I am having an attack of insecurity. There are (currently) four things I can blame, I think: 1. My husband is on call, and when he is on call we spend less time together and I feel ignored and needy. 2. My primary client, for the first time ever, returned a project to me and asked me to redo it. Not minor edits, but a complete redo because I had so completely missed the mark. 3. I have been ordering cute bikinis from amazon because the summery weather (which has since retreated) has me dreaming of time by the pool, and NOT A ONE has looked remotely reasonable on me and only emphasizes the weird shape of my hips and thighs. 4. My poor kid is homesick for our old house and cannot fall asleep (it is currently 1:11 in the morning egads) and I cannot help her feel better (which I know isn’t always the goal! she should feel her feelings!) or help her fall asleep.
To sum up: I am unlovable, my work performance sucks, I look terrible in a bathing suit and probably in all clothing, and I am a terrible mother.
Should I perhaps be focusing on the fact that my husband is lovely and warm and attentive 6/7 of the time, and that he is not ignoring me but is instead focusing all his energy on the very difficult work of keeping dangerously sick people alive? Should I perhaps be remembering that this client mostly asks for very small edits, if any, and also it seems statistically improbable that I would write exactly what they want every single time and also one miss does not negate all the hits, nor does it preclude me from writing well in the future? Should I perhaps stop pressing my finger into the tender bruise of body imperfection when I have a perfectly good, rear-end covering skirted suit already? Should I perhaps recall the many, many nights when I was a child that I cried myself to sleep over something or other and the many, many nights as a child and an adult when I couldn’t sleep and how none of those nights had anything to do with my parents or their parenting ability?
Should does not equal AM DOING, let me tell you that.
Insecurity can REALLY spiral if I let it get going, so I have been reading articles titled “Top Ten Things Therapists Recommend You Do When You’re Feeling Insecure!” and “How to Conquer Feelings of Insecurity.” The thing is that I know how to stop feeling insecure. I mean, I am aware of the techniques. But most of them are long-term kinds of things (replace negative self-talk with positive self-talk; focus on your strengths; talk to a therapist) and I am working on those things, but I want a quick fix. Is there a quick fix for feeling insecure?
What I really want is to say something negative about myself and have someone refute it with convincing evidence backed by reliable sources. My husband is not good at providing reassurance of this type; he is impatient with insecurity and seems to operate under the belief that there is no need to tell a person something that they should already know about themselves. (I also worry that, if I am too insecure around him, he will stop wanting to be married to me how’s THAT for insecurity catastrophizing, hmmm?????)
Reassurance is best sought from friends, I find. But it’s too late to call or text any of my analog-world friends, so I am writing to you. This makes it sound like I am demanding compliments, which I am not because that would be embarrassing and stupid. (Also, you aren’t married to me, you don’t know my work writing and you don’t know what I look like in a bikini, so, lovely and brilliant as you are, you cannot possibly make an honest evaluation of any of those things.) What I’m hoping for, I guess, is commiseration and solidarity. I would also accept The Key to Real Confidence, if you have it.
Do you ever feel insecure? If so, what do you do when you feel that way? My negative self-talk is so loud right now, even my strategies for combatting it (talking out loud to myself; pretending my concerns belong to my best friend and saying to myself what I would say to her; referring to myself as honey and acknowledging that my feelings are valid) are inaudible over the din.
Gah. Being a person is so stupid and exhausting sometimes.
Well, I suppose the next best thing to writing a blog post about it is going to sleep. Sleep helps most things.
Elisabeth’s post earlier this week spun me on a sock tangent. She wondered whether people put their socks on before or after they put their pants on. (Go read her post to find out!) (I sometimes put my socks on first, sometimes once my pants are on. Depends on the pants.) But the more pressing question, in my mind, is HOW you put your socks on: Do you stand or do you sit?
I stand. I balance on one foot while I put one sock on, then balance on the other foot to put the other sock on. My dad does the same thing, as we discovered over Christmas. That’s the kind of riveting discussions we have around here.
My husband and daughter sit to put their socks on.
Based on this very small sample size, I’m extrapolating that there are two (primary) types of socks-putter-onners: sitters and standers.
The only time I sit is when I’m putting on tights. Which aren’t socks, but are similar enough that I’m mentioning them here.
Which camp are you in?
While we’re on the fascinating topic of socks, I have some other sock-related questions.
Do you prefer fun socks or plain socks? When I met my husband, he wore pretty much only plain white athletic socks that he bought in a multi-pack from Target. A few years ago, I started buying him fun socks from Sock Fancy and Bomba and Happy Feet, and now he has a drawer so cram-jammed with fun socks that he cannot fit another pair in there. (Nonetheless, he got FIVE PAIRS of socks for Christmas.)
I have experienced the opposite trajectory. I used to love fun knee-high socks in all sorts of patterns. But these days, I stick to a multi-pack of athletic ankle socks that I get from Costco. It’s just so much easier! I can rummage around in my sock drawer and grab a ball of socks and know it’s going to work.
Speaking of balled socks: are you a baller or shot caller, I mean a person who doesn’t ball their socks? I ball my socks up with wild abandon. Yes, I have read that doing so puts additional stress on your socks, and can stretch them out. But I have never once had an issue, so I have decided it’s worth the risk.
My husband REFUSES to ball his socks. He will carefully tuck the top of one sock into the folded-over top of its mate and that’s as much as he’s willing to do. When it comes to his (now small) stash of athletic socks, he stacks them on top of one another. He is much neater than I am.
My daughter prefers a secret third option, which is to throw all her socks, unpaired, into her drawer and then complain to me that she doesn’t have any clean socks when I ask why, for the love of tacos, did she come down to breakfast YET AGAIN without her socks on.
Do you wear socks to bed? My husband does not. I used to be firmly anti-sock while I slept. But since dealing with plantar fasciitis, and needing to wear shoes at pretty much all times, it’s just more convenient to sleep with socks on. Then I can shove my feet into my sneakers when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. I also tend to moisturize my feet overnight, and I wear socks while I do that so the foot lotion doesn’t get all over my sheets. Ew. Lotiony sheets.
However, I vastly PREFER having bare feet while I sleep. It just… doesn’t work out that way, these days. Sometimes I end up ripping the socks off in the middle of the night and flinging them into the dark.
How many pairs of socks do you own? I tend to get sick of socks and then buy new socks without getting rid of the socks I already own. My husband, as I mentioned before, has an entire drawer of fun socks… and a separate drawer for athletic socks. (To be fair, the athletic socks take up a small portion of the second drawer.) That’s a lot of socks!
I did a very brief internet search for how many socks a person SHOULD own, and the answer seems to lie somewhere between 7 and 16. I started to count my socks and then gave up, but I think it’s at LEAST 20 pairs. That’s probably a very conservative estimate.
Last March, I wrote a post that resulted in one of my favorite comment sections ever. Relationships are so funny, aren’t they? Like, you could be absolutely committed to stepping in front of a train to save a person’s life, but if they hang the toilet paper the wrong way you would murder them with your bare hands. I guess when you spend year after year with a person, you have to find some ways to keep things fresh.
Recently, my husband and I had an argument that made me think of the earlier post and the resulting comments. It was an argument that nearly led to fisticuffs, it was so intense. Neither of us wanted to cede even an INCH of ground. I wanted to scream at him, and surely he felt the same way. We finally stopped bickering about it but only because we ran out of energy; we never formally agreed that I was right all along. (I am right.)
