Elizabeth and Edward both got into one of the safety schools they both applied to, and that is a huge relief: now, no matter what other colleges they do or don’t get into, they CAN go to a perfectly acceptable, relatively-reasonably-priced college.

I am trying to take the long view. I am trying very hard to take the long view. I remember this from the last two times: the decision feels SO IMPORTANT, and it IS so important—but it is impossible to know in what ways it is important. Perhaps their SOUL MATES (and potentially THE OTHER PARENTS OF MY GRANDCHILDREN) are at certain ones of these schools!! Yes, and there is no way to know which ones. Perhaps their DREAM JOBS will come from certain ones of these schools!! Yes, and there is no way to know which ones. Perhaps their LIFELONG FRIENDS are at certain ones of these schools!! Yes, and there is no way to know which ones. And so ALL of those things have to be scratched out of the equation. What matters for each twin’s choice is that the school is a perfectly acceptable school, and that we can pay for it within reason. Everything else is extra, and the luck of the draw.

One of my co-workers graduated from this same safety school the twins have both been accepted to. She went there in not-at-all-ideal circumstances: she got into her dream school, and had to transfer after freshman year because of a dramatic change in family situation/finances. She was bitter and resentful and says she was prepared to hate everything and everyone—and then she ended up loving the new school MUCH more than she’d loved her initial choice. Her daughter now goes to the same safety school under different but similarly resentful circumstances: she missed the GPA cut-off for her dream school by a tiny amount, and the school wouldn’t bend on it. Her intention was to go to the safety school for one year to bring her grades up and then transfer—but then she ended up loving the safety school so much, she stopped wanting to transfer.

Both twins find this safety school very, very boring, but I am feeling happy.

I have an update on the tattoo progress. I have achieved an appointment with the tattoo artist I wanted, for March!! In the immortal words of TMBG, everyone’s excited and confused.

As I was trying to fill out the appointment-request form under intense time pressure, I realized I SIMPLY COULD NOT choose an upper-arm tattoo from among the many appealing candidates: an upper-arm tattoo was my first choice, but that first choice was not yet Ready, EVEN INCORPORATING the realization that I have TWO upper arms. I could, however, choose with confidence a tulip tattoo on my calf. So I filled out the form for tulip tattoo on my calf, and my appointment request was accepted.

Of course immediately after celebrating I began having fretful follow-up feelings. First fretful follow-up feeling: I think I said TOO SMALL a tattoo. The form required a size, and I said approximately six inches. But I think I probably meant eight. Or ten? I don’t want a WEE MINIATURE. On the other hand, my summer “shorts” are a source of affectionate teasing in my household: the claim is that my summer shorts are about three inches shorter than my winter jeans. And it’s true they are RATHER MODEST, as shorts go, and they do descend BELOW THE KNEES. And I do not want my tulip tattoo to be visible in shorts as only STEM!

The ONLY THING I would need to do to alleviate/justify this fret is go put on my summer shorts and measure how much calf is visible, but somehow I am not doing this and am instead just doing the fretting part.

Second fretful follow-up feeling: the tulip is a pleasing choice to me because I like tulips and think they are pretty, and they are one of my favorite flowers, and I find them psychologically supportive in winter (the comforting anticipation of them coming up in spring, but also they are available from my grocery store in January/February so I buy them weekly) and I think they are fun as calf tattoos. But ALSO, I’m half Dutch, so there is a pleasing little ancestral reference there. SO WHY DIDN’T I THINK EARLIER OF HAVING MY BIRTH SURNAME INCORPORATED INTO THE TATTOO?? Well, I still can! I hope! And if not: I can go back for another appointment and get it added then.

Let’s say your child has a new friend, and your child has told you that this friend’s name is Cameron and that Cameron uses they/them pronouns. Then let’s say that Cameron’s mother drops Cameron off at your house and says to you, “Oh, so Chloe is getting picked up by her dad at 4:00—but if that falls through, I can come get her, but not until 6:00, is that okay?”

Here was the response I wanted to communicate to the mother: That’s fine; or, and probably this is what you’re asking: yes, we can absolutely give the child a ride home.

