Volunteering at the school is continuing to go well. The key, I think, is that the particular activity I volunteer for (which I’m not mentioning because it’s precise and unusual enough to be searchable/recognizable, without being particularly interesting or adding anything to this report—something like “cleaning the school’s ping-pong tables” or “setting tables for the once-weekly Public Speaker lunches”) is an activity that doesn’t have many hours of volunteering available: volunteers are only needed about two days a week for about two hours each time. So even if there were problems with other volunteers not showing up for their shifts and the office calling me to come in (which hasn’t happened so far), the amount of time couldn’t really get out of hand.

And, the way this particular activity is set up, volunteers tend to sign up for only one shift every week or two, which is what I’m doing. It’s perfect: I feel like I’m getting all the benefits of volunteering without the burdens.

Since I’ve mentioned the benefits and burdens, I’ll list some of the ones I’m finding. First, the benefits:

1. Getting to know the office staff, so that they know who I am when I call or send in a note. This has made a huge difference in how easy it is for me to call with something awkward like, “I didn’t send in a note, but I need to pick up Edward in 20 minutes.” It helps me so much to have the person on the other end of the line know who I am as soon as I say my name; I’m not sure why, but it does. Part of it is that because they know me, they see me as one person making one request, rather than yet another person making yet another request.

2. Getting points/credit from the office staff. They now think of me as a Friendly and Reliable parent who Helps and Participates without Causing Trouble.

3. Getting more familiar with the school building and routines, which also makes me feel more comfortable there.

4. Social time with other volunteers. It can be a very nice way to get a little social contact if you’re feeling parched for it. And if you would like more friends but don’t know how to meet them, this is a good method to try once the kids are in school.

5. Feeling included/useful.

6. If I ever want a paying job in the school system, I suspect this would help.

7. Self-satisfaction. It’s a little like exercise: right before I do it, I’m thinking, “Aw, man, I don’t want to do this. *whine*” Right after I do it, I’m thinking, “That was GREAT. I feel GREAT. I should do this MORE!” When I leave my shift, I feel perky and happy and energized, even if I arrived feeling sullen and crabby.

The downsides of volunteering, based less on my own experience and more on the experiences of some of my fellow volunteers who do a TON more volunteering than I do:

1. Once you’ve shown a willingness to do work for free, there are a number of people who would like to get in on that action. It didn’t happen to me all year so I thought I was under the radar—but just last week the school called and asked me to volunteer for something else. Some of us find it difficult to say no to a direct request, even if we want to. Some of us start feeling like pushovers/suckers to be doing free work for people who are themselves getting paid to work.

2. I notice there’s a correlation between number of hours volunteered and level of disdain for other parents who choose (absolutely legitimately) not to participate in that particular hobby. There is a change in perspective, I think, to something like “I’m choosing to work for free, so other people should feel obligated to do the same or else they’re unfairly and inconsiderately ditching Their Share of the Work on me.” I think that’s one of those parasitic feelings that causes significant damage to its host. So far I’m doing just the right number of hours: I feel happy with my own volunteering hobby, without feeling as if my volunteer hours obligate other people to volunteer too.

Overall, I recommend the experience. It was scary to me at first, but quickly got less so—and the nice thing about doing work for free is that I felt less anxiety about making mistakes when I was learning than if I were being paid. Also, if you’re volunteering, you’re not going to get in trouble for chatting while you work, or for going more slowly than your maximum possible speed. And if things get bad, you can just say, “Sorry, my schedule has changed and I won’t be able to come in anymore.” So it’s still work, but it’s a more casual and fun kind of work than the kinds of work I’ve been paid for.

It’s also very pleasing to be talking to other volunteers, because they tend to be parents of children in the same school, so they often know things of interest or usefulness. Like, when there was something I didn’t know how to do (picking up someone else’s child after school), I was able to ask the other volunteers and one of them knew all about it and could give me all the details so I felt about a hundred times more comfortable about it. There also tends to be some good gossip about teachers and other parents, if you enjoy that kind of thing, which I do as long as it isn’t getting ugly and mean. Most of the stuff I’ve heard is more along the lines of who’s pregnant and who’s retiring and who’s moving away: stuff you could talk about with that person standing right there. There has been just a TIDGE of the kind of thing we oughtn’t to be talking about (but oh dear, it can be so fun in tiny doses), such as someone’s kid in trouble, or who’s getting a divorce, or a little venting about who’s very hard to work with. But it’s a nice group, so after a tiny bit of that, it stops and we move on to something else like complaining about our children.

