I was able to complete the research for this post VERY RAPIDLY.

(See also: Which Pieces Are in the See’s Candies Chocolate and Variety Box?
Which Pieces Are in the See’s Candies Soft Centers Box?
Which Pieces Are in the See’s Candies Assorted Chocolates Box?)

I’m evaluating the See’s assortment boxes to see if I like the included pieces enough to be worth saving $4.00-$4.50/pound over a custom mix. The last three have both been no: it made more sense to get the Custom Mix, especially since the Custom Mix boxes tend to be a bit heavier than a pound.

Now I’m trying the Milk Chocolates box. Here’s the description: “Enjoy soft buttercream, crispy molasses wafers, creamy caramel and beyond, all generously coated in our classic, irresistible milk chocolate. Includes Bordeaux™, Butterscotch Square, Caramel, Vanilla Nut Cream, Cocoanut, Almond Square and more.” There’s almost no chance this box will end up being a good value for me; I just got caught up in the fun of it, and also I’m curious: I want to know ALL THE PIECES.

Here are the pieces in the box (more info on what each piece is like can be found on the Custom Mix page):

Almond Square (2)
Butterscotch Square (2)
California Brittle
Caramel (2)
Chelsea
Divinity
Mayfair
Milk Almond (2)
Milk Bordeaux
Milk Butterchew (2)
Milk Chocolate Butter (2)
Milk Cocoanut
Milk Molasses Chip (3)
Milk Walnut
Mocha
Rum Nougat (2)
Vanilla Nut Cream (2)

Of those seventeen types, six are ones I would order for sure in a custom mix. Two are ones I really like but might not think to order, and so would be especially pleased to see in an assortment. Five are ones I think are okay; two more I think are kind of meh. And two I actively dislike and would give to Paul. (I don’t specify which are which, because it’s personal tastes/preference only: it’s not that I think some pieces are objectively higher or lower quality.) So for me, this box was good to try but not as good a value as a custom-mix box.

Additional notes:

1. I am almost always disappointed by unnecessary duplication in an assortment box. Why TWO chocolate creams when there are no vanilla, orange, or strawberry creams? I think I was puzzled about this with another box, too, that had, like, three raspberry truffles but none of the other fruit truffles. Diversification is the best part of a mixed box of chocolate. DIVERSIFY IT UP.

2. I’d thought of Caramel (chocolate-covered caramel with almonds) as being in the “okay” category, but after two pieces of it this time, I’d bump it up to the “really like but might not think to order” category. See, you DO have to try things ten times to see if you like them! (*orders ten more boxes*) Also, I would have used the name “Caramel” to describe the piece they call Milk Butterchew (chocolate-covered caramel), and I would have named the one with almonds something that sounds more like it has almonds in it. The name “Caramel” almost seems to specify NOT almonds.

It took a week and a half, but I found the way to explain Crohn’s Disease to Edward (and the other kids): “Your immune system is attacking your digestive system. It’s not supposed to, and no one knows why it’s doing it.” There! *brushes off hands*

Oh, wait, now I have to explain something else? Fine. “This medication is supposed to make your immune system relax so that it will stop attacking your digestive system so much. But the only way to do that is to tell the immune system to relax about ALL attacking. So your immune system is also relaxing about attacking germs and viruses. That’s why I said you have to wash your hands before AND after picking your nose.”

I had a little crisis yesterday when we picked up Edward’s new medication and saw that one of the potential side effects is a rare, rapid, fatal cancer. People and literature say, “YOU know what’s best for your child,” but actually I have no idea. How would I know? In fact, THINKING one knows what’s best for someone else is one of the classic plot lines of tragic literature. And do we think of our own parents as being the ones who know what’s best for us?

