Henry is allowed to take one extra college class per semester for no additional cost—but if you want to take the Extra Class, you can’t sign up for it until everyone else has completed their own normal course registration, which is fair. It’s extra, so there is no pressure to meet a requirement; and in fact, you are encouraged to take something outside your major. (Henry is currently an English major, likely planning to combine it with a teaching degree.) His college offers a class about COWS, and he’d wanted to take that, but it was full; he’d thought about taking Art History or Intro to Music, but both of those are common ways to satisfy the arts requirement so they were all full. (This is one of the primary difficulties of taking the Extra Class: sometimes there are no good classes left.)

He asked all the people in our house (all seven of us are here right now) what college courses we’d taken that we’d recommend. I mentioned a class I’d taken on English words from Latin and Greek Roots; I really liked it, but I think that was in large part because I liked the professor and the way he taught—and because I’d already had several years of Latin, so it was super easy for me. I took a class on Chinese culture because it was the only one that fit in my schedule, and that one was similarly a success, again because of the professor. I found my psychology classes fun; I had to take Into to Psychology to meet the core requirement, and then I took another psychology class that all the business majors had to take; I don’t remember what it was called, but it was sort of a marketing/psychology crossover and it was pretty fun. I liked Probability & Statistics a lot more than I’d thought I would; I liked Intro to Political Science a lot more than I’d thought I would. But I don’t know that I would have taken either of those as extras.

Henry’s siblings recommended any film/music appreciation classes, or any history/culture-of-a-particular-country (whether or not you THINK you are interested in that country) classes. Rob recommended taking an introduction to computer programming class, not so much for the actual coding skills but for learning that way of thinking about things. Elizabeth recommended taking one of the hands-on art classes, especially because those tend to be pass/fail at the early levels, and this is an extra class so it’s nice to have the freedom to let it be the lower priority. I overheard Edward recommending a class on TEXTILES, which is not a class I knew existed, or perhaps I misheard.

Immediately I wanted to ask YOU. What classes do you particularly remember from your school years? What classes did you like more than you thought you would? What classes do you think you would you like to take, if you could take one for no (additional) cost? What classes do you think would be VALUABLE to take, as a not-your-major add-on?

And/or, if this question is more fun: which classes did you THINK you would like, but they TANKED? I started college wanting to be an English teacher, and my first English literature class was so boring and awful I switched majors (ODE TO A GRECIAN URN: NO THANK YOU FOREVER). I took a Philosophy of Friendship class with a professor I’d loved for Intro to Philosophy, and the class was tedious, plodding, pretentious, forced.

Oh hello SO: I wonder if you have any good ideas for fun group desserts for a family-reunion-type setting. Here are the ideas our group has done so far:

• Sundae bar: ice creams, toppings

• Cookie bar: many different kinds of cookies

• Candy bar: many different kinds of candy

• S’mores

The candy bar was THE BEST/FUNNEST when we had a ton of little kids who went WILD over all the options. Now that everyone is older, the idea seems to have lost its shine. Sundae bar feels infinitely appealing, and we always do it. S’mores is another always-do. Cookie bar (Milanos! Oreos! wafer cookies! maple-leaf cookies! Keebler fudge-stripes! fudge-dipped Nutter Butters!) was fun once and will probably be fun again, but was not quite as fun as hoped.

In general it seems we favor highly-customizable displays, where everyone can take exactly what they want from a wide selection. But that is not a necessary preference to comply with, as we collect ideas.

It helps if the idea is make/buy-ahead-able and transportable, and/or doesn’t take up too much fridge/freezer space. We are in a rental house and we don’t usually know the fridge/freezer space ahead of time; and I don’t think any of us want to spend much of our precious vacation time making food.

We are talking SMALLISH reunion in this case—like 12-16 people. But feel free to suggest for smaller or larger groups: these comment sections are for ALL of us.

This is such a niche topic, but can we combine our knowledge about the drinks packages on cruises? For those of you who are where I was ten minutes ago: it seems that cruises charge extra for drinks such as soda, interesting coffee (anything other than pouring it from a Church Fellowship Urn and adding your own cream and sugar), and booze. You can pay for those drinks individually, again and again all day long, or you can buy a “drinks package” where you pay a lump sum per day to cover a whole bunch of those drinks (usually unlimited in the case of soda and coffee, limited-but-nice-high-limit in the case of alcohol). The price is PER DAY, but cannot be different from day to day (that is, if you only drink on weekends, you cannot opt to pay for the alcohol package only on the weekend days). Which means it is ACTUALLY per-week.

