I am back from taking Rob back to college for his summer job, which gave me the worst case of Sunday Afternoon Syndrome ever: not only was it Sunday afternoon, but it was Sunday afternoon and my very-looked-forward-to overnight trip was over. Plus I was tired and cranky from driving the last hour-and-a-half in some inexplicable traffic with the sun at a glaring angle.

Plus I may have hit a squirrel. I’d slowed down to avoid hitting it, even though I know you’re not supposed to do that but there was no one close behind me, and then the little idiot doubled back and ran right under my car. There was a little bonking sound of something hitting the underside of the car; the sound was soft enough for hope but not for denial. When I looked in the rearview mirror, I didn’t see the squirrel in the road or anywhere else. If you know of any possibility that the squirrel stuck to the underside of my car, I don’t want to hear about it.

Well, but aside from those things, it was a great trip. I’d had various frets, such as that his housing wouldn’t actually be available when we arrived, or that it would turn out he was supposed to have submitted a form and now it was too late, but those frets all came to naught. I helped carry in his stuff and then I was free. I did a little shopping, checked into my motel, and then went back out to have dinner. While I was eating, Rob texted me that he’d forgotten to bring his sheets. So I went back and picked him up and we went to Target and bought some. And oh yeah he needed shampoo. And body wash. And floss. And he was low on toothpaste.

I wondered if perhaps he is using mind-altering substances these days, because I asked him about all these things before we left home, TWICE. First, a few days before we left, as I was heading out to Target, I asked if he needed anything like that, and he said he didn’t; second, on the morning we left, I had the storage cabinet open, and I said “Oh, how are you on shampoo and deodorant and stuff?,” and he said he was all set. I remember reading an article long ago about how bad it is for people psychologically to screw around with their sleep schedules, so let’s hope that’s all it is.

I dropped him back off at school, and went to my motel room and changed into pajamas and re-watched Bridesmaids. It is really, really not my type of movie (I don’t like gross-out humor, horrifying-awkward-situation humor, or raunch), but I liked it better the second time through when I knew what to expect, and it was the right kind of movie for half-watching while I played on my phone and ate snacks. I stayed up late and it was fun.

The motel I was staying at was not the kind with breakfast. I’d been thinking I’d get a Sausage McMuffin and a coffee at the drive-through on my way out of town, but then impulsively stopped at IHOP instead. Here were my anxieties, before stopping:

1. I haven’t been there in a couple of decades and I don’t really remember what it’s like
2. What if on Sunday mornings it’s really crowded?
3. Maybe they’ll resent me taking up a whole table
4. Maybe it’ll be expensive and disappointing and I’ll wish I’d spent $2 at McDonald’s instead

But it was so perfect. It was not AT ALL crowded, in fact if anything it was worryingly empty, just me and three families with kids in a huge empty restaurant. It was totally fine for me to take up a whole table. And I was not at all disappointed:

(I would have tipped the camera a little higher so you could see the coffee pot, but I didn’t want the family at the next table to think I was taking pictures of them)

I was in a daring mood, so I ordered the stuffed French toast even though it said it was made with cinnamon-raisin bread and I don’t like warm raisins; but there was not one single perceptible raisin in it, and the cinnamon flavor was unexpectedly good with the strawberries and whipped cream. I got the sourdough toast and it was so good; the last time I had breakfast out I ordered wheat toast and it was all dried and crunchy, but this was chewy and soft. The waitress asked if I wanted two sausage or two bacon, then added “…or one of each?,” as if she knew my secret heart. I got my own entire pot of coffee and she brought a little bowl of assorted creamers so I could try multiple flavors. I just kept eating a bite of each thing in turn like Albert in Bread and Jam for Frances, and kept adding more hot coffee to my mug, and it was so so wonderful and I want to eat there every morning.

The only way it could have been better is if there had been a jelly caddy on the table, instead of the toast being delivered with one strawberry and one grape. I LOVE a good jelly caddy. I like trying the flavors I wouldn’t usually choose, like apple jelly or orange marmalade. I just spent some time researching this topic (I wanted to make sure “caddy” was the right word; it turns out it can be called a caddy or a rack), and did you know you can buy these little jam packets and caddies for your very own house? I didn’t see any variety packs that included all the different flavors, but there are 200-packet packs of strawberry/grape/marmalade, strawberry/grape/apple, strawberry/grape/mixed, or just peach, or just blackberry—and there may be others but that was just about the point where sanity returned. Plus I got discouraged because the jam rack I wanted was only in packs of twelve, which is twelve more jam racks than my house can use. The Smuckers site has the other kind of jam caddy I like, and they’re only $3.49 each, but that’s when I started thinking was I actually going to place any such order and realized the answer was no I was not. (But if your answer is yes, Smucker’s also has a cherry/blackberry/strawberry assortment I didn’t find on Amazon.)

