When slowing down is a mirage

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On Monday I wrote about how my life was slowing down just when most people are speeding up for the holidays. I was mistaken. I worked calmly and steadily through Monday and Tuesday. They were good days and I was able to feel happy about my life and the things that are in it. By Wednesday it became apparent that while “calm and steady” is a good emotional state, it was not keeping up with the deluge of tasks.

I gave last week to the Church Christmas party. This week was supposed to be about finding my balance and setting the house back in order. Instead the week was about hundreds of small things that had become urgent when I wasn’t looking. It was also about tripping over stuff and shoving it into odd corners so that I could pay attention to the task at hand. The result is all jumbled up. My office and work room are in such a state that I’m constantly having to move boxes (or papers, or packaging) in order to get to the books (or papers, or packaging) that I need. I need to do a thorough reorganization, but I’ve been too busy chasing urgent tasks.

Adding to the mix, my two daughters are each having a rough time this week. They each need my full attention to help them sort through and find solutions. And I have little energy or attention to spare.

We’ll sort it all out. I just wanted it to be sorted this week instead of next. I’m constantly hoping that a big effort today will allow me to relax in the future. I’m chasing a mirage, and I haven’t yet figured out how to stop. At least Howard met his achievement goals for the week. The buffer is healthy again.

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Things discovered in the last 24 hours

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Kiki’s teacher expects a lot more than Kiki thought on the major project of the year. There was panic.

When Kiki’s work on the major project is assembled, she has more than enough. Now she just has to fill in the gaps.

Having $1000 lay out and design tools is a major help for history projects.

Toasted London broil roast beef sandwiches dipped in broth are really yummy.

Our cat will pounce on dice if we roll them along the floor. Much giggling.

Gleek’s little fuzzy caterpillar on a string toy is a perfect cat toy.

Gleek loves her little fuzzy caterpillar on a string and has a really hard time sharing it with her brothers.

I need to stay focused on the kids before school rather than getting distracted by hauling boxes of books from the car.

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Clash of the Emotional Crises

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Today has been a fairly good day. True, Kiki was a little emotionally fragile, but she handled it well. This is often the case when one person is emotionally off balance. The real excitement begins when two or three or six of us are all teetering, trying to hang on to rationality with the tips of our fingernails, and crashing into each other. We’ve had more than our fair share of crashing emotional conflicts this fall. The feminist in me is frustrated to admit that most of them centered around one or more of the females in our house. I do not think that this is due to our female-ness. We’re just the ones struggling to find balance. Howard has struggled a bit too. My sons are both ensconced in secure places and I pray that they stay there until the rest of us get sorted out.

Kiki’s frustration this evening is centered around her art. She feels stuck and all the solutions she can see require time (which she does not have to spare) or money (which she does not have at all.) She curled up in my lap and spilled her woes. I sat and listened, doing my best to just accept her feelings without feeling guilty for not fixing the problem. The minute I begin thinking about how I ought to have done something differently so that Kiki wouldn’t feel stuck, I have preempted her emotional experience and turned it into something which is about me. (Yes I do that. Far too often.) The conversation wended around in circles for a bit. Then I said:
“You know, the fact that we’re having this conversation means that things have already begun to get better. You have time and energy enough to feel frustrated, which is an improvement over the way things have been lately.”
Kiki quirked her eyebrows at me the way she does when I’ve said something for which she has no context. “That’s a weird way of looking at it.”

I suppose it is, but it also feels true. I feel like I’ve finally reached a place where life can slow down a little. We have whole weeks where we don’t host Clash of the Crises Part N. I finally have space in my brain to anticipate and head off the imbalances before they reach crisis level. I can organize the house and plan. Though I confess that my plans did not start with defrosting the freezer that was left open over night by someone undetermined. My plans are destined to be rearranged and that is okay too.

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Savoring the holiday

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All around me are people whose lives have begun to speed up as the holiday season kicks into gear. They’ve got calendars filled with events and task lists full of things. My life has just done the opposite. I finally have time to catch my breath after the break neck pace I’ve been running. November was full of frantic must-get-ready-for-the-holidays both on business tasks and for the church Christmas party.

