One Cobble at a Time

A couple of weeks ago I sat and watched Patches play with a friend’s transformer toys. As I watched I remembered him being mesmerized by the display of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys at a McDonalds. At that moment I realized that my little boy is moving away from the world of Blues Clues and into a world of Ninja Turtles and Transformers. This change does not surprise me, I’ve seen three kids before him make similar shifts in interest. The change itself is not the surprise, but somehow I wasn’t expecting it right now. Patches is my youngest child and he is not a toddler anymore. I rejoice for this. I love watching him get stronger, smarter, more capable. But I also feel wistful.

On the same day that I noted Patches and the transformers, Gleek announced that she has wiggly teeth. This is also to be expected. She is 6 years old, prime age for growing adult teeth. But it saddens me that her beautiful little row of baby teeth is about to be replaced by a mish-mash of gaps and oversized grown up teeth. I know it is part of growing up. I know that I’ll love the gap-toothed smile as much as I love the one I see now. I still feel the urge to grab a camera and take a million pictures. I want to capture who she is right now, because in a year this Gleek will be gone. She’ll be replaced with an older version.

Life rolls on. I can’t bid any moment to stay forever. But sometimes I want to. . . just a little.

When we hear about events, like the shooting at Virginia Tech yesterday, our instinct is to grab our loved ones and to huddle somewhere to keep them safe. We begin to look askance at that strange person down the street or down the hall. We wonder if he or she might be the next one to pull out a rifle and shoot people. We want to withdraw from these people in an attempt to keep ourselves safe.

This is exactly wrong.

If you want to prevent an event like Columbine or Virginia Tech, you should befriend those with no friends. People with friends and social contacts do not spiral in loneliness and despair. People with something to live for do not share their pain by firing a gun. Every case of a mass shooting features a shooter who was called a “loner.” Think about it. You know a loner. Have you said hello lately? Smiled? Validated that person’s existence? You don’t have to be best friends or hang out all the time. You don’t have to put yourself in frightening situations. All you have to do is meet the loner’s eyes and treat him like a person instead of an obstacle.

Most loners will never be violent. Violence is a choice. Most people with the same amount of pain as yesterday’s shooter choose other ways to deal with it. This is admirable. But life would be better for everyone if there are a dozen friendly people nearby to ease the pain.

We are not powerless to prevent violence. All day, every day, good people do a million things to help each other, to prevent people from being driven to violent extremes. Look around you and see who needs your friendship today. That is what you can do.

Today I intend to be done blogging about our trip to Seattle. I just need it all to be done so that I can move on to other projects.

Hotel:
During our trip we spent two nights at a hotel. The kids really relished living in the lap of luxury. They grasped very quickly that nothing in the hotel was free. During the first evening Gleek inquired which of the things in the hotel would cost extra money to use. She asked about everything from the TV to the towels to the toilet paper. I was pleased that the kids were paying attention and trying to save money. The hotel room was a fairly spacious one. It had two double beds and then a little sitting area with a fold-a-bed couch. Howard and I took one bed and the kids doubled up in the others.

The kids loved the hotel. They loved snuggling into bed and watching cartoon network. They loved riding the elevators down to breakfast. They loved getting to make waffles and eating bacon every day. They loved leaping from bed to bed. They loved eating hot pockets heated in the room microwave. But more than anything else, they loved the swimming pool.

Each of the days that was stayed in the hotel featured a visit to this swimming pool. On the first day I got into my swimsuit and played with them. It was fun for all of us. Then we trooped back to the room and took turns washing off. The swimming had the added benefit of wearing the kids out so that they went to sleep easily. On the second day poor Patches was already worn out. Several days in a row of exciting activities will do that to a little guy. He fell asleep in the car on the way back to the hotel and remained asleep when I carried him upstairs. The other kids all begged to go swimming, so I carried sleeping Patches down to the pool and let him nap on one of the deck chairs. He missed the whole thing. I sat near him and wrote some of my thoughts while watching the other three kids splash and play.

