I have too many events in the next two weeks

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These are my things, not all of my things, because I know I am forgetting some of them. I’m pretty sure the kid leaving junior high also has some things, but I haven’t seen that list of events, so I don’t know what they are or where they fit.
Also missing from the list: me collapsing because my brain has frizzled out from trying to track all of it. I do not recommend having three children graduating from their schools the same year. Particularly if you have also agreed to ship 30,000 coins.

May 17
Help child assemble and decorate a rocket
help child prepare 5 homemade items for trading post, must be cool enough that other kids want them.
help child put on trader costume for trading post
deliver books and merch for transport to Phoenix Comic Con
possible coin delivery today
Do not attend trading post nor volunteer to help with it despite multiple emails asking for said help.
Figure out how to relocate old couch
accept delivery of new couch
Must remember to make business phone calls and emails
Continue re-installing software and discovering what data I lost because of the death of my hard drive. (Report on this in a blog post sometime next week.)
Acquire gift for child’s birthday party
Deliver child to friend’s birthday party

May 18
Weed whack before the wilds begin to be inhabited
clear the garden patch
plant tomatoes and basil so they have a chance to bear fruit by end of summer
clean the house
do the laundry

May 19
Church
Scout meeting
Seminary graduation for oldest child

May 20
Accounting (including the re-creation of data from paper info because I had to restore from back ups.)
communicate with coin shipping volunteers about schedule (hopefully by then I’ll know something concrete)
Organize house for coin shipping
Do not attend child’s rocket launch at school. Hope it goes well
Help child finish up construction on last major assignment
Make sure kids have opera costumes
Start work on Tub of Happiness reprint

May 21
Attend opera performances for two 20-minute long operas for two kids
Admire all the opera scenery I did not help paint and the costumes I did not help construct despite the many emails asking for volunteers
Probably assemble coins into bundles, if we have coins. If not, organize invoices and plan

May 22
Senior sluff day
Elementary school 3K fun run, must remember to send water bottles and make sure they dress appropriately
Do not attend nor participate in the run despite the many notes of invitation
run the errands
Maybe shipping coins
Pack Howard for a convention
remember to send kids to youth activities

May 23
Drive Howard to airport
Attend 6th grade graduation
Attend 6th grade celebratory BBQ lunch
Admire all the food and effort to which I did not contribute despite the emails asking for volunteers
Orthodontic appointment
Attend honors night for high school senior
Maybe shipping coins

May 24
6th grade class auction. Remember to send one item to be auctioned, must be cool.
Remember to send the mummy chicken to school so that it can be unveiled on schedule.
Deliver art to CONduit for art show
Probable deliver of the remaining thousands of coins
Maybe shipping coins

May 25
Possibly attend CONduit for part of the day
Maybe stay home and clean all the things

May 26
Church
Retrieve art from CONduit

May 27
No school
Pick up Howard from airport
Maybe coin shipping prep

May 28
Elementary school dance festival. Make sure kids wear their costumes
Clap for the dancing children
Maybe shipping coins

May 29
Field day at the elementary school.
Do not volunteer for anything despite the emails asking for volunteers
Maybe shipping coins

May 30
Last day of school
High school graduation
Senior overnighter

After that there is more stuff. I’ll think about it when I either get all of this stuff right or recover from failing at it.

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Adventures in Computer Hardware

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Last Thursday I uploaded the final files for The Body Politic to our printer in China. When I clicked to close the ftp program I noticed that the machine was behaving oddly, like it had to think extra hard about what to do next. I use this machine all the time and I could tell something was significantly wrong. Sure enough, halfway through the back up process it failed completely. Diagnostics at JPL Computers have diagnosed a hard drive failure. No data is retrievable from the drive.

Hard drive failure is never good news. Yet, as with Howard’s recent hard drive failure, this one happened as conveniently as possible. I was in between projects and in a schedule lull. Reconfiguring my computer was not how I wanted to spend this week, but at least I have time for it. Also, in the wake of Howard’s computer failure, I stepped up my back-up habits. They’re pretty good. Most of my writing in progress exists in dropbox where I still have all of it. Using my back up drives I’ve been able to switch most of my processes over to Calcifer, who is supposed to be my writing machine, but he’s been great about stepping up and handling business tasks for me. My desktop machine has been out of commission for almost a week and I’ve been fine.