(ASIDE: I successfully planned, managed, and catered a dinner party with a program and activities for 280 people. This still blows me away. Also: 130 pounds of ham is a lot. The smell of ham lingers on hands despite repeated washings. And thank heavens for neighbors who have crockpots to help cook hams when it won’t all fit into the church ovens.)

Now all the hurry to get ready is done. There are still things to do. Our tree isn’t fully decorated yet. Not a single present is wrapped, although many of them were acquired during the November preparatory flurry. But the things that are left are things I’m content to savor.

Last year I stage managed the perfect Christmas for my family. I even mentally composed a blog post which talked about how to engineer a Christmas to maximize joy and avoid the tantrums and disappointments which often accompany the holidays. I had it all noted down, ready to write. But at the appointed writing hour on Christmas afternoon, supposedly the pinnacle of perfect Christmas triumph, I sat down on the couch and cried. Looking back, I recognize exactly what happened. It is the same thing that happened after the Halloween Carnival in October and last Saturday when the Christmas party was over. To run these events I extended myself, used up all my reserves of energy and then some. It caught up to me and I sat limply without any easy-to-see measure of success. When I run myself ragged for a book shipping, I know I have succeeded because of the packages. Creating an event for other people is far less tangible. So while I sit, too tired to move, my brain starts picking at the things I feel I could have done better. At that beyond-tired moment it is impossible for me to believe I succeeded.

This is why the only assignment I gave to Howard for the Christmas party was to take care of the kids and to tell me I did a good job when it was all over. He did exactly that, and it worked. I collapsed and he was rested, ready to take care of me.

I have another Christmas ahead of me. I’m going to use the lessons I’ve learned this year, particularly those about delegation. Christmas is a community-created event. Our family works together to bring it into existence. In years past I did all the planning and gave everyone their cues. I declare the day for tree assembly and decoration, then I exert energy to make it occur. I decide, then I make it happen. Most everyone else floats along on the current of my making.

I’m doing things differently this year. We put up the tree a week ago because Howard needed a Christmas tree. The ornaments came out yesterday because Patch wanted to do ornaments. Rather than declaring an official ornament time, I just opened the box and the kids have been putting them on as the mood strikes. The same has occurred with the other decorations. Rather than one big expendature of effort, we’ve had lots of pleasant little moments. We’re savoring the holiday instead of hurrying to get everything out so we can “enjoy it.” I spend too much of my life hurrying now with the intent to relax later.

I’m curious to see how long it will be before the kids ask to wrap the presents they’ve selected for each other. I wonder if waiting until they are concerned (rather than me wanting “wrap presents” out of my brain) will make a difference in how they feel about the gifts they are giving. I wonder if involving them more in the process of creating the holiday will result in something whole and good, without being picture perfect. It will certainly be interesting, and it sounds so appealing after all the planning and managing that I have been doing lately.

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Loose thoughts

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I have reached the point in Church party preparations where nearly everything is done. What remains is food prep, and due to the perishable nature of food, most of that has to be done tomorrow. In the absence of things to prepare, my brain has resorted to exploring possible ways that things could go wrong. This means it is time for distraction. So here are some non-party (or at least only tangentially party-related) things for the last couple of days.

****

At bedtime Patch likes to spend some time talking. First I listen to him tell about his day, then he will ask about mine. Yesterday my brain was so full of planning that I couldn’t even begin to form a coherent story about my day.
“I’m sorry kiddo. My head is too full of things and I need to not lose them.”
Patch nodded in complete understanding and lay with me in contented silence. He knows exactly what it is like to have a head full of important thoughts.

****

On Wednesday night I was triple booked with a junior high band concert, directing the young women’s group in decoration construction, and a writer’s group hosted at our house. I finished up the other things and finally was able to collapse in a chair for writer’s group. Then it was my turn to critique and I amused everyone greatly by having extremely fractured thoughts. The thoughts were good ones, once I could gather them together. But if anyone spoke while I was gathering my thoughts it was like a rock landing in the middle of a puddle. The thoughts fractured and scattered and I had to begin the process of collecting them anew. With much laughter I eventually was able to communicate.

