Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 83

Things of Today

Wake up earlier than I wanted to fix breakfast. Birthday boy requested waffles.

Drop Kiki off to take the ACT test.

Harvest two giant batches of grapes. Realize that there are just as many left on the vines.

Put first set of grapes into sink full of water to find all the hiding bugs.

Mow lawn.

Abandon lawn mower and flee when bumping Winston our gargoyle reveals that yellow jackets have taken up residence in his hollow interior.

Warn all family members and neighbors to not go near the infested gargoyle.

Retrieve lawnmower and finish all the parts of the lawn that are not near Winston.

Pick grapes off of vines. Smash grapes. Boil grapes. Strain grape juice out of skins and seeds. Put jars of juice into fridge.

Repeat.

Let kids eat left overs for lunch and microwaved frozen food for dinner.

Figure out that tying a rope to the gargoyle’s head will let us tip him over from a safe distance. Declare that 8 pm will be the killing hour for yellow jackets.

Contemplate picking more grapes. Decide not to.

Wander over to watch the yellow jackets. Think how cool and amazing they are and how they really can not be allowed to nest right next to the kids play area.

Pick two boxes of pears so that they can begin to ripen. Plan to make pear butter next week.

Stare at nothing for awhile.

Make sure all the kids are indoors, then pull the rope to tip Winston over. Go inside to observe the cloud of angry stinging bugs from behind glass. Watch Howard spray them from thirty feet away.

Summer score: Taylers = 3, Stinging bug nests = 0 Hope we can just call that score good for the summer.

Run to store for more wasp spray. Also because Link’s Sunday pants no longer fit.

Realize on the drive home that I am perhaps more tired than I ought to be while driving. Arrive home safe anyway.

Finish straining the last of the grapes. Realize our fridge is now completely full of jars of grape juice and that I’ll have to make jam very soon. But not tonight.

Tell kids to put themselves to bed.

Wander outside with a flashlight to view yellow jacket carnage. Notice how beautiful the nest is. Really a marvel of nature, which one can only observe once all the winged defenders are dead.

Tell kids that while going to bed and reading in bed are similar, they are not the same thing.

Write words about the day. Eat food. Go to bed.

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

The School Barrage

This is the time of year when I have to aggressively defend my schedule and budget from three schools. I know that there are costs associated with educating my children. I pay my taxes and school fees with only muttered grumbles because I understand that the value of what my children are given far outweighs the monetary price I pay. I also understand that my children benefit greatly from many volunteer run programs through their schools. Each year I pick a place to volunteer, some small place where I can give a few hours to give back a little since my kids are getting so much. The problem is that there are so many programs in need of volunteers and donations. Volunteers needed for field trips, choir costumes, to help with fund raisers (so many fundraisers,) and then I’m asked to donate funds for class trips, field trips, boxes of kleenex, tootsie pops to sell for a class fundraiser, otter pops for a different class fundraiser, paper towels, hand sanitizer. I understand how much these donations help. It just starts to feel like a barrage when every single day includes a phone call, email, or note wondering if maybe I could just give this one little thing. None of it is aimed at me personally. I know it will settle down, but I’m starting to picture myself with a shield deflecting each of these requests before they have the chance to land on me.

I feel guilty when I deflect requests, particularly if I’m deflecting them without having some other thing which makes them impossible. It is much easier to say “I can’t go to your meeting because I have this other meeting.” Than it is to say “I’m not going to go to your meeting because I intend to be at home having a quiet evening.” Except unless I say exactly that, all my quiet evenings will be obliterated. Instead of having a stable routine, our family will have chaos and stress. Last night I stayed home from an event without any obvious excuse. In the quiet space, Link was able to talk to me and tell me about a significant problem at school. The quiet space means that today we are on the way to solving the problem instead of continuing to let it fester.

So pardon me while I pick up my shield and deflect school requests. I have important spaces to defend.

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

The Long Hard Hike

There was a moment of decision at the beginning of the day which shaped everything that came after. It was a simple wooden sign pointing down two different possible paths through the Devil’s Garden in Arches National park. We hadn’t done much research on the trail, so confronted with this sign we made a decision almost whimfully. “This way.” Link said with a swing of his arm. The rest of us shrugged and followed.

It was a long low trail with a sandy path. If not for the sand shifting under our feet, the walk would have been easy. It was still pleasant though tiring for legs and feet. I noticed how the earlier rain had not soaked in past the top layer of sand. Each footprint broke through this wet layer into the dry sand underneath.

We kept walking, exclaiming at discovered pools of water in hollows of rock, or admiring the huge fins of rock that drew closer and then surrounded us. The landscape was desert, but beautiful.

