Afghan Giveaway

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We are entering into what may be a very hard winter in the United States: election, pandemic, etc. And my dear friend Rachel, who many of you know as Doing My Best, made me an afghan that is like medicine: it is so cozy and warm, and so cheerful and bright. The first two pictures are Rachel’s:

Then this is me opening the box and immediately pulling out an armload of satisfyingly heavy warm softness, and being a little pink/weepy about it (it had been a long day, and this was Exactly The Thing):

And here it is on my favorite chair in my personal sunporch room:

And here is the ridiculous fearful cat who NEVER sits on laps, sitting on my lap because I have the afghan on me, a situation that has happened multiple times since then:

And here is what happened: Rachel ended up with double the yarn she needed. And she said this pattern was a very cheery therapeutic one to make, and that she would enjoy making it again. And so between us we devised a plan: the ad fund from the blog would cover the yarn and shipping, and she would make a matching afghan to give away to one of YOU.

We wondered if we should make the giveaway a fundraiser. But we are both aware that this is not a financially good time for many people—and the people who might MOST need an afghan in their lives might be the very ones who absolutely cannot make a donation right now. So here is what we came up with. IF YOU ARE FINANCIALLY ABLE, make a donation to a charity of your choice, as if it were a requirement for entering the giveaway, and comment with the name of the charity. IF YOU ARE NOT FINANCIALLY ABLE, comment the name of the charity you WOULD be giving to if you were able. DON’T SAY WHETHER YOU DID OR DIDN’T DONATE! Just say the name of the charity. We want the entrants who donated money to be indistinguishable from the entrants who were not able to donate. We also want to get lots of good ideas for charities as we enter into this long dark winter / the season of giving.

The giveaway is limited to U.S. addresses—but if you don’t live in the U.S., you can still enter if you have someone in the U.S. to ship it to. Let’s give a full week to enter, just to make sure; I will try not to forget to choose/announce the winner on Friday, October 23rd. The blanket will then arrive When It Is Ready. It is hard to know how long a big project will take, especially because it is hard to know how much despair there will be, and whether that potential despair will take the form of EXTRA crocheting or LANGUISHING crocheting. The hope, though, is that one day, perhaps when the winner has forgotten about it and/or is having a very long dark day, a box will arrive, and inside will be a satisfyingly heavy warm soft blanket, and it will be Exactly The Thing.

Update: The winner is Bitts!

Gift-Related Questions: Skin Care Products for a 15-Year-Old; Hair Dryer with Diffuser; Fashion Stuff for a 19-Year-Old

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My sister-in-law and I are in agreement that this Christmas in particular is likely to have a lot of issues with shipping delays, and so even though I am usually someone who likes to wait until after Thanksgiving to do most of my festive shopping, this year I am working on it right now. I have a few things I wanted to see if any of you know anything about.

FIRST. Elizabeth has put on her wish list “Luxury skin-care products, like one of those boxes where you unpack it and there are a bunch of things to try.” I don’t really know where to look for those, and hoped YOU might. And even if you don’t know exactly the format she’s talking about (which sounds like a sampler box?), I hoped you might have recommendations for skin-care products a 15-year-old girl might like to try. Her skin is combination/oily; she is not plagued with acne, but neither has she been spared.

SECOND. Also on Elizabeth’s list is a hair dryer with a diffuser, and I wondered if anyone had any recommendations. Her hair is wavy rather than curly, if that is useful to know.

THIRD. William, I’ve noticed, has tendencies toward being interested in brands/fashion: he bought himself a pair of Vans, and seemed to do it with Intention: that is, my impression is that he saw something online that made him think of himself as a person who would wear Vans, and then ordered some. He also wanted a denim jacket, and got one for his birthday—and again, it seemed to me that he thought to himself “I am someone who would wear a denim jacket.” And he is my only son who wears skinny jeans, and he does that on purpose. And he is careful about his hair: he researches styles and, in The Beforetimes, took photos to the barber to get a specific kind of cut, and uses a hair dryer and styling products; when we went into quarantine, he researched clippers and ordered a particular set, and now cuts his own hair in specific styled ways (usually short on the sides/back and swoopy-stand-up on top, almost like comic-strip hair). And what I was wondering is if this description brings any gift ideas to your mind. I realize this is a tall order. But perhaps one of you has a college-aged boy who wears skinny jeans and Vans and a denim jacket and is careful about his hair and ALSO has/wants something else I might want to buy William for Christmas.

And I think you should feel free to ask your own gift questions in the comments, if you want, and see if other commenters have an answer.

Voting in Person vs. Voting Absentee, During a Pandemic

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Would you like to join me in some hand-wringing about voting?