The kids were sad to leave the hotel behind. I’ve had several requests to go back there again. Link in particular missed the hotel breakfasts. We’ve appeased him somewhat by introducing waffles into some of our weekend breakfasts.

Getting lost:
I do not think of myself as a person who gets lost. I’ve got a good sense of direction and before we took the trip I printed out lots of maps. Perhaps I should have expected to get lost in a strange city, but I found it extremely annoying that 3 out of 5 times that I got behind the wheel of the van, I had to call someone to help me find my way to where I wanted to go. I attribute the first two times of being lost to not having maps to and from the hotel. This is because I’d assumed that the hotel and the convention were the same location. I got lost driving from the hotel to the convention. Then I got lost driving from the Aquarium to the hotel. Both times it took me an extra 40 minutes to get where I wanted to go and I had to call our local friend Dan to help me sort myself out. The third time I got lost was due to having to make a split second decision about exiting and choosing wrongly. In that case it was Pi who gave me additional directions. Each time I did my best to remain calm about finding my way, but I found myself very angry about it. It took me awhile to figure out why.

I don’t mind at all letting people help me. I often decided that the best way to get something done is to ask someone else to help. But in these cases I decided that I was capable of driving myself and to be proven incompetent was infuriating. I like to be able to do things for myself. I knew that driving in a strange city would be a new experience for me, a challenge. I did not conquer the challenge the way I wanted to.

Movies in the car:
The drive from Orem Utah to Seattle Washington is about 15 hours long. That is a very long time for kids to sit still in the car. We managed it by making sure they got regular breaks and by throwing movie after movie into the DVD player. I even rented some new movies from Netflix so that they would have new material to watch. It worked really well. The kids were amazingly good. This was particularly true on the return trip when we didn’t stop over for a night at my sister’s house.

Watching all the movies was necessary to sanity, but I found myself wondering if by putting a stream of movies in front of them I was robbing my kids of a piece of the road trip experience. They were so intent on the electronic entertainment, that they hardly looked out the windows at all. I love watching out the windows and watching the scenery change. During this trip I found myself thinking about the pioneers who traveled the Oregon Trail in covered wagons. I watched the scenery and thought about how hard that trip would be. Occasionally I tried to draw my kids attention to things outside the windows, but mostly I did not want to disturb the quiet. I wonder if my enjoyment of scenery and thinking are a product of my childhood road trips which did not have movies. Will my children grow into contemplation of scenery or will it forever be foreign to them as they turn away from the windows toward screens?

The Shoe/Nap Incident:
On the Sunday afternoon that we were in Seattle Howard had to work the convention, the kids and I crashed at the Strohl house for a much needed quiet day. I even managed to sneak away downstairs and catch a nap for awhile. I was so exhausted that I didn’t even come fully awake when Patches crashed into the bed next to me demanding that I get up and help him put his shoes on. He wanted to go outside and play with the other kids. I was still exhausted and wanted to just lie still for awhile longer. I told Patches that I would be happy to help him put on his shoes if he would just go get them and bring them to me. Patches insisted that I had to get up right then and go help him put on his shoes. I offered him two choices, either he could wait for me to finish sleeping or he could get the shoes so I could help him without getting up. We were at an impasse.

Patches is frequently in the habit of making demands and throwing a screaming tantrum if the world does not align itself exactly as he pictures it should be. I get very tired of this. Despite my fatigue and mellow mood I decided I needed to take a stand on the issue. I’d given him two choices and over the next 30 minutes I did not waver on the shoe issue. I did attempt to snuggle him and tell him a story or to do any number of things, which I hoped would stop the screaming without me having to get out of bed. Patches would have none of it. He steadfastly refused to stop screaming unless I got out of bed to help him put his shoes on. He rebuffed all my efforts to be kind and loving.

Eventually Patches became so upset that he started crying for his blanket. After that shift I declared that I was now done napping and I got up to help him find his blanket. It wasn’t really a victory for either of us, but I figured that it was about the best that I could expect considering. A blanket and a snuggle and a snack turned the world around for Patches. And the remaining afternoon was pleasant.

