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I am spending too much time apologizing for delays and searching for things I never should have lost in the first place. This is driving me a little crazy because my preferred mode of operation is to accomplish tasks fast so that I am waiting for someone else. Lately too many people end up waiting on me. Too many things require simultaneous organization and in the scramble important things get lost. It does not help that I have physical limits. Today would be less stressed if I’d accomplished more yesterday. But yesterday my brain shut down at 4 pm. I could not find the drive to get moving again.

This morning I put on my business face, determined to knock down all the tasks on my list so they can stop looming at me. I want to end today with no one waiting on me. Then Link, who is being very perceptive lately, said “Mom, what’s wrong? You’re not usually like this.” He’s right. I try not to wear my business face around the kids because it too closely resembles the angry mommy face. And that sums up the dilemma of this summer. I have to switch rapidly between high efficiency business and go-with-the-flow parenting. It does not surprise me that things are getting misplaced, but it does frustrate me.

Scrapbooks are big business in Utah. The pursuit of creating scrapbooks is so common that the noun has become a verb. “I need to scrapbook that.” Or “I need to get caught up on my scrapbooking.” Around here the term scrapbooking implies large sheets of colored paper, photographs, paper cut into shapes, stickers, stamps, and other small decorative bits. This is not just sticking pictures to pages, it is an art form unto itself. There are whole companies devoted to scrapbooking supplies. The way it is done here, scrapbooking becomes a creative pursuit. But it often has guilt attached because these scrapbooking women (there may be men scrapbookers, but I don’t know any) tell themselves that the reason they are scrapbooking is to record family history. But the effort put into each beautiful page is far more than necessary to record the events of a family’s trip, or birthday, or day. Somehow hobby and requirement are all mixed up to the extent that I know women who confess the fact that they don’t scrapbook with guilt. In the local culture scrapbooking is somehow expected. Implied is that to be a scrapbooker, and particularly to be caught up on your scrapbooking, is a mark of excellence as a mother. I can’t say for certain where the implication comes from. It is just in the air, around the neighborhood, at church. Only the implication is wrong. Being a caught-up scrapbooker is the mark of someone who has found a hobby that fulfills her creativity. This is a wonderful thing, but not something others should feel guilty for failing to do.

My first experience with scrapbooking Utah style came when Kiki was a baby. I was invited to a scrapbooking party ala tupperware parties. And I bought into the company. I bought the books and some paper and some pens. I planned albums and pages. I took a photo of Kiki each month so I could create a page about how she grew. I enjoyed it for years, although the album plans became simpler as I added children. What I discovered was that I was not interested in pages as art. I was interested in the pages as a format for storytelling. Most of my pages became filled with handwritten text. Pictures were sometimes an after thought. The colored papers and stickers began to interfere with the stories about our family, so I stopped using them. Then we got a digital camera, and I learned how to use InDesign, and suddenly I realized that the papers and stencils and stickers were no longer useful to me at all. They sit in a box waiting for me to decide to get rid of them. Now my “scrapbooks” resemble layout projects. I combine the pictures with segments from my blog and other informational text. I use the resulting pdf file to print the book at lulu.com. Then I hand it to my kids, know if they destroy the book, I can print another one. The scrapbooks from earlier years are kept carefully on a shelf, defended from the children because their abuse could undo hours of my work. My electronically created family books are not beautiful, but I like that the kids can enjoy them.

I am thinking on scrapbooking today because I opened up my file of pictures from last year. I began sorting through and organizing them to put together a new family book. It has been more than a year since I last worked on family book creation. But it is time to put this back into my schedule. Looking at the pictures and telling the stories of our family life grounds me. It reminds me why I bustle around to get the work done. I do the work, to bring in the money, so that I can afford to buy experiences for myself and my children. These experiences are the point. The act of remembering and writing inspires me to do things that will be worth remembering and writing next year. I need the family books not for the book, but for the inspiration.

