One Cobble at a Time

No one meant for the evening to be hard, but it was anyway

2010-01-07T00:50:28Z

This is the second day in a row I’ve ended up weary and tearful over my kids. I don’t know how to help them. I don’t even know if I should be helping them or if I should be standing back and letting experience be a stern teacher instead. The issues aren’t major ones, just homework and kid squabbles. I fear major issues since these small ones hammer me so hard.

This is as much a part of my parenting experience as the happy days which are full of fun stories. It is an important data point for all those considering parenting or in the midst of their own parenting. I know that I’m good at parenting, or so Howard tells me. Some days I even believe him. But other days I feel like a failure.

Then I comfort myself with the quote from Mary Radmacher:

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day which says “I will try again tomorrow.”

Edited to add: It is now thirty minutes later and things are much better. They always do get better, it is just hard to remember when in the midst of it all.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

That anxious voice inside my head

2010-01-05T21:48:07Z

An argument with a voice in my head after spending several hours working on book layout:

Time for a break.

But we’ve still got so much left to do. You’re on a roll. Why stop now?

I’m tired. I’m cold. My hands are feeling shaky. And all those rows of file names are starting to get tangled up in my head.

But this is important. It has to be done. The sooner it is done the sooner you can move on to the other stuff.

Yes. But it does not have to be completed today. I’m going to go take a bath.

The voice is quiet while I get up from the computer, have a bath, and then lay down to rest. Then it is back.

You have to pick up kids in an hour. What if you don’t wake up in time. You really should go back downstairs and get some more work done while they’re out of the house. Once they’re home you won’t be able to focus on work.

I have a timer set. It will beep and wake me up. All that other stuff is true, but the work can wait. The work is supposed to wait. I’m supposed to pay attention to the kids in the afternoon.

I then went to sleep, but the voice romped through my dreams making them feel restless. It plotted sneaking off to do work after picking up the kids, then it put that into my dreams. Defiantly, I kept sleeping until I heard the timer.

I really do have a lot to accomplish this month. All the things are important and I will feel much more relaxed when they are done. But pushing too hard and stressing myself only gets them done a little bit faster and it seriously impacts my enjoyment of life. I don’t need to run around in an anxiety driven panic. I just need to do some work every day until all the things are done.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Trying to figure it out

2010-01-05T03:29:01Z

Problem:
Gleek often reacts without thinking. Sadness and loneliness get expressed as contrariness and anger. As a result Gleek commonly discovers that she has just done a mildly bad thing and wishes she had not done it. This leads her to feel bad about herself.

Analysis:
Much of her impulsive bad choices are driven by tangled up feelings that she carries inside without sorting through. I need to give her tools for sorting through her feelings. In past years I’ve tried to make space to be her emotional sounding board, but what she really needs is something that does not depend upon me being available. She has lately shown an interest in journal writing.

~~Solution~~ Attempt to address the issue: Each night before she reads in bed, I’m going to have her write a journal entry. She can write down all her feelings both positive and negative. Then when I come to tuck her in for the night, she can tell me about what she wrote.

Results so far: We’re two days in. The journal was filling up with angsty sadness. I was concerned that re-reading all the sadness would convince her that her life really is horrible, so I have added the requirement that each entry should have at least one happy thing in it. Her days really do have more happiness than sadness. I’m not sure whether the codicil is necessary. Writing the emotions down seems to allow her to let go of them. She is much calmer after writing a lament.

Additional plans: I need to enroll her in either dance or gymnastics. She needs to have something in her life on which she can focus surplus energy.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

A Running Start on the New Year

2010-01-03T23:22:49Z

I made a list of the things I want to get done this month. It was enough stuff for two months. I looked at the list and felt a deep desire to get some of it done quickly, to knock it out in the first week of the month so that the rest of the month is more relaxed. The desire is familiar. Each week I bury Monday under a list of things that I want to have out of the way for the rest of the week. I looked at my list again and realized that I’ve kind of done the same thing for the year. January is full of things that I want out of the way. I want this year to be a calmer one. I want there to be space for quiet contemplation and family trips.

