Sandra Tayler

In our church the kids sing a song about pioneers which has a chorus about “we are marching, ever marching, marching onward, ever onward.” My life feels like that chorus right now.

Last October through December I was living a high energy, high stress lifestyle. I’ve deliberately stepped away from that. I’ve pared back my away-from-home commitments. However the at-home commitments have doubled or tripled. I’m giving the kids far more time and attention. I’m giving the house more attention. But the largest part is the increase in workload for the Schlock business. With the new merchandise I’ve been spending several hours per day preparing packages for shipping. Since we intend to continue adding merchandise at the rate of at least one new thing per month through July, I expect the shipping chores to increase rather than decrease. It isn’t high energy stress, but it is one thing after another stress. I don’t have to go fast constantly, but I do have to keep on track and keep going.

An additional time consumer is the book layouts that I’m supposed to be working on. I’d planned on getting them done early in the month. Instead I did seemingly endless piles of Tax Preparatory accounting. But the tax accounting is all done now. So today I opened up the layouts for Hold on to Your Horses and really dug into the changes I want to make. None of the individual changes is large, but I discovered that I wanted to make a lot of tweaks. I spent several hours on it this afternoon. It was supposed to be morning hours so that the afternoon could belong to the kids, but shipping and customer support slurped up the whole morning. I have another hour or so of work on it, then I can shoot a pdf off to the artist for approval.

I think I’m actually going to meet my goal of getting Hold on to Your Horses sent off for print by the end of this month. This is both exciting and terrifying. What if I make some horrible mistake in formatting the book, but no one sees it until we’ve shelled out the money and got the books in hand? What if no one buys the book? I ran the numbers and for me to break even, we need to sell 700 books. (It would be 400, but I feel strongly that the artist deserves to get paid for every copy that sells whether or not the project breaks even.) One part of my brain says that of course we’ll be able to sell 700 books. Howard sells that many of his books in the first 24 hours. But another part of me remembers all too clearly that 700 is an astronomically high number of sales for a self-published book. So I’m scared that this project of mine will cost our family money just when we’re trying to create a more stable financial situation.

As soon as I get the files sent off for print, I need to start putting together a website for the book. I need a place to point people when they ask about it. I’ll also need promotional materials like bookmarks. Oh, and of course there is the layout for the next Schlock book that needs to be done as well. So much to do. One thing after another.

Mostly I just move from task to task getting things done. But sometimes I pause and just feel tired. In that moment it all seems impossible. But then I pick up and start moving again. At the end of each day I’ve done a lot, but it is but a sliver compared to what I have yet to do. I would be discouraging except that I have this strong feeling that this burdensome schedule is only going to last for about 6-9 months. I can keep going that long.

This past week I’ve been checking in with my kids’ teachers. I’m not really concerned, I just want to have a feel for how life in the classroom is going for them. When I reached Gleek’s teacher I could tell that she wasn’t certain of the reason for my call and she really had nothing specific to say about problems in the classroom. This makes me very happy. It means that Gleek is not one of her problem kids. This is such a relief after last year when Gleek had such a hard time.

The kids did not have school today. I had a plan for us all to get out of the house so that we wouldn’t drive each other nuts. Then it snowed 8 inches this morning. I braved the snow twice. Once with Gleek to get breakfast donuts. Once with Link and Patches to the dollar store to buy birthday gifts for Gleek. Both times the roads were coated with snow and slippery. We all stayed in for the rest of the day. Unfortunately the trip to the dollar store also resulted in Link becoming the proud owner of a whoopie cushion and three cans of silly string. I’ll just let you picture three of my kids and two neighbor kids shrieking with glee as silly string goes everywhere. There was much clean up. There was much whining about said clean up. There was much grumbling from me when I had to do the post-cleanup clean up. We have 14 foot ceilings and I had to scrape stuff off of them. And then later we were all treated to Link putting on a “fart show.”

I have a nice house, but today it felt far too small.

Today I focused my attention on the house. I started by cleaning the kitchen because when the kitchen is clean everything else seems more possible. The rest of the day was spent organizing my office and the storage room. We’re planning to start producing merchandise other than books and I really need a place to put it all. The time has come for my office to eschew doubling as a guest room and admit that it is just an office. The futon has been evicted and shelves were put up instead. I’m still not done in there, but it is a start.

The futon is currently taking up space in the family room. Howard and I had discussed putting it in the front room, but after watching the antics today I don’t want it there. The kids were all very excited about the new family room furniture. First they discovered that if they hit the mattress, dust came puffing out. Then they discovered that they could lift it into a bed or fold it into a couch. This was highly amusing to them and highly nerve wracking to me. I kept hearing Thump-CRASH as they switched it back and forth. The frame of the futon is metal and made a lovely CLANG sound. I could just picture smashed limbs and I forbade them to fold it out anymore. I declared it to be a couch and only a couch.

