I have a movie from 2013 to recommend, if you want to get a feel for how long my Netflix queue is: Now You See Me (Netflix, Amazon). It’s an action movie but with MAGIC. In fact, I would say it’s a MAGIC movie with some action, including one overly-long-to-the-point-of-dull car chase. I would like to say ahead of time that I found the romance plotline unpleasant: there is no way she should ever consider that disrespectful, dismissive pinehole. But I liked everything else, and the romance didn’t ruin the rest of the movie for me.

I have a book to recommend, but with caution:

(image from Amazon.com)

The Wonder, by Emma Donoghue

The recommendation is because it fell into that category of books I look forward to getting back to. The caution is because the plotline has a strong religious element that is not flattering to religion. My guess is that most people who were religious would think, “Well, but MY religion isn’t like that” and still enjoy the story, but I don’t know. I’d also like to say that I found it repetitive and tiresome how often the main character asked herself cynical questions. But it didn’t last forever, and it was not enough to ruin the book.

Paul has put up the tree, and the lights. Now it is my turn to supervise the putting up of the ornaments, and I realized I really, really didn’t want to. The whole idea made me tired. I am trying not to let current events drown the holiday season, but there is a spectrum of Doable/Undoable, and the ornaments were falling way on the joyless side—even considering that all I would need to do is supervise the children doing it. It was more like I didn’t want to see the ornaments.

I wondered if this might be the right year to do something I’ve thought in the past might be fun, which is to decorate the whole tree with only homemade ornaments. As soon as I thought of that idea, it opened up a little pocket of Doable. I broached the idea lightly to the children and they were ON BOARD, so that’s what we’re doing this year. I like the feeling this gives me of looking for ideas. I’m making dinner and wondering if I can find that gold paint we used to have and if it would work on dry pasta noodles; I’m emptying the trash and wondering if I could do something with the egg carton; I remember making paper chains as a child, and wonder if I’d have to make one for the entire tree or if I could just make one until I felt like not making it anymore; etc. But I don’t feel PRESSURE to do anything: with five children, the tree will get plenty of decoration whether or not I make any ornaments.

I’m making a couple of exceptions to the only-homemade rule. One is the chocolate ornaments I’d already bought. This is my third year buying those, and they were another little pocket of Doable, so I’m not changing that. The second is candy canes. Sure, I know people can make those. Not me—or at least, not this year.

Long ago, back when we were at the financial level where it was WELL worth it to return a 99-cent bottle of shampoo if I didn’t like it, I found a whole bunch of Christmas cards on clearance at a bookstore for $1/box. They weren’t what I would have chosen (one was a scene with pagodas, another was an Andy Warhol red shoe, a third was a very plain light blue with a few white snowflakes on it), which as it turned out made them all the more fun to send.

Every year since then, even now that we can afford to just buy them at regular price, it’s been a ton of fun to go scouting for clearance cards in January. One year, when we had a new Target that didn’t yet know how much stock it would need, I bought three or four boxes each of half a dozen kinds, all at 90% off. Most years, I add more like half a dozen boxes: enough to replenish but not enough to oppress. Every year near Christmastime, I go down to the basement, pull out the two big cardboard boxes labeled “CARDS”, and pick which style I feel like sending this year.

This year, I went down and…no cards. It SEEMED like I had a lot of cards, because I had a dozen and a half boxes of leftovers from previous years; plus another half-dozen boxes of cards I bought just one box of; plus a bunch of things purchased but not often used, such as decorative business-size envelopes. But NO sets of enough cards to send out to everyone. This is the first time this has happened in probably close to fifteen years.

Paul had the good idea of getting cards from the ACLU or something. I loved that idea, but ACLU doesn’t have holiday cards, and neither did the next two charities I tried, so maybe that is less of A Thing now; I’ve noticed most of my list sends photo cards instead. But in any case, I don’t think I’d want to order this late.

Then I thought, well, it’s a perfect year to need new cards, because I want something a little more…SOMBER this year, anyway. But I looked around and didn’t see anything that exactly communicated what I wanted to say, which was, “Sure hope this isn’t our final year living in the world as we know it” or “Who’s really in the mood for this right now anyway?” or whatever.

