For the wedding present, I chose Girl Scout cookies. I liked a LOT of the suggestions in the comments, and had a wonderful time reading all the stories and considering all the options. In the end I chose Girl Scout cookies because they seemed light and fun and quirky, which also describes my cousin and her husband and their wedding; and because it felt Just Right for the relationship I have with this cousin; and also because I just WANTED TO and the idea made me feel happy. The cookies are on their way to them, and I feel bouncy and excited for them to arrive. I had planned to buy them some window prisms as well, but it felt like the combination reduced the gift rather than adding to it, for reasons I couldn’t put a finger on; and it didn’t matter much so I just didn’t buy the window prisms. I highly enjoy these sorts of low-pressure gift-giving occasions, where I feel free to follow whims.

A few of you mentioned that you would never have thought to give a wedding present for an elopement and asked if that was weird/wrong, and I have puzzled over that for several days now, wondering which of us is the weird one, and I’ve decided it’s Neither of Us, Really, but specifically it’s Not Me. They still got MARRIED! That’s a HUGE DEAL and a MAJOR LIFE EVENT and something to celebrate! If I don’t send a gift, and it’s because they eloped rather than having a wedding for me to attend, that seems like it oddly prioritizes The Wedding Event over The Marriage, when I am pretty sure we’ve all agreed it’s the other way around.

I wonder if “elopement = no gift” comes from the more general ruling on whether a person is OBLIGATED to get a wedding gift: I know that if you go to someone’s wedding, etiquette absolutely insists that you bring a gift; and that if you are not invited to the wedding and/or do not attend, etiquette does NOT insist that you send a gift. Perhaps that morphed into an idea of no wedding = no gift. Except…an elopement is still a wedding! So then we’re back to the wedding gift being an item the couple receives not because they got married but because they threw an expensive party. Which doesn’t seem right.

It may also come from a difference of feeling about gift-giving in general: if it’s about what ETIQUETTE demands, then I agree: no obligation to send a gift for an elopement. But my motivation wasn’t etiquette, or obligation: it was that I was excited about the significant life event, and I wanted to celebrate it with a gift. Sending a gift is a way to say you’re happy for someone, and/or at a minimum (such as in a situation where you don’t think they should have married this person) that you acknowledge the significance of what has happened. This is one reason that, although of course I want very much to get them something they WANT and LIKE and WILL USE/ENJOY, I don’t WORRY so much about that aspect: PART of the point of the gift is to add to their possessions, but another HUGE part of the gift is to give them…well, “positive feedback” doesn’t feel quite right, but in another way it’s EXACTLY RIGHT. The gift gives them positive feedback. It says “Yay!” and “Your friends/family rejoice with you!” and “I have seen your news and agree it is cool/good/significant!” It is like clicking “like” and “care” and “wow” and “love” all at the same time on someone’s Facebook post, but more expensively!

I found out this morning that one of my cousins eloped with her fiancé, which was very fun news to see on Facebook first thing in the morning—tons of “WHAT???? CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!” comments.

Now I wish to buy her a wedding present, but (1) they do not seem to have a registry and (2) they are in their 30s, and they already own a house. So I do not think they need a toaster.

I am worried you will say I should just send money. I don’t want to hear that I should just send money, EVEN IF IT IS TRUE. I wish to purchase a gift, and send it with a gift receipt, or else not care that they can’t return it and will have to regift it.

I’m not at all stressed about accidentally sending something they don’t want / can’t use. That feels like an utterly normal and not-stressful and manageable thing to have happen; and, if it happens with my gift, I trust them to count the thought, and then either return the gift if possible, or find a new home for it if not.

So I am looking for wedding-gift ideas, but more than that I find I am looking for wedding-gift TALK. I just feel like THINKING ABOUT and TALKING ABOUT wedding gifts. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a chance to do that: there was a big flutter of weddings a decade or two ago, but I’m not quite into the era of friends’ kids getting married. I was discussing it with a co-worker who IS in that era, and she says everyone now is registering for things like “champagne on the airplane to and from our honeymoon – $50,” “couples massage – $200,” and boy, that does not appeal to me even a tiny bit.

