I had such a down day today, and for NO GOOD REASON other than the looming presidential election and likely collapse of democracy! I had a good night’s sleep; I had the day off work so I went on a good long walk for my stupid physical and emotional health; I had a hot shower and I shaved my legs; I made my bed and I ate a good breakfast. And, after that excellent and promising start, I spent most of the day mooning pitifully around my house, feeling sad and cold and dismal and not able to think of or make myself do any of the many, many, MANY things that could have helped. And now that I have perked back up like a watered plant, it’s so easy to think of those things. Like, it wouldn’t even have taken much energy or motivation to just go upstairs and lie on my bed playing phone games in a patch of sunshine, instead of playing them in a chilly rocking chair in the dim living room, and I would have been warmer and maybe the sunshine would have been mood-bolstering. But did I do that? Did I hell!

I did make myself go to the grocery store, which didn’t help my mood but it got me out of the house and I got something done. And, when the grocery store was out of a few things, I got myself to make a second trip out of the house to another grocery store, one that’s more expensive but also has some different things than our usual grocery store—and as I’m typing this I am hearing this how my children would hear it: “Well, I went to a DIFFERENT grocery store and looked at some DIFFERENT groceries, so THAT was a LITTLE fun!” Oh dear. Well, but it WAS a little fun! I still felt inexplicably morose, but you know how sometimes it can almost feel good to feel morose? It started feeling a little bit of that, instead of the only-bad-to-feel-morose kind of morose from before. And I looked at their wider selection of International Foods, and I admired their wider array of take-home meal items, and I considered their new display of many varieties of salt water taffy, and I got a little overwhelmed by their much larger and more expensive floral section. I bought the things the usual grocery store was out of, plus two flavors of ice cream that our usual grocery store doesn’t carry, plus (again I hear this how my children would hear it) a package that was entirely a good and useful size of rubber band. Our usual grocery store has only the mixed pack including all the tiny useless ones that fall to the bottom of the miscellany drawer and breed depression.

I am experimenting with bedtime teas. This is actually Henry’s idea; he has been very Into Tea recently. I can’t remember if I told you already that I bought a clearance teapot at HomeGoods just to see if we’d use it, and now we use it all the time. Like, late morning on a weekend, Henry might say, “I’m putting on some Earl Grey; would you want some?”—and if I say yes, he’ll use two teabags and make a whole teapot of it. Or in the late afternoon he might make an herbal tea. I think this appeals to his Theatre Kid side: a little vintage, a little European, a little attention-getting. He’ll make a pot of tea when his Dungeons & Dragons group comes over, which I act very nonchalant about as if it is not a charming combination I will try to drop into conversations(/blog posts) with friends/relatives/co-workers. D & D & tea!

Where was I? Oh, yes: bedtime teas. We have several kinds, with varying combinations of melatonin/valerian/chamomile/etc., and I need to keep more careful track of (1) which ones I drink and (2) how long I let them steep and (3) how much of them I drink, because SOMETIMES it seems as if a sleepytime tea very gently helps me get to sleep and stay asleep, and SOMETIMES it seems as if it makes me sweat and have bad dreams and makes it hard to get up in the morning. And I don’t know which is the applicable variable. Henry suggests it might be completely other things not related to the tea, and that is also possible. I think it’s the tea, but it could for example be the tea + perimenopause.

I finally bought some eShakti jeans, something I have been putting off forever, even though it seemed like custom jeans might be the solution to literally my entire perimenopausal jeans problem. But they were expensive, and more importantly I would have to do all those measurements. Finally, finally, finally, I made myself do all the measurements, and I placed the order. I ordered three pairs, of three different styles.

There are several ways in which these are the worst jeans I have ever owned. Well, really only one way, and it’s the crushing disappointment: I EXPECT normal jeans to maybe not fit well or look good, but I DID think that by doing THE ULTIMATE CUSTOM JEANS I would get jeans that fit nicely and were comfortable. Instead, it’s as if someone who hates me took my exact measurements and used them to make jeans that would make me unhappy in as many ways as possible.

