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Wrapping my head around this week’s schedule

By / September 3, 2007 / 2 Comments

Today:
Deliver birthday party invitations
write a page of text for the Schlock book
take Gleek to buy a brush for Kiki to replace the one that got broken yesterday (Gleek will use her own money)
Make a dinner

Tomorrow:
School for all four kids
Meeting at school about the Creative Writing class I’ll be teaching
EDIT: Scrambling with last minute stuff for the schlock book
first day of art lessons for Kiki and Link
Back to school night a the elementary school (Not going. I’ll catch up with the teachers next week.)
Writer’s group

Wednesday:
School for 3 kids
Get fingerprinted so I can teach the creative writing class Do this Thursday
Prep for editing party
run a cub scout den meeting
EDIT: Editing party was just moved to this night because the sooner we can get the book done, the better.

Thursday:
School for all four kids
EDIT: Get fingerprinted so I can teach the creative writing class
EDIT: Scrambling to get the edits put into the schlock book

Friday:
School for 3 kids
EDIT: Send the Schlock book off to the printer (hopefully)
Family party for Link’s birthday

Saturday:
Drive to Ogden to retrieve Link’s best friend (3 hours round trip)
Howard attends Dragon’s keep 20th anniversary
Run Mario Party birthday complete with giant game board and mini games
host a book editing event for the next Schlock book. this was moved to Wednesday night.
Either collapse in a heap or have a couple friends over to celebrate surviving the week. This might be a good time to haul out our “Give Me the Brain” card game because I’ll surely feel like a zombie before the week is out.

Only Tuesday and Saturday are insanely overbooked, The whole week is booked solid. I’m going to have to run in high gear this week to get it all done. Particularly because some of those days which seem empty will actually be full of getting ready for the overbooked days. Already filled them up.

I’ve got to figure out how to run a giant Mario Party game with 7 boys aged ten as the live game pieces. Usually I don’t do complex parties for kids. But it has been several years since Link has had a party at all and he has been positively glowing while planning this event.

And there will certainly be more Schlock book work to be done. There are always odds and ends to be taken care of.

Being responsible for my words

By / September 2, 2007 / 4 Comments

Yesterday Kiki attended Anime Banzai with Howard. It is a kid friendly convention. Kiki found many things to delight her and many kindred spirits to talk to. At some point during the convention Kiki and Howard ran into a person who reads this blog. He asked her how she liked having her mom blog about her. Kiki’s response was “She does?” I’m surprised at this response because I’ve never attempted to keep my blogging habit a secret from the kids. In fact several times I’ve specifically asked Kiki’s permission before posting something of hers. I asked Kiki later about her answer and she said that while she knew I blogged, she’d never considered that other people might be reading it. I assured her that I’m careful about what I post. And I also told her how to look up my blog and read it whenever she wants. I also told her that if she ever wants something about her removed from my blog, she has only to let me know and I’ll pull it down. In another few years (like maybe when she’s 16) we’ll probably get her a livejournal account of her own and then she can comment and tell her side of these stories.

Then in church today we had a lesson on being careful how we speak to and of each other. There was also a section on being careful how we think and speak about ourselves. The major point of the lesson is that words have great power to heal and do damage. Sticking the words “just kidding” at the end of a sentence doesn’t unsay the criticisms that came before. Sentences that begin “I shouldn’t tell you this but” need to remain unspoken. We all have a responsibility to be as careful with our words as we are with our vehicles because accidents are common.

I think the need for caution is particularly important in my blogging because the words remain. My father taught me that lesson after he read one of my blog entries. He pointed out that the only entry I made about a particular event was me griping about inconveniences which made the creators of that event feel like the event had been a failure. The event was a wonderful one, but I hadn’t told those parts. If I left the entry to stand as it was, then that was all anyone would know. It would become history. I edited the entry to give a much more balanced report.

I love blogging. I love being able to share my thoughts and my life. I love having people respond. I particularly like the times when people say that my words have somehow helped them. I feel like this blog is a good thing, but the potential for damage is huge, and so I must be very careful. I must never say anything about anyone in writing that I would not say if they were standing in the room with me. Because these words stay here and that person may wander through later.

