Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 84

Cabbage Farming is More Adventurous Than Intended

(Warning: this adventure contains hornets, a moment of panic, but no serious injuries. If I ever have serious injuries to report, I’ll not begin that story by talking about cabbage.)

Near the end of third grade, local kids are each given a cabbage sprout and a challenge to grow it over the summer. In theory they will bring their grown cabbages to the school next fall to win prizes. I’ve never seen that part come to pass, but the cabbages come home because they’re provided free by a plant company. Patch proudly brought his cabbage home and we plunked it into the weed bed which has been a vegetable garden in years past. I expected it to die of neglect the way that Gleek’s had. Instead it thrived and over the summer months developed into a giant plant. This past week I’ve been staring out the window at the thing and realizing why that myth about babies and cabbage patches might seem believable. The cabbage head looked like an alien life pod. I knew that harvest time had to be near, so I consulted the internet for instructions and recipes.

Around 4 pm today I went to Patch to tell him that I planned to harvest his cabbage for dinner. His reaction was electric. He instantly jumped up from his game “We’re going to harvest it? Now?” Then he ran outside. I paused to collect a knife and my camera.

There he is contemplating his cabbage. Unfortunately the harvesting became more adventurous than intended. Right underneath the wood on which Patch was standing was a sizable hornet’s nest. Patch jumped up and down in excitement. Then moved in to a better photography position.

We got the above photo just moments before Gleek, who had come to watch the excitement, said “Wow. There are a lot of bees.” That was the last clear moment before my memories become a fog of shrieking Patch, Gleek yelling instructions, Patch freezing instead of running, me trying to swat a hornet off of Patch while not stabbing anyone with the knife nor dropping it where a panicked person might step on it. Oh, and I was barefoot, as I often am in summer. I wish I’d thought to put on shoes before heading outside. All of that in sixty seconds. Then we came indoors because there was a stinger to remove from Patch, Gleek discovered that one hornet had gotten inside her shirt and there was even more panic while that bug was slain.

The final sting count was three. Two on Patch, one on Gleek. We immediately administered antihistamines and daubed baking soda onto the sting sites. Then I prescribed a medicinal dose of funny animal videos for the next couple of hours. Within fifteen minutes all was restored to quiet. It was quiet outdoors as well. The hornets had returned to normal behavior. I noted where their entrance was hiding and vowed to return after dark with chemical weaponry.

So instead of having a fun family moment harvesting the cabbage, with photography. I went out by myself and cut it.

Patch grew a really good cabbage. It weighed five and a half pounds. I used about a third of it in soup for dinner. The other two thirds are in my fridge awaiting tomorrow’s recipes. The soup itself got mixed reviews. I loved it, as did Kiki. Link did not like it at all. Gleek and Patch both ate a reasonable portion, determined to eat the food they earned with pain, but finished up dinner by eating other foods.

The stump of the cabbage is still outside.



The internet tells me that it will sprout leaves that we can cook and eat. I’m curious to see what they will look like.

Once the world got dark, I went outside to spray the entry to the hornet’s nest. I don’t think I eradicated it yet, but I have other tools to employ on a different evening. I do feel a little bad, because the hornets were only defending their home. I actually find the tenaciousness of these huge nests kind of admirable. Unfortunately this is the second nest of 200+ stinging bugs that has taken up residence in a location that clashes with the safety of my kids. It has to go. As soon as the world freezes, sending all stinging insects into hibernation, I will recruit a crew to help me removed the wood under which these hornets are nesting. I’m tired of providing habitat for stinging bugs right next to my garden beds.

By bedtime the stings had faded to near invisibility. Patch and Gleek say they still hurt some, but they both completely forgot the stings for several hours this evening. Then they fell asleep without difficulty. I suspect another day will heal everything up again.

So: Growing cabbages = really cool and surprisingly tasty. I may repeat that. Housing hornets near my cabbage plant = bad idea, not to be repeated.

