Elizabeth’s tonsillectomy went just fine. She was the first patient of the day on a non-busy day, so she got a lot of attention and everything was done sooner than predicted. I barely had time to have a cafe mocha and a strawberry-cream-cheese danish in the coffee shop before they were calling me back to see her.

Our main nurse was exactly the style I do best with: she told me the whole story in advance, like this: “First I’ll do x, y, z. Then the anesthesiologist will come in, and he will ask you some new questions, but he’ll also repeat some of the questions I already asked you, for safety. Then the doctor will come in, and he will do the same thing, and also he will listen to her heart and lungs again. After he leaves, that’s when you should get dressed in your paper suit.”

After we went home, things were pretty rough. Elizabeth threw up a lot, and she tried to cry about how much her throat hurt but couldn’t cry because it hurt too much, and I lay awake that night fretting that she wasn’t keeping her antibiotic down, and that I didn’t know if I should wake her up for her pain medicine or if that would just make her throw up all over our bed, and that she might have to go back to the hospital (the ENT doctor said that if she couldn’t keep fluids down he would check her right back in and give her an IV). (A measure of my phone anxiety is that I was just as nervous about the possibility of having to make that phone call as I was about having her back in the hospital.)

Another thing making me nervous was all the conflicting information. The post-tonsillectomy sheet from the ENT doctor was different than the post-tonsillectomy sheet from the hospital. The verbal instructions from the ENT doctor were different than the verbal instructions from the nurses. I didn’t know who to follow.

The nurses, I’d think, would be more familiar with the practical effects: the doctor gives his instructions and then is gone like a summer breeze, while the nurses are there caring for the barfing patients. But the doctor is at least in theory the boss/expert of this show, and he’s the one I’d have to answer to if something went wrong as a result of me NOT following his instructions, and it’s hard for a layperson to tell the difference between the nurses who can wear the “Thank a nurse: we keep the doctors from accidentally killing you” t-shirts and the ones who really shouldn’t take that adversarial tone.

Oh, I could ask for clarification when I find differences in instruction? Genius! But often such questions don’t crop up until after I’m home and the potential complication mentioned on the sheet presents itself—so I would need to call. And more importantly, ask WHOM? If I ask the doctor, he’ll tell me to follow his instructions; if I ask the nurses, they’ll tell me to follow theirs. And both will have good reasons!

You know, maybe the professionals could work these differences out among themselves, rather than putting patients in the middle to figure it out and make guesses and “trust their guts” (which I find seems to work only in hindsight, during the self-congratulating/rebuking stage of a decision). I have EVEN LESS of a medical degree than either of the two groups, so I don’t really care how much “YOU have to be the ADVOCATE of your HEALTH!!” is going around, I am not QUALIFIED for that POSITION. Which is why the Large Checks go FROM me rather than TO me: I’m paying people with education, expertise, and experience to tell me what to do, because “my gut” doesn’t know anything ABOUT tonsillectomy recovery.

(She was way better on the second day, thank goodness.)

Popular kid breakfasts at our house:

• spoonful of peanut butter, cup of milk
• half a peanut butter sandwich, cup of milk
• dry cereal (a “compromise” variety such as Cinnamon Life, Honey Nut Cheerios, Frosted Mini-Wheats), cup of milk (or in Edward’s case, orange juice, since it helps to absorb the iron in the cereal)
• banana, cup of milk
• cinnamon toast, cup of milk
• muffin, cup of milk
• bowl of yogurt, cup of orange juice
• two hard-boiled egg whites with salt, cup of chocolate milk (this is only William so I’m not sure it counts as “popular”—but on the other hand it’s what he eats most mornings so it’s popular with HIM)

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My last trip to Target didn’t have much in the way of fun clearance (the clothing has been marked down at a snail’s pace recently, and when I did buy a few clearance kid t-shirts I noticed after washing them that they’re now cotton-poly instead of cotton, so that was a non-score), but I did bring home some things that make me feel happy and satisfied every time I walk past them:

This year I remembered ahead of time that on the first day of school the children will be coming home with piles of forms that need to be filled out with information that is the same as last year’s and the same as each other’s (could this process not be even SLIGHTLY computerized?), AND a request from each teacher for antibacterial wipes and facial tissues. Then I feel all panicky and frantic, as if the teacher will think that my week-long delay in sending in the requested items reflects badly on me as a parent. Target had both items on nice sales, so I got enough for each child to bring in a container of each and still have one of each left over.

