I am back from an assortment of short vacations/road-trips (people who chose the postcard subscription in the fundraiser will get this month’s postcard from the road), and so today I am feeling mixed feelings: the fun is over and so is the vacation/road-trip food, but on the other hand I have my familiar shower and my non-travel-size hairbrush and my full assortment of clothing.

I’d ordered some earrings from Etsy before I left (I ordered a duplicate pair to go into one of the fundraiser care packages), and they were waiting for me when I returned. It is challenging to take a picture of one’s own ear, but I persevered until I got at least a mediocre picture:

One of the things I find discouraging on road trips is getting a glimpse into how very many women feel comfortable peeing all over toilet seats. I remember learning in psychology class that the human brain will work very hard to take a person’s behavior and force an explanation for it that lets it align with their concept of themselves as a good person doing the right thing, and I am wondering how anyone’s brain manages that feat in the case of peeing all over a toilet seat and then leaving that pee for someone else to have to clean up. Perhaps we should have a couple of special stalls reserved for people who don’t want to sit down, so that we are not wasting nice clean seats for other people, and to minimize the number of peed-on seats for the people who clean the bathrooms.

While I’m complaining (I am drinking black coffee after a week of adding, for example, Hershey’s syrup and heavy cream, so my mood is iffy), I would like to complain about how frustrating it can be to share the road with other people. I’ve noticed that if the speed limit is 55mph, I can usually cruise along contentedly in the same lane without needing to pass—but when the limit is 65mph, I have to keep passing people in order to go the speed I’d like to go. And it happens again and again that I am stuck behind someone going about 60mph, and then as I attempt to pass, their speed climbs and climbs until we are twinning it along the road at 75mph and I still can’t pass them. I am familiar with the right-lane phenomenon of “Oops, someone is passing me and that makes me notice I am going slower than I want to be going, better pick up the pace!” so I try to be understanding, but it happens SO OFTEN! How can SO MANY people just be noticing their speed as I pass them? And could they perhaps let me pass them and THEN pick up the pace? That’s what I do when it is me in the right lane, because I am ALSO familiar with the left-lane phenomenon of trying to pass someone who is going faster and faster. EMPATHY, everyone; EMPATHY.

Another complaint: people who are UP IN MY TRUNK as I am in the passing lane, when I am going Nice and Fast but also can’t go any faster than the person in front of me in the same lane, and/or can’t get over to the right because there are cars there. If I could say ONE THING to The Car Behind Me, it would be something like: Look WIDER than just the back of my car. This is not a case of my one single car unfairly blocking someone’s way by going deliberately slow in the fast lane. I CANNOT go faster than the person in front of me. I CANNOT get over to the right if there is a car to my right. I am JUST AS STUCK as the person behind me, so could I have A LITTLE SPACE. We are going VERY VERY FAST and it seems like the safety distance should be more than three feet.

The last time I was on a road trip, there was a scary situation where someone switched into my lane without looking, and luckily I had noticed that it looked like they were about to do that, and luckily I had time and space to scooch over to the lane to my left and avoid the crash. It was a lot closer than I would usually like to cut it, but it was an emergency. The guy I cut in front of LEANED on his horn, pulled so close behind me I was sure he was going to hit me, swerved his truck back and forth, was visibly flailing his arm and shouting. He did this for several minutes. Like, was he attempting to communicate that he felt my driving had been unsafe? In that case, why was he communicating it by being WAY WAY WAY MORE UNSAFE? It is a mystery. When I was finally able to get back into my own lane, he drove beside me for another minute or so, continuing to honk and shout and gesture. My good sir, you are teaching me nothing about road safety/manners.

I wrote about this bee shirt on Twitter but wanted to write about it here, too. I love it so much. I might buy it in more colors.

(image from Amazon.com)

I was nervous about what size to order. I am long-torsoed, narrow-shouldered, medium-to-medium-small chested. Men’s/unisex shirts are typically terrible on me: huge/boxy in the shoulders, tight in the hips, shapeless/baggy in the waist. But women’s sizes (especially in graphic/fundraiser tees) tend to run small/fitted/short. I wear an XL Tall in Old Navy / Gap women’s shirts. Sometimes I wear an XL in other brands; sometimes I wear a 2XL (my Notorious RBG shirt is 2XL); sometimes nothing works because all the options are too small or too fitted or too short, or else too big or too baggy or too boxy.

I ordered a women’s 2XL in the bee shirt. I didn’t try it on before I washed it so I don’t know if it shrank; but after washing, it fit the way I like a cute comfy weekend t-shirt to fit: soft and casual and a little loose. And it was nicely long. If I were ordering a second shirt in another color, and I may very well do that, I’d risk the XL.

