I finished May We Be Forgiven (by A. M. Homes) last night and, as with many books, I can’t figure out if I DO or DON’T recommend it. But a telling detail is that this morning I am disappointed that I finished it, and I don’t really feel like starting a new book.

(photo from Amazon.com)

I would like to digress and talk about photos of ourselves, because I think that’s a subject near to a blogger’s heart. Here is the author photo I kept looking at on the book jacket as I was reading the book:

(photo from the jacket, by Marion Ettlinger)

And here is the photo on Wikipedia, which I saw when I went to find out more about the author:

(photo from Wikipedia, credited to David Shankbone)

I do empathize, and I suspect we ALL do, with the feelings that cause an author or blogger to use something more like the first image. Here are two reasons not to:

1. The shock of seeing the second image AFTER the first is far more severe than it would have been if I’d only seen the second. The second photo would have been a normal picture. But because I was familiar with the first picture, the difference between the two CRIED OUT. If a blogger is ever planning to be seen in public, it would be better to be frank from the very beginning.

2. I liked her far, far better when I saw the second picture. I think people think to themselves, “People will only like me if they think I’m thin and pretty.” But the thing is, I think we admire people who are thin and pretty, but that most of us are also a little put off by it until we get to know the person. Also, photos made to look thin and pretty may carry an unintended attitude the photographed person isn’t aware of: the photographed person is thinking, “Whew, this angle hides my double chin!” and not noticing that in order to hide that chin they’ve had to make themselves look bitchy or vapid or silly or unfriendly or unapproachable or unrelatable.

When I was reading the book and seeing the first picture, I had the author summed up as a girl in her twenties, right out of a writer’s MA program after attending expensive prep school; grew up rich; now kind of a privileged brat trying to shock people just for the sake of making them uncomfortable. I was a little cranky that it turned out she was making it work, because I’d prefer to see such people taken down. When I saw the second picture and read on Wikipedia that the author is 51 years old, I had to completely re-evaluate my impressions of the book. (Paul: “Well, how long ago was the book written?” Swistle: “2012.”)

I think when people choose pictures of themselves that they find flattering, they do know that they’re trying to alter the way people see them—but what they don’t realize is that they could be altering it with a net effect of WORSE.

Anyway. On to the book. I knew from the flap that there would be some violence at the beginning, so I was braced for it. I read the first scene of violence, which was only described by a character, not witnessed by the narrator, and I closed the book. Nope, not reading this. A minute went by. I opened it up again and kept reading. I came to the second scene of violence, which the narrator does witness, and I closed the book even more decisively. No. I’m not reading this book. Five seconds passed, and I went back to reading.

For me, continuing to read was the right decision: the really bad stuff was over after that, and was tempered considerably by later events.

Another reason I almost stopped reading is that this is a book that employs a method I’m sure has a name but I don’t know what it is. I would call it “unreliable narrator”—which is funny, because I just Googled that and it IS what it’s called. This reminds me of when I was trying to figure out what “AKA” could stand for, and I thought, “Well, it’s kind of like saying ‘also known as’….oh.”

Anyway, you can’t trust the narrator to tell you the truth, and I generally HATE that. There are two Agatha Christie books with unreliable narrators, and I will never read them again because that makes me so angry. But it can make for a compelling plot, because you keep thinking if you keep reading you’ll find out what’s REALLY going on. And there are enough hints in this book that even though many things are left non-revealed, I didn’t end up feeling tricked. It’s not that the narrator LIES, it’s more like he’s not processing information correctly HIMSELF, so he can’t quite relate it accurately to us either. I ended up with a feeling of “Boy, humans sure do kid themselves a lot about their own behavior and/or sure do tell the story one-sidedly to others.” (Another issue close to a blogger’s heart.) I did, however, feel like the narrator’s issues were too severe to have been so easily resolved, and there were a number of places where I’d been pretty sure we were working up to a big plot twist but then was irritated when nothing ever happened with it.

From my author assessment, you will have received the correct impression that there are parts that I feel the author wrote To Be Shocking. But I wasn’t SURE about it: that is, I’m still not sure the author DID write them “just to be shocking”; she might have written them because that’s how she writes and that’s how she saw the story going. In descriptions of her writing, the word “fearless” keeps coming up. I could go along with that.

Both plot and dialogue seemed unreal to me, but it was hard to tell how on-purpose that was. I probably thought “What?” a thousand times. I kept reading parts aloud to Paul, because I couldn’t figure out if (1) the author had no feel for dialogue, or (2) the author was trying to be funny, or (3) the author was trying to Show Something with the way the people were talking, or (4) kind of all three.

