I just impulsively put together a seasonal/December/pre-Christmas care package for Rob, my eldest who is living far away and not coming home for Christmas this year. My goal was to get it shipped for free from Target, which meant hitting $35—but I didn’t want to go too much over, because this was impulsive. I succeeded in this goal: the total was just over $37.

My other goal was to send things that would not overly oppress him: he doesn’t want Too Much Stuff, he doesn’t want Too Many Sweets. These preferences can be challenging for a parent who loves Stuff and Sweets, and who inclines towards showing love through those things; also, he IS just starting out in a new place with only what he could carry in his airplane luggage, so my hope is that SOME, SMALL number of things will still be useful. My other hope is that by this point in adulthood or by a point sometime soon he will have taken on board a sense of Middle Ground, and that we can come to an arrangement where I dial my shopping/lavishing inclinations wayyyyyy back, AND tactfully/completely fail to notice/care if he keeps the items; and where HE accepts the items in the loving parental spirit in which they were intended, AND finds friends or a local charity to take anything he doesn’t want.

…I am looping back to edit this section after posting only the very first thing that I purchased, because it is clear to me as I try to select a second item to post that although I DID dial things way back, I did NOT succeed in not sending Stuff. I just didn’t. It reminds me of a scene from the book Life with Father by Clarence Day, where he is describing the spending habits of his mother, and he says something about how after she had kept herself from buying nine simply divine teacups, it didn’t seem so very terrible to give in and buy the tenth. I felt at the time I was assembling the care package that I was showing enormous restraint by NOT sending all the things I WANTED to send, and there were SO many things I REMOVED from the cart—well, but now I see I will be lucky if he doesn’t sigh over the waste before bringing the whole parcel to Goodwill. Well!! If so, there will be someone at Goodwill who benefits, and how nice!

Here is what I sent, if you have someone similar to send an impulsive and perhaps unwise Christmas care package to—or perhaps you have someone who DOES like Stuff and Sweets!

Mrs. Meyer’s Iowa Pine hand soap. I started with this because I buy it every year. And it’s consumable/useful, so I hope it will not oppress the little minimalist; but I hope it will also smack pleasantly of December and Christmas and home.

(image from Target.com)

50ct white Christmas tree lights. It is just a WEE little string of them! Like what you’d have in a college dorm room, or even littler than that! And they tend to stop working after a couple of years anyway!

(image from Target.com)

Cotton pug kitchen towel. I’d bought one of these for myself and liked it even better than I’d expected. And everyone needs kitchen towels! And I only bought ONE, when I’d wanted to buy him TWO (I would have gotten a different design as the second towel, for variety). And I DIDN’T buy him the coordinating bathroom hand towels OR the coordinating mug!

(image from Target.com)

Just one single melamine Christmas plate. NOT two different ones for variety, as I would have preferred. And also, I’d WANTED to buy him the Christmas-tree-shaped one, but Paul said if I wanted there to be any chance of him keeping it, it would HAVE to stack with his other plates, and I saw the wisdom of that and COMPROMISED.

(image from Target.com)

Candy cane napkins. He uses cloth napkins AND his favorite color is green!! Also: I had already bought a pair of these for my household (along with another kind, for variety), then realized they’d be perfect for him and set one of them aside to include with his Christmas box—but then the total was just under $35, and the napkins were on sale for $3.50; and this way he can use them through the Christmas season instead of not starting until Christmas.

(image from Target.com)

Snack pack of Pepperidge Farm Christmas cookies. Just one lil individual snack-pack of cookies, not a full pack, and not the entire cute polar-bear-themed sewing-kit tin of cookies I would have sent a child who liked more sweets! And no second thing of cookies, for variety! And no Christmas candy!

(image from Target.com)

One single serving of Ghirardelli hot cocoa mix. Not a whole box, even though a whole box would have had eight times as much for three times the price! And no cocoa toppers, or marshmallows, or what have you! Just one austere little packet!!

