This post began with me mulling over a question I wanted to ask a friend, and I realized that “forming the question” and “thinking about my own answer” and “thinking about other people’s possible answers” was interesting/fun enough to me to want to make a whole post/discussion about it. Plus, that friend reads here, so this way I don’t have to worry about making the question both clear and succinct, but can instead go on and on, which is my preferred communication style but can come across a little…odd…if it’s, say, 50 texts, most of them clarifying/modifying earlier texts.

The situation is that a member of a friend group is going to be having a hysterectomy, a procedure I had not realized had as long/difficult a recovery time as it does; and what I wanted to ask her, essentially, was “Do you know what you are likely to find helpful/useful, so that we in your friend group can see if we can help out with that?” And I don’t mean “Can you look into the future and guess how you’ll feel and what you’ll need?,” I mean instead “Have you had relevant past experiences that showed you what things FOR YOU are the best ways for other people to help/support?”

FOR EXAMPLE. After the twins were born, a lot of people wanted to help. Here are some of the things I learned about myself AT THAT TIME (it’s been almost 17 years, so things may have changed):

• I could ONLY accept housework help or errand-running from (1) people who live in my house and (2) my own parents. (I don’t know how I’d feel about it at this point.) But I think I would do VERY WELL helping someone ELSE with housework / doing someone ELSE’S errands (my experience as an in-home elder-caregiver let me know this was My Thing), so my Giving Help feelings don’t match my Receiving Help feelings.

• I ONLY wanted family (my parents, my brother, my sister-in-law, my kids) in the hospital room; I did not want friends to visit. (I don’t know if this would be the same now or not; I will have to see how I feel the next time I am in a hospital; I feel like I might be tearily grateful to see a friend.) But I did VERY MUCH WANT family. We set up a puzzle and people were chatting and working on the puzzle and taking turns holding/admiring the babies, and it was idyllic. “Wanting company” seems like an interesting element to consider, and I can imagine that some people would want as many visitors (in the hospital or at home) as possible, and others would not really want any—but might want emails, or phone calls, or other kinds of social contact.

• You will not be surprised to learn that I did not want check-in phone calls.

• My number one most important need was/is FOOD. If I am WELL-FED, I can cope with almost anything else: pain, lack of sleep, clutter. If I am NOT well-fed, I will FALL APART. Also: I feel able to accept food from pretty much anyone. And this includes ALL KINDS/QUANTITIES of food (i.e., it doesn’t need to be homemade, or enough for the whole household, or adjusted to meet the needs of the entire household, or whatever).

• I also loved FUN MAIL: cards, postcards, etc. During that pregnancy, and it might have been around the time I found out I was expecting twins because I remember a certain “AHHHHHH DEFCON TWO!!!” urgency to her email, my friend Surely asked what she could do to help: scour the second-hand shops for car seats and high chairs? send giant supplemental piles of little hats and onesies and socks? WHAT??—and I said “Oh, could I have FUN MAIL??” And she sent me SO MANY cards and postcards and so forth, and did it for SO LONG after the twins were born, I was QUITE SPOILED. (She STILL sends me cards and postcards sometimes!)

• I LIKE presents but I can get SHY about them. There is a part of me that feels embarrassed when other people spend their money on me. (I do not feel this way when spending money on other people.) I did love that a friend sent me a book of Sudoku puzzles, which I worked on while nursing.

• I LOVE flowers but I can get squirmy about how expensive I know they are. (Which just ADDS to the fun when I SEND flowers.)

 

What I would like to know from you is what are some of the ways YOU like to (and/or can) receive support, and what are some of the ways YOU like to (and/or can) give support—and I am interested in the DIFFERENCES, such as in the example where I feel like I could go over and wash dishes and clean someone else’s kitchen with joy, as well as relief to be of use, but I don’t think I could let anyone except my mom come over and clean my kitchen (and actually I’d have the kids do it).

And it’s going to be different for everyone! That’s the point! It’s not like we can make a list of “Oh, THESE are the things people should offer because these things are Helpful! And THESE are the things people shouldn’t do because these things are Not Helpful!,” not at all! Because one person will DESPERATELY want/need someone to come over and do the dishes and fold a load of laundry and change the sheets, but maybe their spouse does all the cooking already so food wouldn’t be particularly helpful! And another person would actually really like their spouse to step up and take over the housework for awhile as a little Workload Appreciation Reset, but would LOVE if people would come over and keep them company for awhile, maybe bringing a box of pastries! Everyone’s situation is different; everyone’s preferences are different; everyone’s Helpful Things They Can Accept/Offer are different. And so NOTE: We do NOT want this to be one of those comments sections that makes us feel as if EVERYTHING WE COULD POSSIBLY DO IS WRONG

It seems to me that this is one of the glories of a friend group: lots of chances to mix-and-match a person’s needs with another person’s abilities/inclinations. Maybe one friend would most want food and childcare, and some of the friend group can do one of those things and some can do the other, and some can do neither—but then the next friend needs errands and housecleaning, and now a new batch of the friend group gets a chance to pitch in! Plus: ideally, everyone is comfy enough with each other to SAY what they need, which is one of the hardest parts of this normally.