This front loading of my schedule is partially driven by fear. I don’t know what is going to come along and rearrange the calendar. Last year it was the XDM project. The year before that it was a health issue. Earlier than those were financial reverses, learning new skills, and conventions which could not be missed. Our schedule has not been predictable for a long time. I combat the fear by tracking upcoming events farther out in the future. I’m endlessly grateful when other people give me lengthy advance notice about events for which we’ll need to plan. I also try to get as much done as fast as I can because it theoretically makes more space.

Only it doesn’t really. Small businesses and families both provide an endless stream of time filling tasks. It is not possible for me to get it all done. I will never be done. I run myself ragged trying to create spaces and often as not the spaces are filled up before I get there. If I want this year to be calmer and more peaceful, I have to start now. Now is part of this year too. I need to begin as I intend to continue. I need to carve out spaces of time to feel peaceful and joyful. If I can do that in each individual day, then this year will be what I want it to be.

I still have my list. I still intend to get most of it done by the end of the month. But I will not treat this month like a mad dash toward completion. It will be a quick paced run with time to look up and around at the scenery.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Putting Away Christmas

2010-01-01T21:31:20Z

Some years I am so eager to be done with the holiday season that I take down the tree on boxing day. Those years I am in a hurry to reclaim my front room and normality from the clutter of tree, nativity, and seasonal books. Other years I want to savor the holiday feeling for a more extended period of time. This year the need to un-decorate sneaked up on me. It dawned on me slowly that today is New Year’s Day and that my front room is still full of Christmas. Some time before Monday morning I need my front room to not be full of Christmas anymore. I need to hit the ground running on Monday because the first of the year accounting is looming and I’ve got a list of business contacts to refresh.

Knowing the job needed to be done, I decided that the sooner it was done the better. So I rallied my reluctant forces and we began to un-decorate. In this case the forces were my kids. They are always enthusiastic about decorating and completely uninterested in putting things away. (This is also true with most of their toys, but that is a problem for a different day.) I started by requiring them each to remove 50 ornaments from the tree. Thus I discovered that we own approximately 150 ornaments. I’m not sure what I’ll do with this little factoid, but there it is. Mostly I was pleased to have all the ornaments transferred from tree to box in less than 10 minutes. The tree itself was carted downstairs and shoved into the giant duffel bag we use as storage.

At that point I released my minions from bondage and they fled back to their games. The rest was up to me. The tree is our big Christmas effort. Everything else fits into three boxes. This year I decided to organize and sort as I put things away. It is a small gift that I am giving to my next-December self. She will discover less chaos in the Christmas boxes, which is a good thing.

The boxes are all stowed. The various debris have been swept. The furniture is put back in the regular locations. My front room feels light and spacious. Over the next few weeks various Christmas items will surface from odd corners of the house and I will shove them into the tops of the Christmas boxes. We’re ready for what comes next.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Gifts of the Storm

2010-01-01T01:52:49Z

I’ve been feeling lots of decade resonance lately. Things that happened 10 years ago are coming back in unexpected ways. We’ve been watching kid movies that were the 10-years-ago favorites. Howard met a man at the gym who was in the cardiac care unit at the same time he was ten years ago. I just finished an essay that discusses my radiation therapy in 1999 and the effects in my life since. Six months from now will be the 10 year anniversary of Schlock Mercenary. None of us intended to get all retrospective about our lives ten years ago. It happened anyway.

Do you see? asks the universe.
So I look at where we were then and I look at where we are now. Then I answer.
Yes I do.

I offer what I see as hope to anyone out there for whom 2009 was an awful year: 1999 was really hard for us. Some of what came after was also hard. Some of it has been amazingly good. But the amazingly good stuff was made possible by the hard stuff. So hang in there. Ride out your storm. Then see what you can make out of the gifts the storm brings to you.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Sometimes shoveling snow is a good thing

2009-12-31T01:48:12Z

I was right about getting outside and active helping me feel better. Nature obliged the effort by dumping 6 inches of snow on my double wide driveway on a day when I’m expecting guests. I had to get out there and clear it or else they would not have a place to park. I also did not want a repeat of the last snow storm where we did not shovel and our driveway was an icy mess for almost two weeks. So I shoveled. And then I was tired so I napped.

