I am currently living the kind of life where I pretty often do things that don’t really make EFFICIENCY sense (such as driving round-trip 40 minutes to pick up a Target order without combining it with other errands out that way), because I can’t really fit those things in at a better time and/or because getting it done relieves enough To Do List Stress that it’s worth it. I will think “Yes, it will sort of waste 40 minutes to do this—but then I will have done it, and it will only be 45 minutes later than it is now. We will worry MOST of the time about efficient/responsible use of gasoline, but RIGHT NOW we will let it go in the interest of Getting It Done.”

Some other things we’ve been checking off the list:

• Senior yearbook photos for the twins, which was a bit of a hassle and had a lot of variables and also had a firm deadline. This was a process involving so many decisions/steps, it feels wrong to have it be just one dot.

• Senior yearbook photos for the twins: deciding who should take the photos, and when, and where.

• Senior yearbook photos for the twins: actually taking the pictures.

• Senior yearbook photos for the twins: going through hundreds of pictures to narrow them down to a reasonable number of finalists.

• Senior yearbook photos for the twins: choosing one from among the finalists, cropping it, and emailing it in. Yes, that feels more accurate.

• BABY yearbook photos for the twins, which meant going through several years’ worth of photos, and Elizabeth really wanted to help, but she is way busier right now than I am (two part-time jobs; several clubs; several AP classes; volunteering; social life), so then it became me going through the photos and making a folder of Very Narrowed-Down candidates that Elizabeth could help choose from.

• More college visits. I hate them so much, they are so boring and they all seem the same, but it does feel very good to get them done. Making it worse: my boss saying “Well, and when they find that Right College for them, you can just SEE it, they just KNOW!” Yes well good. How many colleges do we have to tour before I am allowed to give up on that Just Knowing part, because that has not happened yet for any of my first four children. And I kind of hope it DOESN’T, because what if they don’t get IN to the college they Just Know is right for them?? Also, I do not believe for the most part in Just Knowing.

• Updated Covid boosters for three of the kids, and for Paul. This is a good example of something where I had to stop trying to plan for efficiency, and instead just leap on opportunities: “Oh!! You’re home and I’m home and the pharmacy is open!! Let’s go RIGHT NOW.” Elizabeth had fever/chills the night of the vaccine, and felt pretty tired, but was better by mid-day the next day. William felt worn out the next day, and had a sore arm. Henry and Paul didn’t feel any side effects.

Then we had Parents’ Night at the high school, which led me to post this on Twitter:

I felt like with each teacher I was either TOO BLURTY, or else allowed an uncomfortable silence to fall, or else stayed too long, or else left too abruptly/soon. Mostly I worried I was too blurty. My main Coping Thought for such things is that the teachers are already exhausted after working a full day, and most of them just want to get through this evening alive so they can go home and put on soft pants, and they are meeting FAR TOO MANY parents to care too much about what any one particular parent is like. (The problem with this Coping Thought is that if I were a teacher I would be EXTREMELY KEEN to see what my students’ parents were like, and then I would spend a lot of time afterward thinking about those encounters. So.)

[Oh, dear, may I apologize in advance for what has turned into a long venty stress post? Please don’t feel as if you need to read it: I don’t think there is any NEWS in here.] [Oh, except at the end I mention some ice cream bars and books to try, so you might want to skim down to there.]

Right now I am doing a lot of laundry and feeling stymied and overwhelmed about William, who is 21 years old and in his fourth year of college and is still doing things such as missing housing deadlines—and this is AFTER he missed a housing deadline LAST year that meant he had to find temporary non-college housing in a big city, which was extremely stressful and expensive, so I would have thought that would really teach him not to do it again, but apparently not; and also he once again failed to waive the totally unnecessary/overpriced university health insurance (it’s okay, he was able to fix that after I HIT THE CEILING), which I didn’t know because he ALSO failed to approve parental access to his student account; so now I am projecting into the future when he will NEVER learn and will NEVER pay ANY of his bills on time or meet ANY of his work deadlines and so forth.

