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“I think that’s Callie.” Said Link’s friend as he petted the cat in Gleek’s lap. This small recognition led to the doorbell ringing an hour later. An 11 year old girl was at the door. I knew her and her family. She was in my creative writing class over a year ago. Her mother is Kiki’s youth group leader. They live around a couple of corners and down the block. The girl was here to see if our Keeka, that we found just over two weeks ago, was her cat Callie, who went missing last November. I led her to the back where Link was playing with Keeka. As we walked, a small piece of me hoped that she would be disappointed, so that my children would not have to be. I thought of the hours that Gleek and Kiki had spent just sitting outside and petting Keeka. We would never have deliberately gone out to acquire a cat, but a beautiful and friendly one had come to us unasked.

“Callie!” the girl gasped with delight. For a moment Gleek was delighted to swap cat stories. Gleek chattered about how we had found Keeka under our deck and rescued her. But then realization began to set in. Suddenly this cat was no longer our Keeka. She was someone else’s Callie. Gleek crumpled into sobs. I quickly realized that I could not just let the girl carry away our cat. Instead we walked with her, so that Gleek could see the home where Keeka lived. Patch came too, but Kiki and Link elected to stay home. Callie was greeted with delight by the rest of the family. They had all missed her and mourned her. It was a sight that Gleek needed to see. We came inside to talk about how the cat was lost and then found. Gleek got to see Callie curl up in her favorite chair and start purring. She also got to play with two tiny poodle dogs. Then I gathered my kids and we bid farewell.

All of my kids have a standing invitation to go and visit Callie any time they want. When we acquired the cat, this is actually the outcome I hoped for most, that she could go back to a home where she could be allowed indoors, but where my kids could visit. It is good, and yet tomorrow morning will be sad when there is no cat meowing at the back door to remind us that her bowl is empty. Tomorrow afternoon will be sad when she is not sitting on the doorstep waiting for the kids to arrive and pet her. We will go visit, but it will not be quite the same as when she was ours. But then I think of the joy on my friends’ faces. If I am a little bit sad, they were much more sad and now they are not. And neither is Callie. She was glad to be home.

I needed a plan fast because it was almost time for family home evening and it was my turn to provide the activity. I remembered a recipe that had been posted in the Codex forum, so I grabbed ingredients and started mixing. The kids trickled into the room. Kiki watched in disbelief as I dumped spoonfuls of flour into a mug

“What are you doing?” She asked.

“Making an experiment.” I calmly answered. This was true. Any untested recipe is technically an experiment.
Gleek, having spotted the cocoa on the counter announced “I know what it is. It’s hot chocolate!”

“No it isn’t” Link protested. “She just put in an egg.”

Kiki peered into the cup. “Yeah. It is much too thick for hot chocolate.”

“I think it is going to explode.” Patch announced. All four kids were gathered around the counter, completely fascinated as I stirred brown glop in the mug.

“No it won’t” Kiki announced with all the certainty that being thirteen automatically supplies. “Food doesn’t explode.”

“Baking soda and vinegar does.” Link countered.

For a moment all was silent as four heads turned to watch the handful of chocolate chips be added to the mix. Then I turned and put the mug into the microwave.

“I told you it was hot chocolate!” Gleek announced triumphantly.

“No way.” Kiki declared. Before the argument could blossom, Howard and I called everyone to the table to begin the family event. We started with a song. Gleek picked Once There Was a Snowman, but with the caveat that we sing it backwards. This means that the snowman starts small and grows tall by the end instead of the other way around. As the song wound to it’s close, I glanced over at the microwave and burst out laughing. The concoction in the mug had puffed up over the top of the mug until it was as tall above the mug as the mug was tall.

“See!” Shouted Patch. “It exploded!”

All the children abandoned the table in a general rush to see the “exploded” experiment in the microwave. Thirty more seconds, and the timer beeped. We called everyone back to the table for prayer and lesson. Then we were ready for the mug. The contents of the mug had shrunk back into it. I dumped it onto the plate.

“This is a mug muffin.” I announced. We divided it between us. As muffins go, I’ve had better flavor, but it was still very good. It was particularly good when dipped in milk. But the joyous novelty of cooking a muffin in a coffee mug was fun for us all. Once the first one was gone, we made another.

