It’s basically too late for me to mention this (many items are already out of stock), but Target is doing a collaboration with John Derian again, for Thanksgiving. I bought two things:

This lil serving tray, which does not look exactly like my house but has the vibe of my house:

(image from Target.com)

and this wine tote:

(image from Target.com)

I find as I get older that I have more and more need of cute wine totes to give with wine gifts. A friend of mine had a birthday party this past month, and everyone was teasing her for the number of bottles of wine/liquor she was receiving (“Oh, they sure know you I guess har har!!”)—but it’s more that when someone is My Age, there are fewer and fewer toasters and throw blankets you can buy them, and the focus turns to consumable treats. And wine/liquor KEEP well if you don’t want to use them right away, and it’s not a problem if you get DUPLICATES, and they are easy to REGIFT and/or serve to guests.

I do not need any more Christmas tree ornaments, I DO NOT need any, I already have them divided into two bins to use on alternating years. But:

(image from Target.com)

A PASSPORT ORNAMENT! So perfect to commemorate our first trip out of the country!

I am trying a new thing, by which I mean something I do from time to time and then forget about and then start doing again: I am trying the concept of Getting Rid of Things, Even if it Is Just One Thing and Doesn’t Seem Worth it. Tossing one single worn hair towel, even though I still have too many and should really go through them more thoroughly so that I can close that drawer, is still worth doing. Putting one single necklace in the Goodwill bag, even though I still have too many and should really go through my entire jewelry box, is still worth doing. Taking one window fan we never use out of the barn, even though really I should go through the entire barn and get rid of everything we moved five years ago and haven’t unpacked/used yet, is still worth doing.

The main thing I notice with this method is that it inspires me to do more of it. YES, it would be more efficient to thoroughly tackle an entire cluttered/disorganized drawer, but it’s not more efficient if I NEVER DO IT. If I notice and throw away one item from that drawer while I have it open for other reasons, that is something that doesn’t have to be a Big Involved Project. And then maybe the next time I open that drawer, I see another item I can throw away. And maybe now I can see to the back of the drawer and I say “WHY do we still have twenty packets of assorted orthodontic elastics when no one at our house wears braces anymore??” and I throw out a nice big handful. This is the kind of small success I find encouraging, and sometimes it’s so motivating it TURNS INTO thoroughly tackling the entire drawer.

A Big Involved Project I think really has to be done in one swoop is my make-up. I don’t even WEAR make-up anymore, but I have a large box of it, and I DO want to keep SOME of it for those few occasions I DO want to wear make-up. But the other night, Paul and I were going out to dinner and I put on some make-up, and it looked ridiculous and I wiped most of it off. So maybe I should just throw out the whole box and be done with it. Well, but then I know someday I will REALLY WANT my perfect brown-red lipstick or whatever, and then I will feel sad. (I have heard the “THROW OUT MAKE-UP AFTER SIX MONTHS, IT IS CONTAMINATED!!” thing, and I do not believe or comply. I will reconsider my stance if I ever experience one single ill effect from using old make-up.)

I am having to rely again on “Do ONE SINGLE THING, even if it is the SMALLEST AND LEAST IMPORTANT THING, because doing ONE SMALL UNIMPORTANT THING still puts you AHEAD of where you are if you do ZERO THINGS.”

There are cluttery, visually-burdensome things I would not have to see and feel oppressed by every single day if I would just spend two minutes bringing them to where they belong, and yet I am not doing it. I keep thinking “Ug, but there are SO MANY things that need to go other places, it would take SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT to put them ALL away” and so I don’t put ANY of them away, and that is extremely silly. If I had made myself put away even one single item per day for the month of October, I would be looking at SEVENTEEN FEWER ITEMS right now, maybe EIGHTEEN if I had already done today’s item, and that would be SOMEthing. It might be small progress, but it would BE MORE PROGRESS THAN DOING NOTHING. And actually, it wouldn’t even be small progress, it would be pretty significant progress!

I also get stopped by “But putting that one thing away is a LOW priority: what I REALLY need to be doing is [much, much larger and more important and more time-consuming task]”—and so I don’t put the item away AND I don’t do the larger and more important task. Again: silly. I know from experience that if I get ANYTHING off the to-do list, the WHOLE LIST feels better. If I make my environment even a LITTLE less oppressive, it is easier to do EVERYTHING, including the more important items on the list.