Here are some of the things I’d enjoy discussing, if you too would enjoy it:

• Favorite wedding gifts you’ve RECEIVED, especially something you didn’t think to ask for
• Favorite wedding gifts you’ve GIVEN
• Favorite wedding gifts you’ve HEARD ABOUT
• I see nothing wrong with also discussing LEAST favorite / funniest gifts
• What YOU would give a cousin in her 30s who owns a house, as long as the answer isn’t “money”
• Really any thoughts at all about wedding gifts, just feel free to say whatever
• Except “money,” I mean it, I’m not sending money

One of my favorite received wedding gifts was a box of assorted Christmas ornaments—from, as it happens, a cousin (a different cousin). They were the kind sold individually rather than the kind sold in sets, and it was a somewhat surprising gift and she didn’t explain it or anything. Every year when I hang them on the tree I think of her.

A wedding gift I used to like to give, often along with something from the registry, was several sets of address labels (holiday set! heart-decorated set! etc.!), but that works better when the couple didn’t already live together and/or when a name-change is involved. It also worked better a decade or two ago, when people paid more bills by mail.

One of the most unfortunate wedding gifts we received was a framed embroidery, quite large, obviously very time-consuming, with the wrong wedding date on it, and also my name spelled wrong.

One gift I am considering is a pair of heated throw blankets. It seems cozy. But this is the wrong time of year for that.

I could send a care package full of treats and other things that keep well / can be used up. They seem like the kind of couple who would do fun face-treatment masks together while drinking spiked hot cocoa, and I could make a care package for that, plus cookies and window prisms and just whatever looked fun/good.

I could send a two sets of really nice towels. Kind of boring, but in a wedding-registry type of way, and I like the “get the REALLY GOOD version of something normal” type of gift idea.

I could send alcohol, which I’d consider a risky gift except that they often post photos of themselves at a friendly-looking bar, with friends. But shipping alcohol tends to be so much more expensive than just buying it at the store, and it’s complicated because someone has to be home to receive the package, so eh.

I could send them a big assortment of See’s candies. That feels celebratory. I could do one custom box, which would allow me to choose a heart-shaped box, and then fill in with miscellaneous other things: peanut brittle, sour candy, etc.

Or flowers! Celebratory! Weddingish! I don’t care that they don’t last long, and that might be a plus in this case!

I could get them matching/coordinating Comfys. They definitely seem like that kind of couple.

My sister-in-law recently sent Edward a 24-pack of assorted craft sodas, which was such a fun gift it made me want to immediately buy it for someone else, so perhaps this is my moment.

Oooo, or another thing that made me feel that way was when a dear friend ordered me multiple packages of Girl Scout cookies as a surprise!! THAT would be a fun wedding gift!! A WHOLE BUNCH OF GIRL SCOUT COOKIES!! Oh that seems like a really fun idea!!

We lost power one evening this past week, very abruptly and for hours, which reminds me to strongly recommend an item I LOVE WITH ALL MY DARKNESS-FEARING HEART:

(image from Target.com)

General Electric Power Failure Nightlight (Target link) (Amazon link). It’s a nightlight—but it charges itself at the same time, and if the power goes off it comes on automatically, using that charge. We have one at the top of the stairs, for normal nighttime safety and for power-outage safety. We also have one in our bathroom, and it’s enough light to brush your teeth and get ready for bed in a power outage. You can also unplug it and use it in flashlight mode.

So basically it is awesome, and I have ordered two more, and might order a couple more after that but also might not, because it would have been nice if they had come on automatically all over the house, but on the other hand let’s not get carried away: I had a set of LED pillar candles (housewarming gifts from dear friends) I could switch on right away, and also a couple of wax/jarred candles I still had on the counter because IT CAN TAKE SOME OF US AWHILE TO PUT AWAY THE FINAL CHRISTMAS TIDBITS OKAY, and so very soon we had a nice amount of light. Plus of course we all had the flashlight mode of our phones, so there is no reason to GO OVERBOARD as I am absolutely planning to do. (It was just SO PLEASANT, moments after being plunged into abrupt darkness, to have these BEACONS shining forth helpfully, as if they’d waited their entire lives for this moment—and it made me want MORE BEACONS.)