I’m finding it fun to think of lots of areas of help/support to consider, and am hoping others can think of more. Would you want a gift certificate for a manicure, for when you didn’t feel like you could cope with doing it yourself but would love the little lift of pretty nails and someone else taking care of you? Would you want someone to come over with a box of ingredients, make cookies while chatting to you and telling you how beautiful you look, and then clean the kitchen and leave behind cookies and the scent of cookies and a clean kitchen? Would you want a nice houseplant, or would that be one more thing you had to take care of? Would you want someone to come and watch a movie with the kids while you took a shower and a nap without anyone interrupting you? Would you want someone to take the kids to the park for an hour and a half while you spent some time lying on the floor breathing carefully? Would you want to send a group text asking if by chance anyone was available to bring you some fast food but perfectly fine if nah? Do you like to exchange silly Snapchat-filter photos?

(My hope, by the way, is that we can avoid bringing “love languages” into this discussion, even though I realize it is nearly irresistibly applicable. I found the concept SO interesting and useful when it was described to me, and then I read the actual book and was icked out by it, and have since heard various icky things about the author, and so now I wince at the term even while sheepishly finding it useful. Like, above, talking about housecleaning: housecleaning is a way I could GIVE support, but wasn’t so much a way for me to RECEIVE support, and that’s a useful distinction for this discussion—but I hope we can make the distinction without love languages.)

A yoga update is that it turns out I can’t use “getting better at yoga”/”seeing if I like yoga” as motivation for doing yoga. It doesn’t work, and I end up hissing “Are plank, cobra, and downward dog LITERALLY THE ONLY YOGA POSES YOU KNOW??” at the video and then giving up in tears. I can only do yoga medicinally: for back pain, or for joint pain/flexibility, or for stress management. I find I WILL do yoga if I think “What issue will I work on today?,” and then choose a dose of yoga for what most ails me. The stress/anxiety ones are particularly good, I think, because not only do they feel like I am working on stress, but also they tend to be slower and stretchier and less sweaty/vigorous.

Speaking of stress management, it is a little concerning to me how stressed I am recently, considering I don’t have anything truly serious to be stressed about. This morning I lay awake at 4:30 with my brain asking me how I’d cope if something REALLY TERRIBLE yet TOTALLY ROUTINE and ABSOLUTELY EXPECTED life-wise, such as illness/accident/death, happened to me or mine. My brain then helpfully listed many of those possible happenings, with accompanying helpful little movies to let me imagine how each one might feel, until I gave up on sleep and got up for the day (and did stress-management yoga, which also felt like it did some nice things for my aging knees).

The other day, and I am going to breeze past this story as quickly as possible because I am still finding it don’t-think-about-it levels of stressful, I discovered accidentally that our homeowner insurance had lapsed. I told myself not to freak out, and that I would just call and get it reinstated, and please stop mentally rehearsing terrible-outcome conversations in advance. It turned out I was actually correct to freak out, for reasons that are still unclear to me, but the upshot is that instead of paying $900/year for our homeowner insurance, we have to pay $2600/year, and we are lucky that any insurance company was willing to cover us at all; our former insurance company (National General, the one who says they sent us a bill, but we did not receive it, and we were not inspired to think of it without a bill) (though YOU CAN BET that “Homeowner Insurance Day” is now a recurring holiday on my calendar) would not insure us at any price, nor would the company (Amica) we used for nearly twenty years for our old house without ever missing a payment or making a claim. (After a year of this new expensive coverage, we can call and get a new quote, and we will very likely have better choices, IF we haven’t had a claim during that time. So if you believe in magical thinking of any sort, if you could please send little protective-dome thoughts to surround my house for the next year or so, until we get more reasonable insurance. After that we can take our chances like everyone else.)

When I went downstairs to tell Paul the results of my 1.5 hours on the phone, I almost opened my remarks by saying it had been a disaster. Immediately my mind rejected the word. A DISASTER would be if our recent plumbing incident HAD flooded the entire downstairs and basement with sewage, and THEN we discovered we were not insured. THAT would have been a disaster. If THAT had happened, I would have considered “happened to think of the insurance, called and had to pay a $1700 penalty for letting it lapse but DID get covered again, and thank goodness nothing happened while it was lapsed” the DREAM FANTASY OUTCOME. If something bad happened to a parent or sibling or child, and I were given the opportunity to undo that bad thing by switching to the timeline with the LATE FEE, I would GRAB IT GRASPINGLY WITH BOTH HANDS

And in terms of household expenses, $1700 is, well, it’s not NOTHING, but certainly I think of household repairs as coming in units of thousands or tens of thousands. Refinishing hardwood floors: thousands. Repainting the exterior: thousands. Metal roof: tens of thousands. Remodel: tens of thousands. A $1700 expense can be seen as a normal sort of household expense. Sure, it is disheartening to pay it when theoretically it could have been avoided, but it could perhaps be filed with other accidents that could theoretically have been avoided: if the child hadn’t left the water running; if the leak under the sink had been discovered sooner; if we hadn’t left that back door unlocked; if we’d worked harder on ridding ourselves of the mouse issue before they chewed through those wires and started the electrical fire. And so on. Things happen, and that’s all they ever do.

