My dad sent me this article by an economist, about whether it does any good to sponsor a child. Short answer for those of you who, like me, dislike clicking links or reading articles: yes.

I found myself convinced. And I’ve had that low-grade-fever feeling of wanting to DO something to HELP THE WORLD—but WHAT??? This seemed like a good answer.

The next step was to find an organization that met two requirements:

1. It should not be a religious organization; I’m on board with Feeding/Clothing The World, but not with Converting The World

2. It should score well on Charity Navigator

Several of you on Twitter recommended Plan International (I went specifically to PlanUSA.org, since I am in the USA), which has such a forgettable name I’m not surprised I’d never heard of it: maybe I DID hear of it, even MANY TIMES, but COMPLETELY FORGOT. They have four stars (out of four) on Charity Navigator, and they’re not religious. They also run Because I Am a Girl, which specifically works to improve the education and safety of women and girls. And they have a child sponsorship program (that’s the USA-specific one I’ve linked to; use the Plan International link above to see if they have it for your country), so I signed up.

You can select a child based on location, age, sex, and photo, which is both SUPER FUN and SUPER UPSETTING. I knew if I wasn’t careful, my “But how do I know I’ve chosen THE VERY MOST EVERYTHING child???” feelings would take over, and then I’d end up getting overwhelmed and not choosing anyone. (It took me, like, a YEAR to get going with Kiva.org, because I couldn’t chooooooooose.) I don’t know anything about The World, so I left location as “any.” But I wanted specifically to sponsor a girl, and I thought it would be fun if the girl were Elizabeth’s age (for Elizabeth to write letters, if she wanted to, but also just so I’d always be aware of the age our sponsor child was), so I chose “4-8” for age, and “girl” for sex.

Not only did I not want to get sucked into the CAN’T CHOOSE sinkhole, I’d also thought I couldn’t go back to a child if I hit the “search” button again. But right now, as I was trying out the search feature so I could describe it to you, I saw it actually just cycles between two girls in the 4-8 category—so I wonder if they are a bit short on children who need sponsors, or if it’s that they want to discourage browsing, or what? No, it must be the discouraging-browsing thing, because I see I get just two choices in ANY category I choose. You could keep changing locations, then, and get two choices from each. And maybe you get different choices if you go back another day, I haven’t checked.

But ANYWAY, I chose the very first 8-year-old girl presented to me, a girl from Cambodia, because I INSTANTLY liked the look of her. She had an Elizabeth look to her, I thought, even though they look quite different. The way she was looking at the camera like “Fine, I understand you have to take my picture, so I will stand here and allow you to get that over with.”

We got a big packet in the mail a few days later with more information about her, and that was fun too. I found myself a bit tongue-tied trying to write the first letter to her. “Hi! Our daughter your age just got back from a one-week camp where she really ROUGHED IT in living conditions way better than your usual ones! And it cost more than it will cost to support you for a WHOLE YEAR, isn’t that incredible?” No. “Hello! Do you like Hello Kitty and owning twelve pairs of sparkly shoes and going to the large public library and large public pool, like Elizabeth does?” No. “Here’s a picture of us, looking kind of fat and over-healthy in front of a house that’s roughly ten times the size of yours and also has central heating/cooling, running water, indoor toilets, and floors that aren’t made of dirt!” No.

I finally had to think to myself, “This is not the really crucial part of this whole program. Just say hello and it’s nice to meet you.” So I told her the ages and sexes and names of everyone in our family, and I said that Elizabeth and Edward were twins and that they were her age, and I said which country/state we lived in and what that state was known for, and I said how many people were in our city, and I said we had two cats, and then I wrapped it up. I put in some stickers and a couple of postcards that show our area.

For future letters, I’m planning to include those little Dover activity books—but those, too, were a little hard to choose. Would she prefer to put a pretty little white girl in a dress that cost more than her house and will be worn for part of a single day, or do kitchen activity stickers with electric appliances and no wood fire anywhere? Or perhaps she’d like to make her own sticker ice cream sundae! (Has she ever…HAD ice cream?) I went with decorating butterflies, baby animal stickers (cute baby animals seem like they’d translate well), wildflower stencils, and fairyland activity stickers. I’m also going to look around online for other ideas. The items need to be the sort of thing you can mail in an envelope, so maybe…fabric ribbons? That’s all I’ve got so far.