I also finally bought a bee mug. I’d been looking for awhile, but nothing seemed just right until this one:

I wish I could include a link, but I found it at a non-chain candy/card/gift shop, and it doesn’t have a brand name on it. They had one each of several similar mugs, and I narrowed it down to two and then asked my sister-in-law and my sister-in-law’s sister which they preferred, and they both preferred the same one, and it was the one I was leaning toward, so that was happy.

One more bee-related shopping story. I had a packet of Mrs. Grossman’s bee stickers, bought who knows where. As with most of the stickers I buy, for a long time they just sat in a cubby on my desk. Then when I started mailing stuff for the fundraiser, I started putting a bee sticker on the mailing label, and/or tearing off a little panel of stickers and putting them in with the book/earrings/whatever.

As I got low on bee stickers, I started nervously wondering where it was that I’d bought them. I suspected I’d found them while shopping with my sister-in-law and my sister-in-law’s sister, but those are stores outside of my usual rounds. I looked online, and that’s when I’d found information that the bee stickers had been discontinued, and that the stock remaining in stores was all that was left. And so I was greatly anticipating an upcoming shopping trip with my sister-in-law and my sister-in-law’s sister: MAYBE we would find the bee stickers!

We found the bee stickers:

They were at a crafts/stationery/gifts store. I bought all they had.

(Each time we talk about bee stuff, there are questions about what’s with the bee stuff. Here is the Erin Keane tweet that started it: Erin Keane tweet that started it. Here is the article she later wrote: Welcome to Bee Season. Bees have become a symbol of pissed-off liberal/progressive women. Here’s a whole post of gift ideas for same.)

Elizabeth is going through her room and she’s been getting rid of tons of stuff: a giant bag of clothes, a giant bag of stuffed animals, two boxes of assorted toys and knick-knacks and miscellany. One thing in the pile was the book The Care and Keeping of You—the version from before they split it into a book for younger girls and a book for older girls.

I was leafing through it to see if I should just discreetly put it back onto a shelf in case she might want it again later, but it really did look much too young for her. She’s 14 now, and will be a freshman in high school this fall. She hangs out with friends in coffee shops. She French-tucks her shirts. She’s growing out her bangs. She needs an older-girl book and I’m wondering if you have any to recommend. We have the Scarleteen book on the bookshelf, but that seems like that’s TOO old: “to get you through your teens and twenties” sounds like a broader range than what I’m looking for. I’m looking for something in between American Girl and Scarleteen. Like, to get her through ages 13-16.

I leafed through one book in a bookstore this weekend, and it looked like the kind of thing I wanted: casual, cool, friendly, a section on tampons, answers to questions people might not want to ask the grown-ups in their lives. The only reason I didn’t buy it right then and there is that as I was skimming through I saw a lot of stuff about how can you tell if you have a crush on a boy, what is it like to go on a date with a boy—and nothing about any other possible situation. I’d like such books to show they know that situations other than “girls get crushes on boys” EXIST.

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OH! Also! Elizabeth is having her first sleepover. We haven’t had one before for various reasons, including “because I hate sleepovers” and “because we have so many children sleeping here already,” but I am finally at the stage of life where I can imagine managing it, and also there was a reason to have one, and so here we are.

What I would like to know is if there are things that make sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag more comfortable and that are also worth purchasing/storing to have on hand for sleepovers. Like, what about those rolled-up squishy-foam things? Should I get a few? We have hardwood floors. I personally would not want to sleep in a sleeping bag on them.

Or air mattresses? I associate air mattresses with being gradually lowered from “sleeping on a balloon” to “sleeping on the hardwood floor,” and also with “endlessly trying to find where the leak is this time,” but perhaps that is not always accurate.

Or do we just let the kids put their sleeping bags on hardwood floors? I don’t remember caring much about the floor when I was a kid. Though thinking back, I’m pretty sure my friends’ floors had carpeting.

What I want to ask is if you’d feel comfortable letting your daughter sleep over at a house when only the dad was home and not the mom, but I feel like that could devolve into an exhausting “not all men,” “but women also,” “what if it’s a family with two dads,” “here’s a horrifying story you will never get out of your head, as an example supporting why I have the opinion I have” kind of discussion that I am not up for this morning.

It’s on my mind because Elizabeth is going to have a sleepover, and the plans are for a specific date for a reason (that is, the sleepover can’t be moved to a different date), but that’s a specific date I’ll be out of town. Paul is totally up to the task and is in fact better at this kind of thing than I am (he’s already planning to do make-your-own-pizzas for dinner and make cinnamon rolls for breakfast), but I was wondering if other parents would mind if they knew I wouldn’t be home. I’d mind a little. I’d almost certainly still let Elizabeth go, but I’d mind a little.

