Tonight I was out on my walk/jog (or as Erica puts it, my “wog”) and a woman getting her mail said, “I just have to tell you, I see you every day when I’m coming home from work, and I think, ‘I wish I had her determination.'”

Well, goodness. That’s pleasing, isn’t it?

It does take a certain determination to exercise FOR HEALTH, ANYWAY when the body isn’t responding with aesthetic changes, and in fact increases appetite considerably to compensate for the Worrying EXERTION. It takes a certain—and I am just going to come out with the word, even though it’s about myself—BRAVERY, to expose one’s not-aesthetically-perfect body to teenaged boys who drive by in cars yelling out the windows “YEAH, RUN FATTY RUN!!”—and to people who don’t yell it, but think it. It takes a certain deliberately-put-on-despite-not-feeling-it thickness of skin not to give up when it is made ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that it nauseates people to see fat people even WALKING ACROSS A ROOM—let alone EXERCISING, my GOD, the SWEAT and the JIGGLING, GROSS!!! Why don’t they just STARVE themselves like NORMAL people??? It does indeed take DETERMINATION to keep exercising when people are saying that if other people were being HONEST they’d be THIN. It takes a certain OOMPH to continue exercising when other people assume that if you’re fat, you never exercise and you don’t know how to eat right.

There is not a lot of positive feedback for people who exercise but do not as a result of it become thin and “fit.” The reaction at first is HIGHLY FAVORABLE (“Oh good, you’re finally working on that problem!”) but if the weight doesn’t come off, the reaction can be aptly described as “Um, points for trying, I guess?”—with the obvious assumption that the person must be eating fast food six times a day to counteract the fitness that would otherwise present itself in the form of an Awesome Bod.

I guess what I’m saying is two things:

1) I’m pissed that “rockin’ abs” is considered wayyyyy better than “determination.”

2) I’m nevertheless so pleased to get praised for “determination.”

This feels “too personal for internet,” but it seems SO ESSENTIAL for advice-giving purposes on the SIL/house situation. I’ve seen the appraisal on Paul’s mother’s house, and it’s $25,000. That’s in as-is condition and includes the land.

Oh, I am SO enjoying your input on the SIL/house situation. Each and every comment is like a soothing salve. A balm! Some sort of medicated ointment!

And it’s SO helpful to hear all the different angles laid out so clearly.

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Cat love continues:

He’s resting his head on her fluffy tail. Her back paws are getting all up in his grill, but he doesn’t mind.

Much different body language in this scene. Mouse’s body language communicates: “I should NOT have to share my favorite chair but DANGED if I’m going to be kept off of it.” Feather’s communicates oblivion of any political issues, but on the other hand she’s keeping her tail to herself. Possibly her paw pads are chilly.

Okay, I’ve been thinking. The house Paul owns with his sister is in very poor shape. VERY poor shape. When Paul went there for the funeral, he said he was advising his sister to move out for SAFETY, and he estimates nothing’s been repaired or maintained since his dad left his mom two decades ago. Let that sink in a minute. TWO DECADES. Furthermore, it’s in an area of the country with extremely low cost-of-living, and real estate prices are very low anyway there.

So let me run something by you: Would it be CRAZY to just GIVE his sister the house? On one hand, this is wildly unfair to us. On the other hand, it is ALSO wildly unfair to have her live there year after year, possibly driving the house’s condition even further into the ground, while sending us bill after bill for half the repairs (including, for starters, REPLACING THE ROOF), and then eventually we sell it and after taxes and agency fees get enough money to mayyyyyybe make up for the money we contributed to repairs.

If we give her the house, we can cut it loose: we don’t have to worry about taxes, or repairs, or insurance, or ANYTHING. She can live there without us having to be connected to it, and she can pay for the repairs herself. We never have to think about it again. And, Paul can stop thinking of me as a Heartless Money-Hungry Fritch for suggesting his sister NOT live there rent-free while we pay half for repairs.

If the two options were (A) sell the house and split the cost, or (B) give her the house, I would obviously not even be considering Option B. But instead the two options seem to be (A) grind my teeth to nubs with frustration as she lives there for free and we PAY money into an asset we may or may not ever see half of, IN ADDITION to paying to maintain our OWN house, or (B) give her the house.

Tell me what you think. This is a good time for frankness. Paul and I have been having tense email exchanges all day, and I suspect a decision will soon be made because neither one of us wants to talk about it any more than we have to.

