Last time we talked, I had just found a leak in the bathroom and cat barf on the couch. That afternoon, the air conditioning stopped working.

I called a place and left a message, and after 24 hours of misery I still hadn’t heard back from them, so then I called a second place. They said oooh, unfortunately they didn’t have any regular appointments until next week: I could either wait 8 days and pay the regular appointment price, or I could pay over twice as much and get an overtime appointment for that afternoon/evening. Reader, I paused for about 4 seconds and then I booked it for that afternoon/evening. Then I felt like a dumb spoiled princess all day because, what, I can’t go a single week without AIR CONDITIONING? It’s worth THAT MUCH extra money not to have to be a little too WARM for a few days? Was I not remembering we have FIVE CHILDREN to help through college?? But then it got to 93 muggy degrees in the house and I was holding a dishtowel-wrapped ice pack to my neck and feeling so glad I’d booked the expensive appointment. It reminded me of the time I didn’t buy a seat on the plane for my baby because it seemed so spoiled to get him a seat when he could ride on my lap for free, but afterwards I was thinking it would have been worth TWICE the price to get him his own seat.

The a/c guy arrived around 4:30 and Paul went outside with him to stand near him in a manly way and speak of tools and motors, and about ten minutes later Paul came inside and said, “Go ahead and turn the a/c on,” and I did, and cold air started coming into the house. And then Paul said, “Oh, and he said it was a quick fix and not very long after 4:00, so he just charged us for a regular appointment.”

SO HAPPY. SO, SO HAPPY. The a/c was back on, AND we got it that day instead of 8 days later, AND we paid the same price as if I’d martyred it for 8 days?? Right away I wanted to tell you about it: I do so much complaining, and so when a good thing happens I want to make sure that gets into the playlist. But I couldn’t think of a way to tell the story without also telling you I was someone who would pay more than double to get the air-conditioning fixed sooner.

It is one of those very unpleasant tangles where if I act as if it’s no big deal and you are in the financial situation where you would not be ABLE to make the decision to pay double, or able to have a/c at all, then it’s like I’m saying “Oh, I’m so BAD but I just HAD to have that diamond! I mean, I feel guilty about it when other people don’t have enough food or whatever, but you’ve got to TREAT yourself sometimes!” We were in a pretty grim financial place when I read a blog post saying how gross it was that so many people didn’t bother to get pedicures in the summer, and I remember the nauseating, incredulous indignation I felt on encountering that level of careless, scornful obliviousness. But if on the other hand I make a big deal about spending the money and feeling bad about it, and if you would absolutely have spent the money too, then it’s like I’m criticizing your spending and saying you should feel bad about it too.

Money and the spending of it can be tricky to talk about. But here it is two days later and I still wanted to tell you the happy thing about getting a same-day overtime appointment for regular price, so I am telling you and trusting that we all know about how money/spending can be tricky to talk about.

I am having a morning. As I was about to get into the shower I noticed a puddle on the floor where there should not be a puddle, and further investigation revealed a leak in the cabinet under the sink. It has apparently been going on for some time unnoticed. I threw away a set of sopping hair clippers, some half-used boxes of flushable wipes that had been under there ever since I saw some story about them not actually being flushable after all, and a couple open packages of pads that had done their valiant best to deal with the issue. It isn’t a disaster, you see: it was an opportunity to clean out that cupboard! It might also be kind of a disaster. I put a bowl under the pipes, and a fan pointing into the cupboard, and a plumber is coming tomorrow afternoon. We have been meaning to redo that bathroom anyway, and let’s hope we don’t also have to redo the underflooring.

Anyway, then I took a shower, and as I was combing my hair I heard a child say, “Uh oh, cat barf.” A cat had thrown up on the couch instead of on the nice easy-to-clean hardwood, and furthermore the cat had hit BOTH cushions. So I cleaned that up.

Then one of Edward’s braces broke off during breakfast (he was eating a MUFFIN), so I had to call the orthodontist. And it was a wasted call, because she said, “No big deal, we’ll just fix it when he’s here in three weeks.” Which is giving me the stress because it’s the END brace that broke off, the one that holds the wire. But I said so when I called, and she just said, “Is the wire poking him? If it’s poking him, you can snip it with wire snips.” OH OKAY. So…not a big deal, I guess.

