I feel like we have a whole bunch of unfinished conversations going!

I’ve done two things for my resolution to act on generous impulses. Actually, it’s been three, but I’ve already forgotten one. One of the ones I remember is that I impulsively ordered a box of chocolates for someone else while placing my own order. The other was weirder: I ordered a shirt for a classmate of Elizabeth’s. The story on that is that it was on a really good clearance and I was ordering it in pink for Elizabeth because it’s one of those fake-vintage-ad shirts and the name in the ad happens to be her aunt’s name (my brother’s wife, not Paul’s sister). The shirt also came in purple, and the name of Elizabeth’s aunt is the same as the name of Elizabeth’s friend and classmate who LOVES purple and often comes dressed fully in purple. Boy, that’s a long story. Anyway, it felt like a weird thing to order the shirt for someone else’s child, but I referenced the resolution and DID IT. Then I held onto the shirt for two weeks, fretting about how to phrase the note I’d send with it to the parents I haven’t met. Finally I did it, and got a very nice note back from the child’s mother, and so that was a pleasing thing and I’m glad I did it.

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I DID register Henry for preschool, and I feel happy about the decision. We recently finished paying off our 11-year-old minivan (sigh), and the amount of that payment will significantly assist us in making the preschool payment.

Elizabeth thinks it’s HIGH TIME Henry was CIVILIZED

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There are STILL no more baby fish, so either I’m wrong about the pregnant females or else something has gone wrong with those pregnancies. I’d place my bet on the former, except that they look JUST LIKE the photos I saw online of pregnant platys, and not all the females in the tank look that way: the two I think are pregnant are about twice the thickness in the tum area, plus they have dark marks at the back of the tum, which are supposed to be indicators of pregnancy (the more you know! *shimmer sound*). So what I’m hoping for is that everything is FINE but that I’m wrong about how soon the babies are supposed to be born.

I can’t believe I’m pacing the waiting room over BABY FISH.

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I found all the comments on whether to let William quit the clarinet SO HELPFUL. I waited until he was trapped with me in the car, and then I basically told him all the options you guys mentioned, from “quit altogether” to “stick it out,” with all the options in between, and all the pros and cons of each option (he loved this, of course) (I activated the child-safe locks on the doors first). I told him I want him to get enough exposure to music to know if he likes it or not. He said it’s the clarinet he hates, not music in general, and that he wants to take keyboard next year (it’s offered starting in fifth grade, AFTER a year of other music lessons), and that he’s not particular interested in any of the other instruments he’d be able to switch to this year.

So we decided our goal was to get him through this year so that he can do keyboard next year. In order to accomplish that, and in order to make me feel all right about him keeping commitments (I was frank with him that that was an issue), he will spend half an hour a day (where “a day” is understood by both of us to mean “four or five times a week, not seven”) Doing Music. His options are: (1) Sit in front of his music book with his hands on the clarinet, but I won’t nag him to produce sounds; (2) Actually practice the clarinet; (3) Play our keyboard; (4) Play the recorder; (5) Some other thing, if either of us thinks of something—such as listening to classical albums, or looking on YouTube at videos of people playing instruments.

This has been a moderate success. On one hand, we no longer have to fight about music practice, and he complies right away when I tell him it’s time to do it instead of dissolving into despair. On the other hand, he never ever never ever goes and does it without me telling him to, and I am too scattered to remember it more than, say, twice a week. So a recent modification was that I warned him that it was to his advantage to remember to do it himself: if he remembers, say, 2-4 times a week, I’ll feel like he’s taking care of it and likely won’t notice he isn’t doing it as often as agreed; if he never remembers, I’ll feel like I need to make a chart that ENSURES he does it four or more times per week.

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Elizabeth’s finger is doing well. We probably should have put the big piece of gauze + several bandaids thing on it to begin with, because I think that’s what effectively stopped the bleeding. The next day I just left the bandage on, but it fell off on the bus ride home so I got a look at the cut and it looked fine: nice and clean and healing. I put on a fresh bandaid with no gauze pad.

When my dad read the post, he reminded me that he’s available to help in such situations: he’s been a workshop guy since childhood, and says that you can’t do that for decades without getting accustomed to evaluating cuts. He says it’s easier to evaluate if you look while running cold water over it—which also helps it to stop bleeding. I’ll stop now before anyone (including me) starts feeling woozy, but wanted to pass along the tip.

