Announcements and Updates

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Announcements:
Looking for a picture book to give as a gift? Take a look at Hold on to Your Horses. You can get a free pdf of the entire book either by clicking the image or the link. If you want the book on paper. It is available in our store. This book is a story I wrote for Gleek when she was in kindergarten because she needed a story to help her be able to manage her impulsive creativity. I worked with an artist, Angela Call, to bring the story to life. I still love this book and am always glad to see it go out where the story can be loved by others too. It made me happy to see several copies go into packages during our shipping event on Saturday.

Another thing I am excited about is that the LDStorymakers Conference has opened for registration. This is a Utah writer’s conference for those who are interested in writing genre fiction. Both Howard and I have been invited to present at the conference. Howard will be giving his inspiring Talent Vs. Practice presentation and also one on world building. I have a solo presentation on structuring finances to support a creative career. Then I’m team teaching with Crystal Liechty for a two hour master class on book covers. We’re aiming to make the class useful to people who will need to work with publishers and those who want to create covers themselves. I love teaching and so I’ll probably talk more about these presentations as I plan them. Along with classes, the conference offers pitch sessions, work shops, a boot camp, and a couple of banquets. The conference is in May, but there are only 450 memberships available. If you’re interested, sign up now.

Updates:
All the calendar packages were assembled on Saturday thanks to a marvelous crew of 8 people who donated their time. Unfortunately I neglected to remember that the post office closes early on Saturdays. So all the packages are still here. Mailing them will be the first task of Monday morning. It will take two van loads. Calendars are thin, but not when they’re in the same package as a mug.

Today’s energy crash is proceeding at a nice leisurely pace. I’m doing a whole lot of not much. I keep having a vague feeling that there are things I should be tracking and planning for, but not really remembering what they are. Occasionally I’ll remember something and write it down. On other occasions I’ll discover written notes about what I should do next. Then I do those things. Thus I’m wending my way through the day.

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The Day Before Shipping

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Caffeine is the means by which I borrow energy from my future self. The me of yesterday borrowed heavily. I passed the debt (and then some) on to tomorrow. Since tomorrow is shipping day, I’ll do it again. The bill comes due on Sunday and Monday.

Howard rescued me twice today despite the fact that he felt exhausted and oppressed himself. He summoned additional volunteer help so that packing mugs and making bundles went three times faster. Then he shoved me and the younger kids out the door to go watch the Muppets. Because of these things I arrived in the evening only low-level frazzled instead of cranky exhausted frazzled.

Onward.

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Flat Tires and Gratitude

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I suppose I could blame the flat tire on the way home from picking up my kids at school. That certainly derailed everything which came after. I had to call a neighbor to retrieve the kids so they wouldn’t be late for an after school activity and I when my van limped into the high school lot for a parent teacher conference we were rolling on one of those tiny spare tires. Yet the flat came late in the day and by that time I’d already failed to accomplish most of the things on my list. The flat merely prevented me from plowing through the list in the late afternoon.

So the list for tomorrow is long. I intend to hit it hard first thing in the morning. For this evening I shall be grateful that the local average time from beginning to change a flat and the arrival of volunteer help is less than 10 minutes. I’ll also be grateful for kind neighbors who show up at my door with treats which I can serve as a bedtime snack. While I’m at it, I’ll be glad that my kids consider canned chili and tortilla chips to be an excellent dinner choice. I’ll top all that with gratitude that the tire was brand new and under warranty, so that when they discovered that the tire had rolled along too flat and the interior side walls were broken, the replacement was free under warranty.

Life is good and there is a stack of boxes in my family room filled with signed calendars. We got that much done in the morning. By Saturday afternoon it will all be done.

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Pears, guilt, and cooking during shipping week

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There were pears on my front porch; the last fruits from our tree which we’d not given away. They sat there in a row where we’d placed them to ripen. They’d ripened fine, but they continued to sit while we all walked past them off to school, back from school, running errands, shipping packages, fetching mail, or hauling garbage. The pears witnessed it all and they gradually shifted toward the place beyond ripe. My occasional pauses to glance guiltily at the pears changed from “I really ought to can those” into “I really ought to throw those away.” One morning we finally did. Howard and I dumped all the porch pears unceremoniously into the garbage can. I breathed relief. Pears were no longer a little nagging item on my list of things to do.

