(I don’t know what the answers to any of these MEAN. They just seem like they mean SOMETHING.)

Honestly, truly, think about it carefully: Which would you be happier hearing: “Oh, you’re so pretty!” or “Oh, you’re so smart!”

We’re taught carefully that (1) appearance is of utmost importance and also that (2) appearance is of no importance, so this is a question that SEEMS like it has a “right” answer—but I don’t think it does, I think it’s just a matter of which you’d prefer hearing.

I’ve read that people who will leave a bad movie in the middle (cutting their losses) are happier and more successful than people who won’t (trying to get their money’s worth). Which kind are you?

[Edit: Okay, I totally screwed this up. I accidentally posted all five personality tests, then noticed my mistake and took out four. But it’s showing up in feed readers with all five, so some people are answering all five. So if you see someone answering five, they are not crazy! I am careless!]

Pardon me, if I could just remind you that there is only one week left to be in on the secret that everyone except Jess Loolu may know about? The secret would benefit from more participants, and there is no reason the participants must personally know Jess in order to participate, so don’t be shy! It’s the FREE kind of secret—no one’s going to be asking you to chip in for a time-share or anything. Unless you’re Jess Loolu, click here to read more, or just email me (swistle at gmail dot com) to find out more. I can hardly believe it, but NONE of my family or real-life peeps have emailed. Not one! Not that I’m noticing who emails or not, or giving out secret mental points or anything.

I haven’t been around as much lately, and I’m embarrassed to even tell you why. It’s a bunch of little hobbies, all of which I seem to have made into minor (let’s just say minor) obsessions.

1) Postcrossing, which I already mentioned and am still panting for. You can only have five postcards traveling at a time, and so every day I’m checking email every 5 minutes to see if any of my postcards have arrived yet so I can send another one.

2) This one is the most embarrassing, so I’m going to get it out of the way fast rather than leaving it for last. I’ve been, um. Fluffracing. On Facebook. I have the Fluff Friends application, and you can, um, race them against each other. And I’ve been doing that. A lot. So that the application informs me that my Fluff Friend is tired and needs to rest before he can race again. It’s a FLUFFGAMBLING problem!

3) The secret mentioned in the first paragraph, which has been really fun to work on and continues to be fun to work on.

4) Etsy, which has been blowing my mind recently. I found it overwhelming for awhile, and I still do (I don’t like that if I type in “lunch box” I get a bunch of hits that have nothing to do with lunch boxes or lunches or boxes), but it works so much better when I’m looking for something for a post and can get caught up in all the great stuff. I keep adding stuff to my cart—there are like 50 items in there right now.

5) Twitter, which is more fun than I’d expected. If you’re like, “But I don’t GET it. What’s it FOR?”—trust me, you are not alone. The good news is that “lack of understanding” is a treatable problem: the treatment is to sign up and see if it makes sense. Or at least, that’s what I finally did: I figured that if I didn’t like it, there was no reason I couldn’t UNsign up.

6) Making fudge. I can’t understand it, but batch after batch is coming out screwy. I even threw out my candy thermometer and got a brand new one, and still the fudge is coming out wrong. Well, maybe “wrong” is the wrong word. I like fudge to have a grain to it, a melty dissolvey grain. I don’t like fudge to be smooth and creamy. But it keeps coming out smooth and creamy, no matter what I do. The only thing I can think of is that I’ve been using a new bottle of corn syrup, but that’s only 1 teaspoon per batch, and also, what could be wrong with corn syrup? Anyway, I’m getting a little compulsive about this, making batch! after! batch! because it HAS to come out right, what is WRONG with it???

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Pay-it-forward updates:

Astarte is showing the giftie she got and starting a new contest (it involves cheezy early-’90s music, although how anyone can deny that Mmmm-Bop is anything less than MUSICAL GENIUS is beyond my ken).

Living in Maryland is showing the giftie she got and starting a new contest.

Thanks for your low-barf greeting card ideas! And if you’re catching up on weekend posts, it’s not too late to make suggestions: I’m working on a post about Etsy greeting cards for a Milk & Cookies post. (My motto: “Online window-shopping can totally be called ‘working’ if I can somehow make a post out of it!”)

This morning I knocked a full glass jar of molasses onto the cement basement floor. It landed in the tiny space between the upright freezer and the giant shelf unit, so I had to try to scoop molasses (which is not as slow as it tries to pretend, but to be fair this isn’t January) and broken glass out from the 1-inch gap under heavy objects. I mostly succeeded with the shelf unit, but Paul will have to move the freezer so I can get the rest of that part of the puddle before the ants find it. I’m sure there’s a live-on-the-scene ant report interrupting their regularly-scheduled ant broadcast even as I speak.

