I have returned from taking Rob back to college. More on that later. But right now: road-trip snacks. I’ve taken several road trips this summer, which has given me extensive opportunity to test road-trip snacks. Here are the ones I find I am most interested in eating, while other items I might THINK I would want sit unopened and unloved.

Cookie category:
Famous Amos chocolate-chip cookies
Nilla wafers

Chip/cracker category:
Better Cheddars
Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips
regular Pringles

Snack-cake category:
Entenmann’s Little Brownie Bites
Entenmann’s Brownie Chocolate-Chip Minis
Little Debbie Strawberry Shortcake rolls

Candy category:
Caramel M&Ms
Almond M&Ms
Mike & Ikes (10-flavor box + 4-flavor box + Jolly Joes, mixed together)
Haribo Gummi Fruit Salad

This is of course in addition to food at stops: doughnuts, pizza-by-the-slice, frozen mocha coffees, ice cream in all its delightful forms.

I am very interested to know what your favorites are.

If you are in a bit of a tizz over a variety of things, may I highly recommend getting together with a group of girlfriends and having wine and a lot of snacks? I can’t even express how reviving it can be. This morning I am a new, freshened Swistle.

I would like to tell you about this little gentleman, which I debuted at last night’s get-together:

(image from Target.com)

One of the appetizers I like to do is a couple packs of Hillshire Farms little beef smokies cooked in a frying pan on low/medium for awhile so they get all nice and toasty-looking, plus a container of creamy/spicy mustard sauce to dip them in. I make the sauce by mixing mustard, mayonnaise, and creamy horseradish sauce; it’s a slapdash thing, but if I were making about 3/4ths cup of the sauce (which is gracious plenty, but if you make less it looks as if there isn’t enough and people are hesitant to take any), I’d guess I do like half mustard, half mayo, and a good tablespoon or more of the horseradish sauce. Creamy/spicy ketchup sauce sounds gross but is also really good: for the same 3/4ths-cup amount, I’d do mostly ketchup but maybe two tablespoons of mayo, and then a good solid squeeze of sriracha or some other spicy sauce, maybe TWO good solid squeezes. Bring a little box of toothpicks for anyone who feels weird just picking the hot doggers up with their fingers, and bring a spoon for each sauce so people can put some on a plate and dip each little hot dog as many times as they like.

ANYWAY. Benefits of this appetizer: surprisingly good, very easy, keto-friendly. Downsides: difficult to figure out how to keep them warm. Before last night, what I did was heat a baking dish in the oven, and then transfer them to it when they were done in the frying pan; then I put the hot baking dish on a towel in a cardboard box for transporting, and brought a hotpad to put the baking dish on at the host’s house. But…that didn’t keep them much warmer for much longer. So I bought the little crockpot to see if that would be better.

Here is what happened: the little crockpot DID keep them warm the whole evening. BUT: it made it harder to serve them (the crockpot had to be plugged in, of course, and then you had to go over to the little crockpot, remove the lid, get out some little smokies which were hard to see against the black interior of the crockpot, replace the lid), and ALSO it continued to cook them. I didn’t notice until I was on the way home and snitched a little smokie for the road and it was very, very cooked: dry and shriveled and dark. No good.

So. Possible solutions include: cooking them less ahead of time (but then they wouldn’t be Just Right at the beginning of the evening when most people are serving up); putting them in a sauce in the crockpot; unplugging the crockpot after the first hour; saying never mind about the crockpot for this particular appetizer and figuring out a different way to keep them warm longer; find a different appetizer that works better in the crockpot.

I am in one of my periodically-occurring tizzes. I think I can trace at least some of the root causes of this one:

1. Rob going back to college, and some accompanying turmoil: he made a last-minute change in his housing plans that meant he suddenly needed some furniture, and then he waited until the last minute to choose some.

1a. Also the last-minute change in housing plans ITSELF is tizz-contributing.
1b. And he doesn’t yet know what he’s going to do about a meal plan.
1c. And it’s been hard to know how much to offer/remind/help, as the parent.
1d. I don’t want any advice on 1c. right now. (“I KNOW RIGHT??” is okay, though.)

