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A day like yesterday teaches me the importance of fluffy fiction. Sometimes the world is hard, dark, unfair, and full of grief. This is when people need to have a break and go somewhere else. I saw The Hobbit yesterday. I snuggled my kids and watched the Wizard of Oz. They’d never seen it before and were surprised that they knew most of the songs and stories without ever having seen the film. In the evening Howard and I watched Men in Black III. Good guys win. Bad guys lose. Small and ordinary things are able to keep great evil at bay. Gandalf gives a speech about it. For the space of the film the world is how we all would like it to be instead of being massively unfair. Escape is temporary, yet the reprieve is valuable. It gives me space to believe and hope again. I am so grateful to the creators of happy fiction.

In whatever order they fall out of my head.

***

It was eleven pm on Wednesday. I was sitting next to Kiki at the kitchen table helping her color in pictures for a school project. She had written, drawn, and lettered an entire picture book as a gift for a kindergartener. It was an assignment for her creative writing class, but also a Christmas service. Kiki had been working on the book for more than a week, ending in that last marathon day where every hour had been spent on the book. All that remained was to color in the line drawings with colored pencils. Earlier in the day Kiki had lamented the lack of a real life flood-fill. I became that tool for her. She would hand me a colored pencil and point me to a section of drawing, then I would color. Kiki would work on the opposite page, filling in the details. It was soothing, like being back in Kindergarten myself. Sliding the pencil across the pages I did not have to worry about all the dozens of to-do items from the day. They were mostly complete, this project was the last thing at the very end of the day. I could let them all go, which was good since my mind was too tired to retain much. So I colored, as instructed, until the book was done.

***

Mid-day on Wednesday I looked down at my nephew–a knee-high pre-verbal human being with big grey eyes. More than once during the day as he toddled around I would look at him and say “You need words little one.” Except he didn’t really. He was very fluent in point and grunt. We all became trained very quickly even with his mother not there to translate. He hung pretty close to me while his three siblings were downstairs watching a show. My own kids were off at school, except for Kiki who had stayed home sick. She was using her sick day to hammer through her picture book project. I’d been assured that this littlest visitor would nap while his mom was gone at her job interview. He had different ideas, most of which revolved around eating my crackers. The early stages of human development are fascinating, because their minds are so open to new stimuli without having any experience to teach wisdom. This little fellow was likely to fall off of chairs or pull things onto his head because he’d not yet learned caution or consequence. So I watched him closely, following him around my kitchen until he was so full of crackers that a nap was acceptable. Then I ran downstairs to work on shipping.

***

The phone rang again. I am the advancement coordinator for our local scout troop. It is not a job I particularly wanted, I do it as a service. When I accepted the job everyone who explained it to me was anxious to assure me that it was not too complicated and that I’d be able to handle it. I listened to all the information and did not understand why they were worried. It really did sound simple to me. And it is, because it is mostly data entry and data tracking. Except, on the night before a court of honor, I have three different scout masters calling me with last minute changes and “can we hurry and get this recorded so the scout can have a badge tonight?” Also I have to go down to the scout office to acquire all the badges and assemble them for the boys. This can take awhile when there are forty merit badges involved. All the paperwork, expense, and effort makes me think thoughts about cost benefit ratios. I understand that the point is to encourage/reward boys while getting them to learn through challenge and new experiences. I attend the court of honor. I watch my own son get his badges. I watch the faces of the scout leaders and the boys. That is when I know that for our troop, the program succeeds in getting adults to connect with boys. All the stress, paperwork, requirements, and strictures succeed in corralling adults into spending time with growing young men. That is where the success lies.

***

After the last picture on the last page was colored, I sent Kiki to bed. It was midnight. I took the book downstairs and stood at my computer to scan the pages. I pressed the book down hard on the sheet of glass to make sure that the image would have no extraneous gray. Page by page her work was preserved in digital form so that I could print out a copy for Kiki to keep. The original would be gifted to a little girl. My feet were warm as I stood, because my friend Mary had responded to a random tweet of mine by sending me the gift of a foot warming pad. I felt the warmth as I rested my head against the lid of the scanner while a bar of light passed across it. My eyes closed and I waited for the sound of the scanner bar returning to rest. Then I turned the page and scanned again.

