(image from Amazon.com)

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin. I really liked it.

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Here is something that bothers me: when the paperback edition of a book looks different than the hardcover book. I wish they’d match. I linked to the hardcover above because the hardcover feels like the book I read; the paperback feels like a stranger. I suppose there must be assorted good reasons why they don’t match them.

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My hair has reached the length where I hate it unless it’s up—but I do really like it when it’s up. It feels/looks tidy and styled, and yet I don’t have to blow-dry it or maintain a haircut or anything, and it takes me less than 10 minutes from wet-hair-in-a-towel to totally done (4 minutes for a twist and plain side-bun, more like 10 for a French braid and braided side-bun). It feels casual enough to wear with jeans and a hoodie, but also works for dressy occasions. I like how it stays in place and out of my face. I like how it shows off earrings.

French braid with braided side-bun

But I really hate it when it’s down. It’s not particularly pretty; it doesn’t look luxurious or sexy, and Paul is not a long-hair-preferring type of guy. It makes me feel aging and frumpy, and I feel like it emphasizes my double chin. It gets in my way. If I don’t braid it at night, it gets pulled every time I roll over. I hate washing it. I hate folding it into the towel. I hate brushing it. I hate the long loose hairs all over the house.

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Paul was away for a long weekend, and it was weird. It’s strange how much temporary solo parenting differs from duo parenting. We’ve both found that while the job is harder, in the short term we feel more relaxed and happy. I think it’s because: (1) it’s emergency mode: it’s temporary and everything’s weird and it seems fully justified to get take-out food and not worry about housework; (2) resentment levels completely disappear: if I’m busy and Paul’s loafing around, I resent it; or if Paul’s busy and I’m loafing around, I feel guilty or wonder if he’s resenting it; but if I’m busy/loafing and Paul’s not HERE, nothing registers on that scale. Anyway, we had a nice time AND we were glad to have him back.

Yesterday I was in the school office signing in on my way to the volunteer thing I do there, and the two secretaries were trying to figure out the staff situation for the day. Some teachers had known they would be out and so substitutes had already been lined up; but several other teachers were unexpectedly out. “This is going to be rough,” one secretary said to the other. Then her eyes rested speculatively on me. “Mrs. Thistle,” she said. “What’s your schedule like today?”

This doesn’t end with me being a spontaneous substitute for the day: it turns out there are a few little details that need to be taken care of before you can be unsupervised in a classroom with other people’s children, such as criminal background checks, fingerprinting, resumés that aren’t 18 years old. But it put the idea into my mind.

It satisfies several of my current job-based needs, all of which have proved difficult to fulfill with any other kind of job:

1. It can’t be during the summer
2. It has to be during the school day
3. It has to allow for me to be out when my littler kids are sick

The pay is okay. My fellow volunteer said the last time she checked, it was $70/day. That’s about $10/hour.

The qualifications are easy: you can’t be a criminal. Check!

This leaves the last issue: Would I hate it? Paul sighs when I ask this, because he knows I know as well as he does that the ONLY way to answer that question is to try it and see. But I seem to think that if I keep wringing my hands and fretting, the answer will come to me without having to try it.

I can’t even really ask other people about it, because one person’s ideal is another person’s hell. My mom, who was a teacher, would hate subbing or assisting: she wants her OWN classroom and her OWN rules and her OWN lesson plans. Whereas the idea of making lesson plans makes me shudder, and I’m not good at being consistent or sustaining interest: the first week of school, I’d be a GREAT teacher. After that, it would be worksheets and ennui.

Also, people differ spectacularly on preferred age groups. Just as some parents love newborns and suffer toddlers, and others are exactly the opposite, some substitutes find their niche with kindergartners and some with high schoolers, shuddering at the thought of the other.

So any advice I might solicit would be misleading and/or useless. Really, the ONLY way to know is to apply for the job, check allll the boxes for grade-level availability, and try it.

Instead, I wanted to ask you about it. Because the thing is, even if the advice isn’t helpful in one sense (“Ug, I hated it, it was the worst job ever” doesn’t tell me if I’ll hate it, any more than “Middle school is the BEST age!” tells me that I should choose middle school), it’s helpful in another sense: I find a GROUP opinion ends up giving me a fairly good picture of what something is like. If someone says, “I hated middle school subbing: all you do is hand out worksheets; I like elementary school, where you get to do the lesson plans,” then I will think, “Hm, I might prefer middle school.” If someone says, “I hated subbing: at first it’s fun to sit and read a book, but the hours go by so slowly,” I might think, “Hm, that does sound non-ideal.” If someone says, “I hate the way I don’t know until 8:00 a.m. if I’m working that day,” then I know more about how the process works.

