I just read and loved a book I NEVER would have chosen except that BOTH my parents read it and liked it:

Death Match, by Lincoln Child
(photo from Amazon.com)

The cover does not appeal to me, nor does the title, and also I think more than 95% of the books I read are by women because I generally don’t identify with either the writing style or the subject matter of male authors. I would not have even picked this book up to skim the inner flap, is what I am telling you.

Furthermore, the book has flaws. There is a time or two when the protagonist does something and I think, “It is 100% clear he should be doing something different, so this is obviously just a way for the author to give us information he wants us to have and/or force the plot into a particular shape.” And there are some other places where, afterward or at the time, I thought, “But why would they….?” and “But wouldn’t they…?” and “Wait, but if it was the night before, the child would have been…” and “Surely any sensible person would have realized that the information could have been…?” and “But couldn’t he have just NOT set it up that way?” and “Well, and it would have to cost WAY MORE than that.”

But WHATEVER, because the PREMISE is one of the most lock-on fascinating ones I’ve heard of in a long time. And you might THINK I am spoiling it when I tell you the plot, but I am not: I will tell you what my mother told me when I thought SHE was spoiling it, but then when I read the book I thought no, she wasn’t.

The premise is that there is a dating service that has a 100% success rate: it costs $25,000 PER PERSON to join, but there’s a full money-back guarantee and no one has ever used it—or even needed to be matched a second time because the first one didn’t work out. (The cynical reader might notice that every single person who uses this agency is not only attractive and intelligent and emotionally/mentally-well-balanced, but also marvelously multi-talented, and with many interesting interests. We will not spend too much time, however, wondering about couples who are kind of dim and dull; we will just assume they didn’t make for as good reading.) Matched couples are remarkably, blissfully happy. As one or two of the employees at the agency says, people left on their own choose each other for the wrong reasons and eliminate potential partners for the wrong reasons; the agency matches people who at first think the match was a total mistake, and then within minutes see the perfection of it.

Then the couples start committing joint suicide, and a psychologist/detective is called in to find out what is going on. The book is not only his attempt to figure things out, but also lots of interesting discussion about how the agency works, and the tests they use to establish compatibility.

***SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO LIKE TO BE PREPARED FOR UPSETTING SCENES INVOLVING CHILDREN***
The opening scene is a little traumatic, because a small child (old enough to sit in a high chair, not old enough to speak) has SEEN her parents kill themselves. But we don’t join the scene until it’s over (we just figure out that she would have had to have seen it), and the child is safe and unharmed and of course too young to really know what’s happened. In another scene, it is mentioned that one of the women who committed suicide was pregnant.
***END SLIGHT SPOILERS***

A potential downside of this book is you may find yourself looking sideways at your significant other, wondering if you chose him/her for the wrong reasons and if you are not in fact particularly compatible. One character in the book says that even though he’s had a long and happy marriage with his wife, he would have cut off his own arm to have a relationship like the one he’s seen of a couple matched by the dating service. Food for thought, and not necessarily a meal that sits well. But it has been a long time since I had to take a book to another room because I HAD to keep reading it and couldn’t tolerate any distractions at all.

Yesterday I was having a crappy day for no reason. I woke up, and the day was already crappy despite the tulips blooming and nobody barfing and the car out of the shop and basically everything going just fine. But there was no more Easter candy, and when I woke up I thought I was waking up at about 2:00 in the morning but in fact it was 5 minutes before I had to get up and yet I still fell back to sleep so I woke up feeling all weird and sleep-interrupted, and furthermore I’ve been reading more volumes of the Y: The Last Man series so I’d been having bad dreams about being trapped in a bathroom with killers outside, and as soon as I woke up I remembered I’d forgotten to thaw muffins and ANYway it wasn’t all that bad a day and yet it WAS.

I poked around for awhile trying to fix it. Good breakfast. Favorite lavender-vanilla conditioner and body wash. Extra coffee. Sitting and reading more Y: The Last Man instead of getting going on the laundry. Still I remained cranky and wan.