The subject matter of this fierce battle? Marshmallow size.
last year’s carb feast, with mashed sweet potatoes in the upper right
That’s right, folks. My lovely, generous husband agreed to go do all the Thanksgiving shopping for me and I nearly strangled him over his refusal to accept that the marshmallow size I requested was the correct and only marshmallow size.
Do you want some context? Carla’s favorite Thanksgiving foods are a) cranberry sauce and b) sweet potatoes with marshmallows (or, more accurately, marshmallows with sweet potato essence). So I put marshmallows on the grocery list. Because my husband likes to know Specific Details about the things he’s buying, I added the note Giant size to our grocery list.
“We get regular size marshmallows,” he said.
No, we don’t. We always get the jumbo size marshmallows. The kind you use for making s’mores.
“No, the little ones.”
Round and round we went on this, Internet. I found a photo of last year’s sweet potatoes, with the jumbo size marshmallows on top.
“Maybe we used them last year, but usually we use the regular size.”
For awhile, I thought maybe we were talking about the exact same thing and just using different terminology for it. Like maybe he thinks the jumbo size Kraft Jet Puffed are “regular size” and we were arguing about nothing. But no. He meant the small size. The kind you put in hot cocoa.
Carla helpfully googled this photo so we could determine that we were, in fact, discussing marshmallows of different size. (This was only after a deeply infuriating aside, where I said that “tiny” marshmallows are the kind that come in packets of powdered cocoa and he disagreed, and I nearly detonated.)
image from savoryexperiments.com
I tried to remind my husband that I have been making these same sweet potatoes pretty much every year since 2010. Not sufficient evidence. I dug up a photo of that first Thanksgiving, in 2010, with the jumbo marshmallows. Not sufficient evidence.
Is this the most RIDICULOUS argument you have ever heard of?! It didn’t feel like it, in the moment. It felt like this man was a stranger. How could he think I was a person who would put small marshmallows on top of my sweet potatoes?! Who has the TIME for such detailed work?! Not me! Did he not SEE me? Did he not KNOW me?!
Finally, I threw up my hands and told him that fine, if he insisted on getting the small marshmallows, he could place them all in concentric circles on the mashed sweet potatoes. (Even though marshmallow placement is firmly Carla’s job.) And he went grocery shopping. When he came home, he handed me a bag of the correct size marshmallows, even though he made it very clear that he was surrendering to me, not that he thought I was right.
One of the most maddening arguments we’ve ever had.
Although it doesn’t compare in any way to the all-out brawl* we had over which everyday glasses to register for when we got engaged.
Okay, here is where you tell me the most ridiculous arguments you’ve been in. With a sibling, a spouse, a friend. I just want to hear the silly things that push your buttons.
* Not an actual brawl.
I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here.
Here’s a disagreement my husband and I have a few times a year: He will ask for advice in getting out of something – like beers at an old college acquaintance’s house or going to a patient’s sister’s open mic night – and I will suggest he simply say something like, “Oh thanks so much for including me, but I’m unavailable. Maybe next time!”
This is a method I employ successfully in my life. But he says he needs A Real Reason – that if he goes with something vague, there will be follow-up questions.
I prefer vague in the follow-up instance too. Something like, “Oh, just a family obligation.” or “Oh, I have a prior commitment.” (Apparently, I say “Oh” a lot when I am making vague sorry-I-can’t statements.)
He never takes me up on it. He wants something unassailable, like dinner plans or a weekend trip. He thinks people will keep poking at him until he says something specific. I think people who do that are rude or unable to read social cues. Also, I have never once encountered the level of pushback that he anticipates! (To be fair, I have a pretty strong case of RBF, while my husband has the sweet face and warm eyes of someone who would never snap at you for asking too many questions. So maybe people just know not to push me?) I honestly don’t know that he has ever encountered the level of pushback he anticipates; it may be largely if not entirely in his head!
Do you feel the need to justify things on a specific level?
I mean, I get that sometimes specificity is important. It can give context, right? Like if your boss wants you to staff a client event and you can’t, you might feel like saying, “I have to prep for surgery the following day” or “it’s my only night with the kids that week” will give you more credibility than going the simple “sorry, I can’t” route. And if you can’t make your sister’s wedding, it probably would go over better if you could blame your absence on something more specific than “a prior commitment.”
Also, I understand that the phenomenon of canceling or “we totally should”ing plans is poison to a friendship. Also also, I realize that are probably different levels of “need to know,” and you might feel more comfortable sharing specifics with a good friend than you would with a coworker or your dental hygienist. I am well aware that there are exceptions.
But in general, I feel like we are all allowed some reasonable amount of privacy in our lives. And we are allowed to make decisions about how we spend our time, and shouldn’t feel like we have to have A Real Reason to skip out on something. We should be able to opt out of opt-out-able commitments for the simple reason that we don’t want to do the thing, and we shouldn’t have to feel bad about that or worry about hurting someone’s feelings by saying it straight out or deal with the discomfort of coming up with a believable lie.
It seems like I may be in the minority of people who feel that way, though.
I am part of two separate groups, one an email chain and the other a text chain. This past week, both of them were active and there was a similar experience in both groups.
In both cases, the group leader requested a headcount of people coming to an upcoming event. She specifically said, “If you can be there, let me know.” Nothing about “everyone needs to respond,” nothing about “let me know if you cannot be there.”
In each case, the first person to respond was able to attend. (I know this because they both replied all, which is another thing I cannot stand but which seems to be an unavoidable part of the culture here.) Then the responses rolled in, nearly identical in both situations – even though one situation was a volunteer event and the other was a social gathering.
It went something like this: The second person responded in the affirmative, too. Then the third person said yes, and she was sorry she forgot to reply all. (SIGH.) Then the fourth person said she couldn’t and then gave a specific reason. Same with the fifth. Then the sixth replied all and gave a rather personal medical reason for not being able to volunteer. (Seriously! The personal medical reason happened in BOTH CASES.) (Which then leads to another thing that makes me feel uncomfortable, which is that everyone in the group replies all to extend their well wishes/condolences/etc. Which is nice, but results in too many texts/emails and also both feels performative and sets up the expectation that everyone needs to respond. What if I want to email the person separately??? What if I have never met this person and don’t feel I should know the details of her nosehair removal procedure????)
Dude. We should not feel like we need to JUSTIFY our inability to show up to things! If you can show up, do it; if not, DON’T. But I feel resistant and a little flaily, to be honest, about the unvoiced and totally unnecessary expectation that you need to have A Real Reason to bow out of anything, especially a social event or a volunteer position. What if my reason is, I don’t want to? What if my reason is, I don’t want to drive an extra half hour that day? What if my reason is, that day was my only free day all month and I just want to lie on my back on the couch and stare at the cobwebs gently undulating in the air currents?
My manager at my previous job was really good about this kind of thing. He’d email me (his subordinate) and his manager simultaneously and say, “I’m taking a personal day today.” That was it. I might find out later on that his kid had been sick or he’d had a dental appointment or whatever. But it wasn’t something he shared and it freed me from feeling like I needed A Real Reason to take my own personal days. It showed that he trusted me – an adult – to manage my own time. I’m sure if I’d abused the policy, he would have addressed that. But I didn’t and I was so glad that I didn’t have to say things like “Carla was up all night cluster feeding and I’m so tired I can’t think” or “I have a therapy appointment today.” I’d just say, “I’m taking a personal day” or “I need to leave early this afternoon” and that was that.
