When last we discussed it (and I am not linking to it, because it is in a post about election night plans and I don’t think any of us want or need that right now), I had chosen this Exerpeutic Recumbent exercise bike: the same brand as the one we’d had and liked, but recumbent in case that was better, and a good price. The only downside was that the estimated delivery was a MONTH later. But it was the bike I wanted, and I still had well over two months before my knee surgery.

After a month had gone by and the bike still hadn’t even shipped let alone arrived, Amazon canceled the order without explanation. This was a blow: it was okay to wait when we were waiting for The Right Bike, but now we’d wasted a month of waiting, a month when I could have been using the bike pre-knee-surgery. William and I tried not to plummet into despair. (He uses the exercise bike regularly and was quite affected by the breaking of the earlier bike and then the delay.)

I asked William if he would be willing to research a new bike, and he said he was. His research mostly involved asking around in his various online exercise communities, and he came back with the information that there were two camps: first camp says you cannot get a good exercise bike for under $500 (that was my cut-off) and in fact not for under $1500; second camp says Sunny bikes are inexpensive and terrific. We allied ourselves with the second camp, and ordered a Sunny bike. (William suggested the Standard, but I thought I might want some of the app availability of the Smart model.)

(image from sunnyhealthfitness.com)

The bike arrived a week and a half later (there were holidays in there) with free shipping, and it’s exactly what I was looking for. We’ve only had it a few days, so I can’t report on its durability, but it is QUIET and it is COMFORTABLE, and the recumbent style makes it MUCH EASIER to read and/or play on my phone while using it, which makes me MUCH MORE LIKELY to actually use it.

My only complaint involved the ordering process: I found it very difficult to tell the differences among the various bike options—and some options were only available if you clicked on a bike and then selected a different level of expense (Elite, Standard, Smart, etc.). William and I sat at the computer for perhaps half an hour, saying “Wait, is that the one we clicked on before, or a different one?” And they’re all basically named the same thing. Even knowing which one we ordered, I had to go back into my order history and literally click on it so that I could give you an accurate link and a picture. The main differences between one bike and another seemed to be (1) whether the back of the seat was mesh or solid, (2) number of app features, and (3) arm-exercising options.

There is a Cyber Monday sale (it is of course extended, as all Cyber Monday sales are, so it is still happening through Wednesday and possibly for the rest of our natural lives): 20% off with code CM20. If I’ve done that math correctly, it brings the $270 bike down to $216. I THINK if you click this link to the site and then buy something I get “points” for referring you, but don’t worry if it doesn’t work, and ESPECIALLY if it doesn’t work with the sale (GET THE SALE): the points are discounts off future orders, and I am not likely to be purchasing many more pieces of exercise equipment. But if you DO click the points link, and then you want to find the same bike I bought, the product number of the bike is SF-RB4616SMART. (And if you are reading this after the 20% off sale has ended, I THINK the link is supposed to give you 15% off—but let me know if it doesn’t, because there’s an option for me to send an email to a friend giving them 15% off.)

I need an outfit to wear to Paul’s office holiday party, which is to be held, delightfully, at a BREWERY. You may be wondering why I don’t just wear the outfit I bought the last time we discussed this, and it’s because I don’t think the pants (black velvet with some glitter) will fit. I guess I could try them. But my guess is that they will not accommodate my perimenopausal tum in a way that feels warm and loving.

Would it be BONKERS to buy sequined flare pants?:

(image from oldnavy.gap.com)

And if so, is it the GOOD kind of bonkers? What is the sound/sensation when you walk with sequined legs? Is it like corduroy but…clickier?

Also, what shoes would a person who does not wear high heels wear with these pants?

I kind of like the careless loose white oxford the model is wearing, but I’d need it LONGER (the butt MUST be covered), and I would unbutton some top buttons but NONE OF the bottom buttons. I checked to see if Old Navy had a white satin longish oxford, but they do not. This might be sour grapes, but I’m not sure I could pull off that loungey satin look anyway. I need something that suits my nervous, eager-to-please party attitude and uptight updo. My usual glitzy top is a champagne-sequined sleeveless shirt, worn with a flowy dressy thin open cardigan with a drapey front, but that is not going to work with sequined pants.

I could get these shiny black pants instead:

(image from oldnavy.gap.com)

Less fun than the sequins, but with the benefit of working with a dressy top I’m already happy with. And maybe better for a brewery? and a spouse’s work gathering?