Then I remembered what I hardly ever seem to remember on the days that are crappy because I am feeling too crappy to think of things that would make me feel better: I have Crappy Day Presents. And at first I tried to talk myself out of opening one, because I didn’t have a good reason for having a crappy day, and also because a characteristic of this kind of crappy day is a certain sullenness and resistance toward improving it—as if being able to improve it with a present would mean it hadn’t REALLY been a crappy day. I shook that right off.

And I also remembered that when I wrote about Crappy Day Presents before, some of you asked for follow-ups to give you more ideas for sending your own CDP boxes, so…look what Mean Living (more of a Twitter girl these days AHEM languishing blog) sent me:

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP ALREADY

I should have waited for good lighting to take the pictures, but I knew those mini Cadbury Eggs were not going to make it to the good lighting (they are half-gone as I write this post) so you get one with too much flash, and one dark and not completely in focus.

Can you believe that cross-stitch? Mean Living is all “Please excuse all the flaws” and I was all “OMG you MADE this? out of, like, THREAD??” Look at the BIRDY. Look at the SWEET LITTLE FLOWERS, which gradually change from darker to lighter as the row goes along. And do you see what it says? “TODAY’S GOAL: Do not go slap out of my mind.” And the thread it’s written in MATCHES MY BLOG. I think I should put it by the coffee pot. Or next to my alarm clock.

I nearly came home with another cat yesterday. She was perfect: 6 years old, a grey-and-white fur pattern we’ve never had before, had lived with other cats before, and she passed The Henry Test (tolerating with aplomb his sudden loud sounds, lunges, awkward hugs, and fur-ruffling pettings, but also stepping confidently away from him when she’d had enough).

But I didn’t bring her home. Instead I talked my mother’s ear off all the way home about how it was like when you date someone who seems so perfect and list-checking-off in every way, you WISH you were passionate about them, but you’re just NOT. I thought she was a great, great cat, probably perfect for our family, but I didn’t feel like I couldn’t leave the shelter without her.

And we are NOT having more than three cats, so I thought I’d prefer to leave the Third Cat position empty, in case I encountered a cat I felt I couldn’t live without. It’s fun to acquire a new cat, and our current cats are ages 1 and 2 so it’s likely to be a LONG TIME before we replace them (just did math: HENRY COULD BE OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL OMG)—and we just got them in the past year, so maybe it would be nice to spread out the cat-shopping fun a little. But I also feel a little weird and regretful about it: we could given that great cat a home, but chose not to because of a weird and misapplied dating analogy. It helps that our shelter is no-kill AND has a high turnover: she WILL be adopted, and soon, just not by us.

********

I used that trip to the shelter to motivate myself to get rid of four more kitchen-trash-sized bags of clothes. (Connection: donation dumpster at shelter.) A lot was Henry’s outgrown stuff, but there was also a bunch of clothes I bought for Elizabeth that she just Won’t Wear, and I might as well pass them on to a little girl who Will. And some curtains I’ve saved for over a decade because they were perfect in our apartment even though they don’t work in our house. And five pairs of rain boots that are too small for anyone who lives here. And several pairs of near-new shoes that kids didn’t like/wear for whatever reason. And a long skirt I think of myself as being just about to wear, but I don’t wear it, EVER. And two pair of wide-legged jeans I trip in. And some shirts the bigger boys are wearing that were a good deal but I don’t like them; they’d be fine as handmedowns, but I DON’T LIKE THEM, so I’m not storing/saving them and then seeing them again later. And about six pairs of brand-new jeans I bought for Elizabeth before it turned out she wears jeans about once a month. And some baby blankets.

********

Henry, encountering a slice of turkey: “Is this fish made out of HAM?” Meat education fail.

********

I dreamed last night that I was in labor, but it was a pleasant dream because it was labor as I’d IMAGINED it would be (tight squeezing pain over entire tum area—like a Braxton-Hicks but with pain) rather than as it actually WAS (internal small-focus stabbing-knife-gas-pain-type feeling), and I felt like I was handling it.

