Author name: Sandra Tayler

Sets and Eras

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The first five Schlock Mercenary books are a set. We even sell them as one. They represent the early years of the comic when Howard was still figuring out how to draw, and script, and who his characters really were. They also represent our early years in publishing when we were figuring out how to design books and arrange for the printing of them. It is interesting to note that final book of the set ended just a few weeks prior to the day when Howard quit his corporate job to be a cartoonist. So that first set of books also represents an era in our lives, the years when Howard split his time between day job and comic.

The book we are working on now, Resident Mad Scientist, will be the first book in a new set. This set will be much more uniform in size and content. It will contain six books, starting with RMS and ending with the book which is currently airing on the web, Family Anti-Matter. The set will span the era of our lives when we were scrambling to make cartooning work, and the beginning of when it finally did. It is going to take a couple of years before we have the set in our hands, but I am looking forward to that day.

This morning Howard and I spent an hour talking about design changes for RMS. We want to get it right because the decisions we make on this book need to be carried through the five that will follow. Howard sketched out the things he wants to be different. I countered with alternate proposals. Then I came away with a list of changes to make so that we can see what they will look like. I walked down the stairs excited and interested, but not afraid. I spent most of the 8 months we worked on Teraport Wars terrified that I would accidentally break the book. It is nice to feel confident in my ability to tackle what must be done.

Next week will be full of lay out. I’ll be executing the design changes, placing margin art, and fixing typos. I look forward to this work because when we reach this stage the book is almost done. It starts being something we can see, touch, and anticipate rather than just a looming task which much get done.

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The Bright Spaces

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Our pear tree has gotten tall. It is out-of-control tall. This is presents a problem when it grows pears and we want to be able to pick the pears. The tree needs to be pruned. It needed pruning last year too, but I never found the time.

The pom-pommed scotch pine has gotten tall too. This is a tree that we deliberately shape into twisty branches with poms of needles. We have to prune it yearly to keep the shape attractive. I think we last pruned it three years ago. This year’s pruning will have to be drastic to get the plant back into control.

The wisteria vine along the back wall is falling off. It used to climb up the wall and drape over the top. But then the landscaping company on the other side of the wall came along with a buzz saw and trimmed everything. The vines over-balanced and are now laying heapishly at the foot of the wall. I need to prune them back to give them a chance to grow straight again. While I’m doing vines, I should do the grapes too.

I can see all of these things from my window. They are clearly visible in the bright sunshine which is trying to fool me into believing that the outdoors are actually warm. It is not warm out there. Warm remains elusive. I thought through my schedule, trying to figure when I can get outside with my saw. I decided to make tomorrow an outdoor day, but then I glanced at the weather for tomorrow. Rain. Cold rain. Possibly snow.

I used to schedule my life around the good gardening days. I watched the weather and planned. Every remotely sunny day in early spring found me outside messing with plants and dirt. Last year I missed Spring almost completely. I spent the season in my windowless basement office, scrambling to do the layout work on XDM. This spring is also going to be busy. I suspect that many of our Springs will be busy in the coming years. It seems to be part of the rhythms of the business in which we work. This means that if I am not careful I could miss my favorite season year after year. I could miss out on seeing the blooms grown from the bulbs I planted last Fall.

Today I have a bright space, a sunny day, even though it is not truly warm. Today I could go outside and work in my garden. I could also go back into my basement and do more layout work. There is always work to do. I need to plan my schedule so that when I happen upon the bright spaces in my life, I can drop work and go enjoy them. Because bright spaces do not wait for me. The joys of my young children will not wait for me. The moments when my teenagers need help will not wait for me. I must organize my life so that I can seize these moments when they arrive. Then I run outdoors to work in the sunshine.

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Come What May

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There was a fish in a bowl on my kitchen counter this morning. It was the first thing I saw when I flipped the switch to light up the pre-dawn darkness. I was blearily trying to process this new object when a flash of blue caught the corner of my eye. My finger nails were blue. With sparkling glitter. I haven’t been a wearer of fingernail polish since the early 90’s. Even then, blue was not a color I wore. That was some party. The thought drifted across my brain. Then I laughed at the idea of myself attending a wild party during which I did wild things. Only apparently my version of “wild” extends just far enough to paint my nails blue and bring home a goldfish. My life is pretty tame. Responsibility will do that to a person.

