For the second time in recent months, a child has had a friend over and the friend has been…not someone I would have chosen. Both times, I got all agitated about it. It really is kind of astonishing, the way we don’t get to choose who our children like. They can bring people we dislike or even DETEST into our lives—can even make them PERMANENT MEMBERS OF OUR FAMILY. And they can bring people into our houses, because IT’S THEIR HOUSE TOO. And anything we try to do about it will likely make them even MORE attached to these people. This is something I knew when I was having babies, but it’s not something I KNEW-knew. I didn’t FEEL it the way I do now.

It helps me to remember my own childhood friends. My mom had the same exact dismay I’m feeling now, because I made friends with kids just like the ones my kids are now bringing home. Before saying anything or even THINKING anything, I imagine my mom saying/thinking those things when I was a child, and that shuts me right up. I understand now why those friends of mine would be worrisome to a parent, and yet those kids were good kids. The things that might make a parent nervous were not things that applied in those cases and/or not things that affected me in any negative way, and in fact I ended up with some lifetime positive perspective on a few spheres where it is very tempting and easy to judge unfairly. …Which is helping me now, but only with considerable and deliberate effort.

Still. That doesn’t mean these friends of my children will turn out to be as good and no-need-to-worry as my friends were, and it doesn’t mean I find them pleasant to have around. It’s helpful to remember, however, that I don’t even really like it when the kids’ friends I WOULD have hand-picked are around: I feel weird when there are non-family people in my house, and that part has to be added equally to both sides of the equation.

Another thing that helps me is having read Eleanor & Park. It’s a good reminder that kids don’t have much power over their upbringing, and that there can be a lot of reasons why kids might act/be certain ways. As with Eleanor, a kid might not shower or wear clean clothes, and that could be something related to her personal safety, plus no washing machine and no money to use the laundromat; a kid might want to hang around too much, and it might be related to circumstances at her own house. A kid might act needy because he IS needy, and it shouldn’t be considered in the same light as if an adult I’d just met started acting that way: any adult in a society can help take care of a kid, and that tends to be GOOD for kids. A kid might be over-share-y because she’s very friendly and social and hasn’t yet learned where the line is, or because the other adults in her life are very open about things I might not be open about; and again, it’s not necessary to deal with it the same way I would if a new adult in my life were doing the same. Kids are different.

This whole thing makes me wish I were better with other people’s kids. I’d love to be the mom who makes everyone feel welcomed and safe, but knows where to draw the lines—the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle type. Well, this will give me practice. (Because of Reality is Broken and Chore Wars, my mental draft of that sentence was “Well, this will give my character XP.”)

I would really enjoy hearing someone say “He’s not a very good housekeeper” or “She doesn’t help out much around the house,” instead of ALWAYS WITH THE PRONOUNS THE OPPOSITE WAY. We’ve mastered the “men don’t ‘babysit’ their children” concept; I vote for housework to be next. Paul rolls his eyes at my household-cleanliness fretting/self-consciousness, but I think that eye-rolling comes from being 100% secure in the knowledge that NO ONE IN THE WORLD will come in and say, “Whoa. Paul’s not much of a housekeeper, is he?” NOT EVEN WHEN I WAS WORKING FULL-TIME AND PAUL WAS THE AT-HOME PARENT.

Speaking of which, we are playing Chore Wars at our house. I read about it in a book called Reality is Broken, which says, basically, “Instead of complaining about how people play computer games when they could be engaging with reality, why don’t we see if we can use what we’ve learned from computer game concepts to improve engagement with reality?”

Farming is not a whole lot of fun, I’m guessing. But make it into a Facebook game and people will do it for HOURS, UNPAID, for FUN. I remember when I was playing Sims, and I’d suddenly realize that I was spending an hour cleaning my Sims house and interacting with my Sims children while my actual house/children went unattended. We will willingly do things in a game that we don’t want to do in real life.

Part of is the whole “getting credit” concept, which is why I like my FitBit, and why I want something that tracks Good Citizen Points. Part of it is that it really is more fun to play a farming/cleaning GAME than to do actual farming/cleaning. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take some of the fun parts of the game and apply it to the actual chores.

