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On my kitchen wall I keep the family calendar. It is where I coordinate all the events of our lives so that I don’t forget any of them. Each family member has a different color of pen, so I can tell at a glance who is affected by the note. For the past month all of the days have been filled with rainbow scrawls written in tiny letters to fit around the other things. For the past month there has not been a single day with nothing written on it.

I also have a planner. It is correlated with the calendar on the wall. In the planner is the minutiae of task lists and errands and chores. All the events from the calendar are there, along with reminders to do laundry and visit the post office. Each day gets a whole page of the planner. For the past month all of the days have been filled with notes and lists to check off. Each day I check of 3/4 of the things on the list. Then I turn the page and transfer the incomplete things onto the next page. The next page is usually already full and the incomplete tasks have to squeeze around the things already there. None of the past month’s pages are empty.

For the past month my life has had no spaces. We run from busy task-filled weeks, into busy event-filled weekends. There have been few spaces to pause, take stock, and breathe. The one exception is the retreat I did last weekend. It made me realize what I have been missing. I’ve been missing days, hours that have no check boxes associated with them. I’ve been missing doing things just because I want to rather than because they need done.

My state of mind was clearly illustrated by my computer desktop. I’m in the habit of leaving things I’ll need around the edges of the screen. It keeps them where I will not forget them. But the shortcuts and files and folders begin to accumulate and the space in the center gets smaller and smaller. This also manifests in my house which has been accumulating clutter. I have not had the space to look around and see what needs done. Things only get done if they are on the To Do list. And even if they’re on the To Do list, they only get done if they manage to seem more important than everything else there. Things like sorting the non-legos out of the lego bin don’t even register as important until the bin is so choked with toys that the kids haven’t been able to use it for weeks.

My retreat and this week have made me realize that I need to defend the blank spaces on my calendar with vigor. Next month has lots of empty days. I really need to keep some of them empty. I need to make sure that each day has an hour where I’m not required to be efficient. One hour out of the day where I can do something that is not in my planner or on the calendar.

I need to make space in my life.

Many times in my 12 years of motherhood, I have attempted to read books aloud to my children. I’m not talking about picture books. The kids always love picture books and will sit still for those. Or rather they’ll climb all over me and fight about who has the largest portion of my lap while I try to reach around them all to turn pages and speak loud enough to be heard over the din. But I wanted to be able to share more than picture books. I wanted to read novels. Fun stories that they aren’t yet able to read for themselves, but which I hope they will enjoy. Heretofore I have had only limited success.

Such reading is very difficult if there is a toddler or baby around to object to everyone paying attention to anything not the toddler. But now for the first time since I became a parent, I have no baby or toddler. The youngest of my kids is now old enough to pay attention to a story with no pictures. However none of them are old enough to consistently sit still and pay attention if they have nothing to keep their hands busy. I solve that problem by reading during bedtime snack. I throw food in front of them and then hurry to read aloud while their hands and mouths are busy. Sometimes we only get a single page read. Other times we make it through a whole chapter.

The kids accepted this new habit of mom’s without objection. They listened to Peter Pan some interest, but when I began reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, they began to be enthusiastic. Now they come running for snack and Harry Potter. I expect that we’ll make our way through all of the books. At least I intend to try. I’m interested to see if they remain as enthusiastic when we’re reading the books for which they have not already seen movies. We may take some breaks from Harry Potter to read other books. But the key is that we’ve found an enjoyable ritual that my three younger kids all love. Kiki does not sit and listen. She prefers to wait until I am done reading. Then she snatches the book and reads the entire thing all by herself. Then she reads the next Potter book and the next. Since I’ve started reading Sorceror’s Stone, Kiki has gone through the whole series twice.

I’ve been having so much fun reading to the kids, that I decided to read aloud to Howard as well. I’ve been trying to find a way for me to participate in his painting hobby so that the time he spends painting can be together time for us. I don’t really want to paint myself. There isn’t room for two at his table anyway, but there is plenty of room away from the table. This evening I sat in the other chair and read aloud from Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians.

Reading aloud is fun. I just wish my voice didn’t wear out so quickly.