After that I woke up and felt normal. I’m a bit stiff and sore, but I actually made some progress on my projects and on getting the house clean. This counts as a very good thing. The plan for tomorrow also includes getting outside, although I hope that it will take a form other than shoveling snow.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

The Writing on the Calendar on the Wall

2009-12-30T02:34:24Z

My calendar is three feet by four feet and it hangs on the kitchen wall. All of the months are laid out in a grid; each with its own square foot of space. This is where I write the family schedule in multi-colored inks, one color per person. I spend a lot of time standing in front of the calendar. It allows me to quickly review a week, or a month, or a year, as I’m planning ahead to see what will fit, and what will not fit, into our lives. Each day gets about a square inch of space. It is common for the entire inch to be filled with a rainbow of notations about what is to happen that day.

Today I ventured out into the snow covered wilds to fetch the calendar for next year. Upon my return, I sat down with the pens and noted all the scheduled events of which I am currently aware. It used to be that a new calendar stayed mostly empty, only filling up as each month drew near. It was like a wave of scheduled events which rolled across the blank squares. It doesn’t work that way anymore. The wave is still there, but the empty is not. I have events scheduled through November of next year. Our path for the next year is set, complete with wayposts and planned respites. All of it is waiting for the wave of little events to roll through and fill up the gaps.

From now until that mythical day when we’re not so busy, I will be working rear guard action. I must defend the white spaces on the calendar. Because those blank days are not empty days. They are days which are full of the mundane things which don’t get written on calendars. I have to leave time for us to do laundry, and read stories, and clean house, and go to the park, and sit still. There has to be time for the boring stuff, which is the important stuff that we remember best.

I will not always be able to keep spaces empty. I can already see a couple of months that are going to be insanely busy. That happens. That is why it is all the more important to defend the spaces that I can defend. Defending the spaces means not volunteering for things even though I have the skills to get them done. It means telling people no. It means setting aside some of my shiny ideas indefinitely. It means making choices about the activities in which we choose to participate. Turning down an obviously good thing so that I can keep a day empty feels backward, but I have to do it.

My new calendar is on the wall now. In two more days it will be this year’s calendar and the adventure will begin.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Noisy

2009-12-29T04:45:51Z

My brain is a noisy place. When I say that, I’m using the sound engineer definition of noise. (Or at least I’m trying to. Apologies to sound engineers out there (including my husband) if I get it wrong.) To a sound egineer, ‘noise’ means that there are things interfering with the ability to hear the sound you wish to record. For a sound engineer this can mean static introduced by faulty cables or connections. It can mean other sound sources in the room. It can even mean echos from the walls of the room. Eliminating noise is a major part of the sound engineer’s job.

So my brain was noisy, and I couldn’t sort out much of anything from the mess. Some of the noise was work which needed done. Some of it was attempting to create a schedule on a school holiday. Some of it was feeling mildly depressed. Some of it was physical noise from having all the kids home all day. Today was a friends-come-to-our-house day rather than a kids-run-off-to-friend’s-houses day. Some of it was being cooped up in the house all day.

The piece I really wanted to get a handle on was the mild depression. It was the static in the line. I kept thinking that if I could just find the causes, then I could swap out the line before it spills into any more days. Winter darkness, being cooped up in the house, and not having any quiet time are all contributors I suspect. Unfortunately rather than doing the logical thing and getting out of the house, I curled up on the couch with a book and felt frustrated when I was interrupted. Tomorrow will begin with a trip to the gym. Perhaps that will help me sort out the noises and help me hear the happy themes which surround me.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Outside the Routine

2009-12-27T18:04:42Z

Christmas is a Holiday, but it is not a vacation day for me. I enjoy Christmas, but it is a day for focused energy rather than relaxation. I do this to myself. I plan the day around the traditional schedule and emotional arcs of my family members. Each hour is carefully planned to make the entire Christmas experience lives up to the heavy expectations that it must carry. The day is satisfying and happy, but I am tired at the end.

Yesterday was a vacation day for me. I dodged all responsibility for most of the day. It started by bouncing out of bed to run off with Howard and watch Sherlock Holmes in the theaters. This left the kids to eat Christmas cereal for breakfast. I came home and then, rather than fixing lunch or answering email, I played a card game with Kiki and Link. Dinner was left overs pulled from the fridge and given a pass through the microwave. The day also contained reading, and eating treat food, and sitting around doing nothing in particular.

