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I’ve not had any emotional energy to spare since last Friday. At first I was attributing this to how much intervention my kids have needed over the past few days. But the fact that I crashed on the couch and slept for most of the afternoon may indicate that something else is contributing as well. I don’t feel at all sick. I just feel like I stayed up too late. But feel that way despite the fact that I got a full night’s sleep in addition to the hours I slept on the couch. It is possible that the fatigue is due to extreme emotional drain, but it is more probable that I’m fighting off some viral bug. (I hope not. I particularly hope not since I went out to lunch with a couple of good friends and I would feel bad if I had anything communicable. That would be a poor way to repay the lovely time I had visiting with them.)

The sleep was punctuated with waking up to negotiate squabbles between kids. I can’t say I managed the negotiations at peak efficiency, but I didn’t lose my cool either. Of course cool is easier to maintain when you’re too tired to attain a mental state more energetic than “groggy.”

Of late Link and Kiki have been absorbing all of my focused parenting energy. Today I focused a little more on Gleek. Mostly I tried to just notice her and figure out what she needs so that she’ll stop deliberately provoking her brothers in the middle of a previously peaceful game. I think I’ve figured out the shape of her needs, but I need to talk to her teacher to make sure my picture is complete.

I need to talk to Link’s teacher too. I need to talk to these teachers even though I dread learning about further needs that I have to address. Also I’m feeling a bit burned out on the whole communication with teachers thing since I had meetings with four of Kiki’s teachers just last week. (3 very happy meetings, 1 not at all happy meeting with final determination still pending.)

Talking with teachers is exhausting. Usually the result is happy or at least cooperative towards a happy end. But I can’t know ahead of time exactly how the conversation will go. Interactions have the potential to go wrong and it is important for me to build cooperation not damage it.

Also pending are Halloween costumes and pumpkin carving. I need to find the energy for those in the next two days.

Howard rescued the evening. He made dinner. This allowed me to organize the homework load. I played divide and conquer. I tackled each child separately rather than attempting to administer a communal homework time. I was so grateful to Gleek who cheerfully did all of her work the very first time I asked. The other three needed cajoling.

Now they are all in bed. Next I will sleep and hope for a more energetic tomorrow.

The sound of waves on the beach is very soothing. The sound waves of childhood crisis…not so much. Today has been one wave after another ever since the kids got home.

First Link did his daily stomping before settling down to finish his writing assignment. This was accompanied by requests for food from Gleek and Patch while Link loudly insisted that everyone had to be quiet so he could write.

Next came Kiki with whom I needed to sit down and do an extensive post mortem about an ongoing difficult situation. She also had ancillary stresses which needed dissection.

During the lengthy discussion with Kiki, Patch needed food and I had to explain/remind Gleek and her friend that due to Saturday’s territorial infringement’ the bedroom which Gleek and Kiki share is off limits to friends for the rest of the week.

Somewhere in the middle there was about 30 minutes of non-crisis where I went outside with a shovel and dug up a thorny weed.

Then came the crying disaster that Link got to go with his scout master to work on a swimming merit badge while Gleek did not get to go swim.

Following that there were the dropped mini, arguments over dinner, the wanton destruction of the domino constructions created by others, children claiming themselves to be stupid and/or mean while hoping that others will make them feel better, and other random emotional conflicts.

Around 7 pm Howard called me into his office.
“You look like you need help.” I think it was the thousand yard stare that clued him in. So he went out for donuts and then there was bedtime.

Some days “bare minimum” is harder than others.

I have been stable this Fall. There are no major crises in my life. I don’t have trials I am trying to manage. I don’t have emotional things that I am trying to sort through. This should mean that my life is peaceful and calm. But I keep being thrown into turmoil by the crises of others.

There is a level of detachment when the crisis does not truly belong to me. I can sympathize when Kiki has a stressed meltdown over school and homework. I certainly feel sad that she is struggling. I may even wrack my brains trying to find ways to help, but the crisis is not really mine. I am not swamped by it the way that she is. I can walk away and still have the rest of the day be good.

