As many of you mentioned, it was pretty easy to deal with vegetarianism and a tree-nut allergy in England: restaurant menus were marked with vegetarian/vegan options, and many restaurants had an additional card that gave more detailed information. If anything, we encountered TOO MUCH carefulness: like, a server might caution against Elizabeth having salad, because it was too hard to know if it might have encountered a tree nut, even though they didn’t serve any salads containing tree nuts. And there seemed to be some conflation of vegetarian and vegan, so that frequently the vegetarian options would also be eggless and cheeseless, and eggs/cheese are two of the main things Elizabeth eats. But we found restaurants very flexible: if we said “Could she have this, but with an egg instead of bacon?,” no one ever said no—and in fact they tended to say yes with large willingness, as if they were glad we’d asked, even HOPING we’d ask.

Eating IN GENERAL, though, was a constant burden/stress. It felt like having a small baby, where you feed them, and then by the time you get them changed and dressed and get yourself ready to go, it’s already time to feed them again. It seemed like we were constantly, constantly dealing with the issue of needing to eat.

(The meat pie at lower left was not pretty, but was one of the most delicious things I ate in England. Now I CRAVE it. It was minced beef with cheesy mashed potatoes on top. SO GOOD.)

The MAIN issue was our group size: there are SEVEN of us, which is EXPONENTIALLY more difficult than if it were, say, just Paul and me. We don’t all of us go out to eat even at home, because seven is a big group even for fast food, let alone sit-down restaurants; and because it’s so expensive to take a group of seven out to eat, and because it’s difficult for seven people to agree on a restaurant. This is one of the trade-offs we deliberately made when deciding to have a large family: we don’t go out to eat. Also, I don’t think I have ever made a dinner reservation before: I’m not inclined toward restaurants that need them, and I don’t live in an area where many restaurants DO need them.

Take that starting point, and then imagine us in England, where we HAVE TO eat out twice a day, AND even the pizza places and casual pubs need reservations, AND everything costs much more than at home, AND it’s hard to make group decisions. Combine that with someone (me, it’s me) who gets stressed by unfamiliar things.

One of our best solutions was to split into two groups, even if we were planning to eat at the same restaurant. It was interesting to me, the different reaction we got as one group of three and one group of four. Often we were even seated at adjacent tables. But if we went in as a group of seven, the restaurant staff would get agitated/flustered.

I also found it much, much, MUCH easier to figure out our order when I was only dealing with a group of three or four, and when I didn’t have to coordinate that effort with another parent. And of course this was easier on the server as well.

And splitting into two groups helped with the vegetarian situation: all the restaurants had vegetarian options, but some of those options appealed to Picky Elizabeth and some didn’t. This way, Paul could take three of the kids to a gourmet burger restaurant they wanted to try, and I could take the two vegetarians to a restaurant that had some appealing vegetarian pasta dishes. Or Paul could take the picky vegetarian with the group going to a pizza place, while I took the easy vegetarian to a pub I wanted to try.

And splitting helped me cope mentally with the cost, since I was only seeing 3/7ths or 4/7ths of it. I KNEW the other 4/7ths or 3/7ths was happening, but my brain was soothed anyway by seeing a bill for 65 pounds instead of a bill for 150 pounds.

Oh, and another thing! Some of you had mentioned that restaurants WORKED differently in England than in the U.S., but I was too pre-trip agitated to take any of the details on board. Still, this meant I was not surprised when we found differences. But I find Unfamiliar Things stressful, so I needed a work-around to cope. Here was my work-around, which is going to seem so simple as to make some of you cross your eyes at me, but it took me significant time/effort to come up with it, so I will share it in case anyone else is in my boat: I ASKED.

I figured it like this: not everyone knows everything! And all of us humans know that to be true, because we have all personally experienced Not Knowing Things! So it is not weird that I don’t magically know how a new-to-me system works! And the humans who work there DO know how it works, and they are being paid to deal with customers, and I am a customer! So what I would do is, I would snag a server, or someone bussing tables, or someone standing at a cash register, and I would say in my absolutely blazing American accent, “Oh, hi! This is our first time here; can you tell me how this ordering system works / how we pay when we’re ready / how we add some cake to our order?” And each time, the person would just TELL ME! And usually I was very glad I’d asked, because the system was not difficult but nor was it intuitive: at one place, for example, we had to notice that there was a number on our table, which I had not noticed, and then we needed to go to the register and tell them our table number and pay there.

