I am cranky at a book. It’s The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard, and it’s probably not the book’s fault.

Isn’t the cover pretty? It makes me want to paint some of those colors on walls.
(photo from Amazon.com)

The thing is, I like books WRAPPED UP. I want loose ends TIED, and I want mysteries EXPLAINED. I like to know WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. Which reminds me: I’m cranky at another book, too. It’s The False Friend, by Myla Goldberg.

(image from Amazon.com)

If a book uses a BIG MYSTERY (in both books, a missing girl) for its momentum, then at the end I want to know the whole story. I don’t agree with readers who say “Well, but in REAL LIFE we wouldn’t know!” This is not real life, this is fiction, and I want to know. If I don’t get the answer, that says to me that the author didn’t know either: she just wrote it all mysterious-like to make it suspenseful, but she took the lazy way out and didn’t find a way that all those clues could make SENSE. I once emailed Jodi Picoult to DEMAND the answer to a mystery she left unsolved in one of her books, and she emailed me back that the ending is what we make of it. NO. The ending is what the AUTHOR makes of it. That is the author’s job. My job is to read it.

The Fates Will Find Their Way is distinctive for two reasons:

1. It is written in first person plural (we thought this, we did that). This is such an unusual style, I was constantly thinking of the only other book I’ve read that used this style (Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris, a book I thought I hated for the first fifty pages, after which I loved it). It is a VERY STRANGE style.

2. Even more distractingly, it’s a female author writing on behalf of a group of boys/men. I ALMOST ALWAYS hate this. My attitude is “You have failed to acquire authorization to represent this point of view.” You’d think I’d feel that way about ALL books with non-author narrators (“Who are you to write as if you were Mary, Queen of Scots??”), but I don’t: it’s the male/female thing only. I think it’s because that is SUCH a minefield already, what one sex assumes the other sex is thinking and feeling. I feel it less with a female author and a male narrator, of course, because I’m not personally offended when a woman makes assumptions about how a man’s mind works—but I still think, “Hey.” And I wince if it seems personal/private and negative. Since this particular female author is writing for a whole GROUP of men, I was even more sensitive to it: by attributing thoughts/feelings to a group as if there was consensus to support her claims, it was more serious than if she were claiming it only for one character.

Both books deal heavily with teenager stuff: teenage emotions, teenage cruelties, teenage traumas. The Fates Will Find Their Way deals CONSIDERABLY MORE with teenage sexuality than I would like to read about (this was one of the parts where I repeatedly thought the author should not be writing on behalf of the opposite sex); The False Friend put more emphasis on teenage cruelty. Both books made me feel uneasy about my own children entering this age.

Both of these books held me absolutely riveted, and neither one of them paid off in the currency I prefer to tender. If you LIKE books that reflect real life, in that they leave you hanging and you never find out what happened (I’ve seen reviewers saying they liked the food for thought, or enjoyed the way it made them reflect upon the mysteries of life and how little we know about the Truth, etc., etc.) (though, I find it possible to THINK without the element of CONFUSION present), then BY ALL MEANS you should read these because they were GREAT until they omitted their satisfying-resolution, mystery-finally-revealed endings.

THE PARTY IS OVER. It is done! Everything was fine! Although I am still STEEPING IN EMPATHY for a boy who was still there when everyone else had been picked up, saying to me, “I’m sorry” and “You can just go and I can wait here.” *HEART CLENCH* This made me wish SO PROFOUNDLY for the knack of putting people at their ease in awkward situations. I TRIED, but he was still unhappy and embarrassed. I would have used that skill on his mother, too, when she arrived saying “I’M SO SORRY. I’M SO EMBARRASSED” (she hadn’t changed her watch for the time change).

For statistical use: we sent out ten invitations; we got five RSVPs, all yes; we got a sixth RSVP-yes the night before, apologizing for forgetfulness and asking if it was still okay and saying she totally understood if it wasn’t (full mercy awarded); we also had one where we didn’t get an RSVP but it was William’s best friend and she told him yes verbally, and it would have been such a colossal disaster if she COULDN’T come we would have expected an enormous kerfuff in that case, so anyway we felt confident she’d be there.