The back lawn was blanketed with a layer of leaves. This is the natural result of having planted trees a decade ago. If the leaves were left all winter the grass would die. I sent kids out to rake one afternoon and they made leaf houses, outlining imaginary walls with long sinuous piles of leaves. On a different day I sent them out to rake again and told them they were required to fill up six garbage bags with leaves. They did as they were told and the lawn was still dotted with large grass-killing leaf piles. Howard surveyed the leaves and declared a family leaf raking hour. We armed ourselves with gloves, rakes, and a box full of garbage bags. In the course of one hour, our two teams of baggers and one team of rakers relocated all the leaves into bags. From there the leaves could be transported to the green waste station or offered to neighbors for mulch.

Our pear tree had a surprise for us. Protected under the layer of fallen leaves were several dozen pears. Many of them were the sort of rotten fruit one expects to find a month past the end of bearing season, but some of them were perfect. Ripe. Crisp. Ready to eat or cook. We took a break from raking and gathered up the still-good pears. We had almost two grocery sacks full. I looked at them on my kitchen counter. Pears were back on my list. I really did not want to spend another month feeling guilty about wasting pears. I also did not feel excited about canning pears. This was when I remembered apple butter.

Apple butter is a spread, like peanut butter, only it is made of apples, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger. It is like distilled apple pie that you can spread on toast. I’d had some years ago and the memory stuck with me. Another thing which stuck in my memory is that pears can be substituted for apples in almost any recipe. I googled and had a recipe in minutes. I don’t know why smashing pears into a pulp through a strainer is more fun to me than peeling them and putting them into jars, but it is. The pulp cooked for over an hour, spreading the smell of apple pie through the house. Two batches resulted in 9 pints of pear butter. More importantly, it turned guilty pears into delicious spread.

Making pear butter is not what I ought to have done today. I’m not sorry for it though. Tomorrow I will find high gear and do all the shipping preparation things which need to be done. The calendars arrived and all the pieces are in hand. Now we just need to do the work.

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Monday of shipping week

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Returning to a school routine after five days of break was easier than I expected. Everyone rolled out of bed as usual and the morning proceeded as normal. My work day was far from normal. It was all focused on preparing for invoice sorting, which is hours of shuffling papers around until they are sorted by shipping method, contents, and alphabetized by last name. I’ve gotten really good at alphabetizing over the last few years. As usual, Janci and I had many moments where we pondered things like: should we sort for sketches before or after sorting for shipping method? The general shape of this process stays the same from release to release, but there are six months in between when the details fall out of our brains. There is also the fact that each release brings some new and interesting challenge for which we must adjust. This time there were four different categories of sketched options: sketched calendars, sketched TBB reprints, sketched reprint bundles, and sketched emperor bundles. Mostly the various merchandise did not add too much complexity, the only thing which kept throwing me off was mugs. I had to add in a sort where I went through the flat rate box invoices to make sure that the ordered items would indeed fit into a flat rate box.

If most of the above paragraph read like gibberish to you, then you have a good feel for the state of my brain when the invoice sorting was done. I was exhausted by all the thinking. Then I had to go back through all the piles and guesstimate the numbers of boxes we’ll need in all the various types. We’ve got 770 packages which will go into 5 types of mailing boxes and envelopes. In the end I made an educated guess on the high side. We’ll use the boxes eventually, I’m sure.

It is a good thing I had Howard pick up frozen pizza from the grocery store this morning. That was dinner. Now I need to muster the energy to make the kids turn off Phineas and Ferb to do homework. They are not going to be pleased with the switch.

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Saw the New Muppet Movie with Howard

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There is a moment in the first date after which it is either an only date or the beginning of something more. I sat there in the restaurant, across from this guy I’d first spoken to only 30 minutes before. I’d recognized him as the roommate of a former boyfriend and gone up to introduce myself to him after his performance in a musical play. He’d seen me in the audience and met me in the aisle before I could even make my way to the front of the small auditorium. All I knew was that he seemed attractive and interesting. I was quite glad to join him for dessert. So we went to a place where they served ice cream flambe. We traveled the well worn getting-to-know-you conversational paths until Howard resorted to describing the flaming dessert in order to keep the conversation going. He used large hand gestures and possibly sound effects. The question popped into my head and out of my mouth before I had a chance to filter it:
“Do you like the Muppets?” I asked.
It was the question that changed everything, because it led our conversation firmly away from careful territory and into geekland. We launched from Muppets into Battle Star Galactica (the original), through legos and into theories of creativity. Hours of non-stop conversation later the date finally ended, but the relationship did not.