For me, the key was “This is our first time here.” It FOCUSES the issue. It’s not that I’m from another country and also a newbie traveler and also kind of an anxious person overall and also over-panicking about a relatively simple situation; it’s just that this is my first time at this particular restaurant. A laidback cosmopolitan who lives just down the street might have the same question I am about to ask!

I have just realized this entire post is about the LOGISTICS of eating, with no mention of the FOOD of eating. ACHIEVING food always felt difficult, but EATING it was delightful.

I wanted to try a lot of things that sounded familiar but I’d never tried—mostly things I’ve encountered in books/shows set in England. Here are some of the things we tried: a meat pie in a pub; Victoria sponge; jam roly poly with custard; a cream tea (scone with clotted cream and jam, plus coffee or tea); sticky toffee pudding; coronation chicken; mushy peas; sausage rolls; pasties; rock cakes; Hobnobs; McVitie’s Digestives; Cheddars; Tunnock’s tea cakes; lots of Cadbury things. And I can get fish and chips at home, but I think of it as an English thing (“chips” is the hint), so I made sure to get fish and chips there.

There were a lot of things that were familiar but in unfamiliar flavors: for example, the hotels would have familiar little individual yogurts, or familiar little jams, but the yogurt would be rhubarb, and the jam would be currant. The rock cakes were available in chocolate chip (familiar) and sultana (at first glance unfamiliar, but turned out to be another word for golden raisins). (A currant is also a raisin, from a different kind of grape.)

In our experience, cheese was always better than what we’d expect. For example, we ordered “chips and cheese,” which was french fries with cheese on them, and the cheese was like a high-quality sharp cheddar just barely rouxed to make it softer. I got a meat pie with “cheesy mash” (cheesy mashed potatoes) on top, and the cheese was the same sort of very good sharp cheddar taste.

In our experience, eggs were always much wetter than what we’d expect. Fried eggs had liquid yokes. Scrambled eggs were…well, I don’t know how to describe them in a way that doesn’t sound negative. “A wet heap” is what comes to mind. They were good!

In our experience, English restaurants know their way around a potato: the chips (fries) were excellent, the jacket potatoes (baked potatoes with skin) were excellent, the mash (mashed potatoes) was excellent.

Oh! A very surprising thing to us: one evening we got take-out Chinese food, and IT DID NOT COME WITH RICE. We despaired a bit about the rice, thinking “Oh no, this is one of those cultural things and we were supposed to order it separately!”—and then looked back at the menu, where rice was not even listed. The food came with some puffed scoopy things—something in the neighborhood of rice cakes or pork rinds. We don’t know if this is typical in England or if we encountered an anomaly.

Scones, famously, were different/better than the scones I’ve had in the United States. I’ve had the U.S. dry triangles; the English scones were round and biscuity (in the United States sense of the word biscuit, not in the British sense) and soft. I had heard people rave about clotted cream and jam on scones, and the first one I had, I thought “Oh, sure, that’s nice,” but didn’t see the big deal. But then a day or two later I had the opportunity to add a cream tea (that’s the scone/cream/jam plus a coffee or tea) to my lunch, and I did. And a day or two after that I found myself questing for more, and now that we’re home I’m pining, and Paul is experimenting with making clotted cream from raw milk he bought at a local farm, and we’re both browsing scone recipes online. So apparently it just takes a little time for the addiction to take hold.

To continue the Post-England-Trip Packing Thoughts:

I was VERY GLAD we brought a jar of peanut butter for the picky vegetarian. (They do sell peanut butter in England! But not Jif. You heard me say picky.) We DID find MANY vegetarian options in England, and Rob ate well because Rob will eat normal vegetarian things such as beans and spices and noodles and, like, VEGETABLES; Elizabeth ate a fair amount of potatoes and cheese, and then I would later find her eating spoonfuls of peanut butter straight from the jar (we never did acquire bread, though easily could have; she didn’t want it).

I was also very glad that William had thought somehow to bring some disposable cutlery: Elizabeth used one of his spoons for the peanut butter, and we ALL used them the night we ordered Chinese food delivered and discovered it did not come with disposable chopsticks. We wished we had also brought disposable bowls; Paul usually travels with them but hadn’t brought them this time, and we ended up eating Chinese food out of hotel coffee mugs, which worked fine but felt wrong. (We rinsed the mugs in the sink afterward, so the hotel cleaners would not be surprised.)

