It’s too soon to call it, but not too soon to start making plans: it looks as if my Huge Difficult Effort at work was not successful. My supervisor came back with a new plan for doing things that is LUDICROUSLY WORSE IN EVERY WAY, to the point of looking to me like if it’s not payback it’s dementia; and my boss’s boss doesn’t know enough about the job to see anything wrong with the plan, and told me with some light exasperation that I would need to talk to my supervisor if I didn’t like it; and I did talk to my supervisor in a sit-down meeting, and my supervisor said uh huh, uh huh, tough shit we’re doing it this way; and also my boss’s boss didn’t ask any of my affected colleagues if they agreed with me that the new plan was bullshit, she just made it into a my-word-vs-the-supervisor’s-word situation, which of course my supervisor won because she is the supervisor. The new plan has a significant negative impact on every workday for me and for several coworkers, with no benefit to anyone.

So I have learned once again (how many times will it take??) that going up against this supervisor leads only to regret, so I am considering my other options. It is stupid and terrible that she can take a job I love and singlehandedly, pointlessly ruin it; it is stupid and terrible that she would take a dedicated employee who loves her job and make her miserable for no good reason. But here we are. And I can’t work for a boss I don’t respect, a boss who makes stupid/mean decisions that are backed up by a boss’s boss who can’t tell that the decisions are stupid and mean. So again: here we are.

There is still slim hope. I have a few cards left to play, but they are only the last-ditch, gamble-everything-and-almost-certainly-lose kinds of cards. There is also one remaining staffing issue that may help, but it looks unlikely: theoretically I am getting a new supervisor—but the new supervisor will be part-time and will be completely under the jurisdiction of my current supervisor, so it sounds to me like it is an “all the work, none of the power” position. But maybe! Maybe they will be the one to slide in and defeat my current supervisor! Even though the last person who held that position was relentlessly bullied by my supervisor and then fired! I can still dream that this time it could be different! I can choose to hang in there awhile longer to see what happens if for no other reason than The Drama, while I consider my other options.

One more encouraging thought is that I can depart with a full report to my boss’s boss (and to the board of trustees, if I wish) of WHY I am leaving. In another job long ago, I went to my supervisor’s supervisors again and again about issues with my supervisor, and they kept trying to reassure me (“Don’t worry about her, you’re doing a good job, just ignore her!”), and they encouraged me to talk about it with my supervisor, and so on, so that they wouldn’t have to deal with it, and they did not want to hear me that my supervisor was BATSHIT. I eventually quit, leaving a letter explaining why, with copies to the supervisors and also to the owners. My replacement quit after several weeks, also mentioning the supervisor as the reason. The owners then hired a friend of theirs to fill that position, and after a week the friend went to them and said “This supervisor is BATSHIT. It is impossible to work with her and here’s why.” And the owners fired the supervisor. Too late for me, but satisfying to have been retroactively vindicated.

What I am looking for now is my next interesting job. At this point, I don’t expect advancement, or career, or whatever. I have had one entry-level job after another, and that doesn’t seem likely to change at this point. I expect low pay, no benefits—but in exchange I don’t want to encounter resistance (including “find your own replacement”) when I need days off, nor do I want to be pressured into taking on extra shifts, nor do I want to have to fight hard for my 15-minute break; and I need the job to be satisfying and interesting at least in its own way on its own level; and I’m not willing to add a long unpaid commute to my shifts. I especially like jobs where I get a behind-the-scenes / insider-information look at something, or where I can learn a skill I can use in my normal life. I have done:

• waitstaff / ice-cream
• doughnut shop
• receptionist
• nanny
• cleaning
• label factory
• college library
• different label factory
• bakery
• greenhouse
• infant daycare
• pharmacy technician
• in-home eldercare
• library page / assistant

Of the things I’ve done, I’d maybe be willing to do again: library; infant daycare; pharmacy if it wasn’t customer-facing (but the nearest hospital pharmacy is a 35-minute drive, which is too far).

I have a (very old) college degree in business management / human resources. This has helped me get jobs (“ooo, a college degree for this position that doesn’t require one!”), and has also prevented me from getting jobs (“overqualified”). I would be willing to acquire some additional education—but let’s be frank, it’s probably not a good investment at this point. I’m good at numbers, and writing. I can type, and I’m good-in-a-normal-way with computers but I would not say I am techy; the only way I can solve a tech issue is to turn it off and turn it back on again. I’m self-directed, and diligent, and careful, and I will persistently work to improve myself at the job. I hate the phone. I’m not good at anything confrontational. I am great at fixing problems if I know how to fix them—that is, if a customer has an insurance issue and I am a pharmacy technician, I will work at it persistently until it is solved or until I have reached the limits of my ability; I won’t shrug and say “I dunno, ma’am, you’ll have to call your insurance company.” I don’t have a projecting voice, and my voice shakes if I do any sort of public speaking. I have poor fine-motor skills. I can’t cut a straight line with scissors. I am very good at keeping track of things that need to be done, and when. I would almost rather die than do sales or fundraising, I find them so agonizing.

