I had a dream last night that women were being forced to use the language of consent for whatever men asked them to do. I saw a man with his hand on a woman’s throat, holding her against a wall, saying, “I will only touch you if it’s okay with you. Is it okay with you?”—and pressing her neck harder against the wall until she said it was okay. A woman who was already with a man was safe from other men, because of what men had decided was honorable male behavior toward women. Paul and I were in a museum and got separated, and I was getting that cold nightmare feeling because a man had approached me and I couldn’t find Paul; I put the man off with a light remark, but he was starting to get closer and angrier and louder.

Things are not great right now in the waking world, either. There are a lot of people who are having a lot of trouble understanding that even though they themselves feel comfortable and safe from assault, and even though they themselves believe they would not assault someone else, those two things combined don’t mean everything is fine for everyone, and that all other people can also feel comfortable and safe. Even some really great people are saying things like, “This whole thing is getting out of hand”—referring not, as you’d like to expect, to the vast number of assaults, but only to the REPORTING of the assaults. The REPORTING OF ASSAULTS is getting out of hand, they’re saying. Like: in order to improve the situation, reduce the reporting.

I have thought a lot about this, and I think it must be that some people’s brains are jumping over a tricky spot: the spot where “hearing about it less” does not equal “happening less.” The brain is saying, “Listen: until recently, you and I did not think very much about how many people-unlike-us were being assaulted. It is very, very uncomfortable now to think about how oblivious we were to the really bad things people-like-us were doing to people-unlike-us. It is also very, very uncomfortable to feel as if we are being accused just because it was people-like-us who were doing the things, and WE are people-like-us. BEFORE people-unlike-us were making all these reports, we felt pretty good: we didn’t know, we didn’t think about it, we didn’t have these bad feelings in response. If we went back to not hearing about it so much, things would go back to how they were Before, and we would feel pretty good again.”

Here is why we need people to stop thinking that way: people committing assaults don’t listen to the objections of the people they’re assaulting. Of COURSE the people being assaulted don’t like it! In order to assault people, you have to already NOT CARE that they don’t like it. Change happens when the people who are NOT being assaulted, people in the same group as the assaulters but who do not assault or approve of the assault, stand up for the people who ARE being assaulted. People listen to people-like-us, not to people-unlike-us. It is a well-known and understandable phenomenon of human psychology and, like the bystander effect, even just KNOWING about it can be enough to break it.

People who feel accused of assault but are not participating in assault: YOU ARE THE ONES WITH THE POWER TO CHANGE THIS SITUATION. Currently a lot of that power is being diverted and wasted. Some people’s brains are channeling it all into self-defense: “I’M not doing this! Why do we have to judge ALL of us based on the actions of a FEW?” Some people’s brains are going further and channeling it into attacking the accusers or finding ways to defend the assaulters; that is such a sad and upsetting response to suffering, I don’t even want to think about it or talk about it anymore. Some people’s brains are channeling the energy into wishing it would all go away. Here is how some of it could actually go away: if the people with power use that power to defend the people being assaulted, rather than using it to defend themselves or the assaulters.

I emailed Rob to ask if he was for sure coming home for Spring Break and if I should therefore go ahead and buy the bus tickets (there is a great students-only bus with free Wifi that drives kids almost all the way to our house)—and he said actually, a college friend who is also from our town offered him a ride home.

So, okay, let’s not discuss how this compares to the nice safe rental bus that is very high off the ground and is driven by a professional and has a chaperone on board. Let’s not address how much more anxious I will be while he is traveling. Let’s avoid picturing the two teenagers getting into a “STAHP it, no YOU stahp it!” slap fight while driving, ending in fiery death. Or falling asleep while driving because they stayed up until 3:00 in the morning, ending in fiery death. Or being inexperienced drivers, ending in fiery death. Let’s snort together as we dismiss Paul’s argument that this is like the anxiety felt on the first day Rob went to kindergarten: on the first day of kindergarten, I was not LEGITIMATELY ANXIOUS ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF FIERY DEATH.

Let’s instead discuss what are the right things for Rob to do, in order to cover his share of this trip. Should he pay half of the gas? All of the gas, since the other student is putting all the miles on her car? Should he treat for meals (they’ll be stopping for two meals, probably)? What is The Right Way? What is The Fair Thing?