Last night Elizabeth had earned a behavior reward, which she used to stay up late. That is what she almost always spends her rewards on, which is so pleasingly baffling to me (in the “children are so DIFFERENT—from us and from each other!” sense) because one of her other options is to have a dessert or treat, and she TURNS THAT DOWN in order to stay up an extra hour and a half. Whuh? My 5-year-old self would NEVER have passed by a treat! NEVER!

Anyway, so she was staying up late. And Paul was making salsa, and she likes to sous-chef, so she was cutting a green pepper. She’s recently been allowed to start using sharp knives. Do you see where I’m going with this? She got her first cut.

Paul is…*scrunches forehead in pursuit of delicate word-choice*…a fainter. And so the first I heard of this event was a strange tone to Elizabeth’s voice and then Paul was airlifting her to the bathroom, saying to me “Elizabethgotcut” as he streaked right back away from the scene. She was holding her finger in her other hand and starting to up the tone from “strange” to “screamy.” She didn’t want me to look at it, so I looked briefly and then asked Paul if he thought he could bring me a clean dry washcloth, which he did, backing into the bathroom holding the washcloth out blindly.

There are two things I know to do for cuts: one is to apply pressure, and the other is to elevate. But I held her finger firmly in a washcloth for the next hour and a half, and it didn’t stop bleeding. I would hold it up high for awhile until my arms got sore, and then just hold it at her shoulder-height for awhile. I’d peek at it and…nope, no way are we done with the pressure and elevation. I started to wonder—do we go to the ER now? What’s the ER moment for something like this? I don’t want them to be like, “Oh, did she get a boo-boo? Here’s a $50 bandaid, you rookie.”

Paul looked it up online and in our parenting manual, and all of the answers involved closer looks at the situation than even I could tolerate taking, even if I could see past the bleeding, even if Elizabeth would have permitted such examinations without being strapped down and sedated. Finally it was OUR bedtime, so we bandaged her finger with a large piece of folded gauze and three very firm bandaids, and I guess it did stop bleeding in the night but there is no way I’m taking that bandage off for awhile.

What I kept thinking that whole time was that I STILL don’t know what to do. I STILL don’t know when to call the doctor about croup, and when to just use steam and cold air. I STILL don’t know when it’s an ear infection; I STILL can’t tell the difference between a virus and bronchitis; I STILL don’t know the difference between a normal skin rash and one that needs treatment. I STILL don’t know when to take a child to the ER for a couple of stitches, and when to rig a bandage ten times the size of the finger tip. It’s frustrating to do this job for so long and still feel like I’m in training. I mean, I realize that’s normal: it’s not like I think other parents have magically figured out every single thing and never have moments of uncertainty. But it’s still frustrating to be sitting there at 10:00 at night, dithering about it—and to still be dithering about it the next day.

I made a very stupid mistake eight years ago when my oldest child was about four years old and had just attended his first children’s birthday party. He wanted a similar party for his own birthday. I said, “Those are expensive, and a lot of trouble. Maybe when you turn ten.” I forgot that I was talking to a child who, if he does not become a successful trial attorney and support us richly in our old age, will have to redeem himself in some other way that makes his legalistic, argumentative, “But didn’t YOU say…” personality worth it to have brought unharmed to adulthood. And so anyway when he turned ten he had a party at one of those places with a claw machine and skee ball and air hockey and so forth. Whew! THAT’S over with!

Sadly, I had forgotten the other four children.

Yes, yes, I realize I could say I had changed my mind or that it hadn’t worked out or that life wasn’t fair or WHATEVS, and I DO say such things quite often, but this is an idea the kids are soooooo excited about, and also I’d say nine-tenths of my reluctance is pure social anxiety (the other one-tenth is a mix of “dislike of other people’s children” and “OMG THE COST”), and also I think it’s nice for them to each get to have ONE big fun-location party per childhood, and also it gives me a fast answer every OTHER year (“No, only for the tenth birthday”), and so anyway I’m sticking to this, despite advising everyone I know to avoid making similar commitments because OMG I HATE THIS SO MUCH AND I HAVE TO DO IT FIVE TIMES.

Anyway. William’s ten-year party is coming up. We have booked one of those places where the site shows photos of children who look so unpleasantly out of control, I can’t IMAGINE any parent seeing the photos and then going on to book a party there. Nevertheless, we have done so.