I am stressed this morning because Elizabeth has a dentist appointment to fix one of two cavities, and they’re going to give her Novocaine, and she hasn’t had that before (except when she had two extractions, but they didn’t give her the Novocaine until she was very very high on nitrous oxide, so she doesn’t even remember it), and I don’t know how much to prep her about it. And I’m so sad for her that she has to get this done, and also that now she has two molars with breached hulls. Also, I’m agitated that they’re having us do this in two appointments. They said it’s that they don’t want her to have to have work done in two quadrants at once, but I personally would HUGELY rather just get this kind of thing over with, and Elizabeth is the same, but I didn’t want to argue, and they didn’t really give me SPACE to argue: they just said, “Okay, so for the first appointment, any particular times/days that are better?” And then they spaced the second appointment a week later, so she’ll have a week to stress about it. And I’m mad because when we were there the last time for a dentist appointment, the dentist WASN’T THERE and they just shrugged it off as if sometimes the dentist just isn’t there when you have an appointment to see him and it’s no big deal and you can just see him next time, and reassuring me that I wouldn’t have to pay for that part of the appointment (WELL CLEARLY I WOULD NOT HAVE TO PAY TO NOT-SEE THE DENTIST), while I was like “WHY DID YOU NOT CALL ME SO I COULD RESCHEDULE??” (but did that part entirely internally), and now Elizabeth has two cavities that are big enough to need Novocaine, so I’m guessing they were present last time and would have been caught if the dentist had BEEN there. And I’m retroactively mad at myself for not being someone who would say “Wait, you’re saying the dentist isn’t here? Let me reschedule, then. We had appointments to see the dentist.” I just have to be such an Easy Patient all the time, even when it makes NO SENSE, and I am no good at dealing with sudden/unexpected things.

And Rob emailed to say oh, by the way, he accidentally shipped shampoo and body wash to our old address, and could I contact the new homeowners and see what can be done about getting those? Which: no, I can’t/won’t. We will take the loss in whatever form it happens (return shipping, the entire cost of the items, whatever). And also: WHY IS HE HAVING SHAMPOO AND BODY WASH SHIPPED INSTEAD OF GOING TO THE STORE??? And he doesn’t have Prime; does this mean he PAID FOR SHIPPING in addition to paying whatever jacked-up price he paid?? And I am seeing him in ONE WEEK: this was SUCH a last-minute shampoo emergency he had to SHIP things? And even if he had deleted our old address and put in our new address, he meant to ship things to his SCHOOL address, so why wasn’t he checking to make sure of THAT?

This is driving me crazy. It feels like there are so many levels of COULD YOU BE MORE ALERT that I need to discuss with him, I don’t even know where to start or how many of them to do. And it’s reminding me intensely of Paul, which is making me much more upset because it makes it harder for me to roll my eyes and say this is just a Kids Are Kind of Dumb But This Is How They Learn thing. Paul is STILL this unalert. He will run out of the little flossers he likes, and instead of putting them on the shopping list he will just get a packet shipped from Amazon. When I say, “Wait, were they cheaper that way or something?,” he shrugs: who knows? who cares? So then I’ll look it up and they’ll be TWICE the price of buying them at Target, AND I was going to Target before the package will arrive, so he could have had them cheaper AND sooner. It is maddening. MADDENING. I AM MADDENED. I AM SO MADDENED THIS MORNING.

I made a couple of tweaks to the fundraiser options. The size 5 skirts are gone. I made the six-postcard subscription into a twelve-postcard subscription (I’d sent out the first installment of postcards and was already itching to send out the next batch, which cued me that every-other-monthly was too skimpy) and moved the six-postcard subscription to the international options. Also, I investigated and found that my top favorite bee earrings (the ones I have been wearing almost every day, bordering on obsessively) are sold by an Etsy seller who will ship internationally for a reasonable price, so I added those as another international option. Also, I found a bee ornament (I’m going to use mine as a Christmas tree ornament, but it was sold with wind chimes and decorative gardening supplies and those rear-view-mirror crystal danglers, so it could be a suncatcher or a very wee wall-hanging or a rear-view-mirror decoration or whatever), and put that in as an alternate option for the Bee Twins: you can do ornament/sticker instead of earrings/sticker (if you signed up for earrings/sticker but want to switch to ornament/sticker, it’s not too late).

If you signed up for the bee earrings/sticker, I have ordered the stickers and they have arrived, and I have ordered the earrings but they have not yet arrived, so don’t worry that you haven’t received yours yet. Napkins, skirts, pottery, and baby name books ordered so far have been shipped out, except for one set of napkins on my kitchen counter that will likely go out tomorrow. There were more napkin requests than I expected (SO PLEASING), and we are starting to run low (SO PLEASING), but we still have at least three sets left. (One of the sets pictured below has been claimed.) William and Elizabeth and I were working on combinations last night, and they think that any further sets would be TOO hodgepodge—but, while appreciating their artistic sensibilities, I disagree that “too hodgepodge” is a thing, and I think I can get at least two more sets out of what’s left—though I admit I’d be tempted to go buy some more napkins to freshen the selection up a bit. Which I would love to have the excuse to do.