My supervisor has been saying for nearly a month now that we are going to do performance evaluations soon, and it is making me unnecessarily nervous: I KNOW I am doing a good job, I KNOW this is an entry-level job that makes $9/hour and that they are lucky to have me at a time when Target is starting at $16/hour, etc., but it is still making me nervous. The worst part is the self-evaluation form I am supposed to fill out, which, first, feels like it shouldn’t be my job to evaluate myself, and second, feels like interview-question tricks all over again: let’s see, how do I answer the question about my weaknesses in a way that turns them into strengths? JUST TELL ME I’M DOING A FINE JOB AND GIVE ME A RAISE THAT DOES NOT COVER THE INCREASE IN THE COST OF LIVING, AND LET’S GET ON WITH OUR LIVES

An update on the plumbing situation is that we had someone come out, and it is the worst possible news: they are going to have to dig up huge portions of our yard, including navigating an old stone wall, and replace all the pipes. The guy who did the evaluation even DOES excavator/replacement tasks, but said it’s too big/complicated a job for him and he would have to refer us to someone else. I don’t want to talk about how much money this might cost (just the evaluation/mapping was nearly two thousand dollars), or whether we will have to temporarily relocate while it’s happening. I feel almost at peace about it: this is not an optional fix, so I don’t have to wring my hands about what we should do / whether it’s worth it. I can look pointedly at the previous homeowner for escaping without having to do this job, which definitely needed to be done at the time we bought the house; but we sold OUR old house without having to do some upcoming expensive tasks, so it’s just Homeowner Hot Potato, and we just got a particularly large hot potato.

Let’s see, this has been kind of a stressful post so far; let’s talk about books. I had one I gave up on even though I was two-thirds of the way through it, because I kept Not Wanting To Read It, and Not Enjoying It, and it had become a blockage in the book-reading pipes. It was ehT elcnuG, by nevetS yelwoR. It should have been delightful. I could see how it could be delightful. But I found it a tedious slog, and it felt “made up.” Which of course it IS, but I mean I FELT IT as I was reading, I FELT the author making it up.

I read another book where I felt the author making it up and yet I still wanted to keep reading it:

Love Walked In, by Marisa de los Santos. It felt like a First Novel; it was uneven; the names begged believability and seemed more like the author chose her favorite names; I don’t tend to like books where the narrator talks to the reader in that chummy way; I could FEEL the author trying to get herself out of plot corners she’d written herself into; there was more than one plot point where I stopped reading, looked up, and said “What. That makes NO SENSE” or “Oh, come on”—and yet I really enjoyed it, and I requested the sequel from the library system (we don’t have it at my library for some reason, even though we have the other three books in the series).

The GIST of the book is that a woman (who is CONSTANTLY described as tiny and beautiful, and her name is very unlikely, and I wanted to dislike her but I did not dislike her, though I did dislike the way she kept talking about how tiny and beautiful she was) is looking for romantic love, but instead finds parental love, and not in the usual way. (Note that you can absolutely tell this book by its cover.) I don’t know, it just felt so refreshing. And I could forgive a lot of the issues as being First Novel issues. So it’s odd I couldn’t do that with the first book I mentioned, where it’s basically the same plot (single person looking for love but instead finds untraditional parenthood) and has a similarly delightful element of accident/fantasy/fate. Well, that’s just how it went: the first one felt to me like a tiresome invented slog with tiresome invented characters, and the second one felt like a delightful read with some issues. You may find you feel exactly the other way around, if you try both.

We had a Plumbing Incident recently, and by “recently” I mean “It was two months ago, and that is how long it took for me to recover sufficiently to talk about it.” Here is how it happened:

• Sometimes, now that I have decided “Be like Paul” should be my marriage-balancing motto for some decisions (i.e., making decisions for myself in the same self-prioritizing way Paul makes decisions for himself), Paul goes to bed at the time HE wants to go to bed, and I DO NOT GO TO BED AT THAT TIME. This is the first significant thing that happened in this story, and it is important to note that if I had gone to bed at the time I did not want to go to bed, as I used to do routinely, things would have been unfathomably worse—and this is one of the things that plagues me when I am reliving this mentally. Anyway: Paul went to bed; I was still up, though in my jammies/slippers so I would not have to change in the dark when I DID finally go to bed.

• I went into the kitchen. The specific reason for this is lost to the fog of history. Most likely I was going to set up the coffee maker for the next morning, or wash dishes that had been left to soak, or maybe I was just turning out lights or getting a snack. The point is, I went into the kitchen, thank goodness. Perhaps I have mentioned we have a half-bath in the kitchen? It seems like very poor placement, but this house is 200 years old and has been through multiple remodels including ADDING ANY BATHROOMS AT ALL, so we extend mercy for awkward design. One thing about this half-bath is it sometimes BURBLES alarmingly: the toilet will suddenly make loud glupping sounds. We have lived here for over three years and this happens regularly without incident, and we have become accustomed to it. As I went into the kitchen, I heard it burbling/glupping. No big deal.

• Except—weirdly, the kitchen sink was ALSO burbling/glupping. This had never happened before. I was intrigued, and concerned, though not yet ANYWHERE NEAR as concerned as I should have been. This part plays out in my memory as if in a movie: there is Swistle, in the kitchen, in her jammies/slippers late at night, hearing the sounds! She tilts her head to one side: “Huh!,” she thinks! Movie-viewers clap hands over mouths, knowing the horror part of the movie must surely be imminent.

