Thank you all so much for your meal-replacement drink suggestions. Every time I ask a question like that, I think this time I am asking TOO NICHE a question and will not be able to get information—and then it turns out that not only do LOTS of people have LOTS of good suggestions, but SOMEONE has just done a NINETY-PAGE COMPARATIVE REPORT ON THE TOPIC!!

I went partly on group opinions, partly on ease/speed of acquisition, partly on price per serving, partly on variety, and partly on vibes, and this time I bought a tub of Orgain meal-replacement powder, a single bottle of FairLife (our grocery store had singles), and a 12-pack of OWYN complete-nutrition shakes on sale. If he is still interested in this idea at the next gift-giving occasion, I have the comments section ready to revisit. I was very keen on the Oats Overnight idea, and will almost certainly get that next time; I would have gotten it this time, but stalled out over the big discount / free bottle they offered for subscribing (when I don’t WANT to subscribe). How to make myself pay $60, plus $9 for a mixing bottle, when they are offering the same bundle for $45 total if I subscribe?? I need 11 months to get over that hurdle.

My knee-replacement surgery is this coming Tuesday, and I am pretty nervous. I have not been sleeping well. I am nervous (as usual with all such things, including for example driving to an unfamiliar location an hour away) that I will die. I am nervous that this will turn out to have been The Wrong Decision, and that I am embarking on a long process of getting an infection, needing to remove and replace the replacement knee, and then of course eventually losing the leg. I am nervous there will be numerous health insurance complications and struggles, and bills suddenly arriving 18 months later, and the provider and the insurance company sending me back and forth between them when truly the only way to solve it (if they wanted to solve it) is for them to talk to each other. I’m nervous about not being able to shower for two weeks.

I am nervous because the instructions in my tidy folder from the hospital are clearly pieced together from multiple surgeons and offices over the last decade, and no one has ever made sure they make sense together. I am instructed on three separate pieces of paperwork to stop drinking alcohol two weeks before surgery, to stop drinking alcohol one week before surgery, and to reduce alcohol two days before surgery. (I cut out alcohol one week before surgery.) I am instructed that I MUST bring a walker to the hospital with me so that Physical Therapy can show me how to use it, or else I will not be discharged; I am instructed to acquire a walker but PLEASE DON’T bring it to the hospital; I am instructed that a walker is an optional but highly-encouraged purchase. (I have acquired a walker and will leave it in the car. Paul can fetch it if needed.) I am instructed that two weeks before my appointment I will be required to present myself at the hospital for a covid test, and that after that I must quarantine completely and be re-tested on the day of surgery; this no longer seems to be the case, but here is the paperwork in my folder. One set of instructions says that there will be a mandatory Joint Replacement class at the hospital taught by a nurse, and that I will be getting a call to set that up; another set says that this mandatory class will be held over Zoom, and that I will receive an email with a link. I have not heard anything else about any class, nor did they mention it during the pre-surgical assessment; there is a stapled print-out in the folder that looks like exactly like a print-out of slides from such a class. One set of instructions says I’ll be going home the same day as the surgery, and that’s what the pre-surgical nurse said; most of the other sets of paperwork assume I will stay at least one night, more likely two or three; I am instructed to bring at least two changes of clothing. (I will bring a bag with spare clothing, and will leave it in the car with the walker.)

I am nervous because I don’t know what the next six weeks after the surgery will be like, and of course it goes differently for different people. I don’t know how much pain to brace for, and of course it’s different for different people. I don’t know when I can go back to work, and of course it’s different for different people/jobs. I don’t know if I’ll be bored and restless, or if I’ll be contented and napping and reading and feeling pretty busy with physical therapy. I don’t even know how often I’ll be going to physical therapy: the paperwork says 1-3 times a week, and I don’t know who decides that, or how. It’s a $30 co-pay each time, so I’m pretty interested.

