This weekend I saw some cousins I haven’t seen for…well, we couldn’t figure it out. Did we last see each other at my cousin James’s wedding? That was when Henry was 2 weeks old (I’d considered giving Henry the middle name James in honor of the cousin/wedding; I am glad I didn’t, but also I still think that was a fun idea and that I wouldn’t have regretted it) (the real names would not have been Henry James like the author, so that was not an issue), and Henry is now 18 years old. Maybe it was at my cousin Lynnie’s wedding two years later—but no, I didn’t go to Lynnie’s wedding. Oh!! Maybe it was at my brother’s wedding?? Oops, no, that was even longer ago.

Our conclusion was that if we can’t remember how many DECADES it has been, that means too much time has gone by. And we had such a nice time together! My brother said afterward that he hadn’t realized the gathering would be so determined to laugh and have a good time, and that’s just how it was. It’s not as if we thought everyone would be determined to be pensive and serious! But this was just so clearly a group that WANTED to enjoy the time together, WANTED to say things to make everyone else laugh, WANTED to be glad to be together.

Well. Now this presents a new conundrum, and it is: How do we arrange more frequent get-togethers in the future? Maybe something every year or two; every two to three years might be more achievable. I think the big gap happened because we hadn’t noticed we’d shifted from the “Our parents get us together” stage of life to the “We have to do that ourselves” stage of life. It was a little exhilarating to think of, and a little weighty.

We have a rather large age gap: my mom and her siblings are spread out over twelve years, which is half a generation; my cousins and I are born over fourteen years, and I am the eldest. When my youngest cousins were born (two of them the year I was twelve and one more when I was fourteen), I was about the age my youngest uncle was when I was born. I love this kind of generational shifting (I love when someone becomes an aunt/uncle while still in school, or when an aunt/uncle is YOUNGER than their niece/nephew), but I do think it makes it near-impossible to do the important childhood bonding. I am much closer to some of my SECOND cousins on that side of the family, because they are almost exactly the same age as my brother and me, and they were often at family events; and in the era when grandparents felt no obligation to have any entertainments on hand for children, we bonded immediately. Meanwhile my little cousins were toddlers, under the radar. When I headed for college, they headed for preschool/kindergarten. No wonder we didn’t think to keep in touch.

Now, however, they seem to be full adults, and very nice/fun people besides. Our parents are mostly at the point where they may no longer attend family reunions, let alone arrange them. We cousins are spread out not only in age but also over about 800 miles: not insurmountable, but not the kind of thing where you can stop by with a pie. I would say two of the seven of us are placid to the point of irrelevance in this matter: they might attend a reunion, but they won’t do anything to make anything happen. Another two of the seven of us (plus one of the placid ones) have young children: it’s harder for them to travel, and harder for them to be in an unfamiliar place, and harder for them to find the time/energy to arrange things. Another two of the seven of us are my brother and me: we have older children, we’re more flexible—and also, we’re the eldest; I feel like this gives us a certain level of responsibility to see if we can make this happen / see if we all want it to happen. The last of the seven is another contender for leadership: confident, comfortable, social, and ready to make things happen; she’s also one of the babies born when I was twelve, which is fun. Oldest and youngest cousins—UNITE AND PLAN!

…Er. If you have any ideas, the cousin committee would be grateful to hear them. How do people MAKE THESE THINGS HAPPEN? (And WHAT SORTS OF THINGS do they make happen?) I feel like we could get bogged down even trying to find times we’re all available.

First, a shopping mystery for the comments section. I feel silly asking about things like this, but then I ask anyway and nine times out of ten someone is like “Oh, I’ll bet I know what that is! Here’s a link!” Elizabeth lost her favorite eye pencil. She doesn’t know the brand, and neither of us think we bought it: we think either she got it several years ago as a gift or else it was in my make-up box (which she has thoroughly pillaged) from one of the few subscription/advent boxes I tried before realizing I don’t wear make-up. It was a black eye pencil with glitter—not shimmer, GLITTER, so that there would be several little flashing pieces of glitter along her eyelid. She said it had a gold cap. I’d love to find out what it was and replace it for her.

Second: we have dropped off the three college kids, and now it is just me and Paul and William in the house. I know from experience that the sudden painful jabs will stop in a week or two, but right now I am still catching myself off-guard with thoughts such as “Isn’t it about time for Henry to be getting home?” and “Oh, we need more _____ at the grocery store, oh wait no we don’t.” I was thinking how much stranger this would be if William were NOT still at home. Just…me and Paul and the cats? Already?

