Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 35

More Post-Nap Cuteness

3:05 p.m. and I hear hands rattling the spokes on the stairs. “Hey, Munchkin, you up?” I call.

“Yes.” Michael pads into my bedroom, where I’m channeling my childhood by writing while stretched out across my bed. “Mommy, why do you call me Munchkin?”

“Because I like to call you loving, silly names. Like boo boy. Or Little Man. Or belly boy. Are you my boo boy?”

“No!”

“You’re not? Are you my little bunch of grapes?”

“No!” (Giggle.)

“Are you…my Captain America?”

“No!”

“Well then, what are you?”

Giggle again. “I’m just your regular Michael!”

“Oh, you’re my regular Michael! Well come here, my regular Michael.” (Commence chewing and kissing and “Aunt Tamara” chewing.) Michael climbs on top of me and we snuggle and tickle for a while. Then Michael looks over at the wall. “Why do you have a cross on the wall?”

“We have one downstairs, too.”

“No, we don’t have one downstairs!”

“We certainly do. It’s on the living room wall. But it’s not called a cross. It’s a special kind of cross, called a crucifix, because it has Jesus being crucified on it.”

“No, it’s not called a crucifix!”

“Oh, yes it is.”

“No, it isn’t!” Giggle and collapse on my chest.

“Hey, Mr. Not-yet-four years old, don’t mess with your mommy on Catholic stuff.”

“Mommy, that’s what you should call me!”

“Mr. Not-yet-four years old?”

“Yes!” Giggle giggle. “Can we go downstairs? I want a fruit snack.”

And thus ends another episode of cute post-nap moments with Michael Mayhem, of whom you would never believe, looking at him, that he is capable of ripping the leg off Julianna’s very special Disney World Tinker Bell doll.

The cuter they are, the more danger they hide. Just sayin’.

An Open Letter From An Unapologetic Christian to Those Who Are Up In Arms About Starbucks

Image by julochka, via Flickr

To my fellow Christians who are up in arms about the so-called “war on Christmas”:

Cut it out.

No, really. Just stop. You’re giving all of us a bad name. And worse, you’re giving Christ a bad name.

There is no war on Christmas. Christian America quite successfully corrupted Christmas into a free-for-all greed fest without any help from people who hate religion.

And as for the rest…Does it really matter if Starbucks prints a red cup instead of a red cup with completely non-religious ornament shapes on it? Is anyone’s right to worship really being curtailed by the failure of the city to put a tacky light-up Nativity scene on public property? Have we forgotten that when people say “happy holidays,” they are actually, literally referring to a holy day? And why are we making such a hullabaloo about Christmas in the first place, when the reason for Christianity’s existence is Easter?

Credit, I believe, goes to “Wild Goose Festival,” via Facebook

There are plenty of things in this world worth raising the ire of those of us who profess to follow Christ. Violations of human dignity in many forms we’d rather not confront, because the fingers point back at us as often as they point elsewhere. Violence. Pollution and overconsumption. (See: disposable red cups.) Refugee crises, and the violations of human rights and dignity that cause them. Various -isms. A government full of politicians who can’t play well enough with others to do something as fundamental as pass a budget.

But no, by all means, let’s focus on the design of disposable cups and whether we say “happy holidays” or “Merry Christmas.” Priorities, you know.

*

And with that, I’m going quiet for the week. I need to circle the wagons and get some work done.

Ghost Car: A story by Alex Basi

My Back to the Future Guys, as an illustration: Doc, the DeLorean, and the Flux Capacitor

Today I am sharing a story that Alex wrote, which you will soon see is a spinoff of Back to the Future. The opening, in italics, is a the prompt he was given as a starting point by his English teacher. Note: I disclaim all spelling and punctuation irregularities. But I did put paragraphs in, for all our sakes.

I poked my head into the old car. The dashboard was covered with dust, and the passenger seat was ripped and stained. “Why does Grandpa Ed keep this old wreck behind the garage?” I asked my sister Ashley.