There are LEVELS: I am not totally clear on this, but the gist seems to be that the lowest-price level is all the soda you can drink; the second-lowest is all the soda and specialty coffees you can drink; the third lowest is all the soda and specialty coffees and virtually all the lower-priced wine/cocktails you can drink (a nice high limit on the alcohol drinks, like 15/day); and the most expensive is all the soda and specialty coffees and virtually all the lower/higher-priced wine/cocktails you can drink (again, a nice high limit on the alcohol drinks, like 15/day). My assumption is that the alcohol drinks on cruises are NOT AT ALL strong, if the limit is 15/day. But I don’t know; I could be wrong. This is one of the many areas where the experienced among us could offer their expertise.

I am someone who enjoys drinking, especially on vacation/holidays, and also I find it very difficult to pay $8/$10/$12/$16/whatever for a drink. (One of the ways Paul Served My Interests on our recent road-trip is by continually encouraging me to order a drink at dinner, and even a SECOND drink since he was driving, and further indulging me by saying things like “Sure, you’re right, this is too expensive for Usual—but we don’t usually do this. This is a special situation.”) So FOR ME, there is significant value in buying a drinks package that means I have an auto-Paul and DON’T HAVE TO THINK/FRET ABOUT IT. FOR ME, the no-brainer option is the drinks package, EVEN IF the math does not work out in the end. (Though I would plan to keep track of it on the first cruise, and use that information to inform future cruises—because I can also imagine working well with a self-managed Generous Drinks Budget, with the knowledge that the amount I was spending was Less Overall.) Also: the boozy-drinks package includes the sodas and special coffees, which I would enjoy but would find it difficult to pay extra for: I’m not paying $4 for diet Coke if I can have water for free; I’m not paying $7 for a fancy coffee drink if I can have a regular coffee for free. Ordering the drinks package is a sensible choice, FOR ME, in terms of VACATION ENJOYMENT/RELAXATION/INDULGENCE. My guess is that ME getting that package would also have significant value to Paul, to give him a break from the Support Role; and indeed, he not only supports the idea of me getting the Highest Drinks Package, he actively encourages it.

Here is my MAIN ISSUE: passengers have to buy the same package as everyone in their cabin. So Paul and I are REQUIRED to choose the same path. But Paul BARELY drinks. Sure, he will have a beer. He might have a cocktail if he doesn’t have a beer and we are on vacation / out for our anniversary. And he DOES NOT AT ALL think/fret about the cost if he wants a beer/cocktail. So FOR HIM, the boozy-drinks-included package is an UTTER WASTE: he would buy exactly the number of drinks he wanted to buy, without giving it a single thought, and he would never buy enough of them to be worth it. With soda and coffee drinks, he would literally never think of the price, he would buy exactly as many as he wanted—but he would buy many, Many, MANY more of those than of alcohol drinks. For him, the all-you-can-drink soda package, or more likely the all-you-can-drink-soda-and-coffee package, would be MUCH WISER deals. But even though we are very, very different, we have to choose the same package.

I am obviously going to have to math this out, because what the cruise seems to be asking me is if I can drink enough for almost-two. And NO I CANNOT. But there are other factors, such as the aforementioned Anxious Frugality: WILL I order the number of drinks (soda/coffee/alcohol) that I would like to have, if I have to think of the price every single time? Also: Paul drinks lots and lots of soda and coffee, so he is going to want the unlimited-soda(/coffee) package, and that’s about a third of the price of the unlimited-all-drinks package, so the price of that package cancels out of the price of the larger package (i.e., if the all-inclusive package is $60, and he would have bought the $20 soda package regardless, the all-inclusive package is only $40 more, not $60; and if the soda/coffee combined package is $30, then the all-inclusive package is only $30 more, not $60); and also my Anxious Frugality applies to other people in my party ordering multiple $4 sodas and $7 coffees per day—however much I would LIKE to mirror the support I receive. And actually, it is likely if he ordered just the soda/coffee he wanted in a day, with no package deal, he would EXCEED the price of the alcohol drinks I would order. And I think he(/ANYONE) would appreciate me NOT looking sideways at every soda/coffee drink order. You see how quickly this gets complicated. But the cost of the daily all-inclusive alcohol package!!! times two, when one of us barely drinks alcohol!!! Good heavens!!!

We are back home after our two-week trip, and having a little trouble with re-entry. Part of it is that we are dropping right into the middle of so many more things than are usually going on:

1. One of the cats (it’s one of the younger ones) is seriously ill. The children had to manage this while we were gone, and no one including the vet thought the cat would live until Paul and I were back from our trip. The cat, however, is attempting to rally (possibly in a cat-like attempt to drain our bank account before perishing anyway), so we are in the midst of ongoing appointments/stress, plus daily medications, plus twice-weekly check-ins with the vet for testing and for support medications (steroids, fluids, anti-nauseants, etc). The vet thinks it is either FIP (potentially/possibly curable) or lymphoma (not curable).

