Sandra Tayler

Building a Grape Arbor

By / May 23, 2014

Yesterday I wrote about my grand garden plans. One of them involved grapes and an arbor.

I left the space for one when I put posts into the ground. The idea was to have a grape hedge with an arbor. Today I bought lumber and pulled out my power tools.

The timing on this really was perfect. I had an overcast day and if I’d waited any longer the grapes would have been unweildy to work with.

It is not a particularly elegant arbor, but within only a few weeks you’re not going to be able to see much of it anyway. Next spring, when the wood has had time to weather, I’ll stain it to better match the posts to which it is attached.

It is nice to finally see one of the grand garden plans realized.

Making Friends with Flowers

By / May 22, 2014

I did not always know the names of flowers. I knew the popular ones, the ones that most people know: rose, carnation. I came to know the rest in 1999 when I was recovering from an extended illness. I needed a year of peace, I needed to emerge from a winter of illness into something green and growing. So I read gardening books and I made grand plans for how my garden beds would mature. On any day when the weather cooperated I went outside and made the acquaintance of flowers. I learned their habits, I discovered which ones faded out like guests who leave a party without staying to say goodbye. And I learned which ones were my staunch friends.

To my surprise, my best friends were not roses. I thought they would be. My middle name is Rose, I thought I would always carry that connection. We bought this house only a year before my illness when it had twenty rose bushes and my grand plans featured those bushes. I loved them enough to buy rose gloves that went up to my elbows. I tended them, clipping dead flowers all summer long and amassing piles of thorny sticks in the annual pruning. Yet where roses lived it was hard to grow anything else. If I tried to work around the bases of the rosebushes, they drew blood. I wanted many flowers, not just one.

The rosebushes are all gone now. I didn’t set out to remove them all. It was a series of decisions. This bush needed to come out because I wanted a peony. That one had died. Those were blocking passage to the neighbor’s yard and scratching kids as they ran back and forth to play. One by one they were gone. I remember them fondly. But not fondly enough to make space for new ones in my life. Instead I have friendlier, more sturdy flowers. The irises and peonies which are blooming now I planted all those years ago. I’ve neglected them a lot during the years between. They’ve spent much time swamped with weeds. Yet they’re still here. As are the lilacs, mock orange, wisteria, day lilies, bleeding hearts, and lily of the valley.

My garden now does not look much like my grand plan. The plan was beautiful, but high maintenance. What has evolved instead is mostly self sustaining. It is a green space with some flowers instead of a showy floral display space. This spring for the first time in years, I’m once again planning improvements for my garden. They are small plans, all aimed at doing extra work this year when I have help, so that I can do less work in years to come. I’m not even planning the entire summer’s work, just this week and next week. I take each week as it comes, knowing that each Saturday when I take the time to garden, that is a gift. One that I have not always had. I became a gardening because I needed to heal. Gardening still heals me. Why do I forget that?

BYU Special Collections Tour

By / May 21, 2014 / 3 Comments

If you are ever offered the opportunity to tour a university library’s special collections department, say yes. Howard and I got just such a tour today deep in the basement of the Harold B. Lee Library on BYU campus. On our way in, they gave us bright red visitors badges and our very own security guard. Though really his job was to protect all the things from us, so I guess he wasn’t really our guard. We also had three librarian archivists leading us on the tour to show us the coolest things. It was part sales pitch “See, we’ll take good care of the things that you give us.” But mostly they were excited to showcase their collection and genuinely thrilled at the history that they’ve collected, restored, and preserved. Justifiably so. I came away filled with awe, not just for the things they showed me, but for the dedication and love that goes into making sure that generations to come will be able to see the same things.

The first thing we noticed were the shelves themselves.

They looked like a wall when we first entered the vault room. But they move to create aisles so that librarians can find the materials they are seeking.

It was impressive to see these massive rows slide around noiselessly. We were cautioned to be wary about being between them if they began to move. They have sensors that are supposed to prevent motion if something is there, but the casual way that they mentioned sensors failing made me sure it is a thing that has happened more than once. Fortunately only some metal stools have thus far been sacrificed to the gods of mechanical shelving.

