Sandra Tayler

We have arrived in Boise at my sister’s house.  I love visiting my family.  I walk in the door and my kids scatter to play with cousins.  I was able to lay down and nap for two hours straight.  It was a much needed nap since we got up this morning at o’dark-thirty to leave.  (5 am)  For the next 48 hours I get to just hang out with my sister and her family.  Then we’ll begin the more adventurous part of the vacation in which we go places we’ve never been before.

Wonder of wonders, it looks like we may all attend church together. Everyone woke up feeling almost normal this morning. In addition Gleek and Patches have taken a bath so they will smell like clean and shampoo rather than like sand and dirt mixed with marker. I think this will be the first time they’ve been truly clean in days. Link is also taking a shower and Kiki intends to take one. So, not only will we all be at church, but we will all be clean for it. It is nice when life occasionally matches my ideals.

After church I need to throw myself into a frenzy of packing. All the laundry is clean, but none of it is folded and none of it is in suitcases. Before the end of today both of those conditions need to be changed. Since everyone is feeling better I fully intend to draft some help with this project. Of course the problem with having kids help pack is that they have very different ideas about what is necessary than I do.

The kids are all very excited for this trip. We’ve been talking about it and counting down to it for weeks. For them “Seattle” has come nigh close to “Disnelyand” for desirable destinations. I hope that the reality matches their expectations. I think it will because mostly I think they’re excited to be going someplace and haven’t put a whole lot of thought into what they’ll do when we get there. This is another area where I differ from my kids. I have put hours of planning into what we’ll do in Seattle. I’ve mapquested all our probable destinations. I’ve printed out info sheets on all the museums, hotels, and aquariums. I put all this information into a three ring binder. That binder will live in our van as a useful reference through-out the vacation.

Departure is tomorrow. So much to get done. I can hardly wait to get going.

This journal officially has a name. One Cobble at a Time. It is currently subtitled “laying a path to my castle in the sky,” but as my life changes the subtitle may change to reflect it. Right now the path to a castle in the sky is very apropos.

The sidebar text to elaborate on the title says: A cobble by itself is just a small stone, but when many of them lay together they create a path. My life is made up of many discrete parts. I have to find ways to fit them all into place so that I can continue to journey where I desire to go. This journal records some of the cobbles that create my path.

So there it is. Many thanks to Howard for the word “Cobble.” The right word makes all the difference.

My entire day has been absorbed by preparations for the Seattle trip. I decided to focus on house cleaning today and packing tomorrow. Of course some of each will leak into the other day, but that is to be expected. Because we’ve had stomach flu in our house this past week, I felt inspired to pull out our Big Green Clean Machine and sanitize some areas of carpet. I want to come home and have my house smell clean. Now there are clean spots in the kids’ rooms. Maybe when I get back I’ll feel inspired to do the rest of the carpet.

I also cleaned out the car. We’re going to be spending the equivalent of two days in that vehicle. It is going to be totally trashed before the end, but I figure it doesn’t have to start that way. Maybe when I get back I’ll clean the van carpets too. They certainly need it.

I’ve worked hard all day long, but there is still so much work left to do. I didn’t make the kids do very much work today because they’re all either sick or recovering. Poor Link has been lying on the couch all day. Hopefully he’ll be better by tomorrow and all well by Monday. Howard is sick today too. Ditto on the hopefully all better by Monday. I really think that they will be. This has been a 48 hour bug for all the other kids.

I’m really going to enjoy this trip. I can leave behind all the business chores. I can leave behind all the house chores. I even finished a draft so I can leave behind all the writing chores. The only thing I’ll have to do is be with my kids, visit with friends, and run the vacation. It will still be work, but it will be different from my regular life. That’s the point of vacation, to do something different.

Today began with emergency laundry. For those who are counting, that makes the third case of stomach flu this week. I’m just glad they’re all getting it done this week instead of on our road trip next week. But because I believe in the power of Murphy I will be packing a bucket in the car just in case. Being prepared for in-the-car vomit is a talisman against it right?

Today it was Link who was afflicted. Gleek was still not all the way well. Kiki seemed well enough that I happily drove her up to Centerville to hand her off for an overnight. Then later in the afternoon she felt sick again and was driven home by the friend’s mother. All day I’ve alternated between trips in the car, tending sick kids, and typing in the finished draft of my latest story. I’m glad I made the self-imposed draft deadline of March 31. Yay! Now it gets to lay fallow for a couple of weeks before I revise it and send it out to readers.

Among the errands today were a book order that had 2 day shipping. It’s headed for Washington, so I suspect the person wants the books before Howard arrives in Seattle. Also I had to pick up my business cards. That was a circus and a half all by itself. First they lost the order, then they found it, then they didn’t print it because their cutter was broken, then the cutter was going to be fixed today, then the cutter wouldn’t be fixed until Monday so they were going to have me cut them myself, then they finally said that never mind they’d find a way to get the cards cut despite their broken cutter. I got my cards 24 hours later than originally promised and I’m left to wonder if the cutter was broken when the order was placed. I question the ethics of taking an order if you don’t have the means to finish it. The poor young sales girl just didn’t know how to handle it professionally. I should never have known about their cutter problems, they should have just applied whatever solution they used today without telling me all of it.

