Author name: Sandra Tayler

Gleek has been having bad dreams lately. Lots of them. They cause her to call out in the night and snuggle in bed with Howard because that makes her feel safe. I’ve tried talking to her about the dreams in the morning, but that doesn’t work. In the mornings she has escaped the night’s dreams and doesn’t want to go back there. This means that the best time to talk about her dreams is before bed. This is when she is faced with a long dark night ahead and wants to do anything to keep me from leaving her. This means that she’ll discuss her dreams quite thoroughly. Unfortunately I’m usually trying to hustle multiple kids into bed and so I don’t stay to listen.

Tonight I decided to listen to Gleek for however long she needed. I had no idea how much she needed to talk. She prattled on for more than an hour with me sitting and listening. First she talked about the dreams themselves which were primarily composed of pieces of movies that she had seen. Then she lamented the fact that all movies have scary parts in them. Then she tried to convince me to let her watch a couple of movies before she went to bed because she was used to those movies and they wouldn’t scare her. She described exactly which parts of the movies she liked and why. After that we segued into her telling me that she is never ever going to play with her best friend again. She is filled with anger for this Bestfriend. Only, when I mentioned that Bestfriend was sick, Gleek was ready to write a cheerful note and mail it so that Bestfriend wouldn’t be sad. We discussed the depth of her anger for Bestfriend, but Gleek could not explain why she was angry, only that she was. Then Gleek began to talk about how a boy at school had punched her in the stomach. I got all the details on that one, including reactions from the teacher. A female classmate was mentioned with a smile. Gleek described how she taught Classmate to climb down from the jungle gym. Classmate is obviously special to Gleek. That is when it came out that Gleek had made friends with Classmate and then Bestfriend had too. Gleek worried that Classmate would go off to be friends with Bestfriend and leave Gleek alone. Gleek made a whole plan where she could have Classmate to herself. But then that left Bestfriend without anyone and Gleek didn’t want Bestfriend to be sad, so she decided that Bestfriend could have Othergirl.

We talked around this triangle for a long time. I tried to plant the idea that it was possible for Classmate to have more than one friend, but I’m not sure that the idea took root. There were additional digressions to explain why Gleek threw a crayon at Annoyingboy and how she likes having a first grader desk all to herself because now she doesn’t have to sit at a table with people who annoy her.

Eventually she was winding down. I could tell that she could continue talking, but that the need to unload was much less. I asked her to lie down quietly while I went to tuck Link into bed. I promised to come back to talk to her some more as soon as I was done. I did come back, but by then she was so peacefully sleepy that she didn’t feel like talking. I bet she has better dreams tonight.

I need to take time to listen to her at bedtime. She doesn’t talk about this stuff during the day and it has to vent somewhere. My other kids could benefit from talking time too. It is hard for me to be a good listener when what I really want to do is shove them all into bed and go be with Howard. But they need it, so I need to do it.

I have decided to crawl into a hole for the rest of the day. Lacking a hole, I may just have to settle for my bed which is probably more comfortable anyway now that I think about it. I think I’ll take my portable DVD player with me. I’m worn out.

This morning began normally with me hauling multiple children out of bed. Link was perpetually side tracked today. I pretty much had to dress him to get him to school only 10 minutes late. Ditto for Kiki on the perpetually side-tracked. Gleek is always difficult to maneuver into clothes and off to school. Nothing different there. I arrived home from all of that, relaxed for a whole 15 minutes before I piled into my van with Nancy and her two kids to take them to the airport.

Then came the hauling of luggage and children to the ticket terminal. The ticket man kindly gave me a pass so that I could go to the gate with my sister and help her with her kids. So I got to help Nancy stand in a huge line at the security gate. As I removed my shoes and all personal belongings I wondered what all the point was with the security hoopla. I certainly felt annoyed rather than safe. We then sat at the gate together until I had to duck out. My neighbor was flying back from a business trip in California and I offered to pick him up so that his wife and infant would not have to make the drive. Then his plane was late.