If you’re looking for something similar, the technique I used was asking other people about their own volunteering experiences. If they responded, “OMG, it’s so awful, I mean it’s great of course and so fulfilling but I am SO BUSY and NO ONE ELSE IS HELPING ME,” I put a little NO WAY IN HELL checkmark next to that volunteer opportunity. If they said, “Oh, yeah, it’s cool: it’s just once a week and the kids are cute and I volunteer with my friend so we can get caught up on chatting,” and answered my follow-up question with “No, I haven’t had a problem with people asking me to do more and More and MORE,” I put it on my Sounds Good list.

We saw a lawyer about making a will. His strong opinion was that we should instead make a trust, which costs twice as much. (And I was very glad to have the comments on that post, to brace me for the cost.)

One of the hardest parts of dealing with knowledgeable professionals, I think, is knowing when the money is affecting their advice. I feel the same way when getting car repairs done, or especially with dental work. It is lovely to imagine all such professionals doing what’s best for their customers without any thought at all to profit, but we’re all human beings here. Money IS an issue. A BIG issue. It’s not bad or unethical to prefer to make more money instead of less money.

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We are at a nice peaceful stage right now with Edward’s Crohn’s Disease: he’s on a medication that seems to be working for the time being. (With Crohn’s, this could be permanent but it’s more likely to be temporary.) The pediatric gastroenterologist is seeing him once a month; each time, Edward has to miss a day of school because the pediatric gastroenterologist is a 2-hour drive away. Also, these appointments involve city driving, which I hate so much: one-way streets, pedestrians walking right out in front of cars, cars stopping right in the middle of a lane, parking garages, cars swooping to cut me off, and the HONKING OMG. City driving is like everything I dislike about people, condensed.

And the traffic is its own thing. With something as unpredictable as city traffic, I’m surprised city offices even make appointments at certain times. It seems like instead they’d give appointments for “morning” or “midday” or “afternoon,” and then it would be first-come-first-serve from there. I have to watch for my exit a couple of miles in advance, because it can be backed up that far. Luckily the parking garage guarantees sufficient parking for all patients, but it can still take forever to find a space (why are so many people parked over the line? WHY??), and another forever to wait for an elevator that has room in it. Last time I realized we should have taken the stairs: walking eight flights down would have been two or three times faster than navigating the elevator, and that’s what we’ll do next time.

It’s very frustrating to do all this for something that could be done over the phone: it takes most of the day and significant frustration and stress (city driving) and expense (gas, parking), and the doctor is just asking a few questions and then saying, “Good, good, come back in a month.” My mom and I were wishing it were more routine to be able to pay one’s co-pay for a doctor appointment over the phone, where we could accomplish the same thing in 10 minutes instead of six hours.

Anyway. It’s good that the medication seems to be working. Edward is growing and gaining weight, which are extremely good signs. He’s noticeably more cheerful and energetic. At his next blood draw they’ll test his iron, to see if he even still has anemia or if it’s gone.

Here is what I would like to know, now that I have left the message on the lawyer’s answering machine after 16 years of meaning to get around to doing that:

Is it HARD and SCARY and DIFFICULT to make a will, or is it the kind of thing I will not be able to believe I didn’t do sooner?

Is it piles and piles of paperwork and decisions, or is it fill in these blanks here, initial here, sign here, pay here?

Is it UNBELIEVABLY EXPENSIVE?

Does it take a long time and/or multiple appointments, or is it quick?

Do we have to find witnesses? I don’t know who to ask. I mean, I know people, but. It seems weird.

Will there be Surprise Unexpected Questions and Decisions, such as “Do you want us to store a copy of your will for you? It’s $40/year.” Or anything where Consumer Reports would be all “Don’t pay for these unnecessary services”?

MUST we do the part about life support and so on, or can we just take care of who gets the money and/or children?

