I don’t want to linger too long on this, because there is nothing quite like whining about less-preferred food while hoping for a solution to the world-hunger problem, but I accidentally bought frozen broccoli instead of frozen broccoli florets and I will say this: if you have wondered what they do with all the broccoli stems after they package up the broccoli florets, I have found them. I’m not an advocate of spending more just to spend more, or trying to shame people for saving money on food when “spending more to get better food” might be an option the way “going on a cruise to take your mind off your money problems” is an option, but this is one of those areas where spending 29 cents extra for the florets results in something like TEN TIMES the amount of good food. Unless you like/prefer the stems, and I do know of people who do. I myself enjoy a broccoli stem from time to time, chopped up and widely dispersed among the bountiful florets. But if what you like is the stems, I can report some good news about bags of frozen broccoli.

We had an odd thing happen and we are at a loss to explain it, and at times like these I turn to you. Here is what happened: Paul got an item in the mail from Amazon.com, and it was not something he’d ordered. We looked into it further, and spoke to Amazon, and here is what they said: It was not sent as a gift. It was ordered from Paul’s account, using Paul’s login and Paul’s email address. Amazon considers the matter closed: no fraud, no funny business: they can’t explain it, but Paul must have ordered it. They recommended changing his login just in case, but repeated that there was no evidence of fraudulent usage.

But! Here is the thing: when we order something from Amazon, we get an order-confirmation email and a shipping-confirmation email. Also, we are charged money for the item we ordered. Paul received neither an order confirmation nor a shipping confirmation, and we have not been charged. Also, it doesn’t show up in his order history. Also, you know how if you go to the item page of something you bought, it has a little thing like this?:

(image from Amazon.com)

It is not there on the item page when Paul goes to it. So all of these things say to me it could NOT have been ordered from Paul’s account using Paul’s email address. It MUST have been a gift or an error. (Paul wondered if maybe the item was sent instead of something he DID order, but he’s not missing anything he’s ordered.) He contacted Amazon again: no, they say, it was ordered from his account and his email address. It is baffling. I’ve been keeping an eye on our credit card just in case, but there have been no weird charges (including for this item).

SüßwasserLeah drew my attention to this excellent article about men’s forearms: Men, You Don’t Understand How Hot Your Forearms Are. This was one of those special Internet “I thought I was the only one!” moments for me. I once had a dream in which a guy was fervently pleading with me to run away with him, and I didn’t see his face but I gave serious consideration to the merits of his forearms: white dress shirt, rolled up sleeves, leather watchband—you know what I’m talking about. Or else you don’t, but now I know LOTS OF OTHER PEOPLE DO. I don’t mean BUFF forearms or whatever: just FOREARMS. The rolled-up-flannel-sleeves of the mid 1990s was a pretty good time to be alive, but I’d say the rolled-up oxford sleeves of the late 1980s / early 1990s was even better. There was a preppy boy in my youth group who…well, there isn’t much to this story. He rolled up his sleeves, is what I’m telling you.

…Where was I? Oh! Do you remember the Lands’ End skirted swim leggings from this post? I haven’t been swimming in them yet so I can’t give a complete report, but I tried them on and I love them. I love them. They are comfy and I don’t feel like I’m walking around in my underwear. I’m right between two sizes so I ordered up (there are few things more discouraging than trying on TOO SMALL swimwear), and they feel like they fit without squeezing. If I see a really good coupon code or clearance, I’m going to order another pair in the smaller size. I also went on eBay (thanks for the tip, Danish!) and ordered a pair of ultra-high-waisted swim…what is it called when it looks like underpants? Anyway, a pair of those. Bikini bottoms, that’s what they’re called—except these go up to the ribs. Then if I want to I can wear those under the swim leggings so that I don’t need to think about the tankini top floofing up in the water. I realize this sounds like a lot of layers, but I ENJOY a lot of layers. It’s SECURE. I am longing for a return to this darling swim aesthetic:

(I TRIED to credit this image, but it was on Pinterest with no source, so I did a reverse image-search and got hits to Pinterest and to a spammy site that appeared to be trying to give me a virus. So let’s just enjoy it as it is.)