The reason I’m doing a lot of laundry is that William had gradually acquired nearly the entire household supply of dishcloths and cloth napkins in his room. We toss dirty ones into the empty washing machine as we go, so they just end up in whatever load of clothes go through next, so he kept ending up with a small batch of them in his laundry; and even with a fair amount of nagging he just WOULD NOT bring the clean ones out of his room, let alone do what I would consider the VERY REASONABLE TASK of folding them and putting them away. Instead he just kept tossing them back into his laundry basket, and then acquiring more the next time he did a load of laundry, and so on until we got to where we are now, with almost no dishcloths or cloth napkins. At some point, Reality As It Should Be (he should absolutely be doing this bare-minimum and reasonable thing, it is unfathomable that he is not doing it) had to yield to Reality As It Is (he is NOT DOING IT—and no matter what the REASON for his not-doing-it, my quality of life is being affected), so finally I went into his room and just collected all of them, along with what turned out to be EIGHT bath towels, and I am putting them all through the wash because they were mixed with his dirty laundry. It feels right at this moment like such a discouraging and disheartening waste of time and effort to raise children.

Meanwhile, I ordered some more of the SAME t-shirts I have bought MANY of in the past—and these three, in three different colors so it seems unlikely to be some sort of fluke defect, are MUCH too big for me. And I have had THREE back-and-forths now with the seller, and we seem no closer to resolution. Their position, which is fair enough, is that the shirts are labeled the same as my previous shirts are labeled, and they don’t believe anything about the sizing has changed; but that they’d be happy to exchange the ones I bought for another batch of the same size or for a smaller size or whatever I want. My position is that I don’t want them to spend time and money sending me another batch of too-big shirts if something about the sizing has in fact changed, but that I also can’t exchange them for a smaller size in case THESE FEW shirts are just mislabeled and the smaller size would be (1) correctly labeled and (2) therefore too small. I am feeling some despair because I wanted to order LOTS MORE of these shirts in coming years, but now I won’t know what size to order.

Meanwhile, the twins’ college search. Really, that is probably the main thing. And I am underpaid at work but seem unable to do anything about it; and there has been a shelving change at work that has decreased my daily work satisfaction. And William is doing a co-op/internship this semester, and sometimes he can drive in to work with Paul, but sometimes they each need a car, and then I have no car; and really with FIVE drivers we could use a third car, but this is still apparently a terrible time to buy a car. And I have been having to fight what appears to be the natural impulse of everyone involved to just assume they can take my car—and then having to deal with them acting like I am being unreasonable because I won’t change “my” plans (“mine” as in “taking three kids to the dentist”) so that they don’t have to deal with the mild inconvenience of needing to slightly adjust their own schedules in order to share a car. It is so boggling to me that I need to work/fight for this, and that it does not seem to be sinking in that MY PLANS DO NOT COME LAST TO EVERYONE ELSE’S PLANS. Really, it must be absolutely incredible to be socialized male in this society—like having constant low level of cocaine or something.

And the new Covid booster! I can’t figure it out! I tried to make an appointment online, but it still seemed to be offering me a choice of Pfizer or Moderna; IS the new booster available in either? My impression was that it was just The New Booster. Elizabeth works part-time in a drugstore and made me feel better by saying that many many customers seem similarly confused—but because she works in the front store rather than in the pharmacy, she wasn’t actually able to give me any information. Maybe she will find out more at work today. I found this NPR article that seemed to be saying both Pfizer and Moderna were updated. In which case I have to make a DECISION about which to get, and I have felt so ILL-EQUIPPED to be making such decisions as a non-medically-trained civilian, if only there were some sort of national advisory center specializing in the control of etc.

Okay, I will say TWO GOOD THINGS to try to balance this a little.

ONE: Have you tried the Biscoff ice cream bars?? I bought a box on a whim and I ate two of them that day and have been daydreaming about them ever since. The chocolate coating is so THICK AND DELICIOUS AND FULL OF COOKIE-CRUMBLES, it’s almost TOO much coating for the amount of ice cream. I guess they have pints of Biscoff ice cream, too, which I am going to have to look for.

