:: what if? ::

so here's a question that's been asking itself in my head since last i wrote: what if i'm not depressed? what if i'm just ridiculously, chronically, exhaustingly, painfully stressed out?

or, what if i am depressed, but what if it's because i'm ridiculously, chronically, exhaustingly, painfully stressed out?

it's a worthy and empowering thought anyway.

:: oh the things i'll achieve! ::

i find that the older i get, the more depressed i get.

strangely, though, i don't actually feel like my sads are particularly sadder than before, nor do i feel like i spend any less time happy than i did before, which is weird. my joys are as joyous as they ever were. i laugh as much. i make people laugh as much. i still rock out to my favorite songs when they come on the radio. i still delight in the grand fireworks finale. but some physiological and mental set point seems to be falling lower and lower, and somewhat regularly now i find myself in full-on crisis. 

i make no claims to understand this, and even metaphors, which usually help me both understand and explain how i am feeling, seem to fail me here.

i'm still on anti-depressants, which i think are what allow me to be here and not some darker, scarier place. and i'm still in therapy, which certainly has helped me better understand some of my more maladaptive behaviors and thought patterns. but objectively speaking, i'm more depressed than i was, say, a year ago, at which point i was more depressed, i think, than i was a year prior to that. 

up until now i have adopted the position that if i was feeling depressed, i needed to make a major overhaul. i have always felt like that's what i've needed: drastic and overarching change. a clean slate. stop writing the dissertation. start a new business. put the kids in full-time daycare and work a more typical 9-5 M-F work week. transfer to a different college. drop out of a particular program. quit a certain job.

with each big change there comes a sense of sureness: yes. this was the right choice. hooray.

still to this day i believe that each of those choices was the right one. i have never been happier that i gave myself permission to stop writing my dissertation. leaving my corporate IT consulting job and moving home to rochester was surely the best choice for me. i was much happier at cornell than i was at chapel hill. i stand by every single decision. each one put me in a better place than i had been in before.

but what if i'm only getting it partially right?

i'm wicked smart and super motivated. what i put my mind to i achieve. i don't just go to grad school. i go to grad school in a field i do not have an undergraduate degree in, i bypass the MA with special permission and head straight into my phd coursework, and i spend two of my five years on prestigious, merit-based fellowships. i take my first job out of college with one of the "big five" consulting firms, which provides me with a signing bonus, a car and a per diem, and moves me to two states i've never lived in before over the course of just six months. i don't just open an etsy shop; i open an etsy shop, code my own e-commerce shop to sit alongside it, revamp that three times over three years, get featured in BRIDES and other prestigious magazines (did i mention that martha stewart living recently requested some of my things to photograph for a story that may or may not be forthcoming?). i don't just start working after realizing that i can't only be a stay-at-home mom, i start overworking. i try to work full time and stay home with them. then i put them in full-time daycare, but not without first starting a new business that has incredibly fierce demands on my time. i don't just transfer to cornell. i transfer after my first semester at unc and then proceed to graduate from college a full year early, with highest honors, and with a GPA that put me among the top 1% at the entire (ivy league) university. when i decide to start running i end up completing my first triathlon. 

i am, to put it mildly, an overachiever. 

which it occurs to me now might just be the problem. or if not the problem, a problem.

i've had two major and two minor breakdowns in the last four years. four occasions in the last four years when life's demands became too overwhelming for me to continue to function normally. i couldn't eat or sleep. i couldn't be around my kids. i basically could not do the things a person needs to do to get through a day.

and i feel another one coming on. not, like, this weekend or anything. but in the coming weeks or months.

which leads me to this: i am a firm believer that the things we do in the space of our recovery from these mental breakdowns can teach us something. they are, as in yoga, counterposes meant to bring our psyches back into a more balanced state. they play yin to the yang of whatever it is that has led to the mental breakdown.

in my recoveries, i've benefitted the most from the following: talking with other human beings, reading, writing, taking walks, sleeping, being creative, asking for help handling day-to-day stressors, and spending time alone, in the quiet, often outdoors.

and when i feel better? when i feel better and my recovery period is "over" i usually feel i've done three things:

1 - i've given myself permission to make whatever change it is i feel i need to make.

2 - i've sorted out some problem that has been gnawing at me.

3 - i've figured out some new direction to move in.

and then i move in that direction. swiftly and with determination. at which point i promptly stop: talking with other human beings, reading, writing, taking walks, sleeping as much, being creative, asking for help handling day-to-day stressors, and spending time alone, in the quiet, often outdoors. but change feels good, and success feels good, and so i feel good. i'm "better" and i'm so glad about it.

until it's too much and i fall apart all over again.

in november of last year i had an idea: i would start a print shop. and in february of this year, i started it, right alongside my other business. and by the end of 2012, that print shop will almost certainly gross more than $100,000. possibly even significantly more than that. by the end of its second year i expect it will gross in the quarter-million range.  if i can keep up with it. which already i can't. 

which is where the impending breakdown comes in. i can see already how it will happen. i'll continue to work like crazy, pushing the business to grow even as it has already outstripped me of my ability to keep up. i'll bring on new and awesome customers. i'll buy more equipment and continue to talk about hiring. i might even actually hire. i'll work evenings and weekends to stay relatively on top of things, even though i'll feel perpetually behind. and then some life stressor, like a sick child or a car accident or some other uncontrollable and disconcerting event, will reduce me to an anxious mess. i won't be able to eat or sleep. i'll spend my time taking xanax and watching teen dramas from the CW on netflix for weeks, at which point i'll substitute healthier behaviors like reading and doing puzzles for the xanax and teen dramas, taking a month off from work to recover.

