I wish I could use the same verb for watching a movie as for reading a book, because what I want to say is that recently I verbed a movie and a book that both struck me in some of the same ways. Both shocked me at some parts, and some awful things happen in both, and I wouldn’t know whether to recommend either one—but on the other hand they’ve both stuck with me.

(photo from Amazon.com)

The movie was Young Adult (Netflix link). Parts of it seemed SO GOOD, and I thought Charlize Theron did such a good job, and I got a crush on Patton Oswalt, and I approved of the basic messages of the movie. And it was refreshing to the point of riveting to see trichotillomania shown all casual-like (she’s scalp and I’m eyebrows/eyelashes, but that’s like saying someone smokes a different brand of cigarettes).

But there are some agonizing scenes where someone ruins a party or says something very very inappropriate/awkward/mean. And the character sketches are good and well-accomplished but depressing. But in the end I was glad I’d seen it, and there were quite a few funny moments. I don’t know. I’m not really recommending it, but I’m bringing it to your attention in case it looks good to you.

(photo from Amazon.com)

The book was The Chocolate Money, by Ashley Prentice Norton. Dear god. This is the kind of book where I kept looking at the author’s photo thinking two things: (1) This book is heavily based on her actual experiences, I’m sure of it; (2) She is just self-aware enough to realize she’s been damaged by these experiences, but not self-aware enough to realize just how badly. Also, the author photo has her ostentatiously wearing ripped jeans with heavy jewels, like “Look how quirky!” It turns out she’s a Rockefeller heiress, and her mother isn’t speaking to her after reading the book.

I kept thinking I was going to stop reading, because I found it so many parts gross and disturbing, and because so many people were doing so many devasting-emotional-impact things to each other, and I was afraid those parts would linger with me, and I think some of them will. But the thing is, I also thought it was good. I didn’t ever think “She only got this book deal because of who she is”; I thought, “Whoa. Ouch. Ick. Oh, dear.” It reminded me a little of Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld—but it was as if Ashley Prentice Norton said to Curtis Sittenfeld, “Oh, you think YOU depressingly and painfully exposed the disgusting underbelly of the rich and privileged? Nice try, OUTSIDER.” Again, I’m not really recommending it—more like exclaiming “dear god!” in front of you and, when you say “What?,” telling you why I exclaimed.

This seems like a good day to have my coffee in my Will and Kate mug.

I’m also wearing my bleach-fireworks shirt, for probably the last time (fabric is finally disintegrating from being worn/washed a million times).

********

I am having a touch of the blues. They are of the “Some day all my lovingly-acquired possessions are going to be dumped in some yard sale or consignment shop, where strangers will look at them and say ‘meh’ and/or make mocking remarks” variety.

This is the flip side of one of the things I like about shopping at consignment store, which is the feeling of giving someone else’s lovingly-acquired possession a loving new home. It can backfire, as seen here.

That reminds me, though, to show you one of my recently/lovingly-acquired possessions:

I’ve been questing for a bureau for Elizabeth’s room, and found this old bureau at a consignment store. It had been marked down, like, THREE TIMES, yet it is gorgeous (cream and gilt and all curvy and shapey) and has drawers that are dove-tailed front AND back. And it goes very nicely with Elizabeth’s bed frame, another consignment-shop find. And also with the little bookshelf, which we assembled from a box from Target.

It took a year for this to work out—but then today it did, EXACTLY AS PLANNED. This morning I caught myself saying, “Let’s see, it’s going to be LIGHTER in the morning now, right? Or wait, let’s see, we…”—so I went directly to the computer and printed out my own Fall Back Printout (I actually DID get around to making a Google Doc for it, so you can print it out too) and put it on the fridge so that NO ONE has an excuse to start ANY sentence with “Wait, we set the clocks BACK an hour, so…”

********

(photo from Amazon.com)

Last night I watched Get Low (Netflix link), and I greatly enjoyed it. It’s a slow-going movie; it took me awhile to get into it. It’s the kind where there’s something we don’t know, and we get the story verrrrrry gradually; at first I found this frustrating, but after awhile I was willing to wait. Bill Murray was in it, and he was my favorite kind of Bill Murray: underplayed, with a lot of tiny voice things and tiny expression things that I found hilarious (but difficult to explain to the children why I was laughing). At the end there’s some cathartic crying. And there are a lot of interesting things to think about afterward (including “Wait, I thought they were going to tell stories. Why didn’t they tell the stories? I wanted to hear the stories”).

