there are the urgent post-convention tasks. And the urgent pre-convention tasks (SLCC is only two weeks away.) And the urgent tasks related to finishing Massively Parallel and sending it off to print. I had to bow out of writer’s group on Wednesday because I had nothing left to give. All of that, and I’ve forgotten how to make sure that dinner gets made on school nights. My kids have been fixing for themselves, which is great, but their options become increasingly limited when I haven’t had time to go grocery shop.

So far so good on the school front. Kids are coming home happy. They’re either doing their homework without argument or gleefully reporting that they have none. I’m quelling the part of my brain that wants to double check all of this to make sure their portrayals of homework are accurate. Homework is their job, not mine. I need to let them run the show until mid September (When my task crunch should be over. I hope.) Then I can check in and make sure we’re on track. Though part of my brain really wants to contact teachers and make sure that the understanding my child has of what is expected of him matches the teacher’s actual expectations. I don’t have time for half a dozen teacher meetings this week. I just don’t. So I’m rummaging in my head to find enough trust that it will all be fine.

I really need to complete some tasks and projects so that I can clearly see the ones I have left.

Spent the morning with the kids at the Museum of Natural Curiosity. The afternoon went to napping an a quick convention-related accounting session. (GenCon booth broke even today. Yay! Two more days of sales still incoming.)

This was my evening:

Kikaa does not normally deign to sit in laps when those laps are in a hammock, but today she wanted snuggles more than she didn’t want hammock. She only stayed for a few minutes before she leaped off to go stalk a bird, but it was a lovely few minutes.

Summer is when I lose track of days and hours. I get to the end of the days feeling all muddled and like I didn’t get enough done. So I finished off my day by taking a crowbar to the deck. all of the decorative trim has been removed and we can now use a flashlight to see underneath. Since most of the trim was in contact with the ground, almost every piece has rot on the end. There were many places where wood had turned back into dirt. Yet because of the construction of the deck all of that was hidden from view. The deck still looked sound. Also there were spiders and bugs everywhere. Not my favorite. But beating things up with a crowbar was kind of fun.

I’ve really got to get a grip on my schedule. I need to put some structure into days that have gone all schlumped. I need to declare work hours and tell the kids not to interrupt during them. I need to prioritize and get some things complete so that I’m not trying to juggle so many things in my brain.

This morning I looked around my house and saw all the accumulated clutter from the past five weeks. During those weeks I packed for a trip by pulling things out of their usual places. Then I unloaded my suitcases, but not everything got put away. I was too busy preparing for a convention, which required me to pull out a completely different set of things. Also there was an art show, which strewed another set of paraphernalia about. While I was away on my trip, Howard brought home a drawing table and assorted gear from Dragon’s Keep, because he’s drawing at home now. Some of the gear is duplicates, most of it is sitting in boxes waiting for me to have time to decide where it goes. Then I came home from the convention bringing back piles of things which need to be put away.

One of the troubles with having so many piles of things, it means that even when I know exactly where the item I’m holding belongs, there is probably a pile between me and that location. So instead of putting the item away, I set it on a pile to put away later. Piles beget more piles until the entire house is full of piles which must be moved out of the way in order to accomplish anything useful.

This morning I looked around and realized that the most important business task I could accomplish would be to clean house. So I spent many hours of my work day organizing and putting away. There is much work yet to do, but it is begun.

I’ve also begun dismantling our back deck. The railings are off and we pried up enough boards to shine a flashlight underneath. That part was a little bit scary. I really did not know what we would see. I feared hornet’s nests and massive spiders because I swear that there were bugs or webs in every single join of every single board I removed. I no longer consider it a nice deck. It was a massive bug and spider house. Apparently. Underneath was actually pretty boring. There was dirt. We started at the far corner from where the rotted support is because we’ve seen leaf cutter bees flying in and out over there. If I have to deal with angry insects, I want to have time to know that they are there first. I’ll probably do a post with pictures, but it’ll probably wait until I have pictures of every stage.

Now I need to rest so I can have a similar work day tomorrow. We’ve had five weeks of running around. The next five weeks we’ll all stay home. I’m looking forward to that.

The first day home after a trip involves a lot of drifting around and trying to remember where I left off. I’m also spending time processing what has changed. I was only gone two weeks, so you wouldn’t think there would be much, but a neighbor took out a large tree next to our driveway and that changes the look of the house every time I approach. Howard and Kiki rearranged the front room while I was gone to make space for the drawing table that used to live at Dragon’s Keep. We’re all still assessing how it works. Weeds sprang up in all of the garden beds while I was elsewhere. Weeds do that. The pantry and fridge have different food in them. So I’m making note of things I ought to buy and new things to incorporate into meals.

I also spent a good portion of the day with my accounting software. I try to do the accounting every week and so to miss two weeks in a row makes me antsy. Piece by piece I began to pick up the strands of my life and remember how they go. Next week will be a convention week, with Howard, Kiki, and I trundling off to Salt Lake for Westercon. I’ll be splitting my time between convention events and the kids at home.

The other portions of my day were spent petting the cat, who is apparently glad to see me, or needs reassurance that I still accept her, or something. I also walked around on our back deck, noting the places where the boards have gone wiggly. While we were gone, on board broke through, making it clear that some of the hidden support beams have begun to rot. Repair would require complete disassembly, at which point we’d have better luck just building an entire new one. We haven’t the money for that, so we’ll take it apart and see what is underneath. It’ll be a time capsule of mud and dryer lint. (The dryer vents is in the crawlspace under the deck as is the hose nozzle. Not the most brilliant of arrangements and likely the reason we’ve got rotting support beams.)