Our first stop was where they keep the first printings of The Book of Mormon. I was startled when the librarian pulled one out of its box and let us hold it.

I’ve seen one before, but not to touch. I was awed to be in contact with a piece of my religious history. I was also impressed with the array of first editions in different languages that they had.

The early Mormon people were not wealthy. It speaks of how much they reverenced this book that the constructions and bindings are all so beautiful.

I spent a lot of time in general looking at the bindings and details of books. I noticed how many of the older volumes had ridges on their spines.

I asked if those ridges were decorative or structural. It turns out to be a result of the binding methods that were used.

They showed us one of the oldest “books” in existence. A cuneiform tablet.

There we all were, six of us staring in awe at this evidence of the first writing of humanity. It was thousands of years old. It is also a receipt for beer.

We didn’t have a chance to see the most elaborate illuminated manuscripts, but this lesser one was still amazing.

The gold shined across the pages and we could see that all the letters were hand drawn. I could have stared at that for a very long time. But there was a different wonder to see. For a time it was popular to create hidden paintings on the edge of book pages. My photo does not do this justice. Fortunately the internet can show you more clearly.

Seeing this one kind of makes me want to take some of my One Cobble books, the really thick ones, and paint something on the edges.

I’d mentioned Jane Austen, so they took me to where the Austen books were. A librarian took this first edition copy of Emma and put it into my hands.

I’d seen this pattern on endpapers of books before, but figured that it was some sort of 70’s thing. Instead it appears to be authentic to the era when Austen was publishing.

I would have loved more time to look at each of these things, to sit with them and really comprehend each one individually. The immensity of what they have down there is staggering. There are fifteen miles of shelving and they’ve just been given five more miles. More than once I was glad of our guides, because I would have had to wander to find a way out.

Books are not the only things they have. This is the Oscar for the movie Camelot.

These days Oscars are not allowed to be sold or donated. They are supposed to go back to the academy. This one was acquired by special collections before those rules were created. I love that you could see the place around Oscar’s legs where he’d been picked up and carried, or perhaps held aloft in triumph.

We got to peek at the cold vault, though we didn’t go inside.

Instead week peeked at it through a window while standing in the yellow lit ante chamber. Film has to be kept cold. It also has to sit in the ante room and come slowly up to temperature before it can be manipulated. The yellow light did strange things to vision. We didn’t stay there long.

The library is making massive efforts to digitize as much of the collection as they can and to make it available online. This set up is for exactly that purpose.

It allows for simultaneous photography of both pages while protecting the book and the spine. All a human has to do is raise the glass, turn a page, lower the glass and photograph again.

They’ve lots of books yet to do.

I walked out of the building with a renewed respect for librarians. They were as excited to show us the amazing things as we were to see them. I could hear in their voices how much they value history, which was why it felt so strange that they’d like to have some of our papers. This is why we got the tour, they want to create a Howard and Sandra Tayler collection into their massive archive. They reach out to alumni who are creators with this sort of request and they found us. This leaves me feeling honored and…with an odd feeling I don’t quite have a name for.

To be remembered is the dream, isn’t it? I’ve read essays from scholars who create treatises on the correspondence of Jane Austen. In daydream moments, I’ve looked at letters and journals of my own and wondered if someday there would be a researcher glad to have them, or at least my great grandchildren might be interested in family stories. Now a library actually wants these things. They are things which have been taking up space in my house because of that daydream. Yet I’ve seen the preservation infrastructure that they have. I know how much all that effort must cost and I can’t imagine anything that I produce being worth the expense to preserve it for generations. Then I think of all six of us hovering in amazement around a little stone beer receipt. None of us have any way of knowing what future generations will want to reference.

So, yes there will be a Howard and Sandra Tayler collection in the Special Collections of the BYU Library. We don’t know yet what will be in it, nor how much will be public during our lifetimes. But if nothing else I can stop having to decide to throw out things which might be interesting for future generations, but which I haven’t the space to store.

Special collections is well worth your time to visit and if you are so lucky as to be offered a tour. Say yes.

