We went on vacation and I had my usual insight about how different vacation (and all of life) is for Paul. Some of you will not identify, and good for you and your inarguably better life/marriage, and may the next generation make choices that have more in common with yours than with mine. But I will tell this one anecdote. At one point, we decided to take the kids swimming. Just before we all got into the water, Paul announced that actually he thought he’d prefer to go kayaking instead. He departed, alone. I supervised all of our children in the water—which meant very little swimming/enjoying and quite a bit of counting repeatedly to five to make sure no one had disappeared beneath the surface. Right after this swimming session, there was another excursion planned—again, with supervision of children needed. (Our children don’t need anywhere near the level of supervision they needed when they were small, but a certain level of attendance is still needed in dangerous/unfamiliar/learning situations, and also there is a certain level of “not dumping them on other adults who are also trying to enjoy vacation.”) I went indoors to pee and apply more sunscreen etc.—and found Paul asleep. So he had gone off to do something by himself, leaving me with the children; and then had felt free to just…return from that solo excursion and take a nap. Without checking in or anything. Without worrying or even wondering if the children were being supervised, or if I would like a turn to do something on my own, or if it was okay with me to be indefinitely in charge. Just, doing whatever he felt like doing, without regard for anyone else, and this is the person I apparently deliberately married and apparently deliberately chose to have children with. (And you might say, “Well, why don’t YOU go off and do something on YOUR own??” and the answer is “Because he would have left the children alone in the water.”) I am not telling this story for “Oh SAME girl!” high-fives (though misery does as always love company) OR for “WHAT???” reactions, but more as a measure/check-in of how things are and how they continue to be over the years. For balance, I will say that on this same vacation Paul cheerfully/happily organized (including extensive preparation/packing of ingredients and equipment) and then cooked dinner (with two different appetizers) for fourteen people, while I did no such thing. (But back to the other side of the scale, perhaps we could discuss OVERALL trip-shopping/preparation/packing/unpacking, and how in all of life it seems that Paul gets to choose whether he does chores/childcare or not—and anything he chooses not to do is mine by default.)

***

When we first hired the cleaners, I had never cleaned this house. That was the deal: we could move to the house Paul wanted to move to, but I had seen how things had gone for the last 20 years in our smaller/simpler house, so the deal was that I was not going to be similarly in charge of cleaning the new house just because he preferred that house and had no concept of the associated increase in chores. So we moved, and we hired cleaners (Paul found/contacted/hired the cleaners, because that was another part of the deal), and I was satisfied with their work. Then there was a pandemic, and for well over a year I cleaned the house myself (with half-assed assistance from the rest of the family who were theoretically equally responsible for the substitute cleaning). And now, unfortunately, my eyes are tuned in to what things look like when they are cleaned well. You might have gotten the impression over the years that I am not a good housecleaner, because I hate to do it and often decline to do it—but when I DO clean, I do a Very Good Job (unless I commit ahead of time to doing a Half-Assed Job, which can be necessary for sanity and/or getting anything at all done). This is a curse, as it turns out, because it means I know what the bathroom faucets look like when someone cleans all the little crevices with an old toothbrush and baking soda, and that I notice when someone instead wiped them with a paper towel and didn’t get the crevices and didn’t attend to that part around the back of the faucet/sink that’s hard to see but nevertheless develops build-up if not attended to.

Let’s not suggest I choose new housecleaners. Not only do we all know I would rather sell the house and/or perish than do that, but also I doubt a different set of cleaners would be better: I don’t EXPECT the housecleaners to use a toothbrush on all the little crevices. They are not hired to do it THE SAME AS I WOULD HAVE DONE IT; they are hired so that I don’t have Primary Responsibility for doing the cleaning, and so that the most important cleaning gets done steadily and without the ball being dropped when I despair and/or go on an absolutely justified strike. It’s just that I wish my eyes weren’t tuned into it now. I also wish that, during the pandemic, I had paid myself the same money we paid/pay the cleaners, since I certainly earned it.