2. There are like five phone calls I need to make. There is the stress of needing to make the calls, and also the stress of putting them off, and the stress of why is this so hard when it shouldn’t be.

3. We got a form from our insurance company wanting to know if William’s knee injury could be blamed on someone else. It cannot, and we already said so at each doctor appointment, where they verified that it was not an employer situation or whatever. The form required a LENGTHY online response, including sections on how many times in the past William had had injuries that could be blamed on someone else (NEVER), and how many times we had gone to court for such injuries (N/A!!), and had questions I couldn’t answer (such as exact date of injury) but also the form wouldn’t let me proceed without answering them. It was very frustrating, and then afterward I thought of something I answered incompletely so there will probably need to be a follow-up. And the whole thing is stupid because THE INJURY CANNOT BE BLAMED ON SOMEONE ELSE.

4. Henry is doing this SNIFFING and THROAT-CLEARING routine and it is hard to explain just how insane those sounds can make a person over time. Like, I do okay all morning, but shortly after lunch, when I have been listening to three sniffs per minute for six hours and saying “Henry, blow your nose” or “Henry, pay attention to your sniffing” for six hours, I can get screamy. And I can’t tell if he WON’T stop or CAN’T stop. I can’t tell if this is a tic/habit/compulsion or a physical issue that requires treatment. And I so so so don’t want to launch him down an invasive treatment path if this could be solved by him breaking a tic/habit/compulsion—but he isn’t putting much if any effort into cooperating with the methods I’ve found for treating a tic/habit/compulsion, so I can’t TELL. And then I think, “That’s it, I can’t stand it another second, I’m taking him to an ENT doctor”—but that means a series of phone calls (appointment, referrals) so then I don’t do it (see #2).

5. Henry is starting middle school. I’m not actually stressed about this, but I’m friends/acquaintances with a bunch of people whose firstborns are going to middle school, and THEIR stress is getting me agitated. They’re asking me a million questions I don’t know the answer to because none of those things turned out to be issues. I’m getting a taste of what it must be like to be friends with ME.

My cholesterol has always been low—unjustly low, according to current nutrition recommendations. That is, I was not particularly eating the currently-recommended low-fat, high-fiber diet with lots of grains/fruits/vegetables and no caffeine/alcohol—and yet my cholesterol was always well below 200. I worried that switching to a diet that is basically meat, cheese, eggs, cream, and butter, with low levels of vegetables and no fruits/grains, might change that. Instead, after a year on keto (and no increase in exercise), my cholesterol has dropped still further and is lower than I ever remember it being, by about 50 points. In case you were wondering/worrying about this, as I was.

We have been cramming the rest of summer into the rest of summer, though for poor William that involved knee surgery followed by a wisdom-tooth extraction (which went very similarly to Rob’s experience, except we have different insurance now and it unexpectedly PAID FOR IT). I am looking forward to everyone being back in school—especially Rob, since I will be driving him, and I have a “no keto on road trips” policy that means I will soon be eating pizza and Taco Bell and Sausage McMuffins and a Wendy’s #6 combo and Entenmann’s mini-cakes and Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips and Haribo Fruit Salad and frozen mocha coffees and Mike & Ikes.

I am finally feeling better. It was one day of The Fairy, then one day of feeling very queasy and sick but no more throwing up, and then one day of feeling weak and tired and just a little queasy. This morning I still wanted to lie down after taking a shower, but only for a few minutes, and by lunchtime I felt basically myself again.

Every time I’m sick, I spend some time appreciating how good it feels to NOT be sick, and wishing I could sustain that appreciation. But instead, it’s like when my washing machine was broken and it took a couple weeks for the new one to arrive, and I was going to remember that feeling and be so grateful for the loveliness of having my OWN washing machine in my OWN basement—and I DID feel that gratitude, for about a week. And then The Joy of Laundry was over, and it was back to sullenness and resentment.

