Attack of the Cranky

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It is not news to me that crankiness is contagious, people can give it to each other. Given the quantity of cranky that has filled this house in the past few days, one would think that we’d somehow acquired a particularly infectious strain. Except, when I look closely at all the different flavors of cranky they all seem to have spontaneous origination within the host. Link had a headache and homework he didn’t want to do. Also he was hungry, because hunger is nigh constant when one is fifteen. Kiki was cranky because she was tired and it was nearly bedtime when she learned that the following day was an A schedule day. She had prepared for a B schedule day. Gleek was cranky because we didn’t have a book she wanted, the cat would not consent to being a snuggle toy, and life in general is angry making without any other reason when one is a pre-teen. Patch was cranky because he didn’t pass his math test and he got his third black eye for the year by crashing into a friend on a trampoline. Howard was cranky from deadline stress and just because some days are that way. My case of cranky was definitely made worse by all of the above, but probably originated in a creeping feeling that there was something important I was failing to do properly.

We did not all explode into crankiness simultaneously. Instead it has been as if our house were built where the river of grouchy meets the sea of irritability. The tides ebbed and flowed creating eddies, rip tides, periods of calmness, and the occasional spectacular rogue wave. The good news is that we are all at least somewhat self-aware human beings and thus able to recognize that we are not being entirely reasonable. the most recent and amusing example of this was Patch stomping his feet and crying because Gleek, who had already finished her homework, got to watch Mythbusters, while he had to complete his work first.
“But I’ll miss some of it!” Patch wailed.
I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. (I recommend that all prospective parents learn the eyebrow trick, it is so very useful. Also you get to feel like Spock.)
“And the show will completely evaporate off of Netflix while Gleek watches so that it is gone forever?” I asked.
Patch half scowled and half smiled at me. Then he pulled the corners of his mouth down into a faux sad face.
“Yes.” he sighed. “It will be gone forever.”
Then he stopped complaining and completed his work in record time.

The cranky comes and goes, but it feels like the storm surge is settling out. Hopefully we’ll have calmer waters soon. Until then we try our best to not spread the cranky around.

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Pieces in Today

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There are at least seven different places I could start to tell a story of today. A story, not the story. This day doesn’t have a single narrative, no big event which over rides all else and becomes the focus for all the events around it. Instead I’m left with pieces of stories: The science project in process sitting in mason jars on my counter. The lost homework paper which was the cause of much drama and stomping. The forgotten appointment that I hurried to arrive late for. The pounding of my feet on a treadmill while I listened to Disney’s ultimate swashbuckling album and pondered how pirate songs were not usual gym fare. The script I read for Howard before he headed out to draw on it. The plethora of emails both business and personal along with notifications from various colleges who are trying to make me believe that they’re enthralled with the wondrous capabilities of my daughter when they’re really hoping to get some of my money. The nap I didn’t take. The dinner which is sitting in a casserole dish on the stove “cooling” while I find the emotional energy to call everyone to the table. Then there are the fragments of stories yet ahead of me: homework time, dinner, bedtime.

I would dearly love to draw all of it together, make a coherent whole. I like it when stories have themes and deeper meanings than is implied by the basic scenes. Instead I must accept that today taken by itself does not carry a full story. All of these things are threads of much larger stories which will play out over the next months and years. Some days have stories, others just have pieces of stories. So it goes.

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Catch Up Day

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I was staring down the barrel of Monday after taking three days off of work to venture into the realm of visiting relatives and college campuses. The four days prior to that I was functioning at minimal levels due to a head cold. Stuff had piled up and Monday was the day to get it all done. The only way I could possibly do it all was to deploy lists and minions–five lists, four minions. I wrote a list for each child and left the lists on the counter. My list resided in my google tasks window. At 7 am the work began.

I wish I could take credit for training my kids right, but I can’t. The truth of the matter is that each of them made choices this morning. I made the lists, but they could easily have chosen to rebel or get distracted. Instead my kids decided to own those lists, to claim them and dispatch them as quickly as possible. By noon the house was cleaner and all the critical kid tasks were complete. (Except for Patch’s science fair project which required my participation and thus was the one item on his list which remains incomplete here at bedtime.) I grant you that we have carefully practiced doing chores. We’ve created system after system for tracking chores, assigning chores, rewarding work done, and applying consequences for incomplete work. Each system was built out of the functioning bits of prior systems that had fallen apart. There is definitely a refining process as we figure out what works and what doesn’t for each child at each stage of life. Mostly though, the kids have realized that they have power to make our lives better, that when they do work life is happier, that if they don’t things feel chaotic. Some of this learning is the result of me being too tired and stressed to save them from from the consequences. My kids are good workers because I built a structure and then got out of the way. This let their innate awesomeness have room to grow.

