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Today was a long slog. I spent six hours entering edits, pictures, and layout for a single chapter. Granted, it is the longest chapter in the entire book, but still. Six. Hours. By the end of it I was eyeing the remaining 10 chapters with a sense of panic. If I spent that long on all of them, we would run out of time before I ran out of editing. Just as I untangled my head from the chapter of doom, email arrived with all our tables and charts. In color. The book is black and white. I broke the tables while converting them to grayscale, but fortunately Howard and the table designer rescued me from my panic and reassured me that all will be well. Then I had to scramble to put together a file for a “wetproof” which is a test print of images and text using the actual ink and paper. Got that done too. Which was a great relief, since that was supposed to be the highest priority task for today.

Part of the reason that the chapter of doom took so long is because there were so many distractions. I had a steady stream of email all morning long. Some from Tracy. Some from friends. Several from our printer. Several from merchandise partners. The shiniest emails were the ones containing mock-ups of the XDM cover design. We have finally arrived at a design that is so pretty I want to hug it. The last bits of shiny are being applied and then we will get to show it off to the world.

Speaking of shiny, one of the big distractions of the morning was the doorbell. It was a Fed Ex delivery from China. We have our advance copies of The Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance. The rest of the copies are on a boat and will arrive in a month. It is beautiful. I held it and flipped through it. Then I was struck with the realization that it is as much my book as Howard’s. He did all the writing and drawing, but I’m the one who made it be a book. I organized it all. I arranged for the printing. Holding the book was a very triumphal moment. It would have been nice if Howard and I could have spent the day basking in the glory of accomplishment. Instead we tiredly put the shiny books down and headed back to work. It will be several days before we can do the traditional auctioning of an advance copy.

Bit by bit we are getting closer to finished. Every day I get to color in some more boxes on my XDM tracking chart. Tomorrow will be a satisfying day. I’m set up to knock down a bunch of boxes quickly.

This is me sitting and blogging on my laptop while the kids are falling asleep. Once they are asleep, I may use the hour between now and bedtime to get some more work done on XDM. If I do, then today will be a 10 hour work day for me. Yesterday was a nine hour work day. I want to push hard and just get it all done, but I wear out and those other waking hours get spent on things like eating, and dishes, and paying attention to the children. Sometimes I’m not paying attention to the children directly, but rather thinking ahead and planning for future needs of the children. Today the thinking ahead amounted to me providing dinner before the children declared themselves starving.

Today was a long day, a tiring day, but it was all just getting work done. This is much better than the fear-driven scramble of last week. Now it just remains to see if I will run out of work before I run out of time.

For the last year or more I have been calling myself a full-time working mother. That is inaccurate. I did the math yesterday. I average 20-30 hours per week of business tasks. Some weeks have 40+ business hours, but other weeks only have 10 or so. 30 hour of work per week counts as part-time, not full time. I have a newfound respect and awe for families where both parents work full time. Our house has been crazy this past week because no one is paying attention to the little things that make the family run smoothly. We keep running out of clean dishes and clean clothes. We keep tripping over clutter. We keep walking past that dried-up dollop of mint-n-chip ice cream on the kitchen counter. (How long has it been since we had mint-n-chip ice cream? One week? Two weeks? Has no one washed the counter thoroughly in that long? eeep.)

I can work for 30 hours per week without hideously impacting our family schedule. It means I do business while the kids are out of the house and focus on household when they’re home. That works well. The minute I go over that for any extended period of time, things start to get messy. This is good to know. We can not have a long term pattern that requires me to work more than 30 hours per week. Short-term high-working-hour patterns, like for book shipping, or this XDM scramble, or a convention are acceptable so long as they are sufficiently spaced out by periods of normal.