I went straight from dropping him off to my appointment with the tax accountant. An appointment for which I was less than completely prepared because I forgot to print out some necessary reports. Oh, an they remodeled their building. The driveway isn’t where it used to be which I discovered by distractedly driving over the curb. Thump! Yeah. I’m an idiot. (In my defense, that spot had been the driveway for over 10 years. Who expects a business to move their driveway?)

Now I’m back home and I’m not going anywhere until it isn’t today anymore. Maybe by tomorrow it won’t be windy and snowy and cold.

(Note to Nancy and my neighbor: I really didn’t mind going to the airport. I’m just tired now and ready to be home. Oh, and feeling dumb about the tax stuff.)

I have been seized by a story. This is the fault of a friend who is putting together an anthology and invited me to submit. It is also the fault of Nancy and Raisinfish with whom I had a fascinating conversation. Threads from that conversation are weaving themselves into this story. I need to hurry and get this story done so that it is no longer absorbing my brain when Julie Czerneda emails me to tell me the guidelines for submitting to her anthology. If I’m good, I might have two stories in print before the end of the year. Yay!

*******Warning: Cheerful post derailed by severe crankiness ***********

We had to pick Howard’s car up from the shop where we spent piles of money to get it repaired. Gleek refused to stay home so she buckled up to come along. Then she annoyed me all the way home. And she refused to drop a subject that I have been thoroughly tired of for about a month now. Then there was the incident of the sword where Gleek hit my sister Nancy, hard, on purpose, after having been warned. Nancy confiscated the sword which led to Gleek shrieking, hitting and nearly biting Nancy. I had to haul Gleek bodily upstairs and shut her into her room to get her back under control. Then I was met by Link who had poked around in the storage room to find marbles. Instead he found the decks of pokemon cards that I bought and hid as future birthday gifts. Then Patches picked a fight with his same age cousin, probably because this cousin had deliberately provoked Patches only an hour ago. Then Kiki’s back pack revealed a pile of reading logs completely blank. The reading logs should be an easy A for bookworm Kiki, if only she would fill them out and turn them in.

After all that I angrily ordered pizza because I might as well wreck the budget and my attempts to lose weight while I’m at it.

Howard unwittingly coined a new term today. He does this frequently. He called me on my cell during the hour that I’m helping manage a Webelos den meeting. He had a quick question for me and then signed of by saying “Well, I’ll let you go weeble now.” I like the word weeble. Now instead of saying “I’m going to go to the Webelos den meeting.” I can just say “I’m off to weeble.”

On a separate note my co-leader (fellow weebler?) was really impressed with my organization today. She loved the way that I’d typed up a schedule and notes to send home with the boys so that the boy’s parents know what is going on. It feels nice that she’s impressed. I hope she continues to be grateful rather than getting annoyed that I’ve taken over, because that is exactly what I’ve done. After running a business and managing a book launch complete with thousands of packages mailed, running a webelos den is easy.

When I arrived home I saw three little boys playing in front of my house. I identified two right off as the neighbor’s boys. The red head on the little one is hard to miss. It took me a moment longer to realize that the third boy was Patches. All three were wielding “swords.” One sword was a snow brush, another was the tube extension of a vacuum cleaner. Patches’ sword was the boffer sword that Howard gave him last Fall. I watched Patches swing his sword and strike poses. That’s when I realized that he was being Link from twilight princess. He had all the moves and poses down. My little boy is not so little and he was really good at swinging that sword around. I was going to do some video, but the neighbor mom called her boys in for dinner before I could get back.

The accounting continued today. I was not aware of how badly I let some of this stuff pile up during the month of January. I just need to slog the rest of the way through. I still have piles of things I want to blog about LTUE and writing and stuff that has accumulated. My blogable list is growing longer daily it seems. I’ve been forcing myself to do the accounting first. Not doing the accounting first is what let it pile up so badly. With my tax appointment looming on Friday I just have to get it all done. And once it is done, there will be no more loom.

