Lists of Things All Adults Should Supposedly Be Able To Do, And How I Feel About Such Lists

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Do you know who I love? Hardly anyone. But in that small number I include plumbers. Also the people who come to change a flat tire. I have encountered both of those people this week, and I love them both. I have added them to my Christmas Card list. Whenever I am blue, I will picture that guy kneeling in front of my flat tire, asking the tire earnestly if it is seriously going to fight him every step of the goddam way. Or that other guy kneeling in front of the broken sump pump in his careful, taking-no-chances, 2-inches-above-the-jeans underpants. Guys Kneeling and Fixing Things is a coffee table book I would buy.

I have seen lists of things all adults should be able to do (debone a chicken! sew a shirt! deliver a baby! start a fire without matches! mix a perfect martini! caulk a tub! iron pleats! drive a stick shift! change a tire! hotwire a car!), and I hard-disagree with all of them, starting with the presumptuous tone and ending with the listed items. By all means, learn things you WANT to know how to do, or personally NEED to know how to do, but there is no reason to run out and acquire the particular skills the clickbait author came up with, making it an even 10, 20, or 30 so they could turn it into a snappy title. (I know it should be “bone a chicken,” not “debone a chicken.” But really at this point in the English language it should be changed to debone. So I’ve changed it.) (I also know that “who” in the first sentence of the post should be “whom.” But it always sounds wrong, and also snooty. I’m changing that too.)

Some of the things on the lists are outdated: it takes awhile for older generations to stop insisting that the younger generations learn things they no longer need to know. (I for one will have a hard time giving up on cursive writing.) I was glad my dad made me learn to drive a stick-shift back when a lot of people had stick-shift cars, but now it is really rare to encounter a stick-shift and really common to encounter people who think everyone should know how to drive one Just In Case, because THEIR dads made them learn how to drive one Just In Case. But we are now at least one generation past that time; it’s like saying everyone should know how to use a pencil to fix an unwound cassette tape. (I can imagine similar lists in previous generations. Absolutely EVERYONE should be able to: recite one performance poem from memory; speak conversational French; fashion a bandage from an old petticoat; darn a sock; pull an abscessed tooth; deliver a breech calf; disassemble and clean a simple pocket watch; make a good plain meal on the cook’s night out; gentle a horse; testify effectively in a witchcraft trial.) The ONLY TIME I have ever been called upon unexpectedly to use my stick-shift skills was when the pharmacist wanted to treat the pharmacy staff to coffee and doughnuts, but he couldn’t leave the pharmacy and needed someone to drive his car so he wouldn’t have to mess with reimbursing mileage. I was the only one there who could drive a stick-shift, so I did the coffee/doughnut run. SAVING LIVES. I think people should learn to drive a stick-shift if their car is a stick-shift, or if they WANT to learn to drive a stick-shift, or if they have reason to believe they have more than the usual likelihood of being called upon to drive a stick-shift.

For other, more currently-useful items on the list, I think we don’t ALL need to know how as long as SOME of us do. Let’s SPECIALIZE and then SHARE OUR SKILLS FOR CASH OR BARTER. I do not want to take the bones out of the chicken. It would take forever and I would hate it and it would be messy. Let’s give that job to an expert wearing a company smock they won’t have to personally launder. They can do fifty chickens in the time it would take me to do one, and then we can all take home our packets of boneless chicken and spend our time doing happier things we’re better at.

Or I certainly COULD learn to change a tire or change the oil, but I’d prefer not to. I’d like the person who changes the tire to be someone who has done it THOUSANDS OF TIMES and so will get it RIGHT. I don’t want to do it a few times to learn it, and then wait a few years, and then suddenly have to remember how to do it on a dark scary road in the rain, when I’d rather be inside the car with the doors locked waiting for the guy to arrive and swear at the tire for me. And it’s more sensible for the person who changes the oil to be someone who has all the equipment (including the coverall that only improves in appearance with a few sexy oil stains) and can handle the whole task quickly, neatly, and efficiently. And then they can dispose of the old oil easily, because they have a whole system for that. In a TRUE OIL-CHANGING/TIRE-CHANGING EMERGENCY, like in a dystopian future where roadside assistance no longer exists, I will read the manual. Or I will find someone who already knows how to do it, and I will barter. I have many jars of peanut butter. Or I can name a baby. Or I can listen attentively and responsively to a really boring story.