Speaking of a lot of layers, I attended my first track meet and nearly froze to death. The temperature was in the sixties when I left the house, and I was already wearing a thin zip-up hoodie, so I took along a heavy zip-up hoodie just in case. And by the end of the meet it was in the mid-50s, totally overcast with occasional droplets, and HIGH WINDS, and I was wearing both hoods with both zippers done up and holding hands with myself inside an overlapped-sleeve tube and I was still just about dead with cold. Also it sucked going to a track meet. It was boring as all hell and it went on for HOURS AND HOURS. But thank goodness Miss Grace told me that I MUST purchase a bleacher seat no matter how much it cost. I bought the Cascade Mountain Tech Wide Stadium Seat and it was worth every dollar—and I paid $7 more than the $34 it’s currently listed for. Not that I plan to ever attend another track meet if I can help it, but I can use it for high school graduations.

I had kind of a discouraging day yesterday. It was the day to bring Edward to the city for his new medication (he gets it by IV every 8 weeks; with travel, it takes all day), and the traffic was terrible. The drive was also full of the kind of incidents I find demoralizing on a worldwide humankind type of level. For example: There is this road on the route that is very, very busy, and people have just come off the very, very busy highway so they are not in the mood to delay further. Perpendicular to that road is another road, with a stop sign; traffic gets HUGELY backed up there because they can ONLY get out if someone lets them in, and they are JOINING us not crossing us so every car that gets let in DOES delay us. And yet yesterday, people in my lane, people who had been waiting like I had for TWENTY MINUTES at that exit, were voluntarily doing a zipper merge with the people at the stop sign: one of us would let in a stop-sign person and then one of us would go, and then the next one of us would let in another stop-sign person. It made me feel good, the way people would do that. But then I let my person in—and the guy behind that person ran the stop sign and cut in too, so that I had to slam on my brakes. Startled, I honked one single beep of what the heck—and he yelled something with huge intensity and gave me the finger. Don’t tell me to concentrate on all the good people who were letting people in and not let that one person ruin it: I have already told this to myself many times and the only effect it’s had so far is to make me pissed with myself for saying it.

Then, the nurse at the hospital messed up Edward’s IV. This is the sort of normal mistake humans make; I expect it to happen to any nurse from time to time. But then she made a really big, extended deal about Edward’s quiet wincing/gagging reaction to the resulting blood and pain, asking with faux astonishment does he ALWAYS have such a hard time? And NO, he does NOT. He has gotten very chill about needles and blood draws from doing them very regularly for the last SIX YEARS, and he has only had a problem THREE times, and each of those three times it has been because the nurse messed up the IV. And she knows perfectly well that she messed up the IV and that LOTS of people have a negative reaction to a messed-up IV, and yet she tried to make it seem as if he was over-sensitive and weird, and she didn’t bring him a barf bin even though the other nurse (they have a “one and done” policy, so a new nurse came to do the IV) told her there was one in the next room. And then the same nurse who messed up Edward’s IV messed up the IV of the patient we were sharing the room with, and she and the other nurse did their same routine of how this doesn’t usually happen and was there something wrong with the patient’s veins? And it gave me that “humans are bad” feeling again, because this is always how it happens: on all three messed-up-IV occasions Edward has calmly turned white and quietly says he needs a bucket just in case, and on all three occasions the nurse or technician has tried to act as if they did NOT mess up the IV, despite the clear evidence (blood, needing to be redone, KNOWING PERFECTLY WELL THEY MESSED IT UP), and ALSO acted as if Edward is shrieking and crying and throwing a fit and being very unreasonable, when actually he is being super calm and trying to prevent making a mess on their floor. Edward has flaws just like any human being, but “reacting unreasonably to IVs” is not one of them, and now I have my script ready for the next time a nurse tries to cover up her error at his expense.