How did Christmas go, if you do Christmas? Feel free to say things that went well, or vent about things that went poorly, or both. Ours went well, except I found it exhausting, and now we have all caught a cold. This is giving us flashbacks to last year when we caught what the doctors thought was influenza A, and we were sick for weeks, and half of us had ear complications. This time it seems to be just a cold. I am nervous I will be sick too close to my knee-replacement surgery and they will have to postpone it. Apparently they will even postpone it if I have a small cut, like from shaving, so they advised me NOT TO SHAVE for a week before the surgery!

I am trying to avoid buying too much Christmas clearance. I don’t know if this will work for your own temperament, but I find it soothing to think “I have enough”: it seems to calm that impulse to buy MORE MORE MORE BECAUSE IT’S SUCH A GOOD DEAL AND I LIKE IT. I have enough (too many) ornaments, so I said no to many, many cute clearance ornaments, and only bought a very few. I have enough wrapping paper. I have enough Christmas plates/mugs (though I could buy more bowls if I found some). I have far more than enough candy/treats, even if they ARE on a really really good clearance (*experiencing pain*). Yes, I like/wear Christmas jammies/t-shirts, but I have enough of them. I don’t use the decor I already have, so I don’t need more. I have enough!

This is a niche request, but I’m wondering if anyone knows anything about meal-replacement powders/drinks. Rob’s birthday is shortly after Christmas, and he is so hard to buy for, and literally the only idea he’s given me is that he usually drinks Soylent but he’d be interested in trying alternatives. I started looking into it and got almost immediately overwhelmed—and also, I don’t want to accidentally buy one that supports some gross radio host or something. Some(/most) of the marketing of this kind of drink gives me icky Basement Reddit Guy feelings.

Rob drinks at most one meal-replacement drink per day, and his goals are to supplement his nutrition, and to simplify his food (by eliminating one meal he has to think about and shop for and cook) (he has a subscription to the Soylent, so it arrives automatically by mail). He’s a vegetarian but not a vegan. He’s the kind of person who would enjoy an ethical slant: like, he buys eggs from companies that treat the chickens nicely, and he’s mentioned that he might even be willing to eat meat if he could be sure it was ethically/kindly/environmentally raised, and one of the other gift ideas he likes is donations to charities he supports.

So what I’m hoping is that you or someone you know is similar to this, and that this will be your moment to shine and my moment to benefit. You will say “Ah ha!!! I was HOPING someone would ask! THIS meal-replacement drink is women-owned and the proceeds go to support equality, and also it is made from organic, fair-trade ingredients, and also it is surprisingly nutritious for a meal-replacement product!” Well, or it doesn’t have to be THAT perfect. I would also be really glad to hear “I buy this one! It tastes pretty okay and I don’t get too many Icky Reddit Guy vibes from the marketing!”

Did you put together a large Christmas puzzle this year? WAIT! Don’t take it apart just yet! Do what my mom did, and divide it into 25 sections, and put each section into its own lil numbered baggie, and make it an Advent / countdown-to-Christmas calendar for next year! You can number the baggies however you like: maybe you want them RANDOMIZED, so that the little puzzle-segments accumulate on the table but can’t be joined up yet! maybe you want them ORDERLY, so that the upper lefthand corner is day 1, and the next segment to the right is day 2 and joins up with it, and so forth! You can impose your own will, and you can change your mind next year if you want, simply by putting different puzzle-segments into different numbered baggies!

I had photos to illustrate this concept, but I seem to have misplaced them.

I’m so busy. I’m so busy. Are you SO BUSY?? It feels like one thing after another, and never done. But I know we are near the point where suddenly Everything Will Be Done. Ideally without any of us having murdered the spouse relaxing in the next room.

There are holiday things I like to do (festive baking, and distribution of same; holiday festivities with friends; doing a Christmas puzzle; leisurely Christmas shopping in stores; reading Christmas books by the Christmas tree; tipsily watching the movie A Bad Moms Christmas; writing gift-idea posts; thinking in a more leisurely way about presents; contemplating/implementing a wider spreading of festive feelings/treats/donations to people/businesses outside our own household; going to holiday fairs / special Christmas-light displays / holiday performances) that didn’t get done this year because I was busy doing Everything That Literally Had To Be Done; I wonder if next year there are some adjustments that could be made so that people who are 99% enjoying the holiday, and doing every blessed thing they want to do, while jovially complaining about the ONE PERSON they have to shop/wrap for and the ONE SINGLE THING they do to contribute, could be better balanced with those of us 10% enjoying the holiday and doing 99% of the work and missing out on many of the things we want to do.

