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Today was a Monday and I was not frazzled by 2 pm. I think it has been more than a month since I’ve had a not-frazzled Monday. It feels good to be more balanced. It was particularly good to leave my office by 2 pm and be done with business stuff for the day. It gave me time to pay attention to the house and the kids. I even had some time to think about the family trip that we intend to take in June. I’m sure this new balance will be unsettled once the XDM project switches phases from drafting into editing. At least I figured out that my insanely busy week will actually be the week after spring break rather than concurrent with it.

I am pretty sure that I had other interesting thoughts during the day, but apparently they all went to bed. Perhaps I’ll find them again in the morning.

Kiki sat next to me on the couch, carefully shading her latest drawing with colored pencils. Gleek was just past her, curled up in the comfy chair that has somehow come to be called “the Daddy chair.” She had a friendship bracelet pinned to her knee and was carefully knotting row after row. Patch was on the floor in front of Gleek. He was coloring a maze which I had printed from the file of coloring pages on my computer. Link sat on the floor next to Patch, directly in front of me. He was playing with some lego figures, carefully constructing adventures in brick. Howard had been on the short couch, but had just left the room on an errand. In front of all of us was the television broadcast of General Conference (the twice-per-year conference put on by our church), piped to the television from my small laptop computer. The sound for conference was coming from a different computer behind us and was a few seconds ahead of the picture. This is what happens when you wait until five minutes prior to the start of broadcast to discover that the laptop won’t pipe sound to the speakers. So we got the two video streams as closely timed as we could and tried not to be distracted.

It was joyful to look around the room and see my children peacefully occupied while listening to the talks. There was a time when that scene would not have been possible. When making my children all remain in the same room and be quietly occupied for two hours was about as likely as a hummingbird surviving a Utah winter. But somehow we kept inching toward where scenes like the one this afternoon became possible. We worked on reverence at Church. Then we worked on praying together as a family. Then we worked on having a weekly family night. Bit by bit we practiced being the family we want to be, rather than giving up on the family that we were. Bit by bit Howard and I learn how to be better parents. Bit by bit the kids learn how to control themselves, to think of others, to appreciate their siblings. Bit by bit we all strive to make the family work. And it does. Because we all believe it is important.

It still isn’t perfect, because we are all imperfect. After conference was over, I sent all the kids outside to get some fresh air. They all grabbed their padded swords and began playing a live action version of Brawl. Within ten minutes there were siblings frustrated and yelling at each other, as is to be expected with such mismatched capabilities. But that too is part of building a family. We must know that we can be furiously mad at each other and that does not ruin the family. Because we calm down and forgive and let go. Because we talk it through when we can’t let go. Because we keep practicing this forgiveness thing until we get it right.

And today we got it right. We called them all inside for a dinner with all six of us sitting around the table. It was a special dinner with rolls and chicken and mashed potatoes. The kids love this meal. While plates were loaded I asked them all what they liked best about conference, and they all had good things to say. This made me glad, because it was my idea to make them all sit in front of the television for two sessions of two hours each. In all the years prior to today, we’d listened on the radio. This worked so much better. The visual component was really helpful even if having the picture and sound out of sync was a tad distracting. And so I think we’ve found a new piece to stitch into the pattern of our family. Bit by bit we add pieces and create something beautiful.

For everyone who wondered how we’re all doing after the excitement of Howard’s split lip, we’re all fine. Once the kids saw daddy come home after the emergency room, they all spent a moment examining the wound. Then they ran off to play without a worry in the world. We did have a family movie night watching Bolt, during which we served ice cream. The timing was comforting, but that particular event has been scheduled since last Tuesday. Well, the movie was. The ice cream was a result of the shopping trip that Howard and I took post-stitches.

This morning Howard is doing just fine other than the fact that his lip is swollen and hurts some. We expect most of the swelling to be gone by tomorrow. I’m hoping for a less eventful day today. We have two sessions of conference to watch and I’m intending to make a really nice dinner with home made rolls. There may even be another showing of Bolt.

