I am not getting any better at taping library book covers. I have gotten better at COVERING them, which is when you put a plastic wrapper over the dust jacket: at first I felt so clumsy and awkward doing it, but then my hands learned how, and now I just whip those suckers out one after another. But TAPING, which is what you do to protect the covers of paperbacks and the kind of hardcovers that don’t have dust jackets, is something I keep doing and keep being bad at. I feel like I shouldn’t do it anymore, when I’m so bad at it? But no one is saying anything or acting concerned. “Oh, you’ll get the hang of it,” they said four months ago when I learned how. “You just have to practice!” HOW MUCH PRACTICING UNTIL WE GIVE UP

Today I accidentally stuck the tape to the book cover without noticing the tape had picked up the index card that goes along with the book on its trip through the cataloging/taping/covering process. So I had to carefully remove the tape from the book cover, then put a new sticker on the cover to replace the one I ruined with the tape, then literally cut the index card out of the tape strip, then start all over. IS THIS THE BEST USE OF OUR PERSON-HOURS

Not to go on and on forever about such a boring and specific topic but, like, when the librarian was showing me how to do it, she showed me how to do it so there’d be NO bubbles under the tape. On my BEST taped covers, there are LOTS of bubbles. LOTS. One of my co-workers told me that she secretly uses a pin to pop a bubble if she gets one. ONE! If she gets ONE bubble! She takes out a PIN and pops it! Because it is so important to her to have NO BUBBLES! (I have not shown her any of my taping work.)

And I get SO MANY FINGERPRINTS under the tape! So many! I don’t know what other people are doing to prevent this! One of the librarians said I should just wash my hands and not use lotion right beforehand, but I DO wash my hands and DON’T use lotion right beforehand and I STILL leave fingerprints all under the tape! If I am ever accused of a crime and have vanished so they can’t get my fingerprints, all they will have to do is go to the library and pick up as many full, perfectly-preserved sets as they like!

Also, you know how hardcover books have a little canal/indent along the edge of the cover? Like, there’s the spine, and then a nice little indent to let the cover bend, and then the rest of the cover? The tape is supposed to go neatly down into that indent, and we have a little tool we use to jam it down in there. MY tape keeps getting stuck ACROSS the indent before I’ve had a chance to wrestle it into the indent. Once I DO press it down into the indent, it’s with a BUNCH of bubbles.

Pretty soon I am seriously going to have to go up to someone who ranks higher than me and tell them that I am not getting better at this and should perhaps spend my time elsewhere doing elsewhat. I feel like they’re going to think I’m just trying to get out of having to do the task, even though it should make absolute sense to all of us that some people would be better at some things than others. I’m happy to cover books! I’m happy to stamp discards! I’m happy to refill tape dispensers and put more water in the Keurig and bundle up the old newspapers and salt the walkways and collect books from the bookdrops and do any other tasks they want me to do! But THIS PARTICULAR TASK seems to me to be a BAD IDEA for me to do. If I mis-cover a book, I can take the cover off and start again; when I mis-TAPE a book, the book looks bad and fingerprinty and bubbly for the rest of its life.

Today Elizabeth, who has a tree-nut allergy that has never needed more than benadryl to fix an occasional accidental ingestion, had a reaction that led me to drive her to the ER, where the ER nurse kindly scolded me for not using the Epipen. I hadn’t wanted to make a big deal out of nothing, and on the way to the ER I was worried I’d be embarrassed for bringing her in for no reason and wasting all that time/money; but VERY quickly it became apparent that we were FAR at the other end of things and I was going to be embarrassed for not making a much bigger deal of it. “And why didn’t you use the Epipen?,” the triage nurse asked. “I’m just wondering if there was a reason,” she explained. I gaped and stammered, and the triage nurse triaged my temperament in a hot second: “Never used it before, didn’t know it was time, gotcha,” she assessed with surprising accuracy, making a note. “I was thinking the Epipen was for more of an emergency,” I said meekly. “This IS an emergency,” said the triage nurse, gesturing toward all of Elizabeth.