Harry Potter wins again.

By / September 1, 2007 / 1 Comment

I have discovered the secret of the success of Harry Potter. It is fun to read aloud to children. This evening Link, Gleek, and Patches all sat spellbound as I read chapter one Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. When I tried to stop halfway through the chapter, they pleaded unanimously for me to continue. They were this spellbound even though they have already seen the movie. All the little details drew them right in and they laughed often. I am looking forward to them discovering all the delightful things which are in the books and not in the films.

It wasn’t just the kids who enjoyed it either. The words lend themselves well to expressive reading aloud. Yay for Harry Potter.

Mutiny in the classroom

By / September 1, 2007 / 4 Comments

Someone asked me to tell the story of the time I was part of a classroom mutiny. I was a sophomore in college and at the time I was intending to train as a high school English teacher.

I was in a class where the point of the class was to make visits to schools. This required the class to be a solid four hour block of time five days per week. We only visited schools 6 times during the 6 week term. Most of the sections of this class let students out after a two hour lecture, but my professor was determined to fill every single hour. He did it with the most mundane stuff. It is ironic that my first “How to be a teacher” class is the only one where I’ve seen students successfully mutiny against a professor.

It started with an extremely poor decision on the professor’s part. He decided that there would be a grand total of 100 points possible for the entire term. This meant that any time he gave a 5 point quiz, we all argued vehemently about every single point. The professor was very frustrated by this behavior and kept saying “It’s just one point!” But 5 lost points meant no A, and a lost A could mean a lost scholarship, so we fought hard.

Then we spent hours and hours taking personality tests just to fill up the four hour block of time. One personality test can be interesting, but taking 8 different ones was a little excessive and none of us could see how it was training us to be teachers. To make matters worse, we began to lose respect for the man who was supposed to be teaching us how to be teachers.

The students began to band together. We all had to pass this class and the professor had become an obstacle. The level of frustration continued to rise as people lost points over personality tests or other inane things. Groups of students discussed walking out of the class after two hours, but the professor held our points hostage, so no one did. Instead we sat like uncooperative lumps in class and only did the work which had points attached. There were no class discussions because none of us would discuss.

In hindsight I feel sorry for this professor. Things had gone horribly wrong, he had no control over the class and he had to stand up in front of us for 4 hours to lecture to what must have felt like a brick wall. And yet he refused to back down, even though he was overheard complaining about what our class was doing to his blood pressure. He kept us there for the full four hours and would not expand the point range. My sympathy dries up when I think how he refused to negotiate at all.

The stand-off ended a week prior to the end of the term, when a group of students went to the Dean and complained. We don’t know what the Dean said, but the professor surrendered. He increased the number of points possible. He also stopped teaching us. Instead he brought in guest lecturers for the last week of classes. It was the best week we’d had. The lecturers were fascinating and I learned more about teaching and life than I’d learned all term. I didn’t mind staying for 4 hours to hear the guests. I still remember some of those lectures.

To my knowledge that professor never taught that class again. He may have taught other classes, but I never again put myself in one. In fact, I can’t even remember his name.

Off of the roof

By / August 31, 2007 / 1 Comment

After a day of accomplishing nothing much, I had finally gotten moving and was cleaning out the Linen closet. I’d just found left over “new baby” supplies from Patches’ birth 4 years ago, when Neighborchild came running in to tell me that Gleek had fallen off the roof of our playset. We have a big redwood playset.
That roof is at least 12 feet off the ground.
I ran.

Gleek is okay.
It was apparent that she was okay within 60 seconds of my arrival next to her. But I still needed to go through all the triage checks to be absolutely sure. There are children who will suffer broken bones with hardly a whimper. It would not surprise me if Gleek is one of these. I was starting all the “move this arm, move that arm” checks when Kiki felt impelled to scold Gleek for being on the roof. Gleek screeched at being scolded. Then Kiki felt that Gleek was not learning the right lesson from this experience and tried to elaborate. I did not have either girl’s attention. I attempted to continue to soothe Gleek and check her injuries, but it was difficult with Kiki declaring that Gleek was just bruised and Gleek screeching at every word that came out of Kiki’s mouth. I knew that all this scolding from Kiki was merely her fear finding an outlet. I tried to explain this to her and get her to stop interfering with what I needed to do. In fact I told Kiki in very clear terms to be quiet. But she stood there and I could tell that she was going to speak again. So I ordered her into the house. I knew it would hurt Kiki’s feelings, but I’d spent 5 minutes arguing with Kiki that I should have spent focused on Gleek.

