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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.

Funny how I only feel like life has a scorecard when I feel like I’m failing at it.

Credits:
Went to tax appointment. All seems good. I’m apparently still competent at bookkeeping. I just need to turn in one additional piece of information then wait for them to be done.

I drove kids home from school, to two different social activities, and retrieved them from the activities without forgetting any of them.

I hugged my girl when she was sad, even though I couldn’t make the sadness measurably better in any other way.

The cat sat next to me and purred, so I must have done something right.

Demerits:
There were long stretches of quiet time when I could have gotten piles of work done, but didn’t. This sums it up really. Everything else is a enumerated list of specific things I ought to have done.

I’m not sure how exactly the day slipped away from me. I probably should have given up and taken a nap this morning. Then perhaps I could have been awake and motivated for the rest of the day. Or maybe not. Sometimes low energy days just happen.

I did not quite realize when I decided to have children that I was signing up for a crash course in first aid and preliminary diagnosis. Yet from day one I had to monitor my child and decide whether or not the symptoms merited medical attention and how urgently that attention was needed. At first all of the ailments were new. I learned the signs of ear infections and childhood diseases. I became an expert in the interpretation of rashes. I tended kids through croup, chicken pox, asthma, a kidney infection, RSV, adenoid removal, nearly broken bones, scrapes, cuts, stitches, objects up noses, objects swallowed, and several dozen varieties of flu, stomach flu, and colds. Somewhere in the middle of all of that I changed from a mom who called others to have them look at baby’s rash into the person whom others called with rash questions. You’d think by now I’d have seen it all, yet I’m still scratching my head, consulting google, and trying to decide whether to see a doctor about all sorts of things. This past year we’ve had heartburn trouble, ingrown toenails, strained abdominal muscles, a scratched cornea, and –just tonight– a case of systemic hives triggered by we know not what. I never wanted to be a doctor and yet I’m regularly called on as a first responder and triage nurse.

And this is the point when I should be able to bring all of these thoughts around to say something useful or profound about it all. Mostly though I’m thinking about how unpleasant hives are and how much I don’t want to have to play “figure out what caused the systemic reaction.” Time for bed.

It feels like getting sick this winter is inevitable. I don’t particularly want it, but it has been years since I was mowed flat by a flu variant and some part of my brain thinks I am due. My kids have been sick, some of them more than once. We’ve had coughs and fevers, sore throats and headaches, all in various combinations. The worst I have felt was the edges of a sore throat or a headache. I am glad, of course. I don’t really want to be sick. Yet since it feels inevitable I find myself staring at the calendar and marking the days when I really can’t be sick because there are things I would cry if I missed and which could not be rescheduled. The Orem Writes event last Wednesday was one of them as was last night’s Ballroom With a Twist concert. I’ve now entered one of the “okay to be sick” zones during which events can be rescheduled if I need to. If I’m going to be sick, I should do it now so that I can be done before LTUE in a week and a half. Of course sickness does not cooperate with attempts to schedule. And perhaps I’ll escape without getting sick at all. I would not complain.

In other news, my sister’s family came to spend the night. A furby came with them. It is a blue fuzzy furby with no off switch. The only way to get it to be quiet is to leave it alone in the dark for ten minutes. My five year old niece loves the thing. She talks to it in Furbish, which is the completely invented furby language. She also pretends to be a furby and was chattering away in Furbish, using it to ask for drinks of water. We waited until she asked in English before supplying them. As I listened to this child be obviously bilingual English/Furbish I thought what a sad missed opportunity furbies represent. Why on earth do the furbies not speak Spanish, or French, or any language that is actually spoken by human beings? I know that playing with a computerized fuzzy toy will not teach a child a full language, but it could be a very useful beginners tool. As it is, I will be very happy to bid farewell to the thing tomorrow.

And now I’m off to bed so that I can stay not-sick.

If given the choice I would have liked today to be full of cheerful energy, the kind of day when long term plans feel possible and I’m excited to reach for them. Instead I had a day which was pretty much opposite to that. It was a chop wood, carry water day, when I focus only on the small task in front of me. I only consider what comes next when each task is completed. This is kind of sad, because some of the tasks were things which would make me happy on an ordinary day. On a day like this it is important to note the small beautiful things. The clear view all the way across the valley to the western mountains, a huge improvement over the inversion smog. Bright blue sky. A lit candle dripping wax in interesting ways.

Tomorrow will be a different day. Hopefully it will be a day closer to what I would have liked for today.

The fog was thick enough that billboards seemed to appear out of it as brightly lit screens only to evaporate again after we’d moved onward through the whiteness. Kiki and I kept exclaiming at the visual effects of the fog, much to Howard’s annoyance because he was driving and for a split second those exclamations seemed to be cries of alarm. “Stop doing that.” he told us firmly. So I bit my tongue and watched the world turned strange and magical by the miracle of water vapor in the air.

Fog is not a common occurrence in Utah, but then neither is the freezing rain we had yesterday morning that coated every surface with ice so that college students were skating their way to class and the emergency rooms were full of accident victims. “Please just stay home. The ER is full.” tweeted a nurse. The police department made a similar plea asking people to please, please slow down. All that icy rain landed on top of a thick layer of snow which has lingered for weeks with no chance to melt. Then today the world thawed. Snow turned to slush. Ice turned to water. But the ground was too frozen to absorb it and all of the drainage routes were blocked by slush. The water pooled and evaporated filling the air with moisture. With nightfall it became fog.

I grew up in the California Bay Area. We got fog so thick you couldn’t see across the street. Fog always makes me think of San Francisco and the Altamont Pass with all of it’s windmills turned ghostly by fog. I remember sitting in the back seat while my dad tried to navigate home through a fog which only revealed a few feet in front of our van. All of us kids watched the road as hard as Dad did, as if the extra eyes could make more things clear. I stretched high in my seat to see, at the very limit of my seatbelt. searching as hard as I could to keep track of those white dotted lines which indicated that we were still on the road. Signs ghosted by us and we read those too, watching for our exit. It was a long time in coming, that exit.

Sometimes in my life I can see far ahead and I trundle along happily confident in my trip. Other times life is foggy. Lately some things are foggy while others are clear. It is a sort of swirling mist which obscures and clears at random. When things are clear I pick a path, when they are not, I keep going on that path until I find enough clarity to pick again. I wish life fog felt as mysterious and beautiful as weather fog.

We arrived home safely and retreated indoors, only occasionally peering out at the fog from behind glass. The air dropped below freezing, we’ll have frost sculptures for trees in the morning. I’ll have to remember to take my camera out and capture them. Soon the fog will be gone.