Splitting the Cost of a Ride Home

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I emailed Rob to ask if he was for sure coming home for Spring Break and if I should therefore go ahead and buy the bus tickets (there is a great students-only bus with free Wifi that drives kids almost all the way to our house)—and he said actually, a college friend who is also from our town offered him a ride home.

So, okay, let’s not discuss how this compares to the nice safe rental bus that is very high off the ground and is driven by a professional and has a chaperone on board. Let’s not address how much more anxious I will be while he is traveling. Let’s avoid picturing the two teenagers getting into a “STAHP it, no YOU stahp it!” slap fight while driving, ending in fiery death. Or falling asleep while driving because they stayed up until 3:00 in the morning, ending in fiery death. Or being inexperienced drivers, ending in fiery death. Let’s snort together as we dismiss Paul’s argument that this is like the anxiety felt on the first day Rob went to kindergarten: on the first day of kindergarten, I was not LEGITIMATELY ANXIOUS ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF FIERY DEATH.

Let’s instead discuss what are the right things for Rob to do, in order to cover his share of this trip. Should he pay half of the gas? All of the gas, since the other student is putting all the miles on her car? Should he treat for meals (they’ll be stopping for two meals, probably)? What is The Right Way? What is The Fair Thing?

Valentine’s Day Complaining; Valentine’s Day College Care Package

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I was going to take a minute to complain about the airplane tickets that changed price by hundreds of dollars as I was trying to pay for them, but eh. I’m wearing a cozy cardigan, and everything worked out fine in the end, and I guess I’m not in the mood for complaining about it now.

I sent Rob a care package this morning, with a Valentine’s Day emphasis. You know what, actually I am in the mood for complaining, just not about plane tickets. I want to complain about Valentine’s Day. Paul and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, which makes me a little sad every year because I really like the holiday (pretty colors, flowers/lace/hearts, chocolate everywhere, a brief break from the long joyless winter), but we tried it for a number of years and it just doesn’t work out with anyone feeling happy about it. And I am so easy to buy for! Here is what I want: a pretty, heart-shaped box of nice chocolates. That’s it! That’s not so high-maintenance! Well. I guess also I want it purchased not at the last minute, and without a cranky, burdened attitude, and without a heavy “WHAT is it you want, again?” sigh, and perhaps that is too picky FOR SOME. And lest you are thinking, “Well GEEZ, Swistle, maybe he just wants to have his own romantic idea for a Valentine’s Day gift and you are STIFLING him by acting like you’re PLACING AN ORDER! SOME people don’t go in for TRITE CLICHÉD CONSUMERISM, you know!,” rest assured that the specific request is at his specific request: he absolutely did not want to think of his own idea. And he is a fine, fine man in many other ways, and if a once-a-year traditionally-romantic gift was so important to me I could have married my high-school boyfriend, but instead I wanted smart and funny (oh snap high school boyfriend) and this particular Smart/Funny came equipped with “responding amiably/amusingly to irritable comments rather than allowing them to start a fight” instead of “buying heart-shaped things,” and it’s still a trade I’m willing to make. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get to complain. And he can go ahead and complain to HIS friends about whatever it is he thinks it would be nice if I’d do.

Anyway, now I concentrate on the non-romantic parts of the holiday: valentines for the kids; buying/making heart-shaped foods; contributing heart-shaped paper plates to the elementary-school parties; appreciating the cute elementary-school classroom exchanges; buying my own pretty, heart-shaped box(es) of nice chocolates at 50% off on February 15th. This is our last year of having a kid in elementary school, so that’s a little sad.

Where was I? Oh, yes: care package. What the kids have wanted every single year is those giant 7-ounce Hershey Kisses. At our Target they are only sold in teacher-themed packaging, but the children say they do not care, so that’s what they get every year. (I have heard that some other stores have the giant Kisses without the teacher theme, and if the kids cared I would investigate that option.) I put one of those in Rob’s care package. Also, I have been buying the Valentine’s-Day-themed Hostess and Little Debbie snack cakes for the kids to have as February-leading-up-to-Valentine’s-Day treats, and I set aside one little cakey from each box to put in the care package. Also Valentine’s Day Tic-Tacs, Valentine’s Day Junior Mints, a Valentine’s Day Hershey bar, a tube of Valentine’s Day M&Ms, and Valentine’s Day Sweetarts. For non-Valentine’s-Day-related stuff, I put in a box of cereal bars, a box of granola bars, a pocket pack of tissues, two of his favorite pens (I bought a box of 12, and I parcel them out at the approximate rate I think he’ll lose them), a few ziploc baggies and clothespins (so handy!), a miniature bottle of Tabasco sauce, a package of beef jerky, a package of cough drops, a tin of Altoids.

