Today’s source of unwarranted agitation: Should I, or should I NOT, volunteer a few hours a week to photocopy in the school office?

I have the available time: for the first time in years, I don’t have a child at home keeping me from “no siblings, please” volunteer work. But as I understand it, volunteering is a GIANT SUCKHOLE that pulls you in and makes you feel guilty for doing so little. It also puts me on the PTA’s radar, and past experience has shown me I’d like to avoid that. Also, photocopying for hours at a time sounds like it could be…dull.

On the other hand, it gets me into a system I would enjoy exploring (I love knowing Insider Stuff), and possibly gets my foot in the door for a job later on: it occurred to me after I fretted in another post that at this point in my life if I get a job it has to include SUMMERS OFF, and basically that’s School System.

I blame that book for the dream I had last night: the dream started when I was already having an affair, and it was miserable. I was thinking, “I don’t even really WANT to be in this cheat-relationship, and I can never undo this awful thing I’ve done, and I hadn’t realized when I started this that either way I’d have to have a Bad Break-up with SOMEbody!” Yuck.

I had to go drop off a check at someone’s house this morning, and I managed to get all worked up about it. What if they’re HOME?, etc. And they WERE home, against expectations, but I was still able to just quietly put the check in the envelope taped to the door and everything was fine. (And if they’d come to the door to say hi, that ALSO would have been fine, FREAK.)

On the way home I stopped and bought tulip bulbs. Tulips are my favorite thing to look forward to in spring. This past spring there was a blank spot in the tulip patch, so I was hoping I’d remember to buy more bulbs and fill it in: that’s the kind of task that generally occurs to me riiiiight after the first snow. The only assortment the store had was more bulbs than I needed (a 25-pack, and I only needed maybe 6-8), so it’ll be fun to decide where to put the extras. I wonder if they’d get enough sun if I planted them in a ring around a small deciduous tree we have? Or maybe I’ll put some around the mailbox. Or next to the door. Or maybe somewhere out of sight so I can cut them for indoor vases, instead of feeling like I shouldn’t cut them because it’ll ruin the patch. Or maybe I’ll pot them and refrigerate them and have them bloom in December! Anyway! Fun decision!

I also impulsively bought a 10-pack of a dark-purple kind called Queen of Night. The mixed bag has yellow, orange, red, white, and pink, so I’ll have to carefully space the dark ones—but I think/hope the effect will be gorgeous.

In general, I mention books I like but I don’t mention the ones I dislike. I don’t mind making the mistake of steering you to try a book you might not like: all of us have different tastes and identify with different characters, so maybe you’ll love the book I loved, or maybe you won’t. For those same reasons, I don’t want to steer you AWAY from a book I hated but that you might otherwise have loved. But today I’m too mad to follow my own policy.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Five Days, by Douglas Kennedy. It will sound like I’m giving spoilers, but this is all in the description of the book. We begin with a woman in her early forties, children in high school and college, full-time job as a radiography technician. Her husband is drawn completely flat: he’s just an irrational jerk, all the time, no redeeming features. Meanwhile she is a saint, endlessly patient and kind in the face of his incessant irrational unkindnesses.

And goodness, she just never takes time for herself or pursues her dreams. On the worldwide spectrum, she is BEYOND rich and privileged: living children, a house to live in that is not a one-room hut with three generations in it, a nice/safe neighborhood in a nice/safe city, good health, plenty to eat, a satisfying job with an appreciative boss. But evidently she is insufficiently OVER-privileged and doesn’t have an EVEN BIGGER house in an EVEN BETTER location, has not traveled extensively, has not had a dream career. The author hammers home the point that we need to DO these things, we need to REALLY LIVE, before it’s TOO LATE—as if it makes ANY DIFFERENCE AT ALL, after we’re dead, whether we ever personally saw Paris with our own eyes. Goodness, what a waste of life 99% of humanity leads by not being rich Parisian ballerina-doctor-authors!

She goes to a work conference, where she meets a man. And you will never believe this, but HIS spouse doesn’t understand or appreciate HIM, EITHER!! And HIS spouse is ALSO drawn completely flat in a bad way, while he is drawn completely flat in a good way, JUST LIKE our protagonist! And this is the final thing to amaze us: HE NEVER TAKES TIME FOR HIMSELF OR PURSUES HIS DREAMS. He has a passport, but it sits unused. He never bought the leather jacket he wanted. It’s extremely, extremely sad.

