Month: March 2007

This journal officially has a name. One Cobble at a Time. It is currently subtitled “laying a path to my castle in the sky,” but as my life changes the subtitle may change to reflect it. Right now the path to a castle in the sky is very apropos.

The sidebar text to elaborate on the title says: A cobble by itself is just a small stone, but when many of them lay together they create a path. My life is made up of many discrete parts. I have to find ways to fit them all into place so that I can continue to journey where I desire to go. This journal records some of the cobbles that create my path.

So there it is. Many thanks to Howard for the word “Cobble.” The right word makes all the difference.

My entire day has been absorbed by preparations for the Seattle trip. I decided to focus on house cleaning today and packing tomorrow. Of course some of each will leak into the other day, but that is to be expected. Because we’ve had stomach flu in our house this past week, I felt inspired to pull out our Big Green Clean Machine and sanitize some areas of carpet. I want to come home and have my house smell clean. Now there are clean spots in the kids’ rooms. Maybe when I get back I’ll feel inspired to do the rest of the carpet.

I also cleaned out the car. We’re going to be spending the equivalent of two days in that vehicle. It is going to be totally trashed before the end, but I figure it doesn’t have to start that way. Maybe when I get back I’ll clean the van carpets too. They certainly need it.

I’ve worked hard all day long, but there is still so much work left to do. I didn’t make the kids do very much work today because they’re all either sick or recovering. Poor Link has been lying on the couch all day. Hopefully he’ll be better by tomorrow and all well by Monday. Howard is sick today too. Ditto on the hopefully all better by Monday. I really think that they will be. This has been a 48 hour bug for all the other kids.

I’m really going to enjoy this trip. I can leave behind all the business chores. I can leave behind all the house chores. I even finished a draft so I can leave behind all the writing chores. The only thing I’ll have to do is be with my kids, visit with friends, and run the vacation. It will still be work, but it will be different from my regular life. That’s the point of vacation, to do something different.

Today began with emergency laundry. For those who are counting, that makes the third case of stomach flu this week. I’m just glad they’re all getting it done this week instead of on our road trip next week. But because I believe in the power of Murphy I will be packing a bucket in the car just in case. Being prepared for in-the-car vomit is a talisman against it right?

Today it was Link who was afflicted. Gleek was still not all the way well. Kiki seemed well enough that I happily drove her up to Centerville to hand her off for an overnight. Then later in the afternoon she felt sick again and was driven home by the friend’s mother. All day I’ve alternated between trips in the car, tending sick kids, and typing in the finished draft of my latest story. I’m glad I made the self-imposed draft deadline of March 31. Yay! Now it gets to lay fallow for a couple of weeks before I revise it and send it out to readers.

Among the errands today were a book order that had 2 day shipping. It’s headed for Washington, so I suspect the person wants the books before Howard arrives in Seattle. Also I had to pick up my business cards. That was a circus and a half all by itself. First they lost the order, then they found it, then they didn’t print it because their cutter was broken, then the cutter was going to be fixed today, then the cutter wouldn’t be fixed until Monday so they were going to have me cut them myself, then they finally said that never mind they’d find a way to get the cards cut despite their broken cutter. I got my cards 24 hours later than originally promised and I’m left to wonder if the cutter was broken when the order was placed. I question the ethics of taking an order if you don’t have the means to finish it. The poor young sales girl just didn’t know how to handle it professionally. I should never have known about their cutter problems, they should have just applied whatever solution they used today without telling me all of it.

As much as I’d like to go on and regale further events of my day, I think I used up all my storytelling energy on the final scenes of my story. Maybe tomorrow.

Inspired by Janci, I fiddled with my livejournal to see if I could get it to match my website. I can. I’m pleased at my success. Now I just have to live with the new set up for a week to decide if I really like it or if it bugs me. I also need to figure out where I can host an image so I can put a custom header on my page. (Yes I know Howard can do it for me, but I want to do it for myself.)

This also leaves the quandry of a title and subtitle. I know so many people with clever journal and blog titles. I’d like to have one, but I haven’t yet been able to find one that truly fits. I guess I’ll just have to keep my eye out to find one. However I suspect that this will not be easy. I have a hard time applying labels to myself unless they are a perfect fit. The major reason I’ve always gone by my real name on the internet is that I could never find a pseudonym that fit correctly.

The other day Link brought home two plastic vials from school. At the time he brought them home one was filled with blue sand and the other was filled with multi-colored gravel. I’m still not clear on how he acquired them except that they were give-aways as part of a class party. I’m also not clear on what happened to the sand and gravel because after that first appearance they’ve been filled with a variety of other things. Link has carried them around in his pockets and filled them with what ever struck his fancy. They’ve been filled with water, soap, beads, and slips of paper at various times. This morning at breakfast I saw him carefully filling one with milk from his bowl of cheerios. (He used a medicine dropper.)

This evening I entered the kitchen to check on Link’s homework status. He was all finished and had run downstairs to play. I picked up the papers to put in his homework folder and my eyes fell on one of the vials. It was filled with pale yellow liquid. My brain stuttered trying to find something, besides the obvious, that this liquid could be. I left the vial sitting on the table and called down stairs to ask Link what was in the vial. His grin told me all I needed to know. He was very pleased with himself for collecting his own urine sample.

I required him to empty and wash the vial. He did, pleased with himself for grossing out his mom.

Nothing says “Good Morning!” like emergency laundry and carpet cleaning at 4 am. This is especially exciting when there was already emergency laundry from a different child at midnight. Kiki and Patches have both been quarantined for stomach flu. I suspect that Kiki will not be pleased to learn that stomach flu still does not excuse her from the pile of homework which she has to complete and turn in by tomorrow. I’ve been doing failure analysis to figure out how we got into this situation with Kiki.