This is what my brother and I used to do with chores when we were younger. Our least-favorite chore was filling the giant woodbin with a week’s worth of wood from the piles outside. It was tedious and uncomfortable and time-consuming and not particularly satisfying. Until we started pretending that there was a blizzard coming and that the number of days our family could survive was dependent on how much wood we could get into the house before the storm hit. Or we’d make a challenge to see if we could fit the logs together as snugly as possible to get the maximum amount of wood into the bin, with the challenge being to see if there’d still be wood in the bin the NEXT week when we had to do the chore. I mean, we still had to do the chore. It was still uncomfortable and it still took awhile. But it was a LOT more fun that way.

Chore Wars is similar: you still have to do the chores, and you still don’t enjoy them per se, but they’re MORE fun than before, and also you get CREDIT. I recommend it, if you think your family might enjoy it. I’ll say this for it: the children are coming home from school and racing each other to do housework. Someone OTHER THAN ME cleaned a toilet this week.

Paul and the kids are a lot more into the storyline than I am; I find the whole “battling monsters and collecting treasure” part uninteresting and unmotivating. (What I like best is GETTING CREDIT and having everyone see how many more points I have than they do.) I’ll add a new adventure such as “cleaning the toilet,” and Paul will change it to “polishing the throne in the hall of fountains” or whatever. I find this irritating when I’m looking for the chore in the list—but Paul pointed out that it’s the children’s favorite part so…it stays. Our arrangement now is that I add the chores with boring titles and no monsters/treasures, and Paul goes in later and spices them up, so that now there’s a 25% chance of encountering Jabba the Butt (sigh).

You set your own points system for each chore, and you can change it whenever you want. I like this because it might only take 5 minutes to clean a toilet, and points are supposed to be approximately 1/minute—but I want 20 points if I do it, and I’m happy to give 20 points to someone else for doing it. Hazard pay. Or, like, we’ll realize the children are doing a chore so often that now it doesn’t take as long: it takes a long time to clean the floor and wall around the cat dishes if it hasn’t been done for weeks, but it’s the work of a moment if it was done the day before.

You can also add “quests,” which are chores that disappear from the list when someone claims them. So for example, I’ve lost my wedding ring (woe), and so I put it on the list as a quest: 100 points to whoever finds it. Or if I want Paul to fix something, I can put it as a quest and it works a lot better than nagging.

I saw my doctor today, which I hate doing but they are so much friendlier about sick calls if I do the well visits. And also, if I go too long between check-ups I start imagining scenarios where a doctor tsks regretfully and says, “If only we had caught this sooner.”

The doctor noted that I seemed nervous, and I paused to reflect on how I really do believe that MY type of responses to things are fairly normal and it’s everyone ELSE who could stand to use a little medication to adjust their responses to reality. It OUGHT to make a person nervous to be wearing only the front half of a nightgown and talking with a fully-dressed near-stranger asking Very Personal Questions, in a doctor’s office TEEMING WITH THE GERMS OF SICK PEOPLE, with the potential for hearing Bad News at ANY MOMENT. A nervous response seems NATURAL and APPROPRIATE.

Anyway. I’m supposed to take my blood pressure somewhere that is not a doctor’s office, because she wasn’t sure she was able to get an accurate result, and the number was high for someone my age. In the meantime, she would like me to cut back significantly on salt. Which, is there an easier way? Amputating a limb, would that help?

I am hoping to collect some salt-cutting-back tips, and maybe some salt-COMPENSATING tips (like, if I’m going to eat too much salt, some ways to help counteract the effects). The most helpful kind of tip is something like this: “I love salt TOO! I used to eat it PLAIN as a child!—okay,fine, sometimes as an adult too. And so when I had to cut back, I thought I MIGHT DIE. But I didn’t, and here are a few things that made it easier / more comfortable.”

As opposed to the kind of tip my late mother-in-law used to give, which was criticism + sweeping scorn + complete lack of empathy, along the lines of: “Nobody NEEDS so much SALT! People eat WAY too much of it! All these PROCESSED FOODS! Why, I cut out salt completely and I don’t even miss it! …No, I don’t use other spices instead! Nobody NEEDS those!”

(See also: Which Pieces are in the See’s Candies Chocolate and Variety Box? and Which Pieces are in the See’s Candies Soft Centers Box?)

I’m evaluating the See’s assortment boxes to see if I like the included pieces enough to be worth saving $4.00-$4.50/pound over a custom mix. The last two have both been no: it made more sense to get the Custom Mix, especially since the Custom Mix boxes tend to be a bit heavier than a pound.