(We do have a will made with will-making software, lest you wonder if we have really been flying without one all these years. But this is my first time seeing a lawyer about ANYTHING. I am NERVOUS and UNHAPPY.)

The day before yesterday, I was reading a book that mentioned a woman who wore her hair in a Psyche Knot. I was mildly interested in knowing what that looked like, and also I am on the lookout for new ways to wear my hair up, so I searched online. Several hours later, I was still watching YouTube hair tutorials on various hairstyles, complaining to Paul about how SO MANY PEOPLE have NO IDEA they’re no good at YouTube tutorials.

Anyway, I rediscovered a community I’d been a part of the last time I grew my hair long (pre-YouTube). My hair was about halfway down my back, and I’d just discovered email lists, and those two things converged and caused me to discover there were people who were more than just mildly interested in long hair. GOODness. There were daily discussions about things like the absolute maximum temperature of water that should ever touch your hair, the only hair products that should ever touch your hair, all the hair products that should NEVER touch your hair or else you might as well cut it off because it was permanently ruined, and so on. Things could get pretty heated (BUT NOT ABOVE 90 DEGREES).

A good thing about human beings is that if you have an interest, there’s a community for that. It may be a small community or it may be a large community, but there IS a community.

A good thing about the internet is that it is one billion times easier to find and join and gather together that community. I’m imagining trying to put together a Long Hair Club in my town. Hm. But online? EASY. There are tons of them already in progress. And because it’s online, the groups are meeting any time, rather than Tuesdays at 8:00.

The less-good thing about human beings is that if there’s a community, there’s snobbery and competition. Some of the hair styles I was looking at were listed as being good “even for short hair.” Do you know what “short hair” means in the long-hair community and nowhere else? Halfway down your back. Yes, you are put into your place pretty much right at the get-go. But the good news is that you DO HAVE A PLACE.

And in fact, you have your CHOICE of places. Short-haired newbies who KNOW their place are more than welcome: people higher in the ranks need admirers and students. Or do you want to appreciate long hair without growing it yourself? There are long-hair groupies. Do you want to style other people’s long hair? You are a valuable commodity. Can you effectively and efficiently teach others about styling long hair without saying “Um…yeah, so…” every other sentence and ceasing all progress on the hair style every time you wander off the topic, which is continually? PLEASE MAKE A YOUTUBE VIDEO.

Tonight I had a flashback to apartment living: I was in the bathroom and Paul was listening to music on the other side of the wall, and MAN. I had forgotten how music at a reasonable volume sounds UNTHINKABLY RUDE on the other side of a wall. The wall was VIBRATING, and all I could hear was BOOM-bah-bah BOOM-bah-bah BOOM-bah-bah until I wanted to pound on the wall for old times’ sake.

But the music was not even loud on Paul’s side of the wall. It’s just that the music was CLOSE TO THE WALL. I wonder how many misunderstandings have arisen from similar situations? One side: “WHY do they have to BLAST their music DAY AND NIGHT?? Have they NO CONSIDERATION for others??” The other side: “WHY do they have to POUND THE WALL when I listen to ANY MUSIC AT ALL?? Have they NO CONSIDERATION for others??”

For example, in the apartment we lived in when Rob was born, our next-wall neighbors had what sounded like a full-sized piano but was probably a small electric keyboard. They unwisely put it against our shared wall. They also had two elementary-school-aged children. By the time we moved out, I could have bashed that wall down with my bare hands to get at that piano, and felt glad of the blood and shattered bones my hands would have become.

That is the rule, in apartments: if it makes sound, it does not go against a shared wall. The CD player. The TV. The mixer, if possible, though not as big a deal if it isn’t, because it’s used so briefly and occasionally. The headboard, certainly. None of those things go against a shared wall, even if the external wall is chilly or the interior wall is inconvenient.

Unfortunately, the floor is sometimes a shared wall, and there is no way to put nothing against that.

This song is OBSESSING MY MIND:

Chocolate, by The 1975. I had trouble finding it, for two reasons:

1. I couldn’t understand the lyrics.

2. The band is called “The 1975,” so when I DID figure out some lyrics and search for them online, I kept thinking, “No, that’s not it—it’s a RECENT song I’m pretty sure, not from 1975.” Derp.