***

Elizabeth got a buzz cut. Over the years I have considered myself a pretty laid-back parent about hair, with a “It’s only hair / It’s their hair / They can do what they want” attitude about it—but I had not understood that “buzz cut for a girl” was on the table so I had some rapid catching-up to do. One of my primary fears was that she would have a picture in her mind of what it would look like, and the reality would be dramatically different, and then there would be a crying teenaged girl refusing to go to school or see friends or whatever—but none of that came to pass. She is happy with how it looks, and keeps talking about how quick and easy it is to deal with, and she has sent many pictures to friends and has changed her Bitmoji to match it and so forth. She also bought some painter pants and has been exclaiming about how many/deep the pockets are, so Elizabeth is really living her best life right now. I don’t like the buzz cut, but I can APPRECIATE the buzz cut, if you follow me, as well as the CONCEPT and UPSIDES of the buzz cut; and also I have snapped back around to my “It’s only hair / It’s her hair / It doesn’t matter what I think of it” attitude.

Comparing/contrasting the musicals Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar:

• Both Jesuses are white and blond. Godspell Jesus has a blond afro. [It was hard to know how to write that. Normally “Afro” is capitalized. But this is a fake afro, on a white person. So I left it lowercase, to indicate that it was non-real? But I don’t know if that is right.] Jesus-Christ-Superstar Jesus has Brad-Pitt-dating-Jennifer-Aniston-and-copying-her-Rachel-hairdo highlighted blond wingy sections.

• Jesus Christ Superstar Jesus is miserable suffering sulky moody flopping Jesus. Godspell Jesus is happy dippy skipping clown Jesus.

• Godspell covers a lot of the New Testament parables/lessons: the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, you should treat the poor/sick how you would treat Jesus himself and you will be judged by God using that method, blessed are the meek, turn the other cheek, etc. Jesus Christ Superstar focuses on Jesus criticizing his followers, Jesus defending the use of expensive ointment on himself when poor people are starving, Jesus needing a good night’s sleep for the love of god, Jesus being beaten, and sick people asking too much of Jesus until he screams.

• Jesus Christ Superstar makes it weird with Mary Magdalene by having her in hot romantic love with Jesus. Godspell makes it weird by having John the Baptist and Judas Iscariot be the same person, and also having him personally crucify Jesus.

• Godspell does dumb clowny voices/antics/faces. Jesus Christ Superstar has dumb priest hats/chests and SO MUCH SAND/DUST EVERYWHERE.

• Godspell features the Twin Towers at one point (among other New York backdrops), in case it turns out you would appreciate some time to brace yourself for that. Jesus Christ Superstar is all sand/dust/rocks, no traumatic New York scenery.

• Godspell has some male and some female disciples. Jesus Christ Superstar has all boy disciples.

• Both films skip the resurrection, which is an interesting choice.

• We have been listening to the Godspell soundtrack all week, even the ridiculous druggy ’70s song about talking to a pebble in your shoe (though we skip the oddly formally-sung operatic one about plowing the fields and scattering the good seed). We have not been inclined to listen to the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack yet.

I beg of you, can we please talk about bra-shopping for teenagers? I don’t want to embarrass anyone in particular, but I went shopping with SOMEONE in the age-16 range, and I about went slap out of my mind, and we came home with nothing.

SOMEONE is slim and small-chested, and until recently has been able to get away with pull-over training bras from the Girls department, but has finally outgrown the largest size. (She actually could have used something different a year or so ago, but changing rooms were still closed at that time for the pandemic, and after ordering several batches online and returning them, I gave up.) I THINK a large part of the issue is that she is therefore unaccustomed to what a regular bra feels like. Because I doubt she is much more than a 32A, but she was claiming today that 34B was way too small/tight for her to be willing to wear it. But also: bras fit VERY DIFFERENTLY from brand to brand, so I don’t want to force her into buying some that are uncomfortable for her. But also: they DO take some getting used to, and I don’t want to buy her a bunch of too-big bras, either.

And also: she was getting pretty frustrated and wasn’t super open to the idea of trying on more. (If it is helpful: someone’s rib measurement is 28 inches, which as I understand it means we start with a band size of 32 and see how things go from there.) And also: SOMEONE is the personality type that gets kind of uncommunicative-bordering-on-mute when discouraged/frustrated; it can be very hard to find out what the Real Problem is. For example: today she had already tried on quite a few bras before she revealed that she did not know how to do the hooks. (This was communicated as “And the STUPID hooks are IMPOSSIBLE TO USE.”)

I don’t know what to do NEXT. I THINK the only thing is for her to just keep going back and trying on bras until she gets used to how they’re supposed to fit and finds some tolerable ones? But she, I mean SOMEONE, is so RESISTANT to this idea. (Though perhaps she will feel better after getting over today’s discouragement.) I wondered if those of us who were and/or have bra-wearing teenagers might have some advice.