With Kiki gone I was able to do all the limb checks. Nothing appears broken, although she’ll have some bruises. I was also able to get Gleek to tell me exactly how she fell. She described hitting the swing crossbar with her arm on the way down. This information prompted me to check her armpit where I found the largest of her injuries. She is thoroughly scraped there. She hadn’t even felt it hurting until we found it. She wanted to see the injury, so I brought her inside to a mirror. When she saw the scrape, the enormity of What Could Have Happened hit Gleek. Suddenly she understood that she really could have broken an arm or a leg or her head. Gleek burst into tears and needed more cuddling. I let her talk and snuggle as long as she needed, then settled her to watch Link play a video game.

I then went to talk to Kiki. First I apologized for sending her away. Then I explained to her that when someone is injured there is a process that they have to go through to assimilate what happened to them. During the first shock phase it is important to not confuse the patient with too many people talking. It is also very important to listen to everything because it gives you clues about what to check. Gleek needed to tell her story without interruption for me to know to check under her arm. I explained to Kiki that she was trying to force the realization of danger on Gleek before Gleek was ready to hear it. Later Gleek didn’t need the lecture at all because she made her own realizations. That was even better, because the things we realize for ourselves stick with us longer than things we have merely heard from others. In short I tried to explain how I was handling the crisis and how Kiki had been interfering with my crisis management. Kiki isn’t mad at me anymore. She nodded intently when I asked if she understood what I was trying to explain. I lay even odds that she’ll still interfere the next time Gleek has a crisis. Kiki feels a responsibility to help raise Gleek and I keep having to tell Kiki to back off and let me be the mom. That maternal instinct is a good thing. I just need to help Kiki channel it in ways that are constructive to the sister relationship rather than destructive.

Later tonight I expect Gleek to be achy and sore. She may also need extra hugs and loving at bedtime. Nightmares are a possibility. I’ll actually welcome all those things if they teach Gleek to be more cautious about climbing.
Today could have gone much worse.

Fingerprinting

By / August 31, 2007 / 13 Comments

I spoke with the people who are organizing the after school program for which I’ll be teaching. It turns out that in order to be a teacher I’ll have to be finger printed and get a background check. This is done to prevent predators or dangerous people from working closely with the kids. For some reason this process makes me nervous even though I know I’ll pass with flying colors. So I’m going to poke around in my brain a little to see if I can locate the source of this nervousness.

As of right now I am not in any kind of law enforcement database that I know of. I’ve never been fingerprinted for anything. This means that if my prints turned up as part of an investigation, the prints would remain unidentified because the investigators have no way to tie those prints to me. The thought of putting my prints in a database makes me antsy. What if somehow it leads to me being falsely accused of something? I’m not even going to pretend that fear is rational. I have never been a part of a criminal investigation and hopefully never will be. Not only that, but I seriously doubt that the school district database is connected to any criminal database.

Then there is the fear of mistaken identity. I know that my background is clean. The only run-in I’ve had with The Law is when I got a citation for being an idiot and causing a traffic accident. That was 12 years ago. But there is a chance that someone else with my name has a much more colorful past. This actually happened to my brother. He was nearly arrested because he has the same first and last name as a person for whom a warrant had been issued. Since that first time he has had similar trouble several times. At least now he knows to alert people to the existence of that other guy with his name. I know there is another Sandra Taylor in the area. She shops at the same pharmacy that I do and doesn’t have insurance. Fortunately her last name has an “o” rather than an “e” and now the pharmacists know me on sight. (It just now occurs to me to wonder if my insurance ever got billed for her prescriptions, since several times I was almost charged her uninsured full price for mine.) But what if this same kind of mix-up happens during the background check? Logically I know it would get sorted out. The worst that could happen is that I’m told I can’t teach the class.