I have an extremely pleasing spreadsheet of future greeting cards / care packages / treat packages / Christmas books / wall calendars to send out. I can’t tell you how heart-in-throat sentimental/exhilarating/fun I am finding this. It gives me purpose and hope and things to look forward to.

We are now at $4903.41. It would be so exciting to hit $5000, but even if we DON’T, I feel as if we BASICALLY did. Like, if we stopped at $4903.41, and I were telling someone else about it, I would feel comfortable rounding to $5000. And LOTS of you were able to get matching funds from an employer, and I did not count those in the total but I TOTALLY COUNT THEM IN MY HEART.

I have started shopping for the care packages, which is so fun. I just love it. When I placed my latest Penzey’s order (THE UNEXPECTED SPICES OF THE RESISTANCE) I bought some extras. I am also keeping the care packages in mind every time I buy any indulgence for myself: what’s good for a Swistle is good for a Swistle care package! An interesting care package request concept I hadn’t thought of: someone asked me to send a care package to their college-freshman nephew this fall. I plan to make packages for college-junior Rob and college-freshman William at the same time, so I can get good deals on larger quantities of Kraft Easy Mac and Clif Z-bars and mug cakes and microwave popcorn and Altoids and string lights and temporary tattoos and novelty socks.

Several people donated and said they did not need prizes. I said so already in the individual emailed replies, but I want to say publicly too that if you change your mind and want the prize, I stand ready and eager to add you to the list. Like if you have A Day and you feel as if having treats coming to you at some later date would be bolstering, PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO TELL ME. I would love to add you to the spreadsheet of hope and purpose.

I needed a dress for a summer-evening office-casual indoor/outdoor Paul work event later this month, and I went out shopping one evening with my friend Morgan (we are both feeling a little oppressed by our daytime summer schedule of Children at Home), and we FOUND A DRESS and then we had a Food Court dinner and then split a dessert crepe (strawberry/cheesecake flavor with chocolate drizzle and whipped cream). It was a good evening, though I was sweaty and tired and my hair was wrecked by the end of it. Here is the dress, if you are interested:

(image from Torrid.com)

(It looks quite a bit different on me than it looks on the taller/bustier model: longer, less babydollish, more fit-and-flare. The photo of the dress on its own is more how it looks on me.)

It’s a nice thick slippery fabric, and we’ll have to see if it ends up being comfortable when I’m wearing it on what might be a very warm July evening—but what appealed to me during try-on is that it does not seem as if it needs any kind of shapewear/slip underneath; it’s high-waisted, and it coasts over the details rather than clinging to them. And it’s stretchy: I pulled it over my head and it felt good to put it on, like pulling on a stretchy comfy t-shirt, but thicker fabric than that. The style is partly casual/cute, but the seams/pleats/pattern give it a structured/tailored look as well. And if you are pear-shaped like me with narrow rounded shoulders, and if in a sleeveless and/or v-neck item you look like your grandmother going to church, the existent sleeves and non-V neckline of this dress are a total relief/delight. And Morgan had a $25 coupon she wasn’t going to use, so she gave it to me, and that was even better, though I would have gladly paid the full $68.90 for it after trying on three dozen other dresses that were thin/short/casual/formal/babydoll/v-neck/sleeveless/needed-a-cardigan-or-slip-or-shapewear-to-work. It was an utter triumph. AND IT HAS POCKETS.

I don’t want to argue on Facebook so I’m bringing it here. A guy I went to high school with (and had a very brief and dramatic almost-dated-but-missed-it with) did a kids-these-days post about how he was outside a bar and saw some early-20s guys refusing to walk an early-20s girl to her car, so he stayed outside a little longer to make sure she got there safely. Which is nice. Except. Back in my late teens, I went to a party this same guy was at. And when I left, he asked one of his friends to see me to my car. Which shows a very nice consistent principle over the decades, and he definitely can’t be accused of judging young people for attitudes he only formed in middle age. But. The friend who walked me to my car then started kissing me and was difficult to get away from, and it was a scary and stressful situation to extricate myself from, alone in the dark with some guy. I can’t know for sure there wasn’t something worse along that path, but I’m pretty sure I would have been both safer and happier if I’d walked to my car on my own.

But you can see why I don’t want to argue that men SHOULD NOT walk women safely to their cars—particularly since the conversation is already devolving into “it’s not about gender: men AND women should be looking out for each other!!” plus the traditional middle-aged bitching about how this young generation is the worst and no one has respect or manners anymore.

I asked on Twitter the other day if anyone knew the scoop about putting return addresses on packages: this week I’m mailing out a bunch of skirts and baby name books and cloth napkins for the fundraiser (up to $4578.41 so far!), and long ago a couple of post office clerks tried to tell me that a return address was required—but then they let me leave it off when I explained that it was a blog giveaway, which made me wonder if it’s really a rule. Surely saying “It’s for a blog giveaway” is not enough to override an actual rule, especially if that rule is for safety/security. And especially if, when I DO put a return address on the package, they don’t even check to make sure it’s real/mine.

