Overbooked and Underpaid: Notes from a Yes-aholic

It's Been A Quiet Week In Lake Wobegon....

Profuse apologies to Garrison Keillor for the theft of his sentence. And his brand name.

Of course I don't live in Lake Wobegon and it's been anything but a quiet week.

I think my last quiet week may have been in 2007. Or maybe even 1990. (I had no children at that point and only one job.)

Although - with my daughter in her second day of sleep-away camp - this may turn out to be the quietest week of my summer. Which is how I have carved out a little time to catch you all up on the latest bout of overbooked madness that I now realize I can only refer to as "par for the course".

Exactly 2 weeks ago was the one year anniversary for this blog. I've been so overbooked I didn't even register it until today. Poetic. 

Anyway, here is a list of the things I said yes to in the last 12 months:

Compiled and edited the first collection of my husband's work into book form "The Edison Files: Notes From The Lab". This was a huge project but well worth the time and energy.

Accepted a position on my daughter's school board and, subsequently, a number of projects and a couple of committees.

Accepted the position of music teacher to the upper elementary and adolescent classrooms of said school when the former teacher up and left two weeks before the start of school. My "temporary" position will be extended by another year as the replacement teacher slated to take over from me has had a change of heart.

Set aside much of my gigging calendar for harp to accompany my husband on his various cartooning and speaking engagements. This was a total blast. I'd do it again in a heartbeat - impact on our finances be damned.

Began yet another blog for cartoonist publicity called Spot The Cartoonist. This has sucked massive amounts of time out of my schedule for absolutely no $ whatsoever. To date, I have had exactly one tip. I love this project and feel that it is very worthwhile but I must make it financially workable this year.

Dealt with losses of wonderful dogs and failing health of relatives.

Rushed out and got a new puppy - guaranteeing a summer of potty training.

Decided - all on my own, no outside pressure was brought to bear - that suggesting  Carthage bring the exhibit "One Fine Sunday In The Funny Pages" to Kenosha was not enough and I should organize a Cartooning Festival around the opening of the show.

This last one has been huge and eroded a little piece of my attention from each of the former commitments. Not only did I decide to involve three separate institutions - each with their own bureaucracies and scheduling considerations - I am responsible for all the scheduling of events and acquiring of speakers, all the publicity, all the financing and all the food. And drinks. And fetching people from the airport and driving them from point A to point B.

Over the course of three days.

Oh, and did I mention the really good bit? The bit where I have everyone over to my house for a big party?

That last is the kicker. Because, first of all, there is my little OCD I told you about. I now have 7 weeks to get all those areas sanded, prepped and painted. Secondly there is our disaster of a backyard. And, thirdly, is our ex-driveway, courtesy of the big storm of June 30.

But this is all good actually, because we are the sort of people who need a good swift kick in the pants to get things done. We are finally putting up the privacy fence we have put off for 6 years. John has scraped down and repainted our horrible peeling garage door and is building the patio we've always dreamed of. (Which means I get to run around to antique malls and thrift stores looking for cool garden and patio stuff.) We are clearing out all the old nasty, weedy plants and putting in nice, new, pretty ones. And building some cute little rock walls to put the plants next to. And my family will no longer have to look at this:

every time they turn around.

And - if I get really motivated - I might even finish this border I began painting 6 years ago.

Heck, I might even paint this one too! (Look hard - it's only drawn in pencil right now.)

Working through the details of the festival has been challenging. There have been a couple crises - what would an event of this scale be without them - but, overall, everything is going pretty smoothly and everyone I have had to coordinate with has been - without exception - absolutely wonderful and enthusiastic.

The only real problem is that when I look at the other column of my life - the one where I sift through and eliminate a few things - there has been no progress whatsoever.

Which is a fancy way of saying I still am a committed yes-aholic with a rescue complex who can't say no to anything or get rid of anything.

I'd like to say that my goal this year is to remedy that situation and put my life into a better balance but I would absolutely be lying. 

Especially since this is the senior year of high school for son # 2. 

Approximately 5 minutes after I finish with the festival I will put on my "get all the college application info sorted out" hat and away we will go.

I guess I'll get plenty of rest when I'm dead.

The Great Attic Migration

For much of the last 10 years, my basement has, in fact, looked much like this. Hence, this comic strip, which I wrote about a year and a half ago. I don't talk much about writing for Edison because I don't do it all that often (although today's strip is another one of mine). Mostly my contributions to the strip are along the lines of editing, working on publicity, and planting little seeds of ideas into John's head and then running out of the room before he can rope me into more work.