I was glad I brought my bath pouf. It feels like such a hassle to bring it (shaking out all the water, putting it inevitably-still-damp in a ziploc bag, bringing it out at each hotel and remembering to take it with us when we leave, the feeling that it might be picking up International Spores), but it’s really not such a big deal, and also I dislike using wash cloths for body-washing so it was a nice little familiar comfort to have my usual pouf.

I don’t have an extensive Face Routine, but I do use toner after seeing it mentioned on Twitter as a response to a question about what little life-changing thing would you recommend to others: someone replied that people should use toner even if they don’t know what it’s for or how to use it perfectly. Sold! I also use a crepe corrector on my neck, and a nice face-washing bar or cream in the shower (right now I’m using Yes to Avocado, and I’m excited because I have on deck a very reduced bottle of Confidence in a Cleanser, which I originally tried when a friend bought it for me as a birthday gift). (If it’s still $20.40 for the 5-ounce when you read this, and if it looks right for your skin and you’re willing to spend that much on an untried cleanser, I recommend it: the 5-ounce has been $34 as long as I’ve had it in my cart, and I was EXCITED to find the 1.7-ounce at T.J. Maxx for $6.99-marked-down-to-$4: the 1.7-ounce is what my friend gave me, and used sparingly but almost-daily it lasted me MONTHS.) I did not bring any of these things with us, and I was not sorry: everything while traveling takes so much EFFORT (bringing all my things into the bathroom every day, instead of accessing them where they already live), I was glad to skip some steps. I used the hotel’s body wash on my face in the shower, and I used my usual day moisturizer and one of of my three usual night moisturizers (that is, I have three different night moisturizers I like, and I pick one each night; I don’t use three different things each night).

Speaking of which: the travel agent had advised us to consider bringing our own shampoo/conditioner/soap/lotion: she said most hotels WOULD provide them, but that they would be VERY strongly scented. I remembered the “institutional public bathroom” scent of the products in most hotels I’ve been to in the U.S., so I bought a million travel sizes for us and had each person make themselves a ziploc bag full of the ones they needed.

We did not use them at all. The hotels we went to had scented stuff that WAS strongly scented, but in EXACTLY the way I personally like: sharp unsweetened (no vanilla or powder) botanicals such as lavender, rose, verbena, geranium, and neroli. And the kids didn’t care enough to take out their ziploc bags, and ONE kid liked one of the conditioners so much, they had us all take home any extras we had. We ended up with a lot of unused travel bottles, but that’s fine, they DO get used for other things, such as traveling to hotels in the U.S., which I will be doing a LOT with the twins in college 8 hours away.

I was glad to have brought British cash, which I was nervous about after many, many, MANY people said don’t bring cash, no one takes cash, you can’t even use cash, you will not need cash. Everywhere I tried to use cash did in fact take cash (though I did overhear someone saying they didn’t take cash, at a place where I was not planning to use it). And here were the things we absolutely needed cash for: tipping housekeeping at hotels; tipping at restaurants that did not have a thingie for adding a tip; tipping the tour guides and drivers; giving money to panhandlers/buskers; paying to use a bathroom that cost 50p and had a little box and no other way to pay. Here were things I LIKED having cash for: buying a few postcards at a somewhat dicey little shop; putting a small donation in a box at a church we were touring, which asked for a donation if you wished to take photos; having the leftover cash as pleasing little souvenirs. I wish I’d used cash for MORE things, so that I would have had enough pound and two-pound coins to give to all the children to keep.

Speaking of tipping, that was another thing I kept hearing, which was that tipping Was Not Done in England and in fact Should Not Be Done as it indicated some sort of class insult. Perhaps it was that we were only in touristy areas, but tipping was Absolutely Done, as I was glad some of you had already told me. The travel agent in fact gave us what we all considered pretty wildly-high estimates of what we should tip tour guides and tour-bus drivers, which we did not follow but we DID tip, and I think the wildly-high estimates made us tip higher than we otherwise would have. But it was true that restaurants were different: sometimes the tip was added automatically, but it was an amount we’d consider unacceptably low in the U.S., like 5% or 10%; sometimes there was no way to add a tip to the credit-card payment, and I was nervous about leaving cash on the table because I wondered if that was okay. There were no taxis big enough for all of us and our luggage, so we took TWO taxis from the airport to our first hotel, and Paul’s taxi had a way to add a tip but mine did not. And we were not CONSTANTLY ASKED for tips the way it has started to happen in the U.S., where for example there is a tipping option even if you buy something up at the cash register where no tipping should be expected.