Then we met a couple coming the other way. They told us that up ahead was a steep scrabble across a slickrock boulder. Even the name slickrock sounded a bit ominous. The woman hadn’t felt confident about it, so they’d turned back. Something in their words implied that this one steep spot was the hard part of the trip and if only they’d gotten past it, they could have had the rest of a pleasant hike. We rounded a curve of rock to see this steep place. A group was ahead of us and we watched an older woman with two walking sticks make the traverse with the help of her family members. If she can do it, so can we. It was the unspoken thought in all our heads. If we could only get past this one hard part, we could complete our lovely hike. Besides, we’d already been walking for an hour. It seemed better, easier even, to climb over the hard place and continue.

The spot was more than just steep. It was narrow and there was a slope down to a crevasse. It was simultaneously a simple place to cross and a dangerous one. Confident steps carried one across and up in less than thirty seconds. Howard helped three of the kids to the top and told them to wait. Link does not walk confidently, not over slickrock. Howard and I climbed with Link, one in front, one behind. It was a frightening walk with Link who does not like heights, who out weighs me, who sometimes freezes up when faced with a challenge. It was scary coaxing him up, but we succeeded.

We continued on our way, feeling glad that the hardest part was behind us. It wasn’t. We were one hour into a hike that would take another hour and a half to complete. That remaining ninety minutes was made out of scrambling up slopes, down slopes, looking for stacks of rocks to tell us we were still on the trail, and several ridge crossings where we had to walk along the top of the ridge with drops on both sides. Both Link and Howard suffer from vertigo. Our Gleek loved it all, so did Kiki, I would have loved it too, except I knew that Link was frequently scared and/or miserable. The fatigue grew until all the kids were asking to just go back to the car. Faced with each new challenge, we kept urging them forward because no matter what unknown lay ahead, it was still surely the fastest way to be done with the hike. Every challenge complete became one more argument for continuing onward. We didn’t want to face those things again. Particularly not that narrow passage of slickrock.

Oh, and periodically a squall would pass over us making everything cold and wet. Sometimes the wind would blow just as we had to cross a high ridge.

We kept going, even though we sometimes wanted to cry, even though our legs began to feel like jello, even though we doubted we could make it. There really wasn’t any other option. The only way out was through.

As the day wore on, Link learned to keep going despite the rough terrain. He stopped freezing up and began to find his own paths, the safest ones he could identify. We were a very tired set of hikers when we scrambled down that last ridge to the flat trail with the wooden sign post. I looked at the post and realized that had we gone the other way, we would have been just ten minutes into the hike when confronted with the first ridge walk. With only ten minutes to lose, we would have turned and gone back. The day would have been very different.

That hike through Devil’s Garden was hard. I would never have chosen to subject my kids to that level of difficulty. I spent most of the drive back to our condo picturing the many ways that various traverses could have ended in disaster. But they didn’t. Instead we have a shared memory of struggling and overcoming. We got to see places, like Private Arch, which simply can not be seen any other way. I still remember rounding the corner to Private Arch and having it appear right in front of us. We were the only ones there and peace filled us.

It felt like a sanctified place to us, the farthest point on the long hike. It was a place we could never see without struggling first. We sat there for a long time. When we finally left, Gleek said “I need to come back here again sometime.” I agreed.

I think about the Devil’s Garden hike when I meet someone at the beginning of a journey that I know will be hard. It may be a person embarking on graduate school, or a residency, or a dream to become a published writer. Even if they are aware that there is struggle ahead, it is impossible for them to know how difficult. If it is a path I have walked, I want to warn them, tell them that maybe they want a different path. Part of my heart wants to save others from pain and struggle. I have to remember that if I do, I also take away the potential for triumph. The only way to get to Private Arch is by climbing through some scary places.

We met others on the path as we walked, they were headed where we’d already been. Sometimes they asked us about the trail. We were honest about the difficulty, gave ideas about how to handle it if they chose to proceed, and told them how beautiful it all was. We told them to follow the trail markers and keep going. We added to those trail markers as we hiked.

Some day I’ll hike that Devil’s Garden trail again. It will be hard again, but just because something is hard doesn’t mean I should avoid it.

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

Cost Benefit Analysis on a Convention

The first day after a convention is for sleeping off the exhaustion, but the next day is for cost benefit analysis. A successful convention gives more than it costs in emotional, career, and financial rewards. We’ve had lots of successful conventions. Sometimes the sales aren’t great, but a business contact is made which opens up a world of new possibilities. Other times there are no particularly shiny business opportunities and the sales are mediocre, but we get to share laughter and conversations with lots of good people. There are always good things and bad in every show. Howard comes home and unpacks his brain, complaining of the unpleasant things, joyfully telling about the fun stuff. As he talks, we try to figure out how the next show could be made better.