i tell myself that i work the way i do because we need the money.

i tell myself that i work the way i do because i need to feel empowered.

i tell myself that i achieve things because i'm smart and achieving things comes easily to me.

all of this is true. 

we need the money, i need the sense of purpose and personal fulfillment, and achieving at high levels really does come naturally, and even easily, to me. but at a cost.

which of course makes me feel like i need to make some major, overarching changes. which then of course gets me already started thinking about the amazing things i'll be able to accomplish when i make those changes. perhaps i'll write a book about it or something. or become a guru like leo babauta of zen habits. when i stop being an over achiever, oh the things i'll achieve!

some things i know that are true:

i am working too hard now.

i am under too much stress.

i spend too much time thinking about how to be more successful.

i also spend too much time thinking about how to be happier.

i do not exercise enough.

i do not have enough leisure time.

i have too many things going.

i spend too little time doing the things that make me feel healthy.

i cannot keep up the pace i have established.

no one can.

but what can i do with all of this? knowing my own patterns of overexertion / burnout / breakdown / solace / overexertion / repeat, how can i intervene and change the cycle? how can i stop experiencing burnout? how can i stop having breakdowns? is there a place between overexertion and complete and utter solace that might be a healthier, more balanced place?

:: the road oft-traveled ::

i have officially reached the point in my business at which i need to hire an actual in-my-studio employee.

this is something i have been working toward for a long time. in some ways it was always part of the dream-slash-plan, but in an official spoken-aloud, fully-realized kind of way i've been thinking about it for about the last 13 months.

moving into my own studio, launching aper + pink, and making the move toward working full time have all been important steps along the way. now here i am.

and i'm not sure i want to do it.

there are the usual reasons - the strain + fear of becoming not just a creative being and a business owner but also a supervisor and manager; the burden of finding the right person; the hassle of hiring; the fear of possibly firing; the inability to let go; the added expenses of worker's compensation and taxes as well as things like a computer and a chair to sit on; the fear of being responsible for someone else's livelihood; the reality that i would have to pay my employee before i pay myself, which could be a big problem for my family if business income gets light. 

and there are also my own personal reasons - my really-quite-extraordinary need for solitude; my contrariness; my dislike for confrontation in even the mildest forms; the newly-won knowledge that my times of greatest mental-health-crisis are usually preceded by high stress; and perhaps most of all the very persistent fear that if i hire someone, i'll feel (and probably really be) less free. less free in my manner of working. less free to make crazy decisions. less free to take 180-degree turns in my business plan. less free to create. less free to listen to alix olsen in my studio.  less free to do this the way i want to do it.

if there's one thing that running up up creative (and now aper + pink) has given me over the years it's the sure sense that this can be whatever i need it to be at the time. i answer only to my family and my health.

part of what makes me able to come to work each day and slog through two hours of email and print seven orders and hit the post office on my way home and then do some graphic design at home at night is knowing that if tomorrow i don't want to do it, i don't have to. i can close up shop whenever i choose. i don't choose to, but knowing i could make that choice is part of the allure of the gig.

the truth is, i'm just not ready to hire someone. my business may be ready for me to do it, but i'm not.

but there are whispers in my head: what if i'm never ready? what does this mean for the plans? what does it mean for the way i conduct business now, given that the business is outgrowing me already?

i posted on facebook yesterday that i've been taking a minimalist approach to thinking about my business lately: i've been trying to identify the essential (essential for my happiness, for my bottom line, etc.) and then giving myself permission to eliminate the rest. my hope is that this will make it possible for me to make more space for the work i need and want to do without having to hire someone before i'm ready.

for example did you know that i have the following:

• a facebook page for up up creative
• a facebook page for aper + pink (set up, but not yet active)
• a personal facebook account
• a twitter account for up up creative
• a twitter account for aper + pink (set up but not yet active)
• a portfolio at behance (nothing there, i think)
• an account at dribbble (nothing there, i think)
• a portfolio in progress at upupcreative.com
• a pinterest account
• this blog
• a blog at upupcreative.com
• a blog/gallery at aperandpink.com
• an etsy shop
• a shopify shop
• jotform contact and order forms
• an x-cart shop in development for aper+ pink
• a big cartel account (with five shop items)
• ongoing design work for snapfish, minted, and glo
• greeting cards
• wrapping paper
• calendars
• wedding invitations + accompaniments
• a print shop for retail customers
• a print shop for resellers
• separate mailchimp lists for aper + pink, shopify, up up creative, and wholesale customers, 
• workflowy + asana accounts; dropbox, mozy, and yousendit accounts
• two paypal accounts
• at least six different email addresses
• and more!

this is not all necessary. it's not even all desirable. it's ridiculous is what it is. completely effing ridiculous.

things that must stay include this blog, pinterest, Facebook personal and Facebook business (one overarching business page should suffice though), print shop for resellers, one paypal account.

obvious things to go? the blogs at upupcreative and aperandpink, which i don't update anyway. twitter, which i don't use anymore. big cartel. greeting cards. behance and dribbble. 

but what else? what can i consolidate? what can i eliminate? what pays the bills and what doesn't? what adds extra time and expense? what weighs me down? 

i'm in pare-down town, friends. travel recommendations welcome.