****

Yesterday morning I realized that once I manage to drag the kids out of bed, they get themselves ready for school on schedule. This represents a huge improvement over the many years when I had to constantly nag at each step of the process. I’m not sure why that is working this year when it never did before, but I am grateful.

****

Link has been playing roller coaster tycoon. (or maybe Sim Coaster) His money making strategy is to lure lots of visitors into his park. Then he blocks the park exit with construction and removes all the bathrooms. When the park visitors are beginning to be a little frantic, he’ll construct a single bathroom. The visitors have to pay to use this bathroom. Also they can only get to it by first riding a very expensive roller coaster.

****

My dreams have been full of party preparations, which makes sense since my days have been as well. I had one dream which hit upon every possible failure point for the event. When I woke up, I used the dream as a tool for re-checking my preparations. 28 hours from now I will know what worked and what didn’t.

****

I’ve been watching Babylon 5 as a distraction. I haven’t seen it before. It definitely suffers from age a little, particularly in the first season. Everyone tells me that the first season is awful, but that it has useful information. I beg to differ. Any necessary information contained in the first season will be recapped later, save the pain and start at the beginning of season two. In season two I actually started caring about the characters and being interested in the story that the series is building. It definitely does some things which are not often done in an ongoing television series.
Two annoyances:
1. back story is handled badly, usually by having a character sit down and tell it to another character “I have a back story, let me tell you it.” This is getting better, hopefully I’ll stop rolling my eyes on this by Season three.
2. Anger is an over used emotion. No matter what happens, someone gets angry and shouts about it. I much prefer a more nuanced emotional landscape, particularly from people who are supposed to be diplomats.
We’ll see what the second half of season two and onward provide.

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Conversation in the car on the way home from school

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My two youngest kids are discussing Santa as I drive them home from school. At ages 9 and 7 neither of them are true Santa believers, but they happily discuss the logistics of Santa with the same enthusiasm with which they discuss imagined battles between Daleks and Cybermen.
“There’s not just one Santa, you know.” Gleek says confidently.
“Yeah. There’s lots.” Patch agrees.
“Thousands. One for each house so that everyone gets presents.”
Patch nods.
“And they use lights on Christmas trees as teleportation devices.”
“There’s only a problem if one of them dies.” Patch adds.
“No. Then the others would just take care of that house.” Gleek scowls at her brother.
“But if lots of them died then there would be trouble.” Patch says trying to find the failure parameters of the mythos.
“Yeah, but that won’t happen because it is Christmas.” Then Gleek turns away, confident in the happy imagined world she has made.

There is silence for a minute and then Gleek turns to me.
“Could we make grape flavored roofs?”
“I don’t think so. They would be kind of sticky. Why would we want to do that?” I ask, confused by the sudden change of topic.
“If we could, then the icicles would be grape flavor. Only…” Gleek’s eyebrows crease together. “We’d have to build a glass shield so that the icicles didn’t get dirty.” She ponders this as we pull into the driveway. Then we got distracted by the process of bringing things into the house and finding the cat for after-school petting. We never did find a solution to the problem of grape icicles. Perhaps tomorrow.

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A star for the tree

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We used to have a star to go on top of our tree. We’ve actually had several over the years, but they broke. For the past couple of years we’ve been starless as I sporadically searched for a star that was elegant and durable. I was tired of Walmart stars which only lasted a year or two. The kids were happy with them, but I wasn’t. However I did not feel like buying a star was an important quest, we managed to have Christmas without it.

This evening we hauled out our Christmas tree and assembled it. I hadn’t really planned to tackle it today. I was content to wait until the kids felt like putting it up without my help, but we needed a family home evening activity and the project seemed tailor made. During the branch fluffing and assembly, Gleek commented about the lack of a star. I reminded her that we were currently starless. “I’ll make one!” she announced. Then she dashed off to the kitchen. The boys and I were too busy strewing lights on the tree to notice her absence much. She returned, triumphant with a star of colored crayon on copy paper. As soon as we had all the lights in place, I clipped up her star.