Filling the Waiting Space With Other Work

By / May 20, 2014

I have been informed that the shipment of books will not be arriving this week after all. So now we’re back to the original schedule instead of the week early schedule. This leaves me with a space of time where I’m accumulating and processing orders, but not yet beginning to sort invoices for shipping. The busy is coming, but it is not here yet. Not only is it not here, but also I’ll be handing off portions of the work to Kiki. Even at the busiest, it won’t be as crazy as it has sometimes been.

I’m going to use the time to push through the challenge coin PDF. I my second preliminary layout for it today. The first preliminary layout showed me how I did not want to organize the stories. I knew it was wrong, but hadn’t a clue what would be right. So I talked with Howard and he said it should read as if you were sitting at a bar where folk were swapping coin stories. The moment I heard that, I knew it was the right approach. It helped me figure out what stories go where, because one story can be a set up for the next one. It gives a narrative flow to the whole project. Today I started defining the design space. I threw in a top and bottom border element which is vaguely like what we’ll actually use. I put page numbering in place. I defined the styles for basic text, pull quote text, and sidebar text. All of these things need to be refined, but when I took it to Howard he agreed that the shape is right.

One of the hard things about starting to design a new book project is that every decision extinguishes another possibility. I love the bar conversation format. I believe it is the right one for this project. But it means the death of my original concept which was to sort stories by service. Each choice narrows the project into what it will actually be. In the refining stages it is easy to see how each change makes the project better. In the early stages there are so many possibilities and they are all so ephemeral that it is hard to see which will work best. I end up spinning in paralysis of choice. Today’s work means I’m past that stage. (I hope.)

The other work I’m going to try to push forward in the next few days is writing. I’ve just hit the mid-point in my novel. I wanted to have the draft done by the end of June. I’m not sure I can make that, but it is worth reaching for. If nothing else, I want this to be a week where I average 1000 words per day across both fiction and non-fiction writing. That’s a good writing week for me. I’ve even set up a spread sheet to help me track. Now I can look back and see when I was writing and when I was focused on other things instead.

I have plenty of things to keep me usefully busy while I’m waiting for books. Yet somehow part of my brain would really just like to sit and wait. Not that waiting is fun, I don’t like it much at all, it is just that even when I’m trying to get the other things done, part of my brain is focused on waiting instead. This makes the waiting feel much longer. Not my favorite.

Watching and Counting

By / May 19, 2014

The day we open pre-orders on a new book is always a day of distraction for Howard and I. (Related news: You can now pre-order Schlock Mercenary: Longshoreman of the Apocalypse. It is one of my favorite Schlock books.) In theory we should just be able to open ordering and just go about the regular work of the day. Instead we end up watching the numbers and then doing math in our heads, because different things are possible in the months to come depending on how well the book launch does. It used to be that everything rode on book launches. We’re trying to even out the business so that there is more to sustain us in between. This reduces the stress of pre-order days, but habits formed under pressure are tricky to change. So we’ve been checking numbers a lot today.

I’m also watching the progress of the Altered Perceptions fundraiser. I don’t have much personally at stake in that one, except that I’d dearly love to see my friend Rob out from under the medical debt that has been weighing him down. I’d love even more to see the proposed foundation have enough funds to get off of the ground. I’ve donated a revised version (made more appropriate for print) of my Married to Depression post. I’ve also been making social media noise as appropriate. Possibly more than most people would prefer to have to listen to.

I’ll be watching numbers on both the pre-order and the indiegogo campaign through the end of this week. However I’m hopeful that tomorrow I can spend more time working instead of hovering. Granted, some of the hovering is necessary. I am the customer service department for the Tayler Corporation and quite a few people have needed help with their orders today. The troubles have all been easy to solve, which is good.