********

I am confused about B vitamins. I went to the store to buy B1, and they had B6 and B12 and B-complex, but no B1. I went home to look online, and found that B1 is usually sold as thiamine. B3 is sold as niacin, and B9 is sold as folic acid.

Isn’t that strange/neat? Some B vitamins are known by names, and some by numbers. …That seems less remarkable/interesting now that I type it out.

I want to make a note for next year: glow stuff is THE BEST HALLOWEEN IDEA EVER. I got a pack of 15 glow bracelets in the Target dollar section for, as you might suspect, a dollar, and I also bought three glow necklaces and a pair of glow glasses. The glow glasses were not a great idea (Paul wore them and looked awesome, but he said they messed with night vision), but the rest of it was great: the kids were SO INCREDIBLY MORE VISIBLE than the kids without glow stuff on. Each kid wore a bracelet on each wrist, and a bracelet on each strap of their trick-or-treat bag, and if I’d thought of it I would have put a bracelet on each ankle as well. (Next year I’ll spend TWO dollars on glow bracelets!) Taking motion photos outdoors at night rarely goes well for anyone, but this gives the GIST of what two kids look like in the dark if they’re wearing some glow stuff:

I had some costume triumphs this year. The best one was Elizabeth’s costume: she wanted to go as Raven from Teen Titans, and I didn’t want to spend $40 on the costume + shipping, so I tried for DIY/homemade. Here’s what Raven looks like (I would like to credit this image, but it is ALL OVER THE PLACE uncredited, so here it is with thanks and credit to whoever it belongs to):

Looking at Raven, I’d say her most important feature, costume-wise, is that cloak. I looked into buying just a cloak, but that was in the “might as well just buy the costume” league of expensive. My mom offered to sew one, but that looked like it was going to end up more expensive and time-consuming than would be worth the savings.

Here’s what we did: I bought a $4 one-size-fits-most blue rain poncho (the kind that comes in a little packet) and cut up the middle allllmost to the top (leaving the neck opening intact). I also ended up cutting a long strip off each side to make the sleeves shorter. It was PERFECT.

She’s trying to look crabby like Raven

For the jeweled belt/brooch, we happened to find some of those big-version flat glass vase-filler things at a consignment store (if I’d thought of using those glass things before seeing them at the consignment shop, I would have looked at a craft store). Paul happened to have four flat round metal things to hot-glue the big red glass things to, but if he hadn’t had those I would have used cardboard painted with gold paint. (And if we hadn’t found the big red glass gems, I would have used circles of red paper, maybe with saran wrap over it for shine.) Then I hot-glued the glass-on-metal-circles to an old belt, which she wore backwards so the buckle wouldn’t show. (There was originally another round thing on that belt, but it fell off and got lost at school.) I glued one more glass-on-metal to a clothespin, which I clipped to the top of the cape-cut as a brooch. (I colored the exposed part of the clothespin with a blue Sharpie.)

She wanted a black leotard, but those are not cheap. Instead I had her wear a black turtleneck and dark navy skirt. She wanted slouchy purple boots; I had her wear her dark turquoise ones. Raven’s skin is grey, so she’s also wearing grey tights and grey gloves we already had (both from Target: tights $4, gloves in a pack of three pairs for $2). I used a $1 tube of white face paint to make her face pale-but-not-clown.

The main disappointment was the hair: Raven’s is blue-purple (it looks VERY PURPLE in the image above, but it’s described as midnight blue), so I bought a $2 can of purple hair spray. It says clearly on it “Cap indicates color.” No, it does not:

It was PINK. Bright pink! The cap is DARK PURPLE! Well. We got over it, but it was disappointing.

(She was compensated by the fact that it DID NOT WASH OUT. So she gets to go to school today with pink hair! Whereas I consider that a second disappointment with the product.)

Also a little disappointing: we forgot to put her jewel sticker on her forehead, which a brother helpfully pointed out when it was too late to do anything about it. But our PLAN was to use a jewel from a Sticky Mosaics set she has; if that wouldn’t stick, I would have used a washable red marker to draw one on.

But what surprised me in general was that it didn’t have to be The Same in order to Look Right: no one is holding up a picture of Raven to compare and then saying, “Wait, her boots are supposed to be PURPLE” or “That skirt looks NAVY.” What’s important is THE GIST.

