I don’t know why, at the start of every summer, I make lists of what we’re going to do. I always peter out after a few weeks. At least it’s happened enough years in a row that I now think of that at the beginning of summer: “I’d better do this stuff right away, since I always peter out after a few weeks.” And fortunately, some of the stuff I do right away is signing the kids up for things like swimming lessons, so then I HAVE to follow through.

I’m looking forward to school starting, but I’m dreading the start of school:

• A million pieces of paperwork to fill out (WHY CAN WE NOT JUST CORRECT THE OLD FORMS?? WHY MUST I FILL IN ALL THE INFORMATION EVERY YEAR, FOR ALL FIVE CHILDREN, AND WHY IS MOST OF THE SAME INFORMATION NEEDED ON SEVERAL DIFFERENT FORMS?? AND COULDN’T I DO THIS ONLINE, WITH CONNECTED PROFILES SO INFO CAN COPY OVER FROM KID TO KID?? OTHER SCHOOLS ARE PWNING US ON THIS!!)

• A whole bunch of open houses to go to, each held at a weird and/or inconvenient time (“Let’s see, this one’s from 2:00-3:00 on a Wednesday; this one’s 5:30-6:30 on Thursday, these two are both at the same time on Monday, this one is an ice cream social at 5:00 in the afternoon…”)

• The massive pile of school supplies to be divided into five piles using non-parallel school supply lists (“Let’s see, YOU needed TWO binders and FOUR folders and an eraser and a box of pencils and two boxes of crayons, and YOU needed two erasers and ONE folder and three boxes of pencils and a pencil box and FIVE binders, and somehow I have eight packs of highlighters I don’t need…”)

• And EVERY SINGLE PIECE LABELED WITH A CHILD’S NAME

• The papers from each teacher specifying VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION I will need to put on the calendar and/or put on the shopping list and/or still be able to find in six weeks and/or sign and send back with a check, and all the gym days when different kids will need sneakers, and all the school picture dates/forms to handle (“Package A doesn’t have a size I need; Package B has a size I don’t need; Package C is way too expensive…”), and the particular ways that particular teacher wants communications/forms handled

• Also at least one sheet saying “Oh, you know that school supply list that got sent out? You don’t need any of that, and please don’t send it, and please send everything on THIS list instead, even though all the school supplies are sold out by now and I have extremely particular requirements on brand, color, material, and size!”

• And many sheets will not have the teacher’s name or the grade anywhere on them, so I will have to make sure I know which child just handed it to me before that child runs off and doesn’t know what I’m talking about when I ask

• And oh, crud, have I seen a bus schedule yet?

To say it in the ripping-off-a-bandage style, our cat Feather was recently hit by a car and killed. We got a call early one morning from someone who found her and got our number off her collar, and if I were deputized to dish out blessings I would dish them out all over her, because she went out of her way to do it and saved us significant missing-cat distress. And speaking of distress, I had to go fetch Feather using a snow shovel and a towel, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore except to say I now have a much more positive outlook on peaceful vet’s-office euthanizations.

This is our third cat total who has been hit by a car (two fatally, one non-fatally but with an injury that led to euthanization), so we are switching to indoor-only cats; our street is evidently too busy. Have you noticed that different regions have different opinions about whether cats should be indoors or indoors/outdoors? In one of the areas where we used to live, it was considered Serious Deliberate Animal Abuse to let a cat go outdoors. In our current area, the outdoors is considered part of The Natural Realm of the Cat, even by animal shelters and vets. So this switch is a big deal here—like deciding to have a relative committed to a home.

Happily, our recent orange-cat acquisition was an indoors-only cat when he came to us. And at that time we were still reeling from Benchley’s death and already planning to transition to indoors-only cats as soon as Feather (a dyed-in-the-fur indoors/outdoors cat) was…er, no longer with us. And so we hadn’t let him out, so he’s already all set for the new policy.

And yesterday we acquired a second indoors-only cat, a 2-year-old male who seems very laid-back and we hope he will get along with Orange Cat. Right now they are in the sniff-and-hiss stage, but neither of them is freaking out—it’s more like the usual bow-and-shake-paws formal introductory hissing.

