Ug, I had a Mental Turmoil Morning, waking around 3:00 to pee and then lying in bed suffering from weary mental churning. The dumb thing was, a lot of it was OTHER PEOPLE’S mental churning, a rehashing of stories I inadvertently tap into via stressy Facebook statuses and stressy Twitter posts—or, and this drives me a little bonkers, stressy RE-posts and RE-tweets. I like to keep up on the stresses and frets of people I know, but not with the endless endless crank-it-to-11 RE-tweeted fights and indignations of strangers. One re-tweet to spread awareness of the issue for people who would want to know what’s going on so they can get involved: SURE, of COURSE, I’m even GRATEFUL for that sometimes. But a constant re-tweet stream of EVERYTHING EVERYONE TWEETS ON THE TOPIC? No. NO.

I never know what to do in those situations when it’s chronic, do you? I don’t want to unfollow the re-tweeter, because I DO like THEM. But by following them, I’m also automatically following a bunch of other people I DON’T like and DON’T want to hear from, and/or hearing a ton about issues I don’t want to be involved with and/or have a strongly opposite opinion on but don’t want to argue/think about anymore. It’s a problem.

So anyway, that was one of the mental churning categories. Another is one of those pointless, can’t-do-anything-about-it ones, which is such a good use of sleep time. Our STUPID TOWN keeps voting for cuts in education expenses, and they toe the state line of Meeting Only the Absolute Minimum Requirements For Everything, which would already be annoying enough, except that this is the THIRD YEAR IN A ROW our school system has failed to pass state tests. But my GENIUS CO-RESIDENTS, most of whom are probably voting for education cuts on basis of “MY kids are already grown! Why should _I_ pay to educate other people’s kids?” (that’s right, I built that straw man right in front of you), keep voting every year for more cuts! because they don’t see the connection! possibly because they were educated in this school system! And what I would like to know is, WHY IS THE CUTTING-EXPENSES OPTION ON THE BALLOT?? “Would you like to pay MORE in tax money, or LESS? Your choice! Check box.”

*pant pant*

I also kept mentally working on a post I’m trying to do about how a nightmare about needing to run for our lives made me feel so so so lucky that we can just…live in our house and keep our things there, and go shopping for things we need without fighting off other looters, and not have to spend our entire day foraging for enough food to keep our kids alive, and not have to get in a knife fight to get an antibiotic. I don’t think the post is writeable, though. You know how you can get comfort by telling YOURSELF to be grateful that your life is so much better than if you had problems A, B, and/or C, but if someone ELSE tells that to you it’s just about the most pineholish move ever, assuming as it does that only the most miserable and worst-off person in the entire universe is allowed to complain (and even THEY should feel lucky they’re NOT DEAD)? So. That’s the trouble with the post: even though I’ve spent two days so far feeling wonderful feelings of relief that we have electricity and don’t have to reduce our belongings to what we can carry, it’s hard to tell YOU about it without sounding insufferably preachy and pineholey. PineHOLY, as it were.

GZUZFRK is a pretty clever license plate. (Jesus Freak. I spare you having to ask, if you needed to.)

********

I have “Our God is an Awesome God” going through my head. I’m imagining God clapping along lightly with his fingertips and a sarcastic expression on his face as I hum it. “ORLY?,” he says. I reply by humming with increased cheerful vigor “He REIGNS from heaven aBOVE!” It’s CATCHY.

********

“Recycle Your Memories” is not a good slogan for a consignment shop. I recoiled. RECYCLE my MEMORIES?? How about “Sell Your Sentimental Feelings For Cold Hard Cash”? Speaking of catchy!

********

Things have been a little adrenalizing on the baby name blog this week: the mother’s mother doesn’t like the name, and makes it repeatedly clear—what would YOU do, and I mean in REAL LIFE where you’re talking to your ACTUAL ACTUAL REAL-LIFE EXISTING MOTHER, not in a fantasy life where you take your glasses off dramatically and then address the court with a dignity and intelligence that causes your opposition to fall back in awe?

********

I have noticed that pretty much only thin bloggers show photos of themselves—especially full-length photos where you can’t just tuck knuckles under the chin and hope it helps. It’s gotten to the point that, in general, I can figure out a blogger’s size based on nothing else but the photos. Do they regularly show photos of themselves? Then they are thin. Is it never, or only with children blocking their bodies, and/or the knuckles under the chin? Then they are plump.