I wish we could all have that kind of privacy in our lives! That freedom from explaining ourselves, or fretting about whether our excuses are good or “real” enough. The knowledge that others aren’t judging us for saying no because they trust that our reasons are our reasons and that’s sufficient.
Listen. It’s not that I don’t empathize! When the reasons start flying, it makes me feel like I need to have my own reason for opting out. Like people won’t believe me, or they will grumble about me behind my back, or they won’t invite me in the future.
Obviously, I am feeling super guilty lately about my lack of involvement in anything other than the endless appointments associated with Moving And Getting Settled and my impulse is to make sure that the people I am flaking on know I am doing something else, and it is Not Fun. So truly, I get it. I am a people pleaser. I don’t want people to think I’m shirking any sort of responsibility, or taking my friendships or commitments lightly. But I think – I hope – I show that, by making the effort and showing up when I can. And I hope we can give people grace when they say they can’t do something, and realize that we all juggle multiple priorities, and sometimes one necessarily takes precedence over another.
Even if that priority is lying on the couch, wondering if cobwebs count as Halloween décor.
1.It’s Friday: Is that a good thing? (I mean, it is Good Friday.) But I find that weekends have a whole different feel to them now that I am a parent who works (very) part-time from my home. No longer do I find them relaxing, as I did when I was not a parent. Nor do I find them as stressful and exhausting as I did when Carla was wee. Now, I kind of see them as My Time to Do Stuff with My Family, Whom I Do Not See During the Week. I have spent the week working and storing up plenty of solitude, and now I want to get out and do fun stuff with my husband and kid. My husband and kid, however, do not feel the same way. They want to retreat to their separate corners and play video games and build with LEGO and make elaborate crafts and tool around on their guitars and watch endless episodes of Bluey on their iPads. I try to give them space, and sometimes I succeed in flopping on a couch and reading a book all day. But other times, I end up doing laundry and making meals and feeling like I am doing the exact same crap I do every other day when I want something different and fun. Not something social, mind you – something different and fun with my family. Really, I want to force them to spend time with me. Maybe now that the weather seems to be turning toward pleasant, I can lure them away from devices with the promise of… what? Bike rides? A trip to the [Local Attraction we’ve visited too many times]? A day trip to see one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural gems? I would be delighted by any of these options. Maybe what I need to do is come up with a big list of Fun Things that we can choose from. BUT WHAT? What fun things are on your agenda for the warmer months? What are some of your favorite ways to occupy yourself (and your family) on the weekend?
2. Overeager Emailers: When I got these two back-to-back emails from Take 5 Oil Change, I had to screenshot them. Which was difficult to do because I was rolling my eyes so hard. Have some chill, Take 5. Also, I have never set foot in a Take 5, which I am assuming is a place where you go to get your vehicle’s oil changed, so I am baffled as to how the company got my email address. Perhaps I should have taken their survey, in hopes that one of their questions might be, “Are we inexplicably spamming you?”
3.Comment Concern: My blog is eating a bunch of legitimate and lovely comments, and sending them to spam. This is happening to multiple commenters, for no apparent reason that I can see (like, it’s not every comment from a specific blogger, and it’s not comments with links or specific terms in them). If you are not seeing your comment, it is because of this, NOT for any other reason. I love you and your comments and I appreciate your taking the time to read and share your thoughts. Meanwhile, I will try to keep an eye on the ol’ spam folder.
4. Upgrade or Not?: In addition to the comment eating, my blog has also become overly exuberant with the ad serving. It is driving me nuts. I cannot even see my post title on my homepage anymore, all I can see is an ad or the space where an ad should be. Sometimes there are even POP UPS, which makes me so teeth-grittingly annoyed I can hardly stand it. I put up with the ads – even though they have, unfortunately, offended some of my beloved readers in the past, for which I am so so apologetic – because I am cheap, and I don’t pay anything for WordPress to host my blog, and I recognize that nothing in life is truly free. HOWEVER. I am growing very weary of the ads. Plus, I have been posting in this space for nearly fourteen years, and maybe it is about time to put some money into it? I don’t know. Maybe I could figure out how to get ads that are in some way relevant to the people who show up here? Or at least get rid of that big banner ad that’s BLOCKING MY CONTENT? Anyway, this is all to say that WordPress is forcing me to consider I am starting to wonder whether I should upgrade to the premium version of WordPress. Have you done that? And, if so, are there pros and cons you care to share?
5. Spring Clean: Carla’s class did a spring cleaning recently and she cleaned out her desk. This is all the writing utensils she found inside her desk. The desk that only she uses. They were, of course, hidden beneath piles and piles of paper and “treasures” and worksheets and brochures for school events and paper plates and craft materials and folders and pencil sharpeners and bits of yarn/pipe cleaner/rubber band. I keep reminding myself that I used to be just as messy/hoardery/disorganized as she is, and yet I have become a moderately tidy adult. I can only hope she follows a similar path.
6. Enduring Grumps: I am in a writing slump. I am in a reading slump. Friendship angst, about multiple friendships. My face looks like I am in the throes of peak puberty. My heels have been hurting again. I have been trying to lose weight and am not losing weight. I went on Facebook for five minutes to check on a friend’s vacation photos and saw a post requesting recommendations for bulletproof backpacks. We keep having thunderstorms (but no tornadoes, so I am counting my blessings) and the wind and lightning stress me out. I still feel pressure to Make Holidays Magical but my husband is the founding member of Dads Deeply Against Excessive Easter Baskets and I don’t want to, like, openly defy him. Except I already bought a few things beyond the few things he knows about. But I didn’t get anything to hide inside Easter eggs, which the Easter Bunny still hides around the house for Carla to find. Is she just going to find empty eggs this year? Is that the most depressing thing ever???? Carla’s new schedule is AWFUL, and even though it’s better than her fall schedule was and even though I am pretty sure we will get used to it based on the fact that we got used to the fall schedule, it’s awful RIGHT NOW. I need new shoes but I feel like all I do is spend money. I have tasks that MUST be completed and yet I keep dragging my feet. The school year is almost over and I have loved this year, and so has Carla which is obviously more important, and I don’t want it to end. The school year is almost over and there is a flurry of end-of-year everything cropping up and every day I get a new event to add to my bursting calendar and it seems like we will never have a free moment again. It is only April and already the humidity makes me want to die.
7. Merlin Bird ID: Do you know about this app? Carla has it on her iPad, and she’s talked about it for years. If we see a bird of uncertain heritage in the wild, she will take note of its characteristics and then look it up in the app later. I guess I always thought that it was similar to a bird book – useful for identifying a bird based on size, shape, color. And it is! But it also has an auditory feature which I discovered after Carla had been regularly leaving her bathroom window open in the middle of winter. When I asked why she was opening her window, she said that she likes to hold her iPad up to the window so it can tell her which birds are in our yard. This feature is SO COOL. My husband and I used it to identify a weird trilling noise that we kept hearing outside our bedroom at night. I thought it was a raccoon and my husband thought it was some sort of creepy insect, but it turns out it was an Eastern screech owl. This app is completely free (although make sure you download it while connected to WiFi omg.)