I have never had a “muffin top” issue in jeans, even though I am not slim and I carry a fair amount of weight in my tum area, so I used to be perplexed by the issue as experienced by others. Were people maybe wearing jeans a size too small? Well, these jeans give me a muffin top for the first time ever. All three pairs create it out of nowhere. I don’t know how they do it. It’s some sort of magic. Well, but also the jeans are too tight. But I have OTHER jeans that are too tight and do NOT create a muffin top. So, as I say: some sort of special custom magic.

I have shortish legs for my height, and I had thought IF NOTHING ELSE I would finally have jeans with the correct inseam. But no! The hems are still dragging on the ground for me to step on! How is this possible?? Some of the measurements I had to take were new ones for me, but inseam is VERY FAMILIAR. And it was easy to cuff a pair of my existing jeans to the right length, and then measure THAT to confirm the measurement I took of my leg. And yet!!

I made sure to take my measurements when I was at the highest end of my usual weight range. I took each measurement more than once, and wrote down the highest measurement I got; whenever possible, I rounded up. I did not want tight-tight jeans. I am currently in the middle of my weight range, and the jeans are still too tight. I had to struggle to get them on. And yet they ALSO need to be continually hitched up.

I had heard again and again that eShakti items Have!! Pockets!! And the jeans do have pockets. They are no better than the pockets of my usual, non-eShakti jeans: half of my phone fits in the pocket.

What it feels like to me is that I ordered absolutely non-custom jeans: it is exactly as if I chose a new brand, and I ordered the lower of the two sizes I fall between, and they’re ill-fitting like any jeans could be, and also too long as jeans always are on me, and that I should have ordered the higher of the two sizes I fall between. It does not feel as if I received jeans that were made for me in any way. It is difficult to describe how discouraging it is to FINALLY do the ULTIMATE AND MOST DIFFICULT AND EXPENSIVE option, and have it be the same as the normal, non-ultimate, non-extra-work-and-extra-money option.

EShakti promises that if you’re not happy, you can send the items back and they will be fixed. But there are two possibilities here:

1. Either I somehow did all my very careful measurements WRONG. In which case, this is not eShakti’s fault and they shouldn’t have to fix it.

2. Or else I did my very careful measurements RIGHT, and STILL got THREE DIFFERENT PAIRS of jeans that don’t fit right and make me miserable, in which case I don’t want to deal with this company at all anymore; I will just write this off as a failed experiment, and I will know better for the future. Extending the torture and disappointment and work by sending pictures of myself in the jeans (gah!!!), taking my measurements again, trying to list what about the jeans makes me unhappy (“Everything”), packing them up and mailing them, then quite likely receiving three pairs of jeans that STILL don’t fit—no thank you.

Plus: I already waited too long. In case you are about to urge me on this issue. This is one of my own personal Life Tax issues: for some reason, when I buy new clothes, I leave them sitting in the package for…well. Maybe I don’t want to say a time frame. It varies. But it often means I have gone past the return window.

What happened in this particular case was that I took out the first pair fairly promptly, like after only a couple of weeks. And they were so extremely disappointing, and the prospect of trying to fix the situation was so discouraging, I left the other two pairs in the box for months and months; after I tried on the second pair, and put it directly into the Goodwill bag, I waited so long I wasn’t even sure there WAS still another pair to try on. I finally tried on the third pair today, the pair I’d had the highest hopes for (because they were boot-cut, which is usually my favorite cut), and that brings us up to now. It is over a year since I placed the original order.

I will say this, though: at the grocery store this morning, two separate women stopped me to tell me how much they loved my jeans. Which is not something that typically happens. (The jeans are embroidered, so they are more eye-catching.) The jeans felt a little more comfortable, after that.