“Ben, you know why,” she replied. “Grandpa thinks the car is haunted. He won’t go near it.”

“Haunted? Cool,” I said. I climbed behind the steering wheel.

“I’m outta here,’ Ashley said. “I don’t like smelly, old cars—especially if they’re haunted.” She disappeared around the side of the garage.

As soon as she was gone, I heard a soft whisper. “Ben…let’s go. Take me for a drive.”

“Huh?” I gasped in surprise. I checked to make sure Ashely wasn’t playing a joke on me. But my sister had left.

“Take me for a drive, Ben. I’m so lonely behind the garage.” The voice seemed to be coming from the radio. But the radio was turned off.

I let out a startled cry as the engine started up. The car rattled and clanked, and then the enging hummed smoothly. “Step on the gas, Ben,” the voice whispered. “Don’t be afraid. Let’s GO!”

My heart started to pound. I grabbed the door handle. Should I jump out of the car? I asked myself. Should I tell Ashley what’s happening?

Or should I take the wheel? Step on the gas? Take a chance?

I decided to go tell Ashely about the car. It was really creeping me out. I ran back through the house to Ashely and told her “Ashely, the car really is haunted. Grandpa was right!”

“What?” Ashely said.

“Come on I’ll show you!”

We went back to the car. It had some weird triangle black thing on the back that I hadn’t noticed before. We went inside the car and the “ghost” came back. “Ben,” it said, “I want you to take this car on the road and take it up to 88 miles per hour.”

“Who are you?” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

I am Doctor Emmett Brown, and I have…c-rAZY eyes.

“I am Dr. Emmet Brown,” the ghost said. “I made a terrible mistake building this car, but you can fix it. I secretly made this car to go back in time or to the future, as you like, but it kept messing up the future or the past. I had one apprentice, your grandfather, Martie McFly.”

“What” I said “that’s, that’s…just so weird.”

“I know it is” Dr. Brown said “but it happens.”

I looked at the rusty old car and asked Dr. Brown “How could this piece of junk ever transport someone back in time?”

“I truly don’t know” said Dr. Brown. “But I hope it will, otherwise your family will be destroyed from existance.”

“How do you know?” i asked.

“I’ve been to the future and back again, remember!”

“Oh yeah, it’s just…brand new. I guess and I’m having trouble believing it.” I said.

“Well so did I.” said Dr. Brown.

“Dr. Brown can I call you Doctor?” I asked him.

“Yes I guess so.” He answered me.

“Well are we going to the past to change history or not?” he asked us.

“Well it’s worth a try.” Said Ashely.

“Back to the past it is then! I do hope you’re 16.” He said.

“I’m 15, 2 day still my birthday. I’m close enough. I know how.”

“Well hurry up then, move it!” Ashley said.

“You can’t rush time” said Dr. Brown.

“Whatever” said Ashley. “Let’s go!”

I turned onto the road and excelarated up to 88 miles per hour. There were colorful sparks all over the windsheild and we dissapeared, into the past.

*

Once we got there I felt weird like I was in another setting witch I was. I was actually back in time when Grandpa Marie was a teenager! “Martie and I changed te future, the original 2015 had flying cars and hover boards. Martie even took one home.” Dr. Brown said. “It was a bright pink one with green and blue camoflage on it. Got it from a little girl when he was running away from a boy called Biff Jr. Biff though, original biff caused a lot of trouble though. He stole an almanac for all the 20th century magor sporting events and using my time machine went back to the past and gave himself the almanac to make himself rich, changing the timestream making an alternate future.” He finished out.

“That was a long explination,” Ashely said

“Yes, I excell at long explinations. Now hurry we must fix this problem before it’s to late!” Dr. Brown said.

“First, what is this problem?” I asked.

“You’ll see in a minite.” He answered.

*

We walked for a while until we got to a sign that said Hill Valley. I hadn’t noticed it before but I could actually see the “gost” we were talking to. He had a mad scientist look, white afro hair, a white lab coat, wild eyes, and I could almost see the ideas popping up in his head. We all looked in the valley and saw a small town that had a school, movie theater, a courthouse, and other buildings.