Elizabeth had mentioned that when she ate pecans or walnuts, her lips and mouth felt “weird.” I was hesitant to pursue it, considering how infrequently we eat pecans or walnuts: nut allergies are taken so seriously, I didn’t want to get her sent to the Nut Table in the cafeteria if all she had was a little bit of a skin sensitivity and could easily just avoid the nuts that caused that reaction. I also wondered if she might be imagining it, and it seemed like she’d had too few exposures to even start making a connection.

But when it happened when she had a tiny bit of pecan from a piece of candy, and when she immediately asked “Did that have pecan or walnut in it??” just based on the reaction she was having, and when she added “it feels like there’s a lump in my throat” to her symptom list, I thought I’d better mention it to the doctor at her annual check-up a couple of weeks later.

He ordered a blood test to screen for an allergy, and I don’t really understand how it works but anyway he called us and said it showed allergies to both pecans and walnuts, and an IgE of 247 (he said 100 would be considered high), and that earned her a referral to an allergist; her appointment is next week. I don’t know if this means she IS allergic to pecans and walnuts, or if it means she screened as being POTENTIALLY allergic, but there is no way I’m going to Google nut allergies. The allergist can tell me what’s going on.

On one hand, I have an “Oh, great, here we go” feeling. On the other hand, I’m glad to be going this route: the doctor we’re seeing does asthma as well as allergies, and Elizabeth already has a diagnosis of “let’s call it reactive airways for now, but if this continues we’ll want to look into whether it’s asthma,” and this IgE thing apparently relates to both allergies and asthma, so it’s nice to be Working On This if it’s going to turn out to Be Something.

But now I regret saying no when the doctor who did her tonsillectomy said he could do allergy testing while she was out anyway. I felt at the time like he was just trying to upsell, and maybe he was, but in retrospect it would have been nice; I had the scratch test done as a child, and I remember it being weepingly uncomfortable—like having 100 mosquito bites on my back and not being allowed to scratch them. It would have been nice to be unconscious.

Well, but at the time I’d also thought, “Wait, is it good for her to maybe have an allergic reaction to something while she’s already under anesthesia for the first time?,” and I guess I still do wonder about that. And I don’t think I would have enjoyed worrying about the tonsillectomy recovery AND about the newly-discovered-and-previously-unsuspected (at that time) nut allergy, and she was enough of a cranky mess after surgery without adding 100 mosquito bites, so perhaps it’s better this way after all.

Elizabeth is home from camp! I’m so relieved! I am also so annoyed:

1. The camp assured me that the section I should put her in (after her first choice didn’t work out) would be for grades 3-6, not grades 5-6 as in the camp description. But it WAS 5-6, with her the only 3rd grader. Some of the other girls were going through puberty and were as tall as the counselors. Fortunately most of the girls were nice to her, though of course they preferred to spend time mostly with their peers. And one girl was mean to her: every time Elizabeth mentioned liking/doing something, the girl said it was babyish to like/do that; she also made fun of Elizabeth for being less competent at tasks.

2. The camp said that since groups were being combined because of low enrollment, the section she was signing up for would include the pottery lessons from the section that was her first choice. It did not.

3. The camp said there would be letter-writing time every day. There was not.

4. The camp said we could bring a week’s worth of letters on drop-off day (each letter labeled with the day it should be delivered), and they’d hand them out on those days; this would ensure our daughters would get daily reassurance from us, especially on the first few days. They gave her the entire week’s packet on Thursday.

5. The pick-up was just as badly organized as the drop-off: no indication of where we should go or what we should be doing or where we should park or when we should leave, and no one seemed to know. Everyone’s stuff was jumbled together in a big pile, so that if I hadn’t been compulsively re-checking the heap, I would have missed a whole bag of her laundry and also one single shoe lying on its own.

