William told me yesterday afternoon that he was supposed to wear “business casual” for a senior event that evening. He does not own anything that is not jeans or a t-shirt. I was somewhat sympathetic, because he seemed pretty anxious about it and I can identify with pre-event clothing anxiety, but on the other hand it seemed unlikely that he had only just been given that information that same day.

Still, I had to take Henry for his weekly allergy shot, and that route takes me right past a Goodwill, and frankly there are few things I find as thrilling as a sudden Clothing Emergency of this sort (I still think with fond thrill of when Elizabeth, age approximately 3, got carsick on the way to Target and I “had to” buy her replacement clothing), so I stopped to see if they had any polos or buttondowns. I found several shirts that looked nice and were also cheap, so I bought them. (One of the nice things about having so many kids is that even if he didn’t like any/all of the shirts, it’s likely SOMEONE will get use out of them.) One of the shirts was pink: he’d mentioned that “someone at school” had told him he looked good in pink, and I love when guys wear pink (while also looking forward to a day when guys wearing pink is no more remarkable than guys wearing blue or grey or white). And he did choose the pink one, and he did look nice in it.

Why was I telling you this rather dull story? Oh, I remember! It is because as I was checking out, the clerk asked if I qualified for the senior citizen discount. This is the first time this has happened to me, and it is not a milestone I savored.

I have heard of senior citizens who won’t ask for the discount because they don’t want to admit they’re that age, and I am not that kind of vain: I will be piping right up and asking for it. But that is so far in my future I have not even started WONDERING about it yet, so it is not pleasing to have someone volunteering the information that I look like I could qualify NOW. It was a little tempting to say yes and take the discount as compensation for my injured feelings.

Coincidentally, my friend Meredith ALSO got asked this question yesterday; she too is many, many years from even the lowest most-generous edge of qualifying. As she put it: “It isn’t like carding for alcohol where you ask almost regardless of age to be on the safe side. In fact MAYBE DO NOT EVER ASK.” SERIOUSLY. If I get carded when I am clearly over the age of 21, the worst thing that happens is that I feel foolishly flattered and later try to work the incident casually into conversation. Getting senior-citizen carded is NOT THAT SAME KIND OF THING.

While I have you here, I will finish the story about the shirts. William’s favorite of the shirts I bought was a pale aqua color, and I noticed only after he tried it on that it had giant bleach splatters up the back. This is one reason that even though Goodwill says they want ALL clothes donated (because they can make scrap/rag bags out of the ones that aren’t good), I generally throw away ruined clothes: my own repeated shopping experience suggests Goodwill must only scrap/rag the items that don’t sell, rather than sorting out the ruined stuff before putting it out on the racks. I know it’s my own responsibility to check each item of clothing carefully before I buy it, but for whatever reason I don’t always think to do it, and so I have sighed over quite a few broken zippers, missing novelty buttons, holes, and now bleach splatters. It’s no big deal: I can just consider it a small donation to Goodwill. But there are a lot of people it WOULD be a big deal to, and I don’t want them despairing over money wasted on my broken zippers and missing novelty buttons and bleach spots.

And so I was about to put the bleach-splashed shirt in the trash, but then William jokingly suggested we could Pinterest it up by adding additional artsy splatters (he was teasing me for this shirt), and I declined this idea but it reminded me of ANOTHER shirt I had long ago that got splattered with bleach, and I just bleached the rest of it and had a nice white shirt (which, yes, got holes in it pretty quickly, but I got maybe a half-dozen wearings out of it before that happened). There was nothing to lose, and so I bleached the aqua shirt, and all the aqua came out quickly and easily, and now it is a nice white shirt for the next time someone in this house needs Business Casual.

Recently we had two situations where something patriotic happened and I went with what I thought was the right response, but then felt very uncertain and worried I’d looked silly. So I did what I mean to do EVERY year, and I LOOKED IT UP. Not that I will necessarily remember those answers for the future.

First situation: school band played the national anthem before a concert. My response: stand up, hand over heart, sing along to the parts I remember. Part I was uncertain about: hand over heart. Everyone who was able to do so stood up, which made that part easy, but a lot of people WEREN’T doing hand-over-heart and I was worried I was overdoing it and/or looking foolish; I wondered if maybe hand-over-heart was just for the pledge and I was mis-applying it.