Sometimes it is tempting to do just that, to walk away from the drama. A crisis is exhausting. But I don’t walk away because I love the people involved. So I sit next to Gleek and help her work through her feelings of guilt so that she can apologize and make amends to someone she has wronged. I listen when Link tries to articulate that he feels angry all the time and doesn’t know why. I drop what I’m doing and drive over to the school to bring a child emergency pants. I spend time talking with teachers to clarify communication. I weep with a friend who mourns. I brainstorm with a friend who is problem solving. I do all these things because I love the people, because I am glad to help. I am glad that I can be available.

And I do make a difference. I can tell that I am soothing the crisis, that I am helping to calm the storm or at least to sail safely through it. I am tired and wrung out when the crisis abates. It is a happy tired, because I have done a good work. The hard part is that crises have been hitting hard and fast of late. I often don’t have recovery time in between. Most of the crises are child-sized and manageable, but even small waves can make me tired if I am chest deep in them. And so sometimes I am tempted to step out of the water, away from all the crisis.

And then I discover that someone I know and love has just been smacked with a rogue wave of crisis. It is one of those extra large waves that spring up out of nowhere, threatening to swamp everything. It makes me think of this photo taken by Jean Guichard.

I see the wave, the crisis, and it is not mine. It would be so easy for me to turn and walk away so that it does not touch my life. It would also be easy for me to dive in to the middle and be swept up into the crashing chaos. Instead I have to find some middle ground. A place where I can stand and help without being drown.

The challenge with kid-size crises is to remember that what feels small to me is huge to them. I have to be patient and stable so that they can grow and learn. I have to remember that I may see a small-survivable wave, but the child feels like the man in the picture. It feels like they are doomed and there is no escape. The man in the photograph was not washed away by the wave. Both he and the lighthouse were still there when the wave was gone. They were wet, but still standing.

Similarly, I need to remember that I will not always be yanked about by the crises of others. Several kids are going through a rough time right now, but the waves will pass. We will have calm sailing again.

Link dashed off to his scout troop meeting cradling his backpack in his arms. Except the “dash” was more of a plod because the backpack was full of books, Legend of Zelda manga books to be specific. I suggested that he could wear the pack on his back, but shook his head and insisted that he did not want his books damaged. So off he went to learn about collections and to work on a collections merit badge.

Link returned happy and handed over the unfinished packet to me. I glanced down to see what work was left to do. Quite a lot. I flipped through the pages and was startled to see how adult-centric the questions were.
Discuss with your counselor how investing and speculation would apply to your collection.
What would you look for in purchasing other collections similar to yours?
What would you expect in return value if you decided to sell all or part of the collection?
Half the questions carried the implication that the value of a collection must be measurable in dollars. Link doesn’t care about the monetary value of his manga books. He collects them because he loves to read them. He keeps them safe and sorts them because he loves the stories inside.

This money-centric view of collections is common. I’m afraid I’ve fallen prey to it myself from time to time, particularly when I discover that one of my kids has decided to collect pea-sized dried mud balls which are disintegrating into dirt on the light colored carpet. (I confess to throwing out the mud-ball collection without worrying too much how precious it was to the child who made it and then forgot it.) Some of life’s most personally valuable collections are simply not salable. One year Gleek and Link collected a water bottle full of little air-soft BBs by scouring the gutters on their way home from school. Link has a box full of little twisted bits of metal he discovered the same way. Patch has piles of tiny paper notes he cut out himself and collected into a box. Kiki has porcelain dollar store statues that she still loves. I have pressed flowers. Howard has a stack of sour-patch kids cards lingering in a box in the garage. These things represent something that mattered to us at the time. Each item in the collection has a story, a memory attached. Even when the collection itself is long gone, the value of collecting remains. I still remember fondly the drawer full of snails that my friend and I carefully collected. I was so angry when his sister let them all go.

I don’t collect in the same way that I used to. I place far less value on physical things. But collections of things still come into my life, are organized and used for awhile, and then are passed on. I loved our collection of Sandra Boynton board books. We had them all and read them to our kids repeatedly. Over the years the books themselves were eaten, smashed, ripped, or otherwise destroyed. The few we had left were outgrown and given away. But the memory of that collection remains precious to me. I remember standing in the book store with Howard and deciding to splurge and just buy them all. While we had them, I enjoyed lining them up in a neat little row where the toddlers could pull them out. That collection added joy to our lives without having any resale value whatsoever. I still have those books collected in my memory. (Literally. I can probably still recite most of them.)