There really was a party. It was a mother daughter luau. Kiki stayed for the dinner, then bailed for Home. Gleek and I did all the activities. We had our picture taken, made a flower hair clip, made a picture frame, and painted finger nails. The fish were in bowls on the tables as decorations. This meant that at the end of the evening dozens of girls were begging to take fish home, and dozens of mothers were pondering the implications of adding a fish to their lives. We brought ours home in a little plastic cup. I warned Gleek that fish die frequently. She wanted the fish anyway. She cradled the cup in her lap on the way home and named it Silfer. I was glad for her to have this little living thing to care for. She would love to have pets, and I am allergic to most of them.

The fish was still swimming in the morning. So I began my usual round of morning things, starting toast, pouring cereal, making grits, doling out medication. Then I went to wake the children. I found Gleek in bed with Kiki, two girls snuggled together. I have lots of pictures of my kids sleeping, particularly when they are sleeping near each other. They used to do that a lot when they all still came to climb into bed with me. These days it is rare. Gleek called out in the night, and Kiki, who also had a bad dream, invited her for snuggles. I slept through the whole thing.

Gleek went from barely conscious to downstairs looking at her fish in less than a minute. I rummaged around on the top of our cupboards to unearth a decade old can of fish food left over from the days when we owned fish tanks. Gleek carefully placed one small flake in the water with her fish and watched intently to see if Silfer would eat. I went upstairs to poke the boys awake.

Gleek hung up the phone just as I re-entered the room. I stopped.
“Did you just call Bestfriend?”
“I wanted to tell her about Silfer.” Gleek answered. “Bestfriend will want to know I got a fish.”
Gleek was right. Bestfriend really would want to know. However I was certain that Bestfriend’s parents would prefer that this information not be conveyed via telephone at 6:30 AM. I glanced out the window at my backyard neighbor’s house where Bestfriend lives. All the windows were dark. Our phone rang. Caller ID means that Gleek’s early phone call was not anonymous. Our neighbor called back to see if there was an emergency, or a change in carpool arrangements. Because they are kind people, they talked to Gleek about her fish and only gently mentioned that later in the day would be a better time to call. Or so I inferred from Gleek’s half of the conversation. She was the one who answered the phone.

The odd kilter of the morning has continued throughout the day. Howard finished the bonus story yesterday, so he was due some vacation. We rented a movie and had a morning movie date on the couch. With popcorn. I like watching movies with Howard. Once the movie is over when have lots of fun picking at the plot holes and spinning possible patches for them. In this case the movie was 2012 and there were holes a plenty for our amusement.

The kids arrived home from school abuzz with excitement about the assembly where a guy used Yo-yo tricks to talk about practice and perseverance. Naturally the guy also sells yo-yos to interested kids. My kids were all very interested. They came home and conferenced, pooled their money, then walked back over to the school to purchase three yo-yos. I expect frustration and broken strings in the near future, but I love the way they all worked together to make it happen. I also need to make sure that the older siblings pay back the money they borrowed from Patch. He was the wealthy one this time around.

So my house is full of the smell of popcorn, a goldfish in a bowl, blue sparkling nail polish, and flying yo-yos. Had I made a prediction yesterday, it would not have included any of these things. I plan to take what comes and run with it. Although I think I’ll be running sans the blue nail polish. It’s too distracting.

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School Registration

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Link tromped with me into the Junior High building. It is a familiar place to me, because Kiki has been attending there for three years. For Link, the building was new. It represented a new and exciting chapter in his life. He took his map and navigated us around the school for a bit. We located the lunch room and the math rooms before the novelty wore off and he was ready to go home. At that point we’d already seen most of what he cares about. I worry for Link attending junior high, and I am excited. I love having the ability to select his classes separately. We can put him into advanced Math and resource English. He signed up for Clarinet. I don’t expect him to like it any better than Kiki did, but I think he will do better with it. He is better at practicing than she was at the same age.

Kiki flopped across my bed and thrust a hand full of papers in my general direction. It was the registration papers for high school. I sat with her and we combed through the class listings, trying to figure out what would be the best fit for her. Next year’s course load will be heavy. We have it on good authority that the Chemistry teacher believes in lots of homework. She’s also taking three honors classes (English, History, & Art.) The Honors classes will expect more from her, but I think she will enjoy them more because the other students will also be focused rather than just filling out graduation credits. The most startling realization for me was all the information on Driver’s Ed. Kiki will be fifteen in May. At that point she will be eligible for a Driver’s Permit. We’ve talked it over and the best fit for us all is for her to take Driver’s Ed next summer, so we have a brief reprieve. It still feels really soon.

