Author name: Sandra Tayler

Howard on the Eve of our 18th Anniversary

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Tomorrow is the 18th anniversary of the day I married Howard. This year I’ll be spending the day at the zoo with the kids. Howard will be spending it running a booth at GenCon. This is right in line with our tradition of not planning our lives around anniversary celebrations. The best possible celebration of our marriage is living and working together each day. Also, with all the other exhausting planning that we have to do for summer conventions, neither of us has left over energy for orchestrating an anniversary event. That said, I do try to take at least a minute or two on the anniversary day to look at that guy I married and think about how lucky I am.

There he is. Making me laugh, just as he does almost every day of our lives.
The banana has a story, of course. Howard was standing at the booth next to Tracy Hickman (of Dragonlance). Howard put down the book he was showing to customers and in a signed-too-many-things-today haze, Tracy picked it up and signed it. They joked together that Tracy would probably just auto-sign whatever was in front of him. Howard put it to the test by placing a banana in front of Tracy. So Howard had a Tracy Hickman autographed banana for lunch.

I made a really good decision all those years ago when I held his hand and said “I will.”

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Gleek Worries about Her New School

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“I don’t want to go to New School. I want to go to Old School!” Gleek sobbed while curled up in my lap. We are three weeks away from the beginning of school, and Gleek’s fears about her new academic program boiled over. She listed all the friends she will miss. She talked of how stressed she feels. “I don’t want to go to school!” she cried. All of the things she was leaving behind were concrete and easily visualized. All of the things ahead were vague, uncertain, and therefore fearful.

I held her tight and let her cry. I did my crying and fretting last Spring when we made the decision to switch her to a new school and into a gifted program. It still feels like the right decision, but Gleek’s fears have a solid basis in reality. The switch is going to be hard. The work will be much more demanding than what she has been doing. Adjustment is going to be difficult. It is possible that four months from now we’ll be shifting and doing something else. I held my crying girl and knew I had the power to solve her fears. I could switch her back to Old School at any time. I won’t do it until we’ve given this plan a solid try. We need the information that attempting this will give us.

What I expect to happen is that Gleek will pull out of this afternoon’s emotional low. She will be fine for the next few weeks. She will be scared and worried on the first day of school. Then things will be new and interesting. Gleek thrives on things that are new and interesting. There will be more tears and worries. I will hold her and listen just as I did today. When the litany of fears begins to repeat I will find a distraction for her, just as I did today.

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GenCon and WorldCon

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GenCon will open its doors to the public first thing Thursday morning, but I’m already done with it. My very last responsibility to GenCon was to drop Howard off at the airport this morning. He’s going to have a great time. It will be a fantastic show. I’m sorry I won’t get to visit with our fantastic crew there, but at the moment I’m very glad to get to stay home. I’m done with all the last minute emails and merchandising decisions. Now I can focus my attention on WorldCon which I will be attending. First item on the WorldCon list: Finish my dress. I’m loving working on it and I’ll write up a process post with pictures when it is done. With all the frantic GenCon thoughts out of the way I can look forward to WorldCon with anticipation.

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Parenting is sometimes a tangled mess

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Inciting Incident:
Gleek was riding her sister’s bike without permission and after dark. She failed to get off the bike until after I had ordered her to do so five different times. I decided that the delay was blatant enough that I needed to not let it slide.

Complicating Issue:
I was not sure what consequence to apply. Gleek was very calm about my frustration and wasn’t acting in a way that interpreted as contrite. In hindsight I can see that she was honestly trying to figure out why she hadn’t listened to me. I declared that a consequence was necessary and decided that step one would be for Gleek to describe out loud to Howard how she failed to listen.

Howard was in the middle of business things and packing. He’d picked up steam and was making a final run at getting it all done. I did not communicate with Howard what I hoped for from Gleek’s recitation. Gleek in her turn was fearful that Howard would yell and be angry with her. She balled up all her emotions and buried them deep, thus her recitation seemed like she did not care about what she had done. Howard reacted to her seeming casual attitude by increasing the severity in his voice until he provoked a reaction.

The Muddle in the Middle:
I began to feel bad for derailing Howard’s packing, for not alerting him to the script, for putting Gleek in a situation where she would cry. Gleek’s buried emotions burst forth and she confessed that she feels scared of lots of things and is embarrassed about it. She also said she doesn’t know why she often doesn’t obey. Howard stepped out a bit to let Gleek and I talk. I flailed around trying not to undermine the parenting statements Howard had made, while still trying to help Gleek feel better. Gleek told how she had been planning to turn herself into an obedient little robot girl. I said I didn’t want one of those.