Also, if I hadn’t read on Wikipedia that the author had a daughter, I would have said she not only didn’t have kids but had no experience with kids. The kid part comes across as a 1980s fantasy movie where the single career woman with no interest in children gets stuck with someone else’s. (But I liked it, the way I also liked those movies.)

I don’t know, I don’t think I’m telling this well, because if I read this description I would be like “NO WAY IS THIS BOOK FOR ME”—and yet it WAS for me. When I was reading it, I kept being eager to get back to it, and that doesn’t happen with very many books. I don’t want to read it over again, but I want there to be MORE of it—two more volumes! three! four! MORE ABOUT THIS STORY. That seems like recommending.

Rob is now old enough to get the HPV vaccine, and his pediatrician recommends it, so I chose to have him get it. (It’s recommended for boys even though the cancer issue is more serious for girls, because boys can transmit the infection from one girl to another.)

There are lots of reasons why parents might choose NOT to get this vaccine for their children (it might not work, it’s too new, all vaccines are bad, etc.), and on a couple of those reasons I had to do some thinking: Rob was actually old enough for the vaccine two years ago, and the pediatrician brought it up a year ago, but I wasn’t done thinking yet.

Today I would like to address only one reason, and why I think it’s not a reason. It is possible that this will start a heated discussion, and I hate heated discussions. But I keep hearing this reason, and I have some Insider Experience that others might not have, and so it feels like a worthwhile risk. If you have chosen a DIFFERENT reason for not getting the vaccine for your child, that’s not what we’re talking about here, and I would hate to get half a dozen heated discussions going when I have only stocked up on enough gin to handle one. So tangential discussions such as “Well, _I_ chose not to because _I_….” will just get things all tangled, and perhaps would be better saved for a post discussing THAT particular topic.

Here is the reason I’m talking about: “The vaccine is to protect against sexually-transmitted diseases, but we’ve taught our children that sex is only for within marriage. In a monogamous couple, there’s no risk of sexually-transmittted diseases, so there’s no need for the vaccine.”

And here are the things I would like to say about that:

1. Teenagers are known to be kind of dim. Many of them make foolish mistakes. In fact, ALL human beings are known to be kind of dim, and ALL of us sometimes make foolish mistakes. Even Christian adults continue to sin and ask forgiveness, sin and ask forgiveness. A teenager who truly wants to obey God and parents WILL continue to make mistakes anyway, just as adults do. A major tenet of Christianity is that ALL humans sin—it’s just that God no longer requires the sinner’s death as payment for that sin.

2. One out of six women is sexually assaulted—and because of the large number of women who don’t report such things, the number is estimated to be much, much higher than that. Teaching a child not to have premarital sex does not protect the child against being sexually assaulted.

3. I went to a Christian middle school. Of the twelve children in my class, seven are known to have been sexually active before marriage. (This is not to say that the other five are known NOT to have been. It’s to say that of those five, I know one wasn’t, and the other four have not confided in me.) These were children who were all vigorously taught not to have premarital sex.

4. I went to a Christian college. While I was there, a study came out that electrified the student body. It involved a survey that showed that when college boys were asked if they would commit rape if they KNEW they could get away with it, a certain percentage said yes. What electrified us was that the percentage at Christian schools was the same as at secular schools. This led to a flurry of surveys done at our school, mostly by students in psych programs. Those showed that although in our particular Christian student body the students tended to have had fewer sexual partners than the national average, the percentage who were (or had been) sexually active was hovering right at average. This was not staggering news: I lived in the dorms, and girls talk.

5. I would like to make sure everyone is hearing numbers 3 and 4. Those children had parents and pastors who taught them not to have premarital sex. Those children’s parents paid extra money for Christian education, in part to make sure those standards were upheld among the children’s peers. And those parents were sitting at home with no idea their children were having sex. They even now would say, “Well, but see, I taught my children not to have premarital sex, and they didn’t!” And yet many of them are wrong. Did you yourself refrain from having premarital sex after being taught not to? How nice! But is that detail relevant? Well, it’s about as relevant as the information that other children given the same instructions DIDN’T refrain. What it tells us is that “parental/church say-so” isn’t something parents can count on to make the difference between the child refraining and the child not refraining.

