Shane Bolks's Blog, page 16

The Perfect Christmas Card

I’ve always loved Christmas cards. I remember as a little girl, eagerly checking the mailbox during the month of December for cards. I loved opening them and seeing what was inside. I loved looking at the pretty pictures, like this:

Or this:

Or this:

But most of all, I loved seeing what was written inside. I have a confession: my mom has always been a Christmas letter writer, so this is a tradition with which I’m very familiar. Extremely vividly I remember her working on her letter via the typewriter: she even went through a phase where she liked to do her letter in various Christmas shapes, such as this one:

And to this day, I really love receiving this kind of letter. I love reading what my friends and family have been up to. I love hearing about special times or adventures or dreams coming true. I love hearing about their children, a quick little glimpse into what their life is like. It makes me feel connected, as if the years and miles between us aren’t quite so vast. True, true, some letters can be a bit much. Brag-fests can be tiresome, but all in all, I love a letter.

And I love handwritten notes. While going through boxes of cards this evening, I ran across this gem from my paternal grandfather, circa 1995:

And then there’s this card, from my maternal grandmother, written in 1998.

I can’t read this card, even hold this card, without getting a lump in my throat.

Hours after writing this note, my beloved grandmother had a stroke. A few days later, early Christmas Eve morning, after we’d all gathered to tell her we loved her and goodbye, she passed. It was several days later before I returned to Dallas, and found this card waiting in my mailbox. And it’s such a gift, such a gift to know that during her last conscious hours of life,  she was thinking of me…looking forward to seeing me. Without this card, without those few extra lines she took the time to share with me, I would never have known that.

But all this is changing. I hear my friends talking about how Christmas cards are a chore, a task to be streamlined as much as possible. Too often, seasons greetings are just one more item on a never-ending to-do list. And in this digital world of ours, with the proliferation of social media, there’s talk about whether Christmas cards are even relevant anymore. Some are opting for blanket Facebook posts or tweets.

And that makes me sad.  For sure there are more efficient ways of saying Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, but with efficiency comes sterility. Digital messages are here and gone–they’re not really something you can stash in a box and reflect upon. But I can still pick up my grandmother’s card, the card she held in her hand, the card she sat down and wrote to me in. I can see her handwriting, and I can feel the love wafting up from the card stock. Inside me the little girl who haunted the mailbox still lives. I still get excited when I find Christmas cards in the mail. I still love to see who they’re from and look forward to that moment of connection. And I especially look forward to the personal touches, such as cards from my adorable cousin Stacey, who frequently hand makes her cards. I’ve asked her why she does this, because goodness know crafting cards by hand takes a lot of time, and she simply smiled and said, “because it’s more than just a task. It’s my way of saying I love you.”  (I love her, too!)

And then there’s a childhood friend of mine, Paul. We grew up in the same ‘hood in Baton Rouge, and now, all these years later, find ourselves both living in Dallas, as well. He and his family do something extra special for their Christmas greeting:

I always look forward to their productions, because they are so much more personal than a preprinted card. I can see their smiles and how much they love each other. I can see personalities leak through. I can see they’re happy together, and that makes me happy.

I’m not as crafty as Stacey or as musically talented as the Lastrapes Family, but still, I want to make my Christmas cards as personal as possible. Toward this end, we’ve turned our Christmas cards into a family art project, where, with crayons or paints, we recreate (or at least attempt to!) our favorite images of the season. Then, thanks to sites like Shutterfly, we can turn our images into a card:

The art isn’t fabulous, but it’s from the heart, inside there’s always a handwritten note, and hopefully the warmth of connection comes through.

Sometimes it’s the little things. You never know when they’ll become the big things.

Long live Christmas cards…the real kind!  I’d love to know what makes them perfect for you!

My Family’s Favorite Christmas Tradition by Priscilla A. Kissinger

Welcome Priscilla A Kissinger back to PBK!

Christmas is my favorite holiday.  I love the music, the baking, the giving and receiving of presents, the parties and good food—remembering our blessings and why we celebrate.

