Orson Scott Card wrote a short story about a woman who chooses to live her perfect day, over and over, and shows the horror of making time stand still. 

Even with that cautionary tale in mind, I wouldn't mind living yesterday over again for a few weeks. 

The morning went well--I just started doing Body-For-Life. No, it's not a cult (I'm Mormon, a homeschooler, and used to sell Mary Kay; I'm maxed out on cults for now). I won't tell you what it is, because you can Google that yourself, and I hate sounding like a cheesy commercial.

In any case, it's really working for me, and I've already lost weight and seen an increase in strength and energy. 

So, yesterday morning, I lifted weights. Then I watched my friend Frau's kids while she ran errands and we all cleaned the house. (I love having a clean house.)

Then we packed corndogs and carrot sticks and put Cherry Blossom and Moose into the double stroller, and walked a mile down the footpath by the river and had school out in the fresh, Russian-olive scented air. There were birds tweet-tweetering while I read a chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to the kids. Then we played for an hour.

After we got home, Chief, my 8 year old boy, was permitted to play Zoombinis while everyone else in the house took a nap. I want to include neon lights around this: I GOT A NAP. 

Dragoon got home before six, while I was packing some chicken and spinach wraps to take with us on errands on our way to Dragoon's Dad's house out in the sticks half an hour from our house.

And at my FIL's house was......

PUPPIES!

Goldie the golden lab had three puppies earlier this week. I got to hold one--a tiny, blind, squeaky, silky little nurser. 

In no time at all they'll have their eyes and ears open, and will be bounding in fat seesaws across my FIL's lawn. 

My FIL's dogs are wonderful; they are smart and gentle, and his only regret about the puppies is that there weren't more of them, because puppies from FIL's dogs are in great demand among people who know him. 

I know, I know, we should never breed dogs, we should all go to the pound and get abandonded doggie orphans, I know.....but that's for another entry. Suffice it to say, I think parentage is important for knowing what kind of dog you're getting, and I am really careful about making sure the dog that's around my babies is a known (and trained) quantity. I'll take chances with other dogs when my kids are older.

Then FIL saddled up one of his horses for the kids. We are over there once a week and he's been teaching Buffy, my 6 year old daughter, how to ride. Chief tried, but he's too nice and horses are very quick about knowing who they can boss around. 

Buffy, OTOH, is a natural alpha, and always has been, and has a great time perched way up there on the tall muscled monsters my FIL prefers.

Then FIL saddled up another horse and pushed Dragoon and me out the door to go ride out on the sagebrush while he gave our five kids root beer floats.

It was a beautiful night; not too hot, not too cold, and the sagebrush smelled sweet and green. We rode up into the foothills and looked out into the rural canyon where my FIL's property is. 

Horseback riding with your honey sounds like an innately romantic thing, but really it's a lot of trying to get horses to stop racing each other, and horses nickering to each other about the idiots on their backs, and saying "Whoa!" and "Stop that" and coughing when the horse in front sends a particularly potent puff of methane into your face. 

But. other than that, it was pretty good. I see now why cowboys wear those boots. My Birkenstocks weren't very helpful for horseback riding. 

This morning was perfect, too. I caught the 7 am session at my temple, and got home in time to make smoothies for the children, and now Dragoon and I are getting the kids and house ready for us to go on a date and go see Prince Caspian.

I think I must secretly be a Calvinist, because all this perfection is spooking me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful too. I am VERY grateful. But it sets such a standard. Now that I've had a wonderful day or two, will every other day pale in comparison? Will I engage in self-recrimination when I read this entry a month or a year from now, because I think I should have the stars align like this every week?

Maybe I'm just borrowing trouble.

Well, anyway...the perfect day. I really liked it. 

(I mean, dude........puppies!)

“Heavenly Father planned for me to come to a family. I can strengthen my family now.”

I have a mom, and a dad, and 2 brothers and 2 sisters.  I am 4 years old.

We are all different. We have different names and different hair. We are all good at different things.