Despite the distraction, I’ve still done some good things today. I helped Howard eat some yummy jambalaya that he made. I visited a friend who truly needed a visit. I wrote words on my novel. The kids all got to school and then they all came home. In a few minutes I’ll remind them all that homework is a thing which exists. Though I don’t expect they have much. The teachers can count to eight-school-days-left as easily as my kids can. Also that last day is only about two hours long, so it hardly counts. Field day doesn’t count as a real school day either. We’ve reached the point where books are being turned in and desks are starting to be cleared out. Soon I’ll be figuring out how to work with the kids home all day long. But for tomorrow, I send them to school and have a normal work day. Today was a day of counting. Tomorrow I go back to work.

Maturing Trees and Getting Older

By / May 17, 2014 / 2 Comments

Our trees have begun to poke their roots out of the surface of the lawn. This surfacing of roots is the natural result of having mature trees. The roots have grown in girth, just as the trunks have. They used to hide under the lawn, now they can be seen. This creates new challenges for our back garden. Where we once had to struggle to keep lawn alive in scorching summer sun, we now have protruding roots and spots where the lawn suffers because it doesn’t get very much sun. The challenges of a young yard are different from those of an older one.

I had my eyes examined about a year ago. I went because I’d noticed changes in my vision and thought that I might need new glasses. Upon hearing that I was forty, the optometrist looked at me sadly and said “The forties are not kind to eyes.” He’s correct. More and more of my friends are acquiring bifocals and reading glasses. Howard has had to adjust his work processes for the changes in his eyesight. Focusing my eyes takes far longer than it used to. Sometimes I have to hold a book in this position, other times in that one. My eyes are not the only things that I feel changing in my body. Dozens of small things work differently than they used to do.

I’m not complaining about my yard or about aging. There are advantages to mature trees and there are advantages to being forty. I’m spending much less time afraid than I used to. Most things I encounter I have the accumulated knowledge to handle with ease. This morning I was out with 13 year old Gleek weeding the tall grass out of the spot of dirt which is supposed to be an herb and vegetable garden. “How do you do that?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Get the roots out with one pull.” I turned and looked at her. Sure enough, she kept pulling the tops off of the grass stalks while leaving the roots. My hands have been pulling weeds for so long that they know exactly where on a stalk I should grab, how hard to pull, and that slight twist that breaks the roots free. I don’t know when I learned it. I didn’t even realize it was a skill until I saw that Gleek didn’t have it. Being forty is like that all the time. Hundreds of things have become so easy for me that I’m hardly aware that they are complicated.

When the gardening work is done for the day, I walk in my yard. I trace the length of roots along the surface of the grass. One of the roots runs for more than six feet along the surface of the ground until it disappears under the fence into my neighbor’s yard. I can see the places where vines have grown through the fence and are breaking planks apart. I see the lattice we attached to the wall fifteen years ago, which is now a crumbling ruin around the trunks of the vines it once supported. I look at all these plants that I put into the ground. I now get the array of blooms that I pictured long ago when I planted a tiny wisteria stick and hoped that it would not die.

I don’t know what is coming for these plants. Possibly the roots will begin to trip people. The trees reach over the house now. Sometime soon we may have damage to repair because a tree begins to die, or begins to fight with the house. I can look ahead and try to imagine, just as I pictured grown trees when I dug holes for baby ones. Of course when I pictured canopy overhead, I didn’t picture roots underfoot, yet I get both. The future I’m going to get will be different than I can imagine today. I will be different. Like the trees, I am going to continue changing and maturing. I’ll need different glasses. My body will change. My capabilities will alter. Some of that I’m going to dislike, just as I get annoyed with my eyes right now. Yet I’m sure that continuing to age will continue to bring me unexpected gifts along with the annoyances.

For today, I walk my yard, tend my garden, and try to make decisions that will be good for years to come.

Kiki’s Birthday

By / May 16, 2014

I failed at birthdays last year, which is sad because all of my kids hit significant milestones. Gleek turned 12, Patch 10, Link 16, and Kiki 18. All the birthdays hit in the midst of other things and though I wanted to give them full attention, I just didn’t have that. The one I failed worst was Kiki. When I look at all the things going on at that time, the failure is understandable. I had all the end-of-the-school-year stuff. I had meeting after meeting about Gleek to make sure that we had her anxiety under control and things set up properly for the next year. I’d just sent The Body Politic off to print. We were expecting the coins the next week. I had relatives incoming for Kiki’s graduation. There was also the trecherous emotional terrain we were marching through having our first child graduate and be college bound. I wasn’t entirely stable. I careened through that month just trying not to crash. Then two days before the birthday, my hard drive failed and I had data loss. Computer failure is always massively anxiety inducing and I was already maxed out. So, yes, completely understandable that the birthday did not go as we would have hoped, but still painful.

