It is morning and the kids are still quiet in their rooms. Coffee is next to me, steaming. Finn is asleep in my bed, old Gusser is asleep near his feet, and just in case you think the scene is too picturesque, Knightley is curled up in the base of the avocado plant, and my hair looks like Dr. Seuss was my overnight stylist.

This is found time. Usually we hit the floor running – chores flying, kids everywhere, breakfast chaos, Vince getting ready for work. But today he had an early shift and left hours ago, the kids are sleeping in, Finn slept eight whole hours, and I am up for the day before the late winter sunrise, which never happens.

I answered a few emails, and ignored one that’s been sitting there for a few days. Stalled by checking Facebook and Instagram, considered clipping my nails or cleaning the bathroom to justify avoiding it some more, and resorted to coming here to write about my woes instead.

We call this “processing,” which is a handy word that means working through our issues until we’re ready to do something about them. If you insist on procrastinating, it’s the healthiest, most productive way to do it.

The email I’m dragging my feet over is from a super nice lady who coordinates book signings at the largest bookstore in Alaska. She says I’m qualified, my book meets all the requirements. And I think, Really? Shoot, there goes that excuse.

I need to do it. Shouldn’t be a big deal, right? You sit at a table in public and talk to strangers about something you were passionate enough about to spend years working on. Easy. I’m good with sitting at a table, and I can talk your ears off about the need for more support of adoptive families. It’s the in public and talk to strangers part that makes me wonder if I own enough residual extrovert in my back pocket to pull it off.

We’re still reading The Wind in the Willows, and in chapter three, there’s this:

The Mole had long wanted to make the acquaintance of the Badger…But whenever the Mole mentioned his wish to the Water Rat he always found himself put off. “It’s all right,” the Rat would say. “Badger’ll turn up some day or other – he’s always turning up – and then I’ll introduce you. The best of fellows! But you must not only take him as you find him, but when you find him.”

Badger lives in the Wild Wood. And he loves his friends deeply, but he is the introvertiest of introverts.

I like him. He might have stewed over required book signings and called it processing, too.

“Couldn’t you ask him here – dinner or something?” said the Mole.

“He wouldn’t come,” replied the Rat simply. “Badger hates Society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing.”

“Well, then, supposing we go and call on him?” suggested the Mole.

“Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t like that at all,” said the Rat, quite alarmed.

– Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

He’s not as standoffish as he sounds. Introverts can be so misunderstood, even to each other.

To many he seemed prickly, intractable, and often he was, but as his friend Jonathan Sewall would write, Adams had “a heart formed for friendship, and susceptible to the finest feelings.” He needed friends, prized old friendships.

– David McCullough, John Adams

I’m guilty of joking about not liking people. But the truth is, as long as I get plenty of time alone I like other people just fine. The tricky thing is that with seven kids I need more alone time than ever, but it takes a small miracle just to go to the bathroom by myself.

Aloooooone, say it with me in three syllables: the space and time to untangle thoughts, to think, and often overthink. When it’s quiet enough to notice the furnace humming or the cat snoring, and thoughts can be sorted among themselves without the extra layers of questions, conversations, and importunate requests to share chocolate.

The hush and simplicity force the demands of the day to stop flying around long enough for me to see what I’m really dealing with, like so much debris settling after someone has stopped a wild current of air. Stillness allows my static to finally clear into an image.

Balanced with this, I also need a strong dose of my people to give and receive from. These are the kindred ones we spill our thoughts, feelings, and ideas to with confidence, knowing they will sift them gently. They bring balance to my overthinking, salt my perspective with their own wisdom, and keep me out of trouble (read: make me practice social skills).

There was little he enjoyed more than an evening of spontaneous “chatter,” of stories by candlelight in congenial surroundings, of political and philosophic discourse, “intimate, unreserved conversations,” as he put it.

– David McCullough, John Adams

But beyond that shelter, out in the Wild Wood of animals, predators, and other extroverts (kidding, kidding…sheesh) after a while I get overwhelmed. My brain feels like it’s on autopilot in beta mode.  I need to get back home with my own walls, books, papers, and cats, making food for my people, lounging in the living room with the woodstove blazing and another round of coffee brewing.

In the embracing light and warmth, warm and dry at last, with weary legs propped up in front of them, and a suggestive clink of plates being arranged on the table behind, it seemed to the storm-driven animals, now in safe anchorage, that the cold and trackless Wild Wood just left outside was miles and miles away, and all that they had suffered in it a half-forgotten dream.

– Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

It’s not that I don’t want to talk to people about my book. I do. The message of Upside Down is crucial today, and marriages and families are at stake.

But I’m so passionate about it that even when I talk to my closest friends about it, afterward I wonder if I talked too loud or interrupted too much when I got all excited. Maybe I repeated myself too much. Maybe I forgot to say the one central message clearly enough. Maybe they didn’t realize I was being sarcastic when I said that one thing, or they didn’t realize I was joking when I made a liquor reference.

Because I think too much.

Or…I think that I think too much.

Maybe I’m wrong. I’ll overthink it some more and get back to you.