Two more meh books for the pile, though I did finish both:

(image from Amazon.com)

The Burgess Boys, by Elizabeth Strout (Target link) (Amazon link). This was a re-read, and I’d remembered that I hadn’t liked it as much as some of the author’s other books; but there was a mention of some of the characters in ANOTHER Elizabeth Strout book I was reading, so I thought I’d try it again. I’d say it still has too much sad/upsetting/traumatic stuff to be worth the good writing and good plot and good characters—but also that it wouldn’t be a mistake to risk it if you generally like Elizabeth Strout books, all of which contain a certain level of sad/upsetting/traumatic.

(image from Amazon.com)

The Operator, by Gretchen Berg (Target link) (Amazon link). I was intrigued enough by the plot (1950s telephone operator routinely eavesdrops on telephone conversations, and one day hears something scandalous/shocking about her own family) that I kept going for fully half the book despite finding the writing uneven, and the characters odd and one-dimensional and boring, and the author’s commentary on her characters intrusive and snarky; and despite feeling that our wait to hear the Scandalous Reveal was drawn out for FAR longer than ANYONE could POSSIBLY think was wise. And then the Scandal as initially presented was so…relatively unterrible? I mean, a surprise for sure! But it was treated as if it were absolutely devastating in every way, to everyone involved, in SUCH an over-the-top, dramatic, we-are-all-ruined, deliberately-misunderstanding-the-situation-for-higher-drama way that it managed to talk me out of finding it dramatic at even the level it deserved.

(It’s hard to explain this without spoilers, but let’s say the scandal was that a character’s teenage child had DONE DRUGS!! But then this turned out to mean that the child had had one inhale of a joint at a party, without realizing it was a joint. And then ALL the characters acted as if this would mean the family would need to LEAVE THE STATE to avoid jail time and/or being cast out of the community and/or the child being put in foster care, and as if the child was now drug-addicted and would need to go to rehab, and as if this incident might mean their extended family would never speak to them again—and then gradually the reader realizes that the AUTHOR does not think the characters are over-reacting! and the over-reaction is not the point of the story! It doesn’t take long before even a reader vehemently opposed to all drug-use finds themselves thinking things like, “Well, I mean, it’s just a single hit of pot, and it was an ACCIDENT, and I think probably everyone/everything is fine here and we can simply move forward with our lives without making such a big deal of this? I mean, I know this is set in the 1950s, but…even in the 1950s would it have been THIS bad?” While the characters in the book continue to thrash and wail and panic and blow everything out of proportion, chapter after chapter.)

I almost didn’t keep reading, but then I wanted to find out if it was ever going to explain why there was such an overreaction, so I kept reading, and I guess I would say I was glad I did. It never did justify the overreaction, but the author built a pretty entertaining house despite the foundation resting on sand.

BUT THEN: I got to the Author’s Note at the end, and it turns out this was based on something that really happened to the author’s grandmother. So…perhaps that was what was wrong with it. I was reminded of a Richard Russo book or short story, where the narrator, a college writing instructor, is talking about how sometimes a student’s story will be soundly criticized by other students in the class for being unrealistic and/or seeming untrue and/or not making sense; and, as they’re talking, he’ll see a smug angry expression growing on the face of the student in question, and he’ll know what’s coming: and indeed, the student will say triumphantly that ACTUALLY, this REALLY HAPPENED, so that shows what the critics know about anything!! And the narrator explains to the reader that what the student doesn’t realize is that that makes the situation FAR WORSE: the student has managed to take something ACTUALLY TRUE, and make it SEEM FALSE. Anyway, I think if the premise appeals to you, it’s worth trying, but I’d get it from the library.

So, update: possibly I hate yoga! And also: I would like to know how many hours, exactly, women are expected to spend per day on exercise and self-care? Because it seems as if men are not expected to “””take time for themselves””” in this PARTICULAR way (which just COINCIDENTALLY has an ABSOLUTELY COINCIDENTAL SIDE EFFECT of working to shape women’s bodies for men’s preferences), and it seems as if this gives men a lot more free time to start wars and harass/assault women and take away rights and so forth! Not that I think that if women get that time back by discontinuing our 11 steps to perfect summer eyebrows, we should use it to start wars and harass/assault men and take away rights! I am only saying that it seems to theoretically be VERY PRODUCTIVE TIME. I am reminded, by perhaps a less-connected mental leap than you might be expecting at this juncture, of how the PTA seems to have been designed to give distracting busy-work and faux empowerment/management duties to the mothers who would otherwise be restlessly bothering the teachers and school office staff, but who are instead now very very busy bothering each other in a separate loop; and running fundraisers that barely pay for their own running, and doing so only if a lot of women consider their time to be free of charge! Whoever came up with that idea was VERY VERY SMART! Probably a joint psychology/business major/sociopath!