(image from Target.com)

Holiday flannel sheet set. OKAY I UNDERSTAND WHAT I’VE DONE, YOU DON’T HAVE TO INDIRECTLY SCOLD ME WITH STORIES ABOUT HOW YOUR MOTHER NEVER LISTENS TO YOU WHEN YOU SAY YOU DON’T WANT ANY MORE OF THE UNWANTED STUFF SHE CONSTANTLY BURDENS YOU WITH, THIS IS NOT THE SAME THING AND YOUR MOTHER IS NOT TRYING AS HARD AS I AM. But also: he had a set of flannel sheets this same color that he used until they absolutely fell into scraps—and I got the ones that were more “pine trees, why not year-round?” and less CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS ONLY CHRISTMAS. And he’s only lived in his new place since summer, so he might not HAVE flannel sheets yet. And they were on sale. And I took the sweet little three-pack of dressed birdies and nice little flocked trees out of the cart! I AM NOT EXCUSING I AM JUST EXPLAINING.

(image from Target.com)

You know what, I am turning this into a little Christmas/winter giveaway for someone who WOULD like to receive a box like this from their parent!! If you have a mailing address in the United States (it can be your address, or you can have me send it as a gift to someone you know in the U.S.), and you (or the someone you know) DOES like sweets and stuff, I will send you (or them) a VERY VERY SIMILAR box (I don’t want to promise EXACT, because things are selling out fast).

This is going to be a fast one, because of what I just mentioned in the parenthetical about things selling out fast: I will choose a winner tomorrow (Wednesday the 7th) evening sometime. To enter, leave any comment; I will follow up with the winner about whether the package should be Christmas- or Winter-themed. (I will also ask the winner if they have a twin-sized bed they’d like sheets for, in which case I will choose one of the available sets and it will be a surprise; if not, I will substitute some of the things I kept myself from sending Rob.)

(If you want to comment but DON’T want to enter, just add something about not wanting to enter.)

You were all so extremely helpful on the Co-Worker Holiday Gift post that I am STILL not entirely sure what to get for all my co-workers, because there are TOO MANY WONDERFUL IDEAS. I have jotted down my favorites, and will save this year’s non-used ideas for future years.

I found out today that there is a WORKPLACE HOLIDAY PARTY with a YANKEE SWAP. This should not have been a surprise to me, since this is my fourth holiday season at this workplace. But the first year, the party was for the same night as a friend party I’d already agreed to go to. And the second and third year there was a pandemic on, so I didn’t go. This year there is still a pandemic on, but I am going to go to the party.

I don’t know what THEY consider the rules of the Yankee Swap. I don’t know if MOST people typically bring joke gifts, though I know there is typically at least ONE joke gift (one year it was a Men in Kilts calendar; last year there was something no one would tell me about, saying “What happens at Work Party stays at Work Party”). There is no price range given for the gift. I am thinking…$30? $20? $25? Something in that vicinity.

William worked for the library before I did; and the two years he went to the party, he didn’t care what gift he brought, whereas I was extremely keen to choose for him. One year I sent him with one bag each of like six or seven different Pepperidge Farm holiday (CHRISTMAS) cookies, and I wrapped them in a long line (but side by side, not end to end) so the gift would be an intriguing shape; I liked how those were festive, but wouldn’t go stale anytime soon, so could be kept for after the holidays—or, if not wanted, could easily be handed out to others in a festive manner. The other year, I sent him with a big container of chocolate Christmas tree ornaments (SORRY NON-CHRISTMAS-CELEBRATING CO-WORKERS, I WAS NOT THINKING). I asked him just now what other gifts he could remember people bringing; he remembered a big gift pack of assorted Ghirardelli chocolate squares, and that’s it.

As with the small individual gifts, my main priority (now) is that it not scream CHRISTMAS, as there are KNOWN non-Christmas-celebrators among my co-workers. And once again, I am not taking into account food allergies, scent sensitivities, etc., as there are NOT any known issues among my co-workers. I am not ruling out book-related ideas, but on the other hand I feel like this group has already covered all the book-related ideas. Oh: and I need it in a week and a half, so it can’t be something I should have started on last week/month.

My real goal, my secret goal, is to WIN. However we define “win.” I want to WIN.

This does not, however, have to be a discussion just of “What Should Swistle Bring as a Workplace Yankee Swap Gift.” I would be JUST AS if not MORE interested in hearing what YOU bring and/or are bringing and/or have brought as a workplace-or-non-workplace swap gift; or about what OTHER PEOPLE have brought to your workplace-or-non-workplace gift swaps. ANYTHING you remember about what people brought, and what other people thought. What were the gifts people FOUGHT over? What were the really MEMORABLE gifts—good or bad? What were the good sturdy options? TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU REMEMBER

To add my own anecdote: the two gifts I’ve seen fought over at previous Yankee Swaps were BOTH throw blankets.

