We have a slightly weird issue going on at our house, which is that people, specifically children-people, are perceiving “spending time in delicious, delicious solitude” as “cruel punishment.” For example, Paul and I will be in the living room, and so will FIVE OTHER PEOPLE. And let’s say one of them, let’s say Rob, is trying to work on something that requires concentration. So he gets more and more frustrated because there are six other people MAKING NOISE and BEING ANNOYING. So we suggest, I think reasonably, that he would be happier if he went to one of the MANY CURRENTLY-UNPOPULATED ROOMS IN THE HOUSE. And he says, “Why should I be punished?? THEY should stop being so loud!!”

Example two. Elizabeth is in the living room doing her homework. Edward and Henry and William are also in the living room. William is looking at a website on his phone, and that site is apparently chock-full of things he finds interesting and amusing (“Huh, huh, look at this CAT”), so he keeps sharing those things with his siblings. Elizabeth starts out slow and gentle, with “Would you please SHUT UP?” Within minutes, the situation has escalated to shrieks. Swistle, reasonably, calmly, sweetly, “Hey, I have an idea! You could go to your [own, private, you are LITERALLY THE ONLY ONE IN THE HOUSE WHO HAS THIS PRIVILEGE] room and do your homework there! Nice and peaceful! No brothers allowed!” And she says, even more peeved than before, “I don’t WANT to go to my room, I want THEM to SHUT UP!!!” Swistle: *goes into Elizabeth’s room, shuts door*

Explanations DO NOT HELP. I have tried saying to Rob that it is LOVELY to spend time in one’s room, far from the madding crowd. He continues to assert that this is “him being punished.” Why should HE have to be isolated from everyone else? HE’S not doing anything wrong! In vain do I clarify and explain that peace and quiet for concentration is NOT a punishment. He WANTS peace and quiet; he HAS peace and quiet available to him; why would he suffer noise and distraction ON PRINCIPLE?

It is exactly the same with Elizabeth: SHE was “punished” when we had her go do her homework in her room! Her brothers were let completely off the hook when we allowed them to continue talking in the living room!! It is SO UNFAIR.

Why will they not spend time in their rooms? WHY?? I could understand it if the ones who share a room didn’t want to retreat there when their roommate was there—but that NEVER HAPPENS. And besides, Elizabeth has her very own room but she doesn’t want to go in there much either. All three child-bedrooms sit completely unoccupied even when their services are DEARLY NEEDED.

It’s even more puzzling to me because as a child/teenager I LIKED being in my room. I spent time in the communal rooms of the house too, of course, but it was common for me to go into my room even if no one else was home.

Part of the problem seems to be a confusion with time-outs. They associate their rooms, and being by themselves, with punishment. But surely generation after generation of children have been sent to their rooms as punishment, without them then deciding never to spend a single unnecessary minute there? It isn’t as if we chained them in there in the dark for hours: we sent them there for, say, ten minutes. Not even very often! WHAT IS THEIR DEAL.

I read two more books that were coincidentally similar to Single, Carefree, Mellow, in that they were SORT OF short stories and SORT OF not. In all three cases, SOME stories had the same characters, and SOME stories were separate. Olive Kitteridge holds together even more, since the stories all involve one particular woman to some degree or another: the stories are from different points of view, but they all add more to what feels like the main story.

(image from Amazon.com)

Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. I was pretty sure I’d read it before, and I had, but it had been long enough that I only barely remembered a few small things. Like, I might think, “Ohhhhh….doesn’t something happen between these two?,” but not in a way that spoiled the surprise. I really liked the book, and would read it again. I thought it was a really interesting idea to show a person from a lot of points of view, especially since the person is a rather…difficult person. And the whole book has an appealingly gossipy, getting-to-know-other-people’s-secrets feeling to it.

(image from Amazon.com)

Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri. I saw this on the library shelf and recognized the author as one my sister-in-law was seeking out the last time we went to a bookstore. As I was checking out, the librarian got to this book and said “Oh! I love her. I love all her books.” So that was TWO recommendations, and I’ll add my own: I liked it a lot. I want to read a non-short-story book by her next, because there were a couple of stand-alone stories that I REALLY wanted to read more about.

