Sandra Tayler

Bits and Pieces

By / December 8, 2014

The vast majority of the packages are sent. I’ve got maybe fifty left. They’re all orders which contain non-book merchandise. They’re also all US. The international orders went out last week. This is the longest I’ve ever spent in heavy shipping mode. I’ve been managing packages for this book release since the week before Thanksgiving. This is my third week of shipping all the things. I’ll be very glad to be done.

Link was happy today. I’m so glad to see him happy. I hope that the combination of therapy and school schedule changes mean that things are finally better for him. I’m going to take it one day at a time.

I can feel the difference in my thyroid dosage. I’m not yet able to see it in my life. But that is the case with a subtle shift. The effect is barely noticeable at first. The cumulative effect is significant. More time is needed.

The warehouse is something of a wreck right now. It is littered with stray tape and piles of boxes that no one has taken time to collapse. My crew from today asked if we should do some clean up before we left. Unfortunately I’d run out of time. I had to take my son to his therapy appointment. This has been the case for much of this shipping. We put packages together as fast as we can until the time is gone. I’ll have a warehouse clean up day next week. That is when I’ll finally get to evaluate the state of the warehouse and figure out what to do with all the extra pallets I’ve got laying around. It is really nice that the shipping mess is over at the warehouse instead of taking up space in my house.

I bought the kids fast food for dinner tonight. We brought it home and they sat around the table teasing each other and comparing french fries. I watched them and thought about articles I’ve read that praised the value of family dinner. It was talking about home cooked meals. There was another article which cited evidence that sometimes the stress of providing home-cooked meals can negate the value of them. My fast food solution followed the spirit of both articles. It is the coming together that matters more than the origin of the food. We’re trying to eat together more. On other nights that will mean home cooked. For tonight we laughed over french fries.

Kiki comes home on Thursday and we get to have her until January. This time Howard will be the one to drive and go get her. I’m glad she’s coming home and glad I don’t have to make the drive this week.

The weather has been warm and the pansies I planted in October are still blooming. I love that I have growing flowers in December. I’ve also got two African violets in bloom. These are small happy things. Hopefully I’ll soon have time to light some candles and watch the wax drip. It may be silly, but I find it beautiful and it makes me happy.

Longing for a Pause

By / December 7, 2014

I want to curl up in Sunday afternoon and stay here for a while. In this space I am excused from thinking about work. More importantly I am also excused from monitoring all the schedules of everyone in the house to make sure that everything is on track. There has been a lot to track lately and some of it kept spinning further and further out of control. The book shipping and sketching careened across our holiday season at exactly the moment when emotional needs of kids demanded that we expend more energy for family time. Yet as of yesterday the sketching is done. Tomorrow the shipping will be complete. And as of last Friday we declared quits with the chemistry class that had Link so far buried under work that he would never be able to dig his way out. Instead he’ll be taking a home-study type geology class. In one weekend all the urgencies have lifted. It is a little hard for me to believe, which is why I find myself wanting to linger in Sunday afternoon. Monday will return me to all my roles of responsibility and those roles have felt heavy lately.

At church the teacher asked the class what were our favorite things about the holiday season. People listed things like music, lights, family, celebrations, etc. I knew what my answer would be, but I’m not sure my answer is readily applicable to others. What I love is the span of time which begins just before Christmas and lasts through New Years’ Day. During that time there isn’t much shipping work, the internet slows down, we don’t have to wake early for school, there is no homework to manage, and we get fewer emails. For a little more than a week there is a space that is a lot like Sunday afternoons when I’m excused from most of my regular tasks. I love the peace of that week. All the trimmings, food, and presents are part of what I love, but it is the pause I want.

I usually get a pause during Thanksgiving. This year I did not. Often life serves up a pause in October as the kids settle in to school but before school gets serious. This year there wasn’t one. I could list a lot of reasons, but the pure fact is that sometimes things pile on top of each other. Sometimes that is the only way to accomplish really important things. As hard as some of the stresses this past fall have been, I don’t wish them undone. We needed to learn the things we’ve learned. We needed to have all the appointments and meetings to figure out what was going on and what to do next. We needed the books and slipcases in time for Christmas. We needed Link’s eagle project. We needed to recognize that my thyroid dosage was low. I do hope that this next week can be the point after which things are less piled up together. That would be lovely.

For now, I’ll take my Sunday evening pause next to the Christmas tree.

Signs of Being Busy

By / December 2, 2014

It appears that the last time I was clear headed enough to sort through my email was before Thanksgiving. So many unanswered messages in there. I’ve been spending every waking minute either on family things or shipping work. The other day I tweeted:

I could do all the things if the things would just hold still for a while.

The shipping is stable and simple, there’s just a lot of it. It is the family stuff which is all comprised of moving targets.