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Life Begins to Settle

Something important happened last night and I almost missed noticing it. Howard and I were both pretty stressed about packing him for WorldCon, so I summoned pizza for dinner. The kids descended like locusts once the magical circles of goodness appeared. They were all right there, so I did a quick survey of each child, asking about homework.

Kiki didn’t tell me details, just enough to let me know she had it handled. “I got this mom.”

Link had only one math paper “I did most of it at school. It is pretty easy.”

Gleek had several assignments, but she knew exactly what they all were. She negotiated to do some of it that night and the rest in the morning. I said yes because I didn’t have energy to enforce anything else.

Patch also had several assignments. He told me what they are and laid out a plan to do some that evening and the rest in the hour before school. Again, I didn’t argue with the plan.

The pizza vanished, and so did the kids. They went and did their school work. Then they played until bedtime. This morning both Patch and Gleek completed their work, without drama, in plenty of time to play before school.

Last night and this morning my kids demonstrated that they are settled and happy in their new routines. They’ve got the right amount of work and are getting it done. I know not every night will go this smoothly, but it gives me hope that this year we all may reap some benefit from the groundwork laid last year.

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On the Eve of Howard’s ChiCon Departure

Today was Chicon prep day. Everything proceeded according to schedule, including both Howard and I feeling stressed about random preparatory things. The bags are packed. We have confirmation that the packages all arrived. The pieces are in place and the adventure begins tomorrow. For tonight, Howard and I are trying not to think about it too much. Instead I’m over on Amazon re-reading all the product reviews on the new line of bic pens “For Her.” After that I’ll find a happy TV show to watch.

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Brief Update

This day had a lot of free space in it. Then all the spaces filled up with children. We ended up with nine extra kids from three different families. It was mostly peaceful, but that is a lot of extra bodies. The good news is that it did not drive me crazy because the advent of school has me on schedule with work things and stocked up on solitude. I even pulled out my picture book project Strength of Wild Horses. The draft was three quarters done when I realized that I was structuring it wrong. So I’ve re-structured and I’m back to about halfway done with the draft. None of the work flowed, but at least I did some writer work today. Now I need to do some resting. ChiCon work is going to completely consume my Monday.

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Responsibility Fatigue

I stayed up too late last night because I ran out of responsibility. All yesterday, indeed all week, I have been the organizer of schedule. In theory, the job should not be onerous because we are merely reinstating a slight variation of a long-familiar schedule. No one is rebelling, everyone is glad to fall into a routine, yet I ended up sitting on the couch at 10:30 pm with tears leaking out of my eyes. None of my responsibilities were hard: nudge kids awake, remind them of homework, check to make sure gym clothes were cleaned, post-convention accounting, pick kids up from school, provide snacks, defend quiet space for work, declare time to make dinner, assist in making dinner, oversee homework. None of it was herculean considered alone, but anyone who has exercised with low weights and high repetitions can attest to the increasing difficulty of each lift. The fatigue builds incrementally, particularly when one is out of practice. Thus I ended a day, which had run very smoothly, feeling like I’d failed and was doomed to fail forever.

When I began remodeling my office, I realized that I wanted to take the process slow. I wanted to change something, like taking out the wall, and then consider how to proceed from there. It was very instructive to notice that making one change would open up new avenues of possibility. Dwelling in the changed space let me see which step was obviously next. I haven’t reached the “obviously next” part of this new schedule. I can see what is working; morning schedule, chores, homework times. I’ve identified what isn’t; something needs to be done to give me time off. Yet, I’m still wandering around in this space waiting for my back brain to mull it all over and show me what needs to be changed.

One of the things that absorbed my thoughts last night was thinking ahead to the writer’s retreat I’m attending at the end of September. I always thought it would fall into the category of dream come true, instead I appear to be approaching it like a fearful chore, something that needs to be done because it will force us all to grow. Truthfully, the primary value of the retreat may be that having it loom in my future is forcing me to be conscious of how I set the family patterns during this transition period. Instead of excusing kids from chores, I’m insisting on them. Instead of solving problems by assigning them to me, I’m stopping to think to whom the problems really belong. Instead of setting up a system that is like spinning thirty plates on sticks and I have to run around to make sure nothing falls down, I’m trying to create a functioning engine that only needs some oversight and a little grease in spots. Even if the retreat produces nothing else, the system it is encouraging will give me more creative space all year long. Hopefully between now and the end of September that increased creative space will allow me to remember why I dreamed of going to a writers retreat in the first place.