Reader Question: Things To Do with an Alexa

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Today we have this from Phancymama:

We got an Alexa and a dot for Christmas, and I would love a post on this where I could read lots of comments from other people! I also find myself wishing for Alexa in the car. And I feel like my feelings run from “incredibly useful” to “I forget it’s there” and I have the feeling I’m missing some of the tricks and tips. (For instance I ask about the weather but not the news!)

 

I have a first-generation Echo, but it looks like those are only being sold refurbished and the second-generation Echo is the current thing. I also have a second-generation Dot. Here is what I use my Alexa Echo/Dot for:

1. Every single morning, I ask it for the news (“Alexa, what’s the news?”). I had to set up what news source I wanted (I do set-up stuff on https://alexa.amazon.com/spa/index.html#cards (I just type in alexa.amazon.com and it adds the other stuff automatically), but there is an Alexa app that lets you do it too and makes more sense if you use the Alexa for lists; I started to install the app long ago, but I seem to remember feeling uncomfortable at the time with the permissions/access it wanted), and I chose NPR. You can also set up more than one source, so that it will go through them one after another, but NPR is about exactly the amount of news I want in the morning, delivered in exactly the right tone of voice.

2. Songs! So many songs! “Alexa, play On Melancholy Hill,” “Alexa, play Magic by The Cars,” “Alexa, play Dancer in a Daydream,” “Alexa, play Fever by Peggy Lee.” Sometimes she needs title and artist, sometimes just title: there’s more than one song called Magic; there’s more than one artist who sings Fever. There is a rotating list of songs she’ll say she can only play a sample of, and that’s annoying, so for Christmas I asked for and received a subscription to Amazon Music Unlimited, the $3.99/month version that gives access on just one device. Paul thought this was silly and wanted to get the $7.99/month plan that would cover both devices, but even the $3.99/month adds up, and I wanted to try it out for awhile in a way that would let me compare and see if it gave me enough more songs to be worth it. So far I really like it: when I came home from The Greatest Showman and wanted the soundtrack, the Echo played it for me right away; when I was folding laundry later and asked the Dot for the same thing, it said I would need Amazon Music Unlimited for that.

2a. Asking what song is playing. I LOVE this. I say, “Alexa, what is this?” and she says “This is Let the Games Begin, by AJR,” or whatever.

2b. Asking for a radio station. I have a radio in the kitchen, but it only gets two stations I like. So I’ll ask Alexa to play a different station. I’ve asked her to play Rob’s college radio station, which was fun. It can be a little tricky to get the one I want, because she can play practically anything, so it’s best if you know the call letters.

2c. Asking her to play songs by a certain artist. I’ll say, “Alexa, play songs by AJR,” and she’ll shuffle songs by AJR.

2d. Asking her to make an assorted playlist based on a certain artist. I’ll say, “Alexa, play Peter Cetera radio,” and she’ll play an assortment of songs: some Peter Cetera, some of a similar style, some from that time period, and some weird choices that don’t make any sense. If she plays a song I don’t like, I say “Alexa, thumbs down” and she puts it on a don’t-play list. If she’s playing a song I don’t want to forbid but neither do I want to hear it right now, I say, “Alexa, skip this one” or “Alexa, next.”

2e. Asking for a song I don’t know the title/artist of. “Alexa, play the song that goes ‘Every time I see you falling’.”

2f. Asking for a type of music. “Alexa, play ’80s hits,” “Alexa, play ’90s alternative rock,” “Alexa, play classical music,” “Alexa, play Christmas music.” I’ve had mixed success with this: sometimes I get exactly what I want, but sometimes she’ll play, like, a bunch of music that may be from the ’80s but nothing I recognize, or she’ll get weirdly overly-specific and say “Playing Christmas Country Down Home Favorites” or “Playing music by Bach.” No, no: I wanted an ASSORTMENT of Christmas/classical.

3. Timer/alarm. Mostly I’d rather just set a regular old timer. But it’s handy to have the Alexa when I’m out of timers (the kids walk off with them, or all the timers are in use) or if I’m doing something that makes it inconvenient, like washing dishes. She can do a timer (“Alexa, set a timer for eight minutes”) or an alarm (“Alexa, set an alarm for 1:30”).

4. General information. Sometimes I hear a news story that I don’t quite understand because I didn’t pay attention in American Government class or whatever, or sometimes a kid will ask me a question I don’t know the answer to, or Paul needs to know YET AGAIN how many tablespoons are in a quarter-cup (IT’S FOUR, PAUL. It’s ALWAYS FOUR), so we ask Alexa. Sometimes she doesn’t know, or doesn’t understand the question.

5. Weather: “Alexa, what’s the weather?,” “Alexa, will it snow tomorrow?,” “Alexa, what’s the temperature outside?,” “Alexa, what will the weather be like on Saturday?”

