Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 73

Happy Fiction

A day like yesterday teaches me the importance of fluffy fiction. Sometimes the world is hard, dark, unfair, and full of grief. This is when people need to have a break and go somewhere else. I saw The Hobbit yesterday. I snuggled my kids and watched the Wizard of Oz. They’d never seen it before and were surprised that they knew most of the songs and stories without ever having seen the film. In the evening Howard and I watched Men in Black III. Good guys win. Bad guys lose. Small and ordinary things are able to keep great evil at bay. Gandalf gives a speech about it. For the space of the film the world is how we all would like it to be instead of being massively unfair. Escape is temporary, yet the reprieve is valuable. It gives me space to believe and hope again. I am so grateful to the creators of happy fiction.

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The House of the Skewampus Schedules

On Wednesday Kiki and I stayed up until midnight. She’d been working all day on a picture book project. I stayed up an hour longer to scan all the pictures before she gave away the book on Thursday. Kiki came home from school on Thursday and crashed into sleep. She slept until 10pm and then was more or less awake until time to get up on Friday morning. She is tired and likely to drag through school today. I took a nap mid day Thursday which restored me to being functional, but fatigue returned in force by evening. I should have gone to bed early, but what with one thing and another, I didn’t. I’m tired today and a nap may be called for. Howard got an invitation to a midnight showing of The Hobbit. He went. When I got up at 5:30 this morning, he was still fully dressed and in the kitchen making breakfast. “By the time I got home an blogged my review, I realized everyone would be getting up in forty minutes. It seemed easier to just stay awake.” He crashed into bed at about 7 am. Link is also tired today from various nights of staying up later than he ought. Gleek and Patch got to sleep in a bit this morning because I knew they’d done their homework the night before.

Not one person in this house has had a normal sleep schedule for the past 48 hours. And it was just Monday when I felt a new commitment to getting to bed on time so we could stabilize the family schedule…

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Yesterday and Today in Scenes

In whatever order they fall out of my head.

***

It was eleven pm on Wednesday. I was sitting next to Kiki at the kitchen table helping her color in pictures for a school project. She had written, drawn, and lettered an entire picture book as a gift for a kindergartener. It was an assignment for her creative writing class, but also a Christmas service. Kiki had been working on the book for more than a week, ending in that last marathon day where every hour had been spent on the book. All that remained was to color in the line drawings with colored pencils. Earlier in the day Kiki had lamented the lack of a real life flood-fill. I became that tool for her. She would hand me a colored pencil and point me to a section of drawing, then I would color. Kiki would work on the opposite page, filling in the details. It was soothing, like being back in Kindergarten myself. Sliding the pencil across the pages I did not have to worry about all the dozens of to-do items from the day. They were mostly complete, this project was the last thing at the very end of the day. I could let them all go, which was good since my mind was too tired to retain much. So I colored, as instructed, until the book was done.

***

Mid-day on Wednesday I looked down at my nephew–a knee-high pre-verbal human being with big grey eyes. More than once during the day as he toddled around I would look at him and say “You need words little one.” Except he didn’t really. He was very fluent in point and grunt. We all became trained very quickly even with his mother not there to translate. He hung pretty close to me while his three siblings were downstairs watching a show. My own kids were off at school, except for Kiki who had stayed home sick. She was using her sick day to hammer through her picture book project. I’d been assured that this littlest visitor would nap while his mom was gone at her job interview. He had different ideas, most of which revolved around eating my crackers. The early stages of human development are fascinating, because their minds are so open to new stimuli without having any experience to teach wisdom. This little fellow was likely to fall off of chairs or pull things onto his head because he’d not yet learned caution or consequence. So I watched him closely, following him around my kitchen until he was so full of crackers that a nap was acceptable. Then I ran downstairs to work on shipping.