Then, when I came home, I wanted literally five minutes to starfish on the bed in a dim room and recover from the 9.5 hours of driving/hospital while letting a shot of vodka kick in, and Paul was like no, we can’t do that because Rob is going to have to leave for his piano lesson right after dinner so we can’t delay. And I repeated that I just needed five minutes, and he repeated that it wouldn’t work. And so I went directly into making dinner, feeling super resentful and angry and put-upon: like, I have to give up my very reasonable request for FIVE MINUTES because our child can’t hurry up a little EATING THE DINNER THAT HAS BEEN PREPARED FOR HIM? And later I thought, why didn’t I say in a cheerful, friendly voice, “Okay! So how about you start browning the meat, and I’ll be back in five minutes to take over”? Such a simple solution! I mean, is Paul a cruel, whip-wielding husband who is actively trying to deprive me of five minutes just because he wants me to be miserable? No, he is a husband who sees a scheduling problem and can’t think of a work-around because that is not one of his strengths. In our relationship it is MY job to say things like “It’s okay, I think we have some wiggle room” and “He’ll just eat a little faster” or “Okay, let’s have Rob help out with dinner, then, so it’ll be ready sooner.” But I was a wife whose usual ability to think of workarounds needed recharging with five minutes in a dim room, so I didn’t think of it either, and so then my traffic/humankind/hospital/worry-about-Edward/couldn’t-have-even-five-measly-minutes misery hit a breaking point later on in the evening and everyone ended up getting yelled at and I went to bed early. So now I have my script ready for next time when I know five minutes would prevent a bad evening.

I can do this. This cart is marketed to middle-aged women in craft stores, so it should be buildable by same.

Look how well things are going already: I have the box open.

(Not shown: futilely shaking the box upside down to tip out the contents, then realizing after a period of time known as “too long” that the styrofoam piece was glued into place to keep things from sliding out. Probably I was supposed to open the bottom of the box instead of the top.)

I am beginning to have regrets.

Considerable regrets.

CONSIDERABLE PANICKY REGRETS

HOW CAN STEP 1 INCLUDE SO MANY STEPS

Oh, well this isn’t TOO hard. Four metal sticks hold together the two big side panels. I got all this done before remembering I was supposed to be taking pictures:

Then you put it upside down, put the wheels on, and flip it upright. The middle of those three steps took me some time: figuring out which wheels were which, and what it meant to go on “the front” of the cart (as far as I can tell, “front” and “back” are exactly the same; perhaps time will tell otherwise). Then I had to push pretty hard on the wheels to get them to click, and I felt as if I were going to break the cart (but did not). So here it is, wheeled and flipped:

A lot of the scary little pieces are just drawer pulls. I’ve done those before. You put the screw through the hole from the inside of the drawer, like so:

And then you screw on the knob:

It said I would need a Philips head screwdriver for this, but I just tightened them by hand.

I was greatly encouraged by how many of the little parts got used up with this step. There were two extra small screws, I hope on purpose. And now there is a pile of pretty drawers:

The next step was a little tricky. It said to clip the metal shelf to the metal bars, but it didn’t say how that would work. There were two rounded absence-of-metal-bar-shaped parts on the bottom of the shelf, but—and I don’t know if I can explain this right—there was not space to put them both in place at the same time: if I clicked ONE into place, the other would be sitting diagonally and not line up anymore. So I tried to click them both down at once, but that didn’t work and the cart felt too fragile for the heavy leaning that seemed required. So then I clicked one into place, then tried to sort of push the other metal bar forward so it could click too. This did work, but I kept worrying I was going to pinch my fingers so it took awhile longer than it should have.

And finally, the only step of this entire project I actually wanted to do:

The final step after this one involves flipping the whole cart upside down and putting little locking clips on all the drawers so they won’t slide all the way out of their slots anymore. But I need to think more about the order I want the colors, and I know Elizabeth will want to weigh in on that too, so I’ve just put those clips aside for now.

Update: Edward came home from school and within five minutes had “fixed” the “wrong” drawers. I thought others might feel similarly and be soothed by the sight of the adjusted situation:

We saw Rogue One.

Swistle: “I wish they had cut out about thirty minutes of the ‘[*zooms her hands like fighter planes*] PEW PEW-PEW PEW-PEW-PEW PEW PEW PEW-PEW PEW-PEW PEW PEW-PEW-PEW PEW PEW-PEW!!!!!’ and used that time to explain who people were and what was going on.”

