I like the Starbucks salted caramel mocha very much—but I like about HALF of one. Which makes me unhappy when it’s a four-dollar drink. BUT: this last time, I discovered it KEEPS beautifully. I put it in the fridge when I got home, and later when it was cold I sipped some. Delicious like a milkshake. I also tried mixing some about 50-50 with plain coffee and microwaving it, and that was really good too: less rich, of course, but sometimes that’s what you want. (Stir the leftover first, because the chocolate sinks to the bottom.)

********

While everyone was playing Candy Crush, I didn’t realize I was playing the Webkinz version of the same game: Goober’s Atomic Adventure. So if you’re thinking about getting a Webkinz AND you love Candy Crush, there’s another point in the Yes Do It column.

The way I finally found out about Candy Crush is that we finally got smart phones. You know how at some point, you almost HAVE to join in with something? Like, you don’t HAVE-TO-have-to: I remember my grandparents refusing to get a computer because they didn’t see the point of it and couldn’t think of anything they’d do with it, and they never did get one. So you CAN be like that. It’s ALLOWED.

But when the rest of society is connecting in a certain way, refusing to participate comes with consequences. My grandparents missed out on email from their grandchildren who no longer wrote letters, and they missed out on digital photos, and they missed out on the fun of online research. In my case, we had cell phones that could sort of text, but there was a length-limit so most texts got broken up into several (and we pay per text), and it was a gigantic pain to SEND texts: you had to use the number pad, pressing each number enough times to get the letter you wanted. Meanwhile, texting was so common that other people assumed we had texting even if we told them we didn’t really use it, so we’d miss important information (Brownies meeting canceled, for example) because we weren’t checking our phones—or we’d get the information, but it was an enormous hassle to access it, and to respond in kind. And we couldn’t take photos, or play games, or use apps.

For awhile, that was fine: sure, it would be nice to have those things, but it would also be nice to have lots of other things we don’t have, and that isn’t a reason to automatically acquire them. When a certain percentage of the population crossed over, however, I started having flashbacks to how I felt about my grandparents acting as if it was pointless and silly and overly-expensive to have a computer. Psh, our horse and carriage works just FINE! What do we need to go spend money on an AUTOMOBILE for? We never go farther than into town anyway!

But my cell phone cost less than $7 a month, and I wasn’t willing to pay what I’d heard was the monthly cost of a smart phone (times two, since Paul would want one as well), so there we were: willing to participate, but also not willing.

Then several things happened at once. First, we got to the point where it would be more convenient for US if Rob had a cell phone—but our $7/month plan is olllllld (we got it when I was pregnant with William, when it was $5/month) and not available for new phones, and we were NOT going to buy him a better phone/plan than we had, especially when we don’t know yet if he’ll be responsible with a phone. And second, Paul’s boss mentioned he had a non-iPhone plan that cost in the $10-30/month range, and that he was happy with it.

So we signed up, got ourselves smartphones, and gave Rob my old cell phone that only costs $7/month and limits his texting. (We give Paul’s old phone to William when he needs one.) Now I can play Candy Crush while waiting for the kids to be done with karate, and I can take a photo of something at Target, and Rob can text me that math club is over early and I can come get him. It’s nice to feel caught up with other people again.

This weekend Rob wanted to talk about going to the principal of the high school where he is a brand-new freshman, to protest the sexism of there being only a girls’ softball team and no boys’ team. This is the kind of topic that has two main layers:

1. The “Is it sexism?” layer, which makes me exhausted and furious, and which I don’t think he has the brain development to understand yet, and which I’m not entirely sure I can figure out either, and

2. The “Should he do this?” layer, which is interesting to me and it’s the kind of conversation that makes it fun to have teenaged kids.

So I focused on the second layer, though I addressed the first layer by saying, “Yes, and how there’s only a boys’ wrestling team, and only a boys’ football team, and only a boys’ baseball team!” because OH MY GOD ALREADY I FEEL THE RISING NEED TO CRY AND/OR INFLICT PAIN.

The second topic has lower emotions for me. It’s something I feel like I can talk about in a neutral and cheerful way, because it feels more PRACTICAL. SHOULD he go to the principal about something like this? Yay, he’s going to be sorry he ever brought it up! (Except he won’t, because he loves this kind of picking-apart-the-issues conversation. It’s one of his redeeming qualities.) (I mean, for ME it is. Paul finds it tiresome in both of us, and is grateful that at least it means I don’t mind handling that aspect of child-rearing.)

