Month: June 2013

Promises to Keep and Miles to Go Before We Sleep

By / June 18, 2013 / 1 Comment

Howard came home tired, so tired that he did not have the energy to feel despair over all the writing he intended to do during the retreat but then didn’t. He noted the existence of that emotion as one might note a pasture full of cows while driving past it on the freeway. Fortunately being at home, and watching a silly action movie, restored him long enough that he and I were able to hammer out a list of things. It is all the major things we need to do between now and mid-August when Howard departs for conventions. We’ve divided all the things into roughly equal parts. And I have saved the list under the title Oppressively Long List of Things To Do. Tomorrow we will do some of the things. The day after we’ll do the same. Piece by piece we will turn things to do into things done.

#1 on my to do list for every day between now and the end of August is to prevent anything from getting added to the list.

Clearing Clutter and A Day in the Life

By / June 17, 2013

Almost the first thing that I did when I got home on Saturday was to pick up the garbage off of the kitchen counter. The kids had been living on packaged foods and they tended to drop those packages wherever. They are much more focused on the food than on proper disposal. Without intending to clean up the kitchen, I did, because in the spaces between fixing myself a snack my hands moved dishes to the sink and trash to the garbage can. That was only the beginning. For the past two days I have moved through my house clearing away clutter. I finally have the time to notice it and space in my brain to realize that this item actually belongs over there. Then I put it where it goes. In some ways it is like geological research, the study of how long life has been too busy by examining the collections. I hope I can continue this calm approach to clearing away the clutter for at least a week. That will do much to improve life around here.

This morning I got up early and set to work. I knew I needed to keep myself on track, so I decided to record my work day. Perhaps in some future year this will be an interesting record, a snapshot of my work life now.

7:30 am on Monday. This is the day when I return things back to normal. I begin by mailing all the packages and answering all the email.

8:45 am, answered all the emails and printed all the invoices. Up next: assemble all the packages. (Already behind my hoped for schedule.)

9:15 Postage printed. Next I assemble packages, but I probably ought to pause for breakfast before it has to be lunch instead.

Breakfast consumed. 22 packages set out for the postman. 10:32 am, time to make the kids get out of bed and do their chores.

11:30 most of family room cleaned up and vacuumed. Still need to sort through the mess on the game table, the mess on the fireplace, the mess on the video cabinet, and at some point in the future I need to completely re-sort the game closets. There are things in there that need to be evicted.

12:00 pause for lunch and noodling.

1:00 back to work. Part of my work process has been clearing and organizing odd corners of the house where things have accumulated. It seems like during coin shipping we were always asking Where is a sharpie? Where is a box cutter? Well I found them all. Now my pencil drawer overfloweth. Sometimes I don’t realize how crazy life has been until I start cleaning up and finding the oddest things accumulated in corners.

1:20 Accounting. Ready set go.

Sorted and found some financial documents hiding in the piles on my desk. Nothing overdue, just things to record. I have reached the bottom of the sedimentary layers and exposed desk surface. On one hand I feel bad that I lost track of some things. On the other hand I feel good that my system did not permanently lose them. They just waited until I had time to attend.

2:20 Still accounting. Moving into personal accounts.

Running laundry in parallel to accounting is theoretically efficient, but sometimes it just gives me points where I lose focus and can get distracted.

2:50 Pause for a snack.

3:30 back to accounting. Still having to do extra work because of the data loss post-hard-drive crash. The one accounting session that was lost happened to be one where I reconciled the checking account, so I had to do that over again.

5:39 pm done with the accounting. It does not usually take this long. I had to pause for kid stuff multiple times and there was extra post-shipping accumulation and accounting clean up. Time to go make dinner for kids. And me. I should get to eat dinner too.

8 pm The next hour is for writing. Kind of amazing that I can spare an hour for it.

8:50 pm I can hear quarreling downstairs. Time to go enforce bedtime.

Coming Home, Familiarity, and Ants

By / June 15, 2013

I arrived home to all things familiar, dry air, house, weeds, children watching screens, boxes piled in my office so I can put them away, email waiting, and ants foraging on the kitchen floor. This year there is a particularly thriving ant colony, which is now doomed because I got home, noticed them, and have fed them bait. By Tuesday they’ll be gone. Hopefully by the end of this week the weeds and boxes will also be absent and the kids will be varying their daily activities a bit more.

