Sandra Tayler

The book blogger She is Too Fond of Books wrote a lovely review of Hold on to Your Horses.

Yay!

Yesterday would have been a good day to run errands. There was no snow and the roads were clear. But yesterday I got the kids off to school and went back to bed because I was hoping to feel better when I woke up. I really wanted to plunge deep into sleep and wake up refreshed. Instead I skipped from dream to dream across the surface of sleep until I dragged myself out of bed on the other side of two hours. The rest of the day was better, if not exactly bouncy.

Today, not so good a day to run errands. Unfortunately many of the errands had reached urgent status. So I spent 90 minutes sliding my van across snow packed streets to get things done. Snow driving requires far more attention than regular driving. It also requires me to adjust my instinctive reactions to driving stimuli. I need to remember that when the brake pedal jitters, pushes back, and makes a grinding noise, that means the van is skidding and the anti-lock brakes are trying to help, rather than AGGH! Brake Failure! The correct response is to ease up and pump the brakes, not to smash the brake pedal harder. After 90 minutes of practice I think I’ve trained myself to remember that. Also using empty roads to practice skid management is a good idea. This way when I skid on a crowded road I can remain calm and I know what to do. Sledding down a clear hill on a sled is fun. Sledding down a hill in a van with obstacles to avoid, not so fun. Also, I don’t like ice that freezes to the windshield wipers. Never hurry while driving in snow. Hurrying in snow ends with CRUNCH. No crunch today. Yay.

Next up, the joys of snow removal.

Howard: Still love him. Makes me laugh. Takes care of many things so I don’t have to. Sometimes makes dishes and laundry that I have to clean up, but sometimes cleans up after me.

Kiki: Still enjoying junior high. Has figured out that a small application of effort on a daily basis is all that is necessary for her to achieve straight A grades. Still struggles with maintaining a regular sleeping schedule. Is sometimes too hard on her younger siblings. Takes care of her own homework and chores without me having to nag, (much). Recently figured out that hanging out with a friend after school is more fun than sitting at home mostly bored.

Link: Likes his teacher isn’t complaining about school. Still taking daily medication for ADD. Gets his work done in class most of the time. Is beginning to wrap his head around earning scout merit badges. Loves his once-per-week tumbling class, but could use more physical activity in general. Still highly motivated by all things video game. Still misses Bestfriend who moved away over two years ago, but has also started forming a bond with Newfriend here in the neighborhood and spends a good portion of his afternoons playing.

Gleek: Not real happy about school right now. Struggling to control herself and follow instructions during class. She often fails. The academics are easy for her, which may be part of the problem. Edit: after discussion with her teacher, it seems Gleek’s problem is not boredom, but rather that she gets too involved and resists switching. Loves her once-per-week gym class. Not so thrilled about the once-per-week piano lessons, but loves to pick out tunes on the piano. Will spend long periods of time reading. Has been listening to an audio book of Anne of Green Gables at bedtime.

Patch: Enjoys kindergarten. Proudly shows off his papers as soon as he walks in the door. Is a beginning reader able to blend short words with short vowel sounds. Loves to build with legos and draw. Needs to talk to sort his thoughts. Frequently has trouble settling down to go to sleep at night. Still gets up in the night to crawl into bed with us or with Kiki. Enjoys having half a day with no other kids in the house. Has friends living in both next door houses and in our backyard neighbor’s house.

Writing: I’m just getting started again after a 10 month hiatus. So far it is going slowly. Thursdays are my days to be a writer first. The other days of the week business gets precedence.

Business: Predictably December has included a lot of shipping. Even Amazon.com has been stocking up on Schlock books. I began a preliminary layout on margin art for OFU. Next will come scanning and prepping images. Starting in January we’ll be doing some marketing things and putting out more merchandise. We’ll be doing some marketing for Hold Horses as well.

Gardening: The outside garden is dormant. I have a winter garden again. This year I’m trying out bulb forcing. I’ve planted hyacinths, lilies, and narcissus. The narcissus have nice green shoots but no flowers yet. The hyacinths are just peeking above ground. The lilies are still looking like a pot of dirt. I haven’t been as desperate for flowers this year. I think that is a measure of how much less stressed I am this year.