Here are some suggestions we have already been through and/or are working on:

• What about having a clerk help her / a professional fitting? She was an absolutely Hard Pass on this. I don’t blame her—and also, I had a professional fitting once, and it was WRONG and led to a long time period of wearing uncomfortable bras before I realized I could flout that fitting and wear what felt comfy/right.

• What about sports bras? They might be more like what she’s used to, while having more support/padding than the little-girl ones. This is an option I am still working on with her. She looked at a bunch of them and rejected them, but I think there is still hope. One problem was that the store we were at had mostly the kind of sports bras that are supposed to be worn on their own with no shirt over them—more like a bra-shaped top you don’t have to wear a bra under. Another problem is that the one thing she doesn’t like about her current bralette option is that they have a sports-bra type of criss-crossed back that often pokes out of necklines, and the sports bras looked like they mostly had that kind of strappage too.

• What about [type that is comfier/plainer/softer/simpler]? You may be surprised, as I was, to find that she was most drawn toward lacy-looking ones in vibrant colors like teal and purple. In fact, I had to say no to a HEAVILY-bulked-up push-up bra. (That is the kind of thing she can buy with her own money while shopping with her friends.)

• Maybe try whatever bra you like, but in her size? I totally WOULD, but it doesn’t seem to come in her size. (It seems to have a million different listings and name variations, but I like the Playtex Balconette Underwire, which varies from about $17 to $40+ depending on color/size, which seem to mostly be out of stock. I like the fit best of the ones with an all-over pattern, rather than the ones with a different solid/patterned/lace stripe across the top.)

I am not even really sure what I am asking here! I don’t think I have specific questions, I think what I want is to be sitting around with coffee and treats, discussing it generally with other people, having people say lots of thoughts about bras and bra-shopping and their own teenaged/teenager experiences, and maybe saying what worked for them / their kids, and/or maybe saying “GAH I KNOW RIGHT??? IMPOSSIBLE” or whatever.

Yesterday I realized it had been awhile since I’d seen anything on Facebook from my old high school friend Dave. I went to his Facebook page to see if there were any clues, and to see just how long it had been since he’d posted anything so I could consider if it was worth messaging him to check in—and it was a “Remembering” Facebook page because he died four months ago. I don’t know of what. Covid? Heart attack? Suicide? I wish it were considered more normal to say the cause of death. It feels helpful to the whole processing of it. It is just a DIFFERENT THING if he died one way versus another.

I am feeling a little stunned. We weren’t super close, but we were closer in high school, and in fact tried a couple of dates. We realized pretty quickly that we were Flirty Friends and not people with Genuine Romantic Possibility—but still, he is in the small elite group of People I Have Kissed. Since high school we’ve just exchanged friendly emails now and then, and we were friends on Facebook, and that’s about it. He came into town once for a class reunion and asked if I wanted to get together, and I didn’t think it seemed like a good idea, and now I kind of wish I’d said yes—but if he were still alive right now, I wouldn’t be regretting my decision, so.

I would like to send a card to his family (he had a wife and two children), but it is hard to know what to say. I would not mention the kissing part. But maybe this is a situation where a card from me is not valuable. I wasn’t a close friend. I don’t know if “stories from high school” are particularly appealing to the widow. I keep thinking that I should err on the side of Doing Something, but then mentally composing a draft for the card and getting stuck. I feel like it’s even more awkward since literally MONTHS passed before I knew.

You will not, I think, be surprised to hear that I lay awake last night trying to go back in time and redo the interaction with my supervisor about a co-worker’s lack of a mask. “It’s just…Andrea doesn’t wear a mask. And I don’t know if she’s vaccinated or not, and of course I know not to ask about that. So with Edward’s immunosuppressed….” RRRRRZIP. “It’s just…Andrea doesn’t wear a mask. *MEANINGFUL LOOK, TRUSTING SUPERVISOR TO UNDERSTAND*” RRRRRZIP. “Oh! I wanted to talk to you about that. It’s a little bit tricky, because Andrea doesn’t wear a mask, so of course I…” RRRRRZIP. “Oh! I wanted to talk to you about that. It’s a bit tricky to figure out how to do the newspapers safely—but what if I left an hour or so early on a day we weren’t busy, and then I could come in and do them on Saturday morning when Andrea isn’t here? Because why should ANDREA be even SLIGHTLY inconvenienced by having to follow THE RULES SET BY OUR GOVERNING BOARD, when I could instead rearrange MY whole….” RRRRRZIP.