Both Christmas and the day after represent a step outside my regular routine. I enjoyed both, but I will be glad to reassert some normality into our schedule on Monday. We can’t be completely routine, the kids are out of school and my parents are coming for New Year’s, but I can certainly put work back into the schedule. And the kids will discover that there are chores to do. I don’t expect this to please them, but it will be good for all of us to have a little more structure in our day.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

The quiet of Christmas Evening

2009-12-26T01:44:28Z

I was going to write a post called “The Art of Christmas Day” in which I detailed all the planning, pacing, and managing that Howard and I do to make sure that Christmas Day runs smoothly. I even wrote out all the notes, complete with the psychology behind our choices. I may write that post tomorrow, just now I’m too tired. And I’m feeling wistful/thoughtful after watching UP rather than amusing or logical, which are the moods required for the other post.

Still love that movie. It makes me cry every time. It also makes me want to write a list of Stuff I’m Going To Do. For now I’m going to go hug all my kids a couple of times each.

I hope you all had a marvelous day. And remember sometimes the boring stuff is the stuff you remember best.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

On Christmas Eve

2009-12-25T03:31:27Z

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house resounded the thumping of young children bouncing in bed, winding themselves up into a frenzy of excitement instead of calming down to go to sleep. Exhortations to lay still produce about 10 seconds of silence. It is hard to be six years old and fall asleep on Christmas eve. Patch has already been out of bed three times in the last ten minutes. Gleek, at 8, does better. She is laying still, or at least quietly. I’m standing guard. Guard duty may be a long haul this year.

It was a squabblish evening, despite the effort at orchestrating happy family memories around the making of pizza and the lighting of candles. This is fine. Family is about loving despite squabbling. And in between the minor upsets we had laughter and reverence. It was a good mix I think.

Merry Christmas to all.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

My little boy has run out of ‘little’

2009-12-24T20:24:06Z

Yesterday I was standing next to Link when his voice wobbled. For just a moment his voice changed timbre and dove downward. It was so fast. Link certainly didn’t notice. He kept talking and it did not happen again. But I heard it. And Howard heard it.

Today I gave Link a haircut. His hair is solidly and definitively brown now. It used to be bright blonde. He’s lost the last of his baby teeth, and when I hug him, I can’t see over the top of his head anymore.

I have this memory of him at three years old, running across the lawn with the toddler run that goes up and down as much as forward. He had a little blue flower clutched in his pudgy fist. He proudly presented it to me, even though the stem was broken and the flower flopped over.

I miss that little boy. Link misses being that little boy. But I wouldn’t trade the Link I’ve got. He’s earned every one of his inches and smarts.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

James Cameron’s Avatar

2009-12-24T06:35:33Z

I know everyone must be sick of hearing about it, so I’ll keep my reactions brief and spoiler free:

I was not sure I wanted to go, but I am glad that I went. It was like a beautiful retelling of a fairytale. I knew exactly how the story was going to go and how it would end, but I didn’t mind because I was completely engaged with the characters. It has marvelous themes including coming-of-age, understanding differences, facing fears, the fragility of humanity, and self sacrifice. Also on display were dozens of amazing science fiction concepts which are just part of the scenery. I did not feel like the film had an agenda. The special effects are not what sold me on the film. It was the characters.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Sometimes Giving Up is the Right Thing To Do

2009-12-23T21:42:38Z

Today I came across yet another not-yet-published writer who stated her personal manifesto that publishing is tough, but the people who succeed at it are the ones who stick to it. She ended by stating that not everyone has the will to make it in the publishing business. She is right. People who work persistently and consistently in pursuit of publication are likely to achieve their goals. I’ve seen many similar manifestos. I’ve even said the same thing myself a time or two. What has begun to bother me about these statements is the unintentional implication that a writer who stops pursuing publication is weak, a quitter.

There is a huge difference between the person who makes a reasoned decision to stop pursuit of a difficult goal and someone who gives up because they don’t want to work. Everything has an opportunity cost. Pursuing publication costs the writer in time and energy. Sometimes it impacts relationships or financial stability. Those costs need to be weighed. Also, life circumstances change. Altering dreams in response to a change in circumstance is a success, not a failure. In my life I’ve had times of poor health. I’ve had times when I had to put writing down in order to do other things. I wrote about that last April in an essay called Letting Go.

All the determination and sacrifice in the world can be completely undermined by things outside our control. Loss of employment, loss of health, needs of friends and family, these things happen to all of us at one time or another. They are all good reasons for giving up on writing either temporarily or permanently. Finding something else to do is also a valid reason for ending publication attempts. There is nothing wrong with choosing contentment over endless frustration and rejection. There is nothing wrong with deciding to chase a different dream.