Drop-offs went well. Henry was very nervous (pretending not to be) in the car on the way, and nervous when I dropped him off with his stuff—but by the time I’d taken the car to the distant parking lot as instructed and made my way back to his dorm (HALF AN HOUR’S WALK, THEY SAID THERE WOULD BE A SHUTTLE BUT I DID NOT SEE ANY SIGN OF ONE), he was cheery, and already getting along well with one of his roommates (he’s in a triple). Henry’s goal is to meet as many people as possible the first few weeks while everyone is new. He emailed us a little list of the people he’d met and liked so far, including someone who “may be my lifelong best friend, not that I’m making plans or anything.”

The twins are both in unfurnished apartments, and I am trying to leave this to them to figure out. My own impulse is to panic. “There is NOTHING IN THIS KITCHEN!!!” “But anything they buy, we have to figure out what to do with at the end of the year!!” “What if they buy something and then forget it’s theirs and a roommate takes it??” etc. All will be well. Items purchased for college apartments join the College Apartment Furnishings Cloud: maybe the saucepan is lost, but a couch is found; or both saucepan and couch are lost, along with the tower fan, but all go on to find another college student who needs them. Each semester of parents/students contributes to the Cloud; each semester benefits in their turn. When William’s college didn’t resume after spring break in 2020, workers packed up all the kids’ stuff for them and put it in storage; we ended up with two very expensive bath towels that did not belong to William. He contacted both of his roommates offering to mail the towels, but neither roommate claimed them. I’ve wondered if someone else’s parent was wringing their hands over those towels, as I was over the tower fan Rob lost along the way, along with some cookware and dishes.

When Elizabeth was moving in, we walked past a dumpster that had a little assortment of things clearly set to the side in case anyone wanted to claim them: a coffee table, an ottoman, a computer chair. Elizabeth took the ottoman. We saw other people take the chair and the table. By the time we left, there was a laundry hamper and a dining room chair. This is the College Apartment Furnishings Cloud at its most active and observable, but I like to imagine that that’s the gist of what’s happening all the time, less visibly: perhaps Rob’s tower fan was accidentally brought home by one of his roommates, who passed it down to his younger sister who is just now starting her sophomore year; maybe his dishes were left behind in a cabinet, and a college employee cleared them out and put them in the pile of used-but-still-good things the college resells at the start of each year, and another student bought the little deer bowls, and she graduated several years ago but still has them in her kitchen cabinets now.

fortunately I bought myself a set of the same bowls at the time (for $8, not for the $30-plus-shipping they are charging now)

We are ticking off all the things that will happen before the summer is over and Henry goes to college. One after another, tick tick tick, and now here we are in the last week. We have purchased the twin-extra-long sheets and comforter; we have purchased the tower fan and the bath towel and the backrest. Henry has purchased a guitar.

On Saturday, I took Henry out for breakfast; he and I both like eating breakfast out, and everyone else in our household is kind of meh about it, so we seized a last opportunity. Sunday morning, I drove Rob to the train station (he was here for a two-week visit). Tuesday is Henry’s last day of his summer job. Wednesday I’m off work, and we go pick up Elizabeth from the summer camp where she’s been working, and we do last-minute college shopping for anyone who needs it. Thursday we’re getting Chinese take-out for dinner at Henry’s request. Friday morning Edward has a hospital infusion appointment, so Paul will take Edward to that while I take Henry to college; I might bring William along to help with carrying things, but my memory of other freshman drop-offs is that the lifting/carrying is done almost entirely by extremely school-spirited students working for the Admissions department and using giant rolling carts, while the parents go park the car in a distant lot and walk half a mile back to the dorm to hug the child good-bye and then walk half a mile back to the car.

We have not been settle-the-child-in college parents. At the urging of a coworker whose child is going to the same college as Henry, I joined a Facebook parents group for parents of freshmen at this school, and it has been an eye-opening experience. Parents MEASURING FOR CURTAINS. Parents asking about filters for the showerheads/faucets. Parents wondering which dining hall is closest to their child’s dorm. Parents posting, and I am not exaggerating, HUNDREDS of questions about lofting the beds, and about how many inches there will be under each type of lofted bed, and asking about special bedskirts that will cover the mid-lofted underbed space, etc.