Or they come in silver, which is more fun but I suspect less flattering on me (I think they hit the eye as white), and also then I REALLY don’t know what to do about a top:

(image from oldnavy.gap.com)

And I hope you ALWAYS consider yourself Automatically Reciprocally Asked in cases like this (the only reason I don’t specifically ask every single time is that I feel it comes across as Encouraging Blog Engagement)—but if you have a holiday office party to go to, what are YOU wearing? I would be so interested to know. I am not confident about fashion, and I like to start with other peoples’ templates.

Well, obviously I should have looked for input on labeling the back of a collage print BEFORE getting the prints made, because BY FAR my favorite idea was to add the names to each photo in the collage. I have spent the last few days wondering if I should just get them done over. It’s not so much about the money (it’s a matter of $11); it’s more, can I make myself start over on this collage print, or is it just too wonderful to have already submitted it and picked up the prints? But it would ALSO be wonderful not to be looking at a pile of prints that need labeling.

Are you already feeling a little overwhelmed by holiday stuff? I am already feeling a little overwhelmed. This year, though, it is nice to have that distraction. If I am thinking about the million things that need to be done between now and the shipping deadlines, or now and the work holiday party, then I am NOT thinking about what is happening shortly after the holidays.

Speaking of which, I wish I could remember where I saw someone saying that there was a difference between “media” (the endless flow of information meant to keep viewers engaged) and “news” (actual information), but it has already changed the way I think of taking in news. Which is bad for my line-a-day journal, but good for my mental state.

For example: awhile back, I spent quite a bit of time agitating over the idea of M@tt G@etz as attorney general, and listening to NPR talking to experts about what an alarming choice he was—and then he ended up withdrawing. I am not going to be able to handle these next years if I am agitating over the things that end up NOT HAPPENING, as well as the ones that DO HAPPEN. I am not quite sure what specifically this means for my news/media intake, but it was helpful to realize that what I’d been taking in was MEDIA: hours of NPR discussing what might happen with the various nominees. Rather than NEWS, which I guess would be the confirmation of nominees? I still feel a little unclear, and yet for now I’ve stopped listening to hours of NPR asking experts to guess at all the stressful things in our future, things I can’t do anything about, at least at this point when they haven’t started happening yet. When we get to the part where I can at least be writing to my senators/representatives to ask them to do things, I can tune in a little more.

To end on a non-political note, I would like to recommend these Old Navy utility pants:

(image from OldNavy.Gap.com)

I am between two pants sizes, and I ordered the larger of those two sizes, and that was the right choice to accommodate the perimenopausal tum and be comfy; the high waist makes the tum feel supported and snuggled rather than condemned and criticized. And my dears, the POCKETS. The POCKETS. My entire phone not only fits into the pocket but fits LOW in the pocket. I would buy these pants FOR THE POCKETS ALONE. Yes, the color options are all kind of weird, and yet I wish I’d bought more of the weird colors before they ran out of my size. I chose the odd green, and I wish I had also bought the odd blue they now seem to be completely out of; I can still get the odd rust ones in my size, and I might do it even though I might need to buy shirts that would look right with it. (The cream color would not work on me: I would immediately be/look grubby.)

Also: they do not DRAG ON THE GROUND like so many pants do on me! They are the RIGHT INSEAM for me! This may mean that they will be short on you, if you normally buy pants that don’t drag on the ground; you may need the Tall.

P.S. I also recommend this boyfriend flannel shirt, if you would like some cozy clothes for panicking in. I sized up one size, and if I were ordering another one (as I might) I’d order my usual size instead (it is already oversized as part of the “boyfriend” styling)—but a size up is not wrong. I have been wearing it almost constantly, alternating with one of Paul’s flannel shirts. It is the thinner, softer flannel, not the bulkier, rougher kind. I ordered the grey plaid, if you want to be twins. I think it looks very cute with the weird green pants.

If you ever:
(1) create a COLLAGE photo print to include with holiday cards, AND
(2) you generally label the backs with who’s who,

then I wish to ask: HOW DO YOU DO IT? I wish to ask that of you even if the question is hypothetical because you do not do that and you do not do that either. (I’m going to attempt to keep my terms tidy, so that “print” or “collage” refers to the entire printed collage, and “photo” refers to one of the photos in that collage.)