6. They gave us a letter on the way out saying, “You know how we checked everyone for lice when they got here, but we were so badly organized that lots of people didn’t even know they were supposed to get checked? Well, to our shock, there was a lice break-out! So you might want to check your daughter and launder/trash/bag all her stuff when you get home!”

 

But all these things that have me in a big agitated fit were total shrug-offs to Elizabeth. I asked if she thought she’d have had more fun if the campers had been her age, and she shrugged and said she didn’t think so. I asked if the mean girl had been upsetting, and she said yes, but that she knew those things weren’t true, and anyway that girl was mean to everyone. She also had a satisfying story where she (Elizabeth) said she liked the show My Little Pony, and the mean girl said that was a baby show, and several of the other girls chimed in saying NO that show was AWESOME, making the mean girl feel uncool for not knowing about it.

She wasn’t sad when I left, and she didn’t feel homesick even early in the week. She said they did one fun thing after another all day every day. When I said, “Are you happy to be going home, or do you wish you were staying another week?,” she said “Both!” I asked if she’d want to go back next year, and she said yes in a voice that implied she thought it was weird I’d even ask. She liked her counselors, and she wants to write a letter to the awesome lifeguard who was so funny and cool. The swimming was organized very safely: everyone was tested, and then they had to wear bathing caps color-coded to indicate their swim level (which is probably how she got to know the lifeguard so well, since she tested as a beginner and had to stay right near the lifeguard).

She didn’t come home badly sunburned or badly bug-bitten—just the unavoidable light tan and scattered bites. She came home with most of her belongings (that is, if anything’s missing, I haven’t noticed yet), and only one small item belonging to someone else (looks like a bag for a shower cap or bath pouf—nothing I need to fret about trying to return). Both pairs of sneakers were ruined, but I’d assumed they would be and had sent ones she was about to outgrow. Several items of clothing are probably not salvageable (two with mildew stains, several with very ground-in dirt that then sat for days in a damp laundry bag), but we expected and planned for that. The stamped envelopes I sent with her all got sealed shut from the dampness, but that’s okay. She almost lost her new raincoat, but didn’t. Her hair was reasonably combed. She had a great time.

I did feel much better the morning after I wrote the middle-of-the-night fret post about Elizabeth being at camp. Part of it was that it was morning, and morning is just better. Most of it, though, was the comments on that post, which I started reading as soon as I was up, and have kept reading since. If I make a scale of what would be most comforting while Elizabeth is at camp, and let’s say we put “Letters from her saying she’s having a wonderful time and whining to stay a second week” as a 10 on that scale, the comments were…well, that’s actually harder than I’d expected to put a number on. Let’s call their place on the scale “Surprisingly close to 10.” I had Welling Tears of Relief.

AND, then on the second night, when all the sad thoughts returned, I had AMMUNITION. I was still picturing bad stuff happening, but then each thing I imagined led naturally to remembering one or more of the comments: I’d think for the hundredth time that maybe her stuff all got rained on, and then I’d remember one comment about how the counselors would put stuff in the dryers, and another comment about how the year everything got soaked was the best year ever, and another comment about how the counselors really are completely equipped to handle all normal camp problems, AND SO ON. Very, very helpful, and I thank you very much.

I am hoping today that there will be the letter saying she’s having a wonderful time and whining to stay a second week. But even if there isn’t, or even if the letter in fact says she’s miserable and cold and hungry, the week is half over. Well, sort of half over. Whoever thought of putting an odd number of days in a week was wrong.

