The other day I mentioned how my head is frequently full of business thoughts that I can’t yet share. This is big news that I now can tell everyone. We’ve got a distribution deal.

Now people can walk into a gaming store anywhere in the world and place an order for our books. Not only that, but this potentially puts the books on shelves where they can catch new eyes and gain new fans. We’ll still be selling direct and doing sketch editions, but this opens up another avenue of sales, which is a good thing.

At the moment only XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery and Schlock Mercenary The Tub of Happiness are available in stores, but the other Schlock books will be coming out one per month until they’re all out there.

This is a very happy thing indeed.

Today’s conflict was larger than usual, primarily because it took place in public. However the fact of conflict with children is common, particularly this Fall while three of them are pushing forward on developmental curves. I thought it would be useful to examine the conflict, a post-mortem if you will. If I understand this one, then I am better prepared for the next one. Or at least that is the theory.

The conflict began when I noticed that red liquid was leaking from Gleek’s backpack. We discovered that the liquid was from a bottle of Gatorade that she was given for participating in an activity. This is when the screaming began. Gleek began shrieking at the world and refusing to go home. The situation was worsened by the discovery that the bottom of the backpack had a pool of liquid and other items had been soaked as well.

Conflicts are often the result of needs crashing into each other.

My needs:
to get back home because I’d paused my process of bottling pears to pick kids up.
Gleek to stop shrieking and kicking up a fuss in public.
to get kids home so that we could problem solve. I was pretty sure that I could replace or wash the affected items.

Patch and Link needed:
To be away from the unpleasant conflict and to be home instead of sitting around waiting.

Gleek needed:
Her gatorade back unspilled. (She’d earned it yesterday, but they had run out, so she waited a whole day to receive it.)
Her emotions vented.
Her notebook to not be soaked with pink liquid.

Looking back, I wonder if I had responded differently in the first moment of discovery, would that have made a difference? If I had said something sympathetic instead of “let’s go home” would Gleek have moved into a problem solving mindset instead of a tantrum? I’m not sure that would have been the case. She was so focused on being mad at the world and shouting because she wanted it to not have happened. Unfortunately her response changed my options.

I could have hauled her kicking-screaming person into the car and driven away despite her protests. I could have shouted her into the car. I could have threatened grounding or brandished some other punishment to force compliance. These tactics can be used to good effect in a crisis, but if they don’t instantly bring compliance, they escalate the conflict. They also change the conflict so that it is Mother vs child and the issue is obedience, rather than Mother and child with the issue being the sad thing that occurred.

Forcing her to go home required me to change the conflict in unpleasant ways, so I had to find some other tactic. Link and Patch volunteered to walk home, which removed them from the scene and gave me a little more leeway. I sorted through the damaged items to salvage what I could. I also hoped that the sorting would help Gleek shift into a “where do we go from here” mindset, but she remained stuck in the “I want this to not have happened” frame of mind. I needed to get her to shift. Our best chance of finding solutions was at home. Sorting through the salvage had not worked, so I was left with words.

I sat in the car and began to talk. I probably talk too much during conflicts. I suspect I hound my kids with words and they hate it. I think they hate it most if they can see I am right. Each linguistic foray was an attempt to get her to shift from denial into something else.
I mentioned how her behavior was over-the-top and unacceptable. (This earned more screaming.)
I told how I was frustrated because I wanted to be sympathetic about what had happened to her. She quieted down to listen to this, so I detailed exactly what I knew about why she was frustrated, that she’d looked forward to the gatorade, that the ruined notebook was a special one, and how it was awful that both were gone.
The silence was an improvement, but it still wasn’t getting us home. And she still yelled when I suggested leaving.
I expressed my frustration at managing her behavior and my embarrassment at having to do this in public with teachers and students who could over hear. To this she answered “Now you know how I feel. People are staring at me all the time.”
I replied that it wasn’t the same because she got stared at for things she did while I was being stared at for something someone else did.
We exchanged a couple more heated sentences until she was mad enough at me that she flounced into the car and said “Fine! We’ll just go home!”

I’d won the point about going home. Once at home, I left Gleek to fume by herself while I settled things and started washing out the soaked backpack. When I returned to Gleek I was all sympathy and she was ready to receive it. She’d really needed time alone to cool off, which I’d been completely unable to supply without getting home first. At home she quickly made peace with the loss of the notebook, threw out the remaining gatorade, and happily accepted replacement notebooks from me.

Getting home was the solution, but I don’t like that I had to provoke her to get her there. I worry that she will take to heart some of the things I said and use them as evidence that she is not a good person. I wish the conflict could have been resolved without resorting to adversarial maneuvering. I suppose I could have immediately offered to drive to a store and buy new gatorade and notebook, but would have set a precedent that I don’t want to maintain. Also I don’t think that answer would have ended the conflict any sooner. She didn’t want it fixed. She wanted it to not have happened.