Twitter dug up the evidence that it was in fact a rule (only for priority mail, oddly), but suggested clerks might have varying degrees of interest in enforcing it, which is proving to be the case. The first batch of packages I brought, the clerk made no remark other than “I’m trying not to cover up your heart” as he put the label very close to where I’d written “Swistle” and drawn a little heart in the return address field. (I didn’t at first catch his meaning, so it first struck my ear as a surprisingly poetic thing to say.) So he definitely noticed the return address situation, but chose not to do anything about it. The second batch of packages I brought, a different clerk said, “You know, you’re supposed to have a full return address,” and I started in with what I’d prepared to say (“Is there any work-around for that? It’s a blog giveaway, and…”) and she cut me off with a shrug and an “Eh” and an it-doesn’t-matter wave of the hand, before making sure I knew that if the package was undeliverable, I wouldn’t get it back. That made me think again of the suggestion made on Twitter that I use the post office as my return address: if I were tracking the package and saw it heading back to the post office, I could stop by and let them know to expect it. I don’t know how cheerful they’d be about that, but at least there would be hope. But I don’t remember ever getting back an undeliverable package, even when I do put my return address on there, so I am not very worried, just the usual low-grade anxiety which is literally unavoidable.

Paul had a four-day weekend for 4th of July, and we spent most of it trying to remember what day it was. I am relieved to have things back to relatively normal today. Well, normal + literally 18 mosquito bites around my ankles. Apparently I was insufficiently bug-sprayed for the fireworks.

Edward had his wisdom teeth out and it went well. Paul and I both expected him to do more moping and despairing about the pain/swelling afterward, but he was steadily cheerful and pleasant, cooperatively holding bags of frozen corn to the sides of his face. We have a lot of pudding cups left over, and that is a good problem to have.

The fundraiser is going well! Lots and lots of donations! It is so pleasing and touching and hope-generating, and I have teared up many times. I am keeping everything in a spreadsheet so I can keep easily checking the total without having to do the math myself. ($4023.41 so far!) Have I packed up or mailed out even one single item yet? No! But I will! I’ve placed orders for bee stickers and bee earrings and baby name books and free boxes from the post office. I am sifting through pottery and postcards, trying to choose which ones I think would be best for each person (this has been even more fun than I’d thought it would be, and I’d thought it would be pretty fun). I am examining Swistle skirts with mild stress, hoping not to find those mysterious stains that sometimes appear on clothing that’s been packed away.

I saw online a lot of fellow United States peeps having conflicted feelings about participating in a big celebration of this country when the country in question is doing such terrible and shameful things right now, and it was a relief to see I wasn’t alone. Paul wore his ACLU Statue of Liberty Resist shirt on the 4th of July and got a lot of positive/thumbs-uppy kinds of comments on it; it seemed to beautifully strike that conflicted note.

(image from ACLU.org)

I drank vodka made in America and looked appreciatively at the spreadsheet and ordered my free Penzey’s New Hope spice gift box.

The current refugee/immigrant situation in our country is heartbreaking and appalling and infuriating, if those words were strong enough to describe it, which they are not. I can’t believe we’re choosing to treat people this way. I can’t believe people are ARGUING for it and JUSTIFYING it (as if there were ANY circumstances that would justify treating ANY people that way), instead of briefly imagining themselves and their children as the refugees/immigrants (it is how most of our ancestors arrived in the U.S.; it could happen to us again) and then immediately realizing through the power of empathy that the situation has gone from dicey/unkind to actively inhuman/cruel/evil.

All over the place I see people saying we MUST help, we MUST act, it is immoral NOT to help/act, and I AGREE—and yet, I’m not seeing many ways to FUNNEL these whipped-up feelings into effort except to write to my government representatives and donate money to RAICES and the ACLU and ActBlue Kids and Families at the Border. Those are good things to do, but they feel tepid: they don’t have that ring of HELPING/ACTING I’m looking for and that activists are calling for. The urge, I think, is to go to a camp and take care of the babies, or to sneak food through the camp fences, or to bring towels/sheets/food/clothes to a refugee family setting up a new home here, or to offer up a section of my house as temporary shelter, or to be a lawyer/doctor and donate my services, and those more hands-on options are not currently available to me.

I looked up what IS available to me in my area (@TheRaDR recommends typing “immigration justice” plus your location into a search engine), and the options seem limited to fundraising/advocating. I can make calls, I can answer phones, I can show up to protests, I can volunteer at a fundraiser, I can talk other people into having a fundraiser. This brings me to despair: those are mostly sales/marketing skills, and sales/marketing is the opposite of my skill set. Not only am I very, very bad at it, I HATE it. It is fine for me to experience some misery for this cause, but the misery has to MAKE SENSE: if I am miserable and not raising a single dime, it is a giant waste of time for everyone.