I was going to take a minute to complain about the airplane tickets that changed price by hundreds of dollars as I was trying to pay for them, but eh. I’m wearing a cozy cardigan, and everything worked out fine in the end, and I guess I’m not in the mood for complaining about it now.

I sent Rob a care package this morning, with a Valentine’s Day emphasis. You know what, actually I am in the mood for complaining, just not about plane tickets. I want to complain about Valentine’s Day. Paul and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, which makes me a little sad every year because I really like the holiday (pretty colors, flowers/lace/hearts, chocolate everywhere, a brief break from the long joyless winter), but we tried it for a number of years and it just doesn’t work out with anyone feeling happy about it. And I am so easy to buy for! Here is what I want: a pretty, heart-shaped box of nice chocolates. That’s it! That’s not so high-maintenance! Well. I guess also I want it purchased not at the last minute, and without a cranky, burdened attitude, and without a heavy “WHAT is it you want, again?” sigh, and perhaps that is too picky FOR SOME. And lest you are thinking, “Well GEEZ, Swistle, maybe he just wants to have his own romantic idea for a Valentine’s Day gift and you are STIFLING him by acting like you’re PLACING AN ORDER! SOME people don’t go in for TRITE CLICHÉD CONSUMERISM, you know!,” rest assured that the specific request is at his specific request: he absolutely did not want to think of his own idea. And he is a fine, fine man in many other ways, and if a once-a-year traditionally-romantic gift was so important to me I could have married my high-school boyfriend, but instead I wanted smart and funny (oh snap high school boyfriend) and this particular Smart/Funny came equipped with “responding amiably/amusingly to irritable comments rather than allowing them to start a fight” instead of “buying heart-shaped things,” and it’s still a trade I’m willing to make. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get to complain. And he can go ahead and complain to HIS friends about whatever it is he thinks it would be nice if I’d do.

Anyway, now I concentrate on the non-romantic parts of the holiday: valentines for the kids; buying/making heart-shaped foods; contributing heart-shaped paper plates to the elementary-school parties; appreciating the cute elementary-school classroom exchanges; buying my own pretty, heart-shaped box(es) of nice chocolates at 50% off on February 15th. This is our last year of having a kid in elementary school, so that’s a little sad.

Where was I? Oh, yes: care package. What the kids have wanted every single year is those giant 7-ounce Hershey Kisses. At our Target they are only sold in teacher-themed packaging, but the children say they do not care, so that’s what they get every year. (I have heard that some other stores have the giant Kisses without the teacher theme, and if the kids cared I would investigate that option.) I put one of those in Rob’s care package. Also, I have been buying the Valentine’s-Day-themed Hostess and Little Debbie snack cakes for the kids to have as February-leading-up-to-Valentine’s-Day treats, and I set aside one little cakey from each box to put in the care package. Also Valentine’s Day Tic-Tacs, Valentine’s Day Junior Mints, a Valentine’s Day Hershey bar, a tube of Valentine’s Day M&Ms, and Valentine’s Day Sweetarts. For non-Valentine’s-Day-related stuff, I put in a box of cereal bars, a box of granola bars, a pocket pack of tissues, two of his favorite pens (I bought a box of 12, and I parcel them out at the approximate rate I think he’ll lose them), a few ziploc baggies and clothespins (so handy!), a miniature bottle of Tabasco sauce, a package of beef jerky, a package of cough drops, a tin of Altoids.

A friend invited me to go see The Greatest Showman, and I knew nothing about it except that it was about Barnum and/or Bailey, so I figured it was a pretty safe bet: if nothing else, there would be good circus scenes. Things I didn’t realize until I arrived at the theater:

1. It’s a musical
2. Hugh Jackman is in it
3. My friend had already seen it: she invited me right after seeing it the first time. Like, from the parking lot.

I liked it. As expected, there were good circus scenes. There were also some good big musical numbers with lots of stuff happening: trapeze artists! lions! flames! stomping! clapping! And there were a couple sweet songs. And two good power ballads. I would be happy to see it again. And I might end up doing so: as the credits rolled, my friend said, “Same time tomorrow?” It was a good one to see in the theater, because of all the big/colorful/loud scenes.