********

Driving home from the library, THREE people are lucky I’m such a fearful defensive driver. First, a guy in a car pulled out of a side street, right through his stop sign and into my path. I had to come to a complete stop to avoid hitting him. He didn’t even flinch. A little further down the same road, a bicyclist traveling on a street perpendicular to mine flinged at full speed into the crosswalk from a sidewalk behind a building where I couldn’t see him, without stopping before entering the crosswalk, and without even glancing to see if a car was there. Third, a child (8-10 age) ran across the road without looking, not in a crosswalk.

Our school system has started taking school pictures TWICE a year, once in fall (“The Classic”) and now also once in spring (“The This Makes Us a LOT of Money, So How About We Do It Twice as Often”).

I object. School pictures are ONCE A YEAR. Those cut-out frames, with a place for each grade’s photo, have ONE PLACE PER GRADE. People who say “My fourth grade school photo” mean THE ONLY ONE TAKEN IN THAT GRADE.

I don’t object TOO stridently, though, because all I have to do is “not buy any.” At worst, it’s a second day of the year I have to make sure the kids have haircuts and are wearing clean clothes, so that no one will think I am a parent who forgot Unnecessary Second School Picture Day.

Still, I am irked. Not STRIDENTLY irked, but irked, on principle. These photos are so much more expensive than a package deal at JCPenney’s, for which I can print out a $7.99 coupon any time I want and get a 20-minute custom session where they try to get the facial expressions I’d like to have immortalized, rather than having my child stand in line and get a 6-second custom session where 3 seconds involve being told to stand stiffly and 2 seconds involve being asked to smile like they don’t mean it. I do the school pictures each year rather than doing the $7.99 deal because (1) I HATE having to take kids to have their pictures taken, and (2) I HATE dealing with the sales pitch for additional shots afterward, and (3) school pictures are sooooooo tradiiiiiitional. But they are NOT sooooooo tradiiiiiiiitional TWICE a year.

I AM glad this year, though, because even though I didn’t fill out the order form for photos, they sent home a proof sheet to try to tempt me to change my mind. And they did a little mock-up of what the child would look like against each of the eight background choices, which include, and I am not even kidding, “Floating Upright in Outer Space Posing for a Photo,” “Standing Out in a Freezing Winter Field in Springtime Short Sleeves,” “Standing in the Ocean, Apparently, With a Tropical Island Behind Me But I’m Wearing a Sweater Because Spring Was Late This Year,” “In Some Sort of Mansion, I Guess, or Maybe a Museum,” and “At a BASEBALL GAME, FTLOG.” So I have free, tiny, stiffly-posed, insincere-expressioned photos of the twins in all these places now, and that was WELL WORTH the minor inconvenience of making sure they didn’t have peanut butter on their shirts that day.

(I believe if you click the photos you can see them larger. But not MUCH larger, because they ARE tiny.)

The star of today’s shopping trip: a new toaster. We’ve needed a new one for awhile: our old one is a 4-slot toaster we got from Freecycle that takes so long the bread has time to GO STALE. But I couldn’t justify the cost of a toaster when we technically already had one. This toaster finally motivated me to make the purchase. For one thing, it’s stainless steel, so now I can enjoy noticing every fingerprint like everyone else.

But wait, there’s more! Gone are the days of spending tortuous long hours manually coiling the cord! This baby winds it up FOR you with the press of a button! Space-age!

Also, there is a COUNTDOWN TIMER, so you know when your toast is about to pop up! Now Mother won’t totally screw up breakfast for her family by serving ill-timed toast!

But this is my favorite feature: a big dent, so it was $9.00 instead of $36. And it’s not even as dramatic as it looks in the picture.

(Look! I already have fingerprints to wipe off!)

I also bought this handheld solitaire game. I wanted it at $14.99, but no. I saw it at 30% off and 50% off, but no. At 75% off ($3.74) it was MINE, BABY.

Nailpolish. Two-dollar nailpolish, so maybe it won’t be any good, but I thought the color had potential.