*breathes carefully and calmingly through nose*

I did get TWO satisfying things done. One: I completed all the health forms required by Rob’s college-to-be, and then dropped off the physician verification form at the pediatrician’s office for them to verify/sign and fax back to the college. This is the kind of thing I would normally put off until shortly before it was due, and then I would be panicked and stressed, so I am very pleased to be getting it done so uncharacteristically early: it’s not even due until August. I was partly motivated by wanting to beat the rush of all the other parents contacting the pediatrician in August, and partly motivated by redirected plumbing/orthodontic stress.

The other satisfying thing was just a trip to the grocery store, but I really needed to go and I really didn’t want to, so it felt like it counted more than usual.

A couple of nights ago Henry threw up, and it happened before he was entirely awake—with the result that if he, like a cat, had gone out of his way to barf in the worst possible location, he would have succeeded with high honors. If he’d thrown up in his bed, I could have coped just fine: that makes a big mess, but I am in my 19th year of parenting and I can handle a barfed-in bed. But he threw up over the side of his bed and onto the wall-to-wall carpeting, the installation of which is one of my top parenting regrets. (We were finishing an unfinished basement, and wall-to-wall seemed like the only way to avoid cold floors. The floors are not cold, no, but now they are covered by NON-REMOVABLE ABSORBENT FABRIC.)

After he threw up on the carpet, and into the workings of the control for his electric blanket, and all over a pile of books and toys, and down into the crevice between his mattress and the bedframe, Henry got himself to the bathroom and threw up again into the sink. In cleaning up the sink, I got bleach on one my favorite t-shirts, which I was sleeping in for reasons unknown: usually I sleep in a t-shirt that has gotten too battered for daytime, or in one of my new collection of political t-shirts, but I must have forgotten to change it. So right now I have that t-shirt laid out in the tub, where I have deliberately dribbled more bleach on it in an effort to salvage it, because when something is ruined it can sometimes be saved by MORE RUINING. But I believe in this case we are looking at a lost cause: the spray bottle was set to too fine a mist to start with, so it just looks weirdly and irregularly faded and stained. I will put it through the laundry just in case, but it may be time to say goodbye to this shirt. Or it can be a sleeping shirt now.

Anyway, you know how sometimes it takes a day or so for a muscle to let you know you overdid it? Apparently scrubbing a carpet on three separate occasions (I kept feeling as if it were not clean yet) was beyond what one of my thigh muscles thought should be asked of it at this pay grade. I think what actually did the damage wasn’t the scrubbing itself but the getting down onto and up off of the floor, again and again, as I kept stopping to rinse out the washcloth—or at least, it was when I was on my way down to the floor this morning to gather up some laundry that I really felt the burn. To be more accurate, I said “YIKES” and descended the remaining distance to the floor rather more rapidly than scheduled, luckily cushioned by the laundry. Thank you for your years of service, thigh muscle. Good luck with your apparent retirement.

It reminded me of an anecdote from the years when “getting down to the floor” and “getting back up again” were not activities I gave much thought to except when heavily pregnant. When Rob was a toddler and I was expecting William, we went to visit my grandparents; they were in their mid 80s then. My grandpa got down on the floor to play with Rob. When he was about to get back up, there was a moment when you could see him assessing his options and not finding a whole lot of them, and my grandmother said comfortably from her recliner, “Mm hm. I was wondering how you thought that was going to work.”

I went to a parents thing at Henry’s school, and I shook a lot of hands. Here is what I noticed:

1. A lot of people, men-people and women-people, shake hands the way I do: you keep sliding your hand forward until your thumb-pits engage, and then you shake and/or squeeze.

2. A lot of people, men-people and women-people, DO NOT do this.

Here is what everyone who didn’t do the first option did: they stopped as soon as they were holding my fingers in their fingers, and then they pressed lightly. Like a duck bill, lightly clamping my fingers. I did not know what to do at that point. They were duck-billing my fingers and I could not complete the shake. It’s like if you go for a hug, and someone grips your upper arms and stops you before you get into the hug-space, and your arms are left dangling alone.

I tried this out with Paul just now. “I need to shake your hand for a blog post,” I said, and we shook hands the way I think of as Shaking Hands: slide hands forward until you can slide them forward no more. Shake. Then I said, “Okay, I need to see where it is that it stops when people do it the other way,” and we tried that a few times but it was hard for two untrained novices to figure out where to stop if not at the thumb-pit, and then Paul got all squirmy and uncomfortable about it and we stopped trying.

But Paul does say he has encountered that handshake before. “ONLY with women, right?,” I asked, but he refused to commit. But…I can’t picture two men shaking hands that way, can you? Delicately pressing each other’s fingers? I think it must be that that is the way some women offer their hands for a handshake: stopping before the thumbs can get acquainted. And how some men have been trained to shake hands with women: like, be CAREFUL with women.