Tomorrow is the first day of December, which means even those of us who have been celebrating Tiny Secret Festive Season (TM Nicole, HI NICOLE) can begin to celebrate more largely and openly. Even I, with my feeling that Christmas begins when we WANT it to begin, feel happier wearing my Christmas earrings when the calendar says December and it’s time to open the first item in the Countdown-to-Christmas / Advent Calendar.

An aside: Do people who did not grow up Churchy Christian know the difference between Advent and Countdown-to-Christmas? This might be mildly interesting! Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas; so for example, this year Advent begins on… Oh. Wait. Christmas Day is on Sunday this year, and I can’t remember what happens in that case. Give me a second. Okay, so Advent began already, on Sunday November 27th, because Advent ends on Christmas Eve. So then you look at Christmas Eve and count back four Sundays to November 27th this time. Advent doesn’t line up with most advent calendars (generally they’re Countdown to Christmas calendars, which begin December 1st and end on Christmas Eve or Day), which makes some of us a little twitchy, but others of us have long since adjusted to the two different uses of the word Advent/advent. It’s like those Twelve Days of Christmas things that seem intended to be used like half a Countdown calendar, rather than as something you’d start on Christmas Day.

My family had an Advent candle thing, with a central candle to be lit on Christmas Eve, and four surrounding candles to be lit each Sunday of Advent. The church had one of these, too. Some denominations use a purple/pink/white color combination; my family and I think our churches always used red/white: red candles for the four Sundays, and white for Christmas Eve. I was looking at images online to jog my memory, and I see some arrangements don’t use a central candle; perhaps they don’t do the Christmas Eve one.

Anyway! It’s funny to grow up religious and thinking OTHER religions are full of weird things, and then NOT being religious anymore and realizing one’s OWN religion was JUST AS FULL of weird things! I liked the weird Advent candle thing. My childhood family used to make a paper chain with one link for each day of Advent, and each link had an activity written on the inside of it for each night of Advent: draw pictures of the nativity; look at family albums; decorate gingerbread houses; make Christmas cards for grandparents; sing Christmas carols—that kind of thing. We’d light that week’s Advent candle while we were doing the activity; if it were a LONG activity, we might not leave the candle lit the WHOLE time, since sometimes the first candle especially could get perilously low by the end of Advent.

We took the four younger children for passport renewals, which in this case were treated more like new passport applications because all four of them were under 16 for their first passports. Last time we went through the passport process, in November 2016, it was for all seven of us, and the passport application clerk told me he had never processed such a well-organized group. For years I have treasured that praise in my heart—and, foolishly as it turned out, was hoping for similar praise this time. Instead, I got no praise, I was unfairly rebuked, and I have very low confidence that the passports will be successfully processed.

The clerk (a different clerk) made enough obvious errors (including failing to notice that William is a legal adult and does not have to have a parent involved in his passport application) that it was hard to know if his corrections to my EXTREMELY CAREFUL work (with each person’s triple-checked pile of paperwork carefully sorted and separately binder-clipped) were valid. I had filled out the form online and then printed it; when you use that method (as opposed to filling out the whole form by hand), the site warns you VERY THOROUGHLY that once you print it, you CANNOT make manual corrections; if you find an error, you must go back and start the form over again. The clerk had me make manual corrections. Perhaps the form instructions mean “You may not make manual corrections UNLESS INSTRUCTED TO DO SO BY A PASSPORT ACCEPTANCE CLERK”—but in that case, it should SAY SO. Maybe it DOES say so! Maybe I SKIMMED! All I know is, I incorporated the DO NOT MAKE MANUAL CORRECTIONS information, and then was told to MAKE MANUAL CORRECTIONS.

Furthermore, when having me make manual corrections, the clerk didn’t first tell me that I could only draw a single line through any information I was correcting. So when I scribbled something out on my first attempt, he WINCED and then had me re-fill out THE ENTIRE FORM BY HAND—which, he was RIGHT that I needed to do that after scribbling, BUT THEN HE SHOULD HAVE FRONTLOADED THE INFORMATION ABOUT THE ONE SINGLE LINE THING. He knows VIVIDLY what the rules are, AND should have extensive experience with all the things that can go wrong; whereas most passport applicants do it only one time every 5-10 years and are NOT as clear on the details. I DID NOT KNOW it had to be one single line!! And what I was scribbling out was an “x” in a box: drawing one single line through one single letter looks ridiculous.

