Short update, Second week of summer

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I’m having trouble finding my writing head space. Partly this is a normal effect of having the kids home all day. It is also due to the fact that my laptop still refuses to speak to the internet. I’ve got a friend coming to help trouble shoot later in the week. But for now it leaves me blogging down in my basement office. I much prefer to do my writing in a room with windows.

We had family home evening tonight. Its the first time in weeks. It is the first time in even longer that Howard and I did not veto Tag as the activity of choice. So we ran around outside with the kids. Miraculously we did not have a single tantrum. There was much laughing and running. Everyone got a turn to be It. Then we came inside for pudding. The choice of snack was somewhat ironic since the subject of the lesson was “Eating Healthy.” But a good time was had by all, and it was a good start on my intention of putting family stuff on the calendar this week.

Tomorrow I get to have my annual blood draw to check my thyroid levels. I also get to sort invoices. Then the kids and I all run away from the house to do something elsewhere. We’re not sure yet where.

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Sprinkler Rainbows and Cottonwood Fluff

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I stood at the kitchen table and announced plans for next week, which included a day trip to Salt Lake and a swim day. The older two kids nodded, but the reaction from the younger two kids was to lament that we did not go swimming this week. It was the first week of summer and I’d promised we could go swimming once per week, but we had not yet actually gone.

I felt frustration and anger with their reaction. I spent the whole week a a dead run, scrambling to adapt to a new life rhythm while still getting all the business work and the family stuff done. At the end of that crazy week, I finally had a feel for what was working and what was not. Part of what was not working was finding time to fulfill my commitments to summer activities. Hence my announcement, making sure the kid stuff got onto next weeks schedule before anything else.

The perspective of the kids was different. They burst into the summer of freedom, eager for the adventures to come. Instead they were answered with a seemingly endless stream of “I need to think about that” and “Not today.” So they began to wonder if any of the promises will materialize or if it is all just a mirage. In their ears “next week” sounds remarkably like “never.”

I stood, frustrated, as my kids filled the air with “what about this? Can we do this today?” I closed my eyes, trying to hang on to calm. Trying to see their perspective around the edges of mine. Knowing that it falls upon me to keep my cool even when they are unreasonable in their requests. At 6 pm on a Saturday it is in not fair to throw a tantrum because I won’t immediately pack up and take them to a swimming pool, but kids do not check their desires for fairness before asking. Then Gleek’s lament passed over the fact that I had not yet taken her to the school playground so that she can show me her recess tricks. It was a small outing, small enough to fit into the hours of remaining daylight. My evening was clear. So I said the words the kids had been longing to hear all week. “Yes. Let’s go.”

In the end only Gleek and Patch went with me. An elementary school playground was not all that attractive to them and they were content to wait for the larger activities next week. For two hours Gleek showed me her tricks. Patch Demonstrated his monkey-bar skills. The sprinklers came on and the kids got soaked chasing rainbows in the spray. Then they dried out while catching cottonwood fluff from the air. Each running step sent whirls of fluff up off the grass to fly again. The grass itself looked as if a few clouds had spread out for a summer afternoon nap. Cottonwoods are not popular trees anymore, exactly because of this fluff,. In fact the school yard used to have dozens of them, but they were cut down several years ago. I was glad to find this one remaining at the edge of the field. I sat on the cotton fluff frosted grass and watched my children.

They were joyful, completely occupied by each activity. That complete immersion in NOW is something I need to find in myself more often. I’ve realized it before and I’m sure I’ll realize it again, because I spend much of my life observing rather than participating. I love observation and thinking, but there art times when I need to get myself out of the house to go chase fluff in the air.

The return home had some crankiness. I had to scold when they did not listen. That was unpleasant and the knowledge that it is likely, often keeps me from wanting to go out. I don’t like to discipline my children in public. But a day later, I remember the beauty of the sprinkler rainbows and the fluff filled air. I remember the joy of Gleek running full-tilt through puddles. The sharp words fade. A joyful evening is worth some inconvenience and unpleasantness. I need to remember that.

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Endless Saturday Afternoon

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So far the summer feels like one endless Saturday. This is because all the kids are home all day, just like they are on Saturdays. So I float anchorless through the week, continually surprised to discover that today is in fact Friday (Or Tuesday, or Thursday). Sundays are anchored by church, everything else floats.

Despite the drifting nature of the week, I am still getting lots of work done. This is good and necessary. Every day brings us closer to book shipping, GenCon, and AussieCon. Each of these events has piles of necessary associated tasks. I’m working my way through the lists, keeping careful notes to make sure nothing gets forgotten. Of course things do get missed, but I try to make sure they are small things.

