Three Loose Thoughts on Parenting

/ / 1 Comment

“Once you’ve drawn the space ships and the death star and the meteors, then you put your pencil on a ship and flick it with your finger. It makes a line and that is how you move.” Patch was intently describing the rules of a game which he plays with a friend at recess. Later that same day I sat and listened to Gleek describe the super volcano under Yellowstone National Park, why it is scary, but also why she is not worried. The actual content of these conversations is not particularly important, but the fact that we have them is critical. By listening to the minutiae, I am building in my children a belief that what matters to them also matters to me. At some point in the future a difficult conversation will be made easier by all the little conversations which came before.

***

Gleek’s doodle journal went missing this morning. She wanted to bring it to church. I helped her look, but was unable to locate it. I looked at my daughters sad face. Downstairs on my shipping table was a brand new sketch book. One of my small “make beautiful things” projects the week before had been to recover an ordinary sketch book and transfer the doodle journal logo to the front. I figured it was probably for Christmas along with the bound sketch book which Patch had been wanting for months. I told Gleek to wait and I grabbed both, handing a book to each child. Smiles burst forth on both faces. Sometimes solving today’s trouble is more important than future planning. These books were far more appreciated on this day than they ever would be in the midst of Christmas abundance.

***

Children are complete individuals, not just larval adults. So often I magnify current faults and project how they would play out disastrously in an adult context. This is a false fear. Far too much growth lies between here and there to be able to predict outcomes. It is much better to see my children as they are and discern what they need right now. Gleek quit piano lessons and along with them ditched a feeling of dismal failure. Kiki selected non-college prep accounting instead of a more academic math credit, because she can see uses for accounting skills in her imagined future. Next semester Link will be taking a debate class that he is certain to hate, because practicing presentation skills will be of immediate use in his life. Sometimes this focus on my kids as they are means I need to ask more of them, other times I must back off. Either way it reduces stress because of the immediacy of the requirements and the results. When I focus on who my kids are right now, I am much better able to see and trust in their strengths and virtues.

Three Loose Thoughts on Parenting Read More »

Recovery, Organization, and Feeling Trapped

/

Illness has receded for me. Yesterday was made of fatigue with brief reprieves of energy. Today has mostly been normal with occasional bouts of fatigue. I wish I could report the same of Howard. He continues to suffer. I made the dessert quiche and it was passable, an experiment worth repeating with alterations. The spinach quiche was better, but is crying out for the inclusion of artichokes.

The chaos in the boys’ room is trending toward tamed. Usually when the mess reaches that level I can solve much of the problem by simply removing the garbage. Somehow my boys have not grasped that unnecessary packaging should be placed in the garbage can rather than shoved onto the nearest flat surface. I’m hopeful that this round of organization will last longer since I’m requiring the boys to do their own sorting. The complaints have been many and the progress slow. Bit by bit we begin to see what sorts of containers would be helpful in taming the mess. For instance, Patch has a tendency to array small toys on a large shelf. Inevitably things get stacked on the small toys and it all turns into a jumble. We need to acquire a wall-mounted set of display shelves intended for small cool things. I’ve added this to the thrift store acquisition list.

The day felt endlessly long when we were in the middle, the house was full of kids, the doorbell was ringing every quarter hour, and the phone rang almost as often. I wanted to flee the house, go find a quiet space elsewhere. Unfortunately I was tethered by the group of teenage girls using my sewing machine and likely in need of technical help. Also abandoning sick Howard to manage the chaos seemed cruel. So I stayed, and felt trapped, tangled in my web of connections. Then evening came and all the kids migrated outdoors. The blue light of evening began to fill the sky. I sat on my porch watching kids ride in smooth circles around the cul de sac. Sometimes I tipped my head back and watched the slow progress of wispy clouds against the bright blue sky. The evening felt as open and free as the afternoon felt trapped. And I begin to feel that perhaps the day has been a good one.

Recovery, Organization, and Feeling Trapped Read More »

Excused on Account of Illness

/

Being sick is no fun at all, but being excused from my regular rounds of Things To Do is kind of nice. This particular sickness is somewhat confusing. I’m not actively miserable, just blanketed with a layer of fatigue which denies me the energy to accomplish anything except in short bursts. Oh, and there is the occasional coughing fit. In between the short bursts of almost-normal energy, I sit. Sometimes I sleep, drifting from wakefulness into the top layers of dreaming like a fatigued driver unable to keep track of the lines on the road. In the drift my mind ponders things slowly, like contemplating how to make a dessert quiche which includes elements of bread pudding. Why I chose now to plan quiche is something of a mystery, but it is restful and fatigue has interfered with my ability to question. Perhaps later in the day I’ll use one of my bursts of energy to see if reality matches the quiche of my imagination.