2. Rob arrives today for a three-week visit.

3. Edward’s first intestinal surgery is next week. And Edward has skyed off to visit a friend in another state, returning the day before surgical prep starts. Meanwhile, we received a letter from insurance authorizing an ELEVEN-DAY hospital stay, which is FAR MORE INTENSE than what we were expecting. ALSO: the first day of the new school semester is fourteen days after the surgery, so that seems jeopardous.

4. A toll we can prove we paid (we have one of those auto-pay devices) has GONE TO COLLECTIONS. We have called the toll place REPEATEDLY. We have submitted our paperwork that proves we paid it! When we received the letter that only THREATENED collections, we called and spoke to someone who said our claim HADN’T EVEN BEEN REVIEWED YET (it had been months since we’d submitted the proof). Nevertheless it has gone to collections, and we got the letter when we were opening mail after our trip.

5. Annual family-reunion vacation is the week after next. (This is why Rob is home.)

6. Three kids need to be transported back to school the week after that.

7. William has gotten a job!! It is not at all in his field, but it is a full-time job with benefits!! It starts in a few weeks!!

8. My parents have made the decision to sell their house and move to a retirement community.

Last night, after a little bit of a crabby evening, Paul said wistfully, “I wish we were still just driving around.”

It was a great trip. Everything went well, except for one appalling thing that is already funny: in our first hotel, there was A CLEAR GLASS SHOWER, AT THE FOOT OF THE BED. I went and sat in the lobby in my jammies while Paul showered, and then we switched. We have been together over thirty years, but there is a line.

We saw my parents, and my brother and sister-in-law and niblings. We saw Rob and spent a little time exploring his city. We visited one of my besties who lives where we used to live; I haven’t seen her in person in over 25 years. We visited my favorite cousin who is another of my besties; I haven’t seen her in person for over 25 years. We went to several Interesting Tourist Locations. We discovered that if we eat restaurant food in our usual “Restaurant food is a special treat, so get what you like best instead of aiming for nutrition!!” way for days in a row, we will then consume a 1.5-pound cut-up fruit bowl in about five minutes; and the day after that we will be craving a nice big salad, and the day after that will be the same, until we are basically looking for restaurants that have interesting salads, instead of looking for the ones that have good mozzarella sticks. I started eating the apples from the hotel continental breakfast bars, and those are not good apples.

I was worried that we would not travel well together, but we did. A large amount of the credit for this goes to Paul: I noticed he seemed to be in “defuse don’t escalate” mode for pretty much the whole trip (I can get fretful and touchy if I’m out of my usual element and/or if I get a little bit too hungry; and I am frugal to the point of getting very worked up about the cost of a hotel room), and erred consistently on the side of indulging me. I suspect it is in part because he would like to do a lot more traveling, and I am the more reluctant traveler, so he wanted this to Go Well.

We are on the verge of a two-week trip involving first a visit with my parents and then a road-trip to visit Rob and then on to visit a bestie who lives in the town where Paul and I got married and where Rob was born. I get a little flustered packing for one/familiar journey, but this is a whole new pack of eggs. A major soothing element is that with a ROAD TRIP it is super easy to stop somewhere and buy something. It can even be FUN. For example, we are going to need a cooler, and Paul suggested we buy it at the local chain where we used to do most of our shopping in those early days, and maybe we can even find a cooler branded with the name of the store and that would be fun; but even if we can’t, we will have the memory of buying the cooler there.

Meanwhile we are also preparing for Edward’s surgery next month. We have been back and forth to the hospital half a dozen times for various preparatory tasks (MRI, ultrasound, etc.); each journey takes 6-8 hours, depending on proximity to rush hour and whether the procedure is a 15-minute thing or a 3-hour thing; we have tried to get the tasks combined and that has not been possible (e.g., very limited MRI appointments, specialized ultrasound only done on Fridays, this doctor has only this one appointment between now and September, etc.). A couple of friends have pointed out how lucky the timing is with me being out of work for all this, and it really is.