The report from the heart monitor came in and the news was good. My heart is completely normal and healthy. There were definitely some palpitation events. Apparently one of my ventricles doesn’t wait its turn sometimes. But “sometimes” is less than 1% of the time. Having ruled out heart damage or defects, we’re moving on to blood work. We’ll be testing for menopause and hypoglycemia. In the meantime I’m going to continue to eat right, sleep well, and get some exercise since those things have already proved effective in making me feel much better.

I’ve never considered myself a good housekeeper. Today I realized that I was wrong. I’m really good at cleaning house. I know how to do it. I just don’t spend enough time being a housekeeper. If I could spend hours each day cleaning my house, it would be spotless. And I would be completely bored. House cleaning is not interesting. In fact many of the tasks of my life are not individually interesting. Apparently I decided to add interest by packing as many as possible into each day. Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t do that to me.

That said, I’ve had a couple of really good days. I got lots of stuff done. My retreat worked perfectly. Now I just need to manage my resources properly and make sure I eat right and get enough sleep.

Gleek and Link brought home fund raising packets today. This is the second time this year that they’ve come home with glowing faces and plans for the marvelous prizes they will win. It has been left to me to explain that there is no way we can sell 10 coupon books at $20 each or 75 items from a catalog. In theory I could help them go door to door to all of our neighbors trying, but the expenditure of time is much too high. Besides I have a moral objection to pushing family and friends to buy things that they don’t need.

I know that these fundraisers work. They help the PTA raise a lot of money which is then put into programs at our school. I like the PTA. I like the programs the PTA provides. But these fundraisers are only successful because they use children as emotional levers on the pocket books of their parents. The fundraising companies do not care about the tears and headaches of the children and the parents. The fundraising companies do not care about the PTA or the school or the school programs. The fundraising companies are there to make a profit. They are quick to point out that half of the money goes straight to the school. I would point out that half of the money that people spend in an effort to help the school goes somewhere else. I do not want to give any money to these companies who prey upon my children and make them cry. It makes me angry that the PTA, which is supposed to be all about providing good experiences for children, raises money by emotionally manipulating them; showing them shiny prizes that they will never achieve. The PTA is making money off of setting children up to fail.

It all makes me mad enough that I called the school to register a complaint. I even left my name and number in case they care to call me back and discuss it. I may even make a cash donation straight to the PTA with a letter containing some of the points in this post so that I make really clear that I support PTA, but not fundraising companies.

A retreat is a time to admit that you are over matched, that you have to give ground so that you can consolidate your forces. A retreat is not the same thing as a defeat. A well executed retreat may actually be the key to victory.

This weekend I retreated. I did no business tasks. I did the bare minimum of writing tasks. Instead I focused on the kids and the house and sleeping a lot. This is roughly analogous to retreating to secure my supply lines. The supplies are secure and they’ll keep coming as long as I do not over extend myself in my hurry to go places. Tomorrow I resume my assault on The Schedule trying to make sure that everything gets done in good order.

I think a key tactic will be to do as my friend Janci has done and make a master plan for the next several months. I’ll assign all the necessary tasks to various weeks. Then I will put aside the master plan and only pay attention to this week’s problems. This will be important because I have so many different irons in the fire.

Howard — time spent, jokes shared, conversations had, etc
Children — field trips, treat days, special events, Holidays, story reading, lessons, tantrum management, etc, etc, etc
Household — cleaning, repairing, maintaining, and washing for clothes, dishes, yard and house
Family accounting — Got to make sure the money doesn’t run out too soon while still paying all the bills
business accounting — ditto on the money not running out
Tub of Happiness — preparing for the mass mailing and book release party
The Teraport Wars — installing InDesign, learning to use InDesign, creating the lay out, lining up guest art, filling all the white space, etc
Writing — write regular blog entries, edit blog entries for a book, submit at least two short stories for publication, finish teaching creative writing, attend my writers group, be a reader for a couple of friends
Social — I have friends I’d like to keep and to spend time with
Health — Pay attention to what I eat, confer with doctor, possible further tests

I do not think I’ve ever laid it all out in a row like that. No wonder I’ve been busy. But seeing all of it does help because each of these things have gaps in them, times where there is not much to do. I just have to make sure that the busy time of one thing overlaps the gaps in several other things. Time to get my planner and start making notes.