Here’s what I could not figure out in the surprise and confusion of the moment: How to say that in a way that was correct AND safe, when I didn’t know what the situation was and had just discovered it wasn’t what I’d thought it was. Was Cameron not out to their parents? Was Cameron out to their parents, but the parents weren’t cooperating? Was there some other arrangement, like that Cameron told their parents this was still in the experimental stage and not yet locked-down, and that they (the parents) should continue using Chloe/she/her for now? (Paul wondered if maybe Cameron might be out to their parents AND Cameron’s parents might be respectful of that, but that Cameron’s mom might not know if Cameron is out to US. But…in that situation, Cameron’s mother could easily ASK Cameron ahead of time in the car; and if she’d realized on the spot that she’d forgotten to do that, she would be more careful / less blatant, so I don’t think of that as a real possible scenario.)

In the moment, what I did was I said “Oh, sure, that’s fine, or we can absolutely give her a ride home.” Then Cameron’s mom said “Bye, Chloe!!” and Cameron said “Bye, Mom,” and I closed the door and called out “Henry! Cameron is here!” Partial marks; please see teacher after class.

I am not practiced with this; I am working on improving. Most of my work involves thinking AFTERWARD of what I SHOULD HAVE said in a situation where it turned out I was ill-prepared, and then rehearsing it again and again in my mind so it’ll be readily available to my mouth next time. In this case, what I should have said to Cameron’s mom was something more like “Oh, sure—and WE can give a ride home if needed.” No need to use any pronoun for Cameron, let alone the wrong one. This is the early stages of the process, so I’m hoping I come up with something better to practice, but at least I have SOMETHING. (And then next time it’ll be something ELSE, and I’ll add THAT new modification to my repertoire, and perhaps by the time I die I will be getting some of these right the first time!)

I bought some earrings on clearance. I very nearly did NOT buy them, because they were the only thing I’d found on a trip to TJMaxx, and for whatever reason I dislike buying Just One Thing, especially when I’m still pushing around the entire optimistic-and-now-ridiculous shopping cart. But I was persevering in overcoming that feeling (Coping Thought: the cashier COULD NOT CARE LESS that I am buying just one thing) (okay: Elizabeth, who is a part-time cashier, has notified me that she DOES notice if someone is pushing a cart and buying just one thing, and she DOES wonder What Happened There); but then it was my turn and, at that pivotal moment, one of the two cashiers left and the other one busied herself with something time-consuming, so that I stood there minute after minute, feeling more and more self-conscious and more and more as if I did NOT need to spend eight dollars, even if it WERE a nice clearance, on YET ANOTHER pair of—oh, she’s calling me up, it’s my turn, okay I guess I’m doing it.

And I wore them today and I love them so much more than I was expecting to, and I got SEVERAL comments when normally my earrings elicit NO comments! Do you know what is difficult? Taking a picture of one’s own ear with an earring in it. Here are my two attempts:

Earring blurry and at a non-ideal angle.

Earring a little better but still not right, and now ear looks warped.

ANYWAY the gist is that they’re sort of a safety-pin style, but with a heart. All day I kept noticing them and enjoying them.

I wanted to see if I could find more earrings of a similar type, so I started by searching “safety pin earrings” and found a whole lot of safety pin earrings that looked like safety pins BUT ALSO I found two more pairs by the same brand as mine (Lucky) in gold-tone and in silver-tone. In case you think you might like to buy yourself your own little Valentine’s Day present. I am going to buy one of the two, when I can decide which one I’d prefer.

And HERE are my exact earrings currently unavailable on the Lucky website:

(image from LuckyBrand.com)

I used to actively dislike/avoid heart-shaped jewelry, and I’m not sure what changed but now I am surprising myself by starting to like it. I also have some little red-enamel-heart dangles like the ones in the middle of the top row here, and I am looking forward to wearing them especially in February, and in fact I am thinking of buying the six-pack to have more options:

(image from Amazon.com)

I said above that I’m not sure what changed, but actually I am pretty sure I know exactly what changed, and it was when I stopped thinking of Valentine’s Day as a disappointing day with a boyfriend/husband, and started thinking of it as a fun day of red/pink/hearts/candy with friends and kids and co-workers. I bought heart-shaped plastic plates to serve dinner on, and I bought heart-patterned matching mugs for my friend group, and I buy myself a heart-shaped box of See’s, and I buy giant Hershey Kisses and valentine Little Debbie cakes for the kids, and I send a pop-up valentine to my niece and nephew, and I wear a heart t-shirt to work, and I buy classroom-style valentines for my co-workers just to be silly (this year I’m doing Fun Dip!), and now apparently I also buy heart-shaped earrings.

