Until I think five years ago, I did our taxes myself; it was about five years ago that I gave up in tears and frustration. I was making my best guesses at what things meant, even after reading the instructions and searching on the IRS site and using tax software and so forth, and after a certain number of years of that, we started paying a professional. What an absolute SCHEME capitalism is, that we need to pay people tons of money to tell us how much money we need to pay our own government, because our government makes the forms too difficult for its citizens to figure out.

It seems like using a tax preparer would be so much less stressful! And it kind of is. But there is still the part where I have to get all the paperwork in order, and some of our forms aren’t ready until March, and there’s the part where I worry that I am forgetting something, and the part where it costs a fair chunk of money; and now there is also the part where I worry that our tax preparer is judging us and/or thinks we’re pretty dumb about money.

I know to ignore that last thought as much as possible. I know the sensible thing to think is that our tax preparer deals with a lot of people’s taxes and does not have the time, the mental energy, or the connection to us that she would need in order to care, let alone judge. But…I am a human being in this world, and I know I have found time and mental energy to care about MANY, MANY THINGS I should not care about, including what a tax preparer thinks of me, so this is not a compelling argument. Plus: I am on Twitter, so I have SEEN tax professionals talking about the ways in which they judge people.

Well. There is nothing I can do about any of that. But I have noticed over the years that whenever I am putting off a stressful task, ESPECIALLY if it is the kind of stressful task where it needs to be done sooner or later so it might as well be sooner, and yet I am still putting it off as if I wish to draw out the enjoyment of the stress as long as possible—in those cases, telling you about it tends to have a strongly motivating effect. I am hoping that this post will cause me to load all my tax stuff up and drop it off at the preparer’s office tomorrow.

I don’t know if you already know this, but it turns out that if you do an unfamiliar thing more often, it becomes more familiar and less stressful. Just a little tip from me to you.

We have been visiting a lot of colleges, and also I went away for a Girls’ Weekend, and my packing/traveling stress has absolutely plummeted. I am now SUGGESTING trips, browsing vacation rentals, wondering aloud if there are any other colleges we should visit or perhaps re-visit, etc.

Paul’s birthday is coming up, and he has said he doesn’t want Crazy Cake. I have over the years tried to find the balance between “Explaining why the cake is not coming out right, despite my genuine attempt to make it right” and “Not making him feel bad that the cake is a huge source of stress and frustration each year.” Maybe ten years ago, he started making sounds about not wanting me to have to make the cake, so I dialed the frustration talk alllllll the way back; each time he made some sort of noise on the topic, I reiterated that it is his birthday and he should get the cake he wants to eat and not the cake I want to make, and that I certainly expect the same when it is MY birthday, and that is no big deal at all to make it once a year. I even threw in some talk about how the kids should grow up familiar with his special family recipe. I became outright cheerful about making the cake, whistling and singing happy little songs to show how unstressful it was.

But he has kept acting as if he doesn’t want to trouble me, and it has finally occurred to me that maybe he doesn’t really LIKE that cake anymore. There can definitely be a point where the Cherished Family Recipe of one’s childhood starts tasting like the salt-and-pepper-seasoned-sausage-wrapped-in-white-bread-and-dipped-in-ketchup (my own Cherished Family Recipe) that it deep-down IS, and maybe that has happened to his childhood Making-Do-With-Shortages Depression-Era Chocolate-Colored cake.

Anyway, I will be making the Hershey’s boiling-water cake, with a chocolate buttercream frosting that does not have any flour in it.

Today I bought cardamom for the first time in my life. I don’t know what it is, but now I own some. I bought it because I got suckered once again into buying one of those Skinny Fool coffee add-ins that sounds good and turns out to be a syrup of artificial sweetener and almost nothing else; the one that caught me this time was a Chai Spice flavor. And I DID like the chai spice part! But that was like 1% of it, and the other 99% of it was Artificial Sweetener; I couldn’t add as much chai spice flavor as I wanted without having about 99 more times artificial sweetener than I wanted. I wondered: could I just add the chai spices to my coffee, without the Skinny or the Fool? Hey, maybe it would work to brew my coffee using one of my many, many chai spice tea bags? But then I thought WAIT: I could do this in a way that expends more money and effort! Anyway now I have cardamom.