The three who didn’t RSVP didn’t come to the party. Of the four possible RSVP screw ups (RSVP yes but don’t show, RSVP no but show up; no RSVP but show; no RSVP but no show), that one is the easiest to let slide—but GEEZ I wish they’d have RSVP’d a “no,” because then we could have invited other kids to take those slots (the party package allowed 15 children maximum, and was still the same total price even if there were fewer children), because there were several that William had a very hard time deciding among. (William decided to invite all his siblings, so that’s the other four, plus William himself counts as one, if you’re doing the math.) I wish I could have come up with a good way of spelling out the “please tell us if you can’t come so we can invite a second-stringer” thing on the invitations. Well. Anyway. It’s OVER, and that’s the important thing.

Cake statistics: William wanted chocolate cake with vanilla frosting, so I made one 9×13 chocolate cake with vanilla frosting and one 9×13 yellow cake with vanilla frosting. Of 12 party guests, 10 wanted the yellow cake. THIS BLEW MY MIND.

You know what is working pretty well? “You can’t play with your presents until you’ve written your thank-you notes.”

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If you are both FULL and TALL (particularly FULL) of calf, but you want to wear knee socks, I recommend the “over the knee” style. Target has some at 75% off right now, and I bought some to wear under my air cast. The over-the-knee kind go right up to just under my knee, the way regular knee socks are supposed to. However, may I advise against the argyle? It seems the argyle is knit to look correct only on the unfilled sock; it would warp even on a narrow calf, but on my own calf there is comical warpage. Stripes! Stripes are good! And the diamond pattern (non-argyle, just teal/white/navy diamonds) works okay too.

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You are wondering how we went from intense yellow to white paint for our room. It was something like this:

Step 1: Swistle dithers for hours over various shades of blue, green, yellow, etc.

Step 2: Paul says he wants bright yellow.

Step 3: Swistle dithers for hours over various shades of bright yellow, feeling anxious about how yellow will go with the quilt, and also feeling anxious about how yellow allegedly causes anxiety and depression.

Step 4: Paul sighs discontentedly when shown Swistle’s preferred bright yellows, and says he wants the ones Swistle can’t tolerate. Then he says the most important thing is that SWISTLE chooses what SHE wants. But SHE was trying to choose among what HE wanted, and he still wasn’t pleased.

Step 5: Swistle goes into paint-color-choosing shock.

Step 6: Paul says he’s buying the paint on the way home from work the next day, and Swistle needs to tell him what to buy. Swistle declines to reply.

Step 7: Paul emails from work: he’s bringing home a paint color, and if Swistle doesn’t tell him which one he will close his eyes and choose one at random.

Step 8: Swistle emails back: “White. The same Sea Salt I felt the paint clerk showed insufficient enthusiasm for when I chose it for the dining room.”

Step 9: Paul emails back that this makes no sense and that Swistle should choose what SHE WANTS. What was that bright yellow she liked, again?

Step 10: Swistle emails back that yellow was what PAUL wanted, and that the ideal color with the quilt is a shade of Swistle Blue, but Swistle now associates that color with Swistleness and doesn’t want it in the bedroom, and also she likes green but there are no greens she wants, and also WHITE IS WHAT SHE WANTED TO BEGIN WITH, OH CAN’T WE GET WHITE? It will look right with the quilt AND with the pictures, AND will still look good if we change to a different quilt!

Step 11: Paul comes home with a gallon of Sea Salt and paints the bedroom with it. It’s great. Paul takes out the old icky carpet and Swistle makes the children wash the floor.

Step 12: This is not part of the paint-choosing process, but anyway we move our bed into that room and sleep there for the first time last night, and Swistle lies awake thinking THIS HAS ALL BEEN A TERRIBLE MISTAKE and she wants her old room back because THIS IS ALL WRONG and SHE HATES EVERYTHING.