Back when Rob was maybe five years old, he wanted to have big friend parties like his classmates were having. Rashly, but it didn’t feel rash at the time, I said he could have a big friend party when he turned ten years old. It seemed so far away: five years was how long it had been since he was BORN, and that was FOREVER ago! And it seemed like saying it to only ONE child!

But there are five children now, and the problem with letting the first one do something is that the rest of them PAY ATTENTION. Rob had his ten-year birthday party at an arcade six years ago, and then William had his at a bouncy place four years ago, and then I just relaxed: no more big exhausting expensive parties for, like, EVER! And now suddenly the twins are turning ten next month. *closes eyes wearily*

The upside of one of those big parties was that we could have them at a location that was not our house. The bouncy place was a particular success on this front: we showed up, and they took care of EVERYTHING ELSE, corralling/supervising the children, keeping track of the presents, even serving the cake—but especially cleaning up after ALL of it.

But Elizabeth wants her party at home, and I didn’t have the foresight to say no to this option: I’d ASSUMED they’d all want to do a location party. So fine. Fine. I will figure this out. And I will use this experience to be a better party guest, just as I learned from being a party guest how to be a better host:

1. Include an email address as an RSVP option (I think I’ll add “and texting option” now that I have a phone that can text)

2. Mention on the invitation what time the party ENDS as well as what time it begins

3. Mention on the invitation what food the party will include, so people know whether or not to feed their kids first

4. Mention on the invitation the name of the birthday child

5. Mention on the invitation the basic sort of party to expect, for knowing-what-to-wear purposes

6. Make it clear on the invitation if the parents are expected to leave, expected to stay, or can do exactly as they’d prefer (I’d thought this would be a non-issue by age ten, but no, not around here anyway)

7. Be stationed right at the entrance; introduce self as birthday child’s parent immediately

8. Take a list of names and phone numbers of parents who are dropping off a child

9. No need to worry excessively: it will all be over in 2 hours and no one really cares how well it goes. Even the birthday child may be too hepped up on adrenaline to notice/care

I am trying to treat some mood issues with increased exercise and increased fruits and vegetables. So far here is the change in my mood: increased despair. I wake up feeling pleased with myself for accomplishing the goal the day before, and then it hits me afresh: “I have to do that AGAIN TODAY.”

Worst dream ever: I dreamed I was EXERCISING.

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I have a mole on the back of my neck. Awhile back I was using mirrors to look at the back of my hair to make sure I’d done it right, and I saw a huge black hair. Growing out of the mole. Growing. Out. Of the mole. Like a witch in a fairy tale. Now I am on Mole Hair Alert in addition to Chin Hair Alert.

I would like to get that mole removed (it’s the kind that sticks out), but I don’t want to be referred to a dermatologist and have my entire body checked and have the mole sent away for hundreds of dollars of tests. I’ve always had it, it has always looked the same, and I just want it REMOVED AND TOSSED OUT, by my REGULAR DOCTOR. And I don’t know if that is possible, so I’ve been sitting around not calling to find out.

Look at my Target clearance haul:

The one on the far left was the most expensive: a $3.44 (50% off) Revlon lip gloss I never should have bought because I KNOW I won’t use a gloss that gets painted on with a little brush, I KNOW I won’t. But the way the color looked in the bottle was so exactly what I love. Perhaps I will frame the whole bottle and put it on the wall to enjoy the color properly, since on the lips the color is roughly 1% visible.

All the rest are $2.08 (70% off) Cover Girl gloss balm lip crayons. I bought one of every clearance color. I’ve tried two so far, both pinks. I like them well enough to be happy with the purchase. And I love when things are 70% off, so that instead of having to risk $7 to try ONE color, for the same price I can try MORE THAN THREE. I would never have risked a color called “watermelon” if I were paying full-price for it. It’s especially difficult to tell with sheers/glosses (I have a sheer that LOOKS like it will be bright red, but isn’t), which is why I love being able to try a ton of them.

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I watched Enough Said, and I liked it. I liked that it was people over 40 falling in love. I liked both characters and thought both of them (1) looked their age and (2) were completely believable as love interests. I liked that the actors were the same age. I liked the secondary plot of kids going off to college.