I would like to see more movies. It’s an activity that ties in beautifully with my dabbling goals. For example, since seeing The Greatest Showman I have:

1. Asked Alexa to play me the soundtrack while I made dinner
2. Looked up the actress who plays Jenny Lind (I still don’t know why she seems familiar)
3. Looked up the singer who sings Never Enough (Loren Allred)
4. Thought of the song Never Enough reminds me of (Already Gone, by Kelly Clarkson) and listened to it
5. Looked up the actress/singer who plays Anne Wheeler (Zendaya)
6. Felt interested in finding out why this story about Barnum doesn’t mention Bailey
7. Thought about how glad I was that what seemed like [spoiler] was actually [spoiler]
8. Felt interested in learning more about Jenny Lind

It gives me renewed Interest in Things. It’s a good way to counteract January.

I am on Season Two of The Crown. It is difficult to gauge what is a spoiler when a show is based on actual history. I was never good at history so it’s all spoilers to me. I mean, I know Queen Elizabeth has a son called Charles, I did know that. But I have to be careful not to search online to find out, for example, why that photographer looks so familiar (it’s because he was also in Downton Abbey) because when I do, I see little bits of history that would have been a complete surprise to me two episodes later.

Anyway. I just watched the episode where Charles goes away to school at Gordonstoun. It’s so well done, I think: you can absolutely see how great the school was for Prince Philip and why he wants Charles to go there so intensely that he can justify being an absolute dick about it, and you can even see how it MIGHT have ended up well for Charles too—while also seeing that it was an experiment that should have been discontinued after the first year and better yet even sooner, and that Prince Philip should have noticed that he and Charles are VERY DIFFERENT TEMPERAMENT TYPES with very different issues to work through, so what was good for one of them would not necessarily be good for the other of them. Plus, Prince Philip does not give evidence of being a really superior person, so perhaps he should not over-credit the effect his school experience had on his character.

It all gives a parent a lot to think about, is what I’m saying.

Speaking of spoilers/history, this show makes me want to read biographies and history books to get more information about that time and these people. Do you have any you’d recommend? Probably I’d want to start with a biography of Queen Elizabeth, since I now love her. I am also interested in reading more about Princess Margaret, and eventually I want to read more about Prince Charles.

Last night I couldn’t sleep, and nearly got up to write a post about all the things keeping me awake, but about three-quarters of them were things I didn’t want to revisit in the morning if I didn’t have to.

One thing I was thinking about was something that happened at a party when I was 17. I’d gone at the flirty invitation of a flirty guy friend, and when I got there he had his arm around another girl, so apparently we were playing a game, and at that stage of my life I was all-in for that. The party was a small casual sitting-around-the-campfire-drinking-wine-coolers-and-beer kind of party, and I had obtained parental permission to attend by promising not to drink any wine coolers or beer, but I did sit and talk with people who had had a fair number of them. Everyone there had known each other for years so I was a novelty, and my act went over well. Flirty guy friend observed it going over well, and I observed him observing it, which was additionally pleasing. Your move, sir.

When I’d arrived, I’d found my way from the dark road to the party in the woods by following the light of the campfire. When I left, I couldn’t tell which way to go; it was nothing but dark woods in all directions. My flirty friend, his arm pinned by the girl he was sitting with, asked if someone could see me safely to my car, and one of his buddies volunteered. The buddy did a mock bow and said “My lady,” and walked me to my car. The buddy then prevented me from getting into my car, and kept trying to kiss me.

I am not sure how long this went on. I said, “I can’t do this,” and “I need to go,” and “My parents are going to kill me if I miss curfew,” and “Okay, I really have to go now,” and he seemed to think we were in the Baby It’s Cold Outside song and I was just flirting, and he kept trying to kiss me, and he kept blocking the door to my car. My sole and focused mission became to persuade him to allow me to leave. Isn’t that weird to think of? I had to work, and work hard, to persuade a stranger, with no authority over me, to let me do something I was absolutely allowed to do, and something he absolutely shouldn’t have been preventing.

I’m interested to look back on that scene and observe that I had already completely incorporated, without being taught, that it is not safe to shove away a guy on a dark road when the two of you are alone; there is a good chance of him shoving back, and then where will you be. He’d already shown me that he was going to ignore boundaries and social cues, so it was hard to know how far out we’d find the line he wouldn’t cross. And he’d shown an additional worrisome trait by pretending he was taking me to my car for my safety, when he intended to make me significantly less safe than if I’d gone alone. But neither did it feel as if we were in a situation where screaming or pepper spray would be anywhere near appropriate: those are for when strangers come leaping out of the woods, not when they accompany you out of them. The only way I could think of to get out of this was to pretend reluctance rather than repugnance, to avoid making him angry (danger/escalation path) or hurting his feelings (danger/escalation path), and to lie about next time in order to get away safely this time. I did so, and after some period of time I did get away safely.