Sadly Chicon (WorldCon 70) lands in the red for us. Howard had lots of fun. He’s spent hours telling me about conversations with fans, writers, personal heroes, and friends. He had our dream team of booth help, a crew that stuck with him not just for retail, but also who bolstered him up during the emotional ride of the Hugos. We have fun pictures, and business cards of people to contact after the show. Unfortunately we planned poorly and spent too much. Taken over all, the show simply did not pay all that back. Howard began the show with a slight emotional deficit because of the low buffer and GenCon fatigue. We figured that sales in Chicago would be higher than they were in Reno since the convention itself would be larger. We budgeted accordingly, arranging to have extra booth help and ship the necessary product to support that. Our expenses where higher than they had ever been before. This was not helped by the fact that Chicago kept surprising us with extra fees for things like parking. We did not lose money. The booth sales covered our expenses, but not enough to pay for the week of lost work, or the stress involved in preparing and running the booth. We sold less in Chicago than we did in Reno.

Our analysis of why is ongoing. It was certainly not our help which was fantastic. The booth was always hopping with conversation and transactions. The truth is that retail sales are always capricious. The dedicated fans will always find us and brighten Howard’s day by standing there to talk to him while he draws. They are our bread and butter, the reason we are able to continue to do this crazy work, which doesn’t seem like it should be able to support a family of six and a colorist. We love the people who seek out Howard. But if the dealers’ room is hidden off in a corner (as it was in Chicago) it reduces foot traffic. Fewer people wander by the booth to be exposed to Schlock. Sometimes there is just a mis-match between the general convention populace and Schlock Mercenary. The comic can’t appeal to everyone. It appealed to a smaller proportion of people in Chicago than it did in other areas of the country. That happens too. Either that, or a larger portion had already bought stuff online. We misjudged and let the cost of coming nearly wipe out profits.

If it were only insufficient profits, the conversations with people would be more than enough to balance out the emotional ledger, however Chicon also had the Hugo awards. Being nominated is a huge honor, and a tremendous benefit to Howard personally and to Schlock Mercenary as a business. All weekend Howard had people coming up and telling him that they had discovered Schlock because of the Hugo nominee packet. But once Howard arrives at WorldCon, he starts to feel the strain of hope. He begins to realize that he’d really love to bring home a Hugo trophy and he’s probably not going to. Then in self defense, he tries to negate that hope, which leads to him denigrating his own work to himself inside his head. It becomes a weekend-long effort to try to not think about it too much, while all the time people are coming up to wish him luck. (Some of them do so while confessing that they voted for someone else. Yes. People do that. Lots. Hint: if you didn’t vote for someone, the appropriate thing to say is either nothing at all or “Good luck. I’m rooting for you.” Not “I didn’t vote for you because _______, but I’ll vote for you next year.” Pretty much anything other than “good luck” is pouring gasoline on the flame of creative neuroses. You do not have to fell guilty or apologize for your votes. Howard is strong and can laugh this type of thing off. Not everyone can.) Win or lose, the Hugos require a huge emotional expenditure. Howard works hard to find his fellow nominated friends and help them deal with the stress. He struggles to find helpful words. He tries to make sure that he is always gracious no matter how people approach him, even if what they say manages to gut-punch him right in his insecurities. It is exhausting and exciting and thrilling. But ultimately even excitement is exhausting. High emotions always take a toll, even if they’re positive emotions.

Presumably winning a trophy pays for all of that effort, someday maybe we’ll be able to report how that works. However, I’ve spoken to people who’ve won and they tell me that having the statue can make the next project harder to tackle, the fear of not being able to live up to prior success is real and can be crippling. There is also the emotional ride of having won when your friends didn’t. Whether or not Howard came home with a Hugo, I knew this week would require some emotional rebalancing.

Special note to anyone who may, in the future, be arranging the pre-Hugo ceremony photography. It can be a mad scramble to get this done in the time allotted. I know it is a hard job, like herding cats. People don’t hear announcements or disregard them. However, if you run out of time before the ceremony, do not ask the losers to come back after the awards are handed out and be photographed with the winners. Just don’t. Those who lose do not have the emotional resources to put on happy faces for the camera. The winners are in shock and may feel guilty for winning over the others in their category. Don’t make them stand together while they are still in the first hour of processing this emotional shift. Before the ceremony it is “all in this boat together” after it is different. If you don’t get the picture before the ceremony, let it go.