Rob would like to try a Stephen King book, and has asked me to select one. I am very enthusiastic about this task, but also nervous: I didn’t read the books with a 16-year-old in mind, so it’s hard to pick. I’d like him exposed to the RIGHT kind of horror and depravity.

He thinks he’d prefer non-monster horror to monster horror.

The two I’ve read several times and think of as favorites are The Stand and The Green Mile. But I liked a LOT of others.

I love “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”, but our library only has it in a collection with the one about the teenage boy who likes to kill things, and I’d prefer not to introduce that. He might like The Bachman Books, but I’m remembering an upsetting school-shooting story; maybe that bothers me as a parent more than it would bother him as a student, but again, I don’t want to introduce the theme.

The ones I never want to read again were the ones like the one with the cop who went insane. Or Lisey’s Story, which I couldn’t even get more than 50 pages into because it seemed so extremely dumb and had so many of those italicized nonsense asides.

Under the Dome was kind of cool and thought-provoking, but it had one of those powerful-person-going-insane-and-manipulating-the-populace themes and those are not my favorites. (Needful Things also has that theme.) I get sick of hearing the crazy person repeat themselves over and over.

He says he might like to start with short stories, but some of those are more disturbing even than the long books. On the other hand, it might give him a good Stephen King sampler: some monsters, some creepy stuff, some thinky stuff. But short story collections are even harder to remember which ones are which.

What do you think? Have you read some of these more recently than I have? Which are your favorites—and/or, which seem like a good one to start with?

One of Elizabeth’s friends got her first period. I don’t think Elizabeth knows; I heard it from the friend’s mother. This reminds me to review the basics of such things with Elizabeth; I’m trying to remember to do it every 6 months to a year. But she’s so RESISTANT to it! She HATES talking about it! Well, she has a book that covers it. She may be the sort who’d prefer to look up her own information. And maybe she won’t have to worry about it for a few more years, anyway. I hope. (She is 9.) (Her friend is 10.) (I was 12.)

I should also get her Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, but maybe I’ll re-read it first. I remember that book being part of the reason I wasn’t very freaked when I got my own first period, but I don’t remember how much actual information there was. And don’t they still use BELTS or something in that book? Clipping pads to something? I remember being mystified even at the time.

I didn’t tell my mom when I got my first period; did you tell yours? She had to ask me (and then I did admit it). I wasn’t keeping it a secret, exactly, but I remember not really knowing how to casually bring it up. “Oh, by the way.”

Considering how free and joyful I used to feel when I could go grocery shopping without a child, I’m surprised to find things different now. It’s not really that I want to shop with a child again, but there are two things I miss about it:

1. The feeling of doubled productivity: taking care of a child AND getting shopping done. Both!

2. The company.

But it was that same doubled productivity I miss that used to lead to that harried, crazy, burdened, overwhelmed feeling; I do remember that. And after shopping today and hearing all the “Evelyn! NO! Evelyn! Stop that right now!” (Evelyn: *LOUD WHINY CRYING*) around me, it’s hard to believe I truly feel envious of the company, and it’s more likely that I don’t. And when I DO go shopping with a child, it doesn’t take long for me to say things like “Can you please let Mommy concentrate on this shampoo decision for 10 seconds?”

But I don’t feel free and joyful anymore when I go without a child, either. It’s like when I stop being sick and I think I’ll forever appreciate how good Not Sick feels, but then three days later that’s all done with and it’s back to normal and I don’t even notice feeling well. I’m so used to shopping without children, I’ve lost that intense appreciation for it.

And in fact, sometimes I feel a little inexplicable panic, or existential despair, or inexplicable existential panicky despair. What are we all doing here, with our carts of things, deciding between Pantene and Dove, listening to music made ridiculous by context (“Straight up now tell me do you really wanna love! me! forever!” as all of us non-Paula-Abduls study the laundry detergent choices), someone else’s child whining in the background like a ringing telephone I don’t have to answer, the child’s parent audibly about to lose it from the public embarrassment and frustration, people in matching outfits there to help us choose items and pay for them? What are we DOING here? What IS this? EVERYTHING IS TRAGIC AND SCARY. A child in my cart helped keep my mind off all that, I think.

