Good morning, we are back from England! I have coffee brewing in my own coffee pot and a second load of laundry in the washing machine!

Since I am unpacking right now, I am going to jot down some notes about packing: what we used, what we didn’t use, what we wished we’d had, etc. When people gave us advice ahead of time, I noticed it was EXTREMELY MIXED: one person’s “Make sure you bring X” was another person’s “Don’t waste space bringing X.” My newly cosmopolitan conclusion is this: it makes much more sense to use phrasings such as “We found X essential” or “We thought we’d use X but we didn’t” (as opposed to saying OTHER PEOPLE won’t need it or OTHER PEOPLE will find it essential), ESPECIALLY if there is some information about WHY—because people vary enormously, and people’s travel experiences vary enormously, and one person’s “Didn’t need it, didn’t want it, didn’t use it” is another person’s “We relied on it for our happiness.”

For example: a coworker told me NOT to bring a dress for Tea, because their family packed dresses and never used them. Fortunately for me, she added a Why: instead of the dresses, they just wore their Nicer Clothes, like trousers and blouses. Well, I do not even OWN trousers or blouses. So I brought a dress, and I wore it not once but twice: once to a fancy tea, and once to an unexpected dinner at the kind of place where one does not wear a graphic t-shirt and cargo shorts. And I am making a resolution for the future to purchase at least one semi-dressy outfit: pants nicer than jeans or cargo shorts; shirt nicer than a t-shirt.

Many, many people told me raincoats were ESSENTIAL. And I would say this: raincoats would have been nice to have, because it rained at least a little bit almost every single day, and often rained on-and-off all day. But I was not going to buy seven raincoats for a single trip (well, six raincoats: Rob is grown and can buy his own raincoat if he wants one) (but he’s RECENTLY grown, so we were trying to help cover some of his expenses for this trip, and raincoats acquired for the trip would have been something I would have included him in), and although several times I envied people who had raincoats, I did not wish I’d bought seven (six) (seven) raincoats; and right now I am glad not to be trying to find space in the house for them. Also: I don’t know about you, but if I wear a raincoat when I don’t need a raincoat, I find it hot/oppressive. We did bring some of those $1.79 emergency ponchos, and a couple of us used them when there was a serious downpour, but most of us just got wet and/or used umbrellas. If we were to start traveling regularly to places where it tends to rain pretty much every day, I would likely buy raincoats; if any of us already owned raincoats, I would have brought them along; if only two of us were going on the trip instead of seven of us, I would have bought them.

Shoes, though. I was trying to pack light, but I should absolutely have brought two pairs, because my sneakers kept getting wet—and would have gotten wet even if I’d been wearing a raincoat. It would have been very nice to have a dry pair to wear while the other pair was drying. (Fellow travelers from my group strongly recommend good supportive sandals instead, and I can see how sensible that would be, but I cannot stannnnnnnnnnd the feeling of dusty feet, it makes me truly deep-down physically miserable, so this is from my sneakers-wearing point of view.) I was glad I hadn’t bought new special walking shoes for the trip, because sneakers were fine; again, if we started regularly traveling, I might want to invest in something different/better, but I was glad not to have bought seven (six) new pairs of shoes, or to be trying to find space in the house for them now.

I’d been planning to pack umbrellas, but I took the advice of commenters Em and Sophie who suggested buying souvenir umbrellas in England, and this was great: it was fun to choose them, and the commenters were correct that the umbrellas were inexpensive (7-10 pounds) and cute and readily available. I bought one subtle tones-of-grey London skyline and one British flag pattern, and if anything I wish I’d bought a third.

I was very glad to have a little travel bottle of Febreze, because I used it on my damp sneakers and on clothing I wanted to wear again.

I was very glad to have some laundry detergent with us (my sister-in-law put travel Tide in our stockings at Christmas), so that I could wash clothes in the sink. Even things I’d thought I’d brought plenty of, such as socks, ran out because I got sweaty/wet more often than I’d expected.

I will have to go back and look, but I don’t think anyone mentioned that we should bring allllllll the less-drowsy Dramamine we thought we’d need plus perhaps two extra bottles. We ran out (I had budgeted for the plane, but had forgotten to budget for bus excursions), and I went to half a dozen stores and could not find it. All I could find (and I had to ask at a pharmacy for it, because they kept it behind the counter) was something called Stugeron 15 (cinnarizine) which one kid said did not work well and made them very sleepy. Fortunately I’d brought plenty of motion sickness patches, which I originally tried only because Chrissy Teigen said on Twitter that they worked, and they DO seem to work; they don’t work as thoroughly as Dramamine, but I can use them for shorter and/or less problematic travel.

