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I suppose I should count it as a blessing when inconvenient things happen in the most convenient way possible. As an example, our Chevy Venture broke down this morning. Howard and I were on a run to Sam’s club together to confer about patio furniture. We stopped for gas, but when Howard turned the key to restart the car, nothing happened. The same nothing continued to happen the next twenty times as both Howard and I kept trying. We ended up pushing the car into a parking space and calling a neighbor to come retrieve us so that Howard could get back to work while we considered what to do.

In the end the car was towed to an automotive place within walking distance of our house. They determined the starter motor had died. An hour and $525 later, we have a functioning vehicle again. It was inconvenient, and more expensive than I wanted it to be. It also underlined clearly that our van is pushing twelve years old and 100,000 miles. It is show its age and moving out of the realm of quirky and into being unreliable. So I’m contemplating the further expense of replacing it. Not something I really wanted to do this year. But it didn’t break down in Goblin Valley last week, when we were 150 miles from the nearest tow truck and automotive repair shop. It didn’t leave my seventeen year old daughter stranded and in need of rescue. It didn’t fail on a day when I needed to rush down to a school to help with a child emergency. It even failed early enough in the day that I was able to arrange alternate rides for my kids after school, and I had the car back before the time that Patch and I picked for his special Mother son outing. The inconvenient thing happened as conveniently as possible.

Similarly, we’ve incurred quite a few extra expenses this month. The process of evaluating Gleek has not been covered by health insurance, nor will her therapy appointments be. Howard’s visits with a psychiatrist for depression have also not been covered. Link and Kiki both had minor medical issues requiring visits and lab work which are somewhat covered. Gleek got braces. The car needed repair. Our vacuum cleaner died. Sometime in the next month or two Kiki’s college is going to start asking for payments against her tuition and dorm registration. Yet, we have the money to cover all of this. It arrived before all of this did, in a completely unexpected level of success during the challenge coin kickstarter. My ballpark mental math says that even with all the unexpected expenses, we’ll be in better financial shape than we were before the kickstarter. Though I will be happier when the flow of bills and money has settled down enough for me to really see what is going on.

Patch and I were able to go on our planned date this evening. It was a special outing that we’ve been planning for a week because he needed it. So we went to see The Croods, which we’d both seen before, and out to sushi. It was a lovely time that I’m extremely grateful I did not have to reschedule at the last minute. Now I have to start shopping around and considering options for a replacement vehicle. I’m not looking forward to having payments again.

I’ve been extremely focused in the past few weeks. I have appointments to keep, assignments to get done, and deadlines to make. In addition I’ve been deliberately shifting some of my parenting tactics to meet the shifted needs of my kids. All of this requires my attention and energy. I run out of both long before I run out of things that require them. This is the reason that I’ve been culling all the non-essentials out of my schedule. I have enough hours for them, but I must conserve my energy against a surprise draw. Conflicts show up without consulting me to find out when it might be convenient.

The good news is that the term finally ended last Friday. We are done with the last scramble to get things turned in. Patch has a big report due next week, but then we’ll have Spring Break, a whole week with no new school things to track or react to. It will be a good thing, especially considering I tend to land on the shores of Saturday gasping for breath and needing the extra space. After the break I think things will be better. We’ll all be rested and ready to tackle the seven weeks to the end of the school year. Or so I hope.

Things feel pretty good right now. I’ve had a nice slow Saturday during which I got some things done and not others. I still have Sunday ahead of me before I plunge into Monday. Hopefully I can stock up enough rest and willpower to last me through next week.

Howard sent me home from church early. “Go sleep,” he said over my protests of a post-church meeting. He informed the other committee members that I would not be there and that I would be unavailable for any committee work until May. I came home and slept as ordered. Ninety minutes later Howard woke me up to eat food, after which I slept for another three hours. This is a measure for how sleep deprived and worn out I’ve gotten over the past couple of weeks. I was on duty every minute of every waking hour either managing something, planning to manage something, or preparing so that managing would be easier the next time around. In order to help Gleek and Patch I’ve had to seriously step up my parenting game. Other things have to go. I can’t do it all. I will break.