I felt uncomfortable with how much time the movie spent on his physical appearance and other perceived superficial flaws (no nightstands—GASP!), especially because I was thinking he was a catch. It made me wonder if we should spend some time on HER flaws, maybe. Oh, she’s thin and has nightstands, so EVERYTHING ABOUT HER IS FINE?? *pant pant* But she was too likeable for me to resent HER for it: I only resented those parts of the script, and also the entire world.

The main plot complication was the kind I just HATE, and I suffered through it; it reminded me of why I stopped watching Seinfeld. But I still liked the movie overall, and the main scene of intense suffering was over with fairly quickly.

After Temerity Jane AND my sister-in-law Anna (the one married to my brother) both said they loved K-dramas, I tried one.

Wait. Do you know what a K-drama is? I don’t want to be all, “Now, a moving picture, or ‘movie,’ is…,” but I didn’t know at all what a K-drama was before I watched one. Even after watching two of them, I used Wikipedia to make sure I knew what I was talking about. K-drama stands for Korean drama, and it’s like a miniseries: it’s generally a series of a dozen or two episodes of an hour each, so it doesn’t go on season after season. The children keep asking me things like, “Why KOREAN? Why not FRENCH dramas?,” and I don’t know. I just know that K-dramas suddenly got popular, and I don’t like when I don’t know what other people are talking about, so I tried them.

I started with Boys Over Flowers, which Temerity Jane and Anna both say is a very good sampling of K-drama things, but on the over-the-top side of the spectrum (tons of kidnappings and make-overs and big crazy misunderstandings and wild coincidences and astonishing outfits). One thing I was glad my sister-in-law prepared me for: the kissing is terrible. TERRIBLE. When two characters kiss, they just rest their lips together and then hold perfectly still.

Looking back on Boys Over Flowers after watching another series, I’d say Boys Over Flowers is young-adult K-drama: if you like YA, I think you’d be more likely to like BOF. I don’t tend to like young adult fiction, but I still liked Boys Over Flowers enough to try another K-drama.

The next one I tried was It’s Okay, It’s Love. I loved this one SO MUCH MORE, it was like…I don’t know. It’s hard to describe, because anything I say at THIS point sounds like I didn’t like Boys Over Flowers. But I DID! I DID like Boys Over Flowers! It’s just that I liked It’s Okay, It’s Love SO MUCH MORE, it was AS IF I didn’t like Boys Over Flowers. Like when your first relationship seems good but it was someone you weren’t in love with but you didn’t know what love was yet so you thought that was normal and the way all relationships were, and then your NEXT relationship you ARE in love and you’re like “OHHHHhhhhhhhhh, I get it now!” Anyway. I loved it. My throat feels a little funny even thinking about it.

And the kissing is much, much better. The characters in Boys Over Flowers are high school students, but the characters in It’s Okay, It’s Love are in their 30s, and they do regular kissing.

Also, the stories apart from the romance are so good. Several of the characters work in a psychiatric hospital, so there are lots of interesting psychiatric cases, and I loved all the storylines with the characters’ roommates and co-workers and so forth. I just loved it. This is such a mistake to oversell it like this, but I JUST LOVED IT. Tons of the good kind of crying, tons of good romance, tons of loveable characters. I wanted it to go on forever. When I saw there were only two episodes left (I’d thought there were more like eight), I actually gave a little SOB.

I did my hair mirror-image today (parted it on the opposite side, put the bun on the opposite side) and the whole thing is surprisingly unsettling.

I have a book to recommend, with a warning and an anti-warning. First, here is the book:

(image from Amazon.com)

Single, Carefree, Mellow, by Katherine Heiny. I don’t want to speak too highly of it, because the way I read it seemed IDEAL: I saw it on the shelf, rejected it, but then someone else recommended it and I requested it from the library without realizing it was one I rejected. So then I thought, “Fine. I’ll try it.” And I liked it SO MUCH. I kept wanting to get back to reading it. I wanted there to be LOTS MORE OF IT. I wanted to have discovered it LATER, when the author had multiple books, instead of NOW when this is her only one.