This is silly, and it gives us a severely skewed idea of what percentage of the people we know and like are thin. I would maybe like to meet some of you at a blogger conference some day without wearing a refrigerator box that hides my entire body. Here is a photo of me full-length, at an angle I feel is flattering (baby steps) to my Hip Width as well as to my Rear Awning:

My dad took this picture. In it, I’m taking a photo of Henry, and am not thinking about my picture being taken. As you can see, I am plump and I have cut my hair too short. Nevertheless, I appear in mirrors and in photographs.

Swistle: “I dreamed we were getting married.”
Paul, without glancing up: “You can’t trap the wind, baby.”

********

Our yard is divided into little gardening plots. Without really thinking about it, earlier in the spring I flung the last of the winter supply of sunflower seeds for the birds out over an area that included part of Paul’s garden. When a whole bunch of little two-rounded-leaves plants that looked just like sunflowers came up in that area, I tried to cover my mistake by transplanting them to my own garden plot. Yesterday Paul asked why I’d planted peppers in my garden plot—and wondered why his own peppers weren’t coming up.

********

I’m trying to motivate myself to do some sort of plan with the kids this summer. My mom used to do a Summer Regimen with us: we had a list of things to do each morning, including a couple of worksheets, some sit-ups and push-ups, a journal entry, and a cleaning chore. On one hand I hated the regimen (including the word “regimen,” which was pronounced with an exaggerated zh sound in the middle), but on the other hand it made the rest of the day feel so much more vacationy: it was like still having school, but only having it for an hour and a half a day with no homework.

********

Paul’s mother’s estate is still not settled (it’s been one year and seven months, which I gather is not incredibly long in estate-settling terms). The last we heard, the lawyer said back in January that everything was just about all set, and that all that was left was for the estate to file the taxes so anything due/refunded could be handled by the estate. Silence since then is making me fret: WHO filed the taxes? It wasn’t supposed to be US, was it? We don’t have anything we’d need to file them; Paul’s sister is the executor, unwise a choice as that seems. Was it supposed to be Paul’s sister but she just finked out because she didn’t feel like it? Were the taxes filed by Paul’s sister or the lawyer, but the lawyer just knows that “several months” in estate time is like being on hold on the phone for a few seconds so there’s no reason to update us? Will we get a packet in the mail any day now because everything is going just fine?

Oh, yes, obviously we could ask the lawyer. Except it’s not “we,” it’s “Paul” who would have to ask the lawyer. And I suppose I could ask Paul to do that, but perhaps you can wincingly imagine how money-hungry and unfeeling it looks for a wife to casually inquire about her disliked mother-in-law’s estate. And although I AM curious if there will be any money, my main concern is the disparity between “when I thought this would be wrapped up and we would in no way be attached to that situation” and “now.” I KNOW estates can take a long time to settle, I KNOW they can—but the lawyer said all that was left was the taxes, and tax time is long over, so…PLEASE FREE US FROM THE HOUSE/SIL ALBATROSS KTHANX.

Today I planned to take Rob to a library event for teens. I was out on errands and forgot all about it, arriving home to Rob saying, “Um, the library thing?”—20 minutes after it had started. I was mortified: this taps into several horrors at once, including Horror of Being Late and Horror of Not Following Through (we’d r.s.v.p.’d) and Horror of Forgetting Something Until After It Starts. It was hard to decide which was worse: showing up late, or not showing up. I took him there anyway, despite my instinct to hide and cower and pretend it hadn’t happened. And it was great: the librarian said they were counting on late-shows anyway for some other reason, and Rob had a great time, and I felt so good about our decision.

********

Another parent in Edward’s class called me to find out which teacher Edward had for 1st grade. But she didn’t say her child was in Edward’s class, because she didn’t know Edward was a twin, so she just said that “our kids” were in kindergarten together. So at one point, when she asked who the first grade teacher was, I had to say, “Oh, um…was your son in Edward’s class, or in Elizabeth’s?” and she said, a little confused, “…Edward’s.” And later I realized she’d at one point said the name of Edward’s and her son’s kindergarten teacher, so I could have avoided the whole awkward thing by a method known as Figuring It Out From Other Clues, if I hadn’t been so nervous about talking on the phone that all my brain function was concentrating on Not Dying. But she is probably not even thinking of that now, while I’m replaying it and cringing.

********

Another parent called shortly afterward to find out the same thing, and I didn’t answer the phone because I was putting Henry to bed. I should have just called her back, especially after the relative success of the call I’d taken (it went really well except for that one awkward moment). But I couldn’t do it, so I found her email address and emailed her back. “Crutch” has come to be a disdainful word, but that fails to take into account its usefulness in the case of a bum leg.