No, I did not get any sort of notification from my period tracker today, and also shut up. AND IF I DID: as I understand it, it is AFTER menopause that our hormones are “normal”—i.e., as they are during PMS. Which means that PISSED OFF ALL THE TIME AT HOW EVERYTHING WORKS AND HOW EVERYONE IS is the way women SHOULD BE. WHICH MAKES PERFECT SENSE TO ME.

I feel as if I can’t just Not Comment on the Russian attack on Ukraine, as though it’s not happening / as if I am oblivious to it / as if I think what I am writing is more important. But also: what are any of us supposed to say? It’s a nightmare, right? Stupid and horrifying and dismaying to see people pulling strings and acting as if other people’s lives are unimportant toys for them to play with when they’re bored. I bet some middle-aged Ukrainian/Russian woman would LOVE to be pissed off about yoga and peri-menopause right now, instead of wondering if her kids will survive this and knowing it is NOT IRRATIONALLY ANXIOUS to prepare for the possibility that they will not. I’m all the way over here, and I’m wondering if we’ll survive this, or if we’ll get a little weather alert on our phones notifying us of impending nuclear fallout, possibly because of ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE WHILE TRYING TO TAKE OVER A NUCLEAR PLANT. I read On the Beach a long time ago, but I feel like I remember the gist. Merciful pills for our pets first, and then for our kids, and then for ourselves. But we saw how the U.S. government handled the Covid pandemic, so we know the merciful medication will be plentifully available 1-2 years after we have all already perished from radiation or whatever it is that kills you when it’s a nuclear thing, I AM NOT REAL CLEAR ON THE DETAILS AND NOT REAL INCLINED TO LOOK IT UP, NO I DO NOT WANT ANYONE TO EXPLAIN IT TO ME RIGHT NOW

A little gift of peri-menopause, for me, seems to be the WILD MOOD SWINGS. Not that anyone would EVER have described me as a steady, level, consistent person. But right now I am going from COMPLETELY HAPPY when I remember that it’s the weekend and that means a bonus challenge on my phone game!!! to thinking that really it would be the best thing for everyone/everything if humanity wiped itself out via nuclear disaster. Like, within five minutes. I go from “OH!! I just remembered I have a new sweater I got on clearance and I can wear it today, and now I am wearing it and it’s making me happy and I should tell other people about it!!” (it’s this Lands’ End shaker sweater in Rubellite, and I think the only reason it’s on such a deep clearance is that the wee tiny vertical stripes make it look very weird on computer monitors ((also because Lands’ End prices are doubled, and you should never pay more than 50% off original price to begin with)), and I wish I’d risked buying the Baltic Teal as well even though that color looks even weirder on the monitor; I also got this Lands’ End fine-gauge crewneck sweater in Soft Magenta Heather and Soft Azure, because I love a colorblock) to thinking the only TRULY sensible solution is for me to leave my family and go live in a commune of people who are not men, where we will all SHARE THE CHORES and SHARE OUR SWEATERS and DO NICE THINGS FOR EACH OTHER and HAVE CHICKENS. (Someone other than me is going to have to take care of the chickens, because I only like chickens from a distance. But I WILL CLEAN TOILETS, so I feel like I have a lot to offer. I will also COOK CHICKEN EGGS.)

I had basically stopped doing yoga, not on purpose but just by getting less inspired to do it, and then doing it less and less until I was hardly doing it at all. I had a few favorite videos, but I was getting tired of hearing the same patter every single time; and I was getting bored; but also kept getting discouraged when I tried to do new ones, and even by trying to FIND new ones to try. I was still doing the back-pain ones when I had back pain, but otherwise not.

Then I was assigned a shelf-reading-type task at work. You are familiar with shelves: tall at the top, medium-height in the middle, short at the bottom. So when I am reading the top shelves, I can stand; but at a certain point in the middle-shelves region I am stooping uncomfortably, and it becomes more comfortable to kneel; and for the very lowest shelves, it is most comfortable to sit on the floor.

