Sandra Tayler

Reprioritizing

In November life around here was pretty stressed. We were getting ready for the launch of the second Schlock book and business concerns reigned supreme. There were lots of little sacrifices of family time to feed the engine of business. In December we eased off on the business stuff and put the family stuff back in. It felt so good that we did the same for most of January as well. Unfortunately this has now put us behind our intended schedule for the next Schlock book.

Just this week I have made contractual negotiations with an artist to illustrate my children’s book. Creating this book is going to take 3 months of emailing to discuss the pictures. I am thrilled about this project. I am overwhelmed by this project. It is breaking new ground for me and I’m nervous. There is so many ways for this to go wrong and just as many wonderful ways for it to go right. I’m tempted to go babbling to Howard with every care and concern about this project, but I have realized that if I do so I’ll be taking up the space in his brain that he needs to put toward creating his book. Since Howard’s books are the ones that pay our bills, I really need to not interfere with their completion. In fact I need to get my head back on straight and aid an abet the completion of the next Schlock book.

Being more focused on helping Howard get his next book out does not mean abandoning my projects. I just need to make sure that my projects stay out from under his feet. I also need to make sure that my projects do not interfere with the daily getting-things-done that is necessary to keep life running smoothly. Oh but I want to just ignore laundry and dishes and children to chase the shiny project. I mustn’t do that. I need to keep everything moving.

I just realized something. I always have a project in process. The type of project varies greatly from “keep the house perfectly clean” to “writing a story” to “planting a garden” to “teaching Gleek to read.” Right now I’m enthusiastically chasing this book project, but I’m also trying to psyche myself up to be really excited about facilitating Howard’s book. It’s working.

The Other Side

I’ve entered contests before. Just last year I entered a blog writing contest where I had to write a blog on the contest’s topic. I was dancing on clouds when I was chosen as a finalist. Then when I didn’t even place, I cried. I tried very hard not to base my feelings of self worth on that contest lost. Eventually I picked up, moved on, and it no longer hurts anymore.

Today I was on the other side of that experience. Thirteen artists submitted pictures in hopes of being selected for my book project. At first I was delighted and flattered that so many people would care to work with me. So many people looked at a few lines of text and trusted that the rest of the book would be good. Each set of pictures was accompanied by an email filled with hope. I realized that each of these artists was in the same position that I was in with the blogging contest. Each hoped to be selected and have their art reaffirmed. I exchanged several emails with some of the artists. I came to know them just a little. In the end, only one artist could be used for the book. I had to write 12 emails which I knew would disappoint the recipients.

The judge in the blogging contest rambled for several sentences about how difficult it was to choose and how she wished she could choose everyone. As one of the unchosen, I felt like she was just being polite. But now I know she was telling bare truth. It is hard to choose. I wish I could choose everyone. Each of the artists who submitted was fully capable of illustrating a children’s book. There were things that I liked about every one of them. In the end, one set of images just clicked with me and with the spirit of the story I wrote. This does not mean that the other submissions were faulty. They just didn’t click for me as strongly as the one artist I selected.

This coming Friday Howard will be blogging about all of the artists who submitted. Hopefully this will send some exciting projects in the direction of the artists. I see no reason that everyone can’t win from this. I now have contacts with artists and writers both. Hopefully I can help facilitate connections between the two worlds.

Choosing Dreams

From 1985 by Bowling for Soup

Debbie just hit the wall
she never had it all
one prozac a day
husband’s a CPA
her dreams went out the door
when she turned 24
only been with one man
what happened to her plan?
She was gonna be an actress.
She was gonna be a star..
.

The lyrics go on to describe how Debbie is fixated on 1985 because she feels like that is the last time that her life was good. The song is amusing, but every time I feel sorry for Debbie. Not because she has failed to achieve her dreams, but because she fails to recognize the dreams she has achieved. What happened when Debbie was 24? Somehow I doubt anyone forced her to get married and settle down. It was her choice. She must have chosen it because part of her wanted to be married and have kids. She dreamed of being an actress, but she also dreamed of being a mother and having a home. She chose the second dream and is now making herself miserable by forgetting why she chose the path that she did. Why is she dwelling on old, lost dreams when she can be creating new ones?

