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.

1. It got chilly enough for jeans, so I started putting on jeans, and my jeans are far more tattered and ill-fitting than I remember them being when I put them aside at the beginning of summer. I would say ONE of the pairs is acceptable to wear to work.

2. That one pair was in the laundry.

3. So today I wore a skirt to work. It is a long, tiered, dark-grey skirt, with a hot pink liner that shows under the bottom edge and also through the eyelet lace of the bottom tier of the skirt. I do not remember when/where I acquired this skirt but it was an amount of time ago that would be measured in decades rather than years. The last time I remember wearing it, Elizabeth was in kindergarten and the mothers were invited to a Mother’s Day event.

4. Anyway, I wore it (with a pink rose t-shirt and green Converse and one of these to prevent thigh-chafing), and it worked well even for the physical parts of my job, and it felt kind of cute and swishy to wear, and it seemed like the exact right amount of witchy for this time of year.

(image from Amazon.com)

5. But it does not have pockets, so it is dead to me. I came home from work and ordered new jeans from Maurices and from Old Navy. We’ll see if any of them fit at all. The jeans-fit problem feels like it has really leveled up in perimenopause.

6. Do you know of any long skirts with pockets?—ideally ones you yourself have tried and found good and lined and swishy and full of pocket? I looked briefly on Amazon but got overwhelmed—and also frustrated by the ones that looked good so I clicked through and oh actually they don’t have pockets.

7. Would you like to recommend good jeans for perimenopause and beyond? I wear a 16, and I am a fairly classic pear-shape.

I am drinking instant coffee because the coffeemaker broke. And this was the back-up coffeemaker! The first one broke completely a few months ago, and I was so happy we had this one (my parents’, which they gave us when they moved) all set to go! And now this coffeemaker too has shuffled off. This is not a good time to be alive, for coffeemakers.

I don’t want to speak for you, but I’m not sure any of us have the internal fortitude (shouldn’t that be “intestinal fortitude”? never mind, I prefer internal) for another “What coffeemaker should I buy??” discussion. I will probably just repurchase one of the two that broke.

One of them was a Cuisinart, and here are the things I didn’t like: it was hard to pour water into the reservoir without spilling it everywhere, which I blamed on myself until I was using a different coffee maker and I did not spill; it took a long time to brew; it was made of fast-rusting material, so that the heat plate rusted immediately and also a metal plate on the UNDERSIDE of the coffeemaker rusted, so that there were rust stains on the counter; it broke after four years, which according to the reviews was about two years longer than I should have expected. I liked that it made 14 cups (Paul drinks the leftover coffee iced), and I liked how easy the maker itself was to use, aside from the water issue, and how easy the carafe was to clean, and I liked that I could set it up to brew automatically the next morning (especially considering how long the brewing took).

The one from my parents was a Braun, and it was the kind with a thermal carafe. I liked that it kept the coffee hot for a long time, and I liked that it was FAST-brewing—though I found I trusted a fast-brewing machine less, like maybe it’s not really giving the grounds TIME. I liked that it DIDN’T TURN INTO A HEAP OF RUST. I didn’t like the difficulty of cleaning the carafe and lid, and I felt like the maker itself was difficult to use: a lid that screwed on in a certain way, a swing-out basket for the filter/grounds that didn’t snap back into place in a confidence-inspiring manner.

boring post about coffeemakers;
quick: add kitten picture

GUESS WHAT WE GOT A KITTEN:

(holding back paw with front paw)

(yelling at me from the top of the stairs)

It was not my intention to get a kitten.  Kittens can be challenging, and they have the danger-seeking instincts of human toddlers, and also they tend to be adopted quickly, and also I think of them as being better adopted in pairs. And kittens get into drawers and cupboards and dryers and closing doors. But we have been trying to replace our dear departed Third Cat since about January, and I kept refreshing the shelter’s cat section, and it kept being cats who were, say, already 12 years old or, even more importantly, not good with other cats. Or there would be a great cat, but it would be available right before we were about to leave for England for a week.