6. Have you noticed that among your own Christian peers, there is some disagreement about what God’s will is, and/or what the interpretation of certain biblical passages should be, and/or how important those particular issues are? Children too may disagree with their parents on these same things. I hope you have not accidentally gotten the impression that all those sexually-active students at my Christian college had turned their backs on the teachings of God and their parents. On the contrary, these smart children had been taught to analyze scripture for true meaning, and analyze scripture they did. Many of them were satisfied that either premarital sex was not a sin, or else it was a minor and forgivable one (like the tattoo thing, or like the eating of cloven-hoofed animals thing, or like the gossiping thing). This was after being THOROUGHLY TAUGHT that it MOST DEFINITELY WAS a sin. They disagreed, as many Christians disagree with each other on many matters.

7. For many people, God’s plan for their lives will involve them marrying someone who is a flawed human being like every single other flawed human being. Their intended spouse’s particular flaw may have involved a sexual slip-up, from which they have fervently repented and taken steps to prevent ever happening again outside of monogamous marriage. Or perhaps one person in the marriage was married before, and has since been widowed/divorced, perhaps by someone who was not faithful. The virus remains unaffected by the information that the other person in the marriage was a virgin when the marriage took place.

8. For many people, God’s plan for their lives will involve them marrying someone who was raised by non-Christian parents and only converted after hearing about Christianity in adulthood. That person might have spent their youth without understanding that they shouldn’t be having premarital sex. They now repent of it and will live a monogamous Christian life. The virus shrugs its virusy shoulders at this and goes right on being a virus.

9. HPV can be transmitted from mother to child during birth. Presumably even those who think it’s a fair consequence for fornicators to die of cancer don’t think that virgins who got HPV via childbirth (and the virgins they later monogamously marry, and the children they then have within their monogamous marriage) should all also die of cancer.

If your concern is that a vaccine that may help prevent a sexually-transmitted disease may also send the message to your child that you endorse and encourage premarital sex, I suggest talking to your child on that topic. I was certainly FULLY AWARE of how my parents, teachers, God, etc. felt about premarital sex; getting a shot wouldn’t have made me think, “Hey—maybe they DON’T think it’s wrong!” When I talk to a teenager about Dangerous Things of various sorts, I almost always use the Double Lecture: for example, “You MUST NOT drink alcohol before you are old enough to do so. It is VERY IMPORTANT that you not drink at your age. It’s illegal and dangerous. Here are all the dangerous things that can happen” AND ALSO “…But if you DO drink alcohol, PLEASE don’t drive. Call me and I will come pick you up.” I’m telling them absolutely not to do something—but I’m aware that they are not golums into whom I can put a magical slip of paper giving them instructions that will be absolutely followed, and so I also tell them what to do if they disobey me.

Actually, what I’d probably do if I were worried about the shot seeming to endorse premarital sex is NOT talk about it (in the context of the vaccine, I mean). I haven’t discussed other vaccines with my children: I just tell them they’re getting a shot, and they say “Oh no!” and that’s the end of it. When Rob got the HPV shot he also got a Hepatitis A vaccine (it’s part of the standard set now, but wasn’t when Rob was a baby so he’s catching up now). I didn’t explain to him that this did NOT mean I was condoning the drinking of fecal-matter-tainted water; I just signed the paperwork and he got the shot. If a 12-year-old child hears he or she is getting a HepA and a HPV shot that day, the child is likely to continue looking bored, rather than perking up and thinking “Ah ha! This means my parents DO approve of me having premarital sex! And this shot MAY eliminate ONE of the MANY dangers, so basically I’m CLEARED FOR TAKE-OFF!”

How many decades will I spend on this earth before I realize that if I want my hair to be lighter/highlighted, I should lighten/highlight it rather than purchasing a lightening/highlighting shampoo/conditioner? What is it, I wonder, that appeals to me about the shampoo/conditioner route? Is it that it costs more, takes longer before any result can be expected, and doesn’t work?

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I’m reading the 1930s book Diary of a Provincial Lady on Alexa‘s recommendation. I think I read it a few years ago, also on Alexa’s recommendation, and that I enjoyed it then too. It reminds me a bit of the 1960s book Diary of a Mad Housewife, which I liked very much but am uncertain about recommending it to you, because I found it so very compelling in my early twenties, and there are many things I found compelling in my early twenties that I would not now want to recommend to others. Both books are the sort where you think, “Goodness, so many things are so DIFFERENT now—and yet so many thoughts/ideas/feelings are the SAME!”

One thing catching my attention in Diary of a Provincial Lady is how the old custom of calling hours and paying calls and so forth was probably very good for people’s social lives. Just think of how many blog posts you’ve read about how impossible it is to meet friends in adulthood, and/or how hard it is to know how to get the friendship going once a potential has been met. Do I call her, or is that weird?, It feels almost like dating!, etc. With the old custom, we would all be FORCED to get together with practically every other woman in town!