This will be familiar to a bunch of you who have dealt with food allergies, but I’d only ever taken people to the emergency room for: (1) stomach pains, (2) an injured elbow from falling off a bike, and (3) a sinus infection when the pediatrician referred us just in case. So I am only familiar with the kind of emergency room visit where you check in, and then wait awhile to see the triage nurse, and then wait for hours in the waiting room, and then finally get brought back to a room, and then wait another hour or more for a doctor, and then wait another hour for an x-ray, and so forth. I was not familiar with the kind of emergency room visit where you start to check in, but as you’re talking to the person at the desk they pick up an intercom and start talking into it. And then the triage nurse comes directly out to get you. And then after only a minute or two the triage nurse takes you directly back to a room, calling out requests (calmly, so calmly) to people along the way, and by the time you reach the room, which is right by the nurse’s station rather than down the hall where you’ve been on previous occasions, you have accumulated five medical people including the actual doctor already, and someone is getting an IV set up, and they don’t leave the room for the patient to change into the hospital gown but instead help her briskly into it. I was not familiar with that kind of ER visit, but now I am.

Here was the allergic reaction Elizabeth had that made me take her to the ER even though I felt like I was making too big a deal of things (she was not having any trouble breathing): she threw up the benadryl we gave her after she accidentally ate some walnut, and she got pink splotches on her neck/shoulders that gradually started spreading down her torso. Those were two of the three things her allergy doctor said were reasons to use the Epipen and then call 911, and so you might be wondering why I didn’t use the Epipen and call 911. I can only explain it by saying that I thought the third thing on the list (trouble breathing) was the REAL one, and that the other two were more of an issue ALONG WITH the trouble breathing. I felt like if I took her to the ER with just the throwing up and the pink skin, they would say “Uh huh…but you say she’s not having any trouble breathing? So…why are you here? And you know it’s not a good idea to use an Epipen if it’s not Really Needed.” It turns out no. It turns out that when the allergist gives you really clear instructions and you don’t follow them, triage nurses say things like “This is WHY WE GIVE OUT Epipens.”

(I don’t think I’m capturing her wry tone correctly, which is a shame. She has a frank/direct manner combined with kindness and humor and unflappability and very high competence. She was assigned to us back when I brought Edward in for his sinus infection and it turned out it was much more serious than they’d initially thought; she came in with the doctor who was coming in to tell us the scary results of the CAT scan, and she stayed with us until we left for the city hospital, and she was such a reassuring presence. Anyway I love her eternally and was so happy and relieved to see her when I arrived with Elizabeth. But she is a little scary and she would like me to use the Epipen next time. And I will! I WILL! NOW I KNOW, AND I WILL!)

Anyway, everything is fine. Elizabeth got epinephrine and benadryl and pepcid and steroids, and then she had to be under observation for three hours, and then we went home with prescriptions for more medications for the next few days.

I am feeling slightly high on success. It turns out that, if you have a terrible, terrible list of perfectly ordinary tasks, and that list fills you with inexplicable dread and despondency every time you think of it, you may feel SOMEWHAT BETTER if you accomplish even one thing on the list. And furthermore: feeling somewhat better may encourage you to tackle just one more small thing the next day. (Not the SAME day. No. Not when you have already made it over the tremendous hurdle of STARTING THE LIST.) And if you can just do ONE SINGLE TASK each day, just ONE, going along MUCH slower than it seems as if Everybody Else would be able to handle it, the list will NEVERTHELESS decrease. In ONE week there will be SEVEN fewer items on the list! And when you think of the list, you will feel seven items’ less dread and despondency! Well, you will if “you” is “I”/”me.” Second-person is a dangerous tense to fool around with.