We drop the child off with all their things, and we hug them and leave. So far each baby bird in turn has figured out bed-lofting without us. I remember this from my own college experience as well: bed-lofting is a student group-bonding experience. No one needs a middle-aged parent trying to measure the gap for a bedskirt that matches the curtains. (What happens, I wonder, if the roommate’s parents ALSO bring bedskirt-matching curtains??)

Different people are different ways, so there MUST be students who earnestly want/need their parents to help unpack all their stuff, make the bed, choose coordinated decorations for the room, etc., but we are so far five for five on students not wanting that. Elizabeth SHOOS US OUT: “Okay, now go away, I want to arrange my stuff!” A few hours later she sends us a Snapchat video of the results, zooming in on highlights: her plant, her art supplies, her posters, her large round ugly stuffed proboscis monkey.

The day after we drop off Henry, we leave early in the morning to drive the twins back to college. Both of them are in unfurnished campus apartments this year, which seems to me like THE WORST option: so much stuff to bring, AND you have to clean your own bathroom. (The dorm bathrooms are communal, and cleaned by someone who is paid to do it.) We had a hitch put on one of the cars so we can pull one of those little enclosed trailers. Two mattresses (thank you for the suggestion, Jane D., they are currently uncompressing on my dining room table and seem GREAT!), two mattress bags for protection during transport and for easier carrying, two folding desks (one is this one and one is this one), two folding bookcases. Everything else packed into bags like these (we have several sets, some IKEA brand and some knock-offs; all seem good), which are like nice sturdy roomy water-resistant duffels that fold flat when you don’t need them, and also the kid can use one as a good single duffel for coming home on breaks.

One week from today we will be back home and all three college kids will be at college, and we will be figuring out what a household looks like when it’s me, Paul, and 24-year-old William.

I have had a startling conversation with a co-worker. Her daughter is getting married, and they have settled on a location and menu, and the invitations have gone out. My co-worker said they are still waiting on a number of uncertain RSVPs, and then she added, acting out her own inner monologue: “I mean, we’re spending $250 a plate, can you at least let me know if you’re coming??”

The first time she mentioned that number, I made the active decision to keep my face actively neutral. I don’t know who has what money, or what their priorities are, and no one is asking my face for its opinion. But the THIRD time she said that price, I decided that someone doesn’t say it three times in as many minutes unless they want to talk about it, so I said in a cautious, you-are-the-parent-who-is-slightly-further-down-the-road-than-me-and-I-learn-at-your-feet voice, “I didn’t know it COULD cost that much.” Which was at least theoretically untrue, because if you had told me that, say, George Clooney spent $250/plate for his wedding reception, I would not have said the same thing. But I mean I didn’t know it was possible for ORDINARY PEOPLE I WORK WITH to be semi-casually paying that much per plate for a wedding reception. Groceries for a family of four for a month, or one single dinner for that family at a wedding = the same price.

And she replied, “That is just the AVERAGE, BUDGET-FRIENDLY cost these days! We looked at several other possibilities that were MUCH more. We relocated the wedding to [nearby state] to bring it down as low as this!”

This is when I resolved to come to you. I feel we need to pool our Group Knowledge on this. IS $250/plate the average, budget-friendly cost of throwing a wedding? My co-worker is NOT WEALTHY. She works in a LIBRARY where, for example, I have been working for five years at an exemplary level and I make $17/hour, which for comparison is what McDonald’s and Target employees in my area START at, and in fact I recently saw Target is starting at $19. Her husband has a NORMAL JOB, and she works because she NEEDS TO as well as WANTS TO. We do not live in a particularly expensive area, and in fact they moved the wedding to be in an even less expensive area. If the average, budget-conscious wedding is $250/plate, then I would like to know NOW so that I can inform the children we are OPTING OUT. I mean it. We are OPTING. OUT. We will find other ways to get married that give us more bang for the buck.

We could have it in the yard, and we could pick up a dozen different pizzas from each of three different local pizzerias, and we could buy every single different variety of Bota boxed wine and line them up along a folding table for tasting purposes, and have two giant coolers full of ice and beer! We could go to one of the beautiful local parks, and hire food trucks! The happy couple could instead ELOPE TO ITALY FOR TWO WEEKS FOR THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME, and we’d still save money! I went to a lovely, lovely wedding where they got married in a church and then had cake and strawberries and champagne in the large beautifully-lit church foyer, and my guess is that it did not cost ANYWHERE EVEN REMOTELY APPROACHING $250/person. This is a loving family celebration! Are we suddenly a $250/plate family, when yesterday we were happy with store-brand ice cream?

