Annual Pre-Birthday Fret Fest, Activate!

Oh, hi. It is That Time of Year when I begin to fret about Carla’s birthday party. 

Didn’t we already take care of this, you may be wondering? And yes, yes, I thought I had taken care of it way back in April.  Well. The best laid plans, etc. 

To keep you updated: The theme is still Beach, the party is still at our house. It is still ostensibly a pool party. Will we be able to use the pool or will there be thunderstorms? Who’s to say, Internet. Who’s to say. Also, there is no lifeguard because “securing a lifeguard” in April does not mean securing a lifeguard. It means that your need for a lifeguard goes into some sort of system – but not a system accessible to all the people who work at the lifeguard staffing place – and then you have to call back a month in advance of your event and then thrice a week after that to be told, every time, “Call back on [date two or seven days hence] and we should definitely know whether we have a lifeguard for your event.”

I prefer to send out invitations to an event no fewer than four weeks in advance. That deadline flew past, because I was not going to invite umpteen children to my house without a lifeguard on hand. I know my limits. Finally, two weeks before the party, I convinced Carla to cull her list down to five and sent out the invitations. These kids are all good and experienced swimmers, and my husband and I are going to watch them every second. My in-laws will be there to do things that require leaving the pool area – showing kids to the bathroom, getting waters, answering the door for the food delivery. We are not having any parents stay, in part because that’s a whole additional level of stress but also in part because the more people on hand, the less confident I am that anyone will be watching the swimmers. 

Listen. I understand, fully, that the lifeguard staffing place has a lot of factors to consider. First, summer JUST started, and it’s prime lifeguard season, and I’m sure they’ve been scrambling to find enough high school and college kids to staff all their clients’ needs. Plus, I am guessing that their primary business comes from country clubs and community centers and camps, who all need multiple lifeguards for multiple days a week, and I completely see how it would be a priority to staff those bigger clients before my tiny one-time party. 

And yet… if you cannot promise a lifeguard for an event, perhaps do not promise a lifeguard for an event?!

I pulled this meme from somewhere on the internet and I’m sorry about the typo.

The most maddening thing about the lifeguard issue is that when I finally called them, a week before the party, and told them I no longer needed a lifeguard because I couldn’t deal with the uncertainty (I left a message and I promise I was as nice as possible over the phone; it’s not the fault of the people who do the scheduling), they called me back later that day and left a message that said, “We have a lifeguard for you, in case you change your mind.” ARGH. 

Other people probably would have taken the lifeguard staffing person’s promise of “Oh, I’m SURE we’ll have someone for you.” (followed, always, by, “But call back next Monday just to confirm”) as good enough, but I couldn’t do it. 

MOVING ON.

You may have noticed back there a few vents ago that I referenced food delivery. And lo, we are no longer having a taco party. My husband convinced me and Carla that getting takeout from a local restaurant would be better and easier. (And more expensive, probably? But I didn’t do any sort of price comparison because I don’t want to know.) 

Carla also vacillated WILDLY about what kind of dessert to serve. We began, back in April, with beachy cupcakes. Then she decided she didn’t want cupcakes, she wanted some sort of frozen treat. 

Carla did vacillate back to cupcakes and now I’m making watermelon cupcakes.

I couldn’t put together exactly the right LOOK she wanted (I get the feeling her entire vision was based around Ken from the Barbie movie and I could not get that vibe together), so we settled on flamingoes. (There are a ton of cute flamingo options out there, if you are looking for a flamingo theme.) But then she decided she wanted flip flops as part of the theme, too, and then watermelons… and there seem to be plenty of options available if you want to throw a watermelon-themed party or a flip-flop-themed party, but nothing that effortlessly already combines watermelons and flip flops and flamingoes and beach. So now the whole thing feels very chaotic to me. I realize this is a Me Problem, and none of the kids will care, and it will be cute, and the theme will be, loosely, BEACH as intended, and it will be fine and I should waste NO MORE TIME on thinking about this at all. 

Should, of course, being the operative word.

Okay. Food and theme sorted. Now I am in the throes of What If Our Pool Party Becomes an Indoor Party? anxiety, because – as you already Well Know if you’ve read this blog for any length of time – a party at my house is my nightmare. 

Every year since Carla was, I think, three, I have outsourced the party part of her birthday to someone else: a paint-your-own-painting place or an indoor playground or a petting zoo or a nature hike. This is important to me for two very important-to-me reasons: 1. I don’t have to have a bunch of people in my home which I find stressful on cleanliness/food prep/introvert levels, and 2. SOMEONE ELSE TAKES CARE OF THE ENTERTAINMENT. I do not know how to entertain people! I am not entertaining! The only reason I agreed to having a party at my home is because the pool is the entertainment. If we remove the pool from the equation, we have nothing. NOTHING. 

Taking a step back, I think – I really do – that the kids would be okay if they all just hung out in Carla’s room and chatted and did whatever it is tweens do when they are together. But my FEAR is that they will be bored and teenagery and they will have a terrible time and blame Carla for it and she won’t have any friends. 

Yes, yes, ths is catastrophic thinking at its finest (speaking of, of course I have spent many many hours worrying about drowning and other pool related injuries, don’t think I haven’t), I have taken The Threat of the Indoor Party way too far; it will be fine. Even if they are a little bored, it will be fine. Maybe the weather will even be swimmable! Who knows! 

Despite knowing that it will be fine, here is where I am: in a mild state of panic (much milder, I swear, than the all-caps multi-thousands of words might imply), and trying to soothe my panic with rational thoughts and also trying to plan non-boring and fun and cool tweenage things to do just in case they get all bored and mopey and why-did-I-come-herey and I-want-to-go-homey. 

Just to be 100% clear: I FULLY REALIZE I am overthinking things. That is sort of my brand, the overthinking. I promise you that I KNOW I can simply plop the kids down in front of the TV and they will be fine. BUT. It helps me to have A Contingency Plan, and so that’s what I’m trying to assemble. 

Help me? Please?

Here are my ideas so far:

1. A Treasure Hunt. Always a good option. Always fun for me to put together, even if they are stressful and tie my brain in knots. In my experience, group treasure hunts aren’t that great – there’s always one kid who reads really fast and takes over and the other kids are left to trail behind. But I could divide the kids into teams of two and they could compete with one another; in fact, I panic bought a bunch of clearance items from Michael’s that I could use as door prizes. But treasure hunts are a LOT of work and they always take far less time for the kids to complete than they take me to put together. 

2. Truth or Dare. The kids seem to love to play truth or dare, as I did when I was their age. Because I am (tada!) an overanxious parent, I would probably come up with some pre-planned truths and dares and print them on slips of paper for the kids to choose. That way, we could hopefully avoid destructive/dangerous dares and awkward/hurtful truths. (Like “what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?” and “what superpower would you want?” instead of “what’s your most embarrassing moment?” or “who do you have a crush on?”) (By the way, this is probably a worthwhile topic for another day: the intervention of parents in their kids’ lives in order to prevent them from experiencing awkwardness/weirdness/discomfort. I have wildly conflicted feeling about that, and also have a child who attends a school where keeping kids comfortable is the norm, for all the strengths and weaknesses of that approach. Which means all her friends have that as their norm, which makes me feel like I need to uphold it when I am hosting them. Again. Different, MUCH THORNIER topic.)

3. Beach Themed Scattergories. I can make a Scattergories scoring card in Canva and print it out for everyone. This might keep them busy for a while, and I could give prizes to the winners of each round.

4. Who Am I?/Celebrity. This one is fun, but it strikes me as kind of difficult because I don’t know which celebs the kids know. It’s not like they are all sitting around watching Full House and Saved by the Bell and a handful of the exact same shows everyone else is watching the way I did as a kid. TSwift and their math teacher are pretty much the only people I can think of that they are all guaranteed to recognize. (They also all probably know our current and former Presidents, but since we all come from different spots on the political spectrum, I don’t think that’s a good option here.)

5. You vs the Birthday Girl? Originally, I thought it might be fun to do something like, “who knows the birthday girl best?” but I would want to be careful not to weight it too heavily in favor of Carla’s best friend. So I’m thinking of a game that awards points for things they can compare, like, “has the same number of letters in her name” or “has the same color eyes” or “has bigger feet” or “is wearing earrings” or things along those lines??? 