I was glad I’d brought plenty of benadryl and melatonin; the jet lag was rough, and also some of us have trouble sleeping in unfamiliar places. I was glad some commenters mentioned that we would not be able to buy hydrocortisone cream in England; I tossed a tube into my suitcase, and we DID end up using it: one kid got some sort of mystery hive, and another kid got a little rash on their arm.

This is just going to have to be a series of posts, because look how long this is already, and all I have covered is rain gear and laundry stuff and medications and shoes.

Yesterday evening, as I was locking up, the door out to the garage was being difficult, so I pulled it back and shut it again with more firmness. This caused a breeze that knocked a nearby spider out of its web and onto the floor. As I prepared to scream and run (I ALLOW spiders, but I do not want them SKITTERING TOWARD ME), a much, much larger spider came darting out from behind a shelf, grabbed the fallen, struggling spider, and dragged it back behind the shelf. I think I’ve mentioned that when I was a young child my dad was a pastor; immediately I began thinking of how to build a sermon around this incident.

As my, let’s call it agitation, ramps up before the England trip (last night I sent myself five emails from my phone between 10:02 and 10:44, as I kept thinking of more things after going to bed), I am once again practicing the art and science of separating Nice from Important.

Wouldn’t it be nice to come home to a clean house after an exhausting vacation? Oh it certainly would! But if I don’t get to it, that is not Important: the messy house might be Less Nice to come home to, but that’s fine. It’s not WRONG to spend an extra ten minutes bleaching/scrubbing the shower before work, especially when it’s too early to pack and my agitation needs something to occupy it; and definitely I know from experience I will fervently thank myself for anything I DO do—but it’s not Important. Even if the shower mildew Took Charge in our absence, and I came home and saw it and felt like crying, I would nevertheless manage to bleach the hell out of it, and all would once again be well. (Still, I was glad I got around to cleaning our shower, and that the kids were managed into cleaning theirs.)

It would be Nice if we could remember to toss all the perishables before we go. But if we forget, or if tossing them in the trash would mean the trash would be revolting to come home to, then that’s not Important: we can toss out some moldy sour cream when we get home, we can pour out the iffy milk when we get home. It would be really, really nice if I would remember to wash out the coffee pot and leave it in the drying rack; but if I don’t, and I come home to week-and-a-half old coffee, I will wash it out then. Coming home is going to be a giant to-do list no matter what, and I have the next day off from work.

There are already some items that it turns out we are Just Not Going To Acquire, despite being told to acquire them (for example, several days before the trip, the travel agency said many places won’t allow backpacks so each of us should have a smaller bag; that does not appear likely to happen), and some of those things are making me nervous—but if we desperately regret not having them, we can acquire them in England. It’s not important that we get them ahead of time; it might not be important to acquire them at all. I’m remembering when a child went to camp, and the camp list said they HAD to have rain boots, were absolutely REQUIRED to have rain boots, and we did NOT have much spare money so I was very grateful to find some at 75% off at Target, and the child did not wear them one single time at camp.

But leaving an authorization (for emergency cat/home repairs) for the cat-sitter is Important. Making sure windows/doors are closed and locked is Important. Bringing Edward’s essential medications and Elizabeth’s Epi-pens is Important. Our passports and driver’s licenses are Important: if we forget those, we CANNOT GO.

Then there are some things that are in the middle: they’re Important, but they’re manageable in an emergency, and/or the consequences might be Quite Unpleasant But Not Life/Trip-Threatening. Having enough cat food and cat litter in the house is in this category. Sure, in a true emergency (oh no, raccoons broke in and ate all the cat food!!) the cat-sitter could go to the store and buy some, but we REALLY DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO ASK HER TO DO THAT, so acquiring plenty of both items was a priority and has been accomplished. Running the dishwasher and/or washing dishes and/or getting all dishes out of the kids’ rooms is likewise in this category: no one would die, and the trip would still happen, but the nasty dishes/aromas/flies would be so very unpleasant to come home to and have to deal with.