Right after buying the cardamom, I remembered why it sounded so familiar: my boss was telling us the other day about a recipe she made that she was never going to make again. She mentioned that she spent eight dollars on cardamom and used a teaspoon of it, and that if any of us ever needed cardamom we should let her know and she would be happy to bring us some.

Recently I have been revisiting a technique I remember using when the kids were little: I am timing how long it takes me to do a task, especially a task that needs to be done frequently but that I tend to put off. The kids empty the dishwasher now, but when the kids were little and it was my job, I hated to do it and used to procrastinate, which just made things worse because now the dishwasher was getting half-emptied as I took things directly out of it, so it was hard to tell if it was clean or dirty, and dirty dishes were piling up on the counter. I remember timing it and finding it took a lot less time than I thought it did, and then finding I could use that information to motivate myself to do the task when it seemed overwhelming: “It only takes x minutes! In x minutes it will be done!”

One of my sillier examples is that I will sit around for hours and hours with freezing feet because it feels like too much trouble to go put on warmer socks/shoes. Yesterday I timed it, and it took 1 minute and 15 seconds to take off my shoes, add a pair of wool-blend socks, and put on warmer shoes. I will try to remember to tell myself that, the next time I have chilly feet: “It would take only 1 minute and 15 seconds to fix this problem.”

Speaking of motivation, I have recently found another little surge of motivation to attack the moving boxes still in the barn. You may remember that when we moved over four years ago, we first put everything in the barn, because the house floors were being refinished. I thought at the time that this would make a nice natural sorting system: I’d already gotten rid of a lot of things while packing, but I thought an additional filter could be something like “A year after we move, anything still in the barn can be considered a contender for discard.”

At some point, I started doing a thing where if I were bored and chilly, I would go fetch one box and deal with it. I made some considerable progress with that, but then stalled out.

Two nights ago, I got another little surge of motivation. It started because of that pipe leak, when in moving things out of the way of the water I found the box of miscellaneous stuff we removed from the minivan when we got rid of in 2020. My eye fell upon the box again two nights ago when I was apparently in just the right mood, and I brought it to the garage and started transferring things directly into the trash: pencils; combs that I used on the kids when they were little but we no longer have the daily frantic search for a comb that led me to tuck them into multiple locations; napkins from the glove compartment that were now dusty; a bottle of hand sanitizer that was weird and crusty; not one but TWO partially-full disposable water bottles. I took the baggie of change and emptied into a change jar. I took the ice scraper/brush and put it into the trunk of another car. I put a pair of work gloves onto the stairs to go up to Paul’s workshop. I put several single gloves into the laundry; all of them are the kinds we have multiple interchangeable pairs of. I handed Paul several things that looked like he would know what they were. I took the GPS and hooked it up to my computer to update it.

It was pretty satisfying, and I was still feeling energetic, so I went up to the barn and started poking around. I found a box of snowpants, and some of them were too small for anyone at our house, so I put those in a bag for Goodwill. I found a box of snowboots, and all but one pair was too small for anyone at our house, so I put those in another bag for Goodwill, and put the usable pair with the other boots. I found several Target bags of deeply-clearanced and EXTREMELY cute (bear/bunny-eared, pink and ultra-soft and fluffy with little pom-pom ears, etc.) children’s hats/mittens, purchased for a charity collection event that would have happened in the fall of 2020 but was canceled; I put those aside either for Goodwill or possibly for bringing to the original charity in question.

