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Through the wonders of modern technology and unsecured wireless internet, I am posting this from the waiting room of the doctor’s office. I’m starting to feel like I’m participating in Sartre’s No Exit. Either that or I’m in Dr. Seuss’ The Waiting Place. Not happy either way. Our hopes for a quick diagnosis of Howard’s lingering cough are waning. Odds are good that we’ve spent all this time (three hours now) and money (yet to be determined) to be told that they can’t find anything specific. Yeesh. Can I go home now? Please? I’m hungry.

In hindsight I can see that last week was hard. I was attempting to re-regulate the schedules and biorythms of four immature persons while simultaneously managing a work load that had heavy concentration requirements. A couple of the kids were also a little under the weather, which helped nothing. BUT the huge pile of beginning-of-the-year accounting is done. I completed the photo book that I intend as a gift at the end of the month. I even pulled together the layout for the Hugo reader pdf for the eligible Schlock book. (Longshoreman of the Apocalypse. Howard will be posting a link to it once he’s had a chance to approve what I created.) No wonder I burned out hard on Thursday and I’ve had something of an unfocused weekend.

I’m still seeking a good work/life balance. Since I am the one who assigns me the work, one would think it wouldn’t be so hard. Hopefully I’ll be more balanced this week.

I was right about getting outside and active helping me feel better. Nature obliged the effort by dumping 6 inches of snow on my double wide driveway on a day when I’m expecting guests. I had to get out there and clear it or else they would not have a place to park. I also did not want a repeat of the last snow storm where we did not shovel and our driveway was an icy mess for almost two weeks. So I shoveled. And then I was tired so I napped.

After that I woke up and felt normal. I’m a bit stiff and sore, but I actually made some progress on my projects and on getting the house clean. This counts as a very good thing. The plan for tomorrow also includes getting outside, although I hope that it will take a form other than shoveling snow.

“I hate myself! I’m stupid!” Gleek shouted from her curled-into-a-ball spot on the corner of the couch. She was wet from the knees down and cold. I’d had to drag her indoors from the slushy snow because she refused to come in when I called. She had directly defied me and now was berating herself for it, but that did not change the fact that consequences still needed to be applied.

Among the things that parents don’t want to hear, an impassioned “I hate myself” ranks right under “I hate you.” My mind spins so many unpleasant futures from theses statements. People who truly hate themselves develop all sorts of self-destructive patterns. Most actions motivated by hatred are destructive. I want to argue with Gleek, but I’ve had that conversation before. It goes like this:
Me: “You don’t hate yourself. You’re just mad right now.”
Gleek: “Yes I do!”
Repetition only makes Gleek more upset and more firm in her determination that she hates herself. My attempts to pull her out of the mood drive her further into it instead. I don’t want to waste effort on that dead end tonight.

So sit on the stairs and look at my little girl. She sniffles and curls tightly around her pillowcase filled with blankets and stuffed animals. I can’t remember when she started using the pillowcase as a bag for her comfort objects. It was a while ago. She hides her face from me. She knows she was wrong and she feels terrible.

Howard suggested that her consequence for defiant disobedience could be being sent to bed and missing all the evening activities. It is a stricter consequence than we usually apply, but then this defiance was more direct as well. Perhaps they match. Perhaps the strict consequence will help her remember and avoid making the same choice again.

Upon hearing the suggestion, Gleek cries out “Just do it! I deserve it!”

I rub my face in my hands. If we send her to her room, she will curl into a ball in her bed. She will feel miserable, lonely, disassociated from the family, left out, and ostracized. These are all feelings I have been working to reduce in her mind and heart. She wants to feel these things because they give her reasons to hate herself and that is the mood of the moment.

I look over to Howard and I see that he realizes that his suggested consequence is not going to provide the resolution we hope for. I just wish I had an alternative to offer. So I sit on the stairs and throw a little prayer heavenward.

“Please help me see a way to apply consequences which makes her a stronger happier person instead of a more miserable one.”

There is no rush of inspiration, no answer becomes clear. But I can tell that I am waiting for something. I am like a person walking through the fog. I can see the lamp post ahead of me, but nothing beyond that. I just have to keep walking and trust that the next lamp post will be visible once I’ve passed this one.

Howard suggests that perhaps a chore would be a better consequence. That way Gleek could do something hard, but feel a sense of accomplishment about her work when she is done. It is a good suggestion, but I don’t see how to make it fit yet. So I keep sitting.

“I hate myself.” Gleek mumbles again.

I am tired, and I don’t have a better answer, so I say “Okay. So you hate yourself.”

Gleek’s head raises a little at my atypical response.

“So what are you going to do about it?” The words are spawned by the memory of a conversation I had with Gleek a week ago. We talked about how the only person you can change is yourself. “If you don’t like yourself, then it is your job to change yourself into a person you can like.”

As soon as the words are spoken, I can see the next lamp post. I know what the consequence should be.
“Gleek, you need to choose a consequence for yourself. Mom and Dad have to approve it, but you have to pick it. I’m pretty sure the consequence needs to be a chore of some kind. And you have to stay right here on the couch until you pick it.”