I can feel the shifts. Both Kiki and Link are looking forward, selecting classes, making plans. They are both enthusiastic and optimistic. Picking new classes was always one of my favorite parts of school. The possibilities lay right in front of me and the challenges were only theoretical. In the not too far future, Kiki and Link will both reach a day when they are feeling trepidation for things to come. Next Fall will bring days when they feel overwhelmed and buried. The road ahead of us is long. We are going to get tired. But I am excited for them as they contemplate what is coming. We are all standing at the beginning of a path, wriggling our toes inside our shoes, anticipating the first steps.

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The Working Desk

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Desks are surfaces on which one piles Things To Do. My piles of things always begin as neat stacks, but the stacks quickly encroach upon each other. New layers are constantly added to the top, while the lower layers are slowly squished into the paper equivalent of sedimentary rock. In theory desks are also used as work space. I should be able to lay things out around me while I am actively using them, and be able to write notes using the available clear spaces. Usually my available clear space is about the size of a post it note and I have to slide the keyboard out of the way when ever I need to put a signature on a document. Eventually I have to have a day when I scrape the whole mess off of the flat surfaces and sort through the archeological layers of my business life. Then my desk functions as it is supposed to for a brief period of time.

Working Memory is the desk of the brain. It is the place where ideas and thoughts are processed before being used. It is where stray thoughts are organized into cohesive sentences. It is where numbers are added and multiplied. It is where images are mentally transformed. Like a physical desk the available space varies. Fatigue and distraction fog out the edges so that the working space is smaller. At these times it is literally harder to think and organize. Other things can clutter the working memory space. To Do lists, relationship shifts, and any other stress you can name all act like piles on the edges of the desk. They eliminate chunks of the working space and distract the attention.

Of late my working memory desk has been extremely cluttered. The result is that I feel closed in, unable to focus, and frustrated at my inability to process things efficiently. It is time for me to scrape the desk clear and sort through what is there.

Work:
I’m still trying to be in talent wrangler mode, but it is wearing on me. Howard doesn’t need full attention as much as he did early on, so we’re shifting this to a more balanced state of affairs. There is still lots of work to do. Howard is almost done with the RMS bonus story. Then he’ll have to catch up on the buffer, create a cover, and help with the last odds and ends on the book. I am also coordinating arrangements with 3 conventions. We’ve also gotten started on some necessary preliminary work for some of our summer events.

Family:
I’m in the process of getting Link registered for his first year in junior high and Kiki registered for her first year of high school. Both processes involve learning curves for me to hike. I’m also attempting to be more consistent about homework times and dinner times. In theory this structure will help provide a framework so the kids can succeed, which will lead to them feeling better about themselves and thus reducing conflict. So far the results have been various.

Community:
I’ve been a bit of a social hermit. All the stress causes me to draw back and conserve my energy. Unfortunately this also has the effect of reducing some of the contacts which provide me with energy. I need to be getting out more because I think it will make me happier when I am at home.

Spirituality:
I attend church every week, which gives me hope and energy. I have not been doing so well at regular scripture study, which also helps me gain perspective on the other parts of my life. This is my center of balance. If I do better here, everything else will probably fall into place.

Me:
I have not had much time for the things which matter to just me and I can feel that. I need to get outside. I need to garden. I need to walk. I need to get to the gym. More writing would be good too.

As usual, once I clear the desk and toss the stuff that is just clutter, I find that my piles really are not all that big. I don’t have too many things. I am not buried. Now I just need to get stuff done.

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Stress at the Tayler house

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Howard and I have both been pretty stressed lately. I’m not sure whether that has been clear on my blog, because I am very careful how I write about stressful things. This is not due to the need for a cheerful front to present to the world. It is a little bit due to knowing that the things which get written get remembered, and I prefer to remember the nice bits. The big reason I’m careful when writing about stress is to avoid negative feedback loops.

