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As of last Sunday, Howard and I started teaching a primary class at church. This means that each Sunday we are responsible for teaching a lesson to a group of five kids aged 9 & 10. So far the experience has been pleasant. The kids have been pretty well behaved, although there have been hints that they could get rowdy if we don’t handle things right. One important aspect of being a teacher is to earn the respect of your students. We’re willing to learn from people we respect. Howard and I already had a head start on these kids before we even walked in the door because some of them read Howard’s comic strip. But today after the lesson was over, but before it was time to move into the next section of meetings, Howard earned their awe. They were fidgety and so we decided to let them play Rock Paper Scissors. Howard systematically trounced all of them. They were playing two out of three, and only one time did a child win a round. When Howard was done, he stood back and said:
“So how did I do that?”
The kids all stared up at him, then one ventured “Because you can read our minds?”
Howard smiled. “Exactly.”

He then explained that he was predicting what they would throw next based on what they had already thrown. That was followed with a little bit of Rock Paper Scissors strategy theory. Then there were more games during which one of the kids managed to beat Howard. Then the kids wanted to see if Howard would beat me as well. I was pretty sure he would. He did. I just haven’t internalized enough strategy to really excel at high-speed Rock Paper Scissors.

So by the end of the day, we’d demonstrated that we’re smarter than the kids and that we can teach them cool stuff. I think the class is going to go really well. I know I’m looking forward to team teaching with Howard. I love teaching, he loves teaching. Teaching children is different than teaching adults, but I’m glad to find that some of the same emotional rewards are still there. This is a relief, because the last time I taught primary it was solo, and I felt like I was teaching to a brick wall.

Today my kids discovered the joy of having a mother with packing supplies. All day long they’ve been cutting sections off of my roll of packing paper to draw great big maps and game boards. It makes me glad to see. I remember similar creations during my own childhood.

It’s been a good day.

This past week Howard and I had the occasion to write a press release. (If anything comes of it, we’ll let you know.) Neither of us was particularly happy about having to write it because we had piles of other work to do. I wrote the first drafts and they just were not working. Finally in frustration I went to Howard. He took my drafts and some suggestions from smart friends and then crafted a solid press release. My version did not work because I was merely making an announcement/sales pitch. Howard’s version also included the announcement, but it also told a story that would interest people enough that they wanted to know more. Howard tried to suggest this when I was writing that first draft. “Find the story.” He told me, but in the end he was the one who found it.

When I want to write a blog entry I have the same challenge. I want to find the story that explains the events of my day, or my week (or my year, or my life.) I want to frame it all in a way that makes sense. I want to make the experiences useful either for enlightenment or amusement. I do this primarily for myself, but it brings me joy to share these stories with others as well. No matter what the story I’m telling, I try to find a positive frame for it. I do this because I believe in the power of storytelling. I believe that the stories we tell ourselves have the power to shape our lives. My friend Janci named her blog “fall seven times; stand up eight” I love that frame. I love the message she is giving to herself and to anyone else who reads her blog. I know that no matter what life throws at her, she is going to be fine, because I’ve seen the frames that she gives to the stories of her life.

Lately I’ve been having trouble finding frames for my blog stories. It certainly isn’t for lack of events, because my days are always full. I think that is exactly the problem. My brain is always full tracking tasks and so there is no space for me to lay my thoughts out and shape them into stories. This is doubly true for fictional stories. Fiction starts small but often grows to take over my whole brain and so I’ve been afraid to let the story seeds sprout. The stress has gone down several notches since the end of March. I feel calmer, more ready to handle the things that are coming. But my brain is likely to be cluttered for some time to come. Adding to the clutter in my brain are all the bits and pieces that I’m holding on to because I know that they are the seeds of good blog entries. They are stories that I want to tell. I need to do a better job of clearing space in my brain and my day so that I can find the right frames for these stories. It is so frustrating to sit staring at a blank screen, sorting through the clutter in my brain, knowing I had stories to tell, but not remembering what they are.

Lately the story I have been telling myself about my life is that I am busy and stressed. This theme runs through nearly every day and many of my blog entries. The story I have not been telling is that I am happy and grateful for the life that I get to live. Both stories are accurate, but the abundance of retellings of the stressed stories make them loom over the happy stories. I had this reversed last November. I was no less busy, but happiness was the theme of the month. I need to put that back. I need to remember the stories that explain why I am so busy and why I am glad to be busy with these things. I need to consciously look for the happy things in my life. I think if I do this, I will never be at a loss for a story to tell.

My journal is often repetitive. Tonight I’m going to try to skip the repetitive bits.

Insert “woe is me” rant about the needs of my kids and how I can’t possibly meet all of those needs here.

Insert stressed musings about the state of business and merchandising here.

There. With that out of the way, I can get to the more original stuff.

I got the next set of digital proofs for Hold Horses today. They are beautiful. All the problems are fixed and we’re ready to move forward with the project.

Kiki woke up this morning cheerful and apologetic. She is ready to work hard and talk to her teacher about how to do better.

