Day: June 19, 2006

Okay I’ll admit that I’m sad

By / June 19, 2006

I knew that the Blogging for Books results would be posted this morning, but I was too busy to check until around 2 pm. That’s when I found out I didn’t place. I was exhausted from the morning. I hadn’t eaten lunch. And my head was still full of Things To Do. My first reaction was “oh well.” For about 20 minutes I honestly believed that I didn’t much care. But all the life had gone out of my day and eventually I realized that I do care. I care very much. I wanted recognition for something that was completely mine. I know I do stuff all day long. I know I do important stuff. Not just important, but critical. All day every day I do stuff. Most of it is for other people. Most of it is invisible. And most of it goes completely unnoticed. Or at least unremarked. I wanted to do something remarkable. I wanted recognition for an accomplishment.

I didn’t get all that I wanted. I need to be content with the measure of success that I’ve achieved. I was a finalist and now I get to try harder.

Collecting for Christmas

By / June 19, 2006 / 12 Comments

The past few days I’ve been perusing my LiveJournal archives. I came across many of my entries on frugal living. Particularly the accounts of spending less than $100 for Christmas the past two years. If we are able to bring out Howard’s book on schedule, then this year’s christmas budget will have a little bit more wiggle room than that. However if anything happens to delay the next book, then this Chrismas will be tighter than ever before. I’m starting to feel a little antsy that I don’t have more stuff squirrelled away against this second possibility.

Last year I went to garage sales pretty much every weekend all summer long to slowly accumulate a stash of stuff for Christmas. This year I simply haven’t made the time to go. I’ve been so busy with the book release and relatives in town, it just didn’t seem that important. Now it is time for me to get to it. Of course I need to be careful as I select what to purchase. I don’t want to fill my house with junk, so I need some guiding principles as I’m purchasing. A friend gave me a very useful guide for christmas shopping. I will acquire for each child:
Something they want
Something they need
Something to wear
Something to read.

With this in mind I planned a trip to the thrift store. I decided to combine my thrift store trip with an outing for the kids. That wasn’t too smart. It’s hard to squirrel things away for christmas with the recipients standing right there. Also it’s hard to carefully sift through the thrift store when I’m always trying to count heads. Long ago when I was expecting my first child someone sent me a funny “how to prepare for parenthood” email. It said that to prepare for taking kids to the store you should take a live goat shopping. Pay for anything the goat eats or damages. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Funny how such things just rise to the surface of my brain as I’m galloping to collect 4 children from the far corners of a store.

So today was not so good for acquiring Christmas stuff. Oh well. I’ll try again next week and arrange to not bring so many kids.

Things I’ve crossed off today’s list

By / June 19, 2006 / 2 Comments

Blogging for Books: Didn’t win, didn’t even place.
Packaging and mailing 5 sketched editions: done
Packaging and mailing 8 regular orders: done
Running to staples because I ran out of printer ink half way through printing labels: done
Herding four kids into the car for a trip to the thrift store because I thought it would be a good way to get us all out of the house: Done
Herding four kids through a thrift store amid complaints of everything being too expensive: done
Searching through the thrift store to find the children so that I can leave with the same number of children I brought: done
Requiring Gleek to get in the car amid tantrum: done
Promising to take the kids to the dollar store if they’re good at the post office: done
Take packages to the post office where all four kids actually behaved themselves: done
Drop off library books in the drive up book drop: Done
Spend an hour at the dollar store while the kids peruse, find treasures, and somehow all bring home candy: done
Feed people a healthy lunch: ha ha ha, not even close yet.