Anyway, finally I became willing to consider kittens, and then a couple weeks ago the most perfect kitten was on the site: cute as heck, but more importantly it said she was very good with other cats. I made an appointment to see her. And the shelter employee led me into a room with half a dozen kittens, and I met the kitten I had in mind—and she didn’t seem right for us. First of all, she was 8 weeks old, which I knew but hadn’t fully processed; an 8-week-old kitten is about the size of a large baked potato. But also, she seemed like she was a baby sassy queen, and we already have a sassy queen.

I continued to hang out with the kittens. There was a very sweet little orange-and-white boy one, just exactly as perfectly sweet and dumb as boy-oranges can be—but we already have two orange-based cats, including one sweet/dumb boy-orange, and Elizabeth has said no more orange ones for now. Elizabeth is not the boss of us, but three orange-type cats does start to seem like the beginning of a hoarding issue, in a way that three cats of assorted colors does not. Plus, this was another baked-potato-sized kitten. They seem so unformed at that age; I felt nervous to deal with something so tiny.

Gradually I became aware of another kitten hiding under/behind some Hiding Furniture. I noticed two things about this kitten: (1) the kitten kept snuggling up to a sleeping friend, which seemed like a good sign for getting along with other cats; (2) the kitten was hiding, but kept LOOKING at me—and not cringing or turning away, even though it was hiding and wasn’t coming out to meet me.

I talked with the shelter employee for awhile about it; she looked in the kitten’s file and said he was a boy, and that he was available, and that he was 4 months old—which feels to me like a MUCH better age for a kitten. At 4 months, they’re more like a bag of flour: still little danger-seekers, but there’s a whole category of places they can no longer get into. I had a good feeling about this kitten, and adopted him without even really seeing what he looked like: I could tell he had black and white fur, but that was it.

Well. I don’t want to speak too soon, but he’s just been THE BEST. He’s interactive with people, which is not required but we do enjoy that. We don’t require cuteness, either, but I think he’s VERY cute; he often has this wide-eyed Blown Away expression on his face. But best of all, he seems to understand Cat Politics: when one of our two adult cats hisses at him, he stops/drops/rolls and shows his belly, almost bored—like, “Oh for real? Oh, okay, fine, yes, I will assume the posture; there, are we done? can we play now?” Our bossy queen is not going to want to play with him, probably (she’s the kind of cat who likes to interact mostly with people, not other cats), but she will co-exist with him as long as he doesn’t cringe and run: when our former cat cringed and ran, she HAD to chase him, it made her so angry. This kitten defers to her but isn’t scared of her, and I think that’s going to work well for them. She licked his head this morning, though she then immediately hissed at him again.

And we hardly dare hope that this kitten could be a friend for our boy-orange, our boy-orange who has been sad and lonely since his friend died in December. But it looks as if that relationship is starting out well so far: there has been a lot of nose-sniffing and tail-sniffing, and one tentative play session. My hope is that soon there will be snuggling.

William is back at college now, and we are down to one child in the house, and I will tell you I am not altogether cool with these developments. I am experiencing a time of making non-equivalent comparisons: that is, I think to myself, incorrectly, in an attempt to self-soothe, things like “This is what families with only TWO children feel after the VERY FIRST child goes to college!!” But in a family with two children, when their first child goes, they are down to HALF THEIR CHILDREN, whereas when my first child left I lost only 20% of my children! And, in a similar vein, when a family with two children is down to only one child, they are down to HALF THEIR CHILDREN, whereas I am down to 20% of my children! And you may wonder, why is she all worked up NOW, when she already went from five to four to three and now to one?—but all summer I have had FOUR children at home, which is almost my FULL ALLOTMENT, and now it feels very abrupt to be suddenly down to one. Anyway what I’m saying is that in this frame of mind it’s tempting to make inaccurate/unuseful comparisons, and I am not in the right frame of mind to sort them out, so I beg your indulgence as I spin out a little.

