My brain does not like to be idle. It always wants to be engaged on multiple levels. I habitually read while I eat. I’ll listen to music or watch a show while doing manual tasks like folding laundry. There is this almost incessant need for new information. Sometimes it is fiction, other times it is factually based. But every so often I find a day where some instinct tells me “enough.” Then I find myself avoiding input sources. I’ll turn off the music, leave the books laying, walk away from the internet. On these days I have a strong need just to stare at nothing in particular and let my brain wander. Today was such a day. I found myself seeking out manual labor tasks that I usually find boring. No profound thoughts emerged from all the thinking. I had no epiphanies. But my house is cleaner now than it was and I feel calmer. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

There are not many shows that we can watch as an entire family. Howard and I tend to like shows that are too intense for the kids. The three younger kids like shows that are too simple and repetitive for Howard or I. Kiki loves anime with a passion that is sometimes shared by the other kids, but not by Howard or I. Gleek loves Barbie movies which the other kids all swear they don’t like, but still end up sitting down to watch. Our differing tastes aren’t really a problem. We just schedule the use of the TV accordingly so that everyone gets a fair turn. But sometimes we want to sit down for a family viewing. It is frequently frustrating because the youngest two kids often bounce during the exposition parts of the film that the rest of us are trying to hear. Recently we’ve found two shows that engage us all, the Speed Racer movie and the Myth Busters TV series.

I did not expect to like Speed Racer. Nothing about the trailers interested me. I did not care about race car crashes in over saturated colors. I still don’t. The bright colors, blinking lights, and general flashiness are hard on my eyes. But I find the storytelling methods fascinating. Back story and story line are packed together so tightly. You switch from past to present so often that sometimes it is hard to tell which one is supposed to be present, and yet the story advances so that I am not lost. The movie itself seems like a race. Everything happens so fast. This film has one of the best uses of visual medium that I’ve ever seen. In most films the back story is told using dialog. A character tells about something that happened in the past. Sometimes you get a flashback scene to tell what happened. Speed Racer depends heavily on montage. There are places where a whole story of decision and regret is told wordlessly in less than a minute. Every time the kids turn on the show, I end up watching fascinated. I want to see how the storytelling is done, although most of it will not ultimately help me as a storyteller since my mediums are not visual. And yet it is still definitely a kid’s show. There are characters, such as the monkey, who only exist to be silly. But these silly kid scenes never lasted long enough to bore me. Similarly the few exposition scenes never lasted long enough to bore Gleek or Patch. And most of the exposition was accompanied by fascinating visuals or montages. I suspect that Speed Racer is a movie that people will either love or hate. The good news is that the first 15 minutes of the film is a self-contained storyline that introduces all the characters, all the back story, and comes to a satisfactory conclusion at the end of a race. If you don’t like the first 15 minutes, don’t bother with the rest.

Myth Busters has a very different appeal to our family. It also keeps the interest high by keeping the scenes short. But we are fascinated by the cool things they get to build and frequently blow up. And it ends up being educational because invariably there is some aspect of the show that the kids don’t understand and we then have to pause and explain. Just yesterday I got to explain to Gleek what breast implants were and why someone would want them. Less awkward for me, but equally fascinating to the kids are the discussions we’ve had about electricity, microwaves, the reason we don’t perform these experiments at home, and why we can’t have an electric eel for a pet. I love that the show gives us stuff to talk about. I love hearing Kiki and Link expound about things that they know which Gleek and Patch do not. Then Howard or I weigh in and correct erroneous information.

We own Speed Racer, but there are only so many times we can watch the same film, even one with fascinating storytelling. We have several seasons of Myth Busters to go through. After that, we’ll again be seeking a show.

As befits Halloween, the day began with blood. Patch had one of those spontaneous bloody noses that leak so dramatically. We washed up all the blood just in time for me to cover my hands in red goo. The teenage vampire needed red streaks in her hair. She also needed black streaks. No sooner had I washed my hands clean, than the devilish angel (or angelic devil) needed her hair sprayed half red and half glittery gold. Then there was the black eye shadow and red lipstick for both girls. I had to pause the preparations to go on a quest for the large Indiana Jones’ white shirt. Then again later to quest for the small Indiana Jones’ shoes. When it was all done, I hauled the teenage vampire, Indiana Jones, the angelic devil (or devilish angel) and Indiana Jones all into the kitchen for a group picture. Then I drove them all to school. Later today there will be two school parades. In the evening there will be trick-or-treating. After that we have Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for entertainment, because we need an amusingly bad adventure movie to finish the day.

