Somewhere between breaking up arguments, cleaning up messes, soothing the eighteenth minor "boo boo" in a row and wondering why there is never food in this house despite having just gone to the grocery store, I got a zany idea. I thought, hey, I should write a book! It would be so much fun.
The idea that I could do something more than cook and clean ... well, okay, heat up hot dogs and clear a path...but still, I could do this! But what could I write about? And then it came to me - games. Every person who has known me for longer than two minutes eventually calls me in a panic the week before, or sometimes the night before their kids' birthday party, Valentine's Day class party, Halloween party or other you-fill-in-the-blank event involving kids. They have suddenly emerged from their party-planning shopathon to realize that though they have purchased a cake, planned out all kinds of themed decorations and invited 16 little rug rats to the big event, they have no idea how they are going to keep them all from climbing the walls or killing the goldfish.
Enter me, the gal with the freakish talent for spouting off activities as though motherhood hasn't robbed me of all my brain cells, even as I sit wondering where I lay the ice cube tray that is mysteriously missing from the freezer and a vague recollection of wanting to freshen up my drink floats somewhere between thirst and the memory of someone screaming my name for the fifteenth time.
It's true. I don't know where this freakish ability came from or why it didn't vanish with every other bit of important knowledge I'm certain I possessed before I had kids, but nonetheless, it's true. I can come up with games at the drop of a hat, even when thirsty. So, though the ice cube tray would most likely be found when I sunk my foot into a puddle at some point in the future, I could get started right away on a book about games. This was it, I thought. Games are fun! Better yet - it's summer. Let's make it a book about travel games for kids. Writing a book about travel games would be fun!
Okay, let me just tell you something that I learned the hard way. Writing a book about travel games was fun. Publishing a book about travel games, however, was about as much fun as the twentieth hour of labor.
In fact, I thought afterwards, the only difference between childbirth and getting a mere eight hours of sleep over an entire weekend while trying to learn how to publish said "fun" book, was that after twenty-four exhausting hours of labor and childbirth, there was no four year old bounding into my bed, chattering on about nonsense in a voice loud enough to wake up the sun.
Yep, that was my weekend. After rattling off a book full of games in rapid succession, even under the ever watchful eye of Big Kid, who insisted on looking over my shoulder and asking me if I was done yet every other hour, I set about the business of publishing my book for Kindle.
I had no idea that by the end of the weekend I would be ready to beg everyone I know to let me entertain their 16 rug rats if someone could just promise me that I'd never again have to learn how to sync some new-fangled gadget with some other new-fangled gadget, read 162 pages of instructions on 30 different websites representing 20 different opinions on what was the "easiest" way to accomplish just one of the fifty new tasks I would have to learn or that I'd never again have to peer at lines upon lines of computer programming language gobbelty-gook and tweak one space, character or page break at a time.
And then there was the repetition. The uploading and syncing and checking only to see one part of the text had decided to separate itself from the others and do a wonky dance that would clearly label it as bizarre and me as someone who should have stuck with heating up hot dogs. Back I'd go, coaxing that text into submission, only to upload, sync, read and scream when I'd see that a different line of text had chosen to be rebellious. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that publishing this book was exactly like having children. Just when you think you've got everything under control, somebody else loses it, and it's never first thing in the morning. It will always, without question happen when you are exhausted.
But you know what's worse than finding crazy-eyed, rebellious text while you're trying to publish your first book? It's coming out of the fog that has been your learning curve overload for days upon days and just at the moment when you realize you haven't devoured this much new information since you read the What to Expect When You're Expecting book, you remember that you forgot to include something in your now published book! So, after 36 straight hours in front of the computer, with the rope from the tire swing now strapped around me to hold me upright in my chair and my brain now mixing up letters, numbers and strange hieroglyphic symbols that I'm sure came from some long lost episode of a Sci-Fi show tucked away in my head, I had to now wait 48 hours to be able to unpublish the book that was now locked in online publishing limbo.
As I literally almost collapsed while brushing my teeth at 4:00 in the morning, I thought back over my weekend. I vaguely remembered chatting with a friend online at the onset of this marathon when I couldn't even get my newly acquired Kindle to turn on. That seemed like weeks ago. I wanted to chat with her again, tell her all that I'd been through and the massive amount of information that had assaulted my brain that weekend, but as I tried to compose a quick email to her, I honestly couldn't even retrace my steps. I felt like I'd run through a war zone of foreign programming language and devices that were each shouting their own instructions at me. I had been involved in covert missions to download so many programs that I no longer even cared if they were trustworthy if they'd just help me find the way out of this battlefield and, I'd survived a minefield of people's opposing advice and sometimes nasty, surprise attacks. I was exhausted and pretty sure I was bleeding.
So, I did what any mom in my slippers would do. After realizing that I wasn't sure when was the last time I'd actually seen one of my children outside of a computer-generated image, I tiptoed into their rooms to plant a kiss on their patient, endearing little cheeks and then I fell into bed.
When Little Kid bounded into my room two hours earlier than her norm in what technically couldn't even be called the "next" morning, I was sure that I was being punished for some distant bad deed dating back to my own childhood. I was so tired. Why, why, WHY of all days did this child have to wake up two hours early? Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning I had figured out down to the last possible minute how late I could sleep and still get my hair brushed, the kids to the babysitter and myself to work. I knew I would already be in seriously hurting condition, dragging myself through my work day and oh God help me - my husband's day to work late - with nothing but Pepsi to propel me forward. But when Little Kid's internal clock decided to wake her up before God himself could get his first cup of coffee, all I could do was crawl to the bathroom, lean against the towel rack and paint pupils on the outside of my eyelids to feign some kind of appearance of interest in this day.
All of this and I still had no book to show for any of it. Thinking back to the twenty-four hours of labor before Big Kid was born, this book publishing was once again starting to seem a lot like motherhood. A lot of hours, a lot of pain and nothing to show for it - at least not yet.
But, here I am, a few days and many hours of sleep later and I can say that though this experience nearly finished me off, I did learn quite a bit from it. I learned that God made sleep for a reason, that even the best laid plans can be unraveled by a four year old and that I should always, always buy an extra 2 liter of Pepsi. Aside from that though, I truly did learn that despite my daily fear that I have become nothing more than a walking manual on how to change diapers, potty train, chop food into miniscule pieces, use tiny fingernail clippers, wrestle squirming things into the bath tub, repair stuffed animals and pry apart Legos, I actually do still possess the ability to learn new things that don't involve cute little animals or silly lyrics.
It was quite liberating and as I look around at the dishes in the sink, the scuffs on the floor and the toys scattered about, I'm realizing I'd really like to savor that feeling for as long as I can.
So, with that being said, I'm begging you, read the book. Read it because you want to help this weary mom feel like there is hope beyond the chaos, read it because it will remind you that you, too, can step outside your house-shaped box and accomplish new goals, and read it because it will absolutely save your sanity the next time you are trapped in a car with your children for anything longer than a trip to the grocery store.
My book is called Are We Thrilled Yet? Fun Travel Games for A Memorable Road Trip With Your Kids. If you've already got a Kindle, an iPad or comparable device, you can download it and take it with you on the road. If not, you can use Kindle for PC.
And if you've made it to the end of this long-winded blog post, I'll even let you in on a little secret....for the first day, June 13th, 2012, it's free! Shhh... don't tell anyone.... okay, actually tell everyone! And be sure to drop me a tweet or an email and let me know which game you and your kids enjoyed the most.
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