Hey, what are you getting your dad for Father’s Day this year, if applicable? I wonder if we might make a comments section to help out those of us who are still looking for a good idea. My dad likes delightful/interesting/regional food and graphic tees, sometimes kitchen tools and workshop tools. If anyone knows of an online place that ships delightful/interesting/regional food, I would be interested in hearing about it. In the past I have liked O&H Danish Bakery and Nuts.com.

And what about the father of your children, if applicable? This year the father of my children has made things easy for me by making two remarks about things he might like to have—and both things absolutely SMACK of Father’s Day: one is a four-pack of Night Shift Peach Piescraper beer, and the other is a set of extra-long tongs for the grill. If he’s very, very good this year I might also get him the new Zelda game (which would be more of a summer-vacation gift for him plus several of the kids), but otherwise I feel like I’m all set there.

I am up early and wild-eyed, because I woke up needing to pee at 3:30 a.m., and then I lay awake going over to-do lists that were not at all doable at 3:30 a.m., thinking that I MUST sleep but that it was looking like I might not be able to—and then I DID drift off!!! …just before Paul’s alarm, which he had forgotten to shut off when he woke up before it went off, went off at 4:45. So I am up for the day, and not best pleased.

This alarm-clock thing has been happening jusssst often enough to make me want to throw his alarm clock against a wall, or perhaps against him, but not QUITE often enough to make a big deal about it. Like, it’s been happening about once every two weeks, and it’s been happening like this for maybe six months now—but after decades of not being an issue, so it’s a little perplexing. This morning I did make a little bit of a big deal about it, because this week (twin high school graduation and many, many end-of-year activities/ceremonies; twin 18th birthdays with all the doubled shopping and wrapping and cake-baking and special-dinner-making; twin college-prep stuff; many other miscellaneous things such as cats having vet appointments and one of Elizabeth’s art pieces needing to be picked up an hour away and Henry mentioning that one of the lenses keeps popping out of his glasses) is about as busy for me as the busiest pre-Christmas week, and I have SO much to do, and there are so many uncertainties (will it rain, which will absolutely bork graduation plans? will I be able to find the ingredient two separate grocery stores were out of?) and I have been counting on good sleep in order to cope with all of these tasks as well as to cope unshriekingly with the freshly-tilled awareness of how uneven the workload is in these sorts of busy times, and how after 25 years I can apparently like it or lump it. And then his alarm. Well.

I have been discovering once again how getting even the lowest-priority items off the to-do list can make a marked difference in my despair levels. Yesterday I put a little air in the car tire that periodically needs a little air, and also I filled the gas tank even though it still had just over a quarter tank, and even getting those two little things accomplished was enough to make me feel like I could cope at a higher level than before with the things that were more essential to get done, such as finding a Spotify gift card.

I also used the adrenaline momentum of coming home from So!! Many!! Errands!! to make a phone call: we keep getting medical bills for Edward’s routine medication infusions that are multiple hundreds of dollars rather than our usual $20 copay; and normally the hospital Edward goes to is impressively brisk and efficient at handling all these stressful little glitches behind the scenes without us having to do anything about it (which I regularly notice and feel grateful for, because of how often I have to leap and re-leap through hoops to get things covered for other medical providers); but this time we’re starting to get letters with deadlines after which they will send it to collections, so this time I called. I got someone very nice, who could not help at all. I honestly was not sure why they were answering the phone, when they could not tell me ANYTHING or do ANYTHING about ANYTHING. But they were very NICE, and they DID “send it to code review” and assured me that in the meantime I did not have to worry about paying it. They said that in their experience, almost every situation is completely resolved by code review. My guess is that the reason this is the only thing the person on the phone knows how to do is that someone EXTREMELY COMPETENT normally keeps these issues from getting to this point; very likely that same person is in charge of code-reviewing.

Anyway it felt nice to have made that call, which has been hovering over me. Why do I put off things that MUST be done? Am I trying to maximize the amount of time I spend being unhappy and stressed about them? (Though in this particular case I feel I have an excuse, since USUALLY my procrastination is rewarded. But I mean OVERALL.)

This kind of thing can feel like a glitch in the matrix:. I have a shower radio (it’s this one, if you are in the market, and it was/is expensive but I LOVE IT and have used it for years and years now with no issues), and it has five pre-set stations. This morning I clicked on the first station, and it was just finishing up playing Jessie’s Girl, and then it went to commercials. I switched to the second station: commercials. Third station: commercials. Fourth station: commercials. Fifth station: just finishing up playing Jessie’s Girl, and then went to commercials. (It is only TODAY, right now, that I learned it is Jessie’s Girl and not Jesse’s Girl.) (It seems like it should be Jesse’s Girl.)