When they start talking, it turns out that each of them feels absolutely patient with the flaws the other person’s spouse can’t seem to tolerate after a couple of decades of dealing with them. They bond over this: “Your wife has never really given you the kindness you need, has she?” and “Your husband has never really understood how wonderful you are, has he?” It’s an amazing connection they share. Also, it turns out, they both love words! This makes their conversations insufferable. And a huge chunk of the book is their conversations, none of which sounded natural to me at all. It’s the kind of “conversation” where each person takes a turn relating the many-pages-long polished trauma monologues designed to impress a new acquaintance: the loss of a first love, the imperfectness of a childhood, the failure to take an opportunity for greatness. Their spouses have already HEARD these gems, whereas now they have a fresh audience. It’s delightful!

Soon they have decided that even though they have known each other only a few days, this is a once-in-a-lifetime love: they shouldn’t let their unselfishness and their fear of change keep them from having a happy life together. I kept waiting for the author to reveal this for what it was, but NO! He AGREED with them! This was not a brief fling at a conference, this was TRUE LOVE!! It’s MEANT TO BE!!

I finished the book only with extensive skimming; I would have given it up, but I kept hoping it was going to take a turn for the better. Good characters need some flaws, or else they are boring. Bad characters need redeeming qualities, or else they are boring. A relationship may indeed turn out to be a once-in-a-lifetime love, but the “My spouse doesn’t understand me”/hotel-room stage is too soon to call it. “Finally going to Paris” / “Finally writing that bestselling novel” / “Dropping your whole life because people aren’t constantly mooning over you” is not the difference between a worthwhile life and a wasted one.

My mom and I were talking about menopause, and I didn’t check with her to see if it was okay to talk about that conversation on the internet and maybe I ought to do that before I hit publish. Okay, email sent.

Anyway, I was sighing about how menopause was probably next up on my life list, and she said she didn’t go through it until her mid-50s and neither did her mom (my grandma had the “thinking she was pregnant in her 50s, and that’s how she found out she was going through menopause” experience), so it was likely I wouldn’t either. And meanwhile celebrities older than me are still saying they’d love to have children when the time is right, and I see WebMD says the average age for menopause is 51, so I guess I can probably sigh about something else for awhile.

I remember when I was wondering when I’d have my first boyfriend, what I’d major in, when I’d get married, when I’d have babies, when I’d have the next baby, etc. Now it’s “I wonder when I’ll go through menopause?” and “I wonder when my neck skin will go?” Pff. Displeasing. A few months back I passed the “first white hair” milestone.

I think having all the kids in school does make the mind turn to “What’s next?” Actually, “having the last baby” was what really did it for me: when I knew Henry was the last one, it was like setting a timer. “He’ll be in school in X years, and THEN what?”

But I’m not really free, yet, either. I remember the winter I don’t think we went a single week without at least one appointment at the pediatrician and at least one kid home from school—and with the difference in wages, it would ALWAYS be me having to take the day off work. And I hate to be perceived as unreliable, and I remember how cranky everyone was at my last job about the co-worker who always had to bail because of a sick kid. And taking any job would likely mean reduced blogging income. And anyway the whole topic makes me feel weird and stressed and disinclined to look into it more at this point. Probably I’ll be a Certified Nursing Assistant: it’s a short degree (one semester, I think), and seems sensible/flexible. Plus, increases my usefulness in an apocalyptic situation. (My pharmacy job was good for that, too: I know what to grab first when we’re looting the drug store.)

All five of my children are in school. Did you hear me? ALL FIVE OF MY CHILDREN ARE IN SCHOOL. This is a new world. I’ll have more to say about this when it has sunk in. My eldest is starting high school; my youngest is a first grader.

I was thinking about how, if I’d had my way, I’d still have one child at home, maybe a 3- or 4-year-old. I think that would have been nice, but this is also nice. I’m kind of tired, and there are still twelve years before Henry graduates high school.

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I’ve had a few interesting conversations with the older two boys recently. They are at just the right age to have fun with these subjects.

1. I found a $10 bill on the floor of McDonald’s. No one was nearby or fumbling with a purse or anything. Should we call out, “Did anyone lose a $10?,” and what did we think were the chances that someone would say, “Oh, um, YES, that’s mine!” when it wasn’t? Should we turn it in at the counter? But if no one came back for it (and it seemed highly unlikely anyone would notice a missing $10 and go back to find it), did it satisfy to think of McDonald’s (or possibly an employee or the manager) keeping it? Should we put it in the charity box on the counter, or would that just be making ourselves feel smugly as if we’d Done Good, without actually resolving the issue in the fairest/rightest way? Is it okay to spend someone else’s money like that and then take any credit at all? Could we keep it ourselves, or did that feel funny? If so, WHY did it feel funny? Considering we COULDN’T do the BEST thing (i.e., hand it back to the person who lost it), what was the NEXT BEST thing? How much difference does the AMOUNT of money involved (ten cents, ten dollars, a hundred dollars) make to such a decision? Etc. Really fun! (We ended up putting it in the charity box on the counter, and then continuing to discuss why that didn’t quite satisfy, why we still thought it was our best option in this particular case, what else we could have done that would ALSO have been fine, whether we could instead have sent it to a different charity, and what we might have done if it had been a larger or smaller amount of money.)