Also, the allegedly incorrect x was one the form put there FOR me, based on other information I provided: I did not put the x in that box. (It was the one about whether the passport is in your possession or being submitted with the application. I wouldn’t have known what box to choose.) And there were many other discrepancies between what the form said/did and what the clerk said/did. The online form said a phone number was optional; the clerk said it was required. The online form said that the name of the student’s school was optional; the clerk said it was required. The form said only that a photocopy of each kid’s and each parent’s driver’s license was required and that both sides of each license had to be on one side of one sheet of paper; the clerk said all relevant licenses for each application had to be photocopied together onto the same page. The clerk may very well have been 100% correct on every single point! But, first of all, it is so irritating/destabilizing when two representatives of the same process seem to offer different information; and second of all, why does this have to be such a baffling bureaucratic ordeal??? especially for a renewal!!! even if the person WAS under 16 last time!!!

All the way home, Paul, who works all day every day with computers and computer programs, was complaining: “WHY do they have you PUT IT INTO THE COMPUTER, then TAKE IT OUT OF THE COMPUTER, then PUT IT BACK INTO THE COMPUTER?? Why is a clerk WRITING CRUCIAL INFORMATION BY HAND onto the form?? Why do they seem to be taking EVERY POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY to introduce human error into this??”

Well. It’s fine. It’s all fine. If the applications get kicked back, we’ll just go back and fix whatever was wrong, and I will hope for a different clerk.

I think the part that MOST bothers me is that the library where I work is a licensed passport acceptance station, so I could have dealt with my own highly competent and compassionate co-workers—except they are not allowed to process passport applications for family, friends, or co-workers. So we had to drive half an hour away and deal with Mr. No-Praise Wincy Pants.

Yesterday went approximately as predicted. I went to the grocery store, and although they did not have a couple of items I needed, they did have many other items I needed, and there is enough time to go again before Thanksgiving, and it made me feel better to get a start on things even though it’s not very efficient to go multiple times. And maybe when I go again, they WILL have the missing things and WON’T have some of the things I got yesterday.

Then after work I did my Target pick-up order—but first I went to HomeGoods, for therapeutic purposes. I walked slowly through the aisles and thought about buying things but did not buy those things. I also bought some things. Chocolate Christmas tree ornaments. A bag of Harry & David chocolate-covered dried cherries for my stocking. Two different Christmas dinner plates. Several rolls of Christmas wrapping paper. A bag of coffee grounds. Two of their big cute reusable Christmas bags.

Paul, by the way, keeps saying that there can’t be anything Christmassy until after Thanksgiving. No matter your philosophy FOR YOUR OWN SELF (that is, I am FULLY SUPPORTIVE of anyone’s decision to wait to start Christmas things until ANY point they personally prefer, including those people who wait until Christmas Eve; I personally have VERY STRONG FEELINGS about how Black Friday should WAIT FOR BLACK FRIDAY and NOT CONTINUE AFTER BLACK FRIDAY), I hope we can agree it’s pretty smacky to try to declare anything for other people. Oh, he is WELCOME to try to avoid Christmas ABSOLUTELY AS LONG AS HE LIKES! (And since he does about 2% of the Christmas prep, it is WELL UNDERSTANDABLE that he feels no need to get started with any sort of lead time!) But if I want to buy some Christmas things in even MID-JANUARY for the following Christmas, I am absolutely free to do that, is my stance. “And what’s it to you,” my stance continues.

Anyway, then I did the Target pick-up, and picked up Edward’s prescription. Then I came home and called the vet. This was not The Call—which is something I should have clarified earlier, given the cat’s Tender Condition. But…it is a precursor to The Call. The cat (this is the one who probably has lung cancer in addition to IBD and unpreventable kidney stones that will require regular expensive surgeries) has developed a brownish patch on his eye, which seems to be affecting the pupil in a disturbing way (i.e., pushing it out of shape). I needed to call because the cat is already seeing the vet next week for a check-up (and, presumably, To Talk), and what I needed to know was whether this new eye thing could wait until next week or if it needed to be seen more quickly. My concern was not the seriousness of the eye thing (delicate online searching reveals that in this case it is probably the cancer metastasizing), but rather whether it might be causing him pain, in which case I would want to whisk him in for…Talking, of one kind or another. I spoke to the receptionist, who asked a few pertinent and reassuringly competent-sounding questions and then put me on hold to consult a tech; she came back and said that the tech said it could wait until next week, but that we should call back if there is any discharge, if it seems to be bothering the cat, or if the cat seems to be having trouble opening/closing/blinking the eye. Which so far there is not, it does not, and he does not. I am hoping nothing happens over the Thanksgiving holiday/weekend; it does seem as if children and pets schedule their emergencies for such times.