6. Nail Polish Spin the Bottle. I saw this on a website somewhere and to be honest, I’m not exactly sure how it works? I think the gist is, you line up ten bottles of nail polish, then spin a bottle of clear polish in the middle, and then you have to paint one toe or fingernail the color you land on. This requires a lot of nail polish… but I could get some from the dollar store. My biggest concern with this game is that the kids will get nail polish on the carpet. 

7. Guess That Tune. We no longer have an Alexa, so we can’t play Song Quiz. But my husband could probably set something up and the kids could keep track of who wins. I don’t know though – seems like a lot of work for a small payoff. 

8. Hide the Candy. I could totally buy a bunch of small, wrapped candy (like tootsie rolls, hork) and hide those all over the house. I feel like maybe Elisabeth did this for a party in the near-recent past, and I recall reading it and feeling astounded by its genius and its simplicity.

9. A Craft. The craft store (yes, I did go to both Michael’s AND the craft store, what of it) had some little flamingo suncatcher crafts on clearance: buy one get TWO free, and that was a theme appropriate deal I could not pass up. It is quite young for the kids – you just paint a plastic thing – but it’s On Theme and it could be something to do. A LAST RESORT, if you will. If we don’t do this craft during the party, I will pop the packages into the kids’ favor bags.

10. Poke a Prize. Carla mentioned this idea briefly – once – awhile ago, and I kind of mumbled and changed the subject, because it is TOO much work, and it also requires some sort of competition so the kids can pick a prize. I did it once in 2020, and it was glorious, and I plan to never do it again.

Okay, here is where you come in. Do any of these games sound reasonable? (We are not going to discuss whether my need for A Contingency Plan is reasonable.) Do any of them sound like instant party sinkers? Do you have any other Awesome Tween Appropriate Games or Activities in your back pocket? Is having gifties/prizes a good idea (to incentivize participation) or a terrible idea? (They will all also get identical treat bags at the end of the party.) I was kind of planning on making sure each kid gets one prize, but maybe that’s… infantilizing? Eleven-year-olds are VERY aware of being babied, based on my limited experience. And, I mean, a pencil case is fun but is your life going to be ruined if you don’t get one?

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Noises

Our old house had its share of irritating and unpleasant and downright unsettling noises. Our old fridge had some sort of short in the electrical panel that regulated the temperature, and would utter random musical trills at odd moments throughout the day. We never really knew what would set it off; sometimes it would be silent for weeks, other times there would be only minutes or seconds between its three-note plaintive bleat. 

The neighbor whose fence backed up against our backyard had a dog who liked to bark every time he went outside. Every afternoon, the neighbor would let him out. And then he would bark persistently until she let him back in, which might be an hour or so. Sometimes his barks would be punctuated by her angry voice yelling at him to knock it off. Poor dog. 

Occasionally, I would hear an ominous buzzing from somewhere in my bedroom walls. I was the only person who ever heard it. Only once did the exterminator find a nest of yellowjackets, but I did call him anxiously MANY times throughout the years. 

It should be no surprise that our new house has its own symphony of noises. I’ve related some of them here – like the attack robin that has been body slamming our window all spring. And our doorbell, which had some sort of short in the wiring and would issue a loud buzzing at odd hours of the day and night. It took a trained electrician an ungodly amount of time to figure out how to fix it, but we did get a replacement doorbell that works and doesn’t wake us up with intermittent buzzing.

What DOES wake us up, however, is the hood fan in our kitchen. The kitchen in this house was one of the things I fell in love with when we first toured the place. It is huge, it has all of these top-of-the-line and beautiful appliances. The stove has a gorgeous vent hood above it. 

However, the vent is suffering some sort of electrical short, and comes on by itself every so often. It did this in the early days when we moved in, but then stopped for several months. Every few months, it seems to recall that it’s broken, and starts up again. Often in the middle of the night. Our house has excellent acoustics, so even though it’s in the kitchen, I wake up immediately when it goes on in the middle of the night. Sometimes it will stay off for a few hours, sometimes only a few minutes. 

Since I only just had the appliance repair person out here (to look at my ovens, which cost me $300 to learn that they heat appropriately even though that is not my experience with them), I am loathe to call him back to tell me it will cost several hundred/thousand dollars to fix the hood vent issue. So I have been trying stopgaps. With my dad’s help via email, I dismantled the components and cleaned them. This seemed to help for a few days and then the fan started coming on with renewed vengeance. The only thing that seems to help is turning off the power source at the breaker box, which “resets” it for awhile. We’ve had silence for more than a week now; how long will it last?

Our furnace also makes very odd noises. I’ve questioned the electrician, the HVAC person, and my dad about the noises and they all seem to think it’s a simple matter of the ducts expanding and contracting with the change in air temperature. I’ve mainly gotten used to the loud metallic rumbling and popping sounds; they do happen less frequently now that we use the air conditioner more than the heater.

Over Memorial Day weekend, during which we had a barbecue with my parents, we noticed a trilling sound coming from the trees. It was very charming and pastoral, a lovely summer sound. My mother thought it might be a tree frog. After my parents left and I went to bed, I noticed that whatever it was had set up camp directly outside my bedroom window. It was calling back and forth with a fellow critter and it was no longer charming – it was an ear-piercing squawk that cut through the silence at arrhythmic intervals so that my brain could not get used to it. At first I thought it was a racoon, because how could such a loud noise come from something as small as a frog? But then, after playing the racoon sounds at it to get it to LEAVE THE VICINITY, I realized the calls weren’t quite the same. I looked again for tree frog sounds and found this video, which is identical in pitch and cadence to the song of the frog who lives in my yard. Playing racoon sounds at it seems to help; apparently, racoons are the frog’s natural enemies. 

The most unpleasant of the sounds is human, however. Our new next door neighbors suffered from a catastrophic house fire shortly before we moved in, and their house has been undergoing a complete renovation for the past year. Aside from the lovely port-a-potty in their driveway, the worst thing (for us) about this renovation is the presence of construction workers. They arrive SO EARLY, even on the weekends. But worst of all: one or more of them have a disturbing problem with either phlegm or morning nausea, and so the mornings are often punctuated by loogie hocking, retching, and vomiting sounds. IT IS A DELIGHT. 

There was one Sunday morning when my husband and I were torn from our sleep at sixish by a noise. We both sat up and looked at each other with sleepy horror, certain that it was the sound of our child barfing in her bed. Fortunately for us, it was just the construction people, exorcising whatever demons they seem to bring to work with them. 

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A Very Silly Thing I Am Angsting Over

Through a combination of targeted approaches over the past six months, I feel like I have effectively reduced my overall anxiety level. I notice some anxieties no longer really bother me at all – they only linger in expectation form, like a phantom anxiety that I expect to bubble up but never does. (Perhaps this is a brand NEW anxiety, although it doesn’t ACT like anxiety.) 

Other anxieties remain. I think it is impossible to live a life 100% free from anxiety; even the most laid-back people in my life, after all, have their Things. But sometimes the things I stress about are so SILLY, worrying about them seems completely inexplicable… and yet I cannot stop bumping up against them, like a ring I twist unconsciously on my finger or a mosquito bite I can’t help but scratch. 

I am going to share the current mosquito bite with you, in hopes that a) putting it into words acts as a sort of soothing salve and b) I am not the only person who angsts over things that are ridiculous yet nonetheless persistently irritating. Please. Please. Tell me all the ridiculous things that keep you awake at night.

A bunch of my loved ones are gathering to celebrate A Momentous Occasion and I cannot join them. Out of some sort of mishmash of FOMO and Wanting To Show I Care, I suggested to the host that maybe I could supply breakfast for one morning when everyone is together. 

The host responded with positivity and gratitude. Yes, my overture would be welcome and appreciated.

Almost immediately, I regretted giving in to this generous impulse. Because I am NOT GOOD AT THIS KIND OF THING. This is a task that requires phone calls and guessing what other people might want in terms of quantity and flavor. This is a task that requires, possibly, using DoorDash or UberEats or one of the many food delivery services I have never once used in my life. This is a task that requires evaluating, based on online information, whether a caterer/restaurant/café is going to provide good food and good value. 

The Occasion is taking place in a state I have never visited. Everyone is staying in an Air BnB together. It seemed, in my head, like it would be fairly easy to order donuts or bagels or breakfast sandwiches for everyone to be delivered to the house. But I was wrong! 

