(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?

Certainly it could be PMS—but couldn’t it also be that my children are impossible and I married the wrong person?

One way I know it’s mid-winter is that everything either pisses me off or depresses me. I used the f-word (though only about 30% voiced) in front of my mother the other day, and usually I am the kind of person who says “bull” with only the slightest hesitation to let you know I’m thinking of what the second half of that word could theoretically be.

Oh! Here’s something happy that happened: I needed a new clock, and I bought a replacement and it is WAY TOO BRIGHT—like, I turn my back to it so the light won’t bother me. But I’d already thrown out the packaging, so I felt stuck with it and also mad at myself for throwing out the packaging and having such a hard time with the sunk-costs concept. Then at Target I found a clock on an endcap that was a “repackage” so it was $10-something down from $15, and I impulsively/defiantly bought it. It rang up at $13.99 so I’m going to have to go back and get that fixed, and so far this story is an illustration of how everything pisses me off and/or depresses me, but it is about to take a turn for the better.

The clock was in a bag waiting for me to take it back to Target, and the alarm kept going off (okay, this is still not better), so I thought, “Actually, why don’t I take it out and set it up, because the WORST would be to go get the price adjusted and then end up returning it.” So I set it up this morning, and I love it. I feel FONDLY toward it, in a way I would not have expected to feel toward an alarm clock. Part of it is that I’d thought it was broken because I couldn’t set the time, but then I read the instructions and found out what I was doing wrong and the clock was not broken. Part of it is that it has a brightness setting, and TWO alarms, and it’s a radio. When I took it out of the box it seemed HUGE (this is it; it looks petite, doesn’t it? IT IS NOT), and I thought there was no way I was going to end up keeping it—but not only am I keeping it, I went into my room later to VISIT THE CLOCK.

I lost my wedding ring a week and a half ago, and I am in stage three of the loss. First stage was assuming I would find it any minute: it would be in my pocket, or I would have absent-mindedly put it on the bureau (I don’t normally take it off), or it would show up in the washing machine. Second stage was more like “Whoa, I guess this is going to take some looking!” Maybe it’s down in the sheets or under the bureau, or maybe I sleep-walked and put it into my jewelry box, or could it possibly be in the sink disposal? Third stage is “Man, we might actually not find it.” Maybe it fell off my hand into a trash bag, or maybe I lost it when I was out, or maybe it’s in a part of the washing machine where we’ll never find it or think to look for it, or maybe it fell into the bag of clothes for Goodwill.

I feel weird without my ring on, so I’m wearing a cheap ring I got on clearance at Target a long time ago—but it’s a fashion ring, so already the gold color is chipping off from me wearing it around-the-clock. I started thinking about buying a more serious temporary ring. Maybe a relatively-inexpensive-but-real-gold ring (about $100 on Amazon, or something from a consignment shop), something that would be valuable and nice to own even if I found my ring; or maybe a stainless steel ring that would be a fun change and work fine but would only cost $5-10. And then if we still hadn’t found the ring by the time of our next significant anniversary (a few years from now), we could take an anniversary trip to the same place we bought the original ring and replace it for real.

I mentioned these plans to Paul, though, and first of all he thinks it’s too soon to panic and that the ring is still very likely to turn up. And second of all, he’s going to make me a ring on his metal lathe, so it won’t be very expensive but it will be sentimental. I like the idea, and he’s glad to have a project. There are more calls for a metal lathe than you might think, but always fewer than Paul hopes.

In the meantime, I’m trying to feel that this doesn’t really matter. The ring is just a symbol of being married; it doesn’t have to be the original ring, and plenty of people deliberately choose a new ring because of changing tastes or improved finances. I don’t feel superstitious about the ring, like my grandmother when I took off my wedding ring to show it to her and she said in an incredulous voice, “I’ve never taken off my ring! Never!”—as if I were divorcing and re-marrying my husband by taking the ring off and putting it back on. (That’s not fair to her. She was just surprised by it and commented on it, but I was surprised and embarrassed by her surprise and comment, so I later had an argument in my head where I defended my actions and criticized her reaction, and that imaginary argument has lingered.)

But still. Of course the ring is important to me, and of course it’s sentimental that it’s the very ring I got married with. And I really love my ring, too, and have been happy with our choice. Plus, it’s an item of actual cash value as well as sentimental value, and would be quite expensive to replace, especially since gold has tripled in price since we bought it. So what I really want is to find that ring. (I would very much enjoy hearing some “found a lost ring” stories—or some “lost a ring and never found it, but it’s okay now” stories. Or actually even some “lost a ring and never found it and it wasn’t really okay” stories, on the misery-loves-company principle.)