Also rolled up in the weekend was my absence and the reasons for it. I was pretty miserable because I was sad to miss out on friends and even more because I was actively working to disconnect the anxiety triggers which I’ve had connected to WorldCon since last year. “Disconnecting anxiety triggers” is a lot like defusing bombs, very tense and no fun at all. I tried not to let any of that leak into Howard’s experience of the event, but I was only partially successful because he is perceptive and I am honest. All of which is enough for it’s own story sometime, so I’ll leave it at that.

Among the good gifts that Chicon gave to us, are some valuable lessons. As we pick apart what worked and what didn’t, we’re better able to plan for future conventions. The glaringly obvious thing is that we have to figure out how to make WorldCon in San Antonio cost less. If we can lower the financial and emotional costs of the event, then the rewards will be sufficient to have Howard coming home excited for the next event. Obviously we need to spend less money setting up the booth, but we also need to have more comics in the buffer so that the week off of work does not feel so expensive. We need to make time for Howard to play. There were friends that Howard did not get to spend time with because he was tied down at the booth. We need to figure out how to get Howard to allow himself to play, to recognize that the emotional rewards of a convention are far more important than the financial ones. If he gives up most of the emotional rewards in pursuit of financial ones, his convention experience suffers. I think I’ve managed to locate my personal emotional landmines surrounding WorldCon, which will make next year easier. There’s more detail and quite a lot of talking in circles as we sort it out. In the end we don’t regret Chicon, we just have a list of what to do differently.

If you are one of the people who came to tell Howard you love Schlock. Thank you. If you bought something, or just said hello, or asked Howard for advice, or chatted with him at a party, then you are the reason that Chicon was not a disaster for us. You are the reason that Howard came home determined to pour his effort into the comic, instead of collapsing into a fugue of despair. To paraphrase from a Doctor Who episode: Chicon for Howard was divided into piles of good things and piles of hard things. The fact that, at the end, the pile of hard things was a little bit bigger is our fault and does not at all subtract from the goodness of the good things. If you did anything at all to add to Howard’s pile of good things. Thank you. He’s been telling me about what you did and I am grateful.

We live, we learn, we move onward.

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

More About Stinging Insects

I swear wasps are going to give me nightmares. I stepped on one. In my house. While I was putting kids to bed. I’ve no idea why the thing did not sting me. It should have. The good news is that while Gleek and Patch heard me shriek, neither of them knows it was a wasp. I told them a flying bug scared me. They’re still recovering from major stinging insect paranoia. I am very ready for night temperatures to freeze and send these things into hibernation. Gah.

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Grape Season

When you plant a dozen tiny grape sprouts in the ground, they do not much look like a hedge of vines. Then when you have to baby them through the summer and three quarters of them die anyway, it is discouraging. But there comes a time six or seven summers later when huge vines threaten to over take the maple tree and have killed a bush by sneakily twining inside it and stealing all the sunshine. Those huge vines hide so many grapes that you stand in your kitchen, after having washed, plucked, smashed, cooked, and strained grapes all day long, yet there are still as many grapes still on the vines as you brought in the house. Then you wonder why on earth you planted so many grape plants. But it is hard to picture that day when they are tiny. Of course you’re also going to have grape jelly for the entire rest of the year, so there’s that.

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Space is Becoming Cool Again

A year ago I wrote an article talking about the lack of child-aimed science fiction. It was based on a blog post I wrote in 2009 about an experience with Patch where we deliberately sought out information on the space program. At the time, both times, I expressed concern that my children would not experience the sense of wonder about space that I felt as a child. If people don’t feel that wonder, then funding for space programs will disappear, and that would be sad for all of us.

This month NASA landed another rover on Mars, an event my teenage daughter was excited to watch. Today I picked up a copy of a National Geographic entitled “Exploring Space” As soon as it was spied on the counter, a child snatched it and ran off to read it. Also today, I saw a commercial for Nook Color in which a little girl and her mother read Curious George and then the little girl played space exploration by pretending to be an astronaut. Many congrats to Nook for portraying a little girl aspiring to be something other than a princess or a fairy. It pleases me greatly that the advertising folks at Nook think that space exploration is cool enough to entice people to buy a Nook Color to share with their kids.

I think we might just inspire that next generation of scientists, engineers, and astronauts after all.