Most of all, I love getting together with family and friends to celebrate.  If you read my last guest blog on PBOK, you probably figured out how important my family, especially my three daughters, is to me.

In our house, Christmas wouldn’t be the same without some of our long-held family traditions. I worried as my girls grew older and went off to college that some of these traditions might fade away.  Blessedly, they’ve remained just as important to my girls as they are to me.

Some of our traditions have religious meaning—singing “Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel” as we light the advent candles on the dinner table. Others are a mix of religious and secular—reading the original Christmas story followed by ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas while wearing our new  pjs on Christmas Eve.

One special tradition we’ve followed every year since my girls were in pre-school is making gingerbread houses. From scratch. I’m talking, bags of flour, jars of molasses, Crisco, sugar, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, eggs, oil and a dash of vinegar. Lots of mixing. Getting an arm workout as you roll the dough. Using pattern pieces to hand cut walls, roofs, chimneys, and more. Puffs of confectioners sugar billowing as you add tablespoons of hot water and meringue powder and start the mixer to whip up batches of Royal Icing. Tables splattered with a mix of candies, chocolates, frosting bags with tips. Lots of snacking as you work and Christmas music playing in the background.

Mind you, this isn’t just an afternoon event. I’m talking a long evening or afternoon of baking pieces. Another day of decorating your building sides and creating fir trees from upside down sugar cones, a special tip and lots of green Royal Icing. Another day of “gluing” your houses together and adding the roofs.

In case you haven’t noticed, we take our gingerbread house baking pretty serious.

It all started when I bought a VHS tape entitled “The Magic of Gingerbread Housed with Cheryl Lesh-Maughlin.” It’s a short video that comes with a recipe and pattern pieces you cut out by hand. Little did I know what I was starting when I watched the video with my girls and sparked our love of house building.

What started out as one simple house our first Christmas season

Has morphed into much more. We’ve made gingerbread neighborhoods, complete with a frozen pond and a sleigh train full of toys.

Being avid Chicago Cubs fans, one year we attempted to create a mini Wrigley Field, complete with mini gummi bears as Cubs fans and a sports bar across the street. Yes, for any Cubs fans out there, you’ll be happy to know we included rooftop seating on the bar and a handicap parking space in the lot.

One year we scratched our itch to travel by creating three spots we’d either like to visit or would love to visit again. This turned into a hotel on the Greek shores of Santorini—complete with brown sugar and cinnamon sand, the Roman Coliseum—with crumbled ruins inside, and a pavilion in Guell Parc in Barcelona—multi-colored Nerds candies provided the fabulous colors Gaudi envisioned in his park.

When my girls were younger, you’d probably find a Jasmine or Belle figurine on the front porch.  Now those figurines have been donated or hand-me-downed to cousins. But the fact remains that my girls still remind me gingerbread time is arriving. One might comb Pinterest for ideas. Another might come up with some outlandish design, which means another one has to talk her back to reality.

It’s a lot of work. A lot of hours. In my mind, that means a lot of bonding time. A lot of singing carols together. A lot of laughing as we reminisce.

We used to start early in December. Then we’d have the house to display during the holiday season. The frosting and gingerbread make a great potpourri on the kitchen counter. Then sometime between Christmas and New Year’s Eve we break out a hammer and a butter knife to start chipping away. Yes, Royal Icing dries that hard. I’m talking, cement hard. That’s what makes it perfect for house building.

So it’ll mean another year’s creations demolished and devoured. But the memories we’ll have created will linger. My girls will once again scatter off to colleges and jobs in other states. But the together-time  we shared will be priceless.

To me, it’s the reason for the season—peace, love, and joy. That’s what I wish for you and your family this holiday.

And speaking of your family, do you share any traditions that carry on, no matter how old your kids have grown? I’d love to hear about them!

Priscilla A Kissinger is a three-time Golden Heart finalist who writes contemporary romance with a Latino flavor. A single mom with three daughters, Priscilla recently earned an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. During the day she works as an administrator at a major university, and she spends her free time writing, reading, playing tennis, training for half marathons, watching sports and singing karaoke with her family.  You can find out more about her at www.prisakiss.com.