My intention was to avoid sounding judgey, but clearly that is a lost cause. I don’t MEAN to sound judgey, but I think that is how it unmistakably comes across when someone is astonished by the amount of money someone else is spending on something. We have talked about this before, with Startling Expenses, and we have agreed it is Not Nice At All to express that astonishment to the person whose expenses are startling to us—especially not without first FULLY coming to terms with our own Startling Expenses. Which is why, with my co-worker, I first SUPPRESSED my astonishment, and then, when it seemed she WANTED a reaction, at least went with with MEEK IGNORANCE version of astonishment. But here, among friends, my hope is to PRIVATELY and SAFELY express the astonishment as a conversation-opener and attitude-adjuster: I am astonished, which is going to come across as judginess, but you are my friends; and you know I am prepared, in your company and under your counsel, to go from astonishment to resignation/understanding/enlightenment(/opting-out).

We should also recognize the challenge under these circumstances of presenting information without JUSTIFYING it. Let’s imagine a vastly exaggerated situation, exaggerated beyond all possible connection to actual reality, where someone has paid $250 per guest for a Lyft driver to pick up food at a Burger King drive-through for the reception. We know from studying psychology that humans are prone to mentally justifying their decisions after the fact, no matter how irrational those decisions actually were. That is, if they made that decision, it MUST by definition have been a smart and reasonable decision, and they will find evidence to defend that idea. Someone who, against all objective reason, has spent $250 per person for wedding guests to be fed room-temperature Burger King take-out that should have cost $12 per person, might be inclined to deliver impassioned arguments for why it is WORTH IT to SPEND MONEY on a SPECIAL DAY for WHAT YOU WANT. Before we begin our important work, let us all try to separate ourselves from that psychological inclination. If it is useful to put the financial information in an anonymous comment, in order not to feel the anticipatory gaze of judgement that activates that psychological shield of justification, let’s go ahead and do that.

Because here is what I would like us to do, if you are willing. I would like us to POOL what we know, as objectively as possible. Some of us know a little and some of us know a lot, some of us know specific things and some of us know general things, and it is all valuable in the pool. Maybe you can contribute how much it cost per plate to get married when YOU got married, and use an inflation calculator to figure out what that is in today’s dollars; that is to prevent us from boasting like old people that WE only spent TWENTY dollars a plate in 1965, when that would be the equivalent of TWO HUNDRED dollars a plate in 2025. Or maybe you can contribute how much it cost for your child’s reception—again, unless your child got married this year, we’ll need to use the inflation calculator to make sure we are talking about the same dollars. Or maybe you or your friend or your child is getting married SOON, and you have CURRENT ACTIVE PRICING for us to consider: maybe you know that you can spend as little as $30/plate, but only if you want bad cafeteria food (in which case I am going to really lean into my pizzas / food trucks ideas, which I suspect would please more guests, if pleasing guests is the goal), or maybe you know that everything is nuts right now because of the [reason the rest of us don’t know about], or maybe you have a friend who is a caterer and you know it varies considerably based on the RANGE of the number of people you want to feed (that is, perhaps it is VERY VERY DIFFERENT to feed 40-75 guests than to feed 150-200 guests). Or maybe you know that the real variable is not the food but the locale. All of this is very, very valuable.

Also valuable: information about the QUALITY OF FOOD. If you spent $50/plate in 1997, which is the equivalent of $100/plate in 2025, and your reception food was chicken breast, rice, and mixed vegetables that you would have been willing to pay mayyyybe a halfhearted $16 for in 2025 on a busy night when you can’t face making dinner, that matters TOO. We can see how it could be delightful to treat your friends and family to truly good dinner at a fair price, but less satisfying to treat your friends and family to a meal that cost you roughly six times as much as you would EVER have paid for the same food at a restaurant, if you follow me. VALUE: that is a concept that applies regardless of price-point.

Paul has started, for reasons unknown and unexplored, to increase the amount of housework he does. Of course theoretically I do not want to discourage this IN ANY WAY. But we are running into some issues.

When one household member starts to do a chore that has been done by a different household member for, say, thirty years, my opinion is that there needs to be discussion/training/etc. If, for example, I were to suddenly start doing the snow-blowing of the driveway, I would expect to first ask Paul to show me how to use the snow-blower. I would expect to receive an overview of the things he had learned in his years of snow-blowing, and particularly in snow-blowing our particular driveway, and then I would expect to go to him with questions or issues I encountered; I would also expect him to point out things he noticed, for example if I were doing something in a way that would damage the snow-blower or the driveway, or if I were doing things in a way that would take twice as long. This is because I start from the point of view that a chore is a learned skill, and takes effort and wisdom, and that the person doing the chore is doing it in a particular way based on experience and knowledge.