********

I took a writing job. Then, after I accepted it, a detail was added: it would involve talking on the phone. I spent two hours telling myself I am not totally unable to handle a phone call: look, I just talked to someone on the phone a few minutes ago, and I only made one blunder and it was of the sort probably she is not even thinking about now. A normal working person can occasionally handle working on the phone, even if it’s a corded phone that won’t reach to the computer. This is not impossible even if it feels impossible. Perhaps my mother could babysit all the children or something; I could email her and figure out a schedule, and then go buy a cordless phone.

Then I thought of the situation instead as one in which I wouldn’t be involved at all if it had mentioned phone work to begin with. Only one child was home when I took that other phone call, and even so it was a struggle to talk while keeping him quiet. And…I don’t WANT to take a job that involves the telephone, and that seems like an okay thing to choose, like choosing not to work in fast food. So I chose not to take the job, since it was a different job than the one I’d accepted. It’s hard to tell when something is “backing away from a fear” and when it’s “knowing one’s limitations / not accepting a contract that changed after it was signed.”

This started with Saly mentioning that she might color Lucy’s hair pink for the summer—maybe just the ends, for easy trimming-off before school started. That’s when I put the Manic Panic Cotton Candy Pink in my Amazon cart. When I’d had enough time to think/fret about it, I ordered it. It arrived in the mail yesterday, and Elizabeth and I started in on it as soon as she got home from school.

Ideally, hair should be bleached before Manic-Panic-ing. Not only does this let you start with a white canvas, it apparently makes the hair more porous and thus more willing to absorb and hold the color. But I didn’t want to bleach Elizabeth’s hair, at least not until we’d experimented with NOT bleaching.

First I washed her hair in the sink, using a clarifying shampoo and no conditioner.

Damp hair, checking out the jar of Manic Panic

I combed it and divided it first into two sections as if I were going to do ponytails, and then divided each of those two sections into two sections. Four sections total, if you follow me.

I took gloopy pinches of the color with my fingers and smooshed it into the hair. This is the step I would do better next time: I’d get a brush so I could paint it on, and I might put the hair into the baggies (or onto pieces of plastic wrap) FIRST, rather than trying to cram gloopy hair into the baggies post-glooping with my gloopy hands.

I used about a third of the jar, because I’d read online that people generally use one or two full jars on a whole head of hair, and I was doing just the bottom half of a child’s hair. I was glad I’d read that, because it encouraged me to make sure there was a lot of color on the hair.

When the hair seemed gloopy enough, I put each section into a plastic baggie (non-zip type) and then used a hair elastic to make a ponytail that included the baggie.

It’s hard to tell in the photo, but it was a surprisingly pretty effect—like a hair tutu

I’d read that heat helps to set the color, so I used a blow-dryer on the baggies until she complained about the heat—a minute or so on each baggie. We did this three or four times during the waiting process.

The jar says to leave the color on for 30 minutes, but apparently nobody does that: the people giving tips online leave it on overnight or even for a day or two. We left it on for about four hours, until bedtime. Then we took off the baggies and I rinsed her hair in the sink, and blow-dried it so we could see the color right away.

It’s SUBTLE, which was a little disappointing and also a relief. If it had been clown-pink, I probably would have felt alarmed. As it is, it’s definitely visible but I don’t think it would immediately catch the eye of a passerby.

This was super fun and I want to try it again and maybe do a streak in my own hair. I’ll be interested to see how long the color lasts, especially since she has swimming lessons most of the summer. I’d also like to try a Kool-Aid dye as recommended by Erica (here’s the tutorial Erica linked to: How to Dye Hair With Kool-Aid). We would have started with that, in fact, but our grocery store doesn’t carry the non-sugared-already Kool-Aid, and I haven’t quested for it at other stores yet.

Recently I’ve been trying to find ways to boost myself out of feeling overwhelmed. For example, I’ll remind myself of the many times I’ve had to learn that it can be so much easier to remove the source of overwhelmitude than to continue to be overwhelmed by it. Like when a pile of Christmas card supplies (admittedly a daunting pile of things that needed to be put away in places all over the house) got knocked off the table onto the dining room floor by a child (admittedly an annoying and unfair situation), and I let it sit there for literally MONTHS before spending (again literally) less than five minutes to clean it up. And then I sat there thinking about how that messy heap had oppressed me almost every day. What a bargain that was: probably hours and hours of oppression to save myself five minutes! which eventually had to be spent anyway!