• Burbling/glupping CONTINUED, which is, again, NOT typical. I looked at the kitchen sink, which did not enlighten me. So I went to look at the half-bath toilet. AS I LOOKED AT IT, the clear water in the bowl was replaced by a surge of NOT-AT-ALL-CLEAR WATER COMING UP FROM THE DEPTHS OF PRESUMABLY HELL. The hell-water in the bowl CONTINUED TO RISE and then BEGAN TO OVERFLOW THE BOWL. This is all as I was standing there in my jammies and slippers, past my usual bedtime.

• My one and only idea was to use the toilet plunger. I did that for, I don’t know, 10 seconds? before it was just abundantly clear that that it was doing NOTHING, and that plunger-related issues were not involved in whatever was happening. I took the bath towel we use as a hand towel in that bathroom, and I threw it on the floor to help sop things up. I grabbed another bath towel we keep downstairs and threw it on the floor too.

• This is when I went up to get Paul, as well as more towels. I don’t know about YOUR wedding vows, but mine included an absolute unconditional rider about plumbing emergencies. But also: at that point I would have awakened ANY HOUSEHOLD ADULT. Paul was completely asleep, and none of us would have wanted to be awakened the way I awakened him: “Paul. PAUL. I am so sorry to wake you, but the downstairs toilet is backing up all over the floor.” He startled and yelped and floundered and soon was standing in the third bathroom saying “I don’t know what to do,” just as I had recently been. Meanwhile I had gathered huge armloads of bath towels and was throwing them onto the bathroom floor, like a little Dutch girl plugging the dam.

• I wondered aloud if “turning off the water” would help at all, which, sort of, I guess, and Paul did switch off the water—but when I made that suggestion, I remembered that when I’d gone up to get Paul, I’d heard a child in the shower upstairs. I went racing back upstairs and told that child there was a weird plumbing emergency and that they should stop the shower even if they were coated in soap and shampoo. This turned out to be the key: it was the water from that shower that was (1) failing to drain and (2) therefore backing up in the downstairs toilet. So at the VERY LEAST, water STOPPED coming up out of the toilet. And I got more towels while I was upstairs, and put them on the bathroom floor to keep the tides from getting out of the bathroom / to the kitchen.

• This is around the time I suggested Paul CALL AN EMERGENCY PLUMBER. Have I mentioned this was on a Saturday night at around 10:30/11:00? It was. He called our usual plumber, a 24-hour number, but our usual plumber said they don’t do this kind of plumbing, and gave us another number. Paul called that number. They said all their emergency technicians were already booked throughout the night, and they could not send anyone out until the next day sometime. This is when I truly gave in to despair.

• We decided there was nothing more to do and that we should go to bed and leave things as they were: water off, toilet filled to the brim with the unthinkable, towels covering the floor and soaking up the damage. We got several bottles of water from emergency storage and put them in the bathrooms/kitchen for drinking and hand-washing; we put bottles of hand sanitizer by every sink. We went to bed. Paul went immediately to sleep. I lay awake—appalled, horrified, despairing, wide-eyed in the dark, sick to my core.

• Eventually I realized I could not leave the situation as it was: sewage sinking at that moment into the trim along the edges of the wall, perhaps infiltrating itself in some way into the floor tiles, HELD in fact against the wall/trim/floor as if by some sort of monstrous towel-poultice. I got up. I evaluated the towels and decided I would not try to save them from this particular disaster, would not subject either me or my washing machine to these miseries. I put on disposable gloves. I got two giant heavy-duty trash bags, putting one inside the other. I gathered up all the disgusting towels and put them into the doubled bag; with hindsight, I should have used at least two sets of doubled bags, because the resulting bag of sodden towels was so heavy I could only DRAG it, with significant effort, to its destination, which was OUT INTO THE FROZEN NIGHT.

• I got a roll of paper towels and the bottle of Clorox Clean-Up bleachy spray. I mentally kissed my pajamas goodbye. I sprayed THE LIVING HELL out of that bathroom floor and everything six inches up from it. I cleaned it with the paper towels, put the used paper towels into another trash bag; sprayed THE LIVING HELL right back out of everything again, cleaned it with paper towels again; A THIRD TIME, I sprayed living hell etc. cleaned with paper towels etc. The inside of my nose was filled with the scents of sewage and bleach. I felt coated in both. The entire downstairs REEKED of both.

• Keep in mind that THE WATER WAS OFF AND WE COULD NOT TURN IT ON without overflowing the toilet which was still filled to the utmost brim with hell-water. I could not wash my hands in any sort of normal way. I took off and threw away the gloves, then took one of the gallons of bottled water and used it to wash my hands as best I could, alternating wash/rinses with doses of hand sanitizer. This was dismal. It was DISMAL. I did not feel remotely clean. Meanwhile, bleach stains had appeared on my pajamas, including my “Nevertheless she persisted” Elizabeth Warren shirt, and it is hard to imagine anything more appropriate/dismal.

• I went to bed, feeling absolutely unclean and appalled and horrified and despairing and sick to my very core etc. I felt filthy and reeking; my throat/nose felt burned by bleach but I was glad for it, because bleach-burn felt better than sewage-reek. I lay awake for quite awhile. I felt, ACUTELY, what a thin membrane separates us from absolute primitive savagery. We are all one single modern-day-plumbing emergency away from dying of typhoid, it seemed to me at that time.

