I am looking for t-shirts that are (1) tall and (2) big enough without being too big. I’m plus-sized (you can be big OR tall but not both if you’re a woman), but the Old Navy XXL Tall used to be perfect: the Tall dimensions added width as well as length. But they’ve changed their cut/fit, so now they’re even more “fitted” than before, and the neckline is odd. I’ve tried the Old Navy 2X in plus sizes, but it’s too short and too wide. And in a lot of brands, 2XL is “baby doll fit”—i.e., a size or two smaller than expected. Anything men’s or unisex looks ridiculous on me: way too wide in the shoulders and waist, but then super tight across hips and stomach. But men’s sizes are LONG enough, at least.

Probably price is going to be another issue. I searched “tall plus-size” and did find some limited options—for, like, $60 per shirt. NO. Not for a perfectly ordinary t-shirt that would sell for $10 if it were a few inches shorter and narrower. I would like what I used to get at Old Navy, which was about $5-10/shirt, depending on sales. I will be reasonable and pay up to $15-20 for t-shirts if there is no other choice, but that is IT.

Some mornings, when I am getting dressed and putting up my hair for what feels like the millionth boring time, the smell of coffee wafts down the hallway. I am so grateful to Evening Swistle at those moments, for setting up the coffee pot the night before and putting it on auto-brew, even though at the time it felt as if it wouldn’t be so hard to make coffee in the morning.

I am even more grateful when Tipsy Evening Swistle was on duty the night before, because then sometimes also the sink and stovetop are clean, and several loads of laundry are done and folded and put away, and there is egg salad. Or whatever. I mean, it’s not always egg salad and a clean stovetop. Sometimes it’s brownies and clean counters, or diced red bell pepper and a clean cat water fountain.

Rob has been not so great to be around lately. Sometimes he’s fine, even very pleasant and funny, but other times he is scornful and dismissive of pretty much everything I say. Sometimes I can shake it off and/or keep responding pleasantly and can even get things back on an okay track, and sometimes I just give up and stop talking, feeling tired and discouraged and like I’m living with someone I would never otherwise be willing to live with, and now he is going to go out into the world and make other people hate to live with him. But he’s so ready to leave home, and this is the EXACT stage of life where the parents are idiots and the hometown is lame, and so I will hope that all of this is more a part of that stage and less a permanent part of HIM.

He was my dinner assistant last night, and he was on a real roll. I kept having to give up at conversations. After one long silence, I brought up a topic I thought he couldn’t possibly scoff at, and praised him for some recent behavior. I was wrong: he managed to scoff at it.

So it was the PERFECT antidote when that same evening Twitter solved my duck problem. To back up a little, we’ve had a weird bird noise in our yard since Friday night, and Paul finally investigated, and he came in saying it was a young duck. So then it was a flurry of panic about the poor duck separated from its family and dying in our yard. I turned where the desperate always turn: Twitter. And my faith was justified, because within literally minutes Becky had contacted a birder friend of hers, Deb, who, without seeing a picture of the bird in question, and acting only on my information that (1) it was a duck, and (2) it was brown, and (3) it was about the size of a football, and (4) it was making unpleasant quack/blarp sounds, she suggested it might be an American Woodcock. AND IT WAS. It WAS INDEED an American Woodcock!

That was a pretty significant thrill: not only to have something like that happen, where it almost feels as if something magical or psychic has occurred, but also not to have to worry anymore about rescuing the poor little duck! It is not a duck! It is an American Woodcock, and it is JUST FINE! The whole thing reminded me of the time we had torn the house apart but couldn’t find our kitten ANYWHERE, and I said so on Twitter, and someone responded with the suggestion to look in drawers (neither Heidi nor I can remember if it was her, so if it was instead YOU, speak up), and I opened a drawer and there was a sleeping kitten in it.

Also, if you are feeling sad, I recommend reading descriptions of birds. “Superbly camouflaged against the leaf litter.” “Distinctively plump shorebird.” “The underparts are buffy to almost orange.”