2. We were watching Bones (Netflix), and there’s an episode where Dr. Brennan’s overly-perfect boyfriend of a month quits his job, buys a boat, and wants her to take a yearlong sabbatical from her immensely absorbing and important job, right now, and join him. She declines. Much is made of this decision: she’s not emotionally available! she’s not committed to their relationship! she thinks too much and won’t let her heart take a chance! she’s spending too much of her life working instead of Really Living! she must be in love with Agent Booth! etc.! But here’s my objection: the boyfriend didn’t say, “Listen, let’s run away together for a year! Do you want to? Great! Where shall we go? What shall we do?” Instead, he made ALL the decisions and COMMITTED to those decisions, and THEN asked her to drop everything and join in HIS already-made plans. Even if I WANTED to take a leave of absence and sail around the world for a year, I would want to be asked BEFORE the boat was purchased and the route mapped out. I would want time to wrap things up at work, not get an “I’m leaving next week, are you coming or not?” ultimatum. So instead of seeing this as about HER issues, I saw it as being about HIS issues. I was mad. I paused the episode for a lonnnng time. …This one wasn’t so much a discussion as a rant-lecture.

The Webkinz site is down, and I don’t mind telling you it is messing up my morning. I have to keep working on Goober’s Atomic Adventure! Time’s a-wastin’! I have work to do on level 9!

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This is my last week writing for Milk and Cookies at Work It Mom; my last post will be on Wednesday. I’ve been writing there once a week for well over 5 years, so this is a big change. Probably there will be an increase in the number of shopping posts I do here: I’m now completely in the habit of thinking, “Oooo, this would make a good post!” as I’m shopping. I also might be moving some of the posts from there to here; this might be a little irritating to those of you who already read them there. I will put something like “Originally posted at Work It Mom” at the top of each such post so you don’t get halfway through feeling that weird “didn’t I read something just like this?” feeling, but it still might be a little irritating.

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Speaking of shopping, my mom and I were at a consignment store yesterday and found a stack of lunch plates in the Franciscan Ware Madeira pattern, which was my parents’ casual wedding china. My mom says it was a daring choice: DARK china! and with cartoony flowers! Very mod.

It was quite freaky to see the pattern again all of a sudden. My parents switched to an all-white china when I was in college, so the Madeira is what I remember from my whole childhood.

One of the nice things about going the mix-and-match route with my own dishes is that it is perfectly awesome and workable to incorporate a lunch plate from my childhood. I picked one up to see the price, and it was $6.00, which seemed fine for a 1960s plate. (The 1960s is when my parents registered for china, not when my childhood was—in case you are suddenly thinking, “Wait, what?”) Then I noticed it was $6.00 for ALL SEVEN. SOLD, sir! I put one in the cupboard and the others down in the basement as spares and to think what to do with them. It would almost have been better if the plates were being sold individually—although, then how would I have decided how many to buy?

Another neat thing: my parents got rid of their Madeira here, where we still live. So THEORETICALLY, these plates could be THE SAME ONES they had!

We’ve been working on Edward’s anemia for 2 years now. It’s not severe, but he’s up to three 28mg tablets of ferrous gluconate a day (from a bottle marked “WARNING: Accidental overdose of iron-containing products is a leading cause of fatal poisoning in children”) and his iron levels have finally gotten as high as “just below normal.” Meanwhile, he is having some of the digestive issues you might expect from three iron tablets a day, and also he throws up every few days, and also he tires very easily.

I managed to croak out “Could this be…something scary?” to the pediatrician, who thought not, and said that the (thousands and thousands of dollars of) blood tests have not shown any indications of Scary Things. Edward is just not absorbing iron well, for some unknown reason.

The pediatrician has been hesitant to refer us to a pediatric hematologist. My guess is that this is partly due to the distance to the nearest one (an hour and a half’s drive if no traffic, and in a Scary City with tons of traffic), and partly due to the way Edward’s iron levels aren’t TOO bad: they ARE just below normal. But with this latest batch of test results, I said, “Yes, but…they’re just below normal with three iron tablets a day. That seems like…a lot of iron.” (If you are picturing me saying this in a voice that was firm and reasonable rather than shaky and meek, this is your chance to re-read it.)