Paul: “I wish they had cut out the thirty minutes where people were talking or having feelings or looking meaningfully at each other, and filled it with more PEW-PEW-PEW-PEW-PEW.”

********

I don’t want to nitpick about an otherwise perfectly acceptable person with many indisputably fine qualities, but see my tagline because yes I DO want to and here I go: Paul puts things into temporarily-empty spaces. Like for example, I can still get worked up about him “organizing the pantry” a couple of years ago. He went striding down there as if he thought only his manly super-intelligence could solve this little domestic issue, and into every space where we were currently low on flour or tomato sauce or cereal or whatever, he crammed items from other shelves. He made our pantry into Tetris: every item was packed beautifully for maximum conservation of space—and minimum ability to remove that item or put away any further groceries.

And when I said, “Wait, but I can’t put the groceries away because there’s no room for them, and we can’t get to the cereal or crackers because they’re behind all the canned stuff,” he was pissed and huffy. Pissed and huffy is my least-favorite spousal state after “So Sick He Will Probably Die of this Head Cold that Is Definitely Flu Because Listen to How Much He Is Groaning and Sighing; Can I Feel His Forehead and See if He Has a Fever?”—and also Pissed and Huffy is MY specialty and he shouldn’t be copying me. …I am not sure firstborns should marry each other.

Bright side: the pantry DID get organized, because I had to move every single thing back again.

Not every space-filling episode is as dramatic and disastrous as The Pantry Incident. Sometimes it is a matter of him helpfully moving a stack of bowls over to an empty place in the cupboard—a place where, when the dishwasher is unloaded, it will turn out the dessert plates normally go: that place was not just sitting empty because we were too silly to use it for something. Sometimes it is putting a plate into the dishwasher so that it blocks water to the inside of a bowl. Sometimes it is taking a pad of paper on which I’ve written an important reminder, and adding it to the mail stack on the counter where I won’t see it. Sometimes it is taking a bunch of things out of the upstairs freezer and moving them to the downstairs freezer—right into the space where I will then not be able to put away that week’s groceries, which include replacements for the things I thought we were out of because they were not in the upstairs freezer. But always, ALWAYS there is that lethal combination of “HE’LL take care of this issue!” + MAKING THINGS WAY WAY WORSE AND CREATING A LOT OF WORK + pissed and huffy that “making things worse and creating a lot of work” is not praised and appreciated. Stick to what you do WELL, Paul. LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE, Paul. It has been OVER TWENTY YEARS OF SWISTLE BEING QUITE VOCAL ABOUT YOU NOT REARRANGING HER THINGS, Paul.

Comments suggesting I should be grateful that he WANTS to assume I don’t know what I’m doing and fix it for me will be answered with the delivery of Paul to your house to rearrange your pantry and stand there proudly expecting you to be grateful for it. I will infect him with a head cold first, so that afterward he will lie on your couch groaning and shivering until you ask him if he’s okay.

Yesterday I mentioned I was heading out to do some swimsuit shopping. Backing up a little, I should say I FIRST tried to shop online, but gave up for two, no three reasons:

1. HOLY HELL, $60-100 PER PIECE of a two-piece swimsuit are they LITERALLY AND ACTUALLY ON ACTUAL LITERAL DRUGS??

2. The aforementioned problem of trying to figure out what it would look like on me, when it is displayed on non-plus-sized models.

3. Just in general, I need to try it on I think. I know I COULD order eight suits and return seven, but I hate doing that. I like to find something I like and then order the exact same thing again and again for eternity.

I am not sure why I am reluctant to tell you that my excursion yesterday was to…Wallmartt. No, I do know why: it’s because I hate that store and I keep telling you so. It’s depressing. And their low-price thing is a fake: they do it to start with, and then they raise the prices after you are already convinced they’re lower, and for some reason that is a very hard psychological mold to break out of. And they have their own product sizes, so sometimes you think “Oh, I’m paying $1.97 when the other grocery store has it for $2.50!” but actually the Wallmartt one is 10 ounces and the other grocery store’s is 14 ounces. OR WHATEVER. And things are always out of stock! And things ring up wrong all the time, always in their favor, so you have to WATCH THEM LIKE A HAWK, UG I don’t even want to TALK about it, it’s so frustrating!! …Ahem. My point is that I am on record as having practical, philosophical, and emotional objections to Wallmartt, but fortunately I am also on record as occasionally shopping there anyway, so there is no need to call anyone out.