Last night, I was still a little high from that success, so I went up and searched for more boxes I could deal with. We’re into the really tricky-for-me stuff now: boxes of art and decor that worked well in the old house but not necessarily in this house. I brought down one box marked just “fragile/decor,” and started sifting items: if I could find a place to display it in this house, terrific; otherwise, it went either into the Goodwill pile OR into the box I will pack away in case these things work in the NEXT house. That box will need further curating, because I am not saving box after box of things I MIGHT want, but for now I don’t want to get distracted by that level of consideration: bulk sorting for now, with an emphasis on “unpacking and seeing what I even HAVE here”; further sub-dividing later. And there are an encouraging number of things that although I liked them a lot in the old house, I just don’t like them as much after a four-year break, so they were not very difficult to get rid of.

This task led to me taking a lot of “I’ll just put this here for right now” stuff (old calendars; a several-page receipt for Henry’s glasses, in case we needed it when we picked them up; some canning jars I need to return to whatever friends gave me food in them) out of a corner display cabinet in our kitchen, and instead filling it with lots of pretty little things that have been packed away for four years. The corner cabinet display isn’t DONE, but it’s MORE DONE than it was, and the cabinet looks MUCH better, and now I am enjoying those items, and also thinking “Ooo, I need something TALLER in the back there, I wonder what would work…” and so on. I think tonight I will try to tackle the boxes of wall art, which I expect to be more difficult.

We had an upsetting incident at the library yesterday: there was a loud, lengthy transphobic rant by a patron. After the patron left, my co-workers and I were talking it over. The co-worker at the desk who’d interacted with him, and in my opinion went too far and gave him the impression that she agreed with him, said that we’re not allowed to argue or share our opinions with patrons, and we’re supposed to be neutral; therefore there is nothing we can do when someone is ranting like that. Another co-worker and I were of the mind that being neutral doesn’t mean we have to let someone loudly say terrible things, and doesn’t mean that we have to be so polite that we give the impression that we agree.

I’m going to need pseudonyms: the co-worker who dealt with the transphobic patron is my age and she will be Amy; the co-worker who agreed with me is significantly younger than Amy and me, more like early 20s, and she will be Sophie.

Sophie told us that, the other day, a patron started to try a similar rant with her, and what Sophie said to her was “I don’t agree with you, but there’s no reason we need to have this discussion”; she said it with a friendly tone and face, like “Isn’t it nice it doesn’t matter that we don’t agree on this and can just skip over the unpleasantness?” Sophie said the patron had a pleasant and cooperative reaction to that approach, but Amy thought that would not be allowed by our boss: that it counted as arguing with the patron and giving opinions. My feeling is that I don’t know if I would be able to say it with the right tone and face, but that I think Sophie’s approach was better than Amy’s, which was NOT neutral but instead gave the patron support and encouragement.

I think part of the issue here is that Amy DOES agree in part with the patron (she has in the past put sarcastic air-quotes around “they/them”), though she still found the ranting and the patron unpleasant; Sophie and I were in severe disagreement with the views of the patron, to the extent that both of us had to leave the area to avoid doing something that would get us fired, and afterward it took us a fairly long time to recover and cool down, while Amy was more like “This is just what it’s like working in customer service, you just tune out and let it roll over you.”

And I absolutely understand that Customer Service mindset when, for example, a patron is going on at great length about the ingratitude/troubles of their children/grandchildren, or wants to talk about how prices are out of control and in their day you could get a loaf of bread for 15 cents, or wants to vent about how publishers don’t make enough books in large-print. But DO we allow loud lengthy discriminatory rants in our library, in the name of politeness and neutrality? What if his rant had been racist rather than transphobic, would that have been clearer to Amy that we can’t allow someone to be saying those things in a public community space? My feeling is that if someone were loudly ranting on a racist topic, we would be getting a supervisor to escort them out.

Anyway, I’m going to need to talk about this with my supervisor. She was on the fringes of the interaction, aware of it but not able to hear it, and seemed to be seeing it more as an issue of did Amy need to be rescued (a co-worker can call from another extension, which would make Amy’s phone ring, and then Amy can keep “helping the patron on the phone” until the in-person patron gives up and leaves) or was Amy all set to deal with it. I think it needs to be addressed more as an issue of do we allow people to say these things in a space where other people can hear them.

