Tell me: If your 4-year-old child says, in a puzzled and clearly audible voice as you’re checking out at the register, “That shopkeeper…looks like she has a beard,” and the shopkeeper is female— Is there any way to FIX that?

I’m on a depressing streak of books. Most of them have been GOOD, and I’m glad I read most of them, but they have a lot of THINKY ISSUES in them and they’re leaving me feeling broody and low and inclined to respond irritably if brought out of my Deep Thoughts by the needs of small children.

(photo from Amazon.com)

First I read The Snow Child, which is an enchanting fairy tale for grown-ups, and I was indeed enchanted. Until I got to the end, when I was all, “Wait. What? But then…what happened to the? And what about the? And what does that mean for the? And so was she or wasn’t she?” It was a beautiful story, and the ending was as sad as all those original fairy tales where no one has modernized it for children yet.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Then I read Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, which is one of those 1960’s Heavy Message books of the sort I haven’t read since I had to in high school. I DID like it, and I AM glad I read it, and now I think “See the cat? See the cradle?” at appropriate times and I like that, and also I feel more culturally literate, and also now I can say “So I was reading some Vonnegut the other night, and…” But I also felt like there was a lot of stuff going over my head, stuff that I would need a literature professor to explain to me while I tried to stay awake, and I didn’t like that. And it’s kind of depressing/insightful on the subject of religion, and I couldn’t tell if I liked that or not but it was depressing either way.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Then I read No Cheating, No Dying: I Had a Good Marriage. Then I Tried to Make It Better by Elizabeth Weil, the title of which I unfortunately misread as “Then I Made It Better,” so throughout the entire book I was thinking, “When do we stop talking about marriage therapies/theories I don’t believe in (‘The marital bond mimics the mother/infant bond!’) and get to the part where something WORKED??” (She does claim that things worked, but boy, I didn’t get that feeling from it.) Also, I ended up depressed because she’s married to such an incredible, unbearable jerk someone I would not be compatible with, myself. And they spend more on groceries than on their San Francisco mortgage when only one of them cares about food; I found that hard to incorporate into my world view.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Next was Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet by Heather Poole. I lovvvvvvvvve insider tell-alls, so I wanted to know ALL ABOUT what it was like to be a flight attendant and all the inside scoop on things. But she was so carelessly, cheerfully MEAN about everyone and everything. Like she didn’t even realize she was saying mean things. It wasn’t even snarky, it was just MEAN. And you know how it is when someone is telling you a mean story about someone else and you can’t even enjoy it because it doesn’t sound true? Like, it sounds so distorted and exaggerated and one-sided, it doesn’t even make SENSE? I stopped reading halfway through, because the stories were making me feel queasy and I didn’t even believe the parts that were almost certainly true (or at least trueish) and I wasn’t even ENJOYING them. And I came away with that unpleasant “People are actually, seriously dismissing me as a worthwhile human being because I don’t wax my eyebrows / don’t get pedicures / have a minivan”-type feeling about humanity.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Then I read The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Someone I read JUST wrote about this in the last few weeks, and I need to pretty much cut and paste everything that person said about it because she was exactly right: it was about Jesuits and space travel and that worked; it was one of those books where you know from the beginning that everyone is doomed (the example given was Bel Canto); there is quite a bit of crying; she was so glad she read it. That’s how I feel too. Now someone please recognize who I’m talking about so I can provide a LINK and some CREDIT. [AH HA! It was Notthedaddy’s post! Thanks, Shelly!]

This was another book that was depressing/insightful about religion, and again I didn’t know how I felt about it. It was also depressing/insightful about society, and about contact with other societies, and about the way creatures are. And it was very sad: they tell you right at the beginning that only one member of the space traveling group is going to make it back. And yet there was a lot of laughing/happiness too, and so many interesting things, and I am so, so glad I read it, and I have found it on my mind a LOT, and I’m going to read the sequel. And in fact my MAIN complaint among all the depressingness was actually how the author kept having her characters saying marginally funny things that had her other characters just ROLLING and GASPING with laughter—which is a bit immodest, isn’t it, considering the author herself wrote those marginally funny things?