I dropped off Elizabeth today for a week of sleepaway camp. And I am SURE things will look better in the morning, but right now they DON’T. She was completely fine at drop-off (I looked back and she wasn’t even looking at me), and on the way there she commented that she couldn’t wait until we got to the part where I’d leave and it would REALLY be camp time—but pretty much EVERY SINGLE PART of drop-off contained an error (“Now, did you bring her medical forms? But we never received them. Okay, we’ll double check. …Oh, here they are.” “No, I don’t have her down for the t-shirt that could only be ordered at the time of registration. No, sorry, lots of people have been saying they did, so maybe there’s something wrong with the online system, but in any case the order didn’t go through. …Oh, wait, now I have the right list and here she is”), and at this time of night, that is the kind of situation that makes me think I can’t trust them not to let her drown in the lake. In the morning, I’m sure I’ll instead be telling you all that as a pro/veteran camp mom, my advice is to not sign your child up for the first camp week of the summer, since that’s the week the camp discovers and fixes all the problems with the system.

Also, when I was about 15 minutes into the drive home, there was the kind of amazing downpour where you have to drive 20 miles under the speed limit and look at the lines on the road right in front of the car because you can’t see any farther than that—but when I left camp, everyone’s camping gear was still outdoors, farrrrrr away (wayyyyyyy farther than “Everyone grab your stuff and run for shelter!” distance—more like a 10-minute walk) from the cabins. And maybe it only rained 15 minutes away from camp and not at the camp itself, but I’m still picturing her trying to sleep in a cold wet sleeping bag. And I have her zip code entered into Weather Underground so I can keep seeing what the weather is doing now…and now…and now…

Tonight when I was flossing and brushing the littler kids’ teeth, I realized I’d gotten out three pieces of floss when I only needed two, because there are only two littler kids home right now and not three. Later I thought, “Wow, Elizabeth sure went to sleep early!”—and then realized her light was out because she’s not in there. I know kids go to camp all the time, but she’s 8 and I’m not used to not being in charge of the temperature and dryness of her surroundings, and she freaks out sometimes about bugs, and FAR too many counselors said to her cheerfully that it was THEIR first year TOO!

 

I would love to hear some Everything Was Fine camp stories. I realize that’s a vague category, so I will give some clarifying examples:

1. “I cried for the first couple of nights, but then had a GREAT time!” = Everything Was Fine

2. “My daughter broke her arm, but still had a great time! Everyone signed her cast!” = Everything Was Fine

3. “My daughter got sick and had to come home early, but she had a great time until then and went back the next year!” = Everything Was Fine

4. “________ died at camp, but that hardly ever happens!” = NO DON’T TELL ME

5. “________ was permanently physically/mentally damaged by a camp experience, but that’s so rare I’m sure you don’t need to worry about it!” = NO DON’T TELL ME

6. “I once almost drowned at camp as a child: the counselors were talking and didn’t even notice. Luckily, I managed to inch my way to the raft. I DIDN’T drown, so everything was fine!” = NO THAT IS NOT FINE

7. “I cried and was miserable the whole week, but now I realize it really strengthened me as a person” = NO THAT IS NOT FINE

8. “I’m not surprised everything was messed up—they pretty much hire ANYONE to work at summer camps. I worked at one, and I can’t believe anyone put me in charge of children! But everything worked out fine—nothing bad happened!” = NO THAT IS NOT FINE

9. “One year there was a leak in our cabin and everything got DRENCHED! We had clothes and sleeping bags draped to dry over all the picnic tables, all over the fences, all over the grass! Some of our stuff got ruined, but that’s still the first and best story we all tell about our camp years!” = Everything Was Fine

10. “I didn’t like camp, but it wasn’t a big deal—I just waited out the week, and then I didn’t go back again” = Everything Was Fine

11. “I wet the bed and told the counselor, and she acted completely grossed out” = NO DON’T TELL ME

12. “I was supposed to take medicine every day, but half the days no one remembered! It was fine, though—nothing bad happened!” = NO NOT FINE

 

This is getting long, and distressing. Here is a quicker set of rules of thumb:

1. Does the story give an example of a time that would make the parents later think, “If only we hadn’t sent her to camp”? Then no.

2. Does the story give support to the idea that teenagers should not be put in charge of children for such long periods of time, and that it is basically up to the individual child to survive the experience? Then no.

3. Does the story demonstrate that camp is an adventure, where things might go wrong but the camp is used to dealing with all of it, and children can roll with it, and no one has lasting regrets? Then yes.