So! New plan: this is The Year of Using Up All the Scraps from Previous Years. I have three of this card, two of that card, half a dozen of this other card, a nearly-full box of this card, etc., and I am going to clear them out to make space for all the cards I will buy THIS January on clearance.

I am on Day Three of waiting for a package to be delivered so I can sign for it. If I’m being fair, I can’t really count Day One because on Day One I was not aware I was waiting, but I am counting it anyway because by chance I WAS IN FACT AT HOME ALL DAY. Furthermore, it was raining on and off so I was on FULL ALERT for UPS/USPS trucks: a few days earlier we’d had some things delivered while it was raining and they got SOAKED. So I was (1) home and (2) alert for deliveries, and still somehow they missed me. That takes real ninja skill.

On Day Two, after I’d received an email saying they were sorry they had missed me, I waited at home all morning. At lunchtime one of the kids called and I had to go bring something over to the school; I stopped at the library on the way home, so I was gone 45 minutes total. There was a “Second Attempt” sign on my door when I returned, with a tone that went too far into reprimand for my liking, considering this is not an appointment I made or agreed to. Today I am NOT LEAVING THIS HOUSE UNTIL I SIGN FOR THAT PACKAGE.

And you know what’s extra dumb? This package I have to sign for is NOTHING SPECIAL. It is a $14 stuffed animal from Amazon, a totally normal, routine sort of purchase. I have NO IDEA why it requires that an adult over age 18 must be home to sign for it in person. Is it filled with CIGARS or something? I can’t even sign the little slip saying it’s okay to leave it on the steps or with a neighbor: that section is crossed out. I must be here ALL DAY LONG to sign for it—there isn’t even a delivery window to shoot for. I have been doing my best to work up a little holiday feeling and THIS IS NOT HELPING.

Speaking of cranky, if you have not yet seen The Lady in the Van (Netflix, Amazon), I highly recommend it. Did you like Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey and in Harry Potter? Her facial expressions, her way of moving, her way of talking? Imagine her very similar to those roles, but playing a homeless woman. She was an utter delight as always. And I liked how the movie was DONE. I don’t know what to call what I liked, but I thought it was cleverly and interestingly done. And it’s funny and heartwarming without being too cheery or optimistic, if you’re not really up to cheery/optimistic right now but also do not want to be shoved deeper down.

I have chosen the winners, and I also wanted to send a couple more to people I knew, so long story short I rounded up and had a few extras so I picked fifteen instead of eight, and here they are:

Heather
2016/11/28 at 2:16 pm

Kristin H
2016/11/28 at 10:44 am
Seaside

Lorraine
2016/11/27 at 12:26 pm

Grace
2016/11/28 at 6:14 am
Seaside

CourtneyinFL
2016/11/28 at 8:36 am

Judith
2016/11/27 at 7:10 pm
Victorian

Nancy
2016/11/27 at 7:06 pm
Victorian

Trudee
2016/11/27 at 3:26 pm
either Victorian or Seaside

Charlotte
2016/11/28 at 6:12 am
Victorian

Jill
2016/11/28 at 12:05 am

Deanna
2016/11/27 at 12:59 pm
Seaside

Marlene
2016/11/28 at 9:53 pm
Seaside

Tess
2016/11/29 at 1:06 pm

Erin D
2016/11/27 at 6:28 pm

Dr Pusey
2016/11/27 at 4:34 pm
Seaside

I’m going to start working through the list now, emailing to make sure I’ve got the right email addresses and also to find out whether people want Victorian or Seaside.

I have already reached my political Twitter quota for today, so let’s turn our minds to other things before it starts to seem like a good idea to go hide under a pile of leaves in the woods.

I have a brother-in-law who likes to bring costume/accessory items to get-togethers, which is how I explain owning:

• a green cowgirl hat
• a clown nose
• a lei with matching crown
• fake teeth
• a chicken mask
• a giant, heavy, bib necklace similar to this one

To our most recent gathering he brought tiaras for the women and crowns for the men, and I now have a tiara to recommend:

(image from Amazon.com)

This picture of it in the packaging is less glamorous but better at showing the iridescence:

(image from Amazon.com)

It’s made of metal so it’s heavier than the plastic ones I’ve seen for little girls, and it has to be put in with hairpins—but with no practice and two hairpins (included with the tiara, though some reviewers say they did not get any), I got it pretty securely in my hair in a couple of minutes. I mean, I couldn’t have gone jogging in it, but I easily made it to and from the kitchen for drink/snack refills.