Well. My goodness. I CERTAINLY NOTICED that I had not been doing yoga. When I was doing yoga, I DID notice that it was easier and more comfortable to sit on the floor, etc., but I didn’t think it was THAT big of a difference. (IT WAS THAT BIG OF A DIFFERENCE.) So I have started doing yoga again. The first day I went back to the 12-minute core video, my muscles complained for SEVERAL DAYS afterward, but also I could FEEL how it motivated me to stand up straighter. The first day I did the back pain video I like (which I like even more for leg/hip/knee stretching/flexibility), I was like whyyyyyyyy haven’t I been doing this when it is so NICE??? (And I was alarmed by how much progress I’d lost on some of the poses, including such classics such as Sitting Criss-Cross-Applesauce, as well as pigeon pose.)

But I do need to add more videos to the rotation, because I can now anticipate nearly every word of the scripts, complete with errors, and that is annoying. This morning I tried the first of a 30-day series, so that I could have 30 days of not having to figure out which video to watch. (I am not going to do yoga every day, but I mean I intend to work my way through this series on the next 30 days I DO do yoga.) (Or maybe it will take more than 30 yoga-doing days, because if I happen to LIKE one of the videos, or feel motivated in any way to repeat it, I will repeat it, thereby extending the number of days I don’t have to figure out which video to watch.)

On Day One (all I’ve done so far, so my report is…early), I hated it the way I almost always hate new yoga videos, and also it was a lot of my least-favorite things: downward-facing dog, three-legged dog, planks, and a lot of rotating quickly (for me) AMONG the things I don’t like, so that I ALSO felt as if I could barely get INTO a pose I hate before she’s already done with it and heading into the next pose I hate (often saying “No need to rush!,” INFURIATINGLY). As usual I got frustrated enough to cry, and wanted to quit, and thought viciously about how much I hated the way everything felt, and how much I hated yoga in general, and also hated all exercise. I felt my body and mind were in perfect alignment on these views. Plus, I have been watching older Adriene videos, so I hated the “new” intro (I don’t know how new it is) and the whole vibe of it, and also I felt as if Adriene herself had changed, and was now doing much more…of her…speaking…pattern where…she puts…irregular…pauses…in…her talking which…seems to go…on…and on…as if she doesn’t…know what…she is going…to say…or how…to stop.

BUT: I also thought about how with some exercises, the ONLY way to go from “hating the way it feels” to “liking the way it feels” is to keep doing it until the necessary muscles/skills develop. And I thought about how I DO WANT to get better at these poses and not hate the way they feel, if that is within my abilities; and I won’t know if it IS within my abilities or not until I’ve tried for awhile. And how “working on getting better”/”trying it to see if it improves” are achievable goals, absolutely INSTANTLY achievable goals, even when “doing it the way the instructor is doing it right now” is not. And how I really am not required by any law to do what the instructor is doing, and no one is going to force me, but I can at least TRY! I can just TRYYYYYYYY. If she says to do this odd plank thing, and I look at her and think “I cannot do that,” I MAY VERY WELL BE CORRECT—but that doesn’t mean I can’t just TRY it, just to keep myself from getting bored as I wait for the next thing. And sometimes it turns out I CAN do it A LITTLE BIT, for A FEW SECONDS, which is A START!; and other times I CANNOT do it, but it feels like the TRYING is still working on the very first step of those muscles/skills; and other times I find to my surprise that actually I CAN do it. So even if I hate it, and I hate the way it feels, and I hate being so frustrated, I still feel motivated to keep working on it, at least for now, and to make the “working on it” and “feeling better sitting on the floor again” the point.

I was on a real streak with books there for awhile, finding tons to bring home among the ones I was supposed to be re-shelving at work, and reading them one after another like sleeves of Thin Mints. After finishing Plainsong by Kent Haruf, I read Eventide and Benediction, both of which I liked—though neither as much as Plainsong. Eventide was a sequel, sort of, but it made me half-wish I’d stopped with the first book (though not really) (but sort of), and Benediction was not really a sequel, but only a book that took place in the same town, with some very light character overlap. Then I was reshelving Benediction (it is oddly pleasant to come upon my own returned books on the reshelving cart) and saw Our Souls at Night, another book by Kent Haruf, about two elderly acquaintances, both widowed, who begin having platonic sleepovers because nights are so lonely and difficult, which I thought I hadn’t read but it turned out I had, and I enjoyed re-reading it, though I felt the conflict was forced and required more justification, and shouldn’t have been written as if it’s a normal thing that happens. (And if it IS a normal thing that happens, then I am sad and outraged and I wish to find a solution.)