(Chief) is good at computer games and he is gentle and kind.

(Buffy) paints pictures and is smart at math.

My mom says I am cute and happy about things. I have enthusiasm.

I like it when my family sews together and eats candy together and reads Narnia together.

 I help my family by cleaning and jumping around being happy. I try to be nice to my sister even if she is mean to me.

Jesus wants us to be nice to our family even when they’re mean. And we should help clean and be happy, too.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. 


Then it was Buffy's turn to bear her testimony:

I know God is true.

One time I was very violent. So Mom had to hold me down. But when I got a blessing from my dad, I became much better.

I know God is true because He gave the power to my dad to put his hands on my head and bless me.

And I know that if you are very violent, then you will need a blessing. You should ask God for help and then He will help you.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Then 8yo dear son Chief got up to read a scripture, and Dragoon realized that nobody had told him WHAT scripture to read. 

As it turned out, Chief did find a scripture having to do family. He opened his scrips and began reading, "And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived, and bare Cain..."

Finally he finished up with "Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him", smiled, and sat down.

Buffy's testimony was just a little cringe-worthy, but  but last year while we were still living in Boise, one of my kids was assigned to give a talk about their favorite scripture story. Honeybee chose--it's every kid's favorite--Ammon cutting off the sheep-rustling Lamanites' arms. 

Chief and Buffy got excited and involved and wanted to help Honeybee. They all immediately made visual aids. They traced their arms, and colored and cut them out, and used red poster paint on the torn-paper ends, and there you have it: paper severed arms. 

Buffy, the oldest girl, grabbed one of the PVC/duct tape swords Dragoon makes for our kids, and while Honeybee gave her talk, Buffy acted it out, waving her sword behind her and spilling the paper severed arms out of a tote bag.

It was actually one of the proudest moments of my mothering career to date, my older daughters working together to combine Sharing Time with Sam Peckinpah. 

Likewise, I'm proud of Chief for managing to stay on-topic with his scripture. Granted, his scripture selection may not have been what the Primary Presidency had in mind when they assigned him, but I think procreation and fratricide cover the human family experience.  
 



 

Most families have a stripper. My family had me.

One of the favorite stories in the family saga happened when I was a small girl and we were living in Japan. As the story goes, I took off all my clothes and climbed some trees in the middle of the cul-de-sac, and had to be escorted back to our cinderblock house by snickering Japanese construction workers. 

When I was seven, I reached a compromise with my parents, and began wearing a swimsuit all the time as a concession to modesty.

I suspect part of the problem was that I was a child with that kind of annoying telekinesis that recoils from tags, seams, and impure cottons. Some of my kids have inherited this (Hanibess is our stripper) but clothes are comfier these days. Look at tagless tees. Since my 80’s childhood, some clothiers have finally realized that children aren't oversized dolls to be shoved into polyester outfits with huge knife-like seams, but, aha, actual people, who would appreciate a fiber that breathes and a non-binding inseam.

So as a kid I decided that if it weren't comfy, then I weren't wearin' it. My parents were likely eager to prevent temper tantrums associated with kinesthetic oversensitivity, hence, the swimsuit. 

20 years later, the swimsuit compromise seems to have worked. I began adding to my small pool of clothes I would wear, and now I’m an adult, and I mostly keep my clothes on. My parents couldn't be prouder. 

However there is a vexing irony in the commandment to “Keep Modest!”: Motherhood.

I began young adulthood at 19 when Chief, my 8 year old son, was born. I had just spent the last 15 years at church with “Keep Modest!” thundering down. (15 years to account for the years as a toddler when I ignored modesty, and the years as a teenager when I similarly ignored modesty. It wasn’t that I didn’t hear the lessons on modesty, I just didn’t listen to them.:

So it was traumatic to my dignity to give birth. ALL the bits I had been told to keep under wraps were right there, in front of strangers. In front of strangers a LOT. It was horrifying, up till I was uncomfortable enough that I didn’t care anymore., at which I point I felt simply taken advantage of.  