Yesterday we talked about colonoscopies, and I don’t think there’s any denying that over the last 17 years this blog has been slowly segueing from Parenting to Aging, because today I would like to talk about knees. I am not sure how long mine have been bothering me, but I KNOW they were bothering me in 2017, because that’s when I read that the keto diet could be helpful in reducing joint pain, and decided to try it; 10-year-old Henry had been on a “Let’s go for a walk!” kick, and I was having trouble walking with him, and that seemed like something to fix.

Anyway it’s been at least six years. I keep mentioning it at my annual physicals, and my doctor keeps saying yep, arthritis, these things happen as we get older. (I made her sound dismissive there, but she’s not immediately dismissive: she does a bunch of little tests, bending me and pinching me and saying “Does this hurt? How about this?” and so forth. And then she tells me I can try turmeric, and I can try glucosamine, and I can try icing it, and I can try five-day courses of anti-inflammatories, and I can try diclofenac gel, and I can try a knee brace, and I can try stretches/exercises, and so forth.) But LAST year she said that we COULD have me get an x-ray, just to peek, and if nothing else to get a baseline—and as I was thinking that over, she said actually she didn’t think an x-ray was necessary. THIS year I was ready, and when she said we COULD, I immediately said “YES THAT SOUNDS GREAT,” and so I got knee x-rays.

Both knees hurt, but one of them hurts more than the other: I have been doing stretches and muscles-around-the-knees exercises, and with one knee I can do them, and with the other knee I sometimes can’t. And the x-rays showed it’s the sometimes-can’t knee that looks bad; the other knee looks normal. I am a little surprised it looks normal, because it DOES HURT. Well, perhaps I am compensating for the other knee, and putting extra strain on the normal knee. In any case, one knee looks bad, so I am glad we did the x-rays: firstly, so that my doctor knows I am not just complaining; secondly, so we can see how much worse it gets over time; thirdly, so that *I* know I am not just complaining / just not getting enough exercise / etc. The situation apparently looks degenerative/age-related/wear-and-tear-related, as opposed to injury-related.

The doctor said there are Next Steps we can take, depending on how things go from here (sometimes a knee situation stays where it is, and sometimes it gets gradually worse, and sometimes it gets abruptly worse). At the very end of the timeline, an end we might never reach, is knee-replacement surgery. Between here and there are things such as a referral to an orthopedic doctor who might give me injections, or who might do a smaller surgery, or who might want to try other medications/treatments. This is a fourth reason I am glad we did the x-rays: because now I feel I can ask for the NEXT thing.

This morning I am shopping for knee braces (I am supposed to wear a knee brace), and I am wondering if anyone has one they’d recommend. I am browsing and it seems like all of them have 3 or 4 stars out of 5, with legitimate complaints: they roll down; they don’t feel like they help; the elastic loosens quickly; they need to be constantly adjusted; they’re sweaty/uncomfortable; they’re bulky and make it hard to move around.

Edited to add: Also, do you have any favorite brands of glucosamine chondroitin? (I am supposed to try glucosamine chondroitin.) (I have already tried the turmeric. The doctor said to try it for two weeks, and if it didn’t do anything, I could stop. It did not do anything noticeable.)

I have had a slightly odd thing happen recently, which I will now relate. I mentioned on Facebook (more on this in a moment) that I had been referred for my first colonoscopy. You might well wonder why I would post such a thing on Facebook (this is already the moment, we are already there); and it is because, awhile back, I saw something about how one of the main reasons people die of colon cancer is that there is so much embarrassment/reluctance about colonoscopies; and that it can make an actual difference to THE WELL-BEING OF ALL HUMANKIND if people mention colonoscopies casually, the way they might mention their annual physicals or eye exams: like, it’s not embarrassing; like, why would anyone be embarrassed; like, this is a normal thing to do, your friends and family members are all doing it, it is normal and routine and not embarrassing.

And that is a theory that makes sense to me, a person who finds colonoscopies embarrassing and not at all in the same realm as eye exams—and yet who DOES want (“want”) to have one, because that is the age I am, and because I would prefer not to die of colon cancer. Plus, Edward has had MANY colonoscopies because of his Crohn’s disease, so I am at least familiarized with the process in that way, and it helps me to see/hear how casually–even ENTHUSIASTICALLY–his GI doctor treats the whole thing. His GI doctor does not seem grossed out; his GI doctor seems like he is glad to get a look behind the scenes.