“What’s this place supposed to be?” Ashely asked.

“This place is where your grandpa went to school when he was a teen obviously.” Dr. Brown said.

“Seriously, doesn’t look like much has changed since, where are we?” I asked.

“When are we is the question, and we are in 1985. What else is new?”

“I still don’t see this problem you were talking about” I said

“That’s because it hasn’t happened yet. You’ll see it in a minite.” said Dr. Brown. “There it is, in the sky!”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Its’ the exazct dallorian we came here in!” He answered.

“But that makes no sense.” I yelled, the noise getting louder and louder.

“You’re in that car and it’s going to crash!” He yelled. Then it happened. The car tilted to the side, flew straight toward a power line, and then right before it hit the power line it righted itself and started falling rapidly.

“We have to stop it!” Dr. Brown said “You, the future you, is in that car and you’re going to die if we don’t save you!”

“I am? Or me in the car?” I asked

“You in the car!” he answered.

“Well how are we going to do it?”

“We can make a crash pad where it’s going to crash.”said Ashley.

“Good idea. Where’s it going to land?”

“On top of the Court house!”

“Well let’s get over there then!”

*

Ten minites later we were setting up a bunch of coushions and “Hover Turbines” (That’s what Doc called them any way) to slow and coushion the dallorian’s fall. “The dallorian will crash in approximately one minite and twenty-three seconds.” Doc said. “All of us have to be out of sight by at least a minute before the dallorian crashes. Otherwise we’ll risk paradox!”

“What’s paradox?” I asked.

“Paradox is when the entire universe is destroyed!” said Ashely.

“How do you know?” I asked Ashley.

“I have science class, you know!”

“Well, let’s get out of here!”

“Not so fast, this will only slow the dallorian down. We’ll still have to give you life support.” said Doc. We tried to find a place to hide but didn’t have much luck. eventually we just decided to hide in the clock tower. a few minites later we heard a whistling noise and then a loud CRASH! “That’s our cue,” I said.

“Exactly right.” Doc agreed. We rushed up to the roof. There was a lot of smoke coming from the dallorian. We rushed over and opened the door. It looked like I had passed out but I knew that it wasn’t true. “Great Scott!” cried Doc.

“What happened to me?” I asked.

“It looks like you choked on something” Doc said

“What did I choke on?”

“I’m not sure.” said Doc. “But it is definitely big!”

*

About a minite later I was out of the dallorian. We’d decided to try CPR first. It didn’t work completely but it got us started, it got junk out of my throat. Next we tried the Heimlich Maneuver (witch I had no idea what it was until Doc showed us.) The Heimlich Maneuver is when you put your hands in front of someone, make a fist pull sharply towards you, and then up. It worked pretty well actully. We had to do a little rescue breathing, but after that we went to the dallorian and took off, into time.

Candy, Eating Well, Costumes, & Other Quick Takes

1: to Candy, or not to Candy?

Nicholas is studying nutrition right now. I wonder if the teachers consciously placed that unit just before Halloween? In any case, Nicholas got in the car after school the other day and told me he was not allowed to eat the candy we’d let him take for a snack.

Yes, I know, I’m the mother of the year for letting him do it at all. Truthfully, I wasn’t consulted in the matter. The boys make their own lunches now, most of the time. Anyway, there are principles and then there’s reality, and the reality is that I’d rather just get rid of the Halloween candy as soon as possible.

This is what’s left AFTER one week of 5 people eating on it. 5, because I’m more or less abstaining.

Anyway, my kids are good eaters, because we never gave them the option not to be. They eat vegetables, they know a balanced meal consists of a protein and vegetable or fruit, and they’re not allowed to fill up on starches, and they know there’s no dessert at all unless they eat the healthy stuff. So I don’t feel like making a big stink of candy.

2: And the Sleep thing, of course

The first grade is talking total health, actually, not just nutrition. Wednesday night at bedtime…well…long past bedtime, really, because it was after choir practice…Nicholas was hugging me good night, and he said, “Mom, you know you’re not supposed to get up early, because you need rest.”

