The difficult volunteer at the school continues to be difficult, but I feel so much calmer about her now that I know other people find her difficult. In fact, it gives me room to feel some sympathy for her. She’s trying so hard to get things changed, and she is going about it in the wrong way entirely, and I don’t think she has any idea why it isn’t working. I can see her thinking this is a backwards town, or that everyone here is resistant to change, or that people are too stupid to understand her points—when actually it’s that her manner and presentation are ineffective/off-putting in multiple ways.

It reminds me of language, and how hard it can be to explain the difference between two similar words. When a magazine says that a celebrity “ballooned” during pregnancy or “splurged” on a purse, these are highly communicative words—much different than saying someone “gained weight” during pregnancy or “bought” a purse. There’s a huge difference between the word “drugs” and the word “painkillers,” especially if you’re talking about medications used during childbirth. Second-person singular (“You need to keep in mind that…”) is very different than first-person singular (“I need to keep in mind that…”), and both are very different than first-person plural (“We need to keep in mind that…”). Small changes can make large differences: starting a written comment with “Um” can add a strong layer of scorn depending on what is written next, and it would be hard to explain why. People who don’t see the differences find themselves mystified by how TOUCHY people are. People who don’t see the similar subtle differences in human behavior can find themselves similarly mystified.

Awhile back, one of my sister-in-law’s siblings mentioned the idea of a service that would follow you around and then tell you what to stop doing. Like, you’d pay them a fee, and they’d give you a list like “Listen, you keep darting your eyes and it makes you look shifty,” and “Your posture looks threatening rather than confident,” and “You press your lips together about every ten seconds.” Things like that. This is the kind of service the difficult volunteer could benefit from. “Listen, you talk to the other volunteers as if you’re in charge of them,” the service would write in their multi-page report. “Your ‘listening’ facial expression communicates that you think the other person is amusingly stupid.” “Telling everyone that a certain additive leads to childhood brain tumors is unconvincing if none of the children in the entire school system has ever had one; maybe use the study about poorer test scores instead.” “When you compare this public school unfavorably to your kids’ previous private school, and ask for expensive changes to be made to make the two schools more similar, you need to show you realize that the $25,000/year tuition difference between the two schools (rather than everyone’s failure to realize the other way is better) may be the reason the answer is no.” And so on.

It’s given me a lot to think about, because everybody’s got potentially off-putting things they don’t realize they’re doing. Some of us are laughing nervously after every single thing we say. Some of us don’t make eye contact while we’re talking; some of us make overly intense eye contact. Some of us blurt things out before considering if they represent our actual thoughts/feelings on a topic. Some of us ask overly blunt questions. Some of us interrupt too much, or talk too much, or overuse certain words/phrases. Some of us are completely obvious with our subtle prying or subtle suggestions. Some of us choke up CONSTANTLY over NOTHING (ahem). But a LOT of stuff is absolutely fine once we get used to each other. It’s an argument for giving relationships time to develop: the woman I know who asks overly blunt questions did startle me the first couple of times, but now I’m used to it and in fact I consider it part of her charm. Another friend was stand-offish before we got to know each other, and ended up being the best roommate I ever had. Sometimes things that seem off-putting at first end up making the person even more dear to us, or go away once we’re less new to each other. (And on the “can’t please everyone” principle, you can’t even go around changing things like this: one person’s off-putting is another person’s appealing. I myself am put off by attractive, fashionable, confident people with perfect eye contact.)

In other situations, it doesn’t work that way. The person is trying to get things changed, trying to fit in, trying to make friends—and it’s not WORKING. It can be quite easy to notice what someone else is doing wrong (“You’re talking to other people like they’re stupid; you’re working from the assumption that no reasonable person could disagree with you” or “You’re moving too fast; you’re coming on way too strong/desperate”) but hard to figure it out in oneself. The difference between these two situations (something off-putting/startling that is not a long term problem, versus endless unproductive flinging against a wall) has been very interesting to think about, and is something I’m going to keep in mind the next time I feel like I keep flinging myself against a wall.