My first thought was to use Goldbelly to order something. I’ve used Goldbelly for various food gifts in the past, and it always seems to work out. (Unless my parents and sibling are shielding me from the awful truth…) But a) I couldn’t find what I wanted for under $250, which was more than I intended to spend, and b) my husband thought I was a huge weirdo for choosing that option when I could just order from someplace local. 

Oh. Okay. Right. 

So I researched some local places. Is it reasonable to put all my faith in online reviews and personal reaction to company websites???? Reasonable or not, that is where I put my faith. 

The first place I called took a message and never returned my call. When I called back, they said they were in the middle of a busy period and could I call back later. The second place I called rang and rang and rang. The third place I called was an on-site caterer, and they apparently only cater to their specific site. The first place, which I called a third time, once again took my information and never called me back. 

I decided I would order from Panera, which has a simple online order form and would deliver the food for me. And also, Panera isn’t, like, special or anything, but it’s decent. However, I mentioned this plan to someone whose opinion I trust. The response was an instantaneous and very firm, “Don’t do that,” and a quick google search to locate a fourth place (well, fifth, if you count Panera, which I am not counting so I’m not sure why I’m typing this parenthetical) for me to call. 

If I could have had this friend call the fourth place for me and place the order, I would have. I was Done, Dee Oh En Ee, with this task, except I wasn’t because the only thing worse than calling yet another breakfast place was telling the host I was reneging on my offer. Don’t think I didn’t strongly consider it. 

The fourth place answered the phone! They could put together a breakfast that sounded good! And they could deliver! They quoted me a price, although they “didn’t have the price sheet in front of them, so they were just estimating” and I said let’s do this. 

I emailed the host of The Occasion and let her know what I was planning, and confirmed the correct date and time and location. She responded with a thumbs up. (Not a literal or emojical thumbs-up, but with an affirmation that I was doing something that worked with her plans.)  

It seems to me that Other People have no problem with tasks like this. Either they would call Panera from the get-go, or they would quickly and easily find the exact perfect place to order breakfast from and order breakfast from that place, or they would tell the host “sorry, it’s not working out, can I contribute another way,” or they wouldn’t offer to provide breakfast in the first place, like a chump. So part of the anxiety stems from feeling like I am making a big messy ordeal out of something that should be SIMPLE and STRAIGHTFORWARD. And the other part of the anxiety stems from fear that I am going to fuck it up somehow. 

Today, the fourth place called me and took my credit card information. The price they charged me was quite a bit higher than the quote, but at that point, what could I do? I was already locked in. The date of The Occasion is too near to go back to the drawing board, and I am too worn out from calling all these places and thinking about this for WEEKS to contemplate doing anything else. 

And now I am waiting, very anxiously, hoping that the delivery goes as planned, and the food I ordered is good, and that I ordered ENOUGH FOOD, I am not even going to TELL YOU how much I ordered or for how many people because I am so stressed about it and so worried you will say OMG SUZANNE THAT IS WAY TOO MUCH/TOO LITTLE FOOD.

I even texted a family member who will be in attendance at this Occasion, and let her know that I’d placed the order and it was all set to be delivered at a specific time and directed to the host… even though this family member did not ask for this information, or volunteer to help in any way, and I do not want to make her feel like it’s now, somehow, HER responsibility. 

Also: let me be clear. I fully realize this is not about me. The Occasion is… A Momentous Occasion for my loved one, and there is a whole big to-do going on that has nothing to do with my measly breakfast contribution, and a crappy breakfast is not going to make or break an entire long weekend of celebrating. I GET THIS. My brain understands. But my body is not on board! It is all riled up. The My Breakfast Contribution aspect of The Occasion is all I can think about! What if the food is terrible? What if it feeds only half of the guests? What if everyone gets food poisoning?! (Food poisoning could break a weekend, I suppose.) Why am I worrying about such a small slice of the overall pie of The Occasion? WHY?????? Whatever it is, it will be a blip at most. (Unless food poisoning.) (Please, God, let there be no food poisoning.)

My husband says, “It’s the thought that counts.” And. Well. Sort of? But also… I don’t want to be The Person Who Sent Shitty Breakfast (or diarrhea, which is an entirely different kind of shitty breakfast).

I should have just kept my dumb mouth shut! I should never have offered to do anything! I should have simply offered to send cash to help fund An Event! 

This is the kind of thing that is itching and ITCHING and I cannot scratch it. I want to moan about it to my husband. I want to text about it to my friends. I want to call the host of The Occasion and triple check that I got all the details right and get her to tell me that it won’t even matter if it’s crap because everyone will be drunk on mimosas, or have her tell me that a third of the guests suddenly can’t make it, or have her assure me that there’s tons of other food in the house just in case I didn’t order the right amount (HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT AMOUNT TO ORDER OMG). I want to call my family member who will be on site and ask her to text me photos. I want to FLY TO THE STATE AND BE AT THE OCCASION AND HANDLE THE WHOLE THING IN PERSON OMG.

At least The Occasion will be over soon and I will no longer be troubled by the possibilities; I will know the outcome (because you know I am going to pester my family member until I get a report), and hopefully the reaction will fall somewhere in the range of “meh, that was okay” to “well, that was a pleasant little breakfast spread!” 

At the very least, I hope no one thinks, “Wow, we should have just gone to Panera.”

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Five for Friday

It’s Friday! Here are five things on my mind. Be aware they are mainly about packing; forewarned is forearmed.

• We have closed on the new house! This is very exciting and also very anticlimactic as we will not be able to move in for more than a month. (One of the things we did to “sweeten the pot” when we made our offer was to allow the sellers to stay an extra month. In this market, we made the best offer we could and our realtor said this would help, so we did it.) People keep asking how closing went. “Were there any surprises?” my dad wanted to know. Um. No? It makes me a little nervous, how well it went, because people seem surprised that it was so seamless. A notary met us at my husband’s hospital, we signed a billion papers, then we wired over the down payment. Simple. I think? But all this interest in whether it went well makes me uneasy. Did we overlook something important? WERE there surprises and we just didn’t register them as such? Was it too easy???? Maybe everyone’s so interested because we didn’t make a big deal of it. Because of the anticlimax. 

• I finally packed a box. It was MUCH HARDER than it should be. I decided, after fretting all over the blog about it, that I would start with the guest room closet. We don’t use the stuff in that closet. There are books in the closet, plus old fancy clothes we will probably never wear again, plus lots of other things. I could totally empty it out, was my naïve thinking. Well. I did manage to fill a giant bag of To Donate items, and half-fill another giant bag with trash. But then I had to stop. The items in the closet are either too big to fit nicely into a box (my daughter’s sewing machine, for example) or they require some input from my husband (do we really need to keep all those home improvement books?) or I feel like they might actually have alternative uses during the move (like all of the extra towels and blankets – those could be used to cushion things, or wrap up delicate items right?) (as I am typing this, it is clear I should get a box, grab some of the extra towels, and start packing delicate items). So I ended up abandoning the guest room closet. But! I did manage to clean off the top of my desk in my office and get some tchotchkes off the shelves, like my potato pig and my skier tile. I packed three four boxes of office stuff and made little piles of leftover stuff (“random important things,” “shred or file?,” and “keep”) (why “keep” is separate from “random important things” I’m not sure I can articulate, but they are different) that are now taking up all the real estate on my desk. I haven’t figured out yet what to do with the items inside the desk – but maybe they can stay there! 

• I also cleaned out the top shelf of our pantry, on which lived an assortment of things like cookie cutters, the popcorn popper, an ice cream machine, and a thousand cake pans. How many cake pans does one person need? I usually make layer cakes for birthdays, so I did not even THINK about getting rid of any of the regular cake pans. And we probably don’t need two springform pans, but it’s good to have a backup in case I have some sort of emergency that can only be addressed with multiple cheesecakes. There were a few things that I have literally never used – two Bundt pans, a tart pan, and a Madeleine pan – and probably should consider donating, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it yet. Maybe the me who lives in our new house makes Bundt cakes all the time! I threw all these things, alongside a pizza peel, some disposable grill pans, and some plasticware I use solely when I make food for other families, into two boxes and topped them with some insulated grocery bags. (I did have a moment where I thought, might we NEED the insulated grocery bags during the move? But I pushed past it. They are on the very top of the box anyway, for easy access.) I was also able to clean out half of the drawer under the oven (what do you keep in the drawer under the oven? or do you use it as a warming drawer as I think it is intended to be used?), in which I keep additional cake pans (I have SO MANY cake pans), brownie pans, and loaf pans. (Have I ever used a loaf pan? Maybe once or twice, to make banana bread. Certainly not enough times to require THREE loaf pans.) So that’s two more boxes packed. (This is on top of the glassware I was able to pack away. We have a bunch of wine glasses and champagne flutes that we got for our wedding, nearly 14 years ago, and we somehow had kept ALL THE BOXES, ready to spring into use at this very moment.) (There are still a bunch of martini glasses and non-fancy Champagne flutes in the glassware cupboard that I will have to deal with, as well as an entire shelf’s worth of crystal goblets that I inherited from someone’s grandmother.) (At what point am I no longer actually writing parentheticals, but am instead continuing on with this bullet point? It seems I cannot stop.) Next up in packing: the winter clothes, which should probably have been the first thing I addressed (I know you all said BOOKS but I have not been able to bring myself to do that yet), but which I have not, in fact, addressed. The thing is that I am PACKING THINGS and hopefully the momentum will continue to build.