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I watched another movie with older people (40s, it looked like to me) being attracted to each other. It was called Le Declin de L’Empire Americain (The Decline of the American Empire), and I enjoyed finding I remembered more high school French than I’d thought. But the movie felt kind of plotless, and the fashions and hair were so extremely 1980s. Isn’t it funny how hard it can be to tell if someone from another time period is good-looking or not?

For 40% of the movie, we watch the four women talk to each other about sex while they seriously spend the entire day exercising and attending to their appearance. For 40% of the movie, we watch the four men talk to each other about sex while they get dinner ready. For 10% of the movie, we see little flashbacks/asides that tell us more of the story than is being talked about. For 10% of the movie, we see all eight people having dinner together.

There is nudity just all over the place, but done in an interestingly frank way, so that it doesn’t even seem sexy, just sort of ordinary. Everyone is SO sexually adventurous, it was a little depressing: it made me feel inexperienced, while simultaneously making the more adventurous way of life unappealing. The way some of the men are so casual about cheating on their wives made me feel nervous and upset. And there’s a part where they say “And what’s with women always wanting to take classes?,” which made me feel red-faced and like I wanted to put the course catalog in the recycling—but also indignant, like “Yeah, your trips to the happy-ending massage parlors are a MUCH better way to spend time! Jerk!”

So you’d think I was not recommending the movie, and actually I’m not (I’m not ANTI-recommending it either, but I am not pushing you to see it)—but on the other hand, when I saw on Wikipedia that there was a sequel, I immediately added it to my list, so that tells another story.

I bought a REALLY cute, REALLY pretty, REALLY expensive (travel-size bottle for price of entire bottle of boring lotion) EOS hand lotion for my purse, since when my hands are dry they look even more like old-lady hands. The container is a pretty spring/Easter-egg light turquoise color, and it’s an interesting worry-stone-like shape, and I’ve used the lotion three times already in “Oh I’m so glad I have lotion!” situations.

In fact, I love everything about the whole purchase except the smell of the lotion, which is reminding me of something I can’t place. Not something positive, though not exactly repulsive either. “Store-bathroom hand-soap”? “Motel”? “Bathroom air freshener we used to have”? I think it’s the hand soap. Well, I will refill the bottle with something else when it’s empty.

I donated blood today, and I see it’s been close to two years since I last did it. That’s how long it took me to stop being mad about [long boring story about how they routinely kept me waiting 1-2 hours for an APPOINTMENT to DONATE, and then responded poorly when I finally addressed this politely, and then started calling me DAILY even after I told them to take me off their phone list], plus how long it took me once I’d decided to go back (to a different location, which today at least went WAY better, but was New and Different).

I felt happy and relieved to be back there again. Though also anxious because I realized halfway through I’d somehow forgotten deodorant. I really didn’t want to put my arm up in the air as instructed.

After writing yesterday’s post about attractiveness waning with age/fertility, it seemed fitting to spend the afternoon watching At Middleton, a movie that appealed to me because it is about a less-than-one-day affair between two people, Edith and George (not as old as they sound; SWISTLE, NAME-CONSULTING SERVICES, LET’S DO LUNCH), each of whom is old enough to have a college-aged child. Bonus: the actor playing Edith was 40 in real life, not, say, 8 years older than the actor playing the daughter. The actor playing George was more than 15 years older than the actor playing Edith; I will mention that without further comment.

Boy. I really didn’t like the movie. I am struggling to come up with adjectives. Forced. Fake. Embarrassing. There is a scene where Edith and George sit in on a college theater class. The class is doing one of those things where two students go up on stage and improvise a scene, pretending to be a married couple. It is, as you might expect, forced, fake, and embarrassing. Edith, unrealistically, speaks up in the middle of it, saying no married couple would talk to each other that way. The teacher, mistaking George and Edith for a married couple, tells George and Edith to give it a try. They produce a scene SO forced, fake, and embarrassing, I almost couldn’t watch it. At the end of their horrifying scene (“When did you stop loving me? Did you ever love me?”), there is slow, impressed clapping. Two of the students WORDLESSLY JOIN HANDS. It is the worst.