Sigh.

Well! We have continued watching baseball, and here is the thing about baseball: it is more hours per week than a half-time job—and that’s just following one single MLB team. I am interested to know if people who follow baseball tend to watch ALL the games played by their chosen team, or if it’s more of a “tuning in when I’m in the mood”/”watching the important games” sort of hobby. Well, that’s a silly question, since of course the answer is yes: some people watch all the games by a certain team; some people watch even more games than that; and some people just tune in to some of them, using various ways of deciding which ones (in the mood, have the time, like the team, game is important, etc.).

In other news: toilet paper rolls have narrowed again, just since I last bought toilet paper:

Just how long do they think they can keep doing this, when the spindle provides an easy way to measure how much shrinking has happened?

So much room on the spindle!

I had a bit of a spiral at work today, and on the plus side I was fairly aware that it was a spiral, and on the other hand I also felt like NO IT IS REAL, I AM RIGHT TO BE UPSET AND CRINGING, and either way I wanted to make it feel less bad, and this is how it went:

The first thing that happened was that I was working with someone I don’t usually work with (she works evenings/weekends and as a sub); she used to be a page, but now she works the desk; and when she comes into work, she’s been doing some of my tasks. Which, I can see how that could be perceived as helpful (and even necessary, on days when she’s there and I’m not), but (1) I like to do my job my way, and (2) I often don’t have enough work to fill my shift, and (3) I LIKE TO DO MY JOB MY WAY. So when I AM there, I want her NOT to do my work.

And also: desk people get, like, 2/3rds again the pay of a page, so the LIBRARY does not want to pay a desk person to do paging work at times when there is a page on duty. And also: paging work is seen as bottom-of-the-ladder grunt work, and that’s why we HAVE a page: so that the desk people don’t have to do that work. There is only a page about 20 hours a week, and when there is no page, the desk people fight about who has to do the page work. So I thought I could address it successfully from that angle, and so this morning I said in what I hoped was a friendly and appreciate way, “Oh, hey—you don’t have to do that! When there’s a page, use the page!” But she clutched the work in question, and started saying nervous things to me and to ANOTHER co-worker, about how she’d already started it, and she was almost done, and something else I couldn’t follow. It was extremely awkward and left me feeling like I had handled it badly: it can be difficult with a mask on to make oneself understood, and I wondered if I’d come across completely differently than I’d intended. And also: I felt as if I’d used my ONLY idea and it had been a failure, which led to me feeling as if I can’t handle even the smallest interpersonal conflict, which led to me feeling that I am a prickly and difficult person who can’t get along with others, and that it is impossible to be understood in this life/world.

So that’s how I started off the day, first thing. Then, later on, my supervisor asked me to please manage the newspapers, which is a once-a-month thing. It is considered a fairly undesirable task, but I am not sure why, and I find it satisfying and don’t mind doing it at all. Except: the area where the older newspapers are stored (and where the newspaper-managing job needs to be done each month) is where one of my co-workers works, and she appears to be refusing to wear a mask, and her reaction (a silent tight tiny pained smile) to a mention of vaccinations brought me pretty quickly to the conclusion that she is likely not vaccinated (but I don’t KNOW that to be the case), and I was out for a large part of the pandemic so I don’t know what the story is on the mask (all staff are required to wear masks, so I don’t know if she has an exemption or if no one is addressing it or what), and haven’t felt as if I could ask—but in any case, I don’t want to work in that small room with her.

Last month it coincidentally worked out well: I had to take another day off for an appointment, so I said I could swap those hours and come in on a Saturday instead (the unmasked co-worker doesn’t work Saturdays), and I did the newspapers that day. But today my supervisor asked me to do the newspapers, and I did not know what to do to express myself clearly and succinctly on this complicated issue and while wearing a mask, and so I stammered out something like, “Okay! It’s just…I was…is Andrea vaccinated?” My supervisor blinked, then said she’d check something with the director, then I heard them talking, and then I heard the director say “I’d really like to err on the safe side with that,” which I first took to mean that she wouldn’t make an employee work with someone unmasked, but later realized it was more likely from tone and context that she meant she would rather not divulge one employee’s vaccination status to another employee; and then my supervisor came out and said don’t worry about it, they’d figure something else out with the newspapers.