• One thing we want to do before we move in is to install new flooring. The carpet in the house is uniformly kind of… tired. Which happens after you’ve lived in a place for more than a decade! Especially when you have children and a dog! I get it! But I want fresh, clean carpet. Plus, the downstairs has different flooring in nearly every room, which I personally hate, especially because the new house has a really nice flow from room to room so the flooring shifts are extremely obvious and choppy. I want one seamless type of flooring. I know from experience that once all the furniture is in place, the idea of moving it again to install new flooring will be too awful to bear. So! We are getting everything installed before we move in. Supposedly. The catch – there is always a catch – is that manufacturing and shipping delays mean we need to order the flooring NOW if we want it to be installed before we move. It is surprisingly stressful to try to pick out flooring when you don’t have access to the space it will live in and when you are basing your decision off of a single 2” by 3” rectangle. Also surprisingly difficult to choose between two options that look very nearly identical. I think I have landed on “it doesn’t really matter, either will be fine.”

• My orchid is planning to re-bloom! Here is a non-moving bullet point! This is the orchid I repotted a few months ago. It is so happy that it has decided to delight us all with new blossoms. The process seems to be rather slow, but I doubt it will delay blooming until we move. I am a little anxious about trying to transport it, but it seems to be a determined and sturdy orchid so we’ll see what happens.

In the background there you can see the newest plant acquisition, a mother-in-law’s tongue.

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Millennial Moment

One of the differences in my personality vs my husband’s is that I expect to figure things out as I go, and he prefers to know things in advance. Say we are going to a concert in the park. He will go online, map out the directions, look at parking. He will probably visit the park website to see if there is any information about parking. This is all fine and good and useful. I, on the other hand, would probably plug the park address into my navigator on the way to the concert and figure out parking when I get there. I trust that most things will be easy enough to figure out as you go along, and I think I’ve mainly been right about that. This is not to say that my husband’s methodology is wrong – and it has plenty of benefits. It’s just different. 

When it was time to wire our down payment to the title company, I figured it would be pretty intuitive. Just go to the bank with the wiring instructions, and the money would be wired. Easy peasy lemon squeeze. My reasoning is that banks deal with this kind of thing all the time. Sending a wire may be an unusual occurrence for us, but this is something banks do all the time. There must be systems in place.  

My husband was not willing to leave it at that and had me ask the title company agent what we should do. (He was in the hospital, so I was left to this task.) The title company agent told me that we needed to go in a day or two early, to make sure the money was wired on the date of closing, but that any teller should be able to make the wire transfer. This satisfied me, and since I was the one doing the actual wire transfer, I felt good about it. 

This, my friends, is what is known as “foreshadowing.”

But. If a blog is good for anything, it is for sharing one’s most humiliating moments publicly and in perpetuity.

Two days before our closing, I went to the bank. 

I need to pause for a moment and describe the bank to you. You walk in the door and are immediately greeted by a small welcome desk. I have been a patron at this bank for more than a decade and I don’t think I have ever seen a human at the welcome desk, but it is there just in case. The welcome desk is positioned in roughly the center of the bank. To the left are offices; to the right is a big upside-down-L-shaped bank of counters behind which the tellers stand. There are spaces for at least eight tellers; on this day there were two tellers in attendance which is neither here nor there but between that and the welcome desk, I’m guessing this branch may have staffing issues. In front of the tellers is a big open space for patrons to wait in a cordoned off multi-server queue. There is also a large desk in this area that has pens, deposit slips, and advertisements for various services the bank offers; this desk does not feature prominently in the story to follow, but I included it in the drawing so I feel like I need to describe it to you. I have included a rendering of the interior of the bank for your reference. It is not to scale.

Two days before the closing on our new house, I went to the bank. I stood in line to wait for a teller. One teller was, I think, counting money using a very loud machine. Thpthpthpthpthpthpthp went the bills as the machine organized them into neat stacks. The only other teller was helping a very elderly man who had visible hearing aids. He was having trouble communicating with the teller and kept asking her what she’d said. I felt bad for this poor guy who could hardly hear, especially with all the noise of the money counting machine, which would fall silent and then comically renew its thpthpthp efforts every time the teller began to speak. 

When I’d arrived, it was just me and one other person. But as I waited for the elderly man ahead of me to finish his halting interaction with the teller, people filed in behind me. The second teller finished counting money and took her position at the drive through window. The elderly man finished his business and I was next. 

I explained to the teller that I needed to wire money for a down payment on a house. 

“Oh,” she said, “mumble mumble something.” 

Aha. So it wasn’t that the elderly man was hard of hearing, it was that the teller did not know how to project her voice through the plexiglass window and across the counter. Or perhaps a lethal combination of both.

I asked her to repeat herself. 

“I can’t help you with that,” she said, more loudly, and in that forced-calm way that makes it seem like it’s my fault for not being able to hear her. “You need to meet with a banker.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’d like to meet with a banker then.”

“You have to go sign in on the whiteboard,” she said.

“The whiteboard?”

She motioned toward the front of the bank. “The whiteboard. Right when you come in. At the front, by the door.”

Okay. I thanked her and went back to the front of the store and looked for the whiteboard.

Let’s all take a minute and ask ourselves what a whiteboard might look like. This is what I pictured:

I could not find a whiteboard near the front of the bank. I looked around, scanning the walls, scanning the welcome desk. 

“Right there,” the teller called. She had been watching me and was now directing me across the heads of many people waiting for her. 

I looked. I turned in a circle, panic building as I continued to not see a whiteboard. Or anything resembling a whiteboard. Or even a clipboard or a sign up sheet or a notepad. The teller pointed, which was, ironically, pointless, because she was all the way across the room. “Right there! Right in front of you! The whiteboard!”

Internet, I cannot even describe to you my bafflement. There was a desk and NOTHING ON IT. Where was this whiteboard that she could see and I could not? It was not on the desk, it was not on the floor. I was sure – SURE – that the teller thought it was there, because it was normally there, but maybe no one had put it out yet that morning? I could feel the eyes of all the people in the line, waiting for their banking needs to be addressed by this lone teller or perhaps waiting to find out how long we could keep up this hilarious prank.

“RIGHT THERE,” the teller yelled across the bank. Finally, in a fit of descriptive genius she said, “Leaning against the wall!”

I looked to my left. Against the wall indeed something leaned. Was it a whiteboard? Apparently, in this teller’s mind, it was. I will let you be the judge:

I will share my opinion: This is not a whiteboard. This is a fucking A-frame sign that my eyes dismissed as an advertisement.

The sign was leaning against the wall just to the left of the door. Leaning, out of eyeline, as though it had been closed up for the day. It was not standing on top of the welcome desk, which would not have transformed it into a whiteboard, but would possibly have caught my eye.

I have added an X to the diagram of the bank, indicating the location of the not-a-whiteboard:

“This?” I asked, gesturing to the sign that I had not even acknowledged because it bore so tenuous a relationship to the word “whiteboard” in my mind, my face by now aflame and my pulse rapid in my throat. The horde of bank patrons looked on as the teller said, in tones of my-god-I-thought-I’d-have-to-hit-you-over-the-head-with-it, “Yes.”

I like to think that I would have eventually noticed and examined the sign, had I not been so completely befuddled by the spotlight of the teller’s attention. But perhaps I really am that dumb; who’s to say.

“Oh I see,” I said, not sure whether I was speaking to her or the other patrons or myself, “I just scan it and then sign in that way?”

A woman materialized behind the welcome desk. She would have been much more welcome, to me at least, a few moments prior to this little drama. 