• In the morning I woke up, feeling about the same. We discussed with the children how no one should use water or flush toilets. We brought up more gallons of the bottled water I’d purchased in November 2016, or perhaps it was the additional bottled water I’d purchased in January 2021. Who can say. Sure was good to have it, though. I spent the entire morning feeling sick/despairing, unable to concentrate on anything else, noticing the thin membrane, etc.

• At around 11:00 a.m., and remember this was a Sunday so this is not going to be inexpensive, not that that was even in my TOP FIVE concerns, the plumber called to say he was on his way. Actually it was a plumbing technician, because the plumber was still not available. He arrived near noon, and I have never been as glad to see anyone in my entire life, and I truly mean that. I am worried you will think that is hyperbole, but I was not as glad to see my own children at birth as I was to see this plumbing technician. Oh, actually, now that I’ve given it some thought: when Elizabeth was about 8 years old, I lost her in a store, and I lost her for so long, I had reached the point of thinking in a leaden way, “This is how it actually seriously happens for some people: they do what I am doing now, looking for their child and feeling increasingly panicky but also as if they are being a little silly to be so panicky, but then it turns out their child actually really was taken, because that sometimes DOES ACTUALLY HAPPEN FOR REAL, and they never see their child again, and that is their Real Actual Life”—and then I saw her, and I was gladder to see her than I was to see the plumbing technician, but that is the only example I can think of where I was gladder. The plumbing technician spent half an hour in our midst, and there were some loud hammering sounds, followed by some loud/vibrating drilling sounds, and afterward he said there had been some “light roots” in the line, and he removed the light roots; and then he flushed the horror toilet and the horror-toilet contents went down successfully and the water level in that toilet returned to normal; and then he instructed us to try flushing the upstairs toilet, which was by this time ALSO a horror toilet, and we did, and it worked; and then he charged us the incredible bargain price of $500 and said he was only a technician but Jacques the plumber would call us on Monday to set up a more extensive evaluation, and we did not start a new religion in his honor but absolutely would have if asked.

• I cleaned all the toilets, two horror and one relatively normal, weeping with an intense combination of gratitude and resentment and regret for all my life choices: that I would be in this house with these plumbing issues, that I would be in a marriage where I would be in sole charge of horror-toilet-cleaning. I took the sheets off the bed. I started a load of laundry on Extra Hot water, including the sheets and my pajamas from the night before. Then I took a shower that was so long, with water so hot, I probably did lasting permanent damage to my skin. I put new sheets on the bed.

• Jacques the plumber did not call. This has been our experience with plumbers/electricians/landscapers/etc. They are very in-demand. They are hard to get. They do not call.

• I continued to lie awake, not EVERY night but it was a fairly common theme on the nights when I WAS awake, thinking about what had happened. Again and again in my mind I saw the way I’d stood in my pajamas and watched the revolting water surging up into the toilet’s clear water in a horrifying cloud, and then overflowing into our house. Again and again, I thought about how if I had gone to bed at the same time as Paul, that horrifying-cloud water would have kept coming out of the toilet until the child’s upstairs shower was over. By the time we would have discovered it in the morning, who knows how far the damage would have gone. The kitchen. The hardwood floors. The downstairs furniture. The sunporch. Dripping down into the basement. The bottom inches of all the doors/walls. Electrical issues. Who knows how much of the downstairs would have needed to be torn out. Who knows how long we would have had to stay in a hotel while it was repaired/replaced. Who knows what our homeowner’s insurance would have said/done. And all because of “light roots”??? LIGHT ROOTS could do that??? HOW AND WHY???? I told the children not to shower after our bedtime. I bought a water sensor and put it in the downstairs bathroom; I considered buying maybe fifty more and just putting them EVERYwhere.

• Two nights ago I told Paul how I had been feeling/thinking. I told him that the short version of my thoughts was that this could NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. I paused, making sure he was listening, and then repeated it: this could NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. I did not care what the plumber charged. I did not care if the plumber suggested coming out annually with some sort of ridiculous expensive unnecessary scheme; I did not care if the plan involved pouring something down all the drains every day/week. I did not care if it involved expensively digging up the entire front yard. I did not care if the cost of this affected our children’s student-loan situation. This could NEVER. HAPPEN. AGAIN.

• Yesterday morning Paul called the plumber. He got an appointment for a full overview next Friday—and the only reason it’s that far away is that that’s a day Paul could arrange to be home from work. Last night while I was making dinner I said to Paul that what I wanted him to tell to the plumber is that this could NEVER. HAPPEN. AGAIN, and Paul said that he’d already explained. He said when he talked to the plumber, he said “My wife says if this ever happens again, she is leaving the house and never coming back,” and the plumber, who up until that point in the call had been laid-back and cheerful, changed tone completely and said “…UH oh.” I hope the plumber keeps that in mind.

For the wedding present, I chose Girl Scout cookies. I liked a LOT of the suggestions in the comments, and had a wonderful time reading all the stories and considering all the options. In the end I chose Girl Scout cookies because they seemed light and fun and quirky, which also describes my cousin and her husband and their wedding; and because it felt Just Right for the relationship I have with this cousin; and also because I just WANTED TO and the idea made me feel happy. The cookies are on their way to them, and I feel bouncy and excited for them to arrive. I had planned to buy them some window prisms as well, but it felt like the combination reduced the gift rather than adding to it, for reasons I couldn’t put a finger on; and it didn’t matter much so I just didn’t buy the window prisms. I highly enjoy these sorts of low-pressure gift-giving occasions, where I feel free to follow whims.