And I was just CRINGING, because the newspapers are considered an undesirable task so I worried it looked as if I was trying to find an excuse not to do them, BUT ALSO because I did not successfully address my concern and now there was no way to do it over! Especially since my supervisor might not even KNOW that Andrea is not wearing a mask at work! So I was thinking that what I SHOULD have said was something more like, “Okay! It’s just…Andrea does not wear a mask. So if she is not vaccinated, I would rather not work in the same room.” And that this would have clearly laid out the source of my concern, WITHOUT asking any question I then had to be denied the answer to: I just would have been giving my supervisor the information she needed, and SHE could have decided what to do from there. Instead, I felt like both my supervisor AND the director would think I was being inappropriate and nosy and judgey. And that both of them would see me as being Difficult. And that maybe I WAS being difficult, and should have just taken care of the stupid newspapers, which would have taken under an hour. And that I couldn’t believed I’d ASKED IT AS A QUESTION CRINGE CRINGE CRINGE EVERYTHING IS SO IMPOSSIBLE

These two exchanges together had me all but falling apart, and then feeling ridiculous for nearly falling apart over such small things, and then wondering if maybe I should just quit since obviously I can’t cope with anything in the workplace, not even small normal everyday things. Fortunately I CAN recognize this as (probably) over-reacting—but that doesn’t stop the over-reacting from continuing to happen. I wondered if there was anything I could do to fix any part of it, or if there were any Coping Thoughts that would help stop the over-reaction.

There was no way to go back and try again with my supervisor, but I did manage to think that one through. First, that she was likely focused ONLY on HER part of the conversation (“Uh oh, what am I allowed to say here?”) and not really at all on MINE: a supervisor/boss is going to be thinking of the ramifications of the ANSWER to a question like that, and not so much about the existence of the question itself. Second, my alternate idea isn’t, upon further reflection, much better: in that format, I’d have worried afterward that I appeared to be tattling on Andrea, and also that I was coming across as Taking a Dramatic Stand and still just as judgey. The real issue here was that there was no good way for me to say what my concern was; and in my supervisor’s shoes, I would be thinking “GAH, I forgot all about Andrea!! I can’t believe I asked someone to work in there!! And I guess we’re going to have to deal with that Andrea problem, or else I’m going to need to figure out some other way of dealing with the newspapers because we can’t ask someone else to work in there.” I don’t think my supervisor is anxious like I am, but I still think she is likely thinking more along the lines of “Oh, shoot, the Andrea Thing” and not “Wow, Swistle was really inappropriate”; I think she is likely thinking about what SHE needs to do here and what HER next steps should be, and almost certainly NOT AT ALL about how her employee could/should have better approached the issue.

So that was one part mostly dealt with. I couldn’t FIX it, but I could stop thinking “Oh if ONLY I had said X instead!!,” and I could feel as if my supervisor and the director were very unlikely to be giving ME any thought at all, and I could convince myself that if anything, they were thinking of ANDREA and the issue SHE was causing—not SWISTLE and the cringiness of her QUESTION.

But what about the former page? It was especially hard to address because I wasn’t sure what she had said, AND I didn’t know what she thought I’D said. So many levels of uncertainty to imagine and dramatize and fret about, possibly for NO REASON WHATSOEVER! Here’s what I concluded: When there is an awkward/uncertain interaction with a person you’ve hardly ever interacted with, a really good way to at least MITIGATE the situation is to GIVE THEM MORE DATA TO WORK WITH. When you know someone pretty well and they handle something awkwardly/badly, there is an easy benefit of the doubt: you think, “They probably didn’t mean it that way” or “That wasn’t like them; I wonder if something else is going on.” The interaction gets watered down by all the OTHER interactions—even if you have a temperament that might normally be inclined to go straight for “OH GOD ARE THEY MAD AT ME?? DID I DO/SAY SOMETHING WRONG WITHOUT REALIZING??” And if you have a slightly weird interaction with someone and you don’t know how to interpret it, it can make it a lot better if you run into them later and they’re acting completely normal and friendly.

So what I did was, I on purpose stopped by the desk to chat with the OTHER person working at the desk, and then gradually included the former page in the conversation as well, so that all three of us were chatting in a friendly way. And that went very well. So now if she feels like I was weird or unfriendly this morning, she has more data to water that down with. And if she keeps doing my tasks when she arrives at work—well, it won’t be often, and I will just not make an issue out of it, because she is probably just doing the tasks the way she does them on days I’m not there, and no one else will thank me for breaking her of that habit.