“Hi,” she said smoothly. “If you just scan the QR code, you’ll be able to sign in. You’ll get a few questions and I can walk you through how to answer them.”

I was so flustered I could hardly see. My hands were trembling under the pressure of all those eyes. But I managed to open my camera and scan the QR code, like the tech-savvy millennial I pretend to be. 

“It should pre-load a number in your text messages, and you just hit send,” the woman directed, her voice low and soothing as though I might at any moment startle and take flight or maybe bare my teeth at her and growl. She was there to avert another scene as much as she was to help. 

I dutifully sent the text; I was so discombobulated that I honestly don’t know if I could have figured out what to do by myself. 

I understand and value technology. I do. But just because a technological tool may make simplify or improve workflow for the staff of a company doesn’t mean it is useful or workable for its customers. If I hadn’t been so publicly floundering, I don’t know that I would have gotten any help. I might still be there, in that bank, looking for an invisible whiteboard.

“You’ll get a text,” the woman explained, “and you just need to answer ‘yes.'”

A few long seconds passed and I got a reply text with some ridiculously simple question, like “Do you have an appointment today? 1. Yes 2. No” and the woman, reading over my shoulder said, “Now, type in a 2 and hit send.” She walked me through the remaining questions, all equally basic – “What are you here to do? 1. Deposit 2. Set up account 3. Withdrawal 4. Other” and “What is your name?” and “Do you have an account here?” etc. I could feel the eyes of the remaining patrons on me, curious to learn just how much help I really needed or possibly feeling grateful they were safely on the other side of the crowd control stanchions and far away from this check-in process.

Finally, I reached the end of the text questions – the “sign in process” – and I got a text that said, “Thank you! A banker will be with you shortly!”

That’s when the calming woman said, “Great! Thank you for signing in. I can help you right now.”

Picture me blinking rapidly as though something had short-circuited in my brain. 

I followed her back to her office. We sat down. I explained to her why I was there: we would be closing in two days, my title company advised me to come and set up the wire in advance. 

“Oh, we can’t pre-schedule a wire transfer,” she said. 

I stared at her. “But… we haven’t signed closing documents yet. I don’t want to wire the money until the date of closing.”

She nodded. “I understand. But the wire transfer occurs the same day we schedule it.” She left her office briefly to double check that this was true with a colleague. 

When she returned, she smiled at me pityingly.

“You’ll have to come back in two days,” she said. “I’ll make an appointment for you, so you don’t have to go through that again.”

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Tape, or Transaction at the UPS Store

You know something I just take for granted? That people understand how to behave at an ATM. Like, you keep as large a distance as humanly possible between yourself and the person who is currently withdrawing money, right? That’s the unofficial but universally acknowledged acceptable behavior while waiting your turn at an ATM.

I went to the bank this morning, and the drive-up ATM was out of order, so I had to go to the ATM that’s on the outside of the bank. The best and most logical place to stand is to the side of the ATM, which allows the person at the ATM to keep the person waiting in their peripheral vision. Plus, if you were to stand directly behind the person at the ATM, you would be in the street, which seems unsafe.

Today, a dude stood RIGHT BEHIND me, and he was not in the street, which means that he was maybe three feet away. I felt Very Uncomfortable, and tried to convey this by looking fearfully over my shoulder at him several times. He was not deterred. I thought about asking him to give me some space but didn’t because maybe that would just speed up the mugging. My thoughts did not deter him either. I did all my business while he was standing there, practically breathing down my neck. To be fair, he neither mugged nor murdered me, so perhaps my anxiety was unwarranted. But still. A person doesn’t know she won’t be mugged until she ISN’T, and standing right behind a person while she withdraws money doesn’t give strong I’m Not A Mugger vibes.

Another thing I take for granted? Free shipping. Amazon has really made free shipping something I expect, to the point that I will actively Not Buy something if there is an associated shipping cost. I mean, not always, but usually. 

Along with free shipping, Amazon has made it so easy to return things, that I am beginning to take the whole process for granted. 

Do you remember a few years ago when you’d have to print out a shipping label AND some sort of packing slip, and you’d have to pack your returns up neatly and take them to the post office? Now, in most cases, you don’t even need a box! All you have to do is take the item itself to one of Amazon’s designated return locations and hand it to someone and off you go. Easy peasy. 

SEEMS easy peasy, doesn’t it? Joke’s on you! The blue item turns out to be UNTRUE except in limited cases.

So when I returned some shoes recently, I didn’t really examine the fine print. Sure, they were a Zappos order, but Zappos is owned by Amazon, so… same thing, right? Apparently not. 

I guess I should have paid more attention to these very clear instructions before I trotted off to the UPS Store with my untaped box.

I took my shoes in their boxes, in their packing boxes, to the UPS Store. This is a UPS Store that I go to multiple times a year, by the way. The person who is typically staffing the desk never recognizes me. Never. “Have you ever shipped with us before?” he asks, every single time. There is a weird quirk with my parents’ address where it does not show up in the UPS system, even though UPS definitely ships things to my parents, and so every time I ship things to them, I have to tell him, “Your system says this address doesn’t exist, but it does” and yet even with this disclaimer he is baffled and concerned every time.

Listen, I realize that this lovely person, who is if not friendly then at least not actively unfriendly and who always helps me complete the transactions I am there to transact, sees dozens of people each day. I am but one cardboard droplet in a sea of boxes, so I don’t really expect him to KNOW me or anything. I am not that memorable, that’s fine. But I guess I am a little surprised he doesn’t remember the “this address doesn’t exist” thing. Especially because we go through the whole rigamarole two or three times a year where I say, in advance, that their address isn’t in the system, but they still get packages I send them, and he looks at the system and says in obvious surprise, “My computer says there is no address here” and I tell him how my parents live in the middle of nowhere but they DO get UPS shipments and know their UPS delivery person very well, and he opens his eyes very wide and says, “I guess you’d have to get to know each other really well in the middle of nowhere!” and I agree and he says, in a tone of deep skepticism, “Well, if you’re sure it will get there, I’ll override the system” and I say that’s perfectly fine, I’m sure they will get the package, and then he mispronounces my parents’ street. It is a well-honed routine that I now know by heart. But I guess he probably sees a lot of things that are much more noteworthy. Anyway, the whole thing amuses me. 

This most recent visit, I put down my two boxes of return shoes and held out my return code for him to scan. He said, “You have to tape the boxes shut.” I looked at him.  

“Do you have some tape on you?” he said, which I thought was a very amusing question. No, I did not have tape on me. 

“Well, I can do it for you, but it will cost a dollar.”

While I thought about this new development, he added, “If you pay cash. And it’s two dollars if you pay with credit card.” 

I looked at him. While it is more likely for me to have cash on me than packing tape, I did not have any cash at that time. 

“I guess I will have to pay for it with credit card,” I told him. And honestly, good for the UPS Store for pushing back on these return policies and saying that they deserve to be paid for the time it takes their employees to deal with returns. Irritating to me, because now I have to pay for it, but I am a quick learner and will not make the same mistake next time.

He looked at me, incredulous that I would pay two dollars (or maybe it was two dollars per box? I’m not sure) instead of paying with cash or just whipping out a roll of pocket tape and taping the boxes my own damn self.

“I guess you could buy a roll of packing tape for $3.99,” he suggested.

Okay, yes, that’s a better use of my money. Let’s do that.

The most sadistic roll of tape you’ve ever met.

I pulled a roll of UPS brand packing tape off the shelf and handed it to him. He unwrapped it for me. “Let me start this for you,” he said. “It can be a little tricky.”

I mean, it’s tape, not assembling a supercomputer. But thank you for your service, my dude.

“You want to make sure that the tape always stays behind these little notches,” he instructed earnestly, because perhaps I did not know how packing tape works. He’s never seen me before, after all; all he knows about me is that I’m too dumb to tape my boxes before dropping them off and too unprepared to keep a roll of tape carabiniered to my waistband.

He very carefully, very painstakingly fitted the tape behind the two worthless little notches.

If Bart Simpson and the Budweiser “whasssssup” commercial had a packing tape baby.

He had more to say. “You want to make sure that the tape stays behind the notches because otherwise you won’t be able to find the end again.” 

Yes, I am well aware of tape’s proclivity for sadism. 

He handed me the packing tape. Okay, I guess I am really going to tape up these boxes while he supervises. Fine. I don’t want to violate any UPS labor laws. 