He could start by considering what his stake is. Does this affect him personally? That is, does Rob want to play softball, and that’s why he’s protesting? No, he does not want to play softball. Does he know any boys who DO want to play softball? No, he doesn’t. Does he want to help organize a boys’ softball team? No, he does not. It’s not that I think the person registering a complaint has to be someone affected by the issue, nor do I think that person needs to fix the issue or be the one to come up with an alternative solution (that would be like saying the customer who reports that a pipe is leaking in the store bathroom has to be the one to figure out why it’s leaking and then also be the one to make the repair—and also that they shouldn’t have reported it because it didn’t bother them when they were in the bathroom and now they’re leaving the store so it isn’t their issue), but it would certainly give WEIGHT to the complaint if Rob had a reason for making it other than pure pique. But no, it’s just the pique.

Next is to figure out if/why it’s a problem to anyone, apart from Rob’s personal stake. Because if _I_ were the principal, I would be motivated to move this issue up the priorities list only if there were boys who wanted to play softball or if this set-up was making girls or boys feel like second-class citizens: if no boys want to play softball, and if girls/boys aren’t being treated differently in a bad way, I’d feel like I was going to a lot of effort just for a theoretical issue, and would want to first deal with all the actual issues demanding my attention, such as a group of girls asking for the right to have a wrestling team. (With a side-note here to Rob about how of course maybe things were SET UP to MAKE boys not want to play softball, in which case that was another issue to discuss. Rob, who had been gearing up to make that point, stood down, mollified.) I don’t know if it’s a problem or not—but then, I’m not interested. If Rob is interested, he can think through why he considers it a problem.

All right, then! The next step is to make sure Rob understands the actual situation. IS it a girls-only softball team? Or may boys try out and play? There are only girls on the cheer squad right now, but boys are certainly welcome to participate (and in fact they are in huge demand): it’s “the cheer squad” not “the girls-only cheer squad.” Or are there perhaps boys’ softball tryouts every year, but they can only have a team if there are enough boys to make a team, and there aren’t enough? Because that would be a very different situation than the “only girls get a softball team” situation Rob is objecting to. I suspect it IS a girls-only team, but it would be wise to verify this before storming the principal’s office.

Next! Assuming it IS girls-only, let’s find out WHY it’s girls-only. I notice there’s no girls’ baseball team. So are we perhaps talking about a girl version and a boy version of a sport? Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether such a division is necessary or polite, it’s good to see if we can understand the idea behind the set-up. I looked up softball on Wikipedia, and it was not started as a women’s game or as a women’s version of baseball: it was just a variation on baseball that could be played indoors in the off-season. Wikipedia says that in the U.S., it is played both both men and women, both recreationally and competitively. It notes, though, that “Competitive fastpitch softball for girls is growing increasingly popular.” So while it seems that in our school district it might be baseball for boys and softball for girls, it’s not like it has to be that way. Is it that year after year they offered both baseball and softball for both boys and girls, but year after year there weren’t enough girls to make a baseball team or boys to make a softball team? Maybe our school is big enough for two teams but not for four, and there was a vote at some point, or maybe there’s an annual survey to find out what the kids want the next year. Maybe there are national organizations making these decisions, and the principal has nothing to do with it. It would be good to get some backstory.

And what would Rob like the result of this meeting to be? Again, it’s not that the person who notices a problem is in charge of fixing it or even in charge of knowing what should be done instead—but it would be useful to know ahead of time whether he wants an explanation, a solution, or a vent. If he wants an explanation, my guess is that the principal has one prepared. If he wants to vent, my guess is that the principal is up to the task of saying something soothing about how he’s glad Rob came to him with this. If he wants a solution, it would be good to at least have a concept of what SORT of solution he has in mind—or to know that he doesn’t have any idea, so that he can say so frankly if asked, without being surprised by it and stammering and letting the principal think, “Uh huh, another teenager just venting pique.”