I said, “Now, it has nothing to do with what time you get up. What time you get up has to do with what time you go to bed. You can get up early if you go to bed early.”

“Is it early?” he asked.

“Uh, no. It’s an hour past your bedtime. Now go to sleep!”

I went to bed myself, shaking my head. Even my kids know I don’t sleep well.

3: Technology

Alex’s grandparents brought him a new clock radio/CD player. Apparently you can use any track you want from the CD as an alarm. He chose the Mission:Impossible theme. (It just went off downstairs, hence this mention.) But here’s the thing: he just went down there and did it. I mean, it would take me half an hour to figure out how to do something like that without instructions, if I figured it out at all. And he just went and did it. I find this befuddling. I’m a smart person. I use MIDI and I download and upload and burn CDs and create .pdfs and all kinds of things. But the kids take to technology like fish in water. They learn things without ever being taught. I don’t get it.

4: Spiritual Awakenings

Spiritual awakenings are never comfortable, but I’m grateful for them. Mostly.

5: Age and Weight

I hesitated sharing this at all, because I can predict the response, but oh well. People are still telling me how great I look, but the truth is that I’ve gained two pounds that I can’t get back off. Five months I’ve been trying—shaving calories off the budget LoseIt.com gave me, not counting some of my exercise—but I finally had to accept that the age forty (-one) thing had finally kicked in and my metabolism has slowed. Which left me a choice: roll over, or go back on a weight loss plan. I took option B and set myself a four pound loss goal. I don’t like the new calorie budget. At all. But it is a good check on being intentional about what I put in my mouth. I’ve generally done okay about eating at meals, but when you’re starving and in a hurry, it’s easy to eat two Pringles here and a handful of raisins there and a slice of cheese on the other side, and there goes the calorie budget. Sooner or later, I know I won’t be able to maintain this weight, but it’s too easy to take the lazy, gluttonous road and let your desire for…say….Halloween candy…influence your opinion about whether that time has already arrived, or not.

(Now you know why I want the stuff out of my house.)

6: Speaking of Halloween…

I have always been wretched at Halloween costumes. Even when I was a kid, I couldn’t think creatively. My firstborn? Not so much. He’s all into Back to the Future right now, so he decided to make the Delorean.

Foam board, poster board, rope, and auto primer. I know, right?

7: Julianna’s latest charm

Every morning when Christian leaves, Julianna shouts, “Daddy, kiss Mommy!” So he does, and she says, “Do eet again!”

How do you resist that? Marriage therapy, via Julianna Basi.

Have a great weekend!

Profanity, the “Real” World, and the Author’s Responsibility

Photo by mbgrigby, via Flickr

This week, one of my online writing communities has been discussing profanity and its place (or lack thereof) in literature.

I got to thinking, as I read people’s perspectives, that there’s a pretty deep philosophical question contained in this conversation. For my readers who don’t care to read about writing, please bear with me for a minute!

Whenever we talk about the line between too much sex/profanity/violence and an unrealistic picture of the world, the argument boils down to this: We’re writing the real world, and these things exist in the real world; therefore they belong in our stories.

I find that an overly simplistic argument, as I’ve written before. As story creators, we are constantly being counseled to push the envelope, because it’s the unusual and the sensational that sells books—first to agents and editors, and then to the public. But the more we push the envelope, the more desensitized the audience becomes, and the greater the shock value has to be.

The million dollar question is: Does any of this actually change people’s behaviors or thinking patterns?

Well, I know how much movies, TV, songs and books have influenced the way I interact with the world, and you cannot convince me that the same is not true for everyone else. At least to some extent, the real world goes in the direction it is pushed by its artists.

So really, as creators, we are simultaneously trying to do two things that are in conflict with each other:

1) reflect the real world; and

2) craft the unique angle that makes our story different from, more extreme (and thus heroic) than, the real world.