Elizabeth texted me at 7:30 on a Saturday morning that the 2024-2025 FAFSA was finally allowing online corrections. So apparently she has been keeping an eye on things. I went right downstairs and “fixed” my application (it claimed I had not signed it when I the hell HAD signed it), and now it is processing. Finally. In mid-April. It annoys me that it claims today is the day I submitted it, as if I put it off until today, as opposed to today being the day it allowed me to fix ITS OWN KNOWN ISSUE (SO MANY people got the “Whoops, you didn’t sign it!!” message after signing it—and then the “go back and sign it” button DID NOT WORK AND THERE WAS NO OTHER WAY TO FIX IT).

Anyway! Moving on! By which I mean saving this to stew about later when I should be sleeping!

We have acquired a fourth cat, and I have several things to say about this:

1. I know. I know that is too many cats. No: I KNOW.

2. In fact, I would say that four cats is twice as many cats as three. And three cats was already twice as many cats as two.

3. This new cat has medium-length fur (we always get short-haired varieties), and I am not at all sure I am up to this challenge. Already there are fur tumbleweeds.

But this was not an impulse-buy: I acquired this cat deliberately, after months of searching, EVEN KNOWING that four cats was too many. It was because our new kitten, acquired in the hopes that it would make our sad older boy cat less sad (our older girl cat does not want to hang out with other cats, but our older boy cat does, and he lost his cat buddy a little over a year ago), did not click with our older boy cat, and was instead making him even more unhappy by constantly chasing him and badgering him to play. When he wasn’t tormenting the old boy, the kitten followed me persistently, asking for interaction—which was super cute, but it felt like he was trying to fill a gap in his life. And so I regretted deciding not to follow the “kittens should be acquired in pairs” advice, and began the search for the second kitten we should have acquired.

Our original kitten is 11 months old, so I wasn’t looking for a KITTEN-kitten, just a young cat with similar energy levels. I was refreshing the shelter’s adoptable cats page every single day, and one day I found what I was looking for: a young male cat, 9 months old, described as playful and affectionate, who had been brought to the shelter because he was too playful and rambunctious for the older cat in his home. Longer fur than I’d prefer, but everything else sounded perfect. I went and got him that same day.

And, for the first time, bringing a new cat into our household has BROUGHT BALANCE instead of CREATING CHAOS. Now the two older orange cats cuddle together on the couch, which they did not do before. And the two younger black cats play and frolic together, and mostly leave the older orange cats alone. And I have seen our orange boy doing a little bit of playing with the kittens! And the original kitten still follows me around cutely, but less persistently.

Four is so many cats, though. The food!! The water!! The litter-box scooping!! THE FUR!!! There are cats simply EVERYWHERE.

(image from Amazon.com)

Commenter Slim mentioned reading All the Rage, by Darcy Lockman, and further mentioned having two copies to give away if we wanted to do something for Mother’s Day, which possibly we do. This is how Slim described the book:

Basically, straight married mothers’ brains are melting because our husbands think that doing a better job than their fathers is the same as doing a good job.

I don’t think I would mind dealing with all the stuff I have to do if I didn’t have to do it under the same roof as a grownass adult who makes my life harder.

Well, SOLD. I got a copy from my library, and I have finished it, and it is BRISTLING with slips of paper marking Good Parts. Some samples:

• “…couples with low levels of male partner participation in domestic chores are more likely to separate than couples in which men do more. As satisfaction with a male partners’ help increases, so, too, do positive marital interactions, closeness, affirmation, and positive affect. As it decreases, thoughts of divorce, negative affect, and depression go up—for mothers. Although perceived unfairness predicts both unhappiness and distress for women, it predicts neither for men, who often do not seem to fully register the problem.”

• “Writes [Stephanie] Coontz, ‘Self-reliance and independence worked for men because women took care of dependence and obligation.'”

• “Worrying to no purposeful end is unfortunate, but productive worry stimulates action: the scheduling of well-child visits, the installation of outlet plugs, the introduction of solid foods. The fathers in Walzer’s study both pathologized their wives for their vigilance and connected it to their babies’ well-being. It is not, however, connected to a mother’s well-being.”