(photo from Amazon.com)

And NOW I’m reading Slaughterhouse-Five, another Kurt Vonnegut. I keep getting interested in these older books because I subscribe to Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos, and the stories about why people got certain things from books permanently put onto their skin make me want to go read those books. This one is kind of about war and kind of about space aliens and kind of about time travel and kind of about being a Heavy Message book. And I like it, and I’m glad I’m reading it, and my guess at this point is that I will be glad to have read it, but it also makes me feel like drinking.

Periodically I have to remind the children why they can’t freely say non-swears such as stupid, dumb, hate, sucks, and crap—especially since I say all those words. There are a lot of ways to explain it; the explanation I use is that they first have to fully know what the words mean and fully understand the impact of using each word, so that they’re able to judge the appropriateness of use and then accept the consequences of use.

It’s not that the words are intrinsically bad/unusable, but rather that they’re more complicated than regular words; context/audience/frequency is significantly more important. I know the difference between (1) saying privately/lightly to a friend that I think a certain school/work rule is stupid and (2) saying publicly in a meeting that I think someone’s idea is stupid and (3) calling a clerk stupid. I know the difference between (1) “Oh, man, I’m sorry, I hate that you have to go through this!” and (2) “I hate this new parking lot!” and (3) “I hate you!” The kids don’t really get all the nuances of those yet—but as they start to pick up the nuances, they get more freedom of usage.

One thing the kids have found appealing about this explanation is that it includes the idea that soon they WILL be able to use the words—and also that the timing is not arbitrary but based on their own judgment/maturity levels. That’s what I find appealing, too: I don’t have to sit around debating intrinsic word value or whether they MEANT the word that way: if they act like they don’t understand what the problem is, they’re not ready to use that word yet.

So they’re allowed to try a word out now and then, and if it’s outside of acceptable limits (calling a sibling stupid, for example), I’ll remind them not to use that word. If they’ve used it within acceptable limits (saying that they think piece of homework or a rule at school or the way something works is stupid—bonus points if it actually is kind of stupid) I’ll give them a little squinty, small-closed-mouth-smile look that means “I’m allowing you to use the word this time and in this setting, but I’m paying attention to how you’re using it.” It’s a look that acknowledges/rewards correct usage, while reminding them that they’re still in the probation period.

(Darned if I can find it, but Indigo Girl posted awhile back about one of her kids using a mild bad word, but using it correctly and, when glanced at squintily, following it with something like “I know, not in front of the grandparents.” Yeah baby. That’s the goal.) [Here’s the post—thanks, I.G.!]

I’ve been allowing 7th-grade Rob more word-use freedom recently, as long as he uses the words correctly and not in certain company (school, for example, if adults are around), and as long as he doesn’t use them too FREQUENTLY. That last one is big for me: if he occasionally says something “sucks,” I’m fine with that; if he’s saying “sucks” a dozen times a day and “crap” another dozen times a day, I’m not fine with that. Good-naturedness is also important: yelling “That’s CRAP!” would be totally different than smilingly saying “…Crap!” when I notice/mention it’s past his bedtime.

But several times recently his siblings have reported that he’s been swearing repeatedly under his breath (but loud enough for them to hear). One incident was when he was trying to get his MP3 player to work. Another was when he was trying to find something he’d lost. Not iffy words but Big Swears—and not lightheartedly.

I THINK my goal is only to correct the “audience” and “overuse” aspects of this, not to correct the actual words themselves. Seventh grade is too young for him to use Big Swears in front of me (or in front of younger children), but may be acceptable for when he’s alone or with peers (and there is also the issue of whether I could stop him in either of those latter two situations). As someone who by nature is STILL disinclined to use “the s-word,” it’s hard for me to know what’s normal.

Do you remember what the rules were in your household growing up? Do you remember when you and/or your peers started swearing? When I was in 7th grade, I was still at a private school where you could get a stern lecture for using the word “weird.” (It connects to WITCHCRAFT.)

I was labeling a Postcrossing postcard from Taiwan, and when it self-sorted alphabetically I stumbled upon a photo labeled TwinUltrasound:

As well as a helpful visual aide I apparently made at some point for anyone having trouble with just the ultrasound technician’s labels:

Notice it was 5 days before Christmas when I found out. It was 11:24 in the morning; on the way home, I called my mom at school for the first and last time ever. (One does not call a teacher during the work day unless there is life-draining blood, structure-threatening fire, or twins.)

