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Projects & plans

By / October 23, 2005 / 10 Comments

Some of my online friends have signed up for National Novel Writing Month. Their goal is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I admire thier determination to try whether or not they succeed. I don’t have space in my brain to do that much writing in that short a time span. I do like the idea of setting a challenging goal though, so here is mine. Before the end of November I’ll have my short-story-in-progress ready for editing. (Anyone who is interested in being an editor for me can leave an email below and I’ll send the story along when it is ready.)

In other news, I acquired a childcare job today. Starting in two weeks I’ll be watching a baby for 4 hours every weekday morning. This will definitely impact my life, but hopefully more for good than the reverse. The money will be helpful, it won’t get us out of the financial woods, but it will almost pay for groceries each month. Besides, I think it will be good for Gleek and Patches to learn how to interact with a baby. And this way I get to play with a baby without actually having to be pregnant or get up in the middle of the night for feedings. I’ll have to do some cleaning and arranging so that my house is safe for a crawler again, but with my new toy cupboards that shouldn’t be too hard. The house could stand to be cleaner anyway and maybe I’ll do a better job of keeping it clean if I know that baby’s mom will be coming every week day. I don’t want baby’s mom to feel like her baby is being left in a pigsty. I’m also aware that there will be inconveniences and frustrations. Mostly I feel good to be doing something that allows us to extend the amount of time we have to make cartooning pay all the bills.

Walnut fall

By / October 21, 2005 / 1 Comment

Today began with walnuts. Well, I guess technically it began with breakfast, but walnuts were next an they took up the largest part of this morning. Yesterday the kids spent a lot of time indoors glued to the TV, so I was determined to get them outside. Fortunately our trees have co-operated by dropping leaves all over our yard, so I was able to require the kids to go rake them. This led to hours of raking and jumping with both my kids and neighbor kids as well.

The walnut tree had not only dropped leaves, it had dropped walnuts. Some of these were gathered up last week, but most of them were still on the ground. I made the kids stop raking long enough to help me gather up the nuts. Their co-operation became much more willing after Howard came out to shake the tree. He brought down a veritable hailstorm of nuts and we picked them all up. Then I sat on the steps and pulled husks off of the walnuts while the kids played. Walnut husks are messy. They stain everything. They are even worse when they’ve been left sitting in water for a week. Yuck. I forced myself to finish the job. Now I’ve got 4 buckets and 2 dishpans full of walnuts in their shells. The next step is cracking them all open and drying them. It is a lot of work, but the walnuts from our tree are the yummiest walnuts I’ve ever tasted.

I wish I could say that the afternoon was as fruifully spent as the morning, but it wasn’t. The afternoon slipped away from me until Howard came in saying “Do we have a dinner plan?” I scrounged up a dinner and remained unmotivated to clean up the various messes that filled my home. I did have a burst of energy just before putting little kids to bed. During that I required the kids to help me clean up our family room. I managed it by saying “Let’s surprise Daddy!” They all felt like that would be fun. But Howard wandered out of his office before we were done and Gleek ordered him back in so that he could be surprised when we were done. He disapeared until summoned and was suitably “surprised.”

writing

By / October 20, 2005 / 4 Comments

I haven’t been writing much for the last two weeks. It is probably excusable because I can think up a whole list of excuses. But the bottom line is that I haven’t been writing. If only writing weren’t hard work.

I read Eragon by Christopher Paolini the last few days. I was frustrated by the book. It isn’t very often that I read a book and find myself mentally re-writing sections of it. When I finished the book, the blurb on the flap informed me that the author was 15 years old when he completed the book. That knowledge shifted my view of the book dramatically. That a 15 year old could finish a novel at all is impressive. That he got it published and widely distributed is even more impressive. As the depth of his experience increases, the depths of his characterizations will as well. Everything that frustrated me about the book was because the work was immature not because the premise or story were flawed.

When I was 15 I was also writing a novel. I still have it unfinished and it will remain unfinished because I can now see clearly the flaws in the concepts and characterizations. It was a deriviative work rather than original. Some of the concepts from it may make their way into other works, but that particular novel served it’s purpose. I don’t have space in my life for a novel right now. I do have space for short stories and vignettes, so that is what I’m writing. When I actually get any writing done at all.

Crunching numbers

By / October 17, 2005 / 2 Comments

I’ve conquored the quarterly tax filing for our business. Not only that, but I conquored it so handily that I don’t need to dread it next quarter. That’s very relieving.

While I was hitting my head against bookkeeping, I did a thorough analysis of our current financial state. That was both frightening and reassuring depending on which angle I looked at it.

I’ve come away from all this number crunching with a calm assurance that somehow or other we’re going to make this cartooning thing work for us. I can’t explain how it will work, but it will. It seems fitting that since we began this endeavor with faith we should continue in the same way. I’ve also regained a clear vision of our need to economize. Halloween needs to cost us $10 or less. Thanksgiving comes out of the food budget, but needs to be planned for. Christmas cannot come to more than $200 and I’d like to be able to do it for half of that.

