Sandra Tayler

I’ve never considered myself a good housekeeper. Today I realized that I was wrong. I’m really good at cleaning house. I know how to do it. I just don’t spend enough time being a housekeeper. If I could spend hours each day cleaning my house, it would be spotless. And I would be completely bored. House cleaning is not interesting. In fact many of the tasks of my life are not individually interesting. Apparently I decided to add interest by packing as many as possible into each day. Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t do that to me.

That said, I’ve had a couple of really good days. I got lots of stuff done. My retreat worked perfectly. Now I just need to manage my resources properly and make sure I eat right and get enough sleep.

Gleek and Link brought home fund raising packets today. This is the second time this year that they’ve come home with glowing faces and plans for the marvelous prizes they will win. It has been left to me to explain that there is no way we can sell 10 coupon books at $20 each or 75 items from a catalog. In theory I could help them go door to door to all of our neighbors trying, but the expenditure of time is much too high. Besides I have a moral objection to pushing family and friends to buy things that they don’t need.

I know that these fundraisers work. They help the PTA raise a lot of money which is then put into programs at our school. I like the PTA. I like the programs the PTA provides. But these fundraisers are only successful because they use children as emotional levers on the pocket books of their parents. The fundraising companies do not care about the tears and headaches of the children and the parents. The fundraising companies do not care about the PTA or the school or the school programs. The fundraising companies are there to make a profit. They are quick to point out that half of the money goes straight to the school. I would point out that half of the money that people spend in an effort to help the school goes somewhere else. I do not want to give any money to these companies who prey upon my children and make them cry. It makes me angry that the PTA, which is supposed to be all about providing good experiences for children, raises money by emotionally manipulating them; showing them shiny prizes that they will never achieve. The PTA is making money off of setting children up to fail.

It all makes me mad enough that I called the school to register a complaint. I even left my name and number in case they care to call me back and discuss it. I may even make a cash donation straight to the PTA with a letter containing some of the points in this post so that I make really clear that I support PTA, but not fundraising companies.

A retreat is a time to admit that you are over matched, that you have to give ground so that you can consolidate your forces. A retreat is not the same thing as a defeat. A well executed retreat may actually be the key to victory.

This weekend I retreated. I did no business tasks. I did the bare minimum of writing tasks. Instead I focused on the kids and the house and sleeping a lot. This is roughly analogous to retreating to secure my supply lines. The supplies are secure and they’ll keep coming as long as I do not over extend myself in my hurry to go places. Tomorrow I resume my assault on The Schedule trying to make sure that everything gets done in good order.

I think a key tactic will be to do as my friend Janci has done and make a master plan for the next several months. I’ll assign all the necessary tasks to various weeks. Then I will put aside the master plan and only pay attention to this week’s problems. This will be important because I have so many different irons in the fire.

Howard — time spent, jokes shared, conversations had, etc
Children — field trips, treat days, special events, Holidays, story reading, lessons, tantrum management, etc, etc, etc
Household — cleaning, repairing, maintaining, and washing for clothes, dishes, yard and house
Family accounting — Got to make sure the money doesn’t run out too soon while still paying all the bills
business accounting — ditto on the money not running out
Tub of Happiness — preparing for the mass mailing and book release party
The Teraport Wars — installing InDesign, learning to use InDesign, creating the lay out, lining up guest art, filling all the white space, etc
Writing — write regular blog entries, edit blog entries for a book, submit at least two short stories for publication, finish teaching creative writing, attend my writers group, be a reader for a couple of friends
Social — I have friends I’d like to keep and to spend time with
Health — Pay attention to what I eat, confer with doctor, possible further tests

I do not think I’ve ever laid it all out in a row like that. No wonder I’ve been busy. But seeing all of it does help because each of these things have gaps in them, times where there is not much to do. I just have to make sure that the busy time of one thing overlaps the gaps in several other things. Time to get my planner and start making notes.

It is October 14 and I have not had a spare thought for Halloween costumes. I usually have a costume plan hammered out by this point. The costume plan is important so that I know how much time I’m going to have to spend. I may not have been thinking about costumes, but the kids have.