I’m afraid it is also resetting Paul’s expectations. I had a big struggle, when I went back to work, getting him to understand that if both of us were working on a day a kid needed something, it was no longer a matter of me automatically being the one to figure everything out and change/cancel my own plans: he had become fully accustomed to the SMALLEST inconvenience on his part completely outweighing even a LARGE inconvenience on my part. He finally, finally, FINALLY got the the point of MOSTLY understanding (i.e., he would still default to “Nope, I can’t do it, I have an appointment / planned to go in to work that day,” but then with nudging would start to say “OH! Yes, no, I can maybe swap days / change my meeting / change my appointment / work from home”), and now here we are again with me able to take allllll the tasks and Paul not having to think about it at all. We have a big scheduling conflict today (I have an appointment, AND I have to take Henry to an appointment, AND the hospital two days ago scheduled something else for Edward that MUST be done today and CANNOT be rescheduled, PLUS we have one fewer car than we need for the people who need cars for work/appointments), and I brought the issue to Paul to see if he could work from home to free up a car and he immediately dismissed it: nope, he had to go in to work. I had to cut off his long explanation of all the reasons he Really Had To Be There in Person, because it’s not relevant: if he’s not available, he’s not available, and I need to move on to figuring out what can be done.

You might be thinking, “Well, but he can help figure out what can be done!” The thing is, he mostly can’t. That is not one of his areas of skill. Furthermore, his mind immediately leaps to a dozen different things that cannot possibly work, and then he is talking them into the air and I have to explain to him why each one doesn’t help / won’t work—so now I’m spending my problem-solving time teaching Problem Solving 101 to someone who has already taken the class a dozen times without passing, and he is getting irritable with me for smacking down all his attempts. Like, he is TRYING to HELP, and all I’m doing is PICKING APART HIS IDEAS!! But what is actually happening is that he is twenty steps behind and not good at this to begin with. We don’t all have to be good at the same things! But let me work on it without having to tell you AGAIN that we are SHORT A CAR so NO we can’t “just” do it the way you took four seconds to think of!!!!

Anyway. I AM good at this, so now we have a complicated ballet of a schedule that gets everyone to where they need to be. It involves me doing a lot of chauffeuring; it also involves Edward taking a commuter bus to the city, which has me nervous, but happily we had an appointment earlier this week so we took that same journey together and I had him lead the way and figure out how, for example, to find the right bus, and how to get from the bus station to the hospital—so I think overall this is going to end up being good adulting experience, and also everyone else gets to go to their work/appointments, AND ALSO we can use this idea again in the future if we get stuck.

I said I would talk more about a friend BRINGING HER HUSBAND TO OUR COFFEE DATE.

Linnea and I are former coworkers, and we have been getting together every couple of weeks for coffee or for a walk. We had plans to go for coffee. When we were confirming those plans the night before, she texted, as part of the confirmation, “Kent might come I’m not sure.” Kent is her husband.

I was baffled. Why might Kent be coming to our coffee date? Why wasn’t she sure? Why was there no REASON given? I would never, ever, just bring Paul along to a meeting with a friend.

I left the text unanswered for awhile, to process and consider. I couldn’t even totally tell from context if she might be…kidding? And if not, I wanted to take some time to decide if this was something I was going to set a boundary on. Like, if I don’t object ahead of time, and she does bring him, then I feel like it would be a LOT harder to object next time: it would seem personal, like I didn’t like him. Whereas if I object up front, it’s more like objecting to the breach of our plans in general.

Which I DO object to, by the way. I recently had ANOTHER friend do something like this: my former coworker Wendy and I had plans to meet for lunch, and then I was meeting another former coworker, Melissa, afterward to try a local brewery; I was excited about these fun plans. Wendy and Melissa found out I had plans with both of them on the same day, so Wendy invited Melissa to join us for lunch, without asking me or telling me. Melissa then texted me, informing me that she’d be joining us “if that’s okay,” and canceling our plans for afterward, since we’d be having lunch. Well, at that point I didn’t feel there was any room to say no, it’s not okay—but it was NOT okay! I wanted to dish dirt with Wendy, dirt we could not dish in front of Melissa! (Melissa is long-time good friends with the terrible supervisor.) And then I wanted to meet SEPARATELY with Melissa, because she and Wendy work closely together and share all their news every day, and I wanted to catch up with Melissa without Wendy having to sit there hearing it all repeated! ALSO I wanted to go to this brewery, and so did Melissa, and we have LONG been trying to figure out a time we could both go! (Wendy does not drink.)

But also: I object in general to someone making/changing plans for me without consulting me. My plan was to have two separate fun things with two separate people, and now I was having one thing instead of two things, and the content of that one thing was severely compromised. Interestingly, considering future events, I vented about this at the time to Linnea, who said, “Well, maybe Wendy figured this way you could kill two birds with one stone, and not have to rush from one thing to the next.” Okay, cool? But then consult with me before doing it, so that I can say “Actually, no, I WANT two separate birds, that’s why I set it up that way; and also there is no rush, because I scheduled half an hour between the two things.” I’m an adult who makes plans deliberately! I do not need another adult to decide my plans aren’t good and rearrange them for me!