Unfortunately, the above strip is completely true to life. I wrote about it on my other blog here.

But now the time has come to do something about my basement. If you have ever checked the "goals" tab up at the top of the blog (go ahead and check it now - I'll wait)

you will notice that one of my goals over the summer was to migrate a bunch of stuff from the basement to the attic. (Then of course, we'll have "The Attic of Dorian Gray", but I digress)

So I've been puttering my way toward this goal for about 12 weeks - buying a load of lumber for the attic floor here and there, prodding my sons to install said floor here and there, but not doing much in the way of prep work or organizing on the actual junk to be moved. Which, as anyone who has ever moved from one house to another will tell you, is a bad idea.

Successful moving has everything to do with what kind of boxes you put your stuff in, how you organize these boxes, and what order they get moved in. I have a friend who moved recently - she was working when the boxes got unloaded into the garage of the new house and then discovered that all the kitchen stuff was in the very back of the garage where no one could get to it.  They had to eat "take out" for a week.

So the chaos that is my basement needs to get organized before it can be boxed - you know the sort of thing, you see it on HGTV all the time - "pitch", "donate", "attic", "keep in the basement because it needs to be handy". Which is bad enough when it's just your stuff but becomes ever so much worse when it includes 3 kids worth of stuff. Every item winds up being brooded over.

As I said, I've been puttering along at this slowly since July.

Until Saturday.

That was the day the washer started to make "the noise".

A word about my washer and dryer. I love them. They are great. I got them almost 20 years ago this month when I was expecting my first child and envisioned a time when I would not enjoy trips to the laundromat. My mother and grandmother swore by front loading machines, especially White Westinghouse. So I went out and found what was, at that time, one of the only front loading washing machines available in the entire country. Better yet, it was made by White Westinghouse. Bonus - they also made the only stacking washer and dryer you could get at that time. Which was hugely important to us because of the space we had available in our first house for laundry.

It tickles me pink to now see these stackable front loaders taking over the country. I love when my grandmother is right.

But the washer's time has come. For the past 2 years it has been bumping and thumping its way through the spin cycle - occasionally ripping itself loose from the hose like that scene in "Mr. Mom" (OMG - go rent that movie if you've never seen it).

Because it was made back in the day when there were no computer chips in such appliances, John has actually been able to work on it and put it back into balance a couple of times. But Saturday it started making this banshee like whine that, I'm pretty sure means the bearings are shot. Or something worse.

So we went shopping. 

And bought (with play money that hasn't been printed yet - gotta love "no money down, no interest for 12 months) a lovely new stackable front loading washer and dryer.

Which will be delivered tomorrow.

Yes, as in tomorrow, as in less than 24 hours. 

Which is why I gave up my whole weekend to go wading through the mess. Which is how my basement wound up exploding into the rest of my house. (Because organizing always looks a whole lot worse before it looks better) Which I now have to buckle down to and get under control before the movers come and see my basement (and now house) of shame.

Which is why you may not hear from me for a while.

Send the dogs down if I don't surface by Thursday. 

I may be trapped under a pile of dirty laundry and several boxes of jigsaw puzzles.

What I've Been Doing - No Cooking Tips Today

If you're reading this you probably already know a little bit about my life. If you don't, here's a summation:

I make chocolate truffles, color my husband's comic strip, write a column for my local paper, teach at two local colleges, run a private harp studio out of my home, parent three children, work in over 15 different kinds of art media, compose and perform music for harp and small jazz ensemble, write for 4 different blogs, manage my husband's graphics business, do all the PR for my husband's comic strip, teach general music at my daughter's school, serve on the board of my daughter's school, serve on subcommittees (like fundraising) for my daughter's school, chauffer children hither and yon - the list goes on, but I imagine you're getting the picture.

Recently my husband and I attended the Festival of Cartoon Art which consisted of A) taking in some truly wonderful and inspiring presentations by top cartoonists and B) staying up until 2:00 am each night hanging in the bar with top cartoonists and drinking too much. (The headache I had Saturday a.m. rivaled Hepburn's in The Philadelphia Story). 

Because I love cartoonists so much and have a number of good friends in cartooning circles, I make extra chocolate truffles and take them with to feed to anyone lucky enough to be in the bar at the time.

I mention this because, this particular weekend, as Richard Thompson (of Cul de Sac fame) reached for a truffle he said, "Anne - is there nothing you cannot do?"

I didn't have a good response at the time.

I do now.