Gleek does not like this. She would much rather be exiled to her room. But the more she complains, the more I know the direction is right. We have given her power over her own destiny. We have put the responsibility into her hands. Now it is not Mom and Dad forcing her to stay on the couch. She can get up as soon as she chooses to take action rather than cuddle her misery. Suddenly she is no longer a victim and she does not like that.

The fog has cleared and I see the path. I get up off the stairs and go about my business. I have to give time for Gleek to think things through. She makes a cry of dismay as I leave the room. She does not want me to go. But alone with her thoughts and with the path we’ve set, she quickly chooses a chore.

The chore is done slowly and with much complaining, but the shape of the conflict has changed. Gleek tries to reclaim victimhood a time or two, but I just reiterate that she can be done as soon as she chooses to work. She finishes the job and the rest of the evening goes pleasantly.

I must remember this consequence structure. I’m sure it will be useful again.

From For One More Day by Mitch Albom. The narrator had a 10 year career in minor league baseball:

“I hate my job,” I said.
“Well…” Miss Thelma shrugged. “Sometimes that happens. Cain’t be much worse than scrubbin’ your bathtub, can it?” She grinned. “You do what you gotta do to hold your family together. Ain’t that right, Posey?”
I watched them finish their routine. I thought about how many years Miss Thelma must have run vaccums or scrubbed tubs to feed her kids; how many shampoos or dye jobs my mother must have done to feed us. And me? I got to play a game for ten years–and I wanted twenty. I felt suddenly ashamed.
“What’s wrong with that job you got anyhow?” Miss Thelma said.
I pictured the sales office, the steel desks, the dim, fluorescent lights.
“I didn’t want to be ordinary.” I mumbled.

The “didn’t want to be ordinary” really hit home. Most of my life circles ordinary things, and I sometimes complain about that. I often feel the desire to be extraordinary, special. I write my blog and give presentations. Sometimes I feel that doing these things is the adult equivalent of the four year old child who shouts “Watch me!” while slipping down the slide.

I don’t want to be ordinary because ordinary feel like a synonym for boring. Only that isn’t true. The world is full of ordinary things that are amazing. Snow is everywhere. We stomp through it, slide on it, shovel it, and curse it. It blankets my yard right now. But if I get down close, I discover that this ordinary thing is not a single thing at all. It arrives as beautiful crystalline shapes. It transforms when it lands. It can be packed into snowballs, made into sculptures, or tracked into the house. It is completely ordinary and also amazing.

I am in favor of savoring the ordinary. Not because it lowers expectations and makes life easier, but because so much of what we consider ordinary is actually special. Terry Pratchett brilliantly pointed out that the most amazing capability that humanity possesses is the ability to be bored. Without it we would all sit around being perpetually stunned by the world we live in.

This is what Mitch Albom’s quote does for me. It reminds me that a life spent in the ordinary pursuit of a worthwhile goal will not be wasted. My efforts at house cleaning, or clothes washing, or package shipping, are not wasted. They each contribute to the benefit of our family. Being notable may or may not happen to anyone in life. What really matters is usually ordinary.

It started with the telephone. I was going back to bed after getting the kids off to school. The head cold and the interrupted night’s sleep had rendered bed necessary. But if the phone rang, I did not want to have to get up, so I picked up the handset and carried it with me into the bedroom.

I also collected the portable DVD player. It had a half-watched movie in it and that would be a good follow-up activity to sleeping. Then I remembered that the first half of the movie had triggered some writing thoughts. If I was going to have writing thoughts, I needed my notebook. I retrieved that. Then I also retrieved a brand new notebook from downstairs because I’m almost out of pages in the first one. If I used the last page I didn’t want to have to get up for another notebook.

I carried these things to my room. Where I saw my laptop plugged in across the room from the bed. I might want to write straight to the laptop rather than just scribbling notes, but I didn’t want to have to get out of bed to retrieve it from the other side of the room. So I picked it up to carry it to the bedside table. Next to the laptop was the book I read yesterday. There were some quotations in the book that I wanted to blog about. In the same stack were my paper journal, and my scriptures, and the next book to read. I might as well carry them all to the bed.

At about this time I realized that some deep place in my brain had no intention of getting out of bed again. It planned to stay there all day and was nesting appropriately. The deep place of my brain was right. Other than getting kids from school and supervising some homework, I’ve been in bed. Often sleeping.

Howard laughed at my nesting, but he has taken good care of me. He fixed me both breakfast and lunch. He brought me extra blankets and he kept me company when I was awake.

The nesting was not futile. For some reason my half-asleep brain kept composing essays and blog entries. I kept trying to soothe it; petting it like a mother pets the head of a fretful child. I tried to convince my brain that we could let go of the thoughts, that they would be waiting for us on the other side of sleep. My brain was not convinced and could only be appeased by the copious scribbling of notes while laying down with one eye cracked open. Precious thoughts preserved, I was able to sleep. Viewed with a little more objectivity, some of those precious thoughts were…not so precious. But I find it encouraging that writer thoughts are so pervasive even when I am sick.