I think of Link’s box of twisted bits of things. Then I think of Shel Silverstein’s poem Hector The Collector. As a kid I read that poem and thought how silly Hector was to collect such pointless things. Now I read the poem and want to cry because I have my own little Hectors who all bring home treasures that others consider worthless. I have to be careful not to squelch their enthusiasm for discovery while also suggesting that perhaps we should let the roly poly bug collection go.

The letting go is important. We can not keep everything and yet somehow we try. I have sitting in my closet a pair of old Star Trek book and record sets circa 1975. They were given to me by a dealer at the first science fiction convention I ever attended. I have no use for them. I haven’t lived in a house with a record player for two decades. But I continue to hold onto these books, partly for sentimental reasons, (I remember listening to Star Trek books on record as a kid), but really I hold on the books because they are old and they might have value. They might matter to someone else. If I just give them away, then a piece of history may be discarded or destroyed. It is so easy to fall into this trap, to cart around things that take up space in our lives not because they make our lives better but because of an ephemeral “what if.” The thing is that everything is a piece of history and we can’t keep it all. We have to choose what we’ll allow to take up space in our lives. There is no point in maintaining a collection if it does not provide some sort of joy or satisfaction. I need to look around my house and figure out what else is taking up space.

Fortunately for us, Link’s scout leaders are good, sympathetic men. They did not devalue Link’s collection of books in his eyes. I will be similarly careful as we finish the packet. It will give Link and I an opportunity to discuss how some people view collections and collecting as a form of investment. How for some collections the monetary value is part of the point. This too is a valid reason for collecting things. I’ll just make sure that Link understands that it is not the only one. After that we can move on to discussing how even though we love the things we collect, sometimes we have to stop collecting. We only have so much space in our lives and in our houses and collections can over flow the bounds to take over. It will be a good discussion and I look forward to having it.

The phone rang while I was napping. This is the reason that we keep a telephone plugged in next to the bed. I grabbed the receiver and answered.
“Hello?”
“Mom. The field trip is today and we won’t be getting back until the end of second lunch. Can you pack a quick lunch and bring it to the school? It needs to be here in the next hour.”

I recognized Kiki’s voice, but both my brain and body were feeling extremely lethargic. About the last thing I wanted to do was jump out of bed to fix a lunch and drive it over to the school. I’d earned the nap. Several nights in a row of caring for a sick, sleepless child had burned me out on the whole self-sacrifice angle of motherhood. I was ready to nap selfishly until I was done being a tired zombie. Add to that the fact that Kiki frequently calls me with requests during the school day. It isn’t every week, but she easily has me running things over to her at school three times as often as the other kids combined. I was a little tired of rescuing her from her lack of organization, even though I’d volunteered for some of the rescues without prompting. I could tell that the lunch was important to her. I didn’t want her to go hungry. But I also did not want to get up.

“I’ll see what I can do.” I answered. It was an evasion. But it got her off the phone. I think I considered getting up, but it is all kind of vague because I was slurped back into unconsciousness.

I did not get to nap until I was done. Gleek was in the house with me, which gave her the capability to poke me until I got up to feed her. Her need for food was more critical anyway since she hadn’t eaten much for three days and her appetite was just returning. Also I’m not yet ready for her to learn to use the stove and she wanted grits. So I was out of bed when the phone rang again an hour later.

“Did you bring my lunch?” It was loud in the back ground, like all the kids in school were standing next to Kiki and talking. Which was close to the case since she was getting ready to board the field trip bus.
No evasions were possible this time. “No. I just didn’t get it done.”
A small exasperated sigh came from the other end of the phone. There wasn’t time for explanations or apologies, she had to go.

Usually I feel guilty for something like this. I feel like a failure for not answering the needs of a child. But apparently the guilt engine had been disconnected. I know the self-sacrifice engine was still out of steam. I stumbled onward through the day, until the third phone call came. This time Kiki’s plan was for me to drive 30 minutes to the bowling alley where they were having the field trip. I could bring her money so that she could buy a lunch. I’ll grant her the fact that she intended to use her own money, but this was the third time she’d tried to rearrange my day. I told her “no” again. She often forgets to eat lunch on the days she is at home, so I knew that it would not hurt her to miss lunch. Plus she’d had a really good breakfast.