The evidence suggests that Paul is not starting from this point of view. He does not want to be taught to do the chore first; he wants to just start doing it. He does not do AT ALL WELL with any feedback or information: for example, saying “Oh no, wait, that shirt can’t go in the dryer” or “The bowls don’t get clean if they’re blocked by plates” or “The washing machine defaults to hot water; it has to be manually changed to a different temperature.” And he does not notice when the chore itself gives him feedback: for example, if he loads the dishwasher with a plate in front of a bowl, and therefore the bowl does not get any contact with soap/water, he does not notice when unloading the dishwasher that the bowl is not clean, and he puts it away unclean. If I mention that the bowl is not clean, and it’s because it was blocked by a plate, he does not learn from that either, and he continues to load it the way in which the bowl is not cleaned. If I am putting my own dishes into the dishwasher, and I notice that a bowl is blocked by a plate and move the plate or the bowl, he is exasperated and frustrated with me.

You can perhaps see the conundrum. Sorry, I guess I should have been more clear: when I said I wished Paul would do his share of the housework, I should have clarified that I wanted help that resulted in less work for me, not help that resulted in more work for me. I did not want to have to rewash dishes, replace clothing, and set up new systems to protect my things from being ruined. I did not want to deal with a prickly, irritable spouse who wanted credit for doing a chore in a way I would need to redo, and then got more prickly and irritable with me when I redid it. I did not want to have to SNEAK AROUND furtively doing and redoing chores, while no longer getting credit for doing those chores.

Some of you are perhaps wondering why I do not talk to Paul about this. Perhaps you think I have been in this relationship for thirty years without that idea occurring to me. Talking about it does not go well; I have tried many, many times, with many approaches (including saying the things as I have said them in this post), and with many different outcomes, none of which resulted in change. In the past, the combination of his behavior and the impossibility of addressing it has resulted in me actually INSISTING on doing certain chores and asking him PLEASE not to do them; this is obviously a very displeasing outcome, but was better than what we have again now for some inexplicable reason. I had thought that even if he did no housework, at least we didn’t have to fight about it anymore, and at least I was getting credit for doing it. It is hard to know what to do when we are back to this again.

I used to be a Christian, but even if you aren’t one and never have been, you’re likely familiar with Christian concept that you should pray to God for help. But in my family, and perhaps this is familiar to you too, the idea was that if, for example, you pray to God for patience, you should expect God to give you many many irritating opportunities to practice that patience. If you pray to God for purity/chastity, you should expect temptation rather than a cessation of Impulses. You don’t pray to God as if he is a wish-granting genie; you pray to him as if he is a physical therapist. You want stronger arms? You need to expect ARM DAY EVERY DAY. It is that weird Christian mix of humble (YOU SHOULD EXPECT TO WORK/SUFFER AND SAY THANK YOU VERY MUCH SIR) and narcissistic (THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE IS YOUR PERSONAL TRAINER CREATING CUSTOM TASKS TO MEET YOUR PERSONAL REQUESTS). It is hard to fully shake that view of the universe: if I want to improve something, I expect to encounter extra opportunities to cultivate improvement, deity or no.

And so, from that mindset: I am being put to the test, in a nice easy trial run. Recently I decided in my mind that, based on numerous regrettable examples from the past, I needed to be quicker to give up THINGS I HAVE that OTHER PEOPLE NEED. Too many times I have kept something back, in case I might need it later—when someone else needs it NOW, and I can always acquire it again later. It makes me feel not only selfish but also ridiculous. I am anxious and clingy, even when I don’t need to be. I would like to stop that.

And after making that decision, here comes the first test. Elizabeth texts from camp that they seem to be on the verge of a Covid outbreak, and do we have spare Covid tests? Well, yes. Our insurance company was giving out EIGHT tests per member per month for awhile; now it’s four, and we have stopped asking for them, because we have accumulated a fair number. Let’s say, at a brief count just now, 75 tests. The anxious, clingy part of me says, “But we might need those!” And it’s true we DO go through them very quickly when Covid is in the house and there are six of us. The new concrete resolve says, “Yes, but we don’t need them NOW. Someone else needs them NOW. WE can get more LATER.” And then I allow the anxious clingy (PRACTICAL) part of me to order another batch from the insurance company AND to set aside three tests each to send with the college students this fall. ALL THE REST, we give to Elizabeth’s camp. It is GOOD to USE things for what they are supposed to be USED for. It is NOT good to HOARD things UNUSED, when they COULD be USED. It is ESPECIALLY not good to let things EXPIRE while we hoard them. And look what a nice easy level-one test I am being given: this benefits my own child, and people directly connected with her.