8. Mail Melee: We have a new mail carrier. I know this because we went on vacation and had our mail held while we were gone. And then when we came home and the mail resumed, we never got the pile of mail we normally would have had after a ten-day absence. I went to the post office to inquire after our missing mail, and the supervisor said we had a new mail carrier. He couldn’t get ahold of her, but when he did, he would ask whether she had our mail. I left my phone number and never heard back. We have since had two days with very full mailboxes, so we are hoping that all the held mail has been returned to us. Although… I am not sure how we would know??? (Usually, it comes in a big pile, held together with a massive rubber band or sometimes stacked in a Post Office bin that we have to return. And it’s always been delivered to the stoop rather than into the mailbox, so it’s very clear that it’s the held mail. The two days of excess mail could have just been… heavy mail days.) My husband said something about going through our bills and seeing which ones we get via mail and then looking in our files to determine about when they normally show up… but that sounds very complicated and also not foolproof. We have also gotten a rather alarming amount of mail that belongs to various neighbors, and at least one neighbor has commented that he has also been receiving mail that doesn’t belong to him. So. Our poor mail carrier seems to be facing a rather steep learning curve.
9. Planless Purchase: I bought these spice mixes at Trader Joe’s… and now I have no idea what to do with them. I tried mixing some of the umami one into sour cream to use as a dip for potato chips… it tasted like nothing. What would you use them for?
10. More Controversial Pronunciations: I loved everyone’s responses to my Enduring Marital Arguments post. It was especially enjoyable to learn how many people have strong feelings about the pronunciation of Don and Dawn (my strong feeling, again, is that they are identical morphemes). I remembered another homophonic disagreement my husband and I have: the pronunciation of the three words Barry, berry, and bury. THESE WORDS SOUND THE SAME. Unless you ask my husband, who says they are all separate and distinct.
Well, that’s all I have for you Internet. Hope you are enjoying your holidays, if you are celebrating this week. Have a wonderful weekend.
It is my fervent belief, based on very little evidence, that even the strongest marriages have points of irreconcilable division.
Perhaps you agree, based on marriages you know.
I’m not talking about political or religious divides, or disagreements on number of children, or financial philosophical misalignment.
No. I’m talking about the little things that don’t matter at all and yet make you so incandescently angry that you cannot imagine how you ever married someone so incompatible with your values.
You know, like how you hang the toilet paper.
Here are the top three things that my husband and I CANNOT AND WILL NEVER AGREE ON. (And by “cannot agree” I mean that he refuses to see any sort of reason or logic.)
1. Speeding Technicality: If you are driving in a car, and the posted speed limit is 35 miles per hour, you are speeding if you go above 35 miles per hour. That means that if you are going 36 miles per hour, you are speeding. The limit is 35. Anything above that is speeding.
I acknowledge that most police officers are not going to pull anyone over if they are going a few miles per hour above the posted limit. You could probably get away with driving at 40 mph – even 42 mph! – in a 35 mph zone and not risk being pulled over or ticketed. I acknowledge this. There is a practicality gap between what the LEGAL DEFINITION of speeding is and what an officer feels is worth her time to address.
And yet, I stand firm: 36 mph in a 35 mph zone is speeding.
2. Don and Dawn: My husband and I grew up in different states. But by and large, we have similar “accents.” And yet he maintains that “Don” and “Dawn” have different pronunciations. Anytime this subject comes up, my husband pronounces each name slowly and clearly for me so I can hear the obvious to him only difference between them. I do not hear any difference. There is no difference at all. I acknowledge that perhaps there could be a slight diphthong that I am not processing, and yet, even so, both names would be pronounced the same.
3. Steak Temperature: I like my steak on the cooked side. This is a texture issue; steak that is not cooked enough is too gooey for me to handle. I like a steak that is cooked through, with a hint of pink in the middle. A HINT. For most of my life, if I ever ordered steak at a restaurant, I ordered it well done. This has never worked out well for me, because there is a bias against people who like their steak well done. Even at very fancy steak houses, most chefs choose the worst cut of meat – like the shriveled end of a tenderloin with the only bit of gristle in the entire cow – and then cook it until it is black. This is not well done; this is a travesty against meat. Because of this, I have trained myself over the past decade or so to enjoy steak that is cooked less well: medium to medium well. It still only works out some of the time. Usually the steak is undercooked and I have to send it back – which is The Worst.
But if I am paying for a steak in a restaurant, why can I not have the steak prepared the way I want it to be prepared? I pay the same exorbitant price for a steak whether it is cooked medium rare or well-done. Why should my temperature choice result in a sub-par steak? I do understand that perhaps – PERHAPS, I say with immense skepticism, because I think if you simply used a thermometer you could avoid any issues – it is difficult for a chef to know exactly when a steak is well-done. (Although again, when my husband and I make steak in our home, we achieve the exact right temperature every time.) But temperature aside, I should not get a crummy, shriveled end piece of steak while the medium rare folk get the juicy, tender, gristle-free cuts.
My husband says it is my fault. He says I am asking for a crappy cut of meat. When I order medium-well or well-done steak, I am implying that I don’t like steak (I DO, very much, I just like it NOT SQUISHY) and so the chefs think they don’t need to give me a good piece. If you like steak well done, don’t order it, is his thought. This is a dumb take, I say. I am paying for the steak, I should be able to ask for it to be prepared the way I like it.
WITHIN REASON, of course. I am not asking a chef to change his whole recipe. And also, if you know that you are going to produce something crappy, then maybe give me a chance to change my order? I feel like the staff should say, “We don’t cook steak to that temperature. Would you prefer it medium, or would you like to order something else?” Don’t just throw an old slab of tire on a plate and charge $56 for it and call it filet mignon.
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Well. Now I am very fired up.
If you are in a relationship, what are your silly but still completely irreconcilable debates? What are the small, semi-ridiculous topics on which you refuse to give an INCH? If you eat steak, how do you like it cooked?
Friday already, and looking down the barrel of another long weekend! So here are five topics I’ve been thinking about, beginning with MORE CAKE TALK!
A No-Cake Defense (TL/DR: This Is a Me Issue): I loved everyone’s comments on yesterday’s post about choosing my birthday dessert. One thing I additionally loved was how some readers took issue with my husband’s anti-cake stance. I just want to say: I love you. Thank you for defending my cakely honor. You are a treasure and a joy and I feel so cozy and loved.
While not knowing his exact reasons for not wanting to bake a cake, I can speculate. And so I do want to defend my husband a teeny bit. You do not have to accept these reasons! You can still glare in his general direction!
If I am understanding correctly, his first objection is the time. He fears it will take all day to bake a cake, and he doesn’t want to waste a big chunk of my birthday in the kitchen, when we could be doing something else. While perhaps baking a cake should not take several hours, it does always seem to work out that way. At least, it does for me. But then again, I always end up making some silly mistake that requires me remaking some aspect of the recipe.
Also, and this may be projecting, but he might be a little nervous about making a cake. He is not the cake baker in the family; I am. And I am in no way a good role model for The Ease of Cake Baking, in large part because I am always doing something that makes the whole process more difficult (cough cough leopard spots, cough cough rainbow layers). But my husband has never made a cake. I have no doubt he COULD make a cake (he is generally a better direction follower than I am), but for your first cake to be the Replacement Cake for your wife’s birthday, after her previous birthday cake was such a disappointing experience… well. That seems like a recipe (see what I did there) for failure.