I was very glad to have a HAT. I don’t normally wear a hat or like hats, but I remembered other times when I was outside for much of the day (typically I am The Indoors Type), and I don’t have bangs so my forehead can get pretty pink/freckly even if I use sunscreen; and also I wear glasses which makes sunglasses tricky (I do know about prescription and transition lenses, but I’ve tried them and I don’t like them), so the sun glare can be irritating. When I saw a $10 grey cap with an embroidered daisy (I can’t find it online because there’s no brand on it, but it’s similar in appearance to this one) at T.J. Maxx, and it was big enough to fit not only my big head but also the bulk of a casual-French-twist hairstyle, I bought it—and I used it often and was glad to have it.

Perhaps it goes without saying that I was also glad to have sunscreen. I used it relentlessly, and STILL ended up with a little bit of a tan on my arms/neck.

I brought my trekking poles but did not use them; I felt too self-conscious, and also felt like they’d be burdens to carry around when I wasn’t using them. (They were GREAT, though, when I was visiting my parents and we did a lot of hiking: my knees appreciated not only the support but also the stabilization.) (Also: I saw LOTS of tourists using them, so I think I would bring them again next time.) I did however wear and HUGELY appreciate the Incrediwear knee sleeve/brace (I got the grey one in XXL) commenter Katrina recommended, which I bought not only because of her personal recommendation of it but also because she said her physical therapist recommended it and uses it herself. I found it snugly comfy and comforting on my knee, and frankly I thought it looked surprisingly sporty and even cute emerging from the bottom of my shorts.

I did buy compression socks, and then didn’t use them. I bought them because a number of people mentioned using them, but then I thought, “Wait. Have my legs/feet ever swelled or been uncomfortable on a flight?” and no, they have not. And I was going to be wearing shorts on the plane. And it all seemed like too much, in the stress of the final packing. So I didn’t wear them, and I have put them aside with our suitcases in case I want/need them in the future.

I was glad to have brought a list of ADDRESSES! I wanted to send postcards! And I regret not sending MORE postcards, but (1) it was 2 pounds 20 pence per stamp, and (2) I didn’t find a place to buy stamps until the last few days of the trip. But I was still glad to have BROUGHT the addresses, and would do so again in the future, because now I know for sure that I LOVE sending postcards and would like to do more of that next time, and now I know that I did not feel AFTER the purchase of the stamps that it hadn’t been worth it.

Okay, I think that’s all my packing notes for now. Next up: Things That Were Surprising in England, and/or Things I Bought as Souvenirs, and/or Things We Ate!

Good morning, we are back from England! I have coffee brewing in my own coffee pot and a second load of laundry in the washing machine!

Since I am unpacking right now, I am going to jot down some notes about packing: what we used, what we didn’t use, what we wished we’d had, etc. When people gave us advice ahead of time, I noticed it was EXTREMELY MIXED: one person’s “Make sure you bring X” was another person’s “Don’t waste space bringing X.” My newly cosmopolitan conclusion is this: it makes much more sense to use phrasings such as “We found X essential” or “We thought we’d use X but we didn’t” (as opposed to saying OTHER PEOPLE won’t need it or OTHER PEOPLE will find it essential), ESPECIALLY if there is some information about WHY—because people vary enormously, and people’s travel experiences vary enormously, and one person’s “Didn’t need it, didn’t want it, didn’t use it” is another person’s “We relied on it for our happiness.”

For example: a coworker told me NOT to bring a dress for Tea, because their family packed dresses and never used them. Fortunately for me, she added a Why: instead of the dresses, they just wore their Nicer Clothes, like trousers and blouses. Well, I do not even OWN trousers or blouses. So I brought a dress, and I wore it not once but twice: once to a fancy tea, and once to an unexpected dinner at the kind of place where one does not wear a graphic t-shirt and cargo shorts. And I am making a resolution for the future to purchase at least one semi-dressy outfit: pants nicer than jeans or cargo shorts; shirt nicer than a t-shirt.