The other costume struggle-ending-in-success was William’s. He wanted to be Luke Skywalker, but JEDI Luke Skywalker. Which basically looks like a guy wearing black/brown clothes. Since William is 5’4″, I thought we were already pushing the trick-or-treat thing without also making it look like he didn’t bother to dress up. So I made him look more dressed up with a belted brown towel, and I felt like he REALLY DID suddenly look much more in-costume:

(I evened up the ends of the towel after seeing this photo)

The other crucial element was, of course, the sword, which glowed in the dark. It was $8 at Target, but then that was the total cost of the costume. I have been informed that it is The Wrong Color, but there were two color choices, red and blue, so I got blue.

This outfit showed me that Doing Something almost always looks better than Not, even if the Something doesn’t really make Sense. That is: even though the towel is not an accurate representation of any part of a Jedi costume, he still looked MUCH MORE like a Jedi with it than without it.

I’m reading a book that says parents can’t drink alcohol and still expect their teenagers not to drink alcohol AND smoke pot (because pot is reportedly less dangerous than alcohol).

I was all, “Oh, crap,” and started composing a memo to Paul (“To: Paul. Re: Alcohol. Memo: GET READY TO TOTAL THAT TEE, BABY”). Then tonight as I was folding laundry and thinking about how I couldn’t expect my teenager not to drink if _I_ continued to drink the gin-and-seltzer I was sipping, I had this thought: “Wait. Yes I CAN expect that.”

Because otherwise, I would also need to give up driving: I can’t reasonably expect my un-driver’s-licensed teenager not to drive if I’M going to drive. And I would need to stop having sex, because otherwise how can I possibly suggest to my child that he or she not have sex, if they know from the number of children in this house that _I_ must have done it at some point? I can’t stay up until 10:00 or 10:30 anymore; I’ll need to go to bed at the kids’ bedtime. And I will need to stop using matches, because otherwise I’m practically INVITING them with my own match-usage! And I can’t SWEAR, certainly, and still expect THEM not to! And so on.

It’s silly to think that it’s hypocritical to do grown-up things while expecting our children NOT to do grown-up things. The message isn’t “THESE THINGS ARE EVIL!! NEVER DO THEM!!!,” it’s only, “Wait until you’re old enough.”

Elizabeth’s ears are pierced, and have been since she was five. It’s gone really well, much better than when I had MY ears pierced at five and they got infected, and KEPT getting infected, until we let the holes close up.

She’s had two minor infections in the last couple of years, both of which cleared up with a few days of cleaning them with the stuff they gave us a bottle of when we got her ears pierced, and putting antibiotic ointment on them. Other than that, they’ve been zero care: after the first six to eight weeks or however long it was that the ear-piercing place told us to take daily care of them, we haven’t routinely cleaned them or done anything at all with them.

I asked her yesterday what percentage of her female classmates had their ears pierced, and she said about half. I was interested because customs vary widely: in some communities it’s common to get the ears pierced in infancy, and in others it’s common to wait until the teens. My GUESS was that my particular community the curve would show very few (but SOME) infancy piercings, and very few (but SOME) “not until you’re 16/18/21” piercings, but then the biggest chunk of piercings divided into three basic age groups: the “about age 5-6” group, the “about age 9-10” group, and the “about age 12-13” group.

I really wish there was a good way to COLLECT information I’m curious about. I can stare at everyone’s ears and come up with a very loose estimate—but that doesn’t give me BACK STORY. I’ve gotten used to the blog-type community, where if I’m curious about something I can just ASK. …Maybe it’s not too late to get my questions added to the ballot.

Here’s basically what I’m wondering: What was your own pierced-ears experience, and how was the age decision reached? And then, what about your daughter-related experience/plans? (You don’t need to have daughters to answer this part—it can be what do you think you WOULD do if you DID.)

My own experience is that I got my ears pierced twice in early childhood, at about ages 5 and 7, once with star-shaped studs and once with birthstone studs. I remember really really wanting them pierced, so my guess is I did it at the very first age I was allowed to. The first time, the ears got repeatedly infected and we finally let them heal over, and the second time was a re-do in a slightly different location (the piercing person said the first pair hadn’t been done in the right place). Then I got them pierced twice more in high school, so I have four holes in each ear. (I use two: top pair and bottom pair.)

For a daughter, I could think of upsides and downsides to any age for piercing. I wanted her to be old enough for it to be An Exciting Event, and I had age 5-8 in mind.