Misc

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I have so many things to say, some of them quite dull indeed. But my need to tell others the minutia of my life is HIGH, and Paul’s interest in hearing about it (“And then I found printer paper on this good sale, I think because they’re changing the packaging from 500 sheets to 400 and they want to get rid of the old stuff, AND I had a 20% off coupon!”) is at an understandably lower level, and this is probably why blogs were invented. And since my blog has been in and out of service for about a week (and CONTINUES to have trouble), I have a significant stockpile of minutia built up. Some will have to wait, however, until I’m again able to load photos: I’m getting an error Paul will have to look into while I tell him my great story about the printer paper.

I have a song going through my head and I CANNOT FIND IT, and I have been hoping it will play again on the radio. I wish I could hum you a snippet because I’m SURE some of you would know it. And I have a vague memory of there being apps/programs where you CAN hum a snippet and it will find you the song, but I tried just now to hum it and it was…not very well matched to the original. All I remember is this: the chorus sounds like the guy is singing something like “Do I need YOU? Do I love YOU?”—something along those lines, quite high-pitched and slowish and sad, or maybe just sentimental and croony. I have tried to search with the lyrics, but you can see how those lyrics would be rather common, and also I’m not sure of them: it could be “and” instead of “do,” or maybe he’s singing “And I’m so blue,” or who KNOWS. I heard it while I was cooking dinner and didn’t realize how much I liked it until it was going through my head later. [Update: Rachel KNEW WHAT SONG I WAS TALKING ABOUT. It’s “If I Have To” by Avery Wilson. I cannot believe someone GUESSED IT from my EXTREMELY POOR DESCRIPTION.]

Speaking of songs that go through one’s head. I know we all have our things that we feel physically self-conscious about, and if plumpness is one of yours I suggest Mika’s “Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)”:

I was heading into the grocery store yesterday, basically walking like the girls in the video because I had this song in my head. Well, MENTALLY walking like the girls in the video.

I re-watched Crazy, Stupid, Love. I remember watching it before, and I remembered liking it, but I couldn’t remember much else about it. And I just watched La La Land, which features a re-pairing of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, so that put me in the mood for Crazy, Stupid, Love. It was better than I remembered it. Which I shouldn’t say, because I still think it’s best to go into it with lowered expectations. But…I really liked it. Again. Despite being approximately 0% on-board with the concept of soulmates, or with the ultimate destination of those photos.

Our sump pump is acting up. You know how sometimes a toilet will run and run, and then you open the tank and jostle the floating thingie and it stops? That is how our sump pump is behaving, except when I jostle the thingie, it only lasts maybe ten or fifteen minutes until it starts running again. I have emailed my dad but he is in a different time zone so it may be awhile; in the meantime I have put a box of Famous Amos cookies down by the sump, and every time I have to go down there to jostle the thingie I have a cookie. But I am getting low on cookies. Also, I made the brief, screaming acquaintance of a spider of considerable heft and girth that evidently calls our sump pump home, and now I don’t know where he is. [Update: My dad emailed and said this is a sump pump emergency in need of a TODAY appointment. A plumber has come and gone; he is getting us a new sump pump and will be right back to install it. I notice his underwear is a good two inches above his jeans; he is taking NO CHANCES.]

Don’t let me forget that the next time I go down to jostle the sump I need to bring up a cake mix. Two of our cats have birthdays this week, and according to the children it would be unfeeling to combine the celebrations. So I will bake the two layers, frost one for today’s cat birthday party, and put the other layer aside for the Friday party.

We have now heard back from all the colleges Rob applied to. He has about 3-1/2 weeks until we have to send a deposit to one of them. And is he making spreadsheets, reading pamphlets, responding enthusiastically to suggestions that we discuss pros/cons or visit the campuses again? No, he is not. And when I ask him about it he acts as if I am nagging him around the clock. I alternate between getting teary over my first baby leaving us forever, and COUNTING THE MONTHS.