I am not the only one who benefits from these books. The kids love to read them. They read these stories about our family and remember the fun times they had. They love to see how they’ve changed and grown. I send copies of the books to my parents and to other relatives. The books give these folks a chance to see my kids and feel connected to our lives. There is value in that. Someday I think that grandchildren will enjoy looking at them too.

I am not opposed to the idea of scrapbooking Utah style. I see why it is perfect for some women. But it is not the only way to record the life of a family. I know people who remember their vacations by the souvenirs they bring home. I know a quilter who can tell you where each swatch of fabric came from, with stories. Words and photographs are only one way of remembering what has gone before. It will be interesting to see what new forms emerge out of this video-driven era. And truth be told, not everything needs to be recorded for posterity. I write about our family because I am a writer. This is what I do. The family books I create are emotionally filling to me, and I am aware that they are more for me than for anyone else. Scrapbookers should create because they love it, not because they feel obligated.

Yesterday I did not touch my computer until 3:30 PM and it was lovely. In fact I only spend an hour on the computer all day and most of that was printing postage. It was so good. Even better is that I spent most of that away-from-computer time with other writers. My writer self so often gets shuffled aside with the press of other needs. She waits patiently for me to remember her and whenever I do, I feel whole again. Many of the other tasks of my life empty me out. Working on writing fills me up. I need to remember that. I need to spend more time with people who help me remember that. Fortunately my opportunities for that appear to be increasing.

The life pattern for this summer has involved me rolling out of bed and running downstairs to get work done. I spend several (constantly interrupted) hours in front of my computer first thing in the morning. I’ve been doing this in the theory that it is better to get the business stuff done so that I can focus on other things the rest of the day. The reality is that I emerge from my office tired and not ready to tackle much else. I’ve been using all my high-energy, high-creativity hours on business tasks. This is necessary when I am negotiating contracts or trying to solve a new problem. It is less necessary of late when most of the work is routine shipping and customer service.

The day before yesterday Gleek had a melt down at swim lessons. It was one of those events when I feel great sympathy for her sadness, but instead of being able to express my sympathy, I had to work hard to help her tone her grief down to a level that would not disturb everyone in the pool area or locker room. She has been increasingly prone to frustration and upset this summer. The scattered schedule we are maintaining is not best for her. I spent much of the rest of that day making sure that the kids had some quiet time and two solid meals. I even went so far as to be the you-will-eat-everything-on-your-plate police. Yesterday I made sure to feed my kids a solid breakfast and I stood over them to insure that they ate it up. The difference in Gleek was amazing. We emerged from swim lessons and she said “I feel all calm and new.” The calmness lasted through an exciting afternoon which included several hours at a park, playing at a new friend’s house, and then being babysat by Link. She remained calm throughout. Food makes a huge difference.

The park trip was an opportunity for me to sit and talk with two other local writers. I’ve had the good fortune that my kids’ swim lessons are at the same time as one of their kids’ lessons. Thirty minutes is not long enough for all the talking we had to do, so we arranged a park trip. We’ll have to do that again, because we discovered that three hours was not enough time for all the talking we had to do either. It was fun and it was really good to get my kids out of the house and away from the video screens for awhile.

In the evening was a Writer’s Night out hosted in Salt Lake. I was not sure how this would go since I was meeting new people. Janci and I both went. We had a wonderful time. As Janci said, it was one of those times where a group of semi-strangers sit down and become instant friends. We were able to talk writing and life and families, all things that mattered to all of us. I came away newly inspired to work on my writing projects with some solid ideas of where I can send them once they are ready. The next one is scheduled for July and I am looking forward to it. Even better, I can keep in touch with these women online.

There has not been enough writer space in my life. I love how events have conspired to introduce me to people who help me see how much I need it.