One of the main sticking points of MY ENTIRE LIFE is this sort of situation:

1. When the rules are X
2. But the reality is Y

Nothing epitomizes this conflict for me like The Birthday Treat Problem. The school rule is that the children may have no more than one treat per month. All the birthday children in a particular month are to celebrate on the same day, and only one of those children may bring a treat; the other children must bring Healthy Snacks or Inedible Treats. But this system is not put into effect in the classrooms: once-a-month parties are not coordinated, and parents continue to send in cupcakes on their children’s birthdays.

It appears to me that the situation is this: The administration put the new rule into place; the teachers are not on board with this rule and/or know that parents are going to send in cupcakes anyway, and so don’t implement/enforce it in their classrooms. I am fine with this, except for the part where it makes it look/feel like I’M the one breaking the administration’s rule. I have written about this before.

Here are the three situations I am perfectly happy with:

1. I am perfectly happy to abide by the rules and coordinate my child’s birthday treat with the other parents of children born that month.

2. I am perfectly happy to send in cupcakes on my child’s birthday, and for my child to eat 20 cupcakes per school year (roughly 1/2 cupcake per week of school).

3. I am perfectly happy to have no classroom bring-in items at all.

Here is the situation I am not happy with:

4. If I send in cupcakes I am a rule-breaker, and if I don’t my baby is the only one who didn’t have a birthday treat. That is a LOSE-LOSE situation we have here, Rule Book.

Oh, I could ask each individual teacher, yes. As soon as I think of a way to ask that doesn’t sound as if I am saying, “Hello, Teacher! Should I break the rules, or should you start following them? Your pick!” Well, actually, I DID manage that in some form last year (I went for the simplified, blame-shifting, rule-not-mentioning approach of “Elizabeth was wondering if it was okay for her to bring in cupcakes on her birthday next week”), so I guess I don’t have any ACTUAL struggle here, beyond WISHING RULES AND REALITY WOULD MEET AT SOME POINT.

I have received a high school graduation announcement for one of the little babies I took care of back when I worked in a daycare. First of all, the passage of time is astonishing. ASTONISHING. Second of all, I need to think about what to send as a response and I have no idea: I think this is the first high school graduation announcement I’ve ever had to deal with.

My first thought was that I really dislike the whole CONCEPT of graduation announcements, and I remember with some distaste my own high school peers talking about how much money they hoped to rake in. On the other hand, that’s not why I think I’ve been sent this card: the baby’s mother has sent me a Christmas card EVERY SINGLE YEAR since I took care of her daughter, always with a school picture. So I interpret this announcement not as a hope for money AT ALL: it was sent by the mother and not the child, and I take it as a “Look at our baby girl all grown up!” + including me on the mailing list because I am someone who would be interested in the child’s milestones, which indeed I am.

Speaking of milestones, another issue is that for most kids I consider high school graduation an interesting milestone but not a huge accomplishment: definitely it is a huge accomplishment for some, but not GENERALLY, and I think not in this case. And I dislike the over-praising for Every Single Accomplishment: gifts and ceremonies for preschool graduations! for fifth-grade graduations! FLOWERS for general and halfhearted participation in the elementary school concert! Standing ovations for EVERYTHING! etc. Not that I put high school graduation into this category, but I still prefer not to Overdo It. [To clarify this a little more, I consider high school graduation a huge and important and exciting milestone and transition, like learning to walk/talk or going through puberty. But for most people, I don’t consider it a huge accomplishment: i.e., it didn’t take exceptional or unusual effort to achieve it, and FAILING to achieve it would have been the unusual/exceptional thing. In a different community, where the outcome was less assured, I would feel differently.]

So combining “I dislike the whole concept of high school graduation announcements” + “I think of it as a milestone not a huge accomplishment,” I thought perhaps I would send a congratulatory card with some sentimental reminisces and sincere positive hopes for her future. But I said so to Paul, and his jaw literally dropped open. He is fully on the side of sending a check, and thinks it is a little shocking that I would show such indifference by not sending money or a present. I said, “Like…$20?”—thinking of that as pretty generous. He said, “FOR A BABY YOU USED TO TAKE CARE OF??”—as if I were Scrooge Himself and the child were a shivering orphan on the street corner begging for a dime. He countered with $50, and I said that’s what we spend on a WEDDING gift.