And I know it is only October, but every year I think oh it is MUCH too soon to even START THINKING about Christmas; and EVERY YEAR I get to December and wish I had done SOMEthing, ANYTHING back in October when I was kind of eager to get started and it would have been fun but it felt like it was too early, so that NOW in DECEMBER I could be ENJOYING CHRISTMAS rather than FRANTICALLY SCRABBLING. So one of the tentative items on my to-do list is to bring down the box of Christmas-card stuff. There was one year I addressed and stamped all the cards ahead of time in October, and in December I was so grateful to myself. I LOVE to do the cards, but they ARE time- and space-consuming, and having instead a small neat stack of cards all set to write and then just seal into the envelopes was GREAT: I kept the box next to my comfy chair, and would write a few whenever I felt like it.

I have come to an exciting and satisfying decision regarding my advent calendar for 2023!

I had been feeling somewhat downcast, as I had no compelling desire for any particular advent calendar—and that seemed to me to be an extremely unsympathetic problem to be having, especially right now.

I nevertheless continued to be downcast, and thought to myself: “If only I could find a good PERFUME advent calendar! That would be my FAVORITE BY FAR!” I spent a little time looking online, but a lot of the fragrance advent calendars were eye-crossingly expensive, and associated with brands/houses unfamiliar to me so who knows if I’d even LIKE them; and often the calendars included things that were not perfumes but instead perfumed things such as candles and lotions—which is FINE, but not what I am hoping for.

In my research, I found Immortal Perfumes, which does have an advent calendar, but I’m reluctant to take such an expensive plunge with no previous experience with the brand. I saw a lot of intriguing samples, though, so I posted on Bluesky (where I am primarily located now that El0n Mu$k has made such a cock-up of Twitter):

That got no bites. But Suebob replied:

So I poked around on Illuminated Perfume, and found many samples I wanted to try from THERE, TOO!!

…Which led me to an idea. I have purchased advent calendars (actually countdown-to-Christmas calendars, as they start on December 1st and end on the 24th or 25th) in the past, and several of them have been constructed so charmingly/sturdily that I have KEPT the empty calendars, with the thought that I may someday REFILL them for myself or for others.

AND THIS IS MY MOMENT!! I can buy some samples from Immortal Perfume! Some samples from Illuminated Perfume! Some samples from The Perfumed Court and/or Surrender to Chance (they do decants—custom samples)! I can add in the five Pacifica Wanderlust samples (Target link, Amazon link) I’d already bought for my own stocking! And I can jumble them all up in a bag, and choose randomly and without peeking, and look away obliviously as I fill all the compartments of one of my nice little saved countdown-to-Christmas calendar structures!! And have a lovely, lovely, exactly-what-I-want advent calendar!

I am MORE THAN OPEN to suggestions for other perfumeries and perfume samples/samplers!

I don’t know if this happens to you, because when I mentioned it to my dentist in a “you know, this familiar thing that happens” manner, he did not respond the way I would expect someone to respond about a familiar thing that happens—especially someone who ought to be an absolute expert on the whole range of things that happen with teeth. Here is the thing that happens: if I eat ice cream, and I am talking in particular about LONG-EXPOSURE eating of ice cream, like if I eat a whole pint slowly while reading; then AFTER I finish eating the ice cream, as my mouth is returning to its normal temperature range, my teeth will often ache a little. Just a little! Not, like, shooting pains! Just sort of very mildly sore, for a few minutes.

You need that context for my story, which is that yesterday afternoon I didn’t even have an entire pint of ice cream, just HALF (I wanted to save the other half for evening); and, after I finished eating it, my teeth began aching a little bit as they usually do—and then then went up to like 100 times that amount of pain, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating but it’s hard to tell with these kinds of numbers. But here is the scale: the usual amount of aching is very slightly uncomfortable; with the amount of aching I was experiencing in this new case, I honestly considered whether I might be having a heart attack, because in my CPR training they mentioned that intense jaw pain can be a symptom of a heart attack. I considered whether I should go to the emergency room. That is how much my jaw/teeth hurt.

But I was having no other symptoms at all! I walked around a little bit and everything felt normal: normal heart, normal breathing, normal strength, normal arms. No other pain or weakness or discomfort; no nausea or light-headedness or feelings of something being wrong—other than my ENTIRE JAW in pain. Also, Paul and William were both home (William came home for the long weekend), so I knew there were other people around if things escalated, and I am not in the MOST typical age-range for heart attacks, and I AM prone to anxiety and worrying, and I DO have dicey teeth which I DO apparently clench—so I felt relatively safe to give it a few minutes and see what happened next.