Sorting it out and finding resolution, sort of:
In the end there was listening and hugging. I fessed up to feeling like I’d handled it wrong. Gleek fessed up that she felt like it was her fault in the first place. Howard said he was sad that Gleek is scared of him scolding her. I felt bad for hauling him into a conflict which was primarily between Gleek and I to begin with. I simultaneously felt like I did exactly right in involving Howard in parenting our daughter. Gleek said that the biggest consequence in the world for her would be if we stopped loving her and talking to her. Howard said that was a consequence which we could never apply because we always love her. No matter what.

In the end we all decided that the whole emotional mess was probably consequence enough for everyone and that it will all look better in the morning.

Thank goodness there are mornings after.

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Staring at Another Busy Week

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My list is full of urgent tasks. I am supposed to be ignoring them because it is Sunday and I don’t work on Sunday. Except that somehow I slid into working today without meaning to. Oh I didn’t ship orders or do accounting, but I did answer a business email. Howard and I have had a dozen conversations about business things relating to merchandise or upcoming conventions. I spent an hour updating Howard’s electronic calendar to reflect all of his GenCon events. And I was supposed to pack his suitcase today. I know these things don’t belong in my Sunday. I do a much better job of keeping my Sundays holy when I’m not scrambling to keep up.

However, I spent three hours at church. During those hours I listened to speakers and lessons. I felt my heart open and some of my pathway in the weeks to come felt a little more clear. I also wrote down even more things which I need to not forget to do. I always emerge from church with a list of To Do. The good news is that at least 50% of that list was about house, family, and spirituality. The bad news is that my ever-expanding list expanded yet again. Top on that list was taking Kiki driving. We’re running out of time on her permit and she needs to take her road test soon. I did that first. Then I sat down with my kids and watched the Sci Fi movie classic The Cat from Outer Space. They loved it. If you add in two family meals, the total is 7 hours where my focus was on family and spirituality. This is good, but it is not the same as having a whole peaceful sabbath day. I was hoping to spend time working on my Hugo dress or on the guest blog entry which I have 90% percolated in my head. Perhaps I’ll get to them later this evening, if I don’t run out of evening.

Want to see my list? …

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Cliche and Shopping

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Yesterday I took my daughters for a mother daughter shopping trip. We were out for hours, had a marvelous time, and came home with big bags of new things. I say new, but since we spent most of the time at at thrift store, the things were only new to us. This does not diminish the delight of my girls at their new things. Today I realized that my emotional reserves were empty and that I needed some time by myself. I didn’t need to be physically alone, though that would have worked, what I needed was to reside in spaces where I got to direct my steps without negotiation and where no one expected anything of me. I went shopping again, because that long trip with my daughters was all focused on them. I’ve long had wardrobe gaps to fill and worn out clothing to replace.

I remember our truly lean years. During those years we could not afford to buy clothing that cost more than $1 per item and then only if we really needed it. I shopped the thrift stores on dollar days and thought longingly of the days when I could buy $6 clothing on a whim. I thought about that as I wheeled my cart full of $4-$7 items to the check out stand. I am truly fortunate.

The goddess of shopping smiled upon me and my daughters these past two days. We each had a wishlist and each of us found something perfect to match it. This also held true at the clearance shoe section of Target. I can now pack for WorldCon feeling more confident and a little sheepish that part of my confidence is dependent upon clothing. Feeling like I look good makes me stand taller and walk stronger. This is true even though I might wish that all my confidence welled up from within.

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Restructuring and Life Balance Progress Report

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Back in May I had something of an emotional crisis. I realized that for years I had been structuring our lives in ways that minimized or sidelined my wants and needs. I summarized this in a post called Sinkholes and Structures. Our family made good progress on re-structuring and then school got out. I dissolved into summer and was quite happy until a wake up call showed me that I had swung too far in the other direction. Me doing whatever I wanted all day long didn’t work as a long-term family strategy either.

I’m pleased to report that during the month of July I’ve achieved a sort of balance. Most of each day is focused on the needs of others, but I get to do things that I want too. Most of what I am sacrificing right now is solitary time. I rarely get to be in spaces where other people are not nearby. I know this is temporary, and so I am fine. I also have WorldCon to look forward to. Having something to look forward to is an important happiness component for me. Another important component is project completion. July has had plenty of both. This is good.

I need to stock up on getting things I want because I have a strong feeling that September is going to be all about the kids. My things will be submerged, sidelined, neglected. This is fine, so long as I do not allow that pattern to continue into October and onward. Families have to sacrifice things for each other. I just need to remember that sometimes it means the kids and Howard sacrificing for me.