When I texted Wendy, by the way, saying “Melissa says she’s joining us?,” Wendy said “Yeah, I never get to see her outside of work!” Okay, cool? Then maybe you can make your OWN plans with her outside of work? And also: you sit next to each other four days a week at work and talk the whole time, so.

Back to Linnea and her inexplicable husband. I decided not to set a boundary. I felt like I didn’t have enough information about why he might be joining us, or what that would look like, and also I am a wimp. Instead I hit the thumbs-up ten hours later (there was a nighttime in there), which for me in this context is a FAIRLY CHILLY RESPONSE. And then I waited to see how this was going to go down.

How it went down is that when Linnea picked me up the next morning (we have a shortage of cars at our house, with six people home), her husband was driving. Still no explanation about why he was there. We drove to the coffee shop, and there we met ANOTHER PERSON LINNEA HAD INVITED: a teenager who lives with them right now, because of issues at home. Linnea introduced me to the kid, saying “She’s just here for a few minutes to have coffee and then she has to get going.” Okay, okay, this is weird but okay. So the FOUR of us took our coffees to the seating areas, and at this point Linnea said that Kent was here to get some work done. I thought this meant he would sit separately from us, at a table with his laptop, and I felt very relieved I hadn’t protested this plan earlier. Of course he can tag along to the coffee shop and sit at a table across the room to get work done!

BUT NO. He sat with us. And though he was allegedly working on his laptop, he kept contributing to our conversation! And finally he put his laptop away and became a full participant, even speaking at length about his job and his hobbies and his friends!

And the kid stayed almost the whole time! We were there for over two hours, and the kid left about ten minutes before we did! She was pleasant and made eye contact and pretended to be interested in what we were talking about, but SHE WAS THERE THE WHOLE TIME, AND I DO NOT KNOW HER, AND WHY DID LINNEA BRING HER TO THIS BORING ADULT COFFEE TIME?

Well. After all that ranting, I should confess that Linnea’s husband is chatty and friendly, and it was not terrible having to talk with him. He is very, very social, and I think he’s one of those “never met a stranger” types who likes to know as many people as possible. That kind of person tends to be easy to talk to, because they are ZERO stressed about the situation, and they can fill ANY awkward silence, and in fact there will BE no awkward silence. I suspect Linnea brought him along BECAUSE HE WANTED TO BE BROUGHT ALONG, and perhaps she has trouble saying no to his puppyish enthusiasm. I suspect she talks to him about her friends, and then he wants to know her friends. He is not really my cup of tea, but he is in that neutral zone of I don’t mind him either, and getting to know him gives me more insight into Linnea’s life and marriage, which I find pleasant and interesting. And, too, now I can picture the kid when Linnea mentions her, which is pleasant and interesting. So all of that is good.

BUT IT IS NOT WHAT WAS PLANNED. And I still don’t like THAT.

I have a question. We have a groundhog. That is my question.

At first we found it charming and cute. Groundhogs ARE so cute. They’re so fat and sleek and waddley! And our yard has foxes and raccoons and songbirds and squirrels and chipmunks and hawks, and sometimes deer and skunks and turkeys and owls, and on one memorable occasion bears—so why not groundhogs?

Well. Because this groundhog can’t be reasonable. Two burrow entrances, three, FOUR (that we know of)—we still found it charming: we’re not prissy about our lawn. But then a crater a meter across and almost as deep, right in the center of our lawn, with a fifth (that we know of) entrance. My dude.

Also, one of the entrances is through an old rock wall that supports part of the yard; another one is right next to our old, old foundation. We’re not super savvy as homeowners, but we’re pretty sure neither of those is good.

But what to do. Paul researched it through a wildlife preservation/rehabilitation site, which gave links to places that would relocate a groundhog safely and humanely. He has called all four. One has not returned any of his emails or calls. Another, it turns out, has relocated themselves safely and humanely to another state. The other two were like, WHO said we could relocate it?? They can trap it for us, so that we can relocate it ourselves (which does not seem to be possible/legal, and they had no ideas/leads for us; and when we asked follow-up questions, one of them said things like “Well, I’M not putting it in MY yard! I have a garden!”—which felt particularly unhelpful considering he SPECIFICALLY, VERBATIM, lists “groundhog relocation” on his website as one of the services he provides) (Paul ended up hanging up on him), or they can kill it. Those are the options. We can leave it where it is and let it do its thing, or we can kill it.

I am loathe to kill a living creature for the crime of living in the world and sharing the land we live on, which in a TRULY SIGNIFICANT sense is no more ours than theirs. THE EARTH BELONGS TO US ALL. But also: the groundhog is demolishing our shared property. ONE COULD SAY THE SAME OF HUMANITY, AND THIS PLANET!!!!! But also: right now we are talking about this groundhog, and our yard.