:: i am right here ::

this weekend, i admitted some scary things.

except no. i didn't really. i admitted some very reasonable and understandable and normal things, but admitting them was scary.

it was scary because of what i feared it would make people think about me. and it was scary because of how it made me feel about myself.

i admitted that sometimes, especially when i'm having a hard time personally, like when i'm anxious, i feel like i:

shouldn't be a mom
don't know how to be a mom
don't enjoy being a mom
can't take care of my kids
can't even take care of myself
wasn't meant to be a mom

and my rational mind knows that this is stuff ALL MOMS FEEL. but my irrational brain feels like i am the worst possible person in the world, i am selfish, i am going to ruin my children and my marriage, i am broken, i am crazy, i will never feel better.

but of course none of this is true, at least not as long as i keep talking about it and keep rational about it. we moms, we LOVE our children, but we don't always love being with them, and why would we? they need us constantly. and even when they don't have physical needs, they have wants. they need us to feed them and clothe them, but they also need us to talk with them, play with them, nurture them, listen to them say the same things over and over and over. and we do it because we love them.

and it's so scary to say that we don't always like it because we don't want our kids to know. or we don't want our spouses to know. we don't want anyone to think we're unnatural or scary or a risk to ourselves or others.

as i sobbed and sobbed over the phone finally admitting to a surprised listener yesterday that i often don't like the day-to-day caregiving of being a mom, the person on the line asked me if i feel like my children have stolen my life from me. at first i thought, "yes, maybe that's it." but that's not quite how it is. rather, i feel like i have willingly given my life to them the way we all give ourselves to our kids. i just haven't known how to keep myself healthy and okay in the meantime.

i work at least 40 hours a week, but my kids are only in daycare 17 hours a week. often, especially lately, i take my kids to the studio with me, sitting them on the floor with a laptop and a movie and plying them with snacks, paper and pens, cardboard boxes, lunch. they are good when they're there and they look forward to it, but obviously it's hard. from water spills i have to clean up to the jelly footprints all over my floor from someone who stepped in her bagel and then walked all over the studio, it's hard. they need me and i need them. i need to take care of them. i need to look at the pictures they draw while they're sitting on my studio floor. i need to take them to see the dogs my studio mates keep. i like the idea of having them there with me, having them know their mom as a person in the world, having them see my work and be creative with me.

but the reality is that it's hard.

duh, right?

the trouble i have is that for as self-aware as i seem, i can be really clueless when it comes to my own mental health. it wasn't until i started back up with therapy recently to deal with my anxiety and panic attacks and a specific phobia i have that i realized that underneath it all, i'm really depressed. i'm a mess. i work and i take care of the kids and i do almost nothing else, least of all take care of me. i shower every other day, and only because my hair looks too awful if i go longer than that. i don't take walks anymore, even though taking walks is like breathing for me. i don't exercise. i don't hang out with my own friends (because i don't really have any of my own friends, honestly). i never just sit and veg. i don't read anymore. i often work until ten, watch one episode of a show with brian, and then play iPhone games until i fall asleep with the phone in my hand.

and the clueless part isn't just that i didn't realize how depressed and unhealthy i am. the clueless part is that i honestly 100% thought that my work was my break. i thought it was the thing i do for myself to stay centered and peaceful and mentally healthy. i thought it was the solitude i crave to feel whole and sane.

i thought that because four years ago when this all started, right around the time evan turned one and i had a complete breakdown and had to leave home for 11 days and put evan in full time day care for the next 8 months (until we moved home to rochester and i was home with him 100% of the time again), up up creative was my therapy. making things each day and putting them into the world was the only thing that got me through the long days with evan out of the house. i read books, wrote incessantly in a journal, walked around the OSU campus at will, and mostly i made things. quilts. necklaces. all manner of things. i felt normal and connected and grounded and slowly, i felt happy. or happier, maybe. i felt like a human being again.

and in the years that have followed i've grown up up creative (and now aper + pink) into a serious business. a growing, bustling, busy business. and it continues to be such an important part of my life and of my sense of self. i love working. i love building the business. i need it.

but the "make a few things and put them in an etsy shop" beginnings of four years ago are a far cry from what things are like now, and somehow i failed to notice how much more time, energy, and work that business requires now.

and there's a second kid now, of course, too.

and here i am again, totally lost. i have given everything -- happily, often, and almost always willingly -- until i've come up dry and aching from the drought.

and then on top of all of that i've tormented myself about feeling this way. i've tried to ignore it. i've told myself how easy my life is, how much harder it can be. how much harder it is for other people.

my sister in law told me a couple of months ago about a friend of hers who started working full time after her kids were born and stopped after they had both gone off to first grade and were in school all day. she just knew she couldn't mother them all day long. my exact words were, "good for her. you have to know yourself." i one million percent believe that. i think that woman is amazing and that her kids are lucky.

but somehow when i even think of the same thing for us here, i cry. i feel like i have failed.

i wanted to stay home with my kids. i want to. but i can't. i don't know why but i just can't. and that feels so bad. it feels like acid in my veins. i don't know how to take care of them and still take care of me. i thought i was doing it but i was wrong.

but you know what? fuck it, that's what. fuck this idea of mine that there was one way to do it and i've done it wrong. fuck the idea that each decision i make is a permanent decision and that it will have permanent consequences. fuck being scared that my kids won't know how much i love them. you can't be around me and not know how much i love those two little red heads. how much i admire them. how proud i am of them.

it's hard because i know that right now, i need extra time. it's like i've been giving myself a penny each day instead of a dollar and so now i need to give myself a buck fifty each day for awhile until i'm on evener ground. i think i went into this thinking, "maybe i could give myself two pennies a day and eventually i'll make it all up." but that's ridiculous. that's not working.

today i let brian take the kids for a hike without me. i considered going because i didn't want to reinforce my depression and anxiety by avoiding an outing with them. it was a very logical reason to go. i didn't want to avoid them. i didn't want to stay at home and cry or sulk or be anxious.

but instead i let them go and decided that staying home didn't have to be about avoiding them but could be about looking for me.

so here i am.