I have a happy story about insurance, and that feels like such a rare thing to be in possession of, I bring it straightaway to you as a little shining treasure for us all to huddle ’round, warming our hands in the glow. It is about CAR insurance, which is not as rare or good as a story about HEALTH insurance, but we take what we can get in these odd times.

Our car insurance renews on April 1st. We’ve been with the same company for years and years (before Rob was born, I’m pretty sure, and he’s 17), and I know the routine by now: the renewal reminder comes with the next year’s cards, more than a month before it’s needed. This year I didn’t even open it, just put it aside for when I was ready to pay it.

I was forgetting that this year we have a new driver on our policy. I was also forgetting that back in January, the insurance company emailed and said that in order for Rob to maintain his Good Student discount, we’d need to fresh proof, and that proof was due February 7th. I replied with an attached pdf of his PSAT scores and never gave it another thought.

If I HAD remembered all of this, I would have opened the envelope right away, to make sure there was plenty of time to fix things if they hadn’t gone right. But alas. I pay bills on Saturday nights, and this past Saturday was the Saturday night before April 1st, so I got out my credit card and opened the envelope—and thought “Ohhhhhhhhhh riiiiiiiiiiight.” The total seemed high, but it WOULD seem high: in the last year we’ve added a new driver AND another car to the policy. I checked and there was no mention of a Good Student discount—but maybe it wouldn’t be listed? I wasn’t sure.

I went to the computer to contact the company, and I stopped first at my mail folder to find the email where I’d attached a pdf of his scores, so that I could refer to the date I’d sent it. Annnnnnd I found it, in my drafts folder. My DRAFTS folder. NEVER SENT.

I was completely flummoxed. I sometimes save a draft of a personal or business letter if I want to read it one more time before sending, but I couldn’t think of ANY REASON AT ALL why in this case I would have saved a draft instead of sending right away.

This is when I panicked and hit “Send.” Which was dumb, because if I hadn’t done that, I could still have acted like it was all just a big mystery. “What, you didn’t get it? But I sent it back in January!” Instead I was all “ACK ACK ACK IT DIDN’T SEND, IF I SEND IT FAST ENOUGH MAYBE IT’LL GET THERE TWO MONTHS AGO!!!”

Then I sat there, feeling immediate sender’s remorse. Combined, of course, with the dismay of seeing “draft.” I went back to the email to look again at the date the paperwork was due—and it was STILL in drafts. IT HAD NOT SENT. The page had done the reloading thing it does when an email is sent, but it had NOT BEEN SENT. This explained everything, which was good, but was also MADDENING: it was NOT MY FAULT, and yet I was the one in EXPENSIVE TROUBLE!! And what was I going to say? “Oh, my email thing messed up and didn’t send”? No. It would be difficult to think of something that sounded MORE like a lie, and yet I was witnessing it before my very eyes: I sent it a couple more times, and each time it reloaded without sending and without notifying me that it hadn’t sent.

This was where I started saying to Paul, “You know, worst case scenario is we don’t get the Good Student discount this year. It is not the end of the world.” It is good to say soothing words at such times, even if those words are desperate lies that fool no one.

I logged into my car insurance account, found the Contact Us section, and sent a breezy note. I pretended I had the same temperament as my brother, who does not get ruffled about things. “Oh heyyyyyyyy just wondering if you guys got those documents about the Good Student discount or if maybe it’s already on there and just doesn’t show or what, you know, whatever, I’m absolutely relaxed about this either way.” Then I went back to the kitchen and explained to Paul how many levels of stupid I felt: I didn’t check to make sure they got the documents! I didn’t open the stupid envelope! And now here it is, EASTER WEEKEND, with the payment due in less than a week, and I’m all “Oh, hey guys, LAST-MINUTE PROBLEM ON A HOLIDAY WEEKEND, and it’s all my fault except for the part that sounds like a lie.”