Here is the way in which it’s true I know what’s best for Edward: I know he often doesn’t really hear things the first time, so I know I need to repeat things and/or get confirmation from him that he’s understood. I know he has even more trouble understanding things if it’s a stranger talking to him, so I know it’s better if I can accompany him to things such as the MRI, to re-state for him each thing the technician says. I also know that if he is having trouble choking down a food or medicine, he really will barf it up if he forces it. This is the type of way in which I “know what’s best” for Edward. Note that even this category is pretty thoroughly dicey: maybe what would be best for Edward is if I STOPPED interpreting/repeating for him, so that he would get used to hearing things without my help; maybe what would be best for Edward is if I stopped trying to make him eat vegetables.

Here is the way in which it’s definitely NOT true I know what’s best for Edward: I don’t know if a medicine is the best one for him, or not. The doctor doesn’t know that either. Neither do any of my friends and family; neither do you. THE ENTIRE SCIENTIFIC/MEDICAL/HEALTH/PEOPLE COMMUNITY DOES NOT KNOW THIS INFORMATION. NONE of us will know until we try it and it either works, or doesn’t, or does something awful. The extent to which any of us BELIEVE we know it ahead of time (or believe afterward that we DID know it) is not correlated to the actual fact of us knowing it. The extent to which the medicine makes any of us nervous is not correlated to its effectiveness or lack thereof, or to the rightness/wrongness of a decision; believing it IS correlated is also uncorrelated.

But beliefs still enter into this HUGELY. There are entire branches of treatment options that I consider complete hooey when I have no reason to consider using those branches of treatment and have nothing at stake. Do I still think they’re hooey now that the patient is my own irreplaceable child? So far: yes. But we’re about 5 minutes into this process. Plenty a person who starts out on one branch ends up dedicating their life to Spreading Awareness after things go wrong.

********

Normally when I bring up a topic, I assume I’m bringing it up for discussion: if I didn’t want to discuss it with other people, I would leave it inside my head where I could discuss it with only myself. Today I’m overwhelmed and all over the place after reading the brochure that comes with a medication (see also: the brochure that comes with almost any medication) and then hearing “Oh, don’t give your child those DANGEROUS TOXIC POISONS! Instead try something you’ve always believed to be absolute hooey!” from someone I’d thought was going to give a very different kind of advice. Also, it’s been a week and a half since we got the diagnosis, and apparently that is about how long it takes me to absorb news.

In short, I am feeling tender and touchy and upset—not an ideal state of mind for discussions. I ate three-quarters of a pound of See’s chocolates yesterday, and I assure you that was the minimum therapeutic dose. So if you’ll allow this presumption, I’d like to GUIDE the discussion more than usual—not to make you feel nervous that anything you say will be the wrong thing, though that seems like an inevitable side effect for people as empathetic and considerate as we are, but more to clarify things ahead of time. The way a friend might arrive at the coffee shop and say, “Heads up: I have PMS, and the baby only let me sleep 2 hours last night, and I had a fight with my JERKHOLE husband right before I came here, so I might be a Bit Cranky,” and you might think to yourself, “Okay, so this would be a GOOD day to insist on doughnuts with our coffee and tell that funny story and have a little vent about spouses, and a BAD day to ask for real marriage advice or to mention the extremely irritating customer service I got the other day or to offer an opinion about the importance of treasuring every moment.”

Anyway, so I’ve come marching into the coffee shop already talking a blue streak, and I realize the topic may SEEM to be “Weigh in on what you think we should do with Edward’s treatment and/or give me alternatives to what the doctor is suggesting” or “Reassure me that I DO know what I’m doing, and that anything that makes me nervous is The Wrong Decision” or “Argue with me about how beliefs relate to reality”—but those are in fact the things that have gotten me all worked up, so although they may be good topics for another day after more mental processing has taken place, they are not good topics for right this minute.

The topic is more like “It’s so hard to know what to do for one’s child, and so hard to collect information when the information is large and group-based but the child is individual, and so upsetting and unhelpful to hear that we DO know when we really DON’T, and so upsetting to be reminded that these awful potential side effects really do happen to real people, and so odd to think about how belief systems do/don’t change based on life circumstances, and so weird to have life circumstances change like this, and so upsetting to feel like anything I choose could potentially be Absolutely Wrong and that then it will be All My Fault.”