Second situation: Memorial Day parade, flag was carried past. My response: stand up, hand over heart, hiss at the children and Paul to stand up. Part I was uncertain about: all of that. Also, there were multiple flags scattered throughout the parade: did I need to stand for all of them? keep hand over heart for all of them? I started feeling silly. We were in a sparsely-populated part of the parade route, which made it harder to look to others for cues, but a few people nearby were sitting in lawn chairs and didn’t stand, and others were already standing anyway and didn’t do hand-over-heart, so I felt conspicuous and wondered if I was overdoing it.

My source for information, when I looked it up: Emily Post: Flag Etiquette. (I prefer Judith Martin / Miss Manners, but I had a harder time finding a good online source for her views on flag etiquette, and I wanted something I could link to.)

The conclusion, based on that source: I was not wrong. For the national anthem, civilian citizens are supposed to stand if able to do so, face the flag, and put hand over heart: hand-over-heart is the civilian equivalent of the military salute, which is something I didn’t know. If you’re, say, volunteering at an elementary school, and they start the pledge over the intercom, you’re supposed to face the nearest flag (or the intercom, if no flag is visible), stand up if able to do so, and put your hand over your heart. You don’t have to pledge/sing, you only have to stay quiet if you’re not pledging/singing; you MAY pledge/sing if you’d like to.

For a passing flag in a parade, citizens are supposed to stand, face the flag, and salute (military- or civilian-style as applicable). According to the VFW Auxiliary, this only needs to be done for the FIRST flag of the parade, and not for every single flag scattered throughout the parade, and not for little hand-held flags that people are waving for fun as opposed to carrying ceremonially. That makes sense to me; otherwise, a person would have to remain standing and saluting throughout the entire parade, and that cuts into the cheering/clapping time.

On my recent road trip, I was switching through radio stations as usual (even if you find a good one, you soon lose it to geography), and came upon a station that was doing a show at that moment with two female DJs and no male DJs, and it was a shock to my ears. I am well familiar with the one-female-one-male-DJ format. I am well familiar with the two-or-more-male-DJs format. I am well familiar with groupings of one or two male DJs plus one or two female DJs, or one single DJ doing their own particular radio program. But I don’t remember EVER turning to a radio station that was doing a show with (1) more than one DJ and ALSO (2) none men.

I wish I’d found out what station it was, but I lost it before they said who they were. It sounded very indie. I wonder if it was some local/independent/college station? It demonstrated so clearly yet another way that we think of men as the default and women as the optional add-ons, and don’t even notice it’s like that until it’s done a different way and seems shocking. I never notice it when there are two male DJs; it just seems normal. But hearing two female DJs talking to each other was STARTLING.

To dramatically change the subject: I have been giving the kids small side-dish smoothies sometimes with dinner, as a good way of getting a better variety of fruits and vegetables into picky eaters. I have been buying small $3 packages of fresh spinach leaves to add to these smoothies but then, because I only make smoothies a couple of times per week, and sometimes there is an unfortunate gap between grocery shopping day and the next batch, I often end up throwing away a painful percentage of each bag. I was buying frozen broccoli at the grocery store this morning (not for smoothies) and my eyes fell upon FROZEN SPINACH. I HAD FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT FROZEN SPINACH. I have been buying frozen fruits, but I forgot I could also buy frozen spinach! I don’t want frozen spinach for, like, SALADS, but it’s PERFECT for smoothies!! …Or so I hope; I haven’t actually tried it yet. But I feel so sure it will be!

I have the uneasy feeling that there was something I was supposed to do this morning. I’m hoping it is just the lingering memory that I need to order Paul some new shoes, because I already did that. I also ordered these for myself:

(image from Converse.com)

I almost didn’t, because I balked at the price even on sale, so when I opened the order confirmation later there was a little moment where I couldn’t remember which way I’d gone on that decision, and then I saw them in the email and my heart leapt up with happiness.