Even though I’m trying to figure out where I’m at, everything feels right. I’m in my house with my people. The air feels like home and so do the plants and trees. Tomorrow I attempt to resume a normal schedule by claiming my Saturday morning gardening time. Sunday is a day of rest. I also have a short list of catch-up chores including additional blog posts I want to write before all the California thoughts are packed up and put away.

It is good to be home.

Home home home home home home home home.
It is not poetry, but it is what my heart is singing today.

The amount of insistence I place on my kids coming to the table quickly and eating politely is directly proportional to the amount of effort I put into making the meal. This is neither a good nor a bad thing. It is simply useful information. Low effort meals mean I’m less emotionally invested in the reaction to the meal. There is value in both the effort-ful family dinner and the fix-it-for-yourself free range evenings. Our family should probably work toward having more focused meals and less free range. Balance is good.

I would probably feel differently about this if the act of preparing meals and feeding children was inherently rewarding to me. My grandmother expresses love through cooking and feeding. In contrast, I would be quite happy if we could finally come up with those Jetson-style meal replacement pills so that I only had to fix food when I felt like it. This undoubtedly explains why I’m willing to stock the freezer with Hot Pockets, which are the closest thing I’ve found to those Jetson meals. There are times I enjoy cooking, but mostly it is a thing I have to do rather than something I want to do. I’m very glad that my kids are old enough to fix for themselves rather than always needing me to do it. I do harbor some guilt and worry that I’m letting them form terrible eating habits, but I suspect they’re happier free-ranging than they would be having a mother who provided three meals a day with a side-order of resentment.

When I get home, I plan to create a schedule where each of the kids is in charge of fixing the food one day per week. I suspect that it will suffer the fate of most of my similar plans. It will work for awhile and then fall apart. Then I’ll scrape up the pieces, add in knowledge of what worked and what didn’t, to create a new iteration of The Dinner Plan. After years of similar iterations we have a functioning dish washing schedule. We’re due for a new iteration of the chore schedule, so adding a dinner schedule already fits with established family patterns. There will be moaning and groaning when I unveil it. That too is according to established family patterns.

Another thing I’ve noticed about dinner, when the kids help fix it, they’re more likely to eat it. Also they’re less likely to spurn food when they’ve had the experience of cooking something and having a sibling complain about it. It will take parental effort to get the ball rolling, but it is likely to be effort well spent.

We’ve reached the point where I’m counting the days until I get to go home. It appears that eight days is my go-with-the-flow vacation limit. Last night my task brain switched on and I made lists. Today I’ve not done half the things I told myself I would do today. I visited with my friend and my Grandma instead. I don’t begrudge that. Yet with all the empty-seeming hours it seems like I could get more writing done. Or more things done in general. I miss my usual structures and patterns.

A Northern California beach is about cold water, waves, sand crabs, sea weed, chilly wind, and sun burns. When I took Florida-raised Howard to his first California beach, he was a bit dismayed. When he took me to my first Florida beach, I watched the gently rippling water and thought it was like a giant bath tub. They are each beautiful in their own ways. I can’t honestly say which I prefer, but I do know which one feels more like home.

I spent some time with my eyes closed just feeling the wind on my skin and listening to the sound of the waves. Oceans are loud, very little else can be heard with the surf right there. I like that some. With so much ocean noise there was less space for my own circling thoughts. This is good, because I’m tired of the tight little circles my thoughts have been taking lately. They wear a groove in my brain and I can’t tell if they make sense anymore.

I didn’t get all the way wet. The water was shockingly cold on my feet, and I measured that against the wind. I knew if I got immersed, I would be very cold for quite awhile afterward. I just recovered from being sick. In fact I’m not certain that I’m a hundred percent better yet. So I dabbled in the edges of the water. I watched the kids body surf. I got sandy and a little bit sunburned. I admired the haul of sand crabs. I ate sand with my lunch. And I closed my eyes to listen to the surf, feel the wind, and taste the salt in the air. Yet when time came to leave, I carried regret with me up the hill. My younger self jumped the waves and rode them to shore. Somewhere in the years, I became a person who counts the cost and makes “smart” choices. I wonder if this is something that comes with age, or if I’ve just become unable to dive in and participate without thinking so far ahead that I don’t fully commit my energy to the task at hand. I was wise to not chill myself, but there is something to be said for profligate joy in the moment.

It has been hours since I left the beach. If I close my eyes I can feel the wind pressing against me, as if my skin remembers having to resist all morning. I washed off the sand, but I can still feel it against my feet. It will be years again before I’m back at a beach. I wish I could store up the feel of the wind and the pounding of the surf. If I could just tuck it into some corner of memory and pull it out sometimes that would be lovely. Instead I have some pictures, which show my eyes what the beach was like, but don’t help me preserve the sound, feel, or smells. I brought home a little shell. It is a tiny, ordinary thing, but I can touch it. Perhaps in the touching, I will be able to remember. It will work for a time. Then I’ll have to arrange to have another beach day so that I can remember again all the various inconveniences and discomforts that are an essential part of a day at the beach. They’re all part of what I love about the beach.

We drove past little houses as we left. Perhaps some day I’ll rent a little beach house and spend several days out on the beaches. Of course, first I’ll have to learn how to leave my regular routines without anxiety, but that is a separate consideration. For now, I need to sleep and dream of beaches.