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

Blind Spot

Howard sent me a link to a game called Petit Computer with a note that it might be a good choice for Link’s upcoming birthday. I watched the video and it was like being transported back to all the computer avoidance of my childhood. My father was a computer programmer beginning in the days when that meant racks of punch cards. My three brothers and two of my sisters were all interested in the possibilities of programming. For me, programming was something to escape from rather than enjoyable. My response to Howard was that I was not a good judge of whether the game would appeal, because it looked hard and boring to me. I was just self-aware enough to know that not everyone shares my opinion of programming. My family members certainly didn’t. Many of my current friends are excited by the thought of putting together code which turns a pile of organized metal and plastic into a magic generator of games and productivity. I just want to turn on the computer and use it.

I think I was in elementary school the first time I located the blind spots in my eyes. Every eye has them. They are the spot on the retina where the optic nerve attaches. This means that no visual data is collected there. We don’t notice them because our brains fill in the gap with what ever is surrounding that spot. If you put something small enough into exactly the right visual space, it vanishes. I remember holding an optical illusions book close to my nose and moving it back and forth to watch a printed dot disappear into my blind spot and come back again. As long as the dot sat in my blind spot, it was as if it did not exist.

As kids hit their teenage years, they start needing a focus. They need something around which to form an adult identity and a direction to be heading. Children are happy to just be, teens want to be going somewhere. Link struggled last year because he knew that he needed a direction for his life, but the only thing he is really passionate about is video games. I keep trying to introduce him to things ancillary to video games in the hope that something would ignite the same passion. I gave him tools for making videos and video editing. We took him to GenCon. I kept casting around for something, anything, that would help Link find a focus. I never even considered teaching him to program a computer. Programming sat in my blind spot, because I didn’t like it and didn’t know how to make it sound exciting. It did not occur to me that to the right person, programming is exciting all by itself.

“Mom! I want to buy this game.” It was a familiar refrain, one I’ve been hearing all summer. Link has spent most of his lawn mowing money buying games on his 3DS. He researches the games himself, plays demos, and then comes to me for help when he’s ready to buy. The game he had found this time was Petit Computer.

“You really want this one?” I asked.

“Yeah! I can use it to write my own games!” Link’s eyes were bright and excited in the way that he is when he is truly engaged. When Link is talking about something he loves, he meets my eyes and speaks at length. His enthusiasm causes him to forget that words don’t always come easy. At all other times he uses as few words as possible. We bought the game. More than that, we made an appointment with one of his uncles, someone who loves programming, to sit down with Link and teach him enough BASIC to make the game do fun things.

It is like I turned my head and realized that a wonderful possibility was sitting right there in my blind spot. Among the things that Link will be getting for his birthday is a copy of Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids. It is possible that Link will not fall in love with programming, and that is fine. He needs something he is passionate about, not something his mom thinks he should do.

I never wanted to be the parent who tried to push kids into things I wish I could have done. Yet over and over I discover my own interests and biases leaking into their lives. All I can do is make adjustments when I catch myself doing it.

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

Eradicating a Buried Hornet’s Nest

The entrance to the nest was dug under a railroad tie. I could see the hornets going in and out pretty regularly. My first attempt was to wait until dark and then spray the entrance with one of those wasp killers that shoot 20 feet. I tried to spray right down the hole. Unfortunately the next day proved that the nest was not dead. There were fewer hornets, but they were still coming in and out. Tonight it rained, which I hoped would be additionally calming to the stinging bugs. I scraped everything away from the entrance. Then I used a foaming wasp killer which is supposed to coat a nest. I’d spray the entrance until it was buried in foam, then use a shovel to dig it out a bit. The force of the spray was sufficient to loosen up the dirt quite a bit. I repeated as often as I dared, which was until I’d almost emptied the can. I definitely dug into a hollow space underneath the wood, but I’m still not sure I got a clear shot at the nest. This is particularly true if the nest us up into the wood rather than even or below the entrance. I didn’t see any bugs, which I’d expect if I killed the heart of it. I’ll see if there is activity tomorrow. If there is, I’ll repeat this process. The location of the activity will help me know where to focus the next spray and dig attack.

The whole thing was pretty nerve wracking. I do not like to dig where I think there might be a hundred angry stinging insects. On the other hand, they would have had to wade through poisonous foam to get to me, so I was pretty safe. I will exterminate this nest. It just may take a few days.

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Flowers in My Garden

Sometimes things are serendipitous. In June Gleek found a tiny basil sprout and tried to replant it. This led to me buying basil seeds and planting them. While we were at it, we scattered a mix of wild flower seeds. They grew.

This is what I see outside my kitchen window and it makes me happy.

Now I just need to pull out some of the weeds surrounding them.

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