TWO: I have been re-reading some of the OLD Elizabeth Berg books, from before she started writing books on topics such as Romantic WWII Nostalgia Worship, Unintentionally Demonstrating Everything That Is Wrong with Diet Culture, and Weird Biblical(??) Stuff. I read Durable Goods and Talk Before Sleep, and they were both just as good as I remembered them. Durable Goods is not my usual type of book: it’s a coming-of-age novel, which I have had just about enough of, and it almost reads like Junie B. Jones For Grown-ups; also, it involves the death of a mother and abuse by a military father. I mean, if I read the flap, I would NEVER try it. But I have read it several times and I love it. And Talk Before Sleep looks from the flap like it’s going to be such a downer, because it’s about a woman dying of cancer and it’s told from the point of view of her best friend; but I find it such a lovely, lovely story of female friendship, with a side order of marriage stuff, and the characters are so good and make me want to be friends with all of them, and of course it IS sad but I feel it leads you to it in a bearable way, and in a way that makes it seem natural, WHICH IT IS, and also so unnatural, WHICH IT ALSO IS. Both books have these moments where I stop, stunned, and need to think about something I just read.

We are gradually and with huge effort figuring out what we’re looking for in a school for Elizabeth, who wants to study art:

1. She does not want to go to An Art School; she wants to go to a school that has a good art degree but also has lots of other degrees. This is in part because she would like to stand out a little with her short dyed hair and interesting clothes/jewelry; and in part because she would like to be able to earn a living and so she will probably want to make it a combined or double major and/or add some minors; and in part because she finds art students annoying.

2. Majors we are looking for (but she is not at all sure): Illustration; Studio Art (Painting); Undeclared Art. (Are you about to suggest Graphic Design? So far she is not interested in Graphic Design. But I don’t think it would be a bad idea for the college to offer it, just in case.)

3. Apparently we are supposed to be looking for colleges that offer a BFA or BVA.

4. She wants a bigger college rather than a smaller one.

5. She’d prefer a separate campus, rather than one that is integrated with a town/city.

6. It should probably be in a state where, if she experiences an ectopic pregnancy, she won’t be left to die from it.

7. We are not expecting to get significant financial aid, and it is apparently pretty rare to get merit aid to major in art, so it needs to be a relatively affordable school. (We have gotten a fair number of suggestions from people my age who went to school quite a long time ago and don’t realize that the tuition at their formerly affordable school is now $80,000/year or whatever.)

Has this list helped us create a list of schools for her to apply to? Absolutely not. But it has let us rule out one school after another! Which I guess is helpful in its own way!

I don’t even know how to LOOK. I have tried many search terms, and what I mostly get is lists of schools that include, like, Yale and Harvard. No, yes, I have heard of Yale and Harvard, and I am aware they are Good Schools, but I am looking specifically for schools that have a good ART PROGRAM, not a Clickbuzz list of ten colleges some content-creator has heard of. I want a school that has a ceramics studio and a glass-blowing studio and a furniture-design studio, and graphic arts and illustration and studio painting, and an advisor who can say “Hey, you know what makes money if you combine it with art, other than working in a coffee shop? THIS.” I want a school that KNOWS majoring in art is a dicey thing, and is making sure they have a Genuine Quality Art Program Where the Degree Means Something.

There is a valance in our bathroom that has been Visibly Very Dusty ever since we had the hardwood floors refinished before we moved in…which was in 2018. Tonight I finally took it down and laundered it. I would love for this to be one of those “And it was so quick and easy and I don’t understand why I didn’t do it AGES ago, isn’t human psychology RIDICULOUS??” stories, and that was what I had in mind when I decided to tackle it. But actually it was a tremendous hassle and I don’t know if it was worth it.

It turned out that, as with many, many things in this house, the curtain rod was put up by an amateur who considered himself Handy—but who, just to give you an idea of the pervasive results of said handiness, wired a bunch of outlets BACKWARDS, so that when the inspector put in his little testing thingie, the little testing thingie registered an Oh No Fire Danger temperature within seconds. (We got $5000 off the price of the house to have an electrician fix those.)

Anyway. Taking down the curtain was perplexing: it was hard to understand the curtain-rod situation, and a cracking sound accompanied the understanding. Laundering the curtain was simple. Putting it back up was a task that broke the curtain-rod situation—or more likely it broke while I was taking the curtain down and there was a cracking sound, but it was while putting it back up that a piece of the assembly broke off. Now one side of the rod is just sort of balanced there, so that one day it can fall down and startle me.