I am also sending all the boxes of kleenex we have in the house, plus some KN95 masks, plus our backup supplies of hand sanitizer, plus a hoarded and dear 6-pack of Reese’s Big Cups for morale, plus an unopened bottle of Tylenol. ALL OF THESE THINGS, I CAN EASILY REPLACE. I DO NOT NEED TO CLING AND/OR HOARD.

We saw Elizabeth for a few days; her camp had a half-week off. She showed us around the camp for 20 minutes or so when we picked her up, and in that brief time I got four bug bites, and smacked/killed a dozen additional bugs who were trying to bite me. Bugs were actively trying to fly into my mouth. Elizabeth was entirely unfazed. She said the best way is to ignore the bugs and also the bites. Okay but. Like. They’re biting me, and trying to fly into my mouth. I can’t just let that go.

It was lovely to see her, and she was utterly bored. She said on the way home that she could not WAIT to have more than an hour off (she’s on duty 24 hours a day except for a one-hour daily break, which is the only time she’s allowed to shower, and she gets one day off per week; the going rate for doing the Lord’s work in this way is $50 per 23-hour workday), and then after about three hours at home she was restless. She likes to BE BUSY ALL THE TIME, she just THINKS she wants to rest. If I hadn’t definitely birthed her myself, I would not be entirely confident of the maternity. I don’t like to have more than one thing happening per day. I’m pissy about the pay, but this camp job is perfect for her otherwise.

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I will tell you a dumb thing I did. Here is what it is: I went to three months of pelvic floor therapy, which was not only time-consuming but fairly expensive ($30 copay/week x 14 weeks = $420—which was a HUGE insurance discount, because before insurance it was over $300 per session), and I got into the habit of doing my little daily exercises, and I graduated at about 75% resolution of issues with more at-home progress to be made by continuing the daily exercises; and then two weeks later, I had knee surgery, and I COMPLETELY STOPPED DOING ALL MY AT-HOME EXERCISES AND OVER THE FOLLOWING SIX MONTHS I LOST ALMOST ALL OF MY PROGRESS.

Luckily, as the physical therapist says, I get to keep the educational tool kit. And whenever you work a muscle, it is easier to get it back than before you worked it. So I am starting over, and making MUCH more rapid progress now that I know what I’m doing. I’ve rebuilt some of the little daily exercises into my daily routine. I’m being Mindful in the ways she taught me to be Mindful. I am doing my little Bladder Training things, where I try to delay peeing after I arrive home and so on. I will have to dig into the piles of paper on my desk to find all the worksheets I saved.

I have another tip from Pelvic Floor Therapy, for those of you who have the issue of Suddenly! Needing To Pee Really Badly! So That You Almost (or Actually) Wet Your Pants a Little Bit! (Frequently happens as you’re unlocking your own front door, or as you enter a bathroom and are struggling with the button/tie of your pants.)

It’s another of the tips I found unlikely when I heard it, and then it actually worked. At the time the pelvic floor therapist told me about it, I was not yet able to do a noticeable pelvic floor contraction (these are sometimes called Kegels, but the therapist said we are not naming any more woman things after men), but she said do one ANYWAY, and in fact do three in quick succession (they call this “flicking,” which I find icky but memorable). She said, do what you THINK or IMAGINE is a pelvic floor contraction (or Kegel), three times in a row really fast, and it can stop the urge temporarily, and ideally can stop you from peeing your pants a little. And I thought, how is this going to work, when I cannot yet do a pelvic floor contraction that I can feel? But I did three imaginary (imaginary from my point of view in terms of success, but actually trying to do them) quick Kegels, and it worked. It doesn’t work for LONG. Like, if you’re nowhere near a bathroom, you are out of luck with this maneuver. But it works for the time it takes to get from the front door to the bathroom.