The tape, of course, declined to stick to the edge of the box. The UPS staffer had to hold it down for me. And then the box flaps refused to meet in the middle so I could tape them closed. He helped me with that, too. 

“Wait,” he said, as I was about to stretch the tape across the now closed opening between the flaps. “Let me put the new label on over the old one.” So I held my new roll of packing tape awkwardly aloft while he fitted the label on underneath. The label caught on the tape, pulling it out from behind the useless notches. It took our combined effort to extricate the label from the tape.

Also useless were the teeth, which did not tear the tape neatly from the roll. Instead, the tape stretched screechingly and folded and stuck to itself. I managed, with not a small amount of effort, to unstick it from itself without unsticking it from the box and managed to get the tape to tear from the roll. One box down. 

Someone had come into the store while I was taping. She was waiting patiently quietly, several feet behind me, with her arms full of boxes. I sure hope she’d taped them at home. 

I went to tape the second box, but, saran-wrap style, the tape had affixed itself to itself. I turned the seemingly seamless roll around and around, searching for the end. When I finally found it I picked at it with a fingernail. A tiny sliver peeled up. I picked at the tape next to the sliver. Another tiny sliver peeled up and then detached onto my finger. While it wasn’t wild about attaching itself to a cardboard box, it sure had no issues adhering to my skin. 

A second person came into the UPS Store. 

The UPS staffer continued to supervise. Probably biting his tongue to keep from telling me how I was doing it wrong.

Another sliver peeled up. 

“Wow, this is really messed up,” I said.

“That’s why I told you to make sure it stays behind the notches,” he offered. 

Why.

A third person came in.

At the post office, which I know the UPS Store is not, the staff has you move to the side if you are doing something – putting a stamp on your letter, filling out a label, taping a box with tape they provide you at no charge – and then they help the next person until you are ready to resume your transaction. WHY WAS THIS GUY NOT DOING THAT.

I took some deep breaths. Why wasn’t the UPS staff person suggesting that this roll was defective? Surely he didn’t expect me to PAY for this piece of junk? The large piece of tape I’d finally managed to detach from the roll tore in half and spitefully affixed itself to my forearm.

A fourth person came in. The first person shifted her stack of boxes to her other hip. The second or third person coughed.

A frustrating and ridiculous task is always so much less stressful to perform when you have an audience of people who just want to drop off their boxes and get to work. Wait, did I say less stressful? I meant infinitely MORE STRESSFUL.

“This tape is really terrible,” I said to the staff person, my voice high-pitched with suppressed panic. He did not comment.

By the time I finally got the entire breadth of tape to lift away from the roll as one sheet, the end of the tape was a veritable fringe and my hands were riddled with tape scraps.

WHYYYYYYYYY.

I taped the second box. The UPS person stuck a label on it. I paid for the motherfucking roll of jerkass tape, which I refrained from throwing at the wall, peeled all the tape from my hand, picked tapelets out from under my fingernails, and crumpled the scraps into a ball (which I of course then carried with me and disposed of properly), and fled, avoiding the eyes of all the people who had come in to witness my humiliation.

I ordered and received another shipment of shoes; none of those fit, either. So I have to send them back.

But I sure as hell taped that box shut in the low-pressure quiet of my own home. 

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Day in the Life: Mid-December 2022

Cait mentioned that she would be interested in reading a Day in the Life post. I love to read those posts, when other bloggers post them! It is so fascinating to see what other people do with their time. My days never look like one another, which is… good. But a LOT of time is spent in front of my computer, so… that doesn’t necessarily make for interesting reading? 

I thought I would give it a shot anyway. Here’s a random day from this past week (mid-December 2022):

• 6:45 – Alarm goes off. It was so windy last night that I kept waking up and I feel like I slept horribly. I hit the snooze button – unwise. 
• 6:54 – I stagger out of bed. My feet are feeling much better during the day, but they are stiff and sore in the mornings. I go climb into bed with Carla and sing her the Good Morning song. She wants to sleep a little longer, so I set a timer for three minutes and do the Wordle, the free version of Spelling Bee, and the free mini crossword at NYT online. 

Disclosure: I tried to take pictures throughout the day as I was taking notes on what I did, but I forgot some. So this is a screen grab of today’s mini, rather than the one I did earlier in the week.

• 7:00 – The timer goes off and I coax Carla into telling me what she wants for breakfast. (French toast sticks and strawberries.)
• 7:05 – I put some French toast sticks in the microwave and then dash upstairs to the laundry folding center guest room where I grab a shirt (black) and fleece-lined leggings (black) and a pair of socks (also black) from the pile. I take them downstairs and throw them into the dryer to warm up so Carla can be roasty toasty when she gets dressed. 
• 7:10 – Carla comes downstairs, opens the day’s advent calendar door, and I give her breakfast. She and I chat while she eats. Usually I take this time to make tea, but my husband is on call so he is still home and getting his coffee and lunch together so I stay out of his way. Carla and I give him kisses and hugs as he heads out the door.
• 7:30 – I rinse Carla’s dishes for her (this is a treat; rinsing the dishes is her job) and put them in the dishwasher. I wipe down the counters. My phone chimes with a reminder that Carla needs to bring her instrument to school and she assures me that it’s all ready to go. While she’s upstairs, I tuck a couple of gifts I wrapped last night under the tree.
  

• 7:40 – I brush my teeth and hair and wash my face, which is still itchy and inflamed. While I brush my teeth, I stretch my feet and calves. 
• 7:45 – Carla and I put on shoes and coats and get into the car. 
• 7:55 – I drop Carla off at school. I feel so lucky, daily, that we live so close to school. I remind her to look for her gym shoes in the lost and found (sigh).
• 8:15 – I speed through Trader Joe’s grabbing frozen latkes for Hanukkah this weekend and some baby corn and English peas for Carla. Luckily, the store is nearly empty this early in the morning and I am in and out in five minutes flat.
• 8:35 – Back home. I put the kettle on to boil. I start a load of towels in the wash and fold some laundry on the (clean) kitchen counter while I listen to an audiobook. 

• 8:50 – I get dinner going in the crockpot. 
• 9:00 – I drink tea and eat some breakfast while reading blog posts. 
• 9:15 – Then I write a blog post of my own.
• 9:45 – I have presents to wrap, which I don’t enjoy. But I do enjoy listening to my audiobook while I wrap them.
• 10:00 – I shlep my laptop down to the basement and walk on the treadmill while I work on my current manuscript.

• 11:30 – I am sweaty and at a good stopping point. Even though I walked for 90 minutes, it doesn’t feel like I did much – I have to keep the treadmill on a very low speed or I can’t type. I throw on my coat and go for a quick walk outside – it’s drizzling and cold and the damp air feels good on my hot face. I listen to my audiobook while I walk.
• 12:00 – I take a shower. Ugh, I have to wash my hair today which means I have to dry it. I normally read an ebook while I dry my hair, but today I review some materials a client sent me in preparation for our meeting today. 

• 12:45 – I throw a load of white laundry into the washing machine. Do I have time to eat lunch before my meeting? No, I do not. 
• 1:00 – I jump on Zoom for a thirty-minute meeting with a client about a smallish project – a profile of a community philanthropist.
• 1:30 – I do a quick draft of the profile while my thoughts are still fresh from our call. 
• 2:00 – I remove the towels from the dryer and take them upstairs to the guest room, where I dump them on the bed. I grab another load of dirty clothes, take them downstairs, put the clean whites into the dryer and load the washer and run it. Back upstairs, I fold laundry and listen to my audiobook.
• 2:30 – Still listening, I go make myself some tacos with leftover mahi-mahi. This is when I decide I know The Big Twist in the book I’m reading. It’s interesting– I think Jennifer Hillier is a brilliant writer – and I want to see how it all plays out. And to see, of course, if I’m right.

• 2:50 – My mother-in-law calls and I chat with her for a few minutes. Then I do the lunch dishes.   
• 3:00 – I have a few more holiday cards to address and stamp, so I take care of that and tape some boxes of holiday gifts closed so that I can mail them.
• 3:15 – The laundry beeps so I carry up another load, do some more folding. There are a bunch of little odds and ends that have gathered in various rooms, so I move them to their homes (some of them live in the trash). Clean clothes in the dryer, the last load of the day in the washing machine.
• 3:40 – Carla has an extra-curricular activity tonight, so I have a little extra time. I load her instrument into the car along with three boxes that I need to mail to my far-flung family.