Excusing me from committee work is part of that effort. Howard did it for one committee. I emailed for the other. I’m pulling in on the internet as well, reading less, visiting fewer places, conserving my energy for things that matter. All of this reconsidering led me to rearrange my plans for
Strength of Wild Horses. I’ll still be running a Kickstarter for that project, but Angela and I will do the art creation and book layout first. When we’re all ready to go, then we’ll run a Kickstarter to fund the printing costs. Once I made the decision it seemed obvious to me that this is a much lower stress way to arrange the project. I wish I’d seen it two months ago.

Having removed some things from my schedule, I also have to add something: exercise. It got lost somewhere and I need to put it back.

The last two weeks required lots of emotional energy. I’m hoping this week can be more calm.

It was six pm when I declared that I was putting my foot down and today was not allowed to have any more things in it. There have been at least two things per hour since then. Last week I sat down with one of my good friends and she listened while I talked for hours about all of the stuff going on in my life. She agreed that I really do have a lot going on. I was happier after the conversation. It was good. The trouble is that I’ve had that same conversation with her before. The “stuff going on” was different, but not the overload. For all my efforts to turn things down, slow things down, and simplify my life, I utterly fail at it. My life is not simple. I don’t know if it ever will be, because I refuse to abandon the relationships that make it complicated.

This evening was rearranged twice, once by Gleek who needed an hour to talk through a conflict, the second time when Patch’s teacher called with some legitimate concerns about his well being. It turns out that Patch has been carrying a knot of grief about the ever-changing nature of life. He does not want Kiki to go away to college. I don’t have any comfort to give, because all the rewards from that decision go to Kiki, not to Patch. All I could do was help him draw the grief to the surface where he could see the shape of it. I don’t know if that will help. I hope it will. I’m sure we have more talking to do.

I’ve arrived here, with all the kids in bed, and I’m staring at my calendar trying to find things I can eliminate without causing a major problem. There isn’t much. The next two weeks will see the final rush of preparation for sending The Body Politic off to print. We’ll schedule Link’s classes for next year. We’ll attend a college orientation for Kiki. Gleek has a maturation assembly. Kiki has a fitting for a prom dress (we’re getting a fantastic dress on loan, but it has to be altered.) There are convention preparations to make for Phoenix ComicCon. Link has been waiting for me to find time to drive him over to Kids on the Move so he can inquire about Eagle Scout projects. And the Kickstarter will close. Then it will be our turn to fulfill all those promises we’ve made.

People keep asking if we’re excited about the over funding of Howard’s challenge coin Kickstarter. Yes we are. We are thrilled to get to make all those coins. We’re looking forward to holding them in our hands and the reactions of others when they also get to hold them. We’re also scared. Every dollar is a responsibility. I can feel the weight of it, not just that we need to fill the pledges, but there is also a moral weight to use any profit we make in a way that will benefit Schlock fans. This money and enthusiasm is a gift to us and we must be wise stewards over that gift.

And now it is late. The things of tomorrow will be better if I get more sleep before I arrive at them.

Gleek was gifted three bags of clothing from a neighbor family. She spent more than an hour gleefully trying on clothes and twirling for me to show them off. New has gone into her drawer, old is in a pile ready to be passed along. She is one happy pre-teen.

The sun was shining and the air was mild, so I spent some time pulling dead grass from around the beginning sprouts of spring flowers. It will not be long before my garden is blooming.

We spent the evening with a gathering of Tayler cousins and it was a joy to watch kids from four different families attempting to dance in synch while playing Just Dance on the Wii.

I finished an editorial pass on Cobble Stones 2012. Up next: copy editing.

We put chairs in our front room. It is part of the ongoing project to remodel the room; a process that started with paint and will not be complete until I’ve done some woodwork. The paint was nice, but the addition of a pair of chairs from IKEA transformed the space into a welcome place to sit. We had a chair and a horrid little love seat, but mostly the room was used as a dumping ground and staging area. The effect was magnified today when the new couch was delivered. Now, instead of squished seating for three, we have pleasant seating for five or lounging space for a smaller number. Someone has been sitting in the space pretty much all day long. I sat in one of the chairs in the sunshine, glad for the sunshine, glad for the chairs, and looking forward to doing the finishing work that will make the room be nice. I also feel a small measure of joy that the chairs are are a little bit bouncy and they are named Poang, which is a bouncy sort of name. People keep flopping in the chairs, bouncing a bit, and then proclaiming “Poang!”