The other song going through my head all the time is “Hey Brother” by Avicii and Dan Tyminski. I love unexpected combinations: bluegrass plus dance? YES PLEASE. The video is sad, and also not what I think the song ought to be about; so may I suggest instead the lyrics video, which is baffling (bluegrass plus dance plus breaking pencils plus pouring milk) but not sad?:

AND I love “Delta Rae’s “If I Loved You,” but I don’t listen to it when Paul’s home because I don’t want to make him nervous: a person should not have to wonder why his or her spouse is singing “But I don’t love you, no!” at the top of his/her lungs.

One of the things I love so much about blogging is being able to check in whenever I want to know how many other people feel the same way about something. I mean, we’re no pure scientific sample here, but if I say, “Hey…when you drive a couple of hours away to an unfamiliar place, you pretty much assume you’re going to die on that trip, right?,” I can get a feeling for what the GENERAL percentages are—whether it’s one other person saying “Thank god, I thought I was the only one who makes sure her kids have fresh clothes for attending my funeral!!” while the rest say “…What are you talking about?,” or whether it’s the other way around. Plus, if nothing else, we’ve learned that any question that begins “Am I the only one who…?” can be answered “No,” so we no longer need to start questions that way.

What I’m wondering about today is what percentages of us feel what ways about Girls (Amazon link Netflix link). I have been watching the second season. I started watching the first season even though it didn’t look like my kind of thing at all, because I kept hearing about the show and seeing Lena Dunham on everything, and I wanted to know what was going on. And I just hated it right away. Which makes it hard to explain why I watched all the rest of the first season and am halfway through the second season.

Every time I watch an episode, I feel completely alienated and disconnected: I don’t understand the way the characters are behaving. I don’t understand the way they talk to each other. I don’t understand their fights or the horrible things they say. I don’t understand their romantic relationships or their sex lives. And then I panic, because I think that maybe this is the new way things are (just as my grandparents didn’t understand why people went around talking about such personal things all the time), and Elizabeth will TOTALLY relate, and SHE WILL HERSELF BE LIKE THOSE GIRLS, and then I will not be able to relate to HER. It makes me feel terrible. And the only two people I like on the whole show are Shoshanna and Ray; I find the others cringingly repellent. Plus, I hate how HBO is all, “We CAN show people naked and/or having sex, so we WILL! Just, like, ALL THE TIME!” I don’t know why I keep watching it, I really don’t.

Sometimes I watch the behind-the-episodes parts, and those just make it even more confusing. Lena Dunham will say something like, “We’ve all dated an Adam,” and meanwhile I’d been waiting to find out what serious problem Adam has because something is obviously seriously wrong and I don’t understand his personality at all. But he’s supposed to be an Obvious Type? Someone we’ve ALL dated?

And she says other things that soothe me because I think, “Oh, I see, she’s deliberately poking fun at this stage of life,” but then she says other things that make me realize she doesn’t yet understand the entire caricature: there are things she puts in there thinking they’re normal things, when actually they’re ALSO poking fun at that stage of life but she’s not old enough to notice them yet. It’s hard to poke fun at a stage you’re STILL IN. And it’s hard to know which parts are which, from a later stage.

Or she’ll say that her favorite kind of funny is when someone is coming across completely differently than the way they see themselves, and I think, “Oh, I see: it’s just that we have different senses of humor, because that makes me want to die of horrified empathy.”

So here is what I would like to know, I guess: if you’ve watched Girls (any of it), I’d want to know if you’re in the same age range as the characters, and how the show seems to you. For example, you might say, “I’m the same age range as those characters and that looks NOTHING like my life,” or you might say, “I’m in the same age range as those characters and that’s exactly how it is in my life,” or you might say, “I’m in a different age range but that’s how my life was at that age,” or you might say, “I’m in a different age range and I don’t identify with the show for this or any other stage of my life.” Or whatever your combination is. Actually I guess that’s basically all the combinations. Or, no, because you could also be, “I’m in the same age range, and that’s not like my life at all so I don’t IDENTIFY-identify, but I’m definitely familiar with that kind of life because I have friends like that.” Or of course there’s “I’ve never seen the show.” Well, and that’s not all of them; there are more.