• 3:50 – I mail the boxes. Yikes. I totally understand why people prefer to have Amazon and Target etc. do their mailing for them; it is expensive! I determine to swallow my frustration about people sending me gifts to wrap instead of them wrapping and mailing things themselves. 
• 4:15 – I go to the bank. Then I dash over to Starbucks to buy gift cards for Carla’s extracurricular instructors. I realize I forgot to bring Carla a snack so I grab her a bag of popcorn as well.
• 4:30 – I wait in the car line to pick up Carla. It is one of my favorite parts of the day, seeing her little face break through the throng of kiddos milling about as they wait for their parents. 
• 4:50 – I drop Carla off at her music lesson. Then I go to Kohl’s to wander around. I’m hunting for one last gift for my husband. I usually avoid Kohl’s – it is SO crowded and the line moves SO slowly – but tonight it is nearly empty. I find a pair of deeply-discounted pajama pants that I think he’ll love. There is no one in front of me at the register so I’m back in my car in no time.
• 5:15 – I’m waiting for Carla to finish her lesson. While I wait, I have an idea for how to move my manuscript forward and I type notes to myself in an email.

• 5:45 – Carla’s done with her music lesson. I drive her home.
• 6:15 – I urge Carla to finish the mug she made for one of her extracurricular instructors. She is very weary of making mugs, but she volunteered to make this one, and tomorrow is the day we need to drop it off. While she works on it, I make her dinner (a hamburger patty with pickles, tomato, and cheddar cheese on the side, some rice, and some cut up kiwi). While the burger cooks, I sit at my computer and try to translate my earlier notes into coherent prose.
• 7:00 – Oh my goodness, it’s already 7:00! I call Carla up to eat and cut up broccoli for my husband’s and my dinner. The lemon garlic chicken has been smelling SO intensely of garlic all day I wonder if I did something wrong. (Added too much garlic, I think, even though that sounds impossible.) 
• 7:15 – After I cut the broccoli, I sit beside Carla at the counter and read her three chapters of the book we are reading. I really, vehemently dislike the book (there is too much fat-phobia and bathroom talk and also it is fully ridiculous.), but she thinks it’s funny.
• 7:45 – Yikes. We got caught up in the book and it is now fifteen minutes past the time Carla is supposed to be in bed! I send Carla upstairs to shower and then dash into the basement to put a coat of ModPodge on the mug she just made.

• 7:50 – My husband arrives home. He tells me about his day while I put some couscous on the stove.
• 8:00 – I go up to kiss Carla goodnight, sure she will want her Daddy to read to her, but she asks me to read her another chapter in our book. I ask my husband to stir the couscous and take it off the heat once most of the water is gone. (Carla adds, very serious, “Whatever you do, Daddy, DON’T put couscous down the garbage disposal!”)  
• 8:30 – I kiss Carla goodnight and go downstairs. My husband is in his office, taking a call from the hospital. I spend about twenty minutes on this blog post then run downstairs to put another coat of ModPodge on the mug.

• 9:00 – My husband comes into the kitchen. I put some broccoli in the microwave to steam.
• 9:10 – We sit down to eat and chat. The chicken is edible, but not good. I’m not sure what I did wrong this time – I’ve made it a million times before. Maybe it was just in the crockpot way too long.
• 9:30 – We watch an episode of Station Eleven and then an episode of Abbott’s Elementary. My poor husband is asleep halfway through the latter. Once the show is over, I prepare his coffee for tomorrow and kiss him goodnight, leaving him to sleep on the couch. Poor guy. 
• 11:00 – I apply a final layer of ModPodge to Carla’s mug. Then I wash my face and brush my teeth and do my feet/calf stretches. Then I change into pajamas and get into bed.
• 11:15 – I stretch my feet with an old bathrobe belt (sounds weird, but it is very effective) and read a few pages of The Accomplice before I fell my eyelids getting heavy. Lights out, time to sleep.

Whew. This was an extremely busy day, but when I type it out, it looks so full of NOTHING. I would say that it is fairly representative of a typical day in my life, even though most days don’t involve so much laundry or so much gift wrapping/preparation/mailing. 

If my math is right, I spent between four and a half and five hours on writing projects (blog posts, novel, and freelance work) over the course of this day. Ideally, I would spend the entire seven-ish hours Carla is at school writing, but when you mix in things like grocery shopping, laundry, eating, and exercise, it almost never works out that way. Add in all the extra nonsense of Christmas preparations, and the time shrinks even more. Yes, I realize that some of this is lack of discipline: I could devote all the time Carla is at school to writing, and reserve the rest of the day for errands, exercise, etc. I am making choices about how I spend my time, and that’s something I am constantly examining and trying to revise. Still, four-to-five-ish hours is a good chunk and I’m grateful for it. 

Do you have any questions or post requests for me? If so, feel free to submit them here.

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Dinners This Week

As is usual in December, I feel as though I’m whizzing down a very long, very steep slide. Every now and again, if I concentrate very hard, I can jam my heels into the slippery sides and slow down a bit – complete with loud squeaking of sneaker on plastic and the fear that someone is going to ram into me from behind – but gravity inevitably pulls me forward again. 

My mind wants to be consumed by finalizing shopping (just a few things left), wrapping, mailing, card sending… but there is also the other normal day-to-day stuff required of a typical week. 

Dinners for the Week of December 5-11

• Cuban Sheet Pan Chicken and Black Bean Rice Bowls: Ernie mentioned this recently and I realized I haven’t made it in awhile. Must correct that oversight tout suite. 

• Chicken and Wild Rice Soup: This is one of my favorite soups, and it is a crockpot meal, and I am pretty sure my mother-in-law will like it. Usually I make a loaf of Miracle No-Knead Bread to go along side it, but I may just buy a loaf at the store.

• Sheet Pan Teriyaki Salmon with Green Beans: I think my mother-in-law and daughter would like this, and my husband would tolerate it. 

• Shredded Beef Ragu: I saw this on Instagram and it sounds so warming and delicious. But it calls for a 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes, which I will not eat; I wonder if I could replace it with a 28 oz can of tomato puree?

• Some Other Sort of Soup: We are still in the thick of after-school activities, which means that we eat dinner together very rarely. I am in the mood, lately, to make soup that we can eat for several days. I may be butternut-squash-souped out, and I know my husband doesn’t consider soup to be a meal unless it includes meat. This Creamy White Chicken Chili sounds delicious… as does this Cream of Mushroom Soup. (The mushroom soup would be only for me, since it is meat-free.) 

That’s it for today, Internet. Hope you have a happy Monday.

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Weigh In Wednesday (Post Not in Any Way Related to Weight)

My hands are still shaking from a horrendously embarrassing experience, so I am trying to distract myself with some fun and fluff. 

Oh, you want to share in my humiliation first? Okay. 

I texted the owner of The Kitten to see if Carla could come visit him (“him” meaning the kitten; the owner is a woman). I had recently put her number in my phone, at Carla’s request. She’d (the kitten owner, not Carla) texted me so I would have her number, and I’d added her to my contacts. I tend to add people to my phone as “FirstName LastName,” and then never include any other identifying details… and you are well aware that I have a terrible memory… so there are multiple people in my phone who are now complete mysteries to me. One of these days I should really go through my phone and delete those people. 

I clicked on the kitten owner’s name – noting briefly that there was no prior text from her; I must have deleted it – and texted her: Hi, this is Carla’s mom. Is there a good time for Carla to come visit The Kitten?

A few minutes later I got back a series of question marks. 

As you may have intuited from my expert foreshadowing, I texted THE WRONG PERSON. Apparently, I have two people with the same first name in my phone. A fact which I have long since forgotten. The one whose name popped up when I started the text was the wrong one. 

And I have NO IDEA WHO SHE IS. 

Is this an old work contact? Is this someone for whom I’ve done freelance work? Is she a fellow parent from Carla’s school? Is she a board member I’ve interviewed for a writing project? Is she someone I went to grad school with? Is she a friend of a friend I’d connected with at some point? Is she some sort of service provider I have employed at some point? ZERO IDEA. 

I typed back, So sorry! I must have the wrong number!

But what I REALLY should have typed back was, So sorry! I must have typed the wrong FirstName!

Because if she is in my phone, there is a real likelihood that we know each other, and have interacted via phone before. Which means that there is a real possibility that she is sitting there wondering a) why I am contacting her about a kitten she doesn’t know and b) why I am pretending it was a wrong number and c) why I haven’t asked her how her work/family/life is. 