First I will say that in the grand scheme, Howard’s injury is minor. He has three stitches and some very colorful bruising. For the rest of the story and my thoughts on why I am a better mother than I am a paramedic you can click the link. If you are sqeamish about blood, you may want to skip it.
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Howard’s split lipRead More »

This weekend is my church’s General Conference. This is a major event that is broadcast all over the world via radio, television, and internet. Today I am listening via Radio while doing housework. Tomorrow I will sit down with the kids in front of the television broadcast and we’ll all do quiet activities while listening.

After listening to two hours of talks, several of which addressed faith in the face of adversity, my stresses seem pretty small and unimportant. When so many people are dealing with the stress of not having enough work, it seems ungrateful of me to complain that I have too much. Especially when my problem can be solved by giving the work to someone else and paying them to do it. This makes me far less stressed and makes the other person less stressed about lack of income. Everybody wins. I really want sales to continue to go well so that I can continue this trend. We would love for Schlock to be able to support multiple households.

There are six more hours of General Conference to go. I’m looking forward to it.

This was a good layout day. I figured out how to make a table of contents and how to put automatically update page numbers on all the pages. I also helped refine even further an already fun visual joke for the book. We have one week until the drafting of the text is done and the editing of the text must begin. However I may have found a way to make the editing of the text not drive me insane. Hopefully my idea will fit into the budget.

In only mildly related news, I’ve been watching episodes of CSI NY when my brain just needs to rest. I liked the first couple of seasons a lot, but season three was weak. In season four I really started enjoying it again. It took me awhile to figure out why. But when the hero used a hand scanner to take images of a body and the coroner took those images into his holodeck where he then did a virtual autopsy on the floating 3D image of the body, that was when I figured it out. Somehow CSI NY went from being a law enforcement drama, to being a science fiction law enforcement drama. Everyone in the show is carrying around flashy technology which only exists in hideously expensive forms or which is only theoretically possible. Nothing is done by hand, it is all from some high tech source. It is like they pushed New York into the future by 20 years. So now the show is like watching Star Trek the original series. They even have a Captain Kirk. And yet somehow the puzzles still work and the technology is not deus ex machina. So yay for unrealistic entertainment.

The Good:
My shrinkwrap system arrived. I now have the capability to shrinkwrap all those boxed sets we’re going to be assembling. The system is not terribly efficient, but the price tag and storage requirements are much nicer than the $2500 L-bar system with conveyor belt heat tunnel. Besides I suspect that the kids will have fun wielding the heat gun (think fancy hair dryer.)

I have also place orders for magnets and posters. It feels good to be collecting the things I need for shipping in June. There are boxes and packing materials to order, but first I have to do the math to figure out how much I’ll need.

The Bad:
I have figured out that my insanely busy week working on XDM layout, will coincide exactly with my kids’ spring break. I need to put some thought into how to manage all the kids at home while I am working frantically. Hopefully I’ll find some solutions that don’t involve endless videos and treats. Advance planning will be necessary.

One of the hazards of my existence are the Howard/Sandra emotional stress feedback loops. It goes like this. Howard is stressed because of the amount of work he needs to do. Sandra is stressed because of the amount of work she needs to do. Sandra is also stressed because she is worried about how stressed Howard is. Howard gets even more stressed because his wife is overstressed and not handling things well. The additional stress radiating from Howard, piles on top of the stress from Sandra, and the circle continues until we manage to get enough work done to unravel the mess. Or until someone collapses into a ball and cries. (By someone, I mean me.)

BUT, occasionally out of the feedback loop mess, a miracle occurs. Sometimes seeing the stress of the other person causes us to kick out of our own stress. This happened last night. Howard was so stressed that at 8 pm he decided he needed to escape the house. He also decided that he needed to spend time being a Daddy in a place where there were no business distractions. So instead of putting the kids to bed at a reasonable hour, Howard packed up the three oldest and took them to the movies. It was the right choice. Kiki, Link, and Gleek had all been sad that Patch got to see the movie last Friday. They danced with delight at getting to sluff bedtime.