Are you following the livestream of the giraffe in labor? I AM. I am feeling so much empathy for the giraffe. She stands still; she presses her head against the boy giraffe’s neck; her legs tremble and her ears flutter and her tail lashes. It’s been DAYS. The update on Facebook from the zoo claimed that “there is no pain.” Bitch, please. This reminds me of my own pregnancy/childbirth days, when I fervently wished to mind-meld with the obstetrician for just ONE HOUR. See if he wants to shrug off the “normal first-trimester nausea” THEN! See what he wants to call “the discomfort of contractions” THEN!

Paul, with surprising disregard for his own well-being, started a sentence in this conversation with “Well, actually.” “Well, actually,” he said, “animals don’t feel as much pain as humans do during childbirth. It has to do with head size.” Okay, fine, but what I would like to know is how we think we know how much pain animals are feeling. Have we done a mind-meld? No? Then perhaps we should not be deciding whether they do or don’t feel a certain way. Perhaps that giraffe is feeling no pain. Perhaps she is all “La la la, what a pleasant mild sensation, like a fairy tickling my tum!” But I will be very relieved when the baby giraffe is born.

Men’s Socks

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Here is something I would like input on, and I think it will be a refreshing surprise: men’s socks. I have a few men-people on my list who wear a kind of sock I think of as a trouser sock, but it’s not the super-dressy, ultra-thin kind of trouser sock. It’s more a decorative, comfy kind of trouser sock. Here are the brands I have bought in the past:

(image from Amazon.com)

1. Happy Socks. I find these at Amazon (be careful on Amazon: some of the surprisingly-inexpensive listings have complaints about the socks seeming to be bad-quality knock-offs) and Marshalls and TJ Maxx. I usually spend $3-7 per pair: it varies because sometimes I find them on clearance, and sometimes I’m willing to pay more for a particularly good pattern. I prefer to buy the pairs individually to have more control over pattern choice, but the sets can be really cute too, and they come in very appealing boxes. Here is what I like about Happy Socks: (1) the name of the brand, (2) the colors/patterns, (3) the highish cotton content (78% is what the Amazon listing says, and that’s what it says on a couple of pairs set aside in my Gift Closet).

 

(image from Target.com)

2. Pair of Thieves. I buy these at Target. They’re $6/pair, but it’s not uncommon to find them on sale for $5 or on clearance for $3. I like the patterns less overall than the patterns of Happy Socks, and also I like the name less. And they have a slightly lower cotton content: the pairs in my Gift Closet vary from 68% to 71%. But I like their packaging and their marketing: I find their performance/fit claims persuasive even without trying them myself, and I find it appealing that they sometimes sell sets of one pair of men’s socks with one pair of matching kid socks. (The kid socks are also sold separately, and I buy them for Edward and Henry when I find them on clearance, and they like the socks, so that also influences me.)

 

But here is what I am wondering: Are there BETTER options? By “better” I mean “more comfy/luxurious.” What I am specifically looking for is personal recommendations. That is, more “My husband/father/brother LOVES these.” And don’t be shy about PRICE: I am willing to spend MORE per pair and get fewer pairs, when it’s gifts.

Things I Continue to Love

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Things I continue to love, year after year:

Bath & Body Works lavender-vanilla scent. I just searched “lavender vanilla” in my archives, to see if I could find when I first mentioned it: 2007, when I was pregnant with Henry and was having trouble sleeping. Henry is turning 10 this year, and I just placed another order for lavender-vanilla lotion and body wash (Bath & Body Works is having a buy-1-get-1-free sale). [Update: the scent has changed, and I don’t really like it. I am sad.] I wish so hard I could still buy the shampoo/conditioner, but they discontinued it ages ago; I bought a whole bunch of the conditioner on eBay and I try to USE it and not hoard it. I have sniffed many, many bottles of things marked “lavender vanilla” but I ONLY like the Bath & Body Works one; and I like NO other scents from Bath & Body Works. I would never have found it except that Paul’s sister gave me a gift set one Christmas, I think when I was pregnant with the twins or maybe the Christmas after they were born.