I’m not going to pretend it was a giant trauma. It was a little gross, and it was a little scary while it was happening and when all the potential outcomes were still open—but because it stopped where it did, and because the guy did NOT escalate things but instead seemed more like a tipsy idiot, and because by that age I’d done a fair amount of kissing and could be more casual about it rather than feeling as if My Lips Have Been Violated and Shall Never Recover, it lives in my memory as A Memorably Unpleasant Thing That Happened and not much more. Sometimes I go back in time and ask my friend to free his arm for long enough to see me to my car himself, or I ask one of the girls at the party to go with me. Sometimes I imagine taking the risk and shoving him. Sometimes I imagine an unrealistic but satisfying “How DARE you!” scene. Sometimes I imagine an unrealistic martial arts scene.

The next day my flirty friend called me and said his buddy had asked for my number and should he give it to him, and I said NO at length. The buddy kept asking my friend about me for awhile; he didn’t understand why I didn’t want to see him again. Last night I was lying awake wondering how things went for him from there: did he ever learn not to do stuff like that, or no? Does he wince at how he used to act? Or does he have a sentimental memory that doesn’t match mine at all, about some girl he liked at a party, and he walked her to her car and kissed her, and then she vanished into the night? Or maybe the same thing happened with so many girls, he doesn’t have any memory of it at all.

I have been grim and morose and feeling as if the whole world is a bad place full of broken appliances and corrupt insurance companies and stupid/mean strangers leaving horrible callous comments on news articles, but I am trying to remember (leaving aside for the moment how this next thought reflects on me) that I am always a little messed up when the kids have a lot of days home from school, and the kids have had a lot of days home from school. Plus it’s January, and January is always kind of crummy.

Also, we had a small kitchen project done, and it meant having workers in the house all day, and there are few things that make me quite so staticky. I was in a total tizz all day, unable to settle anywhere, worried that if I went to the bathroom that would be the exact minute a worker would call out to ask me something, worried that they would think badly of me for sitting there with a book while they were doing hard physical labor, worried that they would ask me something I didn’t know the answer to, regretting things I said in previous interactions with them, and overall nervous to find that I will do and say almost anything as long as they will be nice and finish the work and get out of my house. And also I didn’t have access to the kitchen for a whole day, and I STILL have only partial access, and a quarter of our kitchen is in the dining room, and I hate things being out of place, which you would find very funny if you saw how very cluttered and messy my house is, but each thing is WHERE I EXPECT IT TO BE, which is what I mean by “in place.”

And then I start thinking about how extremely poor I am at coping with even minor upheavals, and how this bodes poorly for retirement years spent traveling or doing really anything, let alone for dealing with anything like a true upheaval, and how very spoiled it is to “not like change” when that change is A GOOD THING like a KITCHEN IMPROVEMENT (I don’t know why I’m acting as if it’s a secret: it’s a new window, really big, like the kind you can start seedlings in, to replace the original 1950s window that got thick ice on the inside of it during the winters) and not, say, GETTING FORCED OUT OF OUR COUNTRY or something, and then I have a little spiral about the news of the world and how terrible it is and how many people are suffering, but before long I’m back to the subject of how for a homemaker I sure don’t keep the house very clean. Or do much cooking. Or enjoy spending much time with the children.

Also I don’t have any good books to read right now. I keep starting new ones and not liking them.

Meanwhile I am annoyed with Paul, and it’s so unfair because he has been a PEACH PIE about the window replacement upheaval, and dealt patiently with a discouraging setback, and was up on the counter taping off the window glass so he can stain the frames, but instead I am focusing on how he broke the handle on the minivan because he “couldn’t tell if the door was locked or frozen shut” SO HE YANKED HARDER, using force instead of investigating to see why something isn’t working as expected. And this is after I finally, finally, FINALLY got around to getting the front passenger door handle replaced after ROB broke it by yanking too hard when the door was locked. And as I watch the paint gradually peel off the bathroom walls because Paul didn’t remember he needed to use primer, I am not too excited about him doing the staining. You may wonder why I am not doing it myself, if I’m so critical of his work. It’s a fair question, and the answer is that I really really don’t want to. I so admire people who just plow through things that need to be done, rather than melting with despair at the slightest thing. I would like to hire one of those people to manage my life. “I want you to be kind and gentle with me, and the cold noble unyielding prow of a ship with everything/everyone else,” I’d say, and they would nod and pat my shoulder and then matter-of-factly make all the phone calls that need to be made, and let me hide in the bedroom while the workers were here.