I also got Elizabeth’s lunch box for first grade; she chose the owl one. (It inspired this week’s Milk and Cookies post on lunch boxes.) I wonder how many of our children are going to school with that cute owl lunch box? My mother is finding it fun to see the owl craze of the 1970s back in such full force.

This morning when I woke up I was confident it was a weekend day, and in fact I thought, “I wonder why Paul is getting ready to take a shower already? Oh, well, it doesn’t matter, I will just continue sleeping luxuriously, since none of the kids are up yet.” And then it emerged that he was in fact done with his shower rather than preparing for it, which meant it was my turn, and anyway that was not a very good start to the day.

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Yesterday the hospital called to assign us Elizabeth’s tonsillectomy surgery time for Monday (we need to be there at 6:30 a.m.), and then I ate Nutella right out of the container for awhile. But I did feel better after the call, because it was one of those nurses who is firm and confident and yet caring and understanding, and she had a comfortingly gravelly voice. It made me feel like this whole thing was totally routine and fine and everything was under control—and yet also like she was fully aware that the routineness/fineness from the hospital’s point of view didn’t mean that it wasn’t weird/non-fine for the parents who don’t see this every day. Really, she was very good at her job. Nurses make so much difference at times like this.

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We got Rob’s school supply list in the mail, and it says he needs erasable pens. Do you have a brand you like? The last time I used erasable pens (back in school, I think), the technology had advanced only to the point of adding an eraser to the top, but not yet to the point of having the eraser WORK.

Last weekend I was at the liquor store buying some wine to bring with me to my brother and sister-in-law’s house. Annnnnnd I reached into my Big Bulky Purse, only to remember I’d already switched my credit card to my Small Cute purse. Very embarrassing. Fortunately I live relatively close, so I zoomed home, got my Small Cute purse, and zoomed back to pay for the wine.

Mid-week, I stopped at the bank. We were urgently in need of cash: the last time I’d stopped, the machine was out of cash; the time before, I was sixth in line and I waited more than five minutes and the line didn’t move at all, and we had frozens in the car so I had to give up. I was relieved to remember to stop again, and then I discovered I didn’t have my checkbook (which has my ATM card in it), so I had to just leave. When I got home, I found I’d absentmindedly put the checkbook away with my calculator after balancing, instead of putting it back in my purse.

This morning, I went to the grocery store, and discovered at checkout my wallet wasn’t in my purse. Which I felt pretty stupid telling the cashier, because I was holding a wallet as I said it—but it was my Assorted Stuff wallet (member cards, department store credit cards, coupons) rather than my Absolute Essentials wallet (driver’s license, CREDIT CARD). And my grocery store doesn’t take checks (I DID have my checkbook this time) without an application process, which I have never done because I never pay with a check. And I kept rummaging with increasing desperation through my uncooperative Giant Purse, because the wallet COULD NOT be gone, and yet it continued to be gone. So I pulled out my bank card, which has a Visa symbol on it, and I’ve never used it to pay for anything so I hope that hasn’t screwed up everything in the world. It said “debit” on it, but she said it wouldn’t go through except as a credit. OH WHAT HAVE I DONE?? (My wallet, luckily, was on the floor of the coat closet.)

I don’t know if I’m hoping you’ll tell me you do the same thing all the time, or if I’m hoping you’ll encourage me to check in to a nice quiet assisted-living facility.