//

My life in cars

I got my first car when I was sixteen. It was a 1971 Dodge Dart (literarily as old as I was) with a bad blue paint job. My grandfather had bought it new and driven it for the last ten years of his life. Then it sat in the drive way until my father bought it for my sister. She drove it another three years before it was passed on to me. The car was awkward and clunky and totally unique. It smelled like dust and motor oil, a smell I love to this day. It was the perfect car for socially-awkward, geeky self. It was far cooler and more distinctive than I was and that was one of the things I loved about it.

Unfortunately, I drove it less than a week before it died a horrible death. We ended up selling it for $500.

A year passed before I was able to wheedle another car out of my parents. It was a used Mercury Tracer. That car lasted my senior year in high school, all four years of college and my first few months out in the world. It was blue and remarkably had an even worse paint job. The entire car rattled when I went over sixty five. The air conditioner went out after three years, so the last two years I drove it (in the hot Texas summers) with a fan mounted on the dash that plugged into the lighter. It helped a little, but in the dead of summer, it was really just like turning on the convection fan in an oven.

The week after I got married, my husband taught me how to drive a stick shift. I am not joking or exaggerating when I say that week and a half was the worst strain on our marriage for the first eleven years. It’s a miracle we made it. Worse still, he taught me during a trip to the mountains of New Mexico. That’s right, I learned to drive a stick shift. In the mountains. I’ll never forget sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store, unable to shift my car into gear. Eventually, I had to drift forward until my bumper rested on the car in front of me before I could reverse without killing it. When we got back, I flew up to Kansas City where I bought my next car–a used Saturn–from my mom’s cousin.

That car had no power brakes and no power steering. The steering was so stiff, I hold a bagel in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other and as long as the road was straight I could steer with my pinkie. I once parallel parked that car near the UT campus in rush hour traffic. When I die, I hope someone remembers to put that on my tombstone, because I don’t know that I’ve committed one single greater act of courage.

After the Saturn was a used VW Jetta diesel. My first foreign car. It was so fun and peppy compared to the Saturn that I left like a Formula One racer. And it got nearly fifty miles to the galleon.

When I got pregnant and we needed a bigger car, it only made sense to buy a Jetta station wagon, because I loved that first Jetta so much. It was my first ever new car. The first time I got to pick the color and interior I wanted.

You may be wondering why I’m waxing poetic about cars. I’m not normally a car person. Really, I’m not. But today, we picked up a new car. My sixth car–though The Geek and I are planning on sharing this one. It’s another brand new car. The most expensive I’ve ever driven.

It’s lovely and super safe, but I’m not comfortable in it yet. It’s not home. Not like those other cars, so I suppose I’m just feeling sentimental. I was such a different person with each of those cars and they all represent something different to me.

The Dodge Dart was a loving moment of my grandfather, who had died when I was nine. Who I’d adored but sometimes barely remember.

The Tracer was my first burst of independence. I drove it to my first job. It carried me back and forth to college countless times. I feel in love with my husband when I was driving that car. For three years, every other weekend I drove from College Station to Austin to visit him.

In the Saturn, I was a teacher. I hauled papers and my first laptop. I was so sure of myself and so convinced I could change the world.

In the Jetta, I was a writer. I went to conferences and met critique partners. I had my heart broken by agents and editors and the realities of my own inadequate skills. I had my first bad car accident. For the first time I feared driving–something that had always come naturally to me. And I got over it and learned to drive again. I sold my first book while driving that car. I drove it to the obgyn after my first miscarriage. I went to the fertility doctor in that car. And when I finally got pregnant again, I drove for weekly blood work in that car. The first time I heard my darling baby’s heartbeat, I got in that car afterwards.

In my station wagon, I’ve been a mom. It has safely carried each of my babies. It’s held no fewer than twelve different car seats and booster seats. It’s windows have been plastered with everything from Elmo sun shades to Thor stickers. And let’s not even talk about the gummy worms and hot chocolate. I’ve listened to so many wonderful books on tape in that car. I sat in that car, in my driving, bawling myself sick after The Time Traveler’s Wife. I’ve taught my children to sing out loud in that car. To love books on tape. To curse at bad drivers. (Not so proud of that last one.)