This kind of fingerprinting and background check is done all the time. My brother and his wife have gone through it to be foster parents. Likely anyone who has adopted has gone through it. Many companies require background checks. But I’ve spent 34 years flying under the radar and it makes me nervous to pop up where I can be seen.

Weird. I probably just need to get it over with.

Falling behind the curve

By / August 30, 2007 / 3 Comments

This evening was not a smooth one and it is my fault. I gave all of my “A game” time to business tasks this week and none of it to my kids. This afternoon I was pretty burned out. I made dinner, but it was 90 minutes later than it should have been. This is potentially disastrous because my kids really need the friend-free, electronics-free space between dinner and bed. If I’m doing it right, they can get homework done and still have an hour or more to play quietly.

This evening was spent warding off incipient quarrels and tantrums. Unfortunately in the space of time I had, I could only head these things off by yelling louder. I prefer a much gentler touch. But I’ve succeeded in getting 3 out of 4 kids into bed. Link is staying up a little longer to get his play time. Kiki could be up too, but she’s suffering from a head cold and went to bed voluntarily. The fact that Gleek is suffering from the same cold is the source of most of the Kiki/Gleek conflicts. Neither of them has much tolerance for anything that isn’t exactly the way the want it right this second. As a side note I am truly impressed with both of my girls. Kiki had to be yelled into silence when she was continually sniping at the way Gleek was doing things, but then she nodded and understood when I took a moment to explain why I’d yelled rather than trying to handle it a different way. She could see what she was doing wrong, she was just too sick to stop herself in a moment of irritation. Gleek has been running all day despite being sick and she was seriously over stimulated. But when I shepherded her into her bed, she hugged me tight. It was very apparent that she was glad that I had headed off multiple tantrums, she doesn’t want to be out of control and is grateful when I prevent her from flying into a fury.

I also had a good moment with Link. He was in full-on stubborn mode complete with angry scowl over the fact that he had to do homework. This was in part caused because in all the other chaos he managed to leave the table and start a game after dinner. I generally keep him at the table until homework is done precisely because of this reaction. He’ll sit there fuming that I’ve pulled him away from his game for far longer than it would take for him to get his homework done. Once he lets go of his anger it is gone, but he can hang on tight for hours. This kind of a stand off is particularly difficult because Link is very sensitive to negative emotions pointed at him. If some one speaks to him with frustration, he feels yelled at and scolded no matter what the tone of voice is actually like. So in an inspired moment I looked at Link and said “Can I be on your team?” He looked at me confused and interested. I then made clear that I didn’t want to be working against him with me trying to get his homework done and him trying not to have to do it. He agreed that I could be on his team. I then said we needed to pick a goal for our team. I suggested making sure he had play time before bed as a goal. The only obstacle to our goal was one math sheet. It didn’t work completely, he was still mad about the homework, but the stand off was over. He began expressing his anger by writing as hard as he could rather than by refusing to pick up the pencil.

Hmm. Looking back I think my kids got about an hour of A game from me. But it was all “crisis management” rather than “ahead of the curve.” I think I’m going to have to do more of what I did last fall. I’m going to have to block out sections of time where I’m not allowed to do business things. I think I’m getting enough of a feel for the daily schedule that I can do this now. As for tomorrow, the Schlock book needs to take a back seat for a day so that I can get back ahead of the curve on the house and kid stuff.

Voting Member

By / August 30, 2007 / 1 Comment

From 1994 until 1999 Howard and I ran a small record production business. We spent lots of time and energy helping record 5 or 6 CDs full of truly beautiful music. The business died because we lacked marketing expertise and a good distribution channel. In 1998 or 1999 a group of musicians got together and began the Pearl Awards. This was run similarly to the Academy Awards but the focus was on rewarding people for creating excellent religious music. We qualified to be voting members for the Pearl Awards. This meant that we could nominate things and we could vote for who we thought should win. The first year we were excited to recieve all the demo CD’s and review them and vote. After that when the CDs began to arrive they carried a load of guilt because we didn’t have time to really review them all and make informed decisions. Some years we neglected to vote at all. This meant that people were spending money to send us CDs and were getting no benefit from it. After we’d been out of the record production business for a couple of years we let our membership lapse because it felt dishonest to keep accepting free CDs when we weren’t in the industry anymore.