My list of things also shrank by leaps and bounds through the morning. The largest of these things was that I needed to be online to help answer questions and troubleshoot during the opening of registration for the Writing Excuses Workshop and Retreat which will take place next summer. It is an event I’m really excited to be part of, but which I’ve not been mentioning online because there was only so much space and it seemed important to let those who follow the Writing Excuses blog have the first chance to register. They wasted no time at all. The event was sold out within ten minutes. Mary and I were online for an hour more just to double check everything and iron out a couple of minor behind-the-scenes organizational issues. So next June I’ll be headed back to Chattanooga for another writing retreat. Only this time I’ll have Howard with me and I’ll probably get to do some teaching. I’m looking forward to it.

By the time my kids were finishing up their lists I was barely half way through mine, and I was losing steam. I always assign myself more things to do than can be reasonably done in the allotted time. This is because some days I really can get it all done. Most days I just can’t. Also I have to put every random task I think of on the list or I will lose track of them. I often put things on lists for next week or even next month so that I can forget about them today. Somehow the afternoon turned into a slog for just about everyone. Then we all had to wade through patches of cranky in the evening. Yet here we are at bedtime with most of the things done. I do feel caught up, like tomorrow can be a normal day instead of a sprint. That will be nice. We need a steady pace for a while.

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A Visit to Fremont Indian State Park

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“I just want to go home.” Kiki said as we drove away from my sister’s house. Link concurred. I sympathized, but Fremont Indian state Park was right on the road back to our house. It seemed a shame not to stop and see the carvings made by humans hundreds or thousands of years ago.
“We’ll only stay a little bit. Besides if we go straight home we’ll get there at the same time as the football game traffic.” Gleek and Patch were excited by the possibility of Native American things. So we stopped.

Court of Ceremonies Trail 1/2 mile the little sign said. We’d already wandered through the exhibit room, climbed on the pit house play structure, and listened to recordings. We decided to wander along the paved path to look at rock carvings up close. It was a good choice, the marks which looked like scrawls and graffiti from a distance resolved into a more deliberate art when we got up close. Curated exhibits are useful and informative, but outside in the sun and air we could think our own thoughts and draw our own conclusions about the things we saw–one of which was this little sign. The name Court of Ceremonies was intriguing enough to draw us off of the paved walkway and up a dirt path. We trekked in search of a place that was special or sacred. As we trekked, we saw that every flat surface reachable by human hands was marked.

I wondered what those long ago people thought as they scraped pictures into the rocks. Were the artists people who sneaked off to draw because of an inner need? Were they ridiculed by their community or revered? Were the markings sacred with ceremonial importance or were they like graffiti–an impermanent human being trying to leave something in the world to say “I was here”? If I’d made us all sit for the 15 minute video, I probably would have had answers to those questions. Instead we only had speculations as we walked.

The trail split and the little sign said nothing about Court of Ceremonies, just informing us that one way was back toward the museum along a Hidden Secrets trail. We’d already climbed out of the canyon. I pictured the court of ceremonies as a place circled by walls with drawings etched into them. The path we were on did not seem likely to take us to such a place. So we turned our feet back toward the museum. We all were still aware of the two hour drive necessary to take us home. None of us wanted to exhaust ourselves with a long hike. Link in particular was glad to be headed back. He ran ahead on the trail until we could see him in the distance waving his arms and jumping. He’d found something. As I drew closer, the kids appeared to be running in circles. They were following the trails of a spiral.

There was no sign to explain this spiral or its purpose. It was far too exposed to the elements to have existed since the Native American peoples lived there. Possibly it had been restored and maintained by people who came later, such as the museum staff. We all walked the spiral. I photographed the kids in the center. Then they spiraled back out and we continued on our way, having decided to call the place Court of Ceremonies.

Sometimes having interesting questions can be as satisfying as answers.

A trick of cloud cover and daylight made the clump of yellow trees in the valley below us radiant in comparison with the surrounding landscape.

Most of the natural plants more or less ignored the fall weather, but these trees declared it. I only saw them near the man-made highway. In other areas entire hillsides were orange and yellow. It was lovely, even in pouring rain.

The kids were quiet on the drive home. They had thoughts to think and video games to play. I looked at the spare and open countryside as I drove us home. Utah is very different than the forest I visited in Tennessee. I loved the forest, but I love Utah too. There is beauty in desert landscapes where all the plants and animals have to make the most of limited resources rather than fighting over abundance. I remember the little canyon wren we saw on our hike. It jumped along the cliff face and then vanished into crevices of rock. It was perfectly at home in a place that is difficult to turn into a living space.