And also Paul keeps trying to cheer me up by doing nice things like washing the pans after dinner, but then when I’m putting the pans away later there are patches of VISIBLE FOOD AND GREASE on the insides and the outsides so then I have to do them over because I really can’t talk to him about this again, I really can’t, it seriously must be well over a hundred times I’ve explained it by this point, I am done explaining to a grown-ass adult that to wash a dish you have to apply soap and water in a way that removes the food from it—and yet I could have another FIFTY YEARS of this. His grandparents were married for over seventy years. OVER SEVENTY YEARS. Though by the end they were in a nursing home so I assume they were able to stop dealing with the dishes.

And now that we’ve replaced the window it seems like maybe we should paint the kitchen, especially since we already took everything off a wall and two counters so the window guys had space, but you know how it is when you start painting walls and then the cupboards look dingy and then the living room looks dingy by comparison and I don’t think I want to start that. And speaking of painting, the outside of the house is overdue for it. And the lamppost: it’s from the 1950s but we’d finally got it working and attached to an automatic switch, and it made me so happy to see it glowing out there in a neighborly way, and then last winter one of the kids accidentally hit it with a rock in a fluke snow-shoveling incident and broke the top right off of it so we’re just going to replace the whole thing including the very old and probably not very good wiring, and I haven’t called anyone about it for more than a year because I don’t know if I should call an electrician or a landscaper or both or what, and anyway now the ground is frozen again so it has to wait. And doesn’t it seem like all we do is fix a continuous stream of broken things and clean a continuous stream of dirty things until we die, and all that changes is that we get gradually less physically able to handle it?

Naturally I do not want to recommend alcohol to solve all of life’s problems, but have you tried brandy for cramps? I was more miserable than usual this month, and I think of brandy as pioneer medicine useful for treating everything from emotional shock to limb amputation, so I gave it a shot, as it were, figuring that even if it didn’t help with the cramps it would make me feel better overall (this is also my philosophy about sipping Drambuie for a cough), and it was near-miraculous. The cramps just WENT AWAY. I don’t know if it was the brandy in particular or if any alcohol would do, but I went from “too unhappy to have any dinner” ( <---- EXCEEDINGLY RARE) to "singing along with a Ke$ha song while scrambling eggs.” I didn’t even feel the alcohol per se; it was as if it went straight to the medical issue and dealt only with that. So I had a second serving, but if you don’t WANT the buzz you could stick to one and might not even feel it.

I am still stewing pointlessly about a dumb incident from yesterday, where YET AGAIN someone honked at me when I was right and they were wrong. This happens so often, I am concluding that people who honk are (1) overconfident and (2) REALLY OFTEN WRONG ABOUT HONKING and (3) NOT LEARNING THAT THIS IS THE CASE.

In yesterday’s example, I was at a T-shaped intersection where I was on the stem of the T and had the only stop sign. There was someone behind me. First we had to stay stopped because three cars were coming from the right. When the third car passed, the guy behind me HONKED and then revved and tried to DRIVE AROUND ME—that is, he started pulling into the lane going the opposite direction. And it’s lucky for him he wasn’t faster, because otherwise he would have CRASHED INTO THE PERSON COMING FROM THE LEFT. He couldn’t see that car, because of a snowbank—but I COULD see that car, WHICH IS WHY I DID NOT GO. But did the driver of the car behind me think to himself, “She’s still stopped, so there must be a good reason, perhaps something I can’t see, oh I wonder if that snowbank is obstructing my vision”? NO. He thought, “This IDIOT must be stopped for NO REASON, so I will HONK MY DISPLEASURE and then BREAK A LAW BY DRIVING FIRST ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD AND THEN DIRECTLY INTO AN INTERSECTION WITHOUT STOPPING, LIKE A NON-IDIOT WOULD.” I was RIGHT and he was SO EXTREMELY AND EXTENSIVELY WRONG, but I was the one who got honked at.