I want to tell you about my trip with Elizabeth to visit the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD, pronounced MY-add), but I just wrote a huge long email to my parents about it, and I don’t feel like typing it out again; so I am going to cut-and-paste (and I will try to shorten it) and edit it a little so it makes sense as a post. Which I don’t usually do, so you may notice my tone seems Off; it’s because I was talking to my parents rather than to you!—but also to you, because as I was writing the email I started thinking I would probably use it as a blog post.

It was, overall, a very good trip.

I will start with the very worst thing, to get it out of the way, and then I will talk about everything else as a palate cleanser. The worst thing was that Elizabeth left her backpack, which contained her laptop, her driver’s license, her debit card, a fair chunk of cash she estimates at $35 so I’m guessing it was at least double that (i.e., I think she would want to downplay how much it was), her earbuds, etc., plus the backpack itself which was a relatively recent (this school year) expensive ($50, and that was on a good sale) purchase, on a bus; and, even though we discovered the loss within an hour, and even though it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that the “leaving behind of backpack” would combine in a single hour on a particular bus with a representative of “the tiny percentage of the population who would steal a backpack rather than turn it in,” we did in fact hit those odds, and her backpack and her possessions are gone. When we arrived at our motel on Friday afternoon, instead of being able to relax into it after a day well spent on successfully figuring out the buses and a successful visit to an art museum and successfully figuring out more buses and successfully figuring out how to get our motel so we could relax and eat candy and watch TV, we instead had JUST discovered the loss of the backpack, and so spent a big chunk of time in high distress, making phone calls and freezing the debit card and making lists of what she could remember was in the backpack and trying to figure out for the bus company which bus we’d been on (we got a time-stamp off a photo we’d taken right before boarding the bus). We still had hope that we would find the backpack the next day, even though that involved a complicated maneuver (the administrative offices were closed for the weekend, so the only way to check was to go in person, by bus, to a particular central administrative bus location) but we felt we could figure that out in heroic necessity—but we did accomplish that complicated figuring-out, and we were not rewarded for our efforts, and the station attendant agreed with us in a VERY Wisconsin/midwestern way that we could count on this meaning the backpack had been stolen.

We are using a lot of Coping Thoughts. My primary Coping Thought is the one about how if a problem can be solved affordably with money, it is not a real problem. That is: no one was hurt, no one died, nothing permanent has happened; and by throwing money in various directions, we can fix most of this. The money is painful, but it is doable. If during our trip to Milwaukee, Elizabeth or I had been hit by a bus and permanently injured, THAT would be a real problem. Instead, we just need to send money and time and effort in the directions of a bank and a backpack company and a laptop company and the DMV and etc., and then it will be basically Fixed. But so far I am still waking up in the wee hours of each morning and thinking “WHY!! didn’t I check around us when we left the bus???” and “WHY!!! didn’t SHE remember her backpack???” and “HOW!!! did we manage to encounter the tiny-percentage-chance of a thief??” and so forth. And I keep thinking “BUT MAYBE we will still find it???” and then realizing no: if it were going to be found unstolen, it would have happened at the end of the bus day when the bus was being cleaned; and that was what we were checking when we went in person to the central bus station the next day. The clerk even went out to the cleaning station for us, just to make sure it hadn’t been put aside by a driver who then forgot to bring it to lost-and-found, and it had not been. The backpack and its contents are GONE. And the lucky, lucky, lucky thing is that Elizabeth had the presence of mind to cancel her debit card immediately, before anything happened with that.

Let’s move on.

