On one hand I don’t want to DELUGE you with contests, especially since there’s going to be a steady stream of them on the review blog, and a steady stream of “last day!” reminders, and pretty soon it’s going to seem like all! contests! all! the time!—but on the other hand, meh, free stuff around the holidays, that’s not so bad, and besides, I like to.

I’ve been doing a good job clearing out my gigantic, packed Gift Closet, but it still needs significant work. I can get rid of some toys in one of the toy drives around the holidays, but I don’t think The Little Children want cloth napkins, stationery, cute notepads, dishtowels, mugs, measuring cups, Elvis fridge magnets, etc. This is where you come in, because I need someone to send a box of clutter to (or, if you’re outside the U.S., a flat-rate envelope of clutter to).

And it seemed lame to have a “Win My Gift Closet Clutter!” contest, but as it turns out I had another guessing game to play ANYWAY, so let’s put them together.

Among my late mother-in-law’s possessions, Paul found three rolls of undeveloped film. The rolls don’t match—that is, they’re all Kodak, but they’re different film speeds and different exposures so they probably aren’t three rolls of the same event, they’re probably three separate purchases. We are having them developed; I’m mailing them off today (YES I am too lazy to bring them to Walmart WHAT OF IT).

The pictures could be of her second wedding, which occurred nearly 10 years ago (the second husband died a few years later). They could be of the dog the new couple took in, which has since died. They could be of the cats, past or present. They could be of a child’s graduation, or of a church event, or of holiday celebrations with the second husband’s grown children. They could be of one of her visits to us, or they could even be of the one time we went to visit her as newlyweds. They could be photos of things she meant to sell, or photos of her new car, or photos of her daughter’s new haircut. They could be of her trip to see her parents for their 70th wedding anniversary (I kid you not: 70 YEARS). They could be a bunch of pictures of clouds or sunsets or of the destruction caused to her town one year by a tornado.

The contest, which will be open until I get the email saying they’re available to view online, is this: WHAT IS ON THOSE ROLLS OF FILM?

If I may be a little birdy whispering in your ear, a little birdy who has no personal stake in whether you listen to the whispers but is whispering only out of a desire to do good and spread happiness/cash, I would mention that the Sonicare chance to win $100 Visa gift card expires tomorrow. To enter, you leave a comment about your family’s dental care. Please stop yawning. You can also click over to the other 9 Sonicare reviews to get 9 more chances. It’s 6 weeks to the winter holidays, that’s all I’m saying about $100 Visa gift cards.

Or there is a FIVE hundred dollar Visa gift card for saying “how you simplify your life”—perhaps you simplify it by having INSUFFICIENT $500 VISA GIFT CARDS.

Oh, I know: you never win anything. But do you ENTER? And do you enter enough times to make it a statistical likelihood that you will win, rather than a special fate-directed fluke? That is the key to winning.

I would like to start this day by announcing that I feel very, very strongly that all of you who are suffering through Kids Up In The Night should find yourselves rewarded a thousandfold. I think of myself as remembering what that time was like, and I DO remember (“hell”), but it’s easy to get dazzled by a false overlay of “Oh, that darling birdy little newborn I had then!!” And I do hope I will never get so dazzled by the overlay that I will be like the older ladies in supermarkets who inform exhausted, crusty-eyed, wild-haired mothers that they should be enjoying every moment, but it seems like it must be unavoidable because why else would ANYONE get to that point?

Anyway, perhaps it is obvious that a child woke me many times last night? And that if anything can banish an overlay, it is Fresh Experience? And that even after only ONE NIGHT of this (and it’s the CUMULATIVE effect that REALLY butchers the morale), I nearly put A&D Ointment in my hair instead of hair gel?

Waking up again and again gave me such DREAMS, too, such as that Jennifer Aniston had many other people totally in her power, and also that I was a Chinese immigrant.

I totally get why ONE manufacturer might be kind of pissed when ANOTHER manufacturer reduces product size of a competing product without calling attention to it, and then lowers price WITH calling attention to it. And I can see how the first manufacturer might want to call attention, then, to the second manufacturer’s sneaky change. But this is a ridiculous way to do it:

AH HA HA HA HA HA!! More “thanks Mom!”?? What the? First of all, did we time travel to the 1950s? Secondly, even IF “we moms” collected perky thanks every time we served peanut butter, those thanks would have only to do with how many servings were served, not with how many jars were required to create those servings. Are we doing unit pricing in “thanks” now?

I am ready to get a new cat. As you may remember, we had three cats, and three was Too Many. Then two of them died in the last few months, and now we have one, and one is Too Few. So I have an estimate of what the perfect number of cats may be for our household.

The dilemma is this: our remaining cat, Mouse, is 14. We’re not sure how she’d react to an, um, new friend. Perhaps we should let her live out her remaining time in peace, and then adopt two cats together. Or perhaps we should overlap, so our cats aren’t all the same age like they were this time. Or perhaps she WOULD like another kitty in the house.

