Today I’m headed off to the land of Cabin Without Internet. I shall be spending my time there bonding with relatives and helping coordinate the family reunion activities. Sometimes it is good to walk away from my online life. I will chant that any time I feel withdrawal symptoms or anxiety over the quantities of mail that will be waiting for me upon my return. I have to remember that Howard will keep his eye on things. All will be well.
The other day my friend made an animated jpg purporting to illustrate where there are wild fires in Utah. It showed the entire state in flames, which is kind of how it feels. In the past week over a dozen large fires have burned forests and homes while requiring thousands of households to evacuate just in case. It seems that every single day brings report of a new fire. Nearby states are suffering the same or much worse. Colorado is suffering a fire of epic proportions. Yet at my house all is normal. I work on my projects, do my work, and the only direct effect of the fires is that sometimes the sunlight is red from smoke and yesterday we got a light coating of ash. Yesterday a friend told me that a couple of years ago the law was changed preventing people from gathering deadwood in national forests. He posited that this lead to a build up of underbrush. I suspect that much of this is caused by last year being so wet and mild while this year has been dry. Obviously something is different this year. We get one or two big fires every year, not more than ten in a single week.
Thus far I don’t know anyone whose home has burned, though I know several people who have been evacuated or were at risk of evacuation. I find myself thinking through the contents of our house and making a list of what I’d take if I could only remove one van load of combined things and people. There are lots of things in my house I’d miss if they were destroyed, but only a very few items that I would bother to pack. Most of the space would probably go to kid treasures. They love their things far more than I love mine. Mostly I would pack things that would let us continue to function as a business and a family while we were in exile.
Independence Day is next week. I’m not sure if I’m all that excited about lighting fireworks. I’ve kind of had enough of the smell of smoke.
I am too tired to be reliably using the internet tonight, as evidenced by mis-sending an email and the number of typos I’m having to correct. It is probably also evident in the number of tweets I think of writing which are not actually all that clever, but which feel clever because I am tired. Also redundant, or repetitive, one of the two.
Why am I tired? My brain would not go to sleep last night. So at two a.m. I wandered to the kitchen where I discovered that there was a dead mouse smell emanating from my silverware drawer. Not the smell I want on my spoons. So I cleaned all the things, but did not find the source. Then I got up and traversed a day full of dance festival, invoice sorting, package processing, carpools, and retrieving Howard from the airport. It has been a good day, though the very tired part of my day is just waiting for me to let my guard down so it can flood me with discouragement. I’m too tired to keep my guard up much longer, time to sleep. Tomorrow I can get rid of the smell and do all my other things.
I have many thoughts about the things I saw during this day, so this post will only serve as a quick overview of the day as a whole. (Also I forgot to bring my camera cable, so I can only use the pictures I took on my phone and emailed to myself.)
I began my day at the National Museum of Art. Entrance is free, but they will peek into every bag you carry with you. All the things in the National Mall are free, it is a reminder that all these things belong to all American Citizens equally. Most museums discourage photography, the National museums encourage it. Of course you can take pictures, these things belong to everyone. So I snapped away.
I love how grouchy these lions are in Reubens’ Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Sure they didn’t eat Daniel, but they are not happy about it. Apparently Reubens had a thing for lions. He’d spend hours in the zoo drawing them.
I love this gentleman’s messy office. I also love that Willard thought it worth painting.
Then, of course, I have the obligatory up-close and stand-back shots of impressionist art. It is like magic the way that image appears from mess.
I also have the obligatory photographs of D.C. monuments.
I spent most of the day wandering the Mall solo. I ate ice cream, got sunburned, and then navigated the Metro system without getting lost. I feel quite accomplished. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to spool out my more complex thoughts and upload my more carefully composed photos to explain why this trip means so much to me.
Made powerpoint slides, picked up Mom from airport, mailed packages, tended kids, and went out to dinner with a friend. In all, a pretty good day. Hopefully I’ll have more brain cells to wax eloquent tomorrow.