Hey, do you remember awhile back when Edward had to get blood drawn because he’d lost several pounds in the year between check-ups? Well, a reasonable number of days after that blood draw, we got a call from the nurse saying all the bloodwork came back normal, but that the doctor wanted to see Edward a month or two later for a weight check. I think weight-checks are a little silly if everything is otherwise fine, but I haven’t had enough therapy to be able to say, “Hey, why don’t I just weigh him at home and call you if there’s been a change for the worse?” After thinking it over, I decided it was worth the $20 copay to avoid swimming upstream.

So today was that appointment, and at the appointment it was revealed that the bloodwork was NOT all normal, that Edward is anemic. And I would have been mostly okay with this little surprise, except that I definitely got a “You must have not have been listening when we told you about this before” vibe about it, first from the nurse, and then from the doctor. Not a BIG vibe (they are both VERY NICE), but a definite SLIGHT vibe. Which changes things completely for me: I am as fine as I can possibly be with a no-harm-done misunderstanding (we are all HUMAN; occasional mistakes are COMPLETELY UNAVOIDABLE), but NOT for it to be assumed that I’M the weak link when I’m NOT.

In short: it’s good I was too much of a wuss to argue against the wisdom of having a whole appointment just for Edward to use a scale in front of someone with a medical degree, because I also ended up finding out something I was too much of a wuss to make clear to them that they didn’t tell me before.

Not that it would have done any good to make it clear they hadn’t told me: not only does it change nothing ANYWAY, but also they would have continued to believe that they HAD told me. In my experience, in every job there is a set of things people constantly claim are true, despite them not being true. Pharmacy customers, for example, claim to have spilled their narcotic painkillers down the sink, or to have received too few narcotic pills in the bottle. Occasionally, this is a true claim: it DOES very occasionally happen that a bottle of pills gets spilled; it DOES very occasionally happen that someone miscounts a bottle of pills; and it makes sense that of all those times, a small percentage would involve narcotics. It’s odd, then, that almost all of the claims are made about narcotic medications, and only verrrrry rarely about non-narcotic ones.

Similar Frequently Used Lies occur everywhere, and employees of those everywheres do get a bit HARDENED to their own oft-heard sets of them. It is tempting, then, for an employee to assume they are ALWAYS lies, and to act accordingly. Statistically, this is a solid plan. BUT: treating the statistically-unusual person who IS telling the truth as if they are lying is SUCH a bad move, it cancels out any statistical efficiency of treating everyone the same. And yet, I also understand the extreme reluctance to take blame and make apologies in the smug face of someone who KNOWS he or she is getting away with a lie, so I don’t know where that leaves us, except to say that it is almost impossible for me to protest the truth of the kind of claim I KNOW is almost always made as a lie to that sort of employee, and so I almost never do, and I didn’t do so THIS time, EITHER.

And also, they want to see him back in a month or two for another blood draw. If you have experience making that procedure easier for a child, I would be very grateful for the advice.

I have a preference to state, and I would like to emphasize this a little more before I actually state it: that it is a preference. A preference I hope others will share. Not “Other ways are stupid! Everyone should do it the way I think is right!” I have plenty of opinions that fall along those lines, too. But in this case, I realize that what I’m basically doing is hoping/requesting that people change the way they’re doing something, in favor of the way I prefer it to be—but fully acknowledging that they needn’t, and/or that they might prefer it otherwise, and that it is a big deal to change something for someone else just as some sort of concession to that person’s preferences, so it’s not something I’m expecting. I won’t be all, “WHAT?? This again?? But I SAID I didn’t LIKE it!!” There are many people who express preferences in regards to what I write on this blog, and I decline to meet those preferences, so I am familiar with that process.

Nevertheless, here is the preference: I would prefer if a sponsored post said so at the very top of the post, or within the first few sentences.

Here is how it feels to me, when I read a sponsored post without realizing it’s sponsored until a little note at the very end: it’s like being invited over to someone’s house for a fun evening, and then realizing when you get there that it’s a “party” selling make-up, or kitchen tools, or candles. Crap, I got suckered. And I feel foolish for not realizing it sooner. And my relationship with the person who tricked me has taken a hit.