Anyway, that’s why I mentioned it on Facebook: as a service to all humankind. And here is the slightly odd thing that happened: more than one person, and to be precise it was two people, separately reached out to inform me that I would not, and/or would not HAVE TO, be having a colonoscopy but instead would be doing the little kit where you take a sample and send it in to a lab. But. In my case I had said that I HAD BEEN referred for a colonoscopy. I did not say “I am doing the little kit.” (Which I have done, previous years.) And yet people were telling me I was not going to have to do what I was telling them I was going to have to do, and that I would be doing something else instead. It was odd.

Then I went in to work the next day, and my co-worker of approximately my same age was mentioning that she was going to have her first colonoscopy, and would soon be starting her prep, and I was all “WAHOO, HIGH-FIVE, COLONOSCOPY TWINS!!!”—and our mutual co-worker, who is half a dozen years older than us, informed us that she had never had a colonoscopy, and that all we really needed to do, without a family history of colon cancer, was the little sample kit where you send it off to a lab. But…my other co-worker and I have both been ACTUALLY SCHEDULED for ACTUAL COLONOSCOPIES by our ACTUAL DOCTORS. So…why is she telling us that we can instead send a sample to a lab? It was odd. I can’t think of another medical procedure where I have had this same reaction: the “Oh: you say this is going to happen, but I can tell you with confidence–though without evidence–that it will not happen” reaction.

We have a gross mystery! This reminds me of the times I have searched/scoured the kitchen for That Terrible Smell, and it has almost always been (1) the sink disposal or (2) potatoes. Except this time it is happening not in our kitchen, but in our car.

Here are the facts:

• Wednesday afternoon, Elizabeth asked me to give her a ride home from school, and I did, and nothing seemed amiss in the car. If it is helpful: the car in question is a Toyota Camry—a 4-door sedan.

• Thursday morning, I got into the car to go to work, and there was A Terrible Smell. The smell category was “spoiled milk”/”liquefied potatoes.”

• Thursday afternoon after work, I looked around a little to see if somehow something from one of my grocery store trips (Monday and Wednesday, or the previous Wednesday) had rolled into a dark corner to commit dark deeds. In the trunk, I saw a little bit of liquid down underneath the floor, in a hard-to-reach area by the spare tire. It smelled accurate. It looked like a couple of teaspoons’ worth at most. My starting theory was that a grocery item (milk carton, half-and-half, yogurt?) had leaked a little bit, and then gone very, very bad.

• Thursday afternoon/evening, I left the trunk of the car open, to air it out / dry it up.

• Friday morning, the smell was CONSIDERABLY MORE INTENSE. I thought, “Okay, it’s only a couple of teaspoons’ worth, but surely if I CLEAN THAT UP the smell will go away more quickly.” I took the carpet layer out of the trunk to get at the spill, only to see that there was A LOT MORE LIQUID THAN PREVIOUSLY OBSERVED. Like, a pint? or more? I am not good at estimating. But it took a roll and a half of store-brand paper towels to soak it all up. Paul had to take the spare tire out so that I could get at all of it.

Did you want a description of the fluid? It was translucent and yellowish/brownish. I guess kind of like pee, except it did not really look like pee, and did not smell at all like pee. It smelled like spoiled milk.

One theory is that a grocery item (gallon of milk, quart of light cream, quart of yogurt, etc.) LEAKED. But…then surely we would have noticed a gallon of milk / quart of light cream / quart of yogurt that was MISSING A PINT OR SO OF MATERIAL.

Another theory is that an entire grocery item (potato, pint of ice cream, individual container of yogurt, etc.) was left behind in the trunk, and went bad. But no such item, or any packaging/residue of such item, was discovered during the excavation and clean-up.

Another theory is that Paul’s coffee-with-cream thermos could have leaked everywhere, without him realizing it. But: (1) this is the car I drive and (2) even if he used my car, as he sometimes does, he would not have put his thermos in the trunk.

Elizabeth wondered if perhaps the trunk lid has a leak, and rainwater got in and then developed a bacteria or something and went very smelly. This is a possibility. But…would water go THAT BAD? And we don’t immediately see anything that looks like a hole in the car trunk.