This, then, raises a question. Are we bound to reflect only reality, without imposing philosophical, ethical, or (dare I say) moral judgment upon what we see? The answer is no. Authors don’t write stories just for the sake of writing stories. If, through our storytelling, we explore themes–the plight of women in abusive relationships, or parents who refuse to accept their children for who they are, or mothers who need to learn to let go of absolute control, or the way we handle grief, or whatever it might be–we’re attempting to influence the world, because we see something in it that is broken. Dysfunctional. Not the way it should be.

I would argue then, that we as authors (or screenwriters, or songwriters) don’t have to portray the world the way so much of modern entertainment and literature does: potty-mouthed, hooking up as if sex is without consequences, and so on. First of all, not everybody is doing these things, and suggesting otherwise influences the next generation of humanity inaccurately. Secondly, as authors and other creators of art, we have the right–the duty, even–to hold a mirror up to the world and say, “Hey, this is really not okay. Think about it.”

The other thing that occurred to me in the middle of the conversation on profanity is this: if it’s not okay for children to hear, why is it okay for adults to hear?

There are things that kids can’t handle that adults can. Things they won’t understand at age six, that they’ll misunderstand at age eleven, and finally be ready to process appropriately when they’re sixteen. (I’m just pulling those numbers out of my head for the sake of illustration. Don’t read anything into them.) Some of those things, adults need in order to navigate the world.

Profanity is not one of those things.

Generally speaking, it seems to me that people use profanity either to express negative emotions, or to sound cooler than they do without it (at least in their own minds). I think there are also some who use profanity to shock or titillate, and others who use it to prove that they’re not stodgy and goody two shoes. (Hello, Kate, that finger is pointing at you.)

The last three of those are terrible reasons to use profanity, because they’re all related to making decisions and character traits based on what others think of us. Bad idea, on principle.

As for the first…There’s plenty of negativity in the world. The more we sputter and curse at it, the worse we feel. Anger feeds on itself, bitterness too, and frustration and irritation and everything else we are expressing when we use profanity. It makes no sense to encourage it. Life throws enough challenges at us without chasing after negative feelings.

I lay all this out there not to suggest that I’m a paragon of uprightness in this matter, because I’m not. I say some things out loud and more things in my head. And sure, the characters I create are going to be the same way, some of them more than others, based on their backgrounds and influences. The same is true of the way the characters I create treat others and interact with the world.

But as an author, my basic responsibility as a human being to try to make the world a better place takes on more importance. I have to write with that responsibility in mind.

We Are Responsible For Our Own Actions

Photo by left-hand, via Flickr

If you’ve been around my blog for a while, you’ll know that I’m no fan of the “blaming the victim” argument. In my experience, any time someone invokes that phrase, it shuts down discussion, just when discussion is what is most desperately needed. I think accusing people of “blaming the victim” leads to digging in at the extremes and not paying attention to the larger issues—whether it’s race, sexual assault, or anything else–which are always more complex and nuanced than the sound bites to which we reduce them.

On the other hand, I have had a song inflicted upon me repeatedly in the past year at Jazzercise which includes these lyrics:

‘Cause you’re too sexy, beautiful

And everybody wants to taste

That’s why I still get jealous.

This song makes me want to throw things. (Preferably, throw them at that annoying-falsetto-voiced singer.) Modern English includes a sentence structure that boils down something like this: Because you (insert character trait), I am thus incapable of controlling my reactions. By extension, then, clearly my actions are your fault.

It’s pretty blatant in this song, but I’ve taken people in my life to task for less. My kids are terrible. I’ll say, “Why did you hit your brother/take his toy/yell at him?” The answer is, of course, “Because he’s annoying me!” (Oh, obviously. Silly me. Clearly, he brought it upon himself, right? If he wasn’t so inherently annoying, you wouldn’t be irresistibly compelled to haul off and smack him.)

I have to fight it myself, too. When the kids say, “Stop chewing on me!”, for instance, my first impulse is to tell them if they weren’t so chewable I wouldn’t find it so hard to stop.