And yet, some time soon, we will sell this car to someone else. It will go on to protect someone else’s babies or children.

How can I give it up? How can I possibly say goodbye to that time in my life?

And yet I will. Just like I’ve said goodbye to the funky girl in the Dodge Dart and swooning girl baking in the Tracer in the name of love. I said goodbye to the stalwart teacher and the determined writer. Somehow, I will say goodbye to the new mother.

Some of you will tell me that I’m not saying goodbye to any of those people. They are still in me. They are still me.

Tomorrow I will crank down the windows on the new car and sign out loud and pick up my kids from school and drive around having fun and loving the new car. But for now, for tonight, I am heart broken and lonely and missing all my cars and all my former selves.

I know I will be fine. Probably by bedtime. We humans are resilient. We are made to forget, even when we want to cling.

What’s the hardest part for you about transitions?

MomCon 2014

Hey Texas Moms,

One of our fabulous readers, Katie Mehnert, shared info about a fabulous event coming to Austin in January, MomCon 2014. Sometimes being a mom is pretty lonely and you wonder if you’re doing anything right. This looks like a great place to recharge and connect with other moms.

Register

Trish Morrison is the CEO of MomCon, and she had a piece in the Huffington Post on why she sends her daughter to an all-girls school. Check it out!

Huffington Post

//

You decide…

We’re casual here at the Peanut Butter moms. I hope y’all have felt that and kick off your shoes, snuggle in and enjoy our blogs. Us moms have talked (via email & in person) about how much we love having this venue where we can openly discuss all things parenting/writing/family related. We’ve covered so many topics, and I’m always amazed at what my sister moms (not the same as sister wives :-)) come up with in their blogs. I learn so much from their wisdom and humor and experiences and I know being apart of this group (and that includes you too, readers!) has made me a better mother.

As we’re closing in on the end of this year I’m wondering though, what would you like to see more of here? What topics do you wish we’d discuss, or rehash? Here’s your opportunity to speak your mind and have your voices heard. We WANT to know so give it to us straight.

And thanks, as always, for sharing part of your week with us.   

I Wish I’d Known

I’m a fixer. Yes, I know, pop psychology assigns that role to men, labeling women, instead, as nurturers. A nurturer is someone who takes care of people, while a fixer is someone who takes care of problems. That sounds all nice and tidy, but I’m not sure the reality is that mutually exclusive. At least it’s not with me. When someone I love is hurting, I want to wrap my arms around them and hold them tight. But I want to know why they’re hurting, too…and I want to FIX that. Make the problem go away. Sometimes this is simple, such as buying a bigger size of shoes or remembering to put sunscreen on before a day at the beach. But other times it’s harder. Sometimes the problems aren’t of the flesh, but of the spirit…and the heart.

My kids are young. Our problems are still relatively simple. But I have other young people in my life whom I’ve known and loved since the first time I held them as babies, and they’re lives are getting more complex. And when they hurt, when they stumble and fall, when they walk in front of a figurative firing squad, everything inside me goes a little nutso with the desire–the NEED–to fix whatever it is that’s causing the pain.

But I can’t. At least not all the time. Because life doesn’t work like that. Wisdom is not something magically transferred from person to person. It’s (too often) something attained through personal blood, sweat, and tears. How many times when you were a kid or young adult and someone tried to give you advice (that you didn’t really like) did you think: But you don’t understand! You don’t get it! I’m different. This situation is different. You’ll see. I’ll prove it to you…

Bottom line: some life lessons have to be lived.

Realizing this, I sit here feeling nostalgic and melancholy, feeling helpless at what I view as an inevitable train wreck involving someone I love…someone I’ve nurtured and cared for…someone I’ve tried to coach and teach…but someone who is convinced I am dead wrong. But I’m not. I know I’m not. I’ve seen this particular story play out too many times, and it always ends the same. Always.

So..out of curiosity, I tossed a question out there on Facebook and Twitter:  What do you know now that you wish you’d known at 18?

And the answers were pretty fascianting. And wise.