6. “Alexa, teach me something new.” She’ll tell you something neat about dogs! or stars! or the crippling effects of a break-up!

7. “Alexa, tell me a joke.” (Mostly the kids do this one.)

8. Random number generator. If you tell her to roll a die, she’ll give you a number between one and six. Or you can ask her to roll a hundred dice. Or flip a coin. Or give you a random number between one and a hundred.

 

Phancymama and I would like to hear how you use your Alexa.

Movie: The Greatest Showman

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A friend invited me to go see The Greatest Showman, and I knew nothing about it except that it was about Barnum and/or Bailey, so I figured it was a pretty safe bet: if nothing else, there would be good circus scenes. Things I didn’t realize until I arrived at the theater:

1. It’s a musical
2. Hugh Jackman is in it
3. My friend had already seen it: she invited me right after seeing it the first time. Like, from the parking lot.

I liked it. As expected, there were good circus scenes. There were also some good big musical numbers with lots of stuff happening: trapeze artists! lions! flames! stomping! clapping! And there were a couple sweet songs. And two good power ballads. I would be happy to see it again. And I might end up doing so: as the credits rolled, my friend said, “Same time tomorrow?” It was a good one to see in the theater, because of all the big/colorful/loud scenes.

I would like to see more movies. It’s an activity that ties in beautifully with my dabbling goals. For example, since seeing The Greatest Showman I have:

1. Asked Alexa to play me the soundtrack while I made dinner
2. Looked up the actress who plays Jenny Lind (I still don’t know why she seems familiar)
3. Looked up the singer who sings Never Enough (Loren Allred)
4. Thought of the song Never Enough reminds me of (Already Gone, by Kelly Clarkson) and listened to it
5. Looked up the actress/singer who plays Anne Wheeler (Zendaya)
6. Felt interested in finding out why this story about Barnum doesn’t mention Bailey
7. Thought about how glad I was that what seemed like [spoiler] was actually [spoiler]
8. Felt interested in learning more about Jenny Lind

It gives me renewed Interest in Things. It’s a good way to counteract January.

What it Was Like To Get a Dental Implant, Insofar as the Nitrous Oxide Will Let Me Remember

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I have been so sad and anxious about getting my dental implant, and now it is done and I am so much happier. Plus I tried nitrous oxide and now I have a new life plan involving lots of dental work.

To review, I had the tooth extracted back in September, and a bone graft put in. In early January the oral surgeon had me come back in to check the bone graft, and it looked good so I went back near the end of January for the implant. (Before having this done, I thought “the implant” was the fake tooth, but the implant is the name for the screw-thing they put into the gums for the crown to attach to; the crown is the part that looks like a tooth.)

I chose to be unconscious for the tooth extraction, but chose nitrous oxide for the implant, partly because I was less upset about the second procedure than the first, and partly because I wanted to try nitrous oxide after hearing all the varying reviews. I am happy to report that my experience was on the positive end of the spectrum: it was MARVELOUS. The only downside is it felt a little like having too much to drink, in that I felt self-conscious about how I was coming across to others; and I was uncertain about successfully coordinating, for example, the assigned complicated task of breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. And my mouth was numb and I didn’t have my glasses on, so I had the unpleasant sensation of being semi-detached from most of my senses. But that was like 10% unpleasant combined with 90% Very Very Pleasant, so in short I am a fan and plan to see if I can get it for all future upsetting dental work, such as crowns. I HATE getting crowns, and I have four of them and two of them are getting ready to need replacing.

I will see what I can remember about getting the implant. They first gave me a dose of antibiotics and asked me to confirm some information. I had to have someone with me to drive me home, since I was having nitrous oxide. They put a shower cap thing over my hair and disposable booties over my shoes and a big disposable sheet over the rest of my person. They took my blood pressure and asked if I was nervous (yes), and put an oxygen monitor on my finger. At this point it was still just me and the person who administered the nitrous oxide. She then put a little cup thing over my nose and gave me some oxygen, which just felt like a cool nose breeze.

Then the nitrous oxide, and she asked me to tell her when I felt a little tingly. I get a little paranoid about things like this: I worry that I am highly suggestible and will say I feel something when there is no way I could be feeling anything yet, and then they will be like “Gotcha!” Which of course they would not do. Anyway, I felt nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, maybe I feel something I can’t tell, no it’s nothing, nothing, maybe I’m imagining something, no it’s nothing, nothing, nothing, OH there it is! Just sort of a tingly feeling, as advertised, and then maybe a minute later a definite headrush/buzz/high feeling. Really great. She told me she’d leave it right there, but would crank it higher when we got to the point where the oral surgeon was putting in the Novocaine. And I was not nervous at all! Why had I been nervous! Everything was great!