Once Chief was safely out, I thought, “Phew! That’s the end of it! I can forget about this whole embarrassing episode.”

Until the lactation consultant came into the room and "consulted" me right out of my hospital top. She was personally handling my very personal personal-ness before I had a chance to say with indignation, “Excuse me, do I know you?”

And you parents of small children out there are laughing at me, because you know that's still not the end of it. The Great Immodesty of giving birth and learning to breastfeed (sorry, "nurse", other ladies at church don't like me to throw around "breast" too much) is but a prelude to an entire immodesty-based lifestyle--from nursing a regurgitating newborn that makes wearing a shirt pointless, to shoving a post-partum body into clothes suddenly too small and too tight, to never going to the john or taking a shower alone again. 

And that’s just MY motherhood-related immodesty. That doesn’t even begin to cover (I have a weakness for puns) the immodesty of taking small people with you everywhere. Besides the way children like to loudly discuss genitalia in public, including visual demonstrations, or loudly comment on the size of Mommy’s rear end in a public restroom, some small children, when they are upset, like to begin stripping their clothes off and throwing them, like a mix of aggrieved Israelite rending his garment and a monkey throwing its—er, throwing whatever it has at hand.

 I have some of those small children. It’s like a bad martial arts movie around here, the way shirts fly off of chests.

I have wondered if nudists would have an easier time adjusting to the realities of parenting. I briefly considered it, but when I thought about how often I cook burgers and bacon, I decided to stick with clothes for now. Besides, Dragoon doesn't grok nudity. He's always cold as it is, and he's too ethnic British to be running around in the noodypants without convulsing in embarassment. If I were to go naked-with-no-clothes-on, then I would be a lone woman in the Garden of Eden.

All of this is to explain why, for me, modesty has always been, to me, an exotic and confusingly elastic concept. 

I've been to other temple--I was endowed in Denver, and I've attended Boise, and done baptisms for the dead in Jordan River and Oakland, and visited the outside of San Diego, Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake, Logan, Nauvoo and Idaho Falls. 

But this temple is MY temple.

I wasn't late, but I wasn't early, either, for the 9:30 am session--getting kids out the door to the Frauhaus by 8:30 meant starting the troop move-out at 6 am.

6 am was both not a problem, because I'd been up since 3 am, and was a problem, because I'd been up since 3 am. 

So I was still in high gear when I whooshed through the gold double doors and flashed my barcode recommend to the Front Desk Brother. (Wassup, temple brother, yo?)

The matron sitting near Front Desk Brother grabbed my hands and said, "Sister, it's all right! You're here! You're inside the temple! Time to relax!"

I grinned and took some deep breaths, for her benefit, found they actually worked, and then went to go get ready. 

I know people who swear they have massive spiritual coronaries every time they attend. Or, they have stunning insights into the meaning behind the symbols.

I don't. 

Maybe it's because I just haven't gone enough yet--I got endowed in 2006, and I've only been (pausing to count on fingers) about 16 times, give or take. Maybe it's still just sinking in for me. 

It's not like I've never had a spiritual experience in the temple. I have done, and they were very nice, and instructive, and enrich my life still. But it's not every time. 

I've noticed the same occurance in my life as regards prayer. My prayers aren't apostolic experiences. I've never gotten even a hint of glossolalia after a strong prayer, unless speaking in Pig Latin counts. 

But, I do have spiritual experiences. It seems more like the prayers and temple attendence are the entrance exams to later surprise instruction. Then, out of the blue, while I'm squeezing cabbages at WinCo, or driving to the library, or nosebreathing in Down Dog, that's when the "whammy" hits. 

It used to bother me, that my personal revelation doesn't sit up and shake hands on command. 

That can be uncomfortable at Young Women's camp and EFY, both of which boast huge supercharged emotional testimony meetings where there's an undercurrent of "I am spiritualer than you!" and a great deal of hanky-blowing. 