Last night I was folding laundry and making a mental note that Paul needed new shoes and that I should order some in the morning, and I thought for a little while about the life Paul lives. Like, I’m not commenting on whether or not it’s fair, or claiming that it doesn’t fall within agreed-upon labor divisions, or saying that I would be powerless to change it, or saying that he couldn’t come up with similar thoughts about the way I live—but still I wonder, what must it be like to NEVER THINK ABOUT YOUR SOCKS? Like, not only do clean ones appear without you taking any action, but OLD ones disappear and NEW ones appear without you taking any action. You might notice the supply getting a little old/holey, or sometimes it might dwindle to the point where you start to get a little nervous about having enough socks for the week, but you never actually run out and you don’t even have to think about what brand you wear and whether or not it’s on sale or whether any particular sock is ready to be thrown out. WHAT WOULD THAT BE LIKE.

What must it be like to never think about scheduling appointments for the pediatrician, the dentist, the orthodontist, the eye doctor, the various specialists for Crohn’s disease and scoliosis and wisdom teeth and allergies? What must it be like to see the insurance rejections come in with exasperating regularity (“This time we’re claiming we didn’t get the referral, so you get to make that whole batch of phone calls all over again!”), but YOUR only part of the suffering is having to listen to someone talk about how frustrating it is to deal with them? What is it like to be able to confidently go to work without ever worrying about the impact of the children’s schedules or illnesses? What’s it like to be able to schedule a trip without having to make any arrangements for your absence at home?

What do you suppose it’s like to take off your work shirt, onto which you have spilled Crystal Light, and just drop it into the laundry, knowing it will appear back in your closet stain-free but without giving any thought to the process of noticing the stain, treating the stain, buttoning down the pocket flaps because otherwise they get crinkly during laundering, putting it in the washer with another kind of stain remover and also maybe using the soak cycle, remembering to check to make sure the stain is out before putting it in the dryer, re-treating the stain, re-washing, re-checking, drying, remembering to take it out promptly so it doesn’t wrinkle, hanging it up? What is it LIKE to live that way, I wonder, perhaps just sighing a little because you find your pocket flaps buttoned and you wanted them unbuttoned? I think it must be like being very, very rich.

I am back from taking Rob back to college for his summer job, which gave me the worst case of Sunday Afternoon Syndrome ever: not only was it Sunday afternoon, but it was Sunday afternoon and my very-looked-forward-to overnight trip was over. Plus I was tired and cranky from driving the last hour-and-a-half in some inexplicable traffic with the sun at a glaring angle.

Plus I may have hit a squirrel. I’d slowed down to avoid hitting it, even though I know you’re not supposed to do that but there was no one close behind me, and then the little idiot doubled back and ran right under my car. There was a little bonking sound of something hitting the underside of the car; the sound was soft enough for hope but not for denial. When I looked in the rearview mirror, I didn’t see the squirrel in the road or anywhere else. If you know of any possibility that the squirrel stuck to the underside of my car, I don’t want to hear about it.

Well, but aside from those things, it was a great trip. I’d had various frets, such as that his housing wouldn’t actually be available when we arrived, or that it would turn out he was supposed to have submitted a form and now it was too late, but those frets all came to naught. I helped carry in his stuff and then I was free. I did a little shopping, checked into my motel, and then went back out to have dinner. While I was eating, Rob texted me that he’d forgotten to bring his sheets. So I went back and picked him up and we went to Target and bought some. And oh yeah he needed shampoo. And body wash. And floss. And he was low on toothpaste.

I wondered if perhaps he is using mind-altering substances these days, because I asked him about all these things before we left home, TWICE. First, a few days before we left, as I was heading out to Target, I asked if he needed anything like that, and he said he didn’t; second, on the morning we left, I had the storage cabinet open, and I said “Oh, how are you on shampoo and deodorant and stuff?,” and he said he was all set. I remember reading an article long ago about how bad it is for people psychologically to screw around with their sleep schedules, so let’s hope that’s all it is.

I dropped him back off at school, and went to my motel room and changed into pajamas and re-watched Bridesmaids. It is really, really not my type of movie (I don’t like gross-out humor, horrifying-awkward-situation humor, or raunch), but I liked it better the second time through when I knew what to expect, and it was the right kind of movie for half-watching while I played on my phone and ate snacks. I stayed up late and it was fun.

