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Last night I pulled out my planner and wrote a list of all the things I needed to get done today. I’ve done almost all of it. I love days like this when I get it all done. I only worked for about an hour on the schlock book, but the layout guy did contact me. Now I know we’re ready to really start rolling on Monday. Between now and then I need to start scanning in all the art images that we’ll need. That will be hours of work, I’m sure. Also slated for tomorrow are fixing a toilet and fixing the gate to our backyard. So another busy day ahead.

All that I have left on my to do list today is to write 500 words of fiction. I’ve given myself this little assignment so that the fiction doesn’t get lost entirely in the glut of Schlock book and business tasks. Obviously I can write more if the inspiration strikes, but the minimum is to keep me doing it. If you want to get good at something, do it every day.

One of the things I did this afternoon was to take the kids swimming. We were there at the same time as our backyard nieghbors, so all the kids had people to play with. That was fun for them. It was also fun for me because I had someone to talk to instead of being bored.

Having my two nephews here instead of one Kiki changes the dynamic of the family. Mostly it means lots of joyful shrieking as three boys play video games. But another change became apparent when it came time to put the kids to bed. Obviously the two nephews wanted to sleep in Link’s room. They bracket him in age. Patches shares that room, so he obviously was going to sleep in there as well. This left Gleek, the lone girl. Gleek did not want to be left out, so I simply threw some foam pads down on the floor and let them all sleep there.

Getting them all to fall asleep is something of a challenge. They want to romp, I want them to sleep. So both nights so far have involved thumping and complaining and slamming of doors and shrieks and stolen pillows, and dire threats that I WILL separate them if they don’t settle down. Eventually they do fall asleep. When they do, I sneak in and look at them all. They’re all sprawled and variously piled like an adorable litter of puppies. And like puppies, they’re ready to go again the next day.

Last week, before all my creative energy got slurped into the book editing project, I polished up a few blog entries and turned them into essays on my website. I also finished a piece of flash fiction and I’ve posted that as well. If you want, you can go read them: http://sandra.tayler.com/

In this area wasps are something of a plague. Every year we have to eliminate multiple nests from our deck railing and even more from our wooden fences. We put out traps and catch them by the dozens, but this has no visible dent on the population as a whole. For some reason the wasps particularly like our red maple tree. In July and August you can watch as dozens of them hover around the tree.

This year there are no wasps. I have not seen a single nest on our property and I’ve only seen two flying around that I can recall. This is such a drastic change from the norm that I have spent some time wondering about it. I’d heard that there was a horrible bee virus sweeping across the country. The virus apparently kills whole hives. I wonder if this same virus kills off the wasps too.

The wasps were a nuisance to me. I didn’t like them. But the abrupt disappearance of all of them is a disruption in the local ecology and I wonder what the further repercussions will be.

When you decide to become a parent there are some things that you expect. You expect to have to deal with diapers and potty training and tantrums and piano lessons and carpooling and a million other things. The reality is always somewhat different from the expectation, but at least you expected it. But there are other things. Things which never occurred to you prior to actually arriving in the middle of them. Things like explaining to your disbelieving daughter that she will indeed have to deal with this unpleasant feminine cycle every single month. Things like being 8 months pregnant and chasing your naked giggling toddler down the street. Things like having a child deliberately poop on the floor on purpose to make you mad. But, of all the things I didn’t know I signed up for when I had a baby, the one that haunts me most often is nail clipping.

In the hospital you look at the tiny fingers and toes and you marvel at them. Little do you know that you will soon be forced to take blades to those cute little nails and trim them off. If you do not, those cute little nails will be sharp little claws that will rake you bloody. Babies of course object to nail trimming, so they don’t hold still. More than once I’ve accidentally drawn blood while trimming the nail from a small digit. Then the child becomes mobile and can run away when the nail clippers come out. At various points I have cajoled, bribed, pleaded, and physically restrained various children to get their nails clipped. Link objected to nail clipping so strenuously that I would sneak in and clip them while he slept.

At 12, Kiki is finally in charge of her own nails, but this is a fairly recent development. For awhile I was in charge of 20 little digits for each of my kids. If I added in my own nails, that comes to an even 100 little nails for me to trim. Each and every one of those nails had to be trimmed at least once per month. That’s a lot of nail clipping. It is particularly annoying when Link would turn nail clipping into a 40 minute emotional ordeal. He has thankfully gotten over his terror of nail clippers. Also he has figured out that if he tears the nails off, I don’t have to clip them so often. I think Gleek is nearing the end of needing me to clip her nails for her. She loves nail polish and is trying to keep her nails nice so that they look pretty. This works for awhile, but then inevitably she plays in the sandbox or climbs a tree and makes them all ragged. Then we trim them off and start over again. Patches is fairly content to let me cut his nails as long as I only clip through 90% of the nail. He likes to pull them the rest of the way off by himself. He makes a little game out of it. I’m not sure what the game is, but it involves explosions and the nails going “Aaaaaah!” as they fall from his fingers.

So let this be a warning to all potential parents out there. The diapers are done within 3 years or so, but the nail trimming lasts much longer than that.

Every day is full of events. Most of the events are very small. This past week was full of large events. Large events always fill my brain full of things to talk about. But now my brain seems to have emptied out. I’m back to the trickle of ideas prompted by small events. This is not bad, really. I was so busy last week that the only writing I got done was blogging about events. Now I’m back to having space to contemplate less hurried writing. This would be happy except that I seem to be currently in a mood where nothing I write seems to be worth much. The mood will pass. I know it will, but it doesn’t make me motivated to write things today.

My mother offered my kids $5 for each one-page story they wrote for her this summer. The kids took full advantage of this generosity while she was here. Gleek wrote two storys. Patches wrote a story. Link wrote three stories. Grandma duly paid them. Then they had money burning a hole in their pockets. Today I took them to a store to spend it. Gleek acquired her very first potholder loom. Patches bought a magnetix toy. Link got a coveted set of pokemon cards. Then we fled the blistering heat to our air conditioned house to enjoy the loot.

New toys make for a quiet afternoon. By tomorrow they’ll be bored with the new stuff and I’ll have to find them something else to do.