Nineteen years and one month later Howard and I attended a late showing of the new Muppet Movie. It is a show filled with old corniness, new silliness, beloved songs, charming new songs, deep nostalgia for Muppet shows past, and stirring hope for Muppet shows yet to come. I laughed out loud and I cried, sometimes at the same time. Our kids can not possibly love this film as much as Howard and I do. They will completely miss the threads of nostalgia. They will not recognize the subtle details, like the fact that Miss Piggy’s outfits and hair styles where homages to Miss Piggy appearances past. Characters arrive without introduction because the film assumes the characters are all familiar. I greeted all these characters with delight, as long-absent friends, for my children they’re new. My kids will not instantly tear up by catching a glimpse of the photograph with Kermit and Jim Hensen. They will see this film with modern eyes and they may very well find it lacking. It is a very silly movie which only runs on Muppet logic. This is okay. They will have their own deep wells of nostalgia by the time they reach my age. Those wells will probably be sunk in other places. For tonight I’m just glad there is a new Muppet movie and I’m extra glad that all those years ago I happened to think of Muppets when watching Howard make an imaginary fireball using hand motions.

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Leaf Play

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I asked them to rake the leaves and they did. Sort of.

All the leaves were definitely moved around using a rake. Now they define the boundaries of a labyrinthine house. It was too much fun watching them run along the grass pathways, “sleep” in piles of leaves, and construct new rooms for me to ruin it by stepping outside with trash bags. The weather will be nice again tomorrow. They can keep the house for another day. Besides, I am far too tired from shifting things around in the garage. I did, however, take a couple artsy fall photos because they made me happy.

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I’ll Think About Christmas Later

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Last year I was in charge of our church Christmas party. This was a dinner for 300 people with decorations and a program. I had a committee whose help was invaluable, but I did not spread out the work nearly as much as I should have. The party was declared a success by all those who attended. I’m glad they told me, because I was far too frazzled to be able to tell if any of it was working. This year I’ve been assigned to order and prepare 120 lbs of ham to be served as the main course. (This is 14 whole hams.) In comparison to last year, this sounds easy. Oh I’ll still be part of the set up and clean up crew. I’ll still be busy all day long on the day of the party (Dec 10). I suspect that my skills and knowledge will be thoroughly tapped to help resolve crises. An event this size always has a crisis of some kind, no matter how well the committee plans. Already we are all glad for the notes I took last year. I wish I’d taken more. I’m going to be quite tired when the party is done, but there is a chance that I’ll actually be able to experience some of the party rather than running it the entire time.

It would seem that this Christmas season will be easier than the last, but life doesn’t tend to lower the difficulty rating. If the party were all, that would be easy. However I’m also the Scout advancement chair and I’ve been informed that we will be holding a Scout court of honor three days before the Christmas party (Dec 7). It is my job to do all the reports and paperwork in advance of this event. It is also my job to organize a Board of Review for the scouts who are advancing (On Dec 4). These arrangements are not all that difficult, in theory. I’ve never done them before and experience tells me that any job I’ve never done before will present me with unforeseen complications. Naturally I’m feeling a little stressed about it because part of my brain is trying to foresee those complications and prevent them. Only to foresee the unforeseeable is a bit of a paradox. Whee.

This is not all. One day prior to the Boards of Review which are mine to arrange, we’ll be hosting a shipping party to send out the calendars (Dec 3). That day will be completely consumed by the shipping of packages. We’ll be hosting this event in our house since Dragon’s Keep is unavailable on Saturday. This will require a smaller volunteer crew, longer hours, and a complete cleaning of my house in advance of the event. The two days prior to the shipping event (Dec 1 & 2) will be consumed by printing postage and the aforementioned housecleaning. The days prior to that will be focused on helping Howard do all the necessary sketching. Monday November 28 will be the day that Janci and I sort all the invoices, figure out what sorts of boxes we need and then place the order. Before that I need to go into the store reports and make sure I have enough dice sets, Emperor Bundles, and magnet sets assembled. If not, then we’ll be using our Thanksgiving weekend to make more. I’ve run lots of shipping events. It is routine, more or less. Of course each one presents it’s very own unforeseen challenges. (See earlier note on the unforeseen.)

