Okay. Okay. I am already feeling WAY BETTER than several hours ago. The main thing is that Paul called with an update, and I don’t know if you know this about me yet but I tend to PANIC ABOUT THE UNKNOWN, and so while I was here PANICKING ABOUT THE UNKNOWN he was making totally normal and reasonable arrangements with his normal and reasonable sister, and nobody is spending $35,000 on a funeral and everyone is aware that it would be more pleasant to keep that money for themselves and everything is fine.

AND! Someone thought of organ donation! Which I am so glad about, because even though I am an ADAMANT SUPPORTER OF ORGAN DONATION, even I didn’t think of it in the shock of the moment. But thank goodness someone else did, so that was taken care of.

They’re going with the least expensive burial option because it turns out two things were widely known about my mother-in-law (who, it must be said in her favor, tended to make her views WIDELY KNOWN): (1) she thought cremation was icky (and had bought a plot already), and (2) she thought it was stupid to spend more than the minimum on a funeral. One Budget Funeral, coming right up! AND this is one of those small-town places where everyone in a church takes their business, so there was no slick high-pressure stuff—more like “Okay then! Hey, Frank, it’s one Neighborhood Special, no sides!”

ALSO, though so far it appears there is NO WILL NO WILL OMG NO WILL, she did have two small life insurance policies, one of the kind you get free if you have your account at a certain bank and one of the kind you sometimes get as part of your employment benefits. The two policies together will probably cover the funeral.

Also, Paul and his sister turn out to be able to figure things out JUST AS IF THEY WERE ADULTS, and are systematically going through their mom’s house tossing junk out and deciding what they want to keep, and so far no one is fighting or biting, and everyone’s being all matter-of-fact and just sort of taking care of what needs to be done, rather than sitting around going “huh?” which is what I was picturing.

Also, there was one person we COULD NOT REACH (she was on vacation and no one knew if she even HAD a cell phone) and we REALLY NEEDED TO REACH HER (it’s my mother-in-law’s only sibling), and I was a complete genius and thought of seeing if her kids were on Facebook, and they were, and I messaged them and within an hour she was calling Paul and his sister. So (1) I was a genius and my efforts were lauded, and (2) I felt like I was HELPING, which made me feel better and less useless.

Also, I caught up on the laundry a bit, and it turned out that even our king-sized quilt fit into the washing machine, so I could stop the endless circular fret-thread about how was I going to take it to a laundromat. And in fact, this little barf situation was for the best because that water was DARK. Kids have been jumping on this quilt with their shoes on for several years.

The children are still sick, but things don’t seem quite so grim as they did this morning with no shower and a poor night’s sleep and a huge pile of barfy laundry in the hallway and not knowing what was going on in another state. Now it seems more like, “Oh, the kids are sick. Guess they’ll have to watch SpongeBob all day while I mess around on the computer.”

I hope you will forgive me if I am so crabby and touchy you want to slap me with a sheet of plywood. I am just…just….ACK.

Okay, so first of all, I am trying not to interfere with the family’s plans for my mother-in-law’s body, but on the other hand I am so worried they’re going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on stuff none of them care about just because they’ll keep saying “Okay, okay, okay” to everything mentioned to them with NO IDEA how expensive things are, and have I mentioned we have after years of savings only JUST saved up enough for Rob’s impending braces? And so the idea of spending, say, five times that much, on the disposal of a body, and possibly having to take out a home equity loan to pay for it, is…uh. ACK. Basically ACK. And yet just try even GENTLY suggesting that it would be cheaper to light the body on fire and go have a beer, and everyone gets all SQUIRRELLY.

And then, Paul is gone for at least a week, and I’ve had to put on wool socks AND an additional comforter just to match his furnace-like qualities, and also I am moping around feeling mopey about things I find of his such as this:

He took Rob with him, so I’m fretting about Rob missing so much school, and worrying that his teacher will think this means we don’t think his education is important, and I’m worried Something Will Happen on the long car trip.

Also, I have NIGHTMARES about needing to pack rapidly for something, and so packing for their trip was stressful, and it has also been stressful to gradually become aware of all the things I forgot: Paul’s undershirt, Rob’s belt, Paul’s pajama pants, Rob’s toothbrush, etc. It’s especially frustrating because everything I forgot for one person I remembered for the other, so it’s not like I forgot about the need for such items, it’s more like I LOST MY MIND. But all right, I can reassure myself: all these things can be purchased at store. It is no big deal. Breathe, breathe.