I wish I’d known:

 …how much I loved certain things later in life so I could have made the education decisions to align my job with my loves.
 …how important it is to enjoy the moment. When I was 18 I wanted to rush to college, then rush to career. Wish I’d savored the moments.
 …that one thought, one call, one letter, one misspoken word can change the course of so much.
 …that I was stronger than I thought.
…how much I would continue to change during my twenties. I thought being eighteen, then being twenty-one, meant I was a grown-up. And maybe I was by definition but it didn’t mean I was finished “trying on” who I was and wanted to be. I was much more comfortable in my own skin at twenty five than at twenty one. And more comfortable at thirty than twenty five. Actually this has continued and I’m pushing fifty! Take your time. You have time. Relax. Get to know yourself and be kind to not only others but to yourself.
 …that what goes around comes around.
 …I was going to live this long because I would have taken better care of myself.
 …nothing is really as dramatic as it all seems at that age.
…that people don’t change; instead they only become more of who they are.
…someone who hurt you once will hurt you again…but someone who’s loved you always will love you forever.
…sometimes even real deep love isn’t enough.
…if people are jerks to you more than twice stop wasting your time with them because They Will Not Change. Move on because the 18 yr old self deserves better and is worth better treatment.
…I was nowhere near as smart as I thought I was…or that I would one day become.
…that lust is fantastic, but there’s so much more to building a future.
…to take more time getting where I am now. I rushed thru years thinking I had to cram it all in. I should have slowed down & enjoyed my simple life more.
…all dark clouds pass, that possibility is endless, that you really are the designer of your own future, that dreams really can come true, and that few things are as toxic as doubt.
…that words really are as powerful as sticks and stones, that a single smile can light up the whole room, and a simple hug work miracles.
…that there is no love like the love you have for your children and realized my parents had this love for me.
…that just because you love someone, doesn’t mean they are good for you, or that you end up together. It’s okay to love someone, but not have them in your life.
…the value of keeping a journal. It would be nice to show my kids that I really do understand what they are going through at various times. I may seem ancient to them, but I’ve “been there, done that” with most of their issues and know what I’m talking about.
…how to tell girls the ‘bad boy’ they were chasing was nothing but trouble and have them at least listen to what I said. Trying again with my daughters… don’t think I’ll have any better luck this time around.
…that this world is a lot tougher on the inside than it is on the outside. I would have gone to college instead of a trade school in my thirties. And that boys aren’t all they are made out to be when you are that young!
…and BELIEVED that possibilities are ENDLESS at that age. Want to go to school in a different country? You can make it happen. Want to graduate school and join the Peace Corp for a year? IT CAN happen. BELIEVE what you know are possibilities!
…that your best friend today won’t necessarily be your best friend for life. It is OK for separation to occur. If it was a true meaningful relationship, you can still be good friends without seeing each other or talking every day.
…that regret sucks. I also wish I knew how good I looked, how funny I was and how kind I was to others. We don’t love ourselves enough when we are young. I also wish I knew how powerful my college friendships would be in my life.
…that I should have let the good teachers/people influence me more and the bad ones less. I stopped singing in HS because the teacher played favorites in a huge way and she was fairly horrible to others. I stopped writing in college because of a teacher who tried to beat the love for it out of me and succeeded—for a while. I started writing again but never started singing (though now that we have a piano I find myself eyeballing it….)
…that anger is a mask for fear or hurt, and that when you really love someone, you’ll try like crazy to prevent them being hurt, even if that means you get cast as the bad guy.
…that love is supposed to be kind.
…that being popular doesn’t mean a hill of beans beyond high school. It’s a clean slate once you graduate, and you can forge your own path after high school.
…that life isn’t fair, never has been, never will be and to get over it. Also, there are always people better off than you and people worse off than you.
…that getting married young closes many doors. My first marriage was a huge mistake and a waste of years. I wish I had known that I am enough for me.
…how to have faith in myself and what I could accomplish. I wish I’d realized that a mistake doesn’t equal failure, that there are many new beginnings that start with learning what doesn’t work.
…that depression isn’t in my imagination. It can be treated.
…sometimes you have to jump to learn to fly.
…to take every opportunity you’re given since you may not ever get it again.
…that sometimes “getting serious about your future” means not giving up on your dreams too.
…that aside from family and friends, nothing you think is important then will be important to you ten years later.
…that family is home.