Step 13: Swistle takes a sleeping pill and feels better in the morning, especially when it turns out we get morning light in our new room, which we didn’t get in our old room.

I’m reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and probably I should have put it back on the shelf as soon as I realized it was an Oprah’s Book Club choice: those are INEVITABLY depressing and full of traumatizing events from beginning to end. But now I’m more than 250 pages into it and feel like if there IS some ray of happiness anywhere in the story, I MUST find it: I’m too invested in the characters to leave them stranded in an Oprah book.

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You know what color we’re painting our room? White. You heard me.

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Links:

From the Milk and Cookies blog: green Etsy earrings, which is not an overly specific thing to write about.

From the baby name blog: The father likes the names Branch and Jimmy; the mother likes the names Henry and Corbin.

At Whoopee, I recommend I Would Hate to Go Out With Me. My favorite part is the portrait of the overwhelmed father. I think she should totally sell custom versions of that: people could submit an order with their own Custom Stressy Things and Custom Male Hair Patterns. Or perhaps you would like to read A Cautionary Horse Story, in which the Dalai Lama stops some poo-kicking horses.

Do you remember two months ago when I fell down the stairs with my foot still caught on the rubber dinosaur that caused the fall, so that it got left behind me and I landed on top of my ankle? No, probably not—I mean, _I_ had to look it up. Anyway, that foot has been SLIGHTLY hurty and SLIGHTLY swollen ever since. But I couldn’t quite get up the resolve to go to the doctor about something that was only SLIGHTLY bothersome, and besides, I couldn’t think of anything bad it could be. But then it started hurting and swelling a little more, and I noticed a bony bump up higher on my calf, so I finally went to the doctor this week.

I get to wear an air cast for two weeks. I’m not sure why, though: the doctor I saw speaks English only partially, and I was already in High Anxiety mode (social contact! uncertainty! doctors! stress about correctly communicating the exact nature of the problem! stress that it was silly for me to be at the doctor for this! stress that they would do a dozen tests my insurance wouldn’t pay for and then say “Huh! Looks fine!”) so I had trouble listening ANYWAY. She also told me to take three ibuprofen four times daily, but it doesn’t HURT enough for that, so I don’t really want to take a whole bunch of ibuprofen for nothing—but did she mean to bring the swelling down? I’m not sure. THIS IS WHY I HATE GOING TO THE DOCTOR. But I have my air cast on. I have to wear it with lace-up shoes, and normally I wear mary janes, so I feel weird.

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Next, if you think choosing paint colors is about as exciting as watching those paint colors dry, then you can safely skip the rest of the post: that’s all there is, is more dithering about shades of yellow. There’s no third section with something more interesting in it.

You may remember my nice understated yellows (and for those of you who thought they looked like bandaids, I direct you to Favorite Paint Colors (THANK YOU OH BRILLIANT ONE), where she has a photo of a room done in Manila Tint, the most bandaidy of the colors, which on the wall is a very pleasant non-caucasian-flesh-toned yellow (and in fact, too yellow for me to like it).

ANYWAY, it’s a moot point because Paul says he doesn’t want a warm soft muted yellow (I tend toward brownish ones that have words like “honey” and “pollen” and grain” in them), he wants a SHOCKING INTENSE YELLOW. He said “Like the orange in our bathroom, but yellow.” The orange in our bathroom is almost NEON in some lights.

