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Today I broke out my zoo pass to take the kids to the local zoo. They had a day off from school and it seemed a good day for it. I was frustrated and dismayed to discover that the local zoo does not honor the zoo pass that I have. Grr. That completely derails my plans for taking the kids to the zoo regularly all summer long. Fortunately the local aviary DOES honor the pass, so it isn’t completely wasted. I would not have minded this discovery so much if I’d made it by phone rather than at the zoo entrance with 4 children hyper to see the animals. I decided to just spend money on admission and let the kids see the zoo. I then had to prevent myself from spending the rest of the afternoon making mental price/fun ratio comparisons.

Fortunately the kids had no such mental arithmetic to disturb their enjoyment. They ran gleefully from exhibit to exhibit admiring animals. They also got joy from the running I think. Each trip to a zoo has a different highlight from previous visits even if the zoo is exactly the same. The highlight this time was the small animal and reptile house. I think part of the reason we spent so much time there was that the kids were worn out from all the running. They were ready to stand still and watch squirrel sized monkeys at play. Also it was warm inside the building and outside was a bit chilly. Patches favorite exhibit was the one labelled “This exhibit is empty”, to further emphasize the emptiness of the exhibit some employee had placed a toy godzilla, a toy airplane, and a toy car on the rocks. Patches thought the purple car was the coolest exhibit in the zoo. He likes animals, but he lights up for machines. I need to take him to the aerospace museum.

The kids all had a great time. I did too once I managed to let go the frustration. The museum had an art exhibit that completely wowed Kiki. Some of the art was done by children her age and we spent a few moments learning how to submit art for next year’s exhibit. Kiki is fully capable of doing something show worthy if she decides to devote herself to it. Kiki was also much struck by the old houses in Salt Lake City that we drove past on the way to the zoo. She has decided that she never wants to live in an apartment. Instead she wants to move into a little house like the ones that we saw. In fact she intends to start saving money for a down payment so that she can achieve this goal.

I’ve definitely come away from today’s trip feeling inspired to take my kids to more zoos, museums, and other cultural places. They think new thoughts after seeing such things. And I’ve discovered that my crew have reached ages where it is possible for me to keep track of them all without feeling frantic the whole time. I love that my older kids help me keep track of my younger kids.

I had yesterday all planned. I spent the morning cleaning the house so that the evening could be spent doing dinner with an online friend and his family. All went well, until about 20 minutes after their arrival when Patches threw up.

The guests decided to stay and risk exposure. I quarantined Patches to his bedroom where he slept when not actually vomiting. The dinner and visiting seemed to go fairly well. I know I had fun, I just wish my attention had been a little less split. I also hope that their family failed to take the bug home with them. It frustrates me to provide a vector for unpleasant bugs.

Patches was sick all night. I slept on a mat near his bed. By morning I wasn’t feeling well either. Fortunately in my case some extra sleep in my own bed and a light lunch have remedied most of that.

In other news: Zathura is a good movie for kids. My kids were enthralled and have just embarked on a second veiwing. Maybe I’ll go sneak and have a bath while they’re busy.

I’m about to commit parental heresy: Homework is not always the most important thing to do. I know that it is my job to make sure homework gets done, thus supporting the educational efforts of the teachers at school, but sometimes other things are more important to me. Like being able to eat dinner in peace. Or making the kids stop screaming. Or fielding a business call. Or closing my eyes in exhaustion for a few minutes while hiding in the bathroom with the door locked.

I feel guilty about this, but it doesn’t change the fact that when juggling all the facets of my life I sometimes choose the homework ball as the one to drop. I try to catch it on the bounce, but I still dropped it.

Parent teacher conferences are tomorrow and I can tell already that Link’s teacher is going to want to talk about issues for which I’ve yet to find answers. I can tell from the politely desperate tone to her notes. And I have guilt because I’m very aware of all the nights in the past few months where Link didn’t do reading or homework because life was hectic and in my head second grade homework isn’t as critical as 5th grade homework. Way to encourage good study habits mom.

As you may have guessed, this was a rough evening. It was significantly complicated by a series of visitors and phone calls which always seemed to occur just when I’d begun to get the children under control. Fortunately valuable things may come of all the visitors and phone calls so I’m accepting this evening’s chaos as advance karmic payment for those future good things.