Meanwhile, back at the home front, William’s fever has gone away as of several days ago, but now he is in the stage of Endless Coughing. And the other three children have all—ALL—developed fevers in the 102s and 103s. And when Elizabeth has a fever, she barfs, and so at 1:00 in the morning I was taking all the bedding off MY BED (mattress pad, sheets, down blanket, quilt, extra blanket for furnace replacement) because she came upstairs for what was apparently the express purpose of barfing on it, and also taking off all my own pajamas because ditto, and also thanking goodness we had about eight boxes of baking soda in the pantry, and also WASHING THE WALLS and let’s leave it at that.

I mean, are you getting this? I am here by myself with four children, three of whom are sick, one of whom is BARFING sick. The house reeks and I’m trapped. TRAPPED! And meanwhile, decisions that could strongly affect my financial future are being made FAR AWAY and WITHOUT ME. ACK!

So let’s see, what’s new around here.

William had a fever and a cough last weekend but is mostly better now. And this morning Edward woke up with a runny nose and now has a fever, and so I am back in the land of “Do I let the fever do its virus-frying work? Or is this high enough that I should try to bring it down?”

Also, I got two cute sweaters at Goodwill for $1.99 each: a triceratops sweater for Henry and a Baby Gap zip-up rainbow-striped jacket/sweater for Elizabeth. I wish Goodwill wasn’t so far from our house.

Also, I made both brownies and fudge in one day, and I forgot the salt in the brownies and I overcooked the fudge, so dang it.

Also, my mother-in-law died. I know. I am completely shocked. It was very sudden, and now I can stop worrying about the fact that she had no health insurance and at any time could have developed a bankrupting health problem. And now Paul will be gone for a week, so if you’re stalking me could you keep an eye out for dangerous criminals around the house? Kthanx.

This is just about the most awk of all awk announcements, isn’t it? I mean, what are you supposed to say, if you know I am not flattened with grief, but on the other hand death is often a shock and it would be kind of icky if the comment section were…well, it would be icky. So here we are stuck, looking at each other with eyebrows as high as they can go, speechless. Let’s just read each other’s minds, and then clink our glasses together and take a big quaff in memory of my mother-in-law. *Quaff*

Here are some of the things I think there’s more than one way to think about, and everyone can make their own decisions—no agreement necessary from one person to the next:

• what to eat
• how and where a baby should sleep
• bottle-feeding vs. breastfeeding
• what religion to follow
• public school vs. private school vs. homeschooling
• whether to participate in advanced education
• alcohol consumption, yea or nay
• premarital sex, yea or nay
• whether to use birth control
• whether to have children
• whether to marry
• fixed-rate vs. variable-rate mortgage
• how clean to keep the house
• a good name for a baby

Here are some things I think there’s more than one way to think about, but that a community needs to make a decision about as a whole—not deciding “right” from “wrong,” but just deciding for consistency what can be done when:

• driving age
• truancy age
• drinking age
• marrying age
• voting age
• speed limits
• public park curfews

Here are some of the things I think there is only one way to think about and are not open for community vote, because human beings have not been given that kind of power over other human beings:

• whether skin color changes a person’s rights
• whether ethnic origin changes a person’s rights
• whether sex changes a person’s rights
• whether sexual orientation changes a person’s rights

(As Craig Ferguson says whenever he makes a controversial remark: “I LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR LETTERS.”)

I’ve written before about the ways I cope with mild depression (need I say that if you have a doozier depression, you should not consult ME, a blogger with zero qualifications of any kind, but should instead consult someone who possesses ACTUAL MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE?):

1. A Pitiful List
2. Day Sadness
3. Easy, Inexpensive Ways to Feel Better

Sunshine and lights, coffee and warm food, skin contact and cuddling, small purchases, funny stuff, things that smell nice, music, fish oil and vitamin D—those are the basics.

But I haven’t yet figured out how to deal with acid-in-the-stomach moods. Today I am obsessing senselessly about an altercation I had with a clerk yesterday: my mom and I found a rack of stuff marked “$4 and under,” and we asked the clerk to price-check something from that rack that was marked $7. Even though the clerk was standing right at a register, she wouldn’t check the price, saying the price marked was correct. So we pointed out the sign on the rack, which she felt was irrelevant, and then there was a discussion about whether a store could have a display marked “Everything $4 and under!” that was more than half full of items marked higher than $4, with my position on the subject being “No” and her position on the subject being “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we don’t print the signs and we don’t mark the prices and we don’t have anything to do with anything including checking prices at all, so we are not responsible for any illegal and fraudulent errors our total lack of involvement may cause.” I may be paraphrasing both positions.