Paul is sick now. And I think I have probably complained about this too many times over the years, but he really is terrible when he’s sick. Like, terrible enough that I have thought with great fear about how it might very well happen that he will become chronically ill later in life, or get some lengthy disease, and then it will be too late to leave him because it would seem so heartless to leave a sick spouse. Also, I remember something about that in the vows, which now seem like those long contracts you sign without reading before using an app, but you don’t really think any of that stuff is going to pertain to your future with the app—but then one day the app gets sick and you have to spend the rest of your life with this app you liked a lot until it got sick and was teeth-clenchingly terrible all the time, definitely way worse than the contract-writers were thinking of when they wrote that part of the contract—or maybe EXACTLY as bad as the contract-writers were thinking, and that’s why they cleverly wrote it into the contract. There are LOTS of apps I would LOVE to still be married to even if they were chronically/lengthily ill, because chronic/lengthy illness is not the issue; the issue is how PAUL IN PARTICULAR behaves when he has even a stuffy nose, and how I cannot tolerate that behavior.

He moans and groans and gasps and pants and whimpers and makes whining/sighing sounds; no one has ever endured so patiently the unendurable torment he is enduring. He speaks in a weak, hoarse whisper, using as few words as possible to preserve his small reserves of strength; sometimes he has to pause mid-sentence to swallow painfully, or to briefly close his eyes. He asks pitifully to be brought a blanket. A thermometer (he always thinks he has a fever). A drink. A warm shirt. All sorts of other things he could have gotten for himself when he gets up to use the bathroom a few minutes later (shuffling, barely moving his feet, head hanging down, perhaps bracing himself against a wall). He gives me many detailed updates on how bad he feels, and he wants many consultations about what might make him feel better (do I think some soup would help? or would crackers be better? he’s not really sure he can eat anything; what do I think about an ice pack?). He is far more pitiful and childish than any of our five children have ever been, even as infants.

And I hate it. I HATE it. I can’t bear to look at him when he’s sick, with his tragic face and pitiful panting mouth-breathing. I can’t bear to hear all the ridiculous whimpers and groans, or listen to his hoarse/weak/pitiful voice, or deal with his infinite need for Mommy Attention—which, when he wants it from ME, feels revolting. I can’t stand the MELODRAMA of it. It makes me want to RUN AWAY. And I want to re-iterate here that the problem is not SICK PEOPLE; the problem is PAUL WHEN HE IS SICK. When I was doing my eldercare job and one of them became sick, I was sympathy and soup and medicines and cool washcloths and checking in to find out how they were, because NONE OF THEM were MELODRAMATIC about it. They were just sick! Sickness IN GENERAL activates my urge to help: I LIKE bringing ice packs and TV remotes and medicine doses and more pillows! I LIKE it! But not when the person is being A GIANT MELODRAMATIC BABY AND NO ONE ELSE HAS EVER BEEN SICK LIKE THIS BEFORE AND NO AMOUNT OF ATTENTION IS SUFFICIENT. He doesn’t need my assistance; he just wants an audience for his Illness Performance.

There is no need to have passed Psych 101 to guess that Paul’s mother felt differently about things. She told me she once held Paul’s hand while he slept, sitting there uncomfortably for hours, because he was sick and wanted his hand held. He was IN HIGH SCHOOL when this happened. He is incredibly lucky that after hearing this story I ever had sex with him again. He is further lucky that we were already married when his mother told me the story. I am sort of kidding, but I am not entirely kidding. In fact, if you ask me about it while Paul is actively whimpering in the other room, I’d say I’m not even sort of kidding: he is severely lucky on both counts.

We are enduring a visit from the Barf Fairy at our house. The first person succumbed last Thursday; the second on the following Monday; the third and fourth on Wednesday. Three remain, and one of those is feeling a little queasy. This is what I’m wondering: does drinking alcohol do anything to sterilize the digestive tract? I’m thinking yes. Or at least, I have been drinking since last Thursday and I have not gotten sick yet.