Three things I am fretful/peevish about today:

• “Friendly reminders,” which is a wording that makes a reminder come across as not only unfriendly but also extremely irritating. Do the people who WRITE “friendly reminder” not feel that same way when they RECEIVE a friendly reminder? Are they perhaps AIMING FOR that effect? The particular one bothering me today is a renewal notice from our city, for something that needs to be renewed in September. They sent me a renewal notice in JUNE, which I had to put aside because it is not even POSSIBLE to do the renewal more than a month before it’s due; and today they have sent me a “friendly reminder” that I haven’t yet renewed it.

• A co-worker keeps suggesting ways I could spend my time. She is not in charge of me in any way. I have not shown any evidence of needing to have tasks suggested to me. The tasks she suggests are not tasks I have neglected, but rather tasks I do automatically as part of my daily routine without being asked/told. She is not suggesting things that are MORE important than what I’m working on (not that it would be her job to evaluate that), or things that are time-sensitive, or things where she can’t do a particular part of her job until I do that particular part of mine. This is not happening at times when I am at loose ends: she interrupts me doing my job to tell me (or worse: HAND to me) a different part of my job I could be doing. It’s hard to respond without sounding defensive: e.g., “I was GOING TO do that.” But…I WAS going to. As I ALWAYS DO, without being prompted by her. Until now, I’ve been just…taking care of the thing she hands me, because the task always IS something that’s part of my job, and because I wondered if I was missing something (I wouldn’t want to Take A Stand and then find out I hadn’t understood a situation and DID need to handle that thing right away), but she is starting to escalate it so I am going to have to escalate, too—to a cheery “Oh, sure, just put that aside and I’ll get to it!,” which is a level of fierce throw-down confrontation it has taken me a couple of weeks to steel myself for. DON’T WANT TROUBLE, DON’T START TROUBLE, CO-WORKER

• Elizabeth is taking an online class over the summer. Twice now, we have readied ourselves for a “student/parent check-in” Zoom meeting with her teacher, and her teacher has not appeared. Both times, I have panicked: maybe it’s something on our end, and the teacher thinks WE are not showing up! And yet—the first time, as we were restarting the computer and re-attempting the link and making sure we’d followed the right link and other assorted trouble-shooting tasks I am sure you are well familiar with by this stage of the pandemic, Elizabeth emailed the teacher about the situation, adding that we didn’t know if the problem was on our end or what but we couldn’t seem to get into the meeting, and the teacher never responded: not at the time, and not later. So when it happened again today, I did still panic, but my panic was tempered by that perplexing detail. Because if I were the teacher, and I HAD shown up for a meeting (especially WITH A PARENT), and the student/parent had seemed not to show up, and then the student had emailed me five minutes after the meeting was supposed to begin, saying that she and her parent were there but the meeting just kept saying it wasn’t starting yet, and that she didn’t know if the problem was on her end, I would certainly have responded—if only to prove that I had been there, and that I wasn’t the one missing the meeting!

Do feel free to add your own peevish frets / fretful peeves.

Recently, Paul said something right before bed that made me instantly and unexpectedly insecure in our marriage. But that is not what I want to talk about or collect “I’m sorry your husband made you feel that way”s about: the next morning he was surprised to find me so affected, and said he hadn’t meant it like that. (Though all that did was make me think about what a poor communicator he is, in that case, and how little he understands word implications and relationship dynamics.)

I lay awake for hours, and then fell asleep for awhile and then woke up and lay awake for a couple more hours. What I was thinking about, primarily, was how financially dependent I am, and what my options would be if Paul were to end things. (Or of course if I wanted to do so, though at the time I was imagining an abrupt ending that wouldn’t give me time to prepare.) This is not the first time I’ve realized this, and in fact I set this up on purpose and I can’t see changing it even if I could go back in time and do so, which of course I can’t. What was MOST important to me was having lots of kids, and I don’t see any way I could have combined that with a career. If right now I had a career plus only two children, because that’s the number that could have worked with a career, I guess I would not have been lying awake worrying about my financial dependence—but that would have been pretty low compensation for the loss of the rest of the children I’d wanted: I would have lived a significantly less happy/satisfying life on the gamble that my marriage would end. So hearing “Yeah, that’s why I made sure I kept my career” is not helpful in any way. I want to make sure you heard me on that: saying “Yeah, that’s why I made sure I kept my career” is not helpful or applicable in any way. I can absolutely see why that would have been a good idea, and I would encourage my children to do the same, but it was not compatible with what I most wanted, and would not have made sense for me. It means I am currently in a precarious financial situation, and I accepted that at the time, and I accept it now. (Though it makes me FURIOUS that society is set up this way.)