I walked in the door and was greeted with “Oh, Hi Mom.” Hardly an enthusiastic homecoming. Yet it demonstrates that they were not traumatized by anything that happened while I was gone. Instead they were mostly comfortable and are thus not inclined to be clingy. This is good, because back to normal is my biggest hope for the week. Instead of effusive hugs upon me entering the house, the kids are in their own time and ways, letting me know that they missed me and telling me about their adventures.

It was hard to let go of retreat thoughts, but as the evening continued I began do. My mind has begun to consider the things of next week, the hundred ways I need to put my house into order and what I hope to accomplish. It feels strange to not have some huge deadline to meet in the next week. Instead I can begin to take care of all the small neglected things. Like the ants.

Doing the Job that Needs to be Done

By / June 15, 2013 / 2 Comments

When Brandon, Dan, Mary, and Howard first started talking about doing a Writing Excuses retreat, I loved the idea. I wanted to be an integral part of all the planning. I wanted to be useful and essential. But much of the retreat discussion took place during recording sessions when I was not there. Task after task was handled and there was little for me to do other than to listen to the plans and make suggestions about implementation. I was of great help during the crazy days of registration and customer support. I’m good at answering emails and helping people. So I did that.

Then I figured that I would be most useful during the actual week of the retreat. I would arrive early and help with the hundred preparatory tasks both expected and not expected. I would stay late and help evaluate how everything went. Everyone thought this was a fantastic plan. But then responsible parenting required me to choose. It was no longer a matter of just finding someone to care for the kids in my absence, that someone would have to coordinate sending a girl off to camp and then dealing with her coming home. I checked and all the people in my life who I felt would handle that without being too stressed were unavailable. So the plan changed. I would come late to the retreat and I would leave early. This made me sad, because I’d wanted to be useful and essential. Instead they would arrange it without me and I would be a visitor at the retreat instead of integral.

I expected to arrive and be at loose ends. I expected to fill the odd task. Instead I got there and all the staff breathed relief. I spent most of my days working, helping, arranging, facilitating. It was obvious that I was needed. There were a hundred invisible jobs, the kind of thing that I do at home without thinking, but which enable all the other things. I did far more dish washing than writing and I’m okay with that because I was helping create something larger. I was doing the jobs that needed to be done so that the retreat could exist. Thins like retreats are always a group creation and my role was quiet but critical. Then, before I was done, my time was up. My early departure arrived.

I wanted to stay, so very much. There were needs at home and needs at the retreat. I pondered changing my ticket and figuring out child care via long distance. I weighed my choices. And I didn’t know the right answer. Perhaps there was no right answer, nor wrong one. I conferred with Howard and with the kids at home. Brandon, Dan, and Mary all understood and supported whatever choice I made. I left. I am sad that I had to choose between these things, that there was not some way to rearrange and allow me to be the professional, reliable, helper that I wanted to be. I’m even sadder because it seems like I always have to choose because things land on top of each other. It feels arbitrary and unfair, because everything would fit just fine if only they would land in different weeks.

So my role this past week both was and was not what I had hoped for. The retreat was excellent and exhausting. I was just beginning to feel part of it when I had to leave. Most of it can be summed up by me doing the job that was in front of me because it was the job that needed doing, even if there was a different job I would have preferred.

I’ll be home soon doing more of the same, only different.

An Evening Walk

By / June 13, 2013

I went for a walk during the hour of fireflies in the hope that I would be able to capture one in a picture. The fireflies were very obliging, the hovered right in front of my camera more than once, but sadly my skill is lacking. I have dozens of shots of blurry ground or blurry fireflies. So I turned my lens toward some less mobile targets.

This fern caught my eye because it was growing six feet up on the side of a tree. I wondered how big it would get over the course of the summer or if it would always be a tiny thing.

As I walked, I saw lots of evidence that this is a tended forest. Trees that fall across the paths were cut into logs and cleared. I loved the contrast in color between the bark and the heart wood.

This cluster of flowers was no bigger than my thumb, but still lovely.