So. Today I felt all motivated, ready to start TACKLING things instead of letting them fester. And I thought, “I have some time! I’ll clean the bathroom! It oppresses me many times a day!” So I started cleaning it, and I am continuing to be literal when I say that in the first five minutes of unpleasant cleaning (it was hot and stuffy in the bathroom, and of course I hate/resent cleaning it or else I wouldn’t be putting it off), FOUR CHILDREN knocked on the door saying they needed to go to the bathroom.

I gave patient “I’m cleaning in here—use the downstairs bathroom” replies to the first two children, but then made the classic error of dealing with a SERIES of individuals as if they are all the SAME individual (an example of this is when a clerk treats a customer as if that single customer needs something explained to them for the thousandth time, rather than being the thousandth person to need it explained), and I snapped at the third child and yelled at the fourth.

Later, the fourth child asked me if I was still crabby, and I said yes, but added that at this point I was more crabby about having been crabby: I’d had time to come up with and feel bad about the clerk analogy. But I was ALSO still PLAIN crabby: my goal was so reasonable, and the interruptions were so reasonable (though FOUR children needing to go to the bathroom in the same five-minute interval is not QUITE in need of the word “so” before the word “reasonable”), and yet together those two reasonable things caused a situation that felt completely unreasonable and impossible to handle, which is another way to say OVERWHELMING.

Although I’ve learned again and again from examples like the one where it was so relatively easy to pick up and put away the Christmas card stuff, I’ve ALSO learned again and again from examples like today’s attempt to clean the bathroom: it really WASN’T worth it.

I dreamed awhile back that I went to the doctor because I was feeling so tired, and she discovered I was pregnant. She did an ultrasound since I had no idea when I could have conceived (and was, in the dream, counting backwards to Paul’s snip) (fun fact: at the time of the dream, it had been fourteen weeks), and she said I was fourteen weeks along (which means conception would have been two weeks AFTER the snip, but my dream brain is apparently oblivious to such obstetrical details) and she also told me that the baby was a girl (she added “Every so often I can tell this early!”—my brain’s solution to the problem of how she could possibly know). I wonder if you were able to follow that in spite of all the parenthetical remarks.

In the dream I first got a rush of happy excitement, then a rush of anxiety about telling Paul. Then I thought I’d like to get a paternity test done when the baby was born—not because Paul would kick up any fuss, but because if _I_ were Paul and _I’D_ had a snip and MY wife were pregnant, I would…well, I imagine I’d get a certain peace of mind from having the test done, but I sure as no longer shootin’ wouldn’t want to ask for it or imply there was any need for it.

And then in the dream I thought, “Oh. But I LIKED Henry being the baby of the family. And I LIKED Elizabeth being the only/special girl.”

********

If you’re trying to severely reduce sugar in your diet, and you do really well for awhile but then one day a doughnut and a candy bar go RIGHT DOWN, seemingly before you’ve even had a chance to evaluate the wisdom of such a move—are there any disaster-moderating things to do next? I’m thinking along the lines of “Quick, eat some protein to moderate the insulin impact!”—smart sciencey stuff like that.

********

Elizabeth wanted cupcakes as her birthday dessert. I’d seen other people bringing in cupcakes to school with the child’s age piped onto the cupcakes, so I did that for Elizabeth’s. It turns out that “six-year-old party” = “inadvertent Mark of the Beast theme”.

*******

From Miz S, a post I think she should send to a teacher magazine for publication, it’s so perfect. If there are teacher magazines. I’m kind of assuming there are teacher magazines. There SHOULD BE teacher magazines. Anyway, I read it twice through, riveted and emotional. It wasn’t even the POINT of the post that got to me, it was more the way it gave me one of those neat brief glimpses into what it’s like to be someone else.

From Jive Turkey, a post about whether we can avoid doing unto our children what our parents do unto us. She hits that perfect mark of thought-provoking and introspective, mixed with little shots of comic relief.

A longer essay from Shit My Dad Says—special for Father’s Day. That guy makes me laugh until I cry.

Lakeline linked to a post from PajamasMedia, a kind and compassionate set of tips for how to avoid appearing crazy on the internet (when you really ARE crazy).

I hope you won’t mind if I agitate fretfully to you for a couple a few seven paragraphs about a stressful morning, none of which is a Big Deal but all of which is otherwise going to have to be vented to Paul the minute he walks in the door and I try not to do that. And if you DO mind (and I don’t blame you one bit: YOU just walked in the door TOO), you can skip down to the bottom where there’s a link that made me cry in a more positive sort of way.