[Notice I’m not mentioning the name of the store, and it’s because I shop there regularly and I have never ever had any sort of problem even remotely like this before. So I don’t want to slam the whole chain just because a single problem with a single clerk. I plan to shop there again and everything, I just plan not to go to the particular location with this particular clerk, because now the whole store feels tainted by this encounter. But there is another location I can go to instead.]

Anyway. The real trouble is what home remedies to use on this acidy, stewing, unpleasant mood. When I feel like this, treats don’t really help, nor do any of the “be nice to self” things that can help with a depressed mood. Coffee might help, but also might backfire considerably, adding acid and adrenaline to a situation already steeped in it. Tranquilizers or drinks just make me tired and sullen in addition to cranky and acidy. Sometimes I work on chores, because if I’m going to be a miserable bear to live with no matter what, I might as well be getting the laundry done while I’m at it. I try to eat good foods, because I’ve found that sugar can make this kind of mood worse.

But that’s all I’ve got. Tips appreciated, as long as they’re not “Just don’t think about it” or “Just don’t let it bother you,” both of which are the equivalent of “Just be a different person! It’s so easy!” What little things do you do/use to shake yourself out of a bad mood of this sort?

Yesterday evening Paul had me feel his forehead for fever twice, which means it is time once again for him to be a colossal baby. Today he is staying home from work, parked on the couch groaning and asking weakly for things, and I am trying not to be deeply resentful at the way when he is sick he “stays home from work,” whereas when I’M sick…. Well, there is no sense going down this path.

You may have noticed I rarely have a good word to say about Paul. One of the main reasons for this—and forgive me for lifting the veil here—is that reading praise about someone else’s spouse is borrrrrrrrrring. Bad things are win-win: either the readers feel happier about their own spouses’ flaws in comparison, or they feel relieved that they are not the only ones yoked to boneheads. Good things, on the other hand, are lose-lose: either the readers feel unhappier about their own spouses in comparison, or else they are bored.

Another main reason is that I think you and I know each other well enough by now that you’d assume I wouldn’t live with someone for fifteen years if I didn’t kinda like him. I’ve left a marriage before so I’m clear on that option, I’m toward the pragmatic end of the spectrum on such things, and I have a good life insurance policy on him. If Paul were truly defined only by his shopping dumbheadedness and his pathetic babyish illnesses—or even if that were the larger part of him—-I don’t see any reason I’d stay with such a cheesehead, and I’m pretty confident that’s a conclusion anyone can draw. In fact, it seems like a natural conclusion that he must be pretty awesome in other ways for me to put up with the dumhbhead/baby crap.

Another main reason is that non-annoyances don’t start writing themselves in my mind. If Paul is being a pinehole, a new post springs into being naturally: I compose it as I’m angrily doing the dishes he left, or as I’m going to the store to get the eggs he didn’t get, or as I’m lying awake pretending to be asleep. Whereas if he’s not doing anything annoying, if life is going on as usual, posts do not compose themselves. And to return to the first point, they’d be pretty dull if they DID compose themselves: “Paul did the dishes without leaving food on them this time. Also, he went to the grocery store and came home with the things on the list. Also, a child brought homework back to school without me first having to fish it out of the recycling bin.”

Well, I’ve hidden in here long enough; I’m going to have to go back out there. PITY ME.

1. I finished the Thing! I wore it with my coat this morning as a demi-scarf—or, as the other mom at the bus stop less charitably but more amusingly called it, “a Dickey scarf.”

Oh, this? Yes, I just whipped it up over the weekend! …What do you mean, “Where’s the rest of it?”

Now I am starting a new Thing. I am using Lion Brand yarn again, this time a fuzzy kinked pink yarn called, if I remember correctly, “Cotton Candy.” (A child helpfully removed all the paper wrappings from my yarns for me.) I cast on 50 stitches; my plan is to make a wider, shorter Thing than last time. When I have finished it, I want to try a baby hat.

2. Virginia Ruth wanted to see some samples of Rob’s knitting. My mother-in-law taught him when she was here a few weeks ago.

The one on the left is Rob thinking he could maybe make a sweater for a stuffed animal by knitting two sweater shapes and attaching them together. On the right is him practicing making stripes.

