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This past year Link has decided that Indiana Jones is way cool. So it was no surprise that he wanted an Indiana Jones theme for his 11th birthday. He had a big party with friends last year, so this year I was ready for a quieter celebration. “Quieter” doesn’t necessarily mean “simpler.” The celebration started when I handed Link an Indiana Jones lego set and told him to construct it. Once constructed, this set adorned Link’s cake. While Link was distracted with the construction, I set about hiding all of his presents. Each gift was hidden with a little scroll giving the clue for finding the next gift. I burned all the edges of the clues so that they looked extra cool. The hunt started with Link receiving an Indiana Jones style hat. We then told him that he was Indiana and the rest of us were his helpers. Then we romped through the house and the yard in search of the “rock cliff” the “farthest end of the land where the vines grow tangled” and the place that “blasts heat and rumbles, tumbling its victims in circles.” That last one had the kids stumped for quite a while. Probably because they never do laundry. Kiki finally figured it out. It was a fun family activity for us all. Later this evening Howard will be cooking dutch oven pizza and we’ll eat cake.

Last night the paint on my car was scratched with something sharp. This was done while my car was sitting in my driveway. It was not an accidental scrape. It is hard to accidentally scratch the F-bomb on the side of a vehicle. It is also hard to accidentally hash mark the hood so it looks similar to a game of tic tac toe. I suspect this vandalism is related to the fact that we recently locked our gate, thus forcing teens to hop the fence if they want to cut through our yard. We had to lock the gate so that my back yard neighbor’s toddler wouldn’t wander through the gate that was consistently left open. I even put up a sign apologizing for the necessity of locking the gate.

Now Howard and I are left with a choice. How do we act in response to the damage that was done to us? We know who tends to travel through our yard. Of the travelers we have ideas about who would do this kind of damage. But we have no proof. Innocent until proven guilty. And our suspicions could be wrong. Sometimes “nice” boys do really stupid things.

I’ve thought much today about the bishop in Les Miserables. The bishop took in Jean Val Jean and fed him. When Jean Val Jean responded by stealing the silver, the bishop did not punish him. Instead the bishop also gave Jean Val Jean the silver candlesticks. That act of kindness changed Jean Val Jean forever. I could act as the bishop did. I could return kindness for malice. A neighbor fixed the gate for me today. Now it will swing shut and latch instead of bouncing back open. This means I no longer need to lock the gate. But I have to wonder if rewarding vandalism with unimpeded passage through my yard teaches the wrong lesson. Perhaps in doing so, I am merely teaching a young and impressionable person that damaging property is an effective way to get what he wants. Perhaps the right answer is to lock the gate permanently and request that kids stop traipsing through my yard. The “one idiot ruined this for everyone” principle. But I don’t want to have to enforce that. I like good relations with my neighbors. I like most of the kids I see traipsing through my yard.

I have thought of calling the police, but that seems futile. They have much more important crimes to pursue and they’re unlikely to be able to find out who did it. I have thought of approaching the parents of the kids who generally travel my yard, not with the intention to accuse, but with a request that they help me seek the truth. But even worded carefully my request could be taken for an accusation. I don’t want to start a feud. I also do not want to start a witch hunt or a big neighborhood drama. And yet, I worry about the vandal if his damage passes without consequence. It is much better for children to learn consequences on small violations instead of large ones. On the other hand, perhaps a neighborhood drama is the only way this vandal will hear about the negative consequences of his act. Perhaps the witch hunt is necessary to create an awareness of guilt.

In the end my choices come down to who I want to be. Do I want to be a seeker of justice? Do I want to be a giver of mercy? Do I choose my actions because I fear the vandal might strike again if I anger him? Do I harbor anger, seeking vengeance and reparation for the damage that was done? I’ve figured out that vengeance does not interest me. I don’t need to punish. But somewhere out there is a boy who knows what he has done and either feels guilty or doesn’t even care. That boy needs to learn from this experience. He needs to learn why we do not damage the property of others just because we feel like it. I just wish I knew the best way to make sure that lesson gets learned.

You would think that the day we open pre-orders for a new book would be a celebratory day. After all, this is finally the day when we get paid for all the work that Howard did creating the Schlock strips and the layout work on the book. It turns out that the day AFTER the first Pre-order day is usually the celebratory one. By the second day, the print run is paid for and we’re feeling relaxed. pre-order day is stressful. We keep clicking to see how many orders have come in. Then we do impromptu analysis of how that stacks up to this-time-last-pre-order, which is an imprecise science at best. I spend much of my day fielding customer emails. Most of the emails are problems I can solve quickly and easily. Unfortunately some of the emails must be answered with “I’m sorry shipping costs so much, there’s nothing I can do about international shipping costs.” Then I spend an hour poking around in the store and rethinking my shipping decisions to make sure that there really is nothing I can do. Sometimes I have to update product pages to make wording more clear. Other times I have to help sort out payment problems. I don’t mind helping customers, but it is depressing if they have a problem that I really can’t solve. (This time it is just the cost of shipping, but last time our store was really hostile to one customer for no apparent reason.)

Tomorrow I get to start printing invoices and do a preliminary sort to send out any packages that don’t contain The Teraport Wars. I also get to do the accounting for the money that has come in. Later, after more of the orders have arrived, I’ll do counts to figure out the quantities of shipping supplies I’ll need to buy.