If you’re friends with me on Facebook, there is a change afoot. Here is what happened: long ago, I set up “Swistle Thistle” as a PERSON, by mistake; it should have been set up as a PAGE. Anyway, once I realized I’d done it wrong, it seemed like way too much trouble to fix it. But now, years later, the thing I use to automatically publish links of new posts on that Facebook page won’t work unless I’m posting to a PAGE instead of to a PERSON, so now it is worth fixing. I guess. We’ll see. Anyway, things might be odd, or might not work for awhile, or posts might not show up, or you might find yourself unfriended and have to, like, subscribe or something, who knows. We will find out. One thing I’m hoping for is some sort of progress on the issue where they never notify me if someone comments or does a friend request or sends a message, despite my notification preferences; so I have to go in person to the page to look for those things, but I almost NEVER go to the page.

Speaking of sites that know too much about you. I went on a visit to my parents, and when I am visiting people I like to set aside a certain amount of money for Shopping. I find that if I buy a pair of earrings on a visit, I will FOREVER REMEMBER that visit every time I wear the earrings. So I bought some earrings, and I also bought this cat journal:

(image from Amazon.com)

Which I love. It’s hardcover, with an elastic to hold the covers closed, and I love the colors, and it’s irregularly shiny in a way I love: the details such as eyes and collars and whiskers are shiny, but the cat bodies are matte, and it feels really nice to the touch. I don’t need a journal, because I already have a stack of a dozen journals all set to go, but I am happy to own it in a stack with all the other journals. Here is what made me nervous: about a week after I got home, Amazon recommended THAT EXACT SAME JOURNAL to me in the Recommended For You section. What even. YOU DON’T KNOW MY LIFE, AMAZON.

Apparently I never read Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman, even though it is exactly the kind of book I like?

(image from Amazon.com)

Paul brought it home from the library for me, thinking I might like it, so I gave it a try even though I remembered already trying it and not liking it. I think I must have been remembering the MOVIE, though, because I kept picturing Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, and I definitely didn’t read this book. And I’m not even sure I saw the movie; I might have just seen the previews. Anyway I really loved the book, although it was the kind where afterward I kept thinking things like, “Wait, but that wouldn’t work for them in the long run” or “But I don’t think he would have DONE that” or whatever. Plus, there are a lot of characters absolutely struck dumb by instant meant-to-be love, and while I enjoy READING that, I don’t BELIEVE it, not long-haul. I still recommend the book for the way I felt when I was reading it, and I’d say the afterthoughts weren’t a dealbreaker. When I went on Amazon to get the link/image, I found there is apparently a prequel as well, called The Rules of Magic, so I’ve requested that from my library too.

Follow-up: This post has been sitting in my draft folder since Wednesday, because Thursday morning I discovered that no, gin was not a preventative for stomach bugs. And it’s too bad, too, because I was already imagining saying it in my what’s-the-secret-of-your-advanced-age-and-glowing-health interview. “Two gin-and-tonics a night, sonny!,” I’d say, “And don’t forget the lime!” And the journalist would call me “feisty,” or describe my laugh as a “cackle.” It was going to be great.

I just finished Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, a collection of essays edited by Roxane Gay.

(image from Amazon.com)

If you can bear to read it, I recommend it. I found it a good one to have in progress at the same time as another, lighter book, so that I could switch; I don’t usually like to have more than one book going, but sometimes I would finish an essay and REALLY NEED A BREAK, and it was good to have something else to read for awhile.

Summer amirite.

William had knee surgery. There were two possible outcomes, and the surgeon said he wouldn’t know which it would be until he got in there. First possible outcome: quick easy fix, several days of taking it easy, then back to normal except much improved from before the surgery. Second possible outcome: complicated fix, six weeks of being totally non-weight-bearing on that knee (i.e., using crutches, having significant difficulty with stairs, having significant difficulty working, etc.), and then many months of physical therapy. The woman scheduling the surgery said her son had the same surgery with the second outcome. “It was like having a newborn again!,” she said, helpfully. I didn’t dare hope for the first outcome, but that is what we got. We are so glad/lucky/relieved.