It’s been a week since our Yard Fail Sale. Here’s the photo again of what I got rid of for $7:

I feel okay about the low-profit, though, because (1) we got rid of the stuff, which was the main goal here, and (2) I made a lot of decisions that, a week into it, appear to be happy decisions, and (3) my brother distracted me with the whole impending-aunthood thing. I’ll list the happy decisions for those of you who enjoy clutter-removal discussions; the rest of you can go on with your day. Watch out for the molasses.

Happy decision the first: I REDUCED certain collections of toys instead of making everything pass/fail. That is, instead of saying as I usually do, “We can’t get rid of our BLOCKS or our
PLAY FOOD! Blocks and play food are CLASSIC! And we PLAY with those,” I got rid of about half of each set. I got rid of the less-popular play foods (eggplant, whole turkey) and I got rid of the little square number blocks no one ever makes buildings with. We now have manageable sets of both items and so they’re more appealing to play with.

Happy decision the second: I went through the boxes in the basement marked “Fragile Pretty Stuff.” There were some hard decisions in those boxes: the beautiful stained glass items I paid a co-worker to make for me; the carnival glass I used to collect but now don’t; a few old pretty things from my ex-husband’s grandmother. But I don’t feel sad to have it gone. I did keep a few miscellaneous pieces of china, adding them to our current hodgepodge of dishes. I’d been afraid of breaking them, but when the choice was “use them or get rid of them” I’ve been happier risking it.

I got rid of the unopened-in-box extension I bought for our play yard: I thought we’d need it, but that is because I am poor with visualization and didn’t realize the playpen would take up half our living room even without the extra panels. Then I didn’t want to get rid of it because it was new! unopened! and who would want just the extension panels? But I’m glad it’s gone: that was a lot of basement space.

I got rid of all our tablecloths. The idea of tablecloths appeals to me. They were easy and fun to find on clearance. I’d thought we’d use them. But we don’t.

I got rid of most of our seasonal decor (not the holiday stuff—I mean things like autumnal wall swags). I’d thought for sure I was someone who would put up seasonal touches. But it turns out: no.

I got rid of an expensive United States puzzle that’s no fun to put together—which is why we still had all the pieces, even the tiny ones like Rhode Island.

I got rid of our video tapes. Not the kids’ video tapes, but, like, the Simpsons ones we bought and have since replaced with DVDs. Stupid progressing technology.

I changed my mind and KEPT our giant set of GeoTrax. It gets a second chance: now that we have a large clear floor area in the playroom, maybe we’ll play with it. If not, there will be future opportunities to get rid of it.

One of the toughest things to let go of was the last of my chocolate-molding stuff. I originally had two large moving boxes full of it, and the last time I did a big clutter-purge I got rid of all but my dozen or so favorite molds and a shoebox of things like lollipop sticks and pretty wrappers. This time I got rid of the rest of it: I haven’t molded chocolates for…ten years? And if I go back to it, chocolate molds are fun to buy. But I went back and forth on it, bringing them back inside twice before finally letting them go.

There! Done talking about clutter for today!

If you sell greeting cards online, like in an Etsy shop, would you leave a link in the comment section? I’m looking for a special card for a bridal shower. I went shopping for one today and had a total fail situation: they were all so cheezy, like “May your hopes and dreams water the flowers of bliss in your garden of love” and so forth. I’m looking for something less barfy.

If you and I were talking, and you expressed equal parts FEAR OF and INTEREST IN having more than the standard 2-3 children, you would on most days find me an encouraging person. It’s my experience so far that larger families are not as intimidating as they can look, and that five children is not two-and-a-half times harder than (or two-and-a-half times more expensive than) two children.

But in the interest of fairness, I will mention some of the downsides of five kids:

1. There are days when correction and discipline and basic maintenance take up so much time, there is little or no time for playing and affection. Or at least, sometimes it feels that way after their bedtime: like I spent my whole day giving baths, making meals, saying “no” and “just a minute,” correcting manners, administering time-outs, and being increasingly stern about homework needing to be done NOW, COME ON, DO YOUR HOMEWORK, STOP DAWDLING!, and spent almost no time at all cuddling and reading and praising. Sometimes crowd control takes up too much of my available parenting time. …On the other hand, I remember feeling this way with two kids, too.

2. I can’t imagine going on vacation with them. I know some people do it, but the idea is overwhelming to me. Also: some hotel rooms only allow two children per adult.