I did make sure to have food ready and waiting when she walked in the door after school. Which she didn’t eat, because they’d returned from the field trip in time for her to have lunch. Also she’d had some change in her purse which she had used to buy french fries at the bowling alley. I wasn’t upset, just glad that I hadn’t gone out of my way to provide an unnecessary solution.

I am generally very available and helpful to my kids. On the whole this is a good thing, but sometimes it leads them to simply ask me to solve a problem rather than doing it themselves. I can’t count the number of times I’m called in from another room to fetch things for children who could have gotten the thing themselves. Sometimes I remember to stand back and make them do it. Other times I am ambushed by my own habits. I’m so used to doing all these things for the kids (when they were little they couldn’t do it themselves) that I do it out of habit now. Sometimes neither I nor the child stop to think if the request makes any sense.

This is something I need to work on. It is an important step in helping my kids transition into capable, independent people. And perhaps it will help me conserve my energy so that I have more to give when the giving is truly necessary. I’ll get right on it, once I’m done sleeping.

As I expected, I’ve discovered myself in a biorythmic lull where it is hard to motivate myself to do anything on my To Do list. The lull is exacerbated by the lack of sleep occasioned by Gleek spiking a fever again and filling the night with disruptions, including the need for a pot by the bedside. I took her to the doctor this morning. He agreed that the rash looked like roseola, but that the same sorts of rashes can be caused by various flu viruses. So the new, exciting diagnosis is “Non-Specific Viral Flu With Rash.” Whee. She’ll be fine as long as we keep her hydrated.

So my day was spent, somehow… it has gone a bit fuzzy to tell the truth. I played some Plants vs. Zombies. I read. I made soup. I tended my sick girl. I took a nap. I was not particularly coherent for any of it.

Then the day was gone and the other kids came home from school. This was the part for which I was conserving energy. I had to require Link to do his writing homework before playing. Then I had to run over to Kiki’s school to meet with some of her teachers. She had another overwhelmed breakdown last night, during which she sobbed about failing everything and how much stuff she has to do. So I needed to get a more accurate picture of what is required. She has good teachers. We now have a plan, which Kiki will not like, but which she agrees is necessary. I now have two kids who will be required to do their homework before playing. Honestly, if Kiki puts in an hour per day, she’ll have no trouble keeping up.

Ahead of me are the evening hours. There must be a dinner. (I’m thinking frozen chicken nuggets.) More homework must be done. Dishes need to be washed. I need to keep bed time on schedule. Then, hopefully, there will be a good night’s sleep for everyone. At least I have 30 more minutes before I have to start all of that.

I ran my hand softly over my daughter’s stomach. The raised pink spots felt rougher than the rest of her skin.

“Is it chicken pox?” Gleek asked with wide, worried eyes.

“No honey. Chicken pox looks like little blisters. Besides, you were vaccinated for chicken pox. This is something else.”

“Oh.”

I can’t tell whether she is relieved or disappointed to not have chicken pox. I passed my hand over the rash again. We’d come up to change clothes because Gleek’s fever had broken with the usual accompaniment of sweat as her body attempted to restore normal temperatures quickly. I’m always glad when a feverish child begins to sweat. It means the fever is breaking. I was particularly glad this time because the fever had been high and lasted two days. Clean clothes were called for, but then we both saw the rash.

I’ve seen this before. The knowledge came to me calmly, as if a sudden whole-body rash was nothing to fear. I ran my hand gently over the bumps again and studied the pattern, trying to remember. It did not come to me then, so I helped Gleek dress and resorted to the internet.

There are many alarming pictures of rashes on the internet. Any time I google about rashes I feel very grateful for vaccinations. In this case I was able to make a quick visual and diagnostic comparison. It was a Roseola rash. Her illness was classic for the disease as well. Most people catch and recover from this illness before the age of three. Gleek is 8.

“Gleek come here.” I called to her.

“What?” She came bouncing down the stairs into my office.

“Let me see your rash again.” She held up her shirt so I could compare to the picture on the screen. I carefully took a finger and compressed one of the pink spots.

“What are you doing?” Gleek asked.

“Checking to see of the spots turn white when I push on them. They do. See?” I pushed again.