Many, many people told me raincoats were ESSENTIAL. And I would say this: raincoats would have been nice to have, because it rained at least a little bit almost every single day, and often rained on-and-off all day. But I was not going to buy seven raincoats for a single trip (well, six raincoats: Rob is grown and can buy his own raincoat if he wants one) (but he’s RECENTLY grown, so we were trying to help cover some of his expenses for this trip, and raincoats acquired for the trip would have been something I would have included him in), and although several times I envied people who had raincoats, I did not wish I’d bought seven (six) (seven) raincoats; and right now I am glad not to be trying to find space in the house for them. Also: I don’t know about you, but if I wear a raincoat when I don’t need a raincoat, I find it hot/oppressive. We did bring some of those $1.79 emergency ponchos, and a couple of us used them when there was a serious downpour, but most of us just got wet and/or used umbrellas. If we were to start traveling regularly to places where it tends to rain pretty much every day, I would likely buy raincoats; if any of us already owned raincoats, I would have brought them along; if only two of us were going on the trip instead of seven of us, I would have bought them.

Shoes, though. I was trying to pack light, but I should absolutely have brought two pairs, because my sneakers kept getting wet—and would have gotten wet even if I’d been wearing a raincoat. It would have been very nice to have a dry pair to wear while the other pair was drying. (Fellow travelers from my group strongly recommend good supportive sandals instead, and I can see how sensible that would be, but I cannot stannnnnnnnnnd the feeling of dusty feet, it makes me truly deep-down physically miserable, so this is from my sneakers-wearing point of view.) I was glad I hadn’t bought new special walking shoes for the trip, because sneakers were fine; again, if we started regularly traveling, I might want to invest in something different/better, but I was glad not to have bought seven (six) new pairs of shoes, or to be trying to find space in the house for them now.

I’d been planning to pack umbrellas, but I took the advice of commenters Em and Sophie who suggested buying souvenir umbrellas in England, and this was great: it was fun to choose them, and the commenters were correct that the umbrellas were inexpensive (7-10 pounds) and cute and readily available. I bought one subtle tones-of-grey London skyline and one British flag pattern, and if anything I wish I’d bought a third.

I was very glad to have a little travel bottle of Febreze, because I used it on my damp sneakers and on clothing I wanted to wear again.

I was very glad to have some laundry detergent with us (my sister-in-law put travel Tide in our stockings at Christmas), so that I could wash clothes in the sink. Even things I’d thought I’d brought plenty of, such as socks, ran out because I got sweaty/wet more often than I’d expected.

I will have to go back and look, but I don’t think anyone mentioned that we should bring allllllll the less-drowsy Dramamine we thought we’d need plus perhaps two extra bottles. We ran out (I had budgeted for the plane, but had forgotten to budget for bus excursions), and I went to half a dozen stores and could not find it. All I could find (and I had to ask at a pharmacy for it, because they kept it behind the counter) was something called Stugeron 15 (cinnarizine) which one kid said did not work well and made them very sleepy. Fortunately I’d brought plenty of motion sickness patches, which I originally tried only because Chrissy Teigen said on Twitter that they worked, and they DO seem to work; they don’t work as thoroughly as Dramamine, but I can use them for shorter and/or less problematic travel.

I was glad I’d brought plenty of benadryl and melatonin; the jet lag was rough, and also some of us have trouble sleeping in unfamiliar places. I was glad some commenters mentioned that we would not be able to buy hydrocortisone cream in England; I tossed a tube into my suitcase, and we DID end up using it: one kid got some sort of mystery hive, and another kid got a little rash on their arm.

This is just going to have to be a series of posts, because look how long this is already, and all I have covered is rain gear and laundry stuff and medications and shoes.

Yesterday evening, as I was locking up, the door out to the garage was being difficult, so I pulled it back and shut it again with more firmness. This caused a breeze that knocked a nearby spider out of its web and onto the floor. As I prepared to scream and run (I ALLOW spiders, but I do not want them SKITTERING TOWARD ME), a much, much larger spider came darting out from behind a shelf, grabbed the fallen, struggling spider, and dragged it back behind the shelf. I think I’ve mentioned that when I was a young child my dad was a pastor; immediately I began thinking of how to build a sermon around this incident.

As my, let’s call it agitation, ramps up before the England trip (last night I sent myself five emails from my phone between 10:02 and 10:44, as I kept thinking of more things after going to bed), I am once again practicing the art and science of separating Nice from Important.