My focus on all things merchandise and convention has crowded writing out for now. This will change, but at the moment it is necessary. Writing in the summer is always hard because I have so few empty spaces in which to contemplate. All the spaces are filled with children. These children are all loving the relaxed schedule of summer. They are adapting admirably to the lists of chores on the wall, and the house is getting incrementally cleaner every day. This makes us all glad. Yes, the kids are glad too. They like having clean places to play.

June is a month which will mostly be spent at home. This is good. We need time to stabilize. Howard needs time to build up the buffer. Because at the end of the month the books will arrive.

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Observations on June 3rd

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At 11:30 last night I was falling asleep on my feet, but I did not want to go to bed because the house was so quiet. I was in need of quiet. So I lay on the couch and dozed off while Howard played Oblivion. He woke me at 12:30 so I could go to bed. I shambled up stairs, changed into pajamas, collapsed into bed, where I found myself awake and fretful. I realized that the QFT preliminary layout was looming in my mind and making everything else feel impossible. So I got out of bed and spent the next 3.5 hours getting it done. Birds were chirping when I went back to bed.

I am very tired today, but I can tell that it was the right decision. I had a solid block of time to concentrate that was completely un-interrupted. There are still QFT tasks to do, but I’ve been able to hand off materials to two people who were waiting on me. That feels really good. Now I need to be at least moderately effective today, until I can crash at bedtime.

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Yesterday Link moped around all day and I nagged at him constantly to get his chores done. He finally did at 6 pm. Today Link was up, dressed, smiling, with all his chores done by 10:30 am. The difference? He took his medicine today after being off for a few days. Having the chores done is nice, but the I-can-handle-anything smile is why I know that the hassle of medication is worth it. Medicine does not change who he is. He is himself, he feels like himself, he is just able to plan ahead and accomplish the things he wants to do.

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I have magnets. They are sorted and bagged. I have ordered shirts. They will be in early next week. Prints will be done tomorrow. Slowly but surely I am gathering the necessary merchandise pieces to fill all of these orders. Next week there will be invoice sorting.

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Some days the kids are nice to each other. I like it when that happens.

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I am very tired.

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Third day of summer, par for course

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Remember how on Monday I said that maybe I’m getting the hang of this summer schedule thing? Yeah. Not so much. It is really hard to have work time all mixed up with family time every hour of the day. My kids are home. I want to take them to parks and museums. I want to run off and play. But I have piles of work to do and I want the kids to go away so that I can get it done. These two desires battle in my brain and make focusing on anything very hard. I’ve got to figure it out.

The actual physical schedule with meals and chores is still working fine. It’s just the inside of my head that is noisy.

Also I wish things would just work without requiring maintenance or repair. The mower stopped working and the grass is about 6 inches long. Link was ready to rejoice, but I made him borrow the neighbor’s push mower. He really likes it, but the lawn looks like a blind person tried to buzz cut it while riding over a bumpy road. So the mower goes onto the list of things that I have to troubleshoot along with my laptop’s internet connection and the sound card on the Kidputer.

So. Feeling tired and kind of grouchy. Which really is par for course during the first week of summer. Things settle in as we progress. This morning was actually fine. It is just afternoon which went skewampus. Hopefully I can get everything back on track tomorrow.

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First Day of the Summer Schedule

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I have survived the first day of Summer break, and not once did I have a desire to flee the house. This is a marked improvement over last year. Even more surprising, I feel like our family is falling into a familiar rhythm rather then me having to enforce a new schedule. Perhaps I’m starting to get the hang of this. (Yes I realize I’ve just doomed myself by saying it. Please don’t remind me that I did it to myself when I’m going crazy next week.)

The schedule goes like this:
Mornings I work while the kids go through their list of assigned chores. They have a short list of daily things and a few weekly things which are assigned to days of the week. No video games or movies are allowed. Theoretically this creates a quiet morning conducive to Howard’s scripting and my editing/accounting/lay out. Kids get their own breakfasts (We keep kid-fixable foods on hand.)

Lunch: I fix this at noon. It provides a forced break for me, and an anchor point for the kids mid-day.

Afternoon: Video games are allowed for kids who have finished their lists. Friends can come over. I also need to remember to get us out of the house at least twice per week. Cabin fever is not a good thing.

Dinner: Again, this is my job. I need to plan ahead and fix healthy stuff rather than resorting to frozen pizza like I did today.

Evening: Video games off. Sometimes movies are allowed. The kids need to wind down from the screens and start feeling sleepy. Then bedtime.

Get up the next day and do it again. I liked today. I hope most of the summer can work as well.

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Thoughts on external perception, internal experience, and CONduit

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The lobby of the Radisson Hotel in Salt Lake is so familiar that it feels like the living room of a good friend. This is not surprising since I’ve attended CONduit at this same hotel for at least 5 years. Many conversations with many friends have taken place there.

