Author name: Sandra Tayler

I am very tired just now. I just got back from the annual Hope of America program. I was a little less stressed about it than last year, because this year I was only shepherding two kids instead of four. All the same inconveniences and annoyances were present. It was crowded and Gleek kept trying to dive through Gleek-sized holes in the crowd. If I was holding her hand, I could pull her back (much to her frustration. Could I not see the space?) If I was not holding her hand, I just had to call and try to keep her in sight as I wove through the crowd after her. I suspect that we were an annoyance to those seated around us, because for Gleek music is always participatory. She jumped. She clapped. She sang along. She declared her desire to be able to do every dance and perform every trick. (Especially the one where a girl somehow made five hula hoops look and move like bird wings. “Mom! I want five hula hoops!”) So I spent a good part of the evening like a record on repeat. “Don’t kick the seats in front of you.” “Sit down, the people behind us need to see.” “We need to calm it down a little.” “Shh! If you must sing, sing softly so the others can hear their kids.” Fortunately many of the numbers explicitly encouraged audience participation. Gleek particularly loved when the wave traveled around the stadium three or four times before petering out. After the show was over, Gleek and I climbed to the very top of the stadium. She sat there on the very highest bench and I swear her whole face glowed. She felt on top of the world. She danced all the way back to the car.

But the real reason we went to the show was for Link. He got to be part of the chorus this year. For five years Link watched other kids get to sit as part of the flag and shine lights. This was finally his turn. He was so excited that he lay out all his clothes last night. He was out of bed and dressed this morning before I’d even stumbled my way to the kitchen. My son, whom I have to scowl into mumbling along with the singing at church, was thrilled to spend hours practicing songs and the performing songs. This was his moment to shine a flashlight and wear sunglasses. He got to be cool. The press of people after the show was crazy. There are designated meeting places for parents to pick up their performing children. Teachers do their best to shepherd their students to the meeting spots, but it is a mad house. When Gleek and I arrived next to Link’s teacher, Link was not there. It was futile to go searching for him. Our best option was to wait. I could picture him lost in the crowd feeling anxious and scared. But when he turned up a few minutes later, he was grinning. He’d gone to the wrong meeting place, then found the right one. I have times when I really worry about Link. Then there are times like today when he demonstrates how much he is capable of accomplishing when the goal is something that he wants rather than something I think he ought to want.

This year’s program featured many beautiful dance numbers. I found it fascinating that every number which was not performed by a school class, was performed by a cultural minority group. There were Bolivian dances, salsa dances, sambas, traditional Mexican dances, two Native American dances, and a gospel singing group. I guess the one exception to this would be Jean’s Golden Girls which was a troupe of women aged 50 to 92. They perform every year and they are always good. 92 year old Jean always ends the performance with high kicks and the splits. It was fascinating to me to see all the school classes full of mostly white faces. And then see the dance troupes full of dark hair and brown skin. It was lovely to see these minority cultural traditions thriving in a location that is so overwhelmingly white.

I cried again. I always do, every year. How can I not cry when I see all the enthusiastic effort from all of those young performers? From the tiny kindergarteners who have to be herded into place by their teachers, to the self conscious middle schoolers who are afraid to look silly as they dance, to the chorus with their hand motions and flashlights. The event represents thousands, or perhaps even tens of thousands, of hours of preparation. The event got so big, that they now have half the schools performing one night and the other half performing on a different night. It is an amazing accomplishment and a beautiful expression of desire for a bright and beautiful future. This program is one that exposes kids to ideals they can strive for and dreams that they can reach. I know that both of my kids came home exhausted and inspired. … and singing that song about Abe Lincoln that none of us can get out of our heads. I just wish they could remember more than the chorus.

One of the interesting things about keeping a regular blog is that I can play the “one year ago today” game. It gives me a fragmentary look at how my life has changed over the year. Today I decided to take things a little further and I year hopped all the way back to the beginning. Five years ago this month I started this blog. That was back before most people knew what the word “blog” meant. In internet terms my blog is ancient. My life has changed drastically since then.

One year ago today, I was enjoying a visit from my younger sister and her two kids. I was preparing Hold on to Your Horses for print, and frequently terrified that I was going to do something wrong. I was also sorting out how to manage working from home without compromising on the amount of attention I gave to my kids. (I ended up compromising the amount of attention I gave to household chores and resource management instead.) I also stopped writing fiction for a year.

Two years ago today, I had not yet taken on the layout and design work for books. I was helping two kids with a particularly rough school year, one child with difficult learning challenges, and the fourth child with potty training. I’d just sold my first story and recently written Hold on to Your Horses. I was very focused on house and kids.