Richard - here are some things I cannot do:

I cannot find time to read anything longer than a cereal box. I cannot tell you where my phone charger is. I cannot find my wallet. I cannot seem to remember to call my sister on her birthday (yesterday). I cannot cook any supper for my kids that takes longer than 20 minutes. I have not yet unpacked my suitcase. I haven't the brain space to write up the CV that is due for accreditation at one of my teaching jobs - I think I have one prepared in a file somewhere on my computer, but I don't know how to find it. I cannot seem to remember to pay my phone bill on time (aren't they supposed to wait at least 30 days beyond the due date before they threaten to disconnect you? When did it become only a week?) Again - I could go on, but I think you can tell where this is going.

Hello.

My name is Anne.

And I'm a yes-aholic.

I'm not asking for your pity.

When I was trying to think of a name for this blog, I flirted with "Overworked and Underpaid" but I settled on "Overbooked and Underpaid for a very important reason.

Overworked someone does to you. Overbooked you do to yourself.

I could probably cut out most of the things I do. Especially since easily 60% of them are for no pay. 

So why don't I?

Why do I try to do all these things and make myself crazy?

Well, partly because there are two main components to my yes-aholicism.

Firstly, I am bursting with ideas - so many that I always have at least 5 knitting projects going at a time. This is not unusual for creative types - most artists have more unfinished work than finished - it's a curse where you get the idea for the next piece of art when you're only 22% done with the current one.

Secondly, my husband and I both had the amazing stupidity to choose jobs in the arts and we are both completely freelance. That means we get no paycheck.

No paycheck, no paid vacation, no employer provided health insurance, no tenure... again, I'm sure you get the picture.

Somehow we've sort of made it work. But I've never felt settled. 

I've never felt I was doing what I was truly meant to do. Worse, I'm 47 and still have no idea what that certain something I'm supposed to be doing is.

So I keep throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping that whatever sticks is the thing I'm meant to be doing.

And you lucky readers just happen to be between me and the wall.

I'll try to shift a little better attention onto managing my time and keeping all the blogs tidy and updated.

And I'll look for something to get the spaghetti stains off your shirt.

The Incredible Transforming Sandwich

It was summer.

And, as usual, it was an overbooked summer.

Which meant a softball schedule, a baseball schedule, a drama schedule, and our usual overbooked work schedules.

I thought we were handling everything pretty well. We got everyone where they needed to be when they needed to be there, between the two of us a parent was at every game, and I didn't forget to show up for any gigs.

Yep, the summer was going well.

Then the smell started.

It was subtle at first. We weren't even sure where it was coming from. It might have been the baseball cleats. Or the compost pile in the backyard.

But, by day three we settled on the minivan. It was definitely coming from the minivan.

There was a chance it was coming from the air ducts. Which was a problem because it would mean that something had died somewhere inside the engine or other nasty hidden car places. Which would mean paying someone expensive to find it and fix it.

We resisted taking the van to the dealership. We drove with the windows open. We bought air fresheners. And we looked and looked and looked to track this odor down.

As the noxiousness grew ever stronger rather than weaker, our suspicions that something had died intensified.

We were right. Something had died. But it wasn't an animal.

As I approached the baseball diamond one evening my husband asked me, "What night was it that we bought Alex that sub sandwich?"

"Oh man, that was like, two weeks ago. Maybe even three. Why do you ask?"

In answer, he led me over to a nearby garbage can. The smell hit me from easily 20 feet away.

And there, in a plastic bag, was the worst smelling glob of liquid I think I've ever encountered.

Which, apparently, is what a half eaten Italian sub sandwich turns into after two or three weeks in the door pocket of a hot van in the summertime.

It was like a Magic Schoolbus episode.

No one went near the garbage can for the rest of the night. 

I pity the poor garbage men that eventually had to deal with the results of our overbooked, "we'll just grab something quick to eat as we go to drama practice and then not have enough time to finish it so we can stuff it out of sight someplace later and ruin an expensive minivan" lifestyle.

It took two months for the smell to fully leave the van.

And I swear on hot days I can still smell the ghost of that sandwich.

The ghost of overbooked summers past.

I Can't Let My Head Explode!

 

A word about the bookings feature. 

When I started they always happened under a tab. 

Then I moved them into the main body via a link. 

Then back to the tab, but only a week's worth, then back to the body, but without the grade updates (you had to click the tab for those). 

It's been exhausting. 

All of this has been largely the result of listening to as much feedback as possible about the blog. Some people like one thing, some another.