So here is my four-point theory:

1. Some women are taught to shake hands without engaging the thumb-pit, no matter who they’re shaking hands with.

2. Some women are taught to shake hands with full thumb-pit engagement, no matter who they’re shaking hands with.

3. Some men are taught to avoid the thumb-pit with women, but to engage the thumb-pit with men. (Maybe some women are also taught this?)

4. Men are never taught to avoid the thumb-pit with other men.

So then I, as a woman, encounter these options:

1. Men who have been taught to grab a woman’s fingers without engaging her thumb-pit (but would shake a man’s hand with thumb-pit engaged).

2. Men who have been taught to shake anyone’s hand, man-hands or woman-hands, with thumb-pit engaged.

3. Women who have been taught to grab anyone’s fingers, man-fingers or woman-fingers, without engaging the thumb pit.

4. Women who have been taught to grab anyone’s fingers, man-fingers or woman-fingers, with the thumb-pit engaged.

And I, as a woman, NEVER encounter:

1. Women who have been taught to shake women’s hands with thumb-pits engaged, but men’s hands with only-fingers. (Or maybe I DO encounter this, but don’t realize it.)

2. Men who have been taught to shake women’s hands with thumb-pits engaged, but men’s hands with only-fingers.

And my theory further theorizes that Paul, as a man, encounters these options:

1. Men who shake with thumb-pit engaged.

2. Women who have been taught to grab anyone’s fingers, men-fingers or women-fingers, without engaging the thumb pit.

3. Women who have been taught to shake everyone’s hands with the thumb-pit engaged.

And that Paul, as a man, would never encounter:

1. Women who have been taught to shake women’s hands with thumb-pits, but men’s hands with only-fingers.

2. Men who have been taught to shake women’s hands with thumb-pits, but men’s hands with only-fingers.

3. Any man who would shake his hand with only-fingers.

Here is what I need: data points.

Were you raised as a girl-person or as a boy-person? And how were you trained to shake hands? Were you trained to do it the same way no matter who you were shaking hands with? or were you trained to shake boy-hands differently than girl-hands? Or if you don’t remember being specifically trained one way or another, how did you grow up doing it? I don’t remember being trained; I think I picked it up from examples and social cues (i.e., seeing others do it, and participating in handshakes with others), and also I remember reading a lot of references to “good firm handshakes” and “limp/cool/fishlike handshakes,” which further developed the concept.

Has your brain, like mine, been treating you to a pretty steady flow of Your Personal History’s Greatest Hits since yesterday? Right now as I’m typing it’s an entry for the cheesy high school love song category, hairband ballad subcategory: Love of a Lifetime, by Firehouse. I am wondering how guys in that era felt about having so much hair. Like, were they suddenly so interested in conditioner and hot oil treatments and good brushes and spiral vs. traditional perms and whatnot, and was that kind of surprising to them? Did they cut it all off with relief when the trend was over, and go back to a bottle of Prell and not having to think about it? Okay, now I am onto the next song: More than Words Can Say, by Alias. For some reason I’d thought this was by Firehouse too, but it is not.

I am sugar-high-mind-blown at the moment by my rediscovery of chocolate brownies + vanilla ice cream. Henry wanted to bring brownies as his school birthday snack and there were some extras, and we had leftover ice cream from his birthday ice cream cake, and if you started reading here when I was pregnant with him, you should know that more than ten years of your life have slipped away. As I listen to Bad English singing When I See You Smile followed by Poco’s Call It Love, what I mourn for are all the days of those ten years that have NOT included brownies and ice cream. And why? WHY? Why this unnecessary torment? It’s not even hard to do! Warm up a brownie! Put vanilla ice cream on it! You don’t even have to warm up the brownie!

Have you recently enjoyed the treasure that is Linear’s Sending All My Love video? I WHEEZED with laughter. Or Pretty Poison’s Catch Me I’m Falling, which is less funny but makes up for it by involving snippets of a Jon Cryer film? I’m half “What a strange time that was to be alive” and half “Ooo, that reminds me of a cute shirt I had!” My top favorite clothing item in high school was a strange hybrid of overalls and miniskirt, constructed from stiff bleached denim. I also had a really long skirt, denim but a very thin comfy soft acid-washed denim so my hope was that the look was more “Let’s get our picture taken while laughing and spinning arms-wide-open in a meadow!” and less “I hope this doesn’t show more ankle than would please the Lord”; I wore it with a cute fitted boyish-cut white t-shirt, huge white hoop earrings, and high-top sneakers. High-top sneakers looked good then, I’m not making that up, right? I remember really wanting a pair, but they cost more than regular sneakers so I had to pay for the difference with my babysitting money. I’ve got the brand name on the tip of my brain. LA Gear! Mine were white and light pink, with light pink laces.