Here is something I noticed RIGHT AWAY. Normally, when Paul and I are going on an errand, let’s say to the grocery store, or maybe we want to see if we can replace the recliner the cats have absolutely CHEWED UP; when, as I say, we are going on an errand, we say to the nearest child, ideally the O.A.T. (Oldest Available Thistle—this is taken from O.A.P., Oldest Available Penderwick), “Child, attend to this announcement: your parents are going on an errand,” and we assume that child will alert/inform the others as needed. If no children are in our vicinity, and/or if all children are sleeping, we will leave a note: “Mother and Father have gone on an errand 9:15 a.m.” or whatever.

But here is what I noticed within an hour of being down to one child: when Paul and I were thinking of going out to replace the recliner, I thought of notifying Henry—but then my overriding inclination was to INCLUDE HENRY. Like, INVITE HIM ON THE BORING ERRAND. I wonder if this happens with Only Children. In the years since the children were old enough to be left on their own, it has felt only LIBERATING to leave them alone as we go on errands without them; now, suddenly, with only one child left, it feels Unsettling. And this happened, as I say, within hours of dropping the other child at college: it was an almost immediate and automatic adjustment—and perhaps not a permanent one. My guess is that my parents, who had two children, did not feel this way after dropping me at college—but perhaps they DID!! Perhaps they felt similarly unsettled about my poor brother, a small sad helpless baby junior in high school, as Henry is!

Similarly, it suddenly feels weird to imagine going on a Date Night, unless Henry has plans of his own for that evening. I’m not saying it SHOULD seem weird, and please remember I am literally less than 12 hours into this new frame of mind so this is not where I’m planning to STAY—but it feels to me like there is a WORLD of difference between the scenario where Paul and I leave three or four or five kids to eat pizza and watch a movie while we go out alone for dinner, and this new scenario where we leave Henry alone while we go out for a special dinner. If you see what I mean.

Even GOING TO BED feels different, or it does on this the first night of it! Normally when Paul and I head for bed, we have been leaving THREE TO FOUR CHILDREN still up! We have locked up, but we have WORRIED NOT about the lights, or about the overall emotional stability/support of the household! No, we go to bed before 10:00, and they stay up later, and we don’t any of us fret ourselves! But now: now! The two of us go to bed, leaving, what, Henry alone? in the house? to figure out the rest of the evening?? the lights?? ALL OF IT??

I have three things to recommend:

1. The Barbie movie. Perhaps you have heard of it! If it seems like it could remotely be your thing (I did not like Barbie as a child, and yet the movie was still very much my thing), I suggest seeing it in a theater, because I think it is fun to have been part of a huge cultural event/reference, and this seems like a huge cultural event/reference, and I think you will be glad to be able to say you saw it in the theater.

2. Trader Joe’s dried mandarin oranges. They don’t look as good as they taste. I need to mention, though, that although I went absolutely wild for them and am going to buy like six bags the next time I’m there (our Trader Joe’s is about 40 minutes away, so it’s a rare visit), I made three family members try them, and none of those family members liked them at all. It was baffling to me. I also love the Trader Joe’s dried orange slices, which are a different flavor: bitter along with the sweet, because you eat the peel. But the mandarins are so tart and sweet, and not as pithy as they look like they’d be! Why didn’t anyone else like them?

3. The book Shark Heart, by Emily Habeck (Target link, Amazon link—but I recommend getting it from the library).

(image from Target.com)

It’s an ODD BOOK, and it is the kind of odd that sometimes I like and sometimes I can’t tolerate. This time it was the kind I really liked. I think it would make a fun gift, because the recipient would read aloud the flap description and everyone would say “whaaaaaaaaaa,” and that would be some Gift Value right there, even if they didn’t end up liking the book!