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I was in a hurry (I’m always in a hurry lately) and the car in front of me was frustratingly slow. I glanced at the silver hair of the driver and knew that this particular car was not going to speed up any time soon. My usual response to this situation is a frustrated sigh and seeking for a way to get out from behind the car as quickly as possible. After all, I’m in a hurry. I don’t have time to drive slow. This old man in front of me is not hurried. He probably was hurried in the past, but now he is past hurried and well into careful. On the whole I think I prefer when elderly drivers are careful. I would prefer if non-elderly drivers were more careful. This was the moment when I realized that I am one of those less-than-careful non-elderly drivers. My impatience to pass the slow driving car creates a hazard and saves me maybe a minute or two. I looked again at the silver head in front of me. There was a fluffy silver head in the passenger seat. I suddenly pictured them as one of those long-happily-married couples. I could picture him opening the door for her and them walking slowly together so that observers can not be sure who is lending balance to whom. Such couples have seen a lot of things in their lives and they have learned the lack of value in most of the rushing. So I eased my foot off the gas and drove more slowly the rest of the way home. I did not arrive noticeably later but I arrived much calmer and happier.

I fought my way through the wilds of accounting. I had weathered the kitchen and the laundry. I had even escaped the island of waiting-for-a-truck (rescued by a very pleasant driver who whisked away my two pallets of books.) I found myself washed up on the couch in my front room. I still had an endless list of things I could do, but all the urgent tasks for the day were done. Some of the remaining tasks were post-urgent. These are the things that are supposed to be done regularly, but never get done at all when life gets busy. I pondered the array of post-urgent tasks as I stared at the spot of dried chocolate shake on the hardwood floor which has been there for at least two months. By default my decision was to just sit and listen as my thoughts unwound and paraded through my consciousness. They paraded right back out again and I promptly forgot them all. This parade of thoughts is a necessary process, like sifting chaff from wheat. I’ve been shoving thoughts into the back of my brain indiscriminately. The important thoughts will come back around for another pass the others will wisp away and my brain will be less cluttered.

I had not been sitting long (maybe ten minutes maybe thirty, it is something of a timeless state, but regardless of actual time, the thought parade had only begun) when Link came into the room and sat down in the rocking chair across from me to read a book. Reading is a quiet activity. I like my kids to read. It seems that Link’s reading should not have disturbed my thought processes, but it did. There was another person in my visual space. It was like a weight dropped into the middle of a rubber sheet which changes the landscape. I was trying to decide whether to attempt evicting Link, or whether to find a different alone space, or whether to give up on the thought parade for a bit. I had not come to any conclusions, when Gleek also wandered into the room with a ball of yarn. She wanted to make a yarn doll and needed a second pair of hands to wrap the yarn around. Once my hands were no longer needed, she sat next to me on the couch carefully crafting a small bundle of yarn upon which she bestowed a name. Then Patch wandered into the room with a small construction he’d made out of lego bricks. He climbed into my lap and proceeded to play a game which required the deconstruction and re-construction of the bricks multiple times in various configurations.

It was rather like gravity. For the first time in weeks mom was sitting still and not doing anything in particular. Like little planetoids these three people spiraled in close and orbited happily while doing their own things. It seems that half of the parenting job these days consists of just being a stable center point around which they can orbit and off of which they can rebound. This will be more true the older they get, until they are ready to fly off and form their own stable systems. The presence of the children obstructed the parade of thoughts, but showed me why it is important for me to make empty spaces in my days and in my life. There need to be times for just sitting, for offering my hands as a doll maker’s form, for being the platform from which adventures are constructed, times for just being there.

The alarm rang and I was out of bed before I even knew why. This was amazing because every other time my alarm rang during the past month I responded by hitting the snooze button. Somehow I internalized that getting up on time was truly important today. I had a freight truck scheduled to come sometime between 8 and 10 am. It was to pick up the two pallets in my garage, but the pallets still had to be strapped and wrapped before they were ready to go. I threw on clothes and set to work. It took longer than I expected. I’d allowed an hour and the job took two. I kept telling myself it would be fine if the truck arrived before I was done. That the truck driver would understand and wait. But each time I heard the rumble of a truck, my heart would jump and I would hurry even faster. I finished the pallets by 9 am and then the waiting began. At 10:30 am I called the freight company. They told me “sometime today.” So I waited some more.