She said it would work in a “rollercoaster” fashion: first I’d feel it, then I’d feel it less, then I’d feel it more again, and so forth. She said this was partly the nature of the medication, and partly because when it’s working well, people forget to breathe through their noses, and then they sober up a bit and remember. And that was how it worked for me: at one point I thought she had turned it off and started the oxygen (which she’d told me she’d do at the end), but then after a few minutes there was a renewal of the headrush/buzz/high feeling.

The oral surgeon and her assistant came in right after I was starting to feel the nitrous oxide. The doctor asked how I was and the person handling the nitrous oxide said, “She’s doing great: she loves everyone,” possibly because that’s exactly what I had told her a minute earlier. The doctor put numbing gel on a Q-tip and propped the Q-tip between my lip and my gum. Then there was some talk about needles, and I floated right through that. Ha ha! Needles! So funny! I felt very much like laughing, but stifled it. The doctor picked up something I couldn’t see, and the person handling the laughing gas said she was going to give me more now. I felt GREAT, and also like I might pass out but in a very good way. I felt as if I could definitely fall asleep if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to miss any of this legal high. There was some sort of needle sensation I guess but who cared! Then the doctor said “I’m afraid this one is a rough one,” and her assistant said, “Deep breath in now,” and I thought, “Wheeeeeeeeee ow ow wheeeeeeeeee isn’t it funny how that theoretically hurts quite a bit and yet la la la wheeeeeee this is GREAT I feel WONDERFUL and also I think I successfully obeyed the instruction to breathe in, so that’s good!”

Things are a little muddled in my memory. There was a lot of messing around in my mouth. Some gauze and some suction and so forth. I couldn’t really feel anything because my mouth was numb and because I was quite high. I think the doctor might have tried one kind of implant and rejected it for another kind, because she said something about magenta being more feminine but the other was a better fit; I don’t remember if she put one in and then took it out or if she discovered this some other way. And the doctor showed me an implant and it took a moment for me to understand she was talking to me so I could tune in and take a look at it, and I remember seeing a little grey cone/screw thing. I don’t know if this is the same one I have now or not, because the part that shows is a gold/bronze color, and I also remember her saying something about gold being fancy and that now I had some bling, so maybe she tried/considered three different implants. I remember hearing, with no concern, some debate about which one to use, and there was an x-ray and then some more work, and then after awhile there was another x-ray, and then some more work, and then another x-ray. Sometimes I let my eyes close; sometimes I looked around to help stay awake to appreciate the high. There were at least two occasions when something like a tiny jackhammer was doing something on my gums; I assume putting in the implant? It didn’t hurt, just sounded/felt a little weird. Mostly sounded: I wasn’t feeling much in the mouth region at all. I couldn’t even tell if my mouth was open or closed.

A few times the assistant said I could close and swallow, and I tasted a lot of salt. I would think this meant blood, except it didn’t taste entirely like blood, and also they were frequently using a sprayer and a suction thing in my mouth, and also I wouldn’t think blood would be quite so salty. It tasted more as if they had been using salt water in the sprayer. I still wasn’t sure I was able to successfully follow instructions, but each time I did seem to be following them, at least enough to satisfy. They asked for my flipper (the temporary tooth on a retainer-like thing) and I was able to tell them it was in the pocket of the cardigan I’d given to the nurse, but I was a little surprised that I was able to do that. The surgeon put the flipper in and said, “Yep, that’s going to be in the way,” and they discussed whether I had an appointment scheduled with my dentist, which I did. I continued to float/enjoy. The person handling the nitrous oxide asked how I was doing, and I said “Great!,” and she said “Mom knows best, right?,” and I didn’t know why she was saying it, and I thought she was referring to herself as “Mom.” (Afterward I remembered that we’d talked about my mom saying nitrous oxide was great and that I should definitely try it.)

At one point the doctor said, “Oh, sorry,” and I had no idea what she was talking about but thought it was very important to indicate to her that I TOTALLY got it, so I nodded and half-winked and tried to look knowledgeable/forgiving. Once she said, “Oops, let’s not drown you,” and I had no idea what she was talking about. Several times she asked if I was okay and I said “Yes” and “Lovely!” She said unfortunately she couldn’t send me home with a canister of the stuff, and I laughed and then had trouble stopping laughing but did manage it.

Then the assistant was wiping around my mouth with a damp cloth and the doctor was saying things had gone really well. I tried to nod understandingly. She and the assistant left the room. The person handling the nitrous oxide said she was going to switch me to oxygen, and in the next couple of minutes I started sobering up and regaining control of my various senses. I thought, “OH, I see, my mouth is hard to control because it’s all NUMB! I get it now!” I shifted my arms and legs for the first time since starting the nitrous oxide. It felt kind of good to not be so out of it, though I also felt like I would like to breathe through my mouth to extend the nitrous oxide as long as possible.