Which made me think, what IS my skill set? What can I DO? I can’t lawyer, I can’t doctor, I don’t want to make phone calls, I don’t want to knock on doors. I am good at caring for babies, but I can’t go to the camps and care for the babies. I am good at shopping for household bargains, but I’m not seeing anywhere near me that is collecting for that (maybe in the not-too-distant future!).

What do I OWN that I could use/give? I have about twice as many sheets and blankets as we need, and I have extra food in the pantry—but again, I’m not seeing anyone near me collecting those. I have some money, and I can give that—but seeing how large the need is, my contribution is puny, a drop in the bucket; I’ll do it, but it’s not enough. I have TIME, but I need to find a way to use it. I have two blogs, which gives me two platforms. I have a box full of Swistle Skirts.

I have a box full of Swistle-made pottery.

I have a box full of brand-new cloth napkins. I have a giant box of postcards. I can write baby-name advice. I can bake. I like to make care packages. I like to send postcards/cards. Can I turn these things I have and can do into what is needed, which is MONEY for LEGAL AID and MEDICAL CARE and REFORM?

Even though I hate the usual kind of fundraising (phone calls, door-to-door, arbitrary emergency goals/deadlines, making children sell overpriced items so that the school gets a teeny percentage of the profits and the merchandise company keeps most of it), that’s not the only kind of fundraising. You know what my favorite fundraiser is? The kind where you make a donation and you get a little prize or treat for doing it: maybe you donate $100 and they send you a t-shirt as a thank-you. My top favorite is where you get to CHOOSE your prize/treat from a selection. Like when NPR says that for THIS donation level they will thank you with your choice of a bird mug or a bird tote, but for THIS donation level they will thank you with a bird mug AND a bird tote, and for THIS donation level they will thank you with a t-shirt. I love that. I know the cost of item gets deducted from my donation—but I end up increasing my donation to get the item, which is what is supposed to happen. The organization gets more money than they would have; I get my bird mug; seeing the bird mug daily reminds me of the organization so I’m more likely to donate again; we’re all happy.

And that is something I can do. It is shopping and it is mailing and THAT IS SOMETHING I CAN DO. And I can do it NOT USING A PHONE. I don’t know if what I have is what you would want, but if it is, you can have it as your prize/treat/thanks for making a donation to one of these charities. And instead of the organization having to take the cost of the incentives out of the donation they receive, I will pay for that part.

I am very concerned that even after explaining it in the paragraph above, someone reading this idea will still misunderstand the concept and think that I am valuing the things I am offering at the donation amounts I am pairing them with—like, that I think a birthday card from me is WORTH $20. *HUGE PAINFUL CRINGE*. So I want to emphasize, perhaps OVERemphasize, that when NPR sends you a mug for donating $60, no one is saying the mug is worth $60: the mug is a little $6 thank-you gift for donating the $60 to a good cause. If NPR sent you something WORTH $60, it would eat up your entire donation and not make any sense for them to do that; if I sent you something WORTH your donation, we’d both be better off if I just sent the money directly to the charity and didn’t get anyone else involved. So that is all I am doing here: sending small gifts as thank-yous/incentives. The main difference is that I am not the organization receiving the money, so nothing gets taken out of your donation, only out of my bank account, which is nicer for the organizations: this is me buying you the $6 mug for your $60 contribution to the charity, so the charity doesn’t have to buy it.

Here is how it will work, if you want to participate: you will make a donation directly to RAICES or The ACLU or ActBlue Kids and Families at the Border. (DON’T SEND ANY MONEY TO ME.) [Edited to add: Amy in the comments section reminds us all to see if your employer has a matching program for donations.] You will email swistle at gmail dot com a screenshot of your donation confirmation, plus the name and mailing address you want to use for the thank-you token, if applicable. You will choose your item, and I will send it to you (or I will put it in a spreadsheet so I remember to send it to you at a later time, if applicable).

If you would like to donate a certain amount of money but would prefer a prize from a lower category (say for example you’re going to donate $100 but what you want is the Calendar Twins prize from the $75 category), you can do that. You could also donate $100 and choose Calendar Twins + Greeting Card, or choose FIVE Greeting Cards. Maybe it’s already obvious that you can do that. But I wanted to say it specifically, so that I don’t accidentally reduce someone’s donation with the prize categories.

Some rewards are limited; I’ll make a note of it here on this same post if they are no longer available.

As usual with giveaways, they’re a real bummer for anyone who doesn’t live in the same country as the giver-awayer (in this case, the United States of America), because international shipping prices make things impractical to the point of ridiculous. I know this sucks. There are only three that work internationally: the greeting card, the every-other-month postcard subscription, and the Swistle’s Favorite Bee Earrings. Or you can have the item shipped to someone you know in the U.S.