(This is where, when I was telling this story to my mom, she said, “This had better start getting happier soon.”)

I expected to get an email back saying “We did not receive the documents, and now it is too late.” Furthermore, I expected to get that email in about a week, AFTER I’d already had to pay for the policy. Instead I got an email EASTER MORNING, saying “I checked into it, and I don’t see any documents. You can send them to us via any of these several methods.” No mention of it being too late. No snarky remark. Perhaps SHE was also pretending to be HER brother.

And so I sent the pdf to the email address mentioned. I expected it to save as a draft, but instead it actually sent. I got back an automatic email confirming receipt of documents and saying it could take 5-7 days to review them. I expected that, after review, they would email saying that unfortunately the deadline had passed, or that the documents were not acceptable. Instead, I got an email THIS MORNING, less than 24 hours later, informing me of a change to my policy—and, when I logged on, I saw the Good Student discount had been applied.

I don’t mind telling you that my eyes WELLED UP with stunned gratitude. In all my worst-case/best-case scenario-building, I NEVER thought of the scenario where I would contact them, they would ask me to re-send the documents, and then they would just…give me the discount. My imagined best-case scenario was the one where I would beg for leniency and they would reluctantly grant it, possibly with some unpleasant wording that would cause me to have imaginary arguments with them later. My second-best best-case scenario was the one where they would say no but be nice about it and sound sincerely regretful, and where I would breath through my nose and have a shot of brandy and manage to make “It’s only money / It’s only money / It’s only money” work for me. Instead I have the Good Student discount, and it was easy, and they were nice.

There’s a dilemma I keep encountering in my job, and it is this: what about when the RELATIVE of the client wants “us” (supposedly the client and me, but actually just me) to do something?

Here is an example. I take care of elderly clients, as you know. Many of them live with their grown children. Sometimes the grown child of a client will ask the client to do something—and it’s something the client can’t do without me, and the grown child knows it. Perhaps the child asks the client to polish three boxes of silverware for a holiday get-together, or perhaps the child asks the client (who no longer drives) to drive 40 minutes away to pick something up. Either way, let’s say the client agrees to do this thing—but that they cannot do it without me.

It’s tricky, and it’s especially tricky if insurance is involved. If insurance is involved, the idea is that the client is medically qualified for a certain amount of care. That is, an insurance company has said, “Yes, this person needs x hours of care per week, and we will cover that.” And you know how reluctant insurance companies are to pay money if something isn’t truly necessary. And then…the client’s daughter hopes that instead of me spending time making her mom’s lunch, doing her mom’s dishes, helping her mom shower, reminding her mom to take her medicine, shopping for her mom’s groceries—instead I will take her mom with me to Sears while I return the curtains she (the daughter) felt weren’t quite right for the living room.

But…she-the-daughter didn’t ask ME to do this, she asked her-mom-the-client to do this, and her mom said yes. And a good way to summarize my job is that I am a robot arm: whatever the client can’t do on her own, I do it for her. And she agreed to do this favor for her daughter. And I am her robot arm. So then I do the favor for the daughter. But it feels wrong, on several levels.

It feels wrong in a financial/insurance/fraud sense. The insurance company only agrees to pay for this because they believe it is medically necessary. They obviously don’t intend the time to be used for curtain-returning. (But…if it were the client’s curtain purchase/return, that WOULD be an intended use of the time: running errands is in my job description.)

It feels wrong ethically. My time is supposed to be spent caring for the client. Instead I am running errands for the grown child of the client.

It feels wrong ethically in a second way. I’m supposed to be taking care of someone who can’t do things for herself. Instead I am doing chores for someone who ABSOLUTELY can do things for herself.

The word I’m looking for is that it feels exploitive. The grown child is exploiting a situation that is supposed to benefit her elderly mother, and using it as a sort of “Can I borrow your healthcare provider to be my personal assistant for a quick sec, Mom?” thing.

