Do any of you know, from either study or experience, what the rules are about trees that cross property lines? For example, let’s say we have a tree that grows in our yard, but branches cross over the fence into our neighbor’s yard. Let’s say our neighbor dislikes the tree because it shades their yard and drops nuts/leaves (i.e., not because any branches appear dangerous or broken, or are threatening the fence). If our neighbor requests it, do we need to remove the branches that cross the fence? What if this means removing about a third of the tree? What if it means removing the entire tree? What if it is a very large and established tree, and it would be a shame to lose it? What if the situation actually involves multiple trees? What if having trees pruned/removed is expensive, WHICH IT IS?

I’m asking the question in two ways. One of them, of course, is legally: what MUST we do, legally? But I’m also asking from an ethical/neighborliness standpoint, for areas where the law lets us do what we want: what OUGHT we be willing to do, even if we don’t want to? For example, obviously I don’t want to pay $400 to have branches trimmed that aren’t bothering me (or in danger of falling), but since it’s OUR TREE and we OWN it, should I go ahead and do so even if I don’t legally have to?—things like that.

Rob and Elizabeth and I were having lunch at Wendy’s the other day when my attention was caught by a conversation at a nearby table. “Uh! It’s the WRONG SANDWICH!” said a woman, with an incredulous half-laugh. She couldn’t even believe it. It was supposed to be the SPICY chicken, but THIS was the HOMESTYLE chicken! She looked around in real disbelief. How could this possibly have happened—and to HER?

(screen shot from Wendys.com)

This has got me thinking about what seems to me to be a very low tolerance for human error. The clerk rings something up wrong, and the customer treats the situation as if the clerk has deliberately attempted a criminal action, rather than as if the clerk has made a normal error, just one inaccurate move among tens of thousands of accurate ones. The clerk apologizes for the error and fixes it, and the customer doesn’t bend at all, and doesn’t say thank you at the end of the transaction, and leaves the store with very unpleasant body language. Or an item is ordered, and the wrong item arrives, and the customer cannot believe such a company could even stay in business. Employees who are not 100% error-free! How can this even happen in today’s world?

We know from our own personal experience that humans make mistakes, and they make them regularly. We might try to improve, especially if we notice we’re making the same mistake again and again, but in general we completely understand that we are 100% guaranteed to make at least occasional mistakes, and we feel (completely fairly) that other people should understand that about us and allow for it. It can’t be otherwise, literally CAN’T BE otherwise: we MUST make occasional errors. (And, of course, apologize and fix it when we do.) But when we encounter someone else’s mistakes, many of us are seriously appalled. It was the HOMESTYLE CHICKEN, if you can believe it!!! This means that an employee PICKED UP THE WRONG SANDWICH BY MISTAKE!!!

It isn’t that mistakes aren’t annoying, or inconveniencing: of course they are. It is annoying to me to have to mess with a return because someone else made a mistake and sent me the wrong thing. It is upsetting to me to be overcharged for an item because someone else made a mistake and didn’t apply my coupon. I hate having to go up to the counter to ask for the sandwich I should have gotten in the first place, and I HATE getting home and finding the salad dressing isn’t in the drive-through bag, I REALLY DO. It has an effect on my life, and it’s a negative one, and it feels so unfair to have it be SOMEONE ELSE’S FAULT. It wasn’t MY mistake, so why am I the one having to go to the effort to fix it? So unfair!

But this is an excellent area for allowing one’s own character to be improved by negative example: it’s so easy to feel outraged until you witness someone else being similarly outraged. When I ordered a used book, and the copy that arrived was paperback instead of hardcover, it was my first natural impulse to feel aggrieved. Look how little care has been taken to fill my order accurately! How inconsiderate! How thoughtless! And perhaps they are trying to RIP ME OFF!! In short: “Uh! It’s the WRONG book!!” But then I see someone making a huge fuss over a very similar mistake, and I can’t believe she doesn’t understand that every single human being in the world is going to make errors from time to time: that it is unavoidable, and that she is making her own share of errors that inconvenience/annoy/upset others.

