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I feel like I haven’t had a break since LTUE three weeks ago. I got sick for a week. Then the whole mess with the Hold Horses images threw me for an emotional tailspin that lasted for another week. Both of those things interfered with my ability to get anything else done. Then last week I spent all of my non-mommy moments sorting invoices, printing labels, printing postage, emailing customers, folding shirts, packing shirts, and mailing packages. It turns out that folding and shipping 500 t-shirts is not a one person job unless that person enjoys being too tired to see straight for three days in a row.

During the midst of the shirt shipping came the joyous news that my next door neighbor friend had her baby. The very next day we learned that an across the cul de sac neighbor friend died suddenly leaving behind his daughter and two grand daughters. I spent all day Sunday drifting, unable to settle, too tired to focus. I’ve only begun to sort through the emotional repercussions. Birth and death and sickness and stress, the sorting is still incomplete because this morning I had to put myself in gear and be super-effective.

The effectiveness worked. I plowed right through the huge pile of accumulated emails and tasks that always accumulate in the wake of a big shipping. I sorted through all the accumulated piles on my desk. Now my desk is clean. I pulled out the thick two-week’s accumulation of receipts and bills so that I could do the accounting. I finished the accounting all the way down to reconciling all the accounts. I got a lot done. Then I washed up upon the shores of late afternoon with nothing left in me. I decided I’d earned a break and so allowed myself a couple of hours doing whatever my whims dictated. Mostly my whims dictated wandering around aimlessly, but there were a couple conversations with neighbors as well. Emotionally it was what I needed, but it left me unprepared for dinner and family home evening. We muddled through, but I’ve arrived at my blogging hour exhausted. Again.

I am doing too much. If I continue at this pace I will run myself into the ground. Fortunately the pace of the last few weeks is not what is planned for the next few weeks. The slow down is already in process. I’ve still got projects to finish, but I’ve stopped accumulating new things. It will take a few weeks for me to work my way down to a pace I can maintain, but I can see it up ahead.

As for this week, I need to try to wind myself down. I need to create enough spaces that I can sort all the emotions that I’ve packed away into the corners of my brain so that I won’t trip on them while I’m getting stuff done. I have one more big task for this week, laying in the new Hold Horses images. I’ll do it tomorrow and then the rest of the week is little tasks. I’m going to get to go outside and garden. Gardening is perfect brain-sorting work.

When we ship books it is a huge production. I spend hours and hours preparing so that I can simplify things for volunteers. This is necessary if we want to get 1500 packages mailed in two days or less. So when I was faced with a mere 400 t-shirt packages I was quite a bit more lax about pre-planning. The back of my brain refused to believe that this was anything to worry about. Everything is still organized in such a way that I can get the job done, but it would take me forever to explain how it is organized and why I did it that way.

Since the first batch of shirts arrived just after noon, I have packaged up 70 orders. This would seem to bode ill for getting the job done quickly, except those were all the complicated, multi-item orders. Most of what is left are the single shirt orders and those go much more quickly. I still have a long day of work ahead of me tomorrow. I think I can get most of it done. The last little bit will have to wait until I get the final batch of shirts on Saturday.

Back to work with me.

A couple of weeks ago I sent off the files for Hold on to Your Horses to the printer. The printer contacted me and told me that the files were all RGB and they needed to be CMYK. Then there was this whole huge muddle where I asked my artist to do a pile of extra work which turned out not to be the right solution at all. In the end Howard rescued the project and has provided a solution and I’ve finally managed to admit that I don’t have a clue about image editing. I can pull things into photoshop and push things around to see if I can get an effect that works, but that isn’t true expertise. I don’t even really understand the difference between RGB and CMYK except that I need one for computer screens and the other for print. I am smart enough to learn this stuff, which is what I was trying to do. But I couldn’t learn it fast enough and so I was failing miserably until my resident photoshop expert took the project from me.

The solution is to have Howard do the scanning of originals and the image preparation. With this goal in mind, the originals were mailed to us this morning. I am once again stunned at their beauty. I thought the electronic images were pretty, but in the originals the colors seem to jump right into your eyes and make you happy. I am in awe that such beautiful work was done in support of my words. I can hardly wait to share it and I wish that the electronic or print versions were able to reproduce the glory of the originals. Unfortunately reproductions always lose something. Flat ink on paper can not possibly recreate the luminescence of layer after layer of colored pencil refracting in the light.

The whole muddle figuring out how to get the images done correctly for print was really awful. But I will forever be grateful that I got the chance to see all of the originals even if I don’t get to keep them. I’ll have to be content with the single one that I get to keep and frame.

Note to self: You can not do it all. There is a difference between self sufficiency and a stubborn refusal to ask for help. Even if you are capable of learning something, it often makes more sense to ask for help from someone who already knows how.

This note courtesy of Howard taking over the image editing for Hold on to Your Horses and doing a far better job in two hours than I’d been able to accomplish in two weeks of tweaking. From now on all the image editing needs to stay in the hands of the expert. I’ll stick to layout and design.

The note is also courtesy of Eric Stone who flawlessly implemented my website plan in less than a day. There are still things to tweak, but going solo it would have taken me several frustrating weeks to reach the tweaking stage. Again I should stick with layout. I’m good at organizing things that are already there.