***

I crawled into bed at 1 am on Thursday morning, carefully setting my alarm for 6:30. I forgot to turn it on. Yet my body snapped awake at 6:50 anyway, trained by months of rolling out of bed at that time. I am often tired in the mornings, but I knew I was facing the sort of day where I was only going to be able to retain a single thought at a time. So I made a list: These are things which matter today. At that early hour I knew anything which was not on the list would not happen that day. The list was my lifeline. Every time I was adrift in fatigue I would look at it and know what I was supposed to do. Help Patch with Homework. Kids off to school. Mail packages. I followed the tasks like a trail of breadcrumbs through the fog. Sleep was on the list. It was the task I was afraid to tackle because I knew that once begun it would want to consume at least three hours. The sleep was necessary but full of not-quite-remembered dreams about things to do.

***

I forgot to put “Pick up kids from school” on the list. I put “Kiki and Link to youth activity” on there. That occurred during the same time frame when I usually pick up kids. I was already twenty minutes late for the pick up when looking at a clock triggered me to remember that I was responsible for retrieving children. They were quite cheerful about it, busy playing a fun game. It is the sort of brain frazzled thing which I usually berate myself for, but berating myself is not on the list, so I can’t muster enough energy to do it.

***

On Wednesday my sister sent me a story. “Help. I need a quick critique.” It was on my list that Thursday morning, so I sat down in the quiet and read. I made notations as I read, thoughts and story structure flowing through my mind as I reacted to the words. I wished that I was not so tired, because while my critique had moments of acuteness, mostly it felt fuzzy. I love it when I can give a highly focused critique.

***

I try to do things by the rules. It saves a lot of trouble, particularly if someone checks up on something I’ve done and I’m able to spread out a paper trail of exactly how I’ve done everything correctly. However, having somebody run that check turns on the portion of my brain which obsesses about possible mistakes and then considers all possible ways to prevent those future possible mistakes. Then I have to figure out how to turn that portion of my brain off again.

***

The kitty curls up into a ball on the chair in my office. It is not the chair I use for work. She has her own chair at Kiki’s art desk. It used to be my chair. Now it is hers. Her habits change depending on the weather. In winter she sleeps indoors for much of the day and wants to pounce on things in the night time hours. I looked at her as I walked past. She was curled into a ball so tight that she resembled a tribble. I slid my hand over her fur. She made a little chirrup noise to acknowledge me, but did not open her eyes. Later she fished a six sided die out from under the edge of the couch and batted it around the room for her own amusement.

***

“My chest hurts. It’s been hurting all day.” Link said. It was not the first time I’d heard the complaint. I don’t like hearing such things because it puts me in the diagnosis zone where I have to decide what merits a trip to the doctor and what does not. Most things don’t. I fed Link some antacids and the problem went away. Time to put some antacids into Link’s backpack. Also, he might want to reconsider his diet which is made primarily of hot dogs and pizza.

***

Gleek needed a sarcophagus for the chicken that they are mummifying at school. Fortunately a plastic box was deemed acceptable. Patch needed to look up information and photographs about the Shoshone Indians. Howard found a stainless steel carabiner mug he knew would be perfect for merchandise and needed permission to spend money on new merch. The internet was aflurry with the controversies of the day, different tempests for different circles of acquaintances, each circle certain that their tempest is critically important. I read the tempests. I have opinions. I have friends on both sides of almost any issue I see. I talk about my thoughts with the people who are close to me, but hold my tongue on the internet. Someday there will be an issue where me taking a stand to declare my thoughts is more important than preventing hurt feelings. Today’s issues are not those. Also today I am too tired to explain and defend. Today I just want there to be less conflict.

***

I put the last of the calendars into a cardboard mailer. I was caught up on shipping for the first time since pre-orders opened in early November. I finally have time to consider the organization of Christmas.

***

It is late again and morning will come early.

This was my day of stopping after going all week long. I slept late. I barely participated in food preparations. I ran a couple of errands. I napped. I processed a dozen store orders. I did some dishes. I ate cookies. These are the sum total accomplishments for my day. My plan for the rest of it is to write some words and then go to bed on time.