A few of you mentioned that you would never have thought to give a wedding present for an elopement and asked if that was weird/wrong, and I have puzzled over that for several days now, wondering which of us is the weird one, and I’ve decided it’s Neither of Us, Really, but specifically it’s Not Me. They still got MARRIED! That’s a HUGE DEAL and a MAJOR LIFE EVENT and something to celebrate! If I don’t send a gift, and it’s because they eloped rather than having a wedding for me to attend, that seems like it oddly prioritizes The Wedding Event over The Marriage, when I am pretty sure we’ve all agreed it’s the other way around.

I wonder if “elopement = no gift” comes from the more general ruling on whether a person is OBLIGATED to get a wedding gift: I know that if you go to someone’s wedding, etiquette absolutely insists that you bring a gift; and that if you are not invited to the wedding and/or do not attend, etiquette does NOT insist that you send a gift. Perhaps that morphed into an idea of no wedding = no gift. Except…an elopement is still a wedding! So then we’re back to the wedding gift being an item the couple receives not because they got married but because they threw an expensive party. Which doesn’t seem right.

It may also come from a difference of feeling about gift-giving in general: if it’s about what ETIQUETTE demands, then I agree: no obligation to send a gift for an elopement. But my motivation wasn’t etiquette, or obligation: it was that I was excited about the significant life event, and I wanted to celebrate it with a gift. Sending a gift is a way to say you’re happy for someone, and/or at a minimum (such as in a situation where you don’t think they should have married this person) that you acknowledge the significance of what has happened. This is one reason that, although of course I want very much to get them something they WANT and LIKE and WILL USE/ENJOY, I don’t WORRY so much about that aspect: PART of the point of the gift is to add to their possessions, but another HUGE part of the gift is to give them…well, “positive feedback” doesn’t feel quite right, but in another way it’s EXACTLY RIGHT. The gift gives them positive feedback. It says “Yay!” and “Your friends/family rejoice with you!” and “I have seen your news and agree it is cool/good/significant!” It is like clicking “like” and “care” and “wow” and “love” all at the same time on someone’s Facebook post, but more expensively!

I found out this morning that one of my cousins eloped with her fiancé, which was very fun news to see on Facebook first thing in the morning—tons of “WHAT???? CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!” comments.

Now I wish to buy her a wedding present, but (1) they do not seem to have a registry and (2) they are in their 30s, and they already own a house. So I do not think they need a toaster.

I am worried you will say I should just send money. I don’t want to hear that I should just send money, EVEN IF IT IS TRUE. I wish to purchase a gift, and send it with a gift receipt, or else not care that they can’t return it and will have to regift it.

I’m not at all stressed about accidentally sending something they don’t want / can’t use. That feels like an utterly normal and not-stressful and manageable thing to have happen; and, if it happens with my gift, I trust them to count the thought, and then either return the gift if possible, or find a new home for it if not.

So I am looking for wedding-gift ideas, but more than that I find I am looking for wedding-gift TALK. I just feel like THINKING ABOUT and TALKING ABOUT wedding gifts. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a chance to do that: there was a big flutter of weddings a decade or two ago, but I’m not quite into the era of friends’ kids getting married. I was discussing it with a co-worker who IS in that era, and she says everyone now is registering for things like “champagne on the airplane to and from our honeymoon – $50,” “couples massage – $200,” and boy, that does not appeal to me even a tiny bit.

Here are some of the things I’d enjoy discussing, if you too would enjoy it:

• Favorite wedding gifts you’ve RECEIVED, especially something you didn’t think to ask for
• Favorite wedding gifts you’ve GIVEN
• Favorite wedding gifts you’ve HEARD ABOUT
• I see nothing wrong with also discussing LEAST favorite / funniest gifts
• What YOU would give a cousin in her 30s who owns a house, as long as the answer isn’t “money”
• Really any thoughts at all about wedding gifts, just feel free to say whatever
• Except “money,” I mean it, I’m not sending money

One of my favorite received wedding gifts was a box of assorted Christmas ornaments—from, as it happens, a cousin (a different cousin). They were the kind sold individually rather than the kind sold in sets, and it was a somewhat surprising gift and she didn’t explain it or anything. Every year when I hang them on the tree I think of her.

A wedding gift I used to like to give, often along with something from the registry, was several sets of address labels (holiday set! heart-decorated set! etc.!), but that works better when the couple didn’t already live together and/or when a name-change is involved. It also worked better a decade or two ago, when people paid more bills by mail.

One of the most unfortunate wedding gifts we received was a framed embroidery, quite large, obviously very time-consuming, with the wrong wedding date on it, and also my name spelled wrong.

One gift I am considering is a pair of heated throw blankets. It seems cozy. But this is the wrong time of year for that.

I could send a care package full of treats and other things that keep well / can be used up. They seem like the kind of couple who would do fun face-treatment masks together while drinking spiked hot cocoa, and I could make a care package for that, plus cookies and window prisms and just whatever looked fun/good.