Back at my house, I’m realizing how much more I could do to make it a lovely place, even when my resources feel limited. The Fremont Indians scraped beauty into rock and dug their homes out of the ground. Surely I can manage to sweep more often in my centrally-heated house. I can take time to decorate and mend. I’ve already turned my house into a place that is good to come home to. I can work to make it even better.

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Observations on a College Campus

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I am old. Not old lady old, but mom old. Everywhere we went there were young people and they were all open and ready to engage, meet new friends, maybe find someone particularly special. …and I don’t fit with that anymore. I remember fitting. I remember belonging to the crazy energy of an apartment of girls baking cookies late at night because we had too much studying to do. Part of me misses it, and part of me is tired contemplating it. But I watched Kiki, and she is ready for it. She bounced as we looked at the library, the dorms, the art department. She is ready to launch into college and I am the mom who gets to send her off and go home. Just writing that sentence makes me feel boring.

(No need to make me feel better. I’m fine. I really like my current life stage and level of wisdom. It is just one of those How did I end up here? moments.)

When one tours a college campus in the rain, it is best to wear a coat with a hood. I wish I’d known that rain was in the plans when I walked out of my house without grabbing my jacket yesterday.

Up next: admissions forms, then an unending stream of scholarship forms and financial aid applications. But walking the campus let Kiki picture herself as a college student. It helped her to refine what she wants.

Onward

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Linkage Before I Venture Off

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Today I’m off to spend a couple of days visiting with relatives and helping Kiki tour college campuses. Naturally this means that I had a writing brainstorm late last night and no time today to write any of it down. However I did discover the lovely surprise that a piece I wrote months ago went live today. Over on Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog I’m talking about My Favorite Bit of the Hold on to Your Horses project. Sometimes when I re-read posts I’ve written I want to edit. Other times I think they’re pretty good. Every once in a long while I re-read a post and it makes me cry because it is exactly what I meant. That post makes my eyes leak.

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Reminders

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Reminders I needed today:

Running is better than crying (exercise is the mood balancer)

Shut up and write the words (on writerly kvetching courtesy of Shanna Germain.)

My job is to love people, not fix them.

Words have value even if they only change the one who writes them.

Reminders I didn’t necessarily need today, but which are good to remember and list here for a day when I do need them:

Patterns matter more than incidents.

Courage is not the absence of fear, it is deciding to act despite the fear.

Education is not a race with limited prizes at the end.

Fall down seven times. Stand up eight. (courtesy of Janci Patterson)

Your physical spaces should reflect your priorities.

Emotions are not a problem to be solved. They are a powerful indicator that there is a problem to be addressed.

Some goals can not be reached without a leap of faith.

Find the places that fill your soul and visit them often.

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Sick Day

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I do not like having a head cold. I do not like it Sam I Am. That statement would be a lot more clever if I’d made it rhyme. Of course rhyming verse construction appears to be one of the functions shut down by having a head cold. Also shut down: prioritization, energy, and will to go do things. I not even feeling all that miserable. I keep doing mental assessments of my physical state and thinking that I should just shake it off and get stuff done. I did accomplish the important meeting of the day, take Link to check for strep (negative), and pick up all the kids from school on schedule. But right now I’m staring down the barrel of dinner, homework time, and Family Home Evening. All I want to do is crawl into bed and watch movies until time to sleep.

Tomorrow will be better. I know this. I’m not even intending to complain really. I just suspect that it will be nice to have recorded that some days are full of sloth and fatigue rather than organization and competence.

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Swirls of Thoughts on Conference Sunday

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My brain is full. Usually when my brain is full it feels like a chaotic muddle, a mess to be sorted. Today most of the fullness is the result of listening to four sessions of LDS General Conference. All the thoughts, impressions, and inspirations I gathered from the speakers are not a chaotic muddle. Instead they are like colors of paint swirling together and mixing as they are carried on a current. I feel no need to snatch or clean because I can trust that the things I need will stay with me while the rest will move onward.

I am thinking about a bird of prey tangled in a net. Rescue workers approach carefully, trying to cut the strands so that the bird can fly free, but knowing that the bird will not understand and will attack them for their efforts. Threads part and the bird does fly, but sadly a portion of the net is still tangled on the bird, possibly to get caught on something else and trap the bird again. I think of the be-netted bird when I can see that someone is trapped in a net of habits and compulsions that they can not even perceive. I see it. I want to cut them out, but unlike a bird that can be rescued, people treasure their entrapping nets and they dive back into them. I am left standing with my hands in my pockets knowing that all I can do is hope to help my friend see the net for the trap that it is and then to begin to cut threads for themselves.