But in the end, it all boils down to this: we all have to take responsibility for our own actions and choices. We’re always going to be tempted to violate other people’s human dignity because something about them either bugs us or attracts us. But the responsibility for that violation is still on us–not on the person who tempted us.

The Hazards of Living In A Musical Family, and other Updates on my Babies

Alex

After the LEGO movie a couple of years ago, Alex started singing “Everything is awesome” all.the.time. Woe was me. Then, knowing I loathed the song even more than I loathed the movie, he started teasing me by singing “Percy Jackson ro-ocks!” on the same tune. Then he got tired of Julianna’s obsession with Frozen, and he converted “Let it go” to “Let it blow, let it blow, and frozen goes kaboom!” Funny guy.

Last night, I decided two can play this game. I was washing dishes, he was watching Star Wars, and I heard Luke say, “I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi, like my father.”

I went into the living room and leaned down. “Hey, Alex,” I said, and started singing to the tune of “Do you want to build a snowman”: “Do you want to be a Jedi? Come on, let’s learn the Force!”

Julianna

I had Julianna’s IEP meeting yesterday. Apparently a lot of people dread IEP meetings (individualized educational program, for the inquiring mind). Well, I dread them too, but not for the same reason. Conventional wisdom is “never go by yourself. It’s overwhelming, all those people in the room.” I have no doubt that many people have found their opinions overwhelmed, but I’ve never had a bad experience at an IEP meeting. I’ve been very happy with Julianna’s team and I’ve always thought we’re on the same page. I just dread them because it’s yet another appointment for which I have to figure out logistics.

On the other hand, it’s a good check-in on her academic performance, because Heaven knows we never get any sense from her about what she’s learning in school. The news is that she’s still reading at grade level, even with comprehension factored in, although her ability to read words is much higher. But her math assessments show zero improvement. Interesting, because we’re still doing the regular homework all the other second graders are. The difference is that in order for Julianna to do that homework, I have to sit at the table with her and take her step by step through it.

Nicholas

You know those family stories? The ones everybody knows, even if they were too young to remember them? One of those stories in our house is about Nicholas. He was three, and I decided it would be a special mommy-little boy memory if we went to Kohl’s to pick out Jerry Garcia ties for Christmas for his daddy. “These are a surprise,” I said. “These are Christmas gifts. We don’t tell Daddy about them.”

When Christian walked in that night, Nicholas went running toward him. “Daddy, Daddy, guess what? We got you TIES!”

I turned around from the stove and said, “Nicholas, you are FIRED!”

Last night, I took Nicholas—now 6 1/2, shopping for a new (that is, “gently used”) coat. In the bins at Once Upon A Time I saw a bunch of boots and sparkly shoes that I thought might make good Christmas gifts for Julianna. “Now, Nicholas,” I said, “this is a *secret. Because it’s probably for Christmas gifts. So you do NOT go home and tell Julianna.”

“The way I told Daddy about the ties?” he said, giggling.

“Exactly.”

“But I can tell her we have a Christmas present, right?”

“No, you may not. You have been entrusted with a secret. That is a responsibility. That means you don’t tell anybody.”

We came home and found Alex in the kitchen while the others were upstairs taking baths. “Alex! Guess what!” Nicholas yelled. “I have a SECRET!”

(Face palm.)

Michael

Michael came down from his bath while I was doing dishes and asked me to button his snowman PJs. I told him the price was nibbling on his belly, and he giggled a little and said okay. He was so darned cute. I mean, He generally is cute, but it was particularly concentrated cuteness last night. I sat down on the floor and buttoned his shirt, and he started to run away. “Wait a minute!” I said. “Get back here!”

He careened to a stop. “But I want to watch Star Wars!”

I gave him the over-dramatic sigh. “Oh, all right. But first give me a kiss.”

So he did. I lllllllloooooove little boy kisses, so I always make a big deal of it and act like his kisses knock me over. It makes him giggle, but last night he was in too big a hurry. He kissed and ran, and didn’t even notice my big dramatic flop on the floor. I called after him. “You’ve SLAIN me, Michael!”