:: not a cry for help, a cry for change ::

life here at la maison green continues to be stressful. circumstances continue to suck, sometimes just a little, sometimes more than that, and sometimes a hell of a fucking lot. there have been big stresses and littler ones. some that have swept in quick and fierce and some that have simmered, simmered, simmered.

back on my medication for anxiety, i find i am less apt to have panic attacks now than i was a month ago, which is good. but now i'm finding warnings creeping into other parts of my life: i wake with tension headaches, for one; my left knee hurts, which makes my left calf muscle hurt, which in compensating for has made my left hip hurt, and that in turn has left me with a weird pain in my left foot. it's totally and completely ridiculous.

it's affecting brian, too. he gave himself a concussion a few weeks ago (silly, freakish accident involving a cupboard door and a two year old under foot, but still, it seems to be both a cause of the stress at our house and a symptom of it). and now he's the only 30-something i've ever heard diagnosed with shingles (the adult resurgence of chicken pox, which usually doesn't strike until you are in your 50s or 60s, if then).

our bodies are telling us that our life is too much for us right now. they are screaming at us to figure something out.

and yet we're able to look around and find people all around us who are in worse circumstances than we are in. we're surrounded by people struggling against greater foes than we are, facing less sleep, fighting stronger viruses and ailments.

i see these people, and i talk to these friends, and i give myself an "it could be worse" and a "life is hard" and i remind myself that for millennia people have known these things. life is suffering. isn't this literally buddhism's first noble truth?

i say this over and over to myself. life is hard. it's supposed to be hard. who told you it was going to be easy? your life isn't even that hard. it could be worse. after all, my kids are healthy. my marriage is good. no one in the family currently has cancer. we have a house and two cars that run. we have so many blessings we probably can't count them all. so i repeat the chorus to myself: life is supposed to be hard. it could be worse.


the trouble is, my very core just can't accept this. life may be hard, and yes it can certainly be worse than this, but to me, when circumstances get this bad and the stress mounts this high and our bodies yell out to us that things just ain't right, to me this is when you need to step back, reassess, and change something. accommodate the suffering, maybe. find a way to care less about it, perhaps. or maybe just give the suffering more room to breathe -- take away the things that compound the suffering. make life easier.

because i'm very open about my anxiety and depression, i find that people often come to me about it. i get a lot of emails, even some phone calls. this shit is widespread, my friends. many many of us experience it, sometimes acutely, sometimes indefinitely. and as you know i'm the first one to admit (and advocate for the fact) that sometimes, you just need help in the form of medications. but i also completely believe that these times of discomfort, pain, fear, anxiety, sadness -- these are our bodies' ways of saying CHANGE THINGS THE FUCK UP OR ELSE.

i'm in a place now where i'm just not sure what form the change needs to take. it's so much more complicated to change a family's life than to change a single person's. but my kids are still happy and seemingly unaffected yet by the chaos their parents find themselves embroiled in, and i want to keep it that way. i want to get us back out of the fire so that we can get back to not suffering all the time even when circumstances are bad.

:: but but but ::

i'm doing much better these days. thanks for your kind words and your patience these last few weeks.

i'm back with just a small update on life/business, just a dipping of the toe into the blogging waters. i'm sure i'll be swimming laps again in no time.

but here's the thing: i wanted to tell you how well the aper + pink launch went, and how well things continue to go on that front. i've got a small stack of print orders sitting here on my desk and have sent out a good number of orders already in the last few weeks, and the feedback has been awesome.

i mean, i knew it would be. the whole reason i even conceived of aper + pink was because i knew that what i was producing in-house was better than the stuff i had seen anywhere. but it's been so reassuring, and so gratifying, to hear the great feedback from customers.

i'm sitting here almost a month into things wondering, now, what my next step should be. do i let things grow organically? do i reach out to new audiences and potentially open the floodgates? i have so many ideas and the desire to be bold and grow, but there are always so many buts.

surely i've shown in the past that i'm not one to let the buts stop me. but still. scary.

:: not work ::

i have had a truly rotten, awful week. the kind of awful that you can compare to other kinds of awful and it still seems bad. the kind of awful you can't ignore. the kind that feels like it's causing instantaneous ulcers.

it has me alternately weeping on my husband's shoulder, bawling in the car, and staring into the middle distance dazedly.

i'm having trouble making myself eat, which is a weird thing that happens to me when too much of this kind of fight-or-flight stress courses through me.

and usually, my work is something that helps me get through those times. like knitting and watching crime shows, working is usually something that kind of backburner's the anxiety so that i can feel normal for a bit.

this week, though, work's not working. it's not helping. i don't want to do it.

i want to curl up in a snuggle with my little boy. i want to read harry potter (it's my first time through - we've just started the first book). i want to watch felicity on netflix. i want to be quiet. i want to listen to music. i want to sit next to my husband without talking. in fact i want him around more or less constantly.

i want to shut my computer and leave it shut, unless maybe i need to open it to turn on the next episode of felicity. i get to the studio and don't want to be here.

and i'm not sure what to think about this. i'm not sure what it means, if anything, that all i want to do right now is not work.

obviously it's not a choice to put work aside. i've got orders to fill, clients waiting on me, emails piling up higher than a young boy's falsetto. i have orders to print (that's what brought me in to the studio today, when what i really wanted to do was curl up with my head on my hubby's lap on my in-laws' couch and watch the DIY channel, hearing my kids playing nearby but without them disturbing me).

i've built this thing, this business, to need me and my frequent attention, but i haven't yet figured out how to negotiate the times when i don't want its incessant calls to action.

have you?