Which is, of course, the downside. The idea that we would also have to actively maintain relationships with women we actively didn’t want to be friends with is a bit out of step with current attitudes. And yet it would result in more good friendships overall, plus the fun of choosing calling cards. Though it would be quite hard on those of us don’t much feel the drive to have friendships, but perhaps we could develop reputations for old-fashioned 2000-era non-social-calling eccentricity. Hm. Well, we will have to decide if all the trade-offs are worth it, if we are ever given the opportunity to re-ignite the custom.

Did you see Princess Nebraska’s What To Do With Leftover Christmas Cards post, about making gift tags out of Christmas cards? This appealed to me because I like Christmas cards so much and always have a little trouble throwing them out. (But like Princess Nebraska, I don’t actually want to save them.) This way I have a TRANSITIONAL CRAFT. I especially loved how she made some initial gift tags by snipping out a large letter (like the M in Merry).

So I decided to try it. The first decision was what kind of punch to get. I decided I needed at LEAST five different punches. Then I narrowed it down to my favorite, because who knows if I’m even going to do this? I always use to/from stickers, and I have a lot of fun choosing/using them, too, so maybe I’ll have a lot of fun punching out shapes but then won’t want to fuss with threading them on a ribbon and/or won’t want to give up my cute to/from stickers. So I chose just ONE for starters: the “real estate sign” shape (in our area, real estate signs are rectangular, but the punch is not):

(photo from Amazon.com)

It seems about gift-tag-sized. Maybe a BIT skimpy. I won’t really know until I have to write on them next year. (I also considered the 2.25-inch scallop-edged circle, the wavy-edged circle (but someone on Amazon needs to review it and say how big it is), the gorgeous but expensive 3-inch lacy oval (the one negative review doesn’t scare me off—of COURSE hers is defective, of COURSE it’s not DESIGNED to chew up one side of it every time), and the merchandise tag (but it might be a little small).

I took some of the cards I got this year and made a first batch:

Here’s all the first batch, punched and freehanded alike

Closer-up of some of them

Closer-up of some more of them

I found that my favorites were the ones I DIDN’T use the punch for: the two red doors, the cats (I didn’t freehand those: the shapes were layered for dimension on a fancy card), the plump mouse, the Christmas tree. But I also like a lot of the punched ones. And my scissor skills are insufficient for most cutting-out tasks (like if a straight line is involved), but the blade on my paper trimmer was bent or something (had I let the children use it? yes, I had, like some kind of ROOKIE), so I didn’t feel like doing much without the punch. What I’d kind of like is a straight-edged punch (like this rectangle), but it’s hard to spend the money on something so plain.

I think what made this project so fun was that I’m not good at visualizing things, so each card/punch was a fresh surprise. The punch I was using let me see what I was going to get before I punched, and so it was fun to budge the card around and see how it would change the results. I was also surprised at how some cards yielded GREAT RICHES, and others NOTHING—and they weren’t always the way I’d have guessed. Also, sometimes the BACK of the card had the best thing: a small picture that looked very nice surrounded by lots of white.

I’ve put all the tags in an envelope and tucked them in with the box of wrapping paper, so they’re going to be fun to discover next Christmas!

I hold this truth to be self-evident: that anything meant to be frequently in contact with water (shower rack, for example) should not be made out of metal that rusts easily. Because SERIOUSLY. How dumb.

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One of the children in our household brought home information about The Constitution, and what surprised me is that reading it chokes me up as quick as hearing The Star-Spangled Banner: at some point in my own educational experience my brain hard-wired this stuff to Deep Emotion.

It occurred to me later while making dinner that “We hold these truths to be self-evident” is super-gorgeous writing. It’s all, “We don’t think this even needs to be said, BUT HERE IT IS IN CASE SOME OF YOU ARE A BIT SLOW AND NEED TIME TO CATCH UP.”

But then I thought how obnoxious I’d find that phrase if I didn’t agree with one or more of the truths. Which I would then refer to as “truths,” using a sarcastic tone of voice. But it’s hard to argue with “all men are created equal.” Isn’t it. Except for the part where “men” means “oh, women too, obviously.” Because the word “people” would mean typing FOUR MORE LETTERS GAH NO WAY DEAL-BREAKER AMIRITE??