Or doughnuts. Doughnuts are a good topic. Or things that comfort you to think of when you are in a similar tizz. (Right now I’m using “Yes, it is horrible that bad things really do happen to real people. But nothing horrible is happening to US right NOW, so there is no need to vividly imagine what it would be like if it WERE,” plus a concept along the lines of waiting to look under the bandage until a little more time has passed, plus the self-administered-medication-only concept of thinking of how many other families at the children’s hospital would want to trade places with us.) Or stories about how something scary worked out perfectly fine, like how my gut was sending me the message that Elizabeth’s tonsillectomy would result in certain fatality, and yet it went perfectly fine. Or general agreement about how life is horrible and hard and we all die no matter what we do.

It is perhaps a little odd to segue from Lifelong Incurable Disease Diagnosis to Dr. Who Scarf, but that is how things go.

Here is the situation: William would like to knit himself a Dr. Who scarf. We have not even WATCHED the fourth doctor (we started at the ninth), but he is acting a little rabid about it anyway. Not only is he currently interested in all Dr. Who stuff, but also a cool high school boy in his Dr. Who Fan Club has such a scarf. HE WANTS THE SCARF.

There are TONS of instructional thingies online, but as my mother (our knitting consultant) noted, the results seem….dissimilar to the original scarf. Like, first we see a picture of Dr. Who wearing a long, thin, woven-not-knit scarf, and then we see the tutorial-writer wearing what looks like a full-body blanket/shawl.

One issue, I think, is that the Doctor seems to wear his scarf doubled or even tripled over on itself: someone trying to duplicate the measurements of the actual scarf might make a 14-inch wide scarf, but then it doesn’t look the same because they’re wearing it flat open instead of almost rolled up.

Also, it seems that the scarf changes several times during the fourth Doctor’s tenure, so both knit and woven are represented.

Here are my questions:

1. Do you know, is one scarf considered more legitimate/representative than the others?

2. How…fervent…might a Doctor Who fan feel about the accuracy of a homemade version? That is, could a person capture the SPIRIT of the scarf by making it narrow in order to approximate the OVERALL LOOK of a scarf that is much wider but is of a different fabric and has been sort of rolled up? Must the scarf be the same number of feet long as the Doctor’s own scarf, or may it be made to work on the height of the person wearing it (while still being, of course, massively over-long)?

We could likely answer these questions ourselves by watching several seasons of the fourth Doctor, but we are a bit pressed for time as the urgent need for a scarf has overtaken someone to the point that he talks of almost nothing else. I could also research it online, but I’m worried about getting misinformation and not realizing it because I haven’t watched the fourth Doctor myself and so wouldn’t know the difference between actual information and someone’s mom who thinks she knows what she’s talking about but doesn’t. I’m hoping this is one of those Access the Hive Mind situations the internet is so good for.

[Edited to add: My mom found this one, and it’s our favorite so far: wittylittleknitter.com]

I was away a day and then sick a day, and boy, there is nothing quite like that to make a person feel that special blend of useful/important (“My goodness, I really DO do a lot around here!”) and resentful (“So, it’s LITERALLY that if I don’t do it no one does??”). It’s also given me a couple of days of morbid-fantasy fretting about how the family would cope if I were incapacitated for longer than a couple of days and also about how I’ll fare in my elder years. Well, sufficient unto the day, etc.

Speaking of sufficient unto the day, we have a diagnosis for Edward. To review before the reveal, he was diagnosed with anemia at age 6 and referred to a pediatric hematologist at age 8. The pediatric hematologist (billing $750 for 20 minutes, which, my dear heaven, my insurance card is now covered in lipstick marks) referred him to the pediatric gastroenterologist. The pediatric gastroenterologist first did an endoscopy/colonoscopy and then an abdominal MRI, with me all pre-embarrassed for how this was all going to turn out to be nothing and look how much trouble and expense we caused for a little anemia issue.