3. In fact, I don’t even do shorter trips, like to the pool or to the park. There are just too many children. I know other people do it, but it’s too much for me.

4. Babysitters are a problem. Who can take care of FIVE children? And if you DO find someone, imagine what it would COST.

5. It is really, really boring making that many sandwiches every day.

6. The sheer space taken up by all those winter boots and coats.

7. Laundry.

8. Can’t keep their names straight. No, really.

9. You need a big car.

10. Certain reasonable expenses are no longer reasonable when they’re multiplied by 5.

11. The noise! The noise! OMG, sometimes the noise!

12. Baths. So many.

13. Let’s say on Monday morning you bake a double batch of muffins: 24 muffins. That’s no small task, and you feel like some sort of superhero for managing it. You’d think you’d be ALL SET for breakfasts for awhile. And yet the next morning after breakfast, a mere 24 hours later, there are only three muffins left.

14. You can use up an entire container of something in one sitting. Yogurt. Cereal. Strawberries. Ice cream.

15. Sometimes everyone talks at once. Or two talk, and then as you’re telling them you can’t listen to either of them when they both talk at the same time, two more start talking and one more starts crying. This can make your head explode.

16. Nobody gets much one-on-one time. Even a child who’s BLEEDING usually has to share the spotlight.

17. Playdates are challenging. For younger kids, I’d like to accompany them to someone else’s house—but I have such an enormous uninvited crew to bring with me. And anyone who comes to our house drowns in a sea of children.

18. People don’t feel like they can complain to us. Like they think we’d say, “You think TWO is hard? TRY FIVE!” Unfortunately there ARE parents of larger families who say crappy things like this to parents of fewer children. Not us, though: we remember how it felt to have two. (Hint: it did not feel easy.)

Well, and that’s a pretty daunting list. But I’ll bet we could make a similar-length list for ANY size family: the downsides of one, the downsides of two, the downsides of three, etc. …OH! uh, and the upsides! Yes, upsides. Just as long a list, I’m sure.

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Pay-it-forward updates:

Incognitus Scriptor has a new contest up.

Living Yellow is showing the giftie she got, and starting a new contest.

Oh, hey! Everyone EXCEPT Jess Loolu, please click here for today’s post. I asked Jess Loolu if I could post something secret on her blog that she would not be allowed to read. And she LET ME.

(Don’t worry, Jess. It’s a GOOD kind of secret. Also: we’ll tell you later.)

I DID offer the sheetrock guy some brownies. I put them on a plate and went out with them, and he said no thank you. But I liked what Denise said about how just because you don’t want to dance doesn’t mean you don’t want to be asked, and what Hillary said about how if you’re going to feel awkward either way, it’s better to feel awkward and shy (when offering) than awkward and guilty (when not offering).

And this morning I found it actually EASED some awkwardness to offer something: he came right in and started working, and I wanted to greet him somehow, but it was going to have to be through a plastic sheet so that seemed awk. But I called out “Good morning!” and then when he said good morning back, I said, “I’m about to put some coffee on—would you like some?” It made the greeting a little longer, which makes it more casual. Note: he said no thank you to the coffee, too.

About the floor for the dining room, I’m totally stuck. I’ve reached the point where I can’t even think about it anymore. There are too many choices: too many materials, and too many choices within each material. I have five new vinyl samples to look at (the first ones turned out to be from the most expensive “luxury” line), and they’re just sitting there in a pile because I can’t choose one: this one’s pretty, but too grey; this one’s nice, but too kitcheny. And we could also go with Pergo! Or with another highly-rated fake wood! Or with vinyl from another flooring place!

And then the prices vary so much. It’s $5.50, which includes installation. Or it’s $4.00 but you have to install it yourself. Or it’s $2.20 but you have to order it online. Or it’s $3.00 but there’s a $200 rebate. Or it’s $3.50, and it doesn’t look any different from the stuff that’s $2.50.

The fake woods look the best to me: I like the way they don’t catch the eye, but instead just disappear into being Floor, and they don’t have the problem of looking chilly and kitcheny. They look diningroomy to me. Paul thinks they look fakey, and so does everyone else. But ALL the vinyls are fake! There’s no such thing as vinyl that isn’t faking SOMETHING: it’s fake wood or it’s fake stone or it’s fake tile. I don’t see how fake tile is somehow superior to fake wood. How about this: let’s just have the plywood! I could put a throw-rug on it!

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Pay-it-forward updates:

Honest and Truly is showing the giftie she got, and starting a new contest.

Two Sticks and Some String is starting a new contest.