Our area is allowing Covid-19 as a reason for voting absentee. So Paul and Rob and William and I all sent away for absentee ballots. And those absentee ballots have arrived. And between ordering them and receiving them, the president of the United States has made many, many remarks that indicate that he intends at least to TRY to have absentee ballots considered fraudulent/invalid. I have read more than one article saying He Cannot Do That, but excuse me I have been alive and conscious for the last four years and I have heard “He cannot do that” followed by “Well I’ll be darned, he DID do it! Huh, weird! Guess there’s nothing we can do” TOO MANY TIMES. Which makes it seem like it might be better to vote in person on Election Day, just in case. I think ahead to ballots being questioned, and I don’t want to be kicking myself thinking that my vote is in question and might not count.

On the other hand, we are in the middle of a pandemic. I HATE that we have a president who would try to scare people in order to force them to vote in person during a pandemic, but we do. We do have that. It is obviously better and safer if as many of us as possible vote absentee to lower the risk for poll workers and for people who do vote in person. And surely, SURELY, with so many absentee votes—SURELY that would be too many to overthrow? Surely there would be too many of us tracking our ballots and demanding to know why they weren’t counted? In the past when I needed to vote absentee, I never thought to track it: I just assumed it would arrive and be counted. I assume a lot of other people were the same. BUT NOT THIS YEAR.

Also, if we would like to turn dark for a moment, and why on earth wouldn’t we, after all it is Friday night and we know how to spend it: between now and the election, some of us might become too sick to vote; or, less dark, might be quarantined on Election Day. I would feel happier if my vote were already on its way, Just In Case. And even without that worry, I would feel some relief to have the voting over with, and the Waiting To Vote tension relieved.

But as one of my friends says, the risk of voting in person is relatively low as long as everyone is masked (and our city is requiring masks and, perhaps even more importantly, has a system in place for people who refuse or cannot wear masks); and she says she personally feels she really wants to be there on that day and push that button herself. And I can see that, too.

If I’m going to vote absentee, I want to do it as early as possible: our city has online tracking, so I can make sure our ballots arrived, and with plenty of time to do something about it if not. (Dropping it off in person is an option, but one of the scare tactics is that a postmark will be important to prove it was sent before the election, so I would probably prefer to mail them.) But that means making a decision as soon as possible, when my usual method would be to dither longer.

What are you thinking about voting in-person vs. absentee? (Assuming you have that option. If you don’t have that option, you can answer based on what you think you WOULD be thinking, or what your friends/family who DO have the choice are thinking, since “I don’t know, we don’t have that choice in my area” makes for very dry reading—and, as we’ve noted, it IS Friday night.)

Hive

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I have finished my course of steroids, and my SIXTY lip oil pens arrived the same day. The dose of steroids started with six pills per day and ended with one per day, and now I am feeling glum and missing the perky feeling I had when I was taking the medicine.

Also, I have a big hive on the back of my neck, so apparently this is not over. Some light research shows that the hive itself is not an indication of impending death, and that some people Just Get Hives, especially in stressful situations SUCH AS WATCHING A VICE-PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE LESS THAN A MONTH BEFORE A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. A trip to an allergist seems warranted but not urgent. In the meantime, I am going to try to pay attention to detergents and foods and whatever else might be contributing.

Lip Oil Pens

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Yesterday, Swistle on steroids:

• washed two bathroom floors, regretting that she’d ever married or had children

• ordered a set of SIXTY Burt’s Bees lip oil pens

• left a comment on the Facebook post of an older Christian woman (one of Swistle’s role models as a child), telling her that her “Moral and Ethical Choice” presidential candidate was corrupt and that she, Swistle, couldn’t understand how she, the woman, and other women of God, could be supporting him when he consistently and persistently did the opposite of everything Jesus said to do

So perhaps I will not dabble in street drugs. And it might be wise to have Paul as a double-check on actions/decisions for the next four days.

I can partially explain the lip oil pens, and you may be particularly interested in an explanation if you remember my rather meh review of the one I bought awhile back. The thing is, it WASN’T worth $9, but I DID like it. I kept reaching for it, especially when my lips were kind of chapped and I wanted something nice and soothing. It was a little fussy to have to use the silly brush, and it didn’t last long before it needed to be reapplied, but I really liked the FEEL of the oil. And now I’m home all the time so I can use it throughout the day if I want.

So when it ran out, I looked for it online, thinking I could buy one for my Christmas stocking. Also, I was misremembering and thought it had been SIX dollars, which still seemed too high, but more reasonable. I was a little alarmed when I couldn’t find it at Target, and then when I found it on Amazon it looked like it was being sold the way discontinued things are sold: odd prices, various sellers. So then I looked on eBay, which is where I have successfully bought supplies of several discontinued items. I found basically what I’d expect: one listed for $6 with free shipping, another listed for $4 with $2.99 shipping, etc.—until I came upon SIXTY of them for $30 with free shipping. Well. I mean.