Kiki’s mid-term grade report came home and she’s brought all of her grades back up. She seems to be absorbing the lesson that practice is sometimes necessary. She’s even talking about re-taking German 1 next year so that she can really learn the language well. This takes all the teeth out of my threat to make her re-take the class if she doesn’t apply herself, but I don’t mind because she’s enjoying the class again and working hard.

Bedtimes have been a mess all week. There was much crankiness this evening because both Gleek and Link had a pile of undone homework and they’re both short on sleep. I was short on patience. But with support from Howard we had a good discussion about how bedtimes haven’t been working because it is still daylight and doesn’t feel like bedtime yet when they should already be asleep. Tomorrow bedtime has to start at 7 pm to make time for the pajamas and toy pick up and snack and story time and reading in bed. I frequently feel like our bedtime rituals are far too elaborate. It is hard for me to be so focused at the end of the day. But the kids are much happier and more secure when bedtime runs predictably.

Summer is coming. As usual I’m worried about the lack of schedule. Insert worried musings about how to manage the lack of external schedule here.

Today I did some bathroom scrubbing. This task was long overdue and took far longer than I expected because of the severity of the grunge that had to be removed. But it is truly clean now. Hopefully going forward I’ll be able to stick to requiring chores of the kids so that they’re helping me keep things clean. That system keeps breaking because I decide I’m too tired to enforce chores right at that moment. I need to remember it really is better for us all if I’m not the only one cleaning up the house.

It snowed today. I’m tired of snow.

And now it is time for bed.

Kiki: (crying and holding her clarinet) Mom. I need help!
Me: Okay. What do you need help with?
K: I’m trying to play this song and it just won’t work!
M: What do you need me to do?
K: I don’t know! I just need help!
M: I need more information so I can figure out how to help you.
K: Why aren’t you helping me?! I need help!
M: Do you need me to come listen while you play?
K: That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to do!
M: Next time please say “mom come listen to me” so I know what you need.
K: (stomps downstairs, makes squeaky noises with the clarinet, then dissolves into tears.) See! I need help!
M: I can’t help you with Clarinet. You know more about it than I do.
K: But I need help!
M: We’ve identified that you need help and that I can’t help. Who else can help you?
K: I don’t know! No one! I’m just going to fail!
M: What about your clarinet teacher?
K: He’s so busy. I don’t want to bother him.
M: He’s paid to teach you and would be delighted to help a student who is actually interested in learning after spending all day trying to teach kids who don’t care.
K: (silence)
M: Put your clarinet away. We’ll worry about this tomorrow.
K: (puts clarinet away and gives me the cold shoulder as she goes past.)

The really sad thing is that I’ve had similarly irrational conversations within the past week or two, only I was doing the part Kiki took tonight. She’s irrational because she’s over tired, her neck is out of joint, and clarinet is not an activity she enjoys. She’ll get some sleep and when she wakes up she’ll find her own solution to the problem because she is incredibly smart and capable when she is thinking clearly. I’m just glad that the conversation did not escalate into an all-out fight because I’m not exactly at my best this evening either.

There is a bright orange flower growing on the highway. Some seed found the small crack to the left of the fast lane right next to the center barrier. It sprouted a small green tuft of leaves and a single, shining flower. The plant bobs cheerily in the wind from the cars, unaware that smashing death rushes by a mere foot away.

I am traveling the highway. I go fast because I’ve got to get where I’m going. If I move to slow something might hit me from behind. Speed is exhilarating. The wind rushes by. I am going places. I become one with the vehicle and the vibrations are ground into my bones. Even when I make short stops, my body thrums with the memory of motion. Can’t stop long. Have to keep going.

But I see the flower on the road I just traveled. The flower I already passed by without noticing. How many other tiny beauties have I passed or crushed in my hurry?

I used to scrapbook. I had a file box full of scissors, tape, paper, stencils, and pictures. My scrapbook projects were not as elaborate as many that I have seen. I know women who will spend hours crafting a single page. Mostly I just cut the pictures to remove ugly or distracting elements. Then I stuck the pictures onto paper in a fairly attractive arrangement and filled the white spaces with writing. I stopped scrapbooking in 2004 when money was so tight that I couldn’t afford to buy prints from my digital pictures. When I finally had money again, I had no time because we’d started creating and shipping Schlock books. I enjoyed scrapbooking, but I don’t miss it all that much. What I miss is having the book to hand to my kids so that they can read and remember the things our family has done. I miss having our family’s history in a book.

Today I realized that I am more able than ever to put together a book of family history. I have professional quality layout tools. I have my livejournal entries. I have piles of digital photos. I have skill and experience in layout work. I have everything I need to put it all together and print a book through lulu. It is not a small project. Part of me looks at the hours of effort necessary to put a Tayler family book together and I quail at the thought. All that time could be spent on a project that would earn money or recognition. But I think this is a worthy project. The worth of an effort can not always be measured by the amount of money or recognition it garners. This project is a gift to my future self. It is a gift to my children and my grandchildren. They will be glad to have it.