The party may include up to fifteen children, including the Birthday Child. My first layer of agitation is the sending of invitations and the anticipated Total Lack of RSVPing. And they REALLY MUST RSVP (ideally via email), because the party costs the same if fewer than fifteen children come, and so BY GUM WE ARE HAVING FIFTEEN CHILDREN THERE, and so if some kids can’t come we need time to invite other children. So I’m all pre-agitated about THAT, because I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering an RSVP situation, but if not, you would not BELIEVE how few people RSVP. I mean, you’d think, “Well, of course a FEW inconsiderate ungracious ill-mannered wolf-raised PINEHOLES won’t RSVP, but even _I_ can make a few follow-up phone calls, no big!” And then when you are calling EVERY SINGLE PERSON you sent an invitation to, you will start to wonder why you didn’t just call them to invite them in the first place, since at least then it would have been a HAPPY phone call and you wouldn’t have had to deal with the fuss and expense of the paper invitations and stamps.

But what I’m working on NOW is party favors. And goodness, I could drop $50 on party favors and have fifteen frankly-pitiful favor bags. And I would like NOT to do either of the halves of that sentence. And yet I DO want favor bags, because I don’t know about other people’s kids, but those are my kids’ favorite parts of the parties they go to, which makes me wonder if we should just have a party where people arrive, eat cake, and collect bags. Maybe we could skip the cake. Maybe we could just mail them the bags.

Question one, then, is “What would be cool to put in a favor bag for fourth graders (a mix of boys and girls)?”

And question two is “Where should I buy the stuff, if my goals are ‘not spending $50’ and ‘not having to buy two 12-packs in order to get fifteen of something’?”

And if your answer is “Well, WE try to AVOID bringing a bunch of CHEAP CRAP into OUR house,” I would point out that this answers neither question one nor question two, and also that perhaps you’d like to work on that tone of voice so as not to be quite so off-putting.

I sent two photos of Elizabeth’s new magenta room to my friend this morning, and that reminded me I hadn’t done any photos here:

Right after painting (THREE COATS)

After we moved all her stuff back in

Next up is William and Henry’s room. I’m not sure if I’ve ever said why we have the rooms split up into pairs of one older boy and one younger boy—instead of the more intuitive arrangement of Two Older Boys and Two Younger Boys. It’s because Rob and William don’t get along. Huh. That took less time to explain than I’d expected.

So. Henry wants a blue and orange room, and William wants a blue and green room. They both want intense shades of these colors, and we are having such happy feelings about our orange bathroom and our magenta Elizabeth’s room, we’re going with that. For the blue: Behr Jamaican Sea, 510B-5. The orange: Behr Orange Spice 250B-5 (left over from our bathroom). The green: Behr Tart Apple 420B-4. Here’s a screen shot I took from Behr.com to show you what the colors look like together:

The original plan was to do three walls blue, then split the fourth wall horizontally with green on the top half and orange on the bottom half, so that each boy could have his bunk area in his own color choice. But now Paul is getting all interested in doing something crazier than that, so we’ll see.

I read a really good post recently (THANK YOU, Steph!) by a girl who wrote about what it’s like to be fat. I came away from that post thinking about how right she was: that shame as a motivational tool has already been maximized; that maybe we don’t know why some people are hungrier than others or store fat better than others or have less willpower/motivation than others—but that none of that matters when what we’re talking about is one group of people treating another group of people badly. Do you know what’s a worse character flaw than being fat? ANYTHING THAT IS A CHARACTER FLAW.

I came away from the article feeling understood, and like I had heard a voice of common sense rising over the “Everyone is skinny by default so you must be REALLY screwing up if you’re fat!” crowd. I also felt motivated to think things in a new way—to stop thinking all the time “Must! Lose! Weight!” and instead apply the “Something is better than nothing” principle I’m always trying to work on, and to do it in this way: “I may not be able to make my body smaller, but I can still eat broccoli to help prevent cancer. I may not be able to make my body smaller, but I can still exercise to improve my blood pressure and knee flexibility.”

Then I read part of the comments section. And it infected me like a virus: I feel nauseated, exhausted, feverish, like I need to stay in bed. Life looks grey; it’s hard to manage my usual routine.

Sometimes when people direct your attention to a comments section, it’s because they want you too to read it, so that you will agree with them and add your own comments for their side. In this case, I am telling you so that you will stay away from it: Warning! Pile of dangerous infectious biological material on the floor! Go around, go around!

The people in that comments section have a far worse problem than “ugly rolls of fat.” They have a part of them that’s hateful and ugly and disgusting and unhealthy, and it’s inside of them. A brief exposure to it has made me sick for days. It’s particularly appalling that they don’t know it’s rot: they think they’re perfectly healthy and normal, so they’re continually exposing others to it.

