Twilight has a magic to it. It is dim enough that lights shine over distances, but still bright enough that trees and buildings have detail. The cooling air is invigorating and the blueness of the sky is soothing. I like being outside at twilight. I once read a story about a fairy maiden who would dance in a meadow under the shining moon. She was beautiful and, of course, someone saw her and fell in love. I don’t remember the rest of the story, but that image of dancing in the wind under the trees stayed with me as an ideal of beauty and freedom. I’ve often wished I could find some big open place and just dance. What a wonderful way to feel wild and young and free. I still wish for it sometimes. There is a part of my soul that cries out against the regimentation of my life. I don’t go outside at twilight anymore because that is bedtime, one of my most intensive times of day. That is when the kids need my full attention as I read stories and help with prayers and drinks and snacks. I help with these things enclosed inside four walls. Have you ever noticed that the air is dead inside a building? People call that “stuffy” but to me it feels dead. Inside air doesn’t live or invigorate the way that outside air does. (Of course inside air shelters, but that’s a subject for a different day.)

Responsibility is a trap and a joy. My children depend on me to provide stability. The last thing I want to do is fail them. They bring me joy and purpose. I can’t run off to dance in moonlit fields without abandoning them. But I can write a story about someone who does. I can dance in my own backyard. Just because I can’t have the whole dream doesn’t mean I’ll refuse the snatches of it that I can have.

Mothers give and give and give to their children. Giving is just part of the job description. Mothers are like gardeners who sprinkle water from their own reserves to make sure that everything stays growing. Unfortunately if I as a mother allow my wellspring to get completely empty then I have nothing more to give and everyone suffers. Today I realized that I haven’t been doing enough to keep my wellspring full. Fortunately there are a few small changes I can make that I think will make a huge difference.

I will read from my scriptures every day. This gives my brain and spirit something meatier to nourish them than the usual light reading I default into.

I will do something every day to make my home more beautiful. It may just be doing the dishes and wiping the counters, but sometimes I’ll try to do longer lasting things like planting flowers or (gasp) repainting a room.

I will do something active every day. Right now the default for this is walking Link home from school, but anything that gets me moving will do.

I will write something every day. It might be a fragment of story, it might be a journal entry, but writing focuses my thoughts and makes me feel like I actually did something measurable. I’ll probably be putting most of it in here because feedback makes writing more rewarding.

Each week I will schedule some time for a project that is mine. It might be sewing, it might be a trip to the hardware store, it might be an early morning birdwatching jaunt. The important bit is that I plan ahead for it and it is something that I want to do not something that someone else asked of me.

Thought processess like the one above are one of the reasons I love going to church. In church meetings topics are discussed that bring inspiration to my mind and I understand my life in new ways. Today the lesson made me realize how discouraged I’d been feeling lately. In almost the same moment that I identified discouragment as my problem, everything I wrote above flooded into my head as a solution. Inspiration is wonderful.

It is late. I should be sleeping. Sleeping is harder when Howard is gone. Tonight he and Link are on a church sponsored father/son campout. This is important bonding time for the two of them. Howard briefly considered taking Patches along too, but then realized that there would be diapers involved with that project. It’s just as well, I’d have a hard time sending my “baby” off camping without me. That “baby” is now half a year away from his third birthday. Just yesterday I pulled out size 3T clothes for him to wear. I’m not sure why it is that the bigger clothes should make him seem so much older, but they do. He’s really a little boy now not a baby anymore.

Wow, late night sleepies with no Howard make me rambly. I meant to write about Howard and campout.

Today was a much less hectic day. Note: “less hectic” is not the same as “peaceful” I did manage to finish the day with the house visibly cleaner than it began.

And I’ve just realized that I’m too tired to write anymore. All the thoughts sneak away before they’re more than half-formed into words. I assure you I had good thoughts. I think they’re waiting for me on the far side of a good night’s sleep.

This was supposed to be the week where I finally settled in to the school schedule and got the chores under control. The calendar was fairly empty. Here I am at Thursday. I’ve been busy all week and most of the chores are still not done. On Tuesday I was reporting a lost day. I think I’m really close to having to report a lost week.