Later today or tomorrow the desk machine will come back to me with fresh new drives. I’ll have a clean slate on which to install my programs. In some ways that appeals to me. I like having things be organized and new. Unfortunately then I’ll begin to discover the gaps in my back up processes. I know that there are pieces of data that I will need which I’ve missed. There will be some things I’ll have to re-create. Yet I don’t think I’ll have lost anything that is worth a $1500 drive reconstruction to get back.

The most astonishing thing about this adventure in hardware failure is that I haven’t panicked even once. This is the sort of event which is tailor made to send me into an emotional spiral of doom, sure that everything will fall apart. I did have a moment of shock “Are you sure it is the hard drive?” I asked twice, as if I could make the answer be different just by wishing. But after that moment of disbelief most of my reaction has been to shrug and get to work putting things back together. The story would have been quite different if we didn’t have the money to get the new drives, if I did not have a laptop that could be re-purposed for a few days, if I hadn’t been using dropbox as a storage medium for my writing, if I hadn’t run a bunch of back ups last week, if the timing had been different. So many ifs. I’m grateful that even with a bad thing so many good things fell into place.

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Looking Forward to the Last Day of School

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The end of school is close. Some part of my brain keeps wandering me to where I can stand and look at the calendar. My finger drifts up and I count the days. I look at the multi-colored plethora of events between now and that final school day. Each kid has a color, it allows me to quickly scan who is busy and who is not. Right now they all are. We have 6th grade graduation, field trips, rocket day, a settlers meetup, class stores, unveiling of mummified chickens, school dances, senior sluff day, seminary graduation, field day, a dance festival, and more. All of these things parade across the calendar in rainbow hues. I can’t keep track of it. I don’t want to. I am tired of tracking all of the school things and encouraging responsibility. We all need a rest, but there are days left.

The work will not stop when school does, not by a long shot. We’re expecting coins next week just before Howard runs off to Phoenix comic con. Kiki is avidly preparing art to be displayed in the CONduit art show. June is double booked pretty much every weekend. Yet the energy of the house shifts when school is out. I’m able to declare that the kids must help with the housework and not feel guilty that I’m impinging on their limited free time. The daily schedule becomes more relaxed, which is both a gift and a challenge. I’m looking forward to that shift.

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Something So Small Shouldn’t Require Courage

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Strange that the simple click of a button takes fifteen minutes to accomplish. I’d already gone through all the steps to select a flight, debating about convenience and cost, arguing with myself about whether I should go at all. It is a luxury to be able to go. I know this. The writing retreat will be fine without me. I am not needed there. In contrast I will be missed every single day at home. Yet, the kids are anticipating what I’ve arranged for them while I am gone. They’ll miss me, but they won’t be uncomfortable, neglected, or bereft. All the pieces were in place. All the players had agreed that this was the right action. Except some deep part of me wanted to abort, call the whole thing off, stay safe at home. Ah. The pause before clicking is not about logic, it is fear. I am afraid because the last retreat was difficult, because this one has unknowns, because my brain can fabricate worlds of what-if flavored regrets. If I let fear determine my actions my life will grow ever smaller. I will become smaller. I clicked.

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Mixed Reviews on a Class About Blogging

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The room was not empty. I was quite grateful for this, as that had been my first fear. LDS Storymakers is primarily a conference for the writers of fiction and I did not know if a presentation on blogging would draw an audience, particularly since I made as clear as possible in the panel description that we would not cover using a blog as a marketing tool. I was grateful that the conference organizers decided to schedule it and then grateful again when people showed up. There were only a few empty seats when I turned on the microphone and began speaking.

The trouble with speaking about blogging is that it covers such a vast array of motivations and means. All blogs are on the internet. All blogs hope to be read by people who are not the writer. Other than that, everything varies. The forms, aims, intents, hopes, and needs of one blog can be polar opposite to those of another. In speaking on the topic I could choose to speak broadly and be mildly useful to most of my audience, or I could narrow my focus in order to be extremely useful to some and completely irrelevant to others. Speaking broadly about setting up a blog or gaining readers did not interest me. I wanted to speak about the creation of content and how to manage the meanness of people on the internet. In hindsight those two halves should have been separate presentations, but I’d welded them together and forged onward.