I am starting to encounter some age-related physical issues. Kneeling/crouching is a problem with my replacement knee. I have progressive eyeglasses and have trouble seeing things on the bottom shelf now that I can’t easily kneel. I get tired out more easily than I used to. My veins and I don’t want to be on my feet for eight hours. But one thing I appreciated about my library/paging job is that I did get some automatic physical activity: I typically got 5,000-7,000 steps during a 4-hour shift, not to mention all the going-down-to-one-knee-and-right-back-up-again I used to get before I had my knee replaced. THIGHS OF STEEL BABY. This seemed very advantageous for an otherwise indoorsy, sitting-in-a-chair-reading-or-at-a-computer person like me. I know Am@zon is supposed to be TERRIBLE to work for, but the idea of rushing around filling orders is VERY appealing at least on the face of it. The go! go! go! feeling of industry is one of the things I like about my current job. I find walking MUCH, MUCH easier than standing, or even sitting.

One possibility is doing infant care again. I might enjoy it, and I’d like to refamiliarize myself with babies before I and my friends start seeing grandbabies, and I think “mother of five” is a pretty good selling point—for the employer, and for parents considering the daycare for their infants. But I remember when I did it before, it could be frazzling and exhausting, and of course it depends on the boss: I quit that job in part because my boss’s boss said the babies couldn’t be crying. That’s like a good chunk of what babies DO, as anyone with baby-knowledge knows. And if you put one caregiver in charge of four babies / two caregivers in charge of eight babies, there’s going to be even more of it. Imagine telling a single parent of quadruplets that you are going to close the door and you don’t want to hear ANY CRYING FROM THOSE BABIES.

I could do eldercare again, but I would need to be paid much, much more. When I did it back in 2015, the agency I worked for charged clients $28/hour and paid me $10/hour. That was for changing adult diapers, helping adults to the toilet and wiping adult bottoms, giving adult showers, doing housework and cooking and shopping, handling medications, supporting client emotions/moods, getting yelled at by clients no longer in their right minds—and getting constantly nagged by my supervisor to take more shifts and to drive an unpaid hour round-trip for a two-hour shift. Newp.

Another possibility is going to another library. There is a library 10 minutes away that is advertising a similar job for $5/hour MORE than I get paid now. But they have a reputation for being unfriendly and unpleasant. Patrons often come to us even though the other library is their home library (we’re in a library group, so the library cards work at any of the libraries), saying we’re so much friendlier and more helpful. Maybe it’s not worth considering. Or MAYBE I COULD CHANGE HIM.

Another possibility is the post office. That’s one of the Richard Scarry Town jobs I haven’t yet done. And I’m curious about the inner workings. And I would love to feel less baffled by mailing options.

Another possibility is something medical—but again, the nearest hospital is 35 minutes away. That’s too much commute.

Another possibility is substitute teaching. Our district is so desperate, no teaching degree is required; there’s an online training course and a background-check, and you’re in. I suspect I would not be good at it (I don’t think I have natural crowd-control, and I think the children would sense fear; and also my voice does not Carry), but I also think it’s the kind of job where the only way to find out is to try it.

In some ways, my lack of career/advancement makes this process easier. I know of women my age who have advanced careers and are trying to change jobs, and their options are severely limited by their age and by the scarcity of the job-level they’re seeking. And there’s William, with his fresh computer science and linguistics degree—he doesn’t want to get a job at the post office sorting mail, he wants to Start His Career! But me, I have never had a job other than entry-level, so I have the freedom to choose among alllllllll the crummy options, purely on whim! Yay!

Tonight I’m going with friends to an early-access showing of the latest Downton Abbey movie. I’m looking forward to it, and also I am glad they are saying this is the last one. I loved the show, but the movies have been…sub-par. And now without the Dowager Countess!

I had a confrontation at work with my supervisor, who has been driving me/us crazy. I am not really sure how it went: in high stress, my memory doesn’t record well. I took half an hour to cool down, and then went directly to my boss’s boss. I DID NOT WANT TO. But I thought, my supervisor IS going to go to her about this, and then I WILL be called in to talk to her, and this way I get in there first, and without the “called to the principal’s office” vibe. That meeting went well, though of course I frustration/stress-cried. But my boss’s boss is good at managing such things, and is a calm and calming person.

Now we will see what happens next. I am ready to quit if I need to, but I would rather not. I would rather that instead my boss’s boss rein in my boss, and make her stop driving me/us crazy. Ideally, managers are supposed to listen to employees telling them about the things making their jobs harder, and find ways to reduce/eliminate those hurdles; this supervisor is more interested in winning an argument that the hurdle doesn’t actually exist, and then adding more hurdles as punishment for complaining.

