Yesterday morning in the shower I noticed the fronts of my thighs just above the knees were blue-greyish. Then I noticed there were blue-greyish patches along my hips. I mean, you’d assume a Terrible Diagnosis, wouldn’t you? Because I did. Something grim about circulation, I assumed. I’d been lying on my stomach while I slept, and didn’t I read something in a suspense novel about blood…pooling? in a corpse? I was planning to finally call my doctor for a check-up. Which indeed I should do, just for general health, but later in the day I realized the blue-grey tint was from my new jeans. I’d washed them before wearing them, but they ARE a very dark wash. Dark enough to color the handkerchief I keep in the pocket, which is how I figured it out.

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I am opposed to camouflage stuff for children. Because I’m opposed to thinking about children being in wars. I know. I KNOW. But that’s how it is: I see camouflage for children and I picture my babies in the woods with guns and NO NO NO.

And that it why it was 11.75 years before I bought anything camouflage for a child of mine, and it’s because Rob MUST have rainboots for his 6th-grade camping trip, and there were NO rainboots in big-kid sizes ANYWHERE, and then I found them FINALLY at Target, and the two choices were (1) camouflage or (2) black with skulls. I paid full-price, for something camouflage, for a child. Note it.

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I gave blood this past week. I even made an APPOINTMENT, and still waited over an hour to start the donation process. That is…discouraging, I must say. I read the entire People magazine I brought with me, and the section of newspaper I found, and then I sat there feeling anxious about how close I was to the people sitting in the chairs next to me. I don’t know if I can be discouraged altogether, like so that I would STOP donating blood, but if I MAKE AN APPOINTMENT? Doesn’t it seem like? And I asked about it, and she said it was always that busy. Well, then…I mean, if I might make a suggestion: preparing for that many people? As opposed to a longer wait-time for people who are already volunteering THE BLOOD FROM INSIDE THEIR BODIES? I don’t begrudge it, I’m GLAD to give it, I even get a nice little high from it, but if I have a 5:00 appointment I’d like to…have a 5:00 appointment. Or, like, 5:30 at worst. Not 6:10 for STARTING the part where you answer questions about whether you’ve been to Europe or dated hookers. I had to pee SO BAD by then, because I’d been so diligent about drinking extra water beforehand as instructed.

But, all that time sitting there waiting, I came up with a new idea for what I might want to do for a job once Henry is in school. Phlebotomist? I need something with a short training time.

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I dreamed last night that I cut my own hair and was very happy about it. It’s so long now, I can’t wear it in my preferred French twist but have to bun it. And it gets tangled and it hurts to comb it, and Paul hasn’t given it the attention I’d expect a guy to give long hair, so I thought I WOULD cut it: I’ve cut it myself once before, and it DID turn out fine. And then THIS MORNING Paul said admiringly, “Your hair is so shiny and multicolored!” And I said, “I’m going to cut it” and he said “Don’t change ANYTHING!”

I just finished reading a book I didn’t expect to like, in which I was so engrossed I forgot to even look at the author’s photo until I’d completely finished the book. It’s called Love in Mid Air, and it’s by Kim Wright.

(My scan of my plastic-protected library book is not excellent, but it is better than Amazon’s weirdly low-quality picture.)

I got the book thinking it would be about a woman who has a meet-cute affair with an impossibly ideal man. And it IS about that (is he also RICH? Why, yes he IS!). And there was more raunch than I like: I don’t need the couple to lean out of the screen so I don’t even have to see them kiss ooo icky, but I also don’t need several-page sex scenes so descriptive they include the word “cervix.”And furthermore, while reading it I was frequently reminded of my own, um, “novel” that I wrote for NaNoWriMo: there’s a certain slapdash, anything-goes feeling to the writing, which in my own case was achieved by thinking “It does not matter what happens with the plot or what the pacing is or how likely this is, I just need to get 50,000 words in 31 days, so WRITE, write like the wind, and seize upon any idea that will generate more words!”

BUT. Something about the book—and it’s something that INCLUDES that anything-goes style, which she pulled off in a way I did not—was highly appealing. I’ve read so many books over the years, sometimes I feel like I’ve already read everything. I yawn and think, “So will it be ending A, in which she finds her Ideal Man is not so ideal after all and ends up staying with her husband? Or ending B, in which she leaves her husband and we’re supposed to believe the new guy is the man she was meant to be with all along? Or perhaps ‘surprise’ ending C, in which she ends up realizing she can live on her own without a man?” Which is why QUALITY WRITING becomes so important: if there are, as my English teacher said over and over again, no new plots and no new characters, then only the WAY the story is told matters. And yet this book DID surprise me, and furthermore it surprised me REPEATEDLY.