I remember talking with Kiki about having a low key birthday and thinking it would be okay. We were getting her a laptop for her combined birthday/graduation present. It was the largest and most hoped-for present she’d ever gotten in her life. We went on her birthday to pick it out, but it had to be configured, so she did not get to take it home and play with it on her birthday. If I’d thought that through I would have realized that computers are rarely things to walk in and take home. I’m pretty sure that Howard took her out for sushi that birthday afternoon. So it is not that we deliberately ignored her, nor that we forgot. I thought it was all good. But she was sad, because most of the day had been just a normal day. Then at bedtime Patch had a meltdown because he hadn’t given her a present and it was really important to give her a present because she was leaving and her leaving was sad. Patch’s meltdown reminded Link and Gleek that they felt the same way. So I piled the three younger kids into the car and took them to Walmart to buy presents. I guess Kiki was in the shower or something. Somehow we left the house without her knowledge.

Though I would have liked to have done the shopping trip earlier (ahead of time, instead of late) as I walked with my kids through Walmart, I realized this was exactly what they needed. I watched them as they looked at towels, mugs, etc. Looking at these things, they were actually picturing Kiki at college and thinking about her there. They each selected a thing that they thought she would use and appreciate. Then each one knew that their sister would be taking something that they had selected for her. Much love went into the selection of those gifts. Every bit as much as if they’d shopped earlier, though for obvious reasons advance shopping would have resulted in a different birthday experience for everyone. When we arrived home we had a 10:30pm “patch up the feelings” birthday party. There were smiles and hugs. Kiki was touched that we’d disrupted bedtime in order to try to make the birthday more what it should have been. It was definitely not the 18th birthday that Kiki emotionally needed.

There were about two weeks between Kiki’s birthday and her graduation. I gave her a small gift on each of those days. I called it eighteen days of celebrating Kiki. We both knew it didn’t erase the birthday that wasn’t what it ought to have been, but it let me show that the hard day was not for lack of caring. I don’t know if it really helped or if she was humoring me.

This year is different. Kiki really doesn’t need more than a low-key birthday. She went to a movie with Howard. I fixed her lunch and took her shopping. She got plants; a philodendron from me and a little bonsai tree from Gleek. Link gave her the stuffed portal cube that he had. Patch gave her books. Howard gave her an easel. It was still more cobbled together than advance-planned, but the key is that she never felt ignored nor neglected. Not once. Not only that, but I was able to tell her about my (failed) quest for a lucky bamboo plant. It was a story that demonstrated that I’ve been thinking of her and her birthday for over a month in various bits and pieces. (This is usually true. I think a lot, but actually pull things together just in time.) The love is no different between this year and last, but the emotional needs and capabilities vary greatly. Last year Kiki was looking ahead to leaving home and needed evidence that she was loved and would be missed. This year she’s just arrived home and had seen in a dozen ways how glad we all are to have her here. Different year, different emotional needs.

Kiki and I talked about last birthday and this birthday. I don’t believe any hard feelings linger. But I did have a moment of being appalled when I remembered the scrambled 10pm shopping trip. I’d actually forgotten that part until Kiki mentioned it. It is one more evidence of how insane last year was. I’m so glad to be in this year now. I’m also glad that I don’t have to figure out any more birthdays for a while. They’re hard to get right.

Schedules and Sleep Deprivation

By / May 15, 2014

My standard weekday schedule shorts me an hour or two of sleep per night. I sleep later on the weekends to restore balance, but the sleep deprivation still accumulates and about every other week I have a day where I send the kids off to school and go back to sleep for three to four hours. It seems like a waste to spend work hours on sleeping, but I can’t deny that I need it. I always feel better afterward. Today was an extra sleep day.