On top of all of that, we’re cooking pies and rolls for Thanksgiving dinner, one son needs a hair cut, three children need new pants, the leaves need to be raked, there are non-calendar orders to be shipped daily, three pallets of books need to be relocated from our garage to the storage unit, the kids are going to want to put up the Christmas tree, and I want to put up the shelving in the garage so that the food storage can be moved out of my office.

When I line it up, all of it fits. In theory. If I’m working at top efficiency. But if I seem flaky or distracted in the next three weeks, now you know why.

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Why I Love Jellyfish

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I love jellyfish. This is very likely because I have never met one in the wild. Instead I see them through glass with carefully selected lighting to display their beauty.
Photo by Mike Johnson

I did not expect to love jelly fish. In fact I had never given them much thought at all. But then, almost ten years ago, I took five-year-old Link to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They happened to be hosting a special jellyfish exhibit at the time. We wandered through with our mouths open, completely stunned by the variations in size and the way that the jellyfish moved. I took photographs. They didn’t turn out, except one which was only slightly blurry: the back of Link’s head against the blue tank next to some other child I didn’t know.

It completely failed to show the beauty which captivated Link and kept him sitting still for a very long time.

Photo by the_tahoe_guy

The jellyfish were beautiful aliens, only they lived right here. But even then, walking through the beauty, I did not know that I would forever love jellyfish. It was not until we came home and my son, who still struggled to speak comprehensible sentences, could not stop talking about the jellyfish. He drew pictures of jellyfish. He talked to his Kindergarten teacher at length. His small vocabulary doubled in a very short span of time. Something about all those earthly aliens opened a door in his brain and he began to find words. I had been so afraid for him, for years. I did not know whether he would be able to manage the challenges of being a teenager or an adult. But by jellyfish light I could see that perhaps he would.

Link is fourteen now. I wrote a post about him yesterday, describing his developing responsibility, reliability, and capability. I can’t credit those things to the jellyfish exhibit, they were his all along, but I still remember the strong sense that by seeing the jellyfish Link’s world had become larger and his brain grew in response.

Photo by Renee Silverman

So any time I see photos of jellyfish, or see them in an aquarium, I think about how much bigger the world is than I expect. I think about possibility and growth. Most of all, I remember that sometimes hope comes from unexpected places.

And that is why today’s post over on Light Stalking 44 Incredible Photographs of Jellyfish made me cry.

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Link’s Plans

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“Mom, look!” Patch shoved a 3×5 card in front of my face. After adjusting the card to a read-able distance I could see that it was covered in Link’s handwriting.
“30 minutes free each day. (After you pass the 3DS test.)”
I looked over at Link who was hovering near with a pleased smile.
“I got tired of them begging to use my 3DS.” Link said “So I made a plan. This way they can have a little turn and then if they want more time, they can buy it.”

I loved that Link was finding a way to share his device with his younger siblings, but that last bit sounded like a profit-from-siblings scheme. Not so. Link’s plan was to take all the money and put it into a box which saved up for an additional 3DS for our family. He had even made a special box for this purpose. I got a glimpse of the the 3DS test. It was basic care and maintenance questions. Link was, quite reasonably, making sure that his siblings knew the necessary rules to make sure the device does not get broken. Link had seen a problem, planned a solution, and carried it out.

This is not the first case of Link making plans. The same inertia which I struggle against when trying to get him up in the morning or making him do an unpleasant chore, carries him far when he is moving to complete a plan of his own devising. In the past several months he’s started putting himself to bed, organizing his own school supplies, and doing his own scout planning. It is strange to see the very personality traits that I worried about turning into strengths. He doesn’t have the in-your-face personality that some of my other kids possess, you don’t picture Link heading out to take on the whole world, but I have no doubt that once Link decides to go someplace, he’ll get there. That’s want he does. Quietly, calmly, happily, while no one is paying attention, he sets out and gets things done.

We do still have conflicts. Sometimes Link’s plans require a particular type of cooperation from siblings who want to make up their own games. Other times life requires an alteration to the plans that Link has made, then he slows to an unwilling crawl until he can re-plan. But for the most part, my younger kids and most of Link’s friends are happy to let Link plan the games. He’s good at making games.

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