This morning I woke up around 3:30 needing to pee, and then I lay awake thinking of all the things that needed to be done, and how stressed I was about them. Finally around 5:00 I decided to get up and do OTHER things. That is, at 5:00 a.m. I couldn’t get the Thanksgiving grocery shopping done, and I couldn’t take the car in for what needs to be done, and I couldn’t pick up Edward’s prescription, and I couldn’t call the vet about the cat. But I COULD spray bleach on the mildew that always settles in the seam of the shower, and I could put away the load of laundry I forgot in the dryer last night, and I could spray bleach in the gross toothbrush cups and let them soak, and I could put the bills out in the mailbox, and I could place a Target order for pick-up so that it would be ready when I went to pick up the prescription after work.

None of those things were the things I was lying awake agitating about, but it has gradually over many years managed to sink partially into my brain that doing ANY things that need to be done, even if they are not THE things that MOST need to be done, can reduce that terrible agitating feeling to the point where it is manageable—and in fact, even to the point where it makes it EASIER to do the things that DO need to be done. That is, I hate making phone calls—but somehow the momentum of spritzing the shower mildew and placing a Target pick-up order helps reduce my flapping levels enough that I think I will be able to call the vet this afternoon after I get home with the pick-up order and prescription.

And, because I got up early, and am all showered and dressed and scented delicately with bleach, I will have time before work to zip over the grocery store right when it opens and get the few Thanksgiving things I was most agitating about and couldn’t get in the pick-up order.

Today we bought a car (at one of the worst and most expensive possible times to buy a car) to replace the car one of our children ran into a pillar in a parking garage by “pressing the wrong pedal.” Our mechanic, who had agreed ahead of time to take a look and see what could be done, looked under the hood and said “OH. Oh. Call your insurance.” Happily this is a 10-year-old car with 160,000 miles on it. Still.

Then we came home and completed the FAFSA, the college financial aid form that, for example, says you can import your IRS tax information so you don’t have to fill it all out manually, and then makes you dig out your IRS tax information anyway for the few fields you DO have to fill out manually; and then says that after you sweat your way through the first FAFSA, you can at least click a box to automatically fill out a second FAFSA form for another child and they’ll duplicate all the information so all you’ll have to do is sign it—but when you do that option, it for whatever reason does NOT fill out all the duplicate information and in fact you have to do it all again, including re-importing your IRS tax information and then re-filling-out the IRS tax information that for some reason was not part of the import. Also the FAFSA site is very very very slow and laggy right now, and one child had to fill out their whole account information (including name, date of birth, Social Security number, security questions and answers) four times because each time they clicked “submit,” it just hung there with a little working-on-it circle, but never actually completed.

It was, in retrospect, not the right day to decide to make a cake from scratch.

Anyway, the reason I had to write “cake mix” on the list was not because I didn’t have cake mix on hand (rule one: ALWAYS HAVE CAKE MIX ON HAND, WHO KNOWS WHEN YOU MIGHT NEED TO CELEBRATE), but because I needed to replace the cake mix I used: I made a yellow cake, and in order to compensate for not having room temperature eggs I used hot water, this doesn’t seem like it has to be SO HARD. Then I made one of my favorite mixes, a brownie/cookie thing. (Paul, unwisely entering the kitchen: “Why are you panting?” Swistle: “I’m BUSY.”) At this point the cake is out of the oven and the brownie/cookie thing is in the oven, and I am feeling calmer.

The grocery store has been alarming me again. Today half a dozen things on my list weren’t there, and some of them have been ongoing not-theres: the grocery store has been low on bread (variety and quantity) for weeks; they’ve been patchy on half-and-half and light cream for weeks; they’ve had lots of paper towels and facial tissue but extremely limited variety (like, today you could buy a 6-pack of store-brand paper towels, and that one pack/brand option lined allll the shelves, with the exception of a few packs of one brand name, plus a few two-packs of the store brand); they’ve been extremely limited on granola bar variety.