Three years ago today, we were in the midst of preparing for our first ever Schlock book shipping. I was trying to wrap my head around the logistics of shipping thousands of books at once. I was also chasing a toddler and preschooler constantly. Keeping them safely occupied was a daily challenge. But I didn’t mind the chaos, because we’d just had the first evidence that Howard being a cartoonist could actually pay our bills.

Four years ago today, I was very much focused on making do with very few resources. We were living month to month. We never had more than three months’ worth of bills stashed away, and frequently it was far less than that. Howard was scrambling to take corporate cartooning contracts to make ends meet. I spent lots of time gardening, canning, and figuring out how to entertain/educate the kids without spending any money. I spent most Saturday mornings combing through garage sales trying to find bargains on things that we needed and things that could be stashed away for Christmas.

Five years ago today, I had not even started this blog yet. I started it about a week later. Howard was still working long hours for Novell, then coming home to work even more hours on Schlock Mercenary. He was also traveling for Novell once or twice each month. I managed the kids and the house solo much of the time. I had an infant, a preschooler, a kindergartener, and a third-grader. I did not know that we only had four months before Howard would leave Novell forever.

Five years can make quite a difference.

For the past five weeks I have had to be extremely focused. All of my energy and brain space had to be devoted to getting the XDM project completed on time while not completely neglecting the children. I did not stop thinking other thoughts, but when they occurred, I would shove them away. I can’t think about that right now. For me “shove away” is not the same thing as “dismiss” or “forget.” I’ve spent years training my brain to save ideas for me so that I can use them later. This is the stash from which I draw my blog entries and stories. So for the past five weeks I shoved my ideas away; rather like a child who cleans the room by shoving things in the closet and under the bed. Repeated iterations of this eventually fill the closet. Then things are shoved against the walls or into corners. The edges fill up and the space in the middle gets smaller and smaller.

Yesterday I shipped off the XDM files to the printer. I was done. I finally had time to think about things other than preparing for printing. Hmm. Didn’t there used to be more space than this inside my head? My brain was half full of idea fragments. But they had all been compacted together so tightly that I could not see any of them clearly. My first thought was to wade into the mess and muck it out. I do this by writing what I call a “brain dump” entry. That is when I just write the thoughts in my brain as they surface. Each one pours out my fingers and into the blog. Then I can just let them go. Sometimes braindumps are the ideal way to sort my thoughts, but they are not pretty. Rather than giving each idea full reign of a blog entry where I really explore it, I just shove a bunch of them into a single entry so that I can let them go. I feel like most of my entries of the past few weeks have been of this variety. I finally had time and space to really compose an entry, and I wanted it to be a good one.

So I poked at the jumbled mess of ideas. I was certain that in there somewhere were a dozen possible blog entries. But each time I tried to grab hold of an idea, all I could catch was a fragment. And if I did not grab fast, the fragment would disappear again into the mess. I realized that I had to wait for the ideas to emerge. I had to lurk, like a hunter, trusting that if I was quiet that the ideas would separate themselves from the mess and float across the middle of my brain. Then I could catch them. I catch them by quickly scribbling notes. Pinning them to the page allows me to see them and figure out where they belong. The difficult part is that waiting for thoughts can be boring. I’m bored. Let’s go read. Let’s turn on music. Let’s watch a show. I wonder if there is email. But if I follow the bored voice, I will scare the ideas back into hiding. Not only that, I will be adding to the mess of ideas already there. So I have to let myself be bored. I do the dishes, and fold laundry, and wipe counters, all with nothing but my own thoughts to entertain me. And as sure as carbonation bubbles form and rise to the surface of the soda, the ideas coalesce and percolate out where I can see them. You have time to think about me now. Then I catch them on paper.

After a morning of quiet tasks and catching thoughts, I now have notes for four blog entries of which this was one. I’ve also identified stray business tasks I need to take care of next week and written them down so I will not forget them again. I’ve even made some plans about writing and revising. As a side bonus, my house is cleaner too.