Our state put out a study awhile back that reported how much a person would have to earn in order to afford to live here (not even to buy a house here, but to rent a 1BR/1B apartment), and it was triple the hourly wage I make at the library, plus benefits (which aren’t available for my job). If Paul and I split up, I would not be able to afford to live in this state; but I also couldn’t move to a cheaper state, because of the kids. I could get a different job than my library job, and I’d HAVE to—but I can’t think of any job that would pay me triple wages plus give me benefits. I wouldn’t be able to afford housing that would let me have my kids live with me. Meanwhile Paul would be GREAT: he could afford to live in and maintain a house, and he would still have health benefits, and he would not need to change jobs or worry about the financial aspect of things at all. (If the kids were younger, presumably I could count on some of his salary; but two of my kids are legal adults, and the others are 14 and 16 years old, so there would not be many more years of that, if any.)

Here is what I DO want to talk about: What can be done about this, if anything, at THIS point? I am well into my forties. There is theoretically TIME to get another degree and start a new career—but I have heard that women in that situation are not particularly hireable. Also: there is still nothing I particularly feel drawn to doing, so I’d be picking almost at random and then hoping it wouldn’t lead to a job I found intolerable. But it seems like if there is a small degree (1-2 years) that I could be working on now, which could then lead to a job with a good salary and benefits, that that would be a good idea on numerous levels. If NOTHING ELSE, if everything is FINE and there is NO NEED, I can still use it to help pay the kids’ college tuitions, and to fill my time once the kids are grown.

On the other hand, I HATE this idea. I like my library job; I don’t want to quit that and train for a better-paying job JUST IN CASE something happens to my marriage. I don’t WANT to change the course of my life and make it less happy so that it earns more money Just In Case. I don’t really WANT to go back for more schooling; and I don’t really want to PAY for more schooling. I am no more career-motivated/driven than I was in my early 20s, and if I don’t HAVE TO I don’t WANT TO. But. It does seem wise to be a little more prepared for other possible futures.

Here is the trouble with choosing baseball and musicals as summer projects: VERY TIME-CONSUMING. Our intention was to watch ALL of a particular MLB team’s games, but there are so many games and they are several hours each! If we watch a baseball game in the afternoon, that means we are sitting in the living room for, say, three or four hours; do we then want to sit in the living room for two or three additional hours to watch a musical? And then perhaps spend two more hours watching a baseball movie? Clearly we should have thought this out a little more carefully.

Still, we are enjoying it! I have a notebook I use to keep track of what we did each summer, and I am glad I started lists of games watched and musicals watched, because already I am getting a little forgetful; looking at my notebook, I see we have watched seven baseball games and nine musicals. We are starting to learn the baseball players’ names, and are developing favorites; we are playing soundtracks while making dinner.

We watched In the Heights, which we liked pretty well. We watched High School Musical, which made me think of how Seventeen magazine pretends to be for high school girls but is actually aimed at pre-teens; then we watched High School Musical 2, because we couldn’t imagine what MORE there could be to that story. Now we feel pressured to watch High School Musical 3, but so far have had other priorities. We watched Sunshine on Leith after commenter Shawna mentioned it; I’d never heard of it and really enjoyed it.