The last time I bought the “beauty bar” bar soap I use on my face was when I found a bunch of 8- or 12-packs of it on 75% off, maybe…ten years ago. To my surprise, when I used up a bar and went to get a fresh bar, I was actually OUT OF SOAP. I thought I must be mistaken, but it appeared to be true: I would need to PURCHASE soap. I bought Ivory because I’d recently read in a celebrity magazine that some celebrity’s mother told her to ONLY use Ivory soap on her face. When I was buying the soap I was remembering that it was Elizabeth Taylor, but when I was taking this picture I remembered that I think it was actually Jennifer Lopez. That is…not quite as pleasing, but she does have beautiful skin too.

(One bar already in the shower.)

Cute Easter eggs for next year’s egg hunt, 90% off, so 50 cents. I also got some candy, but let’s just gloss over that.

(Package-ripping courtesy of Henry, who was bored in the cart.)

New Target-brand bandaids. The hearts/flowers set is nice, but the other set is even better: one is cute giraffes/monkeys/elephants, and another is rows of purple penguins. (The third is teddies.)

These were YESTERDAY’S shopping trip, but whatevs. Elizabeth likes to wear dresses and skirts (with four boys, I say “OMG THANK GOODNESS”), and she’s been wearing her velvet-top-and-huge-poofy-gold-skirt Christmas dress once a week to kindergarten, and it really was not made for that many launderings, so I was looking forward to post-Easter dress clearances. I got one really-almost-TOO-dressy pink dress that would work as a flower girl dress and has beading and many layers of fabric under the skirt; one yellow eyelet sundress; and one brightly flowered sundress. All 75% off.

(It really is difficult to take nice photos of clothes.
See also: eBay, where even awesome-condition cute brand-name clothes
look awful when photographed flat on someone’s bed.)

Someone recommended this book to me and, as I often do, I put it on the library request list without even investigating.

When We Were Strangers, by Pamela Schoenewaldt
(photo from Amazon.com)

I read the first couple of pages and I was like, “Oh. Tiny village, young girl, late 1800s, poverty and misery. Not my style.” I kept reading only because it was my last library book.

It totally won me over. By the time she sets out for America, I was all, “Whoaaaaaaaaaa.” I could just PICTURE it. I really really really did not think I was much interested in immigration stories aside from a moderate interest in the most dramatic story from my own family (boat sank, almost everyone was killed except a few people including my male ancestor and female ancestor, who then perhaps bonded over their survival guilt and got married), but it turned out I WAS interested. Bewitched, almost. And yet, when I think back over it, I’m STILL not interested in a summary of the plot, and I don’t have much interest in reading MORE immigration stories.

Will YOU like it? Dunno! I mean, I could say, “If YOU don’t like immigration stories EITHER, you might!” or “If you DO like immigration stories, you might!”—so I suspect it’s actually, “If you like this style of writing, you will!” since I felt like it was more the storyteller than the story for this one.

Y: The Last Man, by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
(photo from Amazon.com)

Paul heard about this book and thought I’d like it so he requested it from the library. I read it in an evening, and handed it to him saying “More.” It’s an apocalyptic graphic novel series, and the gist is that every person and animal with a Y chromosome dies all at once—except for one man and one male monkey. The first book has to Do The Apocalypse Part, so there are a few upsetting pages where the women are watching all the men die. And then, of course, there is a new world order, and you know what new world orders are founded on? PEACE AND LOVE. Ha ha! No. New world orders are founded on people grabbing for power with both fists, using violence and cultish control practices when necessary.

So…it’s not like I can tell you this is not an upsetting book—but if you LIKE apocalypse stuff, as I do, I think you’ll like it. I was worried the visual element would be too much (I like apocalyptic BOOKS but not apocalyptic MOVIES), but I was able to handle it with only a few winces or upset feelings—and those are sort of guaranteed with, like, a mass death situation.