Wouldn’t it be nice to come home to a clean house after an exhausting vacation? Oh it certainly would! But if I don’t get to it, that is not Important: the messy house might be Less Nice to come home to, but that’s fine. It’s not WRONG to spend an extra ten minutes bleaching/scrubbing the shower before work, especially when it’s too early to pack and my agitation needs something to occupy it; and definitely I know from experience I will fervently thank myself for anything I DO do—but it’s not Important. Even if the shower mildew Took Charge in our absence, and I came home and saw it and felt like crying, I would nevertheless manage to bleach the hell out of it, and all would once again be well. (Still, I was glad I got around to cleaning our shower, and that the kids were managed into cleaning theirs.)

It would be Nice if we could remember to toss all the perishables before we go. But if we forget, or if tossing them in the trash would mean the trash would be revolting to come home to, then that’s not Important: we can toss out some moldy sour cream when we get home, we can pour out the iffy milk when we get home. It would be really, really nice if I would remember to wash out the coffee pot and leave it in the drying rack; but if I don’t, and I come home to week-and-a-half old coffee, I will wash it out then. Coming home is going to be a giant to-do list no matter what, and I have the next day off from work.

There are already some items that it turns out we are Just Not Going To Acquire, despite being told to acquire them (for example, several days before the trip, the travel agency said many places won’t allow backpacks so each of us should have a smaller bag; that does not appear likely to happen), and some of those things are making me nervous—but if we desperately regret not having them, we can acquire them in England. It’s not important that we get them ahead of time; it might not be important to acquire them at all. I’m remembering when a child went to camp, and the camp list said they HAD to have rain boots, were absolutely REQUIRED to have rain boots, and we did NOT have much spare money so I was very grateful to find some at 75% off at Target, and the child did not wear them one single time at camp.

But leaving an authorization (for emergency cat/home repairs) for the cat-sitter is Important. Making sure windows/doors are closed and locked is Important. Bringing Edward’s essential medications and Elizabeth’s Epi-pens is Important. Our passports and driver’s licenses are Important: if we forget those, we CANNOT GO.

Then there are some things that are in the middle: they’re Important, but they’re manageable in an emergency, and/or the consequences might be Quite Unpleasant But Not Life/Trip-Threatening. Having enough cat food and cat litter in the house is in this category. Sure, in a true emergency (oh no, raccoons broke in and ate all the cat food!!) the cat-sitter could go to the store and buy some, but we REALLY DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO ASK HER TO DO THAT, so acquiring plenty of both items was a priority and has been accomplished. Running the dishwasher and/or washing dishes and/or getting all dishes out of the kids’ rooms is likewise in this category: no one would die, and the trip would still happen, but the nasty dishes/aromas/flies would be so very unpleasant to come home to and have to deal with.

Hey, what are you getting your dad for Father’s Day this year, if applicable? I wonder if we might make a comments section to help out those of us who are still looking for a good idea. My dad likes delightful/interesting/regional food and graphic tees, sometimes kitchen tools and workshop tools. If anyone knows of an online place that ships delightful/interesting/regional food, I would be interested in hearing about it. In the past I have liked O&H Danish Bakery and Nuts.com.

And what about the father of your children, if applicable? This year the father of my children has made things easy for me by making two remarks about things he might like to have—and both things absolutely SMACK of Father’s Day: one is a four-pack of Night Shift Peach Piescraper beer, and the other is a set of extra-long tongs for the grill. If he’s very, very good this year I might also get him the new Zelda game (which would be more of a summer-vacation gift for him plus several of the kids), but otherwise I feel like I’m all set there.

I am up early and wild-eyed, because I woke up needing to pee at 3:30 a.m., and then I lay awake going over to-do lists that were not at all doable at 3:30 a.m., thinking that I MUST sleep but that it was looking like I might not be able to—and then I DID drift off!!! …just before Paul’s alarm, which he had forgotten to shut off when he woke up before it went off, went off at 4:45. So I am up for the day, and not best pleased.