If you have been made ill by contact with people infected by this disease, I’m afraid treatment is very difficult. DO read the post I’m talking about, because it may soothe the pain of past contacts—but avoid re-exposure from the comments section. Think of them the way Paul told me to think of the underside of a lawnmower: as a pack of rabid weasels with knives.

Doesn’t this cover make the movie Cheri look like a delightful playful romp?

(image from Amazon.com)

Michelle Pfeiffer and Kathy Bates as aging courtesans! Rupert Friend as eye candy! “Immensely entertaining!” as a review bite! This movie is going to be FUN!

Ha ha haaaaaaaa.

What we have here is a movie more like Dangerous Liaisons (which Michelle Pfeiffer was also in): dark themes, French costumes, drug/sex/alcohol abuse, undereye circles, and unusually-persistent sexual obsession misrepresented as True Love. I don’t think Rupert Friend smiles a single time, and his hairstyle is unflattering, and he’s an unappealing mooch.

The two best and most believable characters in the whole thing are Frances Tomelty as Rose (Michelle Pfeiffer’s maid), and Felicity Jones as Rupert Friend’s wife. Not only does Felicity Jones do a very nice job Epitomizing Youth for contrast, but she also does a good job portraying a girl with deliberately suppressed spirit and intelligence. And Rose provides Sensible contrast that makes Michelle Pfeiffer look even sillier, plus she makes me wish very badly I had a maid who’d been with me for decades.

What I thought the movie was trying to say (and doing a good job saying, too) was “This is what happens if you mistake sexual persistence for love, and then one of you finds an actual love relationship.” But the ending makes it clear that we were supposed to see Perfect Love in the relationship made up of nothing more than flirty insult-humor, arch remarks, sexual attraction, and a mutual affinity for a decadent lifestyle. So then the ending is like “Here’s a bonus kick to the stomach for suffering through this whole thing.”

Okay! Based on your comments earlier today and also internet search results which let me access the thoughts and opinions of many, many, many people who don’t know what they’re talking about or how to express it in writing, I have made some Fish Tank Revisions.

1. I released the pregnant-or-maybe-just-plus-sized platy from the fish nursery, and removed the fish nursery from the tank.

2. I added three more fake plants: two of the regular sorts of plants, plus one roughly 5×5-inch square of low dense foliage I thought would be good for babies to hide in.

Here’s the new-look tank:

The dense baby-hiding foliage is front left. The two regular sorts of plants blend in, but one is reddish-brown and the other is green and lacy.

To the best of my internet-search-acquired knowledge, two of the four female platys are pregnant, and in fact are to the “can see the babies’ eyeballs through their mother’s skin” (oh, GROSS, but you DID ask) stage of pregnancy. But between them they ought to have more than enough babies to satisfy Darwin, now that I have all the new fake plants for hiding.

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If you enjoy discussing the at-home mom / working mom Balance thing so many of us struggle with, but without all the petty sniping and bitching and “anecdotes designed to make everyone attack one side or the other as if they were piranhas with a steak,” we’re having a good talk about it over at Milk and Cookies, and I hope you’ll join us unless you’re one of those people who tries to make other people feel bad about their choices / life circumstances, in which case we decline the pleasure of your company but thanks anyway.

Were you waiting for a fish update? THEN YOU ARE IN LUCK.

Especially because I can’t remember where I left off. Let’s see: we have a 14-gallon tank and it had two rosy-red minnows (“look just like goldfish but don’t grow as big”) in it, and then we bought five twin-bar platys (“yellow fish with black tail stripes”), and one was a little sickly from the beginning (bitten-looking tail, clamped fins, keeping to the top or else the bottom, not swimming with the others) and eventually died. We bought three more platys, all female because we read that it’s best to have 1 male to 3 females or else the males can chase the females to literal death, which made me hate men for a moment. Then one of the new platys died, too. So now we have six platys, four females and two males, which is not perfect but it seems like it’s working okay.

We’d thought the minnows would enjoy the company and stop hiding so much, but instead they hid even more than before. So we moved them back to the 2.5-gallon coldwater tank, and we bought three long-finned zebra danios (“stripey grey fish”) for the 14-gallon tank. One of the danios died. Fish are tricky business.

So. We have six platys and two danios in a 14-gallon tank, and two rosy red minnows in a 2.5-gallon tank.

Actually, the “six platys” count is not accurate, because one of the platys had babies awhile back, and we’ve seen up to three baby platys at a time, but we’re not sure we still have three because for awhile we’ve seen only one at a time. I tried to catch the babies with a net, but I was unsuccessful: they are SO TINY, and so good at hiding.