At the moment I am pursuing publication. I am writing and compiling essays so that I can embark on the terrifying adventure of querying agents and editors. At this point in my life this is something I feel I must do. But my goal is not “getting published.” My goal is to get my stuff out there; to work as hard as I can; to learn as much as I can; to try. Whether or not publication is the reward of my effort, the effort itself is worthwhile. That said, I really want to hold my book in my hands. I want to be published.

But being published is not the only thing I want, and I am aware that somewhere down the road I may have to put the publication dream down for something else. I don’t want to, but I may have to. The ability to deliberately set aside a dream for something else is a measure of strength, not weakness.

Many thanks to my friend Janci. My thoughts on this subject were, and continue to be, refined by the fascinating conversations we have.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Seeing the good

2009-12-23T04:28:55Z

At three hours into the holiday break, it was looking like a bust and I was ready to send kids back to school. I’d even written up an entertaining/complaining list comparing the number of hours on vacation to the number of tantrums. But then things got better. I finally got back to my blog entry and realized that the mood had passed. I no longer feel like complaining. Instead I feel all cozy and happy.

It is hard for people to see outside their current mood. This afternoon Kiki was furiously mad at the thoughtlessness of teenage boys. She was also mad at most of the rest of the world for daring to exist while she was angry. I knew that the mood would pass, but she could not believe me. Neither could Gleek who spend most of the time I was cooking dinner bemoaning the fact that I was not cooking something else. And then I could not see out of my mood where I wanted to complain about my kids.

But here we all are and life is much better. It usually gets better if we just try. I need to remember that before I write a blog entry which records the day as awful. The whole day was not awful, just a few hours of it. The rest has been good.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Managing an irregular income

2009-12-21T18:54:24Z

Our income does not arrive in regular checks made out to the same amount. The bulk of what we make in a year will arrive in the month surrounding a book release. All the money arrives and sits in a big pile in our bank account. It is our reserve and for awhile we feel rich. But then the months pass by and the reserve dwindles. We still have bills to pay and we tighten our belts until the next book release.

One of the things I do to manage the money is keep separate accounts for the family and the business. The reserve sits in the business accounts and gets transferred to the family by means of small regular paychecks. This allows me to manage the family budget the same way I did when Howard still worked for a big corporation. At least in theory. The actuality is that when the business accounts begin to run low, we go longer between paychecks and the paychecks get smaller. Sometimes we even pull money from our home equity to cover bills for the last month or two prior to a book launch. That money gets paid back as soon as the next book launches.

We are currently at the lean end of our income cycle. Last year we launched a single Schlock book and then invested money into inventory in the form of XDM books, a reprint of Under New Management, and slipcases to make boxed sets. The inventory investment was necessary, but it diminished our reserve more quickly than usual. Since last August we’ve been about two months from having to borrow money to pay bills.

I did the accounting this morning and we are still about two months from having to borrow money to pay bills. This is largely due to additional advertising revenue. However all the scrambling we did during the Fall definitely helped. It also helps that Schlock fans were generous and bought the things we scrambled to make. Christmas sales went well.

Now Christmas sales are largely finished and advertising revenue always takes a nose dive in January. However, the end is in sight. Travis is hammering away at the coloring for the next book. Howard is hammering away at the bonus story. We should be able to send the book to the printer right about the time our reserves run out and we start to borrow. The borrowing makes us nervous, but the truth is that our home equity and our IRA accounts represent an enormous reserve in themselves. We stock them up when the money flows freely so that we can draw on them when things are tighter. If we are depleting a couple months of the year and accumulating the rest, then we’re still in good shape.

We really are very fortunate to get to do what we are doing.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Winter Break is Nigh

2009-12-21T03:52:15Z

On one hand, I am glad I have two more days to get work and writing done before the kids are home all day. On the other hand, I really don’t want to get up early tomorrow. I want to make the kids get up early even less than I want to get up early myself. Most mornings I have to physically wrest the covers from them before they’ll get out of bed. And then there is the problem of breakfast. The kids have an array of dietary preferences. I can either fix multiple meals in order to save on arguing, or I can fix a single meal and weather the complaining. Neither one sounds like much fun at o-dark-thirty in the morning.