I've long been of the admittedly dubious opinion that EFY is, basically, coed lockdown with a testimony meeting. I used to call it "Re-Education Week". I say that without rancor; you parents will agree that sometimes a commie-style re-education camp is precisely what a teenager needs. Let's hear it for Stalag BYU!

But I digress. The point here is, my temple attendence is a simple show up, do a session, bounce a prayer off the ceiling in the Celestial Room, and go home. The highlight of my temple trips is wearing a pretty dress, with the bonus of putting names on the prayer roll. 

This strikes me as shallow, and I usually try not to be a shallow person, almost to a fault. Most people around me tell me I overthink things, and that I should possibly consider just letting go and getting a life, already, does it really matter in the eternities whether my Doritoes are Cool Ranch or Nacho? 

So I find it perplexing that I don't experience more depth in the temple. 

OTOH, Hugh Nibley says that nobody in his right mind would want to see an angel, who are so scary that they have to keep telling us Fear not, already, okay buddy? Unless you're Alma, Jr., in which case the angel may remind you of a older brother shaking the rope bridge you're trying to cross. "Oooh, shaky shaky, who's the big kid now?"

Not to mention angels never show up without handing you a calling; if I avoid my bishop for that reason, why would I want to see an angel?

Either way, I'm planning on going to the temple every week, and having an epiphanic revelation at the temple every seven days sounds exhausting. 

It's not for nothing that most revelation recievers in the Middle Ages didn't have husbands or children, because how would you, if you're always worn out from heavenly communiques? 

(That would be a cool excuse to lock myself in my room on a bad day--I'm not being a bad mom, I'm being an anchoress! Please slip some food under the door, all this epilepsy is making me hungry. )

At the very least, I'd need to start packing restorative PowerBars in my temple bag. 

I was thinking about this on Sunday when I was trying to decide whether to go to church. It wasn't laziness, or rather, it wasn't just laziness; Dragoon had fever and chills, and we had been up during the night and by the phone waiting to hear from the hospital about Dragoon's mom. 

MIL has been going downhill for the last 9 or 10 years thanks to congestive heart failure, and has been on the transplant list for almost a year. Then, Saturday after midnight, they called her in and told her they had a new heart waiting for her. 

We got the call around 10 am that the heart was in and beating and they were moving MIL to the ICU. Dragoon relaxed (I could tell because he started wheezing slower) and I left 8 year old Chief in charge of his dad and little baby Moose, and took the girls to church.

I really didn't want to go, but after meditating briefly on the principle of the virtue of self-denial, I decided that not wanting to go meant I HAD to go. Is that bad? I'm told that I am supposed to want to obey, indeed, laugh merrily and sing with the chickadees when I obey, but if obedience means feeling happy about doing things, doesn't that mean the corollary is also true--that if I don't wanna do something, I shouldn't have to? I've gone to enough public school and EFY to know that whether I want to or not is irrelevant. :)

So, I went, and kept my head down. We were too late for Sacrament meeting--I didn't miss it on purpose, but I didn't cry about missing it either, if you remember what I told you happened last Sunday at Stake Conference. I have promised the Lord that we will try to come to church every Sunday, and so far I am perfect in my obedience. I go to church every Sunday. Sometimes that means showing up with one kid fifteen minutes before the end of third hour, but hey, we showed up. 

It ended up being a really good Sunday. The Beehives and Mia Maid I usually teach were having their class with the Laurels, and it ended up being a really good lesson on the gifts of the priesthood. And I talked to the Laurel advisor afterwards, and made a good friend. 

I get the feeling that the Lord knows how reluctant I am to go to church sometimes, and so He blesses me for it. I've had a lot of insights in Sacrament Meeting, totally unrelated to what the speaker is talking about. Practical advice like how to teach my children church doctrine (answer: using hymns with pictures), or how to make someone I love stop doing something I don't love (answer: You don't ,sweetie; you love them and let ME change them). 

