Sandra Tayler

After taking Kiki through heavy traffic and construction zones all the way down to Provo where she got immunized, I then hauled her back home and made her do homework until bedtime. She was not pleased with me. Hopefully this experience combined with Saturday’s experience and the experience I expect tomorrow and Wednesday will teach Kiki not to dodge homework all term and then try to get it all done in four days. Fortunately Janci came to the rescue again. She sat with Kiki all afternoon and kept her on task when Kiki distracted herself every 30-60 seconds.

The day was also filled with other assorted chaos. I was tired and snappish with my kids all afternoon because I was not happy about immunizations or piles of homework either.

At least I made some progress on my current story and I was able to say some useful things to a writer friend. That felt good.

One week ago today I had a bucket full of flowers in my kitchen. They were the remnants of the portrait session. Flowers are beautiful, even sitting in a bucket of water. I loved having them there. But there were so many flowers that I knew I needed to share them rather than keeping them all for myself. I selected a few and put them in a vase for me to enjoy. I took a few more and put them in a vase in my girls’ room. A third batch went to Janci who went with me for the portrait session. The last of the daffodils went into a vase in my bathroom. I still had far too many flowers. I pulled out three mason jars and divided the remaining flowers between them. Then all that was left to do was decide who I should give the flowers to.

I looked at those three jars of flowers and pondered all the people in my life I might want to thank. I very quickly realized that I simply didn’t have enough flowers to thank them all. I eventually decided to give flowers to two women whom I suspect have been having a hard time lately. I’m not sure that they are because we don’t talk that much, but even if they aren’t they would be made happier by a gift of flowers. The third jar went to Kiki’s friend because Kiki really wanted the chance to give flowers to a friend.

All this past week I’ve been loving having cut flowers in the house. It makes me want to grow millions of flowers so that I can always have flowers in my house. Also giving flowers away was so much fun, that I want to do it again. I want to grow millions of flowers so that I can cut them and give them away as the mood strikes me. There are so many women nearby who could use a gift of flowers.

Today I looked at my vase of flowers and realized that half of them have wilted. The other half were still beautiful. I thought of a neighbor I saw walking down the street yesterday. She was wiping her eyes when I saw her. I don’t know if it was an allergy or if she was crying. I thought of this neighbor and realized that she is one of those wonderful quiet people who go through life doing good things and never getting thanked. I took the flowers that were still beautiful and put them in a jar. I added a few of the early daffodils from my yard and a stalk of hyacinths. I wrote her a note and delivered it all to her house. I’ll miss having the flowers here, but she’ll love having them there.

I want to have more flowers so I can give them away.

The end of the term is Thursday. Yesterday Kiki came home with a note that details exactly how much homework she hasn’t done during the last two months. We spent all day today working on it. Fortunately for my sanity and Kiki’s well-being my friend Janci came over to tutor and referee. There are still piles of homework to be done. I am not looking forward to making her do it. At. All.

Oh and Patches threw up. on me.

Not the best of days. Thank goodness for friends and cookies.

My friend Janci loaned me Veronica Mars season 1. I’m hooked. The show features compact storytelling where past events mesh with current events to unravel a murder. Mix into that teenage angst and you’ve got a great story where all the threads twine around each other. The story is all about the people and how they are affected by past events and by the choices that they are making now. The good news is that season one is self contained. When I’m done I can stop. The bad news is that I have 5 disks to go. Or maybe that is also good news because I have hours of fun story ahead of me. I just need to make sure that I don’t watch Veronica Mars when I should be doing other things.

Today I walked home from school with Link. He asked me to walk with him. I left Kiki in charge of Gleek and Patches while I walked over to the school. Link met me with a wide smile. He was so happy to see me that he skipped along bouncing over cracks and lines and any other excuse he could have to go vertical as well as horizontal. I recognized the mood, there are times where I just feel like skipping and dancing. Sometimes I do skip and dance, sometimes fear of social censure prevents me from doing it. But Link has no such fears. He bounced. Then when he slowed down a little, he held my hand. I’m pretty sure that isn’t typical for a 9 year old boy to voluntarily walk down the street holding hands with his mother, but Link loved it. I think he remains the snuggliest of my kids. He was the one I rocked to sleep most often. The others wouldn’t sit still long enough. On the way home Link chattered about the walk. He pointed out the place he likes to cut through someone’s yard. He showed me the mailbox that looks like a birdhouse. He showed me the wobbly fence. He showed me the poles which he like to pretend to bump into. He also told me stories about events which happened with neighborhood kids along this same walk. Walking home has been good for him. I’m glad I got to share it a little today.

Today was also the day I dug through all the boxes of clothing in the garage. I sorted through to figure out what clothing I have waiting for my kids. Gleek and Patches are pretty well set for the next several years. Link and Kiki don’t have much waiting for them. Since money is looking like it is going to tighten back up for awhile, I need to keep my eyes open for good sources of clothing for these two. I probably need to be hitting the dollar days at Savers again. I haven’t been for awhile.