BUT, the holidays are near. I will get to sleep in. They will get to sleep in. We will all have a break from homework and routine. It will be good right up until we all start feeling cabin fever and are ready to take on a new year. Then we will be back to schedules and checklists. I will be newly happy because I will remember what chaos ensues when the routine is AWOL.

For tonight, I need to sit in the light of the softly glowing tree and feel glad for a quiet hour.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Working at Writing

2009-12-20T04:42:42Z

My brain has been tied up with writing for the past two days. I have this essay which I intend to submit to a contest. The deadline is Dec 31st and the essay is not ready yet. I’ve known about the contest since last spring, but it was only in November that I found the right stories and concepts for the essay. I wrote a draft in early December, but yesterday I had one of those moments where I could see how the ideas were right but the presentation was all wrong. The insight was due to some good feedback from an alpha reader. Many thanks are due there.

My original draft told the story. My new draft is wrapping the concepts around scenes of the story. I am attempting to show rather than tell. This proves difficult because the scenes have to be from my own relevant experiences. There is only a limited amount of rearranging I am allowed to do for narrative convenience. The line between creative nonfiction and complete fabrication is narrow. I keep re-writing and re-adjusting as I go; trying to find the right arrangements of words to communicate the ideas. Even as I forge forward toward a complete draft, I am aware that there are errors I am missing. I’m going to have to go back through the whole thing to check for tense drift. I simply can’t focus properly on tense matching while I’m working on structure.

Writing this essay has been hard. I haven’t had a writing experience this intensive since I wrote the story to submit for a DAW anthology in 2007. Part of it is writing to a deadline and really wanting the work to be my best. Another part of the intensity is the subject matter. I really care about what I am trying to say. This effort is forcing me to push deeper and write longer than I usually do. I am learning a lot from the experience. Naturally I hope that the essay is accepted and published as the DAW story was. However, even if it is not I will still have succeeded.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Christmas Status Update

2009-12-19T00:54:51Z

One week to go. (The kids make sure I am appraised of the count down daily. As if I might forget.) I ran out today to buy the last Christmas gift. (The remainder are things I must bake.) I have already had my bout with Christmas over-whelmedness. (Yes I made that word up.) I did the fretting over how much we are spending. I worried that we were getting too much for the kids. Then I worried that there might not be enough. Hopefully I can now move on toward the blissful feeling that all will be well. There are still things to do. People continue to order and I must ship the packages. I have an essay that consumed most of my attention for today, and it is still not finished. But this evening I am putting down all my Things to Do and visiting with a friend. There will also be food. It is good.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Dreaming of Grandpa

2009-12-17T23:26:52Z

I dreamed of my Grandpa today. He died eleven years ago this month. It was the normal sort of mish-mosh dream that I have when I take a long nap in the middle of the day. Then Grandpa was there. He was awake and alert. He spoke with a clarity that he lost some time in my early teens. I don’t remember most of what he said despite the fact that I tried to hold onto it as the dream dissolved into consciousness. All I retained was a sense of his presence and love.

I’d like to believe that my Grandpa came to visit me, that he was really there. This is not the first time I’ve felt visited by people who are gone. But whether it was a visit, or the scattered dreams of someone who has been thinking of her Grandparents lately, it was still a good dream. It was nice to see him again.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Projects in my head

2009-12-17T06:05:20Z

Christmas–still needs some organizing and shopping and wrapping and shipping.

The Kids– The level of drama around here is lower than it was, but there is still plenty for me to figure out and manage. I’ve figured out the family structures to meet the needs, but I have to keep it all in place.

One Cobble– My brain is almost constantly collecting stuff for blog entries, or composing experiences into stories. Sometimes I can write as soon as I think of it. Other times I have to scribble notes to try to save it for later.

House cleaning — always. This project I often try to ignore out of existence, but it never works.

Family Photo book– This was shoved to the back burner when I realized I couldn’t get it done in time for Christmas. Instead I planned to have it done by my Grandmother’s birthday. Which is at the end of January. And I’ve done nothing on the project for nigh three weeks now.

Resident Mad Scientist book layout– The deadline on this has been pushed back, but that does not mean I can ignore it. We need to know where margin art is necessary.