So when I just showed up at that session a week ago where I got told to forget about regular schooling for now, and to go to the temple instead, I thought at first that it was such a cop-out. I worried that people would not consider me an adult or a full-fledged human until I'd gotten a college degree and had some way to make money. I thought, But anyone can go to the temple.

But anyone can't. I live 15 minutes away from a temple that after only 2 visits feels familiar and welcoming. That's a rare and special blessing, and I think God knows that now that I'm considering the temple my school, and am coming ready to learn, that I'll be blessed even for just showing up.

Wednesday, being equidistant from the Sabbath (theoretically the "Day of Rest", I am guessing they're referring to dead mothers here) is our cleaning and errands day. I focus more on school the other 4 weekdays, and any school that gets done on Wednesday is an unexpected bonus. Usually while I' m cleaning, the children are right next to me, with an identical paper towel or dust pan.

Yesterday I:

showered (this is always an accomplishment)
made 1 king sized bed
made 1 hot breakfast for 5 children
did 3 loads of dishes
ate 1 low-carb breakfast out of children's sight
6 loads of laundry
scrubbed two bathrooms, including tubs
helped 4 children put away clean clothes
bathed one Moose (hee, how many people get to bathe a Moose?)
moved 1 oak table and 3 chairs in kitchen, into new places
dragged 1 box of Goodwill-bound items out to garage
paused for 1 45-minute discipline break for Slayer, with 3 light spanks, 2 big hugs, and 1 long talk
took out 3 bags of garbage
dragged the oak futon couch, rocker recliner, pine bookshelf and rug into new positions
boxed up excess living room clutter for trash pickup
dragged one 8-foot-long table upstairs to living room from basement; restacked books
ate 1 salad
boxed up books (2 boxes)
swept and mopped 3 floors
vacuumed 4 upstairs rooms
worked on reading with 4 year old Hanibee
answered phone on the fourth ring; talked to one friend (Frau), agreed to tit-for-tat grocery pickup
made 1 slow cooked pot roast
scrubbed one fridge, inside and out
worked on math with 6 year old Slayer and 8 year old Chief 
read 1 chapter from The Magician's Nephew
explained one Article of Faith to the children; recited it in chorus twice
searched through 3 tool boxes to find 1 claw hammer
said 2 four-letter words when I pinched 1 finger in an aforementioned toolbox
thanked Frau for groceries--
   2 gallons whole milk, 5 pounds apples, 5 pounds oranges, 3 pounds oats, 1 block tofu
( tofu is the big one; the kids say they love chocolate cake, but it's tofu that makes them lick their plates)
pulled 16 nails out of the walls (thank you previous renters)
found 14 nails, still searching on 2 hands and 2 knees for the rest
unpacked 3 boxes of pictures
hung up 4 posters, 8 framed pictures, and 1 flag (American, standard) 
changed 9 poopy diapers at an average of 3 wipes per change
recieved 5 short-stemmed dandelions from three little girls (mine) (dandelions AND girls)
fed 1 cat
cursed 1 cat for 1 catbox and the innumerable stinkiness thereof
made 8 copies from 3 library books, all 5 days overdue, plus handwritten notes; smoothed out 14 dog-eared pages (yeah, I dog-ear library book pages; I also lay them open and facedown; if books could scream mine would)
wrote 2 pages of notes for my books 
carried 34 library books out to the car for hasty return, done by 1 kindly Dragoon husband
kissed 3 booboos: 1 real and 2 imaginary (2 year old Cherry Blossom hates to be left out of anything)
Superglued one scratch (Slayer thinks that the kitty growling means "Please torture me some more")
made and served 1 hot dinner for hungry family of 7, including one Moose with a love-hate relationship with being spoonfed
sat down for 8 minutes and ate dinner! :)
reluctantly began 1 dinner cleanup; I hate cleanup and always wait in case the Dish Fairy shows up
ushered 4 kids into jammies
measured 3 doses of medicine to the feverish children
prepared 1 warm 9 ounce bottle of milk for Moose, with 15 minutes quiet baby snuggles
began 1 bedtime routine, comprised of 5 Primary songs, one prayer, and 4 sippy cups of cold water
gave 5 firm admonitions that this is bedtime and not time to watch Barbie: Island Princess,
administered 4 admonitions  to 2 year old Cherry Blossom, who asked for 1 cold washcloth for her hot forehead
read 20 pages of a library book, this one barely legit (6 days till turn-in and counting)
gave 1 Dragoon 10 minutes of backrub
stole 20 winks of sleep until midnight shift started, 
woken by 1 shout from Hanibee, who sleeps light, who was in turn woken by 1 Cherry Blossom, who pulled off 3 blankets, 1 nightgown and 1 sodden diaper in her fever, and who was kicking the wall
applied various soothings and remonstances as needed to nocturnal offspring
grudgingly allowed inside 1 damp and grateful cat, at 1 am
1 master bedroom door firmly shut to keep out stinky obnoxious kitty
discussed 8 baby names  with Dragoon, 
administered another 15 minute backrub 
and back to sleep till 6 am. 