Oh, and look! Here’s me pregnant with the twins!

And I am TALL, and so long-torsoed I can’t wear one-piece swimming suits, and I am not arching my back or tipping backwards at all—it’s that even the one-size-too-big maternity shirt no longer has anywhere near enough tum space to hang straight across for someone measuring “50 weeks” pregnant. (Also: note I am using a camera that used ACTUAL FILM! We didn’t switch to digital until the twins were about 6 months old. I am deliberately hiding my face with the camera because that removed one of the variables that made me not want to save pictures.)

And here they are in the hospital! You can see Edward had a bit of jaundice:

And going home, with TWO infant car seats:

At first you can make do with one bouncy seat (put one leg of each twin through each leg opening, so no one slides out through a leg hole). (It’s making you feel kind of nervous, the way Edward doesn’t seem to have room to breathe, right? He did that ALL THE TIME. I consulted anxiously with the pediatrician about it. He nodded seriously, considered seriously, and reassured my pale, damp-shirted self.)

And here I am, looking a bit bloodless and tired on the ugliest couch we ever owned, tandem-nursing while doing Sudoku puzzles (that’s TWO great baby gifts: the tandem-nursing pillow from my cousin Lee, and the puzzle book from my friend Melissa):

It’s tempting for me to get a bit glossy-eyed here, so let’s not forget the tandem screaming:

I would like to talk a bit about the phenomenon of being actively uninterested in something. I brought this up once on Twitter, but I did it sweepingly, scornfully, winefully, and “right after a bunch of people I knew had declared active uninterest in something,” which is the award-winningly cheeseheaded way to bring things up. This has left me sheepish about bringing it up again—but the thing is, it’s something I DO want to discuss, not something I want to scornfully dismiss in a Twitter post while a bit fruited.

So FIRST, a better description of what it is I want to discuss. It’s when there’s a major event people are interested in, and other people are volunteering that they find it boring and stupid. I’ll start with the example that makes me wince when I remember my own demonstration of this very behavior: there will be a major sporting event on the horizon, and people will be talking about it and Twittering about it and Facebooking about it and posting pictures of themselves in shirts and facepaint, and OTHER people will start mentioning that they themselves find the whole thing ridiculous and lame and they “don’t even know who’s playing.” (*RETRO WINCE*)

Or there will be an awards show coming up, and people will be discussing nominees and hoping certain ones do/don’t win and making plans for awards-watching parties, and OTHER people will volunteer that they think it’s stupid and lame and they don’t even know what kind of award show it is or who is nominated.

Or there will a celebrity wedding planned, and people will be talking about dresses and ceremonies and whether they might get up early to watch it on television, and other people will tell the air that they think it’s the stupidest thing to be interested about, ever, in the history of time.

I have been thinking this over, wondering specifically about MOTIVATION for such remarks. Certainly I can see that if someone were asked “Who do you like in the game?” or “Who do you think will win for Best Actress?,” someone could say politely, and with a trace of embarrassment at being asked about a topic they don’t know anything about, “Oh…I don’t really follow…those. Who do YOU think?” But the phenomenon I’m talking about here is VOLUNTEERING the information, unasked, announcement-style, often with a bit of an unpleasant tone.

The trouble with exploring this phenomenon further is that, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve done this volunteering-of-info myself. (I hope not recently—but it can feel so different in the volunteering-the-info position, I think it’s actually possible to not notice oneself doing it.) So because I’ve done it myself, I’m motivated to find a gentle spin for this behavior, but I can only think of one: that the excited discussion about something one doesn’t care about can make one feel left out. I’ve had the experience of kind of WANTING to be excited about something so I can participate in the excitement—but I’m just NOT. Declaring that NOT-ness to be the case can be a combination of (1) acting like one doesn’t MIND being left out, certainly NOT, absolutely FINE with sitting over here by myself, and (2) hoping to find others who were also quietly feeling left out, who will now speak up with relief that they’re not the only ones. (Although in that latter case, that’s kind of an icky club to start: The Cutting Down Other People’s Interests Club. I definitely see the appeal of such a club, and have belonged to many, but it doesn’t help with the charitable spin I’m looking for here.)