It helps too to spend some time working in customer service, I think. Seeing people’s outsized reactions to one’s own (much easier to understand) errors can help a person stay empathetically pleasant when handling a transaction from the other side of the register. Rob doesn’t yet know it, but that woman’s incorrect chicken sandwich is what ensured him a retail job next summer.

I’ve nearly forgotten what I was going to say/ask about the impending visit from Paul’s aunt/uncle. Fortunately, I ended that post with breadcrumbs: “With this post I’d intended to discuss the practical aspects of hosting/guesting: meals, activities, expectations, etc.”

The first difficult thing is that they have planned a 3-day visit in our area (as part of a longer road trip), and they are staying in a hotel 30 minutes from our house, and they haven’t made clear what percentage of the visit they intend to spend socializing with us. This visit could be anything from “We’re staying in a hotel for comfort/non-intrusiveness, but we will be at your house from breakfast until bedtime each day” (this was my mother-in-law’s style) to “We’ll be in the area as part of a larger trip, and would love to get together for coffee with you while we’re here.” I suspect it is somewhere in between—in fact, if I had to guess, I’d guess right in the middle: getting together for a good part of each day to do excursions and talk, perhaps sharing 1-2 meals each day. That’s my GUESS.

Thinking about this, I realized how much expectations enter into these things. There are visitors who expect the heads of household to give up their bed to the visitors, because visitors are supposed to get the best room/bed in the house; there are visitors who expect no such thing and would be horrified if it were offered. There are visitors who expect to have a fun and interesting schedule planned out for them, and there are visitors who expect to do their own planning and would be agitated if presented with pre-made plans. There are visitors who make lists of dietary requirements, and there are visitors who make their own eating arrangements.

Goodness! So much potential for ruffled feathers! Such things get SO much easier with repeated visits: by the time my mother-in-law died, I felt like I knew what she expected from a visit to us, and also which of those expectations I was willing to meet. It wasn’t fun, but it was familiar. With Paul’s aunt and uncle, I suspect this will be a one-time thing—but even if they end up making it a regular thing, THIS is still the FIRST one.

I think what I’m interested in discussing is, what would be YOUR expectations going into this, knowing what you know: i.e., that we don’t know them well, that they are in their 70s, that there are some potential resentments, that they are religious and from the midwest? What would you GUESS they would expect/want? What might you make sure you were prepared for? What might you specifically offer?

Some things, I might want to head off before they are issues. I loved Judith’s suggestion in the comments on the backstory post: she suggested saying, “Would you like me to find out the times of the services of churches around here so you can decide which one works best for you? We’re not part of a congregation here, but I hear the people at xyz church are very welcoming.” I might want to use this whole concept of laying out what we’re OFFERING.

In some cases, though, I’m not sure what I’m offering. Am I offering an open invitation for any meals they’d like to have with us? Possibly! Or possibly that would be quite stressful, especially since I don’t know their dietary situation. Am I offering to take them around and show them places? Welllll…it’s not that I’m not willing, it’s more that I don’t really…go places? or do things? So I’m not actually sure where I’d take them or what we’d do. I ordered a tourist manual from my own state, to help me out.

The other thing is that if they’re planning to take it easy and spend most of their time relaxing at their hotel and/or going out on nice drives or something, I don’t want to make THEM feel that MY expectations are for them to spend more time with us. Meanwhile, they may be sitting at their house thinking, “We don’t want to make them feel like they have to spend the whole three days with us…”/”We don’t want to make them feel like we came all that way and then ignored them.” Well. These things are a little tricky. It does help me to think that such things are probably ALWAYS tricky the first time, for EVERYONE: it’s not that I personally can’t read the minds of my guests while everyone else is having no trouble with it.