Like, imagine it: it is a 4×6 print, let’s say it is horizontal, and it includes let’s say six photos of various family members. And you would like to label the back of the print, so that future generations (and also the not-very-in-touch people on your card list) know which people are in which photo.

My first inclination was to label BEHIND EACH PHOTO. That is: if Elizabeth and Edward are in a photo together at the top right of the print, then I would be writing “Elizabeth and Edward” on the top LEFT of the back. Like, if you were to cut the photo collage into separate little photos, each individual photo would still be labeled correctly.

But when I imagine taking someone else’s collage print and flipping it over, the behind-each-photo idea seems confusing: my brain wants to project my memory of the images onto the back of the card, and have the names written correspondingly. If I look at a photo at the upper right, and then I flip it over, my brain expects to see those names at the upper right, just like on the print.

I suppose I could do a sort of “L to R, top row:” situation, but that feels…exhausting.

WHAT SAY YOU. (If your very valid opinion is “Just don’t label the back, this solves everything,” I do hear you, I do, but I am going to label the backs, so “don’t” isn’t one of the options remaining to us at THIS stage of the decision tree.)

GOOD MORNING SO if you are in the United States and your passports expire sometime in the next 4+ years, may I suggest along with many others that it would NOT BE A BAD IDEA to renew them early? I work at a library that also serves as a passport-acceptance agency, and we have been DELUGED with calls/appointments. One coworker mentioned she saw that passport applications/renewals have been up 800% since the election and MAY I SAY I AM NOT SURPRISED. Paul and I got our passports in the VERY EASY TO REMEMBER month of November 2016, so we technically have almost two more years before they expire, but we are going to just go ahead and renew them now. I was hand-wringing a little about the waste of money, and William (age 23 and this election was HIS 2016) said “What is that, a 20% loss? Like, $32? to get it renewed NOW instead of After Whatever Happens, Happens?” Which helped considerably.

I do think that, given the incoming administration’s apparent determination to appoint the LEAST qualified and MOST destructive candidates to each vitally important post, it wouldn’t be weird to wonder if the passport-processing agencies might not be quite the same after January 2025, when someone takes his lil executive hammer and uses it to flail away at all those nasty agencies that hold up the government and nation.

Here’s a whiplash of a post, after the election despair! But family members are asking for updated wish lists, and my parents like to do all their Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving, so I wondered if we could have a bit of a group discussion about what we’d like to get for Christmas when what we might really want for Christmas is to avoid a relentless flow of terrible things happening for the next 4+ years. Let’s see if we can instead come up with a bunch of clickable material ideas that we can steal from each other, as we try to build lists that don’t involve this all being a bad dream.

On my list:

The new Elizabeth Strout book, Tell Me Everything (Target link, Amazon link):

(image from Target.com)

Human Rights Campaign’s Unicorn Rainbow Pride t-shirt:

(photo from shop.hrc.org)

Purple Converse:

(image from Converse.com)

Yes I have a bad knee and these shoes have zero support, WHAT IS YOUR POINT. (Also, I did buy these purple Skechers, for days when the knee needs to be babied.)

Bunk-bed cat hammock (I AM FINDING JOY WHERE I CAN AND I THINK YOU SHOULD TOO):

(image from Amazon.com)

Assorted French Bull dishware (I particularly like the Garden Florals pattern, and have the dinner plates, appetizer plates, dessert spoons, and spreaders on my list):

(image from frenchbull.com)

Google Play gift card:

(image from Target.com)

I have two games I play on my phone (Pokemon Go and Love Nikki Dress-Up Queen) that CAN be played without in-game purchases, but are VERY MUCH IMPROVED with in-game purchases—but I can’t make myself spend money on such purchases. But if I have a gift card!—well, then, what else can I do but spend it? Also, I play both of these games every single day, and even in times like these they bring me a measure of happiness, and that’s something I think we may need to scrounge for.

On that topic, I also want a Pokemon Go Plus, which Paul has heavily implied he has already purchased for me:

(image from Amazon.com)

It’s so silly, but I belong to a Facebook group now called Old Ladies Playing Pokemon Go (“old” defined as 20+), and MANY of them have this and love it. I don’t even entirely know what it IS, but they love it so I want it.

Please please tell us what you want for Christmas so we can all poach ideas for our lists.