Well. The thing is, it turns out I like yellow less the clearer and more crayon-like it gets. But HE doesn’t like lilac, and he nevertheless pushed us to use the glowing lilac I liked in our computer room, just because I liked it. So I am inclined to Go With This—especially since even though I’m not crazy about yellow, if we’re GOING to do yellow I prefer shocking over pastel. However, I would like to steer us away from Child’s-Paintbox Yellow and toward something more like College-Team-Colors Gold. Here’s a screen shot from Behr.com, where you can use their ColorSmart program to try colors on walls. This one is called Twenty Carat 310B-6, and don’t scroll too far because I want you to first see this one alone without the yellow that comes after it:

I vastly prefer that sort of color to bright crayon/daycare yellow, which to me is more like this (Vibrant 370B-6):

(And if you’re thinking, “Wait, WHAT?,” it might be that we have different impressions of colors but it’s even more likely that our monitors have different color calibrations: these colors on Paul’s computer looked SO DIFFERENT he had to use my computer. ((We tested which person’s computer was “right” by plugging in colors we’ve already used. His computer showed our bright orange as a sort of pinkish melon.)) )

That second one makes me feel depressed (I know, I know, who feels “depressed” in the face of SUNSHINE YELLOW? I don’t get it either), and it looks like a nursery or a classroom or a library children’s room to me—one in which the painter underestimated the impact of the yellow they were choosing. The first one, I can live with and maybe even like: it looks orangey compared to the second one, but of course the second one would not be present for comparison so no problem. But I showed them to Paul, and indeed the second one is what he has in mind, and he made a subtle dissatisfied/resigned face at the first one.

First you need a little background information, which is that the computer room is off the hallway, and the door swings open into the computer room. The frame around that door has been weird since we moved in: it comes gradually unpried, but hammering it back down doesn’t seem to help, and some parts WON’T hammer down, and some parts pry up AS you hammer other parts down, so there’s always weird gaps and we’re aware that something is amiss or warped or something, but neither of us is much of a fix-it type.

So, okay, what happened was that I was very crabby with the constant interrupting (not “We need basic care!” interruptions, but more the “He said I was THREE but I’m FIVE!” and “He’s THINKING that I’m a baby!!” interruptions), and I told the children I was going to shut the door so I could finish proofreading, but I didn’t SHUT it so much as SLAM it with a SHOVE, and the part of the frame that’s been kind of broken suddenly broke significantly MORE, so that the door went a little bit through the frame the wrong way, toward the hallway, and got completely wedged: I couldn’t pull it back toward me at all.

I said to the children that this is one of many reasons we don’t slam doors, and I asked them to try flinging their little bodies against it. That didn’t work either, though they enjoyed it and wanted to keep trying. I tugged on the doorknob some more, but no. Elizabeth said the little gold thing was in the way, and I said “Do you mean the little gold square right next to the door knob?” and she said yes, but I still wasn’t confident we were talking about the same thing so I drew a little picture and slid it under the door and she said yes that was the thing.

See how that would be? The door pushed through the frame, and then that little thing clicked across the edge of the frame and held the door where it was, so I couldn’t pull it back toward me. I turned the doorknob back and forth, but Elizabeth reported the little thing didn’t move. I asked the kids to try pushing the little thing in, but they said it wouldn’t move. I tried moving the lock on the doorknob from unlocked to locked and back again; no effect. So I tried taking off the doorknob. First I used the tip of a scissors, but then I thought to check my desk and sure enough I had a little flathead screwdriver I hadn’t put away the last time I’d used it, so yay for being kind of untidy.

But after I took off the doorknob, the little thingie was still sticking out, still preventing the door from being pulled back toward me, and still unmovable. I looked to see if the hinges had screws I could remove, but no, not on my side of the door.

I sat back and evaluated the situation. On the up side, I wasn’t shut away from any infants or toddlers: all three children would be fine and could understand the situation. I was also indoors, and could talk to the children easily through the door. I would not need to resort to, say, having a child call the fire department, and having firefighters break me out (*CRINGE*).

Also, I had on my side of the door my computer AND the remains of my box of Russell Stover Bloopers. Also, I’d given in to the siren song of the leftover fried rice at 10:00, so I wasn’t going to be uncomfortably hungry. I also had a full basket of dirty laundry I could pee in if necessary: the last year or so of dealing with cat-peed bedding has made this seem like a normal thought to have. In fact, it was a little tempting not to even try real hard with the door. “Oops, guess I’ll have to play on my computer and eat chocolates all day! Sorry, children!”