On one hand, I don’t want to be a cheapskate, and I want to fit in with the normal societal standards: if sending $50 is the norm, sending $20 can seem to send a message of lower regard. And I want to make sure I adjust for the changing value of money, so that I am not the little old lady sending a $5 check for someone’s wedding because that’s what I got at my wedding 50 years ago. On the other hand, I don’t want to give in to pressure of the sort that has people thinking they need to give a wedding gift that costs double what the couple spent per plate. And people have different amounts of discretionary income to work with, and I think that makes any kind of “set amount” ridiculous.

Besides, the normal societal standard will vary from one community to another. In some communities, $20 is what is given to the doorman for hailing a cab, and high school graduates are given pen/pencil sets from Tiffany. In other communities, only grandparents will send money for graduation; everyone else will send a card or maybe they’ll call. In other communities, no one will send out announcements but most people will have potluck pool parties. And so on. What we think is normal for everyone will be based heavily on (1) the community in which we grew up and (2) on the community in which we currently live.

And of course the relationship between the sender and the graduate may factor in. Some people will have a set amount ($20, say, or $50) that they send to every single graduate, but others will send more to the dearly loved babysitter and less to the child of an acquaintance. Some will send a check to a graduate they don’t know very well, but a gift to someone they’re close to. Some will send checks/gifts to non-family members, but nothing to family members because in their family they don’t do gifts for graduations.

So here is my own set of variables. I currently live in a community where I don’t know what the typical situation is—but I might be able to find out by asking around a bit. I SUSPECT that some people send checks and some people don’t, and I would expect the checks to be in the $20/$30 range but I guess I’m basing that on myself, which is what shocks Paul and he lives in this community too (though he doesn’t know EITHER). Paul grew up in a community where, when he graduated QUITE a few years ago, a $20 check was received with almost no impact; he says that if I want the child to think, “Whoa, WHO is this?” (as opposed to adding the check to the stack without noticing who sent it), the check would need to be at least $50. This makes me feel like flailing my fists until I hit someone, ANYONE (probably Paul, for being such an ingrate back then), but it also influences me. On the other hand, none of this information pertains to the community the child herself lives in, which I don’t know anything about.

My relationship with the graduate is that I took care of her for six to eight hours a day every weekday for probably nine months or so, back when she was a baby. So of course she won’t remember me at all, but her mom used to stay and chat a bit each day, and she’d also come at lunchtime to nurse the baby so we’d chat then too. I’ve had no contact with the child since then, except that her mother sends me a Christmas card each year with a school picture. I remember the baby very well, but find it hard to connect that baby with this current 18-year-old.

I think a poll would be worse than useless here, because it gives the WHAT but not the WHY, and because it only allows for one answer when most people probably have several answers depending on circumstances. And although I’m looking for input on this particular situation, this is not the only graduation announcement I’ll need to reply to in my life. So what I’d be interested in would be hearing, in general, how you respond to high school graduation announcements: Do you send a gift? a card? a check? nothing? How much do you spend? How does it vary depending on the particular child? And so on.

I’ve recently noticed a group I’d never really noticed before: grandmothers bringing up their grandchildren. One reason I hadn’t noticed it is that I started having children younger than is currently typical, and so other mothers are pretty much always older than me—sometimes by quite a bit. In the group of women I get together with every month or so, we all have children the same age, and I am the second-youngest member of the group—and the youngest one had her first child when she was just barely out of high school. Some of the women are more than ten years older than I am.

So when I saw women in that age group with children, I assumed the women were the mothers of the children—or, more accurately, I didn’t think about it one way or the other. But if you’d said to me, “Hey, what do you guess is the relationship between those two people across the room at this open house?,” I would have said, “Mother/child.” Then I would have wondered why you were asking, because that’s kind of a weird question.