***

The phone rang again. I am the advancement coordinator for our local scout troop. It is not a job I particularly wanted, I do it as a service. When I accepted the job everyone who explained it to me was anxious to assure me that it was not too complicated and that I’d be able to handle it. I listened to all the information and did not understand why they were worried. It really did sound simple to me. And it is, because it is mostly data entry and data tracking. Except, on the night before a court of honor, I have three different scout masters calling me with last minute changes and “can we hurry and get this recorded so the scout can have a badge tonight?” Also I have to go down to the scout office to acquire all the badges and assemble them for the boys. This can take awhile when there are forty merit badges involved. All the paperwork, expense, and effort makes me think thoughts about cost benefit ratios. I understand that the point is to encourage/reward boys while getting them to learn through challenge and new experiences. I attend the court of honor. I watch my own son get his badges. I watch the faces of the scout leaders and the boys. That is when I know that for our troop, the program succeeds in getting adults to connect with boys. All the stress, paperwork, requirements, and strictures succeed in corralling adults into spending time with growing young men. That is where the success lies.

***

After the last picture on the last page was colored, I sent Kiki to bed. It was midnight. I took the book downstairs and stood at my computer to scan the pages. I pressed the book down hard on the sheet of glass to make sure that the image would have no extraneous gray. Page by page her work was preserved in digital form so that I could print out a copy for Kiki to keep. The original would be gifted to a little girl. My feet were warm as I stood, because my friend Mary had responded to a random tweet of mine by sending me the gift of a foot warming pad. I felt the warmth as I rested my head against the lid of the scanner while a bar of light passed across it. My eyes closed and I waited for the sound of the scanner bar returning to rest. Then I turned the page and scanned again.

***

I crawled into bed at 1 am on Thursday morning, carefully setting my alarm for 6:30. I forgot to turn it on. Yet my body snapped awake at 6:50 anyway, trained by months of rolling out of bed at that time. I am often tired in the mornings, but I knew I was facing the sort of day where I was only going to be able to retain a single thought at a time. So I made a list: These are things which matter today. At that early hour I knew anything which was not on the list would not happen that day. The list was my lifeline. Every time I was adrift in fatigue I would look at it and know what I was supposed to do. Help Patch with Homework. Kids off to school. Mail packages. I followed the tasks like a trail of breadcrumbs through the fog. Sleep was on the list. It was the task I was afraid to tackle because I knew that once begun it would want to consume at least three hours. The sleep was necessary but full of not-quite-remembered dreams about things to do.

***

I forgot to put “Pick up kids from school” on the list. I put “Kiki and Link to youth activity” on there. That occurred during the same time frame when I usually pick up kids. I was already twenty minutes late for the pick up when looking at a clock triggered me to remember that I was responsible for retrieving children. They were quite cheerful about it, busy playing a fun game. It is the sort of brain frazzled thing which I usually berate myself for, but berating myself is not on the list, so I can’t muster enough energy to do it.

***

On Wednesday my sister sent me a story. “Help. I need a quick critique.” It was on my list that Thursday morning, so I sat down in the quiet and read. I made notations as I read, thoughts and story structure flowing through my mind as I reacted to the words. I wished that I was not so tired, because while my critique had moments of acuteness, mostly it felt fuzzy. I love it when I can give a highly focused critique.

***

I try to do things by the rules. It saves a lot of trouble, particularly if someone checks up on something I’ve done and I’m able to spread out a paper trail of exactly how I’ve done everything correctly. However, having somebody run that check turns on the portion of my brain which obsesses about possible mistakes and then considers all possible ways to prevent those future possible mistakes. Then I have to figure out how to turn that portion of my brain off again.

***

The kitty curls up into a ball on the chair in my office. It is not the chair I use for work. She has her own chair at Kiki’s art desk. It used to be my chair. Now it is hers. Her habits change depending on the weather. In winter she sleeps indoors for much of the day and wants to pounce on things in the night time hours. I looked at her as I walked past. She was curled into a ball so tight that she resembled a tribble. I slid my hand over her fur. She made a little chirrup noise to acknowledge me, but did not open her eyes. Later she fished a six sided die out from under the edge of the couch and batted it around the room for her own amusement.