On the down side, it was less than an hour until time to start lunch so the twins could go to kindergarten. They would have to miss kindergarten. Cheesing, yes; disastrous, no. But I wouldn’t be able to call them in absent, because there is no phone in the computer room.

Oh! I didn’t have a phone, but I had EMAIL! I could email my parents! They are right up the street! It would be embarrassing to say that I got stuck because I had a flash of temper and slammed a door, but they DO remember my teenaged years so… Plus, I’m telling YOU ALL, so clearly I’m not THAT excruciatingly embarrassed. And my dad could PUSH the door into the room even if I couldn’t PULL it, and he could probably figure out what to do with the little doorknob thingie too. …Oh wait. My parents are gone all day to an appointment. I could email Paul, but it’s more than an hour’s drive and then we’d lose half a day of his pay.

This is where I spent some more time yanking with renewed effort on the doorknob, wondering if I could channel panic into some extra strength. (No.) I also fiddled some more with where the doorknob used to be, seeing if I could figure out how to remove or tamper with the mechanism that was keeping the little doorknob thing in its locked position. (No.) I also used the screwdriver and a pair of scissors to see if I could pry the door back in my direction at all. (No.) I also flung myself at it for awhile, to see if I could push it all the way through to the hall. (No.)

I turned my attention to the window. I could easily remove the screen and climb out. But we have a raised ranch, also known as a split foyer; whatever you call it, the gist is that the first floor is 1.5 stories off the ground, not the usual 1. And right under our window is the branchy remains of a shrub: not enough to support a descent, just enough to make it dangerously impaley.

One window over, our ladder leaned against the house. I spent a little time wishing I’d slammed the door to THAT room. Then I told the twins to get on their coats and boots. We spent fifteen minutes with me leaning out the window trying to move the ladder using remote twin-power, but it was a total failure: it was too heavy and bulky for them, and they couldn’t really move it using the anti-having-a-ladder-fall-on-them positions I was advocating.

I looked at the clock. It was 20 minutes until I would need to start the pre-kindergarten routine. I had to decide: were we staying home from kindergarten and having a weird afternoon where I would have the children forage for what food they could manage to get for themselves? Or was I going to confirm my long-standing theory that if I REALLY WANTED TO I could break a locked door down just like in a movie—with the understanding that I would do some serious damage to the frame, since I would be pushing the door OUT (the way it doesn’t usually swing at all) instead of IN like in the movies.

I tested my theory. Slamming into it worked a little, but not enough. I remembered that kicking was better for those of us with our body strength concentrated lower. I kicked, then kicked higher and harder, then kicked higher-still and harder-still, and I broke the whole frame out of the wall and I was out.

I emailed Paul at work and he asked why I didn’t just take the pins out of the hinges. “Pins”?

This is the part of choosing paint colors that makes Paul say “I KNOW WHAT! LET’S JUST USE THAT LILAC COLOR YOU LIKED!”:

But they are all so very DIFFERENT

(Here’s the quilt I’d love to have work with the walls; good idea, Rah!)

I have either a strong case of denial, or a strong case of disorganization, or a strong case of avoidance, or perhaps some sort of unholy trifecta situation, because William’s big birthday party is a week from today and I haven’t even sent out the invitations.

I’m appalled, and yet “being appalled” did not have its usual mobilizing effect: even though I started being appalled a week ago today (when I thought, “OMG, the party is in two weeks and I haven’t even sent out the invitations!”), it was only yesterday that we printed out the invitations, and only today that we put them in envelopes and bought the stuff for the favor bags. “Panic” was apparently required for this.