Kiki has designed her own costume. She wants to be an anime style girl. Not from any show she’s seen, or book she has read, but one of her own creation. I’m hoping that we can find things at the thrift store to alter which will be close enough. I don’t want to make it from scratch which was what Kiki intended.

Link wants to be the Master Chief from Halo. I’m not sure where he fixated on this because we don’t play Halo. I tried to see if maybe he wanted to be a Naruto ninja instead. No. He wants body armor and a big gun he can stick on his back. Eep. Hopefully I’ll find some child sized shoulder pads and a dirtbike helmet that I can spray paint green. I am NOT going to try to bid on the ebay Master Chief costume. It is going for over $200.

Gleek seems inclined to select clothes from her dress-up box. Last I heard she wants to be a ninja fairy princess. I have been corrected. She is not a princess. She is just a ninja who wears a dress. The only accesory she is lacking is the ninja head band.

Patches wants to be a spider. This one is easy because all I have to do is pull the spider costume out of storage in the garage.

So it looks like I have two easy costumes and two tricky ones. Hopefully I can pull it all together in the next two weeks.

I believe in healing by faith, the power of the mind to heal the body. I also believe that prayers make a difference and miracles can happen. During my medical adventures in heart monitoring I tried to exercise faith toward making myself better. But there is a difference between true faith and trying to make myself well by sheer force of will. Faith says “What should I do? and thy will be done.” Will says “I’m better now, really I am. That tremor there is just an after effect, but I’m all better.” Faith is patient. Will is petulant and insistent. Will is my good friend. Together we have set many goals and achieved them. Will is a familiar tool. So, familiar that I didn’t notice it masquerading as faith. But faith to be healed is more than willing it to be so. Having the faith to be healed is listening when you’re told to go to the doctor. It means taking the medicines to restore health. It means accepting that taking a medication daily does not make you an unwell person; often the reverse.

I thought I was exercising my faith to be healed. I was instead exercising will power. Two weeks ago I was told as part of a blessing prayer that I need to get more sleep. I’ve also known for weeks that my diet had turned into a mess of skipped meals and sugary snacks. In the past two days I’ve slept until my body was done sleeping and I made sure that I ate nutritious food at regular intervals. The heart palpitations and mental fogginess are gone today. I feel normal, healthy.

I ought to feel stupid for over looking such an obvious solution. Curiously I don’t feel stupid. I just feel relieved to find a solution that does not involve further medical intervention. I feel glad to have the validation of the message I was given weeks ago. I feel grateful to have this lesson in the difference between faith and will power.

I will continue to eat and sleep well. Hopefully that will be the end of my adventures in heart monitoring.

Because some of you (Including my parents who found out about my medical adventures via this journal. In hindsight a phone call would have been wise. Sorry Mom and Dad!) may be curious about how that whole heart monitor thing turned out, I offer the following update.

I’ve heard nothing from the doctors.

This is actually good news. If there was something wrong with my heart, they would have called me. Instead I get to wait a week for my primary care doctor to tell me that my heart is completely healthy. I kind of expected this. It feels like the palpitations are symptomatic rather than causative.

Non-terrifying explanations for my symptoms:

Pregnancy — Nope. We’ve ruled this one out.

Early stages of menopause — I’m young for this, but it isn’t unheard of.

Anxiety — I don’t like this one. In order to fix it I would have to slow down when I really want to get well so that I can go faster.

Hypoglycemia

I’m currently pursuing hypoglycemia as a theory because I can do my own empirical testing. I had a very anxious/palpitatious hour last night about an hour after eating a very sweet dessert. Today I’m having no sweets. Instead I’m snacking on nuts regularly (every 20-30 minutes) and drinking lots of water in addition to regular healthy meals. I was dragging this morning, but my energy has been picking up steadily and I’m feeling better. Granted that eating right will help almost any condition, but if I can make this problem go away merely by eating right, I count that as a win.