4. Does the story show that camps are so extremely afraid of lawsuits that they are VIGOROUSLY careful as well as PAINFULLY regulated? Then yes.

I’ve found that if I wait, I get a lot of answers to things I’m wondering about. “Why do so many grown women look so FRUMPY?,” my teenaged self wondered after spending no-kidding 90 minutes feathering her hair and putting on make-up, and then looking critically at her 50-year-old English teacher who had a straight bob and a shiny forehead and a boring skirt. My current self can answer that it has something to do with a lack of time, something to do with a shifting of priorities regarding the use of that time, something to do with a change in how much of our life revolves around the way we look, something to do with a changing of style preferences (the black mini and coral crop-top and black-patterned tights seems right at 17, less right at 50), something to do with how we feel when we look back at pictures of ourselves with that feathered hair and frosty green eyeshadow, and something to do with how we feel when we look at what teenagers currently consider worth the effort.

I remember when it was fashionable at my school to get hair “frosted” (every single high school boy: “What FLAVOR frosting, hur hur hur”). I wondered why girls with darker hair were getting it done, when their hair looked better without it. The answer is something like “Because even though YOU didn’t prefer the look, THEY did, DUR” (that’s my own reason, now that my hair is darker and I still like it with light elements), combined with “How come girls with lighter hair were getting it done, when their hair looked better without it?,” combined with “Because it was the fad, and they wanted to participate in the fad,” and possibly combined with something about a hairdresser persuading them it looked wonderful.

When I was a babysitter, I wondered why parents let their houses get so messy or so overrun with kid stuff. I’m not wondering about that anymore (or using the word “let”).

I used to wonder why grown-ups wanted to TALK so much when it was so BORING. It turns out the answer is that it’s not boring to the grown-up. (Or that it IS boring but the grown-up feels obligated. But with the kind I meant at the time, it’s that it’s not boring to the grown-up.)

I used to wonder how high school kids could STAND not to have recess, or how grown-ups could STAND to have such boring Christmas presents. All became clear with time.

In fact, I’ve noticed that if I start a sentence with a little huff of exasperation followed by “Why would anyone _____???,” and then if I treat it as an actual question rather than a exclamation of scorn, I can usually come up with an actual answer. She’s wearing that outfit because she likes the way it looks, that’s why. She takes that kind of self-portrait because she thinks it looks good, and/or because all the more realistic shots made her cry, that’s why. She plays that game because it’s fun for her, that’s why. She puts up with him because that kind of behavior falls into the range of what she’s willing to deal with, or because she thinks she doesn’t have a choice, or because she knows she has a choice and she’s choosing this. She’s acting a certain annoying way, and so do a lot of other women her age, and I’m approaching that age—so although I don’t know yet, there’s a good chance I soon will, and maybe I should assume the reason will be as good as the other reasons I’ve found for why women older than me do things.

There are a lot of gaps still. For one thing, with a lot of questions I can think of answers—but SEVERAL answers. Is she trying to force everyone to do things her way because she really thinks we’ll enjoy it, or because if we say no it makes her doubt her own decision, or because she enjoys the act of arguing people into changing their minds, or because she gets a commission, or because she hasn’t yet understood that different people live different ways? Is she scoffing at other people’s interests because she’s right to scoff, or because she feels left out, or because she’s a scoffing and unpleasant person in general, or because she doesn’t realize how scoffy she’s coming across, or because she hasn’t yet understood that different people live different ways, or because she’s mad at the people she’s scoffing at for some other reason, or because other people scoffed at her interests and she wants to show them what that feels like?

And then there are other things, where I have questions I don’t think are going to get answered. Why would someone say in a horrible tone of voice to the perfectly nice and helpful receptionist, “Um, HI. She’s trying to get IN??” instead of a friendly “Hello! She’s here for camp!” and waiting to get buzzed in? I’m not on board with the idea that it’s because she’s fighting a hard battle or that she must have a sad life; those sound like Coping Thoughts to me, like when we try to manage our mounting road rage by imagining that the honking tailgater behind us is trying to get to the hospital where a family member lies recently injured. Sometimes that story is actually true, but mostly it isn’t.

