Grumpy Monday, Half-Hearted Dinners This Week

Wow, am I ever grumpy this morning. Is there a reason for it? No, not really. I mean, I can PINPOINT some grumpy-making things, if you want to know:

1. The weekend was full and social and overall went really well, but I feel like I got NO TIME to myself at all, and I need time to myself or I will LOSE MY MIND. 
2. One of the weekend activities was a volunteer event I co-led, and even though it went pretty smoothly a) I find stuff that involves the combination of logistics, other people, and socializing to be overwhelming and exhausting and b) there was a little hitch in the day that resulted in some adults acting like CHILDREN and while I am trying very hard to have compassion and see things from their side, the whole thing still makes me grumpy. I think in most cases we are all just doing our best, and humans make mistakes and fumble things awkwardly and we can either have a tantrum or we can give other people grace. Reminder to self: GIVE OTHER PEOPLE GRACE. (She says, as she has a mini tantrum on her blog.)
3. My to-do list has too many things on it.
4. Some of the things on my to-do list are FORMS and I hate forms and there are too many and a lot of them are stupid and yes, I know The State requires certain things for certain occasions and I will fill them out but that doesn’t make them less stupid or irritating. 
5. I cannot find frozen cherries ANYWHERE.
6. The effing ROBIN will NOT LEAVE MY WINDOW ALONE and I am not going to resort to bird murder, I promise, but I am THINKING ABOUT HOW SATISFYING IT WOULD BE.

I’m sure there are other things, but those are the grumps that are currently top of mind. 

Oh right.

7. I also have to plan dinners for the week and I don’t wanna.

The good news dinner-wise is that one of Carla’s activities has ended for the year, which means (I think?) that we can cut back to eating fast food only one night per week. Of course, it will mean an extra hour in the car that day, but it may be a good trade off. (That is how sick I am of fast food.)

Dinners for the Week of May 6-May 12

• Chicken and Broccoli Stir Fry: I have broccoli, I have chicken, I have mushrooms. I have no particular desire for this dish, but it will be fine.

• Cauliflower Tzatzki Bowls with Sweet Potato Fries: I don’t know if I have enough motivation to make sweet potato fries AND an avocado cucumber slaw (does that combination of foods sound appetizing? I’m not sure), but I could certainly make the cauliflower. Wait a second, am I talking myself out of this? I’m leaving it on the list anyway. Maybe it will sound better later, and if not, I can surely find many ways to make due with cauliflower and sweet potatoes.

• Chickpea Bowls: Yes, this sounds good. I will make a chicken breast for my husband to add to his chickpeas.

• Fish Taco Bowls: Is this too many “bowl” meals for one week? Maybe, but who cares. There’s no law.

• Sheet Pan Chicken Fajitas: We haven’t had fajitas in awhile. Let’s fix that. Even though the idea of chopping so many vegetables is not particularly appealing. Oh well.

All right internet. That’s all I have for you. Instead of doing anything at all on my to-do list, I am going to go try to sweat out some of my grumps with this full-body strength video. To be fair, I do have two loads of laundry doing their thing, so at least one item on my to-do list is In Process. 

What to-dos are you avoiding today? Any grumps to share? How was your weekend?

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Five for Friday

It’s Friday and I am posting this on Friday, March 15; you may not see this until June for all Feedly cares, but I don’t think I have any control over that. This is kind of a cranky way to begin a blog post, so, as I say to Carla: Let’s try that again.

It’s Friday! I am coming off a night of broken sleep (child coming in at three, returning to bed around four, husband waking up for the day at five thirty), so let’s have some Friday bullets. 

1. Are you as steeped in the Kate Middleton drama as I am? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, a) bless you and b) here is a really thorough explainer. If you are In It, I highly recommend finding a friend who is similarly obsessed so you can text her memes and links to conspiracy theories at all hours of the day. My personal opinion is that Kate is recovering from surgery, probably doesn’t look or feel her best, and just wants to recover in private until Easter as previously planned and communicated by the Palace. BUT, simmering in that dark gross part of me that enjoys drama, especially when it feels very removed from my own boring non-royal life, I am kind of hoping that someone is pregnant with someone’s love child.

2. What kind of snacks do you keep stocked in your house? I ask because we have become friendly with our new neighbors and they invite us over all the time for all manner of things. While I am a little intimidated by reciprocating with A Real Meal (they are incredible cooks and bakers, and every time we’ve been invited to their house the food has been astonishing in both quantity and quality), I am ostensibly fine with having them over for drinks and snacks. The other day, the kids went sledding and we had them over for impromptu cocoa. Luckily, we had cocoa mix in the pantry, and even more luckily the mix had tiny marshmallows, and even more luckily, we had an unopened bottle of spray whipped cream because one of the neighbor kids informed me that he really likes whipped cream on his cocoa in a tone so grave I understood him to mean that something dire would happen if no whipped cream appeared. But then there are all these kids and their parent in my house and I realized I DON’T HAVE ANY SNACKS. It’s not that I don’t enjoy snacks; it’s that I enjoy them too much. We managed to scrape together some muffins I had in the freezer and some individual bags of chips and veggie straws that we had leftover from some party or other, so no one starved. But it made me feel like I need to have at least some snacks on hand. But what?!? I’m not crazy about having a bunch of cookies around, because they either go uneaten or get devoured in two seconds. If we have chips, I will eat the chips. Cheese and crackers aren’t big among the elementary school set, and it’s not like I can have an emergency brie on hand for last minute guests (or can I?). Fresh fruits and veggies, yes, great, and I try to have those around as much as possible, but we don’t eat enough of them to have a ready supply in the fridge at all times. Occasionally I panic buy a bag of clementines, but at least a third of them inevitably go bad before we can eat them. So: shelf stable snacks that appeal to kids and adults but are not so appealing that my family will eat them before we have guests. Is this a thing? 

3. In vanity news, I have been Influenced to buy several things lately. I really like this very inexpensive multi-use highlighter stick. Of course I cannot find the video that originally persuaded me that this was an essential tool in my (non-existent) makeup game, but I like dabbing it on the inner and outer aspects of my eyes and swiping