On a meta level it was amusing to watch myself this morning. I was aware that my thought processes were askew. My time sense certainly was. I am still a bit unfocused, but three hours of sleep made things somewhat better. More sleep is in my future. I also intend to summon pizza via the internet in order to supply dinner. Pizza sounds good. I still have that movie to watch. Today I am really glad that my kids are old enough to take care of themselves while I sleep.

(Yes this entire entry was written on the laptop while laying in bed.)

I really want to take the title for this post and draw great big arrows pointing to it with exclamation marks. I can not remember the last time that Saturday was pleasant. I think it might have been sometime during the summer. Maybe. Mostly Saturdays have been chaotic and full of squabbling. By early afternoon I’m ready to flee from the house. Only I usually can’t because my house is full of neighbor children playing with my children.

But today was pleasant. Peaceful. I am trying to deconstruct where the difference lay so I can repeat the experience in future Saturdays. It wasn’t lack of neighbor children because those were here in abundance. Nor was it some edict from me about cleaning the house and banning video games. Our house is still cluttered and the sounds of repetitive game music abound. I can only find three things about today that are markedly different from other recent Saturdays.

1. Gleek was focused on playing nicely and being a good sister. This means that an accidental injury in the course of playing was met with sympathy and care rather than indignant protests that it was not her fault. Also she provoked no one and was accommodating to other people’s ideas.

2. I went to the gym. This got me out of the house and invigorated. I’ve exercised three times this week. I don’t think it is a coincidence that my mood has been better.

3. Kiki got herself out of bed. Then she proceeded to do her chores and get started on her homework without me commanding any of it.

All of these things are wonderful, but only #2 is in my control. So I’ll be getting myself to the gym more regularly and just cross my fingers that the kids will decide that being kind and responsible are more fun than the other options.

My facebook status this morning proclaimed that I had clawed my way through an enormous pile of email and was ready to tackle an enormous pile of shipping. The statement was accurate, but due to the short space requirements, incomplete. Also pending was a big pile of accounting, a big pile of laundry, and a big pile of dishes. Things do tend to stack up when I step outside my usual round of tasks for a holiday weekend.

Oddly this accumulation of things to do feels like an interesting challenge rather than a burdenous slog. My triumphant feeling about the email was repeated upon the completion of the shipping. That’s as far as I got before the kids got home and rearranged my priorities. The rest of today will be spend housekeeping and mommying. I just hope I can keep up this energetic streak so that I can tackle more piles tomorrow.

There are some days where events fit together as part of a much larger picture.

The speaker in church talked much on personal revelation, that we each can receive inspiration to direct our actions and guide our lives. This is something I believe in strongly. I’ll admit that I was only giving the speaker half of my attention, as the rest of my attention was on Gleek’s artistic explorations into cross hatching. The kids require lots of encouragement to remain non-disruptive. But in the midst of showing Gleek the different effects that can be achieved by cross hatch density, I suddenly found myself listening with full attention. The speaker spoke of building life habits around seeking inspiration. This is something I’ve tried to do in my life. Because of it there have been times when I have felt clearly and strongly about things I needed to do or say. Lately it has all been a muddle. I haven’t felt strong or clear about anything. Mostly I’ve just been trusting that part of myself that says “do this next.” There hasn’t been time for quiet thoughts or big perspectives. What came to me while listening to the speaker is that the “do this next” voice can be every bit as inspired as the quiet, calm, perspective-driven decisions. I’ve trained myself to recognize and respond to that quiet inner voice. It makes sense that I would keep responding even when there isn’t much time for thought. I also realized that I miss having the larger perspective. If I want it back, I need to carve out some time for it to exist in. I resolved to do some quiet thinking during the rest of church while I was away from the kids.

Quiet thought during church was not to be. Instead I was asked to be a last minute substitute for the primary class that I used to teach. I agreed without a qualm. I love those kids and I know that they really need someone who understands the particular personalities involved. The class had gotten more challenging, not less. Later in the evening I spoke with my backyard neighbor who is their regular teacher. We got to compare notes and discuss the needs. The conversation was helpful in spinning ideas about how to help the kids in the class. It sparked ideas both in her and in me about things that could be done to further help. That conversation would not have happened without me being willing to drop my plan for quiet contemplation.

Directly after church our home teacher came to visit with us. Home teaching is one of the community building activities of our church. Men are paired up and assigned families to visit once per month. This builds friendships and also provides a conduit for information and help in times of need or crisis. We don’t often need much from our home teachers, so the visits tend to be a social visit with a lesson attached. The home teacher arrived and his lesson was tailored just for our family. He spoke about burdens and engaged all of the kids in the discussion. He touched on all the angles that Kiki needs when contemplating school. He gave Gleek direct attention and praise, which she needs. His lesson even let me share my story about the handful of meal and a little oil, that we can somehow give of ourselves and not turn up empty. It was a really good lesson that answered the needs of several family members. Only he had no idea of the needs he was answering. He had no idea how burdened I’ve felt of late, or how various things he said applied to the various situations of our family members.

So in one day I had an insight which has potential to make my life feel more peaceful. I was given the opportunity to answer a need. Then someone else unknowingly answered needs in our family. These are the times when I can sense the larger picture of which I am only a small piece. It has been a good sabbath.