I got stuck for a couple of days even after deciding on this approach, because I felt like I wasn’t allowed to choose the easiest item on the list first. Two days later I realized that was ridiculous: it wasn’t as if by forbidding myself the easiest item I was making more progress on the harder ones. So I did the one that was easiest to make myself do, and I crossed it off, and the next day I picked another item. And then today I made myself do one of the worst/hardest ones, which involved a phone call, so now I am sitting here with Reward Coffee and a Reward Snack; and when I think about the list I get noticeably less of that sick adrenaline feeling than I did before, which is its own additional reward.

There have been requests for an update on the New-House Feelings. I was just talking about this with Paul the other day. It came up because we went grocery shopping (he has started coming with me, which is…odd, and more on that another time, perhaps), and they had the $4.99 bunches of tulips for the first time this season, and I did buy some, but I commented that I didn’t feel the same DESPERATE NEED for fresh tulips/daffodils as I did last year, and that the winter didn’t seem so never-ending, either: it already felt like we could be thinking ahead to spring. We agreed that part of this could be attributed to the atypically mild winter, with far fewer snowstorms than last year (and only dealing with ONE snowy driveway per storm instead of TWO—at this point last year we still owned two houses), but then Paul added, with a little hesitation: “And also…you’re more used to the house now.” And I do think that’s so. That is: I know I’m more used to the house, and I do think that contributes to feeling less of a dire need of bulb flowers and warmth and spring.

We’ve had a full year in the new house now, and that really helps. We know what winter is like here; we know what to expect in the spring. We’re getting used to which vents to open/close for heat and a/c, and we’re getting used to which are the best windows to open on nice days. Things aren’t so OVERWHELMING all the time. We have a nice view out our windows, and I am appreciating it in seasonal ways. I knew where to put the Christmas decorations this time. We know what the ice-maker sounds like, and we can tell who’s awake based on where we hear the footsteps above, and we know what it sounds like when snow falls off part of the metal roof and lands hard on another part of the metal roof (it sounds like we are all about to die).

However, I still have hung up virtually zero wall stuff. I put up two calendars, one poster, and two arts, and they are all in places that already had a nail. There are no further nails, so I stopped. My New Year’s resolution was to keep going, but I have not yet done so.

Nor have I bought furniture for this house, with the exception of an inexpensive folding bookcase for my personal sunporch room. The furniture from our old house does not work well at all in the new living room, and other rooms have insufficient furniture, and yet have I bought anything or even started researching? I have not. I am too overwhelmed. I tell myself it does not matter, but I do feel a little embarrassed when people come over and see our old ripped-up furniture still crammed awkwardly into the new smaller living room, and another smaller room with, like, one recliner, two bookshelves, and several assorted chairs just sort of up against a wall along with a filing cabinet. It feels like when other people move, they get settled in a lot faster.

Well. There really is no rush. There is no moral imperative to have all the right furniture, especially when there are two children in college. And one day perhaps I will just START WORKING ON IT. That is what happened in the old house, though it happened…sooner. But! But but! In the old house, that was our FIRST house after living in an apartment! So that was different: we needed a bunch of house stuff, so we went out and acquired it. This time, it’s more like I have all this furniture and all these wall hangings that worked in the OLD house but look weird in the NEW house, and I just don’t know how I want to approach that problem yet. It’s not like when we moved into the old house and spent the first night sitting in partial darkness because our previous apartments all had ceiling lights so we owned only two small bedside lamps, but our house had ceiling lights only in the kitchen and bathroom and hall and we didn’t fully realize that until the sun went down, and so then the very next day I went out and bought four lamps. It’s not like that this time. We can make do just fine with what we have, so I’m lacking the motivation I need to GET GOING.

And also, I am not good at choosing furniture and have made many mistakes in the past, so now I hate furniture decisions and find them stressful. I so so so so so so so so so so so so wish the previous owners hadn’t gotten rid of ALL the furnishings before trying to sell the house. I probably would have bought a LOT of whatever furniture they’d had. Like, maybe all of it. I’m so grateful they did leave the curtains.