Words are probably the answer to what comes next. Writing gives me more than it takes from me. I’ve even begun to open up writer thoughts, which is also an effect of the scheduled retreat. I can’t waste the opportunity to focus on writing without doing some preparatory work. I’m slowing reading and processing a book about rhetoric and writing construction. I’m not racing through because I want to absorb and incorporate rather than cause my writing brain to seize up trying to do it all at once. I suppose I’m renovating my writing using the same method as I used for my office. Change a little and wait for it to settle. Unfortunately I keep battling waves of worry that my words are simply not as good as they ought to be. “I can do better than this,” is a frequent thought in my mind while hitting publish on yet another blog post which I know could use more polish if only I were not so tired. Or lazy. It is very human to simultaneously want to create something glorious and at the same time to not want to work too hard at it. I need to take more time to work at writing, trusting that the focused practice will make my work better even if it does not seem any better to me. Even if the words are not better, writing them makes me happier. I need to remember that.

I finally dragged myself off the couch and proceeded to stay up too late. I knew that my responsibility was to go straight to bed so that I could rise on time and launch the next day properly. That last responsible act was too heavy, too depressing. It felt as though all year would be an unrelenting onslaught of “I must be responsible.” Instead I fixed myself a frozen pizza and watched a tv show for an hour. At the end of it I felt much better. I’d taken time to do something just because I felt like it and the process restored my ability to hope again. I’m short on sleep today, but the morning went smoothly anyway, because the patterns don’t all depend on me to keep them running. This morning I’m writing first instead of trying to discipline my brain into doing accounting. I’ll do the accounting next, because it is important, but this morning writing was obviously next. After a work out it is important to rest. A study of weigh training makes clear that rest is when the muscles actually form, making the next lifting session easier. I think that this evening will be better.

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Exactly the Same, Only Different

Day two of the school schedule and it is all beginning to feel familiar. My brain is unearthing the habits which lay fallow for three months. I’m remembering to watch for school pick up times and what times of day are parenting heavy because all the kid needs get squished into the same few hours. The kids are all in the same schools as last year, so no one is adapting to a big cultural shift. We are beginning to fall into the patterns of last spring. Even the afternoon carpooling schedule is the same. Except Kiki has a before school class that requires us to get up earlier every other day. Last year Gleek and Patch had teachers with very regular and regimented homework schedules. I can tell already this year is going to be different. I think this will be the year that Gleek seizes control of her homework and I’ll need to keep my hands off. It feels like I’m going to be able to continue to require chores instead of having to excuse kids because they’re overwhelmed. This year we might even be able to make the weekly activities for the kids. Things are looking good, so naturally I’m holding my breath waiting for crisis to erupt. Surely there has to be a crisis, some big emotional event or huge homework slog to be got through. Yet when I try to sense it, anticipate the shape of it, I can’t. Maybe that means there won’t be one for awhile. Maybe we can just have small daily crankiness and stress instead of big worry and diagnostic processes. At least for a month or two. By November the shapes of the strains will begin to emerge.

For now, we’re back to school and it feels the same, only different.

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Organizing the House

In the past six months my house has grown steadily more organized, clean, and attractive. I still have a lot of work to do, but improvement is visible in almost every room. I’m glad for this. The push toward organization and beautification began last fall when I sat in my messy office and pictured what it would be like if I broke down a wall. I was deliberately shaking up my thought processes at around that time, forcing myself out of old patterns without being sure what the new patterns would look like. I stared around at the jumble in my office and started picturing what my ideal office would be like, how it could be arranged to provide space for the things which make me happy. My office was a box, and I was able to see how to break the bounds of that box to create something new. I gave myself permission to really own the space and turn it into whatever I wanted. The vision was exciting and all the other organization flowed from there.

