Sam Harris on the lack of need for the word “atheism”: “Nearly everyone rejects Zeus, Thor, Isis, along with the countless other dead gods of antiquity, and yet no one feels the need to name this condition of unbelief.” I liked the sound of that until I realized this: “theism” means the belief in ANY god, not ALL gods—so an “atheist” would mean specifically someone who doesn’t believe in a single one of them, as opposed to someone who, as typical for a theist, believes in one god or a certain group of gods, but not the others. There isn’t a need to “name the condition of unbelief” of those who disbelieve in specific ones of the available gods, because that’s already got a word, which is “theist.” It makes sense to me that if pretty much everyone who believes in a god or gods believes in some but not all gods, that we WOULD want a specific word for someone who believes in none of them.

But his point stands even if I think it wasn’t well-illustrated by that particular example. He goes on to say that we don’t have special words to indicate our lack of belief in most other things. I don’t believe in horoscopes, but no one makes me identify myself as an anti-astrologist, and no one asks what horoscope-related trauma caused me to give up my faith in horoscopes. Did I perhaps have a bad experience with people who DID believe in horoscopes? Do I realize that horoscopists aren’t perfect, just predictable? I should try THEIR newspaper’s horoscope, because if I was trying some OTHER newspaper’s horoscope, of COURSE I didn’t feel like it was for me. Etc. Nor do I have to call myself a non-vegetarian non-Gemini non-doctor.

Having a word that means “not-that” helps give the impression that “that” is what’s normal and right—as opposed to “that” being an addition to the standard model. Better to have words for “plain” and “plain plus the religion option,” rather than to have words for “plain plus religious” and “plain plus religious but minus the religious.” Better to have “hamburger” and “cheeseburger,” rather than “cheeseburger” and “cheeseburger without cheese.”

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As I do each year, I have a sticky note on my computer monitor with “APRIL FOOLS’ DAY” written on it. Otherwise (or perhaps I should say “Even so”) I tend to fall for things, like the year I believed the most popular rock station in our college city was changing to an all-polka format. Or the year I believed Google had started a dating service, which I STILL think was an AWESOME IDEA. (Did you see this year’s Google prank?)

Every year I hope not to fall for a fake pregnancy announcement: I’d get so happy and excited, and the disappointment of finding out it wasn’t true would be so awful. So far I haven’t fallen for one, but I did fall for one on a non-April-1 day when a Facebook friend did the “I’m expecting!!” joke where the punchline is “…snow!,” so I got a sample of what that feels like (“really good followed by really bad”).

I have a little cold, and if I thought the universe was a sentient prissy jerk (and that I myself wasn’t part of that same universe, a la “There’s only one everything”), I would theorize that this cold was my payback for being happy about my good test results from my physical: nice low cholesterol, everything normal with thyroid and blood sugar and so forth—I don’t really know everything they tested, but they made a whole bouquet of little bottles when they were drawing blood, and everything was normal/low/high where applicable. So, in good health for now according to the standard markers, though heading for the time of life where we all start getting things and it’s a matter of what do we get in THE DRAW.

I also had my first mammogram. If you are a little nervous about your first mammogram, as I was, I will tell you how to get a good idea what it’s like. Go into your kitchen, or I guess it doesn’t have to be YOUR kitchen but I do recommend it for privacy reasons. Take off your shirt and bra. Then take one mammo, and lean it into the open freezer, or refrigerator if you are shorter or have one of those freezer-on-the-bottom fridges—whatever’s at the right height for you.

Now you are going to start to close the door, slowly. You will need to reach in and pull/stretch the mammo into the fridge or freezer pretty firmly, or else it’ll just pop out as you close the door. You know that unflattering “orange in a sock” image people use? The orange should be fully into the fridge, with the door closing on only sock. You are right if you’re suddenly thinking that the “orange in a sock” analogy never really worked, and that this can’t work either and the orange will HAVE to be squashed.