Rob could also consider that we all have only a limited amount of time and energy to spend, so we have to pick and choose our issues and missions. Is this one that’s near the top of his personal priority list, or would his time be better spent elsewhere, while someone who DOES want a boys’ team, or DOES have an idea for fixing the issue, or DOES play sports at all, takes this one? I would not, of course, want to imply that hormones can lead to Feeling Pissy, and that Feeling Pissy can lead a person to take up Irritation-based Causes—but if this IS a Feeling Pissy and an Irritation-based Cause, perhaps those could be usefully redirected to something he’d have more long-term interest in, such as spiffing up the computer team.

If I start with the assurance that I know blogging isn’t “dead” (as evidenced by the number of BLOGGERS who are BLOGGING), and go on to say that I realize that what can SEEM like dying is more like “moving on”/evolving/progressing, can I THEN say that I’m sorry the changes are what they are and also sorry that I don’t feel like changing along with them?

I will tell you what it feels like to me, even though that means slipping into second-person singular. Imagine being new to an area and not having many friends and feeling kind of isolated and less social than you’d like to be, but without seeing much of a way around that. Imagine that every day you pass a coffee shop that looks like it has what you want: people sitting around, talking, happy. It feels like you’d be intruding if you went in there—but one day you’re in a heck-with-it mood so you just DO. You order a coffee, you sit down, you feel super-self-conscious but no one is being mean to you or telling you not to sit at that table. You listen in to the conversations but you don’t join in.

You start going regularly, and then daily. People start recognizing you and saying hi. You start to recognize people, and you start to get to know them just based on what you can overhear of their conversations. One day, part of the group orders too many doughnuts, so they offer you one. One day someone says “Is anyone sitting here?” and sits at your table. Sometimes the conversations are split into smaller groups, but other times everyone’s talking together—and one day one of the loudest people turns to you and says, “I mean, RIGHT? You agree with me, right?” And you DO, so you say so, very briefly and shyly, and then the conversation goes on and LOOK YOU PARTICIPATED!!!

From there it goes much faster. You start saying something sometimes when it’s a big conversation. One day you buy a big box of doughnut holes and you offer them around. LOTS of people now say hi to you when you come in. One day you have a dentist appointment so you don’t go to the coffee shop, and the next day someone asks where you were. It’s exactly what you want: a low-pressure, big-group social interaction situation where you can drop in or drop out whenever it works for you—but also, over time, really get to know people well. Sometimes you sit with just one person and have an intense conversation; sometimes you sit with a small group; sometimes everyone’s talking at once. You get to know people and it’s fun to catch up every day. Some people do a lot of talking; some people do a lot of listening; some people do a lot of both.

Then a huge percentage of the group discovers a new place. It’s dark and loud—lots of dancing and dance music. You can kind of talk there, but you have to yell. It’s hard to see who’s there. A big chunk of the coffee shop group starts hanging out there all the time. Maybe they come to the coffee shop once a month, but it’s hard to catch up on that much time; you lose track of their lives and they lose track of yours. They say, “Dude, we’re not gone—you should join us at the new place! Come ON!” And so you try, but you don’t like it there. It’s not your style at all, and it makes you feel frazzled and exhausted, and you don’t feel like you get to talk to anyone there anyway. So you don’t go, or you only go once in a while.

Some of the group still hangs around at the coffee shop. And some new people start hanging around there, too, but they’re in a different stage of life and you don’t really click with them, and also you’re discouraged by the thought of getting to know a whole new group. You wouldn’t say the coffee shop is OVER—I mean, you’re still there and so is some of the group and so is the coffee shop itself. But it’s not the same thing anymore, and you miss everybody else, and yet you don’t want to go to the new place.

Yes? Good analogy? Does it include all the elements: the non-death of the old and yet the unhappy effects of the new? The concept of what is lost, and the sense in which it is lost? The missing of friends, without accusation/blame and with a total understanding that the left-behind person doesn’t HAVE to be left behind and yet chooses to for understandable reasons, and yet is ALSO SAD ABOUT THAT? The sadness of wanting to want to—but not wanting to?