I have just finished re-watching Sense and Sensibility (the Emma Thompson / Alan Rickman version) and Pride and Prejudice (the Jennifer Ehle / Colin Firth version) (Twitter thread if you would like to hear why Mr. Darcy is hot), and now I am in search of a dress like those dresses. They look so COMFORTABLE. Like nightgowns, but with flattering bust emphasis. I suppose it would look ridiculous at the grocery store, especially since I don’t have those short front-curls of hair framing my face. Were those wiglets, do you think, or did the actresses really cut their hair like that? I suppose it was little wiglets.

I am also re-reading Shirley Jackson’s book Raising Demons, and enjoying it so much. Several of you recommended it and you were SO RIGHT: she moves to a new, large, weird house with her many children; it is eminently relatable right now. She even has an unpleasant altercation with the movers, as I did. I want to find a copy of this book so I can own it, but I am looking on Amazon and the options are odd: new editions, editions that include other books, etc. I don’t want the one that has the cartoon cat on the cover; it has to be the old one with the house on the cover [edited to add: and it has to be hardcover]. I will try eBay. Oh, $350. Perhaps I will steal my library’s copy and pay the $14 lost-book fine. (This is not a joke I can carry off believably.) [Update: Slim found me a reasonably-priced copy and then told me I needed the book and the book needed me, and I find Slim very persuasive so I ordered it. I am so happy imagining it on its way to me!]

This weekend I am taking Rob back to college, because at the last minute he obtained a summer job there. This is excellent news, as he does not seem keen on living at home with us anymore, and I am finding I am somewhat less than keen myself on his schedule of sleeping until 2:00 in the afternoon and then getting up and examining the labels of our food to evaluate ethical status. It has been nice having him home for a little while, but now it will be nice to return to the status quo of loving him from afar. Also it will be nice to spend a night by myself in a motel room, watching Say Yes to the Dress and eating Junior Mints / Mr. Goodbar / Pringles / Smartfood Kettle Corn / Entenmann’s Brownie Chocolate-Chip snack cakes. Though as it turns out, it will be an expensive trip: for some reason motel rooms were either sold out or else double the usual price; apparently there is something going on in the city that weekend. I chose the cheapest room, which was the same price I usually avoid paying by choosing something else at half the price, and I felt myself lucky to have it. Fortunately I got my snack-cakes on sale.

Rob’s new job, which is for a company run by other college students, told him proudly to watch The Social Network as homework before beginning his new job. We have watched it, and I am at a loss to understand what they are trying to tell him. That movie doesn’t just fail The Bechdel Test, it douses it in gasoline and lights it on fire while chanting fraternal loyalty to the brotherhood. If I had to guess, I’d guess it was a warning: Get in, loser, we are going to steal your work, stab you in the back, and be terrible to women as we’re doing it! I said something similar and Rob was a little touchy about it. “He didn’t say he was The Next Mark Zuckerberg; YOU called him that,” etc. This job has Learning Experience written alllllllll over it.

It doesn’t make for a very interesting post, but I can report that Mother’s Day 2019 went far better than Mother’s Day 2018.

As it approached, I began to feel nervous and also sheepish: I didn’t want a BIG DEAL made out of Mother’s Day, because it’s NOT a big deal to me; I literally just wanted NOT NOTHING. I didn’t want jewelry or expensive flowers or ANYTHING expensive, I didn’t want to go out to eat on a crowded-restaurant day, I didn’t want the kids to spend a lot of their own money on stuff. I was afraid that by addressing it last year, even as calmly and explainingly and specific-examplefully as I did, people would go overboard this year, and then I would have to re-correct, and UG why is something that seems so simple to me so hard to explain??

If you recall, here is the sort of thing I was looking for: (1) Not having to do any dishes all day. (I don’t even MIND doing dishes normally, but last year there was something extra demoralizing about finding a fresh pile of other people’s dishes on the counter every single time I went into the kitchen.) (2) Maybe someone suggests going out to get some doughnuts, because they remember Mom likes doughnuts, and also because THEY like doughnuts. (3) And/or perhaps Paul takes some of the kids to the car wash with my minivan and they get it washed and then see what they can do with the car wash’s coin-operated vacuum cleaner, because they remember how I rhapsodize when the car is freshly cleaned and because these are tasks that are funnish for the kids. (4) And/or perhaps they remember I like grocery store flowers, so Paul takes some of the kids to the grocery store (it’s right by the car wash!) and they pick out one of the $4.99-$6.99 flowering plants for me, and Paul pays for it. (5) And, overall: I was looking for Paul to do some work TRAINING THE KIDS to be thoughtful and think of others and so forth. I like sweets, I like cheap flowers, I like things to be clean without me being the one to clean them, I like people to notice what I like, I am not some sort of IMPOSSIBLE CIPHER.