Let’s see. The last time we talked, Henry had been sick all day Monday, and Elizabeth threw up at the bus stop on Tuesday morning. Since then we’ve added Edward starting to throw up right after school on Tuesday, and Paul coming right back home from work Wednesday morning. I just deleted a paragraph about Paul, because I’ve talked too many times already on the topic of Paul/illness/divorce. I’ve been dealing with barf since Sunday morning at 1:30, and it is now Thursday afternoon; it is not the right time to evaluate relationships and life choices.

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Two people on my friends/family Facebook recently posted rather hostile lists (why do people post these lists?) from the point of view of clerks/nurses, scolding customers/patients for being awful. When I read those lists (why did I read those lists?), I ended up brooding/mulling over several things:

1. One item on the list had a clerk asking the customer to “look up” and understand that there was a REAL PERSON (i.e., the clerk) standing in front of her. Yes. Okay, that is true, and everyone should treat clerks nicely, and as a former clerk several times over I realize MANY customers are not doing so. But in such situations where one person is resenting another person, it’s a good idea to flip it around for resentment-justification verification: the clerk should think to herself, “And am _I_ seeing the customer as a Real Person, or am I seeing ‘A Long Line,’ or ‘Irritating Group of Customers Who Don’t See Me as an Individual’?” Maybe the clerk will answer, “YES, I am seeing her as a Real Person! I TRULY CARE about THIS PARTICULAR CUSTOMER’S human needs and wants, and I want HER SPECIFICALLY to see my humanness in return!” But this is a list addressed to “Customers” as a bulk unit, and the tone is unkind and triumphantly group-spanking, so it seems like the context already gives us the answer I’m expecting, which is “Er…..no. Ahem.”

This may sound like I’m advocating all of us holding hands and reaching out and seeing each other as Real People, but actually I think that’s too much intensity for the customer/clerk relationship. I’m only advocating the general practice of double-checking both sides of the equation before getting indignant—particularly if the indignation involves self-pity. See also: “No one noticed I disappeared from Twitter” and “No one remembered my birthday” and “No one ever invites me to things” (equation check: “Do _I_ notice when other people take Twitter breaks? and if so, do I tell them so, so they’d know I noticed, or do I worry I’d sound naggy/stalkery?” “Do _I_ remember their birthdays?” “Do _I_ invite other people to things?”). Sometimes the answer will be yes (in which case perhaps the individual might want to consider changing his or her own behavior/expectations in order to stop banging his or her head against this same wall), and sometimes it will be “Er…..no. Ahem.”

2. There is an extremely valuable and admirable trait that some people have and some people don’t, and it makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE in performance/happiness in certain careers. I don’t know what to call the trait, but it’s when someone can hear the same exact question a thousand times from a thousand different people and see it as one thousand people each asking it for the first time, rather than seeing it as one person asking the question a thousand times. If you’re asking someone a question, and that person sighs and acts like they have told you a THOUSAND times, you are encountering a person who lacks this trait and/or has finally hit the limit of that trait for this particular job/question.

3. It’s a group-bonding thing to group-mock the group of people a particular group has to deal with. So for example, it makes perfect sense to me for clerks to gripe about Customers, and for nurses to gripe about Patients: it’s a tension-reliever and also a bonding experience, and de-humanizing others with mockery can take some of the sting out of the hurt feelings they cause. The problem is that it gets out of hand extremely quickly, and soon one group is seeing the other group as an amorphous blob of irritating traits. The resentment builds, and soon a polite and reasonable customer gets treated the same as a rude customer, and a polite and reasonable patient gets treated the same as a jerky one. This sucks, and I wonder if there is a way to avoid it while still getting the benefits of group-bonding and tension relief. Perhaps by also talking about the good customers/patients, and aiming for approximately the same amount of time on that topic. It seems like that would have good tension-relieving properties as well, while also giving an increase in job satisfaction. Griping, yes—but BALANCED griping, to keep from turning into a churning perspectiveless cloud of surly resentment that has to deal with THESE ANIMALS all day long.

