One Cobble at a Time

Today is my birthday. It is also Lewis Caroll’s birthday.  Over the past two years I’ve developed a livejournal tradition of posting a story or imaginative essay here to commemorate both events.  The first two such entries can be found here:  http://sandratayler.livejournal.com/59852.html and here: http://sandratayler.livejournal.com/127561.html.  For this year I wrote a little story it is kind of a rough draft, but I’ve run out time to edit:

“You can’t get rid of that!”  hissed the diamond-eyed demon from his perch on Jodi’s shoulder.  “What if you need it later?  Besides, Aunt Beth made that had for you.  You can’t get rid of something that Aunt Beth made!”

“But it’s an ugly, lumpy, poorly made hat.”  The pallid demon coughed out from Jodi’s other shoulder.  “You’ll never wear it.”

“Aunt Beth made it just before she died.”  hissed the first demon.

Jodi sighed and returned the hat to the drawer where it had spent the last 10 years.  The diamond-eyed demon cackled with glee and gyrated it’s green body in a victory dance.  the other demon sagged even more limply and surveyed the cluttered room with resignation.

Oblivious to both the rejoicing and despair, Jodi creaked to her feet to answer the doorbell.  Both demons settled in for a nap.  They weren’t much interested in visitors, unless the visitors also brought gifts.

“Thank you so much for coming Tricia!”  Jodi said as she opened her door to an older woman with greying hair.  “I tried to get some done before our appointment, but I can’t even see where to start.”

Tricia’s eyes flickered to the demons on Jodi’s shoulders as she spoke.  “Jodi, it is my job to help people get organized.  We won’t have any trouble at all.” The demons rustled uneasily.  It was almost as if this Tricia could actually see them.

“I thought we could start in my bedroom.”  Jodi said as she turned to lead the way upstairs.

Quicker than a cat, Tricia’s hand snaked out and snatched the green demon by it’s wings.  It barely had time to blink before she dropped it into her purse and zipped the purse shut.  

“Excellent idea.”  Tricia responded as she tucked the purse under her arm.  The diamond-eyed demon’s howls of protest were muffled by the layers of faux leather.  Tricia looked around the cluttered bedroom.  Her eyes lit upon the hat.  She strode into the room and picked it up. “Let’s start with this.”  She declared.  The pallid demon sat up with interest.

“That’s the hat my Aunt Beth made for me right before she died.”  Jodi said dutifully.

Tricia pinned Jodi with her eyes.  “Do you wear it?”

“No.”

The pallid demon remembered his duty and repeated his earlier mutter.  “It’s an ugly, poorly-made hat.”  

The other demon shrieked from the depths of the purse, but it was impossible to discern any words.

Tricia raised an eyebrow.  “Do you even like the hat?”

“You hate the hat.”  hissed the pallid demon frailly.

“No.”  Jodi mumbled.  “I’ve never liked it much.”

“Then we get rid of it.”  Said Tricia firmly as she tossed the hat into the large empy box labelled Goodwill.

The pallid demon on Jodi’s shoulder sat up straight.  It focused it’s intent gaze upon the new ally, Tricia.  A slow grin began to appear on the demon’s face as item after item went into the Goodwill box.  From within the depths of Tricia’s purse, the wail of the other demon grew increasingly frail.

I was sitting in my brother’s living room when Gleek and her four year old girl cousin came prancing into the room.  They were all decked out in princess gear complete with dresses, tiaras, and wands.  Patches followed along on all fours wearing his normal clothes.  I listened as the two girls spun a story about how they were the most beautifullest girls ever.  Then they went to a ball in the kitchen to meet the prince.  There was a brief effort to press Patches into service as the prince.  He didn’t want to be a prince.  He wanted to be a puppy.  He was quite adamant about being a puppy.  Confronted with the prospect of a barking, panting prince, the girls decided to make do with an imagined prince.

I listened to see how they would solve the problem of a single prince for two princesses.  I expected them to conjure a second prince into existence, but Gleek just declared with a wave of her hand that the prince just married both of them.  Apparently Prince Charming is a polygamist.  This would explain why he features in so many different fairy tales.  Won’t Cinderella and Snow White be surprised when they find out?

The obligatory ball-and-wedding having been dispensed with, the two princesses and their puppy trooped back downstairs to do other princess things.  Poor imaginary Prince Charming was abandoned in the kitchen like the prop that he was.

My head is full of thoughts, but most of them are related to a task list rather than thoughts than I can spin out into elegant prose. It’s kind of a shame. I like it when I write well. Those are the entries that I really enjoy re-reading. But today my head is much too full of laundry and no matter how beautiful the clothes are, when they’re all crumpled together in a pile they’re just laundry. Hmm, that analogy really works because I’m sure that if I can pick out some of my thoughts and shake the wrinkles out they’d probably be beautiful and profound, but right now they’re all jumbled into a heap. What is it about laundry baskets that the one item of clothing that you really want disappears into the middle of the mass never to be seen until you finally cave and just fold everything in the basket? Would that I could pick all my thoughts out one by one, fold them neatly, and then store them away. I could have a whole dresser full of story ideas just waiting for me to pull them out. Another dresser could be full of thoughts on parenting. But alas my brain is very like my house right now. It looks like someone turned it upside down and shook it.

Tomorrow we leave for my brother’s house. The kids are excited. I’m glad. Howard is stressed because he feels like he didn’t get enough done this week and now he is out of time. Howard rarely feels like he got enough done even when he has scripted, pencilled, and inked an entire week of comic in one day. This week he has done enough to hold the buffer steady which is good. But we’re both feeling pressure to get the next book moving. This trip to Pocatello negates the possibility of doing any work on the book this week. I feel bad for messing up Howard’s work schedule, but not bad enough to cancel the trip. It’s been ages since I went anywhere for my birthday.