Oh, hey, can I pick the internet’s collective brain? Does anyone know the tax implications of owning half a house in another state? Because Paul’s sister is apparently just going to continue living in their mom’s house for free, but charging us half for repairs, and TRUST ME THAT I TOTALLY AGREE WITH WHATEVER YOU ARE GOING TO SAY ABOUT THAT AS LONG AS IT’S EXTREMELY NEGATIVE AND USES WORDS LIKE “CRAZY” AND “STUPID,” BUT I HAVE TRIED TO GET PAUL TO HANDLE THIS AND HE IS DECLINING TO DO SO, SO WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH THINGS AS THEY ARE RATHER THAN AS THEY SHOULD BE.

I know when I do OUR taxes, there are several house-related things, but it’s a house in our own state and we own it and we don’t share it with someone else (well, except the bank). What about this other house, which we don’t live in and share ownership of? There’s no mortgage on it.

Doing My Best pointed out this great Groupon deal: $50 worth of Zazzle stuff for $25. I’m subscribed to Groupon but haven’t done any of the deals yet and am not quite clear how it works, but I’ve processed that you only have one day to buy the coupon, and I guess you pay up front and then redeem it later?

Anyway, I guess I will learn how to do it, because I need more stuff with my name on it. And if you’ve been thinking YOU need stuff with YOUR name on it, this is the moment.

AND there’s free shipping on $50+ through October 28st with code FREESHIPFORU. I don’t know if it works if your $50 worth of stuff costs $25, though.

Yesterday morning in the shower I noticed the fronts of my thighs just above the knees were blue-greyish. Then I noticed there were blue-greyish patches along my hips. I mean, you’d assume a Terrible Diagnosis, wouldn’t you? Because I did. Something grim about circulation, I assumed. I’d been lying on my stomach while I slept, and didn’t I read something in a suspense novel about blood…pooling? in a corpse? I was planning to finally call my doctor for a check-up. Which indeed I should do, just for general health, but later in the day I realized the blue-grey tint was from my new jeans. I’d washed them before wearing them, but they ARE a very dark wash. Dark enough to color the handkerchief I keep in the pocket, which is how I figured it out.

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I am opposed to camouflage stuff for children. Because I’m opposed to thinking about children being in wars. I know. I KNOW. But that’s how it is: I see camouflage for children and I picture my babies in the woods with guns and NO NO NO.

And that it why it was 11.75 years before I bought anything camouflage for a child of mine, and it’s because Rob MUST have rainboots for his 6th-grade camping trip, and there were NO rainboots in big-kid sizes ANYWHERE, and then I found them FINALLY at Target, and the two choices were (1) camouflage or (2) black with skulls. I paid full-price, for something camouflage, for a child. Note it.

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I gave blood this past week. I even made an APPOINTMENT, and still waited over an hour to start the donation process. That is…discouraging, I must say. I read the entire People magazine I brought with me, and the section of newspaper I found, and then I sat there feeling anxious about how close I was to the people sitting in the chairs next to me. I don’t know if I can be discouraged altogether, like so that I would STOP donating blood, but if I MAKE AN APPOINTMENT? Doesn’t it seem like? And I asked about it, and she said it was always that busy. Well, then…I mean, if I might make a suggestion: preparing for that many people? As opposed to a longer wait-time for people who are already volunteering THE BLOOD FROM INSIDE THEIR BODIES? I don’t begrudge it, I’m GLAD to give it, I even get a nice little high from it, but if I have a 5:00 appointment I’d like to…have a 5:00 appointment. Or, like, 5:30 at worst. Not 6:10 for STARTING the part where you answer questions about whether you’ve been to Europe or dated hookers. I had to pee SO BAD by then, because I’d been so diligent about drinking extra water beforehand as instructed.

But, all that time sitting there waiting, I came up with a new idea for what I might want to do for a job once Henry is in school. Phlebotomist? I need something with a short training time.

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I dreamed last night that I cut my own hair and was very happy about it. It’s so long now, I can’t wear it in my preferred French twist but have to bun it. And it gets tangled and it hurts to comb it, and Paul hasn’t given it the attention I’d expect a guy to give long hair, so I thought I WOULD cut it: I’ve cut it myself once before, and it DID turn out fine. And then THIS MORNING Paul said admiringly, “Your hair is so shiny and multicolored!” And I said, “I’m going to cut it” and he said “Don’t change ANYTHING!”

I just finished reading a book I didn’t expect to like, in which I was so engrossed I forgot to even look at the author’s photo until I’d completely finished the book. It’s called Love in Mid Air, and it’s by Kim Wright.

(My scan of my plastic-protected library book is not excellent, but it is better than Amazon’s weirdly low-quality picture.)