We all learn. Life teaches us. There is no greater teacher. But sometimes the lessons themselves really stink. I wish I could fix what I see looming on the horizon. I wish I could prevent the inevitable pain. But I can’t. It’s not my life, and the more I try, the more I’ll only create other problems. We all have to choose, then walk, our own paths. In the meantime, I’m working to suppress my inner fixer and be ready to nurture when the time comes. Because it will.

Feel free to add to this list. I’d love to know what YOU wish YOU’D known when you were 18….

Christmas is Not Your Birthday

In my adult Sunday school class we’re doing a unit on Christmas is Not Your Birthday. I sometimes teach the Three-Year-Old Sunday school, so I’ve missed some of the lesson, but the gist of it is: stop trying to make Christmas perfect and all about you. It’s about a gift we were given and a sacrifice that was made.

So we have been trying to think of ways to impart this idea to Baby Galen. It’s not easy when, before Halloween, Christmas lights were up at local shopping centers and everywhere you look is a Santa or a Christmas tree. To kids, Christmas is about how much will I get, not what can I do for someone else. But our halfhearted efforts were brought home to us the other day when someone asked Baby Galen what she was going to ask Santa to bring her for Christmas. She immediately whipped out her praying hands and started to pray to Santa. Oh, the horror! My child was praying to Santa Claus. Immediate action had to be taken.

First of all, we talked more about the real meaning of Christmas and how so many kids don’t have anything. Along with some friends, we chose a needy family and bought gifts for a little boy about her age. We brought food to the food bank. We donated clothes to the local homeless shelter. I still don’t feel like it’s struck home yet. Maybe she’s too young, or maybe it is sinking in, and I just haven’t realized it. She did attempt to pray to Santa again, so that hasn’t sunk in!

What do you do to try and help your kids understand Christmas isn’t just about consumerism?

Shana Galen, Multitasker Mama

I’m Shana Galen, AKA Multitasker Mama (and aren’t we all?). I’m a wife, mom to a four-year-old daughter I call Baby Galen. My parenting motto is, “Keep moving. Don’t pass out. Don’t throw up.” Or maybe that’s my fitness motto? http://www.shanagalen.com

 

//

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Happy Thanksgiving, from our family to yours.

National Adoption Month

November is National Adoption Month and the 23rd of November is known as Adoption Day. Many families adopting from the foster-care system choose to adopt on this day and lots of courts do special things to celebrate this amazing day. I read this article yesterday that this year more than 4500 children from the system were adoption on Adoption Day.

Y’all know this is cause near and dear to my heart so I like to periodically shine a spotlight, if you will, on it in the hopes that I can reach maybe one family and talk them into considering this as an option for growing their family. So I’d like to share a few statistics with you:

* there are more than 100,000 children in the foster care system that are waiting for forever families

* nearly 25,000 children age out of the system every year – stop and think about this one a moment. That means that every year a quarter of the kids available for adoption become “too old” for state care and they literally become individuals without families. Meaning they have nowhere to go for the holidays, no one to call if they get married or get a great job and if they make it to college (which most don’t because of the lack of familial support), they have no one to invite to parent’s weekend. I’m sorry, but that just sucks!

* One statistic stated that of the children waiting for adoption, 40% are Caucasian, 28% are AFrican American and 22% are Hispanic.

Now I’d like to share some general info I’ve learned since being in the “system” (so to speak).

* special needs is a term that states use for a variety of scenarios, yes, it can mean that a child has learning disabilities or medical problems, but it also can mean that it’s a sibling group – like my girls were considered special needs, or that the child is a minority.