I’ve worked for 8 hours so far today. I may be done for the day, or I may put in some more time after the kids are abed. In some ways having them back in school has been easier. I had 6 quiet hours today. Other things have been harder. I had a hard time keeping my cool this morning while helping the kids get ready for school. I wanted to rush everybody off to school so that I could get to work. Only that doesn’t work well. In fact at one point Link looked at me and said “I just want you to be happy mom.” Gleek and Patch both chimed in with agreement. They can tell I am stressed and they want their calmer mom back. I hugged them and apologized. Just one more week and the craziness should be largely over. I could see the end of XDM layout for the first time today. Three chapters have been declared “done” which means that they’re ready for proofreading. I made a chart so that I can track what is left to do on each chapter. It may be silly, but having boxes to fill when each task is finished, make the job seem possible. It definitely makes it easier for me to see what I should work on next. I think I’ve broken out of the overwhelmed middle of the project and now I’m on the home stretch.

Hours worked today = 7
Hours worked this week = 54

Many times Howard has reached the end of a stressful/busy day and has been exhausted and yet apologizing that he couldn’t work more/harder/faster. Then I soothe him and tell him it will all be okay, because I want him to slow down instead of run himself into the ground. I don’t know that I’ve ever been on the inside of that feeling before this week. I worked a 54 hour week and I want to cry because there is so much more to do. If I could just have worked harder/smarter/faster then I would be closer to done right now. I’ve been overwhelmed by the hugeness of parenting frequently, but this is different. It feels different. I honestly do not know how people work 40 hour weeks one after the other for months on end. Let alone 50-60 hour weeks. People do it, but continuing at this pace would grind me into a powder.

Parenting. This is the first time in my life when I have experienced my parenting tasks as a break from work. Have been my primary job for my whole adult life. They will be again just as soon as I can get this huge project kicked into shape. In the meantime, the kids are mostly foraging and fending for themselves. I try to make sure that there are plenty of cheerios and hot dogs on hand for them to eat. Then I emerge from my office all brain frazzled and flop on the couch to watch whatever movie or game they are occupied with. It is so good to just snuggle with them. To hold them close and remember that book layout is not the only thing in the world. The kids are feeling the effects of the lack of attention. Today Kiki and Link had a big blow-up. Patch has been easily upset. Gleek is running fast and being harder to steer. I sense these things vaguely, but I can’t focus on them right now, except in spurts. A few minutes here or there devoted to a particular child as our paths cross. The pattern would be extremely destructive if it were to last longer than the next week or two. But it will not. And things will be better when the kids are back in school next week, providing more structure to our days. And I have all day tomorrow where work is not allowed. I need a sabbath break more than I think I’ve ever needed it before.

The kids got their park trip. Finally. I promised it to them Monday evening, but then the weather went cold and snowy. I didn’t get to take them. Janci took them while I worked. I’m glad they got to go. I wish I could have gone.

Work hours for today so far= 10
Work hours for the week so far = 47
Work hours expected for tomorrow = 4-8

Howard and I keep throwing each other off. He’ll call me to request a layout shift. I scramble to get it done. I call him back to tell him that the shift requires other shifts. Those other shifts change the shapes and locations of the pictures he needs to draw. This throws him off his game because he is back to figuring out what to draw instead of pounding through pictures. The fact that he is stressed about the quantity of remaining pictures, sends me back to the layout to see if I can re-arrange and consolidate, or eliminate, some of the picture spaces. I scramble. I can. I do. Then I call him to tell him what I did, which unsettles him yet again because we have to make sure that I have not eliminated spaces he already had ideas for. I didn’t. During this whole process we run into to communication trouble because Howard’s printout no longer matches what I have in InDesign.
“the picture on page 29”
“Page 29 has no picture.”
“Yes it does. The orc picture.”
“Oh. That’s page 27 now, but I moved the orc to page 57. He fits better there.”
“So am I drawing a picture for page 29, I mean 27?”