I think about the cultural shifts and how so small a change as the minimum age for missionaries can have rippling effects. Suddenly a decision which seemed years off moves much closer. Will there be a missionary boom for a couple of years like the baby boom after the first world war? Will BYU be easier to get into next year as more high school graduates opt for mission before college? In a couple of years it will all settle out, but during the settling process some things will shift. It will be interesting to watch.

My thoughts drift to the many family members and friends who are suffering from lack of employment, under employment, and health issues. The amount I can do to help feels paltry in the face of their needs and I feel guilty for feeling stressed by my own financial strains which are so much less dire. Yet I remember years ago when I was pregnant with Gleek and it seemed that every female relative and friend was suffering from fertility issues. I was growing with blessings that they longed for. Within two years every single one of those women became pregnant. Their longed for children came on a schedule different than the one they wanted, but the children still came. I feel that this is the same, that employment and health are nearby and that the desired security will arrive by faith, not by frantic efforts to exert control. So I try to exercise faith on their behalf. Do what you can. Trust for the rest.

I think much about Simon Peter and Christ. I think even more on the command to pick up discipleship and never put it down again. I ponder what service I am to give in making the world a better place.

Then I close my eyes and think of nothing in particular because I’m still fighting a head cold and too much thinking makes me sleepy. The things I need to do will stay with me, brought back to me over and again by the whisperings of inspiration and divine guidance. For now, I rest.

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Contemplating College for Kiki

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Kiki filled out her first college application while I was away at the writer’s retreat. The first I knew about it was when the college emailed me saying that she’d applied and that all they needed were her ACT scores and a transcript. She took the ACT a month ago and her scores arrived last week. The transcript only required a five minute phone call to the school. Without any fanfare at all, we’ve shifted into the applying for colleges phase of Kiki’s high school year.

I can’t help thinking that it ought to be more stressful than this. There certainly is paperwork involved. There are dozens of little tasks to track and complete. But then tracking and completing dozens of small tasks is something we do around here daily. The fact that the tasks are related to college applications is only a tiny shift. Applying for scholarships is a similar deluge of paperwork tasks. Half the challenge is figuring out what is available so that the paperwork can be submitted. When I mentioned to a friend that I ought to be more stressed about paying for college, she pointed out that the dollar amount for a year of college is approximately equivalent to the dollar amount of paying for a book printing. Most people encounter sticker shock when looking at those numbers. I don’t because I’ve dealt with them every year for quite awhile. Covering the cost is a challenge, not something to fear.

Absent the deadline panics and financial terror which beset most families when contemplating college, we’re still left with the emotional ride of launching a child into adulthood. Kiki is taking all this in stride, as evidenced by her just filling out an online application when the link was mailed to her. We’ve scheduled some campus tours and she is very much focused on the possibilities rather than the possible roadblocks and troubles. My state is more complicated. I want to manage this all calmly, this is where we’ve always been aimed, but my emotions are unruly. When we arrived at the first day of school this fall, I cried for two days–grieving for the end of the era when all my kids live at home. It seemed silly to grieve then, we still had a year ahead, but that was when the grief arrived and I had to deal with it. Then it passed and we moved onward into the school year. Over the summer I watched my brother and sister as they planned big trips and fun events, trying to cram into a single summer all those things they meant to do earlier but somehow didn’t. My reactions spring from the same knowledge–that things are going to change–but my impulse is different. I want to hoard normality. I want to eschew all big events and disruptions so that we can have as many calm days as possible with all of us here.

Despite my desire for normal, change is in the air. Kiki is beginning to face outward from home, to plan and picture her future. We are beginning to set things up so that she can fly free. Each step is small, an application, a checking account, a college tour, but they accumulate. By next spring all these tiny steps will have changed us. Perhaps I was right to grieve a bit on that first day of school, my subconscious knew that the moments of change had already begun to arrive. Perhaps I grieved then so that I would be able to feel the joy inherent in this process. I watch Kiki, strong and so very obviously ready for all of this. She calmly fills out forms and writes paragraphs about the things she has done in her life. She is surprised to discover so many accumulated accomplishments. Some time in winter or spring she is going to look around and notice how far she has come in the past six months. She will be either happy or frighted by it. When she is, I will hug her tight and refrain from telling her how I saw it coming. Or perhaps I will tell her if hearing it is what she needs to regain some balance.

I know it will not be a launch and gone forever. We’ll always be part of each other’s lives even if we don’t live in the same house, but the change has begun. It is beautiful, joyous, and fascinating to watch.

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