Hopefully tomorrow will dawn with the accounting done and Howard’s car fixed. His beetle had a breakdown which required it to be towed. It is going to be expensive. We’re also preparing for our trip to Seattle which will also be expensive. I need to get some auctions up on ebay soon. It won’t defray expenses much, but every little bit helps.

It never fails. When my days are filled with blogworthy events, I do not have time to blog. This becomes a problem because my head fills up with all the things I could write about. They all jostle in my head so that I have trouble articulating any of them. Fortunately The List has come to my rescue. I made a list of all the things that I want to blog about, this empties my head space so that I can actually formulate coherent thoughts.

LTUE, the science fiction and fantasy symposium at BYU finished yesterday. I got to go to some of it on Friday and Saturday I was there all day. Once again I met amazing people, had fascinating conversations, and got very excited about current and pending writing projects. This completely undermines my plan to focus on being support personnel for Howard’s new book. I need to figure out how to maintain excitement about my projects while still prioritizing the next Schlock book before them. I have to do this because Schlock pays the bills.

My writing projects also need to make way for my kids. Both Patches and Gleek are still sick. They missed me lots yesterday. Gleek called me on my cell phone four times to tell me how much she missed me and wanted me to come home. When I did finally arrive home, she was too busy playing to do more than give me a quick hug. Patches, who didn’t call me at all, clung to me. I sat with him in my lap while he told me how sad his day had been. We also discussed how much he missed me. He extracted a promise from me that I wouldn’t leave again without telling him. (I’d left in a hurry that morning.) I promised him that for the next two days I would not go anywhere unless I took him along too. That made him smile. He wouldn’t let me put him down until I had also agreed to change into my pajamas. Once I did, Patches relaxed. He had visible proof that I wouldn’t be going anywhere. I read him a story, then snuggled him until he went to sleep. Gleek was also relieved to know that I promise not to go anywhere without her for at least two days. I made that promise over the phone yesterday. When I reiterated it this morning, she smiled. Gleek doesn’t need the snuggles that Patches does, but having me nearby is a measure of security that she wants and needs today.

Since Patches and Gleek are both still sick, I stayed home from church with them. This means we have a space of blessed quiet while everyone else is gone. I love having Nancy and her kids here. I love having my sister from Boise and her family here. I love having my brother from Pocatello and his family here. But having them all at once gets a little bit chaotic. No. It gets a LOT chaotic. Add to that the fact that I’ve been away from the house for two days, and everything feels all out of place. I’m using this quiet everyone-else-at-church time to do some cleaning up. I’m clearing my brain by blogging a little and I’m cleaning up the living spaces so that I can stand to have so many people in them. I don’t want to evict any of the people until the visiting is done, but I can certainly evict the trash and banish the toys to their cupboards. That will make the visiting nicer.

Most of the crowd will be departing tomorrow. The Idaho families came down so that they could visit with Nancy who is only in the states every couple of years. Nancy and her two kids will be staying until Thursday. It will be nice to have some quiet routine time with her next week. And I think that by Tuesday, Gleek will be well enough to go back to school so that I can do some of the stuff I’d planned to do last week. Hopefully.

I’ve made several mentions of the fact that Gleek is sick. She has been sick since last Saturday morning and has spent most of the week lying on the couch in her “sick spot” watching movies. Yesterday she looked like she was on the mend. Then around bedtime the sound of her cough changed and she spiked a fever. The last time Gleek lay listlessly with a high fever and shallow breaths she was two years old and I ended up staying with her over night in the hospital. She slept in my bed for a good portion of last night. She did no sleep well. I did not sleep well. When I did sleep all my dreams had to do with packing for an overnight hospital stay and being perpetually late for the doctor’s appointment.

This morning I packed up a bag just in case the doctor sent us straight to the hospital. I had all the plans made. I was taking Patches with me and if we were sent to the hospital I had a list of people that I could call to come and get him. I dressed in comfortable clothes just in case I ended up sleeping in them. I had clear ideas about who I could call to pick up Link and Kiki from school. This minute planning is how I occupied my brain lying awake at 3 am, listening to Gleek breathe, and waiting for morning. When morning came I put all the pieces into place. It was only when it was all done and I found myself pacing in the kitchen with 30 minutes before the doctor’s appointment that I realized my flurry of planning was a very effective tactic for not fretting.

