Fall Back

I love Fall Back time, and the extra hour of sleep came at a good time for us. I had been letting the kids' bedtime migrate starting from the ALCS playoffs, which was handy for things like the shows and concerts we've been seeing and participating in, but was sort of bad for home schooling -- they'd get up later, David would get to work later, we'd get started later. But because the stuff we do in the afternoons is at fixed times, we'd have to shorten the school day, so we've been getting less done. With Fall Back having happened this weekend, I can easily now put the kids to bed at 8 instead of 9, which meant that Ella got up at 6:45 this morning and we woke Madison at 7:45. So we were at it by 8:30, which I love. Thank goodness for home schooling, I can't imagine how we could get all of this accomplished if I had to rush them out the door at 7:30. We'd have to cut back or they'd be exhausted. This way they can get 9 1/2 hours of sleep. I've been reading how even elementary kids' lives are so crammed lately that they're getting less than 8 hours. Ick, I can imagine how perpetually cranky Madison would be.

Other things are also settling down. I'd been preparing for the party last week, and on this past Saturday I exhibited KOA at the Rochester Children's Book Festival. I had about 750 6-year-old KOA printed purple balloons from when I first got them made when KOA started, and so I rented an insanely big (I learned -- I'll never do that again...I'll always get two smaller ones even though it's more costly) helium tank from Party City and spent 6 hours blowing up and giving away 300-400 balloons. The kids helped, in the afternoon, after they got out of choir. The balloons were really effective, even though it seems that latex has a definite half-life, and over 1/3 of them broke or were hole-y before I even got the knot tied.

There's nothing like free balloons to get kids to drag their parents over to your booth. Madison and Ella were beyond thrilled at being the ones with all the balloons to give away, rather than being the one who wants the balloon. (I tell ya, I give these kids EXPERIENCES.) Anyway, I got a lot of signups to the KOA list, and it was also a real rush to ask parents, "Have you heard of KOA?" and often to get the answer "Oh, gosh, yes, I get the email every week, I love it, I always look forward to it, are YOU Debra Ross?" It was a lot of fun for me. And really exhausting, too. I smashed various fingers and toes in the whole helium tank escapade, and wore away bits of skin on my right index finger from tying balloons for six hours, but it was worth it.

And I can now settle in with nothing more looming that I have to prepare for. Aside from work, that is, and my kids' education. Oh, and we have to distribute and collect the money for the Girl Scout cookies that came in yesterday. And we're having a cookie booth at RIT (the troop is, I arranged it) to sell G.S. cookies on Friday.

I've actually been quite prolific on the Frontier Team book that I'm writing (with Madison, to some extent). We got delayed with the research, romping through classic children's mystery books and finding "rules for detecting" contained therein so we could reference them in our book, and we're still doing that to some extent. But I've been getting the story fairly well fleshed-out, lately, and we're about 1/3 of the way through the book. Frankly, being at the RCBF on Saturday was inspiring, in that if these people could be successful authors, there's no reason I couldn't be. And I have a built-in marketing machine, anyway, so I'm hoping I'm that much more appealing to a larger publisher. We'll see. It's been fun putting in real-life places and people in Rochester, too. And weaving good reasoning in there, both implicitly and explicitly.