I could send a two sets of really nice towels. Kind of boring, but in a wedding-registry type of way, and I like the “get the REALLY GOOD version of something normal” type of gift idea.

I could send alcohol, which I’d consider a risky gift except that they often post photos of themselves at a friendly-looking bar, with friends. But shipping alcohol tends to be so much more expensive than just buying it at the store, and it’s complicated because someone has to be home to receive the package, so eh.

I could send them a big assortment of See’s candies. That feels celebratory. I could do one custom box, which would allow me to choose a heart-shaped box, and then fill in with miscellaneous other things: peanut brittle, sour candy, etc.

Or flowers! Celebratory! Weddingish! I don’t care that they don’t last long, and that might be a plus in this case!

I could get them matching/coordinating Comfys. They definitely seem like that kind of couple.

My sister-in-law recently sent Edward a 24-pack of assorted craft sodas, which was such a fun gift it made me want to immediately buy it for someone else, so perhaps this is my moment.

Oooo, or another thing that made me feel that way was when a dear friend ordered me multiple packages of Girl Scout cookies as a surprise!! THAT would be a fun wedding gift!! A WHOLE BUNCH OF GIRL SCOUT COOKIES!! Oh that seems like a really fun idea!!

We lost power one evening this past week, very abruptly and for hours, which reminds me to strongly recommend an item I LOVE WITH ALL MY DARKNESS-FEARING HEART:

General Electric Power Failure Nightlight (Target link) (Amazon link). It’s a nightlight—but it charges itself at the same time, and if the power goes off it comes on automatically, using that charge. We have one at the top of the stairs, for normal nighttime safety and for power-outage safety. We also have one in our bathroom, and it’s enough light to brush your teeth and get ready for bed in a power outage. You can also unplug it and use it in flashlight mode.

So basically it is awesome, and I have ordered two more, and might order a couple more after that but also might not, because it would have been nice if they had come on automatically all over the house, but on the other hand let’s not get carried away: I had a set of LED pillar candles (housewarming gifts from dear friends) I could switch on right away, and also a couple of wax/jarred candles I still had on the counter because IT CAN TAKE SOME OF US AWHILE TO PUT AWAY THE FINAL CHRISTMAS TIDBITS OKAY, and so very soon we had a nice amount of light. Plus of course we all had the flashlight mode of our phones, so there is no reason to GO OVERBOARD as I am absolutely planning to do. (It was just SO PLEASANT, moments after being plunged into abrupt darkness, to have these BEACONS shining forth helpfully, as if they’d waited their entire lives for this moment—and it made me want MORE BEACONS.)

Two more meh books for the pile, though I did finish both:

The Burgess Boys, by Elizabeth Strout (Target link) (Amazon link). This was a re-read, and I’d remembered that I hadn’t liked it as much as some of the author’s other books; but there was a mention of some of the characters in ANOTHER Elizabeth Strout book I was reading, so I thought I’d try it again. I’d say it still has too much sad/upsetting/traumatic stuff to be worth the good writing and good plot and good characters—but also that it wouldn’t be a mistake to risk it if you generally like Elizabeth Strout books, all of which contain a certain level of sad/upsetting/traumatic.

 

The Operator, by Gretchen Berg (Target link) (Amazon link). I was intrigued enough by the plot (1950s telephone operator routinely eavesdrops on telephone conversations, and one day hears something scandalous/shocking about her own family) that I kept going for fully half the book despite finding the writing uneven, and the characters odd and one-dimensional and boring, and the author’s commentary on her characters intrusive and snarky; and despite feeling that our wait to hear the Scandalous Reveal was drawn out for FAR longer than ANYONE could POSSIBLY think was wise. And then the Scandal as initially presented was so…relatively unterrible? I mean, a surprise for sure! But it was treated as if it were absolutely devastating in every way, to everyone involved, in SUCH an over-the-top, dramatic, we-are-all-ruined, deliberately-misunderstanding-the-situation-for-higher-drama way that it managed to talk me out of finding it dramatic at even the level it deserved.

(It’s hard to explain this without spoilers, but let’s say the scandal was that a character’s teenage child had DONE DRUGS!! But then this turned out to mean that the child had had one inhale of a joint at a party, without realizing it was a joint. And then ALL the characters acted as if this would mean the family would need to LEAVE THE STATE to avoid jail time and/or being cast out of the community and/or the child being put in foster care, and as if the child was now drug-addicted and would need to go to rehab, and as if this incident might mean their extended family would never speak to them again—and then gradually the reader realizes that the AUTHOR does not think the characters are over-reacting! and the over-reaction is not the point of the story! It doesn’t take long before even a reader vehemently opposed to all drug-use finds themselves thinking things like, “Well, I mean, it’s just a single hit of pot, and it was an ACCIDENT, and I think probably everyone/everything is fine here and we can simply move forward with our lives without making such a big deal of this? I mean, I know this is set in the 1950s, but…even in the 1950s would it have been THIS bad?” While the characters in the book continue to thrash and wail and panic and blow everything out of proportion, chapter after chapter.)

I almost didn’t keep reading, but then I wanted to find out if it was ever going to explain why there was such an overreaction, so I kept reading, and I guess I would say I was glad I did. It never did justify the overreaction, but the author built a pretty entertaining house despite the foundation resting on sand.