The back of our garden shares a wall with commercial property. It is the parking lot of a lawn and landscaping service. Occasionally this is annoying, as when large diesel trucks are revving or idling in the early pre-dawn hours. Several years ago some employee stacked some long metal pipes against the wall so that they extended a good five feet above the wall. That was ugly. But then they neglected to remove the pipes and our wisteria plant has been happily winding around them. It creates a beautiful screen so that we see even less of the lot than we could before. This was the point of planting wisteria, to obscure the wall and the lot behind it. For the most part we just ignore the commercial property.

It has come to my attention again recently when I began hearing music in the evenings. It has been happening pretty much every night for weeks. At first I’ll hear only a couple of instruments doing scales and playing fragments of songs. Usually the horns sound off first, followed by tympani. Within an hour or two a full complement of instruments is playing. Sometimes there are voices singing in Spanish. The music continues for hours. It sounds like a Mexican fiesta. I listen to the music and I picture beautiful dark women dancing with brightly colored skirts. Men with white shirts and mustaches play traditional instruments and sing. Children run through the crowd happily. It sounds like a whole Mexican village over there. They are having a celebration. I know that there can’t really be a village in the midst of a paved parking lot, but it makes me happy to picture it while I listen to the cheerful music. When I am slightly less imaginative, I picture the Mexican landscaping employees gathering after a hard day’s work to enjoy good company and live music. The music certainly sounds live. It is ever changing and vibrant in the ways that recordings cannot be.

I know in my head that my imaginings are unlikely. It is probably some night security guard with an exceptionally loud radio. Or perhaps the landscaping company rents out the lot to some performing group. To tell the truth, part of me doesn’t want to know. The mystery of the music is as alluring as the music itself. I certainly prefer this lively music over the Wednesday night automobile auctions we used to hear wafting from the auto place three lots down. The sound of distant music and laughter is pleasing. I can close my eyes and see the picturesque fiesta which I’ve never had the opportunity to attend in person.

This is the book that ate April. We finally have our advanced copies and they are gorgeous. I just created a flickr set to let people take a look. There are also some pictures of the reprint of Under New Management. I even put notes on the pictures, so be sure to scroll over with your mouse. So if you’re interested click on through.

This morning there was yelling, and flailing, and running around in a panic, and objects hit in anger. All of that was just from me, though throughout the day my kids have exhibited similar proclivities. It is that kind of day. Yesterday was lovely. I want to flee back into yesterday. Instead I just have to muscle through today, trying to hack through some of the tasks which are causing me stress. I really need to lock myself in my office and work uninterrupted for hours. Unfortunately summers are made of interruption, or maybe kids are, same difference when they’re home all day. By 5 pm I had succeeded in clearing my desk of all accounting. Gleek called me upstairs for a “surprise.” Such surprises can be anything from a slug, to all-over marker body art, to a new hair cut for a stuffed animal, to a new trick on the trampoline, to a yarn creation, to a picture. Today it was this:

It is not a Peace Rose, but it is giant. I could cup it in both hands and bury my stresses in fragrance. The stem of the rose was wobbly and the petals were threatening to fall off, all signs that this rose had been part of little girl games for a significant portion of time before being gifted to me. We took it outside and I took pictures of Gleek with the rose. It is almost as big as her head. She showed me all her “fairy poses” and I took more pictures. Then she took the picture above of me holding the rose. Even in a crazy-stressy day we can find beauty by the handful.

Anyone who has seen the movie UP knows where the title of this post came from and probably has an inkling of what I’m going to talk about. The rest of the post will be behind a cut. I don’t intend to spoil plot points, but I do want to talk about the themes of the movie and those who haven’t seen the film may want to see it first. I recommend it by the way. It is well worth seeing.