I COULD draw a line in the sand, and there are situations where I very well might. If, for example, the grown child asked me to help cater a dinner party she was throwing. But mostly these iffy situations happen infrequently enough and are fuzzy-lined enough (“Well, but this lets the client feel as if she is still useful to her daughter”) that I don’t feel I need to take any action other than thinking about the interesting layers of issues involved.

Edited to add: It is a normal part of my job to drive the client on errands (or to go on my own on her behalf), using the client’s car or mine depending on the circumstances. (If I use my car, I’m paid for mileage.)

It seems as if it’s time for a general update on the children.

1. Rob is a junior in high school, and it turns out that “taking the SATs” is more like “putting your name on a mailing list sold to every college in the country.” I am panicking about college selection. I am dealing with this by doing nothing that would alleviate my panic. Rob is dealing with this by ramping up my panic with statements such as “I might want to try a college in Europe.” Rob has started playing violin as well as piano. He is also teaching piano lessons, which I feel is a cool job for a high school kid. He thinks he would like to quit that and bus tables instead. I am practicing not arguing about things like that.

2. You know, it’s always hard to think of something to say about William. I have this same problem when writing newsy updates on Christmas cards. He’s…interested in languages, there’s something I can say. He took Spanish, now he’s taking Latin, he’s planning to take sign language. He has his father’s skill of defusing tense/irritable situations with humor.

3. Elizabeth is still obsessed with walruses. She is The Best right now, which I assume is setting me up for the worst that is to come when she hits puberty. She perches on the arm of my chair and tells me all about what happened at school and who said what to whom. She talks with her hands—mostly from the wrists, so that her arms are steady and her hands/fingers are moving. She snaps her fingers a lot while talking; I don’t think she realizes she’s doing it.

4. Edward is hard to discuss, mostly because when I think of Edward I think first of what’s going on with his Crohn’s, so then I end up talking about Crohn’s instead of about Edward, and then I end up talking about our problems with the lab instead of talking about Crohn’s. One of his medications needs to be reduced, but it’s not available in that dosage, so we have to get it from a compounding (i.e., custom-made prescriptions) pharmacy in another state. I have been trying to return this pharmacy’s call, but their phone system says my call cannot be transferred at this time. I tried to contact them with their online form to let them know I was having this problem, and it said the message could not be sent. Combined with our problems with the lab, I sometimes feel as if we are being pranked.

5. Speaking of pranks, Henry has been peeing into the water reservoir of his water gun, in preparation for an excellent summer prank against his brother. Luckily this fact emerged the easy way (he accidentally told me) instead of any other way.

These socks are on clearance at Target and I would like to recommend them:

They are Merona brand, sold in two-packs (one stripe, one solid) normally for $5; some of the colors are on clearance for $3.50 or $2.50 at my Targets. I have them in the brown combo, the navy combo, the grey combo, the strange pale pinky-purple combo that probably won’t go with anything I own but they were $2.50 and I really like these socks. I’m trying to decide just how out of control to get when buying more. They’re also available in a brighter-blue combo and a black combo (those two colors are in fact the bulk of what is left on the clearance shelf), but I haven’t bought any of those yet.

They are cooler/colder-weather socks, which is probably why they’re on clearance now. They’re nice and cottony (91% cotton), without being so cottony they stretch out and won’t snap back. They say for shoe sizes 4-10, but I have size 11 feet and they fit well.

Sock recommendations. That is what today is.

Speaking of Target, I would like to say that one of the only things I don’t like about Jane the Virgin is the Target product placement. It is intrusive and obvious and annoying. It’s like when a celebrity is the spokesperson for a product and then suddenly they are mentioning it in every interview. But I am a LITTLE touchy about ads right now, because they are also appearing in my Facebook news feed, my Twitter stream, my Amazon search results, and now even my ETSY search results. ETSY! Is nothing sacred? I didn’t complain when the ads were in the margins: that is where ads live. But mid-feed, and/or mixed in with search results, is ICKY.