Why would a woman say loudly “You have GOT to be kidding me right now!!” and stomp off and make loud huffy sighing sounds and crabby remarks to the air for the next half hour when the office staff can’t give her back the dollar she lost in a vending machine out in the building’s lobby, a vending machine clearly marked with a sign saying only the vending machine company can help in such a situation, a vending machine she voluntary decided to interact with, even knowing that choosing to interact shoppingly with a machine meant the transaction would not involve personal customer service? Why would someone standing in line roll their eyes and make audible mean remarks about how slow/stupid the clerk is? Why would someone in a restaurant say out loud “Heh-LO, does anybody WORK here??,” when the waitstaff is clearly visible WORKING at other tables?

So far, here are the only answers I’ve come up with: “Because for some reason that may still require more life experience before I know what it is, they think that behavior is appropriate for those situations” and “Because they’re rude, unpleasant people.” I’ve toyed with “Because they were born without sufficient empathy,” but that one doesn’t satisfy: people who have trouble with empathy can still use polite language and a polite tone of voice. Besides, the people in question are not blaring out “I WANT TO EAT” or “I WANT TO GET IN” like a toddler who hasn’t yet understood how things work—no, they’re using sophisticated scorn-indicating language and behavior and body language.

I’ve also wondered things like “Maybe they’re going through an intensely stressful time,” but that brings me back to “Maybe this horrible tailgating jerk just heard his wife was in a car accident”: it’s possible, but seems like it could cover only a tiny percentage of offenders. And most of them are not showing signs of that in other ways: they’re not red-eyed and looking unhinged, they’re just being rude as if it’s a normal way to live and they don’t understand why OTHER people are being so stupid and tentative and doormatty as to NOT behave that way. GEEZ, if you don’t get what you want RIGHT AWAY and EXACTLY THE WAY YOU WANT IT, make a HUGE FUSS!

Things were better yesterday and today with summer stuff. My mom bailed me out yesterday when Elizabeth had a doctor appointment that was at the same time I had to pick up Edward and Henry (I tried to reschedule the appointment, which I’d made long before signing up for summer stuff, and they said, “Let’s see, our next available appointment is…July 28th”), and then today there were no piano lessons, no karate, and no doctor appointments, so actually everything went well.

Oh, wait, there was an orthodontist appointment. I forgot about that because my mom and I combined it with a shopping trip that went extremely well, and so it felt like it just merged with that. We did the appointment first, then we went to KFC: I am having a little problem with their 10-bites meal, which I had for the first time this past weekend and now would like to eat every single day.

Then we went to Goodwill, and I don’t want to make the acid of envy burn the back of your throat, but they had HANNA ANDERSSON stuff for $1.79 per piece. It made me feel like pawing through every single item on every single rack looking only at the brand names—but that way madness lies. Instead I just went through the rack of Elizabeth-sized clothing as usual, and if I happened to find something Hanna Andersson, then how nice. Here’s my final haul (each item $1.79):

 

• Hanna Andersson bright pink jeans

• Hanna Andersson stripey leggings in teal and purple (possibly pjs)

• Hanna Andersson pink polka-dot cotton-knit button-up round-collar (HYPHEN AWARD) blouse that matches the pink of the pants

• Hanna Andersson brown velour zip-up sweatshirt with pink, blue, and purple polka-dots

• Gymboree denim shorts with jeweled pockets

• Gymboree corduroy heart-patterned skirt

• Gymboree appliqued short-sleeved shirt

• Gap pink fleece hooded jacket

• Old Navy cat-applique t-shirt

 

(I probably should have started with the Old Navy and worked up to the Hanna Andersson; that would have made for a more impressive impact.) I also got two things in brands I don’t recognize: a Kingkow polo shirt (very cute tiny cow where a preppy alligator would be) and an “SO wear it declare it” top (declare what?).