I am in the stage where I keep thinking of and buying Just One More Little Thing for someone whose list looks skimpy. I used to fight this impulse, but it is too inherent. What I do now, instead, is that if I DO overdo it (sometimes my impulses are CORRECT and I have NOT overdone it but have instead SAVED CHRISTMAS), I put the extra things aside for birthdays: they all have birthdays in the first half of the year, so this works well.

For the first time in my life, I bought scratch tickets. I think it’s a fun gift idea, and some of my coworkers give them out as co-worker gifts and I like that, but I was nervous! But it was just a vending machine in the grocery store, no big deal. The only thing I didn’t like is that BOTH TIMES I used the machine, another customer was waiting for a turn WAY TOO CLOSE and with a vibe as if I were stealing HER tickets. I wished for a way to buy multiples, because in one case I was buying twenty-five $1 tickets for co-workers, and it seemed like the only way to do that was to push the button twenty-five times. I then went back the next day to buy those same $1 tickets for the kids (it is hard to find good fun stocking stuffers for older kids), and a $5 ticket each for Paul’s stocking and mine. Very fun.

Wait: that is an inadvertent lie, about never buying scratch tickets before. Long, long ago, when I was just out of college and working at a grocery store bakery, there was a trend among my co-workers of buying $2 scratch tickets. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it was something like we all bought a ticket on payday, and we all scratched them in the break room—so when you were taking your break, you’d stop at the customer service counter and get your ticket, and then you’d scratch it off to the audience of whoever else was taking a break, and they would tell you what they’d gotten. We liked the $2 tickets because they pretty often paid out $5; some of us would keep the winnings and others of us would extend the fun by using it to buy a $5 ticket. But that was easier, because other people told me how to do it, and I was buying it from someone I knew at the desk. This week was the first time SINCE then, and I didn’t remember how to do it or how it worked, and also it worked differently. Well, that was not a very interesting story.

Paul’s office closes for the eight days of Christmas and New Year’s, and everyone gets paid for that time. My library closes for a half-day on Christmas Eve, and is closed Christmas Day, and we don’t get paid for the time, and we go right back to work on the 26th. And all the kids have lots of days off: Henry doesn’t go back to high school until January 2nd, and the twins don’t go back to college until mid-January. It is going to be a little galling to leave them all lounging about as I go back to work. Or maybe it will be glorious to get out of the house, get paid to work on a day when hardly any patrons come in, and spend most of the shift chatting with co-workers about Christmas and eating the treats everyone brings in. I do wish we had the 26th off, though. That’s one of my favorite days, when all the work of Christmas is over and you can lounge around and enjoy the leftovers and gifts and treats.

I keep meaning to tell you about the pelvic-floor therapy and it keeps being a lower priority than other things I want to talk about, but let me tell you one thing. If you have trouble with suddenly feeling like you HAVE TO PEE (like when you come home, or when you are in/near a bathroom), even when you don’t actually need to pee all that badly, a trick to make the feeling go away is to stand up on tip-toes, then drop your heels back down, then back on tiptoes again, several times; the muscles you use for that are apparently connected to the muscles of the pelvic floor. Another trick is to speak to your bladder firmly but compassionately, and say “You are okay. You can wait a few minutes. I promise we will pee soon.” Perhaps you would like to say that in your head, and not out loud. Another trick is to WALK A DIFFERENT DIRECTION than you normally do. Like if you always come home and go hang up your coat and then go plug in your phone, and this makes your bladder think WE ARE HOME AND MUST PEE RIGHT NOW, instead go the opposite way into a different room; you would think this was too silly to even try, but I tried it and it actually worked.

In some ways the page-a-day calendar is even more challenging than the wall calendar, because so many wall calendars are MADE to be pretty and restful. Whereas day-to-day calendars, with 353-354 more images to come up with in a year, tend to be a little more feisty. But this year I don’t want feisty, I don’t want funny; I might want art, beauty, science. I think I could tolerate cute, maybe even MILDLY funny? But I don’t want the Pusheen calendar again, even though I liked it this year. Too sweet and sunshiney.