But instead it’s Crohn’s Disease (a disease that can include the entire digestive system from In to Out), and we’re so glad we found out as early as we did: some people find out they have Crohn’s after it’s caused them to miss an important growth spurt, or at the point where they need a large piece of damaged intestine removed. Edward has lost some growth (the anemia was diagnosed after he failed to grow at all between age 5 and age 6), but we hope this nice early treatment will help him not to miss more. The diagnosis explains his anemia, his irregular growth, his tiredness, his picky eating, his low appetite, his stomachaches: Crohn’s can make it difficult to absorb nutrients, and difficult to digest food and to feel good while doing so. Crohn’s is not curable but it’s treatable; he’s started on Pentasa (this is nine capsules a day) and omeprazole, plus two weeks of prednisone, and he’ll likely start on 6-MP at his visit next month.

I don’t know much about Crohn’s at all, though that situation is rapidly changing. Paul got us a book out of the library and it’s causing me to do childbirth breathing. Also, Crohn’s can be quite hereditary, so I’m also worrying about future grandchildren. I’m trying to take to heart Augusten Burroughs’s advice (from This Is How, which I see is currently bargain-priced and which I highly recommend: it’s like having someone ELSE go to three decades of therapy and condense it for you so you don’t have to go), where he says that just because someone has an illness that COULD involve certain things, don’t worry about those things until they happen, because if/when they DO happen, you’ll take it in stride in a way you can’t do when thinking of it ahead of time. OKAY I WILL TRY.

(image from Amazon.com)

The Husband’s Secret, by Liane Moriarty. I started this book, but gave up just as I started the second chapter. The gimmicks INSTANTLY bothered me: drawn-out mystery, switching storylines at a cliff-hanger, starting a new storyline in a way that deliberately makes the reader wait a page or two to know what on earth is going on. Plus, there was lots of irritating exposition: we’re reading about a woman wondering whether or not she should open the “in case of my death” letter she found written by her husband (who is not dead but is on a business trip), but the author is using the scene to explain to us in a distracting, noticeable way what the main character and her life are like. Why not go all the way and have her look in a mirror in order to describe her hair and eyes?

But then my mom read it, and she said I should give it another chance. She assured me that the drawn-out mystery was worthwhile (I’d have placed a money bet that it would be drama for the sake of drama, followed by a disappointing reveal) and not overly drawn-out, and that the book hit its stride pretty soon. And I DID give it another try, and I DID like it. Very much! Very, VERY much! So!

I did strongly object to the amazing number of times a size-18 woman was referred to as “morbidly obese” and considered wayyyyy too fat for anyone to ever be interested in her—the kind of fat where she’d walk into a room and people would stare and whisper and giggle. It made me think of those web sites where people send photos of what “size 18” or “200 pounds” actually looks like at various heights and on various body types, to counteract the weird impressions society has about what the numbers look like.

It’s a Maeve-Binchy-like book, in that there are several interlocking storylines. When I was describing the book to someone else, it sounded soap-opera-y (hardly anyone in real life has SO VERY MANY dramatic things happen to them), but it didn’t seem that way when I was reading it. Instead I came away with a fresh dose of that slightly jaw-dropped understanding that these dramatic things really do happen to real people.

There are several Quite Sad scenes involving children and parental grief. I found I was able to bear it, but it was a close call and I did some skimming. There were a lot of scenes where a character was thinking in a way I recognized, which gave me that happy bonding feeling you get when someone’s thought processes are very similar to your own. Things are tied up nicely at the end (not entirely, but enough), and there’s some Omniscient Narrator stuff of the sort I enjoy. I was always very eager to get back to the book, and I thought about it a lot when I was reading it and also afterward.