I’ve thought about the incident since it happened. I’ve thought about how Patches steadfastly refused any offer of love/help that was not shaped exactly how he wanted it to be. How often do we do this? How often are we so disappointed in a gift, which isn’t what we would like, that we can’t see how much love went into the selecting of the gift?

During our 30 minute battle I tried to reach out in love to Patches many times, but because my love was not shown by me getting out of bed to put his shoes on, Patches could not see my love for what it was. He could not comprehend that I would show my love for him by teaching him that he can not always shout orders and expect people to obey his whims. It is perhaps too sophisticated a concept for a four year old, but I as an adult have no excuse. I need to be careful to make sure that I am open to expressions of love which are proffered in ways that I do not expect.

Last night I dreamed I was an audience participant in an amazing magic show. By the end of the show I was half in love with the magician, so I was delighted when, of all the crowd, he came to speak to me. I’d just reached the part of the dream where the magician was going to reveal that he loved me too, when Patches crashed into bed with me and woke me up. I snuggled Patches into bed with me, regretting the loss of the dream. It had been a lovely story and I wanted to see the rest. I was drifting back toward sleep when I realized that I’ve already seen the rest. It was no wish-fulfillment dream. It was my life history played back to me under the guise of a story. See, 13 years ago the magician did pick me out of the audience and take me home.

At the time I didn’t fully realize that Howard was a magician. I was only at the play because my roommate was a cast member. Howard was the conductor for the on-stage orchestra. I recognized him as the roommate of my former boyfriend. I’d been introduced to him once, but I was with another guy and did not follow up on my interest. This time I had several hours to watch him on stage. I knew I wanted to talk to him, but I did not dare.

I did, however, dare to come back to the play again. This time I determined that I would at least speak to him and compliment him on the play, particularly on the music. He’d written many of the songs in the play and they deserved praise. I was working my way to the end of the row of seats, rehearsing what I meant to say. I had less time to rehearse than I’d anticipated because he was at the end of the row waiting for me. I wish I could remember what he said. I can’t. I do remember that he spoke first. In all the crowded audience he had seen me, and he wanted to know my name.

We went to dinner that night and many nights thereafter. In fact I never went on a date with anyone else again. We did not have a fairytale courtship, nor wedding. There were no evil queens to interfere, nor singing birds to adjust my veil. Instead we had prickly government employees at the county registrars office and a trio of sisters to help me fix my hair. It was all so much harder and more wonderful than stories would lead one to assume. There has been no happily ever after to neatly end the story. Instead there have been more than 13 years of laughter and anger and frustration and joy. Sometimes we had all of those things simultaneously.

There have been times when I have felt like my life is hopelessly mundane, when I look at my husband and wonder how I ended up here. Not that here is bad, but it just seems so ordinary, so lacking in fireworks and music. Those are the times when I can’t see the magic in front of my nose. See, he chose me when he did not have to. Better than that, every day he continues to choose me. And he is magic. Anyone who has been in a room with him, who has heard him speak, knows this. He can take a simple gathering and turn it into a laughter filled event. But more precious than his public magic are the private gifts. The tears he will shed in front of no one else, the joys and jokes that are for my ears alone. In a hundred tiny ways he continues to choose me every day.

Patches did not ruin my dream this morning. He woke me up into a better one.

I love it when the world is sunny. I love it even more when it is a sunny Saturday morning and my kids have actually gotten their work done. Things are put away and my house is orderly. All of this and it is only noon right now. Even better, I’m writing this blog entry upstairs where I can see the daylight instead of down in my basement office. I’ll transfer the entry to my internet connected computer later.

Yesterday Link spent all afternoon and evening playing with his Nintendog. When bedtime came he suddenly dissolved into tears. He told me he was crying because for the past three days he’d been only playing Nintendogs and had forgotten to snuggle his blankets. Further digging turned up the useful information that he’d been thinking about Nintendogs all day at school as well and it had distracted him from his school work. He was very remorseful about this and said that maybe we should ground him from video games for two years to make up for it.