I was trying to choose a page-a-day calendar, and I ended up buying one that wasn’t even on the list: Effin’ Birds page-a-day calendar. And it turns out I don’t really like it. I’d seen Effin’ Birds images as memes around the internet and had found them funny, but in a page-a-day desk calendar it’s bringing me down. Like, this weekend’s message was “could you shut the f*** up before i die,” which seems less snappy/irreverent and more depressed/mean. Today’s is better (“feel free to leave me out of your bullsh*t”), but I am still shopping for a new calendar. Bright side: most of them are 50% off now! And the longer I dither, the cheaper they get!

Rob’s birthday is very close to Christmas, and this was the first one since his birth that he’s been away from us. The day I was going to be shipping his birthday box (I was waiting for one last-second item that was due to arrive mid-day), I was at the grocery store and I impulsively bought a cake. I had previously considered various cake options, but they all seemed unworkable: I could bake a cake, but there was no way I could successfully package or ship it, and anyway I doubted it would be much good to eat a few days after baking; I could have a cake delivered to him, but the prices for that were astonishing; I could send him a cake mix and a can of frosting, but I didn’t know if he had oil and eggs and cake pans—and it seemed like a collection of Can’t Make It Into Cake elements would be worse than No Cake At All.

But then on the way to the produce section my eye fell on the Entenmann’s display. Those cakes are made to be hold up to a fair amount of slinging-around before they’re sold, and they appeared to be approximately the size of the medium flat-rate box I was planning to use. And they were marked “Best by January 17th,” so Entenmann’s expected them to still taste good TWO WEEKS after the day I would be buying/shipping it. And they were about $7, so I figured even if I shipped one and it was a failure, it was still worth trying for the fun experiment of it and for the symbolic intent of it. And I even got a little test-run of my idea, because the cake fell out of a tipped-over shopping bag on the way home, and it landed upside-down, and there was no consequence: the cake did not come out of its pan, the frosting did not stick to the lid, etc.

And it was apparently a success! Rob said it was particularly amusing to open a box and start taking out presents and find an unexpected CAKE underneath; and also he said he’d just been talking with a friend earlier that day, and had mentioned that he hadn’t thought about a birthday cake until it was too late, so he’d been planning to make do with banana bread. Which is AT LEAST as grim as any bashed-up icing-stuck-to-lid cake I could have sent! (No no—banana bread isn’t grim, it’s DELICIOUS. But as an alternative to birthday cake, on a person’s first independent grown-up birthday away from their parents, chosen ONLY because the person didn’t realize in time that they would need to figure out their own birthday cake—well then it’s grim.)

The one thing I wished I’d thought to include: CANDLES. That would have been so easy, and not expensive! Well, but does he have matches? Probably not. I have a bunch of those cute wee little boxes of matches, but I am NOT AT ALL SURE about sending those through the mail, and my guess is that the answer to any such question posed to the post office would be a gigantic panicked hands-waving-wildly NO. Plus, WOULD he put the candles into the cake, light them, and blow them out, all alone? I am guessing also no. And in fact I feel a little dismal, thinking of it, so now I am glad/relieved I didn’t send the candles. Whew! Close call!

I have one resolution this year, and it’s to get a tattoo. I’ve waffled long enough.

Some progress I’ve already made over the past few years is to find the tattoo artist I want. This was no small task. Any time I saw anyone with a tattoo I liked, I’d ask where they’d gotten it done, and I kept a list. I have a preference for a non-male artist, though I was willing to be flexible on that; but also I want flowers, and a lot of times I’d be looking through an artist’s portfolio and it would be all, like, skulls and snakes and SpongeBob. It’s hard to tell from that how they’d do with the nice pretty flowers I wanted.

Then one of my co-workers came in with some new flower tattoos of exactly the sort I was looking for, and it turns out the artist SPECIALIZES in the realistic flower tattoos I like. And also she is so booked up, she is not even adding to her waiting list anymore. If, however, you are on her email list, she will email when she has cancellations; I don’t know how likely it is to get one of those appointments because I haven’t yet tried, because I’m not yet ready. I am still dithering. I am dithering about LOCATION and I am dithering about ART. I wonder if you would want to discuss this.