I have several local acquaintances who do sales parties, and they would argue with this. I know, because they have argued it within my earshot: “It’s not like a SALES thing!” they say. “It’s just a fun evening! Friends getting together! No pressure! It’s not like you have to BUY anything, it’s just for learning about cool new things! And it’s been so long since I’ve seen you guys! It’s a GIRLS’ NIGHT OUT!” I understand that they might really feel this way about it, but I continue to NOT feel this way about it. And with sponsored posts, I understand that a blogger might say that it’s their own content, that they weren’t in any way pressured or instructed what to write, so it’s the same as a regular post. I understand how they can see it this way, but it’s still not the way I see it. My preference is still to know from the start what I’m getting into, rather than getting tricked into it and feeling manipulated and suckered at the end.

I just finished watching It’s Complicated, and I gave it 5 stars on Netflix even though my actual score is more like 4 or even 3 (I liked it, but I save 5 stars for “OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW MUCH I LOVED THAT!!”). The bonus star or two was to skew the Netflix recommendations so I’d get MORE MOVIES LIKE THIS PLZ KTHANX. Movies about people older than me? having relationships just as if they continued to be real people after their twenties were over? and dealing with issues involving their children? THERE IS A MARKET FOR THIS, I THINK.

I ALSO like movies about attractive single people in their twenties finding Obviously True Deep Real Lasting Love with other attractive single people in their twenties (“We’re REALLY attracted to each other, so we MUST be eternal soul-mates!”), but it’s nice to see some VARIETY in human relationships. And, just as I enjoyed the “romance in their twenties” movies in my teens and the “having a baby” movies in my early twenties (it’s exciting to imagine What’s Ahead in life), NOW I would enjoy seeing movies about people navigating things in middle age.

And perhaps they can deal with problems I’m more familiar with than the “Do I think the bad-boy guy is too hot to give up for the obviously-better-choice Nice Guy guy who is also really hot?” theme. Like, maybe the husband could say that he’s going to do the dishes every night, and maybe he even kind of cheeses his wife if she tries to do them. And she SUPER LOVES that he is going to take over this chore, and praises him mightily and regularly. But then, like, some nights he doesn’t do them. Which is fine! It’s FINE! It’s FAIR to share this chore! But in that case, he should mention it to his wife, because then she wants to take her option to do them herself, because waking up to a dirty kitchen and dried-on food and no clean sippy cups makes her want to give up and just heap the dirty dishes in the TRASH. But she’s already mentioned this several times, with careful explanations, and still she is sometimes waking up to a dirty kitchen, and HOW CAN MERYL STREEP SOLVE THIS PROBLEM IN A WAY I CAN APPLY TO MY OWN LIFE??

Remember how just a couple of weeks ago I was all, Summer is going GREAT!?

Never mind. Forget it. I ran out of steam.

We’re still going to swimming lessons, but activities at the library have almost completely ceased (in many cases, because so many of them are scheduled at the same time as our swimming lessons, a conflict I’d thought we were avoiding by booking lessons at lunchtime), and today we have no swimming lesson and yet I don’t feel at all motivated to figure out something else to do—even though I know full well that if I don’t schedule something, everyone is going to end up bickering.

I seem to have lost both my “Hey, I can DO this!!” feeling AND my “Hey, I WANT to do this!!” feeling. In exchange, please accept “When does SCHOOL start?” and “Why did we have so many CHILdren?” and “There are not enough CHAIRS in this LIVING room.”

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Also, a school-related vent: the school supply lists. They NEVER WORK OUT. Either we don’t get the list until the first day of school, by which time all the back-to-school sales are over, OR, worse, we get a long list in the mail well before school starts and I carefully purchase everything on the list, only to be told by the teacher on the first day of school that “Oh, the office just sends those out—here’s my completely different list” and now all the back-to-school sales are over.