We were stymied by the bus system. I had thought it would not be too difficult, but I had not realized we would need either exact change or a bus card or an app, so there was some scrambling. Partly we managed the situation because of the famous midwest attitude: each bus driver we encountered seemed fully prepared to delay the bus for as long as it took to explain to us what we should do. I was reminded of an inexplicable-yet-somehow-still-relatable meme I once saw, which said something along the lines of how people in the northeast/south/whatever were nice but not kind, and people in the midwest were kind but not nice. Each bus driver was non-smiling, direct, kind of short/barky with us—and yet, each one looked at us directly as people, assessed our situation, and genuinely tried to help us to the best of their abilities. One driver told us not to pay her, because she couldn’t give us a transfer if we were paying cash; she then drew our attention to the stop at which we should get off, and tried her best to explain to us how to achieve the next bus (we were unable to manage it, but that was not her fault). Another driver told us we should acquire a certain app on our phones; we had strong doubts, but it turned out that was the absolute best way to do everything. Another driver, when Elizabeth could not get her phone to pull up the ticket we’d paid for, just waved her onto the bus. This level of competence and care is the main of many reasons why, when the relevant bus drivers said the backpack was not on their buses, and when the station attendant left for more than ten minutes to check to make sure the backpack was not in the wash-house, we believed that the backpack was Truly Gone. Each time I am lying awake wondering if we should call back AGAIN, I think of this: if it were on the bus, it would have ended up with a driver, or at the wash-house; it did not end up with a driver or at the wash house; therefore it is GONE. I see I am talking about it again, rather than palate-cleansing. But my assumption is that your minds too will be spinning with possibilities where the backpack might yet be found, or where maybe if we just call one more time….

We really did feel TRIUMPHANT, figuring out the buses on this trip. At first it felt insurmountable—and it was SO COLD there, and WINDY, and we were STRANDED right off the bat, dropped off in the middle of Milwaukee by one bus and unable to figure out how to find our next bus. But we used Google Maps and we DID find the Milwaukee Art Museum, and it was about half a mile away from where we were, so we just walked. We were nearly numb by the time we go there, but we DID get there. And then we got to the point of Emergency Hunger/Thirst while there, and so we spent I am not kidding $35 on two servings of mac-and-cheese and a coffee at the museum cafe we had trouble finding and had to ask TWICE in order to find it, but we DID do that and it WAS the only right thing to do, because then we had to retrace our steps more than half a mile in the freezing cold and find our bus stop to the motel, which we DID DO, and which we COULD NOT HAVE DONE if not fortified. I consider the $35 to have been a co-pay for a medical treatment. (We don’t travel much, and I have made a mental note: we need to eat BEFORE we are hungry, because once we are hungry we can’t figure it out and can’t cope. I can Coping Thought one “medical co-pay” meal, but not more than that.)

It was when we got back to our motel that we realized we were missing the backpack, and I will just skip over those hours of stress and phone calls and so on.

The next day was by all measures a resounding success. We started at the wrong bus stop; we eventually realized that, and used the app to find the correct bus stop. We then realized we were half an hour early, and would die of exposure before the bus arrived. We went back to our motel room and warmed up. We set out again, for the correct bus stop at the correct time. We felt grateful for my anxiously over-abundant time-padding: we got on the correct bus at the correct time, and even with our false-start delays we still got to MIAD with plenty of time to spare. We browsed around the college neighborhood until our extremities were in danger. We went in, and signed in at a table with multiple sign-in people—and, when Elizabeth said her name, someone at the other end of the table overheard and called out “Elizabeth!! Hi!!! I’m your admissions counselor!! Come talk to me afterward if you have any questions!”

After checking in, we went downstairs and there was a nice muffins-and-coffee breakfast, which we consumed gratefully: being cold and figuring out buses apparently burns a lot of energy. Then there was the session, and we learned a lot about the school, and it all sounded good to me: there was lots of emphasis on preparing art students for Actual Paying Jobs, and I felt I was becoming sold on the idea of an art school, or at least THIS art school. Then there was a tour that turned out to be self-guided, which was disappointing to hear, since we have learned from experience that self-guided tours are almost worthless. But this one turned out to be fine, because the entire college (exclusive of dorms) is in one large building, and we were allowed to go pretty much everywhere—unlike other self-guided tours where we have looked at the outsides of buildings. I let Elizabeth lead the way through the place, and she seemed to me to be rather intense/researchy about it. We spent HOURS there. I played a lot of Pokemon Go, caught so many pokemon, spun so many pokestops.