My mother-in-law taught him to cast on and bind off, and he made these Tetris shapes later that night when he was supposed to be sleeping. My mother-in-law thought this was meh. Paul and I thought it was BRILLIANT. He has knitting and binding off IN THE SAME ROW!

It was hard to take a picture of this, but it’s a side view of a square of knitting with a rectangular flap coming out of the middle. Rob wanted to see if that would work. Mother-in-law said that wasn’t really the way it was supposed to work. Paul and I thought it was BRILLIANT.

This is Rob’s “sampler scarf”—he did a little of all the stitches he knew how to do, so there’s some knitting and some purling and some cabling and whatever else he knows. It’s about 4 inches wide on average.

1. This was Henry’s first year trick-or-treating; he went as a fydah-fydah (firefighter). A very REFLECTIVE firefighter.

It is not a whole lot of fun bringing five children trick-or-treating. There is a lot of playing The Manners Police (“What do you say?” “Do you remember what to say?” “What do you say NOW?” x 5), and there is a lot of fretting that a child will get lost in the dark. But it does mean there are five bags of loot to pick through after the kids go to bed. We searched first for razor blades, unwrapped/opened candy, and religious detritus. Razor blades 0, unwrapped/opened candy 0, religious detritus 2 (1 roll of smarties with scripture verses on the wrapper, 1 tract about “the treat that lasts forever,” complete with the prayer you should pray in order to “trick-or-treat at God’s door.” Jesus: He won’t give you cavities! Or get stuck in your teeth! Or get eaten by your parents after you go to bed!).

2. On Friday afternoon, William was tired and kept saying so. He went to bed an hour and a half early. He woke up two hours later with a nightmare, and he was feverish and coughing. Yesterday he was dizzy and had a fever that got in the high 103s whenever the ibuprofen started wearing off. This morning he was around 101 and feeling much better. I have to call the school tomorrow to let them know: they’re keeping track of all children and staff who miss school for flu-like symptoms.

3. Rob taught me how to knit. I should clarify that this was probably my dozenth time learning. I don’t know why I am learning again, except that Rob was so! keen! to teach me.

I am making A Thing. It started as 22 stitches across and has without my intentional interference varied from 22-28 stitches, mostly 26. It is too wide and short for a scarf. It is too narrow and long for a blankie. But ohhhhhhh it is soft! I’m using Lion Brand “suede” yarn in a pretty variegated color that is a lot prettier when it is not against the backdrop of my berry-colored shirt, and I’ve almost finished a skein. (I did my first Thing in Red Heart yarn because I’d heard that’s a good yarn for beginners, but for my second Thing I chose a yarn I liked.) Rob keeps saying, “NOW do you like knitting?” and I keep saying, “Nope! Still difficult yet boring!” But I do like petting the yarn.

4. The cat has been acting bonkers. She follows me around, making the cat equivalent of yippy-little-dog sounds. MEW! MEW! MEW! MEW! She is frantic. She bumps against my legs, tripping me and getting stepped on. Her food is fresh and full; her water is fresh and full; her box is fresh and scooped; she’s been petted and snuggled; WHAT DOES SHE WANT?? I am on the verge of taking her to the vet just because surely it must be SOMETHING.

May I recommend a hat for all your hat-related needs? I was shopping for winter hats for my fifth grader and my third grader, because the fifth grader EVIDENTLY no longer wants to wear the multicolored ones with fleecy spikes and tassels I’m so fond of, and so of course the copycat third grader had to pipe up with the same opinion. We went to Target and we looked in the boys’ section, but those hats failed to please the judges, and also even the size 8-14 was pretty snug (pediatrician, examining Henry: “Have ALL your kids had such ENORMOUS HEADS?”). We went over to the men’s section to see if those would be too big, and they weren’t. But they were, like, $12.99, and I hate paying that much for a non-cute hat that will no doubt be lost in November. Then we saw these:

Edward, Rob, Henry, William, Elizabeth

The hats are $2.99 each, and they’re stretchy and fit EVERYBODY, from fifth-grade Rob down to 2-year-old Henry. I bought six: one for each kid, plus a spare to reduce the morning fighting over who gets which color (everyone will get a choice, rather than the last hat-chooser getting stuck with the last hat). It comes in wine red, orange, yellow, green, royal blue, plum, black, grey, and brown. I still want to buy the brown one, and the kids might talk me into getting wine red and black too. At one of our local Targets these hats were on the opposite side of the display rack that held the more expensive men’s hats; at another Target the hats were on a different rack altogether (but still in the men’s department).