In all the spaces between the things I did, I was scraping thoughts out of the corners of my brain. They accumulate there when I do not have time to think about them. Many of the accumulated thoughts are random or silly, the kind of thing I would think about for a minute and then forget. But in my rush even those thoughts get stored for later. This morning my head was filled with swirling thoughts and not at all restful. Somewhere during the day the thoughts slowed down, as if they realized that they do not have to frantically attract my attention. They can be quiet and I will still get to them. I like it when I remember how to be quiet.

The weather turned cold today. We’ve been lingering in the fifties, not typical for December. Even when it rained, the air stayed warm–much to Gleek’s dismay. She is ready for snow. I hope that we do not get the twelve foot snowfall that she keeps speaking about wistfully. She has no idea how inconvenient such and epic snowstorm would be. I think a couple of six inch falls would make her happy. She wants to be able to sled down our hill and build a snow fort. I’ve been fine with the warmer weather and rain. I wish I’d been able to take greater advantage of it to get outdoors and finish weeding some of the flower beds, but the time went to other projects. We’ll have to see whether the rest of the winter smiles upon Gleek or upon my gardening intentions.

I just spent thirty minutes reading through the last month of blog entries. No wonder I’m tired.

Sometimes I get to the end of a day and I am too tired for clever and pretty words.
The day in list:
Everybody up
Early school drop off
Homework scramble
Kids to school
Shipping and email
Setting up Howard to work
Attend a friend’s birthday lunch
Leave early because Kiki injured herself at school
Make Dr. appt.
Arrange for someone else to do afternoon carpool.
Shipping and observing Kiki because a trip to the emergency room is still under consideration.
Go to doctor
Kiki has an acute abdominal strain. She acquired it during yoga in PE. She is now excused from PE for four weeks. We have a prescription for physical therapy, but we’re only to use it if we feel it is necessary.
Come home
Feed some Children
Solve shipping problem
Read email and learn that a beloved childhood friend is hospitalized after multiple strokes. She was a second mother to me and she’s all the way across the country where I can’t visit. I haven’t even spoken with her in years. How did I not keep in touch better?
Departed house with Gleek for choir concert
Helped set up chairs.
Was asked did I know that the kids were supposed to be wearing Sunday best? (Gleek was in a skirt, but a casual shirt.)
Drove home to get a change of clothes, kicking myself because I could have avoided the trip if I’d been paying more attention prior to departure.
Listened to an adult acapella group put in a solid performance.
Listened to an elementary school orchestra play christmas songs that were recognizable. Barely. They were cute though.
Listened to Gleek and her choir.
Came home.
Attended writer’s group because it was at my house.
Ushered kids into bed, but later than it ought to have been.

We were all in the kitchen when we heard the sound of rain pelting on the windows.
“Sounds like weather.” Howard said. I flipped on the porch light to show us the blowing rain.
“But our cat is out there!” Gleek said. She jumped out of her chair and called out the back door. Then she ran to the front door and called from there too.
“The cat is fine.” I assured Gleek. “She’s found a dry place to curl up and probably doesn’t want to come through the rain to the door. I reminded Gleek that our cat took care of herself just fine for several months while she was a stray. That’s how she became ours.

Bedtime continued, but I left the lights on so we could see the cat should she show up. She did only about ten minutes later. She was wet, but only a dash across the yard wet, not soaked by the rain wet. The cat did not much appreciate the quick toweling, but she purred for the petting. Gleek was quite relieved to know that the cat was indoors and safe.

This is far from the only instance when my kids have been worried for our cat. Sometimes she spends all night outdoors and the kids worry about her. But she always shows up, ready to purr and be in the house. In fact a major source of conflict in our house is differing opinions about how we should treat the cat.

So our wayward pet is indoors and I lock the deadbolts. No one else will be exiting before morning. I pause a moment to look out at the puddles out in the street. Raindrops scatter the reflected light from the street lamp. There is a flash of lightning and thunder rolls overhead. Thunder is not the usual music for December, but I feel happy hearing it this evening. I’m not really ready for the world to be snowy yet, but we can use the moisture. I like the sound of the rain. It feels cozy and Christmas-ish. My childhood Decembers in California never featured snow.