Picture This by Lynda Barry
(photo from Amazon.com)

I buy every new book by Lynda Barry without even looking to see what it’s about. It doesn’t MATTER what it’s about; I know I will like it. The back of this one says something about Lynda Barry having created a new genre, the graphic-novel how-to, and that’s what this is. It’s part demonstration, part instruction, part freestyle thoughts on art and the experience of making art and the experiences that go into art. Every page is crammed to the edges with pictures and words and watercolor. I don’t even DO art and I was interested. But of course, part of this is that I am very keen on Lynda Barry’s whole THING, her whole drawing/writing STYLE. So if you AREN’T…well, then, I think you won’t like this book! But if you DO, well then you WILL.

********

Well! Aren’t those good reviews? “If you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you would like! Contrariwise, if you DON’T like this sort of thing, then this is NOT the sort of thing you’d like!”

I will start by saying that I intend to tell this as if I were telling it to my 10-year-old who FAINTED when he saw a child at school get a nosebleed. I will be careful and gentle.

I have mentioned before that I like to donate blood regularly as one of my own Nice Things We Do For Other People things. For me it’s relatively easy, and while I guess I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “enjoyable,” I’m glad to do it and I get a pleasant feeling of doing-nice-things satisfaction from it.

But will you catch me nagging YOU to do it, or whining that you don’t? No. Well, I mean, you might catch me ENCOURAGING you to do it if you’re scared, and wishing that more people would donate—but if you DON’T donate, it’s not just that I won’t SAY anything negative, I won’t THINK anything negative. Many, many people CAN’T donate blood. There are tons of reasons: underweight, low blood pressure, low iron, various medications or heath states, vein problems, fainting, etc.

And many, many people CAN donate blood but DON’T WANT TO for a large number of assorted reasons, and those people are doing DIFFERENT things that help other people. We should each choose our OWN things; we can’t ALL do ALL the things, so if we each do our own selection, we will cover the most ground. Some of us donate money/clothes/food to charity; some of us volunteer at animal shelters or nursing homes or food pantries or crisis lines; some of us peer out our windows to make sure Those Kids aren’t getting Up To No Good out there; some of us cook for families that are sick or have a new baby; some of us tutor or mentor; some of us serve on committees or boards; some of us promote causes or work to raise awareness/action; some of us pick up litter while we walk the dog; some of us put a penny in the “Take a Penny, Leave a Penny” dish—there are all KINDS of unpaid, for-the-good-of-humanity things that need to be done, and it makes the most sense for each of us to do the things that we are most drawn to and the things that work best with our own skill sets. I don’t WANT to do a charity walk, and I’m not skilled at tutoring—but I DO want to give blood, and I have GORGEOUS veins.

If you think you might want to make blood-donating one of YOUR things, but you are nervous about it, or you feel nervous (as I do) about New Things when you don’t know how things will go or what they will be like, I will tell you about it. There will be slight variations from donation center to donation center, but I’ve given in six different states/centers now, and it’s been roughly the same at each one.

The first step is find a place to donate. (No, wait: probably the first step is finding out if you’re eligible.) Some areas have a donation center that’s open all the time; in other areas, the Red Cross sets up blood drives at churches or town halls or schools or other buildings that have enough room and can donate the space, and they’ll be there once every two weeks or once a month or something like that. You can search by zip code to find a place near you. I thought at first that there was nothing near me that had hours I was available to donate, but then it turned out there’s an every-4-weeks evening thing less than two miles from my house.

Some drives allow you to make an appointment, and others don’t. I haven’t found it makes much difference in waiting time: at my most recent drive, I overheard two other donors talking, and one said he’s found he waits 15 minutes if he has an appointment, or half an hour if he doesn’t. That sounds about right for that location. So if you do better if you can drop by on the spur of the moment, it’s not a huge deal not to have an appointment. I like to have an appointment, though, because otherwise I have trouble remembering when it’s been 8 weeks (you can donate every 8 weeks). I bring a book, and the waiting is time when no one is BOTHERING me. Also, bring ID.