***

“My chest hurts. It’s been hurting all day.” Link said. It was not the first time I’d heard the complaint. I don’t like hearing such things because it puts me in the diagnosis zone where I have to decide what merits a trip to the doctor and what does not. Most things don’t. I fed Link some antacids and the problem went away. Time to put some antacids into Link’s backpack. Also, he might want to reconsider his diet which is made primarily of hot dogs and pizza.

***

Gleek needed a sarcophagus for the chicken that they are mummifying at school. Fortunately a plastic box was deemed acceptable. Patch needed to look up information and photographs about the Shoshone Indians. Howard found a stainless steel carabiner mug he knew would be perfect for merchandise and needed permission to spend money on new merch. The internet was aflurry with the controversies of the day, different tempests for different circles of acquaintances, each circle certain that their tempest is critically important. I read the tempests. I have opinions. I have friends on both sides of almost any issue I see. I talk about my thoughts with the people who are close to me, but hold my tongue on the internet. Someday there will be an issue where me taking a stand to declare my thoughts is more important than preventing hurt feelings. Today’s issues are not those. Also today I am too tired to explain and defend. Today I just want there to be less conflict.

***

I put the last of the calendars into a cardboard mailer. I was caught up on shipping for the first time since pre-orders opened in early November. I finally have time to consider the organization of Christmas.

***

It is late again and morning will come early.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Anxiety Follow Up

Writing the list of why I am doomed and then mocking that list was extremely helpful in establishing perspective. It let me quell the fears and move forward with the day. However it also revealed something else. I expected the list to be much longer because I thought the anxiety was a generalized mood for the day. Instead I found it to be very localized to those specific things. This means that later, when I was feeling more stable, I needed to come back to those seemingly ridiculous things and dig to find out what in them was an anxiety trigger for me. I did it by writing extensively about every detail of what I was afraid would happen for each thing. I also wrote out any wandering thoughts which were attached to the subjects. This process helped me dig out the not-ridiculous things which were at the root of the ridiculous things. Figuring out the roots is important in the long-term strategy of reducing anxiety. In this case, I am once again assigning myself responsibility for things which are outside my control. I need to figure out how to stop doing that.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Anxiety Folllow Up

Writing the list of why I am doomed and then mocking that list was extremely helpful in establishing perspective. It let me quell the fears and move forward with the day. However it also revealed something else. I expected the list to be much longer because I thought the anxiety was a generalized mood for the day. Instead I found it to be very localized to those specific things. This means that later, when I was feeling more stable, I needed to come back to those seemingly ridiculous things and dig to find out what in them was an anxiety trigger for me. I did it by writing extensively about every detail of what I was afraid would happen for each thing. I also wrote out any wandering thoughts which were attached to the subjects. This process helped me dig out the not-ridiculous things which were at the root of the ridiculous things. Figuring out the roots is important in the long-term strategy of reducing anxiety. In this case, I am once again assigning myself responsibility for things which are outside my control. I need to figure out how to stop doing that.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Poking in the Irrational Recesses of My Brain

I really should not have written that post about how I was not feeling afraid. I summoned it, or taunted it, or something. Today everything terrifies me, even though some part of my brain can step back and see how completely irrational all the fear is. So I am going to make a list of my recent decisions and how those choices will obviously lead to my ultimate doom. Then I will mock the irrationality and maybe when I’m done things will feel better.

I paid a large bill. It reduced the number in the checking account significantly. Therefore our business is doomed, we’ll never be able to get ahead, all my efforts are in vain. (Which makes complete sense, because hey I paid a big bill in full and had money left over. That’s always evidence of financial doom.)

I made a request of Howard regarding social media. Therefore I am a horrible over-controlling person who is neurotic and needy. Also interrupted his writing in order to make the request and therefore I’ve thrown him out of the writing space and he will not be able to complete the work he needs to do today and that will be my fault.(Because it is unheard of for spouses to ever need things from each other. Also, the request took him less than a minute almost two hours ago. He’s been writing this whole time.)