(image from Amazon.com)

I would have said I didn’t want to read EVEN ONE MORE coming-of-age novel about a teenaged boy, but I was wrong. (I think what I actually want is to never hear another novel about a teenager referred to as a coming-of-age novel.) I added Blind Sight, by Meg Howrey to my library list on Meredith‘s recommendation, and I loved it so much I’m reluctant to recommend it, because what if you don’t like it? Also because it’s a teenaged-boy coming-of-age novel so there are a lot of embarrassing sexual references in it.

I generally don’t like books written as letters or as essays or whatever, but I thought this one pulled it off (and it’s only PART essays). When I was reading the first page or two I thought, “Hmmmm….I don’t think I’m going to like this…” but I very quickly changed my mind. I thought it ended up working great, in fact: a way to see the main character as he saw himself in addition to how the author described him.

I liked the basic story (teenaged boy meets father for the first time), but what I MOSTLY liked were the boy’s thoughts and observations and the way he expressed them, and the way the characters acted and talked. I kept saying to Paul, “I can’t believe how much I like this. This is just exactly my kind of book.”

At the end, I was disappointed to be left hanging on an issue or two. I wanted MORE. I think there needs to be a sequel.

As the next step in his diagnosis plan, Edward had an abdominal MRI. I’d never had an MRI and I didn’t know much about it. Here are a few things I would have liked to know ahead of time (and could have, if I’d done any research):

1. It was LOUD. I mean, I knew it would be loud. The tech said it would be loud, and he gave Edward noise-muting headphones and he gave me ear plugs. But he said it would be “loud.” It would have been significantly more accurate to say that at times it sounds as if the hospital is under attack and using their loudest, highest-emergency alarm system. And that at other times it sounds as if someone is using a machine-gun. And that at other times it sounds as if the machine itself has something seriously, seriously wrong with it. Some noises were so loud and went on for so long, I felt stunned by the noise.

2. Edward had to drink several cups of barium-something beforehand. This was the worst part, as far as he was concerned. It didn’t taste too awful, according to Edward, but the aftertaste was unpleasant. The biggest issue was that there was so MUCH of it. A nice man in the waiting room with us said, “Ug, I’ve had to do that. No fun. And you’re just so FULL: it’s way more than you’d ever normally drink.” Edward finished about half the bottle (which looked like it held about a pint), and then a tech came in and filled it back up almost to the top; that was very discouraging. Edward drank it down to about half-full again and then started gagging hard with every sip. I started panicking: what if he COULDN’T finish it? What if I tried to force him to drink more and he threw it all up and had to start over? And then the tech came to get us for the procedure, and I held up the bottle and said in a fretful, anxious voice, “He didn’t drink it all!,” and the tech said, “Eh, that’s fine.” WHAT.

3. When I booked the appointment, they told me the MRI would take about 30 minutes. As the tech brought us in, he said it would be 60 minutes. It was actually 90 minutes, not counting the long wait in the waiting room. About 60 minutes of that was in-the-machine time, so that is probably what the tech was referring to. (The other 30 was changing into the johnny, setting up the pads and straps and breathing monitor, waiting for the doctor to say if the pictures were good enough or needed to be redone, and getting the contrast dye injected.) I’d been worried he’d have trouble holding still, but they nestled him in pretty securely with pads and straps (he looked cozy and cute, not Strapped Down). He could have moved if he wanted to—but as long as he WANTED to hold still, he wouldn’t have much trouble.

4. There was a Surprise Needle. Toward the end of the MRI, the tech said, “So, now we’re going to put in the contrast dye,” and I had to rapidly explain to Edward what that meant. It went fine, though. The staff changed shifts halfway through the MRI, and the tech who was leaving said the good news was that the tech coming on shift was especially good with kids/needles. And he really was.