Sense and Sensibility, the version with Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson. A few years ago I was studying some Jane Austen as a way to dig myself out of crippling boredom. (Here is my syllabus for Sense and Sensibility, if you want to do the same.) I still had the movie on hand, and… This sentence needs to start again, because it is several sentences: We usually watch tv while we eat dinner, and Paul is in charge of selecting what we’re going to watch. Earlier this week, he said he was out of ideas, and I said I would choose something. (This turned out to be as startling to him as when we are going somewhere together and I get into the driver’s seat, which makes me resolve to do both things more often.) Anyway, I picked Sense and Sensibility, thinking it would PROBABLY bore the children but maybe not. And it did bore Henry, but all the other four really liked it. (They also liked counting how many Harry Potter actors were in it.) And I liked seeing it again, and possibly I was a little annoying because I kept pausing it to share my wisdom: “You see, this is because it was WILDLY INAPPROPRIATE for a young lady to send letters to a man unless she was engaged or married to him!” Anyway I just loved it. Again.

Cadbury Eggs. The large creme-filled kind and the small solid ones with the crispy shells. This is the best time of year for candy. (By the way, last year I bought a whole bunch of Cadbury Creme Eggs right at the end of the season, so that I could continue to eat them for months. This did not really work. You might think the reason was that I ate them all the first month, and this is not an unreasonable guess—but actually it was that they are much better eaten fresh, and significantly less yummy if eaten in, say, July. The creme filling separates or else crystallizes, and the chocolate has a stale flavor.)

Track; Rob’s Job; The Good Wife

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I am feeling a bit grim today. Part of it is that Elizabeth decided to do track. I am glad that when she told me yes she DID want to do it, I had a genuinely glad feeling: I think that kind of thing SHOWS. But as soon as I started filling out the forms (I’d waited: I knew they’d be bad, and I didn’t want to do them if it was going to turn out I didn’t have to), my despair returned. You know how pretty much every year I complain about the summer-camp forms: they ask for things they shouldn’t need to ask for; they say contradictory things; they ask for the same information on multiple different pages; they try to act as if they can force you to sign the “I’m totally fine with it if you kill my child, and in fact it will be my own fault!” section. The school athletic forms are similar. And then there was this long list of things to put onto the calendar, after several paragraphs of rather aggressive language about how they MUST not miss ANY events, and how ANY missed practices MUST be explained IN WRITING (OH I’M SO SORRY SHE ALSO TAKES TRUMPET LESSONS AND CAN’T DEVOTE HER LIFE EXCLUSIVELY TO TRACK). Well, I had many good years of no one doing sports.

Also, Rob quit his part-time job. He did so with my FULL SUPPORT: the company was being crappy. (Rob, with damp eyes: “What would you say if I said I wanted to quit?” Me: “I’d say DO IT.”) But I’ll be feeling a little under the weather for awhile as I mentally attempt to fight his battles for him and also apparently take this opportunity to relive all my own bad work experiences. When he quit, they gave him a hard time about it, saying things like, “Life lesson for you: this is not okay.” I feel like MURDERING. Paul is taking a turn at playing the role of Chill Parent here, saying that speaking of life lessons this is a really good set of them for Rob. Some companies suck: you don’t have to believe them when they tell you YOU are the one that sucks for not giving into their sucky demands. And sometimes you DO have to work for a sucky company for one or more various reasons, but this is not one of those times.

Also, and it took me awhile to put a finger on this, but watching The Good Wife is making me feel a little icky. She is so BUSY and PRODUCTIVE and VALUABLE. She works so hard, while looking so pretty and fashionable! She’s so calm and pleasant with her children, and so tough and unflinching in court confrontations! She gets so much DONE! She fights for justice from dawn to dusk, and often through the night! And I am sitting on the couch, eating Easter candy and watching her do it, feeling burdened if I have to make a single slightly-uncomfortable phone call.

Well. Enough pity party. (Though feel free to use the comments section to keep the party going.) I am going to go drop off Elizabeth’s forms at the pediatrician’s office so they can handle their annoying part of this process, and then I am going to assemble a sweet little drawered cart I got this weekend on a great mark-down (it looks kind of like this one, but it cost less), and then I am going to try that idea of setting a timer for 20 minutes and see how much stuff I can get rid of in that amount of time.

Barium Swallow Test Results; New Crohn’s Medications; College Rejection Letter; Track

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The barium swallow test, referred to here and here, didn’t give a clear reason for the symptoms I’m having, so in a couple of weeks I will be writing a post called What It’s Like to Have an Endoscopy. Edward has had one, and he was unconscious for it and woke up feeling happy; I have hopes for same.