What I didn't do:

read scriptures
write in my journal
work out 




Dang it. I didn't get anything done.

This is to explain why I regularly freak out about having time to write.

In 2004, I decided to start writing again. I wrote a lot in--well, pretty much ever since I COULD write, I've written. I always knew that I was going to be a writer, when I was a kid. I was a little disappointed by that. There are a lot of writers, and they don't get out much, and usually don't get a lot of money. But it's my thing, and that's ok.

I put it aside for awhile in the beginning of my marriage and when I was having baby after baby (I have been pregnant for part of every calendar year since 1999) and finally when I hit 24 years old, I picked it back up again.

I went through lots of ideas, and settled on writing an LDS vampire story. Simultaneously I started making notes on a book, while trying to learn how to write A book, ANY book. 

Hundreds of pages of notes and a few years later: Stephanie Meyer gets published. People (some of them parents) email me the news: Hey, look, an LDS mom who's made a bundle. Hey, how's YOUR story coming?

How, indeed. *grrrr*

I think it's great she is published. I haven't even put my stuff together into a "real" draft, so the fault is mine. But I thought, well, there goes me being all original and making an LDS vampire novel.

I thought, But the South will rise again! I'll pick myself up, dust myself off, and I won't let this discourage me!

What I need to do is uber-specialize. 

SO I decided to make my novel/novels focus on werewolves. I would write an LDS werewolf novel. And, hey, I'll set in the Tri-Cities, my hometown. And have a girl....who's a coyote...yeah. I will be so original! I'll be this LDS mom, writing a coyote werewolf novel set in the Tri Cities.

Some of you out there are already laughing at me. Because you've heard of Patricia Briggs. 

Sister Briggs writes a werewolf series...with a female coyote main character...set in the Tri-Cities. She used to live just a few streets over from where I live now--and she was in my stake. She is ALSO an LDS mom.

*Sachiko hits head against keyboard repeatedly*

See, I blame myself mostly, because I just should have vomited my notes into a draft as soon as possible. Every time, it seems, I have a writing idea that I really cherish--and I work on my notes and scenes every day, people, these ideas represent years of work--suddenly someone else gets it published.

It's like there is this hive mind, and I'm tapping into it, or I'm feeding it, but I am NOT benefitting from it.

The ONE upside is that this is confirmation that at least I have having marketable ideas. Where there's delusion, there's hope, right?

Also, MOM: Where Fun Goes To Die.

I took my  brain out with my contacts last night and forgot to put it back in, which is why I wasn't thinking when I packed up the kids to take them, sans Dragoon (who is in Boise with FIL today), to

dum dum dum 

Stake Conference!


Was I out of my mind, or just out of mind? (yes, I was. Fresh out.)

We got there nice and early, because the friend offering to help me is one of those nice-and-early types.

But it meant that half an hour later, when SC finally started, Cherry Blossom and Moose were already done. DONE done. Scratching at their church clothes, going boneless in my lap, whining and blowing snot all over me. Sweet angel baby stuff like that.