I don’t always have answers or solutions, sometimes I feel that as a gaping void that I ought to be able to fill somehow. There are times when I weep because I can not fix the troubles of my beloved people. Other times I see the void and I stand back because I know I can not fill it. This is a new capability for me, to stand back at a safe distance while sympathizing and agreeing that things are hard. It feels uncaring. It feels like I am locking my heart away and being selfish. Except, my previous habit of throwing myself across gaps meant that the gaps did not feel so challenging. They seemed a small thing, part of the patterns of our lives. When I learned to stand back was when we began to see that the gaps as problems to be solved; when we began to fill in the gaps, change our routes so we didn’t hit so many, change the landscape so that they closed up. The moment I stopped rushing to fix everything is when I learned that love means letting others struggle and grow.

I’m starting to see the end. The snow is melting, the sun is brighter, and daylight is coming earlier in the morning. Winter is drawing to a close. Howard is in the final stages on two large projects. We’ve exited the muddle in the middle and are beginning the final rush to the end. I got my redesigned copies of Cobble Stones 2011 back from the printer and they look good. I’m doing a final editing pass on Cobble Stones 2012 before sending it to the copy editor. Howard’s kickstarter has funded and is in a stable pattern until the final rush at the end. I began the process of setting up the kickstarter for Strength of Wild Horses. These projects have been brewing and simmering for months and we’re finally starting to finish them off and call them done. It feels good.

Life slowed down today. Finally. Howard was able to get a solid amount of work done. I finally had time to sleep. I’m close to paying off the sleep debt. I’m sure I’ll rack up more again next week, but tomorrow is Saturday and I get to sleep late. Even better the flow of incoming tasks was smaller than the flow of outgoing tasks. For the first time in almost two weeks I feel like I ended the day with less to do than I began the day. A survey of my calendar for the next few weeks shows lots of empty spaces. They won’t actually be empty, but there are no events to disrupt the flow of ongoing tasks or to unleash a flood of new ones.

I’m starting to feel my thoughts slow down. Instead of trying to track and manage a dozen things, I begin to trust that there will be enough time to do them in sequence. The prioritization engine is also humming along nicely. Instead of feeling it all has to be done right now, I’m assigning tasks to future days. This lets me forget about them today.

My thoughts have slowed, but I’m still distractable. Time to sleep and reboot my focus.

My front room is a jumble of boxes which stocked our LTUE tables with merchandise, but which now need to be sorted and put away. My inbox is full of emails all of which deserve considered replies. My to do list is full of things I want to get done. Any time I pull one of these things into my brain thinking that I will focus on it, I instead find myself checking twitter or wandering around the kitchen in search of some unspecified food which will make me happier. I have to face the fact that today is not going to be my most effective day. I did manage to write up my presentation notes. I also got dressed for the day just after lunch. Then I tackled the problem of convincing Amazon.com that we should be allowed to accept payments through Kickstarter, the fact that this required me to put on clothes and drive to a location with a fax machine did not thrill me. The fact that it is all still pending thrills me even less. Howard’s Kickstarter is ready to go, now we just have to wait in administrative limbo. Not a great place when I’m still tired enough that any small obstacle feels like the great wall of China. For the rest of the day I will feel accomplished if I manage to fix dinner, not eat a million cookies, and make everyone go to bed on time.

Things I want to do today:
Soak up the quiet in my house so that I can enter three days of intense convention socializing feeling rested.
Write 2000 words of blog posts and fiction.
Think long, slow thoughts to help me sort all the kid emotional shifts of the past week.
Nap enough to catch up on sleep.
Finish re-reading The Help.
Have dinner at a restaurant with out of town friends.
Prepare for tomorrow’s solo presentation and write notes for the other two panels.
Write a letter.
Exercise.