Now I’m trying the Assorted Chocolates box. Here’s the description: “…from Butterscotch Square to Dark Nougat, Marzipan, California Brittle and more.” There is a note that Rum Nougat and Mayfair are temporarily excluded, but there was one of each in my box.

Because one of the things I take into account is that the Custom Mix boxes weigh more than a pound, I’m glad I thought to weigh this box before opening it: it weighed 1 pound 3 ounces, which is similar to the amount the Custom Mix boxes tend to be over (though of course it will vary from box to box). However, then I weighed the empty box (with the wrappers and protective layer and pamphlet inside) and it weighed 3.3 ounces. So that is somewhat less impressive, because that means the chocolate weighs slightly less than a pound.

Here are the pieces in the box:

Almond Square
Butterscotch Square
California Brittle
Caramel
Dark Almond
Dark Nougat
Dark Butterchew
Dark Pattie (2)
Maple Walnut (2)
Marzipan
Mayfair
Milk Almond
Milk Bordeaux
Milk Molasses Chip (4)
Milk Walnut
Mocha
Rum Nougat
Scotchmallow
Vanilla Nut Cream (2)
Walnut Square

Of those twenty types, six are ones I would order for sure. Three are ones I really like but might not think to order, and so would be especially pleased to see in an assortment. Five are ones I think are okay; five more I think are kind of meh. And one I actively dislike and would give to Paul. (I don’t specify which are which, because it’s a matter of personal preference only: it’s not that I think some pieces are objectively higher or lower quality.) So for me, this box was good to try but not as good a value as a custom-mix box.

(See also: Which Pieces are in the See’s Candies Chocolate and Variety Box?)

Last time, I evaluated the Chocolate & Variety Box to see if I liked the included pieces enough to be worth saving $4.00/pound over a custom mix (it used to be a difference of $4.50/pound, but prices have changed again). That one was a no: it made more sense to get the Custom Mix, especially since the Custom Mix boxes tend to be a bit heavier than a pound.

Now I’m trying the Soft Centers box (FOR SCIENCE). Here’s the description: “Includes Lemon and Pineapple Truffles, Bordeaux™, Mocha, Buttercream, Butterscotch Square, Chocolate Butter and more.” Nice of them to mention seven flavors instead of five, but I STILL WANT MORE INFORMATION.

Here are the pieces in the box:

Blueberry Truffle (2)
Butterscotch Square
Dark Buttercream
Dark Chocolate Butter
Lemon Truffle (2)
Light Chocolate Truffle
Marzipan
Milk Bordeaux (3)
Milk Chocolate Butter
Milk Cocoanut (2)
Mocha (2)
Orange Cream (2)
Raspberry Cream (3)
Strawberry Cream

Notice that there was no pineapple truffle, so they must sometimes substitute flavors. I would have preferred more variety: a Raspberry Truffle instead of one of the three Raspberry Creams; a Milk Buttercream instead of one of the three Milk Bordeaux; an Apple Pie Truffle instead of one of the two Blueberry Truffles.

Of those fourteen types, four are ones I would order for sure. Four are ones I really like but might not think to order, and so would be especially pleased to see in an assortment. Two are ones I think are okay; three more I think are kind of meh. And one I actively dislike and would give to Paul. So for me, this box was good to try but not as good a value as a custom-mix box.

I opened the fridge and cupboards half a dozen times this morning, looking with apathy at the various breakfast options. I kept thinking, “I can’t wait for lunch so I can have that leftover lasagna.” After awhile the coffee kicked in enough for me to think, “Wait. I could have that lasagna FOR BREAKFAST.”

Typical breakfast foods have been successfully incorporated into other meals: plenty of people have pancakes and sausage for dinner, or omelets. They might be sheepish enough about it to call it “breakfast for dinner” or “brinner,” but they go ahead and do it. Lunch/dinner foods for breakfast is a harder sell, apparently, and needs to be handled gently. One kind of ground-meat patty on a bread product is WEIRD for breakfast; another kind of ground-meat patty on a bread product is FULLY FINE. French fries for breakfast, are you NUTS? Oh, hash browns! Sorry, I misunderstood!

I had coffee and half a grapefruit with the lasagna.