(When the kids were younger, what I wanted was more than anything else for Mother’s Day was Time Away from the Kids in a Quiet House with a Pint of Ice Cream; now that they’re older, this is no longer specifically on my list, though of course always in season.)

Things got off to a shaky, uncertain start when Paul suggested several days before Mother’s Day that he and I could go on our own to a Mother’s Day prix fixe brunch at a snobby dressy expensive restaurant near us. That’s the opposite of what I described: the kids are not involved; it’s expensive; it’s going out to eat when it’s crowded, at a place that is not at all where I like to go. And, like, I don’t want to dictate other people’s gift-giving, but he explicitly said last year that he did nothing because he didn’t know what to do (imagine my facial expression), and so last year I explained at some length the SORT of low-pressure, low-expense kind of thing that would be my own personal preference, and how to get to those ideas on his own in the future since it kind of ruins it if I have to decide what they should do for me for Mother’s Day, and also explained how to train the children to think of thoughtful things for someone else (“the same way I am training you right now, but they’re children so you can do it without the incredulous facial expression I’m wearing”)—and so now this is a matter of Actively Not Listening, which is Worse Than Nothing. Also, we are ALREADY in the zone of “Why do I have to do this work for you when you are a FULLY-GROWN ADULT and this is the TWENTIETH Mother’s Day we have had together??,” so anyway things were looking grim and I was regretting ever speaking up.

But it went well. Paul made cinnamon rolls in the morning, and made sure dishes were managed all day. Rob and William went out on their own to Target and got me some candy (including those Ferrero Rocher gold-wrapped hazelnut things I like) and a card. Elizabeth made me a little succulents planter with three different baby succulents in it. Edward and Henry both independently decided to participate in the school’s kid-priced Mother’s Day fundraiser, which is a plant sale, so they each brought me a little plant. Everyone posed for the annual Mother’s Day photo with minimal complaining. (Henry tried to start a conversation mid-session about how fake it is that everyone always has to be smiling in photos, and I asked if we could please postpone that very interesting topic until AFTER WE TOOK THE PHOTO.) Paul and I went out for lunch at a casual bar-and-appetizers-and-tacos place we suspected would not be a popular Mother’s Day spot (and indeed it wasn’t), not for Mother’s Day per se but just in the spirit of having a day of treats, and I ordered a giant, potent margarita (like, I could tell the difference when I was walking, afterward), and also french fries. And then we came home and I re-watched part of Sense & Sensibility (the Emma Thompson / Alan Rickman one).

So! It was a fine day. Feel free to vent here if yours was NOT a fine day for whatever reason. Or you can say why it WAS fine.

When I was trying without success to narrow down phone case options, I noticed that two of my favorites were from the same company (Bfun), so I thought I’d search just cases by that company to see if I’d managed to miss any, despite going through so many pages of search results that I was starting to get wild mismatches such as bath toys. And, in the sort of situation that makes me freak out because WHAT ELSE AM I MISSING, there were a TON of cases I hadn’t seen yet, including a GREEN one that hadn’t come up in the search results when I specifically searched GREEN. (Green is one of my favorite colors, and it can be hard to find.)

(image from Amazon.com)

It has green in the title! It has the name of my new phone in the title! I searched for the name of my phone + the word green! WHY DIDN’T THIS OPTION APPEAR?

But also, why didn’t any of THESE other options appear, especially when I was putting three of their siblings into my shopping cart?

(image from Amazon.com)

Pink floral paisley! I love pink! I love floral! I love paisley! I have pink phone cases, paisley phone cases, floral phone cases, and phone cases of this brand IN MY SHOPPING CART. WHITHER PERTINENT SUGGESTION, AMAZON??

What is THIS rampant cuteness and why is it not on the first page of search results for ANYONE looking for a phone case??

(image from Amazon.com)

PENGUINS WITH BALLOONS ARE YOU EVEN SERIOUS RIGHT NOW??

(image from Amazon.com)

My very early childhood as a phone case:

(image from Amazon.com)

The entire musical Godspell as a phone case:

(image from Amazon.com)

I COULD NOT LOVE THIS MORE:

(image from Amazon.com)

(Actually I would love it a little more if the flap lined up with the design or else were a solid color, rather than duplicating part of the design in smaller format.)

I would understand if you were getting a little tired of paisley, but I am not:

(image from Amazon.com)

A DAINTY FLORAL IN SWISTLE BLUE (other people might call it Tiffany Blue, but we all know who thought of it first):

(image from Amazon.com)

WHIMSICAL BIRDIES WITH KICK-BACK FEETIES:

(image from Amazon.com)

Anyway. Suffice it to say I will never be able to choose. I give up. I will just let the phone go naked. Or else I will order a dozen phone cases to stave off potential regret, and then choose one randomly from the box when they arrive.