Also, she seems to THRIVE on emergencies, so she has no incentive to prevent them. The confrontation was about me finally getting BEYOND sick of having a preventable emergency every single Monday morning, despite numerous requests for changes to the situation; my supervisor instead DECREASED staffing during that time, and then made cracks about how we sure didn’t need two people doing one job. My boss’s boss agreed with me that there was no reason to be having such an emergency, and she listened to my suggestions and made a few of her own; she then talked with a couple other people the situation affects and got their input, and together we came up with a plan. The next step is for her to go over it with my supervisor. This is where I’m afraid things may go amiss. My supervisor has an inexplicable way of convincing bosses that the staff is being a bunch of babies and that everything is actually fine, and/or that the problem was a temporary anomaly and there’s no reason to change anything.

Furthermore, my supervisor has a pattern of agreeing to a plan but not implementing it. Or implementing it but not reinforcing it, or implementing it but after awhile forgetting why we implemented it and changing it back. (That’s what happened with the staffing: she put a second person on shift with me because of the constant emergencies, and then moved that person elsewhere saying they were a duplicate and we didn’t need them.) And so another reason I am glad I went to my boss’s boss is that now I have a separate person involved in the changes, someone I can go back to and say “Remember the plan we agreed to? [Supervisor] is changing it.” I don’t want to be Little Miss Tattletale, but it has been years of this and I am about to pull a “people don’t leave jobs, they leave bosses,” so I don’t have much left to lose. I have loved this job better than any job I’ve ever had, and my supervisor is acting as if it’s her personal mission to change that.

This weekend I saw some cousins I haven’t seen for…well, we couldn’t figure it out. Did we last see each other at my cousin James’s wedding? That was when Henry was 2 weeks old (I’d considered giving Henry the middle name James in honor of the cousin/wedding; I am glad I didn’t, but also I still think that was a fun idea and that I wouldn’t have regretted it) (the real names would not have been Henry James like the author, so that was not an issue), and Henry is now 18 years old. Maybe it was at my cousin Lynnie’s wedding two years later—but no, I didn’t go to Lynnie’s wedding. Oh!! Maybe it was at my brother’s wedding?? Oops, no, that was even longer ago.

Our conclusion was that if we can’t remember how many DECADES it has been, that means too much time has gone by. And we had such a nice time together! My brother said afterward that he hadn’t realized the gathering would be so determined to laugh and have a good time, and that’s just how it was. It’s not as if we thought everyone would be determined to be pensive and serious! But this was just so clearly a group that WANTED to enjoy the time together, WANTED to say things to make everyone else laugh, WANTED to be glad to be together.

Well. Now this presents a new conundrum, and it is: How do we arrange more frequent get-togethers in the future? Maybe something every year or two; every two to three years might be more achievable. I think the big gap happened because we hadn’t noticed we’d shifted from the “Our parents get us together” stage of life to the “We have to do that ourselves” stage of life. It was a little exhilarating to think of, and a little weighty.

We have a rather large age gap: my mom and her siblings are spread out over twelve years, which is half a generation; my cousins and I are born over fourteen years, and I am the eldest. When my youngest cousins were born (two of them the year I was twelve and one more when I was fourteen), I was about the age my youngest uncle was when I was born. I love this kind of generational shifting (I love when someone becomes an aunt/uncle while still in school, or when an aunt/uncle is YOUNGER than their niece/nephew), but I do think it makes it near-impossible to do the important childhood bonding. I am much closer to some of my SECOND cousins on that side of the family, because they are almost exactly the same age as my brother and me, and they were often at family events; and in the era when grandparents felt no obligation to have any entertainments on hand for children, we bonded immediately. Meanwhile my little cousins were toddlers, under the radar. When I headed for college, they headed for preschool/kindergarten. No wonder we didn’t think to keep in touch.

Now, however, they seem to be full adults, and very nice/fun people besides. Our parents are mostly at the point where they may no longer attend family reunions, let alone arrange them. We cousins are spread out not only in age but also over about 800 miles: not insurmountable, but not the kind of thing where you can stop by with a pie. I would say two of the seven of us are placid to the point of irrelevance in this matter: they might attend a reunion, but they won’t do anything to make anything happen. Another two of the seven of us (plus one of the placid ones) have young children: it’s harder for them to travel, and harder for them to be in an unfamiliar place, and harder for them to find the time/energy to arrange things. Another two of the seven of us are my brother and me: we have older children, we’re more flexible—and also, we’re the eldest; I feel like this gives us a certain level of responsibility to see if we can make this happen / see if we all want it to happen. The last of the seven is another contender for leadership: confident, comfortable, social, and ready to make things happen; she’s also one of the babies born when I was twelve, which is fun. Oldest and youngest cousins—UNITE AND PLAN!

…Er. If you have any ideas, the cousin committee would be grateful to hear them. How do people MAKE THESE THINGS HAPPEN? (And WHAT SORTS OF THINGS do they make happen?) I feel like we could get bogged down even trying to find times we’re all available.

