Scattered Jules

Lyrics from If I Only Had Today

If there were no more tomorrows
If I knew I could not stay
I’d know how I’d spend every minute
If I only had one day
I’ll Hold you and listen
I’ll let the dishes sit in the sink
I’ll tell you I love you
over and over
and for once just let that phone ring
I’d remind you of forever
and how our love will never change
If I only had today

I have no idea why this song is so stuck in my head today, but I love the message. So often I let moments pass me by–moments of my children wanting to play, wanting me to stop what I’m doing and really see them–listen to them. They are in front of me almost all the time, and yet I sometimes don’t see. And with my daughter gone, I realize how many moments I’ve lost to the world of ”busyness.”

Today is busy. Taxes, writing, editing, reading, working in my business, cleaning, cooking. It is a day filled with busyness. So was yesterday. And I’m wondering how my children feel when they get lost in all my busyness. My youngest suggested yesterday that I get a stress ball. He’s sure that will somehow help. A stress ball will not help. What I need is an accountant, a maid, a cook, and any other work for hire person to come save me from drowning in my to-do list. What I need is a time out and a hug.

I have mutated from a human being to a human doing. As a human doing, I am completely overwhelmed. But I’m not the only one who suffers. It isn’t like I never spend time with the kids, but that some days I get sidetracked and get suggestions of stress ball purchases. Today is a good day to remember that I brought those little people into the world so I could hold them and listen for a little while. It’s time to mutate back to a human being.

LTUE is the symposium at BYU for fantasy and science fiction writers. It is the only free writers conference sort of thing that I am aware of, and it is awesome. Lots of talented artists and authors come together to teach a little of what they know.  I am so excited for Thursday’s main address since James Christensen (the artist) will be speaking and I am so in love with his work. I have several signed, numbered paintings of his in my home, but I’ve never been able to meet him. This will be a real treat for me. Lee Modesitt will also be there on Saturday, which will be fabulous because I haven’t seen the guy since my booksigning in Cedar City. I’m also hoping Kevin Wasden will be there since he is, and always will be, my favorite artist. The only downside to LTUE this year is the fact that Jessica Day George won’t be able to attend. I am sad about this beyond words. The symposium will last three days and is on February 11-13 (it looks like I won’t be missing Valentine’s Day with Mr. Wright this year. It’s about time!)

You can find out more about LTUE and get the schedule for the full symposium here: http://ltue.org/LTUE2010.html

Make sure to star the places on the schedule where I’m speaking–you certainly don’t want to miss those

Michele Ashman Bell, bless her heart, interviewed me on her blog last week. Michele is one of those amazing, cool people that you cannot help but want to hug. You can learn more about me and the scary methods of my madness at her blogspot here: Michele Rocks

And finally, I decided to give an update on the family service project of book giving. It’s going well. We have 38 books collected so far, but are hoping for at least fifty. The kids have donated all the money from their chores over the last couple of weeks to the cause and it’s been kind of fun to have them personally make sacrifices so they can be truly a part of this. I told them that their normal allowance from chores was going to this and then asked them to think about the kids whose parents are away and serving our country. They didn’t even complain like they normally do about having to do their chores. I should have thought of this years ago!

For people who may not be aware of the Mormon teaching of Family Home Evening, I thought I’d give a little recap of the concept and the reality of what those words mean. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, we are encouraged to hold Family Home Evening in our own homes with all members of our family every Monday evening. The purpose of this is to strengthen home and family, to bring us closer together, and to help families learn how to interact socially with each other.  There’s a little more to it than that, but you can look it up yourself here.

I genuinely believe in Family Home Evening. I think it’s absolutely inspired for families to set aside one night every week to escape all the busyness and time takers that corrode family unity.

Unfortunately, I am not perfect. I am not organized. And sometimes Family Home Evening is composed of breaking up quarrels, raising my voice (to be heard of course, not because I’m actually grumpy or anything), and threatening to kill the offspring I am working  so hard to develop unity with.

Families rock.

No really.