For LOCATION I am considering:
• side of calf
• upper arm / shoulder cap

For ART I am considering:
• rose
• peony
• tulip

The main issue for location is this: if I love having a tattoo and I want MORE of them, what I would want would be an entire bouquet on my upper arm and up/over/around the shoulder. But I don’t want to START with that, because that’s wildly ambitious and time-consuming and expensive for something I don’t even know if I’ll like. If I started with one single flower on my upper arm / shoulder cap, it would have to be with the ability to expand it into a bouquet, and that means compromising the design, both of the flower and of the bouquet.

So I could instead do one flower on the side of my calf. I don’t have any grand plans for the calf. And I have seen some cute tattoos where there’s, say, a tulip that starts at the ankle, like it’s growing out of your sock; I don’t know that I want that much whimsy, but it’s an option. Or I like the idea of a big rose or peony there, NOT seeming to grow out of the sock. And so the calf seems like the perfect solution—except that when I think of it, I feel some disappointment that it’s not my upper arm / shoulder cap.

I have to tell you that it only just now occurred to me as I was writing this that I have TWO shoulders/upper-arms. I could get a tattoo on ONE of them now, and then if I love it do the big grand project on the OTHER one. This changes everything: TWO arms! I have TWO!!

The main issue for the art is this: it’s hard to decide, when I love all the options. The rose is so classic it’s cliché, but that’s one of the things I like about it: it’s a TATTOO-tattoo. Plus, roses are the kind of thing where conceptually I roll my eyes, but then I see a real rose and you guys have you LOOKED AT A ROSE THEY ARE SO BEAUTIFUL. Peonies are also gorgeous, and have a similar vibe to a rose while not being a rose, and if I want whimsy I can add a darling round little peony bud. And I love tulips, and I’m predominantly Dutch so that’s pleasing too. A tulip is not as great as a bouquet-starter, but would be perfect for the side of the calf, especially with that nice stem; and I could do TWO tulips, which I think makes it a little less whimsical than just one straight tulip growing right up the calf.

Based on how I feel when I imagine deciding on each flower in turn, I think the most likely is peony on upper arm (ONE of my upper arms!) and second most likely is tulip(s) on calf. I would be very interested to hear YOUR tattoo thoughts—for my tattoos, of course, but even more for your own if you are planning one.

I am not panicking, but today I went to the grocery store, and I was first alerted to The Egg Issue because the entire egg section was filled exclusively with the cheapest store-brand white-shelled eggs. We usually buy the ones where the government has certified that the chickens are kissed on the forehead each night before being sung to sleep in their roomy apartments, so I admit I had a moment where I thought it would be nice to have the excuse to buy the cheap eggs: the petted-chicken eggs used to be $3.29/dozen but recently have been more like $4.39/dozen. But then I noticed that NO, the cheap store-brand eggs were $5.99/dozen!! I thought I must be mistaken—looking at the wrong tag or something. I WAS NOT MISTAKEN. The cheap, large, store-brand eggs were $5.99; the jumbo size were $7.99.

On the way home I heard that the avian flu is a big huge deal right now. I had not bought any eggs, because I was hoping the price was a brief weird thing, but this might not be a brief weird thing. For a moment I wished we had gotten chickens as we have a few times considered doing, but then the news story went on to talk about how chicken-owners need to take precautions and be prepared to have their flocks put down, and I was grateful I only needed to think about the price of eggs.

As long as I am talking about bad news, I have some sad-but-expected cat news: we had to make The Decision about Elizabeth’s Dear Sad-Boy Cat, the one with recurring kidney stones, IBS, and cat laryngitis that turned out to be likely lung cancer. In November I wrote he seemed to have unexpectedly rallied, but then later that month he started losing weight again. He started sometimes missing his footing on a jump, which was alarming. He had a regular annual check-up already scheduled with the vet, so I took him to that, but said to the tech who was doing his little intake interview that I doubted we would be doing his usual senior bloodwork and so forth, but would instead be having The Talk.