The truth is that I can not avoid conflict with my children. Even if I turned myself into a doormat of a mother, they could still create a conflict by sheer irrational demands. All I can do is try to weather the conflicts with as little damage as possible and to talk them through afterward to make sure the right lessons are learned.

How do I describe a day that has been filled with strife, and prayer, and answers to prayer, and being an answer to the prayer of someone else? It was a day that began badly, but was redeemed by everything that came after.

Link needs more positive attention to balance out all the negative he has been getting lately. I began the morning determined to provide it. I’m still not sure how that determination devolved into a stand-off over kids eating breakfast complete with ultimatums and crying. I dropped off three unhappy children at school and came home to sort through where things had gone wrong. Howard and I had a good discussion about it. We identified where we’d been working at cross purposes. I felt better, but still wrung out.

Our church has a program called Visiting Teaching where two women are assigned to visit a third. Everyone gets a turn to teach and be taught. It builds relationships and a strong community. I had an appointment to go and I was in charge of the lesson. I flipped open the church magazine and saw that the lesson was on nurturing children. How ironic after the morning I’d just had. Instead of teaching the lesson, I fessed up to those other women (who are both grandmothers) about how my morning had gone and how burdened I felt with the responsibility of raising four children. I opened my heart to them and they poured in comfort. Then the woman I was visiting opened her heart. She shared some of what she has been suffering lately. Her story is not mine to tell, but she is amazing. The best part was being able to draw upon some of my own experiences and say things that were helpful to her. These visits are supposed to be around 30 minutes. Ours lasted an hour and a half because none of us wanted it to be over. Visiting Teaching is always a good thing, but every so often it is an amazing thing.

That was a sufficient emotional roller coaster for one day, but the ride was not yet over. Next Howard and I had a business meeting. It was a good meeting. But all business meetings require focus and thought. I am always tired afterward.

The afternoon brought the kids home from school and the necessary aftermath of the morning’s upset. All the kids needed additional reassurance and kindness. They also were required to sit in front of bowls of bland oatmeal and eat some. This allowed them to appreciate by comparison the other foods we have been supplying. They sampled and the light dawned. I don’t think tomorrow will feature breakfast complaints. I played some games with the kids to provide positive attention. I repaired a beloved object that has been waiting. I fixed a dinner that they all like. I generally did my best to be a stable, happy presence despite the fact that I’d been wrung empty.

My friend Janci came over to lend me company and morale support. She’d had her own events for the day and we both felt better for commiserating and rejoicing together.

Now it is all done. The kids are in bed. Howard is home and he brought a fun video for us to watch. I am tired. I am beyond tired. My eyes still feel raw and inclined to leak. But it has been an undeniably good day. I did things today that really matter. I did things that made my small corner of the world a better place. I wouldn’t trade that for anything. I wouldn’t even try to skip the bad beginning. It is all of a piece. This day was good. I shall treasure it.

…but I shall also hope for a less eventful day tomorrow.

At the end of the day I relish the silence. I have to relish it fast because I know it will not last. The kids are quiet because they are reading. In a moment I will have to make them turn the lights out, a process that is anything but silent. In theory there is more silence after lights out, but in practice it takes awhile to get there and by the time I do, my own bedtime is nigh.

But for the moment I have quiet. In this quiet space there are no children mulishly attempting to avoid homework. No one is deliberately attempting to annoy anyone else. No one is unintentionally annoying anyone else. No one is thumping up and down stairs at a dead run while giggling with a sibling following and emitting that half giggle, half cry of dismay that means the formerly-fun game is close to dissolving into a fight. No one needs me to pour milk, or invent snacks, or spell a word, or answer a question. These are not random examples. All have been part of the last two hours.

In the quiet space I am able to view these sorts of events with something akin to affection. I know that this period of my life is one to treasure. I know that I will sometimes miss the chaos and quarrels. Just yesterday at church I watched a mother with her crying baby and felt a pang remembering what it was like to be the primary comforter for an infant, to be the person who could make the world better just by jouncing exactly right. For a moment I missed it, but then the mother had to go change a stinky diaper and I didn’t. I’ll miss my kids as they are right now, but I am so glad that my life now does have moments of silence after the chaos. I revel in the quiet spaces because they give me strength to be calm in the face of chaos.

Time is up. Got to go make the lights be out.