Katy Perry’s public image appeals to me, so I was repeatedly disappointed that I didn’t like her songs. Not the one fantasizing about aliens. Not the one fantasizing about high school relationship sex. Not the one about getting too drunk to remember anything about a party. Not the one about a firework. Not one that made me wonder if we could perhaps sing a song about girls in a non-California state for a change.

So I was pleased that I liked Roar, and now I also like Dark Horse. When I liked Roar I thought it was a fluke; liking Dark Horse makes me think she changed between the last album and this one. Which I imagine means there are a whole bunch of people saying they used to love Katy Perry songs but they don’t like ANY of the new ones.

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I was very sorry to hear that Philip Seymour Hoffman died. It seemed both worse and better that it was apparently drug-related: worse because that means it didn’t have to have happened; better because it means I can do that human-psychology thing where it means it won’t happen to me. I don’t do drugs = Oh good, I won’t die.

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This is going to sound like such a McDonald’s ad, but our local McDonald’s is doing something so extremely right, I wrote a letter to the manager. What it is is this: they make me feel like I am an important executive and they are my devoted assistant helping me get on with my day. Like, you know those movies where an important executive is striding down the hall and an assistant appears out of nowhere and is immediately jogging alongside handing the executive a coffee and a briefcase and a folder while saying things like “You have a 9:30 with Mr. Jones; remember his wife just left him so don’t ask about her. At 10:30 it’s the fish people; PLEASE be nice to them this time, we need their grant money; I put a framed painting of a trout in your office. You have a lunch date with…” and so on, so that the important executive can continue striding importantly? That is how EVERY SINGLE DRIVE-THROUGH EMPLOYEE AT OUR MCDONALD’S makes me feel, even though I am wearing jeans and a t-shirt and driving a minivan and on my way to Target. They have kept this up for a couple of YEARS now, so it’s not just a particular employee or catching them on a particularly good day: someone is hiring a particular type of staff and/or training them to act a particular way. And “act” is the wrong word, because they don’t seem like they’ve been trained to say certain words, it’s like they MEAN IT. It makes me want to stop there to get a coffee I don’t even need or want, just for the hit of feeling important.

For the second time in recent months, a child has had a friend over and the friend has been…not someone I would have chosen. Both times, I got all agitated about it. It really is kind of astonishing, the way we don’t get to choose who our children like. They can bring people we dislike or even DETEST into our lives—can even make them PERMANENT MEMBERS OF OUR FAMILY. And they can bring people into our houses, because IT’S THEIR HOUSE TOO. And anything we try to do about it will likely make them even MORE attached to these people. This is something I knew when I was having babies, but it’s not something I KNEW-knew. I didn’t FEEL it the way I do now.

It helps me to remember my own childhood friends. My mom had the same exact dismay I’m feeling now, because I made friends with kids just like the ones my kids are now bringing home. Before saying anything or even THINKING anything, I imagine my mom saying/thinking those things when I was a child, and that shuts me right up. I understand now why those friends of mine would be worrisome to a parent, and yet those kids were good kids. The things that might make a parent nervous were not things that applied in those cases and/or not things that affected me in any negative way, and in fact I ended up with some lifetime positive perspective on a few spheres where it is very tempting and easy to judge unfairly. …Which is helping me now, but only with considerable and deliberate effort.

Still. That doesn’t mean these friends of my children will turn out to be as good and no-need-to-worry as my friends were, and it doesn’t mean I find them pleasant to have around. It’s helpful to remember, however, that I don’t even really like it when the kids’ friends I WOULD have hand-picked are around: I feel weird when there are non-family people in my house, and that part has to be added equally to both sides of the equation.

Another thing that helps me is having read Eleanor & Park. It’s a good reminder that kids don’t have much power over their upbringing, and that there can be a lot of reasons why kids might act/be certain ways. As with Eleanor, a kid might not shower or wear clean clothes, and that could be something related to her personal safety, plus no washing machine and no money to use the laundromat; a kid might want to hang around too much, and it might be related to circumstances at her own house. A kid might act needy because he IS needy, and it shouldn’t be considered in the same light as if an adult I’d just met started acting that way: any adult in a society can help take care of a kid, and that tends to be GOOD for kids. A kid might be over-share-y because she’s very friendly and social and hasn’t yet learned where the line is, or because the other adults in her life are very open about things I might not be open about; and again, it’s not necessary to deal with it the same way I would if a new adult in my life were doing the same. Kids are different.

This whole thing makes me wish I were better with other people’s kids. I’d love to be the mom who makes everyone feel welcomed and safe, but knows where to draw the lines—the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle type. Well, this will give me practice. (Because of Reality is Broken and Chore Wars, my mental draft of that sentence was “Well, this will give my character XP.”)