Speaking of Edward, we are indeed changing his Crohn’s medications. His new one has to be given by IV, and it takes several hours each time. This makes me feel leveled-up anxiety about the whole medication, that it is administered like this. It makes me think of cancer treatments. I am trying to focus instead on how this hospital is just LOADED with Pokéstops. When I was waiting for him during his MRI, there were two within reach of the waiting room. I will hope that that is the case for wherever we’ll be sitting during the IV. Also, he is going to LOVE this new treatment: each time, he’ll have to miss a whole day of school and play on a phone for several hours, and we’ll probably end up going out for lunch.

Rob got a rejection letter from one of his top two college choices. He seems to be handling it okay: of his top two, it was definitely second choice. But I worry that this doesn’t bode well for the other top-choice college. For ME, I am not worried: he has acceptances to several other colleges that I think might actually be better choices for him than his top choice. But for HIM, I’m worried he’ll be very disappointed. At his age I hadn’t yet gotten the message about how sometimes things you want don’t work out and that ends up being BETTER in the long run.

Elizabeth is trying to decide whether or not to do track. For many reasons, I would rather she didn’t: it is incredibly time-consuming, not just for her but for me, and involves tons of figuring out how I am going to drive her here or there when I also need to be somewhere else with one of the other kids at the same time—not to mention sitting around at endless track meets. And there are other reasons I hope she DOES do it: my kids never want to do sports, and that sometimes gives me a low, humming anxiety about their normality and/or my parenting. Plus, what if she loves it? It’s so fun when a kid finds something they love. And with track, it could mean a life-long running hobby. But I CANNOT BELIEVE how much time a sport takes up and how much parental involvement is expected. And she can’t even run a mile at this point, while the other kids trying out for track have been doing other sports and can run three miles while still breathing casually through their noses. But she’d shape up quickly with the INCREDIBLY HUGE NUMBER OF PRACTICES. And better to join NOW in 6th grade, when there are probably other kids new to it as well. And if she doesn’t like it, it’s only a few months. Buuuuut…she’s only been to three pre-season practices and is already saying she’s getting pretty tired of them, and that seems like a bad sign.

I don’t know what she should do, and I am trying not to influence her one way or the other because I really don’t KNOW, but I suspect my conflicting preferences for her to both DO it and NOT do it exude from me like a clinging mist, making the decision even harder. At this point I guess I hope she DOES do it, since “wondering if I discouraged her from doing something she wanted to do / should have done” would feel worse than “wondering how we are going to fit this COLOSSAL INCONVENIENCE AND TIME-SUCK into our lives.”

A Return to the Joy of Salads

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Nearly spring, when a no-longer-young-per-se woman’s thoughts turn to salads!

I had FORGOTTEN about salads. Literally forgotten. I think it was because last spring I was working: when I’m working, I like meals that are fast and portable. When I am instead staying closer to home base, what I like are meals that take an entire episode of The Good Wife to eat. For breakfast, I like vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, corn, and red bell pepper) mixed with scrambled egg, sriracha, and cheese: I make a nice big plateful, and it’s delicious, and it takes forever to eat. For lunch, though, I was stymied. UNTIL I REMEMBERED SALADS.

I had to look in my archives to remember how to make them. I was standing there at the fridge, thinking “Okay: spinach, dressing, and…I forget.” Thank goodness for archives:

1. the salad-toppings post from the start of my last salad kick, with a comments section that makes me so happy about blogs

2. a salad I make with kielbasa and banana peppers, a post I transferred over from the old blog platform and so now it clearly needs some tweaking but then I’d have to tweak alllll the old posts and I can’t imagine I’ll get to that anytime soon

3. a salad made with shredded bbq chicken, tomatoes, corn, cheese, carrots, sunflower seeds

4. a salad made with buffalo-chicken nuggets, couscous, tomatoes, cheese, carrots, sunflower seeds

5. cheeseburger salad, made with a hamburger, cheese, tomatoes, dill pickles, bacon bits, and crushed-up Doritos

 

Today I had the one made with buffalo-chicken nuggets (#4), minus the couscous, plus some cut-up apple and slivered almonds, and then I ate the rest of the apple on the side. I feel so pleasantly full! It took so pleasantly long to eat!