I finally had to create a new printout and drive it down to Dragon’s Keep just so he and I could be talking about the same layout. Things will change yet again after the meeting tomorrow morning with Tracy and Curtis. Hopefully those changes will be tweaks rather than major rearrangements, but there will be changes. There are always changes. Every time I look at the document I end up jotting down a page full of notes about things I need to fix. Every time I look at a page, I find something wrong. And that does not even count the editorial comments that I have to go through and enter. However the editor is working on a copy of the document that is at least 6-7 iterations old. Many of the layout changes are a result of her early comments, but most of the layout she is looking at is out of date. Not all of it though. And the text has not changed. And she is catching all sorts of things that need to be fixed in the text. Fortunately most of the textual things to be fixed are small. This is good. We don’t have time for major fixes.

Have I mentioned that this process is crazy? …and yet I think we’re going to manage it.

While I was at Dragon’s Keep handing over pages to Howard, I was able to show the pages to my friend Janci who was also there. She took a look at it and said “Wow, this is looking really good.”
I really needed to hear that, because all I can see anymore are the things that are broken. Only they are not nearly so broken as they used to be. And I had to search to find broken things to show her. This thing keeps transforming and each iteration is closer to being done.

4 PM
I’ve lost count of the number of times this past week when I have wanted to curl into a ball and cry. I’m pretty sure the number is higher than 20. I don’t actually do it, because that would use time and there isn’t any to waste. So I keep going. Hours worked so far this week, Thirty-Seven and counting. I still have two working days left before next week.

The layout is really taking shape, but the copy edits are tedious to enter and Howard has far more pictures to draw than we originally calculated. The most difficult of which are the technical drawings of Hands doing tricks with cards. Many cards. Only Howard’s back is killing him today and so instead of drawing 20 pictures he has drawn three and is now off to the Chiropractor. He guesstimates he has 60 pictures left to draw. He thinks he can do it…if his back will stop hurting.

The 9 inches of snow did not contribute to us having a pleasant spring break. It particularly does not help when it turns into 6 inches of slush. Grass is fun for playing. Snow can be fun for playing. Slush is not fun for anything except getting cold and wet. The kids are still housebound. So I dragged out a copy of Riven that someone gave us months ago. Kiki started playing and liked it, but the third disc was cracked. No more Riven. So while I was out buying groceries, I grabbed a copy of The Orange Box which contains a copy of Portal. Only when I entered the registration code, I was informed that this code is already in use and therefore invalid. The game store helpfully and willingly accepted the game back in exchange for a new copy that they will order from another store. It will arrive after spring break is over. So approximately 90 minutes of attempting to find new things for the kids to do has resulted in nada.

_________

6 PM Things feel a bit better. I ate some food. The chiropractor helped Howard. Kiki called a friend instead of moping around. I took a break.

_________

10 PM Just as I was completing the entering of copy edits, the next set of edits arrived. We’re all feeling pretty frazzled trying to work so fast. That includes our editor. But I’m learning a lot about editing just from using her notes. The first thing I’ve learned is that there is no substitute for an experienced editor. She can tell at a glance how big the font is and how much space there is between lines. The pages all bleed when she hands them back. But every red mark means a mistake that will not be in the finished book.

Tomorrow I need to enter the edits and then I need to print out copies so that they are ready for our progress meeting on Saturday morning.

Today I was assailed by zombie tax ducks.

It goes like this. In January I made sure that I had all of my ducks in a row for taxes. I sent out 1099s. Filed 1096s. Printed a W2. Filed a W3. I was all set. I trundled off to the accountant with all the papers necessary to file tax returns for two corporations and one household. Or so I thought. It turns out that the Household needed to wait for a K1 form from a relative on the East Coast. One Corporation needed me to look up some additional information. The other corporation needed me to look up additional information and also file a form for an amended W2 because the rules on reporting medical expenses changed. My ducks were scattering and I had to catch them all again. So I waded through all of that while simultaneously handling the first stages of XDM. Then I was done. Completely done. Hurray done. All the ducks were dispatched. No more ducks. Only then a duck appeared out of nowhere. Someone sent one corporation a tax form which momentarily had me afraid that I would have to amend the return, until I figured out that I’d already accounted for the money indicated. Whew. Nevermind, false alarm duck. And then a couple of people to whom I’d sent 1099s either lost or never received their forms. So I had to send those out again. I’d already taken care of those ducks, but they came back. Anything that comes back from the dead is a zombie. And these are tax ducks. Hence Zombie Tax Ducks. Have I mentioned that I don’t like zombies. I’m sure I have. I do like ducks though. I should probably stop abusing them in metaphors.