I don’t want to move on from our feelings about this recent U.S. election and the probable impending collapse of democracy it portends, but also I have other things I want to talk about with you: pelvic-floor therapy; the results of a second ultrasound after an iffy mammogram (I’m not going to tease: the radiologist said the rogue lymph nodes have decreased in size and so I can come back for my usual annual mammogram) (though I have some uncertainties about this); an upcoming car purchase (before the descent of tariffs); Christmas shopping for a holiday “adopt a child” program, which is currently doing some heavy lifting in terms of preserving my sanity; Advent / countdown-to-Christmas calendars; co-worker holiday gifts, and what to get for the pelvic-floor therapist; what we’re buying our impossible-to-buy-for grown children; and my parents’ adoption of an Election-Stress-Reducing Cat, who spent his first week hiding in the ducts of their furnace.

This post is going to be politics-related, and then after that I am probably going to talk about something else, and I entirely understand if you are not ready to read about Something Else right now. It has only been a week and a day since we found out that we were going to be reliving a nightmare; there are daily horrifying previews for this nightmare (a Fox disinformation-television news host as the head of the Department of Defense!! sure why not!!! how could that go wrong?!?!?); it is not weird to prefer to nope-out of posts on lighter topics. You will not hurt my feelings if you skim and skip as needed. I have been drifting in and out, myself, and when I am not in the right headspace I have been skipping/skimming other people’s posts on lighter topics, and on political-ranty topics, depending. Sometimes I can think about things other than this country’s political catastrophe, and sometimes I need to drift in the abyss of horror, and sometimes I can’t spend one more minute hearing about the abyss of horror and I want to see pictures of someone’s dog/cat, and all of these are fine ways of being.

Heck if I can find it, but I am sure I recently mentioned that I finally purchased a one-line-a-day diary that’s been in my online cart for YEARS; there are tons of options, but I chose this one:

(image from Amazon.com)

I have liked this idea for so long, but struggled with When To Start It. New Year’s Day 2020? My 50th birthday? Some random day, to take the pressure off? I finally decided I would just buy it, and then if I were struck by the impulse to start it, I would have it ready to go. Four days after the election, I was lying awake simmering in nauseated horror, and I thought of a good start-date: Election Day. It would mean fudging several days’ worth of entries, but let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good: this project gave me a flicker of interest, and that is something to be seized. And I was able to recreate the first four days pretty accurately using posts and emails.

I am going to record this presidency (the next five years of it, anyway), but only one line a day. (Would you like to do the same? Join me.) I am hoping this will help me to narrow things down, and condense. What is the MAIN THING that happened each day: be BRIEF. This will also give me room to record the happy surprises that are bound to happen even in this timeline: for example, today the satire/humor site The Onion purchased the disinformation site InfoWars, and plans to remake it in a better image. I have written it down for today.

When I look online, I can see that some people respond to a time of overwhelming crisis with an “OKAY, IT’S BEEN 24 HOURS, CRYING’S OVER, BOOTS ON THE GROUND, HERE IS OUR 20-PART COMPREHENSIVE GLOBAL ACTION PLAN.” It is good to have those people. That is not the kind of person I am, or the kind of person I live with. Some of the things we are doing at our house:

• Removing a bunch of Personal Eating Rules, for the time being. Some of us normally eat keto, or low-calorie, or low-salt/fat or whatever, and right now we don’t have the bandwidth to handle What Just Happened AND food restrictions. I felt similarly in the early days of the pandemic.

• Resting more, when possible. Going to bed earlier and sleeping later, when possible. Lounging around more. Treating ourselves as if we’re recovering from a serious illness.

• Not Thinking About It, when possible; Thinking About It Later, when possible. Letting it sink in slowly and from a certain distance, to avoid mental devastation. Avoiding catastrophizing about What Could (and Likely Will) Happen: there are too many of those, and running around in panicked hyperventilating circles isn’t going to help. Trying to think of the future as unknown, and still including the possibility of good surprises, EVEN IN THIS TIMELINE.

• Skipping some chores, where possible. Some chores truly must be done, and some chores make life harder if they’re put off; but some chores will be fine if they wait awhile past the time they would ordinarily have been done. Imagine if you lived alone, and had the flu or broke your leg and couldn’t clean the bathroom floor for awhile: all would still be well. But you’d still have to have to figure out the litter box no matter what.