I have had two experiences recently in which I was not allowed to do something and was told that my husband had to do it. In one case, I was trying to use an L.L. Bean rewards coupon on an L.L. Bean order, and it wouldn’t work. I called customer service, and they said that even though the credit card is in both our names, and even though the bills are addressed to ME because I opened the credit account on my own and then added Paul to it later, and even though the rewards certificate had my name on it—still, Paul would have to be the one to place the order if we wanted to use the certificate, because he was “the primary” on the account.

You know I am not a bold person, especially on the phone, but this made no sense and that activated my tenacity: I clarified that I had been the one to open the account, I said the certificate was in my name, etc., etc., etc. It turned out that at one point L.L. Bean transferred their credit card from one bank to another and, when that happened, the new company put Paul as the primary and me as the secondary. Would you like to lie awake driving yourself crazy with mental arguments about this entire situation and how it makes NO SENSE? OH ME TOO APPARENTLY. Also I would like to investigate how often the error was made in the opposite direction: how many times was a woman mistakenly put as the primary, even though her husband had opened the account? Was it never?

The second incident happened today. We are almost ready to close on the old house, so our realtor told us to call various utilities and let them know. I called the natural gas company—and they couldn’t talk to me, because only Paul’s name was on the account somehow, even though setting up utilities and paying bills is 100% my job in this marriage, and so I would have been the one to set up the account. The customer service representative was very apologetic, but he was sorry to say my husband would have to be the one to handle this because I was not on the account.

In neither case do I take issue with the person I was talking to. If there is a rule that only the primary account holder can use a certificate, and I am not the primary account holder, then the customer service representative cannot make it so I can use the certificate. If the rule is that only people listed on an account can change the account (and of course that rule makes every bit of sense), then of course the customer service representative could not let me make changes. Etc. My issue is with the underlying assumptions and issues that allowed these situations to occur in the first place. Since I was the one who set up the natural gas account, and I was one of the two homeowners of the home in question, and if only someone whose name is on the account can deal with the account, my name SHOULD CERTAINLY HAVE BEEN INCLUDED SOMEWHERE ON THE ACCOUNT. Since I was the one who set up the credit card, and it is my name on the billing statement, my husband should ABSOLUTELY NOT have been made the primary account holder. There should be NO SITUATIONS IN LIFE where a customer service representative tells me my husband will need to order those boots for me if I want to use THE COUPON WITH MY NAME ON IT, CONNECTED TO AN ACCOUNT IN MY NAME.

This reminds me of something that happened almost two decades ago, a story I evidently plan to brood about until I die. (I have SOME hope for a more Serene Perspective in old age, but so far I am not seeing much encouraging progress on that front.) My grandfather sent us some money to congratulate us on a new baby. My grandfather was old, old-fashioned, and conservative, so he made out the check to just Paul. I went to the bank to put the money in an account for the new baby, and didn’t notice until I was there that Paul had failed to endorse the check. The bank’s manager sighed and said to me, “Next time your husband gives you money, make sure he signs it.” Oh. Next time my husband gives me money. Thanks for that phrasing.

The trouble wasn’t with the fact that the check should have been endorsed by Paul: of course it should have been endorsed by Paul, if it was made out to Paul! The trouble was again the underlying issues/assumptions: first, that my grandfather would write out the check to The Husband; and second, the tone/phrasing the bank manager chose to use. She could have said, “Oh—I’m so sorry, this has to be endorsed first,” and I would have been 100% fine with that and only embarrassed I hadn’t noticed he hadn’t signed it. Instead it was “Next time your husband gives you money…” (as I sat there with my baby and toddler in the middle of the workday), and her tone was Way Off, and that has given me almost two decades of humiliated wincing/anger when I remember it. If the check had been made out to me, and if Paul had taken it to the bank without noticing I hadn’t endorsed it, do you think there is any chance at all the bank manager would have sighed and said to him in that tone of voice, “Next time your wife gives you money…”?

And these are such SMALL inconveniences/humiliations, relatively speaking! They weren’t even the big ones, like never having had a female president in the entire history of this country! Furthermore, I have the power to FIX them if I need to: I could talk back to the bank manager in a cold tone and then close our accounts if I felt like it, telling the manager exactly why I was doing so. I could call the credit card and take Paul’s name off of it, or close the account entirely, and I could follow that up with a business letter telling them why. I can make sure my name is on all utility accounts set up in the future. Whereas about 45 years ago in the United States, women still couldn’t have credit cards in their own names. Two generations ago, I might have been talking with pride and happiness about my husband being so generous with my housekeeping budget. But baby, we still have a long way to go. There is so much UNDERLYING/AUTOMATIC STUFF to unpick.