Today:
Kids off to school
Drop XDM cover off at Alphagraphics for a test print. This is the second attempted test print for the XDM cover, we’re having boxes appear around some of the images. Probably a problem introduced by the export process.
Gather all XDM proofreading notes
Enter all proofreading notes into InDesign file for book
Wait for computer to slowly export book to high resolution pdf
Wait while computer and printer to slowly communicate and print the pdf.
Accept delivery of XDM dummy book. So Pretty!
Wait while Howard flips through XDM print out.
Howard finds errors.
Field phone call from Alphagraphics. The Under New Management file they have for test printing is corrupt. They need a new one.
Welcome Patch home from school and usher him off to a birthday party.
Flip through XDM print out. Find more errors.
Enter fixes into InDesign file.
Wait for computer to slowly export the book to high res pdf.
Wait for computer and printer to slowly communicate and print the new pdf.
Decide to buy lunch.
Discover that van will not start.
Use Howard’s car to drive for food.
Welcome kids home from school.
Eat food.
Call Auto repair shop and towing company
Wait for computer to slowly export the UNM file for test printing.
Assist in loading van onto tow truck.
Wave goodbye to van and at least $150 for towing and diagnostics
Burn the UNM pdf to a CD.
Use Howard’s car to take the CD to Alphagraphics.
Pick up UNM and XDM cover test prints.
Discover that we have not yet solved the XDM cover issue.
Discover that the UNM cover still requires some fixes.
Fix UNM cover.
Wait for computer to slowly export the cover to a high res pdf file so I can do another test print.
Show Howard the cover test prints
Discover another problem with the UNM cover. This time it is Howard’s fix.
Howard and I hatch a plan to fix the XDM cover.
Write a blog while waiting for a big file to load in photoshop.

Up ahead:
Fixing the XDM cover (hopefully)
Feeding people dinner
putting kids to bed.

I’d hoped to ship files this afternoon. It is going to be mid-day tomorrow at the earliest. Once I get all the test prints approved, I still have to package the InDesign files and burn them to CD. This will mean even more waiting while my computer processes things. Whee.

I am in transition this week. There are a last few details to pull together for XDM, so I’m not completely done there. But I’m also starting to look ahead to May and realizing that I need to plan a book shipping event and a book launch party. I can see those things up ahead of me, but I’m not quite ready to really dive into them yet. I am also looking around my house and seeing all theneglected housework. I’m trying to find the motivation to catch up. I think it might be buried under the laundry, but I’m not sure. I’m also trying to muster the determination to make the kids do their homework again. And yet we’re already shifting into the run up to the end of school. The homework gets sporadic and there are many end-of-school activities.

Most of all I am transitioning between last week’s high intensity work into a more normal schedule. It feels…lazy. Because it feels lazy, I’m having a hard time remembering that I am not, in fact, on vacation. I still have work to do.

Tonight for a family activity we played hide-and-seek. By “we” I mean all six of us, Howard and I included. The game was Link’s pick. At first I was not all that thrilled about it, but standing in my first hiding place, trying not to breathe loud, my mind hearkened back to similar games from my childhood. It was very much the same. Standing there, listening to noises, trying to figure out if people are close, hoping they won’t see you because your hiding spot is too awesome, getting bored, being a little uncomfortable, deliberately making noise so that they’ll find you faster. That last bit was almost the best party. The rounds lasted about ten minutes because the kids had a hard time finding people. I would listen carefully for the sound of frustration and start making noises so that the kids had clues. The older the child, the fewer clues they needed. Even with me making noise, I was usually one of the last people found. It isn’t that my hiding places were amazing, it is just that I know how the kids think. I know which types of obstructions will render shoes or toys completely unfindable to them. All I had to do is hide in those places. Mom is good at hiding from kids. Mom is also very, very good at finding kids. They did not need to give me any hints. I found them all inside three minutes. Again, I know my house and I know my kids. Finding things is something I do daily. I’m good at it. I never realized before that hide-and-seek is an educational game. It teaches kids how to search methodically. Howard was also good at hiding and finding. The game was fun. Next time I think we ought to play sardines.

I’ve spent all day recovering from the two-week long working marathon. It is a little like waking up. I’m tired and not inclined to take on anything strenuous. Bit by bit I’m starting to open up parts of my brain that I had shut down so that they would not distract me from the hyper-focus I needed to get the XDM project done. Three weeks makes a habit and so many of these thought patterns are a bit rusty from four weeks of disuse. But now I am remembering the writing projects that were set aside. I am looking around my house and seeing the organization it needs. I am remembering that I like having friends and spending social time with them. These possibilities are opening up to me again. I’m remembering who I am when I’m not working 10-13 hour days.

This evening we got together with long-time friends who moved back into the area last year. It has been 8 years since we spent time with them regularly, but they are the kind of friends where we can easily pick up right where we left off. There was reminiscing, and new stories shared, and laughter had. A good time was had by all. We need to get together with them again. Once a year is far too seldom. It was a nice parallel to be reconnecting with friends on the same day when I’m reconnecting with myself.

Tomorrow there will be more work, but the work will not dominate the day. I will be back in balance and that will be nice.