But that’s the best I can do, spin-wise, and it’s not a justification that works to mollify the people who are excited about something. If you haven’t had that experience, try this: Think of something you’re passionate about. Get it firmly in your mind: is it an event? a hobby? a book or movie series? a cause? Imagine discussing it happily and excitedly with other people who are passionate about it. So much fun! So interesting! Then imagine someone coming over and volunteering, unasked, that what you’re excited about is of ZERO interest to THEM, and/or that they think it’s stupid and lame and a waste of time.

SUPER annoying and hurtful, right? Like someone throwing a bucket of cold water on everyone for no reason. So unnecessary! Why would someone do such a thing? Why not just go find a group of people talking about something they ARE interested in, instead of trying to STOP a conversation about something they’re NOT interested in? Plus, sometimes the person is advertising their own ignorance as if they’re proud of it (“I don’t even know who’s playing,” “I don’t even know who’s nominated,” “I don’t even know who he’s marrying”), which makes it even more annoying and dismissive.

Which leaves us with the question still: Why DO people ACTIVELY express non-interest? What IS the motivation? And more interestingly, to me: Considering that most of us have been on the receiving end of such volunteered non-interest and know how it feels—why do so many of us nevertheless do it ourselves when it’s something WE’RE not interested in? I just spent a whole post failing to find good spin, so if you’ve got some I’d love to hear it.

You know how you can keep criss-crossing with another shopper at the grocery store? I had an especially awkward one this morning, because she was also driving right behind me most of the way to the store, and we parked just a few spaces away from each other and then walked into the store in tandem, with little “Am I going in first or are you?” glances and hesitations, and THEN we kept criss-crossing.

We wisely stuck to wry little smiles until we were at the far end of the store and could dip into the stash of Awkward But Friendly Verbal Acknowledgements of the Situation. There aren’t many of those, so you don’t want to use them up in the first few aisles. First she brought out “We meet again!,” and then I used “It’s like synchronized swimming!,” and then she pulled into the checkout lane next to mine and remarked that it had taken us almost exactly the same amount of time to complete our shopping, and I agreed that it had.

But remember we were parked near each other in the parking lot. I was hoping my checkout lane would be faster, because my car was farther back. But no, she was first, so I had to walk past her to get to my car. I used “It was a tie!,” with a friendly little laugh—which was fine. I mean, she’s not going to tell the family about it at dinner tonight, but it wasn’t an embarrassment of a remark.

But I realized on the way home (with her car once again behind mine) that what I SHOULD have done was get a running start out of the store, and then fly the cart past her while yelling “RACE YOU HOME!!!”

When I wrote the post about the Stephen King and Ernest Cline books, I realized how unusual it is for me to read two books in a row by men. I DO read books by men, but I’ll bet it’s one book by a man for every ten to twenty by a woman—and most of the books by men are non-fiction. I identify so much more strongly with the female point of view, and sometimes I find the male point of view alienating and upsetting: I can end up feeling I was happier knowing LESS about how some of them see things. (WHAT IF THAT’S HOW PAUL SEES THINGS??)

It’s even more extreme with blogs. With a book, the story might be more the point than the author; but with a blog, it’s usually ALL person’s-eye-view. I’m trying to think if I read even one single blog written by a man, and I don’t think I do. (I do read two comic-strip blogs by men ((Bad Machinery and xkcd)), but that’s different.) It’s similar on Twitter, where I think I only follow one guy. Total. Everyone else is a girl, I’m pretty sure. It isn’t a policy: it’s that I check out a guy’s blog or Twitter stream, and it fails to appeal to me enough for me to subscribe to it.

I know that back in my Single Days it was considered awfully cool and sexy for a hetero girl to claim to get along better with guys than with girls. I believe I said it myself, probably repeatedly, probably while flipping my hair, probably while hanging around with a group of guys and avoiding the girls. And I MEANT it, too! But that was full-on flirting/seeking when I did it, because it turns out that if there’s no opportunity for a romantic relationship, I’d WAY rather talk to a woman. (If it’s about romance, then I’m really more of a GUY’S girl. You know, not like those OTHER girls.) And even when I was single, I didn’t read more books by men, and I don’t think I would have read more blogs by men or identified more with the male point of view.