We specifically chose a cat who had reached adulthood while always living indoors. And we chose a laid-back cat rather than a bold adventurer, in the hopes that he will be happy and calm restricted to indoors life. I do feel sorry for them, not getting to climb trees and roll in grass/dirt and bask on the driveway the way our other cats did/loved. But I also feel relieved on various matters from rodent/bird issues to neighbor issues to danger issues. As Elizabeth said to me just now, “I’m glad we got another indoor cat. There’s not as much worrying to do.”

I’ve been reading a depressing novel that touches on world issues (children kidnapped to work as prostitutes! fathers shot in the street in front of their wives and children! very cheery stuff!), and meanwhile my childhood friend Jen in MI made a very good point on Facebook about how time/money could be better focused, and those two things together gave me the idea for a compromise.

What if everyone who wanted to show support for a fast-food restaurant’s spending priorities bought GIFT CARDS at that restaurant, and donated them to a shelter or food pantry or other such organization? They could then hang around and have a soda or something to show warm-body support for the fast-food employees, who have probably been having a rough couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, everyone who wanted to show NON-support for a fast-food restaurant’s spending priorities could (1) write a letter to the restaurant (boycotts may or may not do any good, but they definitely don’t do any good if no one knows you’re doing it—and an absence of $7 doesn’t show up in the annual report); (2) send the money NON-spent at the restaurant to a non-profit organization that DID reflect the person’s point of view (see also: Spite Charity), perhaps with an accompanying letter about the reason for the donation.

(Both sides could, if they liked, crow about how their side’s larger contribution to good causes meant significant things about the quality and legitimacy of their side’s point of view.)

Everyone who didn’t care either way could carry on as usual.

Let’s not have a re-hash of the reasons a person might make one of those three decisions. What I’m interested in is whether these three options are enough choices to let everyone feel happy about their actions, while also funneling all this Enthusiastic Effort in a pleasing direction.

I think in the Perfume post I may have inadvertently made the perfume spreadsheet sound more intriguing than it is. It is a spreadsheet. On which I keep track of what I think of various perfumes I try. Here is a screenshot sample:

All the perfumes in this section are L’Artisan so it doesn’t say so in each box; a section below has non-L’Artisan perfumes, each with its brand.

The “category” section (fresh, spices, bouquets and single flowers, etc.) comes from the early days of the spreadsheet, when I was getting my list of perfumes from a site that categorized each scent that way; any perfume added since then doesn’t have a category.

I use this in part to keep myself from accidentally ordering the same samples again and again (“Oh, yeah, this is the one I always think SOUNDS like I’d love it, but it’s no good on me”), and so that I’ll have a list ready of the ones I still need to try (I order from Luscious Cargo, and they let you choose 5 free samples with each order).

Also, perfume is something I’m interested in intermittently, so this helps me pick up where I left off the last time.

Also-also, I like to put perfume on my wish list, so this helps me prioritize which one to ask for: I might remember only that I liked both Fou d’Absinthe and Mimosa Pour Moi, and the spreadsheet tells me which one I’d rather have and which one can wait.

Now listen. This movie I am about to praise, it sells for $4.78 on Amazon. Shipped. That is, they will send it to you for less than five dollars, even though it probably costs Amazon around five dollars to pay for shipping plus the salary of the person who finds it in inventory and puts it in a box for you. That is…not a ringing endorsement for this movie, I realize. It’s called City Island.

(photo from Amazon.com)

And yet, I liked it. I DID. I liked it. I laughed, LOUDLY, several times, so that my 7-year-old said to her father, “What could be THAT funny?” I think there is probably a technical term for this kind of movie, but I don’t know it. Farce? Comedy of errors? Dramedy? …I don’t really know any technical terms for movies.

Part of it is that I am fond of Andy Garcia. I saw him in Ocean’s 11 and found him memorable. And his real-life daughter plays his daughter in the movie, which is fun.

Part of it is that there are some interesting insider insights into what it’s like to be an actor. (It does not look very appealing.)

Part of it is that one of the actors spends much of the movie with his shirt off and then acts honorably in the face of temptation (rawr). (And if that is not your thing, perhaps you will be interested to hear that part of the movie takes place in a strip club, in which a girl is genuinely working to pay her way through college.)