And so now we’ve got the referral. This means another round of: (1) call insurance company to find out who’s covered; (2) call covered doctor’s office to make appointment; (3) call pediatrician to have referral sent over; (4) fill out one million pages of paperwork for the specialist; (5) remember I forgot to tell pediatrician to also send previous test results. And since we just went through this with Elizabeth’s asthma/allergies (the twins are sticking to medical issues starting with A), and then got a letter from the insurance company saying “We never saw a referral, so you owe the doctor $1,045!” (I had a copy of the referral in the mail within 30 minutes, addressing the envelope with adrenaline-shaking hands), I’m reluctant to start it again. But I suppose I will have to woman up.

It is particularly stressful because it appears that all pediatric hematologists are actually pediatric hematologists/oncologists, and I don’t really want to dwell on that, do you? Also, I am looking at this list of pediatric hematologists/oncologists from the insurance company’s website, and how on earth am I supposed to CHOOSE one? Each doctor is listed at several locations, too, which is confusing me—and how to know which locations are “best”? Here’s what I want: a NICE, SMART, EXPERIENCED doctor who will FIX THIS and also won’t make me feel like an over-reactive, no-perspective-on-REAL-problems parent for bringing in a child whose iron levels are .5 below normal (with three iron tablets a day).

Today I was remembering one of my ultrasounds when I was pregnant with the twins. The first technician looked and looked, and finally said, “I think Baby B is a boy, but I’m going to call in Cynthia for Baby A.” Cynthia came in with the pleased confidence of someone who gets called in when an expert is needed and nearly always justifies that summoning. She was relaxed and ready for this task. She looked for a long, long time—unhurried, not acting as if she had been called away from something she needed to rush back to. Then she said, “I’d say Baby B is a boy. And what do you have so far?” and I said “Two boys.” Another long look and then she said, “And are these the only grandchildren in the family?,” and I said yes. And then she said, “Then I’m only going 70% on Baby A being a girl.” By which I understood that she was pretty sure, but didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes too high. Wise.

I went back into my journal to see when this happened (24 weeks—they checked at 18 weeks but couldn’t tell with either baby; imagine the disappointment) and whether I’d remembered it right (seems so, but I didn’t write down as many details there as I wrote here), and I encountered my lists of names. Those were very fun to look through, especially because some of them surprise me: I have Mark and Lauren on the boy/girl list, and I don’t remember considering EITHER of those names.

I see we were still considering the name Emerson, which surprises me: what I’d remembered is that we considered that name seriously during the first half (before we knew it was a boy) of the first pregnancy and then never again. But here I am, completely wrong: on the girl/girl list I have Emerson and Marin, Emerson and Rowan, Emerson and Imogen. Emerson never made it to the Serious Contenders list, but I’m surprised to see it at all.

Girl/girl combinations I still like: Jane and Eliza, Imogen and Elena, Elizabeth and Genevieve, Emily and Liana.

Boy/girl combinations I still like: John and Genevieve, Charles and Elizabeth (I think that set got ruled out for being too royal-family, but I like it anyway).

The list of boy/boy combinations looks much less enthusiastic: it’s about a third the length of the girl/girl list. Joel and Dean would have been nice. Calvin and Malcolm. I’m surprised to see Collin on there; I didn’t remember considering that name. I’m so glad I wrote all this down.

[An earlier version of this post originally appeared on Work It Mom.]

I like fox things, and I would like to have more fox-related possessions. (Including a tattoo, if I could figure out how to make an orangey fox look good with my pink skin tone.) (I don’t want a grey fox, I want an orangey one.) Here are some other fox things I’m considering from a recent Etsy browse:

(photo from foxfeather on Etsy.com)

Fox Stack Painting Print. I like seeing the assorted kinds of fox, but the stack makes me nervous. (THEY MIGHT FALL. Plus, Yertle the Turtle feelings.)

(photo from ceridwenDESIGN on Etsy.com)

Red Fox Illustration Large Canvas Tote Bag. This would be a strong option, except for two things: (1) the dark splotch on the fox’s snout, which keeps catching my eye, and (2) I have WAY TOO MANY REUSABLE BAGS.

(photo from Lyndsey Green on Etsy.com)

Fox Illustration Digital Print. Oh, I love this. Wouldn’t it be especially cute in an arrangement that made him seem to be looking at something in another picture? Maybe a bird.

Fox Heart Tote Bag. And look, here is the same little foxie on a tote bag! Have I already forgotten what I JUST SAID about having too many tote bags? YES! (I like the one without the heart even better.)

(photo from AddysHats on Etsy.com)

Newborn Baby Fox Hat and Diaper Cover Set. I am not in the market for baby things but WILL YOU LOOK AT THIS??

(photo by Marmar on Etsy.com)

Little Grey Fox Earrings. I want so much to want these earrings. I have three other pairs of Marmar earrings and I love them. But once you see the fox tail as something, er, other than a fox tail… Well, there was no going back from that image. (Dear, dear.)

(photo by thekitschycupcake on Etsy.com)

Fox Earrings. These are a more promising possibility.