And then we watched Phantom of the Opera, which I’d never seen. This paragraph is going to contain spoilers for a 35-year-old musical based on a 110-year-old book. I liked the music pretty well, but I found the plot so thoroughly repellent I almost certainly would have stopped watching it if I hadn’t considered it a cultural literacy project. A grown man, who is repeatedly referred to as some sort of genius though I didn’t see any supporting evidence given for that, lives below a theater as he stalks and spies on and messes with the mind of a young orphaned child, convincing her that he is some sort of “angel of music” and/or the spirit of her dead father, and becomes increasingly obsessed with her as she becomes a beautiful teenager; he builds upon those years of deception and emotional manipulation in order to try to make this young girl fall in love with him / have sex with him / live with him in his gross cave under the theater; and then, when she finds it disturbing that he keeps murdering people and so forth (and we wonder why she doesn’t find it additionally creepy that what she thought of as her dead father’s spirit is trying to seduce her), and she falls in love with a boy her own age, the older man claims that everyone rejects him because of his disfigured face, which isn’t even all that bad, and also claims that NO ONE has ever shown him ANY compassion, even though as a child he was saved/hidden by a girl approximately his own age, now a grown woman who continues to care for him and protect him and make sure he has what he needs as he creepily pursues a teenager she thinks of as a daughter (a situation she KNOWS ABOUT?? and doesn’t do ANYTHING TO STOP??); meanwhile, HE is the one hiding from society, murdering anyone who doesn’t do what he says, and feeling sorry for himself because everyone is “making him” do this. He’s like an exaggerated parody of an Internet Incel guy, and really the best moment of the entire play is when the young girl says “Yeah, no, your face is actually no big deal? It’s your corrupted soul that’s the problem here.” The worst moments are when the actress, who was an ACTUAL MINOR CHILD during filming, has to repeatedly swoon and be groped by and then make out with the actor playing the phantom, who was more than twice her age. The actress also has to make out with the actor playing her fiance/boyfriend, who is approximately thirteen years older than she is—so, if she was 16 or 17, he was THIRTY YEARS OLD. The two male characters frequently fight over who should get to have access to her body, and try to make her reject the other male character in the way they wish; her own wishes are not as interesting to the director as the thigh-high white stockings she apparently wears to sleep in at night, along with a white CORSET and, like, white lace CAPE/TRAIN. And these were all CHOICES: it was a CHOICE to cast an underage girl as the lead, and then dress her that way, in apparently REAL rather than decorative corsets (the actress says she could hardly breathe, and that she thinks they affected her growth); it was a CHOICE to make a minor child the focus of the lust and possessiveness of two much older men; it was a CHOICE to have the child actress actually make out with and be groped by both of those older men (in one case until she had to put ice packs on her lips—I guess they just could not get that scene quite right and needed to do it again and again and again, my goodness what a perfectionist the director must be!); it was a CHOICE to lean into the teacher/father element of the phantom and then have her “tempted” by that rather than fleeing in revulsion and horror. My guess is that I said “THIS IS NOT APPROPRIATE,” like, more than two dozen times while watching the movie; I said “GAH!”/”GROSS!” perhaps twice that many times. Then I listened to the soundtrack while making dinner.

Here is something I have noticed, but have been unsure if it’s something we want to talk about or not. I noticed that I went through a stage of feeling kind of sad and panicky that in all likelihood I was never going to fall in love again, never going to have another first kiss with someone, etc. It’s not that I was unhappy in my marriage, but that it suddenly seemed like the stage of Dating Thrills had been such a short stage, and I hadn’t done enough of it when I had the chance.

And what I’ve now noticed is that at some point I seem to have stopped feeling that way. Just as the previous feelings weren’t because I was unhappy in my marriage, the disappearance of those feelings wasn’t due to any particular contentment/happiness in my marriage: it’s like those feelings run on a different track. Now I feel like if I were to be widowed, I wouldn’t want to date again. I feel weary at the idea of it. I don’t pine for those New Romance feelings.

It reminds me very much of the stage in which I desperately wanted more children, and then at some point no longer did, and so I think it’s likely that all these feelings are related to biology/hormones. I remember when I was feeling as if I couldn’t have a happy life unless I had another baby, and I talked to the OB/GYN about it, asking him if those feelings would ever go away, and he said, “I can’t tell you what will happen for YOU. But I can tell you that in my practice, at some point my patients stop talking to me about it.”

Well. I mean. That seems like it could easily be explained by women giving up hope: it’s one thing to be perishing for want of a baby at age 33, and another thing entirely at age 53: no sense talking to the OB/GYN about it at that point. But in my experience, that wasn’t the explanation; in my experience, the feelings of desperation just stopped. I still wish I HAD HAD another baby back then (and I don’t think I will ever be able to forgive Paul for that), but I no longer want a new baby NOW.

Similarly, it’s not that I gave up on experiencing new love again, it’s that I stopped wanting to. I still wish I’d had more romances before getting married so I could think back on them, but I no longer want a new one NOW.

Anyway. I don’t know how universal this experience is. I know that when I was feeling some despair at never having a New Love / First Kiss again, I talked with various friends about it, and a few of them were like “OH ME TOO, HOW CAN THAT WHOLE THING BE OVER FOREVER” and some of them were more like “ARE YOU KIDDING ME, I NEVER WANT TO GO THROUGH THAT HELL AGAIN,” so I know there is some…variety. Same with babies: some of my friends DEEPLY IDENTIFIED with the desire to have another baby (and with the concern that maybe we’d NEVER feel “done”), and others were like “God no, I’m so glad that part’s done with!”