Just the other day my family was all together and my brother mentioned the astonishing scene near the end of Serenity (I won’t spoil it if you haven’t seen it), where something happens that makes you realize this movie is not going to play by the Movie Rules, and you can’t assume ANYTHING. (There’s a similar moment in the book Passage by Connie Willis.) This book was like that for me, though on a smaller scale: there were two or three places where I thought, “Huh. I see: I can’t think in terms of option A and B for this one. And where IS she going with this??”

Anyway. I liked it. It has elements of fluff, in that it is not a heavy-going intellectual kind of book and there is a feeling of “female fantasy life” to it. And as I said, it has SEXXX. But it also has SUBSTANCE and SURPRISE, and I found I really liked the way it went.

My school-related frets: let me share them with you.

Rob. Sixth-grader. MIDDLE SCHOOL. I don’t think I need to say more than that, because that is already plenty of fretting right there, but the more immediate problem is that he is getting some bad grades and making bad excuses. Like, when he got his first D on an English paper, he said, “I didn’t realize what was expected,” and I thought, “Good: he’s learning now that he can’t get away with slapdash anymore.” But then he got his second D and he tried to hand me the same excuse. Oh dear me no. I don’t mind a kid getting Ds anywhere NEAR as much as I mind a kid pulling a constant “It’s not my fault.”

So he and I had what I have seen amusingly referred to as a “come to Jesus” talk, and he was suppressing an embarrassed smile when I spelled out the concept that “Didn’t realize” is a one-time-use excuse, so I hope that means he knew it was and won’t keep doing it. And it’s only October, and maybe he will now get it together. But I worry that he WON’T: we all like to think of our kids as excelling! and succeeding! and exceeding expectations for the sheer love of doing a good job! and yet a lot of kids NEVER DO. My father-in-law, in his late 60s, is STILL talking about how his grades didn’t represent his sheer genius. And look at Jessica Simpson’s parents, who claim that she got bad grades because she was SO academically gifted she was BORED in class (*wipes away tears of laughter*).

And MOST of his grades are still As and Bs, so THAT’S good. But it’s like, As in the classes he’s naturally good at, and Ds in anything that requires him to lift his pinky finger. I feel like this is a sink-or-swim transition for him: either he will fall in with expectations, or he won’t, and I can lecture him night and day but HE has to start doing the work, and all I can do is wait around and see if he does or not. Not everyone ends up a Good Student, and Good Studentism is not the be-all and end-all anyway, and it’s his life, and there really is still plenty of time to improve things even if he doesn’t do so in sixth grade, and cliche aphorism truism cross-stitch.

I was going to list all the other frets, but I think they should be their own posts or this is going to be Too Much.

I said again and again on Twitter that this year I was NOT going to join in to the breast cancer awareness fuss. “I said, and said, and said those words. I said them. But I lied them.” (That’s Dr. Seuss.)

And so I am about to make a blanket objection. The trouble with blanket objections is that, at least for ME, when I read a blanket objection, and I’ve done the thing the blanket objection is about, I feel slapped. Even if I don’t think the person making the blanket objection is talking about ME PERSONALLY, they ARE talking about something I PERSONALLY did, and so they DO mean me, whether they intend to mean me or not, and my face burns with embarrassment, which then makes me feel upset and angry and like slapping back.

That’s not good. I don’t want to cause that feeling in you. And yet here we are, and I am going to try to do it without the slapping sensation. And although I have just said it is totally understandable to take something like this personally, it’s also true that I’m not thinking of one person in particular, or even several people in particular: I’m thinking of posts on Twitter that have been re-tweeted thousands of times and sentiments I’ve heard expressed again and Again and AGAIN by TONS of people. If you think I’m quoting you or specifically addressing you, I can tell you for absolutely sure that I’m not—that if I’m saying something you said, it’s because hundreds or thousands of other people said it the same way.