Today was a day that I had planned out in increments of 15 minutes. In order to stay ahead of everything that needed doing I had to keep moving down the list and checking things off. I actually had a list because I was afraid I might forget something. Gleek and Patches did not pick a good day to be extra cranky. They simply could not interact without one of them ending up in either a screaming tantrum or screaming tears. Frequently both of them did both.

I baked Howard’s birthday pie. Took care of NotMyBaby. Did book keeping and bill paying. Decorated Patches birthday cake. Got three loads of laundry washed. Handed NMB back to his mom. Made an emergency trip to bring an all important item to Kiki. Picked Link up from school. Physically separated Gleek and Patches several times. Picked Kiki up from school. Spent 90 minutes registering Gleek for Kindergarten next year, most of the time was spent in line. Then managed a birthday party for Howard and Patches. By 7 pm I was so exhausted I just wanted to sit down and cry.

Things got much better from there. Howard did the dishes so I could lay down and tune out the world for awhile. Then Chalain and Chaliren stopped by. While they were here Howard pulled out a habanero pepper that he bought at the grocery store. Chalain and Howard sat together and sampled the pepper. I took pictures. Some of the pictures are really really funny. Habenero peppers are really hot. I never even touched the thing and my nose is burning a little. That was really fun and made an exhausted evening into a good one.

Other highlights of the day:

Howard made dinner. He and Kiki worked together to create egg rolls from scratch. They were delicious and everyone wished we could have had more of them.

Gleek’s best friend brought over a little paper note for Gleek announcing “I wrote you a email!”

Kiki finally has a friend at her new school. She has a playdate and a birthday party with this new friend this week. I’m glad she’s finally making a connection with someone. I wish I knew better how to teach her about building friendships. It’s not something I’m historically very good at. I’ve lucked into some really good friends and inherited others, but I’m not so good at building a strong frienship from scratch. Anyway I’m glad she has this new friend I hope it continues to work.

Patches loved his birthday. I wish I could have held the celebration on a less hectic day so that I could have savored it more, but he had a wonderful time. He loved having a cake that was for him. He loved that it had hamtaro figurines all over it. He loved the four foil wrapped chocolate cars that raced around the bottom. Each of the kids got one of these cars. The three older kids tore off the wrappers and gobbled the car up. Patches removed the wrapper and proceeded to drive the car in circles around his plate. After several minutes of this I leaned over and said “It’s chocolate. You’re supposed to eat it.” Patches gave me an “are you crazy?!” look and hugged his chololate car close to his chest. I had visions of this chocolate car being loved for days as it slowly melted and smeared all over the house. Fortunately just as the car was beginning to look lumpish instead of carish, Patches ate it up.

Howard had a good birthday too. A couple of fans mailed him gifts which was a nice addition to what I managed to provide. The biggest gift was an orange vest on which I’d affixed a hand embroidered Tagon’s Toughs logo. I’ve been stealing time to work on that for over a month now. I’m really glad to have it done and for Howard to be able to wear it. Of course the irony is that he recieved it just as the weather has turned warm, so he may have to wait until next fall before he gets to wear it much. Oh well.

This evening I was half offered yet another book keeping job. I’m not going to jump at taking it because I need to get stabilized in managing books for Chalain before I even think about undertaking new projects. Also I need to refocus a little on active mommying. And with the incoming inventory management for Howard’s book I’m reluctant to commit to anything else. But it feels really good to be asked to consider it. I like having valuable skills.

And that’s all the babble I have in my head. I’m going to sleep now.

I like fairly steady streams of new input so that I have new things to think about, write about, and talk about. Because of this I read books, listen to talk radio, surf news, read blogs, and check forums all on a daily basis. I am much more likely to run out of things to process than I am to have too much. In fact I didn’t even really recognize what “too much input” felt like until I identified it last night.