• “Yana’s husband never explicitly turns down her requests [for help with housework and children]—but he routinely fails to fulfill them.”

• “Occidental College sociologist Lisa Wade summed up what she has seen like this: ‘Men find ways of being so difficult that it’s not worth it. You do it yourself.'”

• “Men do not pause to consider the experience of the other, or at the very least, they appear unmoved by it.”

• “Imagine if your children’s father said these things to you, directly and out loud: Women are easy to take advantage of, your efforts are ultimately unnecessary, the needs of our family are not worth my attention, and I’ll choose the more selfish thing. Fathers are implying every last bit of this with their resistance all the time.”

• I wish I had copied a quote from this section before returning the book, but I didn’t mark it so I forgot, but what I keep thinking about is the part where they found couples who said they were equals, where even the woman of the couple said they were equals and she was satisfied with the equal division of labor; and when the scientists/sociologists studied those couples, they found they were NOT equals and the women were doing more. In every single case.

The book did make me feel angry. But more than that, it made me feel Seen and Validated: the inequality I’m experiencing has been observed and analyzed in numerous studies; I am not imagining how unfair it is and how maddening it is; I am not the only one who can’t figure out how to fix it. And the WAYS in which it manifests, also Seen and Validated: the husbands who “forget” to do something, or just sort of Don’t Do It; the husbands who claim they just have to be asked to help (but the wives do not need to be asked); the husbands who know that if they drop the ball their wives will take care of it; the husbands who make their own lives the priority over everyone else’s while their wives work for the common good of the family; the husbands who simply Opt Out of responsibility for handling things, so that the wives are forced to handle all those things.

I recommend the book to you if your library has it—and, now that I’ve read it, would probably go so far as to recommend buying it if you can’t borrow it and can find it at an affordable price. And perhaps we will see about getting Slim’s copies out there for Mother’s Day—let’s think more on that.

This, THIS is the exact time of year to keep your eye out at the grocery store, at Trader Joe’s, at Target, for POTTED TULIPS. They are available right before Easter and not at any other time of year. It will be six sprouted tulip bulbs in a pot of dirt covered by a bright-pastel paper sleeve, and they will sell for $5 or $6 or $7, and you should not hesitate! You should BUY THEM, and use them to decorate your interior house! Don’t buy just one pot, if you can afford more! Buy two or three! or six or seven!

Because then, when they have wilted, you should bury them in your yard (or anywhere else: a roadside area! a park! a friend or family member’s yard as a surprise!), absolutely casually: just dig a casual roundish hole in your yard (or wherever!—but if it’s not your property, BE QUICK!) with a shovel, and then grab the six stems in a handful ’round the necks and use them to pull the whole soil clump out of the pot, and chunk the whole pot’s worth of soil/bulbs into the hole, and tuck/pat the soil around the base of the wilted stems as if you are doing a good job planting wilted flowers (this will make sure you are at least planting the bulbs right-side-up). It is in no way the right time of year to plant tulips; you are merely doing your part to avoid putting them in the landfill! And maybe that is all that will happen: they will gently decompose and return to the earth whenst they came. Or else they will be eaten by squirrels/chipmunks.

line-up of wilted potted daffodils/tulips waiting for me to go out with a shovel; generally they wait several weeks and then I get a surge of inspiration and plant them all at once

Or maybe!!: not!! And then, when they come up next spring, you will enjoy your FREE BONUS SURPRISE TULIPS!! I currently have many dozens of casually-buried potted tulips coming up in my yard, some from last year and some from the year before that and some from the year before that—and I cannot express how happy a thing that is. FREEEEEEEE TULIPS!! Last spring I got carried away and bought too many pots so as an experiment I planted two extra pots’ worth down by the mailbox, thinking there was NO WAY they would overcome the salt/sand near the roadside. And yet: here we are, it’s March and I see two distinct pot-shaped sections of tulips coming up!!! by the mailbox!!