:: confluence ::

oh, i'm brooding tonight, wondering why on earth i insist on doing things in the most difficult way possible.

it's hard to exactly explain, though it's easy to point to what put me here. today brought a series of small events, the confluence of which have given me much to think about. the five events were:

1. getting my snapfish and minted 1099s
2. finishing the irritating job of calculating the dollar-value of my inventory for 2011 year-end (which will be used to calculate COGS (cost of goods sold) on my income taxes)
3. getting an email reminding me that my sales tax will be due soon
4. one of my printers dying
5. being notified by my new landlord, who also rungs a digital print shop, though with a different customer base but also a lot more years' experience, is about to sublet even more of his own space as a cost-cutting measure. he's downsizing his employee base and renting out probably half of his space. he's got dozens of printers, many of which sit unused. 

i'll do my best to explain.

so.

the work i do for minted and snapfish, which my 1099s attest is rewarded financially, requires nothing but couple thousand fonts, a computer, and some design software. it does not require me to file sales tax, do inventory, calculate COGS, buy, repair, and replace printers, or stock paper and envelopes. it doesn't even require me to go out and find customers, or to keep customers happy.

there's always the chance that one of those (major) companies will go bust, or that my work will no longer appeal to their customers, etc. but damn! DAMN! i spend less than 10% of my time on this work. i should just multiple that by ten and i'd be ALL SET. so little overhead. so little payout. why am i not doing that???

the answer, i guess, is that there's something that happens to me when i see other people running successful creative businesses, abuzz with activity, bursting with energy, busy with employees. i want that. i want to make that happen and to stand in the middle of it.

i got an email from the CEO of minted this past december in which she recounted the busy holiday seasons of minted's first years in business -- the year that they realized they were about to hit through-put capacity and had to immediately pull any advertising they could possibly still pull, for one. the year they had to call in their husbands, friends, and family members in order to get everything out the doors.

it sounded like completely wonderful chaos. and i do NOT like chaos.

but its hard to see lots of businesses around me in S-O-S. kodak, for one. my landlord, who maybe isn't in S-O-S exactly but who is definitely in pare-down mode. 

now more than at any other time, even more now than when i shelled out all those big bucks to exhibit at nss let year, i'm standing at the edge of a chasm and i'm about to jump, and while i feel confident that i'll make it to the other side of this particular span, i've got to admit that i can't see what's lurking on the other side.

and with things like COGS and sales tax and dead printers that are more expensive to repair than to replace, i guess it's only natural to take a moment before jumping. and with 1099s showing me the alluring options on this side of the chasm, i suppose i'd be crazy not to be muddled tonight. brooding.

it would be wisest of me to stand here on this side. not only wisest, but possibly healthiest (from a wellness standpoint) and also best (from a mom standpoint). these are things i really believe, not just things i'm supposed to say. i really truly believe that if i could just find a way to stay happy here on this side, i'd be better off. healthier. happier. 

but i can't shake the allure of spanning the chasm. 

i can't stop wanting to be one of the few who takes the leap.

so i guess we all know i'll probably jump.

:: demystifying daycare, a plea ::

i had some helpers with me this week since the babysitter was sick (only emily is pictured here, but evan helped too) and it made me remember that i have a question that i'd like to ask everyone. everyone anywhere. i would like about 1000 comments on this post because i'm interested in ALL of the options. 

in the box, out of the box, near the box. this is an invitation for brainstorming.

my kids are in an awesome in-home daycare. but for a list of reasons that is important but not really right for delving into here on the blog, things are going to have to change with the daycare situation and because this change will more or less coincide with evan heading off to kindergarten in the fall,  I NEED TO KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.

how do you make half-day kindergarten + a younger sibling not yet old enough for pre-school (emily misses the cut-off by days and won't be able to go to preschool until she's a teenager, or so it seems) + a growing self-owned business that requires regular if not 100% full-time daycare?

i mean, on the one hand a nanny seems like the way to go, so evan can come home after school and i can be at work and emily can be taken care of all the while.

but we've tried the nanny situation before and maybe it's just us or something but nannies get sick a lot and then i get mad because inevitably they get sick when brian has court or some such trivial thing and so i have to be the one to ditch work and figure out how to still get the stuff done and have fun with the kids and not resent anyone or anything.

plus i like the idea of them being around other kids because again, maybe it's just me but i find that running a business and being home part time with the kids is not the recipe for tons of playdates. i think we probably end up with like fifteen playdates a year.

but i'm not even sure i have a grasp on what our other options are. here's my list. please add to it in the comments and feel free to (please do!) share your thoughts on making it all work.

OPTIONS:

1. a school-like daycare where the kids are separated into classrooms by age or whatever. this would separate emily and evan.
2. another in-home daycare, but i think this would need to be near home because of the aforementioned kindergarten thing, right? in other words, it would be best located in our school district or else i'd be leaving work in the middle of the day to chauffeur evan, right?
3. a nanny.
4. a shared nanny, like shared with another family or something, so that there could be more kids hanging out and being friends? maybe this is something i invented in my own wishful head.
5. latchkey for evan and something separate for emily. to the very best of my recollection i literally did not know kids with two working parents as an elementary school child, and so to me latchkey was this foreign place in the gym and the cafeteria where the weird kids went (i'm just being honest about my 8 year old prejudices here, folks) and maybe there they did weird things or maybe weird things were done to them? but maybe it's different now? or maybe it was always different? discuss.
6. something different altogether?

daycare mystifies me, my friends. clearly i need your help.