Another issue is that I think it should be Paul’s turn to choose. The first two cats were mine before Paul and I were together, and although we took Mouse in together, it was really because I wanted her and Paul gave in. So my idea is that this time Paul should make most of the cat decision, which means I don’t want to go out Cat Browsing and get all attached to somebody. I am very interested to see what kind of cat he would choose.

Another issue is that I would rather adopt an adult cat. They’re harder to find homes for, so I’d feel good about that, but my real reason is that getting a kitten is like playing the Cat Lottery, whereas when you adopt an adult you have a pretty good idea of the cat’s personality. When Rob and William and I went on a tour of the local animal shelter, we saw a whole bunch of adult cats and they varied so much! There was the enormous male who was bumping against our legs and was sooo friendly, and there was the little wiry male who bit me. There was the standoffish fluffy female and there was the bossy tiny female. I definitely preferred some over others. But Paul and the kids all want a kitten.

Another thing is that it might be nice to put the decision off and see if a cat comes our way. There have been several times when we’ve been unwilling to adopt an additional cat and someone has been looking for a home for a really nice one. Or once, we had a super-sweet stray starving outside our door, and we found a new home for her but I wished at the time that we had an empty cat slot available for her.

How did you get your pets? Of the three we had, two I adopted as kittens from a shelter, and one was a stray left behind by people who moved out of our apartment complex.

Oh hey LISTEN. It looks as if we are going to be inheriting a 12-person dining room table and a huh-YOOG sideboard. If we are not going to decline to inherit it, we would need to transport these items about 1500 miles. Have you ever shipped just a couple of pieces of furniture? How did you do it? How much did it cost? It seems like I HAVE heard of people doing this kind of thing.

Okay. Okay. I am already feeling WAY BETTER than several hours ago. The main thing is that Paul called with an update, and I don’t know if you know this about me yet but I tend to PANIC ABOUT THE UNKNOWN, and so while I was here PANICKING ABOUT THE UNKNOWN he was making totally normal and reasonable arrangements with his normal and reasonable sister, and nobody is spending $35,000 on a funeral and everyone is aware that it would be more pleasant to keep that money for themselves and everything is fine.

AND! Someone thought of organ donation! Which I am so glad about, because even though I am an ADAMANT SUPPORTER OF ORGAN DONATION, even I didn’t think of it in the shock of the moment. But thank goodness someone else did, so that was taken care of.

They’re going with the least expensive burial option because it turns out two things were widely known about my mother-in-law (who, it must be said in her favor, tended to make her views WIDELY KNOWN): (1) she thought cremation was icky (and had bought a plot already), and (2) she thought it was stupid to spend more than the minimum on a funeral. One Budget Funeral, coming right up! AND this is one of those small-town places where everyone in a church takes their business, so there was no slick high-pressure stuff—more like “Okay then! Hey, Frank, it’s one Neighborhood Special, no sides!”

ALSO, though so far it appears there is NO WILL NO WILL OMG NO WILL, she did have two small life insurance policies, one of the kind you get free if you have your account at a certain bank and one of the kind you sometimes get as part of your employment benefits. The two policies together will probably cover the funeral.

Also, Paul and his sister turn out to be able to figure things out JUST AS IF THEY WERE ADULTS, and are systematically going through their mom’s house tossing junk out and deciding what they want to keep, and so far no one is fighting or biting, and everyone’s being all matter-of-fact and just sort of taking care of what needs to be done, rather than sitting around going “huh?” which is what I was picturing.

Also, there was one person we COULD NOT REACH (she was on vacation and no one knew if she even HAD a cell phone) and we REALLY NEEDED TO REACH HER (it’s my mother-in-law’s only sibling), and I was a complete genius and thought of seeing if her kids were on Facebook, and they were, and I messaged them and within an hour she was calling Paul and his sister. So (1) I was a genius and my efforts were lauded, and (2) I felt like I was HELPING, which made me feel better and less useless.

Also, I caught up on the laundry a bit, and it turned out that even our king-sized quilt fit into the washing machine, so I could stop the endless circular fret-thread about how was I going to take it to a laundromat. And in fact, this little barf situation was for the best because that water was DARK. Kids have been jumping on this quilt with their shoes on for several years.

The children are still sick, but things don’t seem quite so grim as they did this morning with no shower and a poor night’s sleep and a huge pile of barfy laundry in the hallway and not knowing what was going on in another state. Now it seems more like, “Oh, the kids are sick. Guess they’ll have to watch SpongeBob all day while I mess around on the computer.”

I hope you will forgive me if I am so crabby and touchy you want to slap me with a sheet of plywood. I am just…just….ACK.