Today I saw a car with three bee stickers on it, and I nearly left a hysterically enthusiastic note on the windshield, except I didn’t know what to say except “I SEE THOSE BEES! I FEEL THOSE BEES! Love, A BEE SISTER!” That seemed kind of dumb at the time—but afterward, picturing getting a similar note on my own windshield in response to MY bee sticker, I realized I’d be thrilled. So next time I’m going to do it.

My current cell phone broke (everything works except it can’t make or receive calls, which as far as I’m concerned means there is an argument to be made for keeping it exactly as it is, “Oh sorry, my phone doesn’t take calls, you’ll have to text me!!”), so I am getting a new one. I was sad that this meant choosing a new phone case: I LOVE my old case and don’t want to change.

Then it turned out my current case is in fact available for the new phone shape, and I had unexpected feelings of disappointment. Apparently I was GLAD to be choosing a different phone case, but had kept that a secret EVEN FROM MYSELF.

Here is my old/current phone case, the one I claimed to wish I could buy again for the new phone:

(image from Amazon.com)

Main downside: shipping from far away, so that it won’t arrive until mid-May/mid-June. Main upside: I love it enduringly, and as it wears out the damage just looks like a deliberate part of the vintage-y design.

Here is another case I was considering before I learned I could have what I supposedly wished for:

(image from Amazon.com)

VERY DIFFERENT than what I had. I like the colors. I worry the white stripe would soon look grubby.

Or what about this option:

(image from Amazon.com)

But maybe I’m only drawn to these bright springy colors because it’s spring. Perhaps in fall/winter I will wish for something a little less exuberant. Here’s a warm, dignified candidate:

(image from Amazon.com)

Upside: I like the look of it, and I think it’s a nice non-embarrassing case to bring out in front of other people. Downside: is the clasp decorated with a spider web? Also, the leathery stuff looks like it might crack along the back cover with use. Also, this seems a little TOO subdued/professional for me. I don’t think it goes with my jeans and hoodie and Converse sneakers.

Possible compromise: it’s available in pink.

(image from Amazon.com)

Or I could embrace the whimsy entirely:

(image from Amazon.com)

(I think this option and the previous option both lose something by being shown next to each other: each pink makes the other pink look less good.) Upside: PINK. FLAMINGOS. Downside: It commits to a very specific concept. I’m not THAT into flamingos.

Similarly, though less whimsically: peacock.

(image from Amazon.com)

I like the colors, I like the look of a peacock—but I’m not so into peacocks that it makes sense as a design I’d deliberately choose for my phone case.

I love the color of this one, but not the weird brown leaf clasp:

(image from Amazon.com)

Like, the case is SPRING LEAF GREEN. So then there should not be an AUTUMN BROWN LEAF on it. Brown branch, sure. Pink tulip, even better. Brown leaf, no.

I like how bright and fresh this one is, but worry again that it’s the joys of spring whispering in my ear:

(image from Amazon.com)

This one seems almost a little too on the nose:

(image from Amazon.com)

Like, that’s the one someone could safely buy me as a gift and know it wouldn’t be wrong. It feels a little boring to me, as if I’ve already had that case and got tired of it. Maybe it would be better in brown or grey.

This pink glittery one calls out to my heart:

(image from Amazon.com)

(There’s also a RAINBOW GLITTER version.) The same 8-year-old me who spent birthday money on a shiny pink velour shirt is the me who wants this case. But I would feel less confident bringing this out in front of acquaintances. I know, I know, one should BE ONESELF! But I have many aspects of self, and might prefer to have this particular aspect less on regular public display. Like I’m imagining it at Paul’s office Christmas party. Hm.

I had a case similar to this one for a previous phone:

(image from Amazon.com)

It was a bit of an assault on the eyes in the photo, but considerably less so in person, and it was one of my enduring favorites. I can’t tell if this would be the same, or if it would actually be that bright (it looks cranked-up to me, color-wise). This option would be less bright:

(image from Amazon.com)

Or maybe I should just get the vintage-y hot air balloons again.

I COULD get more than one, but I’ve learned that what I do then is keep the first one I put on my phone, and never change it, and the others sit in a drawer unused.

I’m kind of hoping you guys will be all OPINIONATED about it. You know how sometimes hearing someone else’s opinion can solidify your own, either because you’re glad to hear them say nice things about a particular one or else you get the impulse to disagree? That’s what I’m hoping will happen.

Once again, I had to contact a doctor’s office to ask them to handle a situation in which (1) I’d obtained the correct referral, (2) I’d verified that they had received it, (3) I got a “billing explanation” letter from my insurance company saying no referral was submitted and therefore they deeply regretted the bill would be entirely my responsibility, (4) I got a bill from the doctor’s office for the full amount, and (5) when I called, the doctor’s office said “Huh, looks like we didn’t attach the referral when we submitted the claim.” I ask you: is there someone besides the patient who could be handling these administrative matters? It seems more fair to have this taken care of by someone who (1) made the mistake and (2) is literally PAID to handle this.