Since we’re departing tomorrow, today was meant to be a day of house cleaning. I’m having trouble getting moving on that. I seem to be low energy and distractable today. It may have something to do with my diet. I’ve been cutting out junk food and adding more vegetables. I think my body is protesting the change. Or maybe it’s an after effect of too little sleep for much of the week. When I’m seriously short on sleep my body goes into a high-energy crisis mode where I’m really effective. I can only pull it off for a day or two before I crash. There are some other factors involved too because sometimes when I short myself on sleep I can’t function well the next day. I got enough sleep last night which may have signaled my body that we were out of crisis mode and thus it could start demanding even more rest. Hopefully I’ll be able to kick into gear this evening because I’d like to be able to come back to a clean house rather than a jumbled one.

In November life around here was pretty stressed. We were getting ready for the launch of the second Schlock book and business concerns reigned supreme. There were lots of little sacrifices of family time to feed the engine of business. In December we eased off on the business stuff and put the family stuff back in. It felt so good that we did the same for most of January as well. Unfortunately this has now put us behind our intended schedule for the next Schlock book.

Just this week I have made contractual negotiations with an artist to illustrate my children’s book. Creating this book is going to take 3 months of emailing to discuss the pictures. I am thrilled about this project. I am overwhelmed by this project. It is breaking new ground for me and I’m nervous. There is so many ways for this to go wrong and just as many wonderful ways for it to go right. I’m tempted to go babbling to Howard with every care and concern about this project, but I have realized that if I do so I’ll be taking up the space in his brain that he needs to put toward creating his book. Since Howard’s books are the ones that pay our bills, I really need to not interfere with their completion. In fact I need to get my head back on straight and aid an abet the completion of the next Schlock book.

Being more focused on helping Howard get his next book out does not mean abandoning my projects. I just need to make sure that my projects stay out from under his feet. I also need to make sure that my projects do not interfere with the daily getting-things-done that is necessary to keep life running smoothly. Oh but I want to just ignore laundry and dishes and children to chase the shiny project. I mustn’t do that. I need to keep everything moving.

I just realized something. I always have a project in process. The type of project varies greatly from “keep the house perfectly clean” to “writing a story” to “planting a garden” to “teaching Gleek to read.” Right now I’m enthusiastically chasing this book project, but I’m also trying to psyche myself up to be really excited about facilitating Howard’s book. It’s working.

I got to go rollerskating with my kids yesterday. It was as much fun this time as it was last time. I was just feeling warmed up and enjoying myself as it was time to go. The kids didn’t want to leave so soon, but Kiki had to get ready for an overnight edventure at the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center. Rasinfish was along for the rollerskating and she got a tour of the space center as well. She agrees with me that it is an incredibly cool thing to have available for kids. Patches went with us and delighted in crawling into all the bunk spaces and up ladders and down stairs. This morning I left Patches behind when I retrieved Kiki. He realized what I’d done and was very sad that he didn’t get to go play in the space ships some more.

Yesterday for lunch I got to visit with my friend Julie of Mental Tesserae. We’ve known each other for years, but we don’t get together often. We’ve been much better about keeping in touch since we discovered that we both have blogs. It was fun to sit down with her and talk about the experience of blogging. As a side note, I have decided that I’m going to have to use the word tesserae in a story sometime. It is too interesting a word to leave lying around unused.

I have flowers blooming in my house. Several of the grape hyacinth bulbs I planted have begun to bloom. None of the daffodils are blooming yet. But my african violet has decided to send up a lone little bloom. I think the violet needs to be repotted. I also have a poinsetta in full bloom. Poinsettas tend to be tricky plants. I can never keep them alive, so I never buy them. But as I was walking out of a garden center on January 2nd an employee handed me the pot and said “here, it’s free.” So now I have a poinsetta with two stalks of beautiful red blooms and a third stalk which has withered away. I expect the other two stalks to join the first soon, but for now I have bright red flowers.

Patches came up to me today with a little grin on his face. “Mom, why did to boy throw the butter out the window?” Thinking that this was one of his odd, but serious questions I answered that I had no idea. He replied “Because he wanted to see a butterfly.” Patches told me a joke. He’s not even 4 yet and he already successfully pulled off a joke. He was so pleased with himself that he immediately started on a second one. “Why did the boy throw the bread out the window?” I answered that I didn’t know. “Because he wanted to see…wait.” Patches’ brow crinkled as he realized that applying the same formula to the new word was not going to have the same effect. He sighed. “I don’t know.” But then we found something else to laugh about so it was all okay.

Next weekend I get to escape town altogether and go visit my brother’s family in Pocatello. Yay!

This morning I attended a school event at Link’s class. It was called “Moms and Muffins.” The whole point is for Moms to come to class and read for an hour with their children. As an enticement to the moms, they are given muffins if they come. Link was very excited about this event. He’d watched Gleek have her turn a couple of months ago and was glad for an hour of having mom all to himself. I was glad for the event as well. It finally got me out of the house for a pleasant event. Out of the house is important because otherwise I’d spend all day attempting to entertain myself by watching the advance of glaciation on my windows.

I also got out of the house to run Patches to his gym class and to pick up Gleek from school and to pick up Link from school and to pick up Kiki from school. Those trips weren’t as fun, because mostly they involve coaxing recalcitrant children into and then out of the van. Gleek did recalcitrant exceptionally well today. By the time I was done doing all of that out-of-the-house I was rather glad when Kiki decided to skip art lessons today. Instead I huddled in my office and played Chuzzle for awhile. My office is a much nicer place now that I’ve installed a full spectrum light. Partly I wonder if it is a placebo effect. Perhaps the addition of any lamp would have made it better. Oh well. I have the bulb now. I might as well use it.