Considering the level of Nintendo love around here, I shouldn’t be surprised that her star looks like it is just waiting for Mario to ascend the tree and hold it up with a triumphant trill of music. I even like the fact that it is held in place by a couple of the document clips that I use when shipping books. I think it is one of the best stars we have ever had and seeing it smile down on us is going to make me happy all month long.

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Contemplating the week to come

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The week ahead of me is full. I have a couple dozen tasks and preparations to make for the church Christmas party on Saturday. Gleek has a big social studies report due by Thursday. Kiki has her regular round of homework plus a big term-end assignment to complete. Tuesday evening hosts a scout court of honor. On Wednesday I am triple booked for the same two hours. I still haven’t figured out the logistics of that one. I also expect the shipping and customer support to be heavy, which is good since the extra income will help cover the extra holiday expenses. Then I have the regular round of household stuff. It is the kind of week where we eat chicken nuggets, frozen burritos, and ramen since the kids can fix these for themselves.

To add to the excitement, I’m a little bit sick today. I’m sporting a light headache, mild head congestion, fatigue, and the occasional cough. I can’t tell if this is as bad as it will get, or if I’m perched on the precipice of true illness. I can’t afford to be sick this week. I have to keep track of too many things. So I’m staring down the illness, taking preventative measures, and making note of all my things to do so that if I have to hand them off, I can. One of the things which may not happen next week is blogging. I have to choose my expenditures of energy carefully.

Even with all of that, I am happier than I was this time last week. Having do-nothing-in-particular days has been incredibly helpful as a restorative for my inner balance. I look forward to the week after next when all of this week’s stuff will be done and I can find something approaching normal.

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Christmastime, Thanksgiving, and smiling

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The grocery store tells me that Christmas time is here. The piped music over head sings cheerful carols while garlands and tinsel adorn the walls and corners. My eyes slide off the decorations and I try to tune out the carols. Christmastime comes with a myriad of To Dos, the largest of which is the church Christmas party that I have to run one week from today. This next week will be swallowed whole by the needs of arranging an event for 200+ people. I’m not ready to manage all that yet. I’ll have to start thinking about it tomorrow at Church, but today I still have a little pocket of Thanksgiving in which nothing is required of me but gratitude.

Christmas leaks in of course. The kids have already begun mentioning things that they would like to receive. We’ve also begun the necessary shopping. Thoughts of party plans drift their way through my brain. Hopefully I’ve had enough rest so that I can dive in to next week.

Another thing happened at the grocery store. I smiled at a friend in passing. A scruffy, bearded man happened to be pushing his cart past me as I did. “You’ve got a great smile.” he said. I thanked him as I passed. I am not in the habit of chatting in the grocery store. It is an introverted time for me rather than a social time. But my smile lingered because of what that man said. He repeated it when we passed each other again in frozen foods. The smile felt good on my face and I tried to keep it for the rest of the trip. Consciously smiling is something I should do more often.

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Thanksgiving at the Tayler House

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This year we spent Thanksgiving with just our little family. It was a perfect respite for me. To make it even better, we removed all the stress from the cooking. Each person in the family picked one thing they wanted to have for Thanksgiving dinner. Each person was then responsible for preparing the food they picked. This meant that Link spent quite a lot of time yesterday creating a seven layer rainbow jello. Yesterday was also the day that Patch helped me bake pumpkin pies. Kiki feels strongly that Thanksgiving must have turkey, so she tackled that. Gleek was the queen of rolls. I did stuffing and Howard handled mashed potatoes and gravy. Over the space of two days I spent time with each of the kids individually preparing a food for everyone to share. This afternoon we all sat at the table and admired the fruits of our efforts. The kids each admired their own work and the work of their siblings. Then we ate. After dinner the kids helped clean up and we all sat down to watch UP, which is a perfect Thanksgiving movie. Sometimes the best stuff is the little stuff, which is why I’m so glad for this simple Thanksgiving day.

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