One of the things that has been absorbing my time this Fall is reconnecting with various communities. I’d fallen out of touch with many of them for lack of time. Now I am back in touch and realizing that I am blessed with the problem of community over load. I have a church community, an extended family community, a neighborhood community, two school communities, a local writer’s community, a local artist/cartoonist community, a gaming/role playing community, an online writer’s community, as well as the communities inherent in participating in social media such as Facebook and Livejournal. Fortunately most of these communities have a lot of over lap, so it is actually possible for me to manage it all.

It has been wonderful re-connecting. I had not realized how disconnected my insanely busy schedule had made me. I’d lost touch without even realizing that I’d done it. Slowly I’m starting to catch up. I’m starting to know what is going on in people’s lives. I’m starting to see and care about the issues that each community deals with. It feels good.

Of course there are days where I want to flee into my room and hide because there are so many people. I like all the people, but I can get overwhelmed just by my four kids on a bad day. Of course hiding all the time is not good either. So I get out. I socialize. Then I go back home to assimilate and re-energize. The good news is that being a connected member of a community requires less effort than re-connecting with a community. I think I’m getting to the less effortful part of being a community member. That will be nice.

There have been times when I’ve truly enjoyed the process of storing food through canning. Today was not one of those times. But the pears were there, waiting, threatening to turn rotten and fill the house with fruit flies. I had the jars, lids, and rings. I even had the time. What I lacked was the desire. No part of me wanted to peel or can pears and no amount of logic could change the way I felt about it. Part of being grown up is doing things that are the right thing even if I don’t particularly feel like it. So I canned pears. The three quarts now sit on my kitchen counter and I am trying to feel accomplished instead of resentful. Also, I’m trying to ignore the box of still-not-quite-ripe pears waiting for me. Hopefully I’ll find my canning mojo next week when they’ll be ready.

It is interesting to me that I can spend an hour weeding a grassy flower bed, knowing that the grass will return from the roots I didn’t get pulled, but I’ll feel happy and satisfied with the job I’ve done. But I can look at those three quarts of pears which I will never have to can again and just feel tired. Emotions and logic don’t even have a nodding relationship sometimes.

Sometimes how I feel surprises me. This evening Howard and Kiki headed out for a social event. We’d all planned for me to stay home with the younger kids. It wasn’t until I learned that this was a whole family event that I realized exactly how much I wanted to go, not for the movie that they would be watching, but just to get out of my house and away from my routines. (Or maybe just away from the pears.) I loaded the kids and went, and had a good time.

Emotions ambush me. They lay in wait or sometimes linger far longer than I would like. This does not mean I am powerless against them. I choose my actions. I can choose to seek happiness no matter what my circumstances. I can’t make the happiness show up, but if I continually make a happiness shaped space in my life, somehow I always find happiness there. I feel fine about the pears now. This is because I spent some time choosing things which enriched my day. I sat in the sunshine, I went out with friends. Enough applications of these kinds of things and even the canning of pears fails to provide sufficient negative stimulus to prevent me from being happy.

“I’m going to jump out of the car and then run ahead, but I’ll slow down and turn around. Then you catch up and we do the hug.” Says Gleek as we pull up to the school.

“Okay.” Answers Patch.

“The Hug of Power really helps me through the day. How about you?” Gleek asks.

“Yeah. I feel better and smarter all day.” Says Patch with a smile.

We pull up to the school and I watch as Gleek dashes toward the door, then turns to wait for Patch. He runs up, arms wide. They hug tight, then walk into the school together.

May the world have more Hugs of Power in it.

This is my first post created originally on my very own WordPress-based site, onecobble.com. I bought the domain name more than a month ago. Since then I have been slowly pulling it together so that it is the way I want it to be. It isn’t there yet. I still need to create custom image headers. Also my page links are all giving 404 errors despite the fact that I created pages. I figured out how to mirror posts over to Livejournal, but I have yet to get them to mirror to blogger and facebook. The idea behind this being that I post in one place and all my social media profiles get updated with no further effort from me.

Setting up the site has been a long slow adventure. I would get excited and get a pile of things done until I ran into a snag. Then I would lose all motivation and let the project sit idle for a week or two until I had the energy to problem solve again. Frequently I asked myself why I was bothering at all. Then I remember that I really do want to have blogging across social networks be simpler for me. I really do want my own domain name for the blogging I do.

So I’ve been plugging away and I’ll keep on pounding at it until it has a shape that I am happy with.

Today I hiked. Now I am tired. Of course the “hike” was more of an uphill walk along a paved trail, but it is still farther than I am accustomed to walking regularly. I suppose I can increase the difficulty modifier just a bit by adding the fact that I was also helping shepherd 12 girls ages 8-11 along the trail. The weather was perfect. There was just enough chill for people to be comfortable as long as they kept moving. The girls got a little cold after playing in the water, but no one was miserable. Gleek claimed she was miserable for awhile. She clung to my arm and moaned about her legs. But then we arrived at some interesting rocks and the climbing was more interesting than the moaning which was a relief for everyone.