My friend called me this morning. “Do you need help? Can I help you with stuff?” Such was my state of mind that I was able to identify that I could probably use help, but I needed to ask Howard what help I could most use. Howard told me to haul my friend with me to IKEA to return the wrong furniture and to help me figure out the right furniture. She trailed me through the store and functioned as an auxiliary brain. She gently detached me from my fixation on certain furniture layouts and offered alternatives. In fact she made sure that no alternative was left unexamined, even when I lay my head down on a desk and whined about how I am so tired of making decisions right now. Or perhaps I was whining about just being tired. Three hours of sleep will do that to a person. BUT I finally have the right desk. It is all assembled and ready for me to move my computer onto it. I don’t have the emotional fortitude to tackle it this evening, but tomorrow, surely.
My house smells of lilacs. I need to remember this because it is a lovely thing. The bushes are blooming outside our window and a fan brings the smell into the house. I need this small loveliness because I haven’t yet unpacked the emotional baggage from my trip, and there is no time to unpack it because this week is full of things all of which are four days behind schedule. And new things keep showing up. We’ll muddle through. For now, lilacs.
Yesterday was constructed entirely out of errands. When I rattled off the list to Howard, his response was “I’m glad that’s your day and not mine.” So I dropped papers off, I returned unwanted purchases, I had the vacuum cleaner repaired, I went grocery shopping. Through my town and hours I wended until the twisty trail landed me in the evening at Gleek’s 5th grade program. It was to be followed by writers’ group and then bedtime. This program has been part of Gleek’s life for months. She’d practiced her lines, sung the songs, sometimes so much that the rest of us asked if she could please be quiet for awhile. She was as prepared as she could be. Well, except for the part where the chairs were filled with audience. They couldn’t rehearse that part. Bravery is a decision, not an emotion. It is the decision to act despite fear. Gleek was afraid, but she did not miss a single cue. She sang and spoke right on time. Then I took her home and let her run until she was tired and play Minecraft until she was calm.
Today was a clean up day. I emptied my overflowing email box. I sent off files to people. Then I sat and stared at nothing in particular while letting my thoughts sort themselves into new places. Pauses are necessary. In the pause I had another possible idea based on my cover concept. The photo shoot is scheduled for next Wednesday. Between now and then a small piece of my brain will be quietly considering and problem solving. The email processing dictated the shape of next week. I have my to do list ready to go. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll feel inspired to clean the house with my newly repaired vacuum cleaner. It would be nice to move Howard’s suitcase off of the front room couch where it has been sitting since he came home on Monday.
Daffodils are blooming in my neighborhood. This relates to nothing else in this post. It just makes me happy.
My oldest child sits with a cat in her lap pondering the pile of homework she needs to complete in the next week on the final run up to end-of-term. She also has worried thoughts about art, money, and validation. My second oldest sits down stairs on a couch, snickering as he reads through the Schlock Mercenary books. He’s finally gotten old enough to realize that they are funny. Third child is reading Girl Genius in her bed. Youngest is reading Full Metal Alchemist. I could play “one of these things is not like the others” except that at any hour of any day the obviously different child would change. They are four unique individuals and I constantly have to alter my parenting strategies to accommodate their different needs.
I can feel the gears of my life shifting. We’re changing from book crunch into the lull before shipping. Hopefully we’ll fill that lull with bonus story creation for the next book. We’re also shifting from winter into spring. Gardening work must begin soon. Fortunately it looks like we’ve cleared away enough tasks that I’ll have space for it. I’m shifting into project mode and out of heavy parenting mode. This actually follows a pattern that I identified last year. I’d forgotten that I identified it, except that one of the things I was working on today was layout for my book of blog entries from last year. Seeing the patterns from year to year is interesting. I feel quite glad that this year we’ve finished the book crunch a full six weeks earlier than last year.
Now we just need to adapt to daylight savings time.
Realizing that the reason my spinning rainbow crystals were not spinning was because the tiny solar panel was dusty. Quick wipe and it was all fixed.
Seeing Link come home from school happy.
Realizing that when my teenager had four errands to run, I could just hand her the keys and stay home while she took care of the errands herself. Also, insuring a teenage girl, with good grades, onto an accident free policy, is not as expensive as I expected. Totally worth an extra $30 per month.
The sky is sunny and bright.
My meeting this morning proved once again that my co-teacher and I get along great. We hammered out an outline in less than an hour. Now we have assignments and sections to work on. One more meeting mid-April and we’ll be ready to teach.
Some of the cut flowers I bought two weeks ago are still pretty.
This was yesterday, but it was so nice I’m still going to list it today: Going out on a lunch date with Howard.