This reminds me of mosquitos. If mosquitos could just TAKE A LITTLE BLOOD, without LEAVING BEHIND A WELT THAT ITCHES FOR TWO WEEKS and/or MALARIA, I would be FINE with it. In fact, I would actively do my part: I would stand outside each day and allow, say, six mosquitos to sting me.

It reminds me of ants. If ants just CLEANED UP THE CRUMBS LEFT ON THE FLOOR, and didn’t have to INFEST THE ENTIRE STRUCTURE and/or INFEST THE FOOD IN THE PANTRY, we would coexist, and even be grateful to them for their service.

It reminds me of mice. If mice just lived cutely in our houses, and nibbled on crumbs and didn’t CHEW THROUGH WIRES AND INSULATION, we would probably be fine with it, I’d even be willing to leave out supplemental food/water for them! Though we might ask them to contain their droppings to particular areas.

It reminds me of rabbits. If rabbits would eat the food in one roped-off rabbit corner of the garden, instead of TAKING ONE BITE OUT OF EACH VEGETABLE/FRUIT, RUINING EVERYTHING FOR EVERYONE, we would probably be okay with that. We would probably even have fun planting the rabbit section each year with new things for them to sample.

It reminds me of humanity. If humans could just LIVE ON THE PLANET and TAKE CARE OF THE RESOURCES THEY NEED TO LIVE, WITHOUT…….. Anyway, the groundhog. And maybe it is not ONE groundhog; maybe it is MANY groundhogs. We have only SEEN one groundhog at a time; we have never seen more than one. And yet, statistically: can it be only one? With five entrances to the burrow? that we know of?

Apparently if you hire a service to kill the groundhogs, they block off all the entrances and put a very humane gas into the burrow to make sure they kill them all. Then they block up the burrow so you don’t get new animals moving in there. Don’t you wish sometimes that you could communicate with animals, to let them know what is at stake? “Listen, the first four entrances are fine. The fifth means we are seriously considering wiping out your entire family and then demolishing your house! Thought you would like to know what we’re thinking!”

So I am wondering if you have any…er, groundhog stories. And if you can tell me how they ended. Did you end up having to…..er.

I VERY MUCH ENJOY sending Fresh Cut Paper paper bouquets. They usually cost in the $12-15 range, and they take four regular stamps to mail, and they’re perfect for things like “aunt’s 80th birthday,” where you want to send something kind of fancy and special but also it can be thrown in the recycling when they’re done looking at it. Or, if you are me, you got one from a friend and it’s still whimsically/beautifully decorating your bookshelf a year later.

If you haven’t encountered these things before: there are a ton of different kinds, but here are a few samples:

(image from freshcutpaper.com)

(image from freshcutpaper.com)

They’re folded flat for mailing, and then you pull on them a certain way and they go 3D. And sometimes there are sales, like 30% off certain bouquets, or 50% off all Christmas, or whatever. All of this is to tell you that while I don’t mail these constantly, I do mail them from time to time, and I find it very fun. I sent one of the Christmas trees (the one with an ornament pack rather than the one with birds) to Rob for his first Christmas in a studio apartment far from home.

The company came out with a new line of 3D ANIMAL cards, with little accessory packs so the animals could be decorated for birthdays and holidays.

(image from freshcutpaper.com)

(image from freshcutpaper.com)

I hadn’t bought any of them, because they had like half a dozen different cats and a dozen different dogs and I felt it was too hard to choose: do I match the animal to the RECIPIENT’S animal? What if there’s no animal close enough? Would most people prefer 3D paper flowers over a 3D paper animal? Etc. Then I noticed they were clearing them out and they were 50% off, and I tried not to lose my mind. I reminded myself that I tend to HOARD things like this, “saving them for special.” I pre-scolded myself that if I wanted to buy these, I needed to ACTUALLY SEND THEM—ideally all within a year, so I wouldn’t have to wonder if I’d already sent someone one on their previous birthday. I bought what I considered a REASONABLE selection. Let’s not actually count up how many; let’s just say it was REASONABLE, considering how much I like sales and how much I like sending cards and how much I like sending THESE cards. I bought some birthday ones, but I mostly bought Christmas ones: I love sending Christmas cards, and I thought it would be fun to send these to the families I know with younger kids.