We went to a play, and I only went because the twins had a friend who was in it, and I was expecting to suffer through it, and I was irritated by how much they thought it was reasonable to charge for tickets to a children’s summer production (FIFTEEN UNITED STATES DOLLARS FOR AN ADULT), and it was amazing. I don’t like to use “amazing” to describe productions by children. But it was amazing. I was amazed. I am going to go see it again. And I am going to make a point of seeing more productions there, even when we don’t know anyone in the play.

We are doing academic/creative/organizational/life-training again this summer. I am using my time so far to study my state senators/representatives, and to do KenKen/Sudoku puzzles, and to learn how to draw interesting lettering/borders. I am also emptying an entire closet in the little boys’ room, because I guess we have fabric moths all of a sudden. I just discovered this tonight, and it’s my first encounter with moths.

I got together with my friend at an AirBnB. It went well (even though it turns out she does not drink wine), except that I had specifically used the search filter to get places with a/c, because a/c is very important to me, and this place “had a/c” in that there was one compact window unit for an entire house. It was not up to the task. “Not up to the task” to the extent that we OPENED WINDOWS to HELP the air conditioner. But there were comfy chairs, and we did a lot of good talking, and there were feral kittens in the yard, and we found a breakfast place with delicious stuffed French toast, so. Next time I will know to ask “How MUCH a/c?” (and also “Do you have feral kittens?”).

And if you’re thinking of getting together with distant friends, I do recommend it if you can swing it. Friends don’t have to be in-person, but in-person is nice from time to time.

Summer summer summer help me out here. Tell me one thing ONE THING you have done this summer that was neat / was notable / was fun / was you-want-to-tell-us-about-it. Or one thing you WILL be doing. Just one thing. It doesn’t have to be the BEST thing. It doesn’t have to be the MOST cool/notable/fun/interesting thing. Just pick ONE thing and tell us about it. Tried a new ice cream flavor on impulse and it was unexpectedly successful? YES.

[Edited to add: Originally I wrote “one thing” to remove the pressure: i.e., you don’t have to write about your entire summer, you can just pick one single thing. Re-reading it this morning, it seems more like I’m saying that I get to say many things but YOU may only say ONE. If you would LIKE to say more than one thing, you CERTAINLY MAY!]

Today my goal is to go somewhere and/or do something. I have fallen into the between-vacations feeling of not being able to focus well enough to make other plans.

Oh, I am not sure I’ve told you about my second vacation: I’m meeting a distant friend at an AirBnB. I’ve never done anything like this before, so I am nervous, but I have hopes that it will be great—or that maybe the first time will just be very nice, but it’ll be nice enough that we’ll make an annual tradition of it and it will gradually become great. I get very nervous about things such as “If we go to the grocery store to get some pints of ice cream, how many will we buy, and how will we pay, and how will we share them, and what will we do with the extra we can’t finish?” and “When we go out for meals, how will we choose where to go, and how will we split the bill?” Those are the little things that get ironed out after a few repeats.

This friend and I have only seen each other once since high school, and just for a dinner out on that occasion, but we’ve been constant emailers since our first children were born, so that’s about 19 years of correspondence friendship to fall back on. I was thinking it was too bad we never get to see each other in person, and then it occurred to me that I was a grown-ass lady and could arrange that if I wanted to. Plus, I love a road trip, and I love road-trip food. Now I’m paralyzed as I wait for this to happen. But today I will DO SOMETHING! or GO SOMEWHERE!

One of my top favorite authors is Maeve Binchy, and whenever I say so, someone recommends Rosamunde Pilcher to me. My library has a few of her books, so I have tried her at least three times (The Shell Seekers; plus one of the other long ones but I can’t remember which one it was but it involved a youngish girl and an unsuitable man; plus a book of short stories), and each time I can SEE why someone would compare her to Maeve Binchy, but the books don’t resonate with me the way Maeve Binchy books do.