5. I was allowed to go into the room with Edward. (I assume this part varies from hospital to hospital and from procedure to procedure.) I was even allowed to keep my glasses on. I’d taken off all my jewelry, my watch, my wedding ring, and I’d taken all the metal out of my pockets, but it turned out that wasn’t necessary for the person NOT going into the machine. When I leaned over to look at the inside of the MRI machine, I felt my glasses starting to be pulled off. They had me sit at the head end of the machine, which was extremely reassuring: I could see enough of Edward (top of his head, eyelashes, upper chest) to know he wasn’t panicking or upset. We could also theoretically hear each other if we needed to: at one point when there was a break in the noise, I said, “Edward! When he says to take a breath and hold it, take a DEEEEEP breath!”

6. If I’d known there would be several times when Edward would need to take a breath and hold it, I would have practiced that with him ahead of time.

7. The machine looked like a jet engine. I was picturing a big silver metal toilet paper tube, but it was more rounded than that on the outside, and white. The tube through the middle was still toilet-paper-tube-like, but also white. That felt less scary to me than silver. There were lights, so it wasn’t dark. Both ends of the machine were open to the air: I’d pictured being ENCLOSED. The end of the machine I was staring at for an hour looked like one of those “smiley faces found on inanimate objects” photos: the lights looked like eyes, and there was a seam that looked like a smile. This photo doesn’t show the smile, but it shows the resemblance to a jet engine:

(photo from en.wikipedia.org)

But I’m not sure knowing all this ahead of time would have helped me prepare Edward. I just had no idea how HE would respond to any of it. Would he panic? Would he be scared? Would it be WORSE or BETTER to know ahead of time that there’d be a needle? Would it be WORSE or BETTER for him to know that some people freak out inside an MRI machine? I was extremely uncertain about the ability of a child to hold still inside a machine for 30 minutes, so it’s probably better I didn’t know it would be 60 minutes. And he did completely fine with it anyway, even with the surprise needle; at this stage of things, I don’t think needles surprise him much anymore.

Elizabeth is a Brownie Scout, so she has to sell Girl Scout cookies. I hate selling things, so basically what I do is buy a whole bunch of boxes ourselves and consider that good enough. (Paul also brings the form into work. This year he sold two boxes. It’s a poor idea to have a cookie fundraiser the first two weeks of January, right when people are most committed to their resolutions.) If I let the kids have two cookies every day after school, we go through them surprisingly fast. I’m also planning to bring some as my appetizer contribution the next time I get together with the wine-and-appetizer friend group.

One thing I wanted to try this year is a taste test. Keebler has cookies that look similar to Samoas / Caramel deLites (they’re called different things regionally for some reason) (and why the lowercase D and uppercase L in deLites?) and also cookies that look similar to Thin Mints (called the same thing everywhere). (Today I also found a version of Do-Si-Dos / Peanut Butter Sandwich, but we’d already done the taste test.) I thought we’d do a blind taste test and see if we could tell them apart, and which we liked better.

First, a cost comparison. Girl Scout Samoas / Caramel deLites are $4.00 for a 7.5-ounce box, or $8.53/pound. Keebler Coconut Dreams are $2.50 for a 8.5-ounce box, or $4.71/pound. (Furthermore, I got them on sale for $2.00, so that made them $3.76/pound.)

Girl Scout Thin Mints are $4.00 for a 9-ounce box, or $7.11/pound. Keebler Grasshoppers are $2.50 for a 10-ounce box, or $4.00/pound. (I got them on sale for $2.00, so that made them $3.20/pound.)

So the Girl Scout cookies are just under twice the price of Keebler’s (or just over twice the price, if you find the Keebler on sale), which makes sense since Girl Scout cookies are a fundraising product.

My photos turned out rather…poorly. But here they are:

Keebler Grasshoppers and Girl Scout Thin Mints

The Girl Scout Thin Mints are visibly darker, and with a smooth rather than scalloped edge..

Keebler Coconut Dreams and Girl Scout Samoas

The chocolate on the Girl Scout Samoas / Caramel deLites is darker and the cookie is slightly bigger.

