Author name: Sandra Tayler

The kid’s school and a local skating rink have conspired. They offer a free skate night to all students and their families. Entrance to the rink is free and standard skates are free. The rink makes money on food sales and rollerblade rentals. I’m not sure what the school gets. Perhaps it is something the PTA pays for, I don’t know.

What I do know is that we have never attended any of these skate nights because they are invariably on school nights. There is no way the rink is going to give out free admission on a weekend. My kids have lamented this non-attendance greatly. Today I was feeling like I owed something to the kids for all the non attention and stress the past while, so we went to skate night.

We walked in the door and I was instantly transported back to my teen years. All roller rinks are essentially the same and the last time I went to one I was about 15. This one had the same lights and the same corny games that kids love and grown ups enjoy because the kids are loving them. There was the same row of video games and the concessions stand. It was different to see kids on scooters out there with the rollerskaters. But this rink allows scooters, it even rents them. (It also allowed strollers, which is cool.) This delighted Link who had no intention of wearing skates. Kiki and Gleek immediately spent the extra $2 for roller blades. I stayed with the retro molded plastic side by side rollerskates. With wheels on our feet we all hit the floor.

Patches hit the floor several times in the first few minutes and decided that he was done with the skating business. He opted for a Pizza dinner and then he went home with Howard. I was glad for this because it freed me up to get out on the floor with my three other kids. Kiki was totally in her element. She skated and played the corny games and bought candy with her money. Link played some of the video games and then happily scooted around. Gleek wasn’t so sure on her feet, but she figured out a sort of a march that let her get around the floor without falling down. Later when one of her rollerblades was hurting, she took it off. That was when she discovered that by using one foot to push and the the skated foot to glide she could go really fast. She particularly liked to go really fast crosswise to the flow of traffic, like a little frogger. Towards the end of the evening she was tired, so she’d go for half a lap with me then dart to the side (through traffic,) she’d wait for me to come back around again and she’d dart back out (through traffic) to join me. She was easily the smallest fast person out there. All the other small people clung to adults and to the edges of the rink.

As for me, I spent a lot of the evening trying to locate my kids. But as the rink cleared out I was able to relax and really skate. I know that I didn’t look cool or accomplished out there, but I was please with how much skating I remembered. I can still weave and spin a little. It pleased me that I can still do these things. I’m not truly good, but I was good enough that my kids now think I’m cool. Skating is a little like flying on that smooth floor. I loved rounding the corners and feeling the wind on my face. I probably looked a little silly out there trying to dance and skate at the same time, but I don’t care. I had fun and I’ve got the aching muscles and bruises to prove it.

Today I am a jellyfish. I drift quietly in one place until some current of thought provides sufficient impetus for me to move somewhere else. I’ve spent lots of time staring at walls today. I stare at the walls while my brain processes all the things that have occurred in the last week. I have to process them now because I just stuffed all of it in the back of my brain to be dealt with later. “Later” has become now. So I sit and think and realize that I’m hungry. So I drift to the kitchen to eat. Then I sit in front of my empty plate and think until I realize that I want a shower. So I go and take a shower. Then I stand under the spraying water and think until I realize that I should probably wash my hair. You get the idea. None of this thinking is deep or complex. It’s all…drifty.

My kids have loved the fact that I’m sitting still. They happily come and snuggle in my lap and I happily let them. It has been a snugglesome day. I have been so focused and organized for so long it feels nice to just drift.

Tomorrow I’ll be closer to normal I think. But I’m not going to push anything this week. This week I’m going to take things slow. I need it. The kids need it. And I think that important things will still get done. But the most important thing I can be doing this week is unwinding and reconnecting with my kids who spent all last week shunted out of the way so I could get stuff done.

Last night after the party, I collected my children and brought them home to put into bed. Once they were all in bed I collapsed into an emotional heap of exhaustion. I realized that in no way, shape, or form, did I want to be in charge of anything just then. At my request Howard snuggled and talked to me while I gradually drifted to sleep. It was so wonderful to just be warm and safe with someone else laying out sensible plans for the next week.