Twitter kind of felt like a coffee shop to me at first, too: the way you could drop in at any time and find people to talk to. But now it feels to me more like the dark noisy club: chaos, with short storylines and missing most of it and too many strangers in the dark and I can’t see who’s talking to me and I can’t concentrate on what people are saying, and following someone means you have to listen to EVERYTHING THEY SAY EVEN IF THEY NEVER SHUT UP and you have to set up filters and lists just to process the number of people talking. Vlogging feels like it puts internet interactions RIGHT BACK with EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD where people get points for being attractive and charismatic and outgoing and fast-thinking, as opposed to blogging/internet where people could take their time and think about what they wanted to say, and didn’t have to look good, and where they could be good at written communication rather than spoken communication. Blogging still exists, but commenting has gotten difficult because of all the spam-blocking mechanisms, and also commenting has itself changed. And many blogs have turned into sales pitches—like someone who comes to the coffee shop and keeps talking about this great line of products they sell. Many others have turned into one-subject blogs about decorating or fashion or fitness or children, which feels similar to having a friend who starts only talking about one subject.

Meanwhile, there were people who followed my blog and I followed theirs, so we kept up on each other’s lives. I know that when they stopped blogging it doesn’t mean they’re GONE or that we can’t still TALK—but that WAS the way we talked! WITH OUR BLOGS. And now some of them never or almost never come to the coffee shop (which is just as understandable as someone not wanting to go somewhere else), so I’m back to wondering how to increase social interaction WHEN I’D THOUGHT THAT ISSUE WAS SO PERFECTLY FIXED. That was how I made friends; that was how I related to my friends; now some of those friends have moved away and I don’t know what’s going on in their lives anymore and I miss knowing what’s going on in their lives and I miss those people and I feel like I don’t know them anymore. Even though they have zero obligation to keep blogging about their lives just because I wish they would, and even though I would be pissed if anyone implied I was obligated to do so myself, and even though there ARE still people who ARE still blogging.

NO ONE HAS TO BLOG, just like no one has to be your friend. NO ONE OWES ANYONE A WINDOW INTO THEIR LIVES. But when so many people I knew stopped, I started missing knowing what was going on with them, just as if they’d stopped coming to the coffee shop where I used to see them several times a week, and I don’t feel like I get anything equivalent from Twitter or Tumblr or Instagram or Pinterest. (Except when a Facebook friend didn’t realize her Pinterest account was attached to her Facebook account and she pinned a whole bunch of “fun ways to announce a pregnancy” stuff.)

I took the kids to get their flu shots the other day, which caused quite a sensation. I forget how MANY of them there are until people are staring and I’m thinking, “WHAT?? …Oh yeah.” The funny thing is that I feel the same way when I see someone out with three or four kids, or when I see Christmas card photos with three or four kids: I look at them like, “Whoo, that is a LOT of kids!”

Anyway. I have a tip to pass on, from the nurse. Passing on this tip involves by necessity passing on a compliment someone gave me and the children, and I realize that’s a special kind of annoying, but I request that you allow it to slide this one time because of the potential benefits involved if you end up finding this tip helpful. OR: allow it to slide because you already do the same thing, so the praise also applies to you. OR: allow it to slide because I will do NO preening and I will remain utterly aware that for every compliment someone gives me about parenting there are a hundred others thinking something vicious about it. Also: I think it’s a tip pretty much everyone already knows.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The nurse was giving the shots one after another and she and I were getting a really efficient assembly-line style going. She praised how well the children were doing, and then she said, “It makes ALL the difference that you’re being all matter-of-fact and we’re-just-getting-this-done about it. We get parents in here who are like, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Mommy’s sorry!!’—and it’s just a MESS. It freaks the kids out, they think something horrible must be happening.”

So! A parenting tip from me and a pediatric nurse: act NONCHALANT. Callous, if you will. If you would like to copy me exactly, you should add a layer of grim assumption that the children will be awful and embarrassing despite the firm and scary lecture delivered beforehand in the car; plus a layer of feeling self-conscious about having so many children, taking up so much of the waiting room, generating so much paperwork, etc.; plus a layer of feeling like an idiot because in your distraction you called a child by the wrong name TWICE (“Willi…Henr…EDWARD”) AND got the age order wrong, right in front of the nurse. Putting your mind on yourself really helps you ignore the children!

Which is not to say you necessarily CAN apply this tip even if you WANT to. (PLUS, it fails to solve the issue of all the children who are going to lose their flip no matter HOW calm the parent is.) When I took Edward for his first blood draw, I knew my own calmness was a Key Element. And then who do you think could barely even talk to him because she was choking so hard, tears running down her cheeks as the nurses looked grim and disapproving and like they were inwardly rolling their eyes at stupid hysterical parents making everything so much worse? That’s right. I should have brought the other four kids with me to achieve the necessary level of detachment.