Also: laundering it made me truly understand how ugly it is. When it was dusty, it was easy to think that the dust was the real problem. But now I see it is a valance made of faded 1980s shiny black prom-dress material, and it does not look very nice in our bathroom—which is OF COURSE light grey, as you should have known just from hearing we bought the house in 2018. Light-grey and black are theoretically compatible colors, but no. I would Just Replace It, but it is overwhelming me to think of removing the curtain rod, installing a curtain rod that makes sense, touching up the light grey paint, and choosing a new curtain. I remember doing those exact things when we moved into our first house over 20 years ago, but I was over 20 years younger then, and hadn’t yet started following politics.

Meanwhile, I have also been tearing up the pea-patch in other ways. (I am thinking of charting these energy surges, just to See. I feel as if for much of each month I am unable to cope, and then suddenly I am fixing/cleaning/booking everything.) I have arranged for the twins to attend the open house of a college that looks like it might be a good fit for both of them, and I have forced myself to get over the cost of a motel for that trip. We have started working on the Common App together, and it is already causing me to lose tooth enamel. I have purchased tickets to a musical in the nearest big city, not just for Henry, who is turning out to be a Theater Kid, but also because I love to see musicals/plays and want to see more of them. I have donated blood, and have set up my next appointment. I have panicked about our electrical bill, which has doubled, and NPR says I can expect it to triple; I have walked fretfully around the house turning off things that can be turned off. I have cleaned the dishwasher filter, and have run self-clean cycles on the dishwasher and the washing machine. And of course I have laundered the dusty black valance. (Still to do: calling a chimney service, because the Former Resident Amateur vented the dryer into a fireplace chimney, and that has not seemed like a good idea the entire nearly-four-years we’ve lived here, but nor have I gotten around to doing anything about it.)

Excuse me but why in the year of our lord 2022 does our annual school registration form still force us to choose between M and F, not only for each student but for each parent and each sibling and each emergency contact?? In an emergency, when my chosen emergency contact arrives at the school, does the school office intend to VERIFY IF THAT CONTACT IS M OR F and if so BY WHAT METHOD DO THEY INTEND TO MAKE THAT VERIFICATION. This is a question I asked in a letter sent to the superintendent and cc’d to the principal and the person who handles Title IX issues. I don’t know if this quite qualifies as a Title IX issue, but I was willing to invest the additional envelope and stamp just in case. Additionally annoying: I sent this same letter two years ago AND had to talk on the phone to the principal about it, and the form STILL ISN’T CHANGED.

(If this were a paper form, I would just leave that question blank and let them come at me if they felt up to it. But this is an online form, and it’s a required field, and there is no available option other than M or F.)

Also, I was complaining and asking for advice on Twitter, and Slim had the idea to contact IT using a “technical problem with the form”-type link, which strikes me as brilliant and tailored. No need to go in with banners and Reasons, talking about Inclusive Education and so forth, when you can just get the IT person to go in and edit the HTML or whatever!

Anyway. I have been feeling a little cranky at work recently (underpaid, and some days the tasks are almost unbearably repetitive and tedious), but wanted to tell you about a real perk (I wish that to be spelled “perq,” but it just isn’t) that happened today. I follow Jeanna Kadlec on Twitter, almost certainly because of seeing some of her tweets retweeted. And she has a book coming out, called Heretic (Target link, Amazon link), and it’s a memoir, and she’s an ex-evangelical like I am, so I am very interested in reading it! But I looked it up in our library system, and it’s another library that has it (or rather WILL have it, when it comes out in October), and when I tried to place a request for it, I got an error notification about that title not being available for holds.

So I went to our reference librarian, and I’ll bet you imagined an older lady in a cardigan and glasses, but actually she’s in her mid-20s and wears fashionable clothes and also contact lenses (and a cardigan, they seriously all do wear cardigans). And I asked her why I was getting this message, and she said some of the libraries in our system have a policy that the new-release books can’t go out on interlibrary loan, which is fair enough: if that particular library ordered the book, they want their particular patrons to have first crack at it. She said usually that restriction is from 1-6 months.