$20 donation option:

• Greeting card. I will send you (or someone you choose) a greeting card on the occasion of your choice: birthday, wedding, congratulations, Valentine’s Day, anniversary, Christmas, Easter, pretty much whatever though let’s not test the limits of that. I will write something Swistley in it; you can specify what you want, if you have a preference, though I’ll have override power on what I’m willing to write in my own handwriting and then sign. (But, like, if it’s something I said on the blog once and you liked it, that’s a likely Yes.) This one can be international.

$50+ donation option:

• Treats. I will fill the smallest flat-rate box (it’s quite small: 5-3/8 x 8-5/8 x 1-5/8) or a similarly small box (I’m still working with the logistics on this one) with your choice of homemade cookies, homemade brownies, or an assortment of store-bought treats from my own secret stash of favorites that I hide in a cabinet on my personal sunporch (DO NOT TELL THE CHILDREN). I will send it to you, or you can choose someone else for me to send it to. We might want to wait for cooler weather for shipping.

$75+ donation options:

• Calendar Twins! When I choose my annual wall calendar for the year after the usual long deliberation via blog post, I will have the same one shipped to you. It will be a surprise: I won’t say on the blog which calendar I’ve chosen, not until after all the calendar twins have received their calendars.

• Cloth napkin starter/supplement kit. I will send you eight assorted cloth napkins from my unnecessarily vast collection of brand-new extras. (I like a non-matching assortment, so I buy a four-pack of cloth napkins on clearance, put one or at most two from the pack into rotation at my house, and put the others in a box in the attic to use as replacements when napkins get lost/stained—and/or, more realistically, to wait for the executor of my estate to deal with them.) If you want to, you can mention preferences (colors you like, whether you prefer solid colors or patterns, etc.) and I’ll see what I can do, but let’s be frank about how hodge-podge the results are likely to be. (VERY.)

• Favorite Christmas book. Nearer Christmas, I will send you a used copy (new copies aren’t available anymore) of my favorite Christmas book: This Year It Will Be Different, by Maeve Binchy. I will write a gift inscription in it if you want—like, “To Marigold, Christmas 2019. I hope you will love this book as much as I do! Merry Christmas! Love, Swistle.” Or I can leave it unwritten-in, if you prefer. I can send it to you or someone else of your choice. My default will be to gift-wrap it in Christmas paper, but I can also leave it unwrapped, wrap it in birthday paper, wrap it in non-Christmassy wintery paper, etc.

• Favorite baby-naming book. I will send you a new copy of the latest edition (just came out this year) of my favorite baby names book: The Baby Name Wizard, by Laura Wattenberg. I will write a gift inscription in it if you want—like, “To Megan, July 2019. Happy baby-naming! Love, Swistle  P.S. Your friend Jen says USE MINERVA!” Or I can leave it unwritten-in, if you prefer. I can send it to you or someone else of your choice. If it’s a gift, let me know: I have some cute baby gift-wrap I haven’t had a chance to use yet.

$100+ donation options:

• Postcard subscription. I will send you one postcard every month for a year (twelve postcards total) from my unnecessarily vast collection. If you want to, you can tell me a list of your interests and I’ll see if I can find any postcards to match; it’s fun for me to search through my supply for any owls/wine/trees/medicine/books/stamps/flowers/cows/Christmas/Harry-Potter postcards. I can stamp/write them if you want, or if you prefer I’ll send them blank in an envelope so you can use them yourself.

• Postcard subscription INTERNATIONAL! I will send you one postcard every other month for a year (six postcards total) from my unnecessarily vast collection. If you want to, you can tell me a list of your interests and I’ll see if I can find any postcards to match; it’s fun for me to search through my supply for any owls/wine/trees/medicine/books/stamps/flowers/cows/Christmas/Harry-Potter postcards. I can stamp/write them if you want, or if you prefer I’ll send them blank in an envelope so you can use them yourself.

• Bee Twins! I have three favorite pairs of bee earrings and I have three different vinyl bee stickers on my car. I will send you (or someone you choose) your own pair of bee earrings matching a pair of mine and your own vinyl car sticker matching one of mine (you don’t have to put it on your car; it also works on laptops, notebooks, etc.). [Edited to add: OR, if you would prefer a bee Christmas ornament instead of the earrings, you can have ornament + sticker instead.] There may be a shipping delay, because I’ll get a break on shipping costs if I order multiple pairs of earrings / multiple stickers at the same time, so it would be worthwhile to wait a bit and order all together once I know how many people want this one. ALSO, one of my three favorite pairs of bee earrings ships from England, so it takes extra time. (If you need your Bee Twins kit earlier for any reason, though, like if it’s for a friend’s birthday and it’s coming right up, say so and I will see what I can do.)