The motel I was staying at was not the kind with breakfast. I’d been thinking I’d get a Sausage McMuffin and a coffee at the drive-through on my way out of town, but then impulsively stopped at IHOP instead. Here were my anxieties, before stopping:

1. I haven’t been there in a couple of decades and I don’t really remember what it’s like
2. What if on Sunday mornings it’s really crowded?
3. Maybe they’ll resent me taking up a whole table
4. Maybe it’ll be expensive and disappointing and I’ll wish I’d spent $2 at McDonald’s instead

But it was so perfect. It was not AT ALL crowded, in fact if anything it was worryingly empty, just me and three families with kids in a huge empty restaurant. It was totally fine for me to take up a whole table. And I was not at all disappointed:

(I would have tipped the camera a little higher so you could see the coffee pot, but I didn’t want the family at the next table to think I was taking pictures of them)

I was in a daring mood, so I ordered the stuffed French toast even though it said it was made with cinnamon-raisin bread and I don’t like warm raisins; but there was not one single perceptible raisin in it, and the cinnamon flavor was unexpectedly good with the strawberries and whipped cream. I got the sourdough toast and it was so good; the last time I had breakfast out I ordered wheat toast and it was all dried and crunchy, but this was chewy and soft. The waitress asked if I wanted two sausage or two bacon, then added “…or one of each?,” as if she knew my secret heart. I got my own entire pot of coffee and she brought a little bowl of assorted creamers so I could try multiple flavors. I just kept eating a bite of each thing in turn like Albert in Bread and Jam for Frances, and kept adding more hot coffee to my mug, and it was so so wonderful and I want to eat there every morning.

The only way it could have been better is if there had been a jelly caddy on the table, instead of the toast being delivered with one strawberry and one grape. I LOVE a good jelly caddy. I like trying the flavors I wouldn’t usually choose, like apple jelly or orange marmalade. I just spent some time researching this topic (I wanted to make sure “caddy” was the right word; it turns out it can be called a caddy or a rack), and did you know you can buy these little jam packets and caddies for your very own house? I didn’t see any variety packs that included all the different flavors, but there are 200-packet packs of strawberry/grape/marmalade, strawberry/grape/apple, strawberry/grape/mixed, or just peach, or just blackberry—and there may be others but that was just about the point where sanity returned. Plus I got discouraged because the jam rack I wanted was only in packs of twelve, which is twelve more jam racks than my house can use. The Smuckers site has the other kind of jam caddy I like, and they’re only $3.49 each, but that’s when I started thinking was I actually going to place any such order and realized the answer was no I was not. (But if your answer is yes, Smucker’s also has a cherry/blackberry/strawberry assortment I didn’t find on Amazon.)

I have just finished re-watching Sense and Sensibility (the Emma Thompson / Alan Rickman version) and Pride and Prejudice (the Jennifer Ehle / Colin Firth version) (Twitter thread if you would like to hear why Mr. Darcy is hot), and now I am in search of a dress like those dresses. They look so COMFORTABLE. Like nightgowns, but with flattering bust emphasis. I suppose it would look ridiculous at the grocery store, especially since I don’t have those short front-curls of hair framing my face. Were those wiglets, do you think, or did the actresses really cut their hair like that? I suppose it was little wiglets.

I am also re-reading Shirley Jackson’s book Raising Demons, and enjoying it so much. Several of you recommended it and you were SO RIGHT: she moves to a new, large, weird house with her many children; it is eminently relatable right now. She even has an unpleasant altercation with the movers, as I did. I want to find a copy of this book so I can own it, but I am looking on Amazon and the options are odd: new editions, editions that include other books, etc. I don’t want the one that has the cartoon cat on the cover; it has to be the old one with the house on the cover [edited to add: and it has to be hardcover]. I will try eBay. Oh, $350. Perhaps I will steal my library’s copy and pay the $14 lost-book fine. (This is not a joke I can carry off believably.) [Update: Slim found me a reasonably-priced copy and then told me I needed the book and the book needed me, and I find Slim very persuasive so I ordered it. I am so happy imagining it on its way to me!]