Also, it helps to know that I WILL get better at this with time and experience. The only guest we’ve had is my mother-in-law—but as we get used to entertaining a variety of guests (if we do indeed get used to that), we will start having Our Things: the recipe that stretches so well and makes good leftovers for the next day’s lunch; that nice walking trail; that fun little town with cute shopping; that great place for souvenirs; that beautiful drive with the great lunch place at the midpoint; etc.

One thing that did NOT help was the sudden horrified realization that even though they’re not staying with us, they will want to see our house. The INSIDE of our house. I wonder, if I cleaned every day for the next month until their arrival…

I just finished reading The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey, and I loved it.

(image from Amazon.com)

I read it in part because I kept hearing about it, and I like to read such books early on, before I have to fight off the silly “I can’t read it now because it’s gotten too much fuss” impulse (“Oh, everyone who reads it loves it? Then I will not read it. I would hate to love a book, or to belong to a group of people who love something.” WHY DO THOSE FEELINGS HAPPEN). It’s post-apocalyptic fiction, which is a category I tend to like, and it’s also science fiction, which is a category I like when it hits that sweet spot between “too sciencey” and “female space-warrior in bikini armor.”

Joss Whedon liked it and wrote a quote for the back cover, if that persuades you one way or another.

I was sorry the book was over, but I was mostly satisfied with the ending. (I had a couple of questions that occurred to me afterward and left me feeling less satisfied, but I still loved the book overall.)

I was searching online to see if it was okay to save part of a smoothie for the next day, and I found this answer: “lol who just has half a smoothie?? i just drink the whole thing.” LOL wow thanks for that helpful contribution.

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Target has finally gotten me to switch to reusable bags, not through their 5-cents-per-reusable-bag discount, but by making their plastic bags crappier. I used to collect and treasure the Target bags because they were great as liners for small trash cans and for disposing of cat-box scoopage. But now they’re thin and cheap and frequently have little holes in them, so fine, I will use reusable shopping bags. But what to do about the litter box? BUYING plastic bags for that instead of reusing the ones I got from a store seems like going the wrong direction here, environmentally-speaking.

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It is a little early for it, but yesterday I did the first installment of my annual gift-card plan. There are still more than fifteen weeks until Christmas, but last year I kept forgetting to get a card on each shopping trip and ended up having to go to Target the day before school vacation to buy several more cards, which kind of defeats the purpose of the plan. Also, I just added it up, and including bus drivers, elementary-school teachers, mail carrier, and karate/music teachers, I need thirteen gift cards, so I’m not actually early after all. Target doesn’t have the holiday-themed ones out yet, of course, but I get the bird one that has a lot of red and green and looks pleasantly non-specific-holidayish in December.

I am feeling a little upset and inclined to blow things out of proportion today. For example, I mailed a package at the post office, and the post office guy kept making brusque remarks to me (for example, I said, “Oh, hello, good morning! Can you tell me which form I should use if…” and he cut me off and said “Small one” abruptly and in an unfriendly tone of voice, and then turned around and walked away before I could ask my next question) and I managed to get my feelings hurt by it, which, why does this happen? Do he and I have the kind of relationship where I could view his brusqueness as a symbolic sign of underlying relationship issues? No. Is this clearly Not Personal? Yes. But it makes me feel bad, and makes ME want to make HIM feel bad. But instead I acted EVEN MORE polite and deferential, because THAT will show him.

I think one reason I’m feeling a little touchy is the book I just finished:

(photo from Amazon.com)

Life Drawing, by Robin Black. It just made me feel bad from beginning to end. Every emotion I felt while reading it was negative, and most of those feelings were cringing anticipation: the foreshadowing was so thick I started feeling teased and resentful. I nearly stopped reading it, just out of spite: “You want to draw this out as long as possible? I’ll show YOU: I can SKIP TO THE END, and you can’t do anything about it!” I ended up feeling yucky and wishing I HAD stopped reading it. It’s just, I remembered really liking If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This. Maybe I’m misremembering, or maybe that book was a different style, or maybe it’s that I like the dreary/suffering/doomed style better in short-story form.