I bought this one:

(image from Amazon.com)

The MET Art of Flowers. My hope is that it will be peaceful and pretty, and give the feeling of perspective that art can sometimes give, while also showing me every day what day it is, and giving me a decorative pile of scrap paper.

But I also just ordered this one:

(image from Amazon.com)

Worry Lines: Full of Hope and Potato day-to-day calendar. I do not need two page-a-day calendars, but this is not the first time I’ve ended up with two. And if this one is TOO hopeful or TOO uplifting, there is a cart at my workplace where we can put things we don’t want and someone else will take them; that’s what I did when the Effin’ Birds calendar turned out more aggressive than I’d thought it would be. But what happened was I saw this image (apparently from Instagram, which I don’t use and so I’m not sure how to link properly, but it’s apparently by @worry__lines if I’ve done that right, and please do let me know if I haven’t), and found it compelling enough that I went right to my cart and bought the calendar:

That is the level of funny/hopeful I find useful.

I will show you some other calendars I considered, in case you are still questing.

(image from Amazon.com)

(image from Amazon.com)

Cat page-a-day calendar. 365 Cats page-a-day calendar. I can look at a picture of a cat each day without feeling as if everything’s supposed to be fine when it’s not.

(image from Amazon.com)

(image from Amazon.com)

The MET Art: 365 Days of Masterpieces day-to-day calendar. Art page-a-day calendar. I find art mildly uplifting but without pressure to sustain that lift. Artists are CLASSICALLY tormented and miserable.

(image from Amazon.com)

Shoes page-a-day calendar. I have had this calendar before, and it was pleasing and fun. I wear sneakers, but I appreciate a fancy shoe.

(image from Amazon.com)

Mister Rogers day-at-a-time calendar. I am exactly the right age to get teary and sentimental about Mister Rogers, and it feels like we could use his sweetness, and I appreciate the way they’ve called this a “day-at-a-time” calendar. But I looked at the sample pages, and I found they did not hit the right note for me right now.

(image from Amazon.com)

Cartoons from The New Yorker day-to-day calendar. New Yorker cartoons don’t tend to be lol funny, they’re more quietly wry. I thought I might be able to enjoy quietly wry. But I decided against it, because I think it’s also possible I’d find it annoying and irrelevant.

(image from Amazon.com)

Paper Airplane fold-a-day calendar. Not for me, but for Paul or one of the kids. Paul has had this calendar before, and said he liked it the first time but didn’t think he wanted to do it again, but I’m still considering it for Rob and for Edward, who both have terrible skimpy wish lists.

(image from Amazon.com)

Spanish Phrasebook day-to-day calendar. And while writing this post, I remembered how keen Henry has been on his Spanish class this semester, so I ordered him this for Christmas. I like that it’s focused around phrases needed for travel, instead of just word-a-day.

I am starting to feel somewhat more accomplished, in re Christmas preparations. With all these days off work (I am still testing positive but still feeling basically fine), I am making significant progress. I have finished shopping for everything that needs to be shipped to a recipient, and have shipped the things I needed to ship. I have finished the two children with reasonable wish lists, and am chipping away at the three without. I have finished my brother/SIL/niece/nephew, and my parents, and Paul. I have gift cards on the way for the various mail carriers. I have finished the shopping for the two kids we “adopted” from a local holiday-assistance program, and have dropped off their gifts at the center; that’s a big project but has rapidly become one of my favorite parts of Christmas; if you are interested-but-anxious, as I was, I highly recommend trying it one year to see if you like it too.

I have finished the Christmas cards, and have had the children bring the boxes of Christmas card supplies back up to the barn, remembering to keep out a little pile of them for giving out with the gift cards. I have gotten the finished cards into the mail, and it gives me a happy feeling to think of them winging out in all directions. Cards have started to arrive, and I am putting them up around the doorway. I have brought down the rest of the Christmas dishes/mugs/dishtowels.