My stress makes Howard more stressed, which makes me more stressed, which makes Howard more stressed…etc. It gets even more complicated because each of us feels guilty if our stressed state increases the stressed state of the other. We want to defend each other from stress by taking care of more things solo. When we are both stressed, we step carefully because we know that the slightest nudge can upset the teetering emotional balances of the day. Keeping balance is critical to get the work done, which is the best path toward being less stressed. So I don’t vent on my blog about about my stress. Howard might take a quick break from work, read my blog, and then be derailed from his task to come help with my stress.

When the emotional balances become too teetering, we’ll find ourselves talking it out. I’ll tell Howard all the stuff I’ve been trying not to bother him about. He’ll do the same for me. Then we realize how silly we’ve been and re-sort the responsibilities so that everything balances better. Of late we’ve been having re-sorting conversations about twice per week.

We had one this morning. It was my turn to spill a pile of things which I was worried about, but which I was not saying out loud in a vain attempt to prevent Howard from feeling stressed over my worries. This hiding of worries thing doesn’t work so well when Howard has 17 years experience interpreting my moods. So Howard listened and assured me that it will be okay. This makes a nice balance for Friday and Saturday when I was the one doing the assuring. The depression we predicted for him last Thursday arrived a day late and in a different form than expected. What we forgot to predict was the effect his emotional downturn would have on me. Which explains this morning.

The only way out from under the stress is to keep going through. So onward we go.

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Joy in Mixing the Colors

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We are approximately two months away from 4 convention appearances. This means email has been flying fast and furious. I’m answering email about panel scheduling from Penguicon at the end of April. I’m discussing art for the Balticon program at the end of May. I’m throwing panel suggestions into consideration for CONduit which is also at the end of May. And I’m realizing that I really need to email the bookstore contact for a lecture Howard will be giving at LDS Storymakers mid-May. So far I’ve only messed up and sent information to the wrong place once.

I handle this kind of organization for Howard regularly. In theory this allows him to focus on writing a funny comic and creating bonus materials for the books. The reality is that the administrative tasks spill all over everything. We are constantly asking each other opinions and making sure we agree on how to handle the crisis of the moment. Yes, there is pretty much always a crisis. There is always some thing that we really should have gotten done several weeks ago.

This is supposed to be our year of settling in and smoothing out our process. We’re supposed to be balancing periods of calm with periods of stress. I pictured us alternating between the two, rather like people who have a regular home and a vacation home. Instead it is much more like two puddles of paint. The more we move around, the more the red gets tracked into the green and it all gets mixed up together until everything is greyish brown. Then I want to wash the plate and start over. If only I could find the time to wash a plate.

This year does feel more balanced. It is a little hard to see it at the moment because this month is really lopsided and work heavy. But I still believe the year will be good. I also have to remember that this mixing of work and family is actually one of the benefits of the kind of work that we do. Many people around the world would love to able to work from home simply so that they can be available for more family events. So instead of washing the plate clean, I need to be finding joy in the swirls of mixed colors.

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Reluctant Party Planner

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Over the past 14 years and four children I have planned and run upwards of 20 children’s birthday parties. The novelty has worn off. This is one of those not-fair-to-the-youngest-child things. Kiki had a mother who was thrilled to run a party for seven year olds. Patch has a mother who would rather not. This is how we arrived at 8:30 am on the day of the party and the only accomplished party task was “deliver invitations.” I had five and a half hours to clean house and plan how to occupy nine children for two hours. I dredged my memories and reconfigured the party plan I used for Link’s birthday about three years ago. We acquired a cake and prizes from the store, did some last minute adjustments to Patch’s request and the party guests arrived.

Parties never go completely smoothly. They just don’t. Hosting a party is all about lightning fast adjustments and forced judgment calls. Tears are nigh inevitable when children are involved. At least this time none of the guests were the ones crying. Poor Patch has a low tolerance for noisy chaos. This is something I need to keep in mind when planning birthdays for him in the future. But it all ended up well. Patch found a quiet space once we reached the cartoons and he told me that it was a really great party. I’m glad my little guy got the party he wanted. Everyone had a good time and I’m not in charge of any more birthdays until September. Time to go collapse for awhile.

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Slow day, snow day

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I do not like it when frozen water falls out of the sky on the day after a springish day. It is like the weather is taunting me. Except that I know it can’t possibly be personal. Perhaps today’s snow was meant to delight some child and only inconvenienced me in passing. Or perhaps it is simply to water the spring bulbs which have just begun to poke up in my flower beds. I can be glad for the wet on behalf of the flowers.