Continue closing the door until you are ALMOST in pain: you should have a slight panicky feeling about impending pain, combined with an impulse to pull yourself out of the situation, combined with the strong feeling that pulling back at this time would lead to a worse feeling. There will also be a scraping feeling as the edge of the door travels tightly across the skin surrounding the mammo. Now hold still. Hold still, hold still, hold still—30 seconds. Open the door. Whew! Do it once more on this side, then twice on the other side. Done!

It was not as bad as I’d feared, though I was glad as usual to have been pessimistic and anxious about it, if only for that delightful “Hey, THAT wasn’t so bad!” feeling afterward.

My mom took the little kids for a couple of hours this morning, and after I dropped them off at her house I drove from there to have my bloodwork and peework done, which I realize is not the MOST exciting way to spend some child-free time, but on the other hand it is super nice not to have children knocking into trays of sterile tubes/needles.

Anyway, so this is just to explain why I was driving past my own house, and when I DID drive past my own house I saw a Suspicious White Van parked across the street, with some guy Taking Notes while looking at my house, so I got all anxious—until I saw it was a van for a home security company, and the guy was in uniform, and he wasn’t looking at my house, he had just responsibly pulled over to take a cell phone call. But this gave me such a good marketing idea for home security companies: sit around in unmarked vans looking Suspicious. Better yet, since you’re sitting there pretending to track people’s schedules for robbery purposes, you could use that time to actually track their schedules; then, break in when no one’s home: don’t take anything, just dump out a bunch of drawers and sweep the mail pile off the counter and make a scary mess. They’d call for an alarm system right away! Well, and I guess they might not call YOUR company, but perhaps some sort of arrangement could be made with other home security companies and the calls would even out.

Or possibly that’s a terrible idea. It was FASTING bloodwork and then I got a large coffee afterward.

For some reason, perhaps because of the words “terrible idea,” this reminds me of the children and how they’re in difficult stages right now. You know how there’s that time when you have a newborn, and the newborn goes to sleep at your bedtime or even AFTER your bedtime so you feel like you just never, ever, EVER have any time that you’re not feeding or holding or comforting a baby, and after you finally put the baby down it’s only to climb into bed and you know you’ll be awakened to immediately pick up the baby again, and the cycle of your days seems endless and exhausting? And then the newborn starts gradually going to bed earlier and earlier so that FIRST you actually have some time to brush and floss without having to hand the baby to someone else, and THEN it starts being you have a good half hour to refill your water cup for the next day or to open a baby gift, and THEN it’s like a full hour and you start to feel like WHEEE SOME FREE TIME, and then the baby starts going to bed at 7:00 and you think “OMG I HAVE MY LIFE BACK”?

Well, it is going in the opposite direction now, is my point. Our two oldest are staying up later and later, and unfortunately they are not yet to the stage of life where we’re so lame they can hardly stand to be in the same house with us unless they have headphones to block us out, so instead they are yammering yammering yammering at us all evening. And we DO appreciate this time with them, but we would ALSO appreciate some time to look at a computer or television or book or magazine WITHOUT having our attention jerked away EVERY TEN SECONDS JUST LIKE THE ENTIRE REST OF THE DAY.

I get up at about 5:40 a.m., and there is ALWAYS at least one child up before 6:00, and more often three. So at 8:00 that night, fourTEEN hours later, I am really really really really DONE with dealing with children. And yet it’s still half an hour until the two big kids go to bed. And by the time we’re done with “Did you brush your teeth?” “Oh yeah, I forgot” and tucking in and so forth, it’s more like 8:45. And we go to bed at 10:00, so that means it’s one hour until it’s time to floss. Oh, sure, one hour is nice! I mean, that’s the WHEEEE SOME FREE TIME marker when there’s a newborn. But because we’re going the other direction, it feels like the walls are closing in rather than finally giving way a bit, and I’m starting to GET BACK some of that “My life is an endless cycle of drudgery and exhaustion” feeling that can happen at bedtime when a person is tired and cranky and didn’t get to read her book.