This weekend I am taking Rob back to college, because at the last minute he obtained a summer job there. This is excellent news, as he does not seem keen on living at home with us anymore, and I am finding I am somewhat less than keen myself on his schedule of sleeping until 2:00 in the afternoon and then getting up and examining the labels of our food to evaluate ethical status. It has been nice having him home for a little while, but now it will be nice to return to the status quo of loving him from afar. Also it will be nice to spend a night by myself in a motel room, watching Say Yes to the Dress and eating Junior Mints / Mr. Goodbar / Pringles / Smartfood Kettle Corn / Entenmann’s Brownie Chocolate-Chip snack cakes. Though as it turns out, it will be an expensive trip: for some reason motel rooms were either sold out or else double the usual price; apparently there is something going on in the city that weekend. I chose the cheapest room, which was the same price I usually avoid paying by choosing something else at half the price, and I felt myself lucky to have it. Fortunately I got my snack-cakes on sale.

Rob’s new job, which is for a company run by other college students, told him proudly to watch The Social Network as homework before beginning his new job. We have watched it, and I am at a loss to understand what they are trying to tell him. That movie doesn’t just fail The Bechdel Test, it douses it in gasoline and lights it on fire while chanting fraternal loyalty to the brotherhood. If I had to guess, I’d guess it was a warning: Get in, loser, we are going to steal your work, stab you in the back, and be terrible to women as we’re doing it! I said something similar and Rob was a little touchy about it. “He didn’t say he was The Next Mark Zuckerberg; YOU called him that,” etc. This job has Learning Experience written alllllllll over it.

It doesn’t make for a very interesting post, but I can report that Mother’s Day 2019 went far better than Mother’s Day 2018.

As it approached, I began to feel nervous and also sheepish: I didn’t want a BIG DEAL made out of Mother’s Day, because it’s NOT a big deal to me; I literally just wanted NOT NOTHING. I didn’t want jewelry or expensive flowers or ANYTHING expensive, I didn’t want to go out to eat on a crowded-restaurant day, I didn’t want the kids to spend a lot of their own money on stuff. I was afraid that by addressing it last year, even as calmly and explainingly and specific-examplefully as I did, people would go overboard this year, and then I would have to re-correct, and UG why is something that seems so simple to me so hard to explain??

If you recall, here is the sort of thing I was looking for: (1) Not having to do any dishes all day. (I don’t even MIND doing dishes normally, but last year there was something extra demoralizing about finding a fresh pile of other people’s dishes on the counter every single time I went into the kitchen.) (2) Maybe someone suggests going out to get some doughnuts, because they remember Mom likes doughnuts, and also because THEY like doughnuts. (3) And/or perhaps Paul takes some of the kids to the car wash with my minivan and they get it washed and then see what they can do with the car wash’s coin-operated vacuum cleaner, because they remember how I rhapsodize when the car is freshly cleaned and because these are tasks that are funnish for the kids. (4) And/or perhaps they remember I like grocery store flowers, so Paul takes some of the kids to the grocery store (it’s right by the car wash!) and they pick out one of the $4.99-$6.99 flowering plants for me, and Paul pays for it. (5) And, overall: I was looking for Paul to do some work TRAINING THE KIDS to be thoughtful and think of others and so forth. I like sweets, I like cheap flowers, I like things to be clean without me being the one to clean them, I like people to notice what I like, I am not some sort of IMPOSSIBLE CIPHER.

(When the kids were younger, what I wanted was more than anything else for Mother’s Day was Time Away from the Kids in a Quiet House with a Pint of Ice Cream; now that they’re older, this is no longer specifically on my list, though of course always in season.)

Things got off to a shaky, uncertain start when Paul suggested several days before Mother’s Day that he and I could go on our own to a Mother’s Day prix fixe brunch at a snobby dressy expensive restaurant near us. That’s the opposite of what I described: the kids are not involved; it’s expensive; it’s going out to eat when it’s crowded, at a place that is not at all where I like to go. And, like, I don’t want to dictate other people’s gift-giving, but he explicitly said last year that he did nothing because he didn’t know what to do (imagine my facial expression), and so last year I explained at some length the SORT of low-pressure, low-expense kind of thing that would be my own personal preference, and how to get to those ideas on his own in the future since it kind of ruins it if I have to decide what they should do for me for Mother’s Day, and also explained how to train the children to think of thoughtful things for someone else (“the same way I am training you right now, but they’re children so you can do it without the incredulous facial expression I’m wearing”)—and so now this is a matter of Actively Not Listening, which is Worse Than Nothing. Also, we are ALREADY in the zone of “Why do I have to do this work for you when you are a FULLY-GROWN ADULT and this is the TWENTIETH Mother’s Day we have had together??,” so anyway things were looking grim and I was regretting ever speaking up.