One thing I think about with mixed enjoyment and stress is what to do with some of our weird little kind-of bedrooms, the ones that are BETWEEN other bedrooms so you’d have to go through someone ELSE’S bedroom to get to yours, and so we’re not using them as bedrooms. We initially set one up as a music/art room and the other as a Legos/games room, and neither is being used much, so we need to rethink. Right now they feel like inaccessible luxury: EXTRA ROOMS, how decadent! but…we can’t figure out any good way to use them!

Possibly sometime I will take some photos of various parts of the house and show you the weird spaces I am working with. Right now when I think of doing that, I do that thing where you slump into a chair and feel as if a task is so inexplicably insurmountable, you don’t know what’s wrong with you. (That’s again if “you” is “I”/”me.”)

At work last week we had to go around the circle and share one happy thing, and I initially panicked because I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, not one single happy thing. “Welp,” I thought to myself, “Time for therapy, followed by leaving my family to go find myself in a country I can use for personal discovery/fulfillment in a condescending and problematic way!”

But after a little more thought I realized I DO have lots of happy things, I just don’t have a bunch of the kind that work well to share with co-workers in a going-around-the-circle type exercise. Like, “I did laundry last night so I am wearing my favorite jeans today, and it makes me happy that today I’ll be working in THESE jeans instead of the ones I have to tug up every five seconds!” That feels weird to share in a group of co-workers, and I don’t want them sneaking peeks to see if my jeans-favoritism is justified, and/or noticing in the future how often I really do have to pull up the other ones. “I got new salt and pepper shakers so that Paul will stop taking the set from the stove to the living room while I still need them for the dinner I’m cooking.” Sounds more like a thinly-veiled Spouse Gripe, even though I was delighted to have an excuse to buy new shakers. Oh, or what about: “This morning I woke up at 2:00 and realized it was colder than it should be, and panicked that we’d run out of heating oil, and thought we were going to wake up this morning to a freezing house and no hot water and a big hassle—but actually we still had fuel and the house was warm and there was hot water, and probably I just felt cold in the night because peri-menopause seems to have broken my internal thermostat.” Too long. Overshare. Boring. Weird. A non-negative stated as a positive.

Plus, at work we’re not allowed to say anything political or religious. Not that there’s much I’m happy about there. But it keeps me from using things like “Today I felt a brief glimmer of hope when….”

I do think there is a shortage of happy things to think about right now. I tend to wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, and when that happens I used to have lots of things I would think about to soothe myself back to sleep: I would imagine shopping at Target, or I would think about baby names and/or babies, or I would think about yummy foods I might bake/eat the next day, or I would think about the book I was reading, and in that way I would fall asleep again. Recently I’ve been finding myself lying awake being literally unable to think of anything like that. Incredulously, I go through my mental topics file and find nothing but worries and agitations under every heading. Or, if I do find something good, it leads quickly to a worry/agitation: e.g., I’ll think about how Rob and William will be home for spring break in a few more weeks, and then that reminds me of some of my frets about Rob. Or I’ll think about the book Little Women, which I’m re-reading and which ought to be a happy comfort, and instead I end up thinking about how Marmee apparently has this colossal daily struggle with her temper but, unlike me, manages it so well that her children think she is Never Angry. And so I lie there fretting at a time of the night when frets seem larger and harder to subdue.

Do you have tricks you use to get back to sleep in the middle of the night? Do you have any Happy Things To Think About that I could borrow?