Also, here is the annual reminder (which most of you don’t even need so you’re free to go do something else now) that stomach flu is not flu. I know, they CALL it flu! It’s so silly! But it’s not flu. “Flu” is short for “influenza,” which is a respiratory illness: like a cold, but EXTREME. Stomach flu is a completely unrelated category of illnesses related to the digestive system. I think it’s fine to call a stomach ailment “stomach flu,” because that’s just how the language shook out there, and because a lot of the time we don’t even know if what we had was a virus or food poisoning or what. What I DON’T think is fine is “Oh my god, the whole family has stomach flu!! Stupid useless flu shot!!” The flu shot may reduce a person’s chances of getting influenza but it will do THING ZERO about the completely unrelated categories of stomach bugs and food poisoning.

(photo from Amazon.com)

I wanted to review The Cuckoo’s Calling WITHOUT mentioning that Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym of J.K. Rowling, but it would never have worked: someone would have mentioned it in the comments immediately. Besides, once People magazine has mentioned it AND a new edition has been put out with the information about the pseudonym right in the author section, it doesn’t seem like it’s exactly a secret anymore.

Learning who actually wrote it is the reason I read it: I wouldn’t have been interested in it otherwise, partly because I feel like I’ve reached my lifetime limit of books written by men about male detectives, and partly because of judging it by its cover (I think it looks like a “beach read”—i.e., trashy and lightweight).

But I DID read it, and I wonder what I would have thought of it if I hadn’t known the real author? I never would have recognized the writing style. I’d say she successfully pulls off writing a male narrator—but I’m more sensitive to such things in the other direction (men trying to write female narrators) so I’d want to ask a few men what they thought.

I liked the book overall, and I would recommend it. I hope she writes more stories about this same detective.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Saving Fish from Drowning is by Amy Tan, but it reminded me of Barbara Kingsolver. It has, however, been a long time since I’ve read a Barbara Kingsolver, because I find they leave me with a card file of horrifying and depressing imagery, plus the feeling that the world is a terrible place and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, and that anything we TRY to do about it (1) actually makes things worse and/or (2) makes us look ridiculous. That’s what this book left me with, too. If you LIKE that sort of thing, however, this is a great book for it: an interesting story, an interesting cast, and an omniscient narrator (I love omniscient narrators).

I almost forgot to update on how the school volunteering thing is going. First of all, the comments on that post were SO HELPFUL. I find it so soothing to have a list of ANSWERS—I think partly because it makes me think “Other people go through this too” and “Other people need to think these things out too rather than just Naturally Handling It,” and partly because I feel like I have a Next Thing to Try, and then a Next Thing if that doesn’t work, and so on.

Anyway, I did my first official shift (so far I’d only done training), and there is one bad news and two good news. The bad news is that the woman in question is even worse than I thought. After I’d gone away from her the first time and calmed down a bit, I’d started to feel like she might be manageable after all, and/or that maybe I’d just had a bad first impression. But no.

I am tempted to say “She is awful” as if it were an objective fact—and that is certainly how I say it in my brain, with incredulity: “She’s awful! She’s AWFUL!” And I DO think a satisfying percentage of people would ALSO find her awful, if I could take a survey (*drifts into reverie, considering how fun that would be*).

And yet it seems clear to me that some of this is more like a chemical reaction. Do you get that, sometimes, with certain people? Like, it’s like EVERYTHING THEY DO hits you wrong, and if you tried to explain to someone else what the person in question had done it wouldn’t sound all that awful? That’s part of what’s going on here. I couldn’t even focus enough to give some of the Next Things to Try a fair shot, because it was like electrical interference. She’d say something and I’d want to burst into tears. It felt so hopeless to even attempt a reply—like, the FACT OF HER EXISTENCE was too much for me to cope with, let alone whatever she’d just said.