Gleek stared for a moment then pushed on one with her own finger. She looked up at me with a grin. “That’s cool!” She happily turned spots white for a minute more before lowering her shirt.

When the other kids came home from school she happily demonstrated her new trick for them. The Amazing Gleek and her color-changing spot show. She has also carefully learned how to say Roseola and all the details of the illness. Now that she feels better, she feels cool to have this disease when she is old enough to remember it. I hope she still feels cool when I have to keep her home from school until after the rash is gone. I can’t allow the spot show to go on tour where it can alarm school staff and parents.

Roseola Infantum is an early childhood illness that most people contract and recover from before the age of three. It is characterized by several days of high fever followed by a body rash. Anyone who has ever had the disease is a carrier and so contracting it is pretty much inevitable. It is worrisome, particularly for new parents, but not ultimately dangerous. The rash doesn’t even itch.

Roseola is familiar to me. I diagnosed it several times for several of my babies. When Gleek’s two day fever broke and the rash appeared, I viewed it with familiarity. I could think what it was, but I knew I’d seen it before. I consulted the internet and dredged up my own diagnostic memories. Except for the fact that she is 8 years old, Gleek’s illness was classic for Roseola. How she managed to miss this illness before is a mystery to me, particularly considering that she attends the giant vector barn that is public school. It is not surprising that I missed the diagnosis earlier. I was watching Gleek’s fever and evaluating it against swine flu symptoms. I stopped worrying about infant illnesses about the same time I stopped changing diapers.

The good news is that no one else is likely to get sick. Everyone else in the family has been exposed previously. Gleek feels lots better and is bouncing around happily. The bad news is that the rash may linger for several days and I can’t send her back to school until it disappears. The quarantine is not due to actual contagion, but due to the fact that one look at her stomach would have the school staff sending her back home for fear of contagion. Also, Gleek would be so tempted to show the rash to her friends. So I predict boredom for tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll swing by her classroom and pick up some homework for her to do. Or maybe the rash will be gone in the morning. That would be nice.

For the last three days my brain has been running at high speed. It is like the creative fountain burst its bounds and flooded me with thoughts and ideas that I can turn into essays or blog posts. The ideas keep flying at me hard and fast. I’ve written multiple essays/blog entries per day on each of these days. I can only process so much before my brain frizzles out. So for the other ideas, I scribble notes. I’ve accumulated many pages of notes in a short span of time. This overflow has been exciting and invigorating, but also exhausting. I can’t make my brain stop. Insomnia has plagued me and I’ll find myself scribbling notes at 2 am because an idea struck me and I can’t sleep until I write it down.

I wear out during the day as well. There are times I desparately want my brain to shut up, to stop throwing ideas at me. So I turn to the computer game Plants Versus Zombies. It is a fun little game from Popcap.com where cute little zombies try to cross my lawn to invade my house. I must defend my lawn by planting a variety of defensive and offensive plants. There is quite a bit of strategy involved and it engages my whole brain. After 30 minutes or so of lawn defense I emerge feeling more relaxed and rested. Or perhaps it is just that I’ve used my brain in a different way, kind of like stretching after sitting in one position for awhile. Whichever it is, I stand up ready to tackle the non-writing tasks of the day.

This weekend has been heavy on house cleaning because we planned to host a social event on Sunday evening. The event itself got canceled due to Gleek spiking a fever, but I didn’t know that was going to happen prior to late last night. So I was cleaning vigorously to make the house fit for company. The thing about the house cleaning is that it kept my hands busy, but left my mind free. The thoughts began to flow again. Then I’d find myself with note book in hand scribbling notes again, or at the computer typing vigorously. Then my brain was frazzled again, which led me back to defending my little electronic lawn from zombies. I don’t know how often I looped that loop, but it continued for two days.

This kind of high creative energy state is familiar to me. It has happened before. It will happen again. It is not always writing focused. Sometimes I’m consumed with a sewing project, or a gardening project, or a book layout project. Other times the energy doesn’t have a specific focus and my brain begins to plan big new projects for me to take on, whether or not I have time to complete them.

I can feel the creative energy tapering off today. This is also expected. If I were to stay that creatively buzzed all the time, I would go crazy. I need my brain to be quiet and calm sometimes. And I will. I fully expect to find myself mired in some low creative energy days. It may not happen this week, but the inevitable biorythmic cost of energy expenditure is that I’ll have to lay idle and rebuild my resources.