I mentioned in my last post (BEST COMMENTS SECTION) that Paul was going on a business trip. I will say this: it has been a peaceful, relaxed week. It’s been fun. The kids are older now and it is no longer a huge burdensome thing to be the only parent on duty—and in fact, I enjoy the change in routine. I have been letting them stay up late to watch Avengers movies (they’re trying to get caught up before seeing the new one), and there are few things in this world I like better than hearing the kids in the other room bonding and having fun together and making jokes to each other and stuff. I just love it. It is one of the reasons I wanted a lot of kids. I have thought more than once, “I LIKE these kids.” I’m not saying that’s amazing, to like one’s own children, but you know how there are so many times where of course you love the little idiots but you wouldn’t want to hang with them socially, and it’s pleasing to see the potential there for change.

And I know that if I were ALWAYS the only parent, things would not be like this. It’s the “things are different this week” aspect that makes things how they are. It makes it seem right to let them stay up late and eat from actual buckets of leftover Easter candy, and it makes the less-strict dinnertimes/bedtimes feel like Vacation Mode, and I’ve been showing them episodes of Sports Night while we eat dinner (Paul hates Aaron Sorkin shows), and I’ve been drinking gin and staying up late myself (Paul always wants to go to bed earlier than I do). These sorts of fun things don’t persist if it’s allllll the time. But, it’s been a fun week. I’ve enjoyed it.

I got some cute plastic Easter eggs at Target at 50% off:

(image from Target.com)

Then I saw them today at 70% off. I am not at all upset about this. Not at all. It is a matter of a mere dollar, and I am a grown woman who has a sense of proportion and therefore I am perfectly fine with that.

Tomorrow I’m going to the OTHER Target, because the Target I went to today didn’t have any Junior Mints Eggs, but the Target where I bought the cute plastic Easter eggs at 50% off had TONS of Junior Mints Eggs at 30% off, so I’m hoping now they have tons of them at 50% off (today the candy was at 50% off, the non-candy at 70% off). I know it’s a matter of 20 cents, but I am a grown woman who likes to save a couple of dimes. And if you haven’t tried the Junior Mints Eggs, and you like Junior Mints, I recommend them. I can eat a whole box in one sitting, easy, and I’d like to eat a whole box for 50 cents rather than 70 cents.

(image from Target.com)

I am cranky because this morning Paul left for a business trip and he left stuff for me to do just EVERYWHERE. Like, when I go away for a couple of days, I make a deliberate effort NOT to leave things behind for someone else to do: I wash my breakfast pan and I put my dishes in the dishwasher, I clear any dishes from my desk, I move any of my stuff/projects out of the main areas other people might want to use. I don’t want to look as if I’m blithely taking advantage of my absence to get out of cleaning up after myself: “Ooo, sorry, I WOULD have cleaned that up but I have to go now sorry byyeeeeeeeee!!”

Paul seems to have no such concern. If anything, his usual morning habit of leaving his frying pan and breakfast dishes for the cleaning fairies (he WOULD have taken care of them when he got HOME, clearly) seems to multiply exponentially. This morning there was the frying pan and dishes, but also a large dirty cutting board, a pill bottle, his packing list, pajamas on the floor near the laundry basket, his work thermos with the leftovers of Friday’s coffee-with-cream still in it, an empty carry-on bag he apparently decided not to take, the ice cube tray he usually uses with his work thermos, a pile of stuff he took out of his work bag so he could use it as a carry-on, and more. All the Easter stuff from yesterday was still spread out everywhere, including the scissors and ribbon and tape he got out for the egg hunt and then just left on the counter as if that’s where it lives now. And this is the day the cleaning people were coming, so I had to deal with it all first thing.

I hate stuff like this. I hate stuff where one person is like “Ug, what is the BIG DEAL??” and the other person is like “THIS IS SYMBOLIC OF EVERYTHING WRONG WITH THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE.” I remember one of many times I complained to Paul about this sort of behavior (i.e., leaving things undone and then skying off to work, but then acting as if it’s my choice to handle them or not), he was like “FINE, if it’s SO HARD, I’ll do it!!”—and I was like, “GOOD, YES, DO IT THEN,” but also: it is not that it’s “so hard” (and thank you for that stupid tone of voice), it’s that it’s NOT so hard and yet you LEAVE IT FOR ME TO DO ALL THE TIME AS IF I AM YOUR PERSONAL SERVANT. Like, one of us just sails along, confidently leaving detritus for someone else to deal with, and THE OTHER OF US DOES NOT. Over the years, that accumulates into something that is very hard to deal with indeed.