Recently, though, I’ve encountered three women, all of whom have primary care of their grandchildren. (My main contact is with only one of them, but she’s friends with the other two so now I’ve met them as well.) I’ve found their situation extremely thought-provoking. I’m not sure I even have much to say about it other than that.

Well, no, I DO. For one thing, of course it makes me imagine myself in that situation, and I wonder what that would be like. Probably none of these women expected to be taking care of kids full-time again at this stage of life, and yet here they are. I realized I’ve definitely been assuming that the kids would leave home and then Paul and I would move on to the next stage—but in one woman’s case, her youngest was still at home when her eldest had children and then abandoned them, so she even has overlap: kids AND grandkids to raise.

I’ve also thought about another implication of being in a situation where I was raising grandchildren: it would mean something had gone seriously amiss with one of my children. So here I’d be, back to a job I’d thought I’d be done with, and worrying/sad about a grown child, and also feeling out of line with my peer group.

(As an aside, I remember learning in high school that we “raise” livestock and “rear” children, but when I use “rear”/”rearing” it seems wrong. My dad was a writer after he stopped being a pastor, and one thing I remember him telling me is that if it sounds wrong, it’s wrong—even if it’s technically correct. So you’ll notice I first used “bringing up” instead of “rearing,” and then I used “have primary care of” instead of “are rearing,” but now I’m giving up and using “raise.”)

My 3/4ths cup measure broke somehow: there’s a split right down its plastic side, as I discovered when I tried to measure water with it last night. My first mother-in-law gave me this set of measuring cups, saying the 2/3rds and 3/4ths cups had dramatically improved her life. At the time I had mixed feelings about the gift: my mother-in-law did all the cooking and cleaning at her house even though she and her husband both worked, and I felt like the gift came with a message: “These are for you, because you are the wife and the household chores belong to you.” I wish I had been a little less inclined to read things into things. On the other hand, I like the idea of giving chore-related household items as a joint gift to the whole household. Although now that I think of it, I think I’ve many times since then given a household item to only the girl. Well, the system needs work, and perhaps I can polish out the details in time to accidentally send the wrong message to MY daughters-in-law (“I assume you are too incompetent to cook,” perhaps, or “I assume my perfect child shares household chores evenly,” or “I assume my child does all the cooking while you loaf around doing nothing”).

Back to the first hand, I WAS the one who did all the baking, and I LIKE to bake, and I REALLY LOVE those measuring cups and I use them all the time (especially for the chocolate chip cookies recipe I use, which calls for 3/4ths cup brown sugar, 3/4ths cup white sugar, and 3 x 3/4ths cups flour), and kept them after that husband and I split up even though in general we tried to divide possessions based on whose family they came from. I worried that the measuring cups would always make me think of my first marriage, and they sort of do, but over time it’s more of a positive association with my first mother-in-law and how kind she was to make overt efforts to make me feel welcome even though she was bewildered by two 19-year-olds (one of them a little unnecessarily prickly) getting engaged, rather than a negative association with the marriage. And if I HADN’T kept the measuring cups, I would have made the association every time I had to use two measuring cups instead of one, so it was pretty unavoidable and this way I got to keep using one measuring cup.

But last night the 3/4ths one finally broke, after many years of active duty. I went on eBay and I searched for vintage Tupperware measuring cups (I don’t like the shape/balance of the newer ones, and neither did my former mother-in-law: she’d gone to some trouble to find me an older set), and I found and bought a set that was just the 2/3rds cup, the 3/4ths cup, and a 1 cup: I could use another 1 cup measure, and I don’t need any more 1/4, 1/3, or 1/2 cups, so I might as well get the missing-pieces set instead of up-bidding a complete set. I got orange this time: the set from my first mother-in-law was white speckled with grey, but the orange reminds me of my grandparents: my grandmother’s cookie and cracker containers were orange Tupperware, and I have one of them. I mean my grandPARENTS’ cookie and cracker containers.

I just finished watching Moonrise Kingdom (Netflix link, Amazon link).

