Author name: Sandra Tayler

I have begun accumulating things to do and settling them into the new schedule. Today was Patches’ first day of preschool. It went off without a hitch. He was glad to go and glad to come home. Then we did lots of talking about everything that happened. Preschool twice a week breaks up my long schedule free days somewhat, but in a good way I think. I still have long stretches of time on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday that are mine to arrange. It is the afternoons that are beginning to seem a bit crowded. Kiki and Link will be starting art lessons next week. Kiki has taken them before, but this will be a new experience for Link and I’m not sure how he will like it. He really values his play time and often resents anything that interferes. But on the other hand I keep being amazed at his drawing capability and I want to give him the tools to be good at it. Art lessons are on Tuesdays, which is also my writer’s group day. Wednesday is cub scouts and Kiki has youth group activities. Thursday is Howards evening out. Fridays have nothing and I’m going to leave it that way. Monday used to be completely empty, but today I got a call from a PTA person at the school. She runs the Art Club there and was wondering if I’d be willing to do a six week creative writing class. She called because of a conversation I had with my neighbor last year where I described how I would run such a class. I said yes.

Even though it complicates my schedule, I’m looking forward to running the creative writing class. I remember taking a couple when I was in grade school and being frustrated with them because they were essentially assignments. Read a poem, then write a poem. Read a story, then write a story. My approach will be to start by teaching the elements of story, protagonist, villain, setting, etc. I want to work with narrative curves and story structures. I’ll do that for the first three weeks or so, then for the second three weeks we’ll work on creating stories and editing them. The end goal will be a print-on-demand book that contains the stories that the kids wrote. I know this sounds complicated, but the concepts can be taught without all the confusing vocabulary. Particularly if I use picture books to demonstrate the points. This time will be the trial run. I have my eye on taking the same class and doing it at a junior high level. Kiki would like that I think.

Schlock book work continues and occupies most of this morning. For awhile I was worried about all the afternoon craziness and making sure I had time for business work and writing, but I have so much more time in the middle of the day. Having only Patches at home is worlds different than having Patches and Gleek. She was constantly bored and she solved boredom by coming to me for attention. It is all going to fit. I can see how, but I definitely need to find a good stride and stick with it. Not too fast, not too slow.

The day began with a broken dryer. It would happily use electricity to tumble clothes for extended periods of time, but they stayed wet because there was no heat to dry them. Today is laundry day, so the lack of a dryer was inconvenient. So I called a repair service. Howard said while the guy was here, he could fix the fridge too.

Then the next iteration of the schlock book showed up. I spent the next 10 hours immersed in making layout decisions and scanning images. The kids had fast food for lunch and pizza for dinner. But the Tayler Corporation will foot the bill because I was completely occupied with business things.

I ended the day with a working dryer, a working fridge, and plans for every single white space that remains in the Schlock book. Now I am tired.

In our house Sundays are special, set apart from the rest of the week. It is a day for our family to be together and for us to take a break from the hectic pace of the rest of the week. Much of the reason for this is religious. We believe in God and that he deserves a day of reverence to him. We believe he blesses us for giving him that day. Indeed a big part of Sunday is attendance at church. But over the years I have found that this weekly break is like the eye of the storm. It is a place of respite. On Sunday I am allowed to sit and contemplate the clutter of my house without feeling like I should get up and fix it right that minute. There are some maintenance chores that I do, like dishes, but for the most part I am excused from work. I find that Monday morning I am much more ready to tackle the chores of the week for having a day of rest.

During my day of rest I have time to contemplate where I am and how I want to steer the rest of the week. It is a time for course corrections. Because it is calm, I am much better able to see where I am in relation to where I want to be. The kids aren’t nearly so contemplative as I am, but they also benefit from the day of rest. They know that Sunday is a family day and so they are content to play with each other rather than running off with friends. Many Sunday afternoons have been spent with all four kids watching a movie or playing a game together. We are all turned inward toward each other rather than setting off on our different paths toward our different goals.

Sundays are not always peace and calm. We have our share of fights and squabbles. People are grumpy just as often on Sundays as on other days. Sometimes the kids complain about the restrictions from friends and from other vigorous activites. But kids frequently complain about things that are good for them and about things that are necessary to running a family. The kids are never happy about housework, but it has to get done. Sometimes the kids are grouchy about our Sunday rules, but our family is better for having them and keeping them.