On Saturday evening there were only seven of us, Bob Defendi, Dan Willis, Eric Swedin, Mette Harrison, Julie Wright, Jessica Day George, and me. Other people drifted in and out during the course of the evening, Including my daughter Kiki. Prior to dinner the same space had held a different mix of people. In past years the group gathering in this space gets so large that we moved the lobby furniture. Then the hotel staff came by and we had to put it all back. But for the larger part of Saturday evening it was the seven of us who planted ourselves in chairs. None of us had any intention of moving until it was time to go home.

I have known and loved all of these people for years. We always manage to fill our time together with fascinating conversations. This time the conversation turned to family histories and childhoods. The breadth of experience was a bit staggering. Three people had been through medical traumas sufficient to kill a person, stories were told of depression, family strife, mental instability, alcoholic parents, neglect, cancer, and abandonment. After the conversation moved on and fragmented into smaller pieces, Eric Swedin and I spoke about how interesting it was to learn all this new information about people we have known for so long. As Eric said, “It’s always interesting to learn the back story.”

I have to agree. People are the reason I return to CONduit year after year. I love the gradual unfolding of friendships. I love that each year my group of acquaintances expands as more people become friends. It simply is not possible for me to spend time with everyone that I would like to in one short weekend.

Reading that back story list in print makes it seem that the conversation was deep and heavy, but it really was not. Everyone spoke cheerfully about their experiences, while still acknowledging they were hard. I thought about it afterward and was once again amazed by these people whom I have claimed as friends. They have been through some very dark places and you would never know it to look at them. They all seem bright, brilliant, healthy, and whole. The experiences give them a well of sympathy and understanding without weighing them down.

I’m sure they feel burdened at times. I know that I do. But that was not what I saw. I saw survivors who took their hard experiences and made them useful. These are people I can aspire to emulate.

Julie Wright and I had a short conversation about when we first met. She told me how early in our friendship she felt so cool because I invited her out to lunch during a convention. I laughed because I spent that whole convention amazed that someone as awesome as Julie would want to spend time with me. We laughed together about how internal experiences are often far divergent from what is apparent to others. In those early years we both felt out of place while assuming that the other belonged.

It was particularly interesting to me this year to be attending CONduit without Howard. We usually attend together and tag-team to cover events and run a table. Howard was greatly missed and frequently asked after. What was heart warming to me was that not once was I dismissed as unimportant without Howard in attendance. Cavan did make a joke saying, “You mean you exist when Howard isn’t here?”
“Apparently.” I smiled back. But the truth is that for years I felt like my professional acceptance at conventions was only because I trailed in Howard’s wake. People came to know me because I was Howard’s wife, part of the Schlock Mercenary team. Over the years I’ve earned the respect I was given, but my internal perception remained the same. I know this because I keep being surprised when professional respect is shown to me in Howard’s absence.

Revan and Malak came to request an interview for Dungeon Crawler’s Radio. I assumed they were attempting to schedule Howard, but they already knew he was elsewhere. It was me that they were seeking out. For fifteen recorded minutes we had a wonderful conversation, in which very few of the questions focused on my role in supporting Schlock Mercenary and XDM. I’d assumed those would be their primary interest. I did talk about them some, because those things are a big part of my life, but I also got to talk about mixing marriage and business, my Hold on to Your Horses book, and my book of essays.

Mette Ivie Harrison and I shared a reading. Just the fact that I had one made me glad. Mette and I arrived together to an empty room. We joked about how we could just read to each other. Fortunately a few more people came. Mette went first and read from one of her many books. She was so calm and competent reading from her bound book, when all I had were sheets printed from my computer. After the reading was over, Mette confessed that it was her first reading and she worried that she should have brought something new rather than reading from a published book. She’s been a published author for years, I’d assumed she was reading from a wealth of experience.

Thoughts about external perception, internal experience, and amazing people continue to percolate in my brain even though the convention is done. I looked around my church meeting this morning and realized that it too is filled with amazing people whom I admire. These people have also lived through dark times and survived them. Some of them are probably going through a dark time right now.

The people at church have no idea how amazing they are. Just as my friends at the convention do not see in themselves what I see. Just as I doubt myself and others see something different. I need to remember this when I feel like nothing I do matters. I need to remember to step confidently, smile brightly, and work to transform my hard experiences into something useful. I need to take my own insecurities and self doubt, then look around me. Others feel the same. Just as the words of others are gifts that teach me to believe in myself, I need to find ways to give out similar gifts.

I also need to use the connective powers of the internet to help me meet up with my friends more often than once per year.