The last of the international packages will go out tomorrow.

Today’s Victories

By / December 1, 2014

All of my kids went to school on time. Bonus points for them being happy as they departed.

3 out of 4 kids ate breakfast.

We set Howard up to continue sketching in books.

Kiki and I teamed up to send out over 100 international packages. We made them and dropped them at the post office without incident.

All of my kids stayed at school for the entire school day and I got no phone calls from schools during those hours.

Gleek sat down with me to talk about a school assignment that is causing her major stress. It was a conversation she did not want to have, yet she stayed with me and talked with me, instead of picking a fight with me and stomping off. We now have a plan.

We put up the Christmas tree and it has lights on it. Ornaments can come later.

It was a good day, but one with very little time to rest. Up next: going to bed so that tomorrow can be another good day.

Recognizing Depression in Myself

By / November 30, 2014 / 3 Comments

“Are you okay?” My friend asked. “It feels like even when I see you, I don’t see you. I’m wondering if maybe you’re depressed.”

She used a lot more words than that and they were phrased carefully, but that was the core of what my friend said to me. Yes I’m depressed. I’ve been depressed off and on since the beginning of 2013. I figured it was situational. 2013 was a year of transition for our family. All four of my kids were struggling in various ways. I pulled in and held tight, figuring that when things settled out, my state would also settle out. And I wasn’t depressed all the time. There have been months where I was content or even happy. Sometimes more than one month in a row. I said all of that to my friend and asked her when she last felt like she had seen me. I thought maybe she was noticing the latest downturn. The one that started building about the same time that school started.

“I’m not sure, a couple of years maybe?”

There was something about the way she said it which triggered a connection in my head. Two years ago this month, November 2012, I was having troubles with anxiety. I discussed it with my doctor and we decided to reduce my thyroid medicine to see if that would help. It did help. It brought the anxiety down enough that I was able to find the anxiety triggers and deactivate them. Howard and I have worked together on that. He started his anti-depressants. We’ve restructured how we see and manage anxiety so that it simply is not the problem that it used to be.

But then I thought about what my friend said. She hasn’t felt like I’ve been me in about two years.

How long has it been since I did my hair fancy and dressed extra nice for church just because I felt like it? About two years.

How long since I did crafts just because and idea came to me and I wanted to see how it worked? About two years.

How long since I took on a sewing project because it interested me? About two years.

How long have I been slowly gaining weight that refuses to come off with diet and exercise adjustments? About two years.

How long have I felt just a little overwhelmed with my life? About two years.

I put in a call to my doctor. We agreed to increase my dosage of thyroid medicine. Maybe it will pull me out of this, maybe it won’t, but it is a logical first step. I started the new dosage about a week ago. So far the only difference I’ve noticed is that my resting state is no longer “I feel like crying.” If that is the only improvement I get, I’ll take it. The other thing I need to do is talk to some mental health professionals about my kids needs and about mine. That appointment is scheduled for next week. Hopefully by then I will have shipped the vast majority of the book release packages. That will help me clear my head. I need emotional space to figure out how much (if any) of this depression is chemical and how much is the natural result in all of the family shifts we’ve had in the past two years.

Doubling Down on Family Time

By / November 28, 2014

We are a family of introverts and we live in a house which has more options for screens than there are people in the house. This means that unless we exert ourselves, the pattern is for all of us to scatter in separate rooms of the house and focus on screens. This is fine as part of what we do, but when it becomes the majority of what we do, that leads to us all feeling disconnected from each other. In the past couple of months all the kids have noticed the pattern and expressed desire for more togetherness.

When Howard and I discussed our Christmas spending plans, we took this need for increased togetherness into account. We also realized that we needed to break one of the cardinal traditions of Christmas. Instead of saving up all the shiny things so they can be revealed on the big day, we needed to break them out at Thanksgiving so that we can spend the entire month of December using them to draw us together. It would be a shame to only have a week to enjoy them with Kiki before she heads back to school when we could have three weeks.

Considering the challenge I described earlier, it would seem that banishing electronics would be the call to make. Instead we bought more, a game system and an upgraded computer. But the important thing is that these new things draw us all into the same room. We’re interacting and talking with each other about the games we are playing. We’re all trying to be conscious about spending time together. To be honest, it is a little exhausting. None of us are used to it and there has been more than one squabble. Feelings have gotten bruised here and there. But I think the shifts will be good for us. We’ll find the right balance between doing our own things and coming together as a family.