Today, taking the pre-scolding to heart, I am already mailing the first of the birthday cat cards—only a week after the box arrived, so that is PRETTY GOOD. Instead of the usual message in the stamp section about needing four first-class stamps, there was a QR code. I used the QR code, and it said if I was mailing a cat card, it would need four first-class stamps; if I was mailing a cat card WITH BIRTHDAY ACCESSORIES, I needed to consult the USPS. I stopped by the USPS and consulted. It will cost SEVEN DOLLARS AND NINETY CENTS to mail. This is an ENVELOPE. But the birthday-accessory pack means it does not technically qualify as an envelope and now qualifies as a package, and it costs EIGHT DOLLARS to mail it TO THE NEXT TOWN OVER.

Remember I mentioned that it normally takes four regular first-class stamps to mail one of these. That feels right to me, and I don’t do the math. Let’s do the math right now: at the current rate of $.78 per stamp, it’s $3.12 to mail. Fine. I liked it better when I hadn’t done the math, but fine. The birthday/holiday-animal cards cost MORE THAN TWO AND A HALF TIMES THAT AMOUNT to mail. No wonder they are clearing them out! No wonder!!

I took the envelope back home with me to think. There are a couple different things at play here. One is whether I want to spend eight dollars to MAIL a birthday card. Another is how the recipient will feel, seeing that I spent eight dollars to mail their birthday card. And keep in mind that I have ALREADY PURCHASED MANY CARDS. That is of course a sunk cost—but I feel it’s worth unsinking if possible: I still love the cards; I still feel the recipients will like them too; I’d still like to send them.

In today’s particular case, I COULD hand-deliver the card. That saves me eight dollars. But I do feel cards are better and more special when they arrive in the mail. Do I think they are EIGHT DOLLARS better and more special? I’m leaning no. And normally I CAN’T hand-deliver, so this question won’t apply to MOST of the cards I bought anyway.

I know when I pre-pay and print postage from the USPS website, there’s an option to hide the amount and not print it on the label. I could do that. I still pay the money, but we remove the issue of the recipient knowing how much. And since I bought the cards at 50% off, I could choose to see it as me spending roughly the same total mount as if I’d bought the card at full-price but then got the shipping for free. If I’d seen a deal where the animal cards cost full price but came with free-shipping vouchers, I would not have bought AS MANY, but I would have bought SOME.

I could mail the birthday accessories separate from the card. It looks like the accessory pack, which weighs so close to just-over-an-ounce it’s ridiculous, would take a second-ounce stamp to mail—so, $.78 plus $.29, or $1.07. Then the cat card would ship for $3.12, and the total would be $4.19 instead of $7.90. That’s a pretty good savings! I would definitely have thought it was reasonable if I’d had to add 1-2 stamps to the big envelope in order to add the accessories. But it means the two pieces arrive separately, possibly on different days—and, with the USPS as it currently is, this doubles the chances that one piece gets lost or arrives three weeks later. And even if they arrive together, I’d say it definitely lessens the overall impact of the card.

I could look into whether I could do things to make the whole card weigh less and go back to qualifying as an envelope. For example, I could remove the birthday accessories from their separate envelope before adding them to the main envelope. I doubt that would make enough difference—but considering how close the accessory pack is to one ounce, my suspicion is that Fresh Cut Paper did not take into account the postage situation when they were designing these. It’s possible we’re within a fraction of an ounce of making this work. …Okay, I weighed it and it is 4.6 ounces; an envelope becomes a package when it weighs over 3.5 ounces; I would have to remove the entire accessory pack to turn it back into an envelope, so that’s not going to work. Hm.

Earlier today I came home from having coffee with a friend (and her husband??????? more on this another time) to find an apparently half-dead injured baby bird that had fallen out of its nest and was now flopping weakly/grossly on the pavers in front of my door!!!!

And now, a mere seven hours later, I am basically an expert on normal, healthy, uninjured, not-any-percentage-dead fledglings and all the things you SHOULD NOT do (return them to the nest, give them food/water, call a wildlife rescue unnecessarily); and now the half-dead injured baby bird is hopping around like a healthy uninjured fluffy wind-up toy, having made an INCREDIBLE amount of progress in just a few hours; and its parents are constantly nearby, periodically feeding it and also visiting its siblings in a nest tucked in next to the security camera above our door!!! So I am basically this baby bird’s godmother, and I expect to soon be godmother to several more “half-dead injured baby birds that have fallen out of the nest”! But also: should the baby bird’s parents perhaps build a nest that is NOT LOCATED OVER HARD AND UNFORGIVING PAVERS??? MAYBE!!!!