When I travel (here’s the tie-in, if you were wondering), I don’t like to bring library books because I’m afraid of losing them, so I like to go to the library book sale and buy a few books for $.50-1.00 each to bring along. This time there was a set of seven Rosamunde Pilcher books, five of them more like novellas, so I bought them to really give her a good try. My conclusion is that they are good-quality sweet-old-lady romances. Like, I read three in a row with this same plot: girl involved with unsuitable man, girl encounters suitable man, girl first dismisses or is separated by circumstances from suitable man, girl later re-encounters suitable man, suitable man is consistently/patiently suitable which causes girl to gradually see him with new eyes, suitable man physically picks up / carries girl at least once because she is tired or has fainted or he is rescuing her or he is bossing her, girl assumes suitable man does not think of her That Way and will soon be gone from her life, girl and suitable man have their first talk about becoming romantically involved which is also when they decide they will get married, end of book. Plus a lot of description of scenery.

Okay, I can’t distract myself with this book talk. If YOU were going on an overnight with a friend, what things would YOU bring? I’m thinking of things that let us Do Something while talking, in case there are lapses in conversation. Paint-by-sticker books, for example. Also I am bringing toilet paper, because I don’t want to chance that the man who owns the Airbnb knows how much toilet paper is needed. And I am bringing a scented candle in case the place is musty or weird-smelling. And a fan, because it is likely to be hot. And I am bringing a box of wine.

The twins and I are back from a vacation to see my parents, and so far my least favorite part is getting back on my computer and finding 229 new messages in the inbox I use for emails from businesses—sales and so forth. I do not need to hear 229 times from a handful of businesses in 6 days. This is a good chance to see where I need to do some unsubscribing, is my feeling about this.

Yesterday I overheard two loud guys in the seats in front of us, and they talked loudly for the entire hours-long flight, so I can now tell you all about them. Incidentally, if your boy has very short hair and likes ambitious outdoor activities, and if this past weekend he traveled across the country to do one of these ambitious outdoor activities, you may want to know that he is telling anyone who will listen that his girlfriend doesn’t really understand how cool he is for talking to strangers on planes and doing ambitious outdoor activities. He described her as someone who “just wants to do a day-hike and then stay at the Marriott, do you know what I mean?,” and he further said she “just doesn’t get that talking to people is how you make connections, do you know what I mean?” We also heard from him at great length about how he “never pays for housing” because he camps out or crashes with friends. He seems really great but I wonder if it’s time to set him free to discover the woman who can truly appreciate his greatness the way his male graduate-student seatmate could.

I am so disoriented. William came upstairs and said “I’m going to work” and I had no idea what he was talking about (or, for a moment, who he was) because I had no idea today was Tuesday. And I’ve been staying with my parents, so it’s a shock to realize I’m going to have to pick up the dinner-making and grocery-shopping reins again, after nearly a week of having someone else handle it and also bring me vodka tonics and plan fun things we might want to do the next day. We explored a giant cave! hiked near a waterfall! saw a baby alpaca being born! Today I guess I’m unpacking, deleting 229 emails, and going to the grocery store. I just added “limes” and “tonic” to the shopping list.

I will say that someone seems to have been CLEANING while I was gone. The area on the shower wall behind the soap shelf, where colored soap residue accumulates? CLEAN. The ceiling above the shower, which had developed little dots of what looked like the paint melting off? CLEAN. The floor under the bathroom scale, which I can easily see because the scale is for some reason transparent? CLEAN. Two loads of laundry I’m sure I left behind? GONE. Also, the day before I left, it came to light that the cats were completely out of their special dental chews, without the children telling me the bag was getting low; that bag, which requires a trip to a special store where I don’t buy anything else so it’s a pain to do, has been replaced. Fairies?

[Follow-up: I asked Paul, and he said he did the laundry and went out for the feline dental chews, but that Rob and William did all the rest as a late Mother’s Day present. They cleaned BOTH bathrooms, including the storage shelves in the downstairs bathroom, and also did the stairs/hallway. Paul said it took them hours and that it was their own idea. Well. Well.]