I put a question on one of the household whiteboards, and I thought it was a good question, but everyone else just thought they were in trouble. Which: fair enough. But that wasn’t really why I asked it, and it wasn’t meant to be rhetorical/scolding; it was meant to engage them in what I thought was an interesting discussion about the non-obvious complications of sharing a household and chores with other people.

The question was: “Household/community issue: Who should wash the birthday cake pan, when everyone ate the cake?” I am talking about a 9×13 cake pan, where you bake the cake in it and then take pieces out of it until the cake is gone—as opposed to, say, a couple of round cake pans where you remove the cake from them right away. And I am talking in this case about a cake where everyone ate some, and then everyone ate some leftovers.

Here’s why I asked: because at our house, it will not surprise you to learn it is always, always, ALWAYS me who washes the cake pan. And I don’t think that’s fair, when everyone eats the cake, and when I was the one who BAKED the cake, too.

But I was not having much luck coming up with a way it could be NOT always me, because it’s hard to come up with a POLICY. I think we could start with two policy fragments: (1) It should not be the person who baked the birthday cake. (2) It should not be the person whose birthday cake it was. But after that, I get stuck.

You COULD say that the person who eats the last piece of cake should be the one to wash the pan. Two–no THREE–problems immediately occur to me:

1. It leaves out the issue of SOAKING. I would SO much rather wash a cake pan AFTER it has been soaking for awhile. But not everyone in my household can be trusted to return to their soaking items in a timely manner.

2. More importantly, in my own household, where people do not cheerfully chip in and try to do their share but instead try to find wily ways to avoid it, what would happen is that one tiny slice would be left in the pan until it went stale, and then the question would be “Who should throw away the stale cake AND wash the cake pan?”

3. And of course, the person who ate the last slice could be the person who baked the cake, or could be the person whose birthday it was.

By this point I was fairly irritable and thinking that the real solution was to live with different people than the ones I live with. And that’s not wrong, but neither is it helpful for coming up with a policy for this current household.

The only policy I could come up with is this, and it is not as clear or concise as I would like it to be: The person who eats the last piece of cake should put the pan in the sink to soak; the next non-cake-baking/non-birthday person to be washing their own dishes should also wash the pan. This policy would work GREAT in a household of me and my clones! In my actual house it would result in a bunch of people playing chicken with their dishes: “Oh, mine are still soaking,” or “Oh, but yours were soaking first,” or “Whoops, I’m leaving for work/bed for 10 hours,” or whatever.

I am wondering what you think would be best, theoretically, and also what you think would work in your actual household.

Paul is away for most of a week. This is the first morning, and I have been nesting. I put his towel in the laundry, for a week of not finding it spread out every morning so that it damply covers the handle of the toilet until I have to shove it out of the way. I put out a new hand towel, for a week of knowing I won’t find it on the floor, or with a glob of toothpaste on it, or with dirty smears because he just rinsed his hands a little and used the towel to wipe the dirt off or because he used it to wipe up a spill. I changed the sheets, for a week of not finding his corners pulled almost all the way off every morning. I wiped his toothpaste speckles off the mirror, and will enjoy nearly a week of the shine, without feeling resentment at the immediate reappearance of speckles. I cleaned my glasses, knowing no one will spit mouthwash into the sink so vigorously that it crests over the sides and spreads across the bathroom counter and even splatters the wall and therefore also my glasses, so that when I peer at them before putting them on I can see and feel that they are sticky with someone else’s spit-out mouthwash; and without having to think about how I have painfully raised this topic, thinking it would embarrass him, and had it result in no change of behavior, even though I feel 99.9999% of humanity would agree that the over-vigorous mouthwash-spitter is the wrong one and should stop. It’s funny how much more willing I was to pick up and throw away a piece of trash on the floor, when I know another adult didn’t walk right past it earlier. It was odd how lighthearted–cheerful, even!–I felt about clearing away another adult’s dirty cup when I knew it wouldn’t be replaced with another dirty cup.

