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Up side of the day: I actually worked on some of my projects.

Down side: My evening has been stomped upon by my child’s poor homework planning. The emotional stew has chased away all the blog thoughts which I hoped to spin into something interesting.

Sigh.

On the Sunday after Prom, many of the young men and women who attended wear their formal attire to church. I love this tradition. It lets the clothing be worn more than once. More importantly, it lets me have the chance to look closely at the beautiful dresses. Kiki paid more attention this year because she is two weeks away from being 16. In the not-too-distant future she may be one of the girls in a gorgeous dress. I think she was also primed to pay attention because I’ve been asking her opinion on the dresses that I am altering. A long-buried part of me is very glad that my life now contains excuses for me to wear formal dresses. The first of these events will arrive on Saturday when Howard and I will attend the Whitney awards gala. The Whitney awards will be quite relaxing since we’re attending to be able to applaud our friends.

It feels like I have more profound thoughts on deliberately dressy clothing, but my thoughts keep slipping away from me. This probably means I should stop trying to write and instead put children to bed.

Stepping Stones book project:
I opened up my book project today for the first time in over two weeks. It feels like it has been longer because my brain has been working double time in the interim. I spent a couple of minutes reorienting myself in the project and figuring out where I left off. Everything about it felt stupid. I could not find any sense of inspiration or flow. I allowed it to all be awful and pounded out some words anyway. I have only one more essay to re-draft, then a bunch of data entry for the hand-written edits in the margins of the print-out. So close, yet not quite done.

Pretty Dresses:
I have now removed all the bits which did not fit my vision for what the dresses will eventually be. Evidence of this feat is strewn all over the family room floor in the form of tiny bits of thread. Gleek was fascinated with the project and did some of it for me. Next comes the more fearful parts. Seam ripping can be undone, cutting can not. However I can not shorten sleeves without scissors. That part will have to wait until I have a few hours available. Nylon chiffon frays badly if the edges are left raw for very long. (I feel cool for being able to attach the right name to the fabric. I know lots of fabric names and lots of fabric textures, but I would badly fail a mix and match test. I intend to fix this as my project continues.)

Raising Children:
My most important and long-term project. I didn’t do anything critical on this today except feed them at intervals and dole out a band aids or two. Sometimes it is nice to have a day when they’re around, but I’m not much required.

Cleaning house:
No progress today.

Gardening:
Ground covered in snow, wind cold. No progress.

Schlock books:
I can’t do anything else on EPD until we get page proofs late next week. I’ve sorted images for the next 4 books. I’ll do preliminary layouts starting on Monday.

Critiquing:
Between my writer’s group, a friend putting himself through an intensive short story writing course, and another friend posting chapters to be read, critiquing has turned into a project. I’m almost caught up with short story friend. Might finish that later this evening. The others I’ll get to.

Blogging:
1 post today. You just read it.

I propelled myself into Monday on a wave of nervous energy. I knew when entering the week that it would be a watershed. The work and decisions of this week determine the shape of things to come. It was important to get it right, so I made a list. The list was my focus. Task by task I was going to get through. I arrived at Monday evening with my list still long and my reserves exhausted. Most of my reserves were expended on emotional management rather than task accomplishment. Tuesday was a complete loss at getting work done. The list lay idle while my attention fractured across dozens of small fears and frets.

Wednesday is the fulcrum of most weeks and this week in particular. Today we can see that Howard will get all the margin art done before the end of the week. The cover is already drawn and out for coloring. I filed paperwork which will transfer my youngest two children to a different school. Now I need to settle my mind about these things. The settling is important because while this week determines new directions, the results of these shifts will not be clear until August. I am afraid of August. It is full of tight deadlines and big events. I have no idea how I’m going to fit a book shipping around the August conventions. I’ve only got a vague idea how I am going to manage the 36 hour turn around from the end of Worldcon to the first day of school. During those 36 hours I have to transport all of us and a load of booth supplies across 8 hours of desert while post-convention exhausted. I don’t even know if the youngest of my kids will be transferred to the new school with his sister, and probably won’t know until the week I’m away at Worldcon, because the schools won’t make their final lists until then.