Some of this can/could be solved by the very solutions that are springing to your mind as you read this. We could make them start getting ready for bed a little earlier so that we are DONE tucking them in at 8:30. We could consider earlier bedtimes, and maybe they could read in bed instead of being up with us—but they are 10 and 12 now, and they already read in bed after 8:30, and 8:30 seems like a reasonable bedtime. I suppose we could tell them they could only stay upstairs if they were perfectly silent and talked neither to us nor to each other nor to the cats. The main issue here is not that things need to be changed, it’s that we have children in an awkward stage as far as our free time is concerned—a stage that, as with those early newborn weeks, I hope will naturally adjust until we have a more pleasing quantity of free time again.

With the long train of children we have, this may take some time: just as the older two start wanting to spend their time wearing earphones and/or mooning around in their rooms instead of talking with their parents and getting all giddy and unpleasant, the younger three will be needing later bedtimes than their current 7:00. Already Elizabeth would be ready for a later bedtime: she’s always awake until after 8:30, reading in her room because we can’t think of any fair way to give her a later bedtime without giving the same to Edward—Edward who has dark undereye circles at about 5:00 in the afternoon and who falls asleep by 7:01. (We’ve thought of doing it all sneaky-like by waiting until he falls asleep and then letting her stay up, but that doesn’t work for us: the other kids can’t be trusted not to spill it.)

So really this is like when you complain to a guy, and he starts trying to solve it and you say “No, no, don’t try to fix it, I just wanted to tell you about it and complain a little.” Which is not to say a “Here’s how we solved it!” would be unwelcome, if you DID solve it and if it doesn’t involve moving to a different house where everyone gets his or her own room.

1. Distributing Children’s Vitamins

If you hand out children’s vitamins that vary in color/shape within the bottle, and if you have the problem we have, which is of children clamoring for a specific shape/color and/or of all the children wanting the same shape/color so that that shape/color gets used up first, I will tell you how I solved this problem: I shake vitamins out into my hand, and the very first MATCHING SET I get is the vitamin everyone gets. I don’t think this would work as well if all five were on the same vitamin, but the littles have one type and the bigs have another so it works great. The vitamins we use are ones that vary in color but not in shape, so I shake out vitamins into my hand until I get two purples or two oranges or two pinks, and then that’s what the bigs get. Then I do the same for the littles: I shake out vitamins until I get three that match. This stops the “OOO OOO, can I have orange??” and also stops the problem of them eating all the orange ones and then complaining about it until 66 vitamins later when we open a new bottle. It also takes the blame off me: hey, it’s FATE that decides today’s vitamin color, not ME. (I could also just shake out one vitamin at a time and say that’s the vitamin that child gets, but this led to “NO FAIR, he ALWAYS gets orange!!”)

2. Peeing Without a Stepstool

If you have a small boy who needs to use a public restroom and only wants to do it standing up but also still needs a step stool, try having him stand on your feet: you stand at the toilet as if YOU were the boy who was about to get to pee without the Public Toilet Seat squeamishness issue even entering into things, and then have him stand on your feet. This still won’t be enough for smaller small boys, but works for the ones who need a little boost. And you don’t have to stand there dangling a child in the air over the toilet while your arm muscles complain.