Then she said, “Let me see if our library has ordered a copy; they probably have, it’s probably just not in the system yet.” And then she said, “Oh! No, we haven’t. Well, I’ll just order one right now.” And she went typey-typey-typey, and then it was in the library’s to-order cart. And then she went typey-typey-typey again and put me on hold for the not-even-ordered-yet copy, so I’ll be the first one to get it when it’s published/processed. And I am underpaid and my work is getting a little boring, but that was FUN.

Also, I feel I should mention that even though I personally went from “mentioning book” to “being on hold for a copy that was ordered because I mentioned it” in about 60 seconds, and that is definitely because I work there, it’s worth noting that the reference librarians frequently do this for non-co-worker patrons too! Our library has a form, and probably your library does too, for a patron to use if they can’t find a book within the system; the librarians will first check our wider network of libraries (there are some libraries OUR LIBRARY can borrow from, even if OUR PATRONS cannot) (we sometimes need to wheedle) and, if they can’t find the book, they will evaluate it and see if we want to purchase it, and we have a budget for doing that. Sometimes the book is out of print and too expensive, but if it’s just one that has escaped our notice, the librarian will often think, “Sure, let’s give it a whirl!” and order it.

Nothing dramatic has happened since we last spoke, but I still have this feeling of not knowing where to START! I’ve had more social stuff crammed into this week than I’m used to, and it’s been great but also it is seriously cutting into my screen time.

I have seen friends, and wish to say again how WORTH IT it is if you can possibly manage it. I can’t take any credit for making it happen: it was someone else who formed the group, and chose the people, and kept arranging meetings until the habit was formed; I was fortunate to have been included. So if you can…Be Included in a Great Friend Group, I guess is what I seem to be suggesting to you, well then I heartily recommend it! We sat outside on a summer evening with our wine, and I peered a little tipsily at my friends who were so beautifully candlelit by the bug-deflecting torches, and I felt so LUCKY.

Also this week, our household went away for a few days to get together with extended family. For all previous trips, I have put out a mixing bowl of dry kibble and left the faucet dripping for the cats, and off we’ve gone, feeling lucky not to be dealing with dogs. But right now we have a cat with two daily medications who is in the middle of probably being diagnosed with lung cancer—and, most importantly of all, seems to only be able to eat wet food, which can’t be left out for days the way dry food can be. We’ve never boarded a cat before, and I was very stressed about the idea, and I wasn’t sure if we’d even be able to get a spot on such short notice; but I called the vet and they DID have an opening, and it all went well. The person in charge of the boarding program was everything you’d hope for in such a role, and she texted me photos of the cat with little messages that purported to be from the cat himself, giving me information such as “I peed and pooped and have eaten almost a whole can of food already!” and then little pawprint emojis. Everything you’d hope for.

Oh, and actually, something dramatic DID happen: at the extended-family gathering my mother lost consciousness while sitting in a chair, and we could not revive her; and we called 911 (specifically PAUL called 911, and did such a good job with it that I hope to delegate that task to him on all future occasions), and she is fine but it was a bit of a Startling Event. And it turns out they sometimes send firefighters to help the EMTs bring someone down stairs to an ambulance, and many firefighters are–oh what would be a good way to describe it?–“calendar-worthy.” Well! Some excitement all around. And in case you have a place to file such information: if someone faints / loses consciousness while seated (that is, they have not been in an accident or hit their heads, and there is no worry about broken neck/bones), 911 will tell you to lay them down on the floor if possible, to help get blood/oxygen to their brain. Perhaps you already knew this; I did not. Also: it turns out none of us really knew how to move an unconscious person from a chair to the floor. We managed it, but I was glad EMTs/firefighters were not watching us do it, and I am motivated to look for videos showing me how to do it right.

One of my favorite moments was when the EMTs had brought my mom back to consciousness and they were asking her some routine questions about medications and substances; and, after the EMTs asked if she’d been drinking plenty of fluids and she said yes, one of the firefighters (tattooed muscled arms in fitted firefighter t-shirt, shaved head) turned to me and said quietly “That true about the fluids?,” and let me tell you I IMMEDIATELY betrayed my mother (she is NOTORIOUS for leaving her water glass completely untouched at meals), and they hooked up an IV. Lie to the police if necessary, but tell THE WHOLE TRUTH to the EMTs. Even if they’re NOT cute, and crossing their tattooed arms, and looking down with warm eyes and a head tilted as if to invite confidences—as this one may or may not have been.