Part of it is that it includes, um, “plumpness admiration” in a fairly favorable, normal sort of light. Like, sure, a heterosexual teenaged boy might be using the internet to find pictures of skinny girls, or he might be looking for pictures of plump girls, why couldn’t it go either way? And when the handsome grown-up houseguest discovers this internet-search preference, he isn’t appalled at all. And the fatness of the neighbor isn’t used as shorthand to communicate stupidity and loudness and coarseness; instead she’s kind and self-confident and friendly.

Part of it is that everyone and everything is such a likeable train wreck, and yet everything comes right in the end. It’s not a particularly realistic plot or resolution, but the movie doesn’t seem like it’s going for realism. It’s going for…”Here’s a jumbled plot, here’s an amusing way to think of it playing out, and here’s everyone jolly at the end.” It reminded me of Shakespeare.

Part of it is that I had low expectations, and in fact when I got the Netflix disc in the mail I thought, “I ordered this? I wonder why?”

Part of it was wine. I really find it boosts the quality of nearly any movie.

I can hardly believe it, but apparently I haven’t watched Blink since 2007. (Netflix link—Blink is on season 3, disc 4.) Nearly FIVE YEARS. Henry was FIVE MONTHS OLD the last time I watched it. (Happily, I’ve similarly gone nearly five years without finding another boiled spider in the coffee filter.)

I’ve seen Blink three times now, and each time I can’t BELIEVE it. The first time, I enjoyed it the least because I was too scared to appreciate it. I enjoyed it more the second time, when I knew how things were going to go. The third time (last night), I pretty much cried all the way through it, including when we were setting it up in the DVD player and when I was loading the dishwasher afterward. “It’s the same rain”—*BAWLS LIKE BABY.*

I just love it. It’s exactly the sort of thing I like. A girl goes to an old abandoned house to take artsy photos, and she finds a message under the wallpaper, written TO HER. And then, a letter is delivered to the house for her, when no one knows she’s there! WHAT THE HECK. Oh, it’s so good. Plus, the first two times I saw it, I didn’t realize the girl was Carey Mulligan! And no one is cuter than Carey Mulligan. (Except you. YOU are cuter than Carey Mulligan. But then it’s Carey Mulligan in second place.)

My heart was pre-tenderized, too, from watching Pride and Prejudice this past week. My dears, my DEARS, it is Colin Firth. But also, it is Jennifer Ehle, with her smiling eyes. And also, Colin Firth. “I beg you, most fervently, to relieve my suffering and consent to be my wife”—*BAWLS LIKE BABY.*

I was particularly delighted because I have NEVER been able to read that book, NEVER, though I have tried again and again. NOW I may be able to read it, now that I have the storyline and can imagine the characters. I am disappointed, though, that one of my favorite lines (the one in the previous paragraph) is reportedly not in the book.

I know I JUST DID a post with books. But here is another book.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Bringing Up Bébé, by Pamela Druckerman. I think there was some very good parenting advice in here. And the author’s writing style was amusing and easy to read (after I skipped the intro, which I was finding irritating)—like reading a blog rather than a manual. And I liked that she, too, notices how often United States mothers call themselves “bad mothers” in a tic-like, not-having-anything-to-do-with-being-a-bad-mother way: “I gave him a sandwich for lunch—I’m such a bad mother.” “I know I’m a bad mother, but I wanted to go to the grocery store on my own.” “I’m such a bad mother: I let him watch television so I could read my book.”

But I have five major objections:

1. I am tired of hearing about how superior the French are, even if they are. I think cultures are wise to learn from each other—and now I would like to learn from a DIFFERENT culture for awhile. How about India? Scandinavia? Russia? Nigeria?

2. I already feel enough natural annoyance at parenting styles other than mine, and I’ve noticed others feeling that kind of annoyance as well, so I suspect none of us are in need of something to SUPPLEMENT that annoyance. After reading this book, I feel like everyone including me is an idiot making things hard for themselves on purpose while simultaneously being show-offs and bringing up children to be beasts. Since I can’t make everyone read the book and start doing things in the superior French way, this seems like a bad feeling to cultivate.