TODAY:
6:45 get up
7:00 get everyone else up
7:15 breakfast
7:50 drive Link to school
8:00-8:25 Kiki takes a “quick” bath I seize a moment to read email & news
8:25-8:45 Kiki styles her hair, I change laundry loads & read webcomics
8:45 Kiki announces “look what I did!” Her hair and Patches hair are slicked down with so much hairgel that the hair has formed into a protective helmet. It is too late to do anything but let her go to school that way.
8:50 Drive kiki to school
9:05 we arrive back home and Patches touches his now dried-into-a-shell hair and tells me “My hair is yuck.” I reach to try to ruffle it up a little and the over-gelled hair scratches my finger. A bath is definitely in order, but I come into the house and get distracted.
9:10-9:40 doze on the couch while Gleek and Patches watch Scooby doo
9:40-11:00 Gleek & Patches ride bikes I do some long overdue yardwork
11:00 I get stung by a wasp which somehow crawled up inside my gardening glove.
11:00-11:30 treated the wasp sting, put away gardening gear, and kept close tabs on myself to see if I would have a reaction.
11:30-12:30 lunch, puttering in the house, and putting Patches down for a nap.
12:30-1:45 I think this time disappeared into the sucking black hole that is the internet. Not sure though.
1:50-2:40 Walked to Link’s school to retrieve him, took Gleek on an emergency potty run, sent Link back to his class for forgotten items, walked back home.
2:40-3:15 helped Link do his homework because I knew we wouldn’t have time later
3:30-3:50 Picked Kiki up from school. All the way home I had to listen to plans from her about how she could get to the entire safety fair without having to go to Link’s soccer game first.
3:50-4:40 Food, book, and ignoring of the children.
4:40-4:55 mad scramble to get soccer clothes on Link, shoes on everyone else, load chairs, fix sandwiches, fill water bottles, and out the door.
5:10 we arrive 10 minutes late for Link’s soccer game.
5:10-6:00 Soccer game while refusing to allow Gleek to run off to the park by herself, there was also an emergency potty run involving Gleek.
6:00-6:15 drive straight to Kiki’s school safety fair.
6:15-7:45 School safety fair. This was an event I did not want to attend at all. The kids loved it. They got to play on giant inflatable slides. Kiki got to dunk teachers. Patches got to touch a helicopter, a firetruck, and an ambulance. We got to watch the helicopter take off. They played on the playground for a long time as well. Face painting and freebies were also there. These kind of events when held by Link’s school are almost pleasant because I am constantly running into friends and neighbors with whom I can exchange casual chit-chat. I don’t know anybody at Kiki’s school. I think I just need to stay in this house forever because I have 8 years worth of friendships accumulated. I know pretty much everyone who lives in a three block radius. The isolation at Kiki’s fair pointed out how much I don’t want to have to start from scratch in a new place. The kids loved the fair. I was exhausted by it. We had a lost dollar crisis, a potty crisis, and several “where is my child?” moments.
8:00-8:40 back home, make the dirty sticky hair-gelly children get into their pajamas and into bed. I momentarily considered baths before bed, but I was too tired to want to do that.
8:40-9:15 writing this entry.

So now I guess I know exactly where today went. That’s useful I suppose. I just wish more of what I’d done had a satisfactory “I accomplished something” feel to it.

Yesterday began at 6:45 am. (Theoretically all my weekdays begin at 6:30, but I never seem to be able to get out of bed without pushing snooze at least once.) Thus began the before school scramble. I walked Link to school. That was 1.5 miles round trip, but it should count for more because I was pushing a stroller laden with 80+ lbs of Gleek and Patches. I came home and did some heavy lifting in the form of large loads of laundry, some of it wet. I also mowed the lawn which is a 2 hour long wrestle with 90 lbs of wobbly wheeled lawnmower. By the end of that, my back was informing me that I should spend the rest of the day being nice to it. After the lawn mowing it was time to retrieve Link from school which was another 1.5 miles pushed laden stroller. By that time I was in dire need of a shower. When it was time to pick up Kiki I drove. Then I supervised and early dinner while also chivvying Link into doing his homework. Then we all packed into the car for Enrichment night over at the church where I got drafted into doing 3 10-minute presentations on first aid kits as part of a crisis preparedness theme. At the end of the evening I hauled the kids back home and bundled them all into bed as fast as I could. That’s when I discovered that Kiki did not in fact have a light load of homework. She had a heavy load complete with unfinished make-up work. 2 hours later I put her to bed. Staying up an hour past that to watch CSI with Howard was almost certainly a mistake, but I didn’t want to sleep and start a new day without a little down time first.

That was yesterday.

Today began at 6:45. Thus began the morning scramble to get kids off to school…

I started this morning with a whole day ahead of me and a concise list of things to do with it. Now it is 10 pm, I still have the list, but the day is all gone.

I think mostly the culprit is not enough sleep. I have to get to bed on time so tomorrow won’t sneak away from me.
G’night all.

Over the summer I’ve grown kind of tired of hearing about the Hollywood movie slump. Then this fall a survey came out which indicated that the major reason that people aren’t going to the theater is that the movies just don’t interest them enough. Big surprise.

I’ve formed a personal theory about entertainment trends. I think Americans are more interested in long story arcs and character development than they used to be. The movies that were huge sucesses in the past few years were all movies that stood alone, but were also part of a larger story. Lord of the Rings, Spiderman, X-men, Star Wars, I’m sure there are more, but they’ve slipped my mind at the moment. TV has also trended this way. Sit coms with their static characters are not as interesting as dramas with arching storylines. Shows like Lost and 24 take this even farther where each episode is only a fragment of a larger story.

I personally like this trend that I’m seeing. I like seeing characters develop and grow. I like story writing that shifts in response to character growth. It’s one of the reasons I like reading Schlock Mercenary, which incidentally fits right in with this trend.

So, am I seeing something that isn’t there? Are there movies/shows that uphold my theory? Are there movies/shows that disprove it? What do you think?

Link has planned his future. When he grows up he is going to be a gadgeteer and a game maker and a movie maker and a soccer player. He’ll be all these things in rotation, but every fifth week he’ll take a break and just play.

My response to this solemn declaration? “Wow Link, that sounds like fun!”

I just got back from my county health department. Both Gleek and Patches were WAY overdue for immunizations. Gleek got 5 shots and was a very brave little girl about it. Patches, who got 6 shots, screamed and had to be restrained. It took far longer than I expected or wanted it to. I’m an emotional mess because watching my children be injected with possibly harmful liquids does not make me happy.

I wrote in detail about immunizations last year: (http://www.livejournal.com/users/sandratayler/2004/10/07/) I’m too tired to think that coherently today. Today I gave in to health department reasoning and pressure and had both of my little ones given the pertussis vaccination. Apparently incidences of pertussis are on the rise. They also got varicella which is one I’ve never had to deal with before. Whee.