If you want to Get The Look, the way celebrity magazines recommend, I wear it with jeans, an Old Navy t-shirt, and these shoes, which I also own in black for more formal occasions and funerals:

(image from Amazon.com)

(Why such a blurry picture? It’s a mystery. They are not blurry in real life, only sparkly. And it’s sequins, not glitter, so they don’t shed everywhere; it seems as if that feature should be easier to see.)

You are I’m sure WELL FED UP with hearing how I feel about phone calls so let’s just take it that you already know, and I refer to it only because I want to make sure I get extra credit for making a phone call this morning that saved us $68. One of Edward’s medications is a compounded medicine, meaning a special compounding (i.e., custom-medicine-making) pharmacy has to make it specially for him. I know from getting a compounded prescription for one of our cats that a lot of the price of a compounded medication is the cost of having something custom-made; so for example, with the cat’s medicine, a one-month supply was $40, but a two-month supply was only $52 because the medicine itself wasn’t all that expensive, and it was the custom nature of the product that drove the price up.

Anyway, our insurance will pay for Edward’s compounded medicine for a $50 copay. But before I realized they would do so, I was paying cash for this medication—and it was $58, which included a $5 shipping charge. (We have since then found a pharmacy we can drive to.) So this morning I geared up the courage to call the pharmacy and ask if we could fill it WITHOUT insurance, and get a three-month supply: it is almost always insurance companies that limit patients to a one-month supply at a time, not doctors or pharmacies. And the answer was yes we could do that, and it would cost $82. So, I can get it filled in three separate one-month supplies, driving half an hour to the pharmacy each time, and pay a total of $150 with insurance, or I can get it filled once and pay $82 without insurance. SCORE.

I am telling you this in part to celebrate a small victory, but also because it’s only because (that is awkward to have those two becauses like that, but let’s just move on for now) I’ve worked as a pharmacy technician AND gotten a cat’s medicine specially made that I knew to try this, and you might not have done EITHER of those things. Before I worked in a pharmacy, I didn’t know it was the insurance company limiting patients to a one-month supply of medicine at a time. So I am telling you, in case you can benefit from this as well: with almost all prescriptions (certain narcotics are different, and certain doctors may have their own policies), if you are willing/able to pay cash, you have TONS more flexibility. You can get all of your refills at once, for example. You don’t have to get prior authorizations: that’s your insurance company too, and not the doctor or pharmacy. If your insurance company says that you may only have ten of the thirty pills your doctor prescribed, they are only saying that is all they will PAY for: you may still have those other pills, if you pay cash. (“Cash” here includes credit/checks. I don’t know why it’s always referred to as “paying cash” when it’s self-pay instead of insurance.)

Of course with some prescriptions, the price of the pills means this won’t help you one tiny bit. If the month’s supply is $600 without insurance, and a $30 co-pay with it, there is no advantage to paying the $600 to avoid the hassle of getting a prior authorization, or paying $1800 cash to get your three refills all at once. If the pills your insurance company will only let you have ten of cost $20 each, it’s slim comfort to know you COULD have the other twenty if you paid $400. But it is good to keep in mind as a possible option for some cases where it might help, especially since I have found there are some pharmacy employees who enjoy explaining such things and/or telling customers their options and/or looking up cash prices, and there are even more pharmacy employees who don’t and don’t and don’t, and in fact don’t seem to understand it themselves. I had a co-worker who would say “You’ll have to call your insurance company, ma’am” to almost ANY issue/question brought up by a customer, when it was something that could be explained/fixed by us in about ten seconds. I think the pharmacy/doctor/insurance triad is a very confusing one, and that it could be made a lot clearer.

[I have literally cut-and-pasted last year’s post, because really all I want to do is an exact repeat of last year. I only changed the last paragraphs. So if this feels familiar, you are correct.]

I have a Christmas thing to recommend. My aunt sent us one of these a few years ago, and now we buy our own each year. It’s an Advent calendar for the computer—though I believe it would be more precisely called a “countdown to Christmas” calendar, since it’s for December 1-25 rather than a period of time including the four Sundays preceding Christmas. ANYWAY. It has turned out to be the funnest thing, and I love it, and the kids love it.