The effects of sleep deprivation on me are subtle. I’m more easily distracted, I write less, and I’m more prone to anxiety. Last night and this morning I felt that I was failing at everything. I was obviously in a downward spiral of failing-ness that would make everything in my life crash and burn. After the long nap my life feels possible again, although I do cringe when I think of opening my task list, because I know it will be full of the things I meant to accomplish today.

The good news is that in two weeks I will no longer have school-schedule-induced sleep deprivation. The bad news is that I won’t have a school schedule to encourage me to get up at a reasonable hour in the mornings. Sleeping til 10am is lovely for lazy vacation days and very counter productive for work days, because no matter when I start my work day, my brain quits around 5pm. So once again I find myself in late May, staring at the summer ahead and thinking “How does this work again?” This year has the additional wrinkle that I’ll be out of town for half of June, which will seriously impact my ability to establish routines.

As always, I’m thinking ahead more than I need to. It will all work out when I get there.

In Which an 11 Year Old Boy Discovers that a “Girl Book” Can Be Really Good

By / May 14, 2014 / 3 Comments

Me: “Hey Patch, for your reading assignment you need to read a Newbery award book. I think you should read this one.”

Patch: “What’s it called?” he asked turning it over. Then he saw the title, The Princess Academy and paused.

Me: “I know has princess in the title, but I really think you’ll like it.”

Patch: “Okay” sounding doubtful.

Later that evening.

Patch: “I think this should be a read at home book, because I don’t want it to get lost at school.”

Me: “Are you a little embarrassed to take a princess book to school?”

Patch: Long explanation of why he needs to leave the book at home, uses supporting evidence, even though he intends to take a different book to school.

Me: “Also, you’re a little embarrassed to take a princess book to school.”

Patch: Sheepish half-smile. “Yeah.”

Me: “I understand. I don’t really think there are girl books and boy books, just stories. But some people do think that way and I understand if you are worried about getting teased.”

Patch: Nods and begins reading.

The first day, he stuck to his plan. The other book went to school. On the second day, Patch went to his back pack and pulled out the other book.

Patch: Holding up The Princess Academy, “I’m taking this one. It’s really good.”

When I picked him up from school that day he walked slowly to the car because he was reading as he walked. In the car he spun theories about what would happen next and how the mountain folk really should be rich because of all the Linder.

Thus do I begin to teach my son that good stories reside in all sorts of covers. I also begin to teach him that he can identify with a female protagonist and be just as enthralled by her story as by stories which feature boys. And if my son can identify with fictional girls then he can empathize with real life ones. Book by book the world can become a better place.

Pondering the weeks to come

By / May 13, 2014

I run my fingers across the calendar squares, counting the days. Twelve more mornings when I have to shepherd the kids off to school. Seventeen days until I reach that final school morning. I try not to count. I want to dwell in the days I have rather than living in expectation of something else, but it is hard. I know that change is coming. I know what I need to do for it, but I can’t know exactly how it will all work until it arrives. So I wait.

I’m not idle while I wait. Each day is filled with a full slate of things to do. Some of them I spend focused on a single large project. More often the day is fractured and pieces spread out over multiple projects. Sometimes it is my task list that reminds me to jump from one thing to another. Other times one task flows logically into the next, as when my work on the challenge coin pdf reminded me that I intended to design a “minion coin” to give out to those people who have helped me with shipping events. Learning the traditions as made me want to participate in them more.

This morning I had the following conversation with Howard over twitter.

Me: May is always a month of many things.
Howard: Name a month that is not, at least for us, a Month of Many Things. Go ahead. TRY.
Me: I think June of 2005 was pretty empty.

Of course I’m only guessing about June 2005. I just know that it fell after Howard quit Novell and before we printed our first book. I was spending my time making the pennies last by shopping garage sales. So I guess I was still busy, just differently busy.

Looking ahead, the calendar for June, July, and August appear emptier. There are fewer appointments, but just as many things to accomplish.