Frugal living: Not doing so well here. I need to get back to meal planning and cooking from scratch. Also, I should make a trip to the thrift store for next summer’s clothing.

House: Howard and I have been doing some small maintenance repairs. We’ve also been working harder at keeping things clean. It is an improvement, but we’ve still got lots to do to make up for the years of living with little-to-no maintenance.

Church: I’m still a primary teacher. I miss getting to go to an adult class, but I’m so grateful for all the people who are and were teachers for my kids. It is my turn to be a teacher for someone else’s kids.

Extended Family: Got to see lots of family in November. I’ll probably see lots more in January/February/March because of scheduled events.

Holiday shopping: Not done yet, but close.

Health: Not feeling well today. Also I’ve passed the high end of weight that I consider acceptable. I’ve started going back to the gym, but it is more miss than hit so far.

Gleek is not among the Santa believers, but her second grade class wrote letters to Santa as a writing assignment.

Dear Santa,

How is Rudolph the red nosed reindeer? How is Mrs. Claus? Do you have any children or grand children? How are you? Is it freezing up there? I’m fine. I’d like a horse for Christmas and a new friend. What would you like? What are your favorite colors?

Love Gleek

She is both the easiest to shop for and the hardest. Excuse me while I go snuggle my girl.

Yesterday I was rummaging in my jewelry box. As I rummaged, I realized that most of the jewelry I own is in the box because of the memories attached rather than because I wear it. There is nothing wrong with keeping jewelry for sentimental value. Jewelry is small and easy to store. But the same strategy applied to larger items can be problematic. A couch generally does not make a good keepsake. It is too large and too easily damaged. Many times Howard and I have discussed how clothing is not a good keepsake. It was usually discussed in reference to t-shirts. I believe this, but it can still be hard to part with a beloved item.

Today I went through my closet. I intended to really evaluate my clothing for utility and attractiveness rather than nostalgia. I was surprised to see how many items hung there, not out of nostalgia or even utility, but simply because of inertia. Many of them I’ll wear if they’re the only thing left in the closet. This means I’ve been wearing my least favorite clothing often, due to the ever present piles of unfolded clean laundry. The result is that I frequently feel frumpy or unattractive. I believe the answer is to get rid of the clothes I don’t like and to do laundry more often. I wonder why “we have too many clothes” did not occur to me previously as part of the over-flowing laundry solution.

So now my closet is much more empty. I’m liking the feeling of space. I also took the sentimental jewelry and put it into a separate box. This makes finding the pieces I want to wear much easier. It will be interesting to see if these changes make a difference in how I feel about how I look.

I begin to type, forming sentences in my head before they emerge from my fingers. I craft my words carefully to wrap them around the meanings that I intend for them.

“MetaKnight!”
“MetaKnight!”

The shouts from my children slice through my concentration. I’ve no idea why they are shouting the name of a video game character while tossing stuffed animals, but apparently it is great fun. The mentally crafted sentences shatter and the meanings drift into the aether. I close my eyes and plug my ears, trying to remember what I’d intended.

“MetaKnight!” Thump! Then a child squeals.

The ideas are gone. They’ve slipped through my fingers. Each time I try to collect my thoughts to capture the idea again, the children make more joyful (or not so joyful) noises. I am glad that they are playing. I’m glad that they have so much fun together. I’m glad that they are being creative and that the electronic screens are all off. But I crave silence, a space to think without their words severing mine.

The economic downturn is all over the news and the blogosphere. Everywhere I turn I hear gloomy news and dire predictions of things yet to come. The thing is, we’re having a good year. Sales in the Schlock store have been pretty strong. Much of this is due to the fact that we have things to sell other than just books. I suspect if we had a similar array of merchandise last year we would have seen much stronger sales last year compared to this year. But we don’t have any other year to compare to and so this year feels pretty good. Does this guarantee our future? Of course not. If people have less money to spend, then they’ll spend less of it with us. This is as it should be. Bills before books. But I can’t live terrified of that future. If all the people like me who are in comfortable circumstances hold tight to their money out of fear, then we’re contributing to the economic woes. Sensible spending inside a budget helps everyone, particularly if the spending occurs at small local businesses.