3. It’s TOO LATE: I have already reared my children past this age. (The book mostly addresses from babyhood up to the start of elementary school—and some methods are too late after 4 months.)

4. I didn’t really…BELIEVE her. I felt like her sample was too small and too anecdotal. There were things that didn’t make sense: everyone in France does daycare! but there aren’t enough spaces for everyone! It’s like if someone visited Mississippi in the United States and then wrote a book about how all United States children say “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am.” And some of the French child-rearing ideas she praises are EXACTLY what I’ve heard here in the U.S., such as offering a child a vegetable again and again, having the child cook with you, making the child try one bite. THAT IS NOT EXCLUSIVELY FRENCH. And most telling to me: she tells how great these child-rearing principles are, but then doesn’t really apply them to her own kids, even though she’s living in France. She has excuses, but they sound exactly like the Typical American excuses she just finished saying had no merit. She throws herself so deeply into getting her Parental Suffering Merit Badge, she’s almost losing her mind and almost losing her marriage and almost going bankrupt hiring nearly round-the-clock help—but she still delays putting the children in the subsidized flexible care she just finished telling us was so excellent and so crucial.

5. A major section covers how great it is that French mothers don’t eat much. This seems off-topic, and I already read that book.

This isn’t an objection, but I also felt depressed reading about her marriage. A memorable line is where she tries to talk to her husband as they’re getting ready for bed, and he cuts her off by telling her that nothing she could possibly say to him could be as interesting as the articles in the magazine he’s reading. Another memorable tale is where she finds he’s brushing the teeth of a child who still has a mouthful of food, and he says he can’t handle her picky and arbitrary demands.

But my mom and I both read the book, we both laughed all the way through it, we both found things we considered very good advice and/or very thought-provoking, and we’re both glad we read it. Well, I THINK I’m glad I read it. Let’s see if the Increased Annoyance wears off a bit.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Pretty Monsters, by Kelly Link. I didn’t know until I went to the listing to get the picture for this post that this is a young adult book. It’s a collection of scary and creepy and weird short stories. I liked them, though a couple were too scary/upsetting for me: young adults wouldn’t be freaked by the parental point of view (“CHILDREN IN DANGER, OH THEIR POOR PARENTS!”) the way I was.

My main complaint was the same as with almost all such books: I wanted the endings to be CLEARER. When endings are fuzzy or uncertain, I feel cheated and frustrated—and I also feel like the storyteller failed to complete the storytelling job. SOME uncertainty is fine: “And when they opened the door, a HOOK was dangling from the handle!!,” for example, is fine and doesn’t need to then explain the whole backstory of the bad guy. But if I finish a story and I don’t even know if the main character is still alive or not, or if the monster was real or not, I get mad. OPEN THE BOX, SCHRODINGER.  This collection had some where you get an ending and some where the storyteller sits there smirking at you.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Children of God, by Mary Doria Russell. This was a sequel; I reviewed the first book, The Sparrow, in another post. I was very, very, very glad that several of you warned me that the sequel would undo one of the major plot events of the first book; if I’d encountered it unwarned, I would have been frustrated and angry, but because I was prepared I didn’t mind much and was even glad.

The sequel continued the religion/society frustrations/insights of the first book. I also continued to be tired of the self-pitying main character, and of the method the author used for laughing at her own jokes (having her characters laugh hysterically at the jokes she wrote for them to say). There were a few things that didn’t make sense to me still (the divided couple didn’t even TRY to communicate with each other?), and there were a few boring sections, and there were a lot of sections where the author was clearly trying to Send A Message. I see reviewers on Amazon objecting to the supposedly miraculous ending, as I did: it seemed simplistic and silly (the equivalent of “Look, reading every twentieth letter of the holy book makes a SECRET CODE!!”), rather than giving me the awed reaction it seemed to think it would inspire.

But I was glad I read the sequel, and I liked reading it, and I liked getting more explanation about what happened in the first book, and about what happened to the characters and why. I’d continue to recommend both books, but I think it helps to go into it expecting some Issues.