But more important, I need to make sure that those business tasks only occupy me completely during the mornings when the kids are all at school. I need to be available for them in the afternoon. Today I was distracted all day. My plan for family outings needs to be in addition to regular daily attention rather than in place of it.

Hold on to Your Horses is featured as a prize for a contest over at WantNot.net. I’m very grateful to Mir for being willing to feature my book, thus letting many people know about it.

Pre-orders for The Teraport Wars are now open. You can order the regular edition or the Customer Choice Numbered Sketch Edition. The books are the same, but the sketched editions also have a hand drawn and individually numbered picture drawn on the final page of the book. The sketch editions are only available until 8 am mountain time on Friday, so get one before they’re gone.

On Friday I threw some clothes into suitcases then we all piled into the car to spend two days in Pocatello Idaho. The event was a family reunion and it was based partly out of a hotel and partly out of my brother’s house. Family vacations always have stressful moments, but this was remarkably lacking in pre-trip I’ve-got-to-work-extra-hard-to-get-ready stress and post-trip I’ve-got-to-catch-up-on-work stress. We had a family trip that had almost no impact on the business side of our lives. This was astonishing to realize. I’ve been plotting and planning, trying to figure out how to carve out space for us to take a real family vacation. This trip showed me that instead of struggling to create space for a week long event, I should be planning smaller events more frequently. We should be “getting away” at least once per month to go to local things like the pool, or the zoo, or a museum, or a park. Then every three months or so we should be planning a weekend trip where we drive for a few hours, stay at a hotel (or campground), and do some fun stuff. In fact we’re probably better off with more frequent family time than with a big effort to make a big trip. I’m already making plans for what we’ll do.

Once per week, Family Home Evening where we spend about an hour playing a game, talking, etc.
Once per month, a family outing to something local like a swimming pool.
Every 3-6 months, a weekend get away to see something new.

On Friday:
haul children out of town to visit relatives. Lete them swim for two hours. Give them kittnes to play with, a huge dirt hill to clmimb, and a fire for marshmallow roasting. Keep them up at least 4 hours past their normal bedtime and make them sleep poorly in unfamiliar beds.

On Saturday:
Haul kids out of bed early to eat breakfast at the hotel. Drive to a huge public pool with water slides. Swim for two and half hours. Eat lunch. Return to hotel and swim in the hotel pool for three more hours. Do a craft. Eat pizza. Stay up late again. Have them sleep with too may people per bed. Make sure that mom sleeps with them, so that she is also poorly rested.

On Sunday:
reap an abundant crop of tantrums from everyone.

The good news is that we’re more likely to remember Friday and Saturday than Sunday.

We arrived at my brother’s house and the kids wen barreling from the car. Adults followed at a more sedate pace. After all of the “”hello, how are you” we noticed that there was a significant lack of running, shouting, thumping, and laughing. The kids had all vanished. We found them in the garage. They were cooing and cuddling the batch of five-day-old kittens that my brother’s cat provided. Six children cuddling six little bundles of fur. It was adorable.

“What are you doing?” asked Kiki as Howard rocked a mounted-in-tire-and-cement tether ball pole into a tipped position.
“Well,” Howard answered. “It used to be that if I could get it tipped, then I could let it fall back into place and it would catapult me into the air.” He let the pole fall. He bounced, but did not catapult. “But I”m heavier now.” He sighed. Howard’s eyes met mine. I started the sentence but he finished it with me. “I need a bigger one.” I love knowing him so well that I know what he’ll say.

My brother uses old tires in his garden. He didn’t plant a garden this year because he was too busy moving, so the tires were laying in a pile. I turned and noticed Patch standing still while Gleek carefully lifted a tire over his head. It joined the stack of two which had already been stacked around him. Patch, grinning from ear to ear, was up to his shoulders in stacked tires. I was just pondering whether the fun they were having was worth the inevitable filth that playing with tires would produce, when my sister in law spoke up.
“Oh don’t let them play with those. There are spiders in them.”
I hollered this warning over to Patch and Gleek. Patch’s smile dissolved, and he hugged his arms close to his body. Gleek, impressed with the urgent need of getting Patch out of the rind of spider-infested tires, began lifting the top one back off. This caused Patch to squeal in terror because a spider might land on his head. Patch’s panic level was rising by the second.
Fortunately all of this only took seconds and I was only a few steps away. I lifted Patch out of the ring of sideriffic terror and inspected him for crawly things. There weren’t any, but Patch needed extra hugs just in case. No one touched the tires after that.

Trying to keep track of kids at a public pool on Labor Day weekend is like an extended game of Where’s Waldo, but you can only see heads and Waldo is allowed to move around. Oh, and there is the chance that if you don’t find Waldo, he might drown. We had bunches of fun, but it was not relaxing fun for the parents. The hotel pool had no water slides, but my kids were the only ones in the water, so I could just sit off to the side and relax.

I was so busy fretting over the zombie that I completely neglected to mention that I’ll be out of town all weekend. There’s a family reunion to attend and probable limited internet access. The hotel has access, but solitary time with said access is going to be limited. I shall consider the fate of the zombie doll when I get home. In the meantime I shall enjoy the company of live people.