Shipment Delivery: Complete

By / November 27, 2014

It was all lined up. Delivery of books and slipcases on Monday. I had a crew to help. Tuesday I’d help Howard sign book covers and then fetch Kiki home for Thanksgiving in the afternoon. Wednesday would be shipping prep and Thanksgiving prep. I’d done my necessary advance preparation. I’d done some preliminary sorting of invoices. Our cat “helped.”
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I also ordered shipping supplies so I could begin mailing as soon as my delivery arrived.
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It went sideways on Monday morning at 9am, when the trucking company called to tell me that their lift gate truck was broken. They were hoping to borrow one for the afternoon. This sent me scrambling to reschedule my volunteers. The company wasn’t able to borrow a truck, so Monday was spent waiting for a truck that did not come. This meant Tuesday was delivery day and fetch Kiki from college day. I was told the truck would be there around 11:30. I pulled up to the warehouse a comfortable 45 minutes early, just as the truck also pulled up. So I had to ping my helpers saying “Truck is here!” Fortunately some of them were able to jump and come right away. The truck had 22 pallets, double stacked.
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As the stacks came off the truck, we organized and put things where they went. Books in one place, slipcases sorted according to type. Fortunately the slipcases are very light. This meant that four people could easily lift and entire pallet.
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Stacking was important because there wasn’t enough floor space for everything side by side. I’m very grateful to my helpers who willingly stacked slipcases three pallets high.
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They also hefted a load of books over to my house where Howard could sign and sketch them. Once the truck was unloaded it headed out to go and fetch the remaining twelve pallets. We were told it would be back in about 90 minutes. I was glad. It meant we could be done unloading by about 2, which would give me comfortable driving hours to go fetch Kiki. (Three hours there, three hours back. She doesn’t have a car and the bus schedule is really inconvenient.) So my crew waited with me for 90 minutes, which is when we got a call letting us know the truck would be another hour. So we went out to lunch, came back and waited some more. The truck finally arrived at 3:30. We were done unloading in about 30 minutes. I finally had all of my shipment.

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I went home to take care of some family things. Because family things do not always wait conveniently for business things. Link had had a rough day. I took him with me for the six hour trek to Cedar City and back. We stopped at the warehouse so that Kiki could see the things she will be helping me ship.
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We have a lot of work ahead of us in the next few days. I still haven’t had a chance to form a new schedule. We need to get shipments to customers as quickly as we can. But first, Thanksgiving.

The Stories of Today

By / November 22, 2014

Today’s story could be about shipping. That was certainly my first focus for the day. Howard rallied the kids to help me prep the house. Some neighbor kids came and put calendars in packages. I ran errands, bought a ladder and other shipping supplies. The shipping schedule in the next two weeks is complex and wraps around the Thanksgiving holiday. Hopefully it does so in ways that will not impinge on the family celebrations.

I could also write a story about how I really wanted to get out of the house, so I packed up the kids at a moment’s notice and took them to see a movie. Being out was good for all of us.

Today also had the sadness of an important event for Patch which was missed, not because we were busy, but because we were distracted. I sat with him and shared in his sadness, because there wasn’t anything I could do to fix it. I couldn’t even suggest a substitute, because there really isn’t one.

Then there are the dozens of smaller stories. How the kids reacted when we told them the plan Howard and I have for some of our Christmas celebrations. The funny thing the cat did which made me laugh. The potted flowers I bought so that I’ll have flowers in the next couple of months.

One day. So many stories. And a brain too tired to tell any of them properly.

Call for Strong Volunteers

By / November 21, 2014 / 7 Comments

UPDATE: Delivery will be happening on Monday during business hours. We appear to have the crew we need. Thank you!

We need heavy lifting help on either Friday (Nov 21) or Monday (Nov 24) to do some box shifting in the Hypernode Media warehouse in Orem UT. We need 4-6 people who are strong enough to lift and stack boxes. 500 of the boxes will be light (slipcases) 200 of the boxes will be heavy (books). We do not have exact hours until the trucking company provides us with a delivery window.

We reward volunteers with food, free merchandise, and gift cards.

If you want to be on the list, email schlockmercenary@gmail.com and tell us what times you are available. Sandra will correspond with you to pin down exact times.

We’re expecting a delivery of 32 pallets. Our warehouse has floor space for 15 pallets. This means that as the trucking company offloads the pallets, Sandra needs a crew to be tearing into the pallets and stacking boxes into towers thus making space for more pallets. We’ll be stacking the slipcases up to twelve feet high (we’ll have a nice ladder and, yes, we have pallet wrap to keep the towers stable.) The books will stack about five or six feet high.

Again: if you have time and are interested, please email schlockmercenary@gmail.com with the hours that you are available.

Seeking Happiness

By / November 18, 2014

A few days ago I wrote a post about finding ways to be happy while still being busy. Yesterday Gleek showed me this TED talk which both backs up my assertion that becoming less busy is not the secret to happiness. Nor is it something we achieve after we’ve accomplished our goals. Instead it is being happy that will help us achieve things. The talk is only twelve minutes, laugh-out-loud funny, and well worth your time.

The Happy Secret to Better Work