Here is what I want, because “asking for what one wants” is allegedly more mentally healthy than complaining about what one doesn’t want: I want each teacher to send out their own supply list, and I want it on the last day of school with the report card. That’s when we get the classroom assignments, so by the last day of school it’s already known what teacher the child will have—and except in the case of a new teacher, the teacher can use the same list year after year. The office can in fact combine this with the classroom-assignment sheet, since they’re printing out a million of those and custom-assigning one to each child ALREADY: top of sheet can say “Your next-year’s teacher is ____!” and rest of sheet can say “Here are the supplies you will need!”

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I just read Hilarity in Shoes’s post about post-break-up post titles (post post post), and I DO feel bad that it is DEEP MISERY fueling this excellent funniness.

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I bought a box of Drumsticks ice cream treats for the children to try, because I have a general summer policy of “a new fun treat each week.” Later that night, putting something else away in the freezer, I noticed my terrible error: FOUR Drumsticks per box. FOUR. The box was the same size and price as 12 ice cream sandwiches, 12 ice cream bars, or 24 popsicles, and I hadn’t even thought to check my unknowingly-held assumption that I would get enough Drumsticks in a box to hand out to five children.

Anyway, I was telling this sad tale to Paul, and he said that it probably wasn’t a big deal—that I should check beforehand with the children, because Edward didn’t really like meat, and Rob was squeamish about eating meat off a bone. And there was a long pause, and I said, “But they don’t have ANYTHING TO DO with meat! or bones!” and he said “…”, and I said, “DRUMSTICKS! The ICE CREAM TREAT! Did you never have a Drumstick as a child??”, and he said “I did! I did! But I thought you meant you bought a box of frozen chicken legs, for them to try!”, and I said, “BUT I SHOWED YOU THE BOX!!”, and he said “But I didn’t see it!”, and I said “BUT I WENT INTO DETAIL ABOUT IT BEING A CHILDHOOD TREAT EVERYONE SHOULD TRY EVEN IF IT IS A DISAPPOINTMENT!”, and he said “But I thought you meant CHICKEN!”, and I said “CHICKEN IS NOT A CHILDHOOD TREAT!”

Anyway, now we’re cleared up and we’re agreed I need to go by another box of them, even though 75 cents (on SALE!) for a Drumstick is more than I’d expected when I embarked on this mission. (Ice cream sandwiches are TWENTY-FIVE cents.)

This morning I was trying to proofread my Milk & Cookies post (I’m giving ideas and also looking for more ideas for birthday party gift ideas for a 10-year-old girl) (the site format is a little wonky right now—it doesn’t usually look all smashed together like that), and the children were being interruptive as usual. I have sometimes wondered if, when I’m trying to write, I over-accuse the children of interrupting: that is, maybe a full fifteen minutes went by between this interruption and the last one, but it felt to me like it was practically CONSTANT.

So today I wrote down the time of each interruption. I counted only deliberate ones: that is, if a child made a loud sound in another room and it distracted me, or if children were bickering and I interfered, or if they had a loud conversation right next to me and I couldn’t concentrate, I didn’t count those; I only counted it if a child approached me (or yelled to me from another room *clenching teeth*) to tell me something, complain about something, or ask for something. I ended up having to make tick-marks to indicate more than one interruption in the same minute:

8:46 – 3 interruptions
8:47 – 1 interruption
8:48 – 3
8:49 – 0
8:50 – 1
8:51 – 2
8:52 – 2
8:53 – 0
8:54 – 2
8:55 – 0
8:56 – 1
8:57 – 1
8:58 – 2
8:59 – 3
9:00 – 1
9:01 – 2
9:02 – 2
9:03 – 1
9:04 – 1
9:05 – 0
9:06 – 1

That’s where I stopped keeping track. In 20 minutes, there were 29 interruptions, and that’s if I did the math right—a child was trying to talk to me while I was adding them up just now.