I think my biggest hurdle with salads is thinking of them as Sad Diet Food. My mental picture of a salad involves someone eating one sullenly as everyone around them has cheeseburgers and fries. It takes effort to think of them as they really are: Giant Bowls of Things I Like to Eat. It can be a cheeseburger-and-fries SALAD.

Interactive Cat Feeders

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Elizabeth and I attended a little seminar at the animal shelter about keeping indoor cats happy and active. Today I may or may not be considering buying FOOD PUZZLES for our cats. To satisfy their hunting/predator instincts and reduce their domestic ennui. (Do they make similar devices to reduce domestic ennui in at-home parents? “Not that I’m aware of,” says the animal-shelter employee. “Wine!,” whispers the middle-aged female attendee next to me. We snort. “MOM,” says Elizabeth.)

(image from Amazon.com)

Northmate Catch Interactive Feeder. This is one of the cheaper options, which puts it higher on my list. I am still cranky about the $45 cat watering fountain that the cats loved but was a TERRIBLE PAIN to clean.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Catit Senses 2.0 Food Tree. “I’m particularly drawn to this one,” I said to Elizabeth later, looking at options online after the seminar. “That’s because they used this picture in the PowerPoint,” said Elizabeth.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Trixie Tunnel Feeder. Why am I doing this to you, you wonder. And yet you have not looked away.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Catit Senses 2.0 Digger. This one gives them the sensation of digging for rodents, which makes them happy. Nature is kind of gross.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Trixie 5-in-1 Activity Center. This reminds me of shopping for baby toys: special features to stimulate their little brains. Oh god. Is this my life now? *brief feeling of panic and distress* *soothing automatic psychological self-defense mechanisms kick in* *goes back to shopping for cat feeders*

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Pyrus Hide-and-Seek Puzzle Toy. I am virtually certain my cats are too stupid for this toy. It’s not their fault! They’re perfect the way they are! But too stupid for this toy.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Profcenter IQ Toy. I believe the ferret could figure this out. I have faith in that dog, even though he does not appear to be a particularly bright representative of his species. I’d be willing to give the green checkmark a shot, just to see what it can do. But not my cats, unless all there is to this toy is moving the intelligent-looking circles out of the way so they can eat the food underneath. Then maybe.

What It’s Like to Do a Barium Swallow Test

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First I would like to complain to you that when I went to my barium swallow test, I forgot my cell phone at home. This meant two things:

1. I could not see if there were any Pokéstops at the hospital.

2. I could not proceed with my original plan, which was to stay in the city after the test and go over to the mall and have lunch and browse Target and maybe get a few Pokéstops. (Without my cell phone, I fret about the statistically-small chance that the school will call about a sick kid or something. Also, without my phone I can’t get the Pokéstops.)

On to the test itself. I was partly worried about how long it would take: when Edward gets his MRI, we are at the hospital for hours and hours and hours; last time it was five-and-a-half hours. Part of it is the time the actual prep and test take, but part of it is that hospitals seem to be in a different dimension of time and space, and the hours pass without any particular concern for their passing. And of course sometimes at a hospital there are emergencies that mean routine appointments get bumped, as well they should.

Anyway, when the lady from the scheduling department called to set up my appointment, I asked her how long the whole thing would take, and she said, “Oh, 15-20 minutes.” I thought, “AH HA HA HA HA HA okay, fine, DON’T tell me if you don’t want to!” But from the moment I walked into the hospital (half an hour fretfully early) to the moment I walked out again was 45 minutes total. The time from “changed into johnny and waiting for doctor” to “changing out of johnny” was less than 15 minutes. Most of the time was spent in waiting rooms, because I was half an hour early. So it was not very long between thinking “Soon I will be one of these carefree individuals on their way OUT of this waiting room” to being in fact one of those carefree individuals.

Let’s rewind to where I am walking into the hospital. I’d been told not to eat or drink anything after 10:00 the night before, so I was feeling a bit grim: first Monday of Daylight Saving Time AND no coffee. I’d been told to go straight to Diagnostic Imaging, and so I did. There they checked me in and gave me a hospital bracelet, and instructed me to walk over to X-ray.