It is October 14 and I have not had a spare thought for Halloween costumes. I usually have a costume plan hammered out by this point. The costume plan is important so that I know how much time I’m going to have to spend. I may not have been thinking about costumes, but the kids have.

Kiki has designed her own costume. She wants to be an anime style girl. Not from any show she’s seen, or book she has read, but one of her own creation. I’m hoping that we can find things at the thrift store to alter which will be close enough. I don’t want to make it from scratch which was what Kiki intended.

Link wants to be the Master Chief from Halo. I’m not sure where he fixated on this because we don’t play Halo. I tried to see if maybe he wanted to be a Naruto ninja instead. No. He wants body armor and a big gun he can stick on his back. Eep. Hopefully I’ll find some child sized shoulder pads and a dirtbike helmet that I can spray paint green. I am NOT going to try to bid on the ebay Master Chief costume. It is going for over $200.

Gleek seems inclined to select clothes from her dress-up box. Last I heard she wants to be a ninja fairy princess. I have been corrected. She is not a princess. She is just a ninja who wears a dress. The only accesory she is lacking is the ninja head band.

Patches wants to be a spider. This one is easy because all I have to do is pull the spider costume out of storage in the garage.

So it looks like I have two easy costumes and two tricky ones. Hopefully I can pull it all together in the next two weeks.

I believe in healing by faith, the power of the mind to heal the body. I also believe that prayers make a difference and miracles can happen. During my medical adventures in heart monitoring I tried to exercise faith toward making myself better. But there is a difference between true faith and trying to make myself well by sheer force of will. Faith says “What should I do? and thy will be done.” Will says “I’m better now, really I am. That tremor there is just an after effect, but I’m all better.” Faith is patient. Will is petulant and insistent. Will is my good friend. Together we have set many goals and achieved them. Will is a familiar tool. So, familiar that I didn’t notice it masquerading as faith. But faith to be healed is more than willing it to be so. Having the faith to be healed is listening when you’re told to go to the doctor. It means taking the medicines to restore health. It means accepting that taking a medication daily does not make you an unwell person; often the reverse.

I thought I was exercising my faith to be healed. I was instead exercising will power. Two weeks ago I was told as part of a blessing prayer that I need to get more sleep. I’ve also known for weeks that my diet had turned into a mess of skipped meals and sugary snacks. In the past two days I’ve slept until my body was done sleeping and I made sure that I ate nutritious food at regular intervals. The heart palpitations and mental fogginess are gone today. I feel normal, healthy.

I ought to feel stupid for over looking such an obvious solution. Curiously I don’t feel stupid. I just feel relieved to find a solution that does not involve further medical intervention. I feel glad to have the validation of the message I was given weeks ago. I feel grateful to have this lesson in the difference between faith and will power.

I will continue to eat and sleep well. Hopefully that will be the end of my adventures in heart monitoring.

Because some of you (Including my parents who found out about my medical adventures via this journal. In hindsight a phone call would have been wise. Sorry Mom and Dad!) may be curious about how that whole heart monitor thing turned out, I offer the following update.

I’ve heard nothing from the doctors.

This is actually good news. If there was something wrong with my heart, they would have called me. Instead I get to wait a week for my primary care doctor to tell me that my heart is completely healthy. I kind of expected this. It feels like the palpitations are symptomatic rather than causative.

Non-terrifying explanations for my symptoms:

Pregnancy — Nope. We’ve ruled this one out.

Early stages of menopause — I’m young for this, but it isn’t unheard of.

Anxiety — I don’t like this one. In order to fix it I would have to slow down when I really want to get well so that I can go faster.

Hypoglycemia

I’m currently pursuing hypoglycemia as a theory because I can do my own empirical testing. I had a very anxious/palpitatious hour last night about an hour after eating a very sweet dessert. Today I’m having no sweets. Instead I’m snacking on nuts regularly (every 20-30 minutes) and drinking lots of water in addition to regular healthy meals. I was dragging this morning, but my energy has been picking up steadily and I’m feeling better. Granted that eating right will help almost any condition, but if I can make this problem go away merely by eating right, I count that as a win.