She gave me some after-care instructions: don’t eat unpasteurized dairy for a couple of days; use ice for 20 minutes out of every 60 for the first two days, then switch to heat if necessary; don’t eat spiky/crispy things such as chips and nuts for a week; chew only on back teeth, no biting with the front teeth (I haven’t been able to bite with my front teeth since September, so no problem); swish with salt water; take ibuprofen; etc. I felt about 75% able to receive such instructions, but she gave me a piece of paper that repeated everything.

The whole thing from antibiotics to paperwork was less than an hour. I didn’t need gauze or anything afterward, because the bleeding had already stopped. The oral surgeon had said something earlier that baffled me but did not cause me to want clarification: she said she had a “perfect-size punch” so that there was hardly any bleeding and no stitches required. Let’s not think too much about what a “punch” might be, or how it might be used.

This is when I started feeling some pain, and the pain increased quite a bit over the next five or ten minutes. She’d told me to take four ibuprofen when I got home, but I had some in my purse so I stopped at the drinking fountain in the building’s hallway and took them right away. The pain increased to the point where it was hard to think about other things. It wasn’t excruciating, but it was very ouchie/distracting, and I felt squinty and bad. My other teeth were hurting too, even though they shouldn’t; I remembered the orthodontist long ago telling me that teeth are particularly prone to “sympathetic pain.” My mom and I had talked about stopping at a store on the way home, but I was too uncomfortable.

Instead my mom drove me directly to the dentist, where I had an appointment an hour later to get my flipper (the temporary fake tooth on a little retainer-type thing) adjusted to make room for the part of the implant that sticks out of the gums. I’d been worried the sticking-out part would be gross and upsetting, like an eighth-inch of screw protruding disturbingly, but it’s just a little nearly-flat gold circle on the gum. It’s almost pretty—as if I’ve gotten my gum pierced to match my earrings. And I can barely feel it with my tongue, even though the tongue exaggerates the size of everything: it’s much flatter and less noticeable than the stitches were, back when I had the tooth extracted.

It was about a twenty-minute drive to the dentist, and by the time we got there I was starting to think I might be feeling better. By half an hour after that, I was DEFINITELY feeling better: it was partly the ibuprofen but also I think the implant just stopped hurting so much, because when the ibuprofen wore off I still didn’t have any pain. Maybe just a slight tender feeling. It was like stubbing your toe, where first it hurts tremendously but then the pain drops off sharply and it doesn’t usually hurt later, or maybe it’s just a teeny bit sensitive. It was as if my gums were saying “AAAAAA INTRUDER AAAAAAAA NO THIS IS NOT RIGHT AAAAAAAAA THERE IS A GIANT THING HERE THAT SHOULDN’T BE HERE oh actually no this is okay this is fine no problem we can make room.”

The dentist carved a teensy bit out of the flipper, and then it fit great. The whole thing took about five minutes, and that included chatting about how the implant procedure had gone. My mom dropped me off at home and I put a bag of frozen corn on my face; I felt like I didn’t need it (no swelling, no pain) but didn’t want to be the idiot who thinks she’s fine and doesn’t follow the instructions and then gets a swollen face. The next day I did notice maybe a tiny bit of swelling, but maybe I was imagining it. Mostly I looked a little pink from the ice pack.

I feel VERY HAPPY about having this step done. I hope there are no complications, because if there aren’t, then all the stressful/hard/painful parts are over: all that’s left is having a crown attached to the implant, and I can have that done in about ten weeks, and then life can proceed. And I will not think about how the oral surgeon said it looked like the same problem might be happening with my other front tooth (probably injured at the same time and in the same way, whatever that time/way was) and we will just have to wait and see.

The Crown; Biography of Queen Elizabeth

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I am on Season Two of The Crown. It is difficult to gauge what is a spoiler when a show is based on actual history. I was never good at history so it’s all spoilers to me. I mean, I know Queen Elizabeth has a son called Charles, I did know that. But I have to be careful not to search online to find out, for example, why that photographer looks so familiar (it’s because he was also in Downton Abbey) because when I do, I see little bits of history that would have been a complete surprise to me two episodes later.

Anyway. I just watched the episode where Charles goes away to school at Gordonstoun. It’s so well done, I think: you can absolutely see how great the school was for Prince Philip and why he wants Charles to go there so intensely that he can justify being an absolute dick about it, and you can even see how it MIGHT have ended up well for Charles too—while also seeing that it was an experiment that should have been discontinued after the first year and better yet even sooner, and that Prince Philip should have noticed that he and Charles are VERY DIFFERENT TEMPERAMENT TYPES with very different issues to work through, so what was good for one of them would not necessarily be good for the other of them. Plus, Prince Philip does not give evidence of being a really superior person, so perhaps he should not over-credit the effect his school experience had on his character.