ONE SURPRISE TULIP CLUMP COMING UP

…I have bought five more pots of them this year so far. AT LEAST TWO MORE POTS’ WORTH are joining the ones down by the mailbox!!

At my last check-up I tried to get my doctor to let me get the shingles shot early: I know of several people who got shingles before they turned 50, and they all say it was the worst pain they’d ever had, worse than childbirth. My doctor declined, and said she didn’t even recommend it right at age 50: she says she recommends getting it later, more like age 60—something about needing it to last the rest of your life. Well. I was not pleased. I went off in a huff! By which I mean I nodded and demurred and made no fuss whatsoever.

But now I am 50, so I can walk into a pharmacy and get the shingles vaccine without my doctor’s permission and have my insurance cover it, and I have not yet done it. I seem to be…chicken. But it is because I have heard the shingles vaccine is one of the very worst! And, worst of all: that it is not the FIRST of the required two shots that is so bad, it’s the SECOND! But once you get the first, you have to follow through and get the second! This is psychologically MUCH WORSE than if the first one were the bad one. But an unpleasant vaccine reaction? to avoid the worst pain of my life? I don’t understand why I am hesitating. It’s not as if I would mind staying in bed for a day and then writing a complaining blog post about it.

Speaking of turning 50, one of my biggest stressors these days is JEANS. I have always been a PEAR: I have a relatively small waist, and I wear a smaller size in tops than in bottoms, and anything long or one-piece (long coats, one-piece swimsuits, dresses) is difficult because of the discrepancy; I carry my weight in my rear and thighs; and I have never, even as a rangy pre-teen, had a flat stomach. But my weight is redistributing, so that I am carrying BOTHERINGLY MORE in my stomach, and it is THROWING EVERYTHING OFF. I don’t even know what fruit shape this is. I tried going up a size (I have about four sizes in storage), but that didn’t work at all: they didn’t fit right AND were too big. If I find jeans that fit at all, they need a belt, and also they look terrible in a way that tempts me to commit the grave error of blaming the body instead of the jeans: if they’re stretchy enough to be comfortable, they’re stretchy enough to SHOWCASE the new tum area, which I will accept but I do not wish to show off. I think this must be why so many older women give up on jeans and start buying Alfred Dunner separates. But I will not go gentle into that good night! (Well, except I searched online for Alfred Dunner to make sure that was still a thing, and ended up thinking “Ooooo actually those are pretty cute!”)

I am having a long run of being unable to face the telephone. I managed to make the ENT appointment because it felt like a potentially dire emergency, and I managed to make some phone calls when Elizabeth’s ambulance claim for her tree-nut reaction was rejected; but I have not managed to make quite a few other phone calls for appointments that need to be made and are causing me trouble. My glasses, for example: speaking of turning 50, apparently now I desperately need BIFOCALS/TRIFOCALS. Sometimes I think in a chipper way that this is FINE! plenty of people get behind on appointments for reasons completely unrelated to phone phobia and it’s JUST FINE! Other times I feel some level of despair: I am FIFTY YEARS OLD, why can’t I do this NORMAL LIFE THING?

Today I realized I had all the ingredients to recreate Swistle’s High School Scent, and so on impulse I recreated it. I washed my hair with Pert Plus, and then I used Suave baby-powder-scented deodorant and Charlie perfume. Maybe it was only the seasonal spring pollen, but two of my co-workers sneezed near me. Just one sneeze each, which is inconclusive—but still, in the future I will save Swistle’s High School Scent for non-working days. I am sentimentally and enduringly fond of Charlie, but it is an aldehyde. I am not 100% sure I am using that word correctly. Aldehyde is a word I have gradually become familiar with from perfume reviews, and to my semi-understanding it refers to that “date-night perfume” element of 1970s perfumes, which non-enjoyers refer to as “nostril-scorching.” I like to have my nostrils lightly scorched by it, and I appreciate the way I can still smell the perfume at 6:30 p.m. after applying it at 6:30 a.m.—but, again from perfume reviews, I am aware of the many, many, many people who don’t appreciate these things (NO NEED TO ADD MORE VOICES TO THE CHORUS, I HAVE SAID I AM AWARE) (NO SERIOUSLY).