First, a shopping mystery for the comments section. I feel silly asking about things like this, but then I ask anyway and nine times out of ten someone is like “Oh, I’ll bet I know what that is! Here’s a link!” Elizabeth lost her favorite eye pencil. She doesn’t know the brand, and neither of us think we bought it: we think either she got it several years ago as a gift or else it was in my make-up box (which she has thoroughly pillaged) from one of the few subscription/advent boxes I tried before realizing I don’t wear make-up. It was a black eye pencil with glitter—not shimmer, GLITTER, so that there would be several little flashing pieces of glitter along her eyelid. She said it had a gold cap. I’d love to find out what it was and replace it for her.

Second: we have dropped off the three college kids, and now it is just me and Paul and William in the house. I know from experience that the sudden painful jabs will stop in a week or two, but right now I am still catching myself off-guard with thoughts such as “Isn’t it about time for Henry to be getting home?” and “Oh, we need more _____ at the grocery store, oh wait no we don’t.” I was thinking how much stranger this would be if William were NOT still at home. Just…me and Paul and the cats? Already?

Drop-offs went well. Henry was very nervous (pretending not to be) in the car on the way, and nervous when I dropped him off with his stuff—but by the time I’d taken the car to the distant parking lot as instructed and made my way back to his dorm (HALF AN HOUR’S WALK, THEY SAID THERE WOULD BE A SHUTTLE BUT I DID NOT SEE ANY SIGN OF ONE), he was cheery, and already getting along well with one of his roommates (he’s in a triple). Henry’s goal is to meet as many people as possible the first few weeks while everyone is new. He emailed us a little list of the people he’d met and liked so far, including someone who “may be my lifelong best friend, not that I’m making plans or anything.”

The twins are both in unfurnished apartments, and I am trying to leave this to them to figure out. My own impulse is to panic. “There is NOTHING IN THIS KITCHEN!!!” “But anything they buy, we have to figure out what to do with at the end of the year!!” “What if they buy something and then forget it’s theirs and a roommate takes it??” etc. All will be well. Items purchased for college apartments join the College Apartment Furnishings Cloud: maybe the saucepan is lost, but a couch is found; or both saucepan and couch are lost, along with the tower fan, but all go on to find another college student who needs them. Each semester of parents/students contributes to the Cloud; each semester benefits in their turn. When William’s college didn’t resume after spring break in 2020, workers packed up all the kids’ stuff for them and put it in storage; we ended up with two very expensive bath towels that did not belong to William. He contacted both of his roommates offering to mail the towels, but neither roommate claimed them. I’ve wondered if someone else’s parent was wringing their hands over those towels, as I was over the tower fan Rob lost along the way, along with some cookware and dishes.

When Elizabeth was moving in, we walked past a dumpster that had a little assortment of things clearly set to the side in case anyone wanted to claim them: a coffee table, an ottoman, a computer chair. Elizabeth took the ottoman. We saw other people take the chair and the table. By the time we left, there was a laundry hamper and a dining room chair. This is the College Apartment Furnishings Cloud at its most active and observable, but I like to imagine that that’s the gist of what’s happening all the time, less visibly: perhaps Rob’s tower fan was accidentally brought home by one of his roommates, who passed it down to his younger sister who is just now starting her sophomore year; maybe his dishes were left behind in a cabinet, and a college employee cleared them out and put them in the pile of used-but-still-good things the college resells at the start of each year, and another student bought the little deer bowls, and she graduated several years ago but still has them in her kitchen cabinets now.

fortunately I bought myself a set of the same bowls at the time (for $8, not for the $30-plus-shipping they are charging now)

We are ticking off all the things that will happen before the summer is over and Henry goes to college. One after another, tick tick tick, and now here we are in the last week. We have purchased the twin-extra-long sheets and comforter; we have purchased the tower fan and the bath towel and the backrest. Henry has purchased a guitar.

On Saturday, I took Henry out for breakfast; he and I both like eating breakfast out, and everyone else in our household is kind of meh about it, so we seized a last opportunity. Sunday morning, I drove Rob to the train station (he was here for a two-week visit). Tuesday is Henry’s last day of his summer job. Wednesday I’m off work, and we go pick up Elizabeth from the summer camp where she’s been working, and we do last-minute college shopping for anyone who needs it. Thursday we’re getting Chinese take-out for dinner at Henry’s request. Friday morning Edward has a hospital infusion appointment, so Paul will take Edward to that while I take Henry to college; I might bring William along to help with carrying things, but my memory of other freshman drop-offs is that the lifting/carrying is done almost entirely by extremely school-spirited students working for the Admissions department and using giant rolling carts, while the parents go park the car in a distant lot and walk half a mile back to the dorm to hug the child good-bye and then walk half a mile back to the car.

We have not been settle-the-child-in college parents. At the urging of a coworker whose child is going to the same college as Henry, I joined a Facebook parents group for parents of freshmen at this school, and it has been an eye-opening experience. Parents MEASURING FOR CURTAINS. Parents asking about filters for the showerheads/faucets. Parents wondering which dining hall is closest to their child’s dorm. Parents posting, and I am not exaggerating, HUNDREDS of questions about lofting the beds, and about how many inches there will be under each type of lofted bed, and asking about special bedskirts that will cover the mid-lofted underbed space, etc.