• Doing some tasks, in cases where those tasks relieve stress. Pick that empty cardboard box up off the floor and take it to the garage: the cats are done playing with it, and breaking it down and carrying it out takes 60 seconds and gets that box out of my sight/way. Place an online order for the taco powder: it feels silly because I could buy it in a store if I went out of my way to go to that one store where it’s the one thing I buy—but also I could order it online right this second and then I can cross that errand off my to-do list.

• Medicating, when possible/needed. I have a prescription for a mild sedative. I hoard them, because my doctor gives me so few tablets per year; but this is the sort of event that makes me wonder what I’m hoarding them for if not for this, so I am using them sometimes.

• Looking into other countries that might be better places to live, and might be open to accepting United States citizens (this is some of the kids, not so much Paul and me; some of my friends say their kids are doing this too).

• Replacing our large campaign flag with our large equality flag.

• Bringing treats to work. I brought a big box of doughnut holes (I ordered a box of 50, and the cashier gave me more like 65-70) and we all stood around the box for the half hour before the library opened, eating one doughnut hole after another and talking about how we could hardly cope, and it was so therapeutic. Even after the library opened, we kept visiting the box like birds at a feeder, saying “I’m just going to have one more.”

• We’d already signed up back in October to sponsor two children through our local service organization’s Christmas-supplementing program, and we were assigned those children the day after the election, which was wonderful timing and felt like a small counterbalance to the immense badness so many people just voted for. And now I can divert some of my attention to thinking about which combination of the items on the wish lists I want to fulfill, and looking through as many pages of options for each item as I feel like, and that is a pretty good thing to focus on. (We got two little girls this time, and the parent noted “GIRLY girls–pink/flowers/butterflies” on the form. I have received an enormous gift.)

• Donating money to organizations. The ACLU. NPR. Wikipedia. Etc.

• Watching calm TV. Reading calm books. I had a fiction book in my library pile about women who acquire superpowers along with menopause and use it to fight evil, and I can’t cope with books about fighting evil right now. I don’t want to feel riled by the descriptions of the types of evil I suspect these women will be fighting, which we are going to have to fight in real life without superpowers. I am reading Tom Lake by Ann Patchett instead (I have heard complaints that “nothing happens,” which sounds perfect, and I love Ann Patchett’s writing and she can write about cleaning bathroom floors for all I care); and I finally read a book I got for Christmas called Extra Helping: Recipes for Caring, Connecting, and Building Community One Dish at a Time, by Janet Reich Elsbach, and that was very much the right thing: lots of talk about using food to take care of people who are ill or grieving, along with relatable references to how the author began focusing on this in 2016.

• Trying to think in terms of what we can do to help/support others. I have heard so many times, in so many contexts, that turning outward can be a huge help—particularly when turning inward is all misery. I don’t mean just the big things we may need to work on in the future, I also mean things like can I bring my co-workers some doughnut holes, can I bake my friend some brownies, can I send my friend a card/email. The Extra Helping book I mentioned in the last paragraph had a lot of good stuff about how you can find your OWN ways to help, the things that come naturally to YOU: we don’t all have to bake bread or make phone calls, we can do the things that work with our own skills and inclinations. Maybe some of us make and deliver a huge pot of soup to a grieving family, and others of us go through the grocery store and fill a basket with bakery muffins and little yogurts and a frozen Stouffer’s lasagna and drop THAT off. You don’t have to feel bad that you don’t know how to make soup and don’t want to make soup and don’t know how to transport soup and don’t have a big soup pot anyway.

• Trying to get some fresh air and exercise. Some of us are inclined toward vigorous burn-off-the-rage exercise, and some of us are inclined toward convalescent/recuperation/restorative exercise, and some of us are going back and forth depending on mood. I’ve recently started pelvic-floor therapy (more on this another day), and my homework this week involves taking huge belly breaths (and attempting at the same time to “relax the pelvic floor,” something I cannot feel AT ALL, which is one reason I am in pelvic-floor therapy), and the physical therapist said pointedly (this was the day after the election, and both of us were pale and quiet) that this was also very good for stress and anxiety.

• Spending time with other people who feel similarly about All This, and how serious and dangerous it is.

• Avoiding people who want to explain how actually this is the Democrats’ fault, and/or who seem to have no understanding of what has just happened here, and/or who want to have bad-faith discussions about it. Re-setting some boundaries.

I don’t know what we’re going to need to do to get through this, but personally I am going to consider myself in a medically-induced coma while I figure it out.