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Stuff I’m Going to DoRead More »

My church primary class is full of particularly active five-year-olds. When people at church ask me which class I teach, I list off the names. By the time I am done listing, their eyes have gone wide and they say “Oh. You have your hands full.” Yes I do. But as my backyard neighbor wisely noted, I like the interesting kids. I would much rather spend two hours figuring out how to wrangle difficult kids than to spend two hours bored sitting next to quiet ones. The kids arrive to me after they have already been sitting for an hour of church. We spend the next hour in a large group meeting. The third hour is spent in a classroom with just our class. That is a lot of sitting for any five-year-old to take. Fortunately the women who are in charge understand children. Some of them are the mothers of kids in my class. They work very hard to keep things interesting for the short attention spans. We also figure out novel ways of encouraging the kids to stay in their seats. I have been known to hand kids an imaginary glue stick and ask them to glue their backs to their seats. We have a good time, and the kids are glad to come even though they sometimes get tired of sitting.

The average attention span in my class is shorter than much of the rest of the room. I am always sure to include in my church bag some objects that are unusual, safe, and quiet. These I pull out when behaviors begin to spin out of control. The most unexpectedly popular of these items is a roll of masking tape. It began when I put tape around the fingers of a wiggly boy. The sensation was so novel for him that he sat for a full ten minutes just listening and wiggling his fingers. Not to be left out, other kids wanted their fingers taped too. Finger taping gave way to simply playing with pieces of tape. One little boy will walk in and immediately demand a piece of tape. Once given it, he promptly sticks the tape to his face. Over his eyes, over his nose, over his mouth, the tape is stuck and unstuck repeatedly. It makes me nervous whenever he sticks it over his mouth. Particularly when several other kids follow suit. Professional teachers have been fired for sticking tape over a child’s mouth and there I am sitting with a row of taped-mouthed children. I know that they stuck it there themselves, but I can’t be confident that this information will be accurately portrayed by an interrogated five-year-old. I can just picture those sweet, smiling faces honestly saying that their teacher glued them to their seats and gave them tape to put over their mouths.

Fortunately I am in no danger of a lawsuit. The other adults in the room see me handing tape to the kids. Then know that rather than using the tape as any kind of punishment, I’m actually warning that I’ll have to take the tape off if the kids can’t be a little more quiet. Also, I know all of the mothers of these kids. Most of them are my good friends and they’re glad to have me as their child’s teacher. It is nice that my teaching philosophy matches that of most of the parents. At this age it is not important to drill kids with doctrine, but just to teach them that church is a good place to be. Deeper understanding of how to relate to God and doctrine can come later. So class time features a brief lesson, storybooks, and playing with duplo blocks. Mostly they build space ships and fly them around the room. It warms my science fiction loving heart to see that building and flying space ships is so generally accepted among this crowd. I do miss attending the adult meetings, but hanging out with kids, masking tape, and Duplo block space ships isn’t so bad.

I have two basic approaches to cleaning. One is the “make it presentable” approach which involves basic pick up and stowing things out of sight. During this I try to put things where they belong, but my primary focus is on creating order in the living spaces. The second type of cleaning is “Corners first.” This is when I start by digging out the corners and closets of the house. I’ll empty out a closet completely and the only things that are allowed back in are the things which actually belong there. This type of cleaning invariably unearths bags full of garbage and even more bags of things that are for giving away. I always feel better after this type of purge and the house is much easier to keep orderly after I am done.

I haven’t had time to do any “corners first” cleaning for months. Today I started in our storage/shipping room. It is amazing the quantities of not-particularly-useful stuff that got shoved into there to be “out of the way.” The problem is that with the influx of new merchandise and books this summer all of that stuff had become very much in the way. So I sorted, and threw stuff out, and stashed things in the garage rafters. I have a huge pile to donate to a thrift store. I have another big pile that needs to be hauled over to our storage unit. I can now walk in the shipping area. I can quickly and easily access the things that I will need to fill orders. The space is functional again. It is amazing how much less stressed that makes me about the upcoming events of the summer.

In the process of organizing the shipping area, my office has improved as well. I still have more work to do there. I’d like to be able to vacuum soon. Also, I need to be able to put a guest bed in there. After my office, the next place in need of major attention is the garage. The garage shelves have turned into a huge jumble of things which don’t really belong in there, but which did not really have anywhere else to be. I know that at least a third of the stuff out there is useless to us and should either be given away or thrown away. We need the space and some of the stuff would be useful to other people.