(image from Target.com)

Now that I work at the library, I try not to take home New Releases, because New books are checked out more than any others, and once they are no longer New they tend to go dormant, which is when I will definitely see them and remember I want to read them; and Elizabeth Strout’s Oh William!, which I have been waiting to read, was moved off the New shelf AND was hanging out on the regular shelf (sometimes a non-New book has a long hold list so will still be absent from the library), so I checked it out, but first I re-read My Name Is Lucy Barton to remind myself of the gist (Oh William! is not exactly a sequel, but it is another book about the same woman), and also because My Name Is Lucy Barton is one of my favorite books, and I’ve read it at least three times, despite the title being so odd and unappealing to me (the title Oh William! is also odd and unappealing to me). Then I read Oh William! and liked that too—not as much as My Name Is Lucy Barton, but I don’t know if I liked My Name Is Lucy Barton the first time as much as I like it now. Oh William! is about an older woman and her relatively friendly relationship with her ex-husband, which is the sort of plot I like very much. My Name Is Lucy Barton is about the same woman when she is younger (though still an adult) (and married to William), and experiencing a lengthy hospital stay, and her mother comes to visit, and they chat about people they used to know; gradually these stories reveal the extreme dysfunction/poverty she grew up in, and you would not think I would like this book, considering I have said I will not even CONSIDER reading any more memoirs about people’s dysfunctional/neglected/abused childhoods, and yet here we are. Fiction is different; but also, this author does it in a way I can stand.

(image from Target.com)

Let’s see, I think that is when I had three or four books in a row that I really disliked, and I persevered with each one for awhile because I really wanted the promised plot, but just could not chew through them. I don’t want the authors to search themselves online and end up here, but in case you are interested, one was emoC htiW eM by neleH namluhcS (I spent quite a chunk of time trying to decide if the order of the words should also be backward, and I still don’t know what’s right, likely because both ways are, clearly, wrong), which was supposed to be a book about getting to see what your life would have been like if you’d made different decisions, but I dragged myself through almost 50 pages and it just seemed like the author was trying very hard to be cool, and was doing that thing where there’s one line of a conversation, then two full pages of backstory, then another line of conversation, then two more pages of backstory, and can we just have the conversation and stop interrupting it? I also tried ehT repaP ecalaP by adnariM yelwoC relleH, which was supposed to be about a middle-aged married woman having a fling with an old crush, and I only got through 20 pages before realizing I hated everyone: all of the characters, the author, even the setting.

Those are just the two books I still have here at home; I can’t remember the others I tried and returned, but in any case I was starting to get worried. Did I not like books anymore? Would I read 20-50 pages of every book from now on? Well. On to the next one in the pile.

(image from Target.com)

Poison for Breakfast, by Lemony Snicket (Target link) (Amazon link).

This was on my shelving cart, and I was surprised to see a book of adult fiction by a children’s-book author. I didn’t think I would want to read it, because I didn’t like the Series of Unfortunate Events books—though really that was an issue of plot and not style. But then I saw two things. On the front flap: “In the years since this publishing house was founded, we have worked with an array of wondrous authors who have brought illuminating clarity to our bewildering world. Now, instead, we bring you Lemony Snicket.” And on the back cover: “Some people might call Poison for Breakfast a book of philosophy, and hardly anyone likes a book of philosophy.” So I got it, because it is free to try books from the library and, since I work there, also very easy. It is a small book, and it is only 158 pages long, and there are illustrations, and in the back there are notes that include things such as “The author I said I would not identify is _____.” I think this book IS in some sense a children’s book; I can see how there may have been a struggle to decide how to publish it and where to shelve it. It is written simply, and with big words still defined as he does in his children’s books (“Sally’s suitor, whatever his name was, seems a bit impulsive, a word which here means ‘too quick to leave town just because Sally didn’t show up at a certain time'”). It feels as if the author is chatting to you: he mentions books he’s just thought of, and conversations he remembers, and why he likes specialty shops. There are little remarks phrased so simply and directly and purely, I had to stop, and blink, and wonder why I had never thought of saying it like that before—but that is the gift, to be able to say things that way, so that other people stop and blink and wonder why something so easy wasn’t easy to come up with themselves. There are little looping asides, where he reuses a word he defined earlier, as if trying to help you learn it. I was charmed by it all, and bewildered. I finished it and walked directly to my computer. If your library has it, I think you should try it, even if you don’t work there and so you have to make a special trip.