This year we’re giving more to charity and to people in need than we usually do. We’re comfortable and therefore it is our responsibility to help those who are in distress. My friendJulie Wright never walks past a street musician without giving some change. I’ve adopted the same attitude toward those Salvation Army red kettles. But today I realized that I want to be giving something more than money. When I was growing up, my family went out caroling for the twelve days before Christmas. We would pick a couple of families who we thought were having a hard Christmas and we’d show up at their door singing twelve days in a row. That was a powerful accumulation of experiences. I still remember the family whose teenage son died accidentally, the mother and kids going through a divorce, the too-sick-to-stand cancer patient. We never had trouble finding people in need at Christmas time. The caroling tradition does not work well with my family now. But today I realized I can still be reaching out more.

Starting today and continuing at least until Christmas, I am going to do something nice for someone who is not a member of my family. I’m not sure what I’ll do or for whom. The things I do will be small. The point of this is not to burden me, but to reach out and cheer up others. Sometimes the little things matter more anyway. Just today I was a recipient of one of those little things, a card with a foam snowman came in the mail and brightened my day. (Thank you S.M.) Little things can make all the difference in the world, so I am going to find some little things to do which will make the world a better place for at least one person each day.

“Mom, can you get me some of my dark blue paper?” Patch asked
“What dark blue paper?” I answered
“The blue paper in my room.” He meant the stack of multicolored construction paper on a high shelf in his closet. We went to his room and I got down several sheets of blue paper. Then I went on my way, not really paying attention to whatever project that Patch had in mind. Patch went straight to Howard and I overheard his query.
“Dad, can I use your silver pen?”
Howard has some silver sharpie markers that he sometimes uses for signing books. Sharpie markers are not usually turned over to the kids because they’re much more permanent than the washable Crayola markers. Howard and I spent a moment mystified as to why Patch would seek out these particular items. We were soon enlightened when Patch began drawing diagrams of experiments he had seen on Mythbusters. He spent a happy hour drawing pictures and pretending to be a Mythbuster. He quickly moved from the show experiments into imagined experiments of his own. They were evocative little drawings of stick figures meeting all sorts of doom. I particularly liked the one with lightning strikes. I love that he can create his own plans and make them happen even if it is just remembering things we have in our house and knowing how to turn them into a Mythbusters game.

In 2007 I sold a story to a DAW anthology edited by Julie Czerneda and Rob St. Martin. That anthology will finally see print in early March 2009. I’ve already seen and approved galleys and now I have a cover image to share. See the pretty cover:

Edit to add: You can preorder the book through amazon.com click here to go to the ordering page. We’ll also be putting it up in our store for the same price as Amazon, but we have to buy them at full price in order to resell them. This means the only additional profit I will ever see from this short story is if the book earns out its advance and starts paying royalties.

I am waiting for packages. One package is more shipping supplies. I (probably) won’t run out before the supplies arrive, but I’ll be more comfortable once I’m re-stocked. I’m also waiting for two separate shirt re-orders. One was supposed to arrive last Friday. The other won’t arrive until next week. I’m also waiting for at least three packages from Amazon.com. These contain presents. One of them is actually a re-order of an item that I originally ordered used in November. The item never arrived and so I re-ordered a new copy. At least the Netflix movies arrived today on schedule. All those packages clogging the system just for me. No wonder this is the busiest shipping season of the year. It has been so busy that USPS.com has been down sporadically over the last two days. This affects me because stamps.com has to query USPS for cost calculations. It seems even shipping from home requires some waiting at this time of year.

At the same time that I’m doing all this postal waiting, my mind is running. For some reason my subconscious has decided to dredge up a pile of unfinished story ideas and throw them into my conscious thought. This set my brain bubbling with possibilities for possible combinations. It also required me to google Tam Lin and sent me searching through my writers forum in search of advice on how to plot. Characters and feelings come very easily to me, but I keep writing things that are more vignettes than actual stories. So now I’m seeking to fill my brain with some plotting theory in the hopes that some of it will collide with the story fragments to birth new drafts that may grow up to be finished stories some day. Add to that stew, the fact that Howard was doing some thrilling/emotional plotting this morning which I got to read and then talk over with him. His story makes me want to chew my nails even though I know how it ends. What with all the reading and thinking, my brain is now tired. It is tired, but it can not stop. I’m going to have to find something mind numbing to do. Something that allows my brain to follow the train of someone else’s story rather than working hard at creation.