In fact, that is how I would describe it: THE ENTIRE MOVIE IS EXACTLY LIKE THAT SCENE. It feels as if the whole thing were produced by students sitting in a theater class trying to come up with Meaningful Emotional Scenes—as warm-ups, before doing real acting with real scripts. I kept being reminded wincingly of poetry I wrote in high school. A SETTING SUN SHINES THROUGH A KISS.

The dialogue was. It was just. I mean. I wish I’d taken notes so I could give exact quotes, because believe me when I say I am not going back for any. An adult says to a college student, “Not bad, kiddo. Not bad at all,” and the kiddo beams. One character asks another character “Are you happy?” One character insults another character she just met that morning by saying, “I know you better than you know yourself!” A college student says to his dad, “You were right, Dad.” I mean seriously. At one point, one of the parents briefly and politely interrupts a tour group to ask directions to a building her daughter is in. A parent in the group says, “Excuse me, but those of us who DIDN’T abandon our children would like to continue with the tour?” Why did that happen?

The meet-cute is NOT CUTE.

About half an hour in, I was pretty sure I was not going to like it. An hour in, I was actively suffering. But I COULDN’T stop watching it, because I was DETERMINED to see someone attracted to someone my age. Well. And what I saw was someone famous for being able to pretend to be things and feel things he isn’t/doesn’t, get paid to pretend to be attracted to someone my age, while I winced and suffered.

More movies to try, please. Actors who are, say, 40 and up. (Bonus points if the male lead is not 15-20 years older than the female lead.)

Recently I’ve encountered several reminders (attractiveness studies, comedians, remembering that Anne Bancroft was only 35 or 36 when she played the desperate older woman in The Graduate, etc.) that someone my age is lucky men can see her at all. After a time of moping, I identified the specific emotion, and it was “hurt feelings.” The next step with hurt feelings is to figure out WHO hurt the feelings, and so I also identified the two culprits: “biological imperative” and “the survival of the species.” It’s not going to be easy to get an apology, let alone a promise of changed behavior.

It makes sense that as I reach an age where my fertility is getting iffy and my chance of a baby with birth defects is ever rising, that my body would stop bothering to divert resources to maintaining all the signals that I’d be a good candidate for mating. I’m NOT a good candidate for mating, not anymore. Men looking to continue the species would be right to let their eyes skip past me.

But isn’t it sad? Isn’t it pitifully, pitifully sad for us all (those of us whose appearance is no longer linked to the continuation of the species; the men who don’t even want to continue the species but still have Fertility Goggles on; the women who are currently getting looks but will soon stop getting them; the children who start getting looks from grown men at age 12-13) that we haven’t yet managed to restructure our animal brains to equate fertility signals with FERTILITY, instead of with beauty? And isn’t it also sad that beauty is so important? And isn’t it BEYOND INFURIATING that Paul is HANDSOMER THAN EVER??? *pant pant*

It’s not even that I want “to be looked at.” Automatic looks from men are of low value. I think what bothers me is knowing that if Paul and I were to split up, he would have very little trouble finding another spouse, but I would have an increasingly difficult time. Even men who didn’t want children would hardly be able to SEE me, let alone be attracted to me, EVEN IF I WOULD BE AN EXCELLENT MATCH, and it would be mostly because of irrelevant fertility signals.

Well. It’s a senseless topic. It IS the way our brains work. It IS the way biology works. I don’t know why I even brought it up.

I don’t know how to say how I’m feeling about Rob having his driver’s license. Actually, I do know how to say it: That I am certain he will die in a car crash. Yes. That puts it nicely.

But look at all of us! Almost all of us drive cars. And yet almost none of us sitting here right now have died in car crashes. It gives me some hope.

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A couple appointments ago, the nurse-practitioner at my OB/GYN mentioned the word “perimenopause” and recommended a book by Christiane Northrup called The Wisdom of Menopause. I wrote a post on my initial impressions, and I think I stopped reading the book right after writing that post: I couldn’t get through it at all. I know a lot of people love it and find it essential, and so if you’re at this stage of life I think you ought to give it a try to see if you like it too. But I think I can sum it up by saying it was not my style at all, and that what I remember every time I think of the book is her asking if it’s any coincidence that the word menopause includes a PAUSE from MEN, and me thinking, “…Yes. Yes, that is in fact a coincidence.” I also remember feeling as if she were spinning out and trying to take me with her. No, I am not going to leave my husband in order to give birth to my creative self. But thank you for offering.