All of that is back story.

On Tuesday at my writer’s group we had a breif discussion about membership in SFWA (Science Fiction Writer’s Association.) One of the advantages that was brought forward was getting to vote for the Hugo and Nebula awards. Because of my experience with the Pearl Awards, I waved my hands and dismissed this as more of an annoyance than a benefit. I’m still concerned that some of the annoyances of being a voting member are inherent in award systems. So many things are nominated that it is hard to properly review everything. But music was not my field. It has never been my field. I was there because of Howard. On the other hand, writing and reading are what I do. I am constantly looking for things to read. I am much more likely to read 20 novels than I am to listen to 20 CDs. And when I’m done with the novels I’ll have much more to say about them than I would about the music. So being a voting member in SFWA would be much different than being a voting member of the Pearl awards.

It is something to think about. I don’t have to make any decisions until I actually qualify to become a SFWA member.

Wednesday stuff

By / August 29, 2007

When I close my eyes I see pages of the new Schlock mercenary book. It turns out that “having plans for all the white space” is not exactly the same as having no white spaces. Some of my plans entail more work, like locating the picture I want to put in the space, or writing something. Most of the additional writing and drawing will be done by Howard, but in two places I get to write stuff. Then when Howard gets done writing and drawing he hands it to me. I write notes about where it will go and hand the stuff off to the layout guy. This is going to take up a portion of my brain until the project is complete. The end is in sight. Most of it will be done this week.

I got several bits of happy news today, none of them are mine to share, but they make me very glad. Writer’s group went really well last night. I recieved good feedback on my story. I hope they continue to like the next two installments and that they can help me identify where it is still broken. I know that it needs work, I’ve just been unable to put my finger on where it needs work.

So the day has been good. I’m just tired now.

Schedule filling up

By / August 28, 2007 / 3 Comments

I have begun accumulating things to do and settling them into the new schedule. Today was Patches’ first day of preschool. It went off without a hitch. He was glad to go and glad to come home. Then we did lots of talking about everything that happened. Preschool twice a week breaks up my long schedule free days somewhat, but in a good way I think. I still have long stretches of time on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday that are mine to arrange. It is the afternoons that are beginning to seem a bit crowded. Kiki and Link will be starting art lessons next week. Kiki has taken them before, but this will be a new experience for Link and I’m not sure how he will like it. He really values his play time and often resents anything that interferes. But on the other hand I keep being amazed at his drawing capability and I want to give him the tools to be good at it. Art lessons are on Tuesdays, which is also my writer’s group day. Wednesday is cub scouts and Kiki has youth group activities. Thursday is Howards evening out. Fridays have nothing and I’m going to leave it that way. Monday used to be completely empty, but today I got a call from a PTA person at the school. She runs the Art Club there and was wondering if I’d be willing to do a six week creative writing class. She called because of a conversation I had with my neighbor last year where I described how I would run such a class. I said yes.

Even though it complicates my schedule, I’m looking forward to running the creative writing class. I remember taking a couple when I was in grade school and being frustrated with them because they were essentially assignments. Read a poem, then write a poem. Read a story, then write a story. My approach will be to start by teaching the elements of story, protagonist, villain, setting, etc. I want to work with narrative curves and story structures. I’ll do that for the first three weeks or so, then for the second three weeks we’ll work on creating stories and editing them. The end goal will be a print-on-demand book that contains the stories that the kids wrote. I know this sounds complicated, but the concepts can be taught without all the confusing vocabulary. Particularly if I use picture books to demonstrate the points. This time will be the trial run. I have my eye on taking the same class and doing it at a junior high level. Kiki would like that I think.

Schlock book work continues and occupies most of this morning. For awhile I was worried about all the afternoon craziness and making sure I had time for business work and writing, but I have so much more time in the middle of the day. Having only Patches at home is worlds different than having Patches and Gleek. She was constantly bored and she solved boredom by coming to me for attention. It is all going to fit. I can see how, but I definitely need to find a good stride and stick with it. Not too fast, not too slow.