The thing that I need to be careful is to not let this project take over. My priorities are out of order if I neglect my kids in order to put together a scrapbook of things that they have done in the past. Similarly bad is if I neglect the work which pays our bills to work on a chronicle project. So I think this becomes my Sunday afternoon project. On Sundays I can spend an hour or two putting together this book. Over a year’s worth of Sunday afternoons, surely I can compile the previous year’s pictures and blog entries.

I started work on the project today. I’m starting with 2007. I can work my way backward in time from there.

Today was an odd day. I spent all of it feeling like I was wasting time, and yet every time I tried to be productive I was unable to focus. Sometimes I decided that the lack of focus meant that I’m sick, but then I didn’t feel sick enough, so I thought maybe I was just being lazy, but then I’d try to do something and not be able to focus, so I’d decide I must be sick. wash. rinse. repeat.

At least the kids had a good day. The weather was beautiful, so they played outside a lot. This necessitated baths later, but the kids like baths, so it just added to the fun of the day. Just before noon I stopped and counted the number of children in my house and yard. There were fourteen kids from five different families and they were all playing happily together. I love my neighborhood. Some other day one of those other families will end up hosting most of the neighborhood kids for an afternoon. Mostly the kids were outside, so it didn’t feel like too many.

The house didn’t get cleaned, not thoroughly. I meant to clean house. Hopefully I”ll be able to kick myself into gear next week and get the house clean. It is sorely overdue for some scrubbing. Having a clean house makes me feel so much better about everything. I’d like to feel better because we went for another round of “this is never going to work, oh wait I think I’ve fixed it” with the Hold on to Your Horses project. Can I be done with that ride now? All the endless circling is starting to make me feel sick. But each circle does bring us closer to done and I think the next pass will be the point of no return after which we can’t change anything. After that comes the nailbiting wait until we get the advance copies from the printer.

Fortunately I will have many things to keep me busy during that wait. My sister and her kids are coming to visit and then I’ll be taking her up to see the relatives in Idaho. I’ll finally get to see my older sister’s baby (who is probably crawling by now.) I won’t get to see the newest niece. She’ll still be in neonatal intensive care. I wish I could see my sister in Germany too. I’ve been longing to hang out with family lately. We’re also embarking on the final six weeks of school. I’ll have piles of events to attend that I don’t know about yet. And before all of that, I’ve got to get all the layout done on the next Schlock book. We want to put that project to bed asap.

Deep breath. I had a vacationish week while my kids were on Spring break. I think I’m ready to pick up and get back to normal on Monday.

Recently I was pointed at this article: http://www.nysun.com/editorials/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-subway-alone and asked my opinion. The article is from the New York Sun and is an editorial from a woman who took her nine year old to downtown New York and deliberately left him there with money and subway maps so that he could find his own way home. The adventure was by the request of the son who wanted to see if he could do it.

What Lenore Skenazy did is not something I would do, but that is primarily because I am completely unfamiliar with New York. I have no idea what areas are safe and what are not. In my head “New York Subway” is fairly synonymous with “dangerous.” If I was dropped downtown and told to find my own way home, the experience would be highly stressful to me. Because the experience would be frightening for me, I don’t consider it appropriate for one of my kids. I might feel differently about it if I lived in New York and rode the subway regularly. I do agree with the points that Ms. Skenazy makes. My job as a parent is not to wrap my children in a cocoon of safety. My job is to guide their growth.

I find Tomato seedlings a good metaphor for this. Early in the spring I fill little cups with dirt and plant seeds in them. Soon the seeds begin to sprout and grow. In my sunny windowsill, they grow tall very quickly. The first time I grew seedlings I was very pleased by this. Then I planted the seedlings outside and they were all dead within a week. The seedlings had grown and adapted for indoor conditions. They were unprepared for real weather and so they died. Over the course of several years I tried many different plans for growing tomato seedlings. The best way I’ve found to grow tomato seedlings is to start setting them outside during the day as soon as they sprout. This way they can experience the weather and adapt to it. I bring the seedlings inside at night when the temperatures are cold enough to kill or when the weather is too fierce for baby plants to handle. This way I raise up little plants that are prepared to handle the outdoors.

The metaphor is far from perfect and I certainly hope that I do a much better job raising kids than I do raising tomato seedlings. It is my job as a parent to carefully expose my children to things that are hard for them, but which will help them to grow in ways that will be useful later in their lives. With this in mind, I made Kiki and Link mow the lawn today. As they struggled to push the heavy mower, I knew that the struggle will make them stronger and better able to handle other challenges in the future. And when they were done they could look around the yard with a sense of accomplishment. I saw how straight and tall they stood. They felt good knowing that they had really contributed to our household. Nothing builds self confidence better than completing a truly difficult task. Hopefully when they are faced with a difficult task in the future, Link and Kiki will say “well, if I can mow a lawn I can certainly do that.”