In spite of all the mayhem, I still think Family Home Evening is brilliant. This is why I haven’t given up on the idea yet. With the daughter living in St. George, Family Home Evening has become much more complex. Thank heavens for technology. We call her and put her on speaker phone and resume business as usual. How kids can giggle, tease, and irritate each other when they are in different cities over the telephone is really staggering, but my children have always been a bit staggering.

Why I’m writing all this is because we decided to do the whole “Give a day of service and get a day of Disneyland” thing. It sounded like another one of those brilliant family unity concepts. I am all for brilliant family unity concepts. So we chose a service project and tonight went over the game plan for the execution of the service project.

Teasing, giggling, and irritating.

But at the same time, it was fun. We’re going to collect books for the deployed soldiers who left children at home so that the USO can record the parent reading from the book, and then send the book to the child(children) along with the DVD of mommy or daddy reading a bedtime story. Seriously . . . this is my kind of service project. Books!

And sending books to kids lonely for parent interaction? I am all over that. Tonight we gave my kids each tasks they had to fulfill. They are all completely and irrevocably on board with this project because they know they are getting Disneyland at the end of it all. Disneyland is the ultimate reward for any good deed.

Yet, even with the carrot of Disneyland dangling before them, it still took ten minutes to calm them down long enough for opening prayer and another ten minutes to get them to stop fantasizing of a world in which their parents could be gone for six months or longer. I’m trying to paint this thing as the sad tragedy it really is, and my kids are finding nothing but benefit in the proposition (ie: we wouldn’t have chores all the time, no one would tell us it was time to go to bed, we could play x-box until our eyes rolled out of our heads . . . ).

I sometimes wonder if the success in Family Home Evening is getting through the night without having actually strangled any of the children. If so, I can count tonight as a raging, riotous success.

So after taking stock of what I accomplished in the last year, I realized I:

• Wrote over 100,000 words
• Read only 26 books (which is really genuinely horrible, but if you count all the manuscripts I edited, I really read something closer to 50).
• Ate at Cheescake Factory only twice (which is also genuinely horrible)
• Lost to my daughter at Dance Dance Revolution more times than I am willing to admit in a public forum
• On 28 separate occasions, bored young Webelos bad enough they wanted to gouge out their eyes (because I’m not a good enough leader to have Webelos every week like I’m supposed to)
• traveled to seven states (two of which I’d never been to before)
• Spent two weeks on book tour with Josi Kilpack and had the BEST time ever!
• realized I stink at word challenge on facebook (which is shaming being that I’m a writer and should be good at that kind of game)
• wished on a lot of stars
• played and read a lot with my kids and felt genuinely sorry to see the Percy Jackson series come to an end
• laughed a lot with my husband and realized that he read more books than I did this last year.
• cried a lot over life in general and had several meltdowns for which my husband had to hold me together.
• broke my foot hiking the narrows with the family
• spent several dollars worth of pennies making wishes in fountains
• signed with my agent
• despaired over my writing career
• rejoiced over my writing career
• and found solace through my family over the insanity of my writing career
• learned to make cheesecake
• learned to bottle jam
• found joy in great friendships
• let my daughter go
• found that my relationship with her didn’t change even though she’s hours away
• found yoga
• found I’m not great at yoga
• but I keep doing it anyway
• felt grateful at the year’s end for all of my friends and family who make my life meaningful. Thank you.

Here’s to a 2010 that will inspire us all to the greatness within us.

Day Ten was Wednesday. We awoke at Janette’s house where she helped me with the revision of the ending of a book where the ending vexed me, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. Janette is brilliant and someone I just genuinely love. I hated saying goodbye to her.

From Janettes, we went to Thatcher Arizona to the bookstore called Bookworms. It’s always fun to have a line of people waiting when you arrive! It was nice to see a few faces who used to live in my home town and now abide in Thatcher. Great signing and AWESOME owners. I tried to sneak and buy josi a present since she loves chocolate covered cinnamon bears and they had a whole ton of them in cute little gift bags, however the sweet staff refused to let me pay. So though I was thwarted in my moment of gift giving, I think they are all awesome in Thatcher. The owner’s are amazing. Their daughter, Megan, was perfect. You’ve got to love a kid who opens her arms up with a big smile on her face and says, “I’m a hugger!” Me too, Megan! Me too!