Earlier in the day I walked home during a light rain. It was more of a sprinkle, certainly nothing like the windy wetness outside. I like walking in the rain. It feels free. When I am in the rain, I know that I have not let the weather stop me from doing something I want to do. Sometimes a desire to not go in the rain traps me at home, which is why I feel strong and confident when I do venture forth. Out in the rain I’ve abandoned responsibility and opened up that part of myself which likes to splash in puddles and kick through piles of fallen leaves.

I was very responsible this weekend. I made sure that eight children and four adults had three meals a day for two days. I sorted invoices and attended meetings. I went to bed at night with a head so stuffed full of responsibility that it kept me awake. I wish there had been rain to listen to in those dark post-midnight hours instead of only my own breathing. I got up in the morning feeling barely rested and continued to be responsible until about the time the rain began. I don’t think it was the rain which caused me to curl up and watch TV. I was already headed there, the rain just made it feel more cozy.

The wind has calmed now, leaving the sound of raindrops falling to the ground instead of blowing against the house. My house has calmed too. Soon we will all be in bed, hopefully to sleep restfully. The weather report says the rain will be gone tomorrow.

This morning I turned on “You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch” as background while I did the dishes. Except that song never stays as background. Within moments I was singing along. Howard wandered up the stairs and joined the chorus. Then he plugged in his iPad to play an alternate version. We sang to that one too. After the music stopped, Howard pointed out that it really is an odd addition to the canon of Christmas music. It is a song about a truly terrible person sung by a narrator who is trying really hard to be thoroughly insulting. Yet it is unequivocally Christmas music for me. This is because every time I hear the song, I remember the rest of the story. I remember that Christmas came without packages, boxes, or tags. I remember the whos hand in hand singing. Most of all I remember the Grinch’s heart, his triumphant return, and the carving of the roast beast. None of this is in the song, yet all of it is there. This is the power of story.

I started to think about it, and realized that this is true of many of my favorite Christmas songs, though for some it is not the story their writers may have intended. I remember the other times of singing a particular song. Memories return of singing when I was 10, 12, 15, 25, 38. Year after year the songs do not change, but they accumulate more meaning with every memory which is attached to them. Ten years from now this morning’s impromptu concert will be part of the grinch song. It reminds me of an essay I wrote long ago about composite memories. Love in the Cookie Dough.

The schedule for this morning was rearranged by a flat tire while Howard was on his way to the airport to drop off some friends. They made their flight, just barely. I was the back up plan and ended up following Howard home as he drove with the spare tire on the freeway. We have a new tire now, thank goodness for warranties. In the less fortunate category: An unexpected medical bill for nerve conduction testing we did on Howard’s hand last April. Insurance cut the bill in half, but it is still not cheap. The garage door needs to be fixed and so does the fridge. Fun.
In good news: The calendars will arrive tomorrow instead of Friday as I’d calculated.
This means our house has to shift over into shipping high gear, except Howard still has to do a week of comics, I have pack meeting, parent teacher conferences at two different schools, and Patch has a big book report due on Thursday. On Friday I’m fleeing the house to go to a concert with a friend and returning home to a house full of guests.
So.
Ready. Set. Go.

Over at Feel More Better, Mir Kamin has written a beautiful post about thankfulness and happiness. One paragraph in particular jumped out at me.

Life is hard. I fear for those I love, and I hurt for those I can’t protect or heal. But somehow I’ve learned that wrapping that hardship around me like a familiar old blanket does nothing but make everything worse. Some days are hard. Our heartbreak isn’t even close to being over, and there will undoubtedly be days when I do pull the covers over my head and wish the world away… for a little bit. In the meantime, just as I can’t stop the bad stuff, I can’t keep the sun from shining, I can’t stop my son from dancing into my office to make me laugh, there’s absolutely no stopping my dog from being a joyous goofball over the dumbest things (“ZOMG A DUST MOTE!!”), and there is love enough in my life to hold me up when I falter. I wish life was easier. I am grateful anew for the uncomplicated bits, when it’s not.