One of the major immobilizing issues for me has been this: The school has in previous years (though not this year, I don’t think) reminded parents that invitations can’t be handed out at school unless everyone in the class is invited—but I don’t have the addresses of William’s classmates, so….? I could have William get each address, and I guess that would be the only option, but doesn’t that draw EVEN MORE attention to the party? I see what the school is trying to do here, but I’m not sure they’ve thought this out.

What I did was lecture William for an entire 20-minute car ride on the importance of kindness and discretion. We discussed that he should hand over each invitation as inconspicuously as possible, with a quiet “Not everyone is being invited, so…” And if any classmates confronted him about not being invited, he could blame us, saying “My parents would only let me invite a certain number of people,” which should be said in kind and regretful tones, not defensive and angry ones.

But this has brought to my attention another problem: I can’t call parents to nag them about RSVPing, because I DON’T HAVE ANYONE’S PHONE NUMBER EITHER. Which I guess is just as well, since William won’t be handing out the invitations until tomorrow, and that doesn’t really give enough time for a decent RSVP window followed by another batch of invitations and a second decent RSVP window. Anyone who gets invited on, say, Friday, is going to think either, “Oh, I see: second string” or else “Who issues invitations two days before a party??”

But then, what about the thank-you notes? I suppose those too will have to be brought discreetly to school. ACK.

As I’ve mentioned perhaps meepillion times before, I like to do Postcrossing. It started as a way to cull and cultivate my postcard collection (“Why do I keep buying postcards when I never SEND them? And how can I get postcards from ____ without traveling there?”), but it has turned into something I’d be reluctant to admit to friends: pre-buying new postcard sets on Amazon.com; storing the cards sorted into clementine crates so I can find the right one for each recipient; sheet after sheet of stamps so I can use, say, a Ronald Reagan, a Shelter pet cat, and an American clock, instead of the boring 98-cent stamp; etc…. *drifts into postcard reverie*

DomestiKook and I were discussing one of the BIGGEST THINGS about Postcrossing, which is “What do you WRITE on the postcard?” It’s to a total stranger and you’ll never write to them again. Some people write “Happy Postcrossing!”—which has led a surprising number of people to put in their profiles that they want the sending to “WRITE something, not just ‘Happy Postcrossing’!”

I will tell you what I do. I write: “Hello! I’m [age], married, with 5 children and 3 cats. We live in the [adjective describing size] [adjective describing area of country] state of [name of state]. -Kristen” (sometimes I accidentally start to write Swistle).

If I have lots more space or feel more chatty, I might add something about our state: “We’re known for [food item], [character trait of residents], and [scenic attraction].” Or “This postcard is of ________.” If the recipient has expressed a liking for something I like, I’ll say, “Oh, I like ____ too!” If they’ve described their cats in surprising detail (age, sex, coloring, temperament, fur length), I’ll describe my cats in similar detail. You could also write “I’m a [profession],” “I can’t have pets where I live now but when I can I’d like to have a ____,” “I like to [athletic activity] and watch [type of movie] movies,” “My favorite authors are ______,” “My favorite celebrities are ________,” “We’ve been married for ____ years,” “We used to live in ____,” “I was born in ____,” “My ancestors came from [country] in [year].”

Paul thinks this is kind of boring, but I like it when I receive postcards that say those sorts of things.

Some people like to write secrets, and that can be fun too. I got one that said “I will tell you a secret: I’m in love with my best friend. I’m going to tell him this afternoon!” (My reaction was more “NOOOOOOooooooooo!” than “Yay, I’ll bet it’s going to work out great for them!”) (I’ve read the book He’s Just Not That Into You.)

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Links:

From the Milk and Cookies blog: letting a child wrap a gift, without losing your mind and half a roll of wrapping paper.

From the baby name blog: Can you use the name Natalie for a baby who wasn’t born at Christmastime?

From Hilarity in Shoes, I suggest two posts: Two Times a Bridesmaid in which she does NOT kill rabbits with her mind, and Whine School / In Lieu of a Revelation, in which a professor refers to Canada as “a purely agricultural society.”