I got the book thinking it would be about a woman who has a meet-cute affair with an impossibly ideal man. And it IS about that (is he also RICH? Why, yes he IS!). And there was more raunch than I like: I don’t need the couple to lean out of the screen so I don’t even have to see them kiss ooo icky, but I also don’t need several-page sex scenes so descriptive they include the word “cervix.”And furthermore, while reading it I was frequently reminded of my own, um, “novel” that I wrote for NaNoWriMo: there’s a certain slapdash, anything-goes feeling to the writing, which in my own case was achieved by thinking “It does not matter what happens with the plot or what the pacing is or how likely this is, I just need to get 50,000 words in 31 days, so WRITE, write like the wind, and seize upon any idea that will generate more words!”

BUT. Something about the book—and it’s something that INCLUDES that anything-goes style, which she pulled off in a way I did not—was highly appealing. I’ve read so many books over the years, sometimes I feel like I’ve already read everything. I yawn and think, “So will it be ending A, in which she finds her Ideal Man is not so ideal after all and ends up staying with her husband? Or ending B, in which she leaves her husband and we’re supposed to believe the new guy is the man she was meant to be with all along? Or perhaps ‘surprise’ ending C, in which she ends up realizing she can live on her own without a man?” Which is why QUALITY WRITING becomes so important: if there are, as my English teacher said over and over again, no new plots and no new characters, then only the WAY the story is told matters. And yet this book DID surprise me, and furthermore it surprised me REPEATEDLY.

Just the other day my family was all together and my brother mentioned the astonishing scene near the end of Serenity (I won’t spoil it if you haven’t seen it), where something happens that makes you realize this movie is not going to play by the Movie Rules, and you can’t assume ANYTHING. (There’s a similar moment in the book Passage by Connie Willis.) This book was like that for me, though on a smaller scale: there were two or three places where I thought, “Huh. I see: I can’t think in terms of option A and B for this one. And where IS she going with this??”

Anyway. I liked it. It has elements of fluff, in that it is not a heavy-going intellectual kind of book and there is a feeling of “female fantasy life” to it. And as I said, it has SEXXX. But it also has SUBSTANCE and SURPRISE, and I found I really liked the way it went.

My school-related frets: let me share them with you.

Rob. Sixth-grader. MIDDLE SCHOOL. I don’t think I need to say more than that, because that is already plenty of fretting right there, but the more immediate problem is that he is getting some bad grades and making bad excuses. Like, when he got his first D on an English paper, he said, “I didn’t realize what was expected,” and I thought, “Good: he’s learning now that he can’t get away with slapdash anymore.” But then he got his second D and he tried to hand me the same excuse. Oh dear me no. I don’t mind a kid getting Ds anywhere NEAR as much as I mind a kid pulling a constant “It’s not my fault.”

So he and I had what I have seen amusingly referred to as a “come to Jesus” talk, and he was suppressing an embarrassed smile when I spelled out the concept that “Didn’t realize” is a one-time-use excuse, so I hope that means he knew it was and won’t keep doing it. And it’s only October, and maybe he will now get it together. But I worry that he WON’T: we all like to think of our kids as excelling! and succeeding! and exceeding expectations for the sheer love of doing a good job! and yet a lot of kids NEVER DO. My father-in-law, in his late 60s, is STILL talking about how his grades didn’t represent his sheer genius. And look at Jessica Simpson’s parents, who claim that she got bad grades because she was SO academically gifted she was BORED in class (*wipes away tears of laughter*).

And MOST of his grades are still As and Bs, so THAT’S good. But it’s like, As in the classes he’s naturally good at, and Ds in anything that requires him to lift his pinky finger. I feel like this is a sink-or-swim transition for him: either he will fall in with expectations, or he won’t, and I can lecture him night and day but HE has to start doing the work, and all I can do is wait around and see if he does or not. Not everyone ends up a Good Student, and Good Studentism is not the be-all and end-all anyway, and it’s his life, and there really is still plenty of time to improve things even if he doesn’t do so in sixth grade, and cliche aphorism truism cross-stitch.

I was going to list all the other frets, but I think they should be their own posts or this is going to be Too Much.

I said again and again on Twitter that this year I was NOT going to join in to the breast cancer awareness fuss. “I said, and said, and said those words. I said them. But I lied them.” (That’s Dr. Seuss.)