In some ways the lassitude which has overcome me feels like the calm drifting I did in early June. In my less lethargic moments, this makes me wonder if I am just being lazy, finding an excuse to lay on the couch and think of nothing in particular. Then the energy passes, or a coughing fit hits, and I know that the fatigue is physiological rather than psychological. I do ponder how good it feels to drift. It is as if I can only comprehend the pressures which I daily place on myself by their absence. This is not surprising news. I have been trying to give myself permission to relax more often, but unlike fictional characters, I don’t complete my character arc and move on. Instead the shapes of my habits and personality send me circling around like Winnie the Pooh in the misty woods, always ending up at the same sand pit. Like Pooh, it often takes me awhile to realize that it is the same pit, because things look different from this side. Yet Pooh did not stay in the woods forever, and neither will I. Each iteration teaches me something new until I finally find my way to a new adventure. Five years from now our lives will inevitably have a very different shape. The things I am doing now, that we all are doing, will make that future a good place to be.

Sometime last week Kiki was having a particularly difficult day, wrestling with problems which no one else could solve for her. After all the listening, hugs, and outpouring of my thoughts on conflict management; the most important thing I said to her was “I know this feels huge right now, but I promise that in the scope of your whole life this will become small.” If I could only keep this thought in mind, then each day could be filled with more of the calm, faithful drift which this sickness has imposed. Today I haven’t the energy to feel stressed about what I’m unable to do. Instead I focus on the few things I can. So I answer a few emails, then I nap. I ponder quiche, then I pick up my kids from school. I sleep and then read. Next week I will have to catch up on things not done today, and I will, but for today I drift.

Excused on Account of Illness Read More »

Budgeting 101

/ / 5 Comments

The basic concept of budgeting is this: Dividing your estimated earnings into assigned categories for spending. If you are on a fixed salary this process is fairly simple. I’ll cover some basics, and then talk about some more difficult cases. I am addressing this primarily to people who are not in dire financial need or poverty. People in those situations need to seek out local resources for help in finding solutions which are tailored to their particular situation. This post focuses on budgeting on particular. I’ve got a more general post about financial management that might be helpful to read first. Onward we go.

The mechanics of budgeting can be as simple or as complex as you wish to make it. If you never overspend and always have money waiting for emergency expenses, then the system you’re using is working for you. Stick with it. If otherwise, here are some places to start in putting together a budget.

Pick some categories and assign dollar amounts to them, making sure that the totals don’t add up to more than your salary income. We have categories for groceries, gas/electric, water/garbage, auto insurance, life insurance, medical, auto repair, auto fuel, clothing, dining, entertainment, savings, and assorted other categories which are more particular to us. What you name your categories is not as important as making sure that you have one to cover every way in which you spend money. I use a lot of categories because my financial program (Quicken) makes them easy to track, and then I can run reports to tell me exactly how much we spent on comics in the last year. If you’re new to budgeting, fewer categories might feel less overwhelming. However it is best to make sure that your fixed expenses, like utility bills, are not in the same category as discretionary expenses like eating out at restaurants. One of the most important things that a budget can do for you is to make sure that you don’t spend your rent money on going out to see a movie, but it can only do so if rent and movies are not in the same category.

A useful way to visualize budgeting: When I’m teaching my kids about budgeting, I use the envelope method to help them visualize. They divide their allowance into several envelopes or jars. This lets them plan ahead for how much they want to spend on the various things in their lives. If the Candy envelope becomes empty, the only way to spend more money on candy is to borrow from another envelope, or wait for a new influx of income. The kids borrow money from envelope to envelope all the time, but the act of pulling it from another envelope helps the kids see that if they spend all their money on candy, then they will not have any left for books or for what ever cool toy they’ve been coveting. In my budget, I loan money across my discretionary categories all the time. I do not pull money from the fixed expense categories like Mortgage Payment.

Pick a tracking method. We keep all our money in one checking account and just track the categories in our financial program. When money is really tight, I keep a little tally in a notepad that I carry with me. Then I can refer to it at a moment’s notice when making buying decisions. If I buy socks I subtract it from the Clothing category on my tally. I know a friend who issues himself a cash allowance for fun spending, essentially applying the envelope method for everything except bills. What ever method you choose for tracking, always refer to your budget tracking method before spending money. If you don’t have money in an appropriate budget category for those lovely new curtains, don’t buy them. Not even if they are on sale.