I finally put the finishing touches on my website. Or more accurately, my brother-in-law randytayler finished it for me. He set up an extremely cool web system where I can edit text and add things without understanding a bit of html, php, or ftp stuff. There may be other acronyms involved, but I don’t know them. So big thanks go out to Randy.

The site is pretty simple. Part of me is loathe to open it to the public without spending more hours finding the exact perfect graphics and fonts and such. But honestly that is just window dressing. What is important about the website is the words, and those are all there.

So without further ado:

http://sandra.tayler.com/

When Kiki was four years old parenting was still new. I was constantly amazed at her intelligence. I spent hours nurturing that intelligence by playing alphabet games and putting together puzzles. I made sure that she was in an academic preschool which focused on learning to read.

When Link was four years old he was developmentally delayed. I played hours of alphabet games with him trying to help him catch up to his peers. I created special learning boxes full of developmental games to help teach concepts such as colors and story sequence. I had photo flash cards to teach him the names of family members because he wasn’t just picking them up on his own. I made sure he was in a preschool which had a large playground so that he had space to play in between the harder learning times.

When Gleek was four years old Howard had just left Novell. Money was extremely tight. I could not afford to put Gleek into preschool, so I banded together with some other mothers and we created one. Every sixth week preschool was at my house and I spent hours preparing lessons and activities. I watched Gleek carefully to see how she was reacting to the group experience. I intervened a lot to make sure that she stayed under control. I talked a lot with the other moms to help them know how to handle her.

Now Patches is four years old and my life is very different. I am very different. For the other three kids my whole focus was on parenting, now I am working. Granted, I am working from home, but there is still necessary business work which has to be done. Patches is ready to learn letters. He is ready for alphabet games. But I am not ready. I’ve played all the alphabet games. They bore me. I know I need to do it for Patches, but no sooner do I sit down to play with him, and part of my brain starts running through all the other tasks which I need to get done. Patches doesn’t get my full attention the way the other kids did at this age. I worry about that. I wonder if that is why he sometimes gets so whiny and insistent. Maybe he has to be whiny and insistent because it is the only way to make sure that mommy pays attention. Negative attention is better than half-attention or no-attention.

This coming fall Patches will be the right age for preschool. I am undecided about what to do. Part of me thinks that I should just teach him myself. That I should schedule a little school time into each day. That would give him the full attention for awhile. But it wouldn’t give him social interaction with peers. And will I really do it? When it is just me and him, it is so easy for me to get distracted and work instead of giving Patches his time. All too often the quiet mornings with the other three in school are spent with Howard in his office, me in mine, and Patches left to play by himself. Lots of days he doesn’t mind, but other times he wanders into my office every five minutes because he’s bored. Then he gets growled at because he breaks my train of thought.

Another option would be to put him into a preschool program. But money is still tight and a good preschool isn’t cheap. Also I’m not eager to add more pick-ups and drop-offs to my fall schedule which currently looks blissfully clear. On the other hand it would be good for him to relate to a teacher who isn’t me and I might be nicer to him if I have a scheduled break. Theoretically I could get all the work done while he is gone and give him my full attention when he gets home. But will I do that? Or will I just bring him home and disappear back into my office?

Life for Patches growing up is always going to be different than for the other kids. He is always going to have a mom who is experienced parenting whatever stage of life he as at. By the time Patches gets there, it is all old news to me. I have to remember that it isn’t old news to him. He is excited about learning letters. He really wants to be able to learn to write. For him these things are new and wonderful. I need to slow down to preschool speed for him. I need to give him more of me.

Have I mentioned that Gleek is doing much better at school? Well, she has. Part of the difference was the emotional break through that she made when she realized that holding grudges was giving her bad dreams. Since then we’ve spent lots of times talking about feelings and about things that happened at school. We identify all the mads and then we let them all fly away into space. The other part of the difference is that Gleek now has her own desk rather than having to share a table with 5 other children. This little bit of personal space makes a huge difference for her.

Link is also doing well in school, but he has been missing his friend who moved away. He has been missing this friend lots this past week. We arranged for the friend to come and sleep over last Friday which helped…until the friend had to go home the next day. Unfortunately there isn’t much I can do for Link except hold him and agree that it is hard. We both know that while we’ll continue to have occasional visits with Friend, it will never be the same as having him live two houses down. It makes me sad to see Link so sad. I just hold tight while he cries and try to make sure he has other friends to play with.

Kiki is getting very excited to go to Junior High next year. We just registered her for her classes and she is thrilled that she will finally get to learn how to play the Clarinet. We even got the mouth piece fixed so that she can start practicing how to make noises with it. Howard is less than thrilled at the prospect of having a beginning clarinetist in the house, but he’ll live. Kiki is also enjoying school right now because her class is preparing to put on a couple of abridged Shakespeare plays. She gets to be the Narrator for Macbeth and a small part in Much Ado About Nothing.

Patches has begun to learn his letters. So far we’ve covered A and B. He loves to sit with worksheet pages and carefully trace all the letters. Then he’ll carefully cut them all out. He can spend hours doing these two things which makes getting work done a lot easier for me. And then there are days like today where all he wants is for me to sit next to him and snuggle but I really have to get accounting done. Not so happy. I need to be nicer to him this evening to make up for it.