(image from Amazon.com)

When I was about halfway through watching it, I emailed my parents to recommend it. I said it reminded me of The Royal Tenenbaums, and of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. (More precisely, I said it reminded me of “that weird movie we saw with Bill Murray and a boat, and that weird movie with three siblings…started with a T.”) It turns out that the reason those movies remind me of each other is that they’re all Wes Anderson movies, which puzzled me greatly because Wes Anderson does horror movies and none of those were horror movies at all. And THAT turns out to be explained by it being Wes CRAVEN who makes horror movies. Which led Paul to share this clip with me:

So apparently I’m not alone.

Where was I going with this? Oh yes! I liked the movie. If you like Wes Anderson movies and/or quirky indie movies, I think you will like it too. If you don’t know if you like Wes Anderson movies, I think it is a good one to start with. If you don’t like horror movies, that’s okay because that’s somebody else who does those.

Also, while I am embedding YouTube videos, here is one that makes me love people more (in a mild way, not like those “guy dancing all around the world” and “wedding party dancing up the aisle” ones):

I already liked the song from the radio, but then the video is a spoof of a Robert Palmer video, which perhaps you should watch first if you haven’t seen it, to full appreciate the Ingrid Michaelson one.

So many things are BUGGING me right now. A lot of them are song-related, which is the downside of having a radio in the kitchen: on one hand it significantly improves my attitude toward kitchen chores, but on the other hand after I’ve heard Adele’s “Someone Like You” for the thousandth time, it is REALLY BUGGING ME that she would behave that way and think it was okay. The part that bugs me most, I think, is the lyrics “for me it isn’t over.” I get what she’s trying to say, but if her ex is married to someone else, it IS over for her too. She may not have GOTTEN over it, but it IS IN FACT OVER. FOR HER. Sometimes it lasts in love, and sometimes you need a restraining order.

Another song bothering me is the Justin Timberlake one where his greatest compliment is that looking at his loved one is like looking in the mirror. Wow, that’s pretty fantastic praise. Also, he feels that no other girlfriend would have helped him get more famous than this one did, so. It reminds me of a sermon my dad did back when he was a pastor, making a distinction between two types of love songs/poems/letters: the kind that celebrate the loved one, and the kind that celebrate the loving one. “What do we know about the loved one, after reading this?,” he’d ask, to demonstrate the distinction. In this case the answer is, “That he or she is dating someone who thinks very highly of himself.”

Wait, that reminds me of another one: I wrote earlier that I really liked Katy Perry’s song “Dark Horse,” but over time that’s evolved into liking the sound of it but really disliking the lyrics. SHE IS SINGING ABOUT HOW AWESOME SHE IS. That is the whole point of the song. Then she gets another singer to sing about how awesome she is, too. If I were considering dating someone who sang that song to me, I’d be like, “You know, maybe it would be better if YOU played with your OWN magic and I found someone who considered themselves mortal.”

I am feeling a bit STRESSY, though much less so now that:

1. This month’s I-hate-city-driving trip to Edward’s specialist is over, and

2. I’ve called to reschedule his next appointment, which I’d accidentally made for the same day as another appointment, and

3. I’ve gone to my doctor appointment follow-up that I didn’t even know why I was going and probably should not agreed to make the appointment because it was a huge waste of everyone’s healthcare dollars, and

4. I went to the grocery store even though I JUST WENT, and got all that put away, and

5. I cut up the raw chicken and put it in the crock-pot for tonight’s Crockpot Chicken Tacos.

All of those were much-dreaded and now over.

Next up to wring my hands over is a school trip Rob is going on. It involves airplanes and hotel rooms, and it does NOT involve parents. He is 15 years old and can absolutely handle this, but I have made a mental list of things to worry about that includes:

1. “What if he doesn’t understand about mini-bars?”

2. “What if he dramatically misspends the cash I give him and it puts the chaperon in a very awkward situation?”

3. “What if he drops his bag on someone’s head while trying to use the overhead compartment?”

4. “What if he oversleeps?”

5. “What if he’s a loud silly annoyance on the airplane?”

6. “What if he stays up too late talking with the other students?”

7. “What if he forgets something?” (both directions)

8. “What if it SAYS he only needs his student ID but then at the airport that turns out not to be the case?”