Other days I go to Goodwill and come out with nothing, after looking listlessly through rack after rack of pilled, grubby, Walmart/Target-store-brand clothes. Today I PASSED OVER a Hanna Andersson Christmas dress ($1.79) and several Gymboree things, just because I didn’t love them, and a Gap zip-up sweatshirt because I already had a Gap jacket and a Hanna Andersson sweatshirt in my hand.

After Goodwill, we went to Target. I wish I’d remembered to buy candy, but I just didn’t and there’s no turning back time. I bought more sunscreen, which involved clenching my teeth because Henry somehow lost a brand-new $8 bottle of it on his FIRST DAY at camp, and even though it had his name all over it in permanent marker, it is apparently gone forever and he needs a replacement. I also compared the ingredients of the Target brand multivitamin I usually buy on sale for $4.49/100, and found it’s completely identical to the Target brand “adults under 50” multivitamin which is sold for $10.99/400 and was on sale for $9.89. And I got milk, so now I don’t have to go all the way to the grocery store just for milk. A triumph.

This has all been a terrible mistake: having children, signing them up for summer things—all of it. I was going to give a sample of today’s schedule so you could rear back in dismay, but I realized it doesn’t look so bad when it’s written down. So what if I have to drop off the first two kids before 7:00, the next at 8:00, and the next at 9:00, picking up the first two between the 8:00 and 9:00 drop-offs? That’s not so bad. But such a schedule doesn’t take into account the WAVES of breakfasting and sunscreening and lunch-packing and form-remembering and do-you-have-your-towels’ing. Nor does it take into account the way I keep FORGETTING WHAT I’M DOING, so that it dawns on me in a sudden rush that, wait a second, if I’m dropping off one kid for piano lessons at 2:30 and a second kid for piano lessons at 3:00, that’s going to put a cramp in my “needing to pick up a third kid at 3:00 on the other side of town” style. And then, wait, when the second kid needs to be picked up at 3:30, I need to be picking up the fourth kid on the other side of town.

In short: o_O’

(The apostrophe is a sweat droplet of stress and befrazzlement. Also of heat.)

Well. Anyway. In happier news, I watched the first movie I’ve ever seen that was in DUTCH.

It’s called Bride Flight, and the cover makes it look soapier/shmoopier than it was. But it’s a little soapy/shmoopy. It’s about three Dutch women coming to Australia in the 1950s to meet up with fiancés/husbands, and about the Channing-Tatum/Carey-Elwes-style guy they meet on the plane over. There are a couple of Big Nudity/Sex scenes, but kind of artsy/pretty rather than horrifying/porny. Oh, wait, there’s one “up on the kitchen counter” scene that is more the latter, but it is mercifully brief. I liked the movie and would recommend it, but I feel like I’ll have to watch it again for the second storyline (when the characters are all old) to make sense: I couldn’t keep them straight until most of their story was over.

When I wrote “THERE IS TOO MUCH EVERYTHING” on Twitter the other day, my friend Firegirl astutely remarked that school must be out. And yes. I keep wanting to write more about that, but how can I when the house is LITTERED WITH CHILDREN? I will tell you frankly that when I was doing all my Planning For a Big Family, I didn’t take summers into account. I thought things like, “And by the time the third baby is born, the eldest will be in school all day, so it’s really just two children for most of the day!” or whatever, and I forgot about summer. I literally forgot.

Rob graduated from middle school! Or rather, he “completed” from middle school. There was a whole day of Completion Ceremonies. One of the worst parts, I think (I mean in addition to having a whole day of completion ceremonies), is that it seemed kind of *cough*lame*cough* to be making such a fuss over going from 8th grade to 9th. I know it’s kind of cool to finish middle school and go to high school…but…. Like, I think all this fuss will be FUN when he’s graduating high school. But. There was this big tearful Goodbye Ceremony where they could “say their final farewells to one another” (actual principal quote)—but…they will see each other in two months. In 9th grade. As they continue their regularly-scheduled school programming. We don’t live in the kind of district where kids split off into different high schools: they’re all moving together from one building to another building.