I feel like all my online areas are currently rife with fighting and bickering and panic. In one online social group that used to be a considerable source of comfort and joy, a few careful and skillful people are subtly sowing strife, and it is relentless and it is proving very effective and everything is falling apart and I don’t see how anyone can stop it. I read a book on sociopaths awhile back, and it was basically like “The way you can tell when you have one or more in your group is there will be endless tempests in teapots, and it will seem inexplicable, but it will keep happening, and the only thing that can fix it is the sociopath getting bored and choosing to move on—which they will only do when the group has fallen apart and they need a new group to play with.” The sociopath can be one of the main players, twisting and feinting until no one knows which way is up—OR they can be behind the scenes manipulating others into performing the drama, which can make them very difficult to detect and remove; in those cases they’re mostly visible in other people’s unexpected and baffling behavior. It’s the kind of thing I wonder about now, when I see a group of people who used to get along very normally and enjoy each other, but then start to disintegrate in dozens of ways for what seems like no good reasons. Our group is having inexplicable and endless tempests in teapots, and there have been outbreaks of unexpected and baffling behavior, and it seems like the group relationship is disintegrating for no good reason. The whole mess is breaking down some good people, and it is hard to watch, and it is such a shame, and it is hard to know what to do when everything anyone does just gets turned into more tempest fodder.

On Twitter, there is of course the endless real-time news of the Senate impeachment trial, but also there are several HUGE and seemingly endless debates about other issues—things where I am seeing TONS of stuff in my feed from people I DON’T FOLLOW, just because I DO follow one person who is very active in the discussion. [Edited to add: I should clarify that I’m talking about people I follow but who don’t follow me or read my blog; they’re people I’m following on purpose to learn more about issues I’m not very familiar with.] And they’re the kind of discussions where I DO want to see an OCCASIONAL tweet by the person I am following, but I DON’T want it taking up HALF MY FEED and keeping me permanently riled. It is very much time for me to figure out how to block discussions. In fact, I am going to do it RIGHT THIS SECOND, while I’m thinking about it.

…Oh. So it was as easy as choosing “Mute this conversation” from the upper right-hand pull-down menu of one of the tweets in the conversation. What held me up on figuring this out earlier was that you only get that option in the pull-down menu AFTER you click on the tweet. If you’re just seeing the tweet in your feed and you click for the menu, there isn’t an option to mute. So I kept hearing about “Mute conversation,” but when I clicked the menu I saw only this:

…Oh, I can’t show you because it puts the user’s name in all the options. I tried to use one of my own tweets as an example, but of course the options are different for that because I have tweet-ownership options. ANYWAY THIS IS BORING, my only point is that if you FIRST click on the tweet, THEN “Mute this conversation” will appear in your pull-down menu options. That’s if you’re using regular desktop Twitter like I am.

(And I know there are various apps and so forth that can make all this better. But you are talking to someone who still views Twitter ONLY on a desktop computer, AND only just figured out how to mute a conversation after nearly a dozen years, so efforts to improve my life are likely to be wasted. ONE DAY I will suddenly get motivated, and on that day I WILL remember that there are better options.)

While I was re-shelving books at work the other day I thought of a dozen things I wanted to talk to you about, but do I remember any of them now that I am home at my computer? Do I hell!

We evidently have a friendly library spirit and/or helpful library patron, and by both of those tactful terms I mean we have someone who is leaving us Pointed Corrections, but those Corrections are Correct, so it’s hard to be critical. The other day, for example, I found a parenting book set flat on the shelf near the travel guides. I picked it up with a contented/irritated sigh (there is almost nothing in this life I love as much as putting a lost book back where it belongs, but I am still theoretically opposed to people putting books in the wrong place; but back to the first point, if someone IS going to put something down in the wrong place, putting it flat on the shelf is absolutely great because then I notice it and can put it where it belongs, so I do approve of that)—but then noticed the number on the spine WOULD put it smack in the middle of the travel guides. But…it was a parenting book, and not a travel-related one. Further investigation revealed the spine sticker was incorrect, something that hardly ever happens because the people who put spine stickers on books are the most meticulous people I have ever known. I don’t know how long it would have taken us to discover it if someone hadn’t set the book aside like that.

I mentioned this on Twitter but I think not on here: my brother is an extra in the 2019 Meryl Streep / Emma Watson / Saoirse Ronan / Laura Dern version of Little Women. He’s the flute-player in the wedding scene, and I went to the movie knowing he DID appear in it for a brief moment, and I kept my eyes wide open and did not blink at all during the wedding scene, and I did not see him. His wife’s entire family went, though, and they ALL saw him, so! Flute-player! Wedding scene! My brother! Good luck!

