Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 144

Perspectives on clutter

Our front room is like a little eddy in the flow of our lives. Things wash up here and remain until some effort is made to move them elsewhere. I know the traditional use for a front room is a place that is always clean to welcome guests. I like that idea, but I'm not good at putting it into practice. More often our front room gets used as a staging area for any large project which includes things exiting or entering the house. Which is most of them these days. Right now my front room...

A little bit of running away

I really should have gone straight home after I finished helping a friend move a load of boxes to her new house. I found that I did not have it in me to go back home and start working on the list of chores. Instead I drove to Zupas, bought lunch, and ate while reading. I even found a table in the corner where I could tune out all the other patrons. So I narrowed my focus to the world in the pages, transmitted to me through text. When I emerged, all my food was gone and an hour had...

Sea Monkeys and a part time cat

Gleek would dearly love to have a pet. Her desires are hampered on two points. First, Howard and I require children to express their commitment to pet ownership by saving up enough money to buy both the animal and all the accouterments. Gleek tends to spend her money impulsively. Second, I am allergic to the pets she would enjoy most. This really stinks for both of us, because she'll sadly cry to me about how she would love a furry pet and I will feel guilty because it is my fault that s...

At the end of an insane week

I've spent today stumbling around, trying to get things done, but never really developing focus. If I didn't still have so many things to accomplish, I would have spent the day reading or watching a show. I think I have entirely depleted my well of organizational energy. At the moment I don't want to be in charge of anything.

I am now the owner of an iPhone. This is the result of Howard and I needing to use the devices as credit card terminals for GenCon. Having two will be a great...

A visit to scout camp

"How long till we get there?" Patch asked for the third time.

"I don't know." I sigh. Rush hour traffic made time estimation difficult, as did the unfamiliarity of the destination. I did not dare use the length of the hand drawn line on the map as an accurate measure of distance. I was sure the map would get us there, I did not know how long it would take us to arrive.

50 minutes. I'd estimated 30, so we arrived at the camp 20 minutes late. This was when I discovered that finding a...

Overload

Sometimes life is too full of things and I can't process all of it. Then my brain shuts down. I find myself reading a book without having made a conscious decision to read, or I realize that I've been staring at the wall for the last 30 minutes, but I can't remember a thing that I was thinking about. It is a normal defense mechanism. Usually when I discover it, I just give myself a break and write off the next hour, afternoon, or day. I have no space for that. I'm scrambling to finish t...

Stopping in the garage on a summer evening

Today I was not quite as busy, nor quite as effective as yesterday. This is to be expected. High efficiency days are usually followed by a crash. I did not crash, but I am oh-so-tired. Tonight I need to get to bed before 3 am.

QFT is almost complete. This is good. It took over all of my work hours today. Tomorrow I need to re-focus on convention prep. Thursday has family stuff. Friday is RMS shipping day prep. I have it all lined up neatly. I'm sure it will be rearranged as soon as ...

Things I have done today

Packed my oldest son off for a week at Scout Camp. This included last minute scrambling to find lost uniform bits and pancakes with smiley faces.

Breakfast and scripture reading. (Managed to not spill on the scriptures, which is a good thing.)

Howard and I had a quick discussion about some business propositions and what the responses should be to various requests made via email.

Answered a whole pile of email. How big is a pile? Well right now I only have 9 messages with stars next to them b...

Thoughts on Superman

When we were on vacation, we caught part of Superman Returns on television. The kids were intrigued by the Superman mythos and caught by the good-guy heroism. They wanted me to Netflix the movie. Instead of letting them start with the somewhat creepy stalkerish Superman of that film, I decided to start them with the Christopher Reeve Superman. They made it through the long, slow origin story. And once Clark Kent showed up at the Daily Planet, they were hooked. They laughed at the good l...

House and garage emptier

The garage is now emptier than it was yesterday. Two tons of books were transferred to the storage unit via my van and half a dozen boy scouts who did their good deed for the day. We also brought back 17 boxes of a different book so that I can put together a freight shipment to GenCon. Hopefully by the middle of next week we'll have cleared out the garage enough that Howard can park in it again.

By tomorrow my house will be emptier too. The parakeet has already gone home, and soon my...