The small details of this world are amazing.

On the Thursday of a Writers Retreat

By / June 13, 2013

The walk along the creek here at Woodthrush Woods is familiar to me, but it feels different than it did in September. In the fall the trees were distinct and individual. I noticed mushrooms and the textures of bark. In June these things are obscured by fresh green growth and somehow the trees feel more like a backdrop. I walk the trails anyway, waiting to see what might catch my eye. Mostly I just get a sense of welcome. In no legal way do I have ownership over this forest. I am a guest who has been fortunate enough to be invited twice. Yet in some unmeasurable way it feels like this forest belongs to me, or perhaps I belong to it. The trees, plants, and land must stay here when I return to Utah, yet I take something home with me.

Howard and I walked together by the creek when the fireflies were out. They turned out to be more abundant on the lawns, but the creek walk was lovely on its own. We saw a pair of snapping turtles in the deep, slow portion of the creek. They’d not been there during the day. We only saw them because they swam away from us to hide under the roots of a tree by the bank. We walked through a spiderweb on the trail back. This was not unusual, but this one stuck itself to the front of Howard’s glasses. It could be seen there, glistening threads in a classic web pattern. Hopefully the spider leaped to safety. I have no argument with forest spiders. They can eat all the mosquitoes.

I am so glad to have Howard here, that he’s being able to do some writing despite the annoying computer he has as a writing machine. I have thus far done very little writing. Instead I have spent most of my energy as support crew, putting out food, putting away food, washing dishes, running laundry, and going grocery shopping. The spaces have been occupied with business email, conversations with my kids, and catching up on the sleep I missed during my travel delays. I still have time ahead of me in which I can write, but only a day or so of it. My trip is shorter on both ends than I would have preferred. It is what it had to be, but some other year I hope to come early and stay late. All signs point to there being another year during which I’ll be invited. I am glad. The company is excellent and I love this forest.

Fireflies

By / June 13, 2013 / 4 Comments

I saw the first on out of the corner of my eye, like a spark rising from a fire which then went out. I watched where I’d seen it until it flashed again. A firefly, two actually, had begun their evening dance. They surprised me because I thought I’d have to go walking by the creek to see them. Instead they hovered in open spaces all around the house, flapping almost invisibly until deciding to light and rise up five or six inches. I know that such sights are common to those who live in the Eastern US. They’re like cardinals, which are common here and do not exist in the Western states where I’ve always lived. I sat while one fly hovered a mere five inches from my elbow. His wings were a blur of effort to keep him airborne, his legs dangled above his abdomen which pointed at the ground. He was a tiny, quiet bug and then he lit and I began to understand why people might believe in fairies.

I don’t really know what I expected of fireflies. I suppose I thought they would be in the bushes and trees, like twinkle lights from Christmas decorations. Even though I’ve heard the phrase “fireflies dancing” I somehow still pictured them lighting up from hiding places. They did not hide, instead they shone from wherever they were, for all the world to see. Then the light would go out and the quiet little bug would move to another spot to shine again. I think these fireflies are among my favorite things. I wish I had the photography skills to capture one of these little flies. I would love to capture, not just the beauty of the light, but also the hovering diligence of the bug who is only bright occasionally. The fireflies work so hard to create this beauty and they will never know that I am inspired by it.

Arriving at Woodthrush Woods

By / June 12, 2013

We pulled onto the long driveway at 2:30 am. Darkness filled the spaces between the trees an the headlights only illuminated a few feet ahead of us on the pavement. Yet some part of my brain rejoiced. Ah yes. This place. This is a really good place. So we drove up the pavement where I ran laps last fall. We pulled up to the house and I knew what I would find inside. I knew the paths through the woods to the creek, though walking them would need to wait for daylight. The peace of this place spoke to me again.

When I came to Woodthrush Woods last fall, I hoped to write, to see cardinals, and to see fireflies. Instead I laid the groundwork for later writing, there were no fireflies, and I spied one lone cardinal. That flying red bird was like a promise, things will be better though they’re stressful now. I believed that bird and took the memory of it home with me. Since I pulled myself out of bed this morning, I’ve seen three cardinals. They flicker bright red through the trees. I’m told that fireflies are everywhere in the evening. My visit here feels like a pattern completed, like I had to come back to complete things that I only began last September.