Which, by the way, the SECOND level of this is to NOT hurry from the front door to the bathroom, but to instead force yourself to do something else for a few minutes, such as putting away a bag of groceries. This is when you’ve gotten good at doing the three quick flicks, so then the next step is to untrain your bladder to want to go to the bathroom the minute you walk in your door. This is when we use Gentle Reassurances, like you would for a sweet little dog who is going to get to go outside very very soon but not yet. “Yes, yes,” you say to your bladder, “I know you want to pee, and we WILL pee VERY SOON, but not QUITE YET. It is fine! We can wait! We don’t even need to go all that badly!” (This method does NOT apply when you REALLY DO need to pee. Like, you have been running errands and drinking a giant iced coffee, and you have been driving 7 miles over the limit all the way home because you honestly need to pee. It is ONLY for the kind of peeing where your bladder hears you coming home and thinks “PEE TIME RIGHT NOW!!!,” when a minute earlier you didn’t even need to.)

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A number of years ago, I consulted with you about buying a mattress in a box for a kid going to live in an unfurnished college apartment. (I don’t remember why, but we weren’t going to have space for a mattress on the way THERE, but thought we WOULD have room on the way BACK.) (Oh, I remember why: it’s because of the difference in passenger space needed. An extra kid was coming along for drop-off but wouldn’t be going along for pick-up at the end of the year.) I cannot find this post now, but it doesn’t matter, because it would have been, let’s see, when Rob was a college sophomore, and eight years is a long time for mattress developments. The mattress we bought him at the time (a Tuft & Needle), after sifting through the advice, was $350, and now that same mattress is $850, and that seems…incorrect, for a mattress that lasted three school years (Rob used it for two years, Edward for one) before collapsing internally and being thrown away. (Looking at the mattress online, I see it had a 10-year warranty, so we should have looked into that—but the collapse was discovered when Paul was picking up Edward at college, and so he pitched it into a dumpster with relief at not having to find room for it in the car. And probably there would have been some reason the warranty didn’t apply.)

I wondered if anyone has recent experience buying a mattress in a box, or knows what the word on the street is. I’m kind of inclined this time to go to a physical mattress store and buy normal mattresses not in boxes. With TWO students in college apartments this year, we’re renting a lil trailer, so we don’t really need the space the boxed mattress saved. (And that space-savings disappears anyway when you go pick the kid up again and the mattress is no longer crammed into a box.)

In the morning before I leave for work, I like to leave a note on the counter telling various kids what I would like them to accomplish while I’m gone—just small, reasonable tasks, nothing particularly onerous. Sometimes those things are left silently unaccomplished, which is maddening. I think they’re trying to surf on plausible deniability: hey, maybe they didn’t see the note! maybe they haven’t even been downstairs yet today! Who can say?

This morning I tried something new. I left the note to two children. I said would the second of those two children to see the note please empty the dishwasher. Then I put “first person to see the note:,” with a line for them to write their name. You see. This way, the motivation is TO HAVE SEEN THE NOTE. When I got home, the dishwasher was empty and the note was gone. I suspect they’ve taken it back to their lair for research/strategizing. How to defeat this new parental ploy?

I had such a successful day of errands yesterday, and I hear how dull that sounds. But you know that good feeling when you just get a whole bunch of little things checked off a list? I had some checks to deal with (the college sent some little refunds, with no explanation, and made them out in the kids’ names); I needed to stop by the hardware store and see if they had tower fans and/or pretty duct tape; I needed to pick up a prescription and see if that drug store had the potassium supplement I was looking for; I needed to drop a Litter Box Sample off at the vet; I needed to mail a package. I also needed a haircut, and that did not get done, but that can wait.

And this sounds even duller, but I had such a good experience at the hardware store! You know I have been trying to shop LESS at Amazon (not eliminate it, just REDUCE it), and I am mad at Target so I am trying not to shop there at all right now, but this means finding new sources for the things we need. Pretty duct tape, for example. I use it when packaging up boxes, especially care packages or gifts. Did I dare go to our very manly hardware store and try to find it, knowing that a nice older gentleman would be asking if I needed help within 30 seconds, and I would have to reinforce a stereotype? Well, I went, and happily found a female clerk, and she said “Wellllll, not really, but I’ll show you what we do have…” and brought me to a large display with half a dozen different patterned duct tapes (rainbow, checkers, camo, etc.) plus bright solids such as yellow, orange, purple, hot pink. I had to use restraint. (I got rainbow, yellow, and purple. If I do Halloween/fall care packages for Henry and his friends, I will permit the addition of orange. Nearer Christmas I will allow the purchase of red and green.)