Once Howard left the house, everything was quiet. I looked around at the cluttered mess and realized that if it was still cluttered when Howard came home, he would walk back in the door and just pick up his load of stress. The house needed to be different when he got back. So I set to work. I picked up, vaccumed, dish washed, swept, and laundered for a good ninety minutes. The house was transformed into a place of order. (So long as you don’t examine the closets too closely. Shh!) When I began the task, it was just another thing on my list to get done. But as I got working, I found that my own mood lifted. I felt great and so I did more cleaning than I had originally intended to do. When it was all done, and the house was still quiet, I sat down. I felt so happy and peaceful. It was as if I had cleaned up all the stress and put it away with the clutter.

It worked too. Howard came home and the surprise of clean house prevented him from picking back up all of the stress. Today has been so much better than the last few days. Howard and I have both been very busy, but it has been the happy-invigorated busy rather than the I-dare-not-stop-or-it-all-will-fall-apart busy. Also, the more I work on the XDM project, the more I love it. This is going to be a fun book. Today is a good day.

I spent most of the last five days very afraid. I have been working hard at not admitting it; at telling myself to just stop fretting and get back to work. But the fears lurk so that no matter which way I turn it feels like one is ready to claw out of the shadows behind me.

There is a reason that the makers of monster horror flicks try not to give the audience a clear view of the monster. The more time we have to examine the monster, the more we can see the seams in the rubber suit, or the aliasing around the edges of the cgi. The more the audience studies the monster, the less realistic it seems. The monster lurking and springing from the dark edges of the screen is terrifying because the protagonist does no know from whence the next attack will come, nor what shape the attack will take. The monster in the middle of the room can be observed, predicted, out maneuvered, or de-masked. Oh look it wasn’t a monster at all, it was just Mr. Smith in a monster suit. Scooby Doo had it right.

So this morning I took a high powered spotlight and shined it into the corners of my brain. I’m kicked those lurking fears right out into the middle so I could really get a good look at them. I sat down and listed in detail every stray fear that crossed my brain. Every fear about the kids. Every fear about XDM. Every fear about reprinting Under New Management. Every fear about the upcoming book shipping. Every fear about failure. I did not evaluate any of it. I just wrote it all down. Eventually I ran out of things to write down. It took awhile, because the list was long, but I did run out.

The next step was looking at each fear individually. Some of them were so obviously ridiculous that just looking at them banished them. Being afraid I won’t get the laundry done today is simply not worth the emotional energy. (Ha! I’ve demasked you laundry, you can terrorize the Tayler house no more!) Others were not completely ridiculous. These fell into two categories. Things over which I have control and things over which I do not. For the things over which I had control, I then thought through what each thing needed from me, what the worst cases for failure were, and how I would respond to the worst case. These monsters do have teeth, but if I have a plan I’m much less afraid that I’ll get bit. Then there are the things over which I do not have control. For those things, I have to choose as best I can and exercise faith.

The process did not banish all my fears, but they feel much more manageable. Even better, I’ve identified the fact that all sorts of factors in my life have been in flux over the past week. Tasks have been flying at me far faster than I could get them done. This was panic inducing. It made me doubt my ability to accomplish all of the tasks that I have agreed to undertake. But the furious pace will not continue forever. In fact the closing of Sketched Edition ordering has slowed things tremendously. And once I am able to stay ahead of my to do list, I will not be so afraid that I can’t handle the rest of work ahead of me. The settling will also give my inner financial squirrel time to inventory our storage and come to grips with the fact that we no longer need to be in scrambling mode. I keep trying to tell the squirrel that we have money now, but with all the other noise in my head, she doesn’t quite believe me yet.

So there are my monsters in bright light and I am less afraid.

It is now approximately 1 pm. I have dug myself out from under the mountain of critically urgent tasks. This means I can now start on the mountain of urgent tasks. Only the kids get out of school early on Mondays and I no longer have focused business time. Instead I have fractured mother duties combined with attempts to reduce the mountain. I’m hoping to dig out by late tomorrow.