July was the month of extended family in my house and the family reunion of 35 people in one cabin. I found it fascinating that I responded to the over crowding by organizing, cleaning, and getting rid of stuff. There were days when it was really compulsive, I had to keep picking up, scrubbing, imposing order on my surroundings. As compulsions go, I’ll pick cleaning over piling any day, but it did trigger a concern for me. As my house gets more organized, I notice the small messes more. I couldn’t have noticed them before, because they were buried in the large messes, but now I see them and they bother me. I need to clean them up, make my surroundings more lovely. Then I remember the old adage “a clean desk is a sign of a sick mind.” I’m not sure that being compulsively clean is mentally healthier than being disorganized and jumbled all the time. I guess time will tell if my recent push toward organization is me becoming healthier or just a different manifestation of my particular neuroses. I strongly suspect that the influx of school things impinging on my time will test my intention to make my surroundings lovely.

One of the hardest parts of my new-found organization is keeping my hands off of the spaces and things which belong to my kids. I want to organize all the things, however if I swoop in and clean up their messes, they will never learn how to do it for themselves. I’ve found a lot of growth in examining how I relate to spaces and things. If I clean up after them constantly, they will never have the chance to learn those lessons. This is why I spent an afternoon sorting with Gleek. We began with a trash bag, a donate box, and a bribe. She could have a small new toy she has been wanting if we could clear the floor, fill the garbage bag, and put some stuff into the donate box. I was pleasantly surprised with how willing she was to get rid of stuff. Even better, I learned a lot about her and what she values. Things which seemed like junk to me felt like treasures to her, and once she explained why they mattered, I could see the value. Because I let her make all the decisions, she was willing to listen when I asked her if she really needed to keep some of the items. The end result was a room where I can now clean the carpet. I need to go through the same process with Patch next. Hopefully listening to how he relates to his things will help us create an organizational scheme that lets him keep his things organized for more than three days. This approach to helping my kids I learned from watching Hoarding: Buried Alive. I can’t watch very much of the show, too depressing, but a few episodes were instructional.

The open question is whether I’ll continue to have emotional and physical energy for organization beyond maintenance now that school has begun. Time will tell I suppose.

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Ready or Not. Again.

My sister dropped her oldest son off for college last week. I’ve watched her this summer as she rode emotional arcs related to having her first child leave home. My daughter is only a year younger and I’m afraid I patted myself on the back a little about how sensible I was being about her entering her senior year. I honestly felt no apprehension. I even wrote a post or two in that vein. My smugness was justly rewarded when I waved the last of my kids out the door for their first day of school, turned, and smacked right into a wall of grief. It was actually more subtle than that metaphor implies. I was aware of something filling my head, so Howard and I had one of those conversations where I begin talking with a tiny thread of thought, spooling it out until suddenly I find that I’m holding an emotional tangle instead of a simple thread. All my thoughts unblock and I learn things about how I’m feeling by listening to the words which fall out of my mouth. The key sentences today were:

“I don’t want this part to be over. I’m going to miss this part.”

I meant this part of my life when all my kids are at home. Later I spoke words which I liked even less, because it implies a level of control freak in my psyche with which I am not comfortable.

“I’m going to miss being in charge.”

As much as I complain about it, I like being the organizer of our lives. I have all my people gathered close to me under one roof. I know I have to let them fly free. That is the point. It is what I’ve been aiming toward ever since the first minute I knew I was pregnant. But I grieve because this era of my life is going to end and today felt like the beginning of that end.

Today I was also tired, insomnia and the bio-rhythmic upset of getting up three hours earlier than during the summer, did not help any. I also felt silly to feel grief about something which has not actually happened yet. My daughter has a full year of high school ahead of her. She may well decide to live at home and attend one of the two universities within twenty minutes of our house. I could be years away from the first one flying off. I’m surprised to feel grief over this. I really thought I wouldn’t.