My first day here has been full of organizational tasks. That is my role, to facilitate everything else that goes on. Yet I took ten minutes to walk the loop through the forest to the creek and back. I wanted to feel the springtime forest, full of growth and compare it to my memory of the fall forest, which was settling in for the winter. It was a quick glance. I’ll wander and think again later, perhaps in the evening when I might spy fireflies.

This is a good place and I’m going to have a good visit.

Waiting

By / June 12, 2013

My flight was delayed, and delayed again, and thrice delayed. The first two delays came before I left for the airport, so I waited an extra two hours at home. It was a strange mental space that waiting. I’d already settled the kids for my absence. It would have made sense to use the time for extra work, but I had packed away all of my work thoughts. They were folded neatly to wait until I returned from my trip. I did not want to open them up. It would have made sense to begin unfolding my writer thoughts, to start musing on story elements and what I would write during the retreat. Yet somehow my brain would not do that either. It was as if that cupboard had a time release lock which would not open until after I had boarded the plane. Besides, my laptop was packed already. So I waited, opening myself to the sensation of waiting, pondering those Dr. Seuss verses about The Waiting Place, and swinging in a hammock, because hammocks invite one to be present in now rather than rushing toward something else. Eventually I opened the book which was supposed to be my in-flight reading. I read while I waited.

Life frequently offers us pauses, places of waiting because we can’t move forward in the ways that we want or expect. I do not like them, they feel like time wasted. I get grouchy when I have to wait for my computer to restart, or the light to change, or someone to respond to a query, let alone an additional three hour wait to board a plane. These imposed waits feel like time stolen from me. I had to wait hours until the airline was prepared to take me to my destination. Even boarding the plane was the end of one wait only to begin another one. I thought about waiting as I drove to the airport, because I expected eight hours of traveling and during most of it my job was to wait patiently. I wished that I could skip the travels and just arrive. But then I remembered my last retreat and the way that the journey quieted my thoughts, slowed me down, and let me begin to shift my thinking into a different gear. Sometimes an imposed wait can be a gift, though often I don’t see that gift until later when I see the fruits of it. Waiting changes me, particularly when I accept and embrace it.

I could spend all my life rushing toward destinations and being frustrated by everything in between. Instead I need to remember the times spent swinging gently in a hammock swing, when waiting becomes its own reward.

The Trees I Planted

By / June 9, 2013 / 1 Comment


The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago. The next best time is today.

Fifteen years ago I dug a hole in the ground and planted that tree in the picture. It was a tiny little thing that I had to defend from the children and the potential ravages of weed whackers. There was one spring where aphids threatened to kill the entire tree, so we released legions of ladybugs on it. We planted many trees that first year in the house because we knew that someday we wanted to have shade. Life changed and shifted. We spent less energy landscaping and far more creating books. While we were not paying attention, the trees grew. They got big enough for Gleek to climb them. The shade spread to cover most of the lawn.

Yesterday I went in search of a hammock for Link. He’s wistfully asked for one more than once, and given his current doctor’s instructions to avoid sitting as much as possible, it seemed like a good time to add lounging space in the back garden. I’d seen the hammocks and stands at IKEA, they still had the hammocks, but not the stands. I brought the hammock home and strung it between a pair of trees. That tiny maple sapling now bears the weight of two kids without bending. The act of fifteen years ago blesses our lives today because I planted a tree in the right place.

Here at the Tayler house this summer represents a pause before things finish changing. All of our lives will look quite different ten years from now. I could drive myself crazy trying to figure out which things I should plant in our lives right now so that they’ll bless us later. I remember agonizing over where to plant the trees all those years ago. I pondered bush placement. I paced off expected shade radii. Some of the trees that we planted later died. Other trees I could wish in slightly different locations. It is hard to know what our lives will need ten years from now. Instead of trying to plan all of it, I just need to plant many things and see which ones flourish. Also I consult with the master gardener and listen to His instructions.

For now I’ll be out back in the hammock, breathing the scents of honeysuckle and mock orange, while swinging gently in the shade of my trees.