Each time I go to one of these new stores I’m adding to my repertoire, I try to browse just a little through PART of the store, so I gradually learn what else they have, but without it getting overwhelming. So I browsed a little in the hardware store, and found Sharpie markers, which were also on my list! And a 5-cup coffee maker, which is on my list for Henry for college! And an indoor/outdoor thermometer/hygrometer, which I wanted now that we’ve put away our Amazon listening devices and can’t ask Alexa! And then the tower fan, which I’d been pretty sure I’d find, but they only had two left, and so that was nice. And I saw they have, for example, KITCHEN UTENSILS, and Mrs. Meyer’s soaps, and envelopes, and a bunch of other things I didn’t expect a hardware store to have.

When I picked up my prescription I browsed the drug store a little, but it wearies me to see their much-higher prices and realize I’ll need to get used to using their sales/rewards/coupons just to bring the prices down to the non-sale prices I’m used to paying. It’s worth it to me, but it’s going to take longer to get used to, and it’s less fun than the hardware store surprises (the duct tape, Sharpies, and coffee maker were the same prices as Target, and the tower fan was $5 less).

If you want to join our Summer Classics Reading Club, and why would you, we are currently reading The Three Musketeers, a book I expected to suffer through, but to my surprise I like it very much. You can probably get a copy at almost any library or Goodwill or used book store, or you can order a copy on Amazon for $4 and have it tomorrow without having to leave the a/c, which is the sort of thing that makes Amazon so hard to get away from.

I like sending mail, and I have several friends who like sending/receiving mail. Last night as I was writing a card for a friend, I noticed that the card had cost more than the copy of The Three Musketeers I’d impulsively sent her. Henry and I talked for a few minutes about the possibility of using inexpensive books AS cards. Like, what if you spent $4 on a copy of The Three Musketeers, or Pride and Prejudice, and wrote in it the same thing you were going to write in a birthday card, and sent it to a friend for their birthday? Would that be weird? It’s about the same price as the card, but for the most part we throw away a card after appreciating it for awhile, whereas the book they could get more use out of, if they wanted to, and then could keep it or donate it or otherwise get rid of it just like they do a card. But does it SEEM LIKE A CARD? This is the sticking point. You can send a card to someone without it being in any way “a gift,” but if you use a book as a card, it might indeed be perceived as a gift, and now you’ve set an unintended gift-exchanging precedent. It’s silly, because the card cost more, but this is the kind of thing that can happen.

And of course there’s the matter of shipping. When I impulsively sent a copy of The Three Musketeers to a friend, I didn’t have to pay shipping because I had it sent directly; the card I’m sending her will cost me a 73-cent stamp, so the book is cheaper again. But if I’d had the book sent to myself so I could write in it and use it as a card, it would cost over $4 to send it to her even at the media-mail rate, so then we’re talking DOUBLE the price of a card.

Back to The Three Musketeers. I’d expected a lot of swashbuckling, and I’d also expected it to be hard to read, because it is old and because it is a classic. But Henry said one reason he chose it is that the writing style is supposed to be curiously accessible/modern, and I have found that to be the case—after the usual getting-used-to-it delay of starting any older book. Like, the first few pages were a real struggle, until I got into the swing, or rather the swash, of things. But after that, it hasn’t been hard to read, and I see how it got a reputation for being curiously accessible/modern. There is for example some breaking of the fourth wall, where the author says to the reader, don’t worry, even if this character forgets about this other character and forgets to worry about where he is, WE will not forget, and WE know where he is. And the characters say “Thanks” to each other, which feels oddly modern, and the writing style is arch and confiding and dryly funny in a way that reminds me of Jane Austen. Henry reports that the audiobook is even more accessible, the way Shakespeare can be easier to process when you hear it spoken aloud by people who understand what they’re saying and know what the tone/emphasis should be.

For quite a big chunk of the book, there were NO women, and I was feeling kind of aggressive about that, but then suddenly there were some women, named and voiced and important to the plot. It’s still a very Guy book with lots of Guy stuff about sword-fighting and doing favors for ladies and dying for your monarch and so forth. But instead of finding that boring and annoying as I’d expected, I am, as I think I may have already said twice, enjoying it. It’s silly in a good way—like it’s SUPPOSED to be silly. It’s sword-fighting for people who don’t really like reading about violence and are more interested in the relationships between the characters. Or for people who DO like to read some violence but ALSO like to read about relationships between characters.