Things I’m going to do today:
Locate and stack all the booth dressing supplies so they’re ready for transport to LTUE.
Assemble bundles.
Pack up merchandise for LTUE.
Make new price lists and signs for the booth.
Deliver a child to school late because he panicked about incomplete homework this morning even though I asked him multiple times last night and this morning if he had homework to do.
Tell a story in the car on the way over to the school which hopefully cements this as a learning experience which will help the child remember that “Do you have homework” means “Go check your backpack and planner” not “Think about it for two seconds and declare that you don’t.”
Double check all the accounting and sales supplies for the booth.
Make a trip to the storage unit to re-stock books and pick up booth supplies.
Fill up the car so I don’t run out of fuel driving to and from LTUE for three days.
Call to excuse Kiki’s absence yesterday and Link’s absence of last week (which I forgot to do previously.)
Wash all the clothes so we have clean things to wear for the next five days.
Fold some of the clothes.
Deliver a forgotten item to a child at school.
Clean the house so it is not embarrassing for guests to stay here.
Hem pants for Kiki.
Slim pants waistband for Gleek.
Put away sewing machine so it is out of the way for guests.
Buy foods that the kids can forage through while their parents are not home to supply meals.
Prepare for tomorrow’s presentation.
Fill orders, mail packages.
Write a quick note instead of a letter.
Wish I’d done more in advance so that the day before the convention is not always a mad scramble.
Make sure my kids get to their afternoon and evening activities.
Supervise homework time, with additional attention paid to making sure that we’re in a good position for the likely neglect of homework on Thursday and Friday while Mom is too busy/exhausted to pay attention.
Scramble to help my two elementary school kids have Valentines to hand out at school tomorrow.

Things I did in the past two days instead of the things I now have to do today:
Accounting and bill paying.
Shipping customer orders.
Customer support.
Took Link to take his driver’s permit test, which he’ll need to re-take next week.
Took three kids to Trafalga in an effort to put things that are important to them on the schedule.
Took care of a teenager with a head cold.
Visited a neighbor.
Stopped by again at neighbor’s to deliver a tool which will hopefully make her life easier.
Attended a committee meeting.
Fielded emails regarding scouts and an upcoming Board of Review.
Answered all the urgent and overdue emails. (I hope.)
Blogged.
Wrote some fiction words.
Wrote some letters.
Began re-reading The Help because it is a good book and because Kiki is reading it for school, so I want to be able to remember the story. Talking books with my daughter is fun.
Re-stocked my shipping room with mailing supplies.
Rearranged all the furniture in my boys’ room to un-bunk their beds, thus letting them know that I’m willing to perform physical labor and rearrange my schedule because sometimes they are more important than other stuff.

Ways that this week has been hard:

Helping Howard track and manage some depression.

Kiki had an unexplained outbreak of hives, allergist evaluation had yet to be scheduled or paid for.

Parent teacher conferences revealed that Gleek and Patch are generally doing well, but there are some specific things I can be doing to help. Check Patch’s math homework, insist he practice his times tables, communicate more with Gleek’s teacher, etc. All are small. All will make a difference. All are yet one more thing I’m supposed to fit into my days.

Gleek had an orthodontic assessment. She wants braces and she very obviously needs them. Yet somehow I want to pause, pretend it isn’t necessary. I won’t. We’ll proceed. I just had more thinking to do than expected.

Link needed full focused attention while he worked through some feelings. He also needs me to step up my game and do a better job relating to him and connecting with him.

I got some publishing news which seemed discouraging at first, but may not be, and yet I still have to work through my feelings as if it really were completely bad news.

Patch continues to struggle with insomnia. I need to give him more snuggles and make sure he is getting more sunlight and exercise.

Smog. Cold. Snow.

Things which I’m supposed to do every day, but for which I’m lucky if I fit in three:

Read scriptures and study them.

Exercise

Blog

Write fiction

Write letters

Things that were good this week, but still tiring:

Staying up late to watch shows with Howard after the kids have gone to bed.

Listening to Kiki tell me in detail all her thoughts and feelings regarding her current projects.

Listening to the kids play a game together knowing that they are having fun but that I’ll soon have to interrupt for bedtime.

I almost won at Laundry. If I fold clothes tomorrow I can declare a win.

Things I am looking forward to:

LTUE

Howard and Patch’s birthdays

Friends coming to visit.

Small happy things:

Gleek’s crookedy smile, her energy, and the livestrong armband she has worn ever since her teacher gave it to her last spring. I can’t think of a better motto for that girl.

Link’s hat that we decorated with his personal symbol. I love how often his hat indicates his mood: pulled down, pushed back, crooked, backwards.

Kiki’s current painting project. She is creating a series of paintings about a girl making mechanical wings to take flight. It is highly symbolic of her right now.

Patch’s tendency to abort an upset with a joke, he’s developing a fine sarcastic turn of phrase. I also love that he makes a new picture for his binder each month of the year.

Howard’s diet and exercise plan which has been working far better than previously. I’m beginning to see him change shape, more importantly he’s happier.

A kitty who sat in my lap and purred for me.

Letters in my mailbox.

Breakfast with a friend.

It is Friday. I can sleep late tomorrow.