:: the things i wish i could outsource ::

there was a time, right after evan was born and lasting, i dunno, a year or more, that i wrote here every day. it went like this: get up, feed the baby, eventually eat something and get dressed and brush my teeth, do the day, whatever the day was to be that day, do dinner for the baby, eat with brian, kid bed, BLOG. and then after blog, or sometimes before, or during, FLICKR.

it was just part of the day.

now i feel like my days are so overrun with everything else the blog is reserved for whenever-i-can-find-the-damned-time. (and flickr? i'm not sure i've used it once since i uploaded the pictures from NSS last may).

and no, whenever-i-can-find-the-damned-time does not include now.

but i've been working so hard on bringing you (and the world!) aper + pink that i forgot to tell you along the way what it's like bringing a new business into the world when it's, like, a planned-in-advance business.

up up creative happened and grew and became. it was an unplanned but very much wanted pregnancy and it has grown to be a very pleasant child.

aper + pink was 100% planned, and while the execution (gestation?) has been purposefully condensed into a short, short period of time, it has at times felt like this overwhelming beast. not the business idea, but everything that goes into making a business idea happen at a certain time and on purpose.

there has been ordering, or i suppose i would be telling a truer truth if i were to say there has been 90% order planning (and unplanning, and replanning, and second-guessing, and third-guessing, and then back to the second guess, no maybe the first) and 10% actual ordering.

there has been physical organization and orientation.

there has been a lot of really awesome pre-launch marketing -- getting out there and talking to the people who i want to be my customers -- which has also served as pre-launch survey-taking and focus group polling.

but holy hell there's so much thinking that goes into this, and i don't mean the angsty "what on earth am i doing with my business" kind of thinking that i've gone through at regular intervals with up up creative. this thinking is more like, "okay. i have a plan. in my mind it is as clear as day. how do i get it across to other people in a way that makes it as crystal clear and fantastic?"

i'm a decent communicator. a decent teacher. i can usually take a large pile of information and carefully, skillfully, condense it into its finest, most digestible self. but taking the fine, digestible idea and building all the necessary scaffolding to hold it up to the sun? 

i've tried three separate times now, or i guess four, to outsource the design and development of the website for aper + pink. i've also developed three almost-complete e-commerce websites. and each time i've changed course, or made the plea to others for help with the coding work, or the design, i've not seen that the real issue is this: i'm having trouble wrapping my head around all the content, and instead of sitting down with that i've been trying to throw Function and Pretty at it. 

oh that i could pay someone to climb inside my head and grab all the bits and bobbles related to aper + pink and then put them through some kind of strainer and turn them into the actual stuff of the business. 

which is to say: i'm going to have to take the next few days to climb inside my head and gather bits and bobbles and spend the time it will take to actually mold them into the business. i was really hoping i could avoid that part by hiring out the website work.

i guess i may do it all myself after all, since the very hardest part is on me.

damn damn damn.

:: julie's first day out ::

four strange and unusual things i did this morning:

1. i showered. i showered even though i showered yesterday. i did this because crap! i am going to see actual people today! every-other-day showering is for people who work at home, damnit!
2. i packed a lunch. kinda. i'm way out of practice on this and really more like threw some food into some containers and put it all in a wegman's bag and who knows if there's enough food or too much or what.
3. i stopped at starbucks because i've got a gift card and i stood in line and i did this weird internal dance to the tune of "i'm a commuter commuting to my studio that is not in my house and i'm standing in line at starbucks with other people who are commuting to places of employment that are not in their houses."
4. i packed my laptop into an ill-fitting laptop bag because, oh, did i mention, i'm not going to be at my house today, and being not-at-my-house will not work so effectively without my laptop.

and also, two things i would normally be doing today that i kind of forgot i won't be able to do today from not-at-my-house and hmm, this is going to take some getting used to:

1. laundry. i have at least three full loads to do and usually i'd sort of throw one in here and there throughout my at-home workday. need a new plan. your advice is welcome.
2. make pizza dough. also not going to be possible from the studio. which means that dinner tonight? i'm going to have to figure something out. more advice welcome.

this is going to be weird. good-weird, but weird.

:: today ::

printing.
planning.
psyched.

:: self-diagnosis ::

i am impatient.
and easily confused.

pushed and pulled -- sometimes it seems -- rather than self-propelled. incapable of stillness. unable to wait. to decide. to sustain.

i am passionate and simultaneously dispassionate.

i am a fatalist and an optimist.

i am excited and disappointed in equal measure. i ebb. i flow. i ebb again.

i get uncomfortable if i start to feel too cliche. i want to make connections but i cringe when someone confesses to feel the ways i feel.

i believe that sharing is good because it connects us. i believe that we all feel the same ways. that we are all impatient and easily confused. that we are all searching, seeking beings.

but when you tell me you are a searching, seeking being, immediately i want to be something different.

in a way i am embarrassed for us in our sameness.

when you stand in front of me, mirrored, i want to love you and run from you at the same time. i want to hold your hand and say it's okay that you feel the way i feel. but i also want to stop feeling that way, sometimes just because someone else feels it, too.

it's possible that i want us to feel the same and be the same but i want to know that i somehow feel it more or better or differently.

perhaps the only thing i want more than connection is MEness.

separation.

at bedtime evan likes to come up with similes: i love you as high as the moon. i love you as much as i hate wearing bandaids.

last night at bedtime evan told me that he loves the three of us (daddy, emily, and me) "as much as i would love having the whole planet to myself."

i get that. i really do.

i want to follow the rules.
i want to write the rules.
i want to break the rules.

i want to be the exception to the rules.

this ego of mine? it's a force. it contends with gravity, pulling me centrifugally upward even as the center of the earth pulls me centripetally downward.

away from the center. toward the center.
exception. rule.
separation. connection.