Well, I have a sad update on the cat laryngitis. When we looked up cat laryngitis online, it said it’s nothing to be concerned about—but that if you notice the cat panting, or breathing through its mouth, a vet visit is warranted. And the cat breathed through his mouth a couple of times, and so I called the vet, feeling like a Right Fool who was about to pay $500 to find out her cat had a cold. But instead it seems to be lung cancer.

This does not mean you should panic if your cat temporarily loses its meow! And in fact, the one thing bothering the vet is that the Area of Concern on the x-ray is not in an area that explains the cat laryngitis. She says the most likely explanation by far is that there is an additional Area of Concern in/near his larynx, and that it just didn’t show up on the x-ray, as many such things do not; but she says there is a Slim Hope that this could instead be a lung parasite, which WOULD account for the Area of Concern AND the laryngitis. So she has given him a course of anti-parasite medicine Just To Make Sure before we start having Hard Discussions. But her entire manner told me she thinks this will not work and that we will be having the Hard Discussion.

One of the things I love about this vet is how easy she makes those hard discussions. She always acts as if she would be 100% Here For It if I were to tell her I wanted to do everything in our expensive power to save the cat—but she also acts as if she personally thinks it makes absolute sense to instead choose NOT to do those things.

I am sad, of course: he’s a good cat; and he’s Elizabeth’s baby, and so I also feel sad for her. But—this is a 12-14-year-old cat with Cat IBD; and one of his kidneys shut down for no apparent reason; and he had kidney stone surgery recently, and the lab analysis of the stones shows they are the kind that will almost certainly recur and can’t really be prevented. The wheels are coming off this cat, is what I’m saying. And although I was willing to pay for the original kidney-stone surgery, and also pay for the expensive food just in case it DID work and he never needed more surgeries, my feeling was that with Elizabeth leaving for college in a year…and a cat who is not happy when Elizabeth is not home…well, perhaps we could consider the cat to be in his Final Year. And if the stones didn’t recur, well, lovely! We’d be happy to continue having him with us! But…if they DID recur…well, I mean, the timing seemed about right. Lung cancer may change the timing, but not by MUCH.

I wish I had asked the vet what kind of timeframe we were looking at. She mentioned that we can keep him comfortable for awhile / until it’s Time by switching from the IBD Dose of his steroid to the Cancer Dose, but I don’t know if we’re talking about weeks? months? It seems like if he DOES have something in/near his larynx, and it is already messing with his breathing, that it won’t be very long before there are Quality of Life issues. Well, we are giving him lots of skritches and cuddles, and we are taking lots of photos.

Hello! Do we have any BOURBON aficionados in our midst? (I had THREE spelling errors in my first attempt at spelling the word “aficionado” AND had to look up the definition to make sure I was using it right. I was using it right: it means KNOWLEDGEABLE AND ENTHUSIASTIC about something.)

My brother had a fun idea for his birthday this year—oh, but first I should tell you that we are a WISH LIST family. I think that’s important to know, since otherwise you might be thinking, “Wait, your brother is TELLING YOU what to give him for his birthday??”—and no, he would never, this is an idea on his wish list, and wish lists are only for family members who WANT to use wish lists: that is, there is no feeling that anyone MUST or SHOULD choose from the wish list, and plenty of feeling that it is EVEN BETTER to go off-list; but SOME members of our extended family (NOT ME, it may surprise you to learn) are TOO ANXIOUS to buy anything that isn’t explicitly listed and linked to. Plus, most of us find wish lists fun, and a good way to get an idea of what SORTS of things the person might be interested in this year: some years someone might have a lot of novelty t-shirts and jewelry; other years they might have a bunch of books and mugs and treats; other years they might have mostly postcards and Etsy art. (Those are all me.)

Back to where I was. My brother had a fun idea for his birthday this year, because his wish list is very sparse right now, and he knows this will lead to some hand-wringing. He suggested that, since bourbon is perpetually on his list and he loves to try new kinds, anyone who wanted a wish list idea should choose a bottle of bourbon and then he’d have a bouquet of birthday bourbons to try, which he would find very fun.