Here is the warning: some people don’t like to read stories about affairs. And pretty much the whole book is about affairs. In some stories, a woman is cheating on her husband or boyfriend; in other stories, the woman is seeing someone else’s husband; in some stories, it’s both. I thought the whole thing was handled extremely well, and I read about the different perspectives with great interest. With the full realization that I could be 100% wrong, I concluded the following things about the author: that the author had affairs with married men when she was younger and unmarried; that her husband was one of those affairs, and that he left his wife and family for her; that since then she has either had an affair or has imagined having them; that the author is a smart and sensible person, with a calm streak I admire—or else she too admires people with a calm streak, and so put that into her characters.

At least two of the stories are written in second person (“You go to school every day, but you don’t feel as if you…”), which I just hate. I mean, I just HATE it. It triggers an automatic argumentative response in my brain: “NO. No, I did NOT. STOP TELLING ME I DID WHAT I DIDN’T DO.” I had to think of them as being written by the character’s future self, telling her how it’s going to happen for her. Even so, I was very relieved when most of the stories were first-person (“I brushed my hair and thought about what I…”) or third-person (“Maya went to the library where she…”).

There were a couple of places where I wasn’t sure if the author was saying something Knowingly or Obliviously. In one, the main character, who is having an affair with another woman’s husband, thinks that the wife doesn’t really know the husband, because she (the wife) said something without realizing it would make the husband mad. Whereas I, reading it, thought, “OH SHE KNEW ALL RIGHT.” In another part, the married mistress protests a man’s previous mistress, saying “But she has a double chin!”—and the man has the grace to look ashamed. Are my feelings hurt by the author’s obliviousness/idiocy, or is that supposed to be a slam on the mistress’s obliviousness/idiocy?

The anti-warning is that you may be tempted to reject the book because it’s short stories. That was one of my original reasons for rejecting it: I don’t like that JUST as I’m getting to know and love the characters, it’s over. This book, although it IS short stories and so can’t avoid producing that response in me, felt more pulled together: because there was a common theme, and because at least one of the characters had several stories about her, it was somewhere between short stories and a novel.

I have been trying some new smoothie recipes, and so far my assessment is that there are a LOT of gross smoothie recipes. This morning Rob took a taste and said, “This is so not fair.” I drank mine but I felt I was suffering significantly for my health and should therefore get at LEAST double credit in terms of long life and disease prevention. For example, I like broccoli, so I’m not unreasonable: I ask only for regular health/nutrition credits for that. But if I eat something I hate, ONLY because it’s good for me, I want EXTRA credits. Plus additional credit for not wasting food, when I attempt a recipe that is not successful but I eat it anyway because it’s nutritious even though it’s yucky.

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Do you have recommendations for horror novels written by women? I’m getting kind of tired of some of the themes I’m seeing again and again and again (oh, we’ve established it’s a BAD person/monster raping and torturing women, so that makes it okay to make the scene REALLY LONG AND DETAILED), and I wondered what it might be like to read some horror not written by a man, and if that might change the themes a bit.

I’ve read several by Shirley Jackson. I tried Anne Rice quite awhile ago but it didn’t click for me. Other recommendations? Preferably recent rather than, for example, Mary Shelley; even Shirley Jackson wasn’t as modern as I’d prefer. I’m thinking more along the lines of authors who are currently writing, less along the lines of early examples of the emerging horror genre. Older books tend to have plots that were new and scary at the time, but since then have been so often re-done that they can now seem tame or obvious. Basically I want Stephen King, but a woman. Stephanie Queen.

I watched the movie Her, about which Paul said, “I was interested when I heard about it—but as soon as I heard the title, I knew I wouldn’t like it.” I felt similarly: I found the concept (man falls in love with computer operating system) interesting, but the title off-putting. I plowed through the off-put feelings: just as Paul didn’t want to be someone who would watch a movie called Her, I didn’t want to be someone who would not-see a movie based on the title. Plenty of titles are chosen for plenty of reasons.