Waiting for a delivery or a repair takes up an inordinate amount of energy. I spend 90% of my time in my house, but somehow I always manage to have a couple urgent out-of-the-house tasks that fall on the same day that I am waiting at home. And then I feel trapped. I fail to begin things because they might be interrupted. So I check email. Then facebook. Then blogs. Then, because I’m still waiting, I check email again. And the hours stretch and I feel silly because of all the things I could have gotten done in the hours that I spent waiting. So I try to shake off the waiting and settle down to work. But some part of my brain is still listening for the sound of a truck and I keep finding excuses to wander into the front room where I can look out the window. Waiting is distracting.

Around 2:30 pm I got a call from the freight company. It seems that the corporate center forgot to tell the local center that a lift gate truck would be necessary until after all the lift gate trucks were spoken for. The guy on the phone apologized and promised that the truck would come tomorrow. But he couldn’t tell me when exactly. So tomorrow I get to wait again. I’m hoping that I can dive into some tasks and forget that I am waiting. At least now the pallets are completely ready to go. Fortunately the delay in pick-up will not affect the delivery much. Now the pallets will only be 7 days early instead of 8. I just want to hand them off so that my responsibility to them is done. Also it would be nice to have our garage be a garage again instead of a miniature warehouse.

Patch crawls into bed with us in the middle of the night. He does not do it every night, but it is more of a surprise when he doesn’t than when he does. The result is that I end up sandwiched between Howard and Patch’s not-so-little-anymore body. Some days it does not make a difference in how well I sleep, but other times I roll awkwardly in that middle space trying to get comfortable without hitting anyone else.

In some ways my whole summer has been like that. I spend most of my time inside my house which has been full of people for most of the summer. Sometimes I don’t mind but other times I feel a little stir-crazy and want nothing so much as a little space. I want a time and space where I can choose what to do without worrying that I will inconvenience someone else. This is a familiar refrain. I usually sing it toward the end of the summer. This year I already know the answer. Howard and I are handing off the kids a full day before we leave for Worldcon. My house will be empty for that day. And then I’ll have five days of vacation from all my regular things. And when I get back, we’ll work on getting Patch to sleep in his own bed all night.

The XDM books are mailed and I think I’m on the upswing from the post-shipping fatigue. In order to prepare and run a shipping event I have to be high energy and focused. Once it is done, I am neither for awhile. By a nice set of coincidences I had the house completely to myself for a couple of hours yesterday. It was lovely. I took a nap. Today also had a nap. Fortunately I was able to pull together enough energy to get some work done. More work remains. I’ve only got a week and a half before we head out for Worldcon.

When I first started running mass shipments of books, I was terrified that I would do something wrong. I could vividly picture all of the packages being returned to me to be fixed. Then all the work of the mailings would be doubled as I scrambled to try to fix it. When people started reporting that their packages arrived it was a huge relief. The fear gradually faded as I continued to send out mass mailings without having mass returns. I began to believe that my system was effective rather than slap dash. The success stopped feeling like a fluke.

This was why the phone call today threw me so far off balance. The post office called to tell me that the 850 packages I had dropped off were improperly sorted and that they could not accept them because the postage was dated yesterday and the day before. It was like being sideswiped by an old nightmare come true. I ended up hauling my wonderful shipping helpers down to the post office so that they could assist in jumping through the necessary hoops in order to get those packages sent on their way. This involved re-sorting the packages and stamping each one with a stamp bearing today’s date. I was conciliatory and apologetic through the procedure because the most important thing was getting the packages to my customers. Also I was emotionally frazzled and I always revert to conflict-avoidance in that state. So the immediate problem was solved, but I still felt unsettled. My shipping system had been challenged. I was certain that the postal workers’ requirements were driven by a need to not damage their customer service stats with “late” packages rather than any legal requirement, but I still felt the effects of the nightmare come true. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how unreasonable the demand was. And then I felt bad for not taking a stand and confronting them about the fact that I was doing the work that they are paid to do. All the “should have saids” buzzed around in my brain and colliding with each other.

So I came home and tried to put it all out of my head with less that complete success. So then I griped on facebook, hoping that would clear it out. That didn’t work either. Then Howard called. His postal contact said that making me sort packages was completely bogus. Then that postal contact told the postal supervisor for this area, and the supervisor said that the demand was outright wrong. In director-level postal worker meetings it is constantly emphasized that workers need to bend over backward to assist in mass mailings. My system is not broken, I just attempted to use a broken post office as part of my shipping instead of the larger post office that I usually use. I nearly cried on the phone with Howard and the tension drained out of me. I was not wrong, the post office was. I knew that logically, but having that validated by someone who has power over the postal system was a huge relief.