3. Inexpensive Non-Leaking Children’s Lunchbox Bottles

I’ve tried a bunch of different reusable lunchbox bottles and they ALL LEAK. I have been SO FRUSTRATED. Then I thought, “…Hey. These reusable bottles are sold empty. But little bottles of water and juice are sold FULL: they CAN’T leak, or the transportation/stocking issues would be a nightmare.” I first bought the little 8-ounce bottles of bottled water, and they DIDN’T LEAK. But they were also made of thin, easily squashed/crumpled plastic. So then I bought these:

(photo from the Amazon.com listing, where they
probably cost a million dollars when in stock)

They’re Mott’s 8-ounce apple juices, and I buy these at Target, though only two of my three within-driving-distance Targets carry them. They cost about $4 for an 8-pack, which is more than I’d want to pay for a disposable product (for field trips I send juice boxes), but think of them as an 8-pack of reusable lunch box bottles, only 50 cents each (which is what our school system charges for a carton of milk, which is what inspired me to start this whole quest). I peel off the paper label and I write the child’s name on the bottle and the lid in permanent marker, to make it clearer to school staff that the bottle is meant to be reused. The bottles are surprisingly sturdy and they don’t leak. (We’ve had occasional problems this year with the twins, because they don’t always get the concept of the screw-top needing to be threaded correctly, in which case of course the bottles WILL leak.) The kids reuse them until they lose them: in several years of using these, I’ve only had one bottle taken out of commission for breaking, and it was the lid that cracked.

Boy, writing all my stressies to you guys definitely helped me reduce the list. Well, and also it’s several days later now, so some of those things were solved by the passing of time. But MOSTLY YOU.

1. I had my physical/pap/Tdap, which I hated but then it was over. Now I have to go get a mammogram, my first, which makes me feel like I’m getting old. I also have to get bloodwork and peework done. So I’m not done yet, but the part I really dreaded is over, and it’s a relief to be getting these things tested and/or taken care of. And she didn’t lecture me about my weight, which is one of the fears that makes me reluctant to go to the doctor.

2. I made the call to the vet about Mouse’s Final Appointment, and I’d hoped I wouldn’t cry on the phone but I did, and I’d hoped I wouldn’t choke up to the point of being unable to speak but I did, and I’d hoped I wouldn’t make an inappropriate joke about how it would be nice if a cat had one of those pop-up turkey timers that would let you know when it was Time To Make The Final Appointment but I did, and it nevertheless went fine. I reminded myself afterward that this is a routine part of the vet’s job, and that she too probably worries about how to handle these phone calls: how much sympathetic talk and how much practical, saying too much or saying too little, knowing whether or not to talk when someone else is choking up. The appointment is tomorrow morning, and it will be fine. Mouse has been a good cat, and it’s hard to let a good cat go—but on the other hand she’s also been peeing all over my new carpet, which makes it a little easier.

Poor old thing
(there’s a heating pad tucked into the towel)

3. My mother assured me that although there is indeed a frustratingly large financial impact from their recent medical drama, it’s not as bad as I’d feared (I’d been under the mistaken impression that one entire hospital stay would not be covered), and they are able to handle it, and it just means I won’t be able to buy an indoor lap pool with a future inheritance.

So if you’re wondering what to get me for Christmas…

4. I told Paul I couldn’t face calling the car place again, so he stopped by there on his way home from work, and they told him they’d found the problem, and the part has been ordered and should be here tomorrow, and the car should be ready by tomorrow afternoon, and we won’t be charged for any of it.

5. I’m trying to do a small house-reorganization thing each day, and not get overwhelmed by how big The Whole Project is. Today I cleared all the junk off the bureau in our room, putting it where it actually belonged (most of it was stuff from the previous room). That meant I could get my jewelry boxes out of the dining room and into our room, which reduced (1) the mess in the dining room, (2) the mess in our room, and (3) some of the living-out-of-suitcases feeling.

I tried the peperoncini beef recipe everyone is trying. I thought it was pretty good, and would make it again. Paul thought it was MANNA FROM HEAVEN EXCEPT BETTER THAN THAT BECAUSE MANNA WAS PROBABLY ACTUALLY QUITE PLAIN AND BREADY.

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Last night I put a hair-dye adventure on Twitter. I will summarize, this time with photos.