When you first arrive, you check in. A volunteer gives you a sticker with your name on it and asks you to read a packet of information. If it’s your first time, read it; after the first time, skim it for a couple of minutes and turn all the pages so it looks like you’re a responsible donor. It tells you things like, “Please don’t donate blood if you are HIV-positive” and “You can’t donate if you’ve donated less than 8 weeks ago” and “Here are the tests we perform on your blood and the information of yours we’ll share” and “If you’re in high school, here are your specific rules.” This is also when you get any goodies the particular drive might be giving out: a certificate for a free pint of ice cream at a local place, or a certificate for a free Subway sub, or a free bag of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, or a Red Cross t-shirt—that sort of thing.

From check-in, you go to the waiting area. In most of the places where I’ve donated, I’ve been given a number, but in one place they called by first name. When it’s your turn, an employee in a white coat will take you into a cubical. If it’s your first time donating, you’ll need to give your name, social security number, date of birth, address, phone number, etc.; after the first time, you’ll have an ID card they can scan to call up your profile. If you’ve ever donated under another name, you’ll have to give that information every single time, which seems silly to me, and it’s such a hassle, and then you have to re-state your birthdate each time they enter another name, so now I have those two previous names and my birthdate written on a card I keep with my blood donor ID card so I can just hand it to them and they can copy it.

They’ll take your pulse and your blood pressure and your temperature, and they’ll glance at the veins that run along the insides of your elbows, and they’ll ask if you’re allergic to latex, and then comes my least favorite part of the whole thing: they’ll set up a little plastic shield between them and your hand, and they’ll prick your finger to get a drop or two of blood to test your iron. It doesn’t even hurt all that much, but it’s sudden (the little needle goes kerchunk) and then they SQUEEZE your finger hard, especially if your hands are cold. Anyway, the anticipation is worse than anything else. And incidentally, I take iron tablets in the days before a donation so I won’t be turned down for low iron; it’s one of the most common things women are turned down for, and it’s a shame to get all the way to that point and then go home.

If you’ve passed everything so far, it’s time for Many Questions. When I first started donating, the employee had to ask all the questions verbally; now at the place I donate, they leave you with a computer and you can do it that way, which is WAY BETTER, especially since some of the questions are Quite Embarrassing: “Have you ever had sex for money?” “Have you ever had sex with a man who has had sex with another man?” Other questions are less blushy: “Have you ever visited any of these countries?” “Have you ever taken any of these medications?” “Have you had a tattoo in the last year?” Some questions, even if you answer the way you think is “wrong” (yes, I’ve had a vaccination; yes, I’ve had contact with someone else’s blood), it’s still okay: they just have to ask a follow-up question (oh, it was just a flu shot; oh, it was just your son’s blood when he skinned his knee).

If everything is fine with the questions, you’ll be given a paper to read and sign: you check to make sure your name and social security number and birthdate are correct, and you read a paragraph about how you’re releasing this donation for their use. It probably says some other things about not suing them if you pass out on the donation chair and fall off and break your arm.

This is when they take you over to the donation area. Most places ask which arm you’d prefer to use; I usually choose left because I’m right-handed, but a couple of times they haven’t asked and they’ve used my right arm and I haven’t noticed any real problem using that arm afterward. I’m just slightly squicked, that’s all. And when I have a babe-in-arms, I use my right arm on purpose for the donation, because I carry a child with my left arm.

The donation chairs are like lawn lounge chairs, so your legs stick out straight in front of you. If it’s your first donation, some places encourage you to let them adjust the chair so that you’re lying down and your legs are elevated; other places just ask you every five seconds how you’re feeling. During one of my donations I felt sick all of a sudden, and they immediately adjusted the chair so I was lying down with my feet elevated, which helped tremendously though I felt silly (this was in college, with cute boys all around SEEING ME HORIZONTAL OMG).

The employee at the chairs might be the same one who did the temperature and pulse and questions, or it might be someone new. They’ll put your arm on a little armrest tray, and ask you to confirm your name. They’ll put one million little ID stickers on one million bags and vials and papers; one of those stickers/papers will be for you to take home in case you suddenly think of a reason they shouldn’t use your blood.