In preparation for shipping books soon, I ordered a pile of shipping supplies. 16 packages arrived this morning via UPS. As I watched them unload I mentally checked off the items I’d ordered. There was one package I couldn’t identify. I looked at it closer and realized that it was not part of my shipping supply order, but it was definitely addressed to me.

I took the mystery package inside and opened it. Inside were copies of Alcatraz and Mistborn: The Well of Ascension. I pulled the books out with delight and read the note enclosed with them. An LJ reader and Schlock fan (Blackcoat) attended a book signing that is part of Brandon Sanderson’s book tour. He took the time to get these books signed and then mailed them to us.

This delights me on several levels.

First and foremost, someone cared enough to send us books. Even more than that, he cared enough to get the books inscribed “To the Tayler family.” It is easy to have an impulse to do something nice for someone else. I have those all the time. But following through is another matter entirely. There are thousands of phone calls I’ve intended to make, but didn’t. Thousands of flowers not given. Thousands of cookies not made. (Actually lots of those cookies did get made, they just didn’t get delivered to the intended recipient.) The unexpected kindness, given with no thought of return, is priceless without measure. I’m honored to receive.

Second, we know Brandon Sanderson. It amuses me greatly to think of Brandon writing this inscription without a clue about which Tayler family these books are going to. Or perhaps there was some conversation and Brandon knew exactly who the books were bound for. That makes me happy to think about too. Either way kind people were conspiring to do something nice for us.

Third, These books arrive in the middle of a rough week. Now I have new books to read while Howard is gone. Yay for good fiction!

(Some of these things I already knew, but that doesn’t stop me from learning them again.)

Junior High band concerts exist for the purpose of teaching beginning students how to properly behave while performing. This makes them good venues for teaching other kids how audience members should behave at concerts. Unfortunately that is not a restful experience. Next time I’ll limit myself to one learning performer and one learning audience member.

Gleek can not treat music as a passive experience. Music is to be sung to, or danced to, or clapped to, or bounced to. She loves music dearly, but she is compelled to participate. She’ll make a great learning performer, just now she is not a respectful audience member.

Reading about Harry Potter’s dead parents just before one of the kids discovered the heart monitor was an unhappy congruence. They were all a little worried until I explained that I was just spying on my heart to see what it is doing. I haven’t heard about it since, so hopefully none of them have acquired new fears about this.

When they assured me that wearing the heart monitor was completely painless, they forgot to mention sticker removal. They also forgot to mention that these particular stickers sometimes cause enough skin irritation that they leave little blisters around the edges of where they were located. True it isn’t really painful, but it is annoying. And I’ll be wearing high collared shirts until the red marks go away. (A moment of insight this evening made me realize that it was not the stickers themselves which caused the red rings. It was a chemical reaction between the “sticky” and the “sticky remover.” Prior to using the “sticky remover” there was no more irritation than that caused by a bandaid. The scientist in me totally wants to test this theory, but not enough to give myself more chemical burns.)

Good friends make a world of difference. This includes my backyard neighbor who spontaneously invited me and all my kids over for dinner yesterday, thus saving me from attending the Junior High concert with children who were starving as well as hyper-active. And the friends who followed Howard home to keep us company when I was ready to melt into a little puddle of fatigue and stress. And the friend who called this evening just to talk and was completely understanding that even though I wanted to talk, I had to manage all my evening chaos.

Gleek and Patches both need more Mommy time.

Link and Kiki both need help with photography projects.

Cub scouts really enjoy pretending to be injured while thier friends pretend to administer first aid. They particularly liked the life threatening injuries or the ones that had blood to be staunched.

I like going shopping with Howard when we’re both relaxed and interested in enjoying the experience. Going out to lunch with Howard is fun too. He leaves tomorrow for the last trip of this year. I’ll be glad when he gets home.

If you ever have to go do a fretful medical thing, I highly recommend taking a professional humorist along. It makes things so much more fun. Fortunately I had one handy, so I hauled Howard with me to go get my heart monitor.

In the car on the way down:
Sandra: “I can just pretend we’re driving together in the car for no particular reason.”
Howard: “Is that this morning’s quota for denial?”
S: “De Nile is my friend. It has fish in it.” Short pause for thought “And mud. It has fish and mud.”
H: “And crocodiles.”
S: “But they’re okay cause I just pretend they are my friends.”

