Sandra Tayler

Today is my day to print mailing lists. I cannot print addresses in blocks of more than 100. So I spend 10 minutes prepping a list to go and then 20 minutes of waiting while it processes and prints. As I’m prepping each list, checking addresses, and purchasing yet more postage, the back of my brain spouts a tension building litany of all the things that could go wrong. I can feel my tension level ratcheting up every moment I spend in front of the computer. Once a list is ready to go I walk away while it is printing. I walk away and try to be nice to the children who invariably need something during the prepping time where I have to concentrate. They get growled at and are sad. So I try to be nice to them and meet their needs. Then I go and hide in my book. I finished Komarr and have started on A Civil Campaign. The world of Miles Vorkosigan soothes my spirit. All the tension leaves as I completely absorb myself in this familiar story. But then the real world calls either in the form of a finished printer or a needy child and the tension begins to build again.

I really hope books arrive tomorrow or I’m going to be a wreck. I’ll probably be a wreck anyway, but at least I’ll be a wreck with something to do.

I now officially hate phone voice recognition systems. I was trying to call the US Postal Service central number to find the number for my local post office so that I could arrange for the pick up of 1500 packages. The phone call went like this:

USPS: Welcome to the US Postal Service help line. Por espanol numero uno. If you have a question about delivery say “delivery.” If you want to look up a zip code say

I sharpen my pencil, the noise of the pencil sharpener makes the phone voice go silent for a moment.

USPS: Okay. If you have a question about delivery say “delivery.” If you want to look up a zip code say “zip

Patches: Mommy! I want a drink

USPS: Okay. If you

Patches: Mom!
I attempt to shush Patches

USPS: Okay. Which zip code are you looking for?

Patches: random squealing noise

USPS: Which

Patches: Wah!
Me: Grr
USPS: A series of partially begun sentences each different than the next.

I quickly realized that the system was picking up all the ambient noise and had taken me down some unknown branch of its possibility tree. There was no way to salvage the phone call. I hung up.

I then tried to schedule pick up via the USPS website and was faced with a form which did not fit my needs at all. I finally resorted to calling the business mail regional center in Salt Lake where an actual person spoke with me. She nicely tried to tell me where I could find the phone number of my local post office on the phone number. I grumpily didn’t follow along and asked that she simply read the number off of her screen since she had it right there and once she gave it to me I would no longer need to use the USPS’s clunky website. (For curiosity’s sake after I got the phone number I tried her instructions and came up with a blank page.)

My local post office was wonderfully helpful. The pick up is scheduled exactly when I need it. I love my local postal service employees, they have repeatedly solved problems and made my life easier. One more thing I can cross off of my list of things to do.

Okay. Internet is back and my mailers just arrived. I’m breathing a little bit easier. I should be able to stay calm. At least until the next hitch shows up.

Last night Howard and I spent some time reviewing all the things we need to get done this week and making contingency plans in case things go wrong. I found myself very stressed over the fact that I’m currently short about 400 mailers. I ordered them over a month ago, the shipment got lost. I called the company last Monday and they sent a new shipment which they assured me would arrive last Friday. It didn’t. Howard kept coming up with calm/logical plans about what we’ll do if the mailers don’t show up in time. I found myself vehemently resisting being de-stressed.

When I took a step back to analyse this behavior I realized that it was classic displacement. There are so many ways the book mailing could go wrong and it is so important to get it right. This creates a lot of free floating tension, but nothing to DO about it. It was almost comforting to have a small aspect to be actively stressed over. If I was focused on the lack of mailers I couldn’t see potential larger stresses like “what if the books don’t show up until Friday?” or “What if the books show up and they’re poorly constructed?” I’m so tense and I won’t feel relaxed until people start recieving their books and loving them.

This morning I needed to finish printing out addresses and postage. To do so requires an internet connection. Guess what is currently not working. I’m trying very hard not to fly into a dithering panic over this. At least we got things straightened out with the credit card company. They took one look at $650 of postage purchasing, called it suspicious activity, and put a hold on the card. I’ve still got $900 more postage to put on that card. When the bill comes I’ll pay it off with shipping & handling money.

So with no mailers to prep and no ability to print postage I’m searching for something I can be doing NOW. Something I can get done so that I don’t have to do it later. Later this week is only going to get busier. I should probably tackle the Release Party menu and purchasing list.

And I should Not Panic. I should definitely Not Panic.