My fault: I was aware that Kiki was claiming far less homework than she should have had. I did not dig to find out what was going on. I get weekly grade reports mailed to me, for the last month I’ve been busy and filing them to look at “later.”

The teacher’s fault: She is weak on follow through. She frequently creates assignments which fall by the wayside and never actually come due. This means that if Kiki doesn’t hear about an assignment she’s learned that she may not have to do it at all. Several times the teacher has instituted consequences for late work. The consequences are enforced for awhile, but then the teacher gets distracted and forgets about them. This also affects me. When regular notes don’t come home, I have no idea whether it is because Kiki didn’t bring it to me or because the teacher neglected to make one.

Kiki’s fault: She assumes that if she hasn’t heard about an assignment, that it isn’t due yet. It does not occur to her that overdue assignments no longer get mentioned. She doesn’t lie about homework, but often “forgets” to bring things home. She inflates the importance of assignments she likes and deflates the importance of ones that she doesn’t. Notes from school frequently go missing. Completed homework will sit in Kiki’s backpack and she doesn’t turn it in.

So the analysis shows me where the gaps are, but doesn’t tell me who should step up to fill it. I could do it, but I’ve been trying to step out of the student/teacher loop. Kiki needs to manage teachers and assignments without my constant intervention.

When I was twelve-years-old I was very involved in my church youth group. We had planned a spaghetti dinner as a service for a family in our ward. All the girls made dinner and dressed up in italian style clothing to serve the dinner. My assignment was to bring a salad. I arrived at the dinner excited for the evening. I had spent a long time getting ready. I was enthusiastic about the clothing I was wearing, but I completely forgot to bring the salad. I can’t remember why I forgot it. I can’t remember what excuses I attempted to offer. I do remember clearly the adult leader scolding me and telling me that my excuses didn’t matter, what mattered was that there was no salad when there needed to be one. She also spoke about taking responsibility for mistakes rather than trying to excuse ourselves from them.

I have never forgotten that even. It was one of those small moments that truly shape a life. Ever since that day I have been reluctant to offer excuses for my failures. I try to accept responsibility for things-gone-wrong rather than to dodge it. Sometimes I take this too far and blame myself for things which aren’t truly my doing. I’ve also learned that the purpose of an excuse is to make people more understanding of the failure, not to deny responsibility Many times as I take responsibility I have a fleeting memory of that youth group leader and I am grateful to her. She taught me what I’d never learned from my parents although they tried to teach it often.

These last few days Kiki has been learning a hard lesson about getting work done when it is due rather than letting it pile up. I’ve had to be very firm and not allow her to play. We still have today and tomorrow to get through before it is too late. If we can emerge from these exhausting days with a lesson learned, then they will have been worth it. Perhaps today’s misery will prevent misery and bad grades in high school. I hope so, but I can never tell if the lesson that my child is learning is the one that I intended to teach. I can never tell if we are having a defining moment that the child will draw upon time and again or if it is a moment that will roll right out of memory and be forgotten.

After taking Kiki through heavy traffic and construction zones all the way down to Provo where she got immunized, I then hauled her back home and made her do homework until bedtime. She was not pleased with me. Hopefully this experience combined with Saturday’s experience and the experience I expect tomorrow and Wednesday will teach Kiki not to dodge homework all term and then try to get it all done in four days. Fortunately Janci came to the rescue again. She sat with Kiki all afternoon and kept her on task when Kiki distracted herself every 30-60 seconds.

The day was also filled with other assorted chaos. I was tired and snappish with my kids all afternoon because I was not happy about immunizations or piles of homework either.

At least I made some progress on my current story and I was able to say some useful things to a writer friend. That felt good.

One week ago today I had a bucket full of flowers in my kitchen. They were the remnants of the portrait session. Flowers are beautiful, even sitting in a bucket of water. I loved having them there. But there were so many flowers that I knew I needed to share them rather than keeping them all for myself. I selected a few and put them in a vase for me to enjoy. I took a few more and put them in a vase in my girls’ room. A third batch went to Janci who went with me for the portrait session. The last of the daffodils went into a vase in my bathroom. I still had far too many flowers. I pulled out three mason jars and divided the remaining flowers between them. Then all that was left to do was decide who I should give the flowers to.

I looked at those three jars of flowers and pondered all the people in my life I might want to thank. I very quickly realized that I simply didn’t have enough flowers to thank them all. I eventually decided to give flowers to two women whom I suspect have been having a hard time lately. I’m not sure that they are because we don’t talk that much, but even if they aren’t they would be made happier by a gift of flowers. The third jar went to Kiki’s friend because Kiki really wanted the chance to give flowers to a friend.

All this past week I’ve been loving having cut flowers in the house. It makes me want to grow millions of flowers so that I can always have flowers in my house. Also giving flowers away was so much fun, that I want to do it again. I want to grow millions of flowers so that I can cut them and give them away as the mood strikes me. There are so many women nearby who could use a gift of flowers.

Today I looked at my vase of flowers and realized that half of them have wilted. The other half were still beautiful. I thought of a neighbor I saw walking down the street yesterday. She was wiping her eyes when I saw her. I don’t know if it was an allergy or if she was crying. I thought of this neighbor and realized that she is one of those wonderful quiet people who go through life doing good things and never getting thanked. I took the flowers that were still beautiful and put them in a jar. I added a few of the early daffodils from my yard and a stalk of hyacinths. I wrote her a note and delivered it all to her house. I’ll miss having the flowers here, but she’ll love having them there.

I want to have more flowers so I can give them away.