Elizabeth is having a behavior regression of some sort. One reason it’s hard to put a finger on what kind of regression it is is that I think I stopped using the word “regression” after babyhood, so it no longer feels like a natural word to use. But I’m finding it’s a really good word for post-babyhood, too, as it implies “temporary” and “a step back, but still on the path” and so on. Encouraging! It felt better to say a baby was having a sleep regression instead of saying that the baby had stopped sleeping nicely, MAYBE NEVER TO START AGAIN; and it feels better to say 7-year-old Elizabeth is having a behavior regression, instead of saying that she may be morphing into someone who leaves her coat and backpack on the floor even after I’ve told her three times to pick them up.

Exhibit A

Based on her temperament I don’t THINK it’s defiance, although it’s likely to be line-finding: seeing how much she really has to do. Paul told me that when he was a child, his mom would tell him to do a task—say, mowing the lawn. He would start mowing, but then halfway through he’d “come in for a drink of water” and then drift away and start reading a book. He found that if she came upon the task half-done, and then found him reading, she would sigh heavily and then finish the task herself. As you can imagine, this pattern has caused us some issues in our marriage. Thanks for the enduring legacy, mother-in-law.

But I see how easy it is to do, without intending to. When I tell Elizabeth that after she takes her shower she needs to bring her discarded pajamas back to her room with her, and then after she’s left for school I find those pajamas still on the bathroom floor, it’s easy to sigh heavily and do it myself: I don’t want to look at the clothes on the floor all day, and I don’t want to bring out the Big Parenting Guns for a single episode of forgetting.

But it’s not a single episode anymore, which snuck up on me a bit. With my own temperament, and with this number of children, and with the way I’m typically half-composing a blog post in my head at any particular time, a child has to do something quite a few times before it gets to the front of my attention—which CAN be good (it means my controlling/micro-managing impulses are distracted and I’m not likely to jump on the kids for one single error or for an issue that will resolve itself) but also CAN be bad, because things can get pretty far off-track before I realize I need to engage the parenting engines. Then it takes longer to pull things back to where they should be than it would have if I’d noticed and corrected right away.

As in this case, where even though for several days I have been pointing out the problem to Elizabeth and cracking down on the follow-through, I haven’t yet seen a change in HER behavior—just in MINE, which is the first stage of change. I don’t remind her three times; instead, the very first time I need to remind her I include a gentle scold with that reminder: “Elizabeth. You are supposed to be putting away your backpack without me reminding you.” I DO leave her pajamas on the bathroom floor all day so she can put them in the laundry herself when she gets home from school—and to compensate me for looking at the messy heap all day, I also have her do another little task for me. Instead of waiting to scold until after we’ve had to scramble and panic, I include a partial scold with an instruction: “Time to get ready for school. And remember, you’ve been dawdling recently and then we’ve both had to scramble, and a scolding at the bus stop is not a nice way for either of us to start our day; let’s not have that happen today.”

(the view this morning, after Elizabeth left for school)

I have been feeling a little thinner lately, and wondered if I was slimming down a bit without realizing. I started working it a little, even, feeling extra cute and doing a little more sashaying. I finally checked the scale yesterday morning, and I’m up five pounds. Now I feel plumper. I’ve had the opposite experience, too: feeling really dumpy, SURE I’ve gained at LEAST five pounds—and then I weigh, and I’m actually down five pounds, and then I feel like I can DEFINITELY tell I’m thinner.

********

We rearranged our kitchen a bit, and now we have a little more counter space but also my coffee maker is more difficult to get to. This morning I was wondering why I have felt SO tired and draggy and motivationless recently—and then I realized I haven’t had coffee for three or four days, not since we rearranged things. That slight change in coffee pot location made me (1) stop drinking coffee and (2) not realize it.

********

I have made a mental note: if I am ever in charge of a group of volunteers, I am not going to spin the volunteer tasks as “FUN!!!” and “EXCITING!!” It gives me flashbacks to teachers in school instructing us to “Have FUN” with an assignment. “Just PLAY with it! Have FUN with it!” No. This is not fun. Let’s add the word fun with our vocabulary list, since not all of us here seem to understand the definition. And yet I find myself tempted to say the same thing when helping one of the kids with an assignment: “Just PLAY with it a little! Make it more FUN! Don’t make it into such a GRUELING TASK!” Nice. That’ll work.