Another one for the dance category: Because of You, by The Cover Girls. I am certain that Teenage Swistle danced around the house to this song in the LA Gear high-tops. Also to I’m Hooked on You, by Sweet Sensation.

Do you remember when I said one thing I like about my cartilage piercings is that they make me feel like a little bit of a badass even though any time I presume to be even 1% badass my entire household quotes this scene from Steven Universe at me:

Steven: “I guess I’m just too tough to cry!”
Pearl: “Just today you were crying about snakes!”
Steven, immediately starting to cry: “They don’t have any arms!!”

Anyway, the outfit I am going to describe to you made me feel like a badass even when my ex-boyfriend was kissing his new girlfriend next to my locker: black denim miniskirt, textured black tights, lace-up black suede boots, loose black t-shirt, vintage army jacket, huge silver hoop earrings. I am a little surprised my parents let me wear it, but they both left for work before I left for school so that prevented a LOT of “What do you think you are WEARING??” discussions.

Speaking of badasses: Grace Slick. I love the yell at the beginning. Do you remember hearing that she named her daughter “god” (with a lowercase G)? She did not.

Speaking of scandals that went whipping through my Christian-school community when I was there: Faith, by George Michael and Like a Prayer, by Madonna.

Speaking of a Christian middle school, my first year at a public high school my favorite outfit was a pink skirt patterned with teddy bears. The teddy bears were wearing yellow bowties, so I wore the skirt with a yellow t-shirt, and I wore alternated stacked scrunch socks: yellow then pink on one foot, pink then yellow on the other foot. Pink earrings.

I would be very interested in hearing about your favorite high-school outfits. Also in hearing The Look, by Roxette.

My sister-in-law is going on a trip with friends, and she had a really fun idea for car music: she asked each person to make a list of one song from each of these five categories:

1. A favorite song/a song you really like. It’s ok if it’s slow, or an obscure genre, or music that isn’t generally popular.
2. A cheesy love song you remember from middle school/high school.
3. A song that makes you feel like dancing.
4. A song from one of the first albums you owned.
5. A song you enjoy, in a language you do not speak.

She’s going to put them together in a big playlist. I liked this idea so much, I asked if we could do it for our next get-together (my sister-in-law and her sister and her brother and my brother and me, and we stay up too late and drink and talk and eat snacks and play games), and we’re going to! So now I need to find songs, and/or need to narrow down songs.

For #1, I need to think awhile. I might save that one for a song I think of while researching the others, something that doesn’t fit anywhere else. I might choose a song from childhood. Or maybe a country song. It’s a little tempting to use this category to torment others.

For #2 I have way too many candidates. Pretty much anything by Peter Cetera, just for starters. Boy-band songs. A ton of earnest hair-band ballads.

It will also be difficult to narrow down #3. I do not dance, per se, but I have been known to sway and/or waggle. Or, if I am driving, to bounce. Many, many songs lead to swaying/waggling/bouncing.

The first album I owned was Knee Deep in the Hoopla, by Starship. Soon after, I added Peter Cetera, Chicago, Paula Abdul, The Cars, Huey Lewis & The News, Heart, INXS, and MC Hammer. This is going to be a fun batch of songs to choose from.

The hardest one for me is #5; I don’t know a lot of songs that aren’t in English. Probably I will pick something from a Korean drama. Maybe Always (though maybe it’s cheating because some of it is English) or What Do I Do. If you know some non-English pop music, I hope you’ll tell me about it so I can look up the artists/songs on YouTube and see if I like them. I am particularly interested in French songs because I took French in high school and still feel sentimental about it even though I’ve forgotten most of it.

This song-list task seemed like the sort of thing that, if I saw it on someone else’s blog, I would immediately want to say what my list would be. So I thought you might feel the same, and I suggest we do that.

Something else we might feel the same about: I would feel as if I couldn’t leave a comment unless I had songs for ALL FIVE—but then one or two would be too difficult to think of or too difficult to narrow down, and I would think it wasn’t really worth it to do a lot of RESEARCH just to leave a blog comment, so then I wouldn’t do it. So let’s say this: do exactly as much as you want to do. You can leave a comment such as “For #4 I would do _____,” and that can be the whole thing. Or you can complete the whole list, with one song for each number. Or you can go the other way and say, “Hm, well, these are the twenty songs I’d have to narrow down for each number.” Or you can do what I did and pretty much just discuss the categories. OR WHATEVER. We are not strict around here.