But I know this is not the way things are for ALL woman. (Not everyone is exactly the same! I am a brilliant statistician and observer of human nature!) I know there are MANY women who read pretty much only books by men, or follow just as many male bloggers as female bloggers, or whatever. So here’s what I’m interested in knowing: Where are YOU on the spectrum? Are you in the market for a romantic relationship or not, and has that affected where you are on the spectrum? What proportion of the blogs you read are by women/men? What proportion of the Twitter accounts you follow are by women/men? What proportion of the books you read are by women/men (and are they woman’s/man’s-eye-view books, or more like non-fiction)?

I read two books recently: 11/22/63 (the new Stephen King) and Ready Player One (Ernest Cline).

The Stephen King one was exactly what I like to read from him: basic suspenseful-and-somewhat-supernatural storytelling, without the need to repeat nonsense words over and over in parentheses and/or italics to try to make them creepy. Or rather, only a LITTLE of that. (But I never did find “Jimla” a creepy word, despite his efforts. It felt to me as if he didn’t actually find it very creepy either, but was trying to.)

It’s a time-travel/do-over book, which I like. If someone described the plot to me, though, I’d feel a little pre-bored: someone goes back in time to stop Kennedy from being shot. The Kennedy assassination is a good event to try to stop because it’s so classic—but because it’s so classic, I’m already tired of thinking/talking/hearing about it. That faded quickly as I started reading, because the book isn’t really about the event he’s trying to stop, it’s about everything else involved in trying to live in a different time (he has to go back 5 years before the assassination), and it’s about the various issues involved in trying to change the past. There are only a couple of yucky/scary scenes, and they’re typical of a scary murder mystery or something (and you pretty much know how it’s going to go, so you can skim without missing important things), not the Horrible Horrifying Horror I might be already dreading when I start an S.K. book (not like I could complain if I found some, considering it is A STEPHEN KING BOOK).

As usual, it could have used someone to go in and take out two to three hundred pages, but it’s not as if my skimmers are broken. I did wonder why the narrator kept agitating about leaving Lee Harvey Oswald’s kids fatherless by killing him, since he knew Lee Harvey Oswald was going to get killed shortly afterward anyway. I objected to the love interest, a 6’2″, 150-pound charmingly klutzy blonde virgin with huge tracts of land, who loves! sex! that is, as soon as our narrator introduces her to it, and keeps referring to herself in the third person. I never felt as if she were real or as if I could see what was special about her other than her looks. I felt the same about the narrator, though: he seemed like an idealized version of the author a man: A writer! A master engaging teacher who really gets the students to CARE! Tall and slim and handsome and resourceful! Free of flaws! A good dancer, and attractive to busty blondes! So wow!

So. I liked it. I thought the ending was good and made sense. I even recommended the book to BOTH my parents, and I would never recommend “a Stephen King book” to them.

Ready Player One, on the other hand, I recommended to Paul, and to 7th-grade Rob. I think the only reason it’s not on the Young Adult shelf is that most of the references are to 1980s stuff. It’s for people who grew up in the ’80s—but it’s a young-adult fantasy (high school students are awesome! and smarter than adults! and fully able to take care of themselves! and they know what’s wrong with the world!) so I thought geek-in-training Rob would like it.

The plot is set in an impoverished future, when guys born in the 1970s are in their sixties and starting to die off. One of them is a Bill Gates / Steve Jobs type but way less socially functional, a multi-billionaire who dies leaving his entire estate to whoever finds an Easter egg (a little surprise hidden in the software) in his giant virtual world. The whole world looks for it, and five years later no one has even solved the first clue. We tune in just in time for a high school student to find the first one, and to watch him and his friends fight a huge band of grown-ups trying to cheat their way into finding it first.

I liked it fine, but I did a lot of skimming: if we’d been talking about Benetton Colors and slouch socks, it would have been more the ’80s I remembered; Atari games and D&D are not tune-in points for me. And the young adult shelf is not part of my usual prowl, so I was rolling my eyes at the dialogue. But I still thought it was pretty good, and I think it would be AMAZING for someone who got the video game / D&D stuff, and/or for anyone who likes young adult dystopian fiction.