Tonight I am in a mood where I am suddenly hyper-aware that WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE, NO REALLY WE ARE ACTUALLY GOING TO DIE, AND SOME OF US SOONER RATHER THAN LATER. This leads to two simultaneous, contradictory, and highly unpleasant lines of thought:

1. I’m not doing anything worthwhile with my life. I am wasting all of it. Here I am, WASTING ALL OF IT. IT IS ALL POURING RIGHT DOWN THE DRAIN. I need to find something significant and worthwhile to do RIGHT THIS SECOND.

2. There is no point in trying to do anything significant or worthwhile, since we are ALL GOING TO DIE ANYWAY and it does not matter AT ALL if we lived a Significant and Worthwhile Life first.

I medicated by drinking a spinach/blueberry smoothie (I WILL LIVE FOREVER), cleaning my desk (MY AFFAIRS WILL BE IN ORDER), and writing some Postcrossing postcards while eating from a box of See’s chocolates; next I’m going to play some Candy Crush and go to bed early. These things always feel brighter (or rather, dimmer) in the morning.

********

William and I had a really great shopping success this morning. He’d seen an 11th Doctor Who jacket online for, like, over two hundred dollars. I looked at it and thought, “I’mma find that at Goodwill.” And the very first time we looked at Goodwill, we found a jacket that is almost identical, for $4.49. So we are pleased. Now he wants a button-down shirt to wear under it. *rubs Goodwill hands together purposefully*

Edward’s procedure went great. When Elizabeth had her tonsils out, they had me go into the operating room with her; I was dreading this part with Edward, because of how Elizabeth had panicked when they put the mask on, and because I cry at anything dramatic and an operating room is just PACKED with dramatic elements. But this was a different hospital and a different doctor, and one or both of those things meant that I didn’t go into the operating room this time: they wheeled him out of the room where he’d changed into the hospital johnny, and I stayed behind at that point, and to my relief I didn’t cry. He was so calm about it, I wondered if maybe he didn’t realize he was going in on his own—but I asked him afterward, and no, he’d known, but the anesthesiologist had given him her tablet with Angry Birds on it, so he was busy.

When he woke up in Recovery about an hour and a half later, he immediately pulled out the nose-oxygen thing and started pulling at his other wires. The nurse came over and asked how he was feeling, and he said, “Actually, I haven’t had my procedure yet.” When she assured him that he had and it was all over, he was near tears because he said they didn’t have him count down or even tell him they were about to knock him out: “I just BLINKED and I was HERE!” It’s possible he’s forgotten, but I remember counting down from my own anesthesia experiences, and so do Elizabeth and my mom from theirs, so my guess is that they just put the anesthetic in his IV and didn’t mention it to him. He complained on this theme for quite some time, still slurring his words and picking at the tape holding the IV on his hand. But soon he felt better and had some juice and crackers, and then we went home.

I’d expected him to feel pretty bad all that day: the doctor said recovery would be a day or two, and that the first day he’d probably be on the couch with no appetite. I’d brought a bucket in the car in case he needed to throw up, and I’d braced for a lot of whining. But instead he seemed perfectly normal. Maybe he ate a little less dinner than usual, but it was still within his normal range. He was playing and cheerful, no couch time. He mentioned his throat was a little sore that day and the next day, and we gave him ibuprofen for that, and that was it.

Part of it, I gather, is that they switched anesthesia plans at the last minute, from the mask type to the hand-IV type. They usually use the mask type for children, maybe because that’s more comfortable for the child (Edward did greatly dislike having the needle put into the back of his hand). But the nurse in Recovery mentioned that the IV type of anesthetic is easier to come out of.

The doctor says everything looked normal, and he gave us some cool color photos of the inside of Edward. There was one place that showed signs of irritation, but the doctor said he’d had trouble getting the camera there and so the camera itself might have caused the irritation. Biopsy results will be back in about a week, but the GI doctor seems ready to send us back to the hematologist now for the next step.

The prep the day before went fine, too. He definitely needed to be home for it, but we had a happy day (I let him have as much video games and television as he wanted) and he wasn’t very hungry. He ate Italian ice and Jell-o, and he drank Gatorade and juice, and I asked him to list his least favorite foods and I made one of those for everyone else’s dinner (lasagna, in case you were about to feel sorry for us).

I forgot to mention one of my most important preparations for Edward’s endoscopy: I ordered a box of See’s chocolates and scheduled it to be delivered to me the day before the procedure. When I ordered it, it seemed like a mildly good idea, maybe a little silly/unnecessary/impulsive. Today, it seems like THE BEST IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE.