:: mommy's little girl ::

yesterday, while we were sitterless and still recovering from a few days at the lake with my cousins and their kids, evan passed out cold on the couch despite emily's best efforts to the contrary. and so i brought her up to the attic, the farthest we could get from the boy without leaving the house.

the rest of this, well she did it on her own. she got the computer from evan's room. she brought it upstairs. she asked me to put her up on my yoga-ball desk chair. she opened the computer. she made mommy proud:

 

 

it should of course be noted that the only thing emily can intentionally do on this computer besides just mimic mommy is control the volume of the annoying sounds -- louderlouderloudersoftersoftersofterlouderlouderloudersoftersoftersofter.

:: lightness and raspberries ::

sometimes thishereblog gets heavy. not like dude, you're blowing my mind heavy. and not testicular-cancer-diagnosis heavy. (which would be heavy indeed since last i checked i'm a girl). just think think thinking kind of heavy.

and so i'm here tonight with some things that make me feel light.

like discovering that bolthouse farms has a juice that i actually love. it is apple juice free, which is like a miracle among miracles because if you've ever read the ingredients list on any of those beautiful, colorful juices by bolthouse or naked or any of those companies, every single one of them contains apple juice, which my non-apple-juice-liking mouth seems to seek out like fleas seek out mangy dogs. it can be the last ingredient and i can be blindfolded and there can be berry fireworks happening in the mouths of normal people but all my berry fireworks are extinguished by apple juice.

so mango lemonade is making me feel light.

and so are raspberries grown in my backyard, picked and eaten straight off the bush (or collected in a bowl when the bush is very very giving). sun-warm raspberries.

and so is the wonderful response i've gotten to my recent blog posts. most of y'all tend to reply to my business-y quandry posts in private, which i find funny since i'm out here practically screaming about my business indecision and development, but which i totally get and love. your emails and messages make me smile and give me stuff to think about and help me find answers.

anyway, right now my kids and husband are out chasing hot air balloons (i swear!) so i'm going to take all this lightness and go do a bit of work and a lot of relaxing.

:: surfacing ::

too. busy. sending love and crossed-off to-do's.
(taken with my iphone - excuse the blur, although it's oddly appropriate given my state of being these days, prepping for the trade show. less than a month!)

:: a letter to my kids ::

dear kids,

i'm taking a few moments from work this afternoon to write you a little note to let you know how much you both impressed me in the last 24 hours.

emily, you are so brave and so tough. you're just a peanut of a babe, so small that people in public exclaim, "she's too small to be walking!" when really you learned to walk about three months later than most babies we know. but you're so tough. yesterday you played "chase and steal" with evan and me and even though you kept getting bumped and knocked into and even though you never could steal the ball unless i handed it to you or evan and i stopped paying attention for a minute, you just played and laughed and loved it. you didn't cry even though i would totally have cried. perhaps you don't even know to feel left out or slighted yet. perhaps you're not yet aware of balances of power and watching out for the little guy. or perhaps you're just smart enough to know that the fact is, you're smaller than us, and if you want to play some of evan's big-kid games then you're just going to have to jockey for position.

and this morning. oh! emily! this morning you were so brave as we packed up our things to leave the Y after evan's swimming lessons. you were brave enough to venture out across people-traffic in the wide open hallway, yes, but then you were brave enough to let a stranger hold your hand and walk you back to mom. you didn't cry. you didn't try to escape. you didn't even look worried. you simply let this wonderful, grandmotherly woman walk you slowly and surely back to where you were supposed to be. you could see me, but i don't think that's what made it possible. i think a lot of other kids would be all the more upset to have a stranger hold their hand when they could see their own mommy right there ten feet away. i think what made it possible for you to hold this woman's hand - her name was rose, she told you - was just the fact that you enjoy being in the world and aren't afraid of things that clearly aren't threatening.

i hope that this never works against you, emily. i hope that you will grow up to be trusting and brave but not naive. and something already tells me that this will be the case. i think it's that "i don't need you guys to coddle me while we play chase and steal" part of you that makes me not so scared for that "sure i'll hold a stranger's hand" part of you.

and evan. dear, sweet evan. talk about brave. this morning you went for your fourth-ever all-alone big-boy swimming lesson. and your usual teacher was not there. as the new instructor approached us (a full 30 years younger than miss judy, and a man), my heart sank. i wanted your usual teacher. i was afraid that you would be scared with this new person.

but you didn't even blink. you were your same solemn little self, the same boy who loves swimming and swimming lessons so much that he can barely even show emotion while he's there but then erupts into chaos and pride the moment we step into the locker room.

and your teacher told me after class that you kicked ass. you weren't scared. you did the back float, for god's sake, evan. you won't even do that with me.

that's amazing. i would have been so scared to have a new teacher. i would have clung to my mom's leg. i would have teared up. i would have whispered as quietly as possible to my mom that i didn't want to go anymore. but not you, you brave child.