The bookings are a popular feature so I don't want to ditch them all together. So here's the current plan:

I will continue to post the bookings every morning in the main body of the blog. Later - either the same night or the next morning - I'll edit that same post to include the grades and shortfalls.

At the end of each week, I'll copy the week's worth of bookings posts into the tab and move the previous week's bookings into the archive.

We'll just see how this works out.

Because if I don't change something, my head is going to explode!

Back From Toonfest!!

 
 

What does this mean? Why, means I'm behind, that's what it means!

It means that I have spent the majority of the day playing catch up (what else is new) and am still massively behind. Our schedules are so jam packed that taking the weekend off always means hell to pay on Monday and today was no exception. 

The good news is that we got the strips finished and off to the syndicate almost on time (our "Fridays" are frequently Mondays anyway). 

The bad news is that I am completely in over my head on blogging. So much blog worthy stuff came out of this weekend that I'll have to blog full time all week to do it justice. The photos alone are a monumental task - I've been working on them for the past 4 hours and am still not done.

So be patient - be of good cheer - I have some time tomorrow and I'm going to get as much done then as I can! Hopefully I'll be back to my regular overbooked blogging schedule asap.

My Life Is Out Of Control!

 

I need to take a minute and address this blog  - why I decided to do it and what it is doing to my life.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I started writing about two years ago and I really love it. Since I started, most of my writing was for a blog for my husband's comic strip and also a blog of sorts for my harp website. 

Very quickly I discovered that much of my writing didn't really fit on either blog as it was completely off topic regarding comics and harp. But I didn't have any place better to put this stuff and those blogs needed regular updates - even though there often wasn't anything terribly pertinent to put on them every day (or even every week) so I posted all kinds of things there.

And then I was given the opportunity to write a column for my local newspaper. Which gave me an outlet for my writing but in a very constrained way. Newspaper columns are not about story telling. They are about a set amount of physical space on the page. As such, they are ruled by the word count (usually about 700) rather than narrative flow. 

This is good for me on a lot of levels because I must choose my words carefully and really give serious attention to redundancies. But it often feels as though it just sucks the life out of my chosen topic. And I can't include pictures or links.

So I decided to start this blog as a place I could be really free with my writing and also showcase my art and all the other things that I do without having to wear my "commercial harpist" hat all the time.

And I'm loving it. I'm having a lot of fun and am not struggling too much with a lack of material.

BUT I HAVE NO TIME!

I thought I was busy before.

If you follow my daily bookings and grades at all you will see a ton of things are being left undone everyday. And everything I've heard or read by anyone who does a blog emphasizes how crucial it is to have regular, predictable posts. If you're paying attention, you'll notice that my posting schedule is all over the place. I've tried to be extra good about putting up my bookings before 9:00 am and  then a daily post of a humorous nature by 2:00 pm with my grades by 11:00 pm. But even that schedule is falling apart.

In fact, everything in my life is sort of falling apart. I feel completely ADD, as though I'm just grazing the surface of things and never getting to the meat of them.

So - the rest of my day today is jam packed. Teaching, performing, and photoshopping. So I will be blowing off the blog and the internet in general for the rest of the day. This includes grades for tonight - I'll get to them either tomorrow or Saturday.

Then, since I have no gigs this weekend, I am going to take both days to seriously figure out how to revamp my schedule so that the blog is as fun and engaging as I want it to be, and I can fit everything else in too and still stay sane.

And my children and my husband will still remember what I look like.

And be able to have actual conversations with me.

Health Form, Health Form, Who's Got The Health Form?

Tis the season for the school form onslaught.

 

This is the state of my dining room table on most days. 

In fact, I don't know why we call it a dining room anymore. We should change the name to "Pit of Paperwork Despair".

I think we eat in there about 4 times a year - generally in the winter, when we have company over for dinner. (In the summer, if we have company, we eat on the screened porch that John built.)

The rest of the time it is where all the papers go. School papers, business papers, junk mail, newspapers not yet read, sales fliers, bills, coupons, you name it. 

I do have a system for eventually organizing all of this. I have a specific place for bills, (as much as I'd like to ignore them, I have to see to it that they don't actually get lost or forgotten) I have a bag for all the sensitive paper like credit card offers that need to be burned, (I don't have a shredder) and I have a recycling system for all the junk and expired stuff. And I do try togo through it all at least once a week. Well, OK, sometimes it's once a month.