What I’ve had much more trouble doing was accomplishing anything concrete today. It was a day full of internet browsing, and book reading, and staring at nothing in particular while my brain wandered. I puttered around in little mental circles. I know such days are necessary. I need to have days where I am not running, where instead I am processing. I would feel more like I was accomplishing something if it were more organized, but it is not. My brain wanders through the same paths multiple times. The same thoughts dance across my brain. Occasionally the dances create connections and I have short moments of focus during which I write notes. That happened once today. Mostly today was a day of resting. A day when I had several hours which were completely child and business free. It would have been nice if the weather had invited me outdoors during those hours rather than encouraging me to stay hunkered down at home under blankets.

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Managing Homework

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Helping kids with homework is easy. I don’t mind answering questions or explaining concepts. Weathering the emotional drama of homework time is exhausting. Watching kids trying to avoid their homework is a fascinating psychological study. Most evenings we go through anger, depression, denial, anger, repression, displacement, avoidance, and anger. Did I mention the anger? I get to be the recipient of much of this anger, although sometimes the kids lash out at each other instead. Then I have to step in the middle and remind everyone that the real issue is not who was looking at whom, but the fact that there are two math assignments yet to be completed. Then both kids glower at me and get back to work for approximately two seconds before busting out in a new direction.

Homework time used to be after dinner. I liked to let the kids come home from school and play. I figured that they had been sitting still long enough and they deserved some time to relax. But this year after dinner homework time abruptly stopped working. Most of this is due to the fact that I now have four children bringing home work that I need to supervise. (In prior years I only had two because Kiki’s homework load was light enough that I did not have do pay any attention to it and Patch was not in school yet.) It turns out that I am incapable of helping four children simultaneously. Every time I tried to focus on one child, three kids were free to pick fights in my peripheral vision. The other problem that manifested in the after dinner homework hour was the lack of enticements to get the homework done. The kids knew that after homework came bedtime and the imminence of bedtime was not encouragement to work fast. This had not changed from prior years, but with my attention split four ways the dawdling increased dramatically.

I began to divide up the homework. I made Link get his hardest work done as soon as he got home. He protested this change vehemently, but gradually came to accept it. Kiki and I are still working on some kind of a pattern for her. The challenge there is that I’m trying to teach her to take charge of her own homework rather than waiting for me to declare what she must do. We’ve made progress, but it is a one-step-forward, two-steps-back, three-steps-sideways, one-step-forward kind of experience. Oh, and every misstep causes tears. When I manage to get Kiki and Link through with their work in the afternoon, then I only have two homework kids in the after dinner hour. Unfortunately I am also exhausted and not at all interested in fighting more homework battles. Specifically, I don’t want to fight with Gleek. Patch loves homework, except on the rare occasions when he hates it. But Gleek is often more interested in Patch’s homework than her own. She alternates between giving him the answers, which doesn’t help him learn, and declaring that the work he is struggling to do is easy. Then there is anger. And hitting.

In all of this I think the poor pencils have a harder time than I do. Pencils get broken in half, thrown across the room, chomped to bits, and erasers torn out. No wonder we have trouble finding a “good” pencil when the time comes for homework. One simply can not do homework with a “no good” pencil. Obviously. And so I put pencils on the grocery list yet again because we went through our stock from last fall’s back-to-school sales much faster than I anticipated.

I’ve tried separating it all out so that the kids do homework solo, but they all seem to require me standing nearby. And where the mother is, all the kids will naturally gravitate to be fed snacks. And so I’ve given up on having a system at all. Each day has its own set of variables and I try to fit the homework in around them. I look at the quantity of homework for each child. I look at the after school activities which are scheduled. I look at the evening activities. I assess the states of the children and figure out which ones will most harmoniously work on homework together for this day. The answer will be different tomorrow. On a good day, I do all this by instinct without even thinking about it consciously. On not so good days…homework doesn’t get done.

I feel guilty when the homework piles up. I feel like I should do better. But no one can be at their best all that time. And part of my brain stomps her feet and declares how unfair it is that I have to pay attention to this at all. It isn’t my work. They should just do it. But they don’t because they are kids. Half of the point of homework is learning how to handle regular unwanted tasks. And I must teach it to them. By example. Which means the foot-stompy part of my brain can stomp all she wants and I’ll help my kids with their homework anyway. Because it is the right thing to do.

I just wish it were not quite so exhausting.

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