This alarm-clock thing has been happening jusssst often enough to make me want to throw his alarm clock against a wall, or perhaps against him, but not QUITE often enough to make a big deal about it. Like, it’s been happening about once every two weeks, and it’s been happening like this for maybe six months now—but after decades of not being an issue, so it’s a little perplexing. This morning I did make a little bit of a big deal about it, because this week (twin high school graduation and many, many end-of-year activities/ceremonies; twin 18th birthdays with all the doubled shopping and wrapping and cake-baking and special-dinner-making; twin college-prep stuff; many other miscellaneous things such as cats having vet appointments and one of Elizabeth’s art pieces needing to be picked up an hour away and Henry mentioning that one of the lenses keeps popping out of his glasses) is about as busy for me as the busiest pre-Christmas week, and I have SO much to do, and there are so many uncertainties (will it rain, which will absolutely bork graduation plans? will I be able to find the ingredient two separate grocery stores were out of?) and I have been counting on good sleep in order to cope with all of these tasks as well as to cope unshriekingly with the freshly-tilled awareness of how uneven the workload is in these sorts of busy times, and how after 25 years I can apparently like it or lump it. And then his alarm. Well.

I have been discovering once again how getting even the lowest-priority items off the to-do list can make a marked difference in my despair levels. Yesterday I put a little air in the car tire that periodically needs a little air, and also I filled the gas tank even though it still had just over a quarter tank, and even getting those two little things accomplished was enough to make me feel like I could cope at a higher level than before with the things that were more essential to get done, such as finding a Spotify gift card.

I also used the adrenaline momentum of coming home from So!! Many!! Errands!! to make a phone call: we keep getting medical bills for Edward’s routine medication infusions that are multiple hundreds of dollars rather than our usual $20 copay; and normally the hospital Edward goes to is impressively brisk and efficient at handling all these stressful little glitches behind the scenes without us having to do anything about it (which I regularly notice and feel grateful for, because of how often I have to leap and re-leap through hoops to get things covered for other medical providers); but this time we’re starting to get letters with deadlines after which they will send it to collections, so this time I called. I got someone very nice, who could not help at all. I honestly was not sure why they were answering the phone, when they could not tell me ANYTHING or do ANYTHING about ANYTHING. But they were very NICE, and they DID “send it to code review” and assured me that in the meantime I did not have to worry about paying it. They said that in their experience, almost every situation is completely resolved by code review. My guess is that the reason this is the only thing the person on the phone knows how to do is that someone EXTREMELY COMPETENT normally keeps these issues from getting to this point; very likely that same person is in charge of code-reviewing.

Anyway it felt nice to have made that call, which has been hovering over me. Why do I put off things that MUST be done? Am I trying to maximize the amount of time I spend being unhappy and stressed about them? (Though in this particular case I feel I have an excuse, since USUALLY my procrastination is rewarded. But I mean OVERALL.)

This kind of thing can feel like a glitch in the matrix:. I have a shower radio (it’s this one, if you are in the market, and it was/is expensive but I LOVE IT and have used it for years and years now with no issues), and it has five pre-set stations. This morning I clicked on the first station, and it was just finishing up playing Jessie’s Girl, and then it went to commercials. I switched to the second station: commercials. Third station: commercials. Fourth station: commercials. Fifth station: just finishing up playing Jessie’s Girl, and then went to commercials. (It is only TODAY, right now, that I learned it is Jessie’s Girl and not Jesse’s Girl.) (It seems like it should be Jesse’s Girl.)

Yesterday we talked about colonoscopies, and I don’t think there’s any denying that over the last 17 years this blog has been slowly segueing from Parenting to Aging, because today I would like to talk about knees. I am not sure how long mine have been bothering me, but I KNOW they were bothering me in 2017, because that’s when I read that the keto diet could be helpful in reducing joint pain, and decided to try it; 10-year-old Henry had been on a “Let’s go for a walk!” kick, and I was having trouble walking with him, and that seemed like something to fix.

Anyway it’s been at least six years. I keep mentioning it at my annual physicals, and my doctor keeps saying yep, arthritis, these things happen as we get older. (I made her sound dismissive there, but she’s not immediately dismissive: she does a bunch of little tests, bending me and pinching me and saying “Does this hurt? How about this?” and so forth. And then she tells me I can try turmeric, and I can try glucosamine, and I can try icing it, and I can try five-day courses of anti-inflammatories, and I can try diclofenac gel, and I can try a knee brace, and I can try stretches/exercises, and so forth.) But LAST year she said that we COULD have me get an x-ray, just to peek, and if nothing else to get a baseline—and as I was thinking that over, she said actually she didn’t think an x-ray was necessary. THIS year I was ready, and when she said we COULD, I immediately said “YES THAT SOUNDS GREAT,” and so I got knee x-rays.

