Category — Me Myself & I

I’m not sure WHY I, or anyone else, thought that quitting my Day Job would miraculously give me more time.  I conveniently forgot that I quit my Day Job to help with my family’s business and to lend more balance to our lives. And by “lending balance to our lives” I mean “doing everything around the house so my husband can work 90 hours a week.”

Sigh.

In any case, once summer “vacation”  is over I shall probably be able to re-devote myself to this blog,  my little business, book reviews, and to the constant tasks of marketing  school visits and my books. Not to mention everything else that’s been lingering on my to-do list for months.

“Farmer Hoggett knew little ideas that tickled and nagged and refused to go away, should never be ignored; for in them lie the seeds of destiny.”
Babe.

I used to write a blog called “Idea Girl.” I moved a lot of the posts over here when I started this blog, and although the name “Idea Girl” is a little bit childish (for I am certainly no “girl” – at least, not any more), it is really apt. I am a person who is FULL of ideas. Ideas that don’t get acted on very often, for I am no fool, but many ideas nonetheless.

I used to think everyone experienced this, but now I know differently. I like to think of myself as creative, but others might just think I’m flaky. Or over-opinionated. It’s possibly a symptom of a pathology, or at least a character trait that puts me in one of the lesser-known Meyers Briggs personality categories.

Anyway, Farmer Hoggett and me – we have something in common.

Well, folks – spring has sprung! And I only have 9 weeks left of work at my Day Job until I’m free! Free of the Day Job, that is. I’ve been working for my family business quite a bit – that, plus my press and my cataloging business (plus my kids, of course, and the little one’s plethora of dr. visits these past few months) have been keeping me busy and will continue to do so forever!
Here’s a quick update on what else has been going on with moi:

• My small press’s newest title, The Forever Friends Club, is puttering along. Sales are off to a slowish start but then again, marketing’s been off to a slowish start, too. As with all my other titles, I don’t get too concerned about the book’s first month’s sales. That’s the luxury of being a micropress. I’m in it for the long haul. The book’s gotten some fantastic, well-deserved reviews. Next stop: blog tour!
• I’m really excited about a new writing project: retold ghost tales of the Carolinas! Not sure what my plan is when they’re done – to produce them myself or to find another publisher – but they’re super fun to write.
• We’ve extended the deadline for submissions to Bless Your Heart, the anthology I’m co-editing with Kay Marner about parenting children ‘easy to love, hard to raise’ to June. Kay’s offered some advice on her blog to people interested in submitting.
• On Easter Monday we’re doing a give-away of The Big Fun Guide to Tar Heel Country through our Facebook page. Fan us to enter.
• On May 8 I’m teaching a workshop at Central Carolina Community College on self-publishing. That will be an adventure! How to cram seven years’ worth of what I know into 5 hours?
• I’m enjoying writing a blog and newspaper columns about energy efficiency as a way to educate people about the benefits of energy audits and weatherization.
• I’m rewriting the novel I wrote a couple years ago for a small publisher in California. They accepted it (after 4 rewrites) and had a publication date…which passed, was reset, was passed again…and I’ve come to believe they won’t ever publish it. It’s a decent enough story, however, and worth a 2nd look. That’s a big part of my summer’s plans.
• I need to write teacher’s guides for Mishka and When I Met You before I do a big mailing in the fall. The reception for the Teacher’s Guide for The Forever Friends Club has been really good; I think it’s a great, useful tool for teachers, guidance counselors, and parents who want to use the books in the classroom. Plus, it is a marketing tool! You know how I love marketing tools!

But first, finish the Day Job!

I just re-found an interview that The Kool-Aid Mom did with me a couple of years ago over at her blog, In the Shadow of Mt. TBR.

I had completely forgotten it existed!

It’s so funny to re-read it, because the more things change…the more things stay the same. I still have no balance in my life!

If you have read any of the “Me, Myself, and I” portions this blog, or any of my previous blog, idea-girl, you’ll  that I have been struggling with work-life balance for the past several years – essentially, since winter of 2006, when I took a full-time school librarian job after 7 1/2 years working part time, raising my children, and starting my little publishing company, not to mention writing and helping my husband with his business (most intensely in the past year).

And even though I did a job-share this year and so cut my hours in half, I’ve had a lot on my plate. As those hours dropped, my work for our family’s business increased. We’ve also been struggling with my younger son’s medical-behavioral issues, which takes up a tremendous amount of energy, time, and patience.

Because of all of this – combined with the growth of my husband’s Home Performance business – we’ve had to make some hard decisions around here. We decided that I would quit my job.

Yesterday I gave notice – 5 months in advance, as I’m planning on finishing out the school year – but notice all the same.

I feel relieved. I feel guilty (if you’ve ever worked as a teacher I think you’ll know why). I will miss the kids and the people I work with and the books.

I also feel like I want it to be over with now, but I’m scared of relying only on a start-up business for our income. And despite the fact that my husband is 100% supportive and probably more on board with the whole idea than I am…I also worry about the stresses ahead.

I am trying to get to the part where I feel free. Where I finally have time to work in a little exercise and regular house-cleaning and WRITING into my day…as well as to be available to take my kids to whatever activities they want.

It’ll happen. Right?