Here is a picture of my Starting Hair. But I think this photo makes it look lighter and more golden than it is. Paul says my hair is brown and I don’t like it when he says that (although I liked it better when I realized his tastes generally run to brunettes) (actually I did not), but at LIGHTEST it’s “dark blonde” (see Twitter avatar). I think the flash gave it some undeserved lightness and goldenness: see how the front strands that didn’t catch as much flash are more ashy?

And here is my box of hair dye:

Isn’t that a pretty color?

I can already tell this is not going to end up the way I’d hoped.
Also, I don’t recognize myself without my glasses, do you?

(This is the point at which Twitter started telling me the mission was doomed. TOO LATE FOR THIS WARNING.)

This is while it is still WET.
Normally my hair looks slate-grey-brown when wet.

I slept with a towel on my pillow, and took a photo as soon as I got up, because I didn’t want to shower and then have to wait for it to dry AGAIN before I could take a photo. So my hair is a little MASHED looking. However, I think indeed it is safe to say that the box color has been non-achieved:

But I wouldn’t call it a DISASTER, either: it’s not the orange/trashy I’d feared, and if I’d wanted a sort of reddish medium/dark blonde, I would have been quite pleased. And I keep boxes of dark ash blonde hair dye in the house, so it would be easy to go back.

Here it is the way I usually wear it, and with my glasses on, and in more natural light:

Look, I am peeking at you with my partially-obscured peripheral vision.
Or perhaps I am noticing the bit of hairline I missed in the front.

Paul keeps asking WHY am I SO sad/crabby. So I made him a list:

Husband: The Snip and resulting emotional stuff; temporary layoff if government shut-down takes place; still a contractor instead of a regular employee, despite repeated employer promises to change this

Parents: scary medical drama followed by resulting scary financial drama

Rob: orthodontic appliance keeps breaking and I have to keep calling about it and taking him out of school for appointments; pre-teen issues such as backtalking and disrespectful arguing that pushes my buttons in a way that makes me think I’m not going to do a good job parenting the teen years

Will: the birthday party (now over); several years’ worth of progress reports mentioning problems with focusing, starting to make me feel like we need to do something about it

Elizabeth: storming off, slamming doors, screaming—at even SMALL things

Edward: my mom read a book about dyslexia and now thinks Edward and William have it

Henry: constantly talks about video games and shooting; starting preschool in the fall; doesn’t obey until the nth time he’s told

All kids: I’m not remembering to teach them everything they need to know; they should have been born to a family that could manage them better; summer camp dithering (choosing which ones, and it’s SO EXPENSIVE and involves so much hassle); upcoming dental visits without dental insurance; video games becoming a problem again

Mouse (the cat): dying, vet thinks probably cancer (and says treatment wouldn’t make sense for an underweight 16-year-old cat with other health issues already); in the meantime, using the entire house as her litterbox; vet is going to call to check in, so I’m constantly jumpy about the phone maybe ringing

Benchley (the cat): repeatedly going into the neighbors’ yards (they don’t want him to, and expect us to…tell him not to, I guess); harassing Mouse; vet says he’s “chunky” and has really bad teeth for his age ($$)

Fish: acting weird

Minivan: I finally got the broken-off door handle (parking lot incident) replaced, and it doesn’t work from the inside—but we only just discovered that (kids always get out on the other side), and it’s been AGES so I feel dumb calling about it and asking the place to redo it (they’ll think we just broke it again, because how would we not know about this for 8 months?)