I was very pleased that he was coming to terms with the reality of video game overload. He could tell his life was out of balance and was asking for help to re-balance it. I recommended that rather than a total ban on video games, we try to set some daily limits. Link agreed with that idea as well as he was able to do. He was very upset, completely convinced that this was a crisis of epic proportions. He spun in emotional circles repeating the same things over and over. For awhile Howard and I were completely unable to convince him that a good night’s sleep would solve most of it. What finally got through to him was making concrete plans for today that did not involve video games. We started with homemade waffles.

Today I’ve had to tell him to turn off the game twice. He isn’t allowed to play until after his work is done, but he’s been cheerful all morning and has spent long stretches of time playing games with Gleek and with Patches. For awhile he was even pushing Patches on a swing and trying to teach Patches how to pump his legs to keep going. I love when the kids play games together.

So, the house is clean, the kids have been nice to each other, Link made a breakthrough of sorts, and I’ve got fresh cut lilacs in a vase. It is being a good Saturday.

During our trip to Seattle we hit several public places with the kids. These included The Science Fiction Museum, Seattle Center Children’s Museum, Emerald City Comic Con, and the Seattle Aquarium. Each of these places was a fascinating destination and I could have spent hours just wandering and reflecting. Instead I pelted helter-skelter through each one trying to keep track of four kids. The kids are usually very good about staying together, but in a place such as the museum, there are so many new things to see that they forget to stay together. For the Sci Fi Museum, and the Children’s Museum I had additional adults to help me keep track of the kids. For the comic con and the aquarium I was on my own.

I think the biggest challenge was the very different attention spans of my four kids. Kiki would have liked to meander slowly reading signs and looking closely. Link was frankly frightened by the Sci Fi Museum and just wanted to leave. Gleek spent as much time swinging on railings as she did looking at exhibits. Patches merely demanded to be carried everywhere. But despite the chaos we all got through and had fun.

I think the highlight of the Sci Fi Museum was the SETI display. They had a rotating cylinder which contained one million tiny yellow beads and one black bead. The point was to show how difficult the search for extra-terrestrial life is with the sky full of stars. Kiki was very impressed with the concept and began spinning the tube to look for the black bead. I took two steps farther on to let Patches examine some buttons when Kiki announced “I found it!” Disbelieving, I stepped back to look. There it was, a black bead among the yellow. Kiki then spun the cylinder to lose the bead and she found it again within three minutes. Then Gleek took a turn and she found the bead as well. We walked away completely unconvinced of the difficulty of finding aliens. Obviously SETI should hire my daughters.

The highlight of the Children’s Museum was the gearworks room. Gleek, Patches, and Link all spent nearly an hour there playing games and making things go. Kiki preferred the Bob the Builder room because it had a “water” pump which actually pumped blue plastic balls. She created a whole game which involved the balls, the pump, and the buckets. Unfortunately we left the Children’s Museum about 10 minutes too late to avoid a scene at the food court. The kids were all over-tired, over-excited, and over-hungry.

We only made a very quick pass through Emerald City Comic Con. I could tell very quickly that it was a place for fans and collectors, not really for young kids. I had to make sure the kids got a chance to see daddy working at a convention, but then we quickly decamped to go to the Aquarium.

For whatever reason, my kids love Aquariums. They love seeing all the strange and varied forms of sea life available. This trip they loved the underwater dome where they got to be underneath the fish. We even got to see a diver feed the fish while we sat inside the dome and watched. Gleek had her dreams come true when she got to touch a sea urchin and feel its spines “hug” her finger. Kiki got to do this years ago and told Gleek about it. Gleek finally got to do it for herself. By far the funniest thing in the aquarium was watching a puffin give itself a bath. At least I think that is what the bird was doing. All I know is that it would flop its wings around and then dive under the water. It did this over and over while my kid’s giggled and giggled. It was really funny to watch. For me the coolest thing was the big red octopus. I took some pictures of that.

They were all good places to go and the right choices for my kids. Hopefully they’ve created happy memories that they can draw upon at a later date.