At this somewhat more sober moment, I realize I should have scrolled a little further, since there was an option to buy SIX of them for $14, which is approximately five times the price per pen, but is still a very nice price, and is approximately as many pens as I am likely to be able to use before they go bad. But at the time, I did not scroll any further, instead I hit Buy It Now, and now they have shipped and are on their way to me. If we do any sort of care-package thing in the future, YOU MAY BE SURE of getting a lip oil pen or two or ten.

Foot Part 2: METHYLPREDNISOLONE

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You will remember, because it was only a week ago and we have not yet lost our minds though who could blame us if things were getting a little precarious, that about a week ago one of my feet swelled up for no reason. It swelled Friday evening, stayed swollen all Saturday, then unswelled by midday Sunday, leaving me feeling perkily relieved that I would not need to see a doctor after all, and that’s when I blogged about it. Then some of the comments on that post made me feel kind of panicky, so I decided what I would do is if my foot swelled AGAIN I would see a doctor.

Well. That’s so easy to say, when the foot isn’t swollen and one’s mood is confident and carefree as a result of feeling freshly grateful for painless walking. A week later, when my OTHER foot started swelling up, I wanted to wiggle out of that promise. I spent two hours trying to do so, but failed, particularly when the foot surpassed the level of swelling the first foot had achieved, and was seriously difficult to walk on—to the extent that I used my computer chair to roll myself to the bathroom before we left for Urgent Care. (I looked into doing a telemedicine appointment, but the screening questions left me pretty confident the doctor would want to take an actual look at this.)

The doctor at Urgent Care said he didn’t think it could be a blood clot. He said first of all, if it were a blood clot my leg would be hurting (it was not), but that also, it was Not A Thing to have a blood clot first cause swelling in one foot, and then the other. He found a large hive on my instep and diagnosed Allergic Reaction, Cause Unknown, and he gave me a dose of methypredisolone and benadryl while I was there, and a prescription for a methylprednisolone pack to start taking the next day. Methylprednisolone is a steroid. It can cause anger, insomnia, and huge appetite. Let’s check in with Swistle on Day 2 of this medication (which was last night):

The benadryl DID knock me out, for five hours; then I woke up, lay awake for an hour, and happily did get back to sleep for a couple more hours. Today I feel Fairly! Perky! Which is good, because you know how we just talked about the urge to lay in provisions. And then the U.S. president was hospitalized with Covid-19, and suddenly I was VERY VERY INTERESTED INDEED in going grocery shopping, but there I was with my STUPID FOOT, feeling I’d wasted the WHOLE week when neither foot was swollen and I could have shopped ANY TIME!! And we were low on milk! LOW ON MILK!!!

But! The medications have been working beautifully: even yesterday I could walk almost normally/comfortably, and today I can walk without thinking about it at all, so I went to the store. They still didn’t have baking chocolate. And they did not have Diet Mtn Dew (until writing this post, I did not know it was “Mtn Dew” and not “Mt. Dew”), and that is one of Paul’s Emotional Support Foods so I am feeling a little anxious about that, especially because they were LOW on Diet Mtn Dew for the last several trips, so it seems like it’s not just a brief hiccup. Fortunately, that lowness had inspired me to get an extra 12-pack each time, so we’re okay FOR NOW.

And I got LOTS of milk, and plenty of eggs, and got us re-upped on all the normal things we use (cheese! yogurt! bread! meat! french fries!), and got a bag of new fall apples even though we still had a nearly-full bag of new fall apples, so now I feel better.

U.S. President in the Hospital with Covid-19

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The U.S. president is in the hospital with Covid-19, and it is easy to get caught up in discussions such as the one Paul wanted to have last night, about whether this is GOOD or BAD for the election (he says bad, because of The Sympathy Vote, which is not something I’m familiar with). And I have seen articles about how our country doesn’t have a system set up for what happens if a candidate is no longer a candidate when there is an election in less than a month, and about what MIGHT happen, given that we don’t have set rules. It’s dramatic, unsettling stuff.

Stuff like that is interesting to think about, and I do think the people who have the power to do so should fix that gap in election policy, especially now that we’re apparently trying to beat our record every year for Oldest Candidate, but I found I was getting caught up in it as if this were a strategy game in which I had to FIGURE OUT and then HOPE FOR the path to the best outcome. But…my thoughts and hopes have no effect on anything. So I don’t have to figure out what would be best and root for that—and in fact, none of us KNOW what’s best, we can only guess (and how many things in our lives have seemed Bad at the time, and then turned out in the long run to be Good, Actually? And vice versa, where something that seemed so Good ended up being Bad, Actually? LOTS), and none of us would be able to influence things for the best even if we did know. All we can do is wait for things to unfold. It can feel like powerlessness/helplessness, but it can also feel like we can stop trying to keep the airplane aloft with our minds.