I thought this movie version of Little Women was really good for someone who has read/loved the book Little Women, but I didn’t feel like it would be as good a fit for my family members, who have not read the book. The movie is like a series of “Hey, remember this?” and “Remember THIS?!”—without actually showing the details of each THIS. And it switches back and forth between Past and Future, which can get a little confusing even if you are like me and have read the book many, many times.

And so we are getting the family ready to see the movie. Paul still reads to Henry each night, so he is going to read him Little Women next. And in the meantime, we have watched the 1994 Winona Ryder / Susan Sarandon movie version of Little Women, which I had never seen; and also the 2017 miniseries starring Maya Hawke who, amazingly to me, is the child of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. I remember reading the issue of People magazine that mentioned her birth. And now here she is, being Jo.

Of the three versions of Little Women I have seen (1994, 2017, 2019), my favorite is the 2017, in large part because as a miniseries it has more TIME so it covers more STUFF. But also because I was distracted by the versions with familiar actors. I kept seeing Hermione instead of Meg, and Winona Ryder instead of Jo, and Susan Sarandon / Laura Dern instead of Marmee. (And BOB ODENKIRK instead of Mr. March, what the HECK.)

It’s been interesting to see which movies (I’m going to refer to all three as “movies,” for simplicity) leave out which parts of the book. The book is like a dozen movies, so SOME things have to be left out. It seems like there is general agreement to be brief with Meg’s married storyline. One movie told the silk dress / greatcoat story, and one referred briefly to the jam story, but none of them did the husband-brings-home-friend-unexpectedly story. Amy’s limes ALWAYS make it in. Burning the book / falling through the ice is always in. Marmee’s temper is always in, but with more/less time devoted to it. There is always the story of the piano, but told differently. The Professor Bhaer storyline is VERY DIFFERENT in each movie; I can’t remember for sure, but I think all three incorporate an umbrella, but not in the same way the book did. More like they’re saying “Remember there was an umbrella?” Laurie shaming Meg is overdone in one version, skipped in another, dealt with oddly in a third. Laurie’s bad behavior is underplayed in all three, though one version does address it a little.

I have enjoyed all three versions very much, and now want to re-read the book.

I always stay in 2-star motels/hotels, not because I am choosing that many stars on purpose, but because that is my price range for motels/hotels. However, recently there was a localized dip in motel/hotel prices that brought a 3-star motel/hotel (I don’t know when to use “motel” and when to use “hotel”) into the same range as the 2-star ones, and so I went ahead and booked one. Here are the things I noted (though keep in mind that this is one single 3-star motel/hotel against MANY 2-star motels/hotels):

1) On-site restaurant instead of complimentary breakfast. Not a fan of this. I would rather have complimentary bagels and coffee (and some 2-star hotels have much more: waffle-makers, yogurt fridges, eggs/sausages, fruit, juice/coffee/cocoa) than a sit-down restaurant with waiters. I can see how someone else might want it the other way around, though.

2) Better towels. The 2-star motels/hotels generally have small, cheap towels. The 3-star motel/hotel had towels like the ones I have at home.

3) Larger shampoo/conditioner/bodywash, and better quality and nicer-smelling. The 2-star motels/hotels have teensy sample sizes you can barely get a single serving out of, and they generally smell like coconut air-freshener. The 3-star had much larger portions (like, enough for 2-3 uses), and they smelled nice.

4) Larger bathroom. This one was a draw. The 2-star places usually have a toilet/shower in one room, and the sink out in the main room, which is nice in its own way; the 3-star place had a more typical toilet/shower/sink bathroom, which was nice in its own way.