Fortunately all my plans were unnecessary for anything other than fretting prevention. Gleek has bronchitis. “Bronchitis” is doctor speak for “Well lookit that, this virus settled into the upper respiratory tract.” We came home with some prescriptions to ease the congestion and instructions to take care of her until she gets better. She’s back in her sick spot watching movies. Hopefully we’ll all get some sleep before the day is over.

I’m very glad to not be in the hospital. I’m even gladder that the medications are helping Gleek feel better. I’m also glad that while Gleek continues to need loving care, her illness is not a serious one. I’m glad that my sister is willing to babysit sick kids so that I still get to go out to dinner tonight to meet John Ringo.

Now I’m off to curl up with a book while the kids aren’t looking.

Valentine’s Day has never been my favorite holiday. It may have once held meaning, but these days all it contains is rampant commercialism. Besides, pink has never been my favorite color, particularly when it is paired with red. While I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s day, I am a big fan of showing love and appreciation for those around us. I just don’t think that a purchase of candy or flowers or cheesy cartoon cards is adequate to the task of expressing affection. Love and appreciation are best when they’re used regularly. I’ve decided to celebrate love by examining the different ways that the people in my family show their love to each other.

Of all my kids, Kiki is the one who is most aware of the tightened finances. She responded to this by volunteering to work in the lunchroom at school. She enjoys working there, but even more, she knows that being a lunchroom worker means that she gets a free lunch. For her this is a small, measurable way that she can contribute to the family finances. No one asked her to do this. She figured it out on her own. I only learned about it from a casual comment she once made during a conversation on a very different topic. Kiki also loves to give gifts and make people happy. She was in the store with me a couple of days ago and begged for me to buy balloons for Gleek and Patches because they were sick and she wanted them to be happy. Kiki draws pictures and gives them away. When the time comes for her to sort through her stuff and get rid of some of it, she is happiest when she can give the things to someone. Usually Gleek is the recipient of the stuff, which doesn’t get it out of my house, but makes both girls happy.

Link shows love by snuggling. Many nine year old boys no longer want to hug their mothers, but Link loves it. He loves it to the point that I sometimes have trouble detaching him in order to make him go to bed or get dressed. Link frequently reads bedtime stories to Patches. They both really enjoy that. Whenever Link gets a treat at cubscouts he asks to have three extras so that he can bring them home for his siblings. He loves being able to share.

Gleek shows love by playing with people. She and Patches will play together happily for hours. When they inevitably fight over something, Gleek will at first be gleeful in her triumph. Then she will be concerned that Patches is sad. She almost always gives him exactly what they were fighting over then clowns around by falling down until Patches is laughing instead of crying. She frequently cheers Patches up by bringing him her stuffed animals and making them do tricks. Gleek is very respectful of Kiki’s property and defends it against the depredations of friends.

Patches tries to please people by following rules. We’re still struggling with potty training because he doesn’t yet have sufficient body awareness, but he always tries very hard. When he suceeds, he needs as many potty prizes as there are children in the house so that he can hand out prizes to everyone. Patches shows love to his daddy by snuggling and teasing. In fact Patches is very good at hugs and frequently says “I love you.”

Howard shows love by feeding people. He enjoys cooking and every time he does, he wants to share what he has made. Howard brings home food for me and for the kids. He cooks eggs on demand for the kids. Howard shows love to me by rearranging his schedule to make my life easier. He checks on the kids every night before going to sleep. He snuggles and tickles and teases them daily.

I think that my primary way of showing love is “tasks done.” I’ll fold laundry for kids so that they don’t have to. I’ll quietly put away papers or toys so that they don’t get destroyed. I make beds and pick up shoes and fix meals and do dishes and grocery shop and acquire clothes. I also read stories and give snuggles and say I love you.

All of us do all of these things regularly. Love flourishes best when it is fed daily.