Today I am still not planning anything. I am drifting through today quietly without steering. We did get to church, but we were late because I could not muster the energy to make everyone hurry. I couldn’t even make myself hurry. After church there was a nap.

Tomorrow I will have to go back to doing things. But I expect that I’ll still not feel any urgency about getting things done. The kids are out of school most of this week and I intend for us all to have a vacation and reconnect. When this weekend is done perhaps the kids will be more emotionally stable. This past week was hard on us all.

And now I’m going to drift up to the kitchen. I think there is some food up there that I might want to eat.

The book release at Dragon’s Keep was loads of fun. I was there from 11 am until 10 pm and during the entire time there were people to talk to and games to be played. There was also some stress because I was hostessing and had to make sure that the food table stayed filled. I really wish my voice wasn’t so hoarse today. I can’t inflect for humor anywhere near as well when my voice is hoarse.

The party was fun. It was also exhausting coming on the heels of two days of book mailing. Perhaps tomorrow when I’m not so tired I’ll regale with stories of games played and fun people met. Tonight I can’t do them justice.

I cannot thank anyone enough for the all the help. The past three days could not have worked without all the people who showed up with willing hands. I need to tell more about those specifics too.

For now I must get into bed before I fall asleep on the keyboard.

Today was much calmer. We had fewer people show up for the first part, which was perfect because there was less work to do. It was good that the chaos level was down a bit because we reached the difficult orders where the book packers had to look at each invoice to know what to put inside the package. By about 2 pm all the orders were filled. That’s when we relocated the party to our house. 10 volunteers all followed me home and helped us move over a ton of books from our garage to our basement. They made a chain and just handed the books down and got over 60 boxes moved in about 20 minutes.

Then we had the best part of the day. All our wonderful worker friends sat around with us and ate pizza while talking about fun stuff. I wish my voice hadn’t completely given out by that time, but it started the trek to gone yesterday and finished it today. I hope it is at least somewhat back tomorrow for the book release party. I’m looking forward to the party. Tomorrow I get to play. I’m so relieved to have all those packages out. I know this because at one point I found myself laughing uncontrollably over a joke that simply wasn’t that funny. It was funny, not 5 minutes of laughter funny. In the end everyone, including me, was laughing because I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s just so nice to be done.

I didn’t even mind bringing all the kids home. In fact I curled up on the couch and snuggled them while we watched a DVD. I honestly couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to sit motionless on the couch snuggled up with my little people. They were so glad to have mommy sitting still. We watched the first two episodes of the first season of the original Star Trek series. My kids have never seen these shows. I haven’t seen them for years. I was surprised at how good they are. Yes there were things that made me want to laugh out loud, but the meat of the series is speculative short stories based around a stable set of characters. I’ve spent so many years telling jokes about Star Trek cliches that I forgot that the jokes are exagerated for the sake of humor. The kids were all enthralled. And after each episode I had to have a long discussion with Link about filmmaking tricks, people in monster suits, why we have salt in our bodies, and why it isn’t possible to suck all the salt out of our bodies. I’m looking forward to more snuggling while watching episodes. Perhaps I can create happy memories of Star Trek for my kids. I’d like that, because watching those episodes was like being transported back home to my childhood when they were regular television fare for me.

This morning I dispersed my children to the care of various friends. The mommy in me cried out “Yay! I get a vacation!” Then the business side of me replied “Vacation?! We have to work!”

Much work was done. Most of it was not done by me. Once again I am blown away by the kindness of Schlock fans. They showed up en masse to help us mail. Once again the work went faster that I would have believed possible. We’re 3/4 of the way done packing books. I am also blown away by the kindness of the postal workers. They came by with a truck twice and waived the pick up fee both times. They’ll be back tomorrow for a final pick up. It was the same truck driver who came by last May.