Anyway. If the rest of my day had been more relaxed, the tax stuff would not have been a big deal. But I was instead in an adrenaline charged emotional state where the slightest glitch felt like a major crisis. Fortunately I managed to wind myself down in the afternoon. That Darn Cat is still a fun movie. They kids all enjoyed it too. We got it because of Gleek’s plea that we find some movies where the cats were good guys instead of bad guys.

Last night I was wound up so tight and so worried about getting all the XDM stuff done, that I couldn’t fall asleep until past midnight. Laying in bed with my brain fretting over the fact that I would be much more capable of accomplishing the impossible if I could just get some sleep first, was not fun. Note the job is not impossible. It is just that I had two three-hour tasks and a one-hour task that were all supposed to be complete by approximately 9 am. It is now noon and I still have a three-hour task to go.

I would like to note that this business-stressy spring break would have been made much easier if the weather were sunny instead of blowing sheets of snow. The kids an I are all trapped indoors and I have no time to take us all someplace.

Grandpa to the rescue. Last winter he supplied our family with a copy of Animal Crossing City Folk and a microphone. Right now the kids are all playing with Grandpa over the internet. Gleek’s little electronic character is happily running around in Grandpa’s town, picking all the flowers and chopping down trees. Link and Patch are down there too and they’re all happily shouting instructions to Grandpa over the speaker system. Hurray for internet and for retired Grandparents who are happy to play with kids.

With a few small breaks, I have been working on XDM layout since 7:30 this morning. Since the time is now 7:30 pm, this means I’ve spent the last 12 hours working. The kids fended for themselves most of the day and I ordered pizza for dinner. Unfortunately some of the work I did this morning will have to be re-done because of changes I made this afternoon. Whee. Such is the joy of layout. Also, Hurray for knowledgeable help that can point out things I don’t know how to do right. Then I can go learn how to do them right. This job would be easier if I weren’t learning it as I go.

The first day of Spring break always brings with it the awful realization that Summer Break is zooming toward me. Summer is always chaotic and hard because so much of how I get things done is dependent upon the structured schedule of kids going to school. So this year I am treating Spring Break not as a holiday, but as a sort of practice run for the Summer Schedule. Right now the plan is for the mornings to be quiet, no electronics. That is when everyone will accomplish work, or chores, or quiet games. Then after lunch will be more free-form. That is when the video games will get turned on or we’ll all escape the house for awhile. I also need to figure out whether it would be best to put swim lessons first thing in the morning, thus providing impetus to get everyone out of bed. Or if it would be better to put the lessons into the afternoons and thus theoretically leave the mornings clear for working. I’m really not sure what is best there, but I’ll have to decide soon because registration will open and classes will fill up.

So far the schedule worked pretty well. It was highly distracting having the kids randomly pop into my office to ask for stuff. But then they discovered that Oh Hey! We have a sandbox! So they made themselves very dirty for several blissfully quiet hours. Link was the really impressive one this morning. He tackled mowing the front lawn (his summer responsibility) without complaint. Then decided that he really really wanted to buy the model he’d created using the Lego online designer. So he cleaned and organized our toy cupboards completely by himself. Yesterday I was looking for behaviors I want to encourage. It was very nice of him to supply such a large example today. We ordered the model in question as soon as he finished working. Our trip out of the house was to the Library, because lots of books are always a good idea.

I even managed to get all the accounting done by noon. Then I worked on layout stuff for several hours. Tomorrow there will be more layout and the first round of edits to hand off to authors. Bit by bit we work our way closer to being done.