Today is a day for peeves, such as being peeved to have lost an hour yesterday, and why do we keep systems around lonnnnnng after they’ve stopped making sense? Every four years I hope it will become an election issue.

I’m going to start with the peeve that is least sympathetic. That is, I am about to complain about a practice that is meant to be NICE, and comes from a GOOD PLACE, and that I nevertheless find very, very irritating: it is the thing where no one can post a picture, even a selfie taken so high up and at such a strange angle that the lower half of the face is missing in an effort to hide the double chin and accentuate the cleavage, without EVERYONE IN THE WORLD commenting “GORGEOUS!!” “BEAUTIFUL!!” “HOTTTTIE!!”—and, worst of all: “Beautiful inside and out!” How oh how could I be complaining about such nice words. How. How?? Well, here we are. It is driving me crazy and it’s hard to put a finger on why, but it’s at least in part because when something is SO PREVALENT and SO PREDICTABLE and SO INEVITABLE, it LOSES something. And I think that’s especially true when someone is trying to avoid that problem by saying something that is supposed to be better, such as “Beautiful inside and out” or “We don’t care as long as it’s healthy,” and then everyone else leaps on that solution and says it like repeatedly pressing a button on an annoying electronic toy. And partly I think it’s that it feeds into this loop where people keep wanting more and more of it. Anyway. PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO BE NICE. They ARE being nice. They are trying to be nice and say the right thing and those are GOOD THINGS TO TRY TO DO. UG.

Meanwhile, my Facebook feed is now 10% my friends, and 90% ads and things-my-friends-liked-or-commented-on. So I am seeing the profile selfies of COMPLETE STRANGERS, with the predictable comments of COMPLETE STRANGERS, and I think that makes it even worse.

Next peeve. In our town, we have a place where there are railroad tracks right before a stop sign. There is room for one car at the stop sign, and all other cars are supposed to stop at a line BEFORE the railroad tracks, so that no one gets caught on the tracks with a train coming. There is a big sign instructing cars NOT to stop on the tracks. Nevertheless, it’s a little counter-intuitive: it feels weird to stop way back there, leaving a big gap between the car at the stop sign and the rest of the line, when we can see there is no train coming; and it feels especially weird if the cars pausing at the stop sign (related peeve: STOP AT STOP SIGNS) are going through at a good clip. ANYWAY, all that is to say I get it that not everyone is going to understand the set-up the very first time they encounter it, and that others might choose to risk their lives so as not to look like a dork. But it still bugs me very much to see EVERY SINGLE CAR EXCEPT MINE breaking the rule, and to nearly get rear-ended every time I stop at the line LIKE A GOOD MEMBER OF THE SAFETY SOCIETY. The very few times I have seen someone else follow the rule, I have felt the way I do when I see someone pulled over to text: like leaping out of my car and FESTOONING THEIR CAR WITH FLOWER PETALS AND KISSES. LET’S BE FRIENDS AND HAVE A GREAT CLUB WHERE WE FOLLOW RULES TOGETHER!!

Oh, related peeve: there is an intersection with a “no right turn on red” sign. I don’t know if people don’t see the sign or think I shouldn’t obey it, but I HATE getting honked at there. I’m not spacing out, I am FOLLOWING THE ACTUAL POSTED LAW.

Next peeve: the phrase “new without tags”/NWOT on eBay. This is a phrase that was INTENDED to mean something. It was MEANT for those weird, unusual situations where you remove the tags from an item and THEN decide not to keep it or return it, or where you bought it intending all along to resell it but your toddler pulled the tag off, or whatever. When I saw such a designation, there would be an explanation in the listing explaining why there was no tag; sometimes that explanation begged belief, but it was understood that there needed to be some sort of REASON why something would be BRAND NEW and yet not retain any proof of that status. Now what “new without tags” generally means is “used.”