As much as I’d like to go on and regale further events of my day, I think I used up all my storytelling energy on the final scenes of my story. Maybe tomorrow.

Inspired by Janci, I fiddled with my livejournal to see if I could get it to match my website. I can. I’m pleased at my success. Now I just have to live with the new set up for a week to decide if I really like it or if it bugs me. I also need to figure out where I can host an image so I can put a custom header on my page. (Yes I know Howard can do it for me, but I want to do it for myself.)

This also leaves the quandry of a title and subtitle. I know so many people with clever journal and blog titles. I’d like to have one, but I haven’t yet been able to find one that truly fits. I guess I’ll just have to keep my eye out to find one. However I suspect that this will not be easy. I have a hard time applying labels to myself unless they are a perfect fit. The major reason I’ve always gone by my real name on the internet is that I could never find a pseudonym that fit correctly.

The other day Link brought home two plastic vials from school. At the time he brought them home one was filled with blue sand and the other was filled with multi-colored gravel. I’m still not clear on how he acquired them except that they were give-aways as part of a class party. I’m also not clear on what happened to the sand and gravel because after that first appearance they’ve been filled with a variety of other things. Link has carried them around in his pockets and filled them with what ever struck his fancy. They’ve been filled with water, soap, beads, and slips of paper at various times. This morning at breakfast I saw him carefully filling one with milk from his bowl of cheerios. (He used a medicine dropper.)

This evening I entered the kitchen to check on Link’s homework status. He was all finished and had run downstairs to play. I picked up the papers to put in his homework folder and my eyes fell on one of the vials. It was filled with pale yellow liquid. My brain stuttered trying to find something, besides the obvious, that this liquid could be. I left the vial sitting on the table and called down stairs to ask Link what was in the vial. His grin told me all I needed to know. He was very pleased with himself for collecting his own urine sample.

I required him to empty and wash the vial. He did, pleased with himself for grossing out his mom.

Nothing says “Good Morning!” like emergency laundry and carpet cleaning at 4 am. This is especially exciting when there was already emergency laundry from a different child at midnight. Kiki and Patches have both been quarantined for stomach flu. I suspect that Kiki will not be pleased to learn that stomach flu still does not excuse her from the pile of homework which she has to complete and turn in by tomorrow. I’ve been doing failure analysis to figure out how we got into this situation with Kiki.

My fault: I was aware that Kiki was claiming far less homework than she should have had. I did not dig to find out what was going on. I get weekly grade reports mailed to me, for the last month I’ve been busy and filing them to look at “later.”

The teacher’s fault: She is weak on follow through. She frequently creates assignments which fall by the wayside and never actually come due. This means that if Kiki doesn’t hear about an assignment she’s learned that she may not have to do it at all. Several times the teacher has instituted consequences for late work. The consequences are enforced for awhile, but then the teacher gets distracted and forgets about them. This also affects me. When regular notes don’t come home, I have no idea whether it is because Kiki didn’t bring it to me or because the teacher neglected to make one.

Kiki’s fault: She assumes that if she hasn’t heard about an assignment, that it isn’t due yet. It does not occur to her that overdue assignments no longer get mentioned. She doesn’t lie about homework, but often “forgets” to bring things home. She inflates the importance of assignments she likes and deflates the importance of ones that she doesn’t. Notes from school frequently go missing. Completed homework will sit in Kiki’s backpack and she doesn’t turn it in.

So the analysis shows me where the gaps are, but doesn’t tell me who should step up to fill it. I could do it, but I’ve been trying to step out of the student/teacher loop. Kiki needs to manage teachers and assignments without my constant intervention.

When I was twelve-years-old I was very involved in my church youth group. We had planned a spaghetti dinner as a service for a family in our ward. All the girls made dinner and dressed up in italian style clothing to serve the dinner. My assignment was to bring a salad. I arrived at the dinner excited for the evening. I had spent a long time getting ready. I was enthusiastic about the clothing I was wearing, but I completely forgot to bring the salad. I can’t remember why I forgot it. I can’t remember what excuses I attempted to offer. I do remember clearly the adult leader scolding me and telling me that my excuses didn’t matter, what mattered was that there was no salad when there needed to be one. She also spoke about taking responsibility for mistakes rather than trying to excuse ourselves from them.

I have never forgotten that even. It was one of those small moments that truly shape a life. Ever since that day I have been reluctant to offer excuses for my failures. I try to accept responsibility for things-gone-wrong rather than to dodge it. Sometimes I take this too far and blame myself for things which aren’t truly my doing. I’ve also learned that the purpose of an excuse is to make people more understanding of the failure, not to deny responsibility Many times as I take responsibility I have a fleeting memory of that youth group leader and I am grateful to her. She taught me what I’d never learned from my parents although they tried to teach it often.

These last few days Kiki has been learning a hard lesson about getting work done when it is due rather than letting it pile up. I’ve had to be very firm and not allow her to play. We still have today and tomorrow to get through before it is too late. If we can emerge from these exhausting days with a lesson learned, then they will have been worth it. Perhaps today’s misery will prevent misery and bad grades in high school. I hope so, but I can never tell if the lesson that my child is learning is the one that I intended to teach. I can never tell if we are having a defining moment that the child will draw upon time and again or if it is a moment that will roll right out of memory and be forgotten.