Oh, I know how I can sum it up: it felt as if The Wisdom of Menopause were written by and for the Baby Boomer generation. It wasn’t a world view I identified with, but I could see how other people would find it a perfect fit. But I’d prefer more of a Gen-X version: less talk about feeling shackled/fulfilled/empowered, more snark. Perhaps Janeane Garofalo could be persuaded to write it.

All of this is to say that I found a book I like better:

(screen shot from Amazon.com)

The Madwoman in the Volvo, by Sandra Tsing Loh.

There were only two parts I didn’t like: (1) the part where the author talked about how much she loved and recommended the very book I just mentioned was not at all my style (this is similar to when a blogger you love raves about a blogger you can’t stand), and (2) the part where she talks about her weight using numbers. I know we all have our own everything, but reading how appalled and shocked someone is by a number I haven’t seen since high school is…a barrier to communication/empathy. I did get past it and identify somewhat ANYWAY.

I don’t want to oversell the book: I think one reason I liked it so much is that I picked it off the library shelf on a whim, and with the assumption I wouldn’t like it. If I tell you I laughed often enough to annoy other members of my household, the increase in expectations could lead to a decrease in enjoyment. For another thing, it’s not in the same category as the Christiane Northrup one. The Wisdom of Menopause is trying to include EVERYTHING: its apparent goal is to be a complete reference book for all the signs and symptoms and reasons and metaphorical interpretations and so forth. Whereas The Madwoman in the Volvo is like reading a blog or a series of essays about menopause: it’s for laughing and relating and feeling normal.

I’m going to buy a copy of it and send it to someone. U.S. mailing addresses only. You can leave a comment without being automatically entered; if you do want to enter, just say something enter-y with your comment. The winner can choose a new paperback or a used hardcover (if you pick used, I’ll choose one that claims to be in good condition). I’ll pick a winner on March 31st.

Update! Winner is Maggie, who thought she might be too late to enter but wasn’t! Maggie, I’ll email you!

I am very happy to report that not only was yesterday’s experience at the DMV successful and Rob now has his driver’s license, but also the clerks were NOTHING LIKE the one we had on a previous occasion.

When we arrived, the line was long, but after about 5 minutes I didn’t even mind waiting, because I COULD HEAR THE CLERKS. AND THEY WERE BEING NORMAL AND NICE AND HELPFUL. A man was applying for a handicapped plate, and the clerk asked him if he wanted one little card to hang on the rearview mirror, or two. He said, “Well…we just have one car, so one I guess,” and the clerk said in a helping, friendly voice, “Some people like to have two: that way you can put one in your car, and your wife could carry one in her purse in case she goes out in a friend’s car. And it’s no extra cost for the second one.” And he said, “Oh! All right, then! Two.”

The other clerk had the unpleasant task of telling a customer that she (the customer) had just waited in a 20-minute line for a service that required a stop at Town Hall before it could be done at the DMV. Instead of brusquely dismissing her and making her feel stupid for not knowing, the clerk’s tone was sympathetic. Like, “Oh…I’m afraid the Town Hall has to process this before we can do our part.” When the customer responded, ungraciously, “How was I supposed to know that?,” the clerk did not get rude in response.

I didn’t hear another customer’s situation, but as he finished up he said “And thank you for being so nice,” and the clerk said, “Hey! Don’t let word get around! We have a reputation to keep up!” It made me feel as if maybe I had something in my eye.

So all of this is to say that as we stood in line I felt quite certain that whether or not we were successful in the day’s attempt, we would at LEAST not be dealt with unpleasantly by someone who was glad to be taking us down. And indeed this was the case. The clerk took the whole pile of papers and looked through it in a relaxed way, like a normal person looking to make sure everything was all set, rather than acting rushed and barking demands for particular papers and acting as if she hoped to find problems. And then there WERE no problems! And then Rob took the written portion and passed! And then he took the driving portion and passed! And then we had to wait in line again for half an hour, but that wasn’t anyone’s fault: it was just a long line. And when we got to the front of the line, the clerk said, “Yay, you made it!” And as we left, other people in line said to Rob, “Congratulations!”

In short: a completely different experience. I’ll bet these clerks HATE working with that other clerk.