I handled Father’s Day in my new way, which is to slightly one-up what he did for Mother’s Day. This year he said “Happy Mother’s Day!,” and he offered to make dinner but on a night we were already planning on getting pizza to celebrate Rob’s graduation, and to be fair I was the one who said I didn’t want to postpone it a week and would rather just skip it. So this year I said “Happy Father’s Day!”; and I reminded the children about it a week before; and when we were running errands on Sunday I saw a bottle of lemon cream liqueur I thought he’d enjoy trying and I added it to our basket. I didn’t plan anything ahead of time; I didn’t clean his car or do any other chores I thought he’d appreciate; I didn’t ask him how he’d like to spend the day or what he wanted for dinner, because I assumed he would do/have whatever he wanted as he does every day.

No, things are not going particularly well, I do realize that. This isn’t me saying “Marriage, amirite??” as if I think everyone’s marriage is like this. Though I’m also trying to avoid acting as if having to deal with someone else’s damp towel is the equivalent of living in inhumane and insufferable circumstances.

LET’S PLEASE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE. I finished The Once and Future Witches, by Alix E. Harrow.

(image from Amazon.com)

I liked it. At some point fairly early on I thought to myself “I’ll bet this was written in the 2015-2020ish era,” and sure enough. There are themes about how non-men are treated by men/society, and about how culturally anything that gives non-men any power or equality (and/or protects non-men from what men would like to do) is spun as being bad/evil and in need of extraction/squashing. Witchcraft was power that was understood to be held by women and passed down by women, and so it made some men afraid/insecure, and when some men are afraid/insecure they get violent/angry toward the thing that made them afraid/insecure. ANYWAY IT WAS PRETTY SATISFYING TO READ. And it made me want to read more about witchcraft.

But it was longer than it should have been, in my opinion. I kept feeling a little burdened by how much of the book I still had left to read. I did really like it, and I WANTED to finish it, and I would recommend it; but I would also recommend getting it from the library, and giving yourself permission to do a little skimming.

Rob has arrived safely in Seattle, and the apartment was not a scam (aside from costing more per month for a studio/efficiency than the mortgage payment we had on our three-bedroom house, but that appears to be normal for the area). That was Wednesday night. We have not heard from him since, though he has participated in his sibling group-chat so we know from his siblings that he is alive. It is starry-eyed baffling to me that he is ACTUALLY IN SEATTLE RIGHT NOW.

Paul and I are both actively working on being cool here. We have decided that even Very Chillaxed Parents could check in after a week, so this coming Tuesday/Wednesday I will send an extremely casual email to see how things are going. I don’t want to make him feel like we’re hounding/pestering him, but I also don’t want to make him feel like we don’t care / like we forgot him. I also plan to explain that although he has grown up knowing his mother Hates The Phone, that that does not apply to her BELOVED CHILDREN, and that if he wants to talk on the phone I am ALL IN.

Instead of doing yoga videos this morning, I looked up physical-therapy knee-pain videos, and tried a few. I will keep trying the exercises for awhile to see if they help. My doctor also said a knee brace would help, but she didn’t mention any particular kind, and I searched “knee brace” and there are so so many options, from “looks like shapewear for fashionably smoothing the knee lumps” to “looks like something a hospital/AI/spacelab would install.” I am overwhelmed. Do any of you have a knee brace to recommend? My guess is that there is variety because there is a variety of needs. And without knowing why my knees hurt, it would be hard to choose/recommend a brace. If it is helpful, my doctor thinks it is osteoarthritis. I think it might also be low-tone / overly wobbly joints. My knees feel a little swoopy, a little tricksy; and all my children have been diagnosed as “low tone” and I think they get it from me (most of my joints bend farther backward than they should, as do theirs).

While I’m on the topic of asking for advice: If you have sliding glass shower doors, how do you keep them clean? I use the squeegee daily, and I scrub them periodically with a scrub-brush and various cleaning supplies, but they always look kind of cloudy/non-shining-clean to me.

School is out for summer, and the remaining kids and I are trying to decide on this summer’s project/plan. Last summer was watching musicals, and we didn’t watch anywhere near all of them, so we could continue that. But I feel like choosing a new mission. I might choose something new for myself, even if the group chooses to keep watching musicals. I am thinking I might read gossipy non-fiction about historical figures, or maybe I will read engaging travel memoirs, or maybe I will study witchcraft (more on this after I finish the book I am reading).