5) GLASS glasses, with paper lids that turned into coasters. I could see that this was supposed to be an upgrade over plastic disposable cups wrapped in plastic, while not actually wanting it. (I get nervous that I will drop/break glass glasses, and I don’t like the way glass feels if it taps against my teeth.)

6) Bottled water in the room. We were too nervous to use it, because of sneaky mini-bar charges for things in motel/hotel rooms and not knowing if these were in that category.

7) Metal ice bucket instead of plastic. We did not care about this, but we noted it.

8) Working ice machine. We very much did care/appreciate. Except we had the room right across from the ice machine AND the elevator, which was…non-ideal.

9) Prettier/fancier hall carpeting. Does not matter, but felt worth noting. It really was very pretty/fancy.

10) Big intimidating fancy lobby / check-in area. Did not like. Felt out of place.

11) Ballroom / conference rooms. Did not use, but felt important to atmosphere. Subjectively negative, because it made me feel like maybe we shouldn’t be there.

12) Better pillows. Both 2-star and 3-star motels/hotels have about four pillows per bed, but the 3-star ones were fatter/plusher/better. Not a LOT better, but somewhat better.

13) More TV channels, and more ways to spend money on movies. But I do not want, so. And the TV kept cutting out / digitally reloading every few seconds, just like in the 2-star places.

14) Big startling mirror in the elevator. Seemed deluxe. Startled us. Draw.

15) Noisy heat/fan. Same as 2-star, but felt more irritating because we were in a 3-star. Nice for blocking out sounds of ice machine and elevator.

16) Same room carpeting that feels like maybe you shouldn’t step on it with bare feet.

I just dropped one of my kids back at college, and Christmas is over, and the get-together I was looking forward to this weekend as a post-holiday pick-me-up is over, and now I am An Entire Mood.

Add to that Mood the fact that we are now in An Election Year. William is 18, and so last week he registered to vote. He knew more than I did about our president’s recent decision to assassinate a top Iranian commander, and mentioned it in the context of being worried about being drafted. I decided NOT to attempt to comfort him with something I read about how we don’t actually need to worry about another draft, because all of us would die from nuclear explosion/fallout LONG before there would be any call for involuntary soldiers.

I have been having a weird few weeks. Christmas is always a little fraught anyway, with all the work and stress and expectations and so forth, plus of course the pressure to reduce work/stress/expectations and Really Be In The Moment and Truly Cherish the Things That Truly Matter and so forth. My two college kids were home for winter break, which was a strange mix of SO DELIGHTFUL (having them near; seeing them safe and well; patting their tall flannelly shoulders as I passed by; hearing them talking with and teasing their siblings; having Christmas and New Year’s with all seven of us together) and very non-great (hearing their cynical takes on my parenting; worrying that one of them is literally up all night and sleeping the entire day away and also talking to himself at a level that might be fine or might be An Early Warning Sign; being irritated/enraged that I guess I still have to tell them NOT to leave their nighttime cooking dishes for ME to do). I pre-mourned bringing them back to school, and now I am at one-half still pre-mourning plus one-half present-tense mourning. While simultaneously looking forward to getting back to normal, and feeling stressed that “normal” now means “without 40% of my children.” It is all such a rich tapestry. And we never did do gingerbread houses, and the bags and bags of supplies are taking up space in my china cabinet.

Listen, do we feel like we can hang on until Galentine’s Day? It’s only five and a half weeks away. Last year I had friends over, and we did a classroom-style valentine exchange, and for my valentines I taped little paper Wonder Woman valentines to cans of sparkling seltzer in pink/red flavors, which I’m going to do again this year, and which I recommend if you are looking for an idea. Furthermore, I highly recommend THE WHOLE THING: I highly recommend hosting a Galentine’s party, and inviting your gals, and seeing if everyone can get rides so that you can drink a lot of cans of spiked seltzer. (You will have leftover non-pink/red flavors.) (Especially if you deliberately buy a bunch of non-pink/red flavors.) Make it an appetizer/dessert potluck. Bring a big heart-shaped box of chocolates.