My essay book– I’ve collected and revised about a third of the essays I estimate I’ll need. I have notes for a bunch more. I really want to get to the point where I can be sending out queries.

Cooking– I’ve recently discovered an interest in occasionally cooking things where I don’t start with a box or a can.

Birthday story– By the end of January I either need to write or revise a short story for posting on my birthday. I like the tradition and I want to keep it.

Short stories– My back brain has decided that writing Christmas stories would be really cool. This comes despite the fact that it is notoriously difficult to write a Christmas story without doing a re-write of The Grinch, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Fill-in-the-blank saves Santa Claus, or It’s a Wonderful Life. I don’t even have characters or plots in mind. I’m waiting patiently on this one and hoping that the mood subsides, because I honestly don’t have time at the moment.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

In which I revise my thoughts about cooking

2009-12-17T05:28:58Z

Every time the kids turn on Ratatouille, Howard wanders into the kitchen and cooks something. All of the cooking scenes in the film remind him how much he loves to combine ingredients. I watched this with puzzlement. The movie didn’t inspire me to cook. It didn’t even make me hungry. In fact contemplating cooking takes up the same piece of my brain that I use to contemplate chores. Cooking is a necessary step in the “feed the children” task which comes up with annoying regularity. Julie and Julia, which I watched last week, is another movie focused around cooking. I really enjoyed the movie, but (as I smugly told Kiki and Howard) it didn’t make me want to cook. I just wanted to eat what the folks in the movie cooked. I was to be proven wrong.

The first shift in my thinking arrived at the Women’s Relief Society (church organization) dinner. It was a marvelous meal featuring two kinds of shredded meat and an array of sauces. The Bearnaise sauce was to die for. I snarfled up a plate full and went back for seconds. I was certain that the sauce had been catered by a local restaurant. It hadn’t. It was made by my friend’s husband. That marvelous sauce had been made in a home kitchen. Not only that, but the recipe was set out for anyone to take. I looked at it and realized that the primary ingredient was “Bearnaise sauce packet.” In theory I could cook this sauce in my very own kitchen and eat a lot more of it.

Next I was browsing in a grocery store and I noticed that they were once again stocking rosemary bread. I love rosemary bread. It is for savoring. I love the way the aroma mingles with food while I’m eating. I brought the bread home and toasted it. The flavor reminded me of the plan I had several months ago. It was a plan for healthy eating which involved eating small amounts of things that I truly desire to eat, rather than discovering I am hungry and filling up on whatever is handy. It was a good plan, but somehow I’d lost track of it.

Then Kiki needed at treat for school and she wanted fudge. So I found myself standing over a stove on Sunday afternoon, stirring. As I stirred, I explained how the heat helps the sugar crystallize and how all cooking is really chemistry. It was a good little speech. By the time I was done, I’d convinced both Kiki and myself that cooking is a fascinating scientific process.

So there I was stirring, spoon swooshing through sugar bubbles, and I realized I was enjoying myself. I thought about Julie from the movie and how her cooking challenge (524 recipes in 365 days) saved her from a dark time in her life. Scenes from the film played back in my mind’s eye and I saw the joy of creation. It helps that Julie is also a writer and so the movie is as much about writing and living as it is about cooking.

The fudge was done and poured into a pan and I stood back satisfied. It struck me that I wanted to do more cooking. Somehow I’d gone from thinking about the film, to picturing myself stirring sauces. I wanted to have a piece of the amazing experience that Julie had in the film. I wanted to understand cooking better, to find ways to enjoy it, to make some dinners that do not start with a can of cream of mushroom soup. I found that I wanted it despite the fact that I know some of the things I attempt will go disastrously wrong. I even wanted the associated emotional melt downs, because at least it would mean that I tried something new instead of staying where I am comfortable.

The last thing I need in my life is another big project. I have no space for a big project. This means I can not undertake so grand an effort as Julie did. I can not add stress to our family in pursuit of cooking. But there are times when my brain is tired of writing and I loathe the thought of being in my basement office. There are times when I have time and space to think about a short term creative project like cooking a single meal. So I am going to try this. I am going to attempt to educate myself about foods and how to prepare them. In between preparing new foods I will be feeding us all the ordinary stuff. I like the idea of introducing new foods, but not at the expense of the family budget.