Some people are caught in traps that are not of their own devising. But most of us aren’t trapped at all. We only think that we are. Sometimes I feel hemmed in by all the responsibilities of being the mother of four kids. I feel oppressed by the endless stream of dishes, laundry, and housework. I feel exhausted by the demands that the business makes on me. I feel worn out from the effort of stretching small amounts of money to cover a multitude of expenses. All of these things can make me feel trapped. But I am not trapped. I walked into all of these things with my eyes wide open. My eyes are not the only thing that is open. The door is right there. I can choose to walk out of here any time want to. I continually choose to stay where I am because to walk out from under these pressures would be to abandon many of my dreams. I would be abandoning people I love for things which ultimately have less value to me. Do I dream of success as a writer? Absolutely. But not at the expense of my family life. This means that I may never be a famous author. I’m alright with that because I am surrounded by the wonderful, exhausting dreams I have chosen instead.

Winter Garden Week #4



Experiment week #4 Experiment week #4

As you can see, the control plant has continued to thrive. The blue plant has lost what green it had. The magenta plant continues to do nothing at all. But when I touch the bulbs on the other two, they aren’t mushy which means they’re probably not dead yet. I’m going to give the colored bulbs one more week to try to grow, then I’ll pull them out and repot them in non-colored soil to see if they are truly dead or if they can be salvaged. So food coloring does not make plants happy.

Bulb Basket Week #4 Bulb Basket Week #4

You can see a few of the first flowers. Several more clusters are beginning to send up flower stalks. The daffodils continue to sit not doing much. The flowering plants are grape hyacinths. Outdoors they are a very dark purply-blue. These ones are a beautiful pale lavender. I suspect that the lack of direct sunlight is what is affecting the color of the bulbs.

In the far left of the picture you can see some of the poinsetta plant that I mentioned yesterday.

Many small things

I got to go rollerskating with my kids yesterday. It was as much fun this time as it was last time. I was just feeling warmed up and enjoying myself as it was time to go. The kids didn’t want to leave so soon, but Kiki had to get ready for an overnight edventure at the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center. Rasinfish was along for the rollerskating and she got a tour of the space center as well. She agrees with me that it is an incredibly cool thing to have available for kids. Patches went with us and delighted in crawling into all the bunk spaces and up ladders and down stairs. This morning I left Patches behind when I retrieved Kiki. He realized what I’d done and was very sad that he didn’t get to go play in the space ships some more.

Yesterday for lunch I got to visit with my friend Julie of Mental Tesserae. We’ve known each other for years, but we don’t get together often. We’ve been much better about keeping in touch since we discovered that we both have blogs. It was fun to sit down with her and talk about the experience of blogging. As a side note, I have decided that I’m going to have to use the word tesserae in a story sometime. It is too interesting a word to leave lying around unused.

I have flowers blooming in my house. Several of the grape hyacinth bulbs I planted have begun to bloom. None of the daffodils are blooming yet. But my african violet has decided to send up a lone little bloom. I think the violet needs to be repotted. I also have a poinsetta in full bloom. Poinsettas tend to be tricky plants. I can never keep them alive, so I never buy them. But as I was walking out of a garden center on January 2nd an employee handed me the pot and said “here, it’s free.” So now I have a poinsetta with two stalks of beautiful red blooms and a third stalk which has withered away. I expect the other two stalks to join the first soon, but for now I have bright red flowers.

Patches came up to me today with a little grin on his face. “Mom, why did to boy throw the butter out the window?” Thinking that this was one of his odd, but serious questions I answered that I had no idea. He replied “Because he wanted to see a butterfly.” Patches told me a joke. He’s not even 4 yet and he already successfully pulled off a joke. He was so pleased with himself that he immediately started on a second one. “Why did the boy throw the bread out the window?” I answered that I didn’t know. “Because he wanted to see…wait.” Patches’ brow crinkled as he realized that applying the same formula to the new word was not going to have the same effect. He sighed. “I don’t know.” But then we found something else to laugh about so it was all okay.

Next weekend I get to escape town altogether and go visit my brother’s family in Pocatello. Yay!

Prada

I finally got to see The Devil Wears Prada last week. I’ve been wanting to see the movie ever since I first heard about it. I am fascinated by fashion. Not in particular with high fashion or expensive designers, but more with the ways that fabrics and colors and bodies can be combined together in aesthetically pleasing configurations. So I watched the movie hoping for an engaging story and lots of pretty clothes to look at. I wasn’t disappointed. It was an enjoyable film.