We drop the child off with all their things, and we hug them and leave. So far each baby bird in turn has figured out bed-lofting without us. I remember this from my own college experience as well: bed-lofting is a student group-bonding experience. No one needs a middle-aged parent trying to measure the gap for a bedskirt that matches the curtains. (What happens, I wonder, if the roommate’s parents ALSO bring bedskirt-matching curtains??)

Different people are different ways, so there MUST be students who earnestly want/need their parents to help unpack all their stuff, make the bed, choose coordinated decorations for the room, etc., but we are so far five for five on students not wanting that. Elizabeth SHOOS US OUT: “Okay, now go away, I want to arrange my stuff!” A few hours later she sends us a Snapchat video of the results, zooming in on highlights: her plant, her art supplies, her posters, her large round ugly stuffed proboscis monkey.

The day after we drop off Henry, we leave early in the morning to drive the twins back to college. Both of them are in unfurnished campus apartments this year, which seems to me like THE WORST option: so much stuff to bring, AND you have to clean your own bathroom. (The dorm bathrooms are communal, and cleaned by someone who is paid to do it.) We had a hitch put on one of the cars so we can pull one of those little enclosed trailers. Two mattresses (thank you for the suggestion, Jane D., they are currently uncompressing on my dining room table and seem GREAT!), two mattress bags for protection during transport and for easier carrying, two folding desks (one is this one and one is this one), two folding bookcases. Everything else packed into bags like these (we have several sets, some IKEA brand and some knock-offs; all seem good), which are like nice sturdy roomy water-resistant duffels that fold flat when you don’t need them, and also the kid can use one as a good single duffel for coming home on breaks.

One week from today we will be back home and all three college kids will be at college, and we will be figuring out what a household looks like when it’s me, Paul, and 24-year-old William.

I have had a startling conversation with a co-worker. Her daughter is getting married, and they have settled on a location and menu, and the invitations have gone out. My co-worker said they are still waiting on a number of uncertain RSVPs, and then she added, acting out her own inner monologue: “I mean, we’re spending $250 a plate, can you at least let me know if you’re coming??”

The first time she mentioned that number, I made the active decision to keep my face actively neutral. I don’t know who has what money, or what their priorities are, and no one is asking my face for its opinion. But the THIRD time she said that price, I decided that someone doesn’t say it three times in as many minutes unless they want to talk about it, so I said in a cautious, you-are-the-parent-who-is-slightly-further-down-the-road-than-me-and-I-learn-at-your-feet voice, “I didn’t know it COULD cost that much.” Which was at least theoretically untrue, because if you had told me that, say, George Clooney spent $250/plate for his wedding reception, I would not have said the same thing. But I mean I didn’t know it was possible for ORDINARY PEOPLE I WORK WITH to be semi-casually paying that much per plate for a wedding reception. Groceries for a family of four for a month, or one single dinner for that family at a wedding = the same price.

And she replied, “That is just the AVERAGE, BUDGET-FRIENDLY cost these days! We looked at several other possibilities that were MUCH more. We relocated the wedding to [nearby state] to bring it down as low as this!”

This is when I resolved to come to you. I feel we need to pool our Group Knowledge on this. IS $250/plate the average, budget-friendly cost of throwing a wedding? My co-worker is NOT WEALTHY. She works in a LIBRARY where, for example, I have been working for five years at an exemplary level and I make $17/hour, which for comparison is what McDonald’s and Target employees in my area START at, and in fact I recently saw Target is starting at $19. Her husband has a NORMAL JOB, and she works because she NEEDS TO as well as WANTS TO. We do not live in a particularly expensive area, and in fact they moved the wedding to be in an even less expensive area. If the average, budget-conscious wedding is $250/plate, then I would like to know NOW so that I can inform the children we are OPTING OUT. I mean it. We are OPTING. OUT. We will find other ways to get married that give us more bang for the buck.

We could have it in the yard, and we could pick up a dozen different pizzas from each of three different local pizzerias, and we could buy every single different variety of Bota boxed wine and line them up along a folding table for tasting purposes, and have two giant coolers full of ice and beer! We could go to one of the beautiful local parks, and hire food trucks! The happy couple could instead ELOPE TO ITALY FOR TWO WEEKS FOR THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME, and we’d still save money! I went to a lovely, lovely wedding where they got married in a church and then had cake and strawberries and champagne in the large beautifully-lit church foyer, and my guess is that it did not cost ANYWHERE EVEN REMOTELY APPROACHING $250/person. This is a loving family celebration! Are we suddenly a $250/plate family, when yesterday we were happy with store-brand ice cream?

My intention was to avoid sounding judgey, but clearly that is a lost cause. I don’t MEAN to sound judgey, but I think that is how it unmistakably comes across when someone is astonished by the amount of money someone else is spending on something. We have talked about this before, with Startling Expenses, and we have agreed it is Not Nice At All to express that astonishment to the person whose expenses are startling to us—especially not without first FULLY coming to terms with our own Startling Expenses. Which is why, with my co-worker, I first SUPPRESSED my astonishment, and then, when it seemed she WANTED a reaction, at least went with with MEEK IGNORANCE version of astonishment. But here, among friends, my hope is to PRIVATELY and SAFELY express the astonishment as a conversation-opener and attitude-adjuster: I am astonished, which is going to come across as judginess, but you are my friends; and you know I am prepared, in your company and under your counsel, to go from astonishment to resignation/understanding/enlightenment(/opting-out).