The college is small, and it is art-only. Those are two things Elizabeth said she did not want. After the info session and tour, and then our afternoon intensive bus tour of Milwaukee (not yet described), I thought she must be reconsidering. But no: this visit confirmed for her that she wants a university-that-includes-an-art-college, NOT just-an-art-college. She says if she later changes her mind and wants an only-art school, she would want MIAD, and she can definitely see living in Milwaukee.

Happily, MIAD fed us lunch before we left, because then we had to figure out how to get a bus from MIAD to the bus station that had the weekend lost-and-found, and then figure out how to get from there back to our motel. We accomplished both of those things. The bus station attendant was the same non-smiling, kind-of-abrupt type, who then turned out to be someone who went allllll the extra miles to try to find the backpack, and seemed genuinely and still-not-smiling-ly invested in finding it, and genuinely sorry not to have found it. She also looked basically exactly like the entire Wisconsin branch of my family: stout and shortish, fair and rosy, short hair, glasses, no make-up. When I asked if in her experience there was any hope after this point of the backpack turning up, she made exactly the face that means no it was stolen, with exactly the words that don’t say no but mean no, which I can’t exactly remember, but were clear at the time, accompanied by an obvious display of sympathy and regret and wishing the world were not the way that it is.

From there we managed to get back to our motel, and by this time we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves for ticking every task off our list, and also on the verge of utter collapse. We sat in our motel, eating candy and watching TV and recharging. After a couple of hours, at about 4:00, Elizabeth said she wished we had something else to do. I said yes but that there was nothing I could think of, especially with the sun going down soon. Then I said well…we still had our day-passes for the bus, and we could…just ride the bus. She said yes and stood up and got her coat. So we rode the bus, continuing to feel pretty pleased with ourselves for learning even as much as we had learned. Elizabeth was looking intently out the window at Milwaukee, really seeming to evaluate it, as she had on previous bus rides.

Milwaukee made a very good impression on both of us. It was similar to the big city near us, sort of, but all the manageable/good parts, none of the bad/oppressive parts. During the MIAD info session, they mentioned something about Milwaukee having the DENSITY of Chicago, but SMALLER, and that seems just about right. We heard ONE siren the entire time we were there, as opposed to our nearby city’s constant wails. There was no barf on the sidewalks, unlike our nearby city. There was a drunk guy at a bus stop, but he was benevolent. There were a lot of charming buildings. There was public transportation that seemed like it would be really good if you lived there instead of just being a dim visitor who didn’t know east from west. It felt like a city, but a MANAGEABLE/LIVABLE city. And there was a LOT of art: murals and sculptures and studios and etc.

At some point the bus was feeling kind of crowded and the sun was going down, and Elizabeth said we should get off and head back the other way, so we did—except first, right at the place we got off was a Penzeys Spices store, the spices of the revolution, which I started ordering online from in, oh, 2016 or 2017. So we went in and I bought a bunch of spices. THEN we headed back. We got back after dark, which I’d said I wanted to avoid—except the bus stop was right at our motel’s parking lot, so that was okay; and meanwhile we got to see Milwaukee At Night, and a very pretty sunset.

Back comfy and safe in our motel, we ordered delivery pizza/dessert and watched soothing programs on TV: the one where the guy deals with dog problems that are always owner problems; the one where a realtor and a designer compete to get a couple to either stay in their existing home or move to a new home; the one where some guy? is just inexplicably living on a big property? with a bunch of rescue animals? and, like, taking off his shirt pretty often?

Anyway, good trip. We are still waiting for the backpack stress to fade, but I feel that it will, and already it is less.