But this was not the end of the fascination with the futon. The kids discovered that if they pushed the mattress out of the way, the back of the couch configuration made a great jail. They would stand on the mattress with their backs against the slats. Their hands would be shoved behind them through the slats as if they’d been handcuffed. We had four neighbor kids over and this whole elaborate game evolved including the jail, a jailer, and 6 kids all being pokemon, or unicorns, or whatever. It was cute to see them all lined up there, but extremely chaotic and noisy.

They climbed. They jumped. They argued. Fortunately no damage was done to either futon or kids, but it was a close thing multiple times. I think the futon needs a new home and we need to invest in an airbed for guests.

Patches is the only person in our house who can’t read. He feels this distinction strongly and has been trying to work with letters and writing for months. I saw him wanting to read and write, but I was too busy to give him more than cursory help. Yesterday and today I sat down with him and we started working on reading. It made him so happy.

I have piles of early reading materials. I collected it all when I was working to teach Link to read. Reading did not come easily to Link. He needed lots of practice at very easy levels, but the stories were so simple that they quickly bored him. It was a very different experience teaching reading to Patches. With Link I cut each lesson in half because it was too much for him to take at once. With Patches I’m actually skipping material because I can tell that he’s already mastered it and doesn’t need to practice more.

I wore out on reading before Patches did. He sat down with a book and carefully learned all the words in it so that he could read it himself. But he wasn’t just memorizing, he was paying attention to each written word and matching it to a spoken word. This kid is going to be reading in no time at all if I just keep making time to work with him. I intend to keep making the time. This is what Patches needs right now.

We haven’t yet gotten comfortable with our shifted priorities and schedule. Not everything fits yet. Grocery shopping for example. I have to find a place to fit that in where it won’t disrupt some other important thing. The waiting until we run out of milk completely and then running to the store grumpy isn’t working well. Also going to the gym is physically exhausting, which changes what we’re capable of accomplishing during the rest of the day. My pace isn’t frantic or heavily stressed, but I do have to keep moving steadily all day to get things done. I’m hoping that habit will make everything work more smoothly, but we’re only two weeks in. We haven’t achieved habit yet.

Despite the kinks in the new schedule, I am filled with a sense that we’re on the right path. I feel strongly that we just need to stick with the new schedule and everything will turn out all right. I can already see shifts in the kids’ behaviors that are a reflection of the shifts that I’ve made. I’ve talked more with them about their lives in the last two weeks than I did during the months of October, November, and December combined. I’ve noticed that very little substitutes for proximity and availability.

I’ve learned that Kiki has been helping a friend deal with some girls who pick on her. Kiki also told me about an event in her German class where she got the approval of all of her peers by angling the teacher into letting them finish a movie. Link told me how he really likes his resource class because it gets him out of composition. He explained how writing is hard and math is easy. Gleek snuggled and cried over the fact that there was an assembly and she did not get picked to help demonstrate despite the fact that she was working her very hardest to be good. Patches revealed that he is upset and nervous about being in charge of the song for Family Home Evening next week. A little practice and talking eased his mind tremendously.

It is like they’ve got all these thoughts and stories and hurts balled up inside them and I’m slowly managing to pull them out. I can see the kids unclenching and relaxing into this new way of being. I am here for them in a way that I have not been for months and they are really glad. This is the right path. I can tell.

This afternoon Gleek climbed into my lap as I was browsing the lol cats at icanhascheezburger.com. She was instantly entranced with the amusing animals. I scrolled through the pictures so she could see them all. Then she started reading the words in the captions. At first she was thrown off by some of the odd spellings and pronunciations, but a couple of them had her giggling so hard that she nearly fell off my lap. She demanded to see all of them. We clicked through a couple of pages until my patience was wearing thin. There is only so much lol humor I can take in a single sitting.

In order to appease Gleek’s continuing demands for more, I printed out two of her favorites so that she could share them with her siblings. That was the first error. Gleek returned with Patches in tow. Then I had two kids demanding more lol cats. I printed out a third page to get them to let me work for awhile. That worked for a time. But shortly Gleek was back in my office. She had put the words of the captions to the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and now serenaded me with lol cat humor. All the kids thought this was the height of humor and cleverness. The song has been sung repeatedly throughout the afternoon. The show has even been taken on the road to perform for the neighbors.

Tonight at bedtime Gleek was making a plan to print out ALL of the lol cat pictures and sing them. We’re going to have an operatic length Ring of the Lol Cats.