We should also recognize the challenge under these circumstances of presenting information without JUSTIFYING it. Let’s imagine a vastly exaggerated situation, exaggerated beyond all possible connection to actual reality, where someone has paid $250 per guest for a Lyft driver to pick up food at a Burger King drive-through for the reception. We know from studying psychology that humans are prone to mentally justifying their decisions after the fact, no matter how irrational those decisions actually were. That is, if they made that decision, it MUST by definition have been a smart and reasonable decision, and they will find evidence to defend that idea. Someone who, against all objective reason, has spent $250 per person for wedding guests to be fed room-temperature Burger King take-out that should have cost $12 per person, might be inclined to deliver impassioned arguments for why it is WORTH IT to SPEND MONEY on a SPECIAL DAY for WHAT YOU WANT. Before we begin our important work, let us all try to separate ourselves from that psychological inclination. If it is useful to put the financial information in an anonymous comment, in order not to feel the anticipatory gaze of judgement that activates that psychological shield of justification, let’s go ahead and do that.

Because here is what I would like us to do, if you are willing. I would like us to POOL what we know, as objectively as possible. Some of us know a little and some of us know a lot, some of us know specific things and some of us know general things, and it is all valuable in the pool. Maybe you can contribute how much it cost per plate to get married when YOU got married, and use an inflation calculator to figure out what that is in today’s dollars; that is to prevent us from boasting like old people that WE only spent TWENTY dollars a plate in 1965, when that would be the equivalent of TWO HUNDRED dollars a plate in 2025. Or maybe you can contribute how much it cost for your child’s reception—again, unless your child got married this year, we’ll need to use the inflation calculator to make sure we are talking about the same dollars. Or maybe you or your friend or your child is getting married SOON, and you have CURRENT ACTIVE PRICING for us to consider: maybe you know that you can spend as little as $30/plate, but only if you want bad cafeteria food (in which case I am going to really lean into my pizzas / food trucks ideas, which I suspect would please more guests, if pleasing guests is the goal), or maybe you know that everything is nuts right now because of the [reason the rest of us don’t know about], or maybe you have a friend who is a caterer and you know it varies considerably based on the RANGE of the number of people you want to feed (that is, perhaps it is VERY VERY DIFFERENT to feed 40-75 guests than to feed 150-200 guests). Or maybe you know that the real variable is not the food but the locale. All of this is very, very valuable.

Also valuable: information about the QUALITY OF FOOD. If you spent $50/plate in 1997, which is the equivalent of $100/plate in 2025, and your reception food was chicken breast, rice, and mixed vegetables that you would have been willing to pay mayyyybe a halfhearted $16 for in 2025 on a busy night when you can’t face making dinner, that matters TOO. We can see how it could be delightful to treat your friends and family to truly good dinner at a fair price, but less satisfying to treat your friends and family to a meal that cost you roughly six times as much as you would EVER have paid for the same food at a restaurant, if you follow me. VALUE: that is a concept that applies regardless of price-point.

Paul has started, for reasons unknown and unexplored, to increase the amount of housework he does. Of course theoretically I do not want to discourage this IN ANY WAY. But we are running into some issues.

When one household member starts to do a chore that has been done by a different household member for, say, thirty years, my opinion is that there needs to be discussion/training/etc. If, for example, I were to suddenly start doing the snow-blowing of the driveway, I would expect to first ask Paul to show me how to use the snow-blower. I would expect to receive an overview of the things he had learned in his years of snow-blowing, and particularly in snow-blowing our particular driveway, and then I would expect to go to him with questions or issues I encountered; I would also expect him to point out things he noticed, for example if I were doing something in a way that would damage the snow-blower or the driveway, or if I were doing things in a way that would take twice as long. This is because I start from the point of view that a chore is a learned skill, and takes effort and wisdom, and that the person doing the chore is doing it in a particular way based on experience and knowledge.

The evidence suggests that Paul is not starting from this point of view. He does not want to be taught to do the chore first; he wants to just start doing it. He does not do AT ALL WELL with any feedback or information: for example, saying “Oh no, wait, that shirt can’t go in the dryer” or “The bowls don’t get clean if they’re blocked by plates” or “The washing machine defaults to hot water; it has to be manually changed to a different temperature.” And he does not notice when the chore itself gives him feedback: for example, if he loads the dishwasher with a plate in front of a bowl, and therefore the bowl does not get any contact with soap/water, he does not notice when unloading the dishwasher that the bowl is not clean, and he puts it away unclean. If I mention that the bowl is not clean, and it’s because it was blocked by a plate, he does not learn from that either, and he continues to load it the way in which the bowl is not cleaned. If I am putting my own dishes into the dishwasher, and I notice that a bowl is blocked by a plate and move the plate or the bowl, he is exasperated and frustrated with me.