Baby platy, tiny, in front of T-Rex decoration.
Compare to gravel for scale.

We also bought a little “fish nursery”: a small box made of plastic sticks and netting, which fits inside the main tank. I got it because one of the platys looks pretty clearly pregnant, and what you’re supposed to do is put the platy in the sub-tank, then after her babies are born take HER out, and then the babies are safe in the sub-tank. But it’s been, like, 2 weeks, and a platy pregnancy is only 4 weeks, so I’m starting to feel like this is going to end that she’s not pregnant at all but just a little plump (and pissed with us for rushing her to the maternity ward when she’d just had an extra fish flake or two), so we’ll see.

This morning I thought I would have green tea instead of coffee. AHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!! Coffee has been brewed, and I’ve had some.

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This is the last day to enter the worst Valentine’s Day gift contest. (Don’t worry: the winner isn’t chosen by who has the worst story. It’s random selection.) I encourage you to enter, not only because there is a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate on the line and because it makes me look good to my boss if there are lots of comments on a post, but also because I am SO ENJOYING reading the stories. Some of them are so appalling, but in the “slap your hand across your mouth” kind of way, rather than the “heart sinking in dismay” way.

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Elizabeth has chosen the color for her new room. After a week of dithering between “aqua” and “aqua with pink corners” and “pink with aqua corners” and so forth, she was getting ready for school one morning and said, “I’ve decided, and it’s my final decision: magenta.” I borrowed one of her magenta gloves, drove to Home Depot, found one single color that met that standard, and bought it.

Paul has done two coats of it and is going to finish the third coat of it tonight. It is just as startling a color as you would imagine. Very pretty, too! But if we ever want to paint over it, I’m predicting eight coats of Kilz. Here’s a screen shot from Behr.com, and keep in mind that not only is her room not that large (I think it’s 11×9), nor as high-ceilinged, nor as sparsely/whitely furnished, nor as well-lit, but also we have medium-dark wood trim instead of white:

Exotic Bloom

This color makes the “bright lilac” we used in the office look like a pale model-home lilac in comparison.

The Milk Divinity looked yummy, and I’d say it was “nice”: light sweet nougat-like filling with nuts in it, covered in chocolate. I don’t think I’d order it again: it was so mild, it barely made an impression.

Milk Divinity
(image from Sees.com)

I was certain I’d like the Maple Walnut because that’s usually one of my top favorites in any assortment box. It’s coated in dark chocolate. I think I’d like it with milk chocolate, too, but the dark is perfect. MMM YUM. Mapley without being over-mapley, and some nuts, and definitely in my upper tier.

Maple Walnut
(image from Sees.com)

I thought I was very likely to like the Caramel, and I did. Very nice caramel (not too sticky, not too hard on the teeth) with almonds, coated in milk chocolate. Seems like it should be called Milk Almond Caramel instead of just Caramel. Upper middle tier.

Caramel
(image from Sees.com)

I knew the Light Chocolate Truffle was unlikely to be a success: I always give Paul the truffles from an assortment. But this one was milk chocolate and had ground almonds on top so I thought maybe? But no. This is not the fault of the truffle, but rather that I don’t tend to like chocolate-covered chocolate truffles. Lower tier for me, and I gave the other half of it to Paul.

Light Chocolate Truffle
(image from Sees.com)

The Milk Butterchew is a nice caramel. It’s very much like the Caramel, above, except without nuts. It says it’s a “brown sugar” caramel, which is why I chose it, but it tasted like regular caramel to me. I wouldn’t specifically order them: they’re yummy, and I’d enjoy them in an assortment, but they’re not special to me—I’d much rather have the one with nuts, above. Middle tier.

Milk Butterchew
(image from Sees.com)

I mentioned the Milk Bordeaux in my first post on this topic. I’m glad I also got a Dark Bordeaux, because as with some other very-sweet fillings (like vanilla buttercream), I preferred it with the dark chocolate coating. I still didn’t like the texture of the sprinkles.

Dark Bordeaux
(image from Sees.com)

I was pretty sure I’d like the Walnut Roll enough to want a piece but not enough to get a whole bunch, and that was exactly my opinion of it. The inside is like a cross between a buttercream and a caramel: neither creamy nor chewy, but more like a nougat. Then rolled in walnuts. Yummy, a nice large satisfying piece, and a nice break from chocolate. Middle tier for me.

Walnut Roll
(image from Sees.com)