Apparently in Gleek’s world “Come to the flagpole as fast as you can when school gets out” means “Stop every third step and take a minute to use your toe to erase the scuff marks on the tile floor.”

I showed her a shorter route to the flagpole that doesn’t have her crossing acres of scuffed tiles. I called it “the sneaky way” to give it more appeal. We’ll see if that helps her arrive in a more timely manner tomorrow.

In high school I spent a year running long races for the Cross Country team and shorter races for the Track team. There is a world of difference between a short race and a long race. Short races are called sprinting. Sprinting is pushing your body as hard and as fast as you possibly can. If you have time to think how much it will hurt later, then you aren’t pushing hard enough. You use up every last ounce of energy as fast as you can until you run out. This is called “hitting the wall.” It is when all the biological consequences of pushing so hard catch up to you. If you train right, you won’t hit the wall until after the race is over, but sometimes it happens before then. When you hit the wall, it is all you can do to keep moving. Long races are all about endurance rather than speed. You try to find a pace that you can maintain througout the run. Endurance racers don’t go fast, but they keep going. As the body learns and adapts the pace can pick up. That’s called hitting your stride.

On Monday morning the starter gun for this school year went off and I began running. I was moving fast, getting things done. Every moment with my kids I was analyzing how they were adapting to the new schedule and making plans for how to further smooth the transition. Oh and I was blogging just about every small incident that occurred. It was all going really well. Then last night I hit the wall. Howard came home grumpy and I was completely unable to do anything to help him work through it. I wanted to, but there was nothing there, nothing left to give. It was only then that I realized I’ve spent these last three days at a sprinter’s pace. Perhaps it was necessary for the beginning of school, but now I need to slow way down. I need to settle in and find a stride that will carry me through until school gets out next spring.

Kiki came home from school bright-eyed and enthusiastic. She’d been worried about navigating through the crowded halls, but found that the experience was actually fun. As she described it like a moving maze and a flowing river I realized that she was viewing the challenge of getting from class to class like a video game where the goal was not to run into other people. She is also full of praises for all her teachers. She thinks that they are all amazingly cool and is glad that the only homework she had tonight was a word search. I’m glad to see the disclosure documents and to realize that these classes are set up exactly to encourage the kind of educational discipline which Kiki needs. I don’t think she is going to be challenged academically this year, but I’d love for her to have the chance to get straight A’s and feel really competant.

I walked Link and Gleek home from school today. I’ve been hoping that I could eventually let them walk home together without me. It is going to be awhile before I’ll let that happen. Gleek needs to learn some good walking home habits before I’ll try to put Link in charge of her otherwise she’ll run him right over with one of her whims and he won’t know what to do about it. Honestly I don’t think they’ll be walking home for awhile either. Gleek is trying so hard to be perfectly behaved during school. First grade is so much longer than Kindergarten, she is worn out by the end of the day. It took her a full 15 minutes to make her way from her classroom to the meeting place. Then I had to threaten Time-Out to get her to climb down from the meeting place tree. Then there were several refuse-to-go-a-step-further moments on the walk home. Only the promise of chocolate chips at the end got her to her feet again. In a few weeks when life is more settled we’ll try walking home again. I’ll happily drive her home from school every day if I get announcements like today’s “I didn’t get sent to time out at all!”

Kiki is going to the doctor on Saturday. She has been sleepy and foggy for weeks. It used to be that she could not fall asleep during the day unless she was sick. Lately she has been sleeping for several hours each day, going to bed early, and getting up late. I know that she’s growing and maturing, but 15 hours of sleep per day seems excessive for that. I hope that she’ll test positive for Mono on Saturday. Having Mono would stink, but I like that diagnosis much more than some of the alternatives I’ve been able to think up.

The new schedule has me blogging a lot more. I’m not sure if that is a result of the large quiet spaces in my days or if it is merely me trying to process how the new schedule affects everything. I think it is a little of both.

You know you’re a blogger when you drop your child off for her first day of First Grade and realize you didn’t bring the camera, but you’re already composing sentences in your head.

Yeah. Gleek will only get a picture of her first day of First Grade because my neighbor took one. But she gets a blog entry. That counts for something right?