We went grocery shopping this morning, and when we returned with the groceries there was half an inch of water in the mudroom, steam on all the windows, and the mysterious sound of rushing/spraying water—like the sound when the washing machine is filling. A hot water pipe in a closet had burst; and really, if a pipe were going to burst, it almost couldn’t have done so more conveniently: in the mud room, which has a literal DRAIN in the floor (there was a carpet over the drain, which is why the water had built up to half an inch or so, but as soon as I moved the carpet it all went swirling down); it happened while we were gone, yes, but we came back very soon after it started, apparently, and if we’d NOT left home I don’t know how long it would have taken us to go out to the mud room and see that something was wrong; and, like, NOT in the middle of the night when it could have done FAR more damage and wasted FAR more water before being discovered. Very, very considerate.

Paul first tried to, like, fix it while it was spraying? And then I wondered aloud about wasn’t there some sort of water shut-off, so he went flying into the house to shut that off, and he didn’t wipe his feet (AS USUAL) and karma chose that delicate moment to give him a little instruction about foot-wiping, so down he went, very dramatic but unhurt, and then up again and turned off the water. Elizabeth was in the shower, it turned out, because about five minutes later she appeared in our midst saying that the water had “suddenly disappeared.” Meanwhile Paul had done whatever it was he did to separate that pipe from the others, and had turned the water back on, so she went back up and finished showering. An invigorating start to the day for all involved!

Elizabeth has been accepted into the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, so we are planning a little field trip out there, even though it is exactly what she said she didn’t want: small, and art-only. But she is interested. I would be interested in hearing anything anyone knows about it. And I do mean anything: if you know it to be, say, an overpriced and low-quality school that accepts literally anyone, then don’t worry about hurting my parental feelings, just go right ahead and spill. I have seen plenty of things about how some art schools are great and some art schools are for people who can’t get into real college, so I will not be shocked by anything you say. Well, let’s not speak too soon. But I DOUBT I will be shocked by anything you say.

Elizabeth and Edward both got into one of the safety schools they both applied to, and that is a huge relief: now, no matter what other colleges they do or don’t get into, they CAN go to a perfectly acceptable, relatively-reasonably-priced college.

I am trying to take the long view. I am trying very hard to take the long view. I remember this from the last two times: the decision feels SO IMPORTANT, and it IS so important—but it is impossible to know in what ways it is important. Perhaps their SOUL MATES (and potentially THE OTHER PARENTS OF MY GRANDCHILDREN) are at certain ones of these schools!! Yes, and there is no way to know which ones. Perhaps their DREAM JOBS will come from certain ones of these schools!! Yes, and there is no way to know which ones. Perhaps their LIFELONG FRIENDS are at certain ones of these schools!! Yes, and there is no way to know which ones. And so ALL of those things have to be scratched out of the equation. What matters for each twin’s choice is that the school is a perfectly acceptable school, and that we can pay for it within reason. Everything else is extra, and the luck of the draw.

One of my co-workers graduated from this same safety school the twins have both been accepted to. She went there in not-at-all-ideal circumstances: she got into her dream school, and had to transfer after freshman year because of a dramatic change in family situation/finances. She was bitter and resentful and says she was prepared to hate everything and everyone—and then she ended up loving the new school MUCH more than she’d loved her initial choice. Her daughter now goes to the same safety school under different but similarly resentful circumstances: she missed the GPA cut-off for her dream school by a tiny amount, and the school wouldn’t bend on it. Her intention was to go to the safety school for one year to bring her grades up and then transfer—but then she ended up loving the safety school so much, she stopped wanting to transfer.

Both twins find this safety school very, very boring, but I am feeling happy.

I have an update on the tattoo progress. I have achieved an appointment with the tattoo artist I wanted, for March!! In the immortal words of TMBG, everyone’s excited and confused.