Part of the hike was a scavenger hunt sheet that I put together. I walked the trail a few weeks ago and took pictures so the girls would have plants and landmarks to look for. It was interesting to see how the advent of Fall had begun to alter the landscape. The girls still managed to find everything, except we had to count sunflower stalks as flowers because the flowers themselves had all frozen and fallen off.

At the top end of the walk we saw Bridal Veil Falls. It is a spot full of memory for me, although these days it is a nostalgic memory rather than an active one. The base of the falls used to be groomed and tended. It was a well-trafficked public park with a tram that ran up a cable to a restaurant at the top. The tram was damaged by an avalanche in 1996 and the restaurant closed it’s doors so repairs could be made. The doors never opened again. The owners spent a decade wrangling funds and environmental preservation concerns until a forest fire came through two years ago and ended the discussion by burning everything. I remember the tram. I remember standing as a child on the grass near the base. I was too scared to ride that steep cable up to the top, but other family members went. I remember coming back when I was in college and having deja vu realizing that I had been there before. All that is left is falling down structures and the arch that used to frame the loading platform. It is like visiting a ghost town that you used to visit when it was thriving. The bustle is gone, what is left is empty. The emptiness has it’s own beauty, but it is not alive. The falls are still the same. They plummet hundreds of feet just as they used to do. There is still a steady stream of visitors because the path is a popular walking and biking route. But these days people come, look, then leave because there is nothing there that beckons them to stay.

The girls felt nothing of the nostalgia. The oldest of them was not even born when the tram stopped running. For them this place has always been as it is now. They were far more interested in wading than in contemplating rusted twists of metal on the cliff high above. Life moves on. So we looked for a while and then we left. It was a good walk. The girls found everything on their scavenger hunt pages. We made it back with no one lost or injured. We even got to pet a little dog on the trip back down. Now I just need to remember to stretch my legs before bed so that they won’t be sore tomorrow.

I am an organizer of things. I combine orders and inventory into packages. I sort piles of dirty laundry into piles of neatly folded clean clothes. I take an unending task list and make of it a schedule which has a chance of allowing the tasks to get done. I turn jumbled piles of papers into neat files. I transform masses of weeds into flower beds. I tally invoices and checks into accounts and tax forms. I take a room in which everything is topsy turvey and turn it into a livable space. I even organize stray thoughts into blog entries. All of this is as natural to me as breathing, but sometimes I am forced to face the fact that the tasks themselves are not easy. They are actually complex processes that I have performed so often that they have become routine to me.

My primary confrontation with the complexity of these tasks is when I attempt to teach one of them to my children. When faced with a messy room, my kids will start to pick over the mess at random. They’ll pick up a few things, but if they don’t know where the things go, they shove them on shelves until the shelves are ready to topple. It is not enough for me to say “clean your room.” I must couple that command with teaching them how to go about sorting and organizing a room. I have to teach them about picking up large things first so you can see the small ones. I have to teach about scraping the mess out of the corners and into the middle. I have to teach that small things need to be put in containers, not shoved on shelves. Each of these things is a separate piece of knowledge all of which combine into knowing how to organize a room.

This weekend Kiki was feeling buried under things to do. For a week or more I’d been telling her to prioritize and do the most important things first. She kept ending up in a stalled panic rather like the rabbit staring frozen at the headlights of an oncoming car. I finally realized that while she knew the meaning of the word “prioritize” she did not actually have a clue how to go about doing it. So I gave her a piece of paper and made her write down every single To Do item in her head. I told her not to fret over the size of the list because we knew it would be far more things than she could accomplish in a single day. The idea was to pull all these fretful things out of her head and pin them to a page where she could see them. Then I took a second piece of paper and used the Franklin Covey square to help her sort her list. Suddenly she could really see what she needed to focus her time on and which things she had been stressing over that were neither important nor urgent. Using the paper helped her see what I meant by prioritize. Kiki still has a lot to learn about organizing her time, but this gives her a method to start learning.

A friend of mine is getting ready to start using Quickbooks for her small business. My first reaction was to tell her not to worry because it is easy. But then I remembered how scary it was to get started all those years ago. I remembered driving to Salt Lake for an 8 hour seminar on small business accounting. Accounting is not easy, but it can become easy with practice. I find this very encouraging because there are things in my life that are not easy, things that frighten me. I would really love to pull together a book and have it published by a large house. This task feels like an impossible pipe dream, but I’ve begun to see where to start and if I can just keep going the things that feel daunting will get easier. I will only stay daunted if I stand still. Practice makes difficult things become easy and that is a good thing to know.