The first woman left right after I clarified what I would and would not cover. I saw her go and thought that I had done my job well. My introduction made clear that my class would not be useful to her, so she went to find one that would. I was fine and I kept speaking. More people left as my presentation continued. Whatever need had drawn them to my class was not being addressed by my presentation. I began to feel bad about that, wondering if I could have done a better job of clarifying in the class description, but comforting myself that this was just to be expected. One presentation simply can’t address all the issues.

It was a strange experience. I’ve spoken often enough that I have a good sense for when a presentation is working. There is a feedback loop with the audience. They smile, they nod, they quickly write a note, I see these things and direct the speech to emphasize the points which seem to get the most response, even when it takes me off script. My purpose is to be useful, to give information that will help. I stood in front of that class and I saw all the signs of engagement. My audience was with me, or at least half of them were. One by one the others left. When I wrapped up the room was about half full.

I pondered it later when the voices of self doubt began howling that if I’d only been better I could have been useful to them all. My logical brain was, of course, countering that I was glad they quietly and politely went to find something else they needed. They were the ones paying for the conference. They had every right to change lectures if they wished. My confident self noted that several people came to thank me and said my class was very helpful. Yet it is a hard thing to see visible evidence that my words were both exactly what they should have been and not at all what was wanted depending upon who was listening.

No matter what I write or what I say, I can’t be brilliant enough to matter to everyone. My blog collects readers, but it also loses them. The same will be true of my fiction. If I had panicked at the departure of audience and tried to bring them back I would only have been pulled off course. I would have floundered and probably lost even more. Instead I stayed with those for whom my presentation was working and did my best to make it work even better.

I hope I get more chances to speak about blogging. I walked out of that presentation with a hundred ideas about how to divide the presentation into more focused topics. These were things I learned from my audience. The questions they asked taught me what I should have prepared and will prepare next time. One woman came to me in the hallway hours later.
“Thank you,” she said. “Blogging doesn’t seem so scary anymore. I can do this.” And my heart sang, because if nothing else, that was one of the things I hoped to convey. I love blogging and I think I was at least able to impart some of that love and enthusiasm.

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Coming Home

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Gifts from my children today:
None of them called me at the conference to ask for anything.
The kitchen was clean when I got home.
They ate three actual meals during my absence and only one of those meals was cooked in the microwave.
My younger two kids where lightly sunburned, evidence that they spent large portions of the day outdoors playing instead of glued to computer screens.
The fridge had more groceries in it when I got back than when I left.
There were flowers in a vase on the counter and a ring of notes, one from each child. (Patch’s note: “Mom, you’ve been nice to me ever since I was born. I just want to say thank you.”)
I came home and they were all watching a show together.
They went to bed without arguing or delaying.

I remember all of the times when I experience the opposite of everything above, to the point where I wondered why I bothered to go anywhere. Today they demonstrated that they’ve actually learned all the lessons in self-sufficiency, hard work, empathy, kindness for others, and home management that I’ve been trying to teach for so many years. It is hard to believe in evenings like this one when at the beginning end of raising kids, but here I am and life is good.

I’ll have thoughts about the Storymakers Conference tomorrow. Tonight I am quite tired.

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LDS Storymakers Presentations

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This morning I’m headed down to the Marriott Hotel in Provo to teach at the LDS Storymakers conference. If you’re planning to be there too, I hope you’ll find me and say hello. My first presentation will be one that I gave last February at LTUE. Structuring Life to Make Room for Creativity. If you click on that title it’ll take you to the post I did of my presentation notes. In fact, since most of you will not be able to attend the conference, I’ll list several blog posts where I report on a panel or presentation:
Little Stories Everywhere: Notes from a Panel Discussion on Blogging
Schmoozing 101: Notes from a Presentation with Mary Robinette Kowal
Or there is a listing of other posts in that same vein.

On Saturday I’ll be giving a presentation on blogging where I talk, not about marketing or setting up a blog, but about the actual content generation parts of blogging. I have a hundred ideas that I’m still pounding into shape. When I’m done I’m likely to write up that presentation as well.