However, these perfectly reasonable reasons aside, after I read the umpteenth comment suggesting that maybe my husband should just suck it up and make me the cake I want (I am paraphrasing; everyone reading this is much more tactful), I started to agree. If he has volunteered to make me a birthday dessert, why shouldn’t I ask for the dessert I really want? And I am sure that if I said, “honey, this is what I REALLY want,” he might grumble a bit, but he would make it for me.
So I spent some time looking online for The Perfect Cake Recipe to send him. But the process looking for a recipe to send him made me realize that there is a secret third reason he may be unwilling to make me a cake.
As you may already know, from reading all my food and cake related posts, lo these many years, I am one of those annoying people who doesn’t necessarily stick to a recipe. I might pair a cake from one recipe with a frosting from another recipe. Or I might make a smaller cake than the recipe recommended. Or I might take a cupcake recipe and turn it into a cake. Or I might choose a recipe that calls for poppy seeds in the icing, but I would exclude the poppy seeds. I am comfortable with this, both because I now have some experience in messing around with recipes and because I am comfortable with the idea that it might not turn out. My husband is NOT comfortable with either of these things. He doesn’t have the cake baking experience to draw on, for one thing. But he is also a Supreme Instruction Follower and would find it blasphemous to deviate from a recipe’s explicit directions.
And the thing is, when I search for My Perfect Cake… I can’t find it. It doesn’t exist. Okay, it DOES exist, and Kate found it (thank you!) but it is too large and too expensive for just the three of us. BUT, it’s very nice to know it’s there, if I need it! What I’m saying is the recipe for My Perfect Cake doesn’t exist. There is this perfectly lovely sounding cake, but it calls for lemon extract and I am a lemon purist. But I can’t ask my husband to just… exclude the extract. I mean, you probably can’t just DO that anyway, you’d need to track down other lemon cake recipes and compare various amounts of lemon juice and lemon zest and choose an amount that seems appropriately lemony for this specific cake. I can imagine how overwhelming it would feel if I suggested my husband do that. Even if I did the research, and wrote on top of the recipe, “omit lemon extract; use X tbsp of lemon juice,” he would feel worried that it wouldn’t turn out, and that if it didn’t, it would be HIS fault.
This recipe looks very close to my ideal… but there are so few reviews, and of the reviewers who seem to have actually tried the recipe, it sounds like the cake comes out too dense for what I would prefer.
I do love Sally’s Baking Addiction, and this recipe sounds similar to what I’m looking for and I trust her recipes, although sometimes the cake is a bit more dense than I prefer. But… there’s no lemon curd in this recipe. I want lemon curd. But I don’t think I could just say, “spread some lemon curd in between the layers” to my husband without him feeling like he needed additional, very specific directions to follow. (I actually used this recipe to make my daughter’s seventh birthday cake, and did put lemon curd between the layers.)
Are you beginning to understand that this is not really a problem with my husband trying to deny me the cake of my heart? That it is, instead, an issue of me being too picky?
Like I said, feel free to continue to feel irritated with my husband. But perhaps you can also spare some irritation for me, as well. I am hard to please.
***UPDATE***: I wrote all of the above last night, before my husband got home from work. After sending him the link to Kate’s cake, and deciding that it was really too expensive, and explaining to him that I have been thinking about this particular cake for more than a year, I thought we finally settled on him making me cupcakes. That would be great! Lemon curd filled cupcakes. I explained how to do the filling part, and my husband listened attentively and asked if I would object to him putting pink food coloring in the frosting which strikes me as very adorable. And then thirty or so minutes later, cake clearly on the brain, my husband asked me, “Should I just make you the cake you want?” and I said, “but I thought making a cake was too much?” and he said, “but if I’m going to make cupcakes, I might as well make a cake,” and I said, “yes, please.” And then there was some discussion about my favorite cream cheese frosting and whether I would be amenable to him adding some lemon zest to the frosting (yes) and whether I need homemade curd (no). So I think it is happening????? If there is cake in the offing, I will certainly share all the details with you. (Although cupcakes would also be excellent.)
Surely This Is Not Right: I went to the dentist and noticed this poster hanging prominently on the wall. I do not object to the sentiment, which is lovely. But it raises the question: how do you pronounce “hygienist”?
After spending far too much time listening to online pronunciations of the word, I believe that in British English, the pronunciation is “hy-JEEN-ist.” But in American English, it’s “hy-JEN-ist,” is it not?
In no way is the first syllable “hahy.” Not that I would even know how to pronounce “hahy.” Hah-hee? Hah-high? (My husband thinks this is a way of representing the diphthong of “hy,” but I think there are better ways to represent it than “hahy.”
I suppose this could be one of those words that you have only ever experienced in print and have not yet heard aloud, and when you do finally hear it spoken, the pronunciation is a shock. (Do you have a word like this? Mine is ravine.) But I don’t think that this is one of those cases.
Okay, I still apparently have more to say about this. If you were the person buying wall art for a dental office, a dental office in the United States specifically, wouldn’t you be uniquely aware of the correct pronunciation of dental terms? And wouldn’t you find this EXTREMELY ODD?
Freelance Does Not Mean Free: One of the most… shall we say interesting aspects of freelancing is the money aspect. Some clients are very on top of it, saying things from the get go like, “This is our budget,” or “We typically pay this for this type of project.” Other clients seemingly would never raise the topic if I didn’t broach it first. When it comes to invoicing, some clients are very clear to say, “This looks good, send me your invoice” while others drag out projects for months and would probably never even consider that I should be paid for work completed until I finally say something like, “Great, I’ve included an invoice.” (And I realize that I have a unique privilege of allowing projects to sometimes drag on without pay – and do so only with clients I have had for years and whom I know will pay eventually; it’s not something I would advocate when you are just starting out. And also, for big projects, it is important to ask for a portion [I do half] up front before you begin.) It’s just so fascinating to me that some clients seem completely oblivious to the fact that the work a freelancer does has a price tag.
Aspirations Mini-Update: I have been working toward all my aspirations. Well maybe not all, but many. (I have made progress on all but one of my Personal/Self Improvement aspirations, for instance.) One thing I did was start a very simplistic Excel spreadsheet where I could track the things I wanted to do regularly, if not necessarily daily. Playing the piano and writing and exercising and walking outside. That kind of thing. And what I have noticed is that I cannot do every single thing I want to do daily in a single day. There are just not enough hours in the day. I mean, I suppose I could break up my day in such a way that I could get to everything… but that seems overly rigid and also, to be honest, exhausting. There needs to be some flexibility. For one thing, if I walk outside for 30 minutes then it seems like overkill to also walk on the treadmill. For another thing, if I am really on a roll with, say, writing, I don’t want to STOP just because it’s time to play the piano for fifteen minutes, you know? So I am still trying to feel my way through what is a reasonable way to achieve these goals without achieving them simply for the sake of putting a check mark in my spreadsheet. Perhaps I do need to find a way to create some sort of a schedule, though.
Unusual Snack Foods: One of my all-time favorite snacks is a half a green bell pepper filled with cottage cheese and sprinkled with Lawry’s Seasoned Salt. (We called it “carrot salt” when I was growing up, probably because my mother also sprinkled it on carrots.) (Carrots are also delicious dipped in carrot-salted cottage cheese.)