We’ve had two days off of school this week, thanks to 5 inches of snow here in central North Carolina. The snow was exciting at first – and fun – but then it promptly froze, was rained on, then refroze again. I’m not sure we’ll have school tomorrow; I haven’t left the house in four days! People who’ve been out and about report mixed conditions on the roads and it seems as if it’d be foolish to risk peoples’ lives by holding school in the next 24 hours.
I have been using my unanticipated days off three ways: 1, listening to my children whine about how bored and unhappy they are; 2, listening to my children fight; and 3, working on this website. It took almost the four full days of tolerating the first two things, but I’m proud to say that the last thing is done.
Oh – and I also took a nice walk in the snowy woods before it started to rain, and made a lovely snow lady.
But back to this website…I had a couple of blogs before, and I needed a place to consolidate them as well as a place to tout myself as an author – specifically, an author who is interested in visiting schools.
So here it is. What do you think?

Hello there!

Welcome to my website. I’m an author, a publisher, a mom, a business owner, a book reviewer, and a school librarian. This site is a place to bring it all together.

If you are interested in inviting me visit your school please see my page on School Visits.

If you are interested in my small publishing company, please click here: DRT Press.

If you want to send me a book to review, please go to my Book Review Guidelines page.

If you want to contact me directly, email me at adrienne(at)drtpress.com.

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About the blog: all of the posts on this site written before Dec, 2009  were migrated here from two other blogs of mine: readabookaday.net, which was about the joy of reading and using children’s books in the classroom and library, and idea-girl.net: a blog about owning a small press, being a working mom (who mostly works when the kids are around), home-life balance,  writing, and book marketing.

Is that you are Zeus for Halloween.

This was an amazingly easy costume to make, which from my perspective (the mother and chief seamstress) was key.

Outfit includes 1 toga (instructions and helpful video for tying a toga found on youtube) made from a white sheet putchased at the thriftshop for $2; a wire crown gussied up with some gold leaves purchased at a crafts store; and a gold belt made from a scrap of gold fabric I had lying around. Shoes were this summer’s sporty sandals – they still fit him or else I’d have spray-painted them gold.

We also made a lightning bolt out of cardboard and tin foil. This was shoved into the plastic pumpkin after a minute of use. Good thing it was bendable!

His other idea was to be Poseidon as depicted in the Percy Jackson books, which would’ve involved bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and sandals. Maybe a shell necklace or something. But he worried that no one would get it.

No one really got the Zeus outfit, actually. Every other kid we went trick-or-treating with was dressed as a vampire.

I don’t know if we had H1N1 or not, but the week before last LittleJ (my 7 year old) was out for 2 days with something virusy-flu-like, and feverish, and last week BigJ (my 10-year-old) was out 3 days with the same.

Me, I had a little fever, too…but I went on in to school. I can’t be out 5 days in 2 weeks with my kids and let a little old fever stop me.

When my kids are sick I relax the screen-viewing rules. Normally the rule is this: no screen time (meaining TV or non-school use computer) on school days, screentime on weekends only after rooms are cleaned to momma’s specifications, and limited screentime on those days. Like not all day. Not even all morning.

But when a sick, feverish, headachy little boy is home for the day then I allow unlimited screen time while brother is off at school. Sometimes it’s part of the cure. Zoning and dozing in front of the TV for a day or two is fine in this situation.

But the boys surprised me. Sure, there was plenty of TV watching. But there was also plenty of reading. BigJ reread The Last Olympian twice (perhaps his 5th and 6th readings of these books?), and started D’aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths for the third time. He also got a ways into the relevant section of Bulfinches before he became frustrated with the Roman names for the Gods. And his 3rd day of being sick, when he wasn’t sick at all (we were obeying the 24-hour fever free rule of school), he read the most recent Cressida Cowell Hiccup Horrendous Haddock book as well as Syren, the most recent Septimus Heap.

Yes, the kid can read.

Now, LittleJ is in 1st grade and just jumping on the read-to-himself bandwagon, but he is certainly very text aware and he looks at books all the time. He especially looks at graphic novels – mostly his brother’s. He has memorized every picture in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, loves his Scooby Doo and Batman graphic novels/picture books – really more the length and size of chapter books, but not comics – it’s hard to categorize exactly what these are. His interest match up exactly with the interests of many of the 6-9 year old boys at the school in which I work – most of whom are both emergent readers and English Language Learners. It convinces me that we need LOTS and LOTS of this kind of text in our library…but I digress. The long and the short of it is that LittleJ also spent a lot of his sick time looking at books. Lots more than I’d have thought for a very early reader. I read one or two to him, but that wasn’t what he was interested in. He was making sense of the books by himself.

I am convinced that the reading was what cured us of our flu so quickly. And me? I was cured by the happy little readers at school…and at home.

Hey! Is your child easy to love, but hard to parent? DRT Press (my baby easy-to-love, easy-to-parent business baby) wants you!

DRT Press is seeking personal essays written by parents of children with ADD, ADHD and/or other mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders for a book about the experience of parenting children with such conditions, for publication (expected) in January 2011.

Essays in this collection will be ones in which parents who care for challenging children can see themselves.  Parents/readers will laugh, cry, and find comfort in these stories.

Focus should be on the feelings and experiences of the writer/parent, rather than simply a description of the child and the child’s condition, behavior, and treatment.  We are looking for honest feelings, lessons learned, epiphanies, commonplace and extraordinary experiences.   Although we are not looking for how-tos on the best way to parent a behaviorally challenged child, we would like to see essays that give parents glimpses of what has worked for individual parents.

To read more guidelines, including HOW to submit and WHO to submit to, please go to the DRT Press website.