Fortunately this kind of thing doesn’t happen often, but when it does I’m curious what percentage of the time it’s a reciprocal feeling. Like, when I feel like I can’t tolerate the mere existence of another person, how often is that other person completely neutral about me and/or even favorably inclined toward me, and how often do I set their teeth equally on edge? It’s probably similar to the percentages with romantic sparks, where one person can be Really Feeling It and it seems like the other person MUST be feeling it too—and yet the other person is completely flat-line. Or sometimes the sparks are completely reciprocal, or sometimes the person likes the other person enough to be friends, but there are no romantic sparks, or WHATEVER. People don’t always feel the same way about each other, is I guess my Captain Obvious point here, and it would be interesting to have a chart of that.

So that’s the bad news. Do you know that song The Twelve Pains of Christmas, where the woman who mentions her in-laws is holding it together pretty well until she blurts out tearfully “She’s a witch I hate her!!” during the verse about the eleventh pain of Christmas? That is how I feel. It’s a panicked, tearful kind of dislike. Or maybe this video clip from Clue is a better way to describe it:
 
 

HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS. There are two. The first should probably count as more than one, because it’s “basically everything else”: I like all the other people I’ve met so far, and the job itself is good, and it went well, and it’s just the right level of work and flexible scheduling for my first crack at this. And also the first good news includes that I don’t think the other people there like this woman either, though they seem better able to handle her (but perhaps I seem that way to them, too), and they DO seem to like ME, and I felt like we were compatible and things were likely to go well. One of the other people there made a statement everyone else disagreed with, and she registered that from our awkward non-responsiveness, and so she changed the subject—unlike the awful woman, who in that scenario pushes harder and tries to force agreement.

The SECOND part is that I HAD THE WOMAN’S NAME WRONG. So when I’d thought I’d inadvertently signed up to work with her for five of the six days I started out with, I WAS LOOKING AT SOMEONE ELSE’S NAME. I THOUGHT it was the awful woman’s name, BUT IT IS NOT. So I will have to look again at the schedule to see if I’m just ALSO working with the same THIRD person every time—but it’s more likely I inadvertently avoided her almost completely. And of course now that I know her, I can try to avoid her, as long as she signs up first. And if I want to get bold about it, I can keep asking for the schedule as if I’ve had something come up, and I can keep scribbling out my name and putting it on different days or whatever.

Don’t you wish sometimes that you could access the hive mind and find out what percentage of other people dislike someone you dislike? Imagine how wrongfully delightful it would be to find out that no one else likes someone either! I suppose that would be more than counteracted by the horror and despair of the times when you’d find out that actually a majority found the person you disliked just wonderful. Plus I’d feel some pity for her if I found everyone agreed with me. Okay, so I don’t wish I could access the hive mind. I DO wish, however, for several other parents to make subtle remarks over the next few months that let me know (without it turning into back-biting, because that feels wonderful at the time but comes with a nauseating hangover) that they don’t like her either.

I have finished my Jincy Willett tour, and now I am recommending reading The Writing Class first and Amy Falls Down second. Unless you don’t like mysteries: The Writing Class is a mystery. In which case, Amy Falls Down works on its own completely fine: it only partially cheeses up The Writing Class by letting you know not to suspect a couple of people, but that’s no problem if you’re not going to read The Writing Class anyway. I feel like re-reading Amy Falls Down now that I know some backstory, but you don’t need the backstory to try it.

*******

I have planted the tulip bulbs. I hate messing with dirt, but it went fairly well except when I saw something out of the corner of my eye and it was a substantial (more compact than some, but also sturdier) daddy-long-legs on my shoulder, just PERCHED there like “Hey.” I practically saw its little chin do the “Hey” lift. In my panic (SOMETHING TINY THAT CANNOT HURT ME IS NEAR MY FACE!!) I first BLEW on it; it flinched down irritably. I then brushed it away with my hand without looking, which is a good way to not have to see your hand touching a spider but is a bad plan in the long run because then you don’t know if you got it and you have to search your entire self multiple times and you still feel like it might be, say, on the back of your collar, or sitting on top of your bun (*compulsively checks back of collar, and then bun*).

Something must have bitten me while I was out there, too, because one ear is itchy and magenta. Let’s say you have it on good authority that that’s what happens if a daddy-long-legs bites you. That should not inspire you to TELL me so. Especially since the daddy-long-legs was on my OTHER shoulder, and I don’t want to imagine it spending that much time on me before I noticed it.