Neither my husband nor my daughter would touch this snack with a ten-foot pole, but it is delicious and crunchy and full of protein and SO GOOD. I cannot be the only person in the universe (besides my mother) who enjoys it. Have you ever tried this amazing combo? If not, would you be willing to try it? (You won’t hurt my feelings if you say no; I am still very iffy on the chicken thighs situation, so I fully understand New Food Resistance.)
Are there unusual combinations of foods that you like to snack on?
That’s all I have for you today, Internet! I hope you have a fabulous weekend full of cake and weird snacks and reasonable pronunciations!
I know I have written about this before, but at some point in the past few years, I asked my husband if he would please unload the dishwasher on the weekend. It’s not that unloading the dishes is difficult, or time-consuming – in fact, it takes about five minutes, tops, which is exactly the amount of time it takes to steep my favorite black tea. So unloading the dishwasher allows me to feel efficient while also making that five minutes pass by more quickly than it would if I were just staring at the tea bags suffusing the water with their sweet, sweet caffeinated elixir. It’s just that it feels like such drudgery when I do it every single day without stop.
He agreed and for the most part he unloads the dishwasher on weekends without me having to ask. He usually waits until far, far later in the day to unload it than I would choose to – I hate the sight of used dishes piling up beside the sink – but that’s a preference on my part, so I keep my lips zipped.
On weekends that he is on call, I unload the dishwasher. And sometimes I will unload it just because it’s easier to do so than not: This morning, I needed butter for my breakfast, but the butter dish was in the dishwasher. To get it out, I needed to move a bowl and a wine glass – which I wasn’t going to lift out of the rack to free the butter dish and then replace in the dishwasher – and the blade of the blender. And if I was removing the blade of the blender, I might as well put it IN the blender and put the blender away, and by then I had some momentum going so I just did the whole thing.
When my husband unloads the dishwasher on weekends, I always make a point to thank him. But when I unload the dishwasher on weekends, he never seems to notice. (Once, I unloaded half of the dishwasher – my rationale being that I was unloading dishes that he never seems to know where to put; I end up putting them away anyway – and rather than saying, oh hey, awesome, I have less to unload now, he complained that I did the easy part. Sigh.)
It’s not that I necessarily want or need to be thanked. I do it on weekdays and don’t think anything of it. But on the weekends, it’s HIS job, and I feel like I’m doing him a favor. And it would be nice if he at least made note of the favor.
But maybe he thinks it’s odd that I thank him for unloading the dishes at all. Maybe he thinks that there is no need to express gratitude for the completion of routine chores. In general, I guess I agree? It can be highly irritating when someone goes around pointing out all the tasks they have completed, seemingly expecting praise, without acknowledging that others are also going around completing household tasks without naming every single one. We should not have to thank each other every time someone refills the water pitcher or empties the trash or pays the bills or feeds the child.
Then again, I find it bolstering when my husband does express gratitude for something I’ve done. He says “thank you for making dinner” most nights when I cook, which conveys “even if I don’t like this meal, I understand that it required planning and energy and I appreciate those things.” That’s a welcome message. When I put out the trash cans and he thanks me for doing so, I feel better about doing it than all the times I put them out and he says nothing.
Then today I had a realization: He probably feels that “unloading the dishwasher” is MY job, and he’s doing ME a favor… not that it’s a joint job that belongs to me on weekdays and to him on weekends.
I will note that when I initially typed out the first sentence of this post, I wrote “if he would please unload the dishwasher for me on the weekend,” so one can understand how he could arrive at this conclusion.
It’s not a huge deal. It doesn’t make me mad or want to rend my garments or anything. But I do wonder if there is any way to change that perception of task ownership.
Why are the “-able” and “-ible” words so difficult to remember how to spell?
My husband and I have a significant Bedtime Incompatibility. Periodically, it drives me nuts as it is today. It takes the obvious form: each of us has a Preferred Bedtime, and they are different from one another.
I guess you would style me as a Morning Person. I like to wake up early-ish and start my day. To make rising early enjoyable, I like to go to bed at a reasonable time around ten o’clock. Probably, if I didn’t have a child or husband, I would go to bed around nine or nine-thirty. But I DO have a child, whose bedtime (around seven-thirty) combined with my husband’s arrival home from work (around seven) means that I often don’t eat dinner until eight-thirty or nine let alone get into bed at that time. But if left to my own devices, I would go to sleep around ten. And often – yawning and feeling all twitchy in the leg region, which happens when I’m tired – I do part from my husband around ten or ten-thirty, even though he would rather watch another episode of whatever show we’re watching.
My husband is a Night Owl, and would stay up until two or three in the morning if he didn’t have to get up for work. On the weekends, he sometimes DOES stay up that late. Part of it is that he is at work from sixish to sevenish most days, and so he feels that going to bed early means he gets no time to do the things he enjoys (make music, play video games, exercise, watch TV, do puzzles, read). So he has to carve that him-time out of the dark of night. Part of it is that he seems naturally inclined toward night-owlishness. I do think that most people are one or the other, and cannot change without great effort and even discomfort.
For a long time, I hated this difference in our go-to-sleep habits. I felt like it was important for our marriage to be able to fall asleep together. I missed having his warm body in bed with me. I missed the quiet chats that occur when two people are in the dark, trying to fall asleep.
But over the years, I’ve come to accept it, if not outright enjoy it. I often have trouble falling asleep, and even more trouble getting back to sleep if I wake up in the night. And on the nights when we do go to bed together, I find that I am more irritated by him than anything. He keeps MOVING the SHEETS and TICKLING my LEGS. Or he will keep his light on even if he is just looking at his phone (which itself is LIT) and the light bothers me. Or he will turn off his light, out of (grudging) deference to me, but then his phone light will bother me. Or he will fall asleep first and then he will BREATHE and it will keep me awake. Do you see how it is better for me to be deeply asleep before he enters the bedroom?
It is a delight to be my spouse.
All this is to say that I have come around to the fact that we have separate bedtimes. It’s fine.
My husband and I have lived together for nearly twenty years at this point, and we have always had this significant incompatibility. But it’s become more pronounced now that we have child.
What’s bugging me currently is the mornings. My natural wake-up time – if it’s not 4:00 am – tends to be 7:00 am. That’s when I wake up without an alarm. On the weekends, I usually lie in bed until a) I’m hungry or b) I can hear Carla downstairs, and realize I need to go feed her (i.e. prevent her from eating junk instead of a Healthful Breakfast; I fail most days as she is quite stealthy). My husband has more teenagery sleep habits, and would probably languish in bed until noon if he could.
But it makes me so irritated!!! See those three exclamation points? I wanted to add ten or twenty, just to illustrate my level of irritation.
Part of it is that my husband unloads the dishwasher on the weekends; even though it takes literally five minutes out of my day, I do it Every. Other. Day. plus on weekends when he is on call, and having to unload the dishwasher on the weekends as well makes me want to scream. He unloads the dishwasher, and, unsurprisingly, he does so when he feels like doing it, which is NOT on my schedule. I want the dishwasher unloaded FIRST THING so that I can fill it with breakfast dishes and glasses from the night before etc. I try to recognize that this is a Me Thing, and I have never gone so far as to demand that he do this task on my schedule… but it still bugs me.