A more recent example is a volunteer “opportunity” I am participating in. I signed up for this on purpose; I am glad to help out for free with the work that needs to be done. But it is WORK. It is NOT FUN. It is CERTAINLY not “The Great [Type of Work] Adventure of 2012!!!” as the PTA officer is currently referring to it, in what I always assume is a voice that could be described as “chirpy.” It’s all email, so I don’t know for sure. Maybe she’s using more of a Daria voice. Maybe I could READ it in a Daria voice to improve it.

Acting as if the work is fun diminishes the contribution people are making. I am doing WORK, and I want CREDIT for doing work. I don’t want anyone pretending that this is a PARTY and that we are ENJOYING ourselves. I find elements of it satisfying or else I wouldn’t do it, but I would never, ever, ever do this for fun. I do this to be HELPFUL and to DO MY SHARE. I am not PLAYING, I am BEING A GOOD CITIZEN.

Acting as if it’s fun seems to be intended to make it fun, or to lighten the attitude. Instead, it becrappens the attitude: if someone tells me what a grand fun adventure this is, I find myself noticing how non-fun it in fact is, and wanting to point that out to them. If someone instead thanks me fervently for all this hard work I’m doing, I would find myself saying no, no, I didn’t mind at all! It was fun! See? Attitude improvement! …And kind of an argumentative personality, apparently, but WHATEVER. No more chirping about how work is fun, is the point here.

I would like to nominate a candidate in the “Ugliest Nailpolish” category:

I’m not sure even this ugly photo lets you appreciate just how ugly it was. Maybe another photo is needed, a super close-up:

That’s still not QUITE expressing it. I’m not even sorry I didn’t do a good job staying in the lines, because I think the bits on the skin give a better feeling for what the color looked like. Nauseating yellow-greenish brown, with chunks. It felt like it ought to come as part of a Halloween costume. A zombie, maybe. Something decaying and dirty.

It’s Revlon Nail Art Moon Candy in Cosmic, and I’m so happy I got it on clearance instead of paying full-price:

It’s two attached bottles. First you’re supposed to put on two coats of what looks in the bottle like a nice dark green but is in fact a streaky algae/mud combination. As I was doing that, I was thinking, “Wow, I wonder how the topcoat is going to transform THIS?”

Then you put on the top coat, which looks like it’s going to be a glorious gold with cool shimmery iridescent bits, but in fact ends up adding a “pee” element to the color, as well as being more litter than glitter.

I took the pictures quickly, so I could remove the polish right away—and I NEVER take polish off immediately, even if I think it’s meh, because it’s discouraging to waste all that work. But I wanted this OFF MY NAILS. (I didn’t even wait to take the picture of the bottle, figuring I could do that later; you can see the edge of my thumbnail, which is now a much nicer medium green.)

It was fun to show the kids, though. I was like, “Look at my nails!” and each in turn said “EEEEEEWWWWWWWW GROSS!!”

I had to drive a little bit yesterday evening, and some of the “grateful to be alive” feeling persists even unto this morning.

I drive in the dark only a few times a year. Part of it is that I don’t like to. Part of it is that I don’t need to: we’re pretty much always in for the night after the dinner/bedtime routine starts (at, like, 4:30).

I feel like I can’t SEE when I drive at night. Part of this is that I’m a nervous driver, so any changes (different roads, different passenger, different weather, etc.) increases that nervousness. Part of it is that IT IS IN FACT DARK, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed this but WE CAN’T SEE IN THE DARK. And then, while it’s dark and I’m driving, lights shine intermittently into my eyes. That DOES NOT HELP.

I feel a little emperor’s-new-clothes about it: like, how come everyone is acting like it’s okay to do this already-dangerous activity IN THE DARK? Shall we also now have surgery in the dark? chop wood in the dark? scythe hay in the dark? get haircuts in the dark? rapidly cut vegetables in the dark? How about in the dark AND with bright lights shining intermittently in our eyes?

********
I bought four Cadbury screme eggs, and I have not eaten a single one: the stuff inside the eggs is green for Halloween, and that makes me queasy to even think about. (If the regular white filling makes YOU queasy to think about, I beg you not to explain why.) And yet I WANT to eat Cadbury eggs! What a treat to get to have them even though it’s not Easter! I WANT to eat them! Maybe I should eat them in the dark. (And here, shine this light in my eyes.)