I agreed to baby sit my sister’s kids while she goes to a job interview. But instead of it occurring during the already chaotic afternoon hours, the kids will be here in the middle of the day. Therefore I’ve just ruined both my work day and Howard’s which will ruin the entire rest of the week because we’ll be thrown out of kilter. (Borrowing trouble anyone? The kids in question are much quieter than mine and we manage to work with mine in the house.)

I engaged in a business discussion via email. Therefore our business is doomed because…I have no idea. It just somehow is. (Yeah I can’t explain this one. The discussion is friendly with no horrible outcomes. No clue why so much doom has become attached.)

I was up until 2 am last night because the brain hamsters were running on their anxiety wheels of doom. Therefore I will never get a good night’s sleep again. (All the nights when I sleep fine are insufficient evidence to counter this.)

The laundry overfloweth. Again. Always. Therefore I am an awful slovenly person who will never accomplish anything good. (The clean kitchen does not count just the grubby carpets.)

Huh. I just ran out of reasons to be doomed. Either making this list helped and my brain is no longer seeking evidence of doom everywhere, or it really was just those things bugging me and I now have a list of things to complete/adjust in order to feel better.

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Sympathetic Vibration and Depression

If you slowly press down the C key on a piano so that the hammer does not strike the string and then keep it pressed so that the dampers are off of it, that string is now sitting free inside the piano. Then take a different finger and play a different C somewhere on the key board. Just push and let go so that the second string plays and then is dampened. You can hear the free string still vibrating in tune with the other. This is resonance or sympathetic vibration. The two strings vibrate at the same frequency, which means that they can cause each other to sound.

I am in tune with the people in my household. It is like those resonant strings where I start to pick up whatever tune it is that they are playing. I have my own music, naturally, but if two or three members of my family are playing mournful songs I pick up on that. Even when I am trying not to, my heartstrings will vibrate sympathetically. Sympathy is a good trait to have in a relationship, yet often what is needed is not sympathy but harmony or counterpoint. When Howard is depressed he doesn’t need me to sing along in tune. He needs something else so that the tune of the day will not all be bleak. This is one of the hard things about dealing with depression. I must have enough sympathy to feel compassion and still have enough detachment to play a different music.

Learning that was hard. Even harder was learning that I can’t fix someone else’s depression. Not really. I can succeed in alleviating bad moods or cheering up a child. I can get quite good at it, but I have not actually solved a problem in a lasting way. I’ve just acquired a never ending job as the make-it-better person. This job burdens me and prevents anyone from taking the long hard steps to seek out a true solution.

So I sing my own songs. I do my own soul searching to figure out why some of my songs are sad or scared. I find ways to be happy. And I try to sing in harmony with those around me. Because sympathetic vibration works both directions. Sometimes I’m the one who gets lifted by it.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Fear and Growing

One of the side effects of putting together a book composed of all the blog entries for the year is that I get to review the year just past and let me tell you, I would not re-do January through May of this year ever again. June calmed down a bit, but July and August were made out of crazy. I think I finally found my balance in October. There was just a lot of stuff, much of which did not make it into the blog. I’d say something like “rough homework time with Patch, I’m really tired” when what actually happened was four hours of crying, cajoling, scolding, and arguing because Patch could not be convinced to try to do homework. There was about 20 minutes of work to do. After that one hideously hard day, all the rest of the struggles were easier. Except there were other things. Thing after thing after thing without much respite in between. On top of all of that I was still trying to dig deep inside my own head to see if I could find the sources of my anxieties. The digging was effective. I learned the first half in April when I finally realized that I have value independent of what I do or don’t accomplish. The second half came in September when I finally knew that it is not my job to prevent my loved ones from feeling stressed. It is my job to love them and help them deal with the stresses as they come. Both of those are things I would have assured you that I already knew, but this year that knowledge sank deep and finally filled up the holes which believed the opposite. All the emotional chaos finally helped me open up enough that I could really believe when the quiet voice of inspiration spoke these truths to me.