I am NOT a bourbon aficionado (one misspelling this time, and that was WHILE LOOKING AT THE CORRECT SPELLING), but I AM an aficionado of OTHER things, so I know how sometimes an aficionado can look at someone’s likes/dislikes in their aficionado category and immediately get excited and start making suggestions. So I am hoping some of you are bourbon aficionados or perhaps you have a sibling/spouse/friend/co-worker who is a bourbon aficionado, and that you/they would find it fun to look at my brother’s list/chart and make some suggestions:

I could, of course, just buy a bottle from Old Favorites, or from Liked and Want More (ignore Looking For: it’s a standing category that happens to be empty this year), but it would be more fun to buy something he hasn’t tried yet, so what I am hoping is that someone is looking at that list right now and saying “OOOOOoooooo you know what I think he’d like??” and then going to the comments section to answer their own question.

Ignore PRICE: not only am I INTERESTED in hearing even about bourbons outside whatever my price range might be, but also there are other people buying gifts for my brother who might have different price ranges, and also-also I might want to buy a more expensive bourbon for a milestone birthday later on.

Oh, and I am familiar with the idea of a gift box / advent calendar of small bottles of various bourbons, but he’s had that gift at least once, and I think at least twice, so I am less inclined to go that route unless you are thinking “Well okay but THIS PARTICULAR GIFT BOX is especially great!”

I have taken the twins on some college visits! We went on an overnight trip and saw three colleges, though one of them was a self-guided tour because we couldn’t find a regular tour that worked with our schedule. We all felt that the self-guided tour was almost useless. We had THOUGHT that a self-guided tour, where we walk around and read little paragraphs the Admissions office has composed, would be as good as a tour led by a perky student the Admissions office has hired to say things the Admissions office has composed, but for some reason it absolutely was not. We came away with almost no impression of the college at all. Well, now we know not to bother with self-guided tours—and we can go back another time for a regular tour.

I think the biggest accomplishment was just DOING ANY TOURS AT ALL. It is so hard to get started! With each kid after the first one, I resolved to get started on tours EARLIER—like, spring of junior year. Yet each time, here I am in late summer, barely begun. And very soon it will be fall of their senior year, and they will be too busy to take days off for college visits! I wring the hands.

Part of the issue is that Paul usually does quite a few of the college tours (he has most Fridays off during the summer, so that’s when he took Rob/William on tours), but he has been significantly affected by his kidney-stone issues for over a month now. Which reminds me to update you: he has had his second kidney-stone surgery, which went SO MUCH BETTER than the first one. Just for starters, this time we knew what to expect from the whole process, so this time his blood pressure at the hospital was at reasonable “nervous about impending medical procedure / feel uncomfortable in hospital smock and leg-squeezing things” levels rather than “so um do you take anything for high blood pressure? are you feeling okay right now? let’s just leave that cuff on and try again in a few minutes, okay?” levels. Also, the first procedure removed the stone that was hurting him, so this time he went into it well-rested, well-fed, etc. And finally: THIS time he didn’t come out of anesthesia to hear that it was NOT all over and there would have to be ANOTHER SURGERY. That was not good for morale.

Another medical update: the cat with kidney issues has lost his meow. We looked it up online and found that cats can and do get Cat Laryngitis. Let’s see if I can post this little video of me asking the cat in my Talking To Cats voice if he has cat laryngitis:

Oh! and I wanted to ask you about your favorite things to bake for bake sales. Henry’s theater group is going to have a concession stand at each performance, and they’d like contributions from the families. I’m curious to know what you personally like to make for bake sales, but I am also hugely hoping that we have in our midst people who have volunteered at bake-sale tables and KNOW WHAT SELLS WELL. I am also planning to donate some pre-packaged manufactured items (snack-packs of Oreos, snack-size bags of chips, that kind of thing), since I know it can be difficult/impossible for people with food allergies to buy things from bake sales.

One important thing to know is that the concessions stand will be OUTDOORS in SUMMER HEAT, so I don’t want to make anything TOO MELTY. I’m going to go right ahead and make things with chocolate chips in them; but for example I have a recipe for yummy bars that have a thick layer of chocolate/butterscotch on top, and those would just be a MESS, so I will not make those.