The stockings still need work, but I still have time, and I can’t do the in-store part of that until I’m not shedding virus, and I do have enough of a good start that I’m not panicking (yet). I’ve probably missed all the fun Trader Joe’s stuff, but maybe not.

I still need to do alllll the wrapping (except for the few things already wrapped and shipped). But I had the kids bring the wrapping paper down from the barn into the house proper, and that is a start.

Oh!: and I found where I’d put the Scentsicles!! (That’s a Target link; here’s the Amazon link.) This is at least the second year they’ve been missing, but I was SO SURE I had put them somewhere that MADE SENSE. I could have just bought more, but first of all they do cost a little, and secondly I couldn’t remember which scent I’d preferred (White Winter Fir, it turns out). So anyway I found them: they were in the Christmas cards box, but had gotten under some mostly-empty boxes of cards so I couldn’t see them; when I took out allll the cards boxes this year I found them. And that IS such a good place for them, because I often get the cards out before anything else. I have two ornaments boxes and use them alternating years, so I can’t put the Scentscicles in with either set, unless I get two sets of Scentsicles, and maybe that would be the sensible thing to do when this set runs out, considering.

I still need to put together my co-worker gifts. I have a gift for my Secret Santa person (I got her one lighted birch tree, plus a USB wall charger block and a nice long A to C cable), and that all needs to be packaged up nicely in a gift bag or something, perhaps with some candy because I feel a little nervous about the gift, and a gift tag, and I like to festoon the top of the gift bag with a string of those tiny battery-powered lights, the ones that are on a teeny wire; I buy them on like 75-90% off after Christmas, and it’s so fun and silly to see them lighting up the tissue paper. And then for each co-worker’s stocking bag I went with a hand-held postal scale (they’re cheaper in bulk but there’s shipping, so if you only need a few here’s the Amazon link).

(image from sciplus.com)

I realize this is a little odd, gift-wise. But because everyone who decides to participate in this gift exchange has to gather together a LOT of gifts, the gifts are by necessity inexpensive; and that usually means a baggie of candy, or cocoa packets, or an ornament, or a candy cane decorated as a reindeer, or something of that sort. And that is very, very nice, and fills us all with goodwill and cheer! And it also gives me the freedom to do something different and perhaps odd, because our candy/cocoa/ornament/reindeer bases are pretty much covered. So I got everyone the scale I use ALL THE TIME, even though Paul said “But does anyone even SEND letters?” Because you know who is more likely than the usual person to still send letters? PEOPLE WHO WORK IN LIBRARIES. And it doesn’t have to be used for letters! You can weigh anything up to four ounces!

Now I need to package up all these scales somehow (probably in these peppermint treat bags, if I can get them here in time), with ribbon and to/from labels. And I wondered, should I CLIP SOMETHING in the little clip? A hot cocoa packet, for example? Paul said the obvious thing would be to clip a Christmas card there (to show people what the lil thing is FOR, if nothing else), and yes, but sigh. I don’t want to write out 20 Christmas cards just as accessories; my co-workers don’t want or need a Christmas card from me; the card won’t fit in the baggie. I do have in my possession eentsy-weentsy little 1.5″-square baggies (purchased in the making of Elizabeth’s tree-nut-free countdown-to-Christmas calendar); I could fill them with Christmas M&Ms or Cadbury snowballs and clip THOSE. I think that would be cuter. Also: yummier. Or I think I could clip the baggie of M&Ms/Cadbury AND a small gift tag with to/from on it, and skip the whole outer gift bag and ribbon situation.

ARE YOU MAKING PROGRESS TOO?? Tell Swistle!

Oh dear, this year it is a challenge. We need a calendar than can BEAR UP. I don’t want super cute, or funny. I don’t want whimsy. I might want art. I might want beauty. I might want science/botany. My 2024 calendar would be good for next year, but it looks like there isn’t a 2025 version. This is what it looked like:

(image from Amazon.com)

Each month was another soothing category of drawings.