Both knees hurt, but one of them hurts more than the other: I have been doing stretches and muscles-around-the-knees exercises, and with one knee I can do them, and with the other knee I sometimes can’t. And the x-rays showed it’s the sometimes-can’t knee that looks bad; the other knee looks normal. I am a little surprised it looks normal, because it DOES HURT. Well, perhaps I am compensating for the other knee, and putting extra strain on the normal knee. In any case, one knee looks bad, so I am glad we did the x-rays: firstly, so that my doctor knows I am not just complaining; secondly, so we can see how much worse it gets over time; thirdly, so that *I* know I am not just complaining / just not getting enough exercise / etc. The situation apparently looks degenerative/age-related/wear-and-tear-related, as opposed to injury-related.

The doctor said there are Next Steps we can take, depending on how things go from here (sometimes a knee situation stays where it is, and sometimes it gets gradually worse, and sometimes it gets abruptly worse). At the very end of the timeline, an end we might never reach, is knee-replacement surgery. Between here and there are things such as a referral to an orthopedic doctor who might give me injections, or who might do a smaller surgery, or who might want to try other medications/treatments. This is a fourth reason I am glad we did the x-rays: because now I feel I can ask for the NEXT thing.

This morning I am shopping for knee braces (I am supposed to wear a knee brace), and I am wondering if anyone has one they’d recommend. I am browsing and it seems like all of them have 3 or 4 stars out of 5, with legitimate complaints: they roll down; they don’t feel like they help; the elastic loosens quickly; they need to be constantly adjusted; they’re sweaty/uncomfortable; they’re bulky and make it hard to move around.

Edited to add: Also, do you have any favorite brands of glucosamine chondroitin? (I am supposed to try glucosamine chondroitin.) (I have already tried the turmeric. The doctor said to try it for two weeks, and if it didn’t do anything, I could stop. It did not do anything noticeable.)

I have had a slightly odd thing happen recently, which I will now relate. I mentioned on Facebook (more on this in a moment) that I had been referred for my first colonoscopy. You might well wonder why I would post such a thing on Facebook (this is already the moment, we are already there); and it is because, awhile back, I saw something about how one of the main reasons people die of colon cancer is that there is so much embarrassment/reluctance about colonoscopies; and that it can make an actual difference to THE WELL-BEING OF ALL HUMANKIND if people mention colonoscopies casually, the way they might mention their annual physicals or eye exams: like, it’s not embarrassing; like, why would anyone be embarrassed; like, this is a normal thing to do, your friends and family members are all doing it, it is normal and routine and not embarrassing.

And that is a theory that makes sense to me, a person who finds colonoscopies embarrassing and not at all in the same realm as eye exams—and yet who DOES want (“want”) to have one, because that is the age I am, and because I would prefer not to die of colon cancer. Plus, Edward has had MANY colonoscopies because of his Crohn’s disease, so I am at least familiarized with the process in that way, and it helps me to see/hear how casually–even ENTHUSIASTICALLY–his GI doctor treats the whole thing. His GI doctor does not seem grossed out; his GI doctor seems like he is glad to get a look behind the scenes.

Anyway, that’s why I mentioned it on Facebook: as a service to all humankind. And here is the slightly odd thing that happened: more than one person, and to be precise it was two people, separately reached out to inform me that I would not, and/or would not HAVE TO, be having a colonoscopy but instead would be doing the little kit where you take a sample and send it in to a lab. But. In my case I had said that I HAD BEEN referred for a colonoscopy. I did not say “I am doing the little kit.” (Which I have done, previous years.) And yet people were telling me I was not going to have to do what I was telling them I was going to have to do, and that I would be doing something else instead. It was odd.

Then I went in to work the next day, and my co-worker of approximately my same age was mentioning that she was going to have her first colonoscopy, and would soon be starting her prep, and I was all “WAHOO, HIGH-FIVE, COLONOSCOPY TWINS!!!”—and our mutual co-worker, who is half a dozen years older than us, informed us that she had never had a colonoscopy, and that all we really needed to do, without a family history of colon cancer, was the little sample kit where you send it off to a lab. But…my other co-worker and I have both been ACTUALLY SCHEDULED for ACTUAL COLONOSCOPIES by our ACTUAL DOCTORS. So…why is she telling us that we can instead send a sample to a lab? It was odd. I can’t think of another medical procedure where I have had this same reaction: the “Oh: you say this is going to happen, but I can tell you with confidence–though without evidence–that it will not happen” reaction.