I love the thought that accepting we are powerless against bad things also means that we should accept the good things too.

Yesterday I was told a story about how military officers get eighty soldiers to take a shower in ten minutes using only six shower heads. It involved marching naked with bars of soap, jumping under the water, running to the end of the line and soaping while waiting for another turn under the water. I listened to this story and had the natural “glad I don’t have to do that” thought. Further stories included keeping one of the two available bathrooms unused and spotless for inspection, having a special set of never-word underwear, also for inspection. In hearing these stories I began to think about human nature, the psychology of creating a unit out of disparate people, and why individuals need to be stressed in order to forge that unit. There is the pure physical necessity. We’ve only got ten minutes and eighty people to get clean is a powerful incentive to shed the trappings of regular civilization. Necessity changes the rules. However there is also great cohesive power when a group of people experiences the same unpleasant thing, they begin to bond.

Howard and I are not military, nor are we ever likely to be, but we are definitely trying to forge a group of individuals into a unit which is capable of hanging together in a crisis. We are building a family and sometimes that requires a sacrifice of individuality for the good of the group. Unlike the military, families must sometimes sacrifice the good of the group for the growth of the individual. Yet there are things to be learned from the tactics of basic training. It is only by pushing people beyond their limits that they get new limits. There are times when the role of parent feels astonishingly similar to the role of drill sergeant.

The source of these military stories is a pair of friends who are staying with us. They are a couple who intend to have children in the future and have been quite honest in admitting that they’re watching to see how we run our household of four kids. So far they haven’t gotten to witness the melt-down stuff. We’ve been moving smoothly through our routines with the kids managing their responsibilities. Knowing that they’re observing, causes me to step back and observe too. It lets me see that currently our family runs like a well oiled machine. All the parts have roles and responsibilities. We all know our assignments and chores. Sometimes there is friction, but the system as a whole works well. This is not how it used to be. When the kids were young everything felt much more messy. Every chore was an argument. Every bedtime a battle. We built systems and they fell apart. We built new systems out of the pieces of old ones and they fell apart too. So much of the work during those early childhood years was spent trying to create family identity and patterns out of chaos. There were entire years when we went to church, not to be spiritually fed, but to teach the kids that church is what we do on Sunday. Some things came easy others felt like we would never get them right. Yet here we am with this functioning system and I can’t pinpoint when we stopped having to massively reconfigure it every three months. I’m also acutely aware that even though things are running now, there are additional reconfigurations in our future. The cool thing is that this system now has six mechanics instead of two.

I’m watching my friends too. I listen to their stories about military life and see how they work together to build a family despite the demands that military careers present. I ponder the unfairness inherent in the fact that if a heterosexual couple wants to have biological children, the woman is the only one who can give them birth, no matter how much logical or fiscal sense it might have to assign child bearing differently. I’m also thinking about the larger unfairness in family planning. There are people like Howard and I. We’ve had our babies and have moved onward to where the thought of having another baby is dismaying. Then there are other people who have yet to be able to parent despite longing for it.

I also see the ways in which larger communities also arrange themselves as needed for crowd control, people management, and (hopefully) personal growth. That last part sometimes gets forgotten in places where it should be paramount, like schools. Sometimes the systems need to be tweaked, other times they need to be completely reconfigured. Brilliant people can make a hodge podge system work beautifully, but it is best when the system is set up so that everyone does a little bit of maintenance and all runs smoothly. All of these thoughts swirl around each other and through each other, not coalescing into an particular insight or realization. Yet the patterns of flow are interesting. I shall have to think more on it.

Lois Bujold has a new book out this week, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance. I’ve been busy reading. It is lovely to get to visit Barrayar again. The other thing that has been eating time this weekend has been squashing comment spam. However there was one side benefit. I had a random walk through my blog archive and thus re-read some old posts. I found this one particularly worthwhile. It talks about how I have trained myself to get things done by setting memory triggers and practicing them. It’s worth reading if you need more words from me today. As for me, I’m diving back into Bujold’s words.