This morning the twins had their 6-year-old check-up. Edward has lost several pounds in the last year, and he was none too plump to begin with. Elizabeth has gained only half a pound in the last year. Both of them seem healthy, but these new measurements mean their height and weight percentiles have drifted apart to a point that caused the doctor to hem and haw throughout the appointment, wondering if/what he should do. Because on one hand: both children look/seem fine. But on the other hand: unexplained weight loss is one of red-light-alert markers of Issues. But back to the first hand: it can also be a normal part of growth. But back to the other hand: Edward is a little pale and has under-eye circles, and it’s hard to know if that’s He Gets It From His Mother, or if it’s More Markers. And both of them are a little PICKY with the eating, so perhaps a nutritional thing? Hem, hem, haw, haw.

The pediatrician finally came down on the side of “I’m sure they’re both fine, but…” and he sent Edward for blood work. (Elizabeth did gain SOME weight, and her percentiles didn’t gap as much further as Edward’s did, and she doesn’t have under-eye circles, so for now he’s not sending her.)

Have you…accompanied a child for a blood-draw? Oh dear mercy. I should have known from the expression on the technician’s face, which was the look of someone hoping the kidney stone at least passes quickly if it can’t pass painlessly. I’d mistaken it for “not having a good day,” but no, it was the face of experience.

In case you have a similar event in your future, Edward would like you to know that it hurts more than a mosquito bite and it was very scary and it went on much longer than he expected. I too was surprised how long it went on, and how many adults (three) it took to keep still even a child who is TRYING to hold still. I think if I had to do it again, I’d prepare the child by saying things like “It will seem like it’s going to go on FOREVER, but it will not, and the more you can hold still, the faster it will go and the less it will hurt; it may seem very scary and weird, and it IS scary and weird, but it’s also fine and it’s what’s supposed to happen, and I will be right there with you, and I have had this done too and it was weird but fine.” (I would also put in more solid information about what exactly would happen, but I’m sparing those of you who would rather not think about it.)

Afterward, I made it worse by being too shaken to remember I’d said BEFORE the appointment that on our way out AFTER the appointment we could get a package of Doritos from the vending machine to eat with lunch. We were all the way home, and Edward almost halfway back to normal, when he realized. So instead we had lunch at Wendy’s, and something is going wrong with the Wendy’s near us so the order was screwed up in three different ways, one of which was the “Assembling everything else right away even though there’s a 5-minute wait on one item, which means everything else gets cold/melted” error, and that added to my frazzled/unsettled feeling.

ALSO, Elizabeth got to skip the blood draw but she got referred to an ENT for her enlarged tonsils, which do look alarming. I’d never noticed them until the dentist mentioned them, and even I could tell something wasn’t right: they take up nearly her whole throat. So I had to call the specialist and make an appointment, and that meant having to work through a suspicious receptionist who seemed to think I might be trying to SNEAK IN a visit to an ENT. And she kept asking me questions like “Do you have our business card?” which, why/how would I have their business card? And then she said I needed to call my insurance company to get a referral, and I said I had a referral, and she said no the other kind of referral, and also I would need to call my insurance company, and I said okay and thank you very much and wished an oxygen mask would drop out of my phone at times like this.

I called the insurance company and had to dial THREE TIMES before I got into the system, because I kept messing up (OMG SO MANY “For ___, press 8” menus, with the options spoken SO SLOWLY and none of them what I needed), and then I finally got through to someone, and she was nice as toast, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to a nicer insurance person. But still. I didn’t have the address of the ENT doctor I’d made the appointment with, and after she very nicely went to see if she could look it up, I realized I DID have at least a PARTIAL address (street and city) that would have been helpful. And then I didn’t have the ENT doctor’s first name, and didn’t know how to spell his last name, and ack. And then she confirmed that it was fine to see him, and she was wrapping up the call when I said, “Wait, and do I need some sort of…other referral?,” and OH YES INDEED I DO. And to get this referral, I had to CALL BACK the pediatrician and ask for it. Meanwhile, of course I was thinking I DID have “a referral from my pediatrician,” since I had a piece of paper that said across the top “Thistletown Pediatrics Referral”. Could this perhaps be made a little less confusing SOMEHOW?

********

Perhaps because of being rather TENDER from this morning’s events, I started crying IMMEDIATELY after clicking through a link Paul sent me to Dear Photograph. People line up a photo against the real life background. I don’t know why that’s so very, very touching, but it just IS. I suppose it’s in the category of “Time: Oh How It Flees.” I don’t think the “Dear Photograph” format for the captions works (wait, WHO is writing WHAT to WHOM?), but the photos themselves are great.