And, when I object/complain/explain, nothing changes. You know that famous “He’s not a MIND-READER!” argument, used almost exclusively to defend men-people? Like, people (usually women-people) are standing around the internet complaining about their spouses, and there is always someone who has to say in a coaching, overly-patient tone of voice, “Have you TALKED to him about it? He can’t know how much it bothers you unless you TELL him”—as if this approach would be BRAND-NEW INFORMATION to literally anyone, let alone people married for decades. “Oh, TELL HIM I don’t like something?? That never occurred to me, an adult person!! Thank you, thank you!! With all your natural talents, have you considered getting into the rewarding field of ANYTHING OTHER THAN THIS??”

And, like, first of all, I find I don’t generally need to be specifically told that the irritating, inconsiderate things that cause work/inconvenience for the people I live with will bother them, so I’m not sure why Paul can’t figure most of it out himself in the same way I did, like by being a person who exists in the world. Obviously we’ll each occasionally need to be told when it’s something we don’t yet know (like if I didn’t realize it bothers him when I have a dozen sample bottles on the bathroom counter, or if he didn’t know that my sweater can’t go in the dryer, or if I didn’t know his work thermos needs a special washing technique)—but I’m just saying there’s a lot of GENERAL knowledge easily available without specific, personal instruction. I’m not a mind-reader either, but Paul doesn’t have to give me a careful, detailed, multi-step explanation for why I shouldn’t put piles of folded laundry all over our bed and then leave for the weekend. NO ONE is hoping to choose between finishing someone else’s chore or else sleeping on the couch. NO ONE is hoping to choose between washing someone else’s frying pan or else having it in the way all day / not being able to use it. NO ONE wants to pick someone else’s pajamas and underwear up off the floor and move them three feet over to the laundry basket. NO ONE’S thermos improves by sitting out for a week with leftover coffee-with-cream in it. I don’t feel it’s my Personal Life’s Duty and Honor to give Paul a continuous stream of detailed, personal instructions Just For Him about the things NO ONE likes/wants. There is nothing remotely similar in life that Paul has to do for me.

And, second of all, the “Just TELL him!” approach makes it seem as if the only thing standing between me and relief is using my words—and, even more irritatingly, that if I don’t speak up, it’s my fault if unjustifiable behavior continues (HOW ELSE COULD HE POSSIBLY KNOW WITHOUT BEING PERSONALLY INSTRUCTED). So then especially when I HAVE used my words, when I have clearly and calmly explained what I don’t like, why I don’t like it, and what should be done instead, and then NOTHING CHANGES, it is hard to know what the next step is. Repeating the process? But no, that doesn’t seem to work either—and also, it has the added charm of being labeled “nagging” or “always complaining.” So THEN what? Screaming? Spritz bottles? Marital duplexes? Abolishing the institution of marriage entirely? Sending certain people (I’m not saying certain men-people but I’m not NOT saying it) to specialized training camps so that their spouses don’t have to spend decade after decade parenting them through basic human behavior?

I have been having dreams about babies again, after a long time of no dreams about babies. Generally the baby is just sort of THERE, pleasantly: I’m neither responsible for the baby nor not-responsible for it. Sometimes I carry it around with me for awhile or help it out with something. The baby is not in any distress or trouble, and it’s not a stressful dream element, and I wake up with happy residual dream-feelings. (I am glad to note I no longer wake up feeling sad that the baby isn’t real/mine.) I am interested to know if you dream about babies.

I am so tired of waking up about an hour before I have to get up, needing to pee badly enough that I can’t be comfortable (but SOMETIMES can get back to sleep anyway), but knowing that if I get up and go to the bathroom I won’t then be able to get back to sleep. I’m so tired of it! This morning I woke up an hour before I had to get up, and then I lay there for 45 minutes thinking stressful thoughts one after another before finally just getting up for the day. It happens often enough that I have considered setting an alarm for, say, 2:00 in the morning, and getting up to go to the bathroom then. But I’m worried that then I would be awake from 2:00 onward. I’ve tried drinking less in the evenings but it seems almost unconnected: there was one evening recently I had nothing to drink after dinnertime, and then woke up THREE TIMES in the night to pee. Or sometimes it’s BETTER to have a nice big drink of water in the evening, because then I wake up at 1:30 to pee and then sleep the rest of the night! Sorry for saying “pee” so much.

In “there is no pleasing me” news, this weekend I was so sad and sulky about a college-visiting road trip formerly planned for later this week but rescheduled for the end of the month. I said to Paul, “I want to be going on a road trip THIS WEEK, not in two weeks! I want to be getting ready for a road trip RIGHT NOW.” There was heavy sighing, and a feeling that life was insufficiently fun. Then the road trip got rescheduled again, so that it IS later this week. And am I happy now, now that I got exactly what I wanted? No. I’m anxious about the rescheduling, and feeling like I DID want to go on a road trip but got over it and now I don’t want to and won’t enjoy it and it’ll be wasted and afterward I’ll be sorry I didn’t appreciate it more. UGGGG WHY.