For a couple of months now Link has been very carefully saving all his money. He’s done extra chores and even sold off some of his old stuff to his younger siblings. He was trying to save $30 because that was enough money to buy Nintendogs for DS. On Monday he finally had enough money and we bought him the “Lab & friends” version of the game.

Nintendogs allows people to have virtual puppies that they train and take care of and play with. Link has been delighted with his new virtual pet. Since Tuesday Link has been spending the majority of his spare minutes playing with his labrador puppy, whom he named Mario. Even when Link has been watching a movie, he has his DS open so that his puppy can watch the movie with him.

I think I like this little Nintendog. Ever since it arrived in the house Link has gone to bed quickly and easily. He’s happy to go to bed because he can get up in the morning and play with his puppy again. In fact, Link has been asking me to get him up earlier in the morning so that he can have more time to play. The last two mornings Link has been out of bed and dressed inside 10 minutes. Then he shovels in breakfast and has nearly 40 minutes to play with his puppy before school. The last couple of days I’ve gone back to bed for more sleep during this time. At school departure time, Link happily shuts down his DS and leaves for school. This is quite different from most video games. Mostly we can’t allow video games before school because it is too hard to turn them off.

At noon each weekday I have to be at the school to pick up Gleek from Kindergarten. This also happens to be Link’s lunch time. Each day he meets me outside Gleek’s classroom (which is right next to the lunch room) and we have a few minutes to talk before I need to take Gleek home. Link always gives me and Patches and Gleek several hugs. I love seeing my kids be glad to see each other. It makes up for some of those times when these same kids deliberately annoy each other. The last couple of days there has been a new component to these lunchtime rendezvous. Now Link very carefully and seriously talks to Gleek and gives her specific instructions on how to take care of the Nintendog puppy. The instructions are quite lengthy and include a list of specific requirements and restrictions. Gleek listens very seriously to the list and once at home discharges her obligations to the virtual puppy with the utmost seriousness. She knows that when Link returns from school, he will ask her to report. Then Link will run off to play with his puppy.

I’ve watched all of this with a feeling of bemusement. I know that pets are supposed to be good for kids and I’ve often felt guilty that we don’t have any. My allergies exclude the possibility of a cat and have put a damper on our enthusiasm for any animal at all. I have four kids to take care of, I don’t want to take responsibility for an animal as well. But then I watch how much my kids love playing with other people’s pets and I wonder if I am depriving them merely for my own convenience. Link’s Nintendog is giving him some of the things which are touted as the primary benefits of owning a pet. He is feeling responsibility for his little virtual dog. He enjoys playing with the dog and teaching it tricks. He loves the dog, but it isn’t the same experience as owning a real dog. The virtual dog is smarter and more obedient than a real dog would be. Clean up is a simple click, no nasty smells involved. But the virtual dog can not be a family member the way a real dog can. And a virtual dog is hard to snuggle.

I will continue to enjoy watching Link’s happiness with his virtual pet. He is full of plans for toys he will buy and is saving up for a second puppy. I will watch and I will continue to wonder if the introduction of a real animal would be good for our family and good for the animal, or unfortunate for everyone involved.

For better or worse today was a writing day. I kept my promise to pay attention to the kids and respond to their needs. I even scheduled a trip for Patches to the library. He loved the trip so much that he thanked me on the way home by throwing a tantrum because I refused to take him to the store and buy potato chips. Some days I just can’t win. But when I was not paying attention to children I was either writing or doing something that occupied my brain so that I could stop thinking about writing. Sometimes when I’m trying to form a story the wheels in my head start spinning. I’m not getting anywhere, but that won’t stop them from spinning anyway. That’s when I have to read or watch a movie or do something else so that I don’t feel trapped by the story. I end up hating the story if it won’t go forward and won’t leave me alone. The mental breaks are always helpful because usually after the break I get unstuck.

Unfortunately routine household tasks leave plenty of space in my brain for the wheels to spin endlessly. This means that my house is a wreck today. It bugs me that my house can be nicely clean one day and a disaster the next.