BUT THEN: I got to the Author’s Note at the end, and it turns out this was based on something that really happened to the author’s grandmother. So…perhaps that was what was wrong with it. I was reminded of a Richard Russo book or short story, where the narrator, a college writing instructor, is talking about how sometimes a student’s story will be soundly criticized by other students in the class for being unrealistic and/or seeming untrue and/or not making sense; and, as they’re talking, he’ll see a smug angry expression growing on the face of the student in question, and he’ll know what’s coming: and indeed, the student will say triumphantly that ACTUALLY, this REALLY HAPPENED, so that shows what the critics know about anything!! And the narrator explains to the reader that what the student doesn’t realize is that that makes the situation FAR WORSE: the student has managed to take something ACTUALLY TRUE, and make it SEEM FALSE. Anyway, I think if the premise appeals to you, it’s worth trying, but I’d get it from the library.

So, update: possibly I hate yoga! And also: I would like to know how many hours, exactly, women are expected to spend per day on exercise and self-care? Because it seems as if men are not expected to “””take time for themselves””” in this PARTICULAR way (which just COINCIDENTALLY has an ABSOLUTELY COINCIDENTAL SIDE EFFECT of working to shape women’s bodies for men’s preferences), and it seems as if this gives men a lot more free time to start wars and harass/assault women and take away rights and so forth! Not that I think that if women get that time back by discontinuing our 11 steps to perfect summer eyebrows, we should use it to start wars and harass/assault men and take away rights! I am only saying that it seems to theoretically be VERY PRODUCTIVE TIME. I am reminded, by perhaps a less-connected mental leap than you might be expecting at this juncture, of how the PTA seems to have been designed to give distracting busy-work and faux empowerment/management duties to the mothers who would otherwise be restlessly bothering the teachers and school office staff, but who are instead now very very busy bothering each other in a separate loop; and running fundraisers that barely pay for their own running, and doing so only if a lot of women consider their time to be free of charge! Whoever came up with that idea was VERY VERY SMART! Probably a joint psychology/business major/sociopath!

No, I did not get any sort of notification from my period tracker today, and also shut up. AND IF I DID: as I understand it, it is AFTER menopause that our hormones are “normal”—i.e., as they are during PMS. Which means that PISSED OFF ALL THE TIME AT HOW EVERYTHING WORKS AND HOW EVERYONE IS is the way women SHOULD BE. WHICH MAKES PERFECT SENSE TO ME.

I feel as if I can’t just Not Comment on the Russian attack on Ukraine, as though it’s not happening / as if I am oblivious to it / as if I think what I am writing is more important. But also: what are any of us supposed to say? It’s a nightmare, right? Stupid and horrifying and dismaying to see people pulling strings and acting as if other people’s lives are unimportant toys for them to play with when they’re bored. I bet some middle-aged Ukrainian/Russian woman would LOVE to be pissed off about yoga and peri-menopause right now, instead of wondering if her kids will survive this and knowing it is NOT IRRATIONALLY ANXIOUS to prepare for the possibility that they will not. I’m all the way over here, and I’m wondering if we’ll survive this, or if we’ll get a little weather alert on our phones notifying us of impending nuclear fallout, possibly because of ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE WHILE TRYING TO TAKE OVER A NUCLEAR PLANT. I read On the Beach a long time ago, but I feel like I remember the gist. Merciful pills for our pets first, and then for our kids, and then for ourselves. But we saw how the U.S. government handled the Covid pandemic, so we know the merciful medication will be plentifully available 1-2 years after we have all already perished from radiation or whatever it is that kills you when it’s a nuclear thing, I AM NOT REAL CLEAR ON THE DETAILS AND NOT REAL INCLINED TO LOOK IT UP, NO I DO NOT WANT ANYONE TO EXPLAIN IT TO ME RIGHT NOW

A little gift of peri-menopause, for me, seems to be the WILD MOOD SWINGS. Not that anyone would EVER have described me as a steady, level, consistent person. But right now I am going from COMPLETELY HAPPY when I remember that it’s the weekend and that means a bonus challenge on my phone game!!! to thinking that really it would be the best thing for everyone/everything if humanity wiped itself out via nuclear disaster. Like, within five minutes. I go from “OH!! I just remembered I have a new sweater I got on clearance and I can wear it today, and now I am wearing it and it’s making me happy and I should tell other people about it!!” (it’s this Lands’ End shaker sweater in Rubellite, and I think the only reason it’s on such a deep clearance is that the wee tiny vertical stripes make it look very weird on computer monitors ((also because Lands’ End prices are doubled, and you should never pay more than 50% off original price to begin with)), and I wish I’d risked buying the Baltic Teal as well even though that color looks even weirder on the monitor; I also got this Lands’ End fine-gauge crewneck sweater in Soft Magenta Heather and Soft Azure, because I love a colorblock) to thinking the only TRULY sensible solution is for me to leave my family and go live in a commune of people who are not men, where we will all SHARE THE CHORES and SHARE OUR SWEATERS and DO NICE THINGS FOR EACH OTHER and HAVE CHICKENS. (Someone other than me is going to have to take care of the chickens, because I only like chickens from a distance. But I WILL CLEAN TOILETS, so I feel like I have a lot to offer. I will also COOK CHICKEN EGGS.)