You can perhaps see the conundrum. Sorry, I guess I should have been more clear: when I said I wished Paul would do his share of the housework, I should have clarified that I wanted help that resulted in less work for me, not help that resulted in more work for me. I did not want to have to rewash dishes, replace clothing, and set up new systems to protect my things from being ruined. I did not want to deal with a prickly, irritable spouse who wanted credit for doing a chore in a way I would need to redo, and then got more prickly and irritable with me when I redid it. I did not want to have to SNEAK AROUND furtively doing and redoing chores, while no longer getting credit for doing those chores.

Some of you are perhaps wondering why I do not talk to Paul about this. Perhaps you think I have been in this relationship for thirty years without that idea occurring to me. Talking about it does not go well; I have tried many, many times, with many approaches (including saying the things as I have said them in this post), and with many different outcomes, none of which resulted in change. In the past, the combination of his behavior and the impossibility of addressing it has resulted in me actually INSISTING on doing certain chores and asking him PLEASE not to do them; this is obviously a very displeasing outcome, but was better than what we have again now for some inexplicable reason. I had thought that even if he did no housework, at least we didn’t have to fight about it anymore, and at least I was getting credit for doing it. It is hard to know what to do when we are back to this again.

I used to be a Christian, but even if you aren’t one and never have been, you’re likely familiar with Christian concept that you should pray to God for help. But in my family, and perhaps this is familiar to you too, the idea was that if, for example, you pray to God for patience, you should expect God to give you many many irritating opportunities to practice that patience. If you pray to God for purity/chastity, you should expect temptation rather than a cessation of Impulses. You don’t pray to God as if he is a wish-granting genie; you pray to him as if he is a physical therapist. You want stronger arms? You need to expect ARM DAY EVERY DAY. It is that weird Christian mix of humble (YOU SHOULD EXPECT TO WORK/SUFFER AND SAY THANK YOU VERY MUCH SIR) and narcissistic (THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE IS YOUR PERSONAL TRAINER CREATING CUSTOM TASKS TO MEET YOUR PERSONAL REQUESTS). It is hard to fully shake that view of the universe: if I want to improve something, I expect to encounter extra opportunities to cultivate improvement, deity or no.

And so, from that mindset: I am being put to the test, in a nice easy trial run. Recently I decided in my mind that, based on numerous regrettable examples from the past, I needed to be quicker to give up THINGS I HAVE that OTHER PEOPLE NEED. Too many times I have kept something back, in case I might need it later—when someone else needs it NOW, and I can always acquire it again later. It makes me feel not only selfish but also ridiculous. I am anxious and clingy, even when I don’t need to be. I would like to stop that.

And after making that decision, here comes the first test. Elizabeth texts from camp that they seem to be on the verge of a Covid outbreak, and do we have spare Covid tests? Well, yes. Our insurance company was giving out EIGHT tests per member per month for awhile; now it’s four, and we have stopped asking for them, because we have accumulated a fair number. Let’s say, at a brief count just now, 75 tests. The anxious, clingy part of me says, “But we might need those!” And it’s true we DO go through them very quickly when Covid is in the house and there are six of us. The new concrete resolve says, “Yes, but we don’t need them NOW. Someone else needs them NOW. WE can get more LATER.” And then I allow the anxious clingy (PRACTICAL) part of me to order another batch from the insurance company AND to set aside three tests each to send with the college students this fall. ALL THE REST, we give to Elizabeth’s camp. It is GOOD to USE things for what they are supposed to be USED for. It is NOT good to HOARD things UNUSED, when they COULD be USED. It is ESPECIALLY not good to let things EXPIRE while we hoard them. And look what a nice easy level-one test I am being given: this benefits my own child, and people directly connected with her.

I am also sending all the boxes of kleenex we have in the house, plus some KN95 masks, plus our backup supplies of hand sanitizer, plus a hoarded and dear 6-pack of Reese’s Big Cups for morale, plus an unopened bottle of Tylenol. ALL OF THESE THINGS, I CAN EASILY REPLACE. I DO NOT NEED TO CLING AND/OR HOARD.

We saw Elizabeth for a few days; her camp had a half-week off. She showed us around the camp for 20 minutes or so when we picked her up, and in that brief time I got four bug bites, and smacked/killed a dozen additional bugs who were trying to bite me. Bugs were actively trying to fly into my mouth. Elizabeth was entirely unfazed. She said the best way is to ignore the bugs and also the bites. Okay but. Like. They’re biting me, and trying to fly into my mouth. I can’t just let that go.

It was lovely to see her, and she was utterly bored. She said on the way home that she could not WAIT to have more than an hour off (she’s on duty 24 hours a day except for a one-hour daily break, which is the only time she’s allowed to shower, and she gets one day off per week; the going rate for doing the Lord’s work in this way is $50 per 23-hour workday), and then after about three hours at home she was restless. She likes to BE BUSY ALL THE TIME, she just THINKS she wants to rest. If I hadn’t definitely birthed her myself, I would not be entirely confident of the maternity. I don’t like to have more than one thing happening per day. I’m pissy about the pay, but this camp job is perfect for her otherwise.