Oh! Also this morning, completely unrelated: a slightly alarming thing. I dried off after my shower, and as I hung up my towel I saw streaks of blood on it. My first thought was that this might be one of the highly irregular periods of The Glorious Transition, but no. I had several other thoughts (shaving injury? etc.), checked them; also no. I stood in front of the full-length mirror and examined the corpus entire: no blood! Baffled, I went on to the next step of my routine, which is drying out the ears and nose—and it turned out my nose was bleeding.

…This story was not anywhere NEAR as dramatic in the telling as it was in the experiencing. Honestly it had the twang of true horror. Ideally blood should not be coming from anywhere, but EVEN LESS should it be coming from NOWHERE APPARENT. Is it coming from…THE WALLS?? A GHOST?? SOMETHING ATTACHED TO THE CEILING?????

I have selected the tulips winner, and also a second tulips winner because I felt like it and there was enough in the Swistle Ad Revenue fund, and I have emailed them for their addresses. If you were not one of the winners, may I suggest you order some tulips for yourself or a friend/relative tomorrow morning, if funds permit? 🌷🌷🌷 They restock at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern time. It is really so fun.

Also I wish to know: what was your High School Scent Combination?

I am going to recommend a toothpaste and, if you are like me, the first time you try it you will say “OH NO WHAT DID I PUT IN MY MOUTH?? GET IT OUT, GET IT OUT” and you will want to put the whole tube directly into the trash can; but, and this is assuming you are still me in this scenario, then you will try it on another occasion and have a similar reaction, but for some reason keep trying it anyway??? until you end up somehow enjoying the suffering??? until it isn’t even suffering??? It reminds me a little of mouthwash: how at first I thought “AAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH WHYYYYYYY!!!” for the entire 30 seconds of swishing, and now it’s no big deal and I even get a little head-rush from it, and afterwards I feel as if I’ve done something very nice for my teeth and gums. Here is the toothpaste:

(image from Target.com)

Arm & Hammer Peroxicare toothpaste. Maybe buy your first tube as a single, in case you hate it and continue hating it and then continue hating it after that.

I don’t remember why I bought it in the first place, but I think it was the general feeling that baking soda and/or peroxide might be good for my poor gums. I also wondered if the whitening effect of peroxide would make the inside of my mouth peel the way other whitening toothpastes can, and the happy answer is NO. And my teeth DO look whiter. At my last appointment the dentist asked, “Do you do tooth-whitening treatments?,” which I thought was the beginning of a sales pitch but turned out instead to be a compliment. I am fantasizing that at my next appointment (when they will do the annual gum-poking thing to measure the pockets) the hygienist will make awed noises about how much improvement there has been. Exciting times!

This is a niche complaint paragraph for U.S. college students and parents of college students: THE NEW (2024-2025) FAFSA!!!!! I HATE IT SO MUCH!!! WAS THE OLD ONE NOT SUFFICIENTLY TERRIBLE???? This new ‘n’ improved version doesn’t let you copy your inputted information for a second child, so you have to type it all in again! I have not changed any of the information on my taxes or any of the balances of my accounts from one child to the next!! And I signed mine, but then when Elizabeth did her section, it told her that I had NOT signed mine. And now apparently we wait indefinitely to hear back.

