Author name: Sandra Tayler

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!

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.

I’ve been feeling stir crazy all day today. I’ve been cooped up in the house with four kids all day long. I kept mulling over plans that would get me out of the house, but then I’d glance at the thermometer which read no higher than 15 degrees all day long. That isn’t just cold, that’s cold which MEANS it. (Yes I know many places in this world get much colder, but I’ve never lived in them.) Temperatures tonight are supposed to be -3. Brrr.

I probably should have gotten outside for a walk anyway. It would have been good for me. I can’t say exactly why I didn’t. Why do we do that? Let small things, like cold, keep us from doing things which will be good for us and which we would enjoy doing? Once I get moving I love going for walks outside. I particularly enjoy it if I can go by myself and thus not have to stop every fourth step to examine rocks, sticks, or pavement. Last year I walked to and from Link’s school pretty much every weekday. This year I’ve only done that a handful of times. I miss the walking. And yet somehow rather than just going out for a walk, I find myself waiting for a warmer day, or a less tired day, or after I eat something. Thus do windows of opportunity slide silently into the past.

I changed my desktop background. It now features a photo I took of pansies glowing in strong summer sunlight. It isn’t a great photo, but it has flowers in it and more importantly it has that sunlight glowing across the whole screen. I have other pictures of summer flowers and I find myself browsing them lately. It is as if I’m trying to fool my brain into believing that summer is here, or at least near. It works for a moment while I’m staring at the pictures. They make me glad. But I can only stare at flower pictures for so long before I get bored. Then I click away to some other spot on my computer. At least the bulbs which I planted in pots are beginning to sprout flowers. I may have blooms by next week.

My house faces south. On sunny days I get sunlight streaming in my front windows. I find myself sitting in the front room in the late afternoon. I’ll find reasons to be there from about 3:30 until about 5 when the sunlight gets weak. I don’t plan to do that, but I end up there anyway. It’s like I’m instinctively trying to store up light because I know the night will be long and dark. Not only is the night long and dark, but the next day may or may not feature sunshine. Utah winters tend to have lots of gray cloud cover. But despite my need for sunlight and flowers I find myself optimistic and cheerful. This year winter does not loom inside my head the way it has done in years gone by. I think all that writing and mental sorting I did last January really helped.

It also helps that I’m filling the winter months with small events to look forward to. Tomorrow I get to have some local friends over for Sunday dinner. Wednesday I get to host a church luncheon. Friday I get to have a long-known-but-little-seen friend over for lunch. Then I hope to escape town altogether on the weekend of the 27th. I really want to have hours to just chat with my sister-in-law. I’ve been saving up things to talk to her about. Phone calls aren’t the same. And I’m really looking forward to seeing submissions from artists for my children’s book, most of those will be coming in this week.

Small happy things are important during winter.