The heart monitor has seven wires attached to sticky patches. The wires connect to a little box the size of a deck of cards. It is optimally designed to read the electrical impulses of a heartbeat without being overtly annoying. It is not designed to be discreet. It is all lumpy under my clothes. So I’ll be wearing stuff baggy for the next 24 hours. I’ll also apparently be keeping a journal of anything which might affect my heart rate. Things like eating, exercising, being upset, etc. The monitor also has a little blue button on it. I am supposed to push the button if I think a heart event of any note is taking place. This puts a little marker on the recording. So far I’ve yet to use the blue button. As much as I don’t like my heart going flippity-flop, I want it do demonstrate the capability at least once today.

After getting me wired, Howard and I went shopping together. The stores were not very exciting (Office Max, Sam’s Club, Robert’s Crafts, and a storage unit) but it was fun to be there with Howard. I like hanging out with him and exchanging whimsical comments. Things like seeing a whole roll of raffle tickets for sale and suggesting we should buy them because then we would totally win the prize.

On the trip home we amused ourselves by reviewing the heart monitor instructions. One entire paper was devoted to assuring nervous heart patients that while these tests take several days to process, if there is something to truly be concerned about, it will be addressed quickly. Only they didn’t say “quickly” or “urgently” or even “In an emergency fashion.” Instead they said “emergently.” I think they were trying to express emergency and urgently in the same word, but I’m not sure.

Howard then spent the rest of the drive finding creative uses for the word “emergently.” He demonstrated merging gently. He demonstrated emerging into an intersection gently. There was at least one more, but I forget what it was.

I love Howard. He can make me laugh even when I’m going to one of my least favorite places in the world. The heart monitor was handed out at the same hospital which did my radiation therapy. It is also the same hospital where Howard stayed for when he had myocarditis. The care and people there are excellent, it just is not a happy place for me. But Howard makes me laugh and asks cheerfully if I’ve gotten to push my blue button yet.

I do not know what I’d do with out him.

Life marches on despite my personal emotional crises. The children need to go to school and to be fed, and to be made to do homework, and to be put to bed. There are necessary business tasks. Laundry happens. None of this goes away because I choose today to have an emotional crisis. It merely piles up if my crisis causes me to neglect it. Fortunately having stuff to do keeps me from spinning in mental circles, so that is good.

I had my fourth session teaching the creative writing class today. It continues to go variously. The early class continues to be loud and chaotic, but each of the kids there has produced multiple stories. They sizzle with energy and some of it lands on the page. Derailment Boy continues to be a major distraction. He doesn’t really want to be there. Today I found out that his dad is currently dating the mom of one of the giggle girls. This explains much of his behavior. I can see the conflicts raging inside him. And in her too. Neither of them is particularly happy about the prospect of the other as a step sibling. Not only that but the talked about how their parents are going to abandon them to the care of relatives and go on a cruise together. Apparently I’m hosting a soap opera as well as a writing class. But addressing the issues by talking about them a little helped Derailment Boy calm down some.

I’m having a harder time pulling stories out of the afternoon class. I get them excited and creative and they start to write. They’re so excited that they take the stories home to work on them. I then never see the stories again. They vanish never to return. I need to send a note to parents pleading that they help the stories get finished and sent back. I need to have finished stories to include in the book.

Last night we got to have dinner with some long time friends. They’ve lived 20 minutes away from us for a decade, but somehow we fell out of touch. I’m glad that they made the effort to contact us and to host us for dinner. It was really fun. We’ll need to do it again soon because we’ve barely scratched the surface on getting reacquainted. Also they have pet chickens and my kids think that is the coolest thing ever. Gleek in particular loved picking up the chickens and carrying them around. These were really nice chickens. They would just let the kids walk over and pick them up. That is completely unlike all my prior experiences with chickens, which all involved pecking and flapping.

Now if only my kids would go to sleep so Howard and I could have our together time.