Similarly: I bought this folding bookshelf recently, mainly because it was the only one I could find that would fit under the deep 36-inch-high windowsill of my personal sunporch room:

(image from Amazon.com)

I’m really happy with it, even though the top shelf is weirdly too short for any books to stand upright, and the other two shelves are taller than they need to be and so it seems as if this could have been designed more practically. STILL. I love the color (I got the cherry), I love the look of it, and it fits so perfectly in the room it almost looks like a built-in. There’s room for a second set of shelves if I want it, and I’ve been dithering: the shelves were $100, which is a lot of money if I’m not SURE I want them. Then they dropped to $88. Still I did not buy them. Then suddenly they were no longer available (I didn’t see any warnings like “Only 3 left in stock”—they were just “no longer available”) and I was kicking myself. Why didn’t I buy them?? They were only $88! They were the only shelves that fit under that sill! Now I’ll never be able to get them and I will be sorry forever! Then they came back into stock and I have not bought them because I’m not sure I need a second set and just because they’ve gone down in price doesn’t mean they’re not still kind of expensive for something I’m not sure I want.

Oh, there is a ladybug crawling across my desk! That seems good! On the other hand, yesterday I was putting things in the car and I saw a medium-sized spider skitter under the seat. So that’s in my future at some surprising moment.

I used to work in a plant nursery, and I’m reminded of it when I see things for sale that I used to help with: pansies and tulips in early spring, geraniums near Mother’s Day, etc. To sell tulips for bouquets, we cut the tulip bulbs right in half along the stem: florists/retailers valued the extra small amount of stem you could get that way, and they must have been willing to pay more for it than it would cost the nursery to buy all new bulbs. (Some workers took home the cut bulbs and planted them.)

One of the early spring projects involved making cute little planters. I don’t remember everything that went into them, but it was, like, two pansies, an ivy, and some other green thing in a pretty wooden basket-shaped planter, things like that. We were supposed to choose whatever pansy color combinations we personally liked: the idea was that the dozen of us workers with our varied tastes/opinions were probably a pretty good representation of the tastes/opinions of the buying public. So if one of us liked red and purple together (even if others winced), probably approximately 1/12th of the population would too. If one of us liked both pansies to be the same color (even if others found that boring), probably approximately 1/12th of the population would too.

I was trying to put something together here where I’d say that this was like parenting. We all make parenting choices based on our own inclinations and the things that come naturally (if you’re a hiker, you probably take your kids hiking; if you like crafts, you probably do crafts with them), and most of us feel like our parenting methods mean our kids are missing out on a bunch of other stuff (if you hate the outdoors, you probably feel bad that you’re not taking the kids outside as much as you feel you should; if you hate crafts, you probably feel bad that you’re not doing art projects with the kids as much as you feel you should). Maybe you feel strongly that kids should learn to cook, but you don’t care so much about manners and thank-you notes and firm handshakes; maybe any time you try to teach cooking someone ends up crying and/or yelling, but you have endless patience for the art of the thank-you note. Whatever your parenting strengths, you’re probably doing those naturally/easily; whatever your parenting weaknesses, you’re probably feeling bad/nervous about those gaps.

And here’s where I’d make the leap to the pansies: if each of us teaches/models what what can and what we like, we end up putting together a nice selection of people for society. Each kid doesn’t have to do allllll the things as a child. It’s okay if one kid grows up doing a bunch of outdoor stuff and not much in the way of crafts/reading, and another kid grows up doing a ton of indoor stuff and not much in the way of hiking/boating, and another kid grows up doing all the hiking/boating/crafting/reading but didn’t go to plays/concerts/movies. When kids grow up, they can fill in anything their parents missed, and that’s one of the fun parts of being an adult: if your parents never let you take karate lessons, you can do them now; if your parents didn’t teach you to cook, you can learn now; if your parents were indoorsy types, you can go hiking/boating now; if your parents didn’t take you to plays/concerts/movies, you can go now; if your parents always boiled vegetables into mush, you can eat them steamed/raw now; etc. Another of the fun parts of early adult life was getting to know people with different sets of life skills/experiences, and swapping/sharing: it feels like the whole world is opening up. Doing things with your peers > doing things with your mom and dad.

The analogy doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped, and it doesn’t take into account parents who are naturally inclined to teach/model, say, racism and violence, and it doesn’t cover the category of stuff parents might not enjoy doing/teaching but they force themselves to do it anyway. But I still like the feeling of the idea. I remember standing at the worktable stressing about which colors would sell well, and then the relief of being told to just choose what I liked: that if we each chose what we personally liked, we’d end up with a nice mix.