Blue PJs paused. You could practically see his heart torn. Then he came padding back in, giggling, to kiss me on the other cheek. It was so sweet, I took mercy on him after that and let him go watch Darth Vader.

Obligatory paragraph about my Book Baby

Book Baby is misbehaving. I got a pretty rough critique a couple of weeks ago, and I lost all will to live for a while. But I think Book Baby and I came to a tentative understanding the other day and I can move forward. However, I now have a month full of weekly columns and two religious education presentations at the top of my docket, so my blissful weeks of no deadlines have passed, and now I re-enter the real world of slicing bits of time out of everything else to write a novel. I had hoped to be querying by the first of the year. One of my critique partners counseled me to let it take the time it needs.

Halloween this weekend. This year we get to trick or treat with cousins! Photos next week. Alex outdid himself again this year.

We Weren’t Made To Live Like This

Photo by Mario_Guo, via Flickr

When you have four kids, life is going to be busy, simply by definition. But Christian and I have not given up the things we were doing before kids came along, and we were busy then. When I first quit working, I was a bona fide stay at home mom. Now, I work from home, but I am being dragged, kicking and screaming, to the conviction that I’ve stretched myself too thin.

See, the thing is, nobody actually does it all. Somewhere, something is going to give.

My head is just too full, and things are falling out of it. On Tuesday nights when Christian is teaching piano, I can get everybody to and from lessons, dinner cooked and on the table, bully everybody into getting their mealtime chores done, make the boys practice piano and trumpet before screen time, do their homework, and maybe even get a page of Julianna’s done with her. But I forget to have them make their lunches. I plan exactly who I have to pick up when in order to get everybody where they’re going when they’re supposed to be there (and we’re rarely late, believe it or not), but I frequently forget to tell the other half of the carpool, or worse, the school where I have to do early pickup, until fifteen minutes before I’m leaving.

Now, I’ve never been one of those parents you could count on to have a package of tissues in her purse. Or hand sanitizer. I am, after all, the mom who once took an all-day trip with the baby and forgot the diaper bag. And I do go easy on myself. I can see how insane that last paragraph is; I recognize that nobody could be expected to remember it all. Even so, a lot of my forgetting is because I’m distracted by all the other things I haven’t yet accomplished yet.

We were not made to live like this.

And then there’s that pesky issue of presence. I shouldn’t be spending car time trying to block out my kids’ voices so I can concentrate on brainstorming a scene, a blog lead, or a not-trite rhyme. For better or for worse, this is the time I have with my children, and my success or failure as a parent depends upon my interactions with them. I don’t want their memory of me to be a mom who is dazed and distracted, and never really paying attention.

(Says the woman who’s sitting on the couch writing a blog post while her kids are reading Tinker Bell, putting a witch hat on my head, and giggling about the walking in the woods story I paused to tell them about two children named Jichael and Mulianna. (They thought that was hysterically funny.)

My parenthetical, and the gauzy watch hat falling down over one eye, provides a good conclusion to this post. Because I have to find some way to be satisfied with what I’m able to accomplish on any given crazy day, even though it’s less than I want. I have to find some way to reduce the amount that I’m taking on, so that I can be present to my children, who are the richest part of my life and the reason I have anything to say to the world at all. And although I have no idea what exactly that looks like in my life, it also reminds me that the changes I need to make are incremental, and already in motion.

How I Do It All

“How do you do it all?”

This is the question I get asked most frequently. I have four kids. I play flute, lead a church choir, write music, write for magazines, and write fiction. Christian and I teach and promote natural family planning, and we (sometimes) and I (often) do a fair amount of disability advocacy. So how do I do it all?

The short answer is, I don’t. My house is never clean, for instance, and this year my outdoor landscaping/gardening was abysmal, because I just couldn’t take the time. A better question is: how do I get done as much as I do? That’s a question I can answer:

1. I am married to a really good man who supports my working from home, even though it means the house is continually not in the condition that the house he grew up in was; a man who never even hints that I’m shirking my responsibilities, and who, in fact, when I get a call from the civic orchestra looking for a substitute third-flute players, doesn’t hesitate to tell me to be gone half the afternoon and the entire evening, because he knows how much I miss playing in orchestra. And who has the dishes done and the kids in bed by the time I get home.