As I was trying to fill out the appointment-request form under intense time pressure, I realized I SIMPLY COULD NOT choose an upper-arm tattoo from among the many appealing candidates: an upper-arm tattoo was my first choice, but that first choice was not yet Ready, EVEN INCORPORATING the realization that I have TWO upper arms. I could, however, choose with confidence a tulip tattoo on my calf. So I filled out the form for tulip tattoo on my calf, and my appointment request was accepted.

Of course immediately after celebrating I began having fretful follow-up feelings. First fretful follow-up feeling: I think I said TOO SMALL a tattoo. The form required a size, and I said approximately six inches. But I think I probably meant eight. Or ten? I don’t want a WEE MINIATURE. On the other hand, my summer “shorts” are a source of affectionate teasing in my household: the claim is that my summer shorts are about three inches shorter than my winter jeans. And it’s true they are RATHER MODEST, as shorts go, and they do descend BELOW THE KNEES. And I do not want my tulip tattoo to be visible in shorts as only STEM!

The ONLY THING I would need to do to alleviate/justify this fret is go put on my summer shorts and measure how much calf is visible, but somehow I am not doing this and am instead just doing the fretting part.

Second fretful follow-up feeling: the tulip is a pleasing choice to me because I like tulips and think they are pretty, and they are one of my favorite flowers, and I find them psychologically supportive in winter (the comforting anticipation of them coming up in spring, but also they are available from my grocery store in January/February so I buy them weekly) and I think they are fun as calf tattoos. But ALSO, I’m half Dutch, so there is a pleasing little ancestral reference there. SO WHY DIDN’T I THINK EARLIER OF HAVING MY BIRTH SURNAME INCORPORATED INTO THE TATTOO?? Well, I still can! I hope! And if not: I can go back for another appointment and get it added then.

Let’s say your child has a new friend, and your child has told you that this friend’s name is Cameron and that Cameron uses they/them pronouns. Then let’s say that Cameron’s mother drops Cameron off at your house and says to you, “Oh, so Chloe is getting picked up by her dad at 4:00—but if that falls through, I can come get her, but not until 6:00, is that okay?”

Here was the response I wanted to communicate to the mother: That’s fine; or, and probably this is what you’re asking: yes, we can absolutely give the child a ride home.

Here’s what I could not figure out in the surprise and confusion of the moment: How to say that in a way that was correct AND safe, when I didn’t know what the situation was and had just discovered it wasn’t what I’d thought it was. Was Cameron not out to their parents? Was Cameron out to their parents, but the parents weren’t cooperating? Was there some other arrangement, like that Cameron told their parents this was still in the experimental stage and not yet locked-down, and that they (the parents) should continue using Chloe/she/her for now? (Paul wondered if maybe Cameron might be out to their parents AND Cameron’s parents might be respectful of that, but that Cameron’s mom might not know if Cameron is out to US. But…in that situation, Cameron’s mother could easily ASK Cameron ahead of time in the car; and if she’d realized on the spot that she’d forgotten to do that, she would be more careful / less blatant, so I don’t think of that as a real possible scenario.)

In the moment, what I did was I said “Oh, sure, that’s fine, or we can absolutely give her a ride home.” Then Cameron’s mom said “Bye, Chloe!!” and Cameron said “Bye, Mom,” and I closed the door and called out “Henry! Cameron is here!” Partial marks; please see teacher after class.

I am not practiced with this; I am working on improving. Most of my work involves thinking AFTERWARD of what I SHOULD HAVE said in a situation where it turned out I was ill-prepared, and then rehearsing it again and again in my mind so it’ll be readily available to my mouth next time. In this case, what I should have said to Cameron’s mom was something more like “Oh, sure—and WE can give a ride home if needed.” No need to use any pronoun for Cameron, let alone the wrong one. This is the early stages of the process, so I’m hoping I come up with something better to practice, but at least I have SOMETHING. (And then next time it’ll be something ELSE, and I’ll add THAT new modification to my repertoire, and perhaps by the time I die I will be getting some of these right the first time!)