So. ON with it. There are three breast-cancer-awareness-related sentiments I’m objecting to:

1. Oh come on, is anyone seriously claiming they aren’t AWARE of breast cancer?

2. Making dumb fake-sexy posts on Facebook and Twitter isn’t going to cure breast cancer.

3. MONEY and TIME are needed, NOT “awareness.”

My first objection applies to all three, and it is the tone in which these statements is delivered: the intention is to slap people down. It’s not just exasperation, it’s not just making a point: it’s contempt. The eyes are being rolled; the words “DUH” and “YOU IDIOTS” are implied; the hope is that the person reading those words will burn with embarrassment. That’s not nice, is it? And it does nothing to improve or change things, it only causes anger and other divisive feelings.

And now I will explain what breast cancer awareness is FOR, since to me all three of those statements indicate NOT knowing what it’s for.

Let’s back away from breast cancer for a moment, and think about a company that makes deodorant. The company hires an advertising agency to advertise the deodorant, and that agency produces ads both in print and on television. Do we say, “THAT’S stupid. Like we don’t already KNOW deodorant exists?? Come on, the company doesn’t need to make people AWARE of deodorant—they need MONEY and PROFITS!”

No. The reason we don’t say that is that we know what advertisements are for. Advertisements bring the product to the front of the consumer’s mind. If the product is in the front of a consumer’s mind, the customer is going to recognize the product when he or she sees it, and may be influenced to purchase. Advertising is not what the company needs, but it LEADS to what the company DOES need, which is money. It leads to it SO EFFECTIVELY, the company gladly spends hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions of dollars, on advertisements. That’s how connected “bringing something to the fronts of people’s minds” and “money” are: VERY connected.

Furthermore, marketers have discovered something very important, which is that if you can get a consumer to take even one TINY step toward the product, the consumer will defend that step by making a HUGE step toward the product in allegiance. Can you get the consumer to click a box on a pop-up survey? Can you get the consumer to scratch off a little panel to see if they’ve won? Can you get a person to change their Facebook status? Then you, the marketer, have made a HUGE stride toward getting the consumer involved with your product. And a consumer who feels involved will feel loyalty, and loyalty will lead to dollars.

Back to breast cancer awareness. Is breast cancer awareness month intended to teach people that breast cancer EXISTS? Of course not. Does anyone think that by using a racy Facebook status they are making HUGE STRIDES toward a cure? Of course not. Would ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND disagree that money was needed more than awareness? Of COURSE not. But awareness is not literally “awareness,” it is ADVERTISING. We’re accustomed to advertising in the product world, but it’s not as familiar to us in the fundraising context so we don’t always recognize it.

Breast cancer awareness is intended to put the concept of breast cancer in the fronts of our minds. I already know that breast cancer exists, but I often go days or weeks without thinking about it at all. In October, however, I think about it every day: I keep seeing statuses, or pink stuff at the store, or big signs, or advertisers trying frantically to use the concept to sell their products. This is GOOD. Because when a concept is in the front of my mind, I am more likely to put it in the front of my wallet—even if I neither purchase something pink nor change my status (though doing either of those things makes me even more likely to pony up the dough).

When people participate in non-cure-related activities such as purchasing pink pens or changing their Facebook status, they are, even if unwittingly, building loyalty to a product, a product that requires financial support. Loyalty is good. Loyalty results in more money than lack of loyalty does.

And does anyone think that someone participating in a Facebook status game is doing that INSTEAD OF writing a check? YES, money and time are what is needed—but that doesn’t mean awareness thwarts those goals, or takes away from them, or substitutes for them. And in fact, it works IN SUPPORT OF those goals. Slapping people down for their participation—especially when, if nothing else, those people have good intentions—works AGAINST those goals.

Two posts I liked this week:

Indigo Girl’s post on embryo donation—I’d heard of the issue, but hadn’t ever known anyone who personally had to make a decision about it.

Problem Girl’s post on the name Stian (pronounced “stain”), with the extremely funny edits.

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Baby name blog stuff:

I was surprised there weren’t more people who’d had a dream about naming a baby.

SQUEE DEAL ALERT: Angel, complete series, $51. CHRISTMAS IS NIE. Or niegh, or nei, or what IS it? NIGH! It’s nigh.

I was filling out a field trip permission slip and writing the accompanying check, and something was bugging me that bugs me every time: at our school, the parents who act as chaperons on field trips have to pay for their own tickets.

That seems so unfair to me. I can’t chaperon right now, and if I could I wouldn’t want to because it seems like a huge and boring and stressful duty (not to mention expensive for those parents who also help by driving), and so I really appreciate it that other parents are willing to. Those parents are helping the school, and the school NEEDS them to help in order to take the field trip, but the school can’t pay their $8 admission ticket to some historical site? That seems wrong.