We’re fully back into the times of having one or two things spread out to artificially fill the shelves that are supposed to hold dozens of things. I am fully back to reminding myself that THERE IS PLENTY OF FOOD IN THIS STORE, even if I can’t get the exact things I want. Like, it is REALLY OKAY that I can’t find my preferred brand and fat-level of dairy to put in my coffee; it is REALLY OKAY that I can’t find my preferred brand and flavor of ice cream; it is REALLY OKAY that I can’t find my preferred brand and type of bread. All of these things are REALLY REALLY OKAY, they just don’t FEEL okay without a little mental management.

Paul and I are recently back from a several-day trip to a big city. The kids are old enough to leave on their own (especially with my supremely competent neighborhood friend on-call Just In Case), and we were only a couple of hours away if something HAD gone amiss. It was fun to be tourists in a city we’ve previously gone to only for medical stuff. But it did remind me that I don’t like cities.

I DO like certain things about cities. I like the way everything is RIGHT THERE: you don’t have to drive 45 minutes for a small art museum and 45 minutes in the opposite direction for a small theater and 45 minutes in yet another direction for a historical site: the big art museum and the big theater and the historical sites and a bunch of other things plus a ton of shopping/food options are all within walking distance.

I don’t like how busy and crowded everything is in a city, and how loud. I don’t like how much CONSTANT HONKING there is. I don’t like how packed-in everything feels: I had intended to do a little shopping, but every single store seemed tiny and cramped and with about enough room for half a dozen shoppers as long as they were all on physically affectionate terms. I don’t like how EXPENSIVE everything is. I don’t like how very often I encounter puddles/piles of things I rarely if ever encounter on the streets/sidewalks in my small town.

There’s another thing I don’t like about cities, and I have been thinking of how to describe it, because the descriptor that first came to mind involved the word “parasitic,” and that’s not nice. But it’s the way everything we encountered seemed designed to squeeeeeeeeze money. We would take a tour, and the tour guide would use various types of manipulative patter to pressure us for tips. We would walk down the street and be approached by someone who would say weird and/or flattering things and then turn to the real point, which was to ask for money; and we are not city-born or city-raised, so neither of us knew what we were supposed to do about that, or how to avoid it. We would look at a city-map board, and someone would come up to us and try to help us, and we would accept the help politely even though we didn’t want it or need it—and then they would ask for money. There were gift shops everywhere, including at the LIBRARY. It was disheartening.

I didn’t actually mind the people performing (musicians, mostly, but also a woman painted to look like a statue), or the endless food/souvenir carts, or the gift shops, because it was low-pressure, money-wise, and felt like it added ambiance—but after a few days, even that started wearing on me. So much HUSTLE, so much ATTEMPTING TO SUCK MONEY OUT OF EVERY ENCOUNTERED PERSON, so many MONEY-MAKING IDEAS. So many $6 bottles of water! So many t-shirts with the city name on them, exactly the same as the ones being sold on the previous block and the next block! So many people offering rides and tours and merchandise and novelties! So much STRIVING for MONEY. I started feeling like a walking wallet, a potential mark; it started feeling as if the only reason anyone would interact with another human being was to achieve a financial transfer.

I don’t know if it’s perimenopause, or something about the keto diet, or mild undiagnosed Raynaud’s syndrome (several family members have it)—but it is pretty common for me to be VERY VERY CHILLY right after eating, and especially to have VERY COLD HANDS, sometimes with numb fingertips. One of the best treatments is to have a hot mug of tea/coffee to wrap my hands around—but the mug cools as the tea/coffee is consumed, and sometimes I don’t want tea/coffee. I don’t know why it took me until TODAY to realize I could just MICROWAVE A MUG OF WATER AND USE IT TO WARM MY HANDS. I have a mug of hot water sitting on my desk right now, and after every sentence I wrap my hands around it for a few seconds. If it gets too cool to be useful, I can simply RE-MICROWAVE IT.

(My feet can also get very chilly after I eat, but I have a foot warmer plugged in under my desk.)

Another warm thing near me right now is Elizabeth’s cat, the 12-14-year-old one who has kidney stone issues that are likely to cause us to make The Difficult Decision sometime in the next year (he has the kind that are highly likely to be recurring, and the surgery to remove them is $3000 each time), if he doesn’t first die of what is probably lung cancer. He has become my little buddy the last couple of months, which is odd not only because he has never liked any of us except Elizabeth (we didn’t acquire him to be Elizabeth’s Cat; he is the one who decided he was Elizabeth’s Cat), but also because I am the one who forces his jaw open every other day to give him a pill, and I am the one who takes him to the vet. (I am, however, the one who gives him wet food three or four times a day on the vet’s instruction, which is probably outweighing all these other factors.)