But it went well. Paul made cinnamon rolls in the morning, and made sure dishes were managed all day. Rob and William went out on their own to Target and got me some candy (including those Ferrero Rocher gold-wrapped hazelnut things I like) and a card. Elizabeth made me a little succulents planter with three different baby succulents in it. Edward and Henry both independently decided to participate in the school’s kid-priced Mother’s Day fundraiser, which is a plant sale, so they each brought me a little plant. Everyone posed for the annual Mother’s Day photo with minimal complaining. (Henry tried to start a conversation mid-session about how fake it is that everyone always has to be smiling in photos, and I asked if we could please postpone that very interesting topic until AFTER WE TOOK THE PHOTO.) Paul and I went out for lunch at a casual bar-and-appetizers-and-tacos place we suspected would not be a popular Mother’s Day spot (and indeed it wasn’t), not for Mother’s Day per se but just in the spirit of having a day of treats, and I ordered a giant, potent margarita (like, I could tell the difference when I was walking, afterward), and also french fries. And then we came home and I re-watched part of Sense & Sensibility (the Emma Thompson / Alan Rickman one).

So! It was a fine day. Feel free to vent here if yours was NOT a fine day for whatever reason. Or you can say why it WAS fine.

When I was trying without success to narrow down phone case options, I noticed that two of my favorites were from the same company (Bfun), so I thought I’d search just cases by that company to see if I’d managed to miss any, despite going through so many pages of search results that I was starting to get wild mismatches such as bath toys. And, in the sort of situation that makes me freak out because WHAT ELSE AM I MISSING, there were a TON of cases I hadn’t seen yet, including a GREEN one that hadn’t come up in the search results when I specifically searched GREEN. (Green is one of my favorite colors, and it can be hard to find.)

(image from Amazon.com)

It has green in the title! It has the name of my new phone in the title! I searched for the name of my phone + the word green! WHY DIDN’T THIS OPTION APPEAR?

But also, why didn’t any of THESE other options appear, especially when I was putting three of their siblings into my shopping cart?

(image from Amazon.com)

Pink floral paisley! I love pink! I love floral! I love paisley! I have pink phone cases, paisley phone cases, floral phone cases, and phone cases of this brand IN MY SHOPPING CART. WHITHER PERTINENT SUGGESTION, AMAZON??

What is THIS rampant cuteness and why is it not on the first page of search results for ANYONE looking for a phone case??

(image from Amazon.com)

PENGUINS WITH BALLOONS ARE YOU EVEN SERIOUS RIGHT NOW??

(image from Amazon.com)

My very early childhood as a phone case:

(image from Amazon.com)

The entire musical Godspell as a phone case:

(image from Amazon.com)

I COULD NOT LOVE THIS MORE:

(image from Amazon.com)

(Actually I would love it a little more if the flap lined up with the design or else were a solid color, rather than duplicating part of the design in smaller format.)

I would understand if you were getting a little tired of paisley, but I am not:

(image from Amazon.com)

A DAINTY FLORAL IN SWISTLE BLUE (other people might call it Tiffany Blue, but we all know who thought of it first):

(image from Amazon.com)

WHIMSICAL BIRDIES WITH KICK-BACK FEETIES:

(image from Amazon.com)

Anyway. Suffice it to say I will never be able to choose. I give up. I will just let the phone go naked. Or else I will order a dozen phone cases to stave off potential regret, and then choose one randomly from the box when they arrive.

I have had two experiences recently in which I was not allowed to do something and was told that my husband had to do it. In one case, I was trying to use an L.L. Bean rewards coupon on an L.L. Bean order, and it wouldn’t work. I called customer service, and they said that even though the credit card is in both our names, and even though the bills are addressed to ME because I opened the credit account on my own and then added Paul to it later, and even though the rewards certificate had my name on it—still, Paul would have to be the one to place the order if we wanted to use the certificate, because he was “the primary” on the account.