I gutted it out--there's nobody more macho than a Mormon mother; we'll chip temple-bound granite blocks out of the canyon walls with our teeth if we have to, and that right there explains the popularity of Jell-O in our church--

but I should have rallied my platoon and called retreat. 

We all ate a good breakfast--homemade wheat-buttermilk bread, panfried tilapia (in olive oil, so lay off, it's healthy) and milk. You'd think just two hours in a stuffy chapel wouldn't nearly kill us but it DID. I'd tell you that you had to be there, but even I didn't have to be there. But if you've been to a stake conference lately, you'll understand.

So, even with that breakfast, we were all deydrated and dyin' from sitting in those pews for two and a half hours. 

My oldest daughter, Slayer, has blood sugar issues. I won't tell you exactly what it was like after we got home, but suffice it to say I didn't get out of my church clothes for a solid hour, and I really thought I was going to need to go fetch an apostle and a herd of pigs.

WHY did I go?

Normally when you don't really wanna go to a church meeting, and go anyway, you get the happies about it. I had that happen last night. 

Significant difference, though--last night I wasn't attending with my children. 

Poor, poor little angels. Poor me. 

I really should have just homechurched today. I'm certainly not looking forward to next Sunday. Is using duct tape on small children considered unrighteous dominion?

(note to CPS people reading this: It's a JOKE.)

I wonder if the real function of a stake conference is a hantai ittai, a counter-irritant. You know, like putting a clothespin on a horses' nose so it won't notice what you're doing under its tail?

(Hey, what ARE you doing under there? All right, but wash your hands when you're done.)

In other words, we have stake conferences to remind us that things could be worse and we should be grateful that sacrament meetings go only an hour and fifteen. That's a theoretical time for me, though, as I haven't been to a sacrament meeting from start to finish since the beginning of this century. 
 

Our school days begin after chores and breakfast are done. We start with the Pledge, then drop to our knees for prayer, then I read aloud from a book--right now it's The Magician's Nephew--and then the kids sit at the table for book work while I sit at the computer. If they're learning something new, I hover near them to help them understand how to do it; otherwise, I do my thing at the computer while they do their thing at the table.

So, yesterday I'm tooling around online--yes, yes, I know, but I can stop anytime I want to--and I find Robin Hobb's website.

In it she says (I paraphrase) "Don't put off writing until you are out of school, or retired, or the kids are older. The free time you have right now is all you will ever have."

I got all charged up by it. All that was keeping me back from writing was me! And I'm officially getting out of my way! Okay! Grab the clipboard and let's GO!

Bookwork done, I hustled the kids outside to the backyard for fresh air/sunshine. I felt so shiny. Look at me, I'm being a good mommy AND a good writer. Pretty pretty me.

I seriously just uncapped my pen when Moose climbed up me and needed his nose wiped--we're not talking some clear mucus, we're talking it looks like a green swamp thing attacked his chin. A bubble blew and shrank in time with his breath. 

Nose attended to, baby loved on, baby put down, clipboard up and--

Cherry Blossom lost a sandal in the groundcover.

Then Slayer started picking dandelions 

(little girls are the natural enemies of dandelions; but they have a net effect on the dandelion population because of how many seeds they blow for the dandelions. In that way, female toddlers become terrible dandelion goddesses, demanding sacrifices of the yellow blossoms in return for the promises of seed dispersion...I digress)

Hanibee saw Slayer picking dandelions and SHE wanted dandelions too, where were they? Of course Slayer went all Mushroom-Hunter on us and refused to show us where she got her flowers, so I get up to help Hanibee ferret out a fresh source of dandelions.

Chief is fine; he's wandering around the backyard by himself, talking to himself. I miss doing that. No, what I miss is doing that without getting weird looks from the neighbors. 

It goes on like this for an hour--just as I put out another fire and return to my grand opus, which is now two and a half sentences long, another fire springs up.

Finally I realize Good Mommy left and Crazy Lady is waving hello, frantically. I herd the kids inside and invite them to watch a video while I have "mommy time out". 