Mug Muffins
4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)(I absolutely recommend keeping them)
a small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly.
Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again.
Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts (high).
The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don’t be alarmed!

Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.
EAT! (this can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous).

Here I am in my house. The house is not clean, but it is Sunday and so I have a good excuse not to tackle it right now. I’m not supposed to work on Sunday. “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.” That commandment is harder to follow than one might think, particularly when my leisure activities are so entwined with my work. And yet the break benefits both the work and me. The kids are downstairs watching a pokemon disc we got from Netflix. We were going to watch City of Ember, but Link has a scout event at 7 pm and we don’t want him to miss the finale. City of Ember will have to wait until tomorrow. Since tomorrow is a holiday, we’ll have all day long. Except that tomorrow is also a working day for me. So much to do. The volume on the TV is too loud. Pokemon shows are always annoying at high volume. I should go turn it down, except that would require me to get up and as soon as I get up I will remember that I really ought to go fix dinner. Spaghetti is the plan for tonight. I’ve got to use up that italian sausage before it goes bad.

And so my thoughts dribble out of my brain and out through my fingers. I would love to really focus on writing something meaningful, and yet if I tangle my brain into writing I worry that I will have trouble refocusing tomorrow. Also, I’m tired. Too tired to find the insightful thoughts that must be lurking here in my head somewhere. I fell asleep in church today. Not surprising when I was awake on the wrong side of 2, 3, and 4 am last night. The caffeine I drank at 7 pm last night killed the vicious migraine, but also killed normal sleep. At least I got to snuggle Gleek for awhile. It has been months since she came crawling into our bed from bad dreams. 8 year olds tend to stay in their own beds. But last night she was scared and I got to snuggle her. I need to do it lots because before long she’ll be as big as Kiki. That would be a good segue into something insightful, but after staring blankly for several minutes, I couldn’t figure out what the insightful thing might be. Oh well.

This week I’ve spoken to several people about the fact that I’m “running hot”, or maybe I just spoke to myself about it several times. Sometimes I get confused about that. But anyway, what I’m trying to communicate is that I’ve been running on high energy, accomplishing lots, and then fizzling out. The metaphor only sort of works. It doesn’t express the wideness of the experience. Perhaps it is more like the huge sails on the rigged ships of yore. In this state I have unfurled my sales in order to catch all of the available wind. It lets me travel very quickly, but the heavy wind also strains the mast and the rigging. If I keep my sails too wide, I risk doing damage to the ship itself. This one doesn’t quite work either. It does properly convey the images of failure, because when I stop working efficiently, it usually is not catastrophic. Perhaps instead it is like casting my nets wide to catch lots of fish. For awhile I can do it, but then the nets wear out and fishes start escaping through the holes. If I don’t take time to mend the nets, then I’ll end up with more holes than net. Only that is not quite it either.

When my focus is wide, I move fast. I process multiple streams of information. I track many trains of thought and manage them all. As an example, this morning I answered email, wrote a blog entry, put a new item into the store, arranged for printing of the email, and did the last touch of contact on a contract. I required two computers and 30 minutes to accomplish all of that. The tasks were all interlinked. The item in the store was part of the blog entry and required an email to a supplier. The contract contacting was also reflected in the blog post. It was very much like fast paced juggling. It is a high energy, adrenaline charged state, but I can not stay there for long because I become fatigued. Then instead of catching all those balls I keep turning around to discover that one bounced off the floor while I wasn’t looking and others are just gone. Did I throw them too hard? Did they roll off into the corner? I have no idea. Also with my brain opened wide for multi-track processing, I pick up a lot of noise. I accumulate piles of information, but am not able to process it. Quickly it all turns into a meaningless wash. This is when I have to deliberately step back, limit my inputs, and reconfigure my brain to be able to focus on a single thing instead of many things at once. Transitioning from one to the other is not easy. Particularly when being hyped on adrenaline leaves me cold and shaky. I managed it with a hot bath and a nap. Unfortunately I was awakened before I had completed the decompression process. Kids need stuff. Often.

But now I am ready to settle down and focus on one or two big tasks rather than a dozen small ones. The only problem being that I’ve run out of work hours. Now I’m into mommy hours. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep the focus until tomorrow morning so I can get the copy edits and footnote boxes put into Scrapyard.