I worked steadily all day. I need to have another couple of steady work days like today. I’m hopeful that I can have them next week, unless there are more urgent business tasks waiting to ambush me. The one thing we did not do so well was have a family outing. The weather ruined our intention to attend the church picnic/swim party. Then Kiki fell sick which ended the plan for a family trip to the movies. Hopefully we can do the movie trip on Monday instead.

I was not inclined to cook dinner and there were coupons, so it was Del Taco for dinner. Besides Gleek and Patch deserved to get to do something special since Link was off at Scout Camp and Kiki was off role playing with Howard. So we loaded into the car and headed out.

At first the conversation revolved around Fable 2. Each of the kids has their own game file. Gleek and Patch had much to discuss. I’ll admit that it was a bit odd listening to Gleek talk about her Bert and realize that she’d had her character get married in the game. She’s been having a great time buying him a house and giving him presents. All the implications of being married completely pass over Gleek’s head. She’s just playing house in the virtual world of Fable 2. However discussion of Bert did lead her to ask me questions about how flirting works in real life. It was a nice moment for me to impart information on how I think healthy relationships should work and to give her some selection criteria that may be of use to her in about ten years. It underlines for me how different my kids are. It never occurred to Kiki or Link to ask questions about flirting.

The topic of conversation turned, which was something of a relief. I did not want to enter Del Taco in the midst of a conversation with an 8-year-old telling her how to go about selecting a boyfriend. My relief was short lived because I found myself mired in a conversation about blindness. Several weeks ago Gleek came to me and declared a passionate desire to be blind and she wanted to know how she could become blind. Gleek is strong willed and occasionally impulsive and it seemed fearfully possible that she might deliberately blind herself if I gave her the information. So I prudently gave her the true, but incomplete, information that some people are born blind and others become blind through illness. Stymied on the possibility of blindess, Gleek was frustrated to learn that I gave the same answer about deafness. I was not pleased to have a rehash of the conversation as we were pulling into the Del Taco parking lot. Discussions of how exactly congenital damage occurs were not conducive to eating.

Fortunately entering a new location is always highly distracting. Del Taco is located on the corner of a busy intersection. Patch immediately declared his desire to eat at the colorful be-umbrellaed tables outside. Since there was a fence and some grass defending the spot from the street, I agreed. As usual, the kids pinged about examining the new space. The tables, benches, fence, grass, and Del Taco itself were all scrutinized. This being a taco place, the kids naturally settled on Hamburgers as their food of choice. So we sat and ate while the cars drove by.

After awhile Gleek picked a sesame seed off the top of her hamburger and walked solemnly over to drop it into the grass. She informed us that she was planting a hamburger seed and that it would grow into a hamburger tree.
“Really?” Patch asked, his eyes wide.
“Yup.” Gleek assured him. She went on to describe how the tree grows both the burgers and the buns. Then people pick them and put them together. After a moment she added that the tree grows ketchup too.
At first Patch was not quite sure whether or not to believe her. She was so calmly certain of the facts that she was telling. I wasn’t even sure whether Gleek believed this tall tale. But then the sly smile emerged and Patch grinned back. So they planted several more hamburger trees while they finished eating.

Then Gleek began watching the cars driving by. She noticed a van like ours and drew our attention to it. That was why we were all looking at the street when the parade float drove past. It was gloriously sparkley and traveling fairly fast. If we had not been looking, we would have missed it. We all laughed about it being our own private parade, when a second float also drove past. A few minutes later there was a third, much slower float towed by. I can only imagine that they’re being hauled down to Provo for the upcoming Fourth of July festivities. We waited, but that was the end of the parade. Del Taco has now been cemented in the kids’ minds as a very cool place to eat.