It all gives a parent a lot to think about, is what I’m saying.

Speaking of spoilers/history, this show makes me want to read biographies and history books to get more information about that time and these people. Do you have any you’d recommend? Probably I’d want to start with a biography of Queen Elizabeth, since I now love her. I am also interested in reading more about Princess Margaret, and eventually I want to read more about Prince Charles.

Bad Kiss

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Last night I couldn’t sleep, and nearly got up to write a post about all the things keeping me awake, but about three-quarters of them were things I didn’t want to revisit in the morning if I didn’t have to.

One thing I was thinking about was something that happened at a party when I was 17. I’d gone at the flirty invitation of a flirty guy friend, and when I got there he had his arm around another girl, so apparently we were playing a game, and at that stage of my life I was all-in for that. The party was a small casual sitting-around-the-campfire-drinking-wine-coolers-and-beer kind of party, and I had obtained parental permission to attend by promising not to drink any wine coolers or beer, but I did sit and talk with people who had had a fair number of them. Everyone there had known each other for years so I was a novelty, and my act went over well. Flirty guy friend observed it going over well, and I observed him observing it, which was additionally pleasing. Your move, sir.

When I’d arrived, I’d found my way from the dark road to the party in the woods by following the light of the campfire. When I left, I couldn’t tell which way to go; it was nothing but dark woods in all directions. My flirty friend, his arm pinned by the girl he was sitting with, asked if someone could see me safely to my car, and one of his buddies volunteered. The buddy did a mock bow and said “My lady,” and walked me to my car. The buddy then prevented me from getting into my car, and kept trying to kiss me.

I am not sure how long this went on. I said, “I can’t do this,” and “I need to go,” and “My parents are going to kill me if I miss curfew,” and “Okay, I really have to go now,” and he seemed to think we were in the Baby It’s Cold Outside song and I was just flirting, and he kept trying to kiss me, and he kept blocking the door to my car. My sole and focused mission became to persuade him to allow me to leave. Isn’t that weird to think of? I had to work, and work hard, to persuade a stranger, with no authority over me, to let me do something I was absolutely allowed to do, and something he absolutely shouldn’t have been preventing.

I’m interested to look back on that scene and observe that I had already completely incorporated, without being taught, that it is not safe to shove away a guy on a dark road when the two of you are alone; there is a good chance of him shoving back, and then where will you be. He’d already shown me that he was going to ignore boundaries and social cues, so it was hard to know how far out we’d find the line he wouldn’t cross. And he’d shown an additional worrisome trait by pretending he was taking me to my car for my safety, when he intended to make me significantly less safe than if I’d gone alone. But neither did it feel as if we were in a situation where screaming or pepper spray would be anywhere near appropriate: those are for when strangers come leaping out of the woods, not when they accompany you out of them. The only way I could think of to get out of this was to pretend reluctance rather than repugnance, to avoid making him angry (danger/escalation path) or hurting his feelings (danger/escalation path), and to lie about next time in order to get away safely this time. I did so, and after some period of time I did get away safely.

I’m not going to pretend it was a giant trauma. It was a little gross, and it was a little scary while it was happening and when all the potential outcomes were still open—but because it stopped where it did, and because the guy did NOT escalate things but instead seemed more like a tipsy idiot, and because by that age I’d done a fair amount of kissing and could be more casual about it rather than feeling as if My Lips Have Been Violated and Shall Never Recover, it lives in my memory as A Memorably Unpleasant Thing That Happened and not much more. Sometimes I go back in time and ask my friend to free his arm for long enough to see me to my car himself, or I ask one of the girls at the party to go with me. Sometimes I imagine taking the risk and shoving him. Sometimes I imagine an unrealistic but satisfying “How DARE you!” scene. Sometimes I imagine an unrealistic martial arts scene.

The next day my flirty friend called me and said his buddy had asked for my number and should he give it to him, and I said NO at length. The buddy kept asking my friend about me for awhile; he didn’t understand why I didn’t want to see him again. Last night I was lying awake wondering how things went for him from there: did he ever learn not to do stuff like that, or no? Does he wince at how he used to act? Or does he have a sentimental memory that doesn’t match mine at all, about some girl he liked at a party, and he walked her to her car and kissed her, and then she vanished into the night? Or maybe the same thing happened with so many girls, he doesn’t have any memory of it at all.

Continuous Stream of Dirty and Broken Things

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I have been grim and morose and feeling as if the whole world is a bad place full of broken appliances and corrupt insurance companies and stupid/mean strangers leaving horrible callous comments on news articles, but I am trying to remember (leaving aside for the moment how this next thought reflects on me) that I am always a little messed up when the kids have a lot of days home from school, and the kids have had a lot of days home from school. Plus it’s January, and January is always kind of crummy.