Not so long ago those numbers would have looked impossible to meet, but now I’m pretty sure I can do it. We have been greatly blessed to be able to accomplish so much with so little. We have been even more greatly blessed to be able to have Howard working as a cartoonist full time.

tales of housework undone

By / October 16, 2005 / 11 Comments

The last few days I’ve been very busy getting stuff done. I’ve finally tackled the list of yardwork that has been staring at me for most of the summer. But despite the fact that I got stuff done I ended yesterday feeling very discouraged. I have this whole list of things that I feel should be happening in my household regularly. But if I don’t make them happen they won’t. The kids should be putting laundry away once a week. Bathrooms should get cleaned more often than once a month (or less). Floors should be swept at least daily. Clothes do not belong on floors. Shoes belong in closets. Plates with food on them should not be sitting around on the counter for hours let alone days. When I am focused on it I do alright at being a good housekeeper, but there are so many things that I would rather be doing.

In theory I should be training the kids to clean up after themselves so that I don’t have to try to do it all myself. But I get so tired of making them do stuff. When they’re happily playing the last thing I want to do is begin a confrontational hour where I require them to do housework. Yet if I don’t they’ll never learn and I’ll continually feel like a failure because I simply can’t keep up with the various messes left by six people.

Yes Howard helps around the house. But if he is in his office working to put food in our mouths it seems counter-productive for me to haul him off to clean the bathroom. He works incredibly hard already.

No deep thoughts or epiphanies today. Just lingering frustrations left over from the past week.

Mommy Challenge

By / October 12, 2005 / 4 Comments

Children test thier parents. They’ll deliberately defy rules to see if they can get away with it or sometimes just because they’re mad. Parents never know when these challenges will come. They’re like Parenting Skills Pop Quizzes. And also like pop quizzes I feel really happy if I get it right and frustrated when I get it wrong. Today Gleek provided me with a Mommy Challenge and I got it exactly right, so I need to brag a little. I’ll put it behind the cut though because I’m not sure everyone cares to have all the details.

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Bidding farewell

By / October 11, 2005 / 3 Comments

I wasn’t pleased with how today went. It felt like the day slipped away from me and I was left at the end of it with a messy house and no energy.

The For Sale sign went up on my next door neighbor’s lawn. They’ve been here as long as we have and I’m really sad to see them leave. It would be nice to have a family move in, one with kids to be friends with my kids. I’ll be happy to just settle for good neighbors. The house just beyond their house will also be going up for sale sometime soon. That one belongs to Link’s best friend. I’m working hard to help him develop other friendships so that the blow isn’t as hard, but he is really going to miss his friend when the move happens.

And now I’m up too late again. 6:30 am is going to come far too soon.

Empirical testing

By / October 10, 2005 / 7 Comments

A couple of books have come to my awareness. I’ve not read either one, but I’m amused by their existence.

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists is essentially an instruction book for guys on how to become a pickup artist and get any girl that you want.

The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right is essentially and instruction book for women on how to snare a man into marriage.

The researcher in me wants to take 20 or so Rules Girls and 20 or so Game Guys and throw them into a bar, then take notes to see which manipulative system wins.

Tis the season …. for costumes!

By / October 9, 2005 / 1 Comment

Halloween season has truly arrived. I know this because today was the day that I pulled out the big red bags o’ costumes and demanded that the kids make their final selections. I have to have time to get costumes made. Even more important I have to have time to scrounge so that I can get costumes made cheaply. Gleek has been telling me what she wants to be for Halloween almost every day for a month. Unfortunately her choices changed each day. Fortunately Kiki has consented to allow Gleek to duplicate her Ice Princess costume and I’m confident that while Gleeks choices will continue to fluxuate from day to day, when the actual day comes she’ll be happy to put on a costume like her sister’s. Link has stuck steadfastly to his decision to be Shark Boy and Patches doesn’t care and so he’ll probably end up wearing the costume that caused Link’s online nickname: Link from legend of Zelda.

All of this is good news for me because I already have most of the large peices that are necessary. All that is left is to accesorize. Well, that isn’t entirely true in Link’s case. For him I’ll be making a tunic & cuffs to go over grey sweats and a gray shirt. A little more work, but still essentially accesories.

I’ve got a cloak that I’m re-working for myself. It was given to me by a friend who no longer wanted the emotional baggage that was attached to it. The cloak has no baggage for me, so I’m happy to have it. Unfortunately it was designed for a person 6 inches taller than me, so I’m having to shorten it some. I also want to put on detail work to make it pretty. I doubt I’ll have the time or energy to make the dress I envision to wear with the cloak. Not to mention fabric. I don’t have the yards of fabric either. Besides a Shark Boy tunic, Ice Princess accesories, and a cloak is probably plenty of sewing to keep me busy from now until Halloween.