The good news is that the grief will pass. It is probable that any later sadness I feel on the matter will be less because I addressed some of the emotions today. This is why I did not attempt to hide from it. The feeling exists inside me, I acknowledge it and try to incorporate it, even if I feel silly or cliche about it.

My four kids came home from school happy. Kiki had nothing but cheerful words for her classes, even the dreaded physics class. She got a pair of science teachers she really likes. Link has concerns about his yearbook class. I’ll keep an eye on it to see if it needs adjusted. Gleek spent most of the ride home providing a comparative analysis of last year’s teacher and this year’s. Patch just says he liked his teacher.

We’re off and running; happy or sad, ready or not.

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The Eve of School

Summer is not gone, but it is waning. I can see it in the walnut husks on the tree that are beginning to crack and blacken. Soon walnuts will litter my lawn and deck. I also see it by the grapes growing heavy on the vines. Any day now the local robins will discover they are there and begin raiding. The signs are all around me, but summer still has some scorching hot days in store. What we’ve run out of is summer vacation. That is finished, complete. Tonight will not be one of staying up late just because. I will be carefully managing bedtime because this is the first school night of the year.

I remember when the onset of summer vacation felt rife with possibility. I made long lists of things I wanted to do, places I wanted to take the kids. Summer was play time on a grand scale. Once I began working, that changed. I could no longer alter my schedule around that of the kids. I had business obligations which did not defer to vacation, in fact some of the business tasks increased because of summer. Those big summer conventions take a toll. Instead of contemplating summer as a wide open possibility, I know in late winter what things must get done during the summer months. I do lots of spontaneous day trips for the kids whenever a free day hits, but we don’t plan and promise in advance. An unexpected result of this is that here I am, at the end of the summer, without a list of things I meant to do and didn’t. I haven’t spent these last few weeks frantically trying to finish items on that list. Instead I sit here on my porch, done with things of summer, prepared for things of fall.

It is possible that my feelings of completion have more to do with resignation. Ready or not, school will begin. I did not feel ready two weeks ago when I rounded the corner into August, I did not want to think school thoughts. But then later that same day, I did. It was like I found the drawer where all the school thoughts were stored. Once found, I was able to air them out and see what needed mending. It also helps me feel complete that I’ve done so many house tasks that have been waiting. I finally took a saw to the dead tree in my front yard. It has been rendered into a log, a stump, and a pile of branches. I’ve been staring at that ugly, dying tree for years and now I don’t have to anymore. Granted, I still have to clean up the tree shrapnel, but the major work is complete. The same with the summer conventions. In the next couple of weeks I’ll finish off these odds and ends of summer and we will fully transition into a different rhythm of life.

I am done with summer. I am ready for school. But there is a large part of me that wishes for a pause. A space in which I could spend two weeks to unfurl all those summer possibilities which we were too busy to contemplate this year. A space with the difficult pieces of summer complete, but the difficult parts of school put off for a bit. I would dearly like a pause. Perhaps I’ll find some of that in the writer’s retreat at the end of September.

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Venturing Forth at the End of Summer

I never intended to make a tradition out of End of Summer outings. But somehow we keep having an outing with the kids and I toward the end of August. Three years in a row makes it a tradition right? This year we ventured to the Tracy Aviary where we found ducks swimming in pools of light.



Or at least ducks who obligingly swam right in the sun’s reflection. When they went fast it looked as though they were scattering light behind them.



We also got to meet Andy, a giant condor out for a walk. He was as big as a medium sized dog. I kept thinking of dinosaurs as I saw him stalk along. He’s fifty years old and being slowly rehabilitated so that some day he’ll be able to fly over the heads of guests as part of a bird show. I hope to attend that show someday. Big bird.



We had a good time. Even during the parts which were boring, too hot, and full of rush hour traffic. Outings have frustrating bits. The kids are ready to head into school next week. Gleek did her summer assignment. Link assembled his binder. Patch put his things together. We’re ready for the next adventure.

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