But there are always a number of things that are time sensitive and MUST BE DEALT WITH. And in order to be DEALT WITH, they need to be out where I CAN SEE THEM. Because if I can't SEE THEM, literally every time I walk through the room, I will completely forget about them.

Currently we have: forms for the changes to our health insurance, forms for school registration (3 different schools, 3 sets of forms) forms for school pictures, forms for immunization records, forms for upcoming field trips at the start of school, waivers of liability for said field trips (like I wouldn't just sue them anyway if my kid got hurt and it was the school's fault). 

It is generally overwhelming.

On a good day, only the important things are on display:

 

But the days the table looks this neat are few and far between - more often it is like the first picture. 

Which is how, during arguable one of the most stressful 8 months of my life, my oldest son was denied admission to one of the Universities to which he applied.

Nothing to do with his credentials - those were fine - it turned out his application was incomplete.

Guess who forgot to send in the application fee?

I wonder how on earth that happened.

Good thing he didn't want to go there anyway.

Countdown to Christmas

 This is my house.

(No, not really.)

Believe it or not, it's time for me to start planning Christmas! 

No, I'm not one of those wonderfully organized people who shops for Christmas presents all year long and gets them all pre wrapped and stashed. 

When one buys presents ahead of time, one has to hide them from potential recipients. And for true security, they should be wrapped to avoid "peek-ability". Any time I have tried to do this, I have either forgotten where I have hidden them, or what they are, or both. 

Which is how we ended up with two copies of the DVD "Spiderman 2" - the one I not only hid, but forgot I bought in the first place and bought again. I just found the second copy 4 months ago. I bought it in 2005.

No, I have to start planning for Christmas because probably 85% of the gifts I give are homemade. Some gifts are food - chocolate truffles, jam and salsa, infused vinegars etc., some are crafts - candles, scarves, hats, mittens, and some are art - painted furniture, blown glass, jigsaw puzzles, jewelry, purses, framed photos, etc.

Once - and only once - I made a patchwork quilt. A word about quilting - when they tell you exact cutting and piecing is important - they're not kidding. My twin sized quilt resembled a trapezoid more than a rectangle. I put a border on it to compensate and just hoped no one noticed. 

I started the tradition of giving away things I'd made about twenty years ago when A) we had no money and couldn't afford to buy much in the way of gifts (come to think of it we still don't have much money and can't afford to buy much in the way of gifts - which kind of stinks) and B) I was drowning in my art. I can be rather prolific and the house was getting awfully full.

As there are usually over 60 people on our gift list, now is the time I have to start planning and executing. Some of the gifts will be things I have already made and set aside, but I never seem to really do enough of that. 

So, starting today, there will be a new category dedicated to Christmas on the daily bookings schedule.

Posting my schedule has already helped me accomplish things that I previously let slide for weeks - even months (public humiliation is such a motivator) so I'm hoping that posting the Christmas countdown will keep me off of the "Oh my God - Christmas is in a week and I'm so behind!!!!" cliff of despair.

When You Have Too Many Plates In The Air...

"When you have too many plates in the air, occasionally one is going to get dropped" 

This is a quote from the gal with whom I have spent over a year rehabbing my shoulder (and a few other body parts as well). A veteran of an overbooked and underpaid schedule, she has home schooled her two boys, been a gymnastics coach,a personal trainer/physical therapist,social worker, and alderman. I'm sure she's done much more but this is as much as I've gleaned in the time I've known her. 

So, in the spirit of the quote, I must confess that I dropped a plate today and,as a result, am writing this post from a Burger King parking lot. 

In planning my schedule for today, I took great pains to push my workout/rehab session up 15 minutes so that I could get to the massage part of my therapy regimen on time.(Harpist are prone to a variety of neck and shoulder issues and I have a boatload including what is most probably a screwed up rotator cuff.) 

Only here's the thing - in my overbooked scramble following my last appointment, I wrote the time down wrong and showed up an hour early. My therapist smiled and said "Right place, wrong time!" 

So I've taken myself off to the Burger King around the corner and am in the parking lot trying to wedge in my bookings and posting for the day as I will no longer have the time later in the day that I thought I would have. See? 

The other big challenge will be getting out of here without ordering a burger and destroying today's workout. That would be two dropped plates. 

 Cheers!

 Ps apparently posting from my ipad means the return key isn't working or something. I'll have to fix that later when I get to my home computer. (I got home and fixed it which is why you can now legibly read all of this) Which really ticks me off because one of the reasons I bought the dang thing was so I could update my blog from the road. Yet another annoying thing to firgure out.

 Like I don't have enough to do!