So what I did was, I wrote a check for my child’s ticket, and I wrote a separate check to sponsor one chaperon. Then I reconsidered: that would put the teacher in a tricky situation, because which chaperon will she choose, and that’s unfair to the other chaperons. I took the check out, planning to contact the teacher and ask what would be best.

But now I am thinking a little bigger. I’m considering contacting someone in administration instead. Because what makes more sense than “one parent writes one check for one chaperon” is for the field trip forms to always contain an option to sponsor a chaperon. I get a little twinge (along with a little rush of guilty relief) every time I check the “I will not be able to chaperon” box, and I’ll bet other parents do too, so that seems like the perfect moment for us to see a “I would like to sponsor a chaperon” checkbox. The money donated could then be divided among the chaperons, so that they get at least a discounted ticket—and possibly there would even be extra money, which could be put toward future field trips.

1. I switched from sandals to shoes, and my shoes are bothering my feet: they feel tight and overly warm, and my feet feel sore.

2. I changed exercises, and managed to make my shins owie.

3. I’ve had a headache every day for three days in a row.

4. It’s only Tuesday.

5. I’m fretful and upset about Marie’s situation.

6. I’m reading a book that has a sad baby plotline.

7. Among the blogs and tweetstreams I read, there’s been a sudden outbreak of sadnesses.

8. There’s no candy in the house.

9. Two of the children have runny noses. That never leads anywhere good.

10. Mouse’s peeing issues.

11. Rob’s school does a one-week sleepaway camp for sixth graders. It’s this month. I’m worried and fretful about obvious stuff, but also cranky about the supply list, which lists a million things we don’t own and then emphasizes that we should NOT be buying new things for this trip, but rather sending old stuff. Oh, sure, I’ll send his OLD sturdy waterproof hiking boots and one of our many daypacks!

12. Henry is in a particularly difficult stage, with lots of bursting into tears over very little, and lots of repeating questions he JUST asked me but now asking them in a whinier tone—and then, when I tell him I said no and stop asking me, saying, “WHY? Why, Mommy? Why should I?” *headache pounding*

13. Two phone calls I need to make.

14. “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?” “Hey, Mommy?”

15. The underwire is coming through my bra, and poking me in the armpit.

What’s wrong with YOU today?

Last night I woke up at 3:00 and sleep didn’t come back. And why—WHY—would my self thwart myself like that? Sleep is good! Sleep is nice! Four in the morning is not a time to be sitting in a recliner with a cat and a book, however pleasant a way that might be to spend the time during the day.

Anyway. Coffee.

I’m reading a book right now that I’ll officially recommend to you if it finishes as well as it has begun and middled: The Good Psychologist by Noam Shpancer. I am mesmerized, MESMERIZED. I just love it and love it. Not only am I enjoying the plot, I’m finding the content literally therapeutic. Like, I am LEARNING PSYCHOLOGICAL TRUTHS and HAVING PSYCHOLOGICAL INSIGHTS. Or rather, being led like a willing and placid lambie to those truths and insights. You could read this book as therapy, is what I’m saying, and yet it’s entertaining and it’s fiction, not textbooky.

Plus, the author photo is pleasing to look at. I like a good author photo. Things that can make an author photo NOT a good author photo include but are not limited to: author putting her hands unnaturally at her face to hide a double chin; author using her upper arms to make her boobs look bigger; author looking like she had the photo taken at Glamor Shots; author perceptibly airbrushed. (I read mostly female authors. For men the pitfall list is less defined, and goes something like “Looking like a jerk.”)

Good author photos are harder to make lists about. The EFFECT of a good author photo is that I feel like I know and recognize and like the author, and I want to keep looking at him or her periodically as I’m reading. The photo should coordinate with the style of the book. I shouldn’t feel as if the author is trying to show us his/her most flattering angle, even if he or she IS in fact doing so.

One of my favorite author photos is this one from Suzanne Finnamore’s book The Zygote Chronicles (I’ve deliberately linked to the unavailable hardcover rather than to the available paperback, because book cover art is IMPORTANT and the hardcover captures the book whereas the paperback does not), taken by Kate Powers:

And another good one is Noam Shpancer’s, taken by Mia Lewis:

The more of the book I read, the more I like the photo, which is another sign of a good author photo.

Follow-up: I REALLY liked the book. I officially recommend.