But I have no idea who this person is, or why she is a contact in my phone. I even googled her and I swear I have never seen her before in my life. But she was in my phone. So we must have known each other at some point! 

All I can do is hope that this person has as terrible a memory as I do, and has long since removed me from her phone, and isn’t feeling hurt/miffed/weirded out by my faux pas. 

LET’S MOVE ON TO LESS HORRIFYING TOPICS.

I have some questions for you. 

Weigh In #1: What food do you hate, but wish you didn’t? While I am a very choosy eater, I don’t feel particularly bad about it most of the time. I eat enough of a variety of foods that I’m pretty confident I can go to any restaurant or any friend’s house and find something to eat. I’ve never once thought, “I wish I enjoyed lamb. Or beets.” But there are a few foods I hate that I really wish I didn’t. 

Tomatoes. I hate tomatoes so very, very much. But they are one of those wildly ubiquitous foods that show up all the time, in places expected and not. (I cannot tell you how frequently I have encountered tomatoes on a Caesar salad, when they have no place in a Caesar salad.) Life would be so much easier and more pleasant if I just liked tomatoes! Or could at least tolerate them! Even friends who kindly ask about food preferences before they invite us over sometimes have tomatoes in their offerings, and I am just so very weary of being that picky person who doesn’t like tomatoes. 

Oatmeal. I cannot bring myself to enjoy oatmeal. Outside of oatmeal cookies, which are the sole exception. But lots of people genuinely enjoy oatmeal, and it seems like such a hearty, healthful food. I really wish I liked it. 

Eggs. Outside of scrambled eggs – which, even then, I only like a specific way – I avidly dislike eggs in ALL FORMS. But they are versatile and easy and full of protein. I want to like them. 

Weigh In #2: What is the best seat on an airplane? I prefer the window, myself. I like being tucked in next to the wall, I like being able to look out during turbulence to reassure myself that we are not in fact falling out of the sky, I like being able to lean my head against a solid surface. But when I fly with my family, my husband is the one who gets the window (although sometimes he swaps with Carla) and I get the aisle. I do not care for the aisle, because it puts me in close proximity to people, and those people tend to be very oblivious to the boundary between their space in the aisle and my space in my actual seat. The only benefit to the aisle seat is easy access to bathroom breaks. But then again, you have to be the one to pop up and down while the middle- or window-seater squeezes past you to the bathroom. I still remember the time I flew and a woman in front of me refused to swap seats with her row-mate’s spouse, because the spouse was in a window seat. “I have a bum leg, and I prefer the aisle so I can stretch out my leg,” she said. But… you aren’t supposed to stretch your leg into the aisle, right??!?! Isn’t that a tripping hazard? Isn’t that begging for a new leg injury when the drinks cart slams into your shin? 

Weigh In #3: What is your worst time-wasting habit? I am already terrible about spending too much time on social media. But more recently, I have found new depths to my time wasting online, which is that I have gotten sucked into watching gender reveals on Instagram. There is literally nothing beneficial about this habit – except that I derive occasional joy from the rare parent that shows true, unbridled joy at the result. Okay, and usually only if that unbridled joy is coming from the male parent, and in response to a pink result. These videos are fascinating, though. There are a bunch that feature the same bearded guy, who must run some sort of company that offers and records these sorts of reveals. There are a bunch where the timing is off. There are a bunch where the couple have other children, some of whom seem very disaffected by the whole event. 

The worst – and most fascinating – ones are the ones where one parent is CLEARLY disappointed by the result. I am not faulting someone for being disappointed: when I was pregnant, I was SURE I was having a boy, and I pictured a tiny blond copy of my husband. I got very attached to this fantasy. When we found out that Carla was a girl, I was disappointed. I hope you know that not a single cell of my body is disappointed NOW, now that Carla is a real wonderful human and it has become clear to me that everything I love about her is completely unrelated to her sex. But I get the disappointment. What I find perplexing is recording that disappointment and then posting it for the world to see. Perplexing and fascinating.  

Anyway. That is how I have been wasting far too many minutes of my one wild and precious life lately. I blame spring break. 

Now it’s your turn. Please weigh in. 

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Digital Grouse

Technology and I are not getting along.

My WordPress blog – which I have had since 2009 (am v. old) – is now suddenly not working correctly. The platform claims that I am trying to access WordPress via an unsupported browser, but when I click on the list of supported browsers, the link does not work. If I google which browsers support/are supported by WordPress, I am assured that Safari, which I use, is in fact fully supported. Do I have to update it or something? Maybe. But that opens a whole other can of worms wherein my computer claims it has no memory left and then I spent 80 hours trying to clear everything off of my hard drive even though the portion of the bar graph that is taking up the most memory is invisible stuff I cannot access or erase.

Yes, in fact, I DO feel very unsupported. (For this post, I have switched to Chrome, which I dislike for unknown but very strongly felt reasons.)

While we’re badmouthing WordPress – which I don’t WANT to do; I have been happy with it these long years – it is also doing a thing where I will create a post and then suddenly it says there has been an unexpected error and I cannot access the post nor edit it. There is no further information offered; none of the buttons next to this message go anywhere or do anything. Well. This finally justifies my long habit of writing posts in Word first, and then copy/paste-ing them into my blog – and I have not lost any content as of yet. But it is STILL ANNOYING.

That’s all I get: “unexpected.” And yet it keeps happening… so… at what point does it become expected?

On to the next grouse: There is too much spam. Many of my blog followers are spam accounts. I delete them and they sign right back up. Why? Why? What are you getting out of following my blog, moneybiz2020 and Buy CBD Oils UK?

I mean, Dickie B looks super nice but his email address, and, frankly, the fact that he is subscribed to my particular blog, leads me to believe he is NOT A REAL HUMAN.

Bots are constantly following my Instagram account, too. They are all the same: names like “the_agile_walrus893” and then there’s a profile image of a beautiful young woman who has a very American-Sitcom-Character-type name and lists her Totally Normal City and her astrological sign and something Totally Normal (umbrella lover! anorak collecter! beet sniffer!) about her. And then the account is filled with dozens of exotic travel photos – featuring zero people who look remotely similar to the woman pictured in the profile – and the photo captions are always emojis. And the bots follow lots of people! And lots of people follow the bot accounts! And I delete/block them every time I see them but ARRRRGGGGHHHH. Why? WHY? What in the name of Jeff Bezos are the bots getting out of these interactions?????????

This is not a real human. Right? RIGHT?

Why do these bots have SO MANY followers??? Are they all just following each other? And if so, WHY?

And I am getting TONS of spam emails lately, too. Not just the normal emails from Athleta and my local library and Barnes & Noble – the ones I signed up for, which nonetheless sometimes feel like spam. But emails from websites I definitely did not visit nor give my information to. Like GQ Magazine. Or some life insurance company I may have requested a quote from once, via telephone, a literal DECADE ago. Clicking unsubscribe, of course, does NOTHING. The emails keep coming.

I don’t have a photo of my inbox because I think you might faint if you see the number of unread emails I have.

Somehow I accidentally clicked the Apple TV app on my computer and now it refuses to leave. I have regular quit. I have force quit. I have turned my computer off and on again. It is always in the background, doing… whatever it is doing. (Something nefarious, I’m sure.)

Likewise with Adobe Flash Player. It constantly pops up on my desktop even though I SWEAR I have deleted it from my hard drive multiple times. It’s hiding somewhere deep in my computer, though, and I cannot root it out, and it keeps popping up and telling me to update.

Speaking of updates: My password manager asks me to update it weekly. At least. HOW does it require so many updates? HOW? And why? Just pick a version and stick with it! For a month, at least! (Edited to add: After I drafted this and tried to shut down my computer, the password manager asked me to update it again. It reads my blog, y’all. SIGH. I did it, but we’ll see how long it lasts.)

Last grouse (at least, for today): when I go to the Instagram website via my laptop, it quite frequently pretends as though I have asked it to display something mythical and non-existent. I am simply typing “Instagram.com” in the browser and hitting enter so please do not pretend like this a site that does not exist.

SOMETHING’S BROKEN, ALL RIGHT. Also, I love how it says “go back to instagram” as though I am not already there.

If I didn’t use technology every second of every day, I would say goodbye so fast…

Actual grouse, whose incredulity mimics my feelings exactly. (image from Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources)

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