I’m glad that I’ve been through the cycle enough times that I recognize it. I’ve learned tactics to prevent complete burnout (Hello zombie game) I’ve also learned how to replenish my resources more quickly. These days I can track the biorythmic sine wave and know that a low will follow the high. I can also find comfort in knowing that the low will end as well. This same pattern is repeated within each day. I have high creative energy times of day and low energy times.

Knowing that my creative energy comes in cycles gives me the ability to structure my life so that things get done. When I feel the drive, as I did this weekend, I scramble to write and take notes. When I have lower energy, I will still have those notes. They are like a breadcrumb trail I can follow. On a low creative energy day I can still get myself to follow one crumb after another so that work still gets done. Howard calls this tactic “Smart Howard and Dumb Howard.” He organizes his days and his weeks around his creative biorhythms. Scripting and penciling have to be done by Smart Howard in the morning because Smart Howard is the one with the flashes of insight about how things need to go. The inking can be done by Dumb Howard because all he has to do is follow the pencil lines. (This whole concept was told to us by our friend Chalain who understands these cycles very well.)

Hmm. Not so sure I’m on the down swing from this particular creative peak right now. Not considering how quickly this whole blog post leaped from my brain through my fingers and on to the screen. I’ve been typing furiously almost without stopping until just now when I achieved brain frazzle. Must be time to go garden the undead.

Howard and I frequently get asked questions about self-publishing and/or marketing.  This is logical since we pay our bills on the sales of books that we have self-published.  Our success draws people to us.  They ask how we did it, hoping that they can apply what we say to their own projects.  So here is what I have to say about self-publishing and marketing:

There is no easy path.  Publishing and getting your work into the hands of others is hard.   Many people look at self-publishing as a short cut, a way to skip all that difficult submission and rejection.  The truth is that you’re trading submission and rejection prior to publication for the labor of text layout, cover design, doing all your own marketing, and rejection from bookstores when they won’t stock your title.   None of our books are available in Barnes & Noble or Borders.  The only way people find us is if they come looking or are told by a friend.  We have been rejected by multiple distributors until we finally found one to carry some of our books into games/comic stores.  There are days when I think longingly of having a publisher.  Publishing is like climbing Mount Everest.  Self Publishing is like soloing up Mount Everest.  Neither one is easy, but the solo climber is much more likely to end up in the bottom of a very deep hole.

Your publication choices should reflect your goals.  If you want to be a full-time author, you should work to team up with a publisher.  If you want to create a book for your grand kids, check out Print On Demand (POD) publishers such as lulu.com.  If you want to write a book for your society of gardenia lovers and there are a thousand people out there waiting for your book, contracting the publishing yourself could be valuable.  If you wrote a novel and just really want to have it in a book for your family and friends, then you could go with a press offers paid design services.  Look around at the options and pick one that meets your goals for your writing.

Self Publishing will take over your life. We began with a single self-published book.  Since then we have created 6 more books.  The publishing has become a business which requires the full-time labor of two people.  I spend hours of time shipping books, managing store software, communicating with customers, writing marketing copy, communicating with retailers and distributors, and physically hauling books around.  1/3 of our home is occupied by publishing work spaces and storage.  We also have two large storage units which function as a warehouse.  We pay to attend conventions so that we can promote the books.  We have reached the point where we almost qualify as a small press instead of as self-publishers.  But even doing all that work does not guarantee an income.

Building an audience is harder than serving one. When we publish the Schlock books, we know that there is an audience out there anxiously waiting to buy.  We published a children’s picture book and that project is still in the hole financially.  It is a good book.  We love it.  But getting the word out about it has been an uphill struggle.  Self publishing is a great way to answer the needs of an audience that you already have.  Using self publishing to build an audience is a very different challenge, and one that we have not yet overcome.  We all want to believe that if we build something beautiful, then the audience will find it.  Unfortunately we know many amazing creators who continue to languish in obscurity.

To speak of our own experience, Howard’s creative work has succeeded brilliantly through self-publication. My work has not and for future projects I intend to pursue traditional publication.

All of that said, I do not regret the hard trek through self-publication. It has been an amazing experience. I would not change it.