(photo from Amazon.com)

The Taker, by Alma Katsu. This fits well into the “supernatural creatures being emotionally manipulative, physically cruel, and insatiably interested in sex” genre.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Mom, Jason’s Breathing on Me!, by Anthony E. Wolf, Ph.D. The short version of this book would read: “Separate the bickering siblings as soon as they either start doing damage or start bothering you—but try to let it happen as much as you can stand it. Don’t play judge/jury to sibling fights; refuse to listen to either side; say ‘Stop it, you two,’ not ‘Elliot, stop bothering your sister.'” The long version explains why and gives examples.

I found it very persuasive and have started using some of the tips. But I felt like it only really works for TWO bickering siblings. There was a small section at the back that dealt with larger families, but it basically said, “You’ll do the same thing, but more of it!” Except that’s not true, because in larger families there are ganging-up issues and excluding issues. Still, I felt like I could apply what I read.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones. I could describe this as an early 1900s English countryside gothic romance novel, but if I’d seen it described that way I wouldn’t have wanted to read it. Here’s what it’s more like: It starts out normal, with a family from the servants-and-horses era worried about losing their home and having some step-family adjustment issues. Then things start to get a little weird, but you’re like, “…But IS it getting weird? or is this just a little creepy-SEEMING but there is a normal explanation?” And then a long time goes by and you STILL don’t know. And then you start to know.

Meanwhile, it’s FUNNY. There were quite a few parts where I laughed, audibly, not at a joke but at some dryly phrased sentence that just struck me as very, very funny, especially in the setting of all the creepiness and weirdness.

And it’s ROMANTIC, in what seemed to me to be a deliberately predictable way: that is, we weren’t supposed to be surprised, we were supposed to know exactly how it was going to end up—but we were nevertheless supposed to be pleased when it DID end up that way. (And I WAS pleased.)

********

It’s continuing to be fun to give away a copy of one of the books mentioned in the post, so I’m going to do that again this time. For U.S. mailing addresses only, which is kind of sad and excluding, isn’t it? If you’re like me, you don’t really even WANT to win until you find out you’re not eligible and then it seems so brutally unfair. Oh, I’m not a member of YOUR SUPER-SPECIAL COUNTRY so I can’t even ENTER? But if you, like, KNOW someone in the U.S., you could enter and then have me ship the book to them as a surprise present! …Okay, that’s weak consolation.

Anyway, it’s the same as before: you can leave a comment without being automatically entered; if you DO want to enter, just say which book you’d like to win. I’ll draw a name on Friday, July 27th.

[Update: Winner is Lippy!]

Now that we have prepared ourselves with a discussion of Startling Expenses (I hope that my brand-name tomato sauce excesses have not left you reeling), let’s talk about perfume!

But first!

1. I don’t know anything about perfume, and my experimenting with it has been very limited. So starting a conversation about it seems odd.

2. I realize this whole topic will seem a little odd. I mean, you’ve seen my Target clearance labels, you know I am not particularly glamorous, you’d probably rightly suspect that I don’t even own a pair of high heels. So if perfume came up in conversation, you’d probably picture me with, at most, a clearance bottle of Charlie, right?

Well, and you’d be right. I like Charlie. And it was on clearance.

3. Sometimes I go a long time not wearing perfume at all, not interested in wearing it. Then suddenly I’m back in a Perfume Phase, wearing it every day, trying samples, filling out my perfume spreadsheet, feeling like my perfumes are A Treasured Collection, etc. So you could easily get the feeling that I’m interested in perfume, and later be surprised to find me not particularly interested.

4. When you hear that I am interested in perfume, you may want to discuss perfume with me. But see #1. I know…a handful of perfumes by L’Artisan. And a very few others—like, literally a few, like three.

5. And my knowledge of these is…sparse. I don’t have a nose for it. I’ll say, “That smells like a plasticky car air freshener,” and there will be blank faces and “…No, it’s rum and vanilla.” And I say, “OHhhhhhhh. I see.” And I use the word “perfume” to mean “scented stuff I put on”—I don’t differentiate among eau de toilettes, colognes, perfumes, whatevers.