This morning Kiki left for a two night stay at a school camp. I’m glad she gets to go. And it may be awful of me, but I’m glad I only have three kids to put to bed instead of four. It is silly to feel that way because Kiki is the easiest to put to bed, but she is also the latest up. Theoretically this means that for the next two nights I get more time off in the evenings than usual. I’m not sure how I’ll spend it. I should probably get extra sleep.

Many thanks to Janci today. She gave me her old IBM Thinkpad. I can now sit upstairs in the sunlight and type away at stories. This is a huge improvement over writing the stories longhand and then typing them into my computer in the basement. If I sit in the basement typing for too long I begin to feel trapped. The Thinkpad is an ancient machine with no battery, no CD drive, and no internet access. The only way to get data on or off of it is by USB stick. I don’t care, it solves a problem and I love it already. Yay free laptop!

There were some tensions inherent in the trip to Seattle. I knew going in that combining a family trip with a business trip was not going to be all roses. The trip was something of an experiment that way. We were trying it out to see if it would work. I knew that if having the family along interfered with business goals, then we would never do it again. To insure that family did not interfere with business, I had to be in full family manager mode. Unfortunately this excluded business manager mode. I could make sure that the kids and I never interfered with Howard doing business, but I could not be doing business things myself because I had to be doing mommy things. There were several times where I wanted to be more supportive of the business goals, but I couldn’t because I was being mommy. Everyone else understood and took this for granted, but it created unresolved internal tension for me.

I solved some of the tension by pre-planning. I had a book full of maps and directions to all probable destinations in the Seattle area. Unfortunately I have limited experience with conventions. All the conventions I have attended took place inside the hotel where we stayed. I assumed the same would be true for Emerald City Comic Con. Thus I had lots of maps and directions leading to and from the convention, but not a single one to or from our actual hotel. In fact we only located the hotel due to the help of Dan, who called around to find where we were staying and get directions.

Another unpleasant discovery was realizing that I’m still not as good at meeting and greeting as I would like to be. Meeting with Schlock fans is fine because they already know who we are and are very ready to be nice to us. That is a very comfortable place to be. But there was a cartoonists BBQ held at Bill Barnes house. At that place I would identify myself as the wife of Howard Tayler and, instead of saying “Ah!” and being glad to talk to me, most of the people said “Who?” I found myself suddenly in the position of having to explain Schlock, and what Howard does, and what I do. I was not comfortable with that. I’m afraid that I was not very good at it either. I don’t think I ever stuck my foot in my mouth, but none of my conversations were fruitful either. I was somewhat glad to dive back into mommying and not have to talk to more people.

Prior to departing for Seattle I made a big push to get my business cards printed. In Seattle I never even pulled one out. I don’t regret having the cards. They will be useful on other occasions. It does show how far I was from thinking business thoughts though. I didn’t even realize that I’d not used any business cards until I was on the way home.

For Seattle, the kids and I had a great vacation. Howard had a good business trip. Unfortunately we weren’t together for much of it. Howard missed the vacation and I missed being helpful to the business trip. It was not a failure, but I think I prefer to try to keep the two more separate in the future.

Today slipped away from me somewhere. For most of the day I forgot to check my list and remember the chores that I’d assigned myself. Partly this was due to a need to catch up on sleep. Another part was due to straining my left side lower back yesterday. The twinges kept me moving slowly and carefully all day. Fortunately the discomfort is measurably better now than it was at this time last night. A couple more days will have me back to normal. In the future I’ll try not to balance quite so many library books simultaneously.

Another reason for the ignoring of the task-list is that my brain has been spinning potential stories all day. I finally got the invitation to submit from Julie Czerneda. I should have gotten it two weeks ago, but apparently the email went astray somewhere. Since yesterday I’ve been trying to feed my subconscious lots of material relating to the topic, hoping that something will click. Right now I’ve got mental sketches of two possible stories. I’ve only got until May 15 to write, revise, and submit. I’m not accustomed to working that fast. I hope I can pull it off without completely neglecting other things.