I can’t adequately express how exciting and stressful this whole thing has been. We kept thinking of trying things and then discovering our instincts were UTTERLY WRONG. First we looked into returning it to its nest: WRONG. (It had feathers, which means it did not “fall” so much as “launch normally.” Returning it to its nest would be like gently taking a 23-year-old human out of their first grown-up apartment and tucking them back into their childhood bedroom and saying “There, there: you’re safe now!” Not fatal, but counterproductive—and in the case of a baby bird, it would have to repeat the “fall” out of the nest, which is presumably unpleasant and potentially damaging.) Then we thought we needed to call a wildlife rescue: WRONG. (The baby bird was behaving normally, as were its attentive parents.) Then we thought we would give it a dish of water: WRONG. (Feeding/watering birds, if you don’t know what you’re doing, can be very, very wrong, and can result in bird death.) Then we thought we would put a light-colored towel onto the pavers, to give it a cooler surface: WRONG. (They can get tangled in the terrycloth fibers.) Then we thought we could provide it some SHADE, at least, with an umbrella or something: WRONG. (This can hide the baby bird from its doting parents.) Then we thought we would scoop it gently into the very-nearby grass: RIGHT, gah, finally, a good idea!! Making sure we see bird-parents nearby: RIGHT, yes, right! Leaving it the hell alone and staying away: RIGHT! Watching out the window obsessively and worrying about it for hours: neither right nor wrong, fortunately!

Here is a little struggle I have. If Good Store sends me a 20% off code (SUMMER) for their coffee/tea; and I buy the 5-pound bag of coffee, which is a considerable savings per ounce over the 12-ounce bags (5 pounds, which is 80 ounces, costs approximately the same as two-and-three-quarters 12-ounce bags, or 33 ounces; it’s $.86/ounce vs $2.08/ounce); and I use my “dots” (little reward points that accumulate from purchases) to get free shipping; and of course I got the 20% off as well; then am I really doing much good? I saved so much on the order, I’m not sure there was any profit left to go to the good cause. What is the point of me “shopping to benefit charity” if I am going to reduce the charitable aspect as much as I possibly can? But…I would not have placed the order without those discounts (at a certain price, I start thinking I should just buy my usual $.50-.65/ounce grocery-store sale coffee and send a donation check to the charity), and I am a shopper who is much more likely to keep shopping at a store (especially for gifts, where I’m more willing to spend) once I’ve been lured in by deals. Plus, here I am telling you about it, and perhaps some of you will end up shopping there, too, and maybe that’s a factor. (This is an affiliate link which will give you $10 off and give me some dots.) Well, I am going to have to let the store decide what’s worth it to them.

I can add that Edward liked his 6-month sock subscription (Christmas gift) so much that he asked for another 6-month subscription for his birthday. If we’d known that in advance, we could have saved money (one pair of socks’ worth of money) with a 12-month subscription—but we did NOT know that, and COULDN’T have known it without trying it. There’s the issue of whether someone will like the fit and feel of the socks, and also whether they will like/wear the surprise designs. Edward was yes and yes, but if he’d had a no in there, we would have been glad we’d gone for the 6 months instead of 12.

I keep inadvertently having my social gatherings stacked up together: nothing for a month, and then two in the same weekend. This past weekend, I went to dinner at the house of my former library supervisor—NOT the supervisor who caused me to quit, but the one who ALSO left because of the bad supervisor. Also invited was a former mutual coworker, and another of THEIR mutual coworkers I didn’t know and was nervous to meet—but it went beautifully and it was a great evening and I have a new potential friend now. People used to meet other people like this all the time.

I think I probably prefer restaurant get-togethers over dinner at someone’s house, though. It WAS nice to see the house (I like to be able to picture people in their habitats), and it’s nice not to have bill-splitting issues or to feel like we might be hogging a table for too long—but I didn’t like that one person did all the work, and then we all left and one person had to do all the clean-up. We could take turns hosting—but the thing is, we’re not going to do that, for various individual reasons (the other people in the home; embarrassed about house; no room for guests; doesn’t really cook). We could theoretically help clean up, but it is excruciating to try to help out in someone else’s kitchen. We could try a potluck, but we all live fairly far from each other (45-minute drive) and that makes things tricky.

Anyway, then the next night I went to a get-together of my wine-and-appetizers group. It’s hard to find a time when everyone is available, so twice now we’ve tried smaller get-togethers (three or four people instead of aiming for at least six of the eight), and in my opinion they’ve gone really well and we should keep doing that, in between the larger events. Everyone gets a chance to talk, and there’s more room for long-form talking if someone has a particular situation going on. I’d say the main downside is that it’s a more precarious situation: if two people are planning to attend and then one is unable to make it after all, now we have an entirely different one-on-one dynamic that maybe nobody wants but nobody wants to say so; or perhaps the hostess ends up with NO ONE showing up, and that does not feel good. When we have seven or eight people planning to be there and two duck out, everything is still fine.