Car: check-engine light took $1200 to fix, and then it was still on when we got the car back; place can’t figure out what’s wrong after 3 days (5 including the weekend); we’ve been managing with one car for 2 weeks now, getting rides from my parents every day to get the twins to kindergarten; we have to pick up the car today no matter what (parents can’t drive tomorrow), and what if they charge us for all the labor involved in not being able to fix the problem? and now we’ll need to somehow get it to the bigger city place, which will mean a 2-car hour-long round-trip for each pick-up and drop-off

Doctor: I have to go tomorrow for a physical, and my doctor has trouble with English, and I have trouble with doctors already (scared, worried about communicating issues effectively); also, my call to make the appointment was an enormous catastrophe, so that I’m still having furious imaginary conversations with the receptionist two weeks later (we can’t really switch doctors or I WOULD HAVE, because that is an easy solution to think of)

Taxes: not done

House: the chaos of the rearranging; everything that still needs to be done; “living out of suitcase” feeling while those things remain undone; constant small repairs cropping up that we don’t deal with; constant cleaning needed

That no-carb book I read: resulting food stress

Other books: three in a row with totally unsatisfying endings, plus one I couldn’t even get through at all, plus one about a fat woman, which portrayed her as going to the grocery store, bakery, and fast-food places DAILY and constantly shoving massive quantities of food into her mouth (the Hollywood idea of what fat people must need to do to stay so fat)

The world: full of constant disaster and constant cruelty

Other: possible impending UTI (and the possible impending argument with the doctor over me not wanting to pay my $150 share of a $500 lab test that checks only to see if she’s prescribed the right medicine—which, presumably, we would know FOR FREE in a couple of days); all the phone calls I’ve had to make for so many of these things

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Then I didn’t give him the list. Instead I said, “Because every single area of my life has something either sad or crabby happening. That’s why.”

However, that left out several important things:

1. It’s Cadbury Egg season

2. My brother and sister-in-law are having another baby, and it’s a BOY

3. Maeve Binchy’s new book due to arrive in today’s mail

4. The peperoncini roast EVERYONE HAS BEEN MAKING is in the crockpot

5. Chunky, bad-teethed, plush warm cat sitting on my lap and purring and giving me love-eyes

We put the nursery valances on Freecycle. I got those when I was pregnant with Rob, from one of the parents at the daycare I used to work at. Her in-laws bought her a new nursery set for her second baby, and she still had the set for her first baby (the baby I took care of at the daycare), so she gave it to me. It was sepia with a pattern of antique toys. At some point I gave away the quilt, and then the bumper and sheets, but the valances were still up. When we moved the rooms around, I took them down.

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Links:

My buddy Kelsey is doing the March of Dimes Walk this year. Three years ago, Kelsey was on hospital bed rest for a month; her son Michael was born at 31 weeks. I did my college internship for the March of Dimes, and they can take credit for my subsequent years of folic acid purchases. They’re good peeps, and if you want to donate some money toward their quest to reduce premature births, I hope you’ll donate it through Kelsey’s walk fund. (Here’s her post on the topic, for more info/background.)

I found JJust Kidding‘s post about handling a meltdown extremely satisfying, I think because it ran the whole gamut of maternal emotions and then put in some well-placed curse words and a Sylvia Plath reference. (“Ran the whole gamut of emotions,” by the way, is a phrase I’m using in a copy-and-paste sort of way. I don’t know what a gamut is, but from hearing the phrase in other contexts I think I’m using it correctly here. However, this is probably how phrases like “for all intensive purposes” get going.)

Look at this awesome leaf-print quilt made by Melissa and her daughter.

Two Shoes Studio is doing a postcard project, so you KNOW I signed right up. She’s sending postcard-sized ART, and you can see the cute fluffy little chick she just did, which has a facial expression that amuses me, and you can also see the postcard _I_ received, which is even better in person.

The Diniwilks has a PSA about removing the headrests in a Honda CRV to make room for the car seat, which you’d think would not be interesting to read unless you had (1) a Honda CRV and (2) a car seat that didn’t fit right with the headrests—and yet I read the whole thing, rapt.

I am cranky at a book. It’s The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard, and it’s probably not the book’s fault.

Isn’t the cover pretty? It makes me want to paint some of those colors on walls.
(photo from Amazon.com)

The thing is, I like books WRAPPED UP. I want loose ends TIED, and I want mysteries EXPLAINED. I like to know WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. Which reminds me: I’m cranky at another book, too. It’s The False Friend, by Myla Goldberg.