I am a camel laden with bales of straw. The straw is heavy and I have a long walk ahead of me. I could put some of it down, but I’ve agreed to carry it and deliver it to the proper locations. If I lose straws or abandon them early, I will disappoint others and myself. So I carry the straw. I work hard to complete tasks so that I can unload some of the straw. Sometimes the task is only a single straw. Other times the task is a whole bale. Each time I unload some of my burden I feel lighter, like I could dance. But the walk goes on and I am met on the road by an endless stream of people who have more straw for me to carry. Some days I’m quite willing to add to my load. Other days I watch them approach and wonder if this will be the proverbial last straw, the one under which I break completely, the one after which my ability to carry straw at all will be permanently impaired.

The hardest times of all, are when some task I thought I’d completed is unexpectedly handed back to me. Particularly if it a bale of straw task rather than a handful of straw task. This happened to me last night. A bale I’ve unloaded twice, came back to me a second time. But before I could collapse, Howard grabbed the bale and added it to his load rather than to mine. I may be a camel over loaded with straw, but I am a fortunate one, because I have a caravan to walk with. I have others around me who notice when my knees are wobbling and help me carry the load.

Now I need to just walk around to the other side of Howard and see if I can pick up whatever gets knocked off because he picked up my bale. And I need to try to walk faster so I can unload some of this straw. And I need to be very careful about agreeing to carry anything else.

I told Howard about my camel and straw metaphor. He told me I’ve got the wrong one. He says I should instead be the camel with it’s nose in the tent because in that one, the camel wins.

I love Howard. He makes me laugh even when I feel nigh broken.

I finally figured out why Kiki spends so much time scolding and picking at Gleek. I knew that Kiki loves Gleek and so the constant stream of negativity was incredibly frustrating. Kiki was observing Gleek’s current behaviors and extrapolating them unchanged into the future. Kiki could just visualize the disasters ahead for Gleek in that scenario and so felt compelled to hound Gleek into making changes. Gleek, whose behaviors are typical of a seven year old, naturally rebelled at the efforts to make her react as if she were 13.

Today I found a quiet moment to talk to Kiki about what she is doing. I explained that she is right, that if the behaviors continue forever Gleek has a rocky road ahead. Then I also explained that these behaviors will not remain unchanged because Gleek will grow and learn. The example we used was cleaning up a bedroom. This was today’s task and Kiki was picking at Gleek for not working hard enough. I told Kiki stories about herself at that same age and explained a little about the brain development that is necessary to handle such a complex task solo. We then talked about the futility of trying to get a seven year old to behave and react as if she were twice her age.

As we talked I could see an inner tension uncoiling inside Kiki. I’d put my finger right on the trouble. Kiki loves Gleek and wants to save her from disaster. Kiki is very relieved to learn that she does not have to be quite so vigilant. I am hopeful of less squabbling.

Patches turned five yesterday. It always amazes me how my kids can be so big and so little at the same time. I look at him and he is so much smarter and more capable than he was only months ago. He’s grown taller, lankier. The last vestiges of toddlerhood have disappeared. And yet he still curls up so small in my lap when he is sad. Among his birthday gifts were items representing both his future and a connection with the baby he once was.

Patches got a lego set with all the pieces to create an articulated spider. Patches opened the box and set up on the kitchen table. With the booklet in front of him, he carefully sorted through pieces and put them together. Lego instructions are all visual and he was fully capable of using them. It took him 90 minutes, but he put that 193 piece spider together all by himself. When he was done, he came to me with a smile on his face. The spider was in his hands. He showed me how the legs moved. He told me that it was a nice spider and had the spider give my arm a hug to demonstrate. Best of all was the confidence in Patches eyes as he looked at he complicated thing he had done all by himself.

Patches also got a great big stuffed puppy. The thing is three quarters as big as he is. I bought him the stuffed animal because he is continually begging for someone to cuddle him in bed at night. Hopefully the giant puppy (already names Ruffy) will qualify as “someone.” It is also possible that I’ve doomed myself to having a giant stuffed dog in bed with me along with my not-so-grown-up-at-night 5 year old boy.

This morning I turned my calendar over to March and realized that I have arrived in the first month of this year which contains two conventions. The first is a fairly normal event. I help Howard get ready, then he goes. The second is quite different. The second is Ad Astra and I get to go too. I’m excited to go. I’m going to have fun. I am also realizing that there are piles of things I need to do to prepare for leaving the kids behind. My parents are going to come stay with the kids. I want it to be a good experience for everyone, so I’m going to lighten the burden as much as possible. I’ll pre-plan meals and prep them so that preparation is simple. I’ll create a schedule book that my parents can reference. I’ll collect a pile of activities and crafts to smooth over those inevitable sad or bored moments. My brain has begun to run on the things that could go wrong and possible preventions or solutions. This is all normal, but I need to not work myself into a state of stress over it. The truth is that all the preparation is for my own comfort. My parents are fully competent and the kids would survive just fine. Mostly I’m thinking about all of this today because I have the time. Tomorrow I’ll be back working on business stuff and my brain will be too occupied to fret.

This coming week is a shipping week. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I’ll be organizing the invoices and printing labels to simplify the packaging process. Thursday and Friday will be the actual packing and mailing. We’ve got about 400 packages to do. And of course there is the ever-looming layout work for Teraport Wars. Not to mention the correction work on Hold Horses. It is going to be a busy week.