I saw a flock of robins today. A whole FLOCK. I’ve seen more than one robin at a time before, but always scattered, as if they weren’t TOGETHER-together and instead just happened to be occupying the same yard. I don’t think of them as flockers. I hope this means we are having an EXTRA GOOD spring.

(I looked it up, and apparently they DO flock, but mostly at night—they split up during the day. Also, Robin’s Egg Blue is a very pretty color.)

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I remember at some point mentioning that my favorite piece in the Russell Stover assortment box is the Roman Nougat, and then I got all excited because I found out I could order a WHOLE BOX of JUST Roman Nougats online, but then they were out of stock. Anyway, they finally came back into stock, so I ordered a whole box of dark and a whole box of milk (I HAD to, to get free shipping, and also I couldn’t decide which ones I preferred). (And incidentally, it turns out that the See’s Rum Nougats have kind of spoiled the Roman Nougats for me, but let’s not let that ruin the story.)

WELL. Before I hit “place order now,” I noticed an OUTLET section, and in the outlet section was a box of “Bloopers”: a 3-pound box (it says “48 ounce,” but there is a cross-wiring in my brain that ALWAYS makes me think 48 ounces is 4 pounds) (oh, I’ll bet it’s because 48 inches is 4 feet) (anyway, 3-pound box is clearer) (well, unless you usually think in terms of kilograms, in which case it’s like one and a third kilograms) of chocolates that look funny but taste fine, in a random assortment based on what got picked off the line by Quality Control that day.

I was immensely curious about this. I wanted to know HOW badly malformed they were, and also I was intrigued by the idea of the GAMBLE: it could be 2.5 pounds of molasses chews (least favorite) and .4 pounds of truffles (second least favorite) and .1 pounds of vanilla creams (love)! OH WHAT WOULD IT BE? Also, I liked the thought of the workers picking them off the line, pick pick pick, like in videos of factories, gloved hands working fast, hair in white paper caps, serious focused expressions. So I ordered a box.

It was with high anticipation I awaited the arrival. Finally the day came.

Thanks for the cow theme, there.

Here it is!

Inside view

As you can see, Bloopers are just tossed into the box all willy-nilly, so they look scruffed-up from chocolate-on-chocolate action. The defects vary: a few were lightly squashed, but mostly it seems to be either misshapenness (supposed to be round, but had a lumpy part; supposed to be rounded oblong, but too low and rounded), or filling peeking out (convenient for picky picking!).

It appears from the way I arranged the photos that I opened the box of Bloopers right away, but in fact I waited more than a week. I was NERVOUS. (Also, I had some clearance Valentine’s Day candy I was still working my way through, which is how I unfortunately found out the Roman Nougats were now just Fine.)

And…I lucked out. It appears that the ones with a cream filling are most likely to be misshapen or have little bits oozing out of them, or maybe they were just working on creams that day, because almost the whole box is creams, and creams are my favorites. I’ve had about ten that are either maple-walnut or walnut creams and it looks like it’s over a pound of just those, so I can picture someone else being TOTALLY DISMAYED (ack, nuts! ack, maple! ack, creams!) but I love those ones so I could hardly be happier.

I’ve also had several caramels, and one lemon cream, and one vanilla cream, and I see several that are Roman Nougats, and I gave Paul a coconut (I like coconut but he loves them) and a truffle. I ALSO saw one that was definitely a molasses chew (filling peeping out), and I wish they looked different on the outside than the Roman Nougats because I just know I’m going to bite into one by accident. (In some assortments the molasses chews have white stripes, and in some they don’t. In this box, they don’t—and two of the maple walnuts DID. What the? I wonder if sometimes they forget to turn on/off the striping machine? I think I need to go work in their factory to find out the answers to these questions.)

There are no nut ones. I mean, there’s the walnut creams and maple-walnut creams, but there aren’t any nut clusters. It might be that they weren’t working on them that day, or it might be that those are harder to get wrong because they are lumpy by nature.