What happened next was that the pain verrrrrry gradually lessened. After maybe half an hour of it, with a noticeable but insufficient downward tick in pain, I took acetaminophen, and that helped too. After a couple of hours, the pain felt like it was narrowing in on a location: upper right teeth. I dithered and dithered (what if it goes away and I feel stupid?) and then called the dentist, and got an emergency appointment for the next morning. I had dinner, and I was able to chew on the left side, but the right was too painful; there didn’t seem to be much heat/cold sensitivity, just sensitivity to pressure/biting. It wasn’t the horrifying electric-shock pain I associate with dental work; it was just very very sore and achy, like I’d BADLY BRUISED my upper right teeth. I worried maybe I’d just SPRAINED my teeth, and now we’d have to pay the dentist $200 to tell me to take more acetaminophen and stop being silly, maybe do some gentle tooth stretches.

My primary theory was that I’d waited too long to get a crown replaced. In my youth I was not so great at getting the toothbrush all the way to the back of my mouth (sensitive gag reflex), and it wasn’t until I’d paid for four back-molar cavities with no dental insurance on my $5.75/hour-no-benefits childcare-worker income that I started being intense/thorough about brushing and flossing. Too late: most of my back molars are now crowned, and I am old enough that we are now starting to replace crowns. The dentist tries to give me a warning when another crown is impending, so I can mentally and financially brace for it, and he’s been warning me about TWO crowns that need replacement—but, as the receptionist pointed out when I called to make the appointment, those pending crowns are on the LEFT. The one that was giving me pain (actually the entire quadrant was sending alarm signals, but by pressing and prodding I could narrow it down to one single tooth) was the back molar on the right, which has a large filling in it but isn’t yet crowned.

My theory before I went to the dentist: cracked filling, time for a crown, what an expensive pain, oh well. The dentist’s surprising diagnosis: Game Over, Tooth Done, extraction and implant. He said I could instead get a root canal and crown, but that with the amount of work I’ve already had on that tooth, and the amount of original tooth remaining, he estimated I’d get no more than 15 years out of it before I’d need to have more work done; he thought the better value, assuming I wanted to gamble on living longer than my mid-60s, was to pay 50% more and get the permanent unassailable implant now.

With three kids in college, this is not ideal timing for expensive dental work—but even with my Anxieties, and particularly my Financial Anxieties, I am almost always able to get my mind to rally around A Good Deal. “Root canal + crown now, plus extraction + implant later; vs. extraction and implant now,” feels like the kind of equation I can solve. Might as well get more years out of the expensive implant. Choose hope.

Also, this means I get to go to the oral surgeon I love. You might wonder how someone gets to the point in their lives where they have “an oral surgeon they love,” and it’s when someone has five children who all need impacted sideways wisdom teeth removed, and when that same someone has a front tooth die and needs it pulled out and replaced over the course of a year. When you go through that kind of financial and physical and emotional trauma with someone who is about 5’2″ and wears a headlamp and an oversized lab coat and is like a cross between a cheerful head-tilting bird and a classic mad scientist but without most of the madness—well, you can’t help but form a bond.

I find I have two types of face treatments in my nighttime skincare arsenal: I have Punishment, and I have Kindness. I feel I OUGHT to use the Punishment ones (wrinkle correction! aging prevention somehow! burny acids to reveal the skin of my youth and keep the situation from Getting Worse!), but almost every time I instead reach for the Kindness (creamy soothing lotions, nice smells). These are my three favorite Nighttime Kindness lotions, which I use interchangeably based on the evening’s whim; plus a fourth that I use less often.

(image from Olay.com)

Night of Olay Firming Night Cream (Olay link; Amazon link, unfortunately a three-pack, which is rough if you just wanted to TRY it). The absolute classic. (There are similar-looking containers that include anti-wrinkle ingredients; make sure you look for FIRMING and not anti-aging or whatever.) I saw an ad for Oil of Olay when I was about 12, showing an old lady looking glowingly wrinkled and lovely, and I have used their products ever since. Does the night cream actually do any firming? Unclear. Does it make me feel as if I am lovingly nourishing my glowingly beautiful wrinkles rather than burning them with acids? Yes.

(image from Target.com)

Pond’s (Amazon link, again for a three-pack, and notice they’re only 3.9 ounces each; Target link, 6.5 ounces, just one jar). Another absolute classic. One can imagine the generations before us using the exact same product before bed. It’s soothing to think of, and increases my feeling that it is futile to do anything other than care gently for our faces, and give them love and comfort.