2. I don’t really sleep. I get up between 5 and 5:30 virtually every day, in part because I have to take my temperature, but also because that is the only time of the day when I’m sure the phone isn’t going to ring and no kid is going to demand something of me. It is my daily readings & reflections, followed by my freshest, most concentrated writing time. And if I can’t get to sleep, or back to sleep, at night, I often get up and do a brain dump at 11p.m. or 2 a.m.

3. I don’t watch TV. It’s a guilty pleasure to rack up an hour and a half’s worth of laundry folding so I can put something on Netflix and fold and watch.

4. I’m very protective of my writing time. In fact, I’m protective to a fault; that’s something I have recently realized I need to work on.

4. I spend a lot of time planning and writing in my head. In the car, while I’m doing dishes, and so on. I plan a lot so that I spend less time flailing and getting my bearings when I do have time. And I am constantly planning logistics of how to get things done in the most efficient manner possible.

5. Finally, but not least important, because this speaks to the second-most-frequently-asked question I’m asked (or maybe needling is the better word): I get it all done because I don’t have a smart phone. You would not believe the amount of flak I catch over this. People seem utterly unable to believe that I could possibly have a well-thought-out rationale for choosing not to jump off the cliff with everyone else, but in fact, I become more convinced all the time that I don’t want one. Not having a phone with unlimited minutes, text and data means that I can leave the house and be off-limits to phone calls from Omaha Steaks and Direct TV and even the perfectly valid business and personal calls. You don’t have to answer every call, but the ring alone disrupts my concentration and that’s thirty seconds of productive time that I can’t get back. Plus, it’s human nature to think, “Oooh, am I missing something important?” Again: distraction! Not having a phone with internet access means I can take my computer any old place and simply not connect to the wireless, and I don’t have the option of getting distracted by Candy Crush, angry kittens, or whatever viral sensation is coating the social media waves on a given day.

I also can’t be texted. The vast majority of the time, text messages are an exceptionally inefficient mode of communication–talking is much faster than typing–so again, not having a smart phone means I’m immune from that particular time waster. And although everyone says you can turn off your phone when you don’t want to be interrupted, we all know how often that happens. There’s even a slide show going around about “what we look like on our phones.” Connectivity is good, but beyond a certain point it’s just noise. I get things done because without a smart phone, I have less mental and visual noise in my life. I can hear myself think.

So that’s my answer to everyone who has ever asked (or just shaken their head in wonder) how I do it all. There’s another side to this, of course, but I’ll address that separately another day.

Adorability

On the docket for today: the obligatory results of my yearly kid portraiture.

Alex looks so grown up all of a sudden.

He loved getting to go out to the Pinnacles and climb rocks to have his pictures taken. Even if it was only 42 degrees outside, and he had to keep taking off his hoodie and putting it back on while I fiddled with aperture and shutter speed and ISO.

But in the end, wouldn’t you know it? One of the test shots won, and for the second year straight Alex will grace our wall not in a nice bright sweater, but the same hoodie he wears every single day. How tween of him. ;)

Julianna, in the meantime, gave me about two hundred shots of this….

…and this…

….so in the end we asked permission to use and share photos from the Children’s Miracle Network Glamourazzi event this summer (all photos taken by Creative Photo):

We had the mommy-daughter shot…

…and the fun shot with a deejay at the local pop-rock station…

But the one we’re opting with for the walls this year is the one that captures Miss Feisty Pants to a T:

Nicholas, of course, is a ham who needs no commentary:

But it’s Michael who steals the show this year, as far as I’m concerned. If you’re on Facebook you probably already saw these, but…are you ready? Guard your heart, folks:

Move over, Jack Sparrow. You’ve been replaced.

Have a great weekend, everybody!