If you and/or your kids have read my dear friend’s new book The Art of Magic, and have not yet left a review, I hope you will do so. (It does not have to be a HIGH-QUALITY or AGONIZINGLY-WELL-THOUGHT-OUT review: apparently even “Wow!” and “Great book!” and “Loved it!” are AMPLY SUFFICIENT.) I don’t think things should work this way: it shouldn’t be “More Media Engagement/Pressure/Popularity = Better Than!!” But it seems that it IS measured that way. And so I wish to do what little I can do to assist, and one of the little things I can do is to nag people to leave reviews. And so here we are. And I thank you so much if you are willing to cooperate with this, because I know it’s a hurdle, and I pledge not to ask too many more times. (Once or twice more, and then stopping permanently, is what I have in mind. So the end is in sight.)

(image from Amazon.com)

Oh! While I have you here, I’d like to ask a favor: if you have read my dear friend’s new book The Art of Magic, would you be willing to go to Amazon to leave a review?

(image from Target.com)

Apparently the thingie Amazon uses for returning/sorting search results doesn’t really care about any product that doesn’t have fifty or more reviews. Which simultaneously makes me think two things: (1) That is a DUMB SYSTEM AND I HATE IT, and (2) I should be leaving more positive reviews. I hate to give in to a dumb system, but if that IS the system, then there are a lot of things I’ve read/bought that I’ve really liked but I haven’t bothered to leave reviews because I don’t have anything interesting or helpful to say. But apparently saying ANYTHING is helpful. And I want the things I like to do well. So, fine. Fine. If necessary I will leave reviews that say “I liked this!!,” with a title of “I liked this!!” (I hate choosing a title for the review.)

An update on the Rob/Seattle situation is that he’s just GOING. He is not going to wait until he has a job: he just picked an apartment (he got a studio because it was taking too long to figure out a roommate) and got a flight and he is leaving in two days. Without a job, without the lead time necessary to get a good price on the flight, without ever seeing the apartment in person or knowing how far it will end up being from the future job (please let there be a future job). He is just GOING.

I am driving him to the airport and I am trying not to say “Oh, and another thing!!” every 5 minutes. Each time I have a thought, I try to first put it through the filter of “Is this something he can figure out for himself and/or ask me about if he wants to know? or is it important enough to be one of the, say, three to five total things I can get away with mentioning to him between now and the time he leaves?” Does he know the apartment will not be stocked with anything, not even toilet paper? Does he know he will absolutely need a very good bike lock?/Does he know how to effectively use a bike lock? Does he know his address, so he can get there from the airport and also so he can ship himself a mattress-in-a-box? Is he remembering he was going to ship himself a mattress-in-a-box? Does he know how to get utilities put in his name? Does he know it’s sometimes cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket than a one-way ticket? Has he thought about whether he can afford the space in his luggage for a bike helmet or whether it would be better to order one to be shipped to him? Does he know there is a size/weight limit on luggage? Has he looked up the nearest grocery/convenience store to his apartment? Is he packing some granola bars or something so he won’t starve while he figures out food? Does he know he should bring an empty water bottle through airport security and then fill it once he’s through security?

So far I have casually asked if he knows his address (no), which I don’t think should count as one of my suggestions/mentions, since I didn’t actually suggest/mention anything. I have also mentioned the bike lock, and the size/weight limit on luggage. I am thinking about mentioning the toilet paper. I am going to trust that he can figure out food, but will casually mention on the day of travel that he should feel free to put any household snacks into his luggage—oh-and-that-might-be-nice-to-have-when-you-first-arrive; I don’t think that should count as one of my suggestions/mentions, either, as long as I can pull off a very breezy tone.