Part of it is that I get a break from unloading the dishwasher on weekends, but I don’t get a break from feeding Carla. It would be so nice to just NOT have to make her breakfast. (I suppose I could extend a little autonomy in her direction, but so far it hasn’t worked out that way. I think she just wouldn’t eat, if it were her responsibility.) And “making breakfast” is not as simple as it sounds. It requires in-depth questioning and listing of options and cajoling and reminding about things like “eating meals is important” and “it’s good to eat things that have nutritional value in addition to things that have none.” It is A Process, is what I’m saying.
Part of it is that I feel like my husband gets this long, luxurious rest – and all its associated freedom from breakfast-making and tidying and chiding the child about picking up toys/turning off the TV/cleaning up her dishes. Not that I would choose to sleep longer, if I could! I guess I’m just envious. It does, in some ways, feel like he gets the weekends off from his job while I do not. But… my housewife “job” is so minimal! And fairly easy! While his work is neither of those things! So why do I begrudge him a little extra break?
The other part of it, though, is that we can never DO anything as a family until late. This past Sunday, we planned on a family bike ride. I wanted to leave early, before the heat descended. But we settled on 9:30. And then… my husband slept in until nearly 9:00 and it was ELEVEN O’CLOCK before we got out the door, and I hadn’t eaten any breakfast (because I am a Late Breakfaster, and I figured we would be home from our 9:30 bike ride before I got hungry) and it was hot and I was cranky. Why should I have to wait around doing NOTHING just because I have the audacity to wake up early?! And now half the day has been eaten up by Nothing. Not just Nothing, but resentful, pouty Nothing.
Oh! Here’s a point on my husband’s side of things: We will watch a TV show or two after dinner (or, more likely, while he and I scarf down dinner after we put Carla to bed). I am usually struggling to keep my eyes open by the end of the show, and I feel like I express Very Clearly that I am ready for bed. When the show is over, I will say something along the lines of, “Okay, I’m ready for bed! I’m going to head up now!” and then I go into the kitchen and wash the dishes and clean the counters while my husband flips around the channels, checking on sports scores and catching up on news and weather.
Then he will finally come into the kitchen – usually right as I am finished – and express surprise that I have done all the dishwashing/cleaning up. He still needs to prep his coffee and get his lunch together for the next day, and sometimes if I am feeling charitable, I will stay in the kitchen with him and chat. But often I am Done with a capital D and I say, “Good night!” At which point he is miffed! Why am I in such a hurry to go to bed? What did he say to me last night – something like, “Well, you didn’t waste any time.” Excuse me? I just did all the dishes!
Hmm. I am clearly casting this in a Me light rather than a Him light. Try to see it his way.
I am very curious as to YOUR bedtime/wake-up habits. And if you live with someone, what THEIR habits are, and whether they are compatible with yours (and whether it matters).
I am dreaming of date night right now. When we have houseguests, I feel like I never see my husband. I am always in the kitchen cooking or tidying up. And when I am ready to head to bed (not early, etiher! ten or eleven!) he is still chatting with his family and spending time with them, often into the wee hours of the morning. It truly feels like we don’t get more than five minutes alone together when we have visitors. Alas, once our houseguests are gone, my husband is on call for a week. Which means I may not see him aside from a few grumpy minutes here and there for a week! Womp womp.
On top of these things, my volunteer project is ramping up – to the point that I now lie awake looonnnng into the night fretting about décor and staffing and what happens if everyone else gets violently ill the night before the event. You know. Healthy stuff. I’m busy and my mind is on other things, so my mind is not really focused on Quality Spouse Time lately.
All this means that my husband and I are getting kind of desperate for some alone time. So I am going to text the babysitter and see if she is free AS SOON as my event and call week and houseguests are in the rearview!
Shay and Erika are doing a little link up today about date night ideas. My husband and I don’t have particularly exciting dates, but we have had exactly TWO date nights since 2020 – both with other couples – so I am kind of feeling like any time we get alone together counts as a date.
Dinner – We both love food, and so our typical date night usually involves going out to eat. One of our favorite local restaurants just reopened (after closing during the early days of the pandemic), so I’m hoping we might go there. Dining in restaurants still feels… fraught. I am looking forward to warmer weather and the opening of restaurant patios!
Dessert – My husband LOVES sweets, which means that dessert is a non-negotiable part of our date nights. (Like I would negotiate against dessert!) Most often, we grab ice cream after dinner. Near us is a small town with a cute main street we like to visit. There’s a delicious ice cream shop right in the middle, and the weather is getting to the point where we might be able to stroll with our cones even in the evening.
Bookstore – My husband and I both love to read, so our date nights often wind up in a bookstore, where we browse for books together (when we go with our daughter, one of us browses and the other goes with her to the kids’ section) and hand each other books to consider. I usually don’t enjoy going to bookstores. For one thing, I am not a huge fan of standing around while my daughter asks for every toy in the toy section. For another, there are too many books I want to buy, and I get cranky about not being able to take all of them home at once. (Do I have a million unread books in my home already? Yes. Does this alleviate the grouchiness or desire to buy more? Absolutely not.) But when we go to a bookstore on a date, it feels different. It feels like quality time, where he hands me books he might like or books he thinks I might like, and I do the same for him. Plus, there’s the novelty of being in a bookstore in heels and date night clothes that really changes the experience.
TV – My husband and I love to watch TV together. We just started watching Inventing Anna and we’re both hooked. I’ve heard mixed reviews of the series, but the whole story fascinates me so I’m predisposed to liking it. Plus, I think the acting is really top notch. We pause frequently and marvel at Anna’s accent, or ask each other who so-and-so actor is and where we remember him from, or discuss how WILD a certain plot point is. This is not solely a Date Night activity, but it’s still fun.
Games – We also love to play computer games together. There’s a very specific type of game we like, and it’s hard to find games that fit our specifications. We loved the Cube Escape and Rusty Lake games, for instance. I’d describe our preference as “combination of horror/mystery story and escape-room style puzzle solving.” We just started a new one called Reach. (If you have any recommendations, I’m interested!)
Here’s hoping our sitter is available, because I’m getting antsy to spend some time with my husband!
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life of a doctor's wife 
Five (or More) Things Friday
Posted in Blogging, Chief Complaint, day to day ridiculousness, Holidays, I am a prickly pear, Marriage, Parenthood, Randomness, School and Such, Wannabe Writer, Worries, tagged being married to me is so fun, Blogging, case of the grumps, commenting on blogs is hard enough as it is, five for friday, half the fun of marriage is these silly disagreements, holiday angst, if buying new things were a goal I would achieve it every time, kids are bonkers, married life, parenting angst, silly things, the ceaseless passage of time, this too shall pass, weekends, you can be grateful and aware of all your gifts and still feel like complaining now and again there's no law on April 7, 2023| 44 Comments »
1. It’s Friday: Is that a good thing? (I mean, it is Good Friday.) But I find that weekends have a whole different feel to them now that I am a parent who works (very) part-time from my home. No longer do I find them relaxing, as I did when I was not a parent. Nor do I find them as stressful and exhausting as I did when Carla was wee. Now, I kind of see them as My Time to Do Stuff with My Family, Whom I Do Not See During the Week. I have spent the week working and storing up plenty of solitude, and now I want to get out and do fun stuff with my husband and kid. My husband and kid, however, do not feel the same way. They want to retreat to their separate corners and play video games and build with LEGO and make elaborate crafts and tool around on their guitars and watch endless episodes of Bluey on their iPads. I try to give them space, and sometimes I succeed in flopping on a couch and reading a book all day. But other times, I end up doing laundry and making meals and feeling like I am doing the exact same crap I do every other day when I want something different and fun. Not something social, mind you – something different and fun with my family. Really, I want to force them to spend time with me. Maybe now that the weather seems to be turning toward pleasant, I can lure them away from devices with the promise of… what? Bike rides? A trip to the [Local Attraction we’ve visited too many times]? A day trip to see one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural gems? I would be delighted by any of these options. Maybe what I need to do is come up with a big list of Fun Things that we can choose from. BUT WHAT? What fun things are on your agenda for the warmer months? What are some of your favorite ways to occupy yourself (and your family) on the weekend?