It costs four dollars, which was a hurdle for me at first, I’m not sure why. Actually, I think I know why: it’s because paying for something online means giving information and money online, and I feel squirrelly about that with any new company. If I could have bought a computer disc for $4 at the store, I wouldn’t have even hesitated.

I haven’t even told you really what this IS yet. First of all, it is a cute snow globe that sits in the corner of your computer screen, looking like so:

(art shown is by jacquielawson.com)

When you click on it, as you will do at least once a day, you’ll get this little menu:

(art shown is by jacquielawson.com)

If you choose “Enter Scene,” your whole computer screen will be filled with this picture:

(art shown is by jacquielawson.com)

See all the numbers scattered around? You can click on each number on or after its day: i.e., on the 3rd, you can click the number 3, and you can also still go to 1 and 2. Some days, clicking a number will take you to a short animation with music. For example, on Day 1 this year, there was a band gathering to play a Christmas song. Some days, you’ll instead go to an activity or game. For example, on Day 2, we got to DECORATE STAINED GLASS WINDOWS:

(art shown is by jacquielawson.com)

We were all FIGHTING to take turns to do this. There are also Christmas trees to decorate:

(art shown is by jacquielawson.com)

Again, lots of fighting about whose turn it is to decorate a tree. (I have to wait until they go to bed or school to get a turn.) There are three trees to decorate (and re-decorate: you can do it again and again, AND WE DO), and one of them (the one most recently decorated, Elizabeth says) [Update: she is wrong, it’s the one you drag the “Display” sign to], shows up IN THE SCENE ITSELF after you decorate it! The stained glass windows also appear in the scene! It is so fun. And then when you’re done playing you choose “Shrink Scene” at the bottom of the page, and it all disappears back into the little snow globe.

Although one countdown-to-Christmas calendar is $4, if you buy ten or more of them they’re only $2 each. I find this kind of deal difficult to resist, so I’m buying ten of them. One is for me, one is for my niece and nephew, and I will give the other eight to you. The calendar is sent by email; you then go to the site from your link and download the calendar.

Last year’s theme, shown in the photos above, was Victorian Christmas; this year it’s English Seaside. But if you missed last year’s, and you like the Victorian concept better than the Seaside concept, you can have it: they made a 2016 version. So when you leave a comment, you can say which one you’d prefer, Victorian or Seaside.

Last year I didn’t think of doing this until we were already on December 3rd, so we had to rush; this year we have time. Let’s say I’ll pick eight names on Tuesday evening, the 29th. That gives us a day for things like collecting email addresses, making sure emails got through, getting the thing set up on the computer, etc.

I am making a wreath for an annual wreath-auction fundraiser. It’s usually one of my favorite events of the whole year, so I am trying to get up to a level I can at least describe as “interested,” if not wildly enthusiastic.

The wreath requirements are, basically, anything. People have done really fun things in the past: making a wreath out of bath poufs and decorating it with bath bombs and travel-size bath products; putting three wreaths together to make a snowman; covering a wreath with lottery tickets; taking a ring of styrofoam and hot-gluing wrapped candies all over it. Some people use the wreath as a transportation device for items: they’ll tie two mugs and a box of hot chocolate and a bag of marshmallows and a box of cookies to it, for example. Other people make more traditional pretty wreaths with bows and ornaments, so it’s a really good assortment. Businesses often pitch in too with a wreath decorated with gift certificates or samples.

I like to take a clearance sparkly-foil wreath from the year before and decorate it with whatever kid stuff my kids are into. One year I decorated with Webkinz animals and Webkinz trading cards. This year I might do Minecraft. Or something with Pokémon: These assorted plastic Pokéballs would make good “ornaments,” and I could add a pack of Pokémon cards dangling in the middle.

I thought it might be fun to do a political wreath this year, but I can’t think of anything that doesn’t make me feel sad. I have a bunch of HRC pins, for example. Wouldn’t those be lovely ornaments. *weep* Did you know the pins are on clearance on the HRC site? *weeps more, begins drinking*

Oh, you know what I should do? I should look in my gift closet and see if there’s anything in there that would work. *rummages* Not really. I think I’ll go with the Pokémon idea. [Edited to add: Oops, those Pokemon balls aren’t available with Prime shipping. Never mind. I will think of something else.]