********

An interesting part of the menopause book I ended up giving up on and returning to the library right around the time she said it was no accident that the word menopause sounded like “a pause” from “men” was that she said men tend to get more domestic right around the time women are feeling (and here I’ll paraphrase) like they cannot spend one more goddam second with saucepans and washcloths. (It’s no accident that the word washcloth contains the words “ash” and “lot,” “ash” signifying burnout and “lot” signifying what a lot of them we used.) That’s consistent with how things have been going at my house: I feel like I am just absolutely out of the energy it takes to clean something for the hundred thousandth time even though I have plenty of time to do it, and meanwhile Paul has started gardening, canning, and baking bread.

I’m not complaining per se, but I plan to later on when I figure out what it is I want to complain about. It has something to do with his domestic inclinations seeming to lean only toward the impressive (rather than also including cleaning toilets, dusting shelves, or putting away the summer clothes), and something to do with how at this point I would kind of like to start going on adventures but now he wants to stay home and make jam, and something about how nice it would have been to have this kind of domestic participation going on when I was so exhausted and busy with babies. Except I think I would have killed him if he had been fussing around with jam for hours in the kitchen while I was dealing with infants and diapers, whereas now I appreciate having a little space—so again, please stand by while I eat homemade jam on homemade bread and figure out what specifically it is I want to complain about.

Here is the order in which I have been on a Jincy Willett kick:

(photo from Amazon.com)

First: Amy Falls Down. I found this on the library’s New Books shelf and thought it looked like just my sort of thing. When I finished the book (having confirmed my guess about it being just my sort of thing), I noticed there were quotes on the back of it from David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs. I looked up Jincy Willett online, and found that David Sedaris is the guy who brought her to national attention. Which is interesting when combined with the plot of Amy Falls Down, which is about an older female writer who is brought to national attention by lucky fluke.

All through the book I kept saying to Paul things like, “This is DIFFERENT. This is my kind of thing, but in a way I can’t figure out how to say it.” There are a few authors I’ve reacted to this way over the years: I’ll be reading along and I start thinking, “Wait. What is this. What is happening here.” Authors who make me lose appropriate punctuation. I’m not saying YOU will necessarily feel the same way, but David Sedaris and I are in agreement and maybe you would be too.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Next I requested Jenny and the Jaws of Life through the library system, because our library didn’t have a copy. I liked this book less. One reason is that I rarely like short stories. (They are too short, which is similar to the reason Paul’s grandmother didn’t like cats: “Too soft.”) But also, I felt like I was pushing my way through character summaries rather than reading a story. “Can we stop talking about what this person is LIKE and instead move the plot ahead just an INCH?,” I would think, my punctuation having returned to me. And I was left feeling depressed and upset after most of the stories, and I prefer not to feel that way unrelentingly even if the dismal stories are very nicely-written, so that was the final blow. I still liked the book, even though it sounds like I didn’t, but I’m glad I didn’t start with it or I might not have tried others.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Next I read Winner of the National Book Award. It was dark, like the short stories, but longer. Character descriptions felt worthwhile because we were going to be spending so much time with these people, and because the plot did keep inching forward. (Though I would sometimes have to put the book down because I felt worn out waiting for the next inch.)

This is the kind of book where you know upfront that something bad is going to happen: in this case, that the narrator’s twin sister is going to kill her husband (her own husband, not her twin sister’s) (the second twin sister’s, not the first twin sister’s) (okay, so the sisters are Dorcas and Abigail, and Dorcas is the narrator, and we know from the start that Abigail is going to end up killing Abigail’s husband, is THAT clear?). And then you jump back so you can work toward this Bad Thing That’s Going to Happen, feeling jumpy about it and wondering how/why it’s going to happen. And then it turns out there is another layer or two of things to anticipate.

It wasn’t cheery, but I liked it. I kept pausing to re-read particularly good parts, wishing it worked well to quote little pieces to someone who wasn’t reading the book. (It never does, which is why I dislike Meaningful Quotes.) (Unless they are meaningful to ME, in which case they’re marvelous.)