2. Overeager Emailers: When I got these two back-to-back emails from Take 5 Oil Change, I had to screenshot them. Which was difficult to do because I was rolling my eyes so hard. Have some chill, Take 5. Also, I have never set foot in a Take 5, which I am assuming is a place where you go to get your vehicle’s oil changed, so I am baffled as to how the company got my email address. Perhaps I should have taken their survey, in hopes that one of their questions might be, “Are we inexplicably spamming you?”
3. Comment Concern: My blog is eating a bunch of legitimate and lovely comments, and sending them to spam. This is happening to multiple commenters, for no apparent reason that I can see (like, it’s not every comment from a specific blogger, and it’s not comments with links or specific terms in them). If you are not seeing your comment, it is because of this, NOT for any other reason. I love you and your comments and I appreciate your taking the time to read and share your thoughts. Meanwhile, I will try to keep an eye on the ol’ spam folder.
4. Upgrade or Not?: In addition to the comment eating, my blog has also become overly exuberant with the ad serving. It is driving me nuts. I cannot even see my post title on my homepage anymore, all I can see is an ad or the space where an ad should be. Sometimes there are even POP UPS, which makes me so teeth-grittingly annoyed I can hardly stand it. I put up with the ads – even though they have, unfortunately, offended some of my beloved readers in the past, for which I am so so apologetic – because I am cheap, and I don’t pay anything for WordPress to host my blog, and I recognize that nothing in life is truly free. HOWEVER. I am growing very weary of the ads. Plus, I have been posting in this space for nearly fourteen years, and maybe it is about time to put some money into it? I don’t know. Maybe I could figure out how to get ads that are in some way relevant to the people who show up here? Or at least get rid of that big banner ad that’s BLOCKING MY CONTENT? Anyway, this is all to say that WordPress is forcing me to consider I am starting to wonder whether I should upgrade to the premium version of WordPress. Have you done that? And, if so, are there pros and cons you care to share?
5. Spring Clean: Carla’s class did a spring cleaning recently and she cleaned out her desk. This is all the writing utensils she found inside her desk. The desk that only she uses. They were, of course, hidden beneath piles and piles of paper and “treasures” and worksheets and brochures for school events and paper plates and craft materials and folders and pencil sharpeners and bits of yarn/pipe cleaner/rubber band. I keep reminding myself that I used to be just as messy/hoardery/disorganized as she is, and yet I have become a moderately tidy adult. I can only hope she follows a similar path.
6. Enduring Grumps: I am in a writing slump. I am in a reading slump. Friendship angst, about multiple friendships. My face looks like I am in the throes of peak puberty. My heels have been hurting again. I have been trying to lose weight and am not losing weight. I went on Facebook for five minutes to check on a friend’s vacation photos and saw a post requesting recommendations for bulletproof backpacks. We keep having thunderstorms (but no tornadoes, so I am counting my blessings) and the wind and lightning stress me out. I still feel pressure to Make Holidays Magical but my husband is the founding member of Dads Deeply Against Excessive Easter Baskets and I don’t want to, like, openly defy him. Except I already bought a few things beyond the few things he knows about. But I didn’t get anything to hide inside Easter eggs, which the Easter Bunny still hides around the house for Carla to find. Is she just going to find empty eggs this year? Is that the most depressing thing ever???? Carla’s new schedule is AWFUL, and even though it’s better than her fall schedule was and even though I am pretty sure we will get used to it based on the fact that we got used to the fall schedule, it’s awful RIGHT NOW. I need new shoes but I feel like all I do is spend money. I have tasks that MUST be completed and yet I keep dragging my feet. The school year is almost over and I have loved this year, and so has Carla which is obviously more important, and I don’t want it to end. The school year is almost over and there is a flurry of end-of-year everything cropping up and every day I get a new event to add to my bursting calendar and it seems like we will never have a free moment again. It is only April and already the humidity makes me want to die.
7. Merlin Bird ID: Do you know about this app? Carla has it on her iPad, and she’s talked about it for years. If we see a bird of uncertain heritage in the wild, she will take note of its characteristics and then look it up in the app later. I guess I always thought that it was similar to a bird book – useful for identifying a bird based on size, shape, color. And it is! But it also has an auditory feature which I discovered after Carla had been regularly leaving her bathroom window open in the middle of winter. When I asked why she was opening her window, she said that she likes to hold her iPad up to the window so it can tell her which birds are in our yard. This feature is SO COOL. My husband and I used it to identify a weird trilling noise that we kept hearing outside our bedroom at night. I thought it was a raccoon and my husband thought it was some sort of creepy insect, but it turns out it was an Eastern screech owl. This app is completely free (although make sure you download it while connected to WiFi omg.)
8. Mail Melee: We have a new mail carrier. I know this because we went on vacation and had our mail held while we were gone. And then when we came home and the mail resumed, we never got the pile of mail we normally would have had after a ten-day absence. I went to the post office to inquire after our missing mail, and the supervisor said we had a new mail carrier. He couldn’t get ahold of her, but when he did, he would ask whether she had our mail. I left my phone number and never heard back. We have since had two days with very full mailboxes, so we are hoping that all the held mail has been returned to us. Although… I am not sure how we would know??? (Usually, it comes in a big pile, held together with a massive rubber band or sometimes stacked in a Post Office bin that we have to return. And it’s always been delivered to the stoop rather than into the mailbox, so it’s very clear that it’s the held mail. The two days of excess mail could have just been… heavy mail days.) My husband said something about going through our bills and seeing which ones we get via mail and then looking in our files to determine about when they normally show up… but that sounds very complicated and also not foolproof. We have also gotten a rather alarming amount of mail that belongs to various neighbors, and at least one neighbor has commented that he has also been receiving mail that doesn’t belong to him. So. Our poor mail carrier seems to be facing a rather steep learning curve.
9. Planless Purchase: I bought these spice mixes at Trader Joe’s… and now I have no idea what to do with them. I tried mixing some of the umami one into sour cream to use as a dip for potato chips… it tasted like nothing. What would you use them for?
10. More Controversial Pronunciations: I loved everyone’s responses to my Enduring Marital Arguments post. It was especially enjoyable to learn how many people have strong feelings about the pronunciation of Don and Dawn (my strong feeling, again, is that they are identical morphemes). I remembered another homophonic disagreement my husband and I have: the pronunciation of the three words Barry, berry, and bury. THESE WORDS SOUND THE SAME. Unless you ask my husband, who says they are all separate and distinct.
Well, that’s all I have for you Internet. Hope you are enjoying your holidays, if you are celebrating this week. Have a wonderful weekend.
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