We have finally been blessed with 60 degree weather. This means I’ve been getting outside and starting on the yard and gardening chores. As is usual for me in the Spring, I’ve been making many mental resolutions to keep my yard looking beautiful. If I can’t manage that, I’d just like to keep it under control rather than letting the weeds run rampant in the late summer. I’ve been reviewing life and my schedule and figuring that I should probably plan to spend an hour a day outside in the yard.

Today I spent my hour cutting down the row of rosebushes in our back yard. Roses have to be cut back every year. There are about 10 rosebushes in the row and my mandatory hour was up about the time I was half done. I took a break to wander around the yard to see what else needed doing. There was honeysuckle to be cut back, strawberries that need to be unburied from the layer of grass that is smothering them, flower beds that need weeding, and garden beds that need to be turned over and planted with peas. Then in the front yard I have to weed one big bed, weed three tree rings, weed out the grape row, plant flowers in the grape row, and construct an arbor for the grapes to grow up. All of these tasks are March tasks. April will bring a whole new set of tasks for me to do.

I looked at it all and realized that it is going to take more than an hour per day. Unfortunately I don’t know that I have more than an hour per day to give. I love having a beautiful yard filled with flowers and plants that grow food, but there are other things which are more important. If I don’t do the business tasks, we won’t have enough money. I have to take care of the kids and the housework. I don’t want to give up the writing, not even for gardening. I particularly don’t want to give up the writing right now when I feel poised to fly a little.

I was mulling over this dilemma while wearing my rose gloves and holding my big clippers. Kiki came bouncing up to me and asked if she could do some cutting. I looked at her and the half row of rosebushes left. Then I handed her the clippers and told her I’d pay her to finish the row. She did an excellent job. Then I set her loose on the honeysuckle. She finished that too. I think I may have found my solution. We don’t have much extra money, but I don’t mind throwing some of it at the kids if they’ll do some yard work for me. Getting them to weed probably won’t be as easy as getting them to clip things back, but at least I won’t be in this alone. I don’t have to do it all by myself. This is good because there’s only so much time in the day.

I left for the photo shoot yesterday with feelings of trepidation. I was nervous for reasons I couldn’t quite identify. It was only after I picked up Janci (raisinfish) and began the hour-long drive that I figured out why. The last time I did a big photo shoot with changes of clothing it was at a glamor shots studio. In that case, there were hours of hair and make-up preparation, followed by a long photo shoot. During the whole process both Howard and the photographer were enthusiastic. I had fun until the moment came to view the pictures. They were aesthetically beautiful and totally wrong. I am not a glamorous person. I am not a formal person.

Logically I knew this photo shoot would be different. I was fortunate enough to find Kristyan, a photographer who shares many of my views on life. I was even more fortunate that she was willing to barter a portrait session for some advertising. I would do my own make up and clothes. We used books and flowers as props.

I knew it would be different, but I still felt cautious as Kristyan took pictures and showed them to Janci. They kept looking at the previews and saying they were turning out well. I couldn’t see the previews since I had to hold still. The whole photo shoot was fun and creative. We all got input into how the pictures should go. I enjoyed it and was relaxed and happy during the shoot. It was hard to be anything else with two fun people to talk to. But as we sat down to view all the pictures, I was again afraid. I worried that I would not like any of them. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to like any picture that had me as the focal point.

My fears were needless. The pictures were beautiful and they were right. There were several hundred pictures. Some were goofy, some had closed eyes or props in weird places, some had the wrong lighting, but the rest were beautiful. Kristyan captured me as I want to be. I walked away with 30 pictures that I have permission to used however I wish as long as I give photo credit to Kristyan Williams Photography. I feel extremely fortunate because that level of print release usually costs lots of money.

By the time I got home, I was doubting again. Surely it was not possible that I’d like photos of me. I must have been mistaken. I looked at the photos again. They were still beautiful and right. I did the same thing again this morning. Apparently adjusting my attitude toward photgraphs of me is going to take some time. Fortunately I have 30 beautiful pictures to help with the process.

Here are a few of the results of yesterday’s photo session.  This is nowhere near all of them.  Many thanks to Kristyan of Kristyan Williams Photography.  She is amazing.  You should all go see her other beautiful pictures.  Some of them are even for sale.

	Portrait of Sandra This is the basic portrait that will probably end up on the wall with our family photos. It is also likely to be the one that I use when I need a photo to go with an author’s bio.
	Flowers! I did not bring too many flowers. The smell of those daffodils was heavenly.
	Hair and Flowers This was my idea and we all really liked it. Unfortunately it really needed a forest and som less modern clothing to make it really work.
	Casual portrait pose It was fun to sit there while Kirstyan pretened to be a tree and drop all the leaves.
	Doesn’t everyone sit reading among scattered roses?
	Roses on white Patches saw this one and said “Oh! Pretty!” I have to agree.