But at least the decisions are made instead of pending. I’ve mixed enough metaphors for one evening. Time for bed.

Arches National park is a place of stunning beauty. It has been photographed with far more technical proficiency that I am able to produce. Yet there is something about my photos that speak to me in a way that the professionally taken photos do not. I remember standing there. I remember the feel of the camera in my hands and the way the wind whipped my hair as I looked up and up at the spires and arches of red rock.
We were dwarfed and humbled by the sheer size of the place.

We walked trails and contemplated the pathway ahead.

But this I think is my favorite picture. It is not technically beautiful, but it proves that I win at meta picture taking. At least for this trip.

I counted the number of essays I have left to revise before I can call the revision done. Six. I am so close. I could do that in a day if I pushed myself hard. The trouble is that if I wear myself out finishing the revision, I will be no good for the other bazillion tasks which are depending upon me. So I continue to work steadily in the snatches of time between everything else.

I’ve always been one to save the best bites for last. I carefully nibble away the crusts before I savor the middle. I push to get things done early so I will be able to enjoy relaxation later. Over all I think it is a good habit to have, however when the supply of crust is constantly replenishing, I have to remember to pause and take bites of the stuff I really want to eat.

Next week is full. I’m going to have to be highly focused to get it all done, particularly the tasks which I don’t much enjoy. I hope I can do it all. I want to end next week with layout near done, my revision done, and preliminary layouts done for the next four Schlock books. That last is important because Howard intends to spend the month of May hammering on bonus story outlines. Monday morning it is time to hustle. Between now and then, I have Sunday.

Howard is away at a convention this weekend. He is visiting with familiar friends and meeting new people. He will have fun conversations and eat out at restaurants. I am here at home with the kids. This arrangement is normal for us. It is a division of labor. One of us to go be public, the other to provide stability for the kids. Sometimes I feel sad about being the one to stay home. I often have conflicted feelings about being unseen, and I wish I could be present for the fun events and conversations. Today I am so very glad not to be going anywhere.

Public events are filled with excitement, interest, and fun. I love being at conventions and presenting at them. However they are also inherently stressful. Just now I’m glad to skip the emotional roller coaster of guilt over leaving the kids, anticipation, nervousness, and fatigue. Instead I’ve had a lovely quiet afternoon, where I made a meal more elaborate than strictly necessary and watched a movie. Tomorrow we’ll finally have Patch’s long-overdue birthday party and then I plan to sit down with my kids and watch West Side Story. None of them have seen it. I’ll clean up the house and make plans for our family vacation next week. All of it will be done at a sane pace instead of in a frenzy. Then when Howard comes home, exhausted, all here will be calm and orderly.

It is very old fashioned of us I guess, husband ventures in the wide world while wife stays home to tend house. It works though. Our lives are more balanced and happy when someone is tending to home. Some time in the future it may be me heading out while Howard stays home. For this weekend, I’m glad of the current arrangement.

I have run out of brain today due to extreme effectiveness in tackling my To Do list. So I offer a thought I crafted last month when I was helping Kiki wrestle with her school’s registration system to set up classes for next year:

Among the things my kids are learning by participating in public school: Bureaucratic systems are often stupid, but if you are clever, the system can be made to dance.

The system danced and Kiki now has a solid plan for classes through the end of high school. As a side note, I once read an article talking about the economic differences between people who believe that systems must be endured and the people who believe that systems are to be managed. People in the second category tended to be more financially prosperous. I wish I could remember where I read about it, but that goes with the lack of remaining brain I guess.

For a day which had higher than usual levels of grouchiness in it. I think it ended pretty well. The broken lawnmower was hauled away by a guy who thinks he can fix it in less than a week. The girls were hopefully chastened and made to think a little bit about their repeated conflicts over treatment of the cat. We watched The Great Race. That movie makes me laugh even though I can recite the lines before the actors speak them. (I watched it a lot as a kid.) Then I wrapped up the day with writing project progress. None of the grouchy stuff should have been such a big deal. Hopefully I can be less grouchy tomorrow.