And the fact is, that is where I went. Whatever Wallmartt’s other (MYRIAD) (SIGNIFICANT) flaws, they acknowledge that plus-size people exist and they sell clothes in those sizes in their actual physical stores so you can try them on, and that is in their favor. And once, long ago in despair when I HAD to go swimming and it was LONG PAST the time stores sell swimwear (i.e., summer had begun), I found two good swimsuits plus a swim skirt on their clearance rack for like $3-7 each, so that has lingered in my mind.

Yesterday I bought:

1. This ruffled tankini top in Superhero Underoos blue, which was my long-distance-third choice after pink and aqua but the only one they had in stock in plus sizes. Also, it has virtually no support in the chestal region, which feels weird—like being in a car with no seatbelt on. But it was $11.84 and Will Do.

(image from Walmart.com)

2. This tankini, which was in Wendy’s post and is one of the reasons I went to Wallmartt. Cute/pretty/fun/colorful pattern; medium support in the chestal region.

(image from Walmart.com)

3. This blue skirt (again, not my top color choice but the only one they had) to go with both. The waist is TOO LOW and I have to keep tugging it up. I would really like the waist to go all the way up to my ribs, and I don’t see why I can’t have that for less than SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS LANDS’ END I AM LOOKING IN YOUR DIRECTION. But here we are, spending $11.

(image from Walmart.com)

So! I came home with two swimming suits I have to keep tugging at. But! I like them OKAY. And they will DO. That is the important thing: they WILL do the job. I can put them on and I can go into the water.

This frees me up for the second step, which is to see if I can do better. I can get a bit…panicky and overwhelmed, with things like this. But if I HAVE something that I CAN wear, that reduces the panic and stress considerably by taking the element of desperation out of it. So then, after reading all the comments that basically said, “Listen, you get what you pay for,” and feeling more relaxed because I already had my bird-in-the-hand cheap swimsuits, I took my 30%-off Lands’ End code and bought a LONG-TORSO plus-size top and skirted swim leggings:

(image from Landsend.com)

I was very excited to find a swim top that was tall AND plus: that is almost unheard of. (I did not need tall for the leggings: my torso borrowed the height from my legs.)

I am going to try to make myself try them on RIGHT AWAY when they arrive, rather than leaving the box unopened for months while I get up my nerve. Because if those swim leggings fit, I am going to be an extremely happy girl. I am of the opinion that swimsuits are NOT ENOUGH CLOTHING TO WEAR IN PUBLIC, and although capri leggings, a mini-mini skirt, and a tank top would ALSO be too little clothing for me to want to wear in public, it is a PRETTY NICE STEP UP, coverage-wise!

Today I am going swimsuit-shopping. I know your thoughts will be with me at this very difficult time.

This has been looming ever since last summer, when I put on my swimming suit right before a swimming commitment and thought, “Oh geez, this no longer works, maybe a t-shirt over it or something?” Later I took it off gratefully and with no small difficulty, thinking “I have until next summer to find another suit.” And lo, that time loometh. Swimsuit emails have been arriving for a couple of months.

But I did not feel fortified for this terrible task until I read a post on plus-size swimsuits by my blog-friend Wendy. I will not usually link you to slideshow posts, but this one is Full-On Worth It. I was just about collapsing with frustration yesterday trying to shop for a plus-size suit when half the models are not even CLOSE to plus-size. Like, how on earth can I tell how this suit would fit on ME?:

(image from roamans.com)

And this is on a site specifically for plus sizes. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable to want to see it on someone with upper-arm fat. And thighs that not only touch but snuggle up like the cozy besties they are. IT IS A SITE FOR PLUS-SIZE CLOTHING. THEY DON’T EVEN SELL NON-PLUS SIZES. How many clothespins did they have to use to fit the suit on someone so much smaller than the minimum size they sell??