(image from Amazon.com)

If a book uses a BIG MYSTERY (in both books, a missing girl) for its momentum, then at the end I want to know the whole story. I don’t agree with readers who say “Well, but in REAL LIFE we wouldn’t know!” This is not real life, this is fiction, and I want to know. If I don’t get the answer, that says to me that the author didn’t know either: she just wrote it all mysterious-like to make it suspenseful, but she took the lazy way out and didn’t find a way that all those clues could make SENSE. I once emailed Jodi Picoult to DEMAND the answer to a mystery she left unsolved in one of her books, and she emailed me back that the ending is what we make of it. NO. The ending is what the AUTHOR makes of it. That is the author’s job. My job is to read it.

The Fates Will Find Their Way is distinctive for two reasons:

1. It is written in first person plural (we thought this, we did that). This is such an unusual style, I was constantly thinking of the only other book I’ve read that used this style (Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris, a book I thought I hated for the first fifty pages, after which I loved it). It is a VERY STRANGE style.

2. Even more distractingly, it’s a female author writing on behalf of a group of boys/men. I ALMOST ALWAYS hate this. My attitude is “You have failed to acquire authorization to represent this point of view.” You’d think I’d feel that way about ALL books with non-author narrators (“Who are you to write as if you were Mary, Queen of Scots??”), but I don’t: it’s the male/female thing only. I think it’s because that is SUCH a minefield already, what one sex assumes the other sex is thinking and feeling. I feel it less with a female author and a male narrator, of course, because I’m not personally offended when a woman makes assumptions about how a man’s mind works—but I still think, “Hey.” And I wince if it seems personal/private and negative. Since this particular female author is writing for a whole GROUP of men, I was even more sensitive to it: by attributing thoughts/feelings to a group as if there was consensus to support her claims, it was more serious than if she were claiming it only for one character.

Both books deal heavily with teenager stuff: teenage emotions, teenage cruelties, teenage traumas. The Fates Will Find Their Way deals CONSIDERABLY MORE with teenage sexuality than I would like to read about (this was one of the parts where I repeatedly thought the author should not be writing on behalf of the opposite sex); The False Friend put more emphasis on teenage cruelty. Both books made me feel uneasy about my own children entering this age.

Both of these books held me absolutely riveted, and neither one of them paid off in the currency I prefer to tender. If you LIKE books that reflect real life, in that they leave you hanging and you never find out what happened (I’ve seen reviewers saying they liked the food for thought, or enjoyed the way it made them reflect upon the mysteries of life and how little we know about the Truth, etc., etc.) (though, I find it possible to THINK without the element of CONFUSION present), then BY ALL MEANS you should read these because they were GREAT until they omitted their satisfying-resolution, mystery-finally-revealed endings.

THE PARTY IS OVER. It is done! Everything was fine! Although I am still STEEPING IN EMPATHY for a boy who was still there when everyone else had been picked up, saying to me, “I’m sorry” and “You can just go and I can wait here.” *HEART CLENCH* This made me wish SO PROFOUNDLY for the knack of putting people at their ease in awkward situations. I TRIED, but he was still unhappy and embarrassed. I would have used that skill on his mother, too, when she arrived saying “I’M SO SORRY. I’M SO EMBARRASSED” (she hadn’t changed her watch for the time change).

For statistical use: we sent out ten invitations; we got five RSVPs, all yes; we got a sixth RSVP-yes the night before, apologizing for forgetfulness and asking if it was still okay and saying she totally understood if it wasn’t (full mercy awarded); we also had one where we didn’t get an RSVP but it was William’s best friend and she told him yes verbally, and it would have been such a colossal disaster if she COULDN’T come we would have expected an enormous kerfuff in that case, so anyway we felt confident she’d be there.