I can’t find it on Twitter now, but someone started a thread for people to recommend VERY LONG books, and someone else responded by recommending The Absolute Book, by Elizabeth Knox (Target link, Amazon link). I don’t think I follow any of the people involved—not that “seeing tweets by people whose tweets you want to see” has ever been Twitter’s plan or interest, but it does make it harder to re-find the tweet I’m looking for. And as it happens, I WAS glad to have seen the tweet, and I wish I could find it again because whatever they said about this book was enough for me to request it from my library system and read it without knowing any more, and so I would like to wield that tweet at you and see if it makes YOU go read the book.

(image from Target.com)

I linked to the paperbacks because Target has only the paperback available and it bothered me to link to one paperback and one hardcover; but Amazon’s hardcover price is actually less than the paperback price right now, and now that I have finished reading the book I have ordered a copy for myself in hardcover, because this book seems too thick to be manageable in paperback. If I hadn’t been so impulsive, I would have instead bought a copy from eBay. And for you, I recommend being even less impulsive than THAT and seeing if your library system has it.

I think the very best way to read it is to go into it without knowing anything about it: that’s one reason I’m recommending LIBRARY, because then you can follow that advice at no risk at all. The tweet I can’t remember used a description that was something about it being a book that “had everything” and “didn’t even seem long” and “you’ll wish it were longer,” and that seems pretty good to me as an enticement. Also, I might be making those quotes up. Those might be things I’D say about it.

I will leave a little spacer here for those of you who would like to go get the book and read it without knowing anything about it, and then I will go on to discuss a little more about it, for those of you who aren’t going to read it otherwise, and for those of you who might be looking at it as a gift idea.

I will be giving what I would consider vague, fair-game spoilers: they will be about the TYPE of book it is, with some mention of THEMES and ELEMENTS, plus things you could get by reading the book flap. I personally was glad to have read it without receiving these vague, fair-game spoilers—but if I HAD received these vague, fair-game spoilers, I would not have considered the book spoiled. It’ll be the equivalent of, like, telling you that a book is a light funny romance, when maybe you wouldn’t have guessed that from the cover because, unlike every single other light funny romance coming out right now, maybe the book in question didn’t have a sherbet-colored cover with cartoonily-drawn characters (perhaps a glasses-wearing woman who has lost one of her high-heeled shoes is being pushed in a wheelbarrow by a tousle-haired man in a business suit!) and a whimsical, children’s-book-esque title such as Fiona McFly Gets By or whatever.

La la la. We are waiting for some of us to leave. We will not be talking about anything you can’t come back and read LATER, after you have first read the book without knowing anything about it.

La la la. Just filling some space.

La la. It’s not even going to be something you’ll want to come back and read later, I don’t think, because I’m still only going to speak about it in general terms.

La la la. Loop-de-doo.

This is the KIND of book that starts out seeming like one kind of book (a book that takes place in our familiar reality, albeit with the rage-inducing murder of a main character’s sister in the very first sentence), and then after a hundred or so pages following this main character’s life and feelings and memories and family, the book abruptly makes a shift into a book with magic and other worlds and mythical beings and so forth. Like the Narnia books, kind of, where first some kids are spending their holidays with some old uncle in some old house, and then abruptly they’re in a snowy forest and there’s a talking faun. I greatly enjoyed encountering this shift with NO PRIOR WARNING: I was amazed and enchanted. But if I’d known about the shift, it would only have made me MORE likely to read the book, so.

It is a LONG book, but it did not feel long, and I wanted there to be more of it. There are parts that are easy to race right past, because you want to get to the next part of the action—and then you realize you raced right past some of the action because it was so calmly told. There is real-life peril! There is a lot of mixed religious/mythological stuff: Odin! Purgatory! Angels! Demons! Souls! Ancient scrolls! Special swords! There are underlying themes of stolen land, stolen people, bad bargains that no one fixes because it’s been so long with things the way they are. There’s some environmental stuff, and there are some brief parts about food/nutrition that made me a little eye-roll-y. There is friendship! romance! superior species / inferior species interactions! other kinds of relationships! There’s a lil bit of sex, but it’s not explicit. There are themes about secrets, and family, and revenge, and regret. There’s MAGIC! SHAPE-SHIFTING! PORTALS TO OTHER WORLDS! I had a lot of fun reading it, and would definitely want to read it again.