How To Stop Paying the Housecleaners

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We have been paying our housecleaners not to clean for over six months now, and I feel it’s time to stop. I feel it’s gone from “This Is The Right Thing To Do” to “We’re Making It Weird.” The last time we talked, they said they were back to their full cleaning schedule, so it’s no longer an issue of supporting them during a time when everyone is canceling. I kept sending checks because I thought at any moment we would say “Yes, come back again!,” and I wanted it to be seamless and easy, and I wanted to hold our cleaning time. But now it looks like that isn’t going to happen anytime soon, and so I want to change plans, but I don’t know how to STOP. What do I SAY? I can do it via a piece of paper included with a last check, so it’s not like I have to make a phone call, and that helps. But each time I sit down to write it, I get stuck.

Also there is a bit of a language issue. Last December, on the last time they came to clean before Christmas, I put out their usual check, but also put cash in an envelope for each of them. They never cashed the check, so my fear was that the check was lost/misplaced and they thought the cash was the payment—which would mean it would look like I gave them a seriously skimpy holiday bonus. I made several attempts but was unable to explain this; she kept saying they HAD been paid, and wouldn’t cash the replacement check I sent, and it never got straightened out and I had to give up. I still feel some level of agony over it.

So I need something (1) very simple and clear (2) that I can write on a piece of paper (3) and send with the final check. I want it too to be something that lets me comfortably employ them again after the pandemic is over.

Provisioning

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In the days before we went into lockdown back in March, I remember having a feeling of gathering everything in and closing the shutters. We went to the grocery store two days in a row, and I felt like a squirrel in autumn. I went to Target, and there was no hand sanitizer and no hand soap, and I bought laundry detergent and shampoo and toilet paper and ibuprofen and Dayquil/Nyquil, and wondered what else I should bring into our burrow. We picked up one college student and then the other, and as I came up the driveway with the second one, I thought, “There. Now we are tucked in. We can lock the doors and hunker down.”

I am having that gather-in feeling again now. Instead of considering my grocery store’s month-long paper-towel shortage no big deal, I ordered some online—and, when they arrived this morning, I brought them into the house with that squirreling-away-acorns feeling. When I placed another order last night, I got an extra box of cereal, extra cans of fruit, extra peanuts and raisins. Not hoarding, but provisioning: buying the things we will need, and will use. Preparing.

Part of it is that I live in an area that gets a fair amount of snow, and so I am already in the category of person that memes make fun of for wanting to have adequate food in the house before we can’t get out safely for a couple of days, and that is apparently endlessly hilarious, NOT THAT I’M BITTER. And so even in normal times, fall gives me the feeling that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a few extra cans of soup, an extra pack of toilet paper, an extra jar of peanut butter. In pandemic times, and when our school system has reported their first confirmed case of Covid-19, and when we are just over a month from a presidential election in which one candidate is already calling fraud and encouraging his supporters to turn to violence if he doesn’t win, it feels like maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get TWO extra jars of peanut butter, by which I mean ten.

Presidential Debate

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The kids wanted to watch the presidential debate last night, and against my better judgement I tried to watch it too. I made it twenty minutes, and every single minute was a mistake, and now those twenty minutes are in my brain. I feel sick, poisoned. There was nothing good, nothing right, nothing wise, nothing useful, nothing of any value. On one side there was a corrupt old white man-ape and his lion-skin-robed donkey, the pair of them presenting as a single unit, the new false God of the white nationalist evangelical Christian party. [If you have not read the Narnia books in awhile, or ever: that’s a Narnia reference. It occurred to me that for those who didn’t grow up in the white protestant Christian church and steeped in C.S. Lewis, that metaphor might hit…oddly.] On the other side there was the appointed champion of the Democratic party, who will get my vote if I have to walk through fire and glass and virus to do it because he is a decent human being who wants to do right, which puts him in a completely different league than his opponent—but who is nevertheless a disappointing affable chuckling aw-shucks yet-another-old-white man who, with all this time to study and train to handle his opponent’s debate style, still descended within ten minutes to “Shut up” and “I got WAY more votes, WAY more!!”—but at least wasn’t an endless fountain of baffling lies and didn’t call on violent armed white nationalists to stand by, which feels like a very low bar but this is where we are. And even with four years to prepare for this day, there was a moderator (a third old white man, what an odd coincidence) who could not moderate, in part because he wasn’t given the tools needed for moderating someone who refuses to follow debate rules, despite our clear and experience-based foreknowledge that that would be a serious issue.