Knowing how much to put in each budget category can be tricky if you have never done a budget before. Start by looking at bank statements, bills, and receipts from the last few months. This can teach you a lot about where your money is going. Add up the amounts you spent in the various categories. I’m usually shocked by some category of spending that I did not realize was adding up to so much. Use whatever information you have to make some guesses and then get started. It is more important to start training your brain to think about how you spend, and whether you should spend, than it is to get the numbers right. The numbers are your measurement tools, not something which will be graded by others. You will goof up. That’s okay, learn something from it and do things differently next time.

Some good practices for budgeting:

  • Pay your bills first, as soon as you can. That way you’re less likely to use the money for something else.
  • Don’t use your checking account balance or your credit card balance as a measure for whether you can afford something. Use your budget.
  • Build savings into your budget. Keep an “in case of emergencies” fund. But also, pick something you want and save for it. It can be anything: college, retirement, a trip, a car, being debt free. It needs to be something you’re willing to sacrifice for. Put that money aside until you have enough to pay cash for your dream. This fund will probably be raided in times of emergency, but then you’ve made your emergency less financially catastrophic.
  • Pay down your debts as fast as you can. Debts weigh on you and limit your financial possibilities. The interest you pay on debt does not add anything to your life except stress.
    Be extremely cautious about acquiring debt. See above.

Some questions and answers about difficult cases:
What if your income is irregular? Not everyone has a bi-weekly paycheck, which can make budgeting seem difficult. However most bills are on a monthly billing cycle. If you set up your budget on a monthly basis, then having a budget can help even out the bumps. Average out your expected income over the course of four months, then divide that by four. I would recommend low-balling your estimated income per month. Some months you will have more than this, others less. Sticking to your budget in times of financial plenty will help you fill in the times when money is scarce. If your income is irregular, stashing money into savings is crucial.

What if money is always scarce? If the total of your estimated expenses by budget category is greater than your estimate income, you are in financial crisis mode. It is time to sit down and seriously look at all all your financial commitments to see what can be eliminated. Being able to eat is more important than having 300 channels. Find every way you can to reduce expenses: cancel subscriptions, pick less expensive foods, sell a car. There are a lot more than you might think. I recommend reading books like The Complete Tightwad Gazette many of the methods inside won’t apply, but the mindset of “I can do this cheaper” is important when money is tight. If you can’t bring yourself out of financial crisis mode within a couple of months, look up local debt management resources. There are often free resources out there to help people get control of their finances.

What if you get hit by an unexpected expense? This happens all the time. Medical bills and car repairs are the biggest culprits. In a solid budget there is some planning ahead for these things. Create a budget category for “in case of emergency” and stick money into it each month. This is what savings accounts are for. Planning ahead means that the unexpected expense is merely annoying instead of an emergency.

What if you have an expense which is not monthly? My auto insurance comes due twice per year. Property taxes on our house are due once per year. I take the amount I’ll need to spend on these bills and divide it by the number of months between payments. Then I put that amount aside each month. To use some made up numbers: if $100 per month is allotted to Car Insurance, then when the $600 bill comes due I have money waiting. If the $600 insurance bill was an annual bill, I would only need to set aside $50 per month. Put this set aside money where you can not accidentally spend it. I routinely put this into my savings account and then transfer it back out when time comes to pay the bill.

What if I goof up and forget to track my budgeting? I do this all the time. This past year I hardly checked my spending against budget categories at all. I was too busy and distracted. The result is that we over extended a little bit, but not much. The reason we did not over extend is because all the years of practice I’ve had in tracking a budget trained my brain to think about money in ways which kept me in check. The act of tracking your budget is training your brain to be financially responsible. Like any sort of training, it takes practice. Just start up again and keep going if you forget for awhile.

What if it is just too overwhelming and stressful to track all those numbers? Then your budget needs revision. Simplify it. Break down to something that is one step more organized than you were before. Adding little pieces of financial organization to your life can make a huge difference over the years. I revise my budget about once per year to make sure that my categories and tracking methods are still working. Systems fall apart, just use the good pieces from the old system to build a new and better system.

And that is enough for now. There are lots of good books on budgeting and financial management that you can get from your local library for free. Your librarian will be happy to help you find them.