Would you like some surprise tulips? Or I can send them to your friend or relative. I have finished the FAFSA, and I have dropped off my forms for the tax preparer, and my twinnies are home for spring break, and there are tulips coming up in my yard, and I am in the mood to send someone some tulips. It has to be someone in the U.S., and I believe in fact you have to be in the 48. No: I have checked, and they say they are shipping to all 50. That is a little difficult to believe, but I am going to take them at their word. I will ask but not demand that, if you win, you satisfy my curiosity by telling me which two surprise colors you received. To enter, leave a comment (either on its own or in addition to the rest of your comment) saying “tulips!” (you don’t have to use the exclamation point if you’re not feeling it) and/or see if it works to cut and paste this lil emoji to make the comments section all springlike: 🌷🌷🌷. I will choose a winner on Tuesday evening, so that I can collect a shipping address (as usual, it’s fine to choose someone you know in the U.S., if you win and you are not yourself in the U.S.) and get the order in on Wednesday morning when the inventory refills.

This morning I am not working. I so look forward to these mornings off! And then I sit here feeling glum, wondering what people at work are doing.

Usually I have errands to run on my morning off, but this morning I have only a boring errand (groceries) and I have not been able to stir myself. I promised myself a fun errand at the same time (browsing Marshalls or HomeGoods), but found that failed to ignite a spark, and then felt depressed at the idea that I was trying to talk myself into spending money unnecessarily when I didn’t even want to.

After my recent rediscovery of the emotions of the monthly cycle, a friend recommended the phone app Stardust, which I downloaded that same day and have been enjoying. In the midst of my hormonal distress it told me I was a strong little houseplant, and that was good to hear from my nest of blankies on the couch. Today I am apparently ovulating! So perhaps that is enough, in terms of errands and getting things done.

I am interested to know if I AM in fact still ovulating. Do I HAVE to be, if I’m still getting periods? Why don’t I know this. I looked it up, expecting to feel silly about the answer, but actually it looks as if there is reason to be unsure: a period can happen even if no egg was released, and everything gets a little whoopsie during perimenopause. But it looks as if regular periods tend to mean ovulation is still happening. Not that those eggs are likely to be viable. Long ago, I read in what I remember to be an issue of People magazine that after age 42, only 2% of women can still get pregnant with their own eggs and without medical intervention; the context I’m remembering was an obstetrician commenting about celebrity women giving birth in their late 40s and early 50s, and how it was misleading the obstetrician’s non-celebrity patients to think they could do the same.

Recently, the wife of a former classmate gave birth after a surprise pregnancy at 47. This possessed my mind for some time. I found it gave me a thrill, but that I was not envious, and in fact a small slice of the thrill (along with the more predominant joy and delight) was an element akin to horror. There was a time in my life when I felt as if I’d never feel this way, that I would ALWAYS want MORE!!BABIES!!, so it has been a relief to be here. It is nice to be able to turn the mind pleasantly to the next generation’s weddings and babies. Still, there is that weird little difference between “don’t want to” and “can’t.”

I am not exactly recommending this book:

(image from Amazon.com)

Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi

It is the kind of book where, after reading it, I went looking for other people who had read it—as opposed to looking for people who HADN’T read it, to tell them to do so. I wanted to TALK ABOUT IT. I am not at all sure I understand what happened, and I DO NOT LIKE uncertainty—but part of what I dislike about uncertainty is when I feel like the author doesn’t know what happened either and just waved a little “Woooooo, mysTERious/ARTsy!!!” hand over the plot to get the book finished so they could stop trying to figure it out; and in this case I feel like the author knows EXACTLY what happened, and it’s just the reader who might be too dim to put it together. (I would LOVE if the authors who do Clever Uncertainty would provide a merciful cheat-sheet for those of us in that Too Dim category.)

I would also have said I did not like gimmicks, and that I would not enjoy anything called “experimental fiction,” but I believe the evidence is beginning to pile up that I DO enjoy those things, at least in the hands of certain authors. In this case I felt a pleasantly blown-away by it.

But I found the first maybe half of the book pretty hard to get through, especially since it was about the sex/drug/emotional lives of high school theater kids, and one of my kids is a high school theater kid. I asked Henry, DO high school children typically have access to cocaine?? I never even saw POT in high school. “Nerd,” he remarked.