They’ll put a blood pressure cuff on your arm and give you a little foam thingie or stress ball to hold, then mark your vein with a permanent marker and ask you to hold still. If you’re twitchy and you move a little anyway, it’s not a huge deal—it’s just that they are about to wash your elbow pit very thoroughly with dark-staining iodine, and the mark helps them to see the vein afterward. But they can still see it even if you move and the mark isn’t in the right place anymore. Just TRY not to.

They’ll use a big q-tip thing to wash your arm with iodine (they’ll ask first if you’re allergic to it) for what seems like a very long time (I think it’s 30 seconds). Then they use a second substance, I don’t know what it is, and they just do one swirl with that. Then they’ll ask you to give a few squeezes on the stress ball and then keep squeezing, and this is where you should avert your eyes and take a breath if you’re squeamish: they’ll say “Little pinch now” and use the needle. It will STING for a few seconds, and they’ve told me why but I forget. The iodine? An anti-coagulant on the needle? I forget. Anyway, just for a few seconds.

Then you’re supposed to squeeze the stress ball every few seconds. They’ll keep checking the bag and at some point they’ll fill a few vials (for testing, I think), but none of that feels like anything. When there’s a pint in the bag (it takes five or ten minutes, typically), you’re done: they’ll press some gauze over the needle and then the needle will be gone quick like a bunny, and they’ll have you press the gauze now and hold your arm straight up in the air for a minute. Then they give you a bandaid, check your name one more time, and send you to canteen.

THE BEST PART: you have to sit quietly for a little while and have a snack. It’s typical for local restaurants to donate snacks, so sometimes there are doughnuts or pastries or pizzas—but if there’s not, there’s usually cookies/brownies, or packets of snack crackers, or boxes of raisins, or…well, you’ll have to find out. If you have dietary restrictions, you can bring your own snack. Some places have you sit for a certain number of minutes and even have a sort of matron in place to make sure you don’t leave before you’ve said you feel okay; other places, like mine, you just sit for ten-ish minutes and then go. And if back at your house it’s time for the bedtime routine, maybe you sit for more like twenty minutes and have a second slice of pizza.

The whole thing all together, from arrival to done-with-snack, takes 1 to 1.5 hours, mostly depending on the time spent in the waiting area.

GEEZ, this freaks me out:

It’s Amazon.com’s ad for their swim section, and they show it to me each time I place an order, on the “Thanks, your order has been placed” page. To me it looks like she’s DROWNED—well, or drownING, since there are still bubbles. But in any case, she does not look like she is heading for the surface any time soon, and her facial expression is not right, and what is with her FULL MAKE-UP, and her neck tendons look like comic book drawings, and she sure doesn’t exude WILL TO LIVE, and also her swimsuit straps don’t match, and the upshot is that I’m startled every time I see the ad. She doesn’t look like she’s SWIMMING, she looks like she’s SINKING. And the water doesn’t look like a nice place to swim, either.

I was out this morning running errands and having lunch with my mom. When I got home, I read all the comments on the post about the cat, and I had renewed hope. Paul was out on errands too, so I waited impatiently for him to come home so I could go get the cat without having to bring Henry with me. I imagined how I’d come home afterward and do a post that was just a picture of the cat. AND THE CROWD GOES WILD.

We drove to the shelter—and there was a “HOLD” sign on the cat’s cage. I found a worker and asked if holds ever fall through, and she said, “Oh, sure, yes! We can take your name and call you if they don’t come back. Which cat?” When I said the cat’s name, she said, “Oh. Actually, they’re filling out the paperwork right now.” The kids wanted to look at the other cats, so I saw My Cat being taken out in a cat carrier.

So. If I’d gotten back from errands a little earlier, if I hadn’t waited for Paul but had instead just taken Henry with me, if I’d posted my post last night instead of this morning—that cat would be home with me now, and this post would be a picture of him. I am thinking of it this way: that maybe the people who took him (it was a woman in her 40s and a woman in her 60s) NEEDED a cat without claws, but didn’t want to declaw a cat so had been waiting for an already-declawed rescue cat to become available. And now they will take him home and he will be very happy, and we will find another cat later and be GLAD this one fell through, because we will like the other one so much. In any case, it’s happy that cat gets to go home now.