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When I learned about The Declaration of Independence in school, I don’t remember it affecting me as sentimentally. It’s kind of like poetry: it takes some slow reading and some mulling to understand the convoluted phrasing—and then once you understand what it MEANS, the convoluted phrasing seems like the beautiful way to say it.

Here’s what it says: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Here’s what it means: We’re leaving you. We think it’s only fair to tell you why, instead of just taking off without even saying goodbye.

Here’s what it says: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Here’s what it means: WE (unlike YOU cheeseheads, is the implication you should be picking up at this point) think it’s obvious that everybody’s a person, and that it’s only fair that all each person should get the same basic rights.

And so on. I like it better all fancy, but only after it makes sense.

One thing that doesn’t seem to change about children as they get older is that they still don’t wait to bring up a difficult issue (is it teeth or is it ear infection?, is this a discipline issue or is it an issue of emotional needs not being met?, what does this decision mean for future applications of our parenting philosophy?) at a time when you’re well-rested, well-fed, and sitting comfortably and approachably by the fire sipping your after-dinner brandy and hoping for an exhilarating exchange of ideas.

Instead it is at 6:10 a.m. while the coffee is still brewing that two of them want to call in judicial moderation on the subject of whether Child One WAS or WAS NOT out of the bathroom by 6:05 as required by household law, AND whether that household law is fair and appropriate. Or it is at 10:00 p.m. as I am wearily brushing my teeth that one of the children asks why religious people can’t just follow the rules as they understand them, rather than spending most of their time monitoring whether other people are following those rules. (YES, dear children, and perhaps you could apply this new-found insight to your own CONSTANT TATTLING.)

I’ve read a lot of stuff, mostly written in metallic script on greeting cards, about how much children TEACH us. Perhaps my own children are somewhat stupider than the standard-issue child, and that is why so far I don’t feel they’ve taught me anything—and in fact, I have to spend a lot of time explaining things to them that seem really obvious, such as “This is why we don’t throw a rubber band ball at the window” and “Are you serious, scraping a FORK into the TABLE??” But what I HAVE noticed is that I teach MYSELF things as a RESULT of having children—and perhaps that’s what people mean to say but their children haven’t yet finished teaching them how to articulate their thoughts clearly.

The child doesn’t come along, hitch up her diaper, spit out her pacifier, and say, “When a human failing is consistent rather than periodic, that failing can no longer be blamed on external circumstances but must instead be blamed (if blame is to be apportioned) on the human herself—either on her unchangeable nature or by her failure to make the necessary changes to her actions that would lead to a change in results.” Instead, it’s that as I teach the child this concept (“If the clock is wrong, that excuses you the first time when you didn’t know it was wrong—but after that, you KNOW the clock is wrong so it’s back to being your fault you’re not out of the bathroom on time”), I learn it better myself (“Hm. If I am ALWAYS rushing/frantic/stressed to get to kindergarten drop-off, maybe I should start getting ready 5 minutes earlier instead of blaming the child and/or the circumstances for always making us late”).

This kind of learning (I teach it to them, and that’s when I learn it better too) reminds me of some rule of education I remember hearing somewhere along the line, which is that to fully learn to do something, you should watch one, then do one, then teach one to someone else. I think it was a medical thing, maybe? Like, first you watch someone give a shot, then you give the shot, then you teach someone else to give a shot—and THEN you can say you know how to give a shot. It seems like it would take more than that to say you knew how to do, say, neurosurgery, but I get the gist: you kind of know it when you’ve been told it; you know it better when you put it into practice yourself; you know it the best after you explain/show/teach it to someone else.

It’s like a very irritating thing Paul used to say (I’ve made him stop) (I hope), which is that if you can’t successfully explain it to a 5-year-old, you don’t really know it. I can think of multiple reasons why that is crap as a hard-line philosophy (but I can’t explain it to Henry so that he fully understands concepts well beyond his developmental level, SO I GUESS I KNOW NOTHING)—but the IDEA is that in order to simplify something down to its bare bones so that even a little kid could understand it, you have to know all those bones really well.

Artists study skeletal and muscular structure even when they’re not going to be drawing bones and muscles, because they know you draw the skin better if you know what’s underneath it. Again, many an artist over the centuries HAS been able to draw excellent pictures of people WITHOUT first knowing all the bones, just as you can know you want go to the less-expensive grocery store without first minoring in economics. But knowing the bones and the economics means knowing more THOROUGHLY what you’re doing and why. The children don’t teach us in the first sense of the word (by being the ones to tell us how things are) (or at least, as mentioned previously, MY children don’t), but we learn it better when we teach them. (That doesn’t look as pretty in metallic script, though.)