Also, we had a small kitchen project done, and it meant having workers in the house all day, and there are few things that make me quite so staticky. I was in a total tizz all day, unable to settle anywhere, worried that if I went to the bathroom that would be the exact minute a worker would call out to ask me something, worried that they would think badly of me for sitting there with a book while they were doing hard physical labor, worried that they would ask me something I didn’t know the answer to, regretting things I said in previous interactions with them, and overall nervous to find that I will do and say almost anything as long as they will be nice and finish the work and get out of my house. And also I didn’t have access to the kitchen for a whole day, and I STILL have only partial access, and a quarter of our kitchen is in the dining room, and I hate things being out of place, which you would find very funny if you saw how very cluttered and messy my house is, but each thing is WHERE I EXPECT IT TO BE, which is what I mean by “in place.”

And then I start thinking about how extremely poor I am at coping with even minor upheavals, and how this bodes poorly for retirement years spent traveling or doing really anything, let alone for dealing with anything like a true upheaval, and how very spoiled it is to “not like change” when that change is A GOOD THING like a KITCHEN IMPROVEMENT (I don’t know why I’m acting as if it’s a secret: it’s a new window, really big, like the kind you can start seedlings in, to replace the original 1950s window that got thick ice on the inside of it during the winters) and not, say, GETTING FORCED OUT OF OUR COUNTRY or something, and then I have a little spiral about the news of the world and how terrible it is and how many people are suffering, but before long I’m back to the subject of how for a homemaker I sure don’t keep the house very clean. Or do much cooking. Or enjoy spending much time with the children.

Also I don’t have any good books to read right now. I keep starting new ones and not liking them.

Meanwhile I am annoyed with Paul, and it’s so unfair because he has been a PEACH PIE about the window replacement upheaval, and dealt patiently with a discouraging setback, and was up on the counter taping off the window glass so he can stain the frames, but instead I am focusing on how he broke the handle on the minivan because he “couldn’t tell if the door was locked or frozen shut” SO HE YANKED HARDER, using force instead of investigating to see why something isn’t working as expected. And this is after I finally, finally, FINALLY got around to getting the front passenger door handle replaced after ROB broke it by yanking too hard when the door was locked. And as I watch the paint gradually peel off the bathroom walls because Paul didn’t remember he needed to use primer, I am not too excited about him doing the staining. You may wonder why I am not doing it myself, if I’m so critical of his work. It’s a fair question, and the answer is that I really really don’t want to. I so admire people who just plow through things that need to be done, rather than melting with despair at the slightest thing. I would like to hire one of those people to manage my life. “I want you to be kind and gentle with me, and the cold noble unyielding prow of a ship with everything/everyone else,” I’d say, and they would nod and pat my shoulder and then matter-of-factly make all the phone calls that need to be made, and let me hide in the bedroom while the workers were here.

And also Paul keeps trying to cheer me up by doing nice things like washing the pans after dinner, but then when I’m putting the pans away later there are patches of VISIBLE FOOD AND GREASE on the insides and the outsides so then I have to do them over because I really can’t talk to him about this again, I really can’t, it seriously must be well over a hundred times I’ve explained it by this point, I am done explaining to a grown-ass adult that to wash a dish you have to apply soap and water in a way that removes the food from it—and yet I could have another FIFTY YEARS of this. His grandparents were married for over seventy years. OVER SEVENTY YEARS. Though by the end they were in a nursing home so I assume they were able to stop dealing with the dishes.

And now that we’ve replaced the window it seems like maybe we should paint the kitchen, especially since we already took everything off a wall and two counters so the window guys had space, but you know how it is when you start painting walls and then the cupboards look dingy and then the living room looks dingy by comparison and I don’t think I want to start that. And speaking of painting, the outside of the house is overdue for it. And the lamppost: it’s from the 1950s but we’d finally got it working and attached to an automatic switch, and it made me so happy to see it glowing out there in a neighborly way, and then last winter one of the kids accidentally hit it with a rock in a fluke snow-shoveling incident and broke the top right off of it so we’re just going to replace the whole thing including the very old and probably not very good wiring, and I haven’t called anyone about it for more than a year because I don’t know if I should call an electrician or a landscaper or both or what, and anyway now the ground is frozen again so it has to wait. And doesn’t it seem like all we do is fix a continuous stream of broken things and clean a continuous stream of dirty things until we die, and all that changes is that we get gradually less physically able to handle it?