You know I am not a bold person, especially on the phone, but this made no sense and that activated my tenacity: I clarified that I had been the one to open the account, I said the certificate was in my name, etc., etc., etc. It turned out that at one point L.L. Bean transferred their credit card from one bank to another and, when that happened, the new company put Paul as the primary and me as the secondary. Would you like to lie awake driving yourself crazy with mental arguments about this entire situation and how it makes NO SENSE? OH ME TOO APPARENTLY. Also I would like to investigate how often the error was made in the opposite direction: how many times was a woman mistakenly put as the primary, even though her husband had opened the account? Was it never?

The second incident happened today. We are almost ready to close on the old house, so our realtor told us to call various utilities and let them know. I called the natural gas company—and they couldn’t talk to me, because only Paul’s name was on the account somehow, even though setting up utilities and paying bills is 100% my job in this marriage, and so I would have been the one to set up the account. The customer service representative was very apologetic, but he was sorry to say my husband would have to be the one to handle this because I was not on the account.

In neither case do I take issue with the person I was talking to. If there is a rule that only the primary account holder can use a certificate, and I am not the primary account holder, then the customer service representative cannot make it so I can use the certificate. If the rule is that only people listed on an account can change the account (and of course that rule makes every bit of sense), then of course the customer service representative could not let me make changes. Etc. My issue is with the underlying assumptions and issues that allowed these situations to occur in the first place. Since I was the one who set up the natural gas account, and I was one of the two homeowners of the home in question, and if only someone whose name is on the account can deal with the account, my name SHOULD CERTAINLY HAVE BEEN INCLUDED SOMEWHERE ON THE ACCOUNT. Since I was the one who set up the credit card, and it is my name on the billing statement, my husband should ABSOLUTELY NOT have been made the primary account holder. There should be NO SITUATIONS IN LIFE where a customer service representative tells me my husband will need to order those boots for me if I want to use THE COUPON WITH MY NAME ON IT, CONNECTED TO AN ACCOUNT IN MY NAME.

This reminds me of something that happened almost two decades ago, a story I evidently plan to brood about until I die. (I have SOME hope for a more Serene Perspective in old age, but so far I am not seeing much encouraging progress on that front.) My grandfather sent us some money to congratulate us on a new baby. My grandfather was old, old-fashioned, and conservative, so he made out the check to just Paul. I went to the bank to put the money in an account for the new baby, and didn’t notice until I was there that Paul had failed to endorse the check. The bank’s manager sighed and said to me, “Next time your husband gives you money, make sure he signs it.” Oh. Next time my husband gives me money. Thanks for that phrasing.

The trouble wasn’t with the fact that the check should have been endorsed by Paul: of course it should have been endorsed by Paul, if it was made out to Paul! The trouble was again the underlying issues/assumptions: first, that my grandfather would write out the check to The Husband; and second, the tone/phrasing the bank manager chose to use. She could have said, “Oh—I’m so sorry, this has to be endorsed first,” and I would have been 100% fine with that and only embarrassed I hadn’t noticed he hadn’t signed it. Instead it was “Next time your husband gives you money…” (as I sat there with my baby and toddler in the middle of the workday), and her tone was Way Off, and that has given me almost two decades of humiliated wincing/anger when I remember it. If the check had been made out to me, and if Paul had taken it to the bank without noticing I hadn’t endorsed it, do you think there is any chance at all the bank manager would have sighed and said to him in that tone of voice, “Next time your wife gives you money…”?

And these are such SMALL inconveniences/humiliations, relatively speaking! They weren’t even the big ones, like never having had a female president in the entire history of this country! Furthermore, I have the power to FIX them if I need to: I could talk back to the bank manager in a cold tone and then close our accounts if I felt like it, telling the manager exactly why I was doing so. I could call the credit card and take Paul’s name off of it, or close the account entirely, and I could follow that up with a business letter telling them why. I can make sure my name is on all utility accounts set up in the future. Whereas about 45 years ago in the United States, women still couldn’t have credit cards in their own names. Two generations ago, I might have been talking with pride and happiness about my husband being so generous with my housekeeping budget. But baby, we still have a long way to go. There is so much UNDERLYING/AUTOMATIC STUFF to unpick.