*pant pant*

Most of them seem to boil down to “What if I’m not there to do what I usually do OMG I REALLY WON’T BE THERE TO DO WHAT I USUALLY DO!!!” It is somewhat helpful to remember that the chaperons are accustomed to high school students and that there are systems in place for dealing with these trips. Also, if I think about how I’d be as a chaperon, I would not be freaking out (more than usual): I’d explain to the kids beforehand about taking off their shoes and not making jokes, and I’d make sure they had their tickets and their luggage, and I’d probably ask the hotel not to have mini-bars or movies available in the rooms. So everything is probably okay.

It is also somewhat helpful to remember that I went to a week-long camp in Colorado when I was 15, with a youth group I’d never met before, and if I picture myself at that age and my mother going berserk fretting about me remembering to fill my water bottle after security, I roll my eyes with all the mighty eye-rolling power of that age. BUT—that is also the trip on which I took TEN hardcover books in my suitcase, because I somehow lacked the logical thinking skills to figure out that I wouldn’t be able to read that many books in a week at HOME, so I CERTAINLY wouldn’t at CAMP. ALSO, I started DATING a BOY I met there. PLUS, I’d been on a lot of airplanes by age 15 (Rob hasn’t been on one since he was 10 months old), and airplane-travel was significantly more casual at the time. Here is a detail to demonstrate how casual it was: I used SOMEONE ELSE’S airplane ticket and it was no big deal.

It is somewhat helpful and somewhat not-helpful to think that this is what we’re going to be doing now: he’s going to be doing more and more on his own, and that’s what’s supposed to happen.

My parents are trying out a plan where they live part of the year elsewhere to try to alleviate my mom’s asthma symptoms. This plan is a bummer for an assortment of reasons, but one thing that IS nice about it is that it gives me an excuse to do some mild traveling, and I LIKE mild traveling.

I was planning to go visit them for a few days this summer, and then I had the idea to bring a child with me. Only Rob has ever been on an airplane, and he was 10 months old at the time so that doesn’t count. The main activities will be shopping and hiking so I decided to bring Elizabeth, who likes both. (The other four kids were like, “Aw, WHAT?” until I explained the planned activities, at which point they reluctantly agreed with the selection while also trying to use it as leverage for future trips of their own.)

This has generated a lot of excitement, as you can imagine, and also a lot of stress. I’m really looking forward to going, and so is Elizabeth. Buying the plane tickets was the usual advanced-math logic puzzle: “Let’s see, THIS flight is a good price but there’s a 30 minute layover and that’s too tight; THIS flight leaves at a reasonable hour but has two 3-hour layovers; THIS flight is perfect in every way, except that there’s no return flight on the day we want…”. When I finally found flights, it let me choose our seats from a seating chart; but then, after I’d spent a lonnnnnnnnng time choosing The Exact Perfectmost Seats, it informed me in red text that seat selection was not actually decided until check-in time. Ah.

I’d rather not have to check bags, so we’re going to try to manage with two carry-ons each, and I’m already fretting about that. I bought some of those plastic bags that squeeze all the air out of things (the roll-to-squeeze kind, not the vacuum-to-squeeze kind); we’ll see if those help. I’m more worried about the lugging of them through the airports, and with the managing of overhead compartments.

I’m also fretting because our flight home is a night flight. Elizabeth is very excited about this and thinks she will stay up all night and that it will be fun; I am picturing something more like her getting over-tired and crabby and weepy and not being able to sleep and complaining all night. She’ll be 9 years old by then, though, and I think I’m imagining her toddler self. Or possibly I’m imagining me.

When I was buying the space-saving bags I saw some travel neck pillows; do those help someone sleep upright without slumping onto the person in the next seat and/or doing that thing where you fall asleep and your head starts to fall and then you startle awake, over and over and over again? There were several different varieties; are some better than others? They’d take up a fair amount of space in our limited-space luggage, so I want to make sure they’re worth it. Do you know of anything else that helps on a nighttime flight? I’ve never been on one before.