I continue to find it satisfying to do a pick-and-choose Valentine’s Day each year, based on inclination and mood. Last year, which was the first Valentine’s Day of the pandemic, I felt like buying cozy/at-home Galentine’s Day gifts and leaving them sneakily at local friends’ houses, and doing a Galentine’s Day care package giveaway that got wildly and beautifully out of hand. This year I am doing:

• heart sweater
• heart sneakers
• heart earrings
• heart mug for coffee
• classroom-style paper valentines (candy taped to each one) for co-workers
• giant Hershey Kisses for the kids
• Valentine care packages for the college kids
• Valentine care package for niece/nephew
• heart-shaped plastic plates

Which looks like a lot when I list it out, but FEELS very low-key: I already owned the sweater and the sneakers and the earrings and the mug and the plates. The co-worker valentines were a last-minute decision, half an hour before I left for work, when it suddenly seemed like it would be fun; I already had a bunch of paper valentines on hand, and I had a bag of heart-shaped York peppermint patties, so I combined them real quick and they were fun to hand out / put at people’s work areas. (I knew from previous years that a few co-workers hand out similar things, so I wouldn’t be the only one.) I always get the giant Hershey Kisses for the kids, so that was very low mental effort. The care packages were small and casual, not elaborate.

In previous years I’ve ordered myself a shipment of See’s Candies to arrive in time for Valentine’s Day. This year I didn’t, because I’d ordered myself some See’s back in the fall, and was still working on it in January, so it seemed less special/tempting. Also, I’d wondered if Paul might suddenly order some, because recently it seems to me that he senses a disturbance in the force and has been attempting to do some of the things I have finally given up on him ever doing. Probably I will buy myself some sort of Valentine’s Day candy, maybe See’s or maybe a box of something at Target, but I will buy it on sale/clearance this year.

And I have flowers, because I like flowers, and happily I like grocery-store flowers, so in The Difficult Months (January and February and often well into March) I try to have two bouquets going: one $3.99 misc-but-mostly-carnations bouquet, and/or one $4.99 tulips bouquet, and/or one $1.89 daffodils bouquet, depending on what is available. The vase with the $3.99 misc bouquet starts out looking pitiful, because a $3.99 bouquet is fairly thin; but the NEXT time you go to the grocery store and get ANOTHER $3.99 bouquet, part of the FIRST $3.99 bouquet (including usually all of the greenery) is still fresh and good!—so you just pull out the wilty items, freshen the water, trim the stems of what’s still good, add in the new bouquet, and now the bouquet is much fuller! This is how it works with the daffodils, too: $1.89 worth of daffodils is pretty okay, but it’s even MORE okay if you go back and get another $1.89 of daffodils, and get rid of the wilty daffodils from the first batch, and keep doing that every time. (I have a THIRD vase, a small one that is in fact a surprisingly prettily-shaped a Starbucks frappuccino bottle and I highly recommend acquiring one, for the flowers/greenery that have lasted longer than expected, but have been trimmed so many times they’re now too short for the regular vase). The $4.99 tulips typically last at least a week, but they all blow out at once; so I let them do their thing, and then I throw them all away, wash the vase, and start with a new batch.

Oh, and I ordered heart-shaped boxes of See’s to be delivered to the unit where Edward was in the hospital for a week, and I see that those were delivered today, so that’s fun!

I do miss going out for dinner with Paul: we’d get cocktails AND dessert; and, because we don’t usually eat out, it felt special enough that then we could stop having the discussion about what we were doing for Valentine’s Day. But we are not yet eating in restaurants, and it is not warm enough to eat outdoors, so we got take-out yesterday, and that did not feel at all the same. Well, perhaps next year.