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I loved this post from The Brunettes Blog, about who is being spoken to when something controversial is said in a Facebook status or Twitter remark. She makes a neat point about how in person, we would know if we could politely/firmly disagree depending on context (in her example, we wouldn’t run across the room to confront a stranger at a party, but we could certainly respond to someone in our conversation group), but when someone posts something we consider objectionable on Facebook in an “of course everyone agrees with this” tone, it’s hard (and very conflicting) to know how to respond—and to feel right about not responding.

I also liked this post by Miss Zoot, especially the part about our responsibility to moderate our comments sections. A couple years back I had a post where the comments section got wayyyyy out of hand—and I had no idea what to do. Looking back on it, I could see how I could have nipped the whole thing in the bud about two comments into it—and although that would have been very difficult (because it would have involved moderating someone I considered a friend, and because I’ve had unpleasant experiences with anonymous commenters retaliating viciously when moderated), it probably would have been the right thing to do. Freedom of speech has never, ever, ever meant that we have to give people part of our own space in which to express their vicious and hurtful remarks. I try to keep that in mind now, though it can still be hard to know when/how to apply it.

But she also takes it further, discussing how such issues can help guide us in teaching our children things we didn’t have to be taught by our parents (and therefore might not realize we need to teach): we need to teach them the responsible use of anonymity; and we need to teach them the responsible management of what other people say in public spaces they control, such as their Facebook pages.

Did you know that it is possible to:

1. Feel uncomfortable in seasonal heat, and
2. Realize that people in other professions/states/countries feel heat that is more intense or more oft-felt, and
3. Nevertheless wish to complain/marvel about one’s own heat experience?

The Giant Internet Hand of Spanking does not know this.

Did you know that it is possible to:

1. Have a pet/child/pregnancy, and
2. Understand the various options for caring for that pet/child/pregnancy, and
3. Make an informed choice for that pet’s/child’s/pregnancy’s care, and
4. Have that choice be different than someone else’s informed choice, or
5. Even have that choice be different than what the current mainstream opinion is, and yet
6. Still have the choice be a truly INFORMED CHOICE, one that needs no further input from others?

The Giant Internet Hand of Spanking concedes none of this.

Did you know that it is possible to:

1. Complain about one’s spouse, and
2. Understand that there are worse traits the spouse could have, and
3. Understand that people who have been painfully removed from their spouses would give anything to be able to complain about such small things, and
4. Nevertheless wish to complain, since there are also BETTER traits the spouse could have, and since people who would like to complain about such things would ALSO be complaining about such things, if given the chance?

The Giant Internet Hand of Spanking refuses to believe you.

Did you know that it was possible to:

1. Feel minor interest in the death/divorce of a celebrity, and
2. Feel intense distress about a bomb in another country, and yet
3. Only mention 1.?

Did you know that the reason for this could be:

1. That a person feels one event is appropriate to discuss on light social media, and feels the other is not, or
2. That a person needs more time to process one event than the other before discussing it, or
3. That a person feels one event is easier to discuss in 140 characters, or
4. That a person likes discussing one subject but not the other?

The Giant Internet Hand of Spanking does not know any of these things.

Did you know that it is possible to:

1. Be very uncomfortable in the late stages of pregnancy, and
2. Wish to complain about that discomfort, but still
3. Fully WANT that discomfort because of what goes with it (the pregnancy, the baby, the health and maturity of the baby, etc.), and yet
4. Still prefer not to have the discomfort itself because, clearly, it is discomfortable?

The Giant Internet Hand of Spanking does not know this, and feels you shouldn’t either.

Did you know that it is possible to:

1. Understand how the legal system works, and
2. Still feel upset about the outcome of a trial?

Did you know that the reason for this could be:

1. That the person thinks it’s a rotten system that needs serious fixing, or
2. That the person thinks the system generally works but failed in this case, or
3. That the person thinks the system worked but wishes their side had presented the case differently, or
4. That the person thinks the system worked the way it should have but nevertheless continues to have negative feelings about the outcome?

The Giant Internet Hand of Spanking continues to treat you with detached condescension.