And that was indeed the case. The weird pupils, which had turned into weird pupils plus a strange-but-not-gross brownish patch on his iris, turned out to be evidence of the cancer having metastasized to his brain. The missing-his-footing-on-a-jump could be weakness from not eating much, or could be the tumor messing with his brain, or could be the tumor messing with his eyesight, or could be a combination of those things. The vet said if we were emotionally ready she could put him down that very day, or she could buy him maybe a week or two. We asked if he was suffering, and she said she believed he was not—and that if she HAD thought he was suffering, she would not have offered to buy him more time. I consulted with Elizabeth, and we opted to buy him maybe a week or two. This involved first a sort of barrage of treatments to see if we could make him feel well enough to eat better: subcutaneous fluids with vitamins; an anti-nauseant; an appetite stimulant; and an increase in the dose of the steroids he already takes. The vet also said that at this stage it didn’t matter WHAT he ate, as much as it mattered THAT he ate, so we were to give him what he wanted; so I went to the store and bought pretty much one each of every single product marketed to owners of fluffy white cats eating out of crystal dishes.

It did buy him nearly two weeks, though toward the end I was wondering every day if we might have to make an expensive and traumatic trip to the emergency vet. I would have opted to put him down the Friday a week and a half after his The Talk appointment, but Elizabeth asked for the following Monday so she could have the weekend with him, and I double-checked with the vet who said that was not unreasonable (but also gave us a list of local agencies that would do emergency euthanasia). And he did make it to Monday. Elizabeth and I brought him in. It was very sad, but also a relief to have things ending peacefully and before he was suffering, and without an emergency.

Now we are down to two cats. One of them, a smart bossy mean orange-and-white queen, does not seem to notice that we are missing a cat—or if she does notice, she’s glad (she didn’t like that cat). The other of them, a classic sweet-‘n’-dippy orange male, has been wandering the house meowing and acting weird, and being snuggly; the girl cat has finally relented and allowed him to snuggle with her sometimes on the couch, which seems to be helping somewhat.

This year I felt like I took on board two absolutely obvious Christmas lessons that apparently I have to keep learning again and again:

1. Christmas doesn’t always have to be the same. What seems DELIGHTFUL and IMPORTANT one year can be totally different than what seems delightful and important the next year.

2. It’s a good idea to have a few little good-for-anyone gifts around.

I kept feeling like Something Was Wrong because we weren’t watching as many Christmas movies, or because this year I couldn’t find A Book for Each Stocking the way I have in the past—but we don’t have to do it the same every year, and in fact if the past few years have taught me anything it’s that FLEXIBILITY IS VALUABLE: if it isn’t a set-in-stone tradition that we absolutely must have chocolate oranges every year, then it is not so upsetting if chocolate oranges are not available. And just in general: there is no reason to waste time and effort and money on things we don’t even want, just because we used to want them, or think we ought to want them.

You can do new-Christmas-pajamas-on-Christmas-Eve OCCASIONALLY if you want: it doesn’t have to be EVERY SINGLE YEAR until every bureau drawer in the house is filled with nothing but Christmas pajamas. You can do an expensive and work-intensive customized advent calendar ONCE if you want, or ONLY when you have the time/inspiration, and do $2 cheap-chocolate-a-day calendars on other years. You can set up a card table and put out a Christmas puzzle just on the years when you feel like it. You can buy books only for the kids who like books, without having to make everyone’s presents match, or make everyone’s presents fit a little rhyme. You can buy tickets for an expensive Christmas performance ONCE, without having to do it every single year. Etc.

And you can do it this way EVEN IF other people in your household express disappointment that you are not putting in all the time and money and effort to make these things happen for them every single year! You can say merrily “Oh, yes, wasn’t that fun, the year we did that? Maybe we’ll do that again another year!” Or, if you are speaking to another adult in your household, you can say merrily “Oh, yes, wasn’t that fun? It’s not on my to-do list for this year, but you can go ahead if you think it would be fun to do again!”

As for the supply of little general-purpose gifties, this wasn’t something I would have done in our poorer years, because I think it only works if you’re fine with having some of the things unused. But this year by accident I overbought and/or overreceived a few things that happened to be perfect for this: a box of chocolate-covered mint marshmallows from Trader Joe’s; a bag of Lindt truffles; extra candy and extra individual Milano cookie packets from the stockings. I had put those things aside in a bag to Figure Out What To Do With Later. Also into the Figure Out Later bag I’d dropped some miscellaneous things: the too-pretty-to-throw-out-OR-ARE-THEY? golden net bags the Trader Joe’s chocolate coins came in; some pretty tissue paper from received gift bags; etc.