It is September! I love September. All of fall is still ahead of us. It’s the Friday afternoon of months. Well, it is for those of us who like fall best. For those of us who like summer best, it’s the Sunday afternoon of months. And for those of us who like winter best, it’s the Wednesday evening of months. For those of us who like spring best, it’s nothing.

At Target yesterday I impulse-bought a pack of cake-batter Chapstick. It tastes/smells remarkably like cake batter. It makes me want to eat cake.

I also impulse-bought a Russell Stover s’more, 50% off. It tasted remarkably like a s’more, and was even more difficult than a regular s’more to eat while driving. I mean, I assume it was, having never test-driven a regular s’more. I know the Russell Stover one was crumbly and I had to give up, and it seems like a regular s’more would be sticky and gooey but would at least mostly stay together because of that sticky/gooey situation. I wish I’d bought more than one.

I had a couple of irritating shopping things happen. One was a coupon for Purell that said it was 20% all the Purell in the order, but when I looked at the receipt later I saw it had only taken 20% off one of the four Purells I bought. Also, there were two boxes of Kleenex on a moderate clearance—something like $1.68 down from $2.39. Not a huge bargain, but the three youngests’ class lists all include two boxes of tissues, so I bought them. But they both rang up at $2.39, and I didn’t notice at the time. The clearance sticker is right on them, so I COULD bring them back and get the price adjusted, but I know I’m not going to.

I hate stuff like that. It’s not a big deal AT ALL, but I hate it. It does help a little that the notebook I bought for $3.50 rang up as $2.80.

The non-Henry kids and I are watching the first season of 24. That show is too scary for me. The twins are missing a lot of the subtle scary stuff, like what is happening to that girl after the bad guy takes her into a more private room. Rob, age 15, thinks it is the coolest show he has ever watched. I’m hoping some of the “danger to women” issues are sinking in—though there’s so much danger OVERALL, perhaps it will seem to him to be spread out evenly.

Speaking of which, Janeric recommended the comic strip Dumbing of Age in the comments section on the teaching Rob the situation with women post, and I’ve been reading it and I really like it. I tried to join the strip in progress, but gave up after half a dozen strips and started at the beginning instead. I’m tearing through them now to catch up, and have recommended it to Rob. It reminds me somewhat of Questionable Content, a comic strip Rob and I both like (it took me awhile to get into it, but he recommended it so strongly I persisted, and now I love it).

Henry and I had a difference of opinion about his First Day of School outfit. My opinion was that the outfit should be one of his nicer ones: it didn’t have to include a vest and bow-tie, but maybe a solid-color polo shirt, for example, or a patterned button-down—but not a character t-shirt. Basically the same as a School Picture Day outfit. When I had to think out WHY this was my inclination, I came up with four reasons:

1. That’s what I remember from my own youth
2. The first day of school is Special, and we dress up a little for Special
3. Making a good first impression on the teacher
4. Looks nice in the photos I take at the bus stop and post on Facebook

Henry’s opinion was that the outfit should be one that expressed his interests. That is, he had the Exact Opposite idea: I was saying “collar shirt—or maybe even a solid-color t-shirt but definitely not a character t-shirt” and he was saying “definitely a character t-shirt, and the only question is WHICH character t-shirt.” When he had to think out WHY this was his inclination, he came up with two reasons:

1. Making a good first impression on his classmates
2. Communicating his interests to other children quickly and easily

I could have pulled “No, most days you can wear what you want, but I am the boss and we’re doing it my way for this one day” (this is what I do on Picture Day and Easter and Thanksgiving and Christmas and certain other occasions, if necessary), but we did it his way, because I could see his point. Also because he was quite nervous about the first day, and I thought a favorite shirt might help. Minecraft t-shirt it is.