Thinking over it afterward, I find I still don’t feel like I understand the characters (despite all the description), so Amy Falls Down is still my favorite.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Now I am reading The Writing Class. I am only a little ways into it, but I see it comes before Amy Falls Down. You definitely don’t need to read this one first, and in fact so far I’d advise against it. The narrator (not the author, as the author keeps using her narrator to remind us) is trying a blog, and the way I feel about what she says about bloggers and blogging is very similar to the way the narrator (and perhaps also the author) feels about the things everyone says to her about fiction-writers and writing fiction. I’ve nevertheless already found several parts to wish I could read aloud to someone, though, so clearly I am ENJOYING it, it’s just that she happens to be hitting some of my personal irritations. [Edit: The part that was irritating me is over, and now I really love it.]

To sum up: I recommend trying the author. I recommend starting with Amy Falls Down or else with The Writing Class (The Writing Class is meant to be first). [Edited to add: I finished The Writing Class, and now would recommend reading that first, then Amy Falls Down. But Amy Falls Down stands alone, if you only want to read that one, and/or if you don’t like mysteries.] If you notice a self-conscious stiffness to this post, it’s because the narrator-who-is-not-the-author says she uses Google Alert on herself.

Last night I had such bad dreams—and they’d started out so well, too, with the classic romance-novel plot of “I thought he didn’t like me but actually he was in love with me,” plus I also had David Boreanaz interested. But then the first guy wasn’t where he said he’d meet me, and instead there was some blood, and I realized something bad had happened to him and was about to happen to me, and I was thinking, “Ah, so this is what Gavin de Becker meant about how when it’s Real Fear it will help you—but then, shouldn’t I be able to run faster than this?,” and I ended up at a dead end and couldn’t tell if THAT was the trap or if backing up and going the other way was the trap, and anyway maybe I shouldn’t be watching Bones so close to bedtime.

I got up and did the Nightmare Cure from my childhood (go pee, eat a Tums, brush teeth, get a drink of water), but as I was getting the drink of water, a spider threaded down from the ceiling a foot in front of my face. And when my eyes had followed its return climb, I saw two more spiders up there. So it is not particularly surprising that when I went back to bed, it turned out the Nightmare Cure had not worked and I dreamed that I was at the animal shelter and it was flooding and I couldn’t figure out how to get the animals out without releasing them into the wild, and also it was clear someone was flooding the place on purpose and therefore was out there waiting for all of us.

I have no reason for being so sleepy and laggy and unmotivated and sad the last few days. Except that we’re all going to get old and die and so will everyone we love.

Rob has been at the moodier/angrier end of the teenager spectrum recently, surprising me with his sudden outbursts over what seems from my point of view to be NOTHING. It’s hard to respond peacefully/defusingly [ha—I originally had this as “diffusingly,” like I was making tea] when I’m not even sure what’s going on. Sample conversation:

Other child, looking at Paul’s desk: “OOOOooooo, a new keyboard! Let me try it!”

Rob, turning around and getting involved with sudden and unexpected scorn: “It’s not even PLUGGED IN yet.” *scoff sound*

Me, in a friendly voice: “It’s a cordless one.”

Rob, with even more intense feeling: “It still has to be PLUGGED IN. The thing that MAKES it cordless still has to be plugged in SOMEWHERE.”

Me, puzzled by this outburst and unsure how to respond/proceed (i.e., is it that he’s embarrassed to have been wrong so he’s trying to prove he really was right, or does he know the thing that needs to be plugged in hasn’t been plugged in yet so he’s trying to rudely-but-nevertheless-accurately correct what I said?): “Mm hm, yes, that’s right.”

Rob: “WHAT?? It DOES. There’s a THING that gets plugged into the computer!!! YOU SAID it didn’t need to be plugged in!!”

Me, cautiously, in a mild, explaining tone: “Yes, I know, I just thought you might think it had a cord, since the last keyboard did. You can check if you like to see if that other thing is plugged in yet. Maybe it isn’t yet, but I thought Daddy already set it up.”

Rob: *exasperated sound; hands briefly beseech the heavens; he spins around in his chair and is back to his computer typing crankily*

Me: *bewildered and annoyed*

It’s difficult to imagine this going on for the next decade or so, but perhaps it gets easier with practice. I’m trying to remember if it got easier to deal with toddler irrationality/outbursts or not, and I THINK it partly DID—if only because by the time the fifth child was being a toddler I was aware that the stage would pass without me having to actually make a toddler understand that he/she was nuts.