4. It seems as if the venting/bonding griping should be shared only with other members of the group. When shared in a general way on Facebook, here is how it hits: other members of the group will like/share/enjoy/bond; people who should be taking justified scolding from the attack won’t read it and/or won’t recognize themselves and/or won’t agree and/or won’t care; people who are already being good customers/patients will feel attacked, hurt, and unjustly accused, and will end up feeling hostile toward the attacking group (in this example, the clerks/nurses) for being so MEAN and UNFAIR, and will take that feeling into future clerk/nurse situations.

On Sunday I thought, “You know, maybe what I should do is work on a Certified Nursing Assistant degree. Maybe it’s something I can do one course at a time, and then I’d be all set once I was ready to go back to work. And maybe I’d be ready now, or soon.” I emailed a friend who’s a nurse, to ask if she knew if there was any difference between one CNA program and another.

Sunday night at 1:30, Henry came upstairs saying he’d thrown up. For the next 19 hours, until he fell asleep Monday night, I was reminded of the years with small babies in the house. That feeling of not knowing how to find a gap in reality for eating lunch. Needing to remind myself to use the bathroom. Making sure I have everything I need within reach before I sit down, because once I sit down I’m stuck down for awhile. Lots of pre-rinse laundry.

Some parts were enjoyable. Henry is a very active, loud child, so having him snuggly and quiet was a treat. Having time with just one child was nice. Feeling essential was nice. A sick day can be nice, too, the way it breaks up routine. Having him fall asleep clutching my finger just like a baby does was nice. That “time has no bearing on reality” feeling was interesting to revisit for a day.

But I didn’t enjoy the part where I couldn’t turn my attention to dinner, or even to re-braiding my coming-unbraided hair. I didn’t enjoy trying to do all these things on half a night’s sleep. It wasn’t particularly fun to spend so much time with another person’s bodily fluids. I was getting oppressed by having someone else ON me all the time. I started FEELING the circles under my eyes. I was reminded of how impossible it is to fully enjoy the baby stage, because it’s so EXHAUSTING and DRAINING and CONSUMING.

This morning Henry is better. He still looks ill, but he’s not throwing up anymore, and he’s eaten half a slice of peanut butter toast and a big glass of water. He and I were both looking forward to the day ahead: still a sick day, but with more TV and video games and less washing out barf buckets, and less of him crying because he’s so thirsty but will throw it right back up if he drinks anything.

And then at the bus stop, Elizabeth threw up. It was very good timing: she narrowly avoided a bus/classroom catastrophe, and it would have been difficult to go pick her up at school with another sick child along. This changes our day, however. And it means the end to my hope that Henry just had food poisoning and that none of the rest of us were going to get it. And it means the end to looking into the CNA for now: I’m not yet available to be a reliable employee. (Though still interested in CNA-related talk.)

Last night I dreamed I asked Paul if anything was wrong, and it turned into a dream conversation about our obvious impending divorce. To my appalled and heartbroken reaction, Dream Paul said, “Don’t worry, it’s not like we have to do it right this second. Think of us as being engaged to divorce.”

In what I’m sure is completely unrelated news, the discussion about paint color continues. All the cheery bright/kindergarten/bus yellows and moderate sunshiney/nursery yellows made me feel nothing but despair, so I suggested green:

(screen shot from behr.com)

“Ugh, that’s terrible,” Paul said. “That is the same color as my coat,” I said. “All these years you have hated my coat, and you NEVER SAID.” “I don’t hate your coat,” said Paul. “But the fact that you would suggest that color for the bathroom makes me reconsider everything you have ever said to me.” “Maybe back to the vintage aqua concept?,” I suggested.

(screen shot from behr.com)

“Yes,” said Paul. So…yay! We agree again! But then, all the vintage-aqua-type colors I tried seemed vaguely FAMILIAR somehow. And I realized all of them were shades of the blue I use on this blog. And I don’t think I want the blog in my bathroom, not that I don’t think of you all as sisters. I wouldn’t want my sister in the bathroom with me, either. Unless we were just doing our hair/make-up, that would be okay.

Now we are looking at shades of gold, which is the kind of yellow I wanted to begin with but Paul said it looked like we wanted yellow but chickened out. To which I say: “How long do you want this project to take?”

(screen shot from behr.com)