I am about to make a suggestion that is in that awkward category of suggestions where, if you already know it, it will sound as if I’m asking if you tried turning the computer ON—and yet, at one point I did not know it, and now I do, and it has CHANGED MY LIFE: add water to the handsoap/shampoo/conditioner/bodywash/lotion when the supply gets low and is difficult to remove from the bottle. Just, add some water. Like, a tablespoon for something small like handsoap, two or three tablespoons for a larger shampoo/conditioner/bodywash bottle. Then shake vigorously. Then the next time you need some, REAP BENEFITS. Then, when it gets difficult again, add more water. It will be a matter of diminishing returns, yes. But it is really surprising how much more handsoap/shampoo/conditioner/bodywash/lotion is in there.

I am sad and mopey again today. Whenever I feel sad and mopey, I think I ought to chart it on a calendar or something so I can see if there are patterns: Mondays, foods, cycle-related, whatever. But it’s only when I’m feeling happy and energetic that I feel like shopping for multi-colored pens, working out a color/mood system, and writing things down—and that’s when I feel like I don’t really need to do any of that because I feel fine most of the time.

Here are some happy things:

1) I found the Jolly Joes I was looking for! The site has a surprisingly helpful product-finder: most product-finders basically say “Here are some stores that carry some stuff from our brands,” but then you have to go to each store to see if they carry the specific product; this one let me select Jolly Joes specifically, and then accurately told me where to find them. They were at a nearby grocery store that isn’t the one I usually go to; and the drug store in that same plaza had some of the other Mike & Ike blends, so I came home with riches.

That’s all I’ve got right now: one happy thing. I was going to say that my new green living room curtains were also a happy success, but that reminded me that I’m peeved with Paul. Remember I said the old curtains were floppy old tab-tops. That was MOSTLY true, but one window had much-newer light-blocking curtains, purchased because that window is over the TV, and the Wii remote couldn’t handle the light. I threw away the holey saggy curtains, but folded the light-blocking ones up and put them in a large labeled baggie: my thought was that we would want those for something else, like maybe a kid room window or a basement window.

This story is already getting longer than it’s worth, but I don’t have any other ideas for this post so I’m going to keep going. I put the baggie of curtains on the kitchen counter to remind me to bring it down to the basement the next time I went down. Paul moved the curtains off the counter and onto a shelf where we put things we want to take to the One Man’s Trash shack we have in town, where people can bring things they don’t want anymore but are too good to throw away, and other people can take those things for free. I said, “Wait, don’t put those there, I’m keeping them!,” and explained what I wanted them for. Paul totally agreed, and said he was only putting them there because he needed the counter, and that he wouldn’t take them.

A couple of days later, we were discussing the success of the new living room curtains, and Paul said now we needed something for the two narrow windows in the entryway, which are on the same side of the house and get the same overabundance of sunshine. I said, “Hey! I have an idea! I can put one of those light-blocking curtains on each side!” I went to get the curtains, but they were not on the shelf. I went back to Paul. He had TAKEN THEM TO THE ONE MAN’S TRASH SHACK. He said “Ug, I am an idiot!” like five times, but I am not done hearing it. They were good curtains! I told him why I wanted to save them! He said he would not take them! THEN HE TOOK THEM. THEN IT WAS DISCOVERED THAT MY URGE TO KEEP THEM WAS ABSOLUTELY JUSTIFIED. THIS MAKES ME CRAZY. DO NOT MOVE OR GET RID OF MY STUFF, PAUL. DO NOT.

I’m sorry to keep going with this, but just look at how right I am:

1. I said I didn’t want to get rid of them.
2. Paul said he would not get rid of them.
3. We discussed future uses for the curtains.
4. We agreed they should be kept.
5. HE GOT RID OF THEM.

When this happens again and again throughout the years, I don’t know how to reconcile it with all the “You can’t expect your partner to read your mind: make your needs clearly known!” school of thought. I don’t expect him to read my mind! I make my mind WELL-KNOWN! And I make sure he has a chance to tell ME about HIS mind: if he disagreed about keeping the curtains, that would have been an entirely different situation. If he had said, “But we’re trying to clear out some space in the basement; I’d rather have to buy new curtains later than keep these just in case,” I would have thought that was a valid point. Then I would have been kicking myself a few days later when I thought of a use for them, but AT LEAST I WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN KICKING PAUL.