So then when I was putting out the gift card for the mail carrier, my eye fell upon the Figure Out Later bag and I added one of the little pretty golden net bags filled with a packet of Milano cookies and some of the Lindt truffles and extra stocking candy. And when I was putting together the gift bag for my workplace Secret Santa assignment, I added a handful of Lindt truffles just for flair. It didn’t feel NECESSARY in any way, so it’s not something I’d recommend if money is tight; but it did feel FESTIVE and FUN. (And, if money IS tight, I’ll mention that about half of my Figure Out Later bag was made up of things I was given / couldn’t use, and things-that-came-free-with-other-things like the Trader Joe’s coin bags, and things that were extra after I divided things up for stockings.)

If you have any shopping left in you, and would like to order yourself a nice little package to arrive after Christmas, may I strongly recommend these wee snowflake plates and wee snowflake bowls? They look so bland in their listing, but I am finding them hugely pleasing in usage—and I am happy to think of being able to continue to use them as Winter Dishes even after I put the Christmas Dishes away (always a sad day).

(image from Target.com)

(image from Target.com)

They are quite small. The bowls are like the berry bowls from my grandmother’s china set; do china sets still have berry bowls? You might use them for a side of jello salad, or for M&Ms, or for giving your kids some cut-up fruit. The plates are the size called “appetizer.” We use them for a couple of cookies, or for a square of cake, or for a dinner roll and some butter.

Anyway I just love them and I use them all the time. I normally tend toward bright!! colorful!! things, and these non-bright non-colorful dishes are making me doubt all my decisions. The way the glaze has settled into the embossed designs does something soothing to my brain. I wish there were a matching mug.

I will warn you that my first order of bowls arrived broken. Target immediately replaced them, and the second set arrived fine—but if you feel you might not be emotionally up to receiving a box of broken ceramic in January, and then perhaps finding out they’re sold out and there will be no replacement, well, it’s something to take into account.

I was thinking maybe next year I’d track all the hours I spent shopping for and wrapping presents, writing and sending Christmas cards, etc. Almost immediately I thought NO LET’S NOT. First of all: probably we don’t wish to know, especially if we might then be tempted to tally up the hours spent on Christmas preparation by the OTHER adult member of the household. Second of all: a large portion of it is HAPPY BUSYNESS, and we do not make a tally of our happy busyness as if it were a work timesheet. This is also why I don’t want my phone telling me how many hours I spent playing Love Nikki Dress-Up Queen this year.

But gosh it is a lot of time and a lot of aforethought. I didn’t have work today, and I DO have work tomorrow, Friday, and Christmas Eve, so after the kids were off to school I went directly to the grocery store, where I did our last Big Shop before Christmas; I’ll do one more small run-in probably on Friday, maybe Saturday, but I want that to be brisk and Essentials Only. Then I came home and wrapped presents. This involved NUMEROUS side-quests of various kinds: writing explanatory notes to go with a couple of peculiar gifts (I got someone the Ennui Duck); wrapping a candy bar with a print-out of the item that is arriving late; opening more packages that arrived while I was wrapping. I also sorted all the stocking stuff into piles, and then bagged them so they’ll be ready for putting into stockings.

The main issue this year, I think, is that I took on a LOT more fun Christmas activities all at once, most of them gift-related (a workplace Secret Santa; workplace Yankee Swap; little co-worker gift bags; items for a local gift drive; etc.), and I would definitely want to do all those things again next year, because they were all exactly the kind of fun I like—but I need to make sure I budget the extra time and energy for them, because this year I did not, and there were several moments where I experienced fleeting feelings that were not entirely festive.

Well. OVERALL it HAS been festive if a little frantic, and now that I am in the last eddying whirls of preparation, I am starting to have more time to enjoy reading Christmas stories by the light of the Christmas tree; gazing appreciatively at the Christmas cards up on the wall around a door frame; gazing appreciatively at the Christmas ornaments; making sure I have used all of my Christmas mugs at least once.