I had my annual physical recently, and I mentioned that my knees, which have always been A Bit Dicey, are hurting more now, and hurting more consistently, and starting to be less of an occasional thing and more of a constant thing. And my doctor, whom I really like and don’t want to switch away from (I very dislike when I have a Doctor-Related Complaint and the only advice is “Switch doctors!!”—as if there were a limitless supply of local doctors, and as if there were a doctor out there who would not occasionally merit complaint), seemed to be saying that that sucked and that there wasn’t really anything to be done, and that this was just how things would be from now on, except that it would probably get worse with time. She said if it seemed briefly worse, like due to extra work/activity, I could take acetaminophen/ibuprofen/naproxen for a few days at a time but not longer; she said I could try stretching before going to work; she said I could try using a knee brace. She said if I started walking differently to favor my knees, I would probably start to experience hip and back pain; I said “Oh! I AM having some hip and back pain!,” and her response was the equivalent of “Yep.” I am left feeling as if there is not much medical science can do for painful joints, and that this is just my life now. IS this how it is? Middle-aged adults get joint pain and then live with it forever?

Well. There are worse things. One of our middle-aged cats had a kidney just…fail. Like, stop working and shrivel up. Apparently that can happen. The vet was almost shruggy about it—like, well, he has two, so, there’s still one working. Meanwhile I am ready for an entire investigative miniseries on WHY DID IT DO THAT? Looking it up online was not a good idea: a kidney can fail if a cat eats something it shouldn’t have eaten, such as certain plants or household chemicals. So this might be our oblivious fault. Kidneys can also fail because mortal living things have parts that can be defective or can reach their own mortality points. So it might be his kidney’s fault, or his genes’ fault, in which case we would probably say fate rather than fault.

Paul, in an effort to interact with housework, has purchased a robot vacuum cleaner. Well, two: the first one was a very basic model, meant to show us whether or not this was something we wanted in our lives. The answer was “Yes, but this particular one is Too Stupid.” Paul has purchased an upgrade, the kind that won’t fall down stairs, and makes its own map and can be told which parts of the map to ignore. It is still Fairly Stupid. It is currently verrrrrrry carefully, in a thousand tiny little inch-by-inch moves, avoiding my computer chair, which it thinks is a permanent obstruction. I tried to move out of its way so it could go under my desk, but it declined to believe that the chair had moved, and just kept tracing around where it thought it was. Earlier it was obsessed, absolutely obsessed, with getting to the string of lights it has tangled with numerous times, despite us attempting to block access.

What I mostly want is for this thing to run when PAUL is home to supervise it, but when I am NOT, so that I am not driven up a wall by its endless inefficient bumbling and periodic cord tangling and “Robot trapped!” announcements when it is just between two chairs. On principle, I do very little robot interference: if it tangles, it tangles; if it stops, it stops. Paul has indicated that he considers himself to be handling the vacuuming, and I am happy to give him credit for it, as long as it affects my life the same way it would affect it if Paul were using a traditional vacuum clearer: i.e., I might be bothered by the sound, or by something bumping into my computer chair, but I would not have to follow Paul around and manage the vacuum cleaner cord for him, or prep the rooms to make things easier for him, or untangle something he’d vacuumed up by accident, or in any other way participate in the process.

Two friends recently brought over a Sunny Afternoon Sangria & Snacks Driveway Picnic, and I cannot express how perfect it was. Ever since then, I have been wanting sangria, something I have never made before.

What we used for the picnic was Opici Family White Sangria:

image from opiciwines.com

It was delicious, and the box is gorgeous. The only improvement I would want to make is alcohol content: it’s 7%, which is roughly the same as a wine cooler. It was perfect for a sunny afternoon, when at least one person was going to need to drive afterward—but let’s say instead I was bringing sangria to a get-together where we were all staying over and no one needed to drive. What THEN.

I still wish to use a BOX of wine. For one thing, I find boxes of wine delightful to use: the little spigot! For another thing, I enjoy the way a box of wine doesn’t keep TRACK of what anyone is consuming: the bottles don’t pile up; and there’s no issue of someone not wanting to finish off the rest of a bottle, or not knowing if they should start a new one. I know it is more typical to soak the fruits in the wine for awhile, which wouldn’t work well with the box idea—but it was even more fun to do a “choose your own fruits” set-up, where each person put whatever fruit they wanted into their glass and then added wine (via little spigot!).

So here is what I am looking for: opinions about the best (1) white (2) boxed (3) wine to use with fruit to make sangria. Also I invite any other comments about sangria, such as what are your favorite fruits to use.