On another occasion that could have had even more severe consequences, I stopped for a pedestrian in a crosswalk. The person behind me came up fast, then HONKED, then swerved around me—then had to slam on the brakes hard to avoid hitting the pedestrian. AGAIN: I was RIGHT and the honker was WRONG. I am sure there are cases in the history of time when a driver has stopped in the middle of the road for literally no reason other than being an idiot, but it is EXCEEDINGLY RARE. (If you are considering arguing with me about this, I think you might benefit from having a Honk Assessment Specialist ride along with you for a few weeks to help scan these situations for reasons. There are a LOT of Wrong Honkers out there, and you may be one without realizing it. There is no shame in reaching out for the help you need.)

There’s an intersection near our town where there is a right-turn lane and also a large sign on the traffic light saying “NO RIGHT TURN ON RED.” I cannot count how many times I have been honked at for stopping in that right-turn lane on red. The person behind me will honk, then throw their hands up in the air like “Who is this idiot?” I AM THE IDIOT WHO CAN READ SIGNS. But that person behind me goes on with their day thinking some idiot was stopped for no reason. NO LEARNING OCCURS, AND THE HONKING SYSTEM ENDURES.

OH! Here’s another one, now that I’m on a roll. There is an intersection that has a tendency to get clogged, so that the light turns green but the intersection is full of people who got partway through and can’t get the rest of the way through. It finally clears just in time for the light to be yellow, and then those people are so frustrated they scoot into the intersection anyway, clogging it in the other direction. It’s such a problem, the town has put up a big sign: “DO NOT BLOCK INTERSECTION.” Even WITHOUT a sign like that, the law is that you don’t start going through an intersection unless you can get all the way through, but the sign lets drivers know that this particular intersection has a particular problem with that. I have to go through this intersection twice on days I have pottery class, and so many times I’ve “stopped at a green light” (i.e., stopped before going into the intersection even though the light is green, because there isn’t room to get through and in fact there is already a car halfway in the intersection) and the person behind me has LEANED ON THE HORN. Listen, I DO SEE that it appears I am stopped at a green light; I DO UNDERSTAND how that might lead to temporary confusion, or even an accidental honk. But look a little AHEAD! Think, “I wonder WHY she is stopped at a green light. Is there a large obstruction in the road? A sinkhole? A cute dog? Is the intersection in some other way unsafe? Is there ROOM TO GET THROUGH THE INTERSECTION, AS REQUIRED BY LAW?” It is at times like this I wish I could get out of the car and explain the situation, instead of having the person behind me go on with their day thinking that so many other drivers are idiots and that only frequent honking keeps things running at all.

I have two ideas that I keep meaning to tell you and I keep forgetting, and I’m not going to try to segue them naturally into another post, I’m just going to put them here.

First idea! You know how at the end of a school year, some of the school supplies are still usable (notebooks only 1/4th used, binders a little worn/bent but still holding together, crayons blunted but not even peeled yet), but also a bit rumpled and disappointing to use for the fresh new school year; and also if you DO try to reuse them they tend to wear out around January when it’s hard to find new ones in the stores? These are great to put aside for MID-YEAR replacements. Like, go ahead and buy the new binder/notebooks if that’s fun (I think it’s fun), but if they wear out two months before the end of the school year you won’t have to buy brand new ones, because you’ll have a few of last year’s still-good things sitting in the school-supply bin, ready to do in a pinch. And by then no one is feeling attached to the idea of brand-new school supplies, they just need something they can bring to school the next day.

Second idea! I don’t know if you run into this, but we regularly run into the problem of trying to figure out Sweets Values. Like, if we have a bunch of leftover Christmas (or Easter, or Halloween, or whatever) candy/cookies of various types, and I want the kids to be able to have a measured amount, we then get into exhausting conversations about how many M&Ms are the same as a Reese’s Peanut Butter Tree, and how many Hershey Kisses are the same as a frosted sugar cookie. I enjoy that kind of talk for about four minutes and then I am DONE. So here is what I do now: I have them use the kitchen scale (I have the Weighmax and I would recommend it) and I tell them a WEIGHT of sweets they can have. Then they can dither with the endless combinations themselves, and leave me out of it. A typical full-size candy bar is in the 1.5-ounce range, if that helps. I usually weigh a few sample batches and that helps me figure out what amount I have in mind, whether it’s .5 ounces (“Have a wee treat”) or 2 ounces (“Leave me alone for a little while”).