Yesterday I had William work on his disastrous room for awhile. It’s a room he shares with Henry, but the mess was pretty much ALL HIS. I set what I considered reasonable goals: “I need to be able to walk to your bureau to put away your laundry, and I’d like to be able to walk to your closet to get out your next-size-up clothes.” I was so pleased with the results: he made a large difference, bringing his room from “It looks like people stood in the doorway and threw trash into this room” to “This is a messy child’s room.”

Then I emptied his trash can. There were BOOKS in there. COINS. Clothespins and combs and hangers and SOCKS. It was not QUITE that he just picked up everything indiscriminately and put it into the trash, but it was CLOSE to that.

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I had a dream the night before last that I had a romantic fling with a friend’s husband. This dream is sticking with me in two ways: (1) I feel stressed, as if I DID have a fling or had at least thought about one; (2) he seems cuter to me now.

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A month ago there was a fraudulent charge on our credit card, and the credit card company closed our account. It was a big mess: we had things set up to auto-pay, and we had things where we’d authorized a charge but the payment hadn’t been charged yet, and we had returns in the mail, and we had things we hadn’t even remembered were set up to automatically renew/charge, and so forth. We still don’t have it straightened out, since some of our auto-pay things (1) wouldn’t let us change the card but then (2) automatically took off the auto-pay when it hit a non-useable credit card number and (3) didn’t say so, so we got these “PAST DUE PLEASE PAY NOW OR ACTION WILL BE TAKEN” notices. Because when a card doesn’t work, it’s obvious that a customer who has paid early every month for ten years has turned to a life of crime.

Anyway.

This morning the credit card company called AGAIN, to say there’s been ANOTHER fraudulent charge and they were closing our account AGAIN. I started CRYING to the guy on the phone, because it’s just so DISCOURAGING and so FRUSTRATING. I asked whether there was any OTHER option—do we really have to do this AGAIN? Sorry, no other option. I asked how we could prevent this, and he said by only using the card with companies we trust. ORLY. Thanks for the HOT TIP. I’ll stop giving it to any old place that asks me for it, then! Well, but it wasn’t that bad: he did say it in the context of “That’s all I can say, because it’s not a question even I, a credit card fraud specialist, can answer.” He was sympathetic, but what I wanted was something more like “Here is the answer: don’t use it for Company X anymore, because they have a bad employee who’s stealing card numbers.”

Having cat-related death thoughts lingering at the top of the page makes it look as if that is still my current frame of mind, and partly it is, but it’s more that (1) I got the new Stephen King (11/22/63), and (2) Henry is sick with something that means he wants to sit on my lap and read books / play video games / talk about fighting imaginary monsters all day long, which is par for the course except that he’s too sick to go to preschool or my mom’s house so there goes the time I usually blog.

So. We all continue to be sad about Benchley, but some of the “I HAVE HAD A GLIMPSE THROUGH THE CRACKS OF THIS DAILY FACADE INTO THE UNFATHOMABLE DEPTHS BELOW” feeling has faded. Plus, we are coming up on Kitten Season, and we are planning to place a soft furry kitten bandage on the Benchley-death owie, so the anticipation of that is helping as well.

I am anticipating it with somewhat less joy than the children are, because in my experience kittens are darling little pains in the tail/pocketbook, and pre-trained/vaccinated/fixed adult cats are where it is. But the children have never had a kitten and will love everything I dislike (wild careening! skidding across countertops, knocking everything in their path to the floor! racing right up my standing body!), and the kitten will be a cat soon enough, and in the meantime I can enjoy the cuteness of a kitten as much as the next person, so it won’t be all bad.

Hm. It seems a little tactless to be talking about kittens so soon. Well, I don’t think I would be if it weren’t for how the idea of it seems to cheer the children, and also because of how lonely our other cat seems: she walks around, looks out the window, sits mopily in my lap, walks around a little more. She’s good with people, but she’s a cat’s cat and always preferred to hang out with Benchley. Without these factors, I think I would be more at the “Why bother to get a new pet, when it will ONLY DIE???” stage still.