When I get Financial Management for Creative People 102 and 201 written up, I’ll link them here.

Take time to read the comments below. Lots of additional good ideas there.

Budgeting 101 Read More »

Gleek Doodles

/ / 3 Comments

“I need this mom!” said Gleek intently “It is a Doodle Journal!”
I’d already planned to buy her something from the school book fair, so saying yes would have been simple, except that she had already displayed four other items which she also desperately needed. Patch had a similar stack. I sat down on the floor with them to examine their finds. The winnowing process would have been easier if they had been less selective, but I could see how each item was perfectly suited to the child who selected it. The needs of my budget required me to force them to make hard choices, and we put some of the things back. The Klutz Doodle Journal was one of the things which came home with us. I didn’t think all that much about it. Drawing books are common fare around here.

A week later and Gleek is still carrying the Doodle Journal almost everywhere. At random moments, in the car, at dinner, mid-afternoon, she spouts bits of information about doodling “You just let your mind and your pen wander.” “Pens are great for doodling, cause there’s no erasing in doodling.” “Doodling has no mistakes, you can’t get it wrong.” I watched how Gleek grabbed her doodle book and drew an angry little picture when someone at school made her mad. She doodled during movies, on car rides, and before bed. Once when she was off doing something else, I picked up her doodle book to look at it. She loved showing us her doodles, so I knew she did not consider the book private. I thumbed through and realized that once again the folks at Klutz have demonstrated brilliance. It was full of starter doodles, idea pages, and little messages about having fun without stressing perfection. Gleek found exactly the book she needs right now. I fully intend to support her doodling by supplying a blank paged doodle book when this one runs out of space. I sort my psyche with words, Kiki uses art, Gleek now has doodles. It is good.

Gleek Doodles Read More »

A Snippet of Cooking

/ / 8 Comments

The cake was Link’s idea, part of his Sunday dinner plan. He’d done most of the ingredient dumping, but felt intimidated by the specificity of the mixing instructions. I creamed the butter and sugar together, watching as these two separate textures blended into smoothness. One egg went in for a minute of mixing and the texture changed. The second egg and second minute changed the swirling mixture again. I watched and pondered the chemical magic which causes molecules to bond when mixed together in the proper order. I was taken with a desire to make more cakes, learning how to side-step those boxed mixes and start from just the separate items on my shelves. We don’t need to be eating the dozens of cakes necessary to perfect a recipe, but I had conceived a desire to master cake in the way that I have chocolate chip cookies. I shall have to try, bit by bit, over many months.

A Snippet of Cooking Read More »

A Greenhouse Realization

/

Four kids steered through pre-church preparations, two kids helped to weather emotional upsets, dishes, Sunday dinner, and Family Home Evening preparations were all done. I’d earned some quiet space. I thought that the me-of-now should get to do something she wanted. So I gathered my journal and scriptures to retreat to my room. I also carried with me a printed article that I’d read on the internet that morning. I’d skim read it in the last moments before the pre-church rush. Something in it called to me, so I printed it for a more in depth reading. Or perhaps for clipping and taping into my River Journal. The events of the day had left no time for pondering until that moment.

The article told the story of a woman who had an invigorating, well-paying, and rewarding job. Yet one evening she discovered herself crying without knowing why. Something about her job did not fill her soul. She realized her life did not give her chances to nurture. I could see why the story resonated for me. I too have cried and then had to puzzle out why. I began to write a journal entry to puzzle out how her experience was different than mine. I started the sentence “I nurture all the time” but stopped halfway through, suddenly not sure that the sentence was true. I spend all day most days creating a family structure optimized for the growth of everyone inside it. Yet building a greenhouse is not the same as tending and fertilizing the plants within it.

There in my room, away from my family I realized that at any free moment my first thought was to retreat, to spend time alone. All day I maintained the structure of the greenhouse and then fled from it rather than relishing the atmosphere inside. As I scratched away with my pen, my four children were downstairs engaged in reading, drawing, and playing. I put my pen down and grabbed a deck of cards. At least I could sit in the same room with them playing solitaire. I could be part of the quiet togetherness that they were having. Within moments of the first card shuffle, Kiki offered to show me a different game. She and I played several rounds together while the other kids played their own games. We laughed a lot. I once dreamed of the time when I could play cards with my kids without having to adapt for young players. I almost missed out on it.

I need to remember that the point of the green house is the flowers.