A major theme of the movie is how the non-fashion conscious Anne Hathaway character learns to wear and love fashion. This event is triggered in part by a speech given by the Meryl Streep character, Miranda. Miranda pontificates how fashions first appear on runways during fashion week and then are picked up by expensive designers who are in turn emulated by mass market clothiers. Thus, according to Miranda, the clothing to be found on the rack at Walmart is a direct result of what is seen on the runways in Paris. It is an interesting spiel which nicely justifies the need for high fashion. I’m not sure that I believe it. I’m not sure that Walmart clothing is very influenced by high fashion. I’m sure there is a little fashion influence, but mostly Walmart clothes are designed around what sells. What sells this season is determined by consumers who probably have paid no attention to fashion week. Instead the consumers pay attention to what their friends and neighbors and nearby strangers are wearing. On the other hand, consumers also pay attention to what people on TV are wearing and people on TV are dressed by professionals who probably DO pay attention to Fashion Week in Paris. So maybe there is a bigger connection than I thought.

I’m still inclined to believe that high fashion is to mass produced clothing as high art is to commercial art. High art exists to challenge us. Commercial art exists to please us. We need to have both. I love both literature and mass market sci fi novels. I love the fine arts studied in school and the pictures on the covers of books. I love the beautiful and strange concoctions worn by models on runways and the comfortable clothes found at local discount stores.

High fashion comes with a high price tag. While I love to look at the clothes, I cannot in good conscience spend that much money on them. In fact I can hardly bring myself to buy clothes at Walmart prices. Most of my clothes are either given to me or come from a local thrift store. Fortunately for me other people are quite willing to spend huge amounts of money on beautiful clothes which they hardly wear and then donate to thrift stores. I can then buy those clothes at a minuscule fraction of their original price. Although truth be told the original price of an item isn’t really the selling point for me. I buy clothes because I like them not because they have a certain label or because I’m getting 99% off retail.

This brings me back to Prada, because today I was in a thrift store looking at bags. I wanted a bag large enough to carry full size notebooks, but I didn’t want something that screamed “computer bag.” I definitely didn’t want something that had a computer corporation logo on it. I saw a likely looking bag and grabbed it. It was slim, attractive, exactly what I needed. Then I looked closer and saw “Prada” stamped into the leather on the front. It may be a knock off. I have no clue how to tell if it is. I do know that authentic Prada bags sell for around $300 on the year that they’re released. I never in my life expected to own a Prada bag. I never cared much either, but now I own one. I paid $1.50 for it. Now my only worry is that someone will see me carrying the bag and think that I’m the kind of person who would spend the money on the full retail price of the bag. Fortunately most of the crowd I hang out with probably won’t even notice or care beyond noting that I have a nice-looking, useful bag for my stuff.

Out of the house

This morning I attended a school event at Link’s class. It was called “Moms and Muffins.” The whole point is for Moms to come to class and read for an hour with their children. As an enticement to the moms, they are given muffins if they come. Link was very excited about this event. He’d watched Gleek have her turn a couple of months ago and was glad for an hour of having mom all to himself. I was glad for the event as well. It finally got me out of the house for a pleasant event. Out of the house is important because otherwise I’d spend all day attempting to entertain myself by watching the advance of glaciation on my windows.

I also got out of the house to run Patches to his gym class and to pick up Gleek from school and to pick up Link from school and to pick up Kiki from school. Those trips weren’t as fun, because mostly they involve coaxing recalcitrant children into and then out of the van. Gleek did recalcitrant exceptionally well today. By the time I was done doing all of that out-of-the-house I was rather glad when Kiki decided to skip art lessons today. Instead I huddled in my office and played Chuzzle for awhile. My office is a much nicer place now that I’ve installed a full spectrum light. Partly I wonder if it is a placebo effect. Perhaps the addition of any lamp would have made it better. Oh well. I have the bulb now. I might as well use it.

Zero Degrees Overnight



Zero Degrees Overnight Zero Degrees Overnight

In case some of you didn’t quite believe me when I complained about the cold, this is a photograph of the INSIDE of one of our windows. Outdoor temperatures hit zero Farenheit last night. And yes we need to get much better windows, these ones leak cold everywhere.



Bulb Basket Week #3 Bulb Basket Week #3

I took this picture a little closer so that you could see the beginninds of flowers. The ear-of-corn shaped bulges in the middle of the three bulges will soon be clusters of purple flowers. Yay for flowers to be!