Okay, so first of all, I am trying not to interfere with the family’s plans for my mother-in-law’s body, but on the other hand I am so worried they’re going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on stuff none of them care about just because they’ll keep saying “Okay, okay, okay” to everything mentioned to them with NO IDEA how expensive things are, and have I mentioned we have after years of savings only JUST saved up enough for Rob’s impending braces? And so the idea of spending, say, five times that much, on the disposal of a body, and possibly having to take out a home equity loan to pay for it, is…uh. ACK. Basically ACK. And yet just try even GENTLY suggesting that it would be cheaper to light the body on fire and go have a beer, and everyone gets all SQUIRRELLY.

And then, Paul is gone for at least a week, and I’ve had to put on wool socks AND an additional comforter just to match his furnace-like qualities, and also I am moping around feeling mopey about things I find of his such as this:

He took Rob with him, so I’m fretting about Rob missing so much school, and worrying that his teacher will think this means we don’t think his education is important, and I’m worried Something Will Happen on the long car trip.

Also, I have NIGHTMARES about needing to pack rapidly for something, and so packing for their trip was stressful, and it has also been stressful to gradually become aware of all the things I forgot: Paul’s undershirt, Rob’s belt, Paul’s pajama pants, Rob’s toothbrush, etc. It’s especially frustrating because everything I forgot for one person I remembered for the other, so it’s not like I forgot about the need for such items, it’s more like I LOST MY MIND. But all right, I can reassure myself: all these things can be purchased at store. It is no big deal. Breathe, breathe.

Meanwhile, back at the home front, William’s fever has gone away as of several days ago, but now he is in the stage of Endless Coughing. And the other three children have all—ALL—developed fevers in the 102s and 103s. And when Elizabeth has a fever, she barfs, and so at 1:00 in the morning I was taking all the bedding off MY BED (mattress pad, sheets, down blanket, quilt, extra blanket for furnace replacement) because she came upstairs for what was apparently the express purpose of barfing on it, and also taking off all my own pajamas because ditto, and also thanking goodness we had about eight boxes of baking soda in the pantry, and also WASHING THE WALLS and let’s leave it at that.

I mean, are you getting this? I am here by myself with four children, three of whom are sick, one of whom is BARFING sick. The house reeks and I’m trapped. TRAPPED! And meanwhile, decisions that could strongly affect my financial future are being made FAR AWAY and WITHOUT ME. ACK!

So let’s see, what’s new around here.

William had a fever and a cough last weekend but is mostly better now. And this morning Edward woke up with a runny nose and now has a fever, and so I am back in the land of “Do I let the fever do its virus-frying work? Or is this high enough that I should try to bring it down?”

Also, I got two cute sweaters at Goodwill for $1.99 each: a triceratops sweater for Henry and a Baby Gap zip-up rainbow-striped jacket/sweater for Elizabeth. I wish Goodwill wasn’t so far from our house.

Also, I made both brownies and fudge in one day, and I forgot the salt in the brownies and I overcooked the fudge, so dang it.

Also, my mother-in-law died. I know. I am completely shocked. It was very sudden, and now I can stop worrying about the fact that she had no health insurance and at any time could have developed a bankrupting health problem. And now Paul will be gone for a week, so if you’re stalking me could you keep an eye out for dangerous criminals around the house? Kthanx.

This is just about the most awk of all awk announcements, isn’t it? I mean, what are you supposed to say, if you know I am not flattened with grief, but on the other hand death is often a shock and it would be kind of icky if the comment section were…well, it would be icky. So here we are stuck, looking at each other with eyebrows as high as they can go, speechless. Let’s just read each other’s minds, and then clink our glasses together and take a big quaff in memory of my mother-in-law. *Quaff*

Here are some of the things I think there’s more than one way to think about, and everyone can make their own decisions—no agreement necessary from one person to the next:

• what to eat
• how and where a baby should sleep
• bottle-feeding vs. breastfeeding
• what religion to follow
• public school vs. private school vs. homeschooling
• whether to participate in advanced education
• alcohol consumption, yea or nay
• premarital sex, yea or nay
• whether to use birth control
• whether to have children
• whether to marry
• fixed-rate vs. variable-rate mortgage
• how clean to keep the house
• a good name for a baby

Here are some things I think there’s more than one way to think about, but that a community needs to make a decision about as a whole—not deciding “right” from “wrong,” but just deciding for consistency what can be done when:

• driving age
• truancy age
• drinking age
• marrying age
• voting age
• speed limits
• public park curfews

Here are some of the things I think there is only one way to think about and are not open for community vote, because human beings have not been given that kind of power over other human beings:

• whether skin color changes a person’s rights
• whether ethnic origin changes a person’s rights
• whether sex changes a person’s rights
• whether sexual orientation changes a person’s rights

(As Craig Ferguson says whenever he makes a controversial remark: “I LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR LETTERS.”)