A Greenhouse Realization Read More »

Pulling Myself Forward

/

Sharks must keep moving or they will die. I am not a shark, and yet I hardly ever stop. It used to be that my days filled with things were driven by fear. I kept moving because I was afraid of the consequences if I slowed down. This fall I’ve put a lot of thought into identifying the sources of those fears and attempting to disconnect them. It is working. I am much less afraid. Yet I am just as busy as I was before. Instead of spending my energy fleeing, I spend my energy pulling myself toward things I imagine. My free minutes are spent upon projects which inch me closer to things that I want. I organize the house so that the next-week me will have a nicer place to live. I pick grapes and turn them into jelly so that the winter me will have no guilt about letting them rot and she’ll also have amazing jelly to spread on her toast. I do lots of things for other people as well, but in order to not feel put-upon I have been focusing much upon the benefits I get from the things that I do. I like it when my family is fed, wearing clean clothes, and has their homework done. This being pulled through my days by future desires is much more pleasant than being propelled by fears. However I still need to find ways that the me-of-now gets a turn instead of always being spent doing things for the me-of-the-future. So, further adjustments are necessary, but these are so much smaller. It is nice to be in the tinkering phase of family routine rather than in the midst of major overhaul.

Pulling Myself Forward Read More »

Finding places to query

/

The process looks something like this:

See a book on my child’s desk at Parent Teacher conferences. Realize that the book cover and title seems very like the type of book I’ve written. Carefully scribble down title and author when teacher thinks I am writing notes about the conference.

When at home, look up the book at Amazon.com. Read synopsis. It does seem similar in tone to my book. Write down the name of the publishing company next to the name of the author. Scroll through the “people who bought this book also bought” list. Identify more books which look similar to my book. Write down those authors and publishers.

Take the titles to my local library’s online catalog. They do have the book, so the next day when I’m at the library with the kids, take a detour into the adult non-fiction section. Find the book. Peruse the shelves around the book for other books which look similar in content or tone. Shush kids who are playing with the library’s rolling stools. Grab a stack of books to check out.

When at home, sit down with the books and the list. Flip through the books to see who the publishers are. Look at acknowledgements to see if the author names an agent or an editor who worked on the book. Write those names on the list next to author names. Take the list to my computer. Google to identify more agents and/or editors associated with the book titles.

Open agentquery.com and start filling in agent names. See if the agents are open to unsolicited queries. Peruse the “what I’m looking for” list to see if the agent will be interested. Compare the agent’s name to my submissions document to make sure that I don’t already have a query out at that agency. If all looks good, copy the agent’s name and contact information into my “To Query” file.

Google publisher names and editor names. See if I can find submission information. Add that information to my “To Query” file.

I am now ready to send out queries. Each query takes at least 10 minutes as I try to personalize the opening and closing paragraphs. Sometimes I have to print and mail the query.

By this time I am tired of the whole process, so I sigh in relief that I’ve done my job. Either it will sell, or it won’t. For the moment I can cheerfully ignore it… until I happen across another book which looks like it might cater to the same audience. Then I have a job to do again.

Finding places to query Read More »

Fall Parent Teacher Conferences

/

Parent teacher conferences are always fraught, not with peril, but with the potential for high emotion. Sometimes I enter with worries and exit with new reassurance and confidence. Other times I have no particular concerns going in, but leave reeling from how much more that child needs than they have been getting. It is my chance to speak with teachers who have alternate viewpoints upon my child’s development. They see things that I don’t, not because I’m unobservant, but because school is different than home and different aspects of my children rise to the surface.

Last week I had conferences for my older two kids. Today I had conferences for the younger two. I now have a laundry list of needs which require me to adjust the family schedule (yet again) so that they fit. The adjustments are minor, but time and energy must be spent on them. Mostly the things which turned up in the conferences are not surprising. We’re having new iterations of familiar problems, nothing new or baffling. This means that the solutions are new iterations of old solutions. In a way the familiarity of it all is reassuring. The kids are all exactly where they need to be for steady growth.

I’ve never seen parent teacher conferences from the teacher side of the desk. I know how tired it makes me, even when there’s no major issue to address. I marvel at the stamina of those teachers, who have 25-30 conferences in two days and a laundry list of issues they hope to address. They must face varying levels of indifference, anxiousness, over-protectiveness, and outright bewilderment from the parents who show up. Teachers are expected to find all the trouble spots and provide solutions, often when no easy solutions are to be had. I am constantly impressed by the efforts of the dedicated teachers who work with me for the benefit of my children.

Fall Parent Teacher Conferences Read More »