I find it very, very discouraging to face dialogue such as this:

Friend: “Have you had your thyroid tested?”
Me: “Yes, and it was normal.”
Friend: “Oh, but you can’t rely on that test. You need to ask your doctor for a different test.”

Aiiiieeeeee. Here are the two reasons I find this so discouraging:

1. My doctor has the medical degree and medical experience, but my friend’s argument requires me to believe that this well-known thing about thyroid testing has completely escaped her attention and she and all the other doctors continue to order the useless test despite how obvious it is to the non-medical-degreed public that it doesn’t work. My friend knows more than my doctor (or any doctor), and now I need to go tell the doctor so. I can’t face it. Even if it’s completely true and all doctors are less educated than my friend, I still can’t face it.

2. How many tests will I need to have before my friend will finally believe that my thyroid is normal? If the more unusual test she wants me to get also reports a normal thyroid, will it turn out I need to have a STILL MORE UNUSUAL test? And then if THAT one ALSO says my thyroid is normal, will the response be that many thyroid issues escape notice by ALL tests so I still need to act as if I have a wonky thyroid? For how many years must I continue to insist to my doctor that something is wrong with my thyroid, before I am finally allowed to concede that it looks like there isn’t?

I notice this mostly happens with the Popular New Ailment. We read about it everywhere, and we start thinking we have it—it’s like how medical students famously diagnose themselves with each new disease they study. The power of suggestion then becomes a faith issue: we BELIEVE an ailment exists, and so no amount of evidence to the contrary is sufficient to shake that belief. The tiny percentage of cases where someone is right to persist in a belief is all it takes to fuel the enormous percentage of cases where someone is not.

I seem to have gotten off my original intended path, which was to say that although this kind of thing drives me nuts, I see how it gets started (because tests DO miss things and symptoms CAN be atypical, and then people spend unnecessary YEARS suffering something until it finally, finally, finally gets diagnosed), and in this particular case I would like to actively seek out stories and information of the VERY SORT that I usually avoid and dislike.

My mom has these symptoms:

1. Sudden unexplained weight gain
2. Feels cold all the time
3. Tired—can hardly get out of bed
4. Fighting off depression
5. Brittle hair
6. Itchy dry skin

Sounds like hypothyroidism, right? So she had her thyroid tested this past week, but it came up normal. I told her I was sure I’d heard thyroid discussed in the way that frustrates me (“Oh, the test for it is stupid and useless unless it gave you the answer you wanted—you need to tell your doctor what to do instead”), and would it frustrate her for me to find out more about it? And she said NO, it would NOT frustrate her, because in this case she would LIKE it if it’s thyroid issues (or some other fixable problem) rather than losing-her-mind/becoming-elderly issues.

The most important purchase on my shopping trip today was these boots:

(photo from Target.com)

For years, I have been looking for boots. The ’90s were a good time for me: I am a work boots, jeans, and flannel-shirt-over-t-shirt kind of girl, as it turns out. But after that style went out of fashion, I had a ton of trouble replacing my excellent Skechers boots with anything similar.

I saw these at Target, and they were leather, and they were the right style and the right height, and they were $13.48 down from $44.99, and they had brown laces with optional wine-colored laces in a little packet. (I see on the website photo they have woven the two colors together. I just put in the wine ones.)

FURTHERMORE, they had them in my size, which is usually 10-1/2 or 11, which is usually hard to find in women’s sizes. I put them on—and they were way, way too big. That’s when I realized they were men’s boots. But here is the thing: I think they were on clearance because all the men looked at them and thought they were women’s boots. I showed them to Paul and when I got to the part about how they were men’s boots, he looked at them with one nostril bunched and said, “Those are not men’s boots.”

I am wearing them right now and they are WARM, but without being HOT. (And it’s fun to be wearing something that says size 9.) My feet have been so cold in the maryjanes I’ve been wearing since boots went out after the ’90s, and I’d been thinking, “If only there was some way to, in chilly weather, wear a shoe that didn’t have a huge cut-out in the top!”

Next! I found this dress for Elizabeth, $7.48 down from $24.99, also at Target:

(photo from Target.com)

I hesitated because it’s black—but Elizabeth LOVES black. And I think it looks less goth-glamor-funeral in person. And if it IS too black, she can wear it over a pale pink shirt and pale pink tights with sparkly pale-pink shoes or something.