Now I will say three pleasant, non-complaining things. First, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, but eBay’s moderation system is so good. It is SO GOOD. Gone are the days of being stuck working things out yourself with a seller who sold you a “new without tags” item that arrived pilled and stained. It is glorious. It feels like heavenly justice.

Two. I have been seeing MORE people pulling over to text. It is happening INCREASINGLY. That makes me VERY VERY HAPPY.

Three. I am watching the first season of Jane the Virgin and I really like it.

I have a fairly boring story. At least it’s long!

When I was in high school, a brand of shampoo/conditioner that appealed mightily to me was Silkience. I liked their pretty bottles, which were white with pastel accents of pink, yellow, blue, or green, depending on the formula. I liked their ads, especially one with a cute little fluffy chick standing near a woman’s long shiny blonde hair, and a slogan something like “All chicks want silky soft hair”—I had that one up on my wall, along with a bunch of other ads I liked. (Teenagers: they will market TO THEMSELVES, FOR FREE.) I imagined the shampoo and conditioner DID make my spiral perm silkier, and also helped heal the damage done to my bangs by the daily gelling and blow-drying and curling and hair-spraying.

Anyway, I don’t know why I suddenly thought of Silkience, but I did, and I wondered if it were still available. I knew I hadn’t seen it at Target, but that doesn’t mean anything: I don’t see Prell at Target either, but THAT’S still for sale. I started by checking Amazon, and INDEED! Well, except the bottles look completely, completely different in every way:

(image from Amazon.com)

The price wasn’t great, but $15 for two bottles would not be out of the question for a little journey back to high school hair. But once I knew the product still existed SOMEwhere, I could look into it further: plenty of things are available on Amazon, but can also be available at some drug store you never shop at but drive past twice a day. I can buy Prell on Amazon for $8, or I can buy it at the grocery store for $3. Plus, half the reviews on the two-for-$15 product were by people who said it was AWFUL and NOT the Silkience of the 1980s. (I love that there is a whole CLAN of us looking for the Silkience of the 1980s.)

I found the Silkience product line claimed by Evergreen Brands, a site with cheesy auto-play music on their home page. Happily, they show the bottles looking more as I remember them:

(image from evergreenbrands.net)

The bottles of my youth did not have pictures of girls on them, and the colors were more pastel, but that is a LOT more the right MOOD than those purple versions above.

AND THEN I FOUND THE VERY AD I USED TO HAVE HANGING ON MY WALL:

(image from evergreenbrands.net)

You can see why I was so loyal.

The next step was the Where to Buy page, which revealed that Silkience is now available at…dollar and outlet stores. Well! I am QUITE GLAD I did not spend $15 for two bottles of what may be available for $2!

Today Paul wanted to go to the hardware store, and there are two dollar/outlet stores near there, so I made a deal that I’d go with him if he’d go with me, and I found it! They only had one kind, and only conditioner, but I found it! And this kind of store has changing stock, and there are more such stores I can investigate, so things are looking up!

And also! Look what else!

Salon Selectives! Dep! It was like my high school drug store shelf come back to life! I would have spent more time trying to figure out my BEST Salon Selectives combination, but Paul by this time was feeling as if three times up and down the shampoo aisle was as much as anyone should be asked to bear, so I will have to go back another day.

I was snooping around in the Facebook profiles of my ex-husband’s family, as one does if one is like me, and I had a sudden and electrifying thought. I was looking at a picture of my ex-husband’s sister with her husband and children, and I realized that her little girls would have been MY NIECES if I’d stayed married to my ex-husband. I would have known those little girls, and very well! I would have been Auntie Swistle to them! I would have snuggled and smooched them! I would have known their birthdays! I would have bought them MANY A GIFT, starting with all the things I would have bought during their mother’s pregnancy! I would have LOVED them. And yet, as it is, I don’t know them at all, not even their names. They’re utter strangers, and I have no connection to them at all. It is weird to think of that missed relationship, and it highlights the weirdness of the whole category of relatives-by-marriage.