(image from Target.com)

Pond’s Crema S. Nice floral scent, for those of us who like floral scents. I am linking to the giant honking tub of it (Target, Amazon), because that is what is available to purchase online; but if you go into a Target store and look in their travel-sizes section, you may be able to find a little one (my Target mixes them in with two other Pond’s formulations, both of which I have tried but I didn’t like them as much as the Crema S; look for the one with the BLUE lid). Oh, and I see Amazon has a three-pack of the little ones, and that’s not a terrible price: I think they’re more like $3 each at Target, but it’s been awhile since I looked. I get the little ones on purpose, because they fit in my bathroom cabinet—but I have a big one in my emergency supplies, because there was a time when I could not find it in stock anywhere, and so when I DID see the big guy, I bought it. Then I started finding the small ones again, so I never opened the big one. This is getting to be kind of a long and boring story, anyway I put the big one aside in case the day comes when I need it. I would probably use it to refill my little container: for some reason it bothers me to think of digging around in that big jar.

I notice only now, this far into my post’s thesis, that the Pond’s Crema S says it contains alpha hydroxy acid. Hm. Okay, well then I recommend this as a COMPROMISE night treatment: it does apparently contain Punishment, but it FEELS like Kindness.

(image from Target.com)

CeraVe Skin-Renewing Night Cream (Target link, Amazon link). This is a newer one in my arsenal, and I hardly ever use it because it is more expensive. Also, I hide it in my bathrobe pocket, because otherwise the children use it, but also this means I forget about it. This is another in-between one, because I have heard the ingredients in it make some people break out, so it gives me a Medicine feeling if not a Punishment one. But because it does not make me break out, it primarily feels like a Soothing Treatment—a medicated balm.

My dears, I am WOUND UP. My parents are in town, and my mother and I went shopping yesterday and we had one of those days when everything in the stores was there specifically for us. I bought a COUCH: we were at a consignment shop, and it was as if someone had designed a retro couch specifically with me in mind, and then priced it using some sort of bizarre retro pricing. It may or may not fit in our wee 1800s living room (actually a parlor) but WE SHALL SEE. Live recklessly, that’s the Swistle way for sure! Here’s a peek at the fabric, but YOU know how hard it is to tell from a swatch, so this is just for decoration and not for drawing conclusions:

I bought three sets of Cath Kidston (LONDON) Christmas pillowcases at HomeGoods, one set for me and two sets to give as gifts. I found two Paula’s Choice skincare items at Marshalls, and recognized the brand as one that William likes, and texted him to check to see if he would want those for Christmas, and he responded enthusiastically.

You know those big 99c reusable bags they sell at Marshalls and HomeGoods and TJMaxx? I like to have a few of those on hand, for when I need to transport a bunch of things and I need a sturdier and more handled bag than a trash bag BUT ALSO it would be convenient to leave the bag behind (e.g., bringing someone a bunch of handmedowns; making a donation to Goodwill; college kid realizes they need one more bag to transport stuff; etc.). They had rainbow LOVE LOVE LOVE ones, and I bought six. I found Kate Spade notebooks that match my cousin’s work tote, and bought two of them for her upcoming birthday.

Then: I came home, and I was looking through my Amazon cart to see if anything had changed price, and a necklace that has been out of stock for like a month was in stock. I have decided to dress as Barbie for Halloween, and I’m doing the pink gingham outfit, and my goal was to find a necklace with the FEEL of her pink-centered sakura-blossom necklace, but something more to my own tastes so that I could wear it again. And I’d put a bunch of possibilities in my Amazon cart, and then I decided on this one, and by then it was out of stock. I have been waiting, because we still have time before Halloween, but it was just indefinitely out of stock and the picture of that color had been removed from the listing, so I didn’t have much hope. BUT NOW IT IS BACK IN STOCK AND I HAVE ORDERED ONE:

(image from Amazon.com)

What, in your opinion, are some nice things to have in a guest room? I have made a small list already, based on the things I like in the guest room at my brother/sister-in-law’s house:

(image from Amazon.com)

• tabletop fan, for white noise and breeze (I see I have bought this Honeywell fan seven times so far: I have one in each of several locations in our house, plus I have purchased one for each child heading to a college dorm room)

• extra blankets

• a couple pillows of various types, if possible, so the guest can choose (not necessary, but pleasant)

• bedside table

• with lamp

• and glowing alarm clock (that’s the clock I bought for each twin, after a previous purchase finked out; Elizabeth has declared it a success)

In a separate, Extra sort of category:

• a chair (fully optional, but pleasing if it happens to exist)

• luggage rack or other surface for suitcase (not at all necessary, but nice when possible)

• a trash can (not a huge deal, if a bathroom is nearby with a trash can—but it is pleasing to have one in the bedroom too)

• charging thingies, maybe? Maybe something like the bedside lamp I have, which has a USB port. I always bring all my own charging equipment, with approximately the same degree of vigilance with which I bring my own underwear, but I can see how it might be nice to have the charging built in.