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Coming home to the kids

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I pull into the cul de sac and peer toward my house. The front room light is on, but the bedroom lights are out. There is no evidence for any of the catastrophic imaginings my brain began to supply when the kids did not answer my phone call to check up on them. This bodes well. I park and walk into the house. The sweet smell of home hits my nose. It is another bit of evidence that all is well. I walk into the kitchen and it is a wreck. The counters and table are covered with boxes, dishes, and debris. Odd though it may seem, this is also reassuring. I can see that they ate dinner and that they had a bedtime snack. I find the kids themselves asleep in beds. Link is in my bed. He obviously fell asleep while trying to wait up for me like a good babysitter. This is likely why he did not answer the phone call. The two fly swatters next to him are a mystery, I’ll have to ask tomorrow. All is well. More than that, every evidence I have is that they took care of each other and followed the script I walked them through before leaving. This is good and a lovely contrast to the last time when there was weeping and yelling for me to sort out upon my return. I kiss all of my children and am glad to be home.

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I went to CONduit today

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I think that any day where I get to participate in a panel, do a signing where people actually buy my books, read out loud to an attentive audience, go out to dinner with marvelous people, sit around talking for hours, and am not interrupted by phone calls from crying children, can count as a really good day.

Everything went well. I am glad. Now I shall sleep.

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Last Day of School

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I sat in the sunshine on a bench out in front of the school. In a few moments children would burst forth from the building, free for the summer. At the moment all was quiet and a breeze flipped the pages of the planner in my lap. I closed my eyes and tipped my head back. I was at the school early for a reason. I needed to find the principal and have a talk with him. But he was not available for a few more minutes. So I sat.

Sometimes everyone means well and things still go wrong. Those good intentions can be so deceptive. I can talk to the teacher and feel her love for my child. I can talk to the child who puts a brave face on yet another incident. I see all the love, the compassion, the good intention, and I think that everything is fine. And it is. But at the same time it is not. All children have difficult days. Teachers, school administrators, and parents know this. And so we manage the difficulty, hoping for a better day tomorrow. But somehow, without anyone quite noticing, my daughter slipped into a place where difficult days were normal. Where the rare day is the one when she climbs into the car and says “I wasn’t mad today at all.”

Kindergarten children burst forth from the building with parents in tow. This means that the principal now has time to speak with me. I walk into the building, leaving sunshine for shadow. I rehearsed this conversation in my head all morning, now is the time to speak it. I was going to just let it go. I did not know that anything could be fixed so late. Then yesterday I overheard my daughter telling her brothers about a conflict during which she hit another child and had to be physically restrained by her teacher. It sounds like the incident itself was handled with wisdom, but if not for me eavesdropping, I would not have known. I am left to wonder what other emotional events have occurred at school about which I have not been informed.

I told the story to the principal and he was quite concerned. He agreed with me that I should have been called. We spoke to the aide in the LRR (think time out room) to discuss the times my daughter has been in there, other incidents about which I was not called. That room is bare. A single desk with a computer on it sits off to the side. Across a sea of carpet, huddled against the wall are five cubicles. A desk and a chair sit in each one, all facing the wall. This is the place where children are brought when they need a space to calm down, or when they must be removed from regular classes. The aide prints out a sheet documenting four times when my daughter was brought there. I was called once.

Behavioral modification techniques rely heavily upon a very fast action and consequence cycle. The most effective systems use an almost immediate penalty or reward for a specific behavior. The younger a child is, or the more impulsive a child is, the more immediate the consequence must be. These techniques have no chance at all of working if the consequence is too far delayed. Even more important is targeting a specific behavior with a specific consequence. I can’t even begin to work on modifying a behavior if I do not know the shape of the problem. I am not guiltless here. Part of my job as a parent is to communicate with teachers, to ask how things are going. This I did not do. I was not in the school regularly. I did not check up on how things were going. I was busy and distracted, so I trusted that the school staff would contact me if things got out of hand. And they did. Sometimes. Because they are busy and distracted too.

I held the paper in my hand. It contained four paragraphs telling me the details of four incidents. Removed from classroom for fighting. Would not settle down. Did not want to go back to class, said it was quieter here. My eyes water for what I read between the lines of text. But I must know if I am to help. I must know all of it. I must feed that intuitive center in my brain from whence solutions might spring. What I hold in my hands is evidence, solid evidence about my child’s experiences. I need more.

At my request, the aide makes a note that I am to be called even for small incidents. Next Fall I will have to check and make sure the note is still on the file. I have already decided that I have to be in the school much more often next year. I need to be speaking with her teacher at least weekly. I need to hear all the stories, see how she interacts with peers. If I do this, I expect that the staff of the school will be happy to support me. And if they do not, that is evidence too.

Meeting over, I return outside. My kids are already waiting in the bright sunshine, with class assignments for next year in hand. My daughter has a new teacher. That is what it says on her paper “New Teacher.” She will be in class with a complete unknown, someone who has not yet been hired. This could be good news or bad. I will know next Fall. For now, I breathe a sigh of relief as we walk away from the building. Summer will have conflicts aplenty, but I will witness them. I will know what they are. And perhaps by summer’s end I’ll have a better grasp on what my daughter needs.

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