I broke up cookies into color-coded bowls, so that taste-testers could say, “I liked Blue better” or “I liked Yellow better.” If the taste-tester liked both cookies equally, I made a mark in the middle. Everyone tasted without looking at the cookies. My test had to be even blinder because I’d noted the appearance of the cookies, and also I knew the bowl-color code; so I closed my eyes and Paul handed me one cookie piece in each hand, and I said “I liked Right better” or “I liked Left better,” and then he told me whether I’d preferred “Blue” or “Yellow.” After we’d all given our opinions, I wrote Keebler and GS over the colors so everyone could see what they’d chosen.

testing sheet

For the Thin Mints and Grasshoppers, Edward preferred the Girl Scout cookies, and Henry and I liked both the same. The other four preferred Keebler. Paul noted that his preferred cookie (the Keebler) had more chocolate on it.

For the Samoas / Caramel deLites and Coconut Dreams, Rob liked them both the same and everyone else preferred the Keebler. Paul noted that his preferred cookie (the Keebler) had a much more intense flavor.

One indication that we’ve settled into the right community for us is the classroom Valentine’s Day exchange. What a FRAUGHT holiday this has the potential to be! Sneering at sweets! Sneering at non-sweets! Sneering at store-bought cards! Sneering at homemade cards!

In my kids’ classrooms, things are pretty much the exact way I would have set them up if I’d been in charge. There is a party, and the party is composed of one Obvious Treat (cupcake or cookie) plus fruit, cheese, crackers and/or pretzels and/or popcorn, and juice boxes. The teacher generally asks that the juice boxes be 100% juice, which is right where I am on the spectrum too, though I’d be fine with it if she didn’t specify. There are no other adjectives used in the list: no “organic,” for example, or “unprocessed.” And I would be okay with two Obvious Treats at the party, but I’d be unhappy if it were none.

Valentine-exchanging is optional but all-or-nothing: you either bring one for everyone or you don’t bring any. This too would be my preference. (The children mentioned to me this year that there is no safeguard in place for making sure an EQUAL valentine is brought for all the students in the class. I too would rather not set up a policy unless it started being a problem.)

The valentines themselves are the true marker of the community. If everyone but me sent clever Pinterest-type valentines, I’d feel uncomfortable; if cards with trinkets/sweets were banned, I’d feel unhappy. Instead, it is exactly the mix to make me feel like I can do anything I want. In a class of 24 kids, the rough breakdown is:

– 2 Pinteresty/crafty/elaborate valentines

– 1 completely homemade valentine, kid-made/construction-paper style

– 1 completely homemade valentine, bigger but non-Pinteresty: for example, a homemade card with a homemade lollipop/cookie

– 1 valentine made with a valentine-making kit

– 7 store-bought valentines, 24-for-$3 type, no added items

– 2 store-bought valentines of the “bag of M&M’s or goldfish crackers with a to/from on it” type

– 5 store-bought valentines where a bonus item is included in the set: a matching pencil or sticker or tattoo or lollipop

– 5 store-bought valentines where a bonus item has been separately selected and added: a Hershey’s Kiss or lollipop or trinket taped to the card, for example

– 1 valentine from the teacher: often a bag with a pencil, eraser, and treat; sometimes also a valentine from the assistant teacher

This is not a strict count, clearly. For one thing, it varies considerably from classroom to classroom and from year to year: one year, one of the kids had to bring valentines home in TWO bags because coincidentally most of the families went more towards all-out (one did a beach pail and shovel, with “I dig you, Valentine!”); other years, a kid is disappointed because he or she got two pieces of candy while siblings got more like ten. For another thing, I wouldn’t notice if one or two kids in the class opted not to bring valentines. But this gives a general idea of the distribution.

For me, these proportions mean I can do ANYTHING I WANT. If I see a fun idea one year, or if I particularly love Valentine’s Day and like to do it up, or if a child wants to go fancy that year, or if a child and I enjoy doing such projects together, I would feel like the community at large would not sneer at that. If I wanted instead to buy a box of valentines and not add a treat or trinket, or cut hearts out of construction paper, I would feel like the community at large would not sneer at THAT.