Just as I'm settling in, 

"Mom! The Toilet!"

I have Toilet Issues. 

I'm fecophobic. Dragoon used to laugh at it, the first time he watched me frantically unclog a toilet and then abuse chlorine bleach to get the plunger acceptable for non-Dumpstering. 

A few months ago our toilet overflowed. Dragoon knighted upstairs in his shining armor and stopped the poo-regurgitating toilet while I climbed inside the bathtub and stared at the brown water on the floor and gibbered.

This was in front of a friend of mine, watching me become an inarticulate, obsessive-compulsive shower monkey. (there's a tasteless potential joke here involving monkeys, fecophobia and poo-throwing, but I'll be good and just toss it.)

So, I sprint upstairs and have to do the whole grabbing-the-bobber thing, then the mopping-with-bleach thing, then the hand-wringing-and-washing thing. 

Dragoon gets home from work just as I sit down to grimly TRY AGAIN to write. 

You know what I am starting to think? That this opposition to writing? Isn't IN MY HEAD!

For some reason the kids are okay with me posting or blogging online. But writing in my books, journal, or talking on the phone = strictly verboten. 

In the past years I've read various how-to-write books. Some authors will include a day in the life schedule, something like this:

7 am: get up
8 am: coffee and paper
9 am: sit in front of computer and start day

And so on.

I get the impression that this is considered a pretty hefty schedule. The advice seems to go, I know it's hard, but you need to just sit down in front of the computer and go.

Um.......?!?!?!?!?!? I can't even imagine a morning like that, where I just hop out of bed, tell the birdies Good Morning, work out, shower, eat, and then start work.

Cannot even imagine. I hop out of bed, start saying "Good--" and then I'm interrupted because this kid hit that kid, this kid needs a diaper change, the other one does, too, but they also need their nose wiped and a bottle(we weaned Moose once he started biting AND twisting, musn't let him damage the equipment for the next baby), and I need to start school going for THIS one, and the husband needs help with the lunch because otherwise he simply won't EAT....

I once read an interview with an LDS writer in Irreantum magazine. She has five kids. They asked her how she does it. She described her children as making their own breakfasts...her husband getting them off to school...sitting in her jammies at the computer writing till noon...not cleaning the house...

On the one hand, I admire her candidness.

On the other hand.....!!! Is there a REALISTIC way I can have time to write, every day, while still attending to the needs of my family and house and own body? Because it sounds like her solution is, she writes instead of being a mom and wife.

I am okay if the answer is no. Really I am. That would be reassuring, much more so than this supermom myth I am falling prey to.

I keep having people point out this or that writer, See, she's got kids....Stephanie Meyer has three, Shannon Hale has two, Mary Higgens Clark had six little ones when she started writing at the kitchen table.

Okay, but, do they work out? Homeschool? How many kids in diapers? What's their toilet look like? (mine sparkles; no brag, it's not because I'm virtuous, it's because I'm obsessive-compulsive)

I am not trying to be a martyr here. But I am tired of people telling me that what stops me from writing isn't all in my head. They're NOT. They're playing in my backyard and stopping up my toilet. And I'm not giving THEM up, and I'm not going to neglect them, at least not on purpose and any more than I already do.

So...the search for writing time continues.

I couldn't resist. I've always wanted to issue a warning about krauts....I've always wanted to darkly refer to The Hun as well...

but this isn't an nostalgic jingoistic tract.

I made sauerkraut!

It was surprisingly easy.

Sweet onions, sliced thin, sauteed in butter.

Add one head finely sliced red cabbage

(Dragoon's favorite color is purple)

and one Granny Smith apple. Nice, tart. I left the peel on. 

Cook as desired. I like it crisp-tender.

Toss with salt, pepper and apple cider vinager to taste.

Yum!

I served it with a wild elk roast simmered all day in a crock pot. The animal was killed courtesy of Dr. Death, my wonderful father-in-law. Dead elk tastes good.