Next! I bought this backpack at TJ Maxx:

A group in our town does this thing every summer where they collect donated backpacks and fill them with donated school supplies and clothing to give to families in financial trouble who have schoolkids. The first time I heard of the project, I thought, “Wow, that’s great, but this is the VERY WORST time of year to buy a backpack!” So the following January, I bought a pile of Lands’ End backpacks that had been marked from $40 down to $11 and then had an additional 30% off, and tucked them into a bin in the basement; that summer when the project requested donations, I donated them. This year I’m doing the same. My rule of thumb is that I only buy a backpack I would buy for my own kids—so, for example, today I bought this backpack marked down to $5.00 at TJ Maxx; if Elizabeth had wanted it, I would have bought it for her. But I left behind the half-dozen that seemed like they were on clearance because they were ugly and cheap and no one would want them. My favorite, though, is to get the Lands’ End ones (I just bought a few at $15 plus an additional 30% off), because they’re durable and good quality; I’d rather get three of those each year than ten of the kind that will only last until the next year’s donation. It’s a very satisfying project, and I recommend it if you enjoy bargain-shopping and you’re looking around for a Nice Thing To Do For Other People. (And if your community does something similar. Obvs.)

Next! Wrapping paper:

I realized the last time Paul had a birthday that all our wrapping paper was (1) girly or (2) little-boyish. These may have leapt right across from little-boy to old-man, but I liked the look of them. And Paul likes (1) clocks and (2) vintage maps, so, score. Not on clearance or anything, but $2.99 each at TJ Maxx.

Next! Eye shadow from TJ Maxx:

Eye shadow makes my eyes irritated, so I never wear it. But sometimes I WANT to wear it. So I bought a pack of Physician’s Formula eye shadow, to see if that will be better. (Not really MATHEMATICIANS at Physician’s Formula, are they?)

Next! Earrings from Target:

They seemed like the right color to just go right home with me.

Sometimes the success of one project (such as finally replacing a shade in a bathroom) can lead to another successful project, such as tackling a this-is-not-working mudroom.

Here’s the mudroom Before:

There are hooks along the left wall, and stackable-cube-unit shelves/drawers/cubbies along the right. The door to outside is directly to the right. (The blue splotch at lower right is a bag of reusable bags hanging on the doorknob.)

This plan was good in theory: each child has a hook, and then the cubbies are used for things that don’t hang on hooks (boots, bike helmets, etc.) and for things someone might need to rummage for (there’s a drawer of hats, a drawer of gloves, a pile of spare lunch boxes, etc.).

The problem with this set-up was that it made the mudroom too narrow to comfortably walk in—and then there’s stuff on the floor too because the children are slobs who don’t listen, and that makes things even worse. And the cubbies went too close to the door, so it was awkward to go in and out. And people kept putting stuff on top of the cubbies, because that area was right there when people had their hands full. And the cubbies were mostly near the floor, which in a narrow area makes them really hard to get to. And yay, it’s the first thing people see when they come into the house, so that’s pleasant.

The first step was to take everything out:

I left the stuff on the hooks, because I wasn’t planning to do anything with those; and I left the stuff on the windowsill, because that wasn’t the day’s project.

This took a million years, and revealed spiders. It also made this mess in the dining room:

I sorted things into piles as I went: a pile of boots, a pile of lunch boxes, a pile of umbrellas, etc. I also wiped down the cubby things.

I got rid of some stuff: bike helmets and sandals that didn’t fit anyone anymore, a couple of semi-broken umbrellas, miscellaneous trash that had fallen behind the cubbies. I didn’t try to go through the hats and gloves in the drawers, because ONE THING AT A TIME.

I relocated some stuff: bin of sandals to a downstairs closet, EXTRA extra lunch boxes to another closet, gardening/potting stuff with the rest of the gardening/potting stuff, winter boots to a couple of boot trays I’d bought recently and hadn’t made anyone use yet, lightweight jackets to hangers in the coat closet.

Then I put some of the cube units back in. But I put them on the far wall instead of on the side wall, and I built them higher (three cubes high instead of two cubes high) so we wouldn’t have to stoop as much to rummage in the drawers.

One downside is that now we see the contents of the cubbies head-on. That will be even more of a problem in several microseconds, when they get all jumbled/crammed instead of being tidy. But there it is: it wasn’t working to have them sideways-so-we-can’t-see-the-contents, because as it turned out, that meant we couldn’t see the contents.

Another downside is that it’s fewer cubbies. But quite a few cubbies were being used for things we didn’t really need in the mudroom. Yes, it is good to have spare lunch boxes where we can find them quickly when we realize 10 minutes before the bus comes that one has been left at school, but do we need SIX spare lunch boxes within easy reach? No, we do not. Yes, it is handy to have all the sandals in one bin, but do we need them stored in the mudroom year-’round? No, we do not.