I’m trying to pull my livejournal entries into a Microsoft word document. I use the livejournal backup utility to save them out in html format, but when I pull that into Word there is all sorts of weird formatting. Each entry is a separate table. All I want are the date, subject, and body of the entry, everything else is garbage. I cannot figure out how to eliminate the formatting in a way that is not tedious. (Like cut and paste or find and replace) Any ideas for me?

I’m currently re-reading Komarr by Lois Bujold. It is one of my favorite books. Pretty much anything Ms. Bujold writes qualifies as a favorite book. Her characters feel like family. I can identify with them. I particularly like the character Ekaterin, probably because she’s a mother and a gardener as well as a strong, intelligent woman. Howard doesn’t reread books very often, but I do. When I’m stressed and want to shut my brain off I want something to read. But I don’t want a new book. A new book will either make mework too hard comprehending a new universe, bore me, or suck me in so thoroughly that I neglect everything else. During stressed times this last is particularly dangerous because staying up until 2 am to finish a book does nothing to relieve stress. Today I need familiar distraction so I can ignore the looming events of next week for a few moments here and there.

Next week is Book Week. Our original time table had books arriving last Wednesday and we planned to be mailing them today. A shipping delay scratched that plan. Now the books are arriving Tuesday or Wednesday and we’ll be shipping Thursday and Friday. Saturday is the party. I did not want those events crunched together. Right now I’m mostly in a holding pattern. Most of the preparatory work is done, so I’m waiting on the arrival of books. And reading. Yay Bujold!

I owe my mother an apology, and a couple days before Mother’s Day seems like a good time to extend it. See, for years I’ve believed that my lack of good housekeeping skills were due to lack of correct training during my childhood. Somehow I entered the adult world without understanding how to clean up after myself. This was a source of great frustration to college roommates and then to Howard. It has only been in the last year that I’ve realized that my lack of housekeeping skills is not my mother’s fault. She DID teach me how to clean. I have many memories of her teaching me how to mop the floor or scrub the toilet or load the dishwasher. What she didn’t do was require such work out of us kids on a daily basis so that they became second nature. I finally understand why. She had seven kids. SEVEN. Every single day she had to choose which of the many important things would actually get done. She consistently chose creative endeavors over make-your-bed-every-day rigidity. I cannot fault that choice because I find myself making exactly the same choices every single day. I have four kids. Every day I have to decide whether to interrupt beautiful cooperative play in order to make the kids do work. I have to decide whether to spend energy on homework or housework. I have to choose whether to spend energy making meals or making kids work. More often than not, making kids do housework is the piece I let slide. For years I’ve felt guilty about this. I’ve felt like I was failing in the same way that I percieved that my mother failed. But that’s where I was wrong. My mother did not fail. She gave me every single piece I needed to be a productive and useful adult. It was my job to put them into application. It is not fair of me to whine because my mother didn’t make me be a clean person. I look at my siblings. All of us are intelligent, creative, useful people. The ones who are married have great marriages and are great parents. There is no way on earth that anyone can look at that parenting track record and consider it in any way a failure. If I can parent as well as my parents did, I will rejoice.

There are many many mailing tasks for me to arrange before the books arrive. All of the bubble mailers have to be stamped “media mail” Mailing lists have to be organized, address changes need to be made, etc. International orders are even more complex because each one has to have a customs form attached. I haven’t figured out any way to automate the customs forms without spending $2000 and setting up an entirely different ordering and shipping system (which we may do for the next book). So I’ve been filling out the customs forms by hand.

These forms also need to be affixed to the Global Priority Mailers. I hadn’t done that yet because of all the other things to do. This morning I got out a sponge and prepared to wet forms and stick them to mailers. I slapped that first form onto a mailer where it promptly curled up and fell off. I tried a second form on the chance that the glue on the first form was defective. Nope. Same result. I attempted licking on the off chance that the problem was the sponge. curling and falling. I shoved aside the three curly forms and grabbed the scotch tape. That worked, but I have 330 of these to do. It was too time intesive and expensive in tape. I tried a glue stick. The form still curled up around the edges a little, but it stayed put. Glue it was.

Upon determining that I’d have to hand glue all these forms I took a break for breakfast. Howard wandered into the kitchen and looked at the evidence of my frustration. He picked up one of the curly forms and examined it closely. He then peeled the paper backing off of the self-adhesive form and stuck it to the mailer.

They are stickers.
Howard saved me from hand gluing 330 stickers.
Yay for Howard.

But now I feel sheepish.