At X-ray, they had me undress just from the waist up, and put on two johnnies: one opening in the back and a second one opening in the front. (I didn’t have to remove those johnnies at any point during the exam.) All my stuff went into a little locker. A technician brought me into the x-ray room and showed me basically how things would go: she stood where I’d be standing and described the various things the doctor would ask me to do. She showed me a barium tablet that the doctor would have me swallow to see how a pill went down. I asked if most people did fine with the whole thing and she said, “Oh, yes!” and that hardly anyone had trouble—it was just a bit icky to have to drink the drink, she said. She also told me that “it goes in white, and it comes out white—so don’t be alarmed later!”

The doctor came in and had me stand up on a little step, standing in front of what turned out to be an x-ray table turned up on its end. He moved a machine in front of me, so I was sort of snugged into a little nook. He handed me a plastic cup of the barium and told me to get ready to drink it but not drink it yet. Then he had me turn partly to one side and then partly to the other, each time drinking the barium until he said to stop—maybe 7 or 8 seconds each time? Then I had to face forward and drink again. Then he had me swallow the barium tablet and drink again.

I didn’t find the barium particularly gross, but it helped to go into it EXPECTING it to be fairly gross. It was very bland, and tasted faintly like strawberries. It was about the thickness of…well, the technician said milkshake, but milkshakes are such a different TYPE of thickness: cold and crystally and melty. It reminded me more of yogurt thinned with milk (but with no yogurt flavor). I tried to pretend it WAS yogurt, to help me drink it.

The doctor had me turn to my side, and then he lowered the table, which was how I came to realize it was an x-ray table on-end. (The technician had not mentioned this part.) It was an odd sensation: like you’re standing against a wall, and then the wall just lies down and takes you with it. The technician gave me a pillow. The doctor had me drink more barium, through a straw this time, while lying on my side. This was the worst part for me: something about lying on my side, plus this was my second full cup of the barium. (They weren’t forcing me to drink that much: that was just how much I was naturally going through during the swallowing tests. Possibly I was drinking it too fast—but I wasn’t gulping it down or anything.) In the last few seconds, I gagged—but just once, and then the test was done anyway. I continued pretending it was a nice nutritious smoothie and not at all making me queasy—but I did feel slightly queasy. I think it was more mental than physical.

The doctor left, and the technician brought me back to the changing area—and then it was done. I stopped on the way home and got a large coffee and a sausage-egg-and-cheese bagel sandwich, and felt so much better. The sweet, sweet relief of coffee is well worth the occasional pain of being a little dependent on it.

Overall, I would say that most of the fretting could be assigned to the Newness, as opposed to the actual procedure. If I had to do the same test again, I would be only very mildly anxious about it: maybe a 1 or 2 on a scale of 10, and most of that would be the nervousness that comes from not being sure I’m following directions correctly, combined with worrying about what they’ll find. LESS anxious than, say, a routine physical where I have to step on a scale, take off the johnny, talk about exercise and alcohol, discuss how many years I have left before they start suggesting colonoscopies, etc.

Barium Swallow; School Dance; Daylight Saving Time Printout

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I had two letters to write today, and I have written them. I love that moment when they are in the mailbox and out of my hands.

I have been having some weird trouble with tightness in my throat and a light cough. It started in November and felt like symptoms of anxiety, so naturally I thought it was president-related—but it finally persisted to the point where I was having trouble swallowing pills, and I started to imagine being asked later why I hadn’t gone to the doctor, so I went to the doctor. Now I have to have a barium swallow test on Monday. The only thing I know about a barium swallow test is that when Edward was drinking the icky stuff he has to drink before an MRI, the technician said, “Just be glad it’s not barium—that stuff is so much worse!”

Elizabeth is going to a school dance soon, and has been practicing putting glitter on her face and hair. She has also been mentioning a particular boy Quite Often. Very casually—but his name comes up multiple times per day. This is a pretty fun stage.

It’s Daylight Saving Time this weekend, so if you need The Printout that Prevents One Million Discussions of the “Wait, So Normally Right Now it Would Be SEVEN O’Clock…No, FIVE O’Clock…Wait…” variety, it is here: Spring Ahead Printout.