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I will tell you a dumb thing I did. Here is what it is: I went to three months of pelvic floor therapy, which was not only time-consuming but fairly expensive ($30 copay/week x 14 weeks = $420—which was a HUGE insurance discount, because before insurance it was over $300 per session), and I got into the habit of doing my little daily exercises, and I graduated at about 75% resolution of issues with more at-home progress to be made by continuing the daily exercises; and then two weeks later, I had knee surgery, and I COMPLETELY STOPPED DOING ALL MY AT-HOME EXERCISES AND OVER THE FOLLOWING SIX MONTHS I LOST ALMOST ALL OF MY PROGRESS.

Luckily, as the physical therapist says, I get to keep the educational tool kit. And whenever you work a muscle, it is easier to get it back than before you worked it. So I am starting over, and making MUCH more rapid progress now that I know what I’m doing. I’ve rebuilt some of the little daily exercises into my daily routine. I’m being Mindful in the ways she taught me to be Mindful. I am doing my little Bladder Training things, where I try to delay peeing after I arrive home and so on. I will have to dig into the piles of paper on my desk to find all the worksheets I saved.

I have another tip from Pelvic Floor Therapy, for those of you who have the issue of Suddenly! Needing To Pee Really Badly! So That You Almost (or Actually) Wet Your Pants a Little Bit! (Frequently happens as you’re unlocking your own front door, or as you enter a bathroom and are struggling with the button/tie of your pants.)

It’s another of the tips I found unlikely when I heard it, and then it actually worked. At the time the pelvic floor therapist told me about it, I was not yet able to do a noticeable pelvic floor contraction (these are sometimes called Kegels, but the therapist said we are not naming any more woman things after men), but she said do one ANYWAY, and in fact do three in quick succession (they call this “flicking,” which I find icky but memorable). She said, do what you THINK or IMAGINE is a pelvic floor contraction (or Kegel), three times in a row really fast, and it can stop the urge temporarily, and ideally can stop you from peeing your pants a little. And I thought, how is this going to work, when I cannot yet do a pelvic floor contraction that I can feel? But I did three imaginary (imaginary from my point of view in terms of success, but actually trying to do them) quick Kegels, and it worked. It doesn’t work for LONG. Like, if you’re nowhere near a bathroom, you are out of luck with this maneuver. But it works for the time it takes to get from the front door to the bathroom.

Which, by the way, the SECOND level of this is to NOT hurry from the front door to the bathroom, but to instead force yourself to do something else for a few minutes, such as putting away a bag of groceries. This is when you’ve gotten good at doing the three quick flicks, so then the next step is to untrain your bladder to want to go to the bathroom the minute you walk in your door. This is when we use Gentle Reassurances, like you would for a sweet little dog who is going to get to go outside very very soon but not yet. “Yes, yes,” you say to your bladder, “I know you want to pee, and we WILL pee VERY SOON, but not QUITE YET. It is fine! We can wait! We don’t even need to go all that badly!” (This method does NOT apply when you REALLY DO need to pee. Like, you have been running errands and drinking a giant iced coffee, and you have been driving 7 miles over the limit all the way home because you honestly need to pee. It is ONLY for the kind of peeing where your bladder hears you coming home and thinks “PEE TIME RIGHT NOW!!!,” when a minute earlier you didn’t even need to.)

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A number of years ago, I consulted with you about buying a mattress in a box for a kid going to live in an unfurnished college apartment. (I don’t remember why, but we weren’t going to have space for a mattress on the way THERE, but thought we WOULD have room on the way BACK.) (Oh, I remember why: it’s because of the difference in passenger space needed. An extra kid was coming along for drop-off but wouldn’t be going along for pick-up at the end of the year.) I cannot find this post now, but it doesn’t matter, because it would have been, let’s see, when Rob was a college sophomore, and eight years is a long time for mattress developments. The mattress we bought him at the time (a Tuft & Needle), after sifting through the advice, was $350, and now that same mattress is $850, and that seems…incorrect, for a mattress that lasted three school years (Rob used it for two years, Edward for one) before collapsing internally and being thrown away. (Looking at the mattress online, I see it had a 10-year warranty, so we should have looked into that—but the collapse was discovered when Paul was picking up Edward at college, and so he pitched it into a dumpster with relief at not having to find room for it in the car. And probably there would have been some reason the warranty didn’t apply.)

I wondered if anyone has recent experience buying a mattress in a box, or knows what the word on the street is. I’m kind of inclined this time to go to a physical mattress store and buy normal mattresses not in boxes. With TWO students in college apartments this year, we’re renting a lil trailer, so we don’t really need the space the boxed mattress saved. (And that space-savings disappears anyway when you go pick the kid up again and the mattress is no longer crammed into a box.)