It feels strange. I am not afraid. I am busy, often stressed about meeting deadlines, but I am not terrified that everything will fall apart if I’m not good enough. Last week was pretty exhausting. I was thoroughly worn out, all of my emotional reserves tapped to their limit, and yet I was only afraid in short flashes that vanished as quickly as they came.

I feel wary about claiming victory over anxiety, because I’m not sure that my battles there are over, however I do feel like I’ve gained some important ground. Perhaps I’ve constructed a fort, a better refuge for when I have to manage things again.

Hopefully I will never again have to manage all of these things in a two month span: a trip to see grandma in the hospital, a trip to the Nebula awards, remodeling my office, two kids having panic attacks at school, those same kids needing interventions with teachers, book release deadlines, a local professional event, a family vacation trip, major psychological realizations, a teenage relationship issue, and all the end of school events. We grow through hardship and this was definitely a growing year. I could do with a little bit of coasting for awhile.

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Resting Day

This was my day of stopping after going all week long. I slept late. I barely participated in food preparations. I ran a couple of errands. I napped. I processed a dozen store orders. I did some dishes. I ate cookies. These are the sum total accomplishments for my day. My plan for the rest of it is to write some words and then go to bed on time.

In all the spaces between the things I did, I was scraping thoughts out of the corners of my brain. They accumulate there when I do not have time to think about them. Many of the accumulated thoughts are random or silly, the kind of thing I would think about for a minute and then forget. But in my rush even those thoughts get stored for later. This morning my head was filled with swirling thoughts and not at all restful. Somewhere during the day the thoughts slowed down, as if they realized that they do not have to frantically attract my attention. They can be quiet and I will still get to them. I like it when I remember how to be quiet.

The weather turned cold today. We’ve been lingering in the fifties, not typical for December. Even when it rained, the air stayed warm–much to Gleek’s dismay. She is ready for snow. I hope that we do not get the twelve foot snowfall that she keeps speaking about wistfully. She has no idea how inconvenient such and epic snowstorm would be. I think a couple of six inch falls would make her happy. She wants to be able to sled down our hill and build a snow fort. I’ve been fine with the warmer weather and rain. I wish I’d been able to take greater advantage of it to get outdoors and finish weeding some of the flower beds, but the time went to other projects. We’ll have to see whether the rest of the winter smiles upon Gleek or upon my gardening intentions.

I just spent thirty minutes reading through the last month of blog entries. No wonder I’m tired.

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The Choir Concert

“Is Gleek’s Mom here?”

I looked up from the row of chairs I was helping to set up. “Yes?”

One of the choir directors came over to me with an earnest look on her face. My tired brain flitted over reasons she might need to see me. Top fear was that Gleek was not cooperating with the pre-concert practice or that she’d had a meltdown. I knew she was pretty keyed up, over tired, under fed, and with some pain in her mouth caused by twelve year molars trying to make an entrance through her gums. With all that, it seemed likely there would be some sort of issue. Getting Gleek dressed and out the door had been a significant cat-herding experience, which was why we’d barely had time to feed her a light snack with a promise of Wendy’s after the concert.

“I just wanted to make sure that you knew the kids are supposed to be in best Sunday dress, because Gleek’s clothes are kind of casual.”

As if I could have missed all of the four emails which had stressed this point in the past week. My tired brain stuttered over forming an answer. This was not the conversation I expected. I wanted an answer that conveyed, yes I had read all the emails, yes I’d understood them, yes I’d planned to help Gleek look her gorgeous best for the concert, but then the day had turned out so differently that I was just glad we’d made it at all. Because making it to the concert was important. I loved that Gleek was singing and finding a focus for her energies. I also wanted to give a somewhat biting response because I could hear between the words to the message Gleek doesn’t match the other students. She doesn’t fit with my vision of how this concert would be perfect.