I still haven’t processed all the things that happened at LTUE. There were business contacts made that I need to think through and communicate with. I’ve got assignments I need to do in order to make the production of the book a smoother process. I’ve got regular accounting and book keeping. I’m going to begin helping a friend with business accounting regularly starting tomorrow. On my kitchen counter are some stories written by a potential collaborative partner (collaborative with Howard, not me) that I need to read. I also have “research” reading to do for the story I’m working on, novels can be research right? I also had a breakthrough about where the story needs to go next and I want to write it. Yesterday books from Ryk Spoor arrrived in the mail. And my friend J brought over a parenting book that she thinks might give me some insights into concerns I’ve been having with Gleek. In fact, I have been feeling a need to refocus on my kids emotional needs more because several small behavioral issues have cropped up. And I have birthdays to plan for, since the celebration is only 3 days away. Oh and I need to eat and sleep.

I want to give each and every one of those things my full attention RIGHT NOW. They all interest me or at least facets of me. I’m excited for all of them. Last night all of this left me almost paralized and incapable of prioritizing. I didn’t want to pick what was most important, I wanted it all. I decided to take a hot bath and read in the tub. (Yup, I even multitask my relaxation.) But once I got into the tub I realized that the last thing I needed was more input. So I didn’t read, I just let my mind wander where it would and then I went to bed.

This morning I curtailed my usual input streams. I didn’t listen to talk radio in the car. I skipped surfing the news. I did read some comics because they’re unlikely to spark deep threads of thought. I didn’t read during breakfast. I don’t need to feed myself any more information until I’ve processed what is already floating around in there. After a day or so when my brain is quiet again I’ll give it new input.

My sister wrote a post thinking through the affects of her writing aspirations on her young family. Her conclusion was that while it was important to prioritize her family above her writing, it was also important that she maintain a creative outlet. I couldn’t help but chime in supporting her conclusions. Then I liked my response so much that I’m pasting it here for my own reference.

The worst thing you could possibly do is to give up who you are to devote yourself to your family. You will not be happy and in the long run it will not be good for them. Mommy with an identity crisis is not good for anyone.

Our mother ALWAYS had something creative when we were growing up. Remember those fabric paint parties, painting plaster figurings, painting rocks, crochet, belonging to craft boutiques, 12 days of christmas, rooms filled with newspaper and balloons just for fun, the list goes on. Lots of times it was a project we could participate in, but there was always something.

My advice also comes from recent personal experience. I’ve spent most of the last 10 years head down in mothering. Most of my creative energies were funnelled into parenting, child management, and actively encouraging developmental growth in the kids. After all those years I managed to lose myself. I honestly didn’t know what to do with myself when I wasn’t being a mommy or a wife. I felt that there probably should be something more, but I wasn’t sure where to find it.

About two years ago my personal rennaissance began. Some of it can be attributed to the lower levels of stress post-Novell. Some I attribute to my involvement in livejournal which cracked the floodgates behind which I’d hidden my inner storyteller. Some is simply because I no longer have a baby in the house and I have larger blocks of time. For whatever reason, over these past two years I’ve developed a strong personal identity. I know who I am. I know what I am good at. I know what I aspire to be in the future.

If you can shortcut the losing self/finding self process that so many mommies have to go through, you’ll be ahead of the game.

“Squee!” is the sound that Skull the troll from the webcomic PVP makes when he is delighted with something. (Edit: I am informed that Skull actually says “Glee!” and that “Squee!” is a noise that Howard brought home from a convention. This error in no way affects the correctness of the rest of this post.)

Howard and I have adopted the term. It is primarily used for the times when we have contact with someone we admire. It is the fanboy/girl sound of delight upon meeting the object of admiration. For example Howard had a squee moment when he first met Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games. Another squee moment was when we realized that Baen author John Ringo was a regular reader of Schlock Mercenary.

Today a package full of squee arrived in the mail. Okay, it didn’t actually contain squee. What it contained was books, but the books made me go squee! Baen author Ryk Spoor is also a fan of Schlock Mercenary. Not only is he a fan, but in his forthcoming book Boundary, Ryk directly references “The Tayler Corporation” as makers of “carbonan.” He sent us an autographed copy of this book. He also sent us an anthology which contains a short story by him. Two free books. Yay!

But I have to confess, the part that made me happiest was the fact that he didn’t just send them to Howard, my name was on the package, letter, and inscription as well. This makes me extra happy because his prior book Digital Knight is one of the few books that has inspired me to write the author to say how much I enjoyed it. It makes sense for people to send free books to Howard who will read and review them, but it was pure niceness that caused him to put my name there.

Squee!