First up: Bearnaise sauce. We shall see how this goes.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Holiday Shipping, Business, and Family

2009-12-16T00:22:41Z

Yesterday was the US postal service’s busiest shipping day of the year. We here at Chez Tayler have been doing our part to add to the load. I’ve been shipping out 5-15 packages per day for the last week or so. This is not a surprise to us. In fact we’ve kind of been counting on it this year to help us make the ends meet until we can release the next Schlock book. In another week I’ll be able to do the math and see how much gap is left. I’ll also do the math to see how Christmas spending added to the gap.

I enjoy the Holiday shipping. It has a cheerful urgency to it. I love looking at the invoices and seeing when the billing address is different from the shipping address. Then I know what I’m sending is a gift. It is a gift to us as well. Every package we send is a gift to us from the Schlock readers out there who enjoy the comic enough to spend money. I sometimes wish I could thank them all. I put a Thank You post card into each order, but it hardly seems like enough.

Things do not always go smoothly. People email me with questions. This year I’ve had multiple inquiries about merchandise for which we’ve run out of stock. That makes me sad because I know the other person is disappointed. I am much happier when the problem is one I can solve by sending out a replacement or filling a special request. I know that the time will come when we are too busy to manage special requests, but that day has not yet arrived. The more I interact with customers, the more impressed I am with Schlock readers. They are courteous, patient, and understanding of our human errors. I even had one guy who replied with startlement that I was the one to answer his email personally. This amused me because I realized he did not know how small our operation really is.

Today I had to assemble more boxed sets to fill out the orders. Six year old Patch sat with me as I slid books into boxes. He’d wanted to help slide books into sleeves, but sometimes the books require coaxing to slide into place. Instead I handed him the note cards which are included in each set. As I finished each box, he would slide card into place. Then he lined the sets up very carefully. Eight year old Gleek was the one who helped with the shrink wrapping. She likes to run the heat gun which makes the plastic fit tightly over the sets. Then we cleared all of it off the kitchen table so that dinner and homework could take place.

As I restocked the shipping table in the unfinished storage room, I pondered once again the cottage industry we are running. In some ways what we have is the re-invention of the family farm. We have busy seasons and slow seasons. My kids measure their lives by these business seasons as much as they do by the seasonal weather outside. They remember the times that Mom and Dad are distracted and pushing to send a book off to print. They like book shipping because it provides work they get paid to do. Shipping season is also celebrated for the treat foods we eat because Mom and Dad are too busy to cook. Convention season is frequently hectic and often involves over night stays with friends and relatives. In our lives, business and family are all tied up together. I like it that way even if it is chaotic at times.

I sometimes wonder how my kids will look back on our family life. Will they consider it as an ideal to live up to, or will they take from it things that they do not want to replicate? I hope they’ll do both. For now we have orders to ship.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.

Link’s Teeth

2009-12-15T22:57:52Z

Link came trudging toward the car after school, shoulders slumped, eyebrows fixed into a scowl. He met my eyes and for just a moment I saw the corner of his mouth quirk up. That was the only clue that all might not be as it appeared.

“Mom. I had a terrible day.” Link flopped himself into the seat next to me.

“Oh? I’m sorry to hear that. What happened.”

Link hunched over a little bit more. “I lost six teeth.”

This was nowhere on the list of probable causes for a bad day. Also, had I heard right? “What?”

“I lost six teeth.”

I looked over at my son. There was no sign of the slight smirk. He was looking at me, deadpan serious. Part of my brain was still convinced that I’d heard wrong. I knew he had a wiggly tooth. Losing a tooth would not be surprising, but six? Really? Then Link grinned at me. There were four teeth across the front surrounded on either side by huge gaps. Link also held up a little ziploc bag containing the teeth in question. Six teeth in one day.

A closer inspection showed that the new teeth are already showing through. Link won’t have the big gaps for very long. This is good, since he’s discovered that chewing is a bit of a challenge at the moment. Also he is very pleased with himself. Not only did he lose more teeth in one day than anyone else we’ve ever known, but he fooled his mom with the “I’m having a bad day” schtick.

Edited to add: The lost tooth count is up to seven. Link just pulled out one on the bottom. This one was not quite as ready to let go as the top teeth. Link was just enthusiastic. None of the rest are even remotely wiggly and I have commanded him to leave them alone. I guess he was just overdue on losing a bunch of teeth.

Mirrored from onecobble.com.