This morning I looked at my box full of invoices and felt like we’d never get it all done. By the end of the day I was worrying that there wouldn’t be enough to do tomorrow. Tomorrow from 11 am until about 2 pm we’ll be packing books at The Keep. Then we’ll shanghai a group of people with strong backs to help relocate books from our garage to our basement. The only drawback to the second part of this plan is that they’ll all get to see the disaster that is my house. I haven’t done much housework this week.

For tonight, I need to finish customs forms, print out some additional postage, pack up some more global mailers and put my kids to bed.

Today I flung myself bodily across the gap between our store software and the various shipping services. Now 1400 invoices with matching labels are prepared to march across my back and be transformed into packages.

Fortunately the rest of this process is going to be greatly facilitated by the willing minions volunteers who will be showing up for the work days. For the first time I actually feel like I have things sufficiently organized to manage it all at the Keep. There have naturally been adventures along the way. The credit card we used to buy postage was put on hold twice. Once yesterday and once today. Apparently purchasing $5000 of postage in $200 increments over the course of two days looks suspicious. The first time all I had to do was call the company and wade through an automated system to affirm that these charges were in fact placed by me. The second time I was fed through to an actual person who asked me multiple choice question about the color of Howard’s beetle and which of a list of people we spend the most time with. On the second question the correct answer was “I don’t know ANY of those names.” Credit card companies are careful about this kind of thing. Fortunately I was able to answer all the questions correctly and the hold was removed.

Other adventures of the day: Picking Kiki up from school early because she didn’t feel well. Putting Kiki to work stamping books since she was obviously not that sick. Eating lunch in the school cafeteria with Gleek, Patches, & Kiki. Taking three kids to Dragon’s Keep to drop off a load of shipping supplies. Helping Patches clean up a potty accident at Dragon’s Keep. (That makes 3 accidents in 3 days all at Dragon’s Keep. Agh.) Picking up Gleek from a friend’s house and driving slowly while she runs home next to the van because she wanted to walk instead of ride. She was thrilled to win a race with the car.

Later tonight I’m going to load the car with more shipping supplies and lots of books, then I’ll drive to the Keep with pajamad Gleek and Patches. Maybe they’ll fall asleep in the car. That would be really nice.

I am ready to go full speed ahead on all of the preparatory tasks for the book mailing party tomorrow. I have a million things to do today and my best shot at getting them all done is to build up a good head of steam and not stop until everything is done. If I stop I’ll realize how tired I am and how much I want to nap.

Unfortunately my kids are not ready to hop onto this train. Every time I start building momentum, a child has needs which require a full stop. I may have to dump my kids on a friend today so that I can get stuff done. I didn’t want to have to do that because they’re getting offloaded to others all day on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. On the other hand it is probably better for them to not see mommy than for them to get run over by the business train.

In the past 24 hours my children have asked me to buy:

A trampoline
a collapsible blue umbrella
footie pajamas
silky pajamas
art lessons that last twice as long
a $53 pastel set
candy
cookies
new video games because all the ones we have are boring
all the polly pocket sets in the world
a new backpack
a new computer for the family
a personal laptop computer
binder sheets for holding pokemon trading cards
a new robe
pizza

And they wonder why I always say no.

Having postnasal drip and a sore throat were not in my plans for today. Neither was being awake at 1:30 am and trying to explain to an 11 year old that “I’m afraid of the dark” is no longer an acceptable answer. At age 11 she is old enough to recognize fear of the dark as an indicator of some unresolved issue lurking in her brain. She is old enough to see the indicator and go hunting for causes rather than sitting in the dark afraid. It was a good conversation to have, I like her being able to seek out and destroy her own monsters, but I wish it could have taken place at an earlier hour.

The pace toward the Schlock book mailing days continues to increase. Today I have to stamp return addresses on many many mailers. I also have to fill out many customs forms. I have to print postage. I have to print labels. And through it all I have to pay enough attention to the kids that they don’t melt into puddles of neglect. All of this with a head cold and too little sleep. Whee.