We spent the night with Alison Palmer’s parents, the Preys and were treated with tons of hospitality. They even made Josi’s favorite, Hello Dolly’s, and packed her up a plate of those and brownies for the road. They were fascinating people and I loved hearing about their mission in Africa. And the cute pictures of Alison as a youth were way fun to peruse.

Day 11: We left bright and early (sigh. There were a lot of bright and early mornings.) so we could make it to brunch? with Marsha, Connie, and Marjean. I only get to see Marsha once a year if I’m lucky and the last time I saw Connie was at the writer’s cruise we went on several years ago, so it was a huge treat to spend the morning with friends.

From breakfast we went to Deseret Book, where we were greeted by an incredibly lively staff. FUN! Simply just fun! We took a picture for  Craig’s (there were two Craigs) wife with a sign letting her know we missed her since she couldn’t join us for the signing. We really did miss her too. I laughed myself hoarse and hated leaving. Great fun store.

Then we drove for eternity to get to Nevada in time for a book group. Book group was great in a very lovely home where they made lemon tea cookies from Josi’s english Trifle book (I love that Josi’s book got us fed all the time. Way to go Josi!) These cookies were the total bomb. I think I might break down and actually bake because I want to eat these things again.

To the hotel with us where we entered the fitful sleep of two women who were seriously exhausted. Josi should have strangled me this night but to my good fortune, she’s better than that and she put up with me instead. There really is not enough to be said for best gal pals.

Day 12: woke up and got another page written in my WIP. I really believed we’d have tons of free time to do things like, oh I don’t know . . . WRITE! I had no idea how all time consuming this trip would be. We packed up the car and headed to our Vegas store signing at Deseret Book on Sahara. We got a way cool tour of the new Distribution Center area they have upstairs.  After that signing, we hurried to St. George for the signing at the Deseret Book there. Loved Paul. I’ve done sigings at this store before and all signings there have been successful which I think can be attributed to the immense great staff. They were great! And we got to spend time with Alexes who drove up from Mesquite just for the occasion.

After the signing, I got to be with my daughter and my mom and dad. I really miss my daughter and so love every chance to be with her. Josi fixed my dad’s problems with his Ipod and is now worshipped in my parent’s home.

Day 13: We had breakfast with Heather Horrocks and her sister and had a good time chatting about books with her. Next stop was Deseret Book in Cedar City. The last bookstore on the tour. It was a great way to end. We sold lots of books, Josi was a rockstar surrounded by friends and family and Lee Modesitt surprised me with a visit. Lee is amazing and I was so glad to see him! He came bearing gifts that only Lee could give: the first few books of the Recluse series in . . . SWEDISH!!! So now I can read about Lerris nar han har det trokigt! These books hold places of serious rank on my bookshelves.  That was a great way to end this tour!

But it wasn’t over . . . not really. We went to lunch with Josi’s family (who were great) and my daughter. Then we finished our sojourn home.

I cannot begin to describe how it felt to hug my kids and kiss my husband’s cute face! The house didn’t even look too bad if I didn’t scrutinize too hard. The first thing Murks had to say to me was, “We even did our own laundry!” The guys had fun being bachelors, but Mr. wright said they were pretty much to the end of their rope and were glad to have me back. I am certainly glad to be back.

Josi and I each now have a sign (gifted to us by her talented sister, Crystal). The sign reads, “We’ll be friends forever . . . You know too much!” That is certainly true after two weeks of conversations in a car. I could never have pulled off such an amazing two weeks without Josi. She is steady and funny, and great conversation. we talked about books, writing, publishing, life, our pasts, our hopes for the future, our great husbands, and our firm belief in all the things that are right in the world. She made signings effortless and kept us organized and on time. She is awesome!

Thanks Josi . . . for everything