I was in High School and the assignment was to create a quick drawing to represent who you are. The teacher did not mean for it to be an important or profound assignment, it was the prelude to a guessing game activity. I was completely unable to comply with the request. I knew I could draw a picture that would allow other students to guess who I was, but somehow I became emotionally tangled in the idea that such an image would be a false representation of who I was. I felt like a person of infinite possibility and to draw an image would be to show only a sliver of who I was. Anything I drew would be boxing me in, limiting my possibilities, and ultimately be a lie. My teacher was quite frustrated with me. He wanted quick drawings, not an identity crisis.

I have always disliked being pigeon-holed or labeled. As a child I claimed all the colors as my favorites. As a teen I entered high school with the deliberate intention to re-define myself in the eyes of my peers. Later I had to undo all that work and re-connect myself with my true interests. It was only well in to my adult years that I learned that I did not have to constantly challenge other people, daring them to accept all the aspects of who I am. Only in the last five years have I learned that allowing other people to categorize me for their convenience is a courtesy I can extend which has absolutely no bearing on my life or what I accomplish. I have an array of labels to describe me, but none of them define me completely. Having lots of labels means I can display whichever one is appropriate to the social situation.

I spent this past weekend at LTUE, a symposium on Science Fiction and Fantasy. It is always interesting to me to see what panels I am placed on, because it is a reflection of how I am viewed by the local writing community. I had one panel on organization, one on parenting, and two on business/financial things. It is endlessly amusing to me that I, the person who picked a humanities major in college because it required no math, am now teaching basic accounting and business structure. Yet these are things I know very well because I had to learn them. I think it is encouraging for creative people to know that organization and structure can be learned. I love teaching about these things. They are good things. However I am more than just business, organizational, mommy lady. I would love to teach classes on story, blogging, and creative non-fiction. I believe I could do these well, but I don’t yet have the credentials to back up my belief. I don’t have visible evidence of my capability and thus that is not how I am thought of when the time comes to arrange panels or presentations.

The need to categorize is built into human brains. We have to be able to file experiences and dismiss them or else we will be in a constant state of mental overload. One of the primary drives of early childhood is the creation of categories. No one wants to examine each and every fork we encounter to determine it’s qualities and use. We need to be able to label it quickly as a fork and move on to something else. We do this same thing with people. We have to. Every person in the world is a being of infinite possibility, but contemplating that for every cashier at the grocery store and every person you drive past would overwhelm. Thus to me the young lady with a head full of hopes and dreams is just a cashier. To her I am just a customer. This is good and necessary, no matter how much I hated it as a teenager.

I think I worked so hard to dodge categories because I was afraid to be trapped in them. This is a very real problem. Sometimes the imposed categories of others can limit a person’s potential, particularly if the categories are applied by people in power. A child may have a very difficult time breaking free of being “the smart one” if that is how parents and neighbors see her. I have friends who make a full time living at writing and yet are still treated as if they’ve picked up an amusing hobby. This can be infuriating and emotionally crushing. Repeated application of a particular category can make even a being of infinite possibility accept limitation. I am in a very fortunate position. None of the categories that other people apply to me block my pathways to my goals. I am not barred from my dreams by being too female, white, Mormon, maternal, scattered, reliable, messy, or any other category. Fighting against the perceptions of those who have power over your dreams is hard. The first step is to not accept the limitations of the categories assigned by other people.

I never did draw a picture for that class game. I sat out while the other students played. Several months later I realized what my visual representation should be. It was a dandelion puff scattering seeds on the wind. All of the seeds had the ability to sprout into a new plant and they had the potential to travel far. It still was not a perfect representation, but I liked it because it represented possibility rather than limitation. The fact that real-world dandelions are often treated as weeds was perhaps a meta-commentary upon the fate of people who defy categorization. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I just loved to remember blowing the dandelion puffs, watching seeds sail off into the blue, and wondering where they would land. I gave my teacher a hand drawn picture of a dandelion puff months after the assignment was forgotten by everyone else. He gave me an odd look, not quite sure where I fit. I felt quite good about that.