Every time we prepare for Howard to attend a convention, we box up stacks of books into easily portable boxes. These boxed then get carried to the convention. When the convention is over, any remaining books get reboxed and hauled back home. Once back at home, we shove the boxes into a corner where we won’t trip on them because we’re too tired to unpack them completely. Also there was always another convention coming soon, so it seemed logical to leave the books boxed. But when we’re prepping for the next convention we invariably discovered that when packing from the previous convention we not sorted the books neatly by type. So it is faster to just pack up fresh boxes.

I’m sure you see where this is going. We’ve been accumulating boxes of miscellaneous books for months. This has made our work spaces cluttered and made inventory very difficult to count. Today I started finding all those boxes and sorting the books into the appropriate inventory stacks. The job is not done yet, but already I feel much better. Once I get all the inventory sorted, I’ll do a thorough inventory count. This will allow me to make sure that the inventory listed in my tracking programs actually matches the physical inventory. It won’t. Anyone who has tracked inventory can tell you that things randomly turn go missing only to resurface months or even years after you’ve written it off. There are promo books that we’ve handed out that we forgot to record. There are shirts which, upon further inspection, turned out to be damaged. Sometimes the kids decide to read one of Daddy’s books and grab on out of inventory rather than searching for the one on the shelf. Inventory wanders. Now it is time for me to find it all and figure out how much we’ve got.

Inventory is not the only thing I’ve been putting into place. I’ve been to the gym twice in the last week. I’ve started paying attention to what I eat. I swept a mass of toys and dust out from under the front room couch. Convention season is over. The book shipping is over. I now have time to put everything else back where it goes.

Sad:  Realizing, at age 35, that I am mildly tone deaf.  My singing voice will waver as much as a quarter tone off the note and I can’t hear it.  This means that I am retroactively embarrassed about any public singing I’ve done ever.  It is possible that the inability to hear notes clearly is related to the scar tissue I have on my eardrums.  The scarring is a result of far too many childhood ear infections.  Or perhaps my ears are just built wrong for tone discernment.  This makes me sad because I love singing.  It also makes me doubt my own judgment because I considered singing something I was pretty good at.

Comforting:  Having a nice talk with Howard about perceptions, validation, music, capabilities, limiting factors, and plans.

Frustrating:  Finally assigning the kids chores that will help us get the house actually clean rather than just de-cluttered.  Then having a child whine that the 20 minute job I’ve assigned is too hard and completely unfair.  We wrangled and then came back to the conflict from a different angle.  The job was done by the child, but it is frustrating to try and get them to care about dirt.

Rewarding:  Watching Gleek at her first gymnastics class.  She approached it as she does everything else.  She threw her whole self at each physical task.  Her cartwheels, forward rolls, hand stands, and back rolls would all improve greatly if she would just slow down to get her form right.  Right now she is using raw energy and muscle power to get the tricks done.  Gymnastics is a perfect fit for her.  It is an activity where she is praised for throwing herself into the activity.

Satisfying:  Knowing that I got all my business stuff done before noon.

Tiring:  Looking around at how much house work there is to be done.  We’ve been operating on bare minimum for over a month.  And for a long time prior to that we’ve been paying only small amounts of attention.  Everything is dirty.

Hopeful:  Howard has finished his last convention for the next six months.  We have a space of time to really refine our home routine and get things running smoothly both for the family and for getting more books into print.

Yesterday I was notified that Hold on to Your Horses was nominated for a Cybil award. The first round of nominations is not too difficult to achieve since nominations are open to anyone. I could have nominated the book myself, but I didn’t because I wasn’t aware of this fairly new award. That is what makes me so pleased. Someone out there knew about this children’s book blogger award and nominated my book. It means someone out there considered Hold Horses the best new picture book of the year.

The next round involves a panel of experts who will select 7 books in each category to be finalists. I don’t know if Hold Horses will make that cut. There is some pretty heavy competition. You can see the full list of nominated picture books here. You have to scroll down to find Hold on to Your Horses with the other books whose titles start with “H”. The finalists will be announced January 1st.

Today I took Link, Kiki, and Kiki’s friend to Anime Banzai in Salt Lake City. I had that “Not in Kansas anymore” feeling as soon as I walked in the door. It had all the vibe that a convention does, but I knew no one and I recognized very few of the costumes in the hallways. I spent all day there and the feeling never left me. I want to say I felt old, but that isn’t exactly right because there were many people my age and older who were fully immersed in the Anime culture. Perhaps I should say “out of step.” The truth is that while I can enjoy anime, I don’t really get it. It does not sing to me the way that LoTR, Buffy, Dr. Horrible, Dr. who, Miles Vorkosigan, or hundreds of other books do. All day long I could tell that marvelously wonderful things were happening because huge crowds of people would cheer or clap, while I was left not really knowing why. Some of that is a lack of exposure to the necessary source material, but even when the referenced Anime was something I’d seen, I still did not have the emotional connection carried by those surrounding me. The experience gave me a new appreciation for what it means to be foreign.