After searching “2025 wall calendar” and getting, as the fourth option, a calendar of fake pictures of the incoming president lifting weights, riding an eagle look-mom-no-hands, dressed as a benevolent Santa, etc., I really feel this may be the right year for Space Cats:

(image from Amazon.com)

Space Cats calendar. I think that’s a pretty accurate metaphorical representation of how off the rails everything feels like it’s going to be.

(image from Amazon.com)

The Farmer’s Almanac calendar looks soothing. Nice vintage picture of flowers, surrounded by some nice soothing facts. Such as that January 20th is Martin Luther King Jr. Day AND Inauguration Day this year!

(image from Amazon.com)

I think the very most likely is a William Morris calendar. There are many. Soothing, soothing wallpaper. I think I will just look at the backs of them all, count how many of the images I love/like on each, and pick the one with the most tally marks.

(image from Amazon.com)

Or the Redouté flower calendar. I consider it every year; I’ve never bought it. This may be exactly the right year for monthly flowers.

(image from Amazon.com)

Good Enough To Eat: The Art of Comfort Food calendar. Or actually I could be persuaded to consider monthly food. I like the way the lower half of the calendar has a pretty colored border; I don’t like the way it smallens the writing space.

(image from Amazon.com)

New York Botanical Garden calendar. Yesssss, inject me with the soothing botanical drawings. But…it looks as if they have allowed the soothing botanical drawings to trespass WELL down into the lower half of the calendar, and I need ALL THAT ROOM for writing things in squares, so this one is out for me. But it is so beautiful (scroll down the listing to see what it looks like hung up on a wall, showing January in all its glory), and I know not everyone needs as much writing space, so I am including it.

(image from Amazon.com)

Okay, this GuassLee calendar and I are on the same page: if you need more room for the illustration, FINE, make the PAGE bigger! and then the calendar squares have more room TOO! But I don’t understand their assertion that this calendar goes through June 2026. Many calendars claim to go from September of the current year through December of the next year, but what they mean is that they have four months of this year sharing one page at the beginning. This calendar seems to be saying it has six extra months, leaving you stranded in the middle of the next year. What are you supposed to do THEN? I read some reviews that mention that the pictures repeat after the first 12, and NOW I’ve had a thought: you can just use those extra pages to KEEP TRACK for the next year, and then TRANSFER those to your new calendar. I’m always having to write the next year’s appointments on the back of the current calendar, but this would be better. Okay, I am back in favor of this calendar again. That’s even enough room for all the every-6-months dentist appointments! And the end of the school year!

(image from Amazon.com)

Esté Macleod calendar. I believe I’ve chosen this one twice, and was happy with it both times. In previous years I’ve inclined away from repeating a calendar, but this year I am more inclined toward the familiar/comfortable.

(image from Amazon.com)

Feathered Friends calendar. Always on the list, because I can be sure I’ll love it.

(image from Amazon.com)

I very much like the look of this Kate Heiss calendar. Soothing and British. Pretty without making me feel like it’s trying to cheer me up. And how did I not know she had a sticker advent calendar??? I am thinking of buying it and using it as a 24 Days of Christmas post-Christmas calendar. I think I actually need the cheery-little-daily thing MORE after Christmas. In fact, I’m buying it right now. I’ll put it in my stocking.

••••••••

As always, if you use a wall calendar, I would love to hear what you’re buying/considering, as well as about any calendars you’re buying for other people.

Also, let’s do something I did for awhile and then forgot about doing: if you want to be calendar twins with me and you have a U.S. shipping address you can use (it doesn’t have to be yours: I can send the calendar as a gift to your friend/relative in the U.S. and say it’s from you, or from you and me if you think that would be funnier), you can leave a comment, and when I decide what I want for myself I’ll order one for you too. It’s a little tricky because if you’re commenting on this post about what calendar you already have, you might not want another calendar—so let’s say that if you want to be entered into the giveaway, include a little <3 heart in your comment. You can comment JUST <3, or you can add it anywhere in the comment. I’ll pick a name on the day I pick my calendar.

[Update: I have chosen a calendar, and I have chosen a commenter! Sara, I’ve sent you an email! I’d thought I was going to choose the GuassLee, but my heart wanted the Kate Heiss.]