The three who didn’t RSVP didn’t come to the party. Of the four possible RSVP screw ups (RSVP yes but don’t show, RSVP no but show up; no RSVP but show; no RSVP but no show), that one is the easiest to let slide—but GEEZ I wish they’d have RSVP’d a “no,” because then we could have invited other kids to take those slots (the party package allowed 15 children maximum, and was still the same total price even if there were fewer children), because there were several that William had a very hard time deciding among. (William decided to invite all his siblings, so that’s the other four, plus William himself counts as one, if you’re doing the math.) I wish I could have come up with a good way of spelling out the “please tell us if you can’t come so we can invite a second-stringer” thing on the invitations. Well. Anyway. It’s OVER, and that’s the important thing.

Cake statistics: William wanted chocolate cake with vanilla frosting, so I made one 9×13 chocolate cake with vanilla frosting and one 9×13 yellow cake with vanilla frosting. Of 12 party guests, 10 wanted the yellow cake. THIS BLEW MY MIND.

You know what is working pretty well? “You can’t play with your presents until you’ve written your thank-you notes.”

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If you are both FULL and TALL (particularly FULL) of calf, but you want to wear knee socks, I recommend the “over the knee” style. Target has some at 75% off right now, and I bought some to wear under my air cast. The over-the-knee kind go right up to just under my knee, the way regular knee socks are supposed to. However, may I advise against the argyle? It seems the argyle is knit to look correct only on the unfilled sock; it would warp even on a narrow calf, but on my own calf there is comical warpage. Stripes! Stripes are good! And the diamond pattern (non-argyle, just teal/white/navy diamonds) works okay too.

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You are wondering how we went from intense yellow to white paint for our room. It was something like this:

Step 1: Swistle dithers for hours over various shades of blue, green, yellow, etc.

Step 2: Paul says he wants bright yellow.

Step 3: Swistle dithers for hours over various shades of bright yellow, feeling anxious about how yellow will go with the quilt, and also feeling anxious about how yellow allegedly causes anxiety and depression.

Step 4: Paul sighs discontentedly when shown Swistle’s preferred bright yellows, and says he wants the ones Swistle can’t tolerate. Then he says the most important thing is that SWISTLE chooses what SHE wants. But SHE was trying to choose among what HE wanted, and he still wasn’t pleased.

Step 5: Swistle goes into paint-color-choosing shock.

Step 6: Paul says he’s buying the paint on the way home from work the next day, and Swistle needs to tell him what to buy. Swistle declines to reply.

Step 7: Paul emails from work: he’s bringing home a paint color, and if Swistle doesn’t tell him which one he will close his eyes and choose one at random.

Step 8: Swistle emails back: “White. The same Sea Salt I felt the paint clerk showed insufficient enthusiasm for when I chose it for the dining room.”

Step 9: Paul emails back that this makes no sense and that Swistle should choose what SHE WANTS. What was that bright yellow she liked, again?

Step 10: Swistle emails back that yellow was what PAUL wanted, and that the ideal color with the quilt is a shade of Swistle Blue, but Swistle now associates that color with Swistleness and doesn’t want it in the bedroom, and also she likes green but there are no greens she wants, and also WHITE IS WHAT SHE WANTED TO BEGIN WITH, OH CAN’T WE GET WHITE? It will look right with the quilt AND with the pictures, AND will still look good if we change to a different quilt!

Step 11: Paul comes home with a gallon of Sea Salt and paints the bedroom with it. It’s great. Paul takes out the old icky carpet and Swistle makes the children wash the floor.

Step 12: This is not part of the paint-choosing process, but anyway we move our bed into that room and sleep there for the first time last night, and Swistle lies awake thinking THIS HAS ALL BEEN A TERRIBLE MISTAKE and she wants her old room back because THIS IS ALL WRONG and SHE HATES EVERYTHING.

Step 13: Swistle takes a sleeping pill and feels better in the morning, especially when it turns out we get morning light in our new room, which we didn’t get in our old room.