If you’d like to follow the conference in more real time, you can follow the #storymaker13 hash tag on twitter. I can’t guarantee that anyone will tweet from my panels, but if they did, that’s where you’d see it.

Alternately you could step away from the internet and go enjoy the outdoors, which is a lovely way to spend a Friday and Saturday.

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The Butterfly Dress Photos

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I promised to let all of you see the photographer’s shots of Kiki wearing the butterfly dress. Here they are along with appropriate credit for those involved.

My original write up of the photo shoot can be found here. It has pictures that I took.
The butterfly dress was created by Rebekah McKinney
Kiki’s hair was done by Ashley of 9 Salon and Spa
Kiki’s make up was done by Sammie of 9 Salon and spa
The photography was done by Gary of Meaux Photography


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Book Editing

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My day began with this:

Each of those little paper flags sticking out of the pages is an error that needed fixed before Body Politic could go to print. I went through flag by flag and fixed all the errors. There were at least 80 of them. It always amazes me how many dumb mistakes I make when putting a book together. Then I print it out on paper and suddenly they are glaringly, embarrassingly obvious. When all the things were fixed, I exported the book to a PDF and paged through it again. I found 30 more errors. I fixed those and exported again to PDF and handed the file to Howard. He found 14 errors. This is always the process. We go through iterations of book creation, each time focusing our attention on a different way of reading. Sometimes I read every word. Other times I just flip pages and look at image spacing. Eventually my eyes glaze over and it all looks like a blur and possibly even a bad idea. At some point we declare it done and I send it off to print. It is out of my hair for a couple of months until it comes back home bound in paper. By then I’m not tired of the book anymore. We’re excited as we open the boxes and see the book made real. But I guarantee that on that first flip through we’ll find a mistake we missed. It happens every time.

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Pondering the Months to Come

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The school year draws to a close in just a few weeks. The teachers from my kids’ elementary school have begun sending home notes with the last lists of things to accomplish before the year ends. I am glad, because this year has exhausted me. I’m ready for it to be over. Yet I haven’t been feeling joy when contemplating the end of the school year and today I figured out why. It is because the school year is not the end of those things that have been most difficult in the past few months. I’ve got three kids in transition and that process can not be complete until they are settled into their new schools next fall. The cessation of school is not the end, it is a pause. This thought is somewhat discouraging. I’d like to have a sense of completion, tying things off so that we can start fresh in late August. Instead I’ll just pack away many of these thoughts, store them while we manage months of summer conventions, family events, major shipping, and everyone being home all day. Then the thoughts will come back to me, unresolved, needing attention. This was my experience last year and I expect it again.

Summers were so long when I was a kid. They are far too short now. I’ve spent lots of time toggling through the months on my calendar and pondering what is to come. It doesn’t feel calm to me until sometime in November, because that is the point when we will have completed all the current things to do. Then the kids will be settled. The conventions and shipments will be done. Except November will be cold again. I don’t want to skip ahead to cold. Also, life does not calm down in November. Ever. That is when the holiday craziness kicks into gear. My life is going to be crazy for years to come. I chose this when Howard and I went full time with cartooning. I chose this when we decided to have four kids, who are now beginning to launch themselves in different directions rather than moving as a family unit. It is messy and crazy, but I’d pick this life over almost any other one that I was offered. This is an important thing to remember when it all feels impossible.

The other thing to remember is that each day offers me spaces. There are quiet moments to savor, flowers in bloom, warm outdoor air, and sunshine. Yes, the rest of May is one long task list. Yes, June is double booked every weekend and a whole week in the middle. Yes, August is week-long convention followed by week-long convention with dropping a child at college sandwiched in between. But July is almost empty. I keep skipping over it when I’m toggling my calendar, discounting the spaces there because of what comes before and after. I’m a little afraid to hope for calmness in July, as if I’d rather be surprised to find it instead of using the hope of it to get me through. Mostly though, I need to stop looking so far ahead. I can not solve June today. Instead I should focus on this week and the empty spaces between me and Storymakers conference on Friday. My life is not as crazy as my stress would sometimes have me believe.

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