When I was helping Edward pick out an outfit, then, I explained Henry’s philosophy and asked if Edward subscribed to the same one. I showed him the solid green polo shirt I would pick for him if it were up to me, and asked if instead he would like to choose something more like what he’d normally wear—more representative of his personality and interests. He said, “Yes, but, that shirt looks NORMAL to me.” Green polo shirt it is.

I wasn’t going to plan out Elizabeth’s outfit with her, because she has been highly opinionated about her clothes since infancy. But when I saw she had set aside velour pants, I suggested she might want something less warm in her non-air-conditioned classroom.

Rob is in 10th grade this year and William in 8th, so they’re on their own for clothing choices. I would say something if I thought their choices weren’t quite right—like, if they were wearing something stained or too small. But I don’t try to make them wear shirts with collars or anything like that.

I’m interested to know how you do things at your house with first-day-of-school outfits.

This was my tenth summer with school-aged children, so by now I know not to bother saving all the workbooks and worksheets and flashcards and suggested exercises the teachers send home for summer use. When I see all that stuff, I WANT to use it. I’ll INTEND to use it. But I know we won’t, because experience is a better teacher than I am.

I do feel a little bad about it: so much preparation and work and planning and stapling and putting into packets; so much paper wasted. But I didn’t ask for that preparation and work to be done, or for that paper to be used, and teaching is very low on my life-skills list. And also, it doesn’t matter WHY we don’t use them, since the fact is that we won’t. I can recycle everything at the beginning of summer, or I can wait and recycle it all the night before school starts when we’re making sure the backpacks are ready.

Last summer, I recycled everything at the beginning. That’s my preference, since then I don’t have to deal with it while I’m stressed about getting things ready for back-to-school. But THIS summer, the children caught me and insisted that everything be kept. They WOULD do the workbooks, they WOULD! They WANTED to! They WOULD practice their math facts! They WOULD do the speech exercises and the math games and the reading comprehension booklets!

Of course they did not. Nor did I suddenly change temperaments and turn into someone who would sit down with them each day and require it. (My mother was of that temperament. She was also a teacher.)

I’ve heard the arguments about how much progress children lose over the summer if they don’t practice the skills. I’m not sure how that translated to “and so untrained/inexperienced parents should be told to spend 1/4th of the year homeschooling multiple grades,” instead of into “and so we should have school all year instead of taking summers off.” And since not all the children will get this review over the summer, the first part of the year will have to be spent in review anyway, which will be even more boring for children who DID spend the summer reviewing. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how compelling the arguments are, or how fervently I intend to support the school by being a summer teacher, or how much I want to do what I’m asked to do, or how much the practice is needed, or whether or not it’s even a good idea to do it: the fact remains that I DON’T DO IT.

Two things. FIRST, I wanted to thank you vigorously for all the comments on the post about how to get certain points across to Rob. I feel like I have RICHES now, and from all directions—things I wouldn’t have found on my own, places I wouldn’t have thought to look, angles I wouldn’t have considered. This is one of my favorite things about the internet, and reminds me of that story where everyone brings one thing for the pot of boiling water and so everyone ends up eating soup. All I had was boiling water.

Second, I read a book and really liked it and felt like it was different than anything I’d read before:

(image from Amazon.com)

The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway.

I would never have tried the book at all if I hadn’t read a review by Jenny on ShelfLove. The premise didn’t appeal to me. The cover didn’t appeal to me. (I read the hardcover, which I think is even less appealing than the paperback image above, and looks as if it were printed on someone’s home color printer.) What got me to read it was Jenny saying she hadn’t wanted to read it, but now wanted everyone to read it. And I ended up feeling the same way: I hadn’t wanted to read it, but now I want everyone to.

It took me some effort to get into it: it starts out with a lot of macho guy talk and it’s hard to figure out what’s going on at all. I found I frequently had to re-read a paragraph I hadn’t understood. I didn’t start to love it until I was nearly 50 pages into it—but after that, I really loved it.