The words which came out of my mouth were “I tried to get her to dress up, but she argued.” It was a half truth. Gleek had come downstairs wearing a swingy skirt and her choir t-shirt along with a pretty purple scarf. She’d obviously chosen the clothes with care, I’d mentioned Sunday dress, but my brain was full of a dozen other things, so I hadn’t argued. I’d just hustled us out the door.

“Well there is plenty of time. So if you wanted to run home and get something…”

I nodded and said “I’ll go ask her what she wants to do” as I walked away.

The thing is that we attend our current school, not because we live in the neighborhood, but because my kids tested into the program. Running home would be a twenty minute round trip. Yes there was time. No I didn’t want to do it. I was tired. I’d spent the afternoon helping Kiki nurse an injury and evaluating whether the injury was severe enough to merit an ER visit. The following doctor’s appointment had been reassuring, but we’d returned to immediately launch into a dinner scramble and helping Gleek get ready for the concert. In the middle of all of that there was an issue with damaged calendars that Howard needed fixed so he could sketch and then there was an email telling me that my childhood best friend’s mother–my surrogate mother–was hospitalized after multiple strokes. I’d also been short on sleep every night for a week. I wasn’t just tired, I was weary in my mind and heart.

I found Gleek. She wanted me to go fetch fancier clothes because she felt out of place among the fancier dresses of the others. I’d been prepared to face down the director and stand up for my daughter’s choir t-shirt, but for my daughter I would drive home. On the way to the car I berated myself for not grabbing a dress on the way out the door. It would have been easy. Then I would not have to give up the excellent parking space which had been the reward of our early arrival. Then I could sit in the gym and work on a critique for writer’s group which would begin at my house just after the concert was over. Instead I drove carefully through the dark, aware that my fatigue and frustration might impact my driving.

I couldn’t find the shirt Gleek wanted. Instead I brought back a Christmas red shirt which turned out to be a little too big.

“It’s okay.” Gleek said “I’ll just keep it pulled up.”

I went to sit in the gym. I had a good seat because I’d taken one page of the story I was critiquing, wrote Reserved on the back, and left it on the chair. During my twenty minute run, most of the seats had filled, but mine was still there. I looked up at the stage then focused on reading because I did not want to think about the last time Gleek performed on this stage. The stress and excitement of performing had triggered a panic attack. I’d spent half the show smiling at her, making “you’re okay” gestures, and pantomiming taking deep breaths. Gleek seemed to have forgotten that experience, but I had not. I worried that this concert would trigger the same response. I wondered if I was about to spend forty minutes trying to help my child manage anxiety from forty feet away. I’d intended to have a calm afternoon, a solid dinner, all carefully staged to reduce stress. Instead she’d skipped dinner, ran around in the gym before practice, and was wearing a shirt which made her feel self-conscious. There was a tap on my shoulder.

“Gleek looks lovely. Thank you.” said the choir director.

I just smiled at her and she moved on. I barely knew the woman. I barely knew anyone at the school. I felt bad about that sometimes, as if we were interlopers and freeloaders in their community. The solution would be for me to get involved, volunteer, work to chat and make connections with the other parents at the school. I haven’t had the emotional energy to spare. Not last year. Not this year. I watched the director and knew her for a good person. She cared so very much about choir, about teaching the kids, about making this concert be a good experience. I thought all these things, but mostly was glad that she didn’t stay to chat more. I didn’t have any chatting energy left.

The concert was lovely. Gleek sang with all the others and while she did fiddle with her shirt and fidget with her feet, she didn’t show any other outward signs of stress. We acquired Wendy’s on the way home and headed on into the rest of the evening. The next day brought a general thank you email, in which the choir director was gracious and praised everyone who participated in the concert. She also mentioned how she would be stepping down from her director position because her step-father was dying and she needed to focus on her family. I was not the only one that evening with a head full of more things than I could possibly express. The new knowledge did not erase my frustrations of the evening before, but did increase my ability to bestow the benefit of the doubt. The director was right. Gleek would have felt awkward in her t-shirt.

Some days are difficult and there are no villains to blame.

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