• Bee Earring Twins INTERNATIONAL! My top favorite pair of bee earrings can be shipped internationally, it looks like. I checked half a dozen countries and they were all reasonable. So this would be JUST the bee earrings, NO bee sticker, but it looks like it can go anywhere!

$150+ donation option:

• Swistle pottery. I’ll send you (or someone you designate) one of the pieces of pottery (pictures on those posts) I made in my beginner wheel-thrown pottery classes. (The key word here is BEGINNER: these items are…let’s call them “charmingly imperfect.” Or “thick and uneven.” Or “frankly childish.”) You can have me surprise you with which one I send, or you can say which pieces you like best from the pictures and I will attempt to send you one of those—but some of the pieces have already been given as gifts (frankly: most of the best ones), and the seriously defective ones (big cracks, or entire bottom of piece missing) have been discarded, and others may go to people who beat you to the donation option, so if none of the ones you mention are available, then I’ll revert to the idea of surprising you. This option has a risk of breakage: I will package each piece well, but it is still possible it will break on the way, and we will accept that as the universe’s decree of what is for the best.

• Swistle skirt. Here’s the first mention of it, back in 2008! I was mourning that it was out of stock, but I’ve since found a number of them on eBay. All of them are in nice used condition; not perfect, but good enough that I was willing to spend money to acquire them. Here’s a picture of my niece wearing one many years ago. I have at least one of each of these sizes: 14, 12, 10, 8, 6x/7, 6, 5 [size 5s are gone], 4T [4T is gone], 24m, 18m, 12m, 6-9m; or if you don’t care what size, I’ll pick one for you; or you can say “I don’t care about EXACT size but would prefer a larger/smaller one.” I strongly suggest emailing me BEFORE making the donation to make sure I still have the size you want, and to reserve it, so that you don’t make a donation and then find out the one you wanted is gone.

$300+ donation options:

• Private baby name consultation. A single emailed response, similar in style and length to a post on the blog. (If you like, you may choose instead to have the consultation posted on the blog in order to get reader feedback as well.) A letter with fewer issues will have each issue addressed at greater length and in more detail than a letter with a larger number of issues; i.e., if you have twenty issues/questions/concerns, you will get a whole bunch of quite short answers and I’ll divide my total thinking time among them; if you have only one or two main issues/questions/concerns, each one will have a longer and more thorough answer with more time spent on each. (And keep in mind that I am not knowledgeable about baby name usage in other countries/languages, so if for example you live in France and you need a baby name that works for your U.S. and Spanish relatives, you may not get good value out of this.)

• Swistle care package. [Closed for now.] Timing/type up to you: birthday, Valentine’s Day, Christmas-stocking-items care package so you don’t have to fill your own stocking again this year, etc.; or you can ask for a randomly-timed delivery of care package so it’s a surprise. (If you want chocolate/melty things included, we should wait until fall at the earliest.) I can send to you or to someone you choose (one fun request so far: a care package for a new college student).

I have a good update on the situation with Rob’s summer job, which is that the professor who referred him to that job felt pretty terrible about how things went, and said he’d see if any of the projects he was currently working on and/or developing needed a computer/math kid, and one of the projects DID need such a person, and the funding for that project hadn’t quite firmed up but the professor went to the college and said under the circumstances could we perhaps get that going a little faster, and the college agreed and handled it immediately, and so now Rob will be working the rest of the summer on that project. Rob sent emails to several different college officials asking them to confirm his understanding of all the details of the job, which seemed a little salty but on the other hand there had been more than one remark of the “This is why we get things in writing” variety from various officials during the investigation, and those remarks rankled, considering there was nothing Rob did or failed to do that would have made a difference in this particular situation, and considering how even grown-ups with extensive experience (SUCH AS THE PROFESSOR AND THE COLLEGE OFFICIALS) were tricked by the other job. So a little salt seems appropriate.

I was sad to miss my road trip to go pick him up and bring him home (I’d already bought the Pringles and Junior Mints and Entenmann’s snack cakes), but happy to have things resolved so relatively quickly and without him having to work in fast food again (the grease smell in my washing machine and dryer!). And I’m happy to have him staying there for summer: I don’t feel he is very happy when he lives at home, and then that makes me a little sad even though I know it’s developmentally normal/appropriate, and so it is nicer for everyone to have him living semi-independently elsewhere.

I need to go look in the archives to see what Rob was like the summer before he went to college, because I’ve already forgotten, and I’d be interested to know if he was as bad-tempered and weird as William is being. William, usually my mild-mannered and funny de-escalator, has been doing things such as suddenly yelling a very loud swear word over something going wrong on a computer game, or storming around being unreasonable about how he got locked out when he didn’t have his keys with him (he absolutely should have had his keys with him), or sighing loudly because someone else’s laundry is in the dryer and he has to do ALL THE WORK of shoveling it into the waiting laundry basket.