* there is a huge misconception that there are no young children in the foster-care system that are available for adoption. This is so wrong. Yes, in some cases (like ours) we had to foster for 6 months before we could adopt) but there are many ways in which you can adopt from the system and there are lots of littles available. That being said, don’t be fooled into thinking that if you go young that means you skip all the scary behavioral problems. We were presented with one group of kiddos where the three year old had been diagnosed with RAD (reactive-attachment disorder). Adoption is really not much different that having your own children, you really can’t ever know what you’re going to get with your kids.

* one of the cool things for our girls – frankly the only benefit they get from having been in in the foster-care system – is that they get benefits from the state. They have their medical insurance paid, they will have their college tuition paid (at a state university) and we get a monthly stipend to help pay for their schooling and extras. Furthermore, we didn’t have to pay for any of the adoption court costs. So the myth about adoption being too expensive – not relevant  to foster-care adoption. That being said, every state is different.

Check here for information about foster-care adoption.

The Convergence of Crazy

I think every writer (maybe even every person), as a fair dose of crazy in them. I don’t know if it’s just part of the business or if writers must be more in touch with their crazy in order to write emotional books.

Of course, it’s also true that mothers are all a little crazy too. We’re stressed out. We work hard. Our kids constantly push our buttons. Sometimes, despite our better judgment, the crazy leaks out.

So on one hand, I have the writer crazy to contend with. On the other, I have the mothering crazy. Often these to things are separate, but every once in a while, they meet in the middle for some sort of crazy super storm, like the moment the Ghostbuster cross the streams on their proton packs.

For me, the crazy converges when I let the bad stuff get in my head. This is true of my mothering and my writing. With mothering, it’s the “Am I doing enough?” “Am I doing too much?” “Are they happy?” “Am I happy?” “How does anyone know they are really happy?” “If I’m not happy, should I fake it or does that just create the false impression that life is like a Target ad?” You can see where this is going. It’s a dark and twisted rabbit hole to go down.

For a long time, when I wrote only for Harlequin Desire, the writing part of my crazy was fairly compact. It was stuff like, “Is what I’m doing making the world better?” “Am I any good any good at it, or should I give it up to spend more time with my kids. (And the answer to that is pretty easy. No. I’ve done the 24 hours a day with my kids thing, and my patience wears thin. We drive each other crazy.) “Does my life’s work matter in the universe?”

Then, I started writing post apocalyptic YA. All of sudden the proton pack of mothering-crazy and the proton pack of writer-crazy were both unleashed at the same time. When I wrote The Lair, the second book in the series, the opening action of the book takes place at Base Camp, where the teenagers who are part of the rebellion are living. It’s winter. They’re in the mountains. And all of civilization has collapsed around them. I spent a lot of time worrying about how to feed these two hundred plus imaginary people. It’s a world without grocery stores! A world without fast food! A world without Costco or Chick-fil-a! Where is the food coming from?

The question doesn’t even take up that much of the book. It’s just something I thought about a lot. It got in my head—partly because I was worried about the plotting of this book, but mostly because I was worried about feeding my own kids in the unlikely event of the apocalypse.

I found myself creeping out of bed in the middle of the night to research how to stockpile food. Did you know you can have a year’s worth of food drop shipped to your house? Did you know you can make a candle out of a can of Crisco? Did you know it’s still possible to get scurvy if you don’t get enough vitamin C? This is the kind of information that can really mess with your head.

Then one day, I went to the grocery store and they were completely out of zucchini. I freaked out, sure this was a sign of the coming apocalypse. So … um, yeah. I sort of started stock piling food.

But here’s the thing about book-related insanity: it comes and goes. Now that my Lair-related crazy has passed, my brief foray into prepping has allowed me to make a generous donation to my local food bank. That’s a good thing, right?

Those big parenting questions really stay with me. I will always worry about whether or not I’m setting a good example for my kids. I will always question my parenting and will always try to do better.

I’ve moved on to other forms of writer-crazy, now. Like wondering whether evil monsters will ever invade our world from a parallel universe. And if they do, will grocery stores still operate?

What are your great fears as a parent?

Emily McKay loves to read, shop, and geek out about movies. When she’s not writing, she reads on-line gossip and bakes luscious deserts. She pretends that her weekly yoga practice balances out both of those things. She lives in central Texas with her family and her crazy pets.