and one last thing, ev. one more thing i need to add even though it's slightly off topic. evan, you are the sweetest boy ever and i hope that you nevereverever lose that. i hope you'll always remember (or always let me remind you) that once, when you were three, you amazed your dad and i with your purehonest goodness.

last night, evan, at bedtime, after you and daddy had gotten PJs on and brushed and washed and read a book, and after you'd hidden like you hide each night, waiting for me to find you so that i can say goodnight, we did our usual thing: hug, kiss, and favorite parts of the day. and you? you told your dad and i that your favorite thing was hearing that emily's blood doesn't have as much lead in it -- that her blood test showed almost 65% less lead in her blood than it did three months ago.

we hadn't talked about this but for one minute during the day when i got off the phone with the doctor's office and said, "hey ev, guess what? emily's lead is a lot better. it's not gone but she has a lot less now."

i will never know what even made you remember that brief moment from earlier in the day, but i will always know why you said it was your favorite thing yesterday: because deep down inside your very cells you are a caring and thoughtful person. that and one other thing: even at three you are already sure that being a family means something special. you tell me often that when you grow up, you want to be a family.

so anyway, kids, i have to get back to work now. but i just wanted you to know that i find you both amazing.

love, mommy

:: i dream of genies ::

about, oh, ten days ago, i lost my keys. i'm not a key loser, so the loss was disconcerting. that it happened when we were running almost late for evan's first no-parents swimming lesson made it much more so.

they were eventually found in a pile of things that had been moved from my desk in the living room (not my main work desk, which is in the attic) to the dining room table and back again the previous night, accumulating detritus, and keys, apparently, with each move.

that afternoon, when the kids were at daycare and i was here working, the state of the house got me so distracted that i went madly through the house like a tornado, scooping up everything in my path that wasn't properly put away, and dumping it into a laundry basket.

part of me wanted to just throw the whole thing in the garbage bin outside figuring that if i couldn't be bothered to put it away then i couldn't be bothered to own it, but then i realized that things like my income tax documents were in there.

so i left the whole thing at the base of the stairs.

and there it still sits. and now there is still more stuff striking various non-put-away poses throughout the house.

i'm not fussy. i'm not a neatnik. but holy crap this is starting to get ridiculous. my very brain is beginning to feel disorganized and cluttered.

one trouble with working from home is that you don't have the time to pick up because you're working, but you're not out of the house enough to keep from messing it up, and even while you're hard at work you still have to look at the domestic disarray.

oh how i sometimes wish i worked outside the house.

or that i lived with a genie.

:: laundry and other hard things about parenting ::

so here's the thing, and i know you already know this and so do i: parenting is so hard. i am only a parent and not a grandparent or anything yet, but i can just tell that being a grandparent is, one day, if my kids have kids of their own, going to be so much better than being a parent.

because the thing about parenting that's so hard isn't necessarily the kids, or the tantrums, or the illnesses, or the fights. it's the complete-and-total-responsibility of it all. it's the needing to be the person who pays attention to things like nutrition. it's the policing the TV use and teaching small people how to be good small people first, and then good bigger people. it's the paying attention to the thermometer and telling the kids "no, you can't go outside today" when even the thermometer is shivering from the cold.

i totally love the exception days. the days when i'm less like a parent and more like a grandparent. the days when we get mcdonald's for lunch and watch two movies in a row and forget to brush our teeth and eat stuff we dropped on the floor. the days when we take fun-only-no-cleaning baths. i am, as a parent, totally made for those days. if i could, we'd jump on beds all day long and when the kids are a bit older maybe make up rude limericks just for fun. i'm the parent who encourages babies to feed themselves even if its so-freaking-messy. i'm the one whose son sits down at arts and crafts at preschool and, while the other kids all look at the example snowman and try to copy it onto their own pages, creates the kind of snow man that makes the teacher ask, "evan, what have you drawn here?" i'm the one who's totally proud of him for that.

but i'm also the one who is teaching her thirteen-month-old daughter to say thanks (it comes out "sanks" and boy oh boy does it impress strangers), and the one who enforces bed times. i'm the one who mops the floor now because the pediatrician said that the baby's got a slightly elevated lead level and it's probably from lead in the dust on the floors.

i totally hate mopping. prior to this january i don't even recall the last time i did mop. but i'm nothing if not a responsible parent.

which sometimes i also totally hate. it's just so much less fun. so much harder. don't get me wrong, i actually do think i'm doing a pretty good job with these-here-kids. truly, i do. i think i find that space between indulgent grandparent and order-shouting military commander and squeeze myself and my kids right in there. but while i sit there in that space, i sure do wish we were eating raw cookie dough off the floor.

that sounds like a good way to spend an afternoon.

i think the thing about being the kind of parent i am, the kind that wants to be creative all the time and have fun and break molds and be a little bit contrary but who really believes in raising kids who can both break those molds and also sit comfortably inside them when it's a good idea to do so, the thing about that that's so darned hard is that the regular days? the days when we do brush and wash and clear our dishes and only watch a little TV? the routine days? they kind of make me feel like they're making me less creative and fun.

i want my kids to know that there's a time for folding laundry and a time for getting into laundry-throwing battles of epic proportions.

i guess i just wish that didn't mean i had to spend a significant portion of time actually folding laundry.

:: the blogger's dilemma ::

i've been putting off my first post of 2011 because i wanted it to be thoughtful. but come on now. it's the eighth. so instead of thoughtful i thought i'd give you a quick, thoughtless hello so we can move on already.

'ello. hope you're well. i've missed you.