And so now I am writing this blog entry and hoping that I can just let it go and bask in the joy of a stressful job complete. I would really like to think about something else now.

The funny thin about avoidance is that you don’t realize you’re doing it until the fact is brought to your attention. At 5 pm when Howard looked around and said “Oh, we’re doing a shipping here tomorrow.” I realized that he was looking at the kitchen mess and wondering why I was sitting down playing a video game rather than frantically prepping for the shipping. This was when I realized that I had spent most of the day doing activities that let me ignore the fact that we’re going to be shipping books tomorrow. I think I somehow sensed that launching into high gear would have me stressfully spinning my wheels to no good effect. I will hit the ground running tomorrow. I will be high energy and social. Today I have been extremely low energy and introverted.

The book shipping is tomorrow. The shipment of books for GenCon goes out on Monday. After that I am free of major events. True I’ll go to Worldcon, but with no children to tend, no panels to prepare and no table to run, that feels more like a vacation than anything else. Howard will be working, but I will not. Howard will also be working GenCon while I will not. I will be at home re-establishing routine so that the kids can settle back into school. I am so close to being able to slow down I can taste it.

I wore my brain out today, so I’ll have to save the thinky blogging for a different day. However I was pleased to receive news of a review which mentions my story in Ages of Wonder. It is only mentioned in passing as “engaging” but I am pleased to be mentioned at all.

Full review is here.

Tonight we asked the kids what they would like in a family vacation. These are the responses:

Disneyland (2 votes)
visiting friends in Seattle (3 votes)
The Dinosaur Museum (3 votes, This is local, we’ll hit it before the end of summer)
Flying in a plane (1 vote)
Going to a beach (2 votes)
a road trip with several stops (3 votes)
Staying at a hotel with waffles for breakfast (4 votes)
Washington DC (1 vote)
Grandma’s house (2 votes)

The results were far from unanimous except on the subject of hotels with waffle breakfasts, but this gives Howard and I a place to start. Next year the family vacation gets scheduled first and everything else has to bend around it. We’re thinking it will be a road trip loop that encompasses a week or two, possibly connected to an event like a convention. My personal vote would be to head eastward since I’ve been many of the places west of here.

Of late Patch has been climbing into bed with me almost nightly. I’ve been too busy to pay it much mind other than to sometimes move him to the padded mat on the floor. Today I thought about it and remembered that this behavior is a sign of unease in him. It means he has an emotional need that is not being met. Patch is also seeking out extra hugs and snuggles. So is Gleek. Gleek is also running faster and more emotionally volatile lately. Link is more able to verbalize his needs. He has been outright wishing for more attention. Kiki seems to be doing okay, but she is far more included in the adult stuff than the other kids are. I have not had time to focus much on the kids and they can tell. They haven’t noticed the lack of outings or special trips, but they are definitely noticing that I spend large portions of each day down in my office and that I say “please wait” far more often than “sure I can help you.”

Tonight I had what amounted to an interview with both Link and Gleek. I asked them about the things that worried them or made them sad. It was like I’d pulled out the cork plugging the hole in the dam. Sadness poured out. In both cases the sadness is magnified by this being late in the day when they are tired, but there is definitely real sadness there. I listened carefully to what they would like to be different, trying to distill the true causes so I can solve them. There were lots of words and requests, but the essence of them is that the kids need more of my focused attention. They need me to be more present on a daily basis. They need me to provide more order in the house and in their schedules. They need me to spend more time as an active listener.

Today is not a good day for this particular leaf to turn over. Tomorrow is not a day that I can actively demonstrate a change to the kids. Tomorrow has to be a business day because I have Tracy and Curtis Hickman coming to sign 1000 books. During the signing I can not be focused on kids. At the end of the day I am going to be tired, but I am going to have to find the energy to give to my kids. There has to be a family home evening and there has to be a stable bedtime routine. Both of those things have been much absent lately. The rest of the week is not ideal for focusing on the kids either. Shipping weeks are always business heavy. This is exactly the problem. Almost all of my weeks have been business heavy since sometime in March. After all the shipping, I will have exactly one week to try to stabilize the kids before handing them off to my brother while I fly to Worldcon.

Once I am back, I am done with major business for awhile. Once I am back, the kids will go back to school and I can better segregate the business and parenting parts of my life. I can see that things are on the edge of being better. I tried to tell this to the kids, but I am afraid they did not believe me. Why should they? Busy Mommy is so normal now that they hardly know how to believe in anything else. Besides, they don’t want things to be better in a few weeks. They want it better now. I have to make it better for them. I have to.