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Embracing the Drift

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Long about 1pm I ground to a complete halt. Every attempt to continue getting things done resulted in me staring blankly at my list of things to do without actually reading it, or, alternately, me standing in the middle of a room knowing I’d entered it for a reason but not being able to remember what the reason was. I decided a nap was in order. Unfortunately while my brain was too fractured to work, it was also too revved up to sleep. I lay like a lump while my brain ran in circles through the forest of stress. Sometimes I would snap completely awake with a terrified thought about something I’d forgotten, only to remember that I’d not really forgotten it. I’d just forgotten that I already did it. Fun.

The nap was not working, so I decided it was time to break out my new swing chair and embrace getting nothing done for the rest of the day. Remember that day last week when I browsed through porch swings and arbors on the internet. I bought neither, but I did happen upon this cotton padded swing chair. My will to resist was defeated by the $15 price tag. I ordered one for me and one to reduce the number of times I’d have to fight to get to sit in my swing chair. The seller sent the chairs promptly, they arrived last Tuesday and had been sitting quietly in the middle of my office floor every since.

I detached the standard swings from our redwood swing set and hung up the chair swings. When I settled my weight into them, they sunk lower than I expected, but it was very like sitting in a hammock. I swung gently and drifted in thought. Gleek came out and claimed the second seat. At first she chattered at me, talking about how she was bored and wanted to have a mother daughter date so that we could go somewhere. Going had fallen out of my repertoire. I answered noncommittally and soon she too was sitting in silence and drifting. After awhile I retrieved a book and read. Sense and Sensibility is a lovely book to read while sitting under dappled sunlight in a hammock seat. The air was a perfect 80 degrees. When the sun peeking through the leaves felt a little too hot, I’d turn the seat so that it hit differently. Sitting. Swinging. Reading. Drifting.

I finally dragged myself out of the seat somewhere between one and two hours later. My arms and legs felt limp and heavy, relaxed. I went downstairs and discovered that one of our marvelous GenCon helpers had proactively solved half a dozen problems. I got reports of Schlock book orders which arrived in perfect condition to balance out the few mistake reports. Our Schlock Mercenary shopping bags arrived and are stashed away for WorldCon. The world felt better and I began to get a few things done again, but when my brain fuzzed out, I would read for awhile. Or just sit. I guess I was overdue for a drifting day.

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A Little Bit Exhausted

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Being a little bit exhausted is an oxymoron really. Exhaustion is all-encompassing. It takes over the whole body and demands that it be attended to before any more effort is expended. I can feel the exhaustion there. It threatens to break through and take me over, but I’m holding it back and getting things done. This probably means I’m actually nowhere near true exhaustion. But it feels like I am. I’ve been working during most of my waking hours since Monday. My list of to do items is not getting shorter. It keeps expanding in the middle because of last minute scramble-to-get-this-done-in-time-for-GenCon things. It also expands due to not-quite-so-last-minute-but-still-urgent WorldCon things and the must-plan-ahead-for-Dragon*Con things. Then there are the neglected household things and the ramping-up-to-a-new-school-year things. I’m pretty sure that most of the urgency will shake out of the list by the time Howard leaves for GenCon on Tuesday. It’s all a little overwhelming, so I try not to think about it en masse. Instead I focus on today’s list and hope that by the end of the day I have nothing that rolls over into tomorrow.

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Warehouse Day

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My teenage boy and two boys borrowed from a neighbor were my minions this morning. The four of us moved three and a half pallets of books from my garage to our storage unit. Each pallet held 56 boxes of books. Each box held 22 books. Each book weighed one pound. Doing the math, we come up with approximately 3800 pounds of books moved this morning. I rejoice that my van survived hauling all of that in only four loads. I drove slowly, particularly down the hill. All that mass made it hard to stop quickly. This is one of the final steps to finishing off a Schlock shipping.

This year I decided to take the warehousing even further. We hauled all the empty pallets and pallet tops back from the storage unit where they’ve been taking up space. We also hauled out several large bags of paper and plastic garbage. At the moment we have 6 spare pallets and 24 pallet tops. Hopefully some kind soul from the Provo freecycle community will be delighted to have them and will haul them away for me. Right now they’re “decorating” a corner of our driveway and adding an air of class to the house.

The other warehousing I have to do in the wake of a shipping day is to find places for all the extra shipping supplies to belong. I also have to rearrange my storage room to make space for another book. Then there are the last few orders which required extra help to get out the door. Those are all done now. The storage room is mostly rearranged. I just have to find the energy to carry stacks of boxes and rolls of packing paper down the stairs. I’m hoping for a burst of energy later this evening. At the moment I just want to sit for awhile.

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