Well. I liked the concept and was very interested to see how they’d deal with it. I thought they did a good job making things look near-future-y. But I didn’t like either of the two leads, and it’s hard to root for a couple when you don’t like either one of them, or the way they talk, or the things they say, and when you would pay cash money not to hear their sex-talk. I’m still glad I saw it, though. I would like to see it again with different actors and a different script.

I watched This is 40, which is a movie I didn’t think I’d like. It seemed to fall into the category of “Movies where I love everyone in it but, you know, I really have reached my lifetime limit of seeing people sitting on the toilet, and while I recognize that many people experience acute discomfort as hilarity, I don’t experience it that way MYSELF.” (See also: Bridesmaids.) And it IS that kind of movie, and yet I liked it anyway. It’s basically Bridesmaids, but when they’re 40 and married and parenting, rather than when they’re dating and getting engaged. So there’s a lot of swearing, a lot of nudity, a lot of raunchiness, a lot of bathroom stuff, a lot of behavior and arguments of the sort I don’t like and can’t identify with at all, and yet I DID like it and I DID laugh. But I’m not really recommending it, because it’s exactly the kind of thing I usually don’t like, so maybe I was in a weird mood.

Megan Fox is in it, and I found I really, really liked her, which surprised me because all my previous impressions of her (photos of her being snarly-provocative when I’ve Googled “fox”) have been so negative. She was FUNNY.

I read Stephen King’s book Bag of Bones, which I apparently missed when it came out in 1998. I think it’s because that was around the time I was pregnant with my firstborn, and I was not in any mood for scary stories.

Anyway, after 50 pages (my usual cut-off), I still didn’t like the book. I persevered and finished it anyway, because it was the last book in my library pile. I wish I hadn’t. I felt like it took a lot of effort to force this book to happen, which, considering the level of author intrusion and the theme of writer’s block, maybe it DID. The Big Reveal seemed like it was only a big deal because of the build-up: if we’d heard that part of the story first, I think all we would have thought is, “Well, why did it lead to a big issue THIS time and not any of the OTHER millions of times that sort of thing has happened?” Also, the type of revenge didn’t make sense, considering the parties who were most injured by it.

I was particularly grossed out by the storyline between the 40-year-old male narrator and the 21-year-old girl he first thinks is 14. “Oh, Stephen!,” she says, “Er, I mean Mike! PLEASE sleep with me! I know you’re a famous novelist and super-rich, but that has NOTHING to do with it! Good thing your wife and baby died so WE can be together now and you don’t even have to feel guilty about it! I’m like her, but way younger and hotter and more adoring—AND my baby is the same age yours would have been, so you can pretend!” And he’s so TORN because he’s so NOBLE, but it really is LOVE and he’d feel the EXACT SAME WAY and be JUST as helpful to her if she weren’t young and hot and beautiful and so very young. Really! He would! Or probably he would, if he knew her AT ALL beyond how she looks and dances and keeps kissing him and pressing her pert firm young….well, anyway, he IS noble! And it is TOTALLY her choice! TOTALLY! HE would NEVER have made a move, but SHE kept insisting! And it’s okay because first he had his wife die! And he let it be a brief and merciful death!

Oh hi, quick question. You know how Target has those things where it’s like “buy 4 of something, get a gift card”? Can you also use coupons for those things, or not? I ask because I bought four of something and got a gift card, but the reason I did it is that I ALSO had four manufacturer’s coupons, which brought the price down to awesome. But when I got home, I could see the coupons recorded on the receipt, and yet they didn’t change the price of the items. I’m hoping to avoid explaining this to a customer service clerk (I had some trouble figuring it out myself), and/or embarrassing myself by presenting the situation to a clerk and learning that it’s clearly stated coupons can’t be used, by finding out from YOU what the situation is.

Four-packs of Kleenex: $5.99 each. Deal: buy four 4-packs, get a $10 gift card. Also: the 4-packs had $1.50-off coupons on them. So the total should be ($5.99-$1.50) x 4 plus ($10 gift card – free $10 gift card) = $17.96. But instead it’s $5.99 x 4 plus ($10 gift card – free $10 gift card) = $23.96. But I can SEE the coupons. They just don’t seem to COUNT.