The awards ceremony went on for a million years, which was actually an hour and forty-five minutes. They gave out hundreds and hundreds of awards. SO VERY MANY self-esteem-boosting awards that any child who managed NOT to get an award would be dealt an incredible blow to their self-esteem. Backfiring: Ur doin it right.

I think they should have handed out Cutest Name awards. That was how I passed the time: going through the list of completers and picking my favorite names. I wish I could tell you all my favorites without, like, putting other people’s real names all over the internet. One of them was along the lines of Fiona Flowers, and then she was also dressed super-cute/classy in a poofy skirt and twin set and wedge sandals.

For the graduation itself, there was a limit of four guests per student, so Paul and I had to take Henry with us if we both wanted to go (because William can babysit the twins, but he can’t babysit Henry) (WE can barely babysit Henry). It was soooooo hot and crowded, and the 8th graders had to be there half an hour before it started, which meant we ALL had to be there half an hour before it started, which meant we sat in a hot and crowded middle school gym for an extra 30 minutes. It was lucky I wore a long skirt instead of one of the dresses I’d considered (knee-length), because we were sitting on the very top bleacher. Even with a long skirt, I felt like it was a good idea to cross those ankles and press those knees.

I’d been worried about Rob’s outfit: he declined my ideas of ties and jackets, but I knew from the moms in my circle that their girls were buying new, fancy dresses, so I was a little worried I should have pushed harder. But it turned out he was nicely in the middle: some boys wore full-on suits with dress shoes and ties, and some boys wore plaid shorts with polo shirts. Rob wore his $4.49 Goodwill dark grey trousers with an untucked short-sleeved button-down plaid shirt in turquoise/aqua/navy/white (Target Shaun White, if that gives you a mental picture of the look of it), and his usual black sneakers. I felt like he looked kind of dorky but in the right way: like, deliberate cool dorkiness. It helps that he’s TALL (almost six feet) and has long hair.

The girls, by the way. OMG. Way more fun outfits than the boys. But OMG. Many of them were acquiring life experience about how a short tight skirt and unfamiliar high heels are an awkward combination when your path involves stairs up to a stage and then stairs back down, in front of hundreds of people. One girl (and remember, these are FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLDS) was wearing a TIGHT, SHORT, WHITE, SATIN, HALTER dress with teetery high heels and a very fancy updo. She looked like she was ready to share her red carpet secrets with US Weekly, and here we were in the middle school gym. Approximately half the girls were wearing those dresses that are short in the front and long in the back. This has been your STYLE WATCH REPORT.

The reading of all the names was mercifully brisk. However, next year they should get someone whose skill set includes microphones.

When Rob’s name was called, I whooped and clapped, despite feeling conspicuous and embarrassed: I made myself notice beforehand that every single graduate had a small (approximately 4-person) whooping/clapping response to having their name called, and that none of those reactions seemed startling or weird or inappropriate to anyone else. But Paul! Paul DID NOTHING. He just sat there. So Rob’s cheering section was Just Me. When called on this breach, Paul said, “I didn’t know we were doing that!” Please. I’d give him a pass on the whooping, but no CLAPPING? The precedent was WELL-SET by then: (1) graduate’s name (2) small whoop/clap outburst (1) graduate’s name (2) small whoop/clap outburst. It’s a simple ABABAB pattern, PAUL.

I finally finished reading A Dual Inheritance.

I liked it, but I felt like I was reading it FOREVER. It’s the kind of story that follows two college friends from their college years to their grandparent years, and it seemed like it was happening IN REAL TIME. But I liked it and would recommend it.

I watched Tiny Furniture and ended up sobbing because I was picturing my own dear daughter growing up to be like Lena Dunham’s character. The same thing kept happening when I was watching Girls. This is a new entry, then, for my list of Indicators of Middle Age: it’s when we start identifying the female lead with our daughters/nieces instead of with ourselves.

And I wrote this:

Absolute Beginners Guide to Naming Your Baby. It was an unusually fun project, and involved writing text to fit in cute boxes so that it could be formatted for a print-out (I would love to take credit for that, but alas: I did not do the pretty formatting).