Kiki and her friend had a marvelous time. They were like fish in water. They wished they could clone themselves so that they could do even more things. Link had fun too, but he wore out early. Fortunately I was able to send him home with Howard, who was also worn out. I stayed with the girls so that they could watch the cosplay. They loved every minute of it. I think the part of the convention I enjoyed most was the Anime Music Video competition. Most of them had no meaning for me, but some of them used songs that I recognized and I could tell that the words in the song were being used in conjunction with or in counterpoint to the video clips I was seeing. Because of my emotional connection to the music, I was much more able to connect to the experience. Some of those video edits were amazingly well done. We didn’t get our hands on the DVD, but I’m pretty sure we can find it via the Anime Banzai website.

It was a day well spent, but I’m glad to be back home.

Two years ago this month we put Link on medication for ADD. It was a transformative event for him. Three months ago we stopped giving him the medication. We wanted to see if he really needed it. Short answer, he does. We put him back on last Monday and discovered that he talks to us more, he is happier, he can look at an assignment and just do it instead of being overwhelmed by it. The difference is striking. I’m sure that medication is not always the right answer. I know that it is sometimes prescribed unnecessarily, but then there are kids like Link for whom it is a Godsend.

I’ve had a long standing rule that kids are allowed to pick one activity for their own enjoyment. We’ve had soccer, piano, gymnastics, dance, art, etc. But recently I realized that Gleek needs more than one activity. She is a much happier person when she has things to do and places to go. When she doesn’t she solves her boredom by bouncing off of other people. I had her in Piano, which is a good fit for the musical and creative side of her, but I realized that she needs a physical activity as well. The one she has wanted for months is gymnastics. I worried about putting her in gymnastics because it is a sport that frequently pressures young girls into competitions that they are not ready to handle. But I can’t continue to keep Gleek out of an activity that I know she’ll love and be good at just because I worry about what might happen. I’ve told Gleek that she can have gymnastics, but that I won’t allow her to participate in competitions until she is 12. Odds are good that Gleek’s interests will have moved on to something else by then.

Patch doesn’t have an activity. Yesterday he said that he needs a new swim teacher because he still doesn’t know how to swim. So I’ll be signing up for that.

Kiki doesn’t have an activity either. She seems pretty content not to have one after years of taking art classes. I’m keeping my eyes open for an activity she might enjoy, but I’m also relieved to have fewer things on the schedule.

Now I just need to go fiddle with the budget to make sure I can cover the additional expenses.

The basic pattern of my days used to be:

Get kids off to school
Work on business tasks in basement office
Welcome Patch home
Finish business tasks in basement office
Welcome other kids home
Sit down with laptop in sunny front room to blog, write, surf
Do house chores
Make dinner
Supervise Homework
Bedtime stuff

The problem is that my laptop went from quirky to wonky to non-functional in the past few weeks. This means that any writing or blogging I want to do has to be done from the desktop machine down in the dungeon basement. The problem might be as easy to solve as replacing the battery, but that costs money and we’re trying to scale back. For now I’m just trying to re-work the pattern around the lack of laptop.

I’m not sure if it is related, but I’ve been finding myself listless and depressed in the mid-afternoon. It might be related to the restricted writing time. It might be related to the shortening days. It might be the looming elections and attendant antagonism I see everywhere. It might be that I’m not getting enough sleep. It might be that the school keeps scheduling events during the middle of my work hours and so I arrive at the afternoon with far less accomplished than I intended. (The correct answer is probably “All of the above”) Whatever is causing it, I’m having to make a daily effort to shake it off. Fortunately between music and friendly neighbors I keep muddling through. This morning I decided to be pro-active about it. I went to the gym for the first time in months. I’m hoping the post-workout endorphins will give me extra energy for the entire remainder of the day. Perhaps it will help me (finally) fold that mountain of laundry and get the filthy kitchen floor mopped. Maybe I’ll be able to make a loaf of sourdough bread that doesn’t crack and look like a mushroom during baking. Maybe I’ll be motivated to eat healthy instead of snarfling the cookies I made in an effort to feel better. Maybe I’ll even be healthier with more muscle tone and less fat.

I know it is a lot to ask of one gym trip. I’m going to have to keep going. This leads me back to the broken pattern. The new pattern has to be shaped around me getting to the gym regularly. I think that will be particularly important as the days get shorter and colder. Winter makes me want to hibernate. Perhaps exercise will keep me alert and cheerful.