I feel like I can add candy or not: maybe a parent or two in the class would prefer their kids not have any candy or particular kinds of candy, but if so they’re handling that themselves rather than trying to make all the other parents’ children follow those preferences as well. I feel like it’s fine if I buy TV-show-tie-in valentines or fine if I don’t: maybe one person sneers at SpongeBob, but the community at large has spoken its preferences, and the community at large thinks both ways are fine.

This seems like a good moment to link to my own post on the topic of Active Disinterest. (The too long, don’t like to click version: It’s about how when people don’t like something or don’t want to participate in something, they don’t need to try to ruin it for (or show scorn for) the people who DO like it or DO want to participate. They can just participate in something THEY like, instead.)

My Valentine’s Day present from Paul is my new ring:

He made it out of brass on his metal lathe. I was pretty impressed. He didn’t intend it as a Valentine’s Day present: he gave it to me days ago as soon as it was done, and he didn’t say it was for Valentine’s Day. But it is in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, and so I am chalking it up as such.

I would like to complain about something, and as I begin this sentence it occurs to me I would be better off complaining to the people who can do something to fix it, so I will do that after I complain to you. Here is my complaint: the giant Hershey’s Kisses sold at Valentine’s Day say “#1 Teacher” on them.

That is very, very silly, to customize something so specifically. A giant Hershey’s Kiss is exactly what I like to buy for the kids for Valentine’s Day, and it’s what they want to receive, and we had to have a little family meeting about whether the “#1 Teacher” thing ruined the idea for us and whether we should choose something else as our tradition. They said no, but it bugs me every year.

A giant Hershey’s Kiss would be a great gift for a high school sweetheart, or for a high school crush, or for a friend you have a crush on but aren’t ready to say so yet, or for a friend you DON’T have a crush on, or for a co-worker, or for a parent, or, sure, why not, for a teacher. So WHY LABEL IT ONLY FOR TEACHERS? My guess is that the marketing concept was to plant the idea of buying a gift for the teacher. Instead, what it has accomplished is to make the gift completely unusable EXCEPT for teachers (and for children who have specifically said they don’t care and want it anyway). I’m going to write to Hershey’s about this, for actual.

I’m accustomed to my name being misspelled/miswritten in various ways (Kristin, Christen, Christian, Kirsten, Krystin, Kristine), but I got the most severe misspelling of my whole life this past weekend: Chusen. HOW DID THAT EVEN HAPPEN? I wish I’d saved the Taco Bell receipt so I could prove it. I’m going to assume that was more of a fumble-fingered scramble-up (whoops, forgot the R; whoops, hit the U-key instead of the I-key next to it; whoops, forgot the T; you know what, never mind, I’ll just bring the tray to the table rather than call a name) than someone’s actual guess at the spelling of Kristen.

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Quite possibly you already know this next thing, but I did not. You know how when you’re filling out your address on an online form, you can do it by tabbing and typing and not using the mouse at all—until you get to a pull-down menu? You can type the first letter of your title/state/province/country/suffix, but if that brings you to the wrong one, I thought we had to use the mouse to scroll to the right one. But it turns out that if you type the first letter AGAIN, it gives you ANOTHER of the options starting with that letter! And so on, until you get the right one! So you don’t have to use the mouse after all! I don’t know if it always does this, but I’ve done two online forms since discovering it, and it’s worked for both, so that is a good sign.

Paul claimed to already know this, and in fact he gave me the “EVERYONE knows this but I am being kind to you by not saying so” look, which I find excruciatingly annoying—especially because I suspect of him of sometimes NOT knowing something but PRETENDING to know it so that I won’t be the one telling him something he didn’t know. (This is one of the potential issues when two firstborns get married.) (Or possibly it is one of the potential issues when two PEOPLE get married.) (Or possibly it is one of the potential issues when someone marries PAUL.) And also annoying because if he DID know, why didn’t he rush to tell ME the way I rushed to tell HIM?