My first bottle of perfume was a present from my aunt when I was about ten. I think it was called Blue Jeans, or Jeans. In high school I wore Avon Soft Musk, Chantilly, and Charlie. In college I wore Sand and Sable, a pear scent that I think was from The Body Shop, and vanilla extract. By the time I was having children, I think I had a bottle of Charlie, a white gardenia scent, a bottle of Ciara, and a bottle of Tea Rose, and I wasn’t wearing them.

Then I was reading a celebrity magazine, and it was one of those sections where they ask celebrities what they’re currently reading/buying/wearing, and it was a perfume theme. And one celebrity said she was wearing L’Artisan La Chasse aux Papillons, that it smelled just like fresh-cut flowers, and that she was getting compliments on it wherever she went.

Something about that description caused me to go on a complete perfume freak-out. I started madly researching—and quickly discovered I couldn’t try or buy that perfume at any store near me. I wanted a sample, but HOW?? I found it a little shocking that I would need to PAY for a sample, but quickly adjusted; after some research online, I placed an order for a sample of La Chasse aux Papillons plus a few others, also L’Artisan—I think the deal was something like six samples for $12 which, since that’s what I HAD been paying for a WHOLE BOTTLE, was kind of weird.

I loved La Chasse aux Papillons, but the surprise success of the samples was L’Eau de L’Artisan, which made me want to stuff my wrists up my nose to smell them more thoroughly. For Christmas that year I got the La Chasse from my parents and the L’Eau from Paul. I also got more samples to try.

I’ve tried samples from other perfume houses, but so far I’ve never liked one enough to want to buy it. Most perfumes seem too sharp/nose-burny to me, or there’s a scent element I dislike, or I think “Eh, it’s fine, but nothing special—no better than my $12 perfumes.” I still use Charlie, Tea Rose, and a bottle of Avon perfume by “mark.” (annoying brand name) but I don’t know the name of it and they don’t carry it anymore.

My top favorites from L’Artisan, in the order I’d save them from a fire, are:

Fou d’Absinthe – I don’t know what it smells like, but I LOVE it; could be for boys or girls

Tea for Two – it’s like all the good parts of pipe tobacco with none of the bad parts; could be for boys or girls

L’Eau de L’Artisan – fresh, herbal, lemon verbena; could be for boys or girls

La Chasse aux Papillons – bouquet of flowers

Navegar – I think of it like a sharper and even less feminine L’Eau de L’Artisan; could be for boys or girls

Oeillet Sauvage – dressy floral, violets; discontinued but my parents found me a bottle

Right now I’m trying a sample of L’Ete en Douce and I really really like it; that might be my next purchase. It’s soft in a way that reminds me of a musk, but it doesn’t smell like what I think of as musk; it’s a little bit floral but not flowery; there’s a bit of a fabric softener scent. I’m not sure what it smells like, I just like it.

********

Now I would be interested in hearing YOUR Perfume Situation. Do you remember your first bottle? What did you used to wear, if anything? What do you wear now, if anything?

An extremely spammy site is using my (very unusual) first/maiden name combination as their domain name. It’s the first hit for my name, and then there’s page after page of hits for it. They’re using KristenMaiden.com as their site name, too, and saying that things are “copyright KristenMaiden.com.”

Paul bought me that domain as a gift quite awhile ago. I used it for awhile, but then we let it lapse. Someone else bought it up, apparently.

And I realize this holds no weight, but it’s the name I theoretically use professionally: that is, if anyone needs a “real name” to publish with my writing, that’s the name I use. The reason I say this holds no weight is I haven’t needed to do that yet. I gave it to Milk and Cookies when they needed a name, but then they went with just first names. My “plans to use it” aren’t worth anything. But it’s one of the reasons I’m so upset.

Can anything be done, SHORT of lawsuit? I’d thought of just…emailing them and asking them to stop, but (1) no contact info on the site and (2) they are VERY ESTABLISHED there, and I suppose it’s incredibly naive to think they’d go away because I asked them to.

But can things really be like this? That if you EVER purchase your name as a domain name, you then need to pay for it for ALL ETERNITY, including leaving instructions in your will for your heirs to continue paying for it? Or else THIS happens?