Today I saw a car with three bee stickers on it, and I nearly left a hysterically enthusiastic note on the windshield, except I didn’t know what to say except “I SEE THOSE BEES! I FEEL THOSE BEES! Love, A BEE SISTER!” That seemed kind of dumb at the time—but afterward, picturing getting a similar note on my own windshield in response to MY bee sticker, I realized I’d be thrilled. So next time I’m going to do it.

My current cell phone broke (everything works except it can’t make or receive calls, which as far as I’m concerned means there is an argument to be made for keeping it exactly as it is, “Oh sorry, my phone doesn’t take calls, you’ll have to text me!!”), so I am getting a new one. I was sad that this meant choosing a new phone case: I LOVE my old case and don’t want to change.

Then it turned out my current case is in fact available for the new phone shape, and I had unexpected feelings of disappointment. Apparently I was GLAD to be choosing a different phone case, but had kept that a secret EVEN FROM MYSELF.

Here is my old/current phone case, the one I claimed to wish I could buy again for the new phone:

(image from Amazon.com)

Main downside: shipping from far away, so that it won’t arrive until mid-May/mid-June. Main upside: I love it enduringly, and as it wears out the damage just looks like a deliberate part of the vintage-y design.

Here is another case I was considering before I learned I could have what I supposedly wished for:

(image from Amazon.com)

VERY DIFFERENT than what I had. I like the colors. I worry the white stripe would soon look grubby.

Or what about this option:

(image from Amazon.com)

But maybe I’m only drawn to these bright springy colors because it’s spring. Perhaps in fall/winter I will wish for something a little less exuberant. Here’s a warm, dignified candidate:

(image from Amazon.com)

Upside: I like the look of it, and I think it’s a nice non-embarrassing case to bring out in front of other people. Downside: is the clasp decorated with a spider web? Also, the leathery stuff looks like it might crack along the back cover with use. Also, this seems a little TOO subdued/professional for me. I don’t think it goes with my jeans and hoodie and Converse sneakers.

Possible compromise: it’s available in pink.

(image from Amazon.com)

Or I could embrace the whimsy entirely:

(image from Amazon.com)

(I think this option and the previous option both lose something by being shown next to each other: each pink makes the other pink look less good.) Upside: PINK. FLAMINGOS. Downside: It commits to a very specific concept. I’m not THAT into flamingos.

Similarly, though less whimsically: peacock.

(image from Amazon.com)

I like the colors, I like the look of a peacock—but I’m not so into peacocks that it makes sense as a design I’d deliberately choose for my phone case.

I love the color of this one, but not the weird brown leaf clasp:

(image from Amazon.com)

Like, the case is SPRING LEAF GREEN. So then there should not be an AUTUMN BROWN LEAF on it. Brown branch, sure. Pink tulip, even better. Brown leaf, no.

I like how bright and fresh this one is, but worry again that it’s the joys of spring whispering in my ear:

(image from Amazon.com)

This one seems almost a little too on the nose:

(image from Amazon.com)

Like, that’s the one someone could safely buy me as a gift and know it wouldn’t be wrong. It feels a little boring to me, as if I’ve already had that case and got tired of it. Maybe it would be better in brown or grey.

This pink glittery one calls out to my heart:

(image from Amazon.com)

(There’s also a RAINBOW GLITTER version.) The same 8-year-old me who spent birthday money on a shiny pink velour shirt is the me who wants this case. But I would feel less confident bringing this out in front of acquaintances. I know, I know, one should BE ONESELF! But I have many aspects of self, and might prefer to have this particular aspect less on regular public display. Like I’m imagining it at Paul’s office Christmas party. Hm.

I had a case similar to this one for a previous phone:

(image from Amazon.com)

It was a bit of an assault on the eyes in the photo, but considerably less so in person, and it was one of my enduring favorites. I can’t tell if this would be the same, or if it would actually be that bright (it looks cranked-up to me, color-wise). This option would be less bright:

(image from Amazon.com)

Or maybe I should just get the vintage-y hot air balloons again.

I COULD get more than one, but I’ve learned that what I do then is keep the first one I put on my phone, and never change it, and the others sit in a drawer unused.

I’m kind of hoping you guys will be all OPINIONATED about it. You know how sometimes hearing someone else’s opinion can solidify your own, either because you’re glad to hear them say nice things about a particular one or else you get the impulse to disagree? That’s what I’m hoping will happen.