THANK YOU, by the way, for all the great comments. I’m finding the suggestions helpful, and the experiences helpful + reassuring. The FIRST TIME of anything can be so disproportionately overwhelming.

********

A few days ago, I complained on Twitter that I could NOT find the kind of legwarmers I wanted for Elizabeth, where “what I wanted” was defined as being able to buy them easily from a place like Old Navy or Target, with lots of choices of colors and patterns, for something like $5/pair. I could find lots of special dance legwarmers for ridiculous dance-gear prices, but not what I WANTED which was to be able to buy her several pairs without really thinking about it. I whined at some length, and Twitter was the perfect place for that kind of whining because people immediately started jumping up with sources and ideas. (My mom is intrigued by the idea of making legwarmers out of the arms of thrift-store sweaters; my own sewing skills end at using sewing scissors to snip the tags off of purchased items.)

Anyway, I feel a little embarrassed to say that after all that, I found legwarmers at Target. Just sitting there in, like, three solids and three patterns, plus two FUR options. For $5/pair, just like I asked for. I would have SWORN I’d looked there, but…the evidence suggests otherwise. I bought a pair of cream-colored knit ones with pom-poms, a pair of dark pink knit ones with bows, and a pair of black fake-fur ones.

Elizabeth has not taken the black fur ones off since I got home from the store. She is even sleeping in them. She has a black fake-fur coat that matches them exactly, so she is looking pretty decked out for third grade.

I was heading into the grocery store, and as per usual (except if the carts are wet/snowy/absent) I took a cart in with me from the parking lot—and this time I’d noticed a cart someone had left actually IN a parking space, so I took that one. This gave me a very pleasant hit of self-satisfaction and, as I was enjoying that chemical, I thought that what’s missing from such tasks in general is CREDIT. What I said I like about my FitBit is that I feel like someone is watching approvingly; if there is no deity in your life to take that job, it can be very satisfying to find a substitute.

For life arenas such as shopping carts, what we need are Good Citizen Points. One point for taking a cart in with you from the parking lot, which means your net effect on the cart situation is zero: you didn’t add a cart an employee would have to come outside to collect. You’d achieve the same effect by taking a cart from inside and then returning it inside (instead of to the corral), so you’d get one point for that as well. One additional point for taking in a cart that was loose in the parking lot causing trouble. One more point if that involved going out of your way to fetch it. But maybe take off half a point if you knew people were seeing you be so righteous.

One point for letting someone merge at a tricky intersection. One point for picking up a piece of trash. One point for holding a door. Additional points for any activity that causes you additional inconvenience or discomfort: an extra point for trash that is damper or dirtier or farther away; an extra point for holding the door when it’s freezing out; an extra point for letting someone merge when you’re in a hurry.

Likewise, points can be lost. There are a very few people who have legitimate reasons not to return shopping carts to a parking lot corral; everyone else loses a point. (Parking lots without corrals are a different category.) Leaving the cart in the middle of a good parking space loses an additional point. (People who literally can’t return the cart can gain a point by putting the cart where it doesn’t block a parking space and is at least partially prevented from getting blown into someone else’s car.) Dropping a piece of trash accidentally and not picking it up loses a point. (I am not even addressing deliberate littering. What would be next: figuring out how many Good Citizen Points someone loses for robbing the store?)

You lose a point for pretending not to see someone who wants to merge. Lose a point per minute of tailgating. Lose a point for sighing audibly in a long line.

Ideally these points would be automatically tallied by a supernatural being. Lacking that, maybe those little click-counter things, if those can subtract as well as add? You’d press the button every time you’d earned/lost a point, and at the end of the day you could look at your total. A device similar to the FitBit would upload your points to a computer or phone so you could see your progress over time.

It will be tempting, I know, to start Overdoing the points. I noticed this with attempted additions to the Holiday Card Scoring System: we start out with plus-one point here and minus-one point there, and before you know it’s it’s “What about X? MINUS FIFTY POINTS, right??” No. This throws off the scale. If a behavior generates or subtracts more than a point or two or three, we are leaving the jurisdiction of Good Citizen Points. Perhaps a very few activities might qualify, but only a very few.

It will also be tempting to use points to grade other people’s behavior rather than one’s own. One point lost for each incidence.