And so I am about to make a blanket objection. The trouble with blanket objections is that, at least for ME, when I read a blanket objection, and I’ve done the thing the blanket objection is about, I feel slapped. Even if I don’t think the person making the blanket objection is talking about ME PERSONALLY, they ARE talking about something I PERSONALLY did, and so they DO mean me, whether they intend to mean me or not, and my face burns with embarrassment, which then makes me feel upset and angry and like slapping back.

That’s not good. I don’t want to cause that feeling in you. And yet here we are, and I am going to try to do it without the slapping sensation. And although I have just said it is totally understandable to take something like this personally, it’s also true that I’m not thinking of one person in particular, or even several people in particular: I’m thinking of posts on Twitter that have been re-tweeted thousands of times and sentiments I’ve heard expressed again and Again and AGAIN by TONS of people. If you think I’m quoting you or specifically addressing you, I can tell you for absolutely sure that I’m not—that if I’m saying something you said, it’s because hundreds or thousands of other people said it the same way.

So. ON with it. There are three breast-cancer-awareness-related sentiments I’m objecting to:

1. Oh come on, is anyone seriously claiming they aren’t AWARE of breast cancer?

2. Making dumb fake-sexy posts on Facebook and Twitter isn’t going to cure breast cancer.

3. MONEY and TIME are needed, NOT “awareness.”

My first objection applies to all three, and it is the tone in which these statements is delivered: the intention is to slap people down. It’s not just exasperation, it’s not just making a point: it’s contempt. The eyes are being rolled; the words “DUH” and “YOU IDIOTS” are implied; the hope is that the person reading those words will burn with embarrassment. That’s not nice, is it? And it does nothing to improve or change things, it only causes anger and other divisive feelings.

And now I will explain what breast cancer awareness is FOR, since to me all three of those statements indicate NOT knowing what it’s for.

Let’s back away from breast cancer for a moment, and think about a company that makes deodorant. The company hires an advertising agency to advertise the deodorant, and that agency produces ads both in print and on television. Do we say, “THAT’S stupid. Like we don’t already KNOW deodorant exists?? Come on, the company doesn’t need to make people AWARE of deodorant—they need MONEY and PROFITS!”

No. The reason we don’t say that is that we know what advertisements are for. Advertisements bring the product to the front of the consumer’s mind. If the product is in the front of a consumer’s mind, the customer is going to recognize the product when he or she sees it, and may be influenced to purchase. Advertising is not what the company needs, but it LEADS to what the company DOES need, which is money. It leads to it SO EFFECTIVELY, the company gladly spends hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions of dollars, on advertisements. That’s how connected “bringing something to the fronts of people’s minds” and “money” are: VERY connected.

Furthermore, marketers have discovered something very important, which is that if you can get a consumer to take even one TINY step toward the product, the consumer will defend that step by making a HUGE step toward the product in allegiance. Can you get the consumer to click a box on a pop-up survey? Can you get the consumer to scratch off a little panel to see if they’ve won? Can you get a person to change their Facebook status? Then you, the marketer, have made a HUGE stride toward getting the consumer involved with your product. And a consumer who feels involved will feel loyalty, and loyalty will lead to dollars.

Back to breast cancer awareness. Is breast cancer awareness month intended to teach people that breast cancer EXISTS? Of course not. Does anyone think that by using a racy Facebook status they are making HUGE STRIDES toward a cure? Of course not. Would ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND disagree that money was needed more than awareness? Of COURSE not. But awareness is not literally “awareness,” it is ADVERTISING. We’re accustomed to advertising in the product world, but it’s not as familiar to us in the fundraising context so we don’t always recognize it.

Breast cancer awareness is intended to put the concept of breast cancer in the fronts of our minds. I already know that breast cancer exists, but I often go days or weeks without thinking about it at all. In October, however, I think about it every day: I keep seeing statuses, or pink stuff at the store, or big signs, or advertisers trying frantically to use the concept to sell their products. This is GOOD. Because when a concept is in the front of my mind, I am more likely to put it in the front of my wallet—even if I neither purchase something pink nor change my status (though doing either of those things makes me even more likely to pony up the dough).

When people participate in non-cure-related activities such as purchasing pink pens or changing their Facebook status, they are, even if unwittingly, building loyalty to a product, a product that requires financial support. Loyalty is good. Loyalty results in more money than lack of loyalty does.

And does anyone think that someone participating in a Facebook status game is doing that INSTEAD OF writing a check? YES, money and time are what is needed—but that doesn’t mean awareness thwarts those goals, or takes away from them, or substitutes for them. And in fact, it works IN SUPPORT OF those goals. Slapping people down for their participation—especially when, if nothing else, those people have good intentions—works AGAINST those goals.