A couple of times, the vet has one of her techs call us to check on the cat. During one call, I’d asked what we should look for in terms of knowing when it would be Time To Bring Him In, and she said that cats tend to hide their suffering, so most owners bring them in later than they should—which is grim, but good to know, and also makes it feel much easier to call Sooner rather than Later, without worrying that they’ll think I seem over-eager to put the cat down. The tech said the cat would probably lose his appetite, and that we might find little clear puddles around the house: a cat who isn’t eating enough will throw up clear fluid. She also said he would start hiding more, and/or hiding in places he didn’t used to hide, and avoiding people more.

So far the cat has gained back all the weight he lost from his kidney-stone distress, and is looking full and plush. And he is SITTING ON MY LAP, which he has NEVER done: he doesn’t even sit on ELIZABETH’S lap. He has a check-up with the vet at the end of this month, and I am looking forward to asking her what this cat is trying to pull.

On the other hand, in the past few days Elizabeth brought to our attention that the cat’s pupils were not evenly dilated. I’d thought it was just the positioning of the light in the room, but we moved him around a bit and the issue persisted. So…I mean, I looked it up and there are a bunch of innocuous reasons a cat might suddenly have mismatched pupils (it could even be the medication I’m giving him every other day, but he’s been on that for a good long while so it seems like we would have noticed the pupils before now), but there are also a few reasons that would join (1) Expensive Unavoidable Recurring Kidney Stones and (2) Lung Cancer, on The List of Reasons To Put Him Down. So even though I need to pee, and my hand-warming mug of water needs re-heating, I am not moving this cat off my lap.

I just stopped myself from having a yelling episode (proposed theme of yelling: no one ever listens to me; no one cares about anything I say; no one changes their behavior even a tiny bit based on any of my reasonable requests, even when those requests BENEFIT THOSE SAME PEOPLE; I am unable to influence anyone in this house so hey how about I go live by myself; I have said all of this NICELY a THOUSAND times to NO EFFECT) by remembering how bad I felt the last time I yelled, EVEN THOUGH THE YELLING WAS RICHLY EARNED BOTH TIMES, (1) which is progress, let’s call it! and (2) which led me to want to link to the last time I yelled, but putting “yell” or “yelling” or “yelled” in my blog-post search field got too many results, which is discouraging.

I have an additional motivation for remembering when I last yelled, because after I suppressed today’s yelling impulses, noticing as I did so that it was more difficult than usual, I remembered that I donated blood today—and suddenly wondered if the day I last yelled was ALSO a blood-donation day. I do remember it was a Friday, and Friday is when the blood-donation center nearest me has their blood drives. This would be good information to have. If I am going to be yelling-inclined on blood-donation days, there are things I can do about that. I can declare Blood Donation Days to be household-chore holidays for the blood donor (both time the Yelling Impulse occurred while making dinner). I can take to my room, for everyone’s happiness and emotional safety including mine. Etc.

Let’s swing wildly to a different topic. I realized on Wednesday that I had apparently lost my mind: I had not purchased any Halloween candy. And at first this might seem entirely sane to you: we have lived in this house for three Halloweens so far, and we have never had a single trick-or-treater. And that’s what worries me, because that is why it seemed sane to ME to buy no trick-or-treat candy. I had thought it through, concluding that if we DID suddenly get trick-or-treaters, I keep enough individually-wrapped candy and snack-cakes in the house that we could muddle through. It was only on Wednesday that I remembered our household Halloween tradition of filling the two largest plastic mixing bowls with candy and eating it freely while watching Halloween shows. (I do not watch the Halloween shows. Paul and the kids watch the Halloween shows. I take my candy and go into another room.)

And when I say it worries me, I mean it actually does worry me a little! How could I have been coasting along without thinking of that?? It’s a little as if we got to December 20th and I realized, wait, I don’t just put up a Christmas tree for the VIEWERS OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE!! Well. Anyway. After work on Thursday I went to Target and spent…let’s not discuss irrelevant details. I was pretty relieved to see candy choices still available, let’s say THAT—because when I’d tried to arrange curbside pick-up, I’d found that NOTHING was available.