Medicinal Brandy: Monthly Edition

15 Replies

Naturally I do not want to recommend alcohol to solve all of life’s problems, but have you tried brandy for cramps? I was more miserable than usual this month, and I think of brandy as pioneer medicine useful for treating everything from emotional shock to limb amputation, so I gave it a shot, as it were, figuring that even if it didn’t help with the cramps it would make me feel better overall (this is also my philosophy about sipping Drambuie for a cough), and it was near-miraculous. The cramps just WENT AWAY. I don’t know if it was the brandy in particular or if any alcohol would do, but I went from “too unhappy to have any dinner” ( <---- EXCEEDINGLY RARE) to "singing along with a Ke$ha song while scrambling eggs.” I didn’t even feel the alcohol per se; it was as if it went straight to the medical issue and dealt only with that. So I had a second serving, but if you don’t WANT the buzz you could stick to one and might not even feel it.

Honking

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I am still stewing pointlessly about a dumb incident from yesterday, where YET AGAIN someone honked at me when I was right and they were wrong. This happens so often, I am concluding that people who honk are (1) overconfident and (2) REALLY OFTEN WRONG ABOUT HONKING and (3) NOT LEARNING THAT THIS IS THE CASE.

In yesterday’s example, I was at a T-shaped intersection where I was on the stem of the T and had the only stop sign. There was someone behind me. First we had to stay stopped because three cars were coming from the right. When the third car passed, the guy behind me HONKED and then revved and tried to DRIVE AROUND ME—that is, he started pulling into the lane going the opposite direction. And it’s lucky for him he wasn’t faster, because otherwise he would have CRASHED INTO THE PERSON COMING FROM THE LEFT. He couldn’t see that car, because of a snowbank—but I COULD see that car, WHICH IS WHY I DID NOT GO. But did the driver of the car behind me think to himself, “She’s still stopped, so there must be a good reason, perhaps something I can’t see, oh I wonder if that snowbank is obstructing my vision”? NO. He thought, “This IDIOT must be stopped for NO REASON, so I will HONK MY DISPLEASURE and then BREAK A LAW BY DRIVING FIRST ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD AND THEN DIRECTLY INTO AN INTERSECTION WITHOUT STOPPING, LIKE A NON-IDIOT WOULD.” I was RIGHT and he was SO EXTREMELY AND EXTENSIVELY WRONG, but I was the one who got honked at.

On another occasion that could have had even more severe consequences, I stopped for a pedestrian in a crosswalk. The person behind me came up fast, then HONKED, then swerved around me—then had to slam on the brakes hard to avoid hitting the pedestrian. AGAIN: I was RIGHT and the honker was WRONG. I am sure there are cases in the history of time when a driver has stopped in the middle of the road for literally no reason other than being an idiot, but it is EXCEEDINGLY RARE. (If you are considering arguing with me about this, I think you might benefit from having a Honk Assessment Specialist ride along with you for a few weeks to help scan these situations for reasons. There are a LOT of Wrong Honkers out there, and you may be one without realizing it. There is no shame in reaching out for the help you need.)

There’s an intersection near our town where there is a right-turn lane and also a large sign on the traffic light saying “NO RIGHT TURN ON RED.” I cannot count how many times I have been honked at for stopping in that right-turn lane on red. The person behind me will honk, then throw their hands up in the air like “Who is this idiot?” I AM THE IDIOT WHO CAN READ SIGNS. But that person behind me goes on with their day thinking some idiot was stopped for no reason. NO LEARNING OCCURS, AND THE HONKING SYSTEM ENDURES.

OH! Here’s another one, now that I’m on a roll. There is an intersection that has a tendency to get clogged, so that the light turns green but the intersection is full of people who got partway through and can’t get the rest of the way through. It finally clears just in time for the light to be yellow, and then those people are so frustrated they scoot into the intersection anyway, clogging it in the other direction. It’s such a problem, the town has put up a big sign: “DO NOT BLOCK INTERSECTION.” Even WITHOUT a sign like that, the law is that you don’t start going through an intersection unless you can get all the way through, but the sign lets drivers know that this particular intersection has a particular problem with that. I have to go through this intersection twice on days I have pottery class, and so many times I’ve “stopped at a green light” (i.e., stopped before going into the intersection even though the light is green, because there isn’t room to get through and in fact there is already a car halfway in the intersection) and the person behind me has LEANED ON THE HORN. Listen, I DO SEE that it appears I am stopped at a green light; I DO UNDERSTAND how that might lead to temporary confusion, or even an accidental honk. But look a little AHEAD! Think, “I wonder WHY she is stopped at a green light. Is there a large obstruction in the road? A sinkhole? A cute dog? Is the intersection in some other way unsafe? Is there ROOM TO GET THROUGH THE INTERSECTION, AS REQUIRED BY LAW?” It is at times like this I wish I could get out of the car and explain the situation, instead of having the person behind me go on with their day thinking that so many other drivers are idiots and that only frequent honking keeps things running at all.