The next step will be to put more hooks on the right-hand wall. For one thing, having the cubbies at the end (even with them shoved to the right instead of centered) means that Henry’s hook area is squashed. For another thing, we need more hooks: each child’s hook situation has not been sufficient for each child’s hook-related possessions. It would also be nice to have a hook for my own coat and purse, and another for Paul’s coat, and another hook or two for guests.

Goodness, there certainly are LASTING EFFECTS from online shopping! Dearest online retailers, may I give you a WEENSY little tip? Sending a new customer emails every single day is unlikely to result in anything except a click right to the unsubscribe button, especially since many of us were new customers because we were shopping for a gift for someone else. I assure you that I personally am not interested in all these emails about exciting tool/hardware specials. If you dialed it back a bit, though, I might be reminded of you the next time I was shopping for that same person. Instead, too late! Unsubscribe! Now I am forgetting all about you, instead of having your company name on my mind like a sweet scent on a gentle breeze!

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I watched TiMER (Netflix link), and although I have complaints, I am also feeling obsessive and thinking about it A LOT, and I want everyone else to watch it too. Just for starters, the lead girl is played by Anya from Buffy, and she was one of our top favorite Buffy characters. (I liked her in this movie, too, but “turning 30 next week,” my foot.) And then the lead guy (John Patrick Amedori) is played by a guy who reminds me strongly of my high school boyfriend, so.

The plot is that it becomes possible to get a wrist implant (a TiMER) that counts down to the day you’ll meet the perfect person for you—but ONLY if that person ALSO has a TiMER. (I apologize in advance for how annoying it is to read “TiMER” written like that. I will try to use it as little as possible.) So you might get the implant (you can legally get one at age 14) and it could be blank—and it might STAY BLANK YOUR WHOLE LIFE, if there’s no perfect person for you OR if your perfect person never gets an implant. Or your perfect person might get an implant and then your blank TiMER suddenly pops up some countdown numbers!! You’d have to glance at it a million times a day!!

Are you fascinated? I am fascinated. I didn’t even really want the movie so much as I wanted a multi-volume set of short stories telling me every possible way this could go. (I felt the same way about Death Match, a book on a very similar topic.) What about someone whose perfect person dies before they meet? Does the screen suddenly go blank? What if you’ve already met your perfect person? Does it just countdown to the next time you meet them? What about all the people who were already partnered when this technology was invented? Would they get a TiMER or not? (Would you?) Did anyone do that and find they were already with their perfect person? What if your perfect person was already, say, your sister’s/friend’s husband? Could anyone have more than one perfect person? Could there ever be a situation where the numbers would change—like if there’s a different perfect person for you, or if your perfect person dies and a new perfect person is substituted? The movie touches lightly on some of the issues, but mostly focuses on these:

1) What if your TiMER is blank and you get kind of obsessive about it and keep trying to get every guy you meet to get an implant?

2) What if your TiMER has a date far in the future? Like, you’re 21, but your implant says you won’t meet the love of your life until you’re 45? What do you do about dating in the meantime? (And do you go ahead and have children with someone else?)

3) What if you meet a great guy and your TiMERs don’t match? Do you date him while you’re both waiting to meet your perfect person? and then, like, break up when the timer is at zero? Or what?

4) What if you get the implant when you’re 14, and the countdown is for a few days later? When you’re not even really ready for dating? Won’t that be kind of weird for everyone, including both families?

5) If this technology exists, should everyone use it? or not? Does it make things work better, or does it mess things up? (I appreciated the way the movie didn’t get heavy-handed here: I wasn’t even sure which side it was coming down on in the end.)

My main complaint was this: If we really did have these countdown devices, it would take mere microseconds for everyone to be online comparing numbers and matching them up to try to find their perfect matches earlier (“Okay, everyone with a countdown to June 5th, 2013 go to THIS forum, everyone with a countdown to June 5th, 2014 to THIS forum…”). But then…that would screw up all the numbers, right? Because they’d all meet sooner. So what about THAT? I would be willing to let that go, though, with the smallest attempt at addressing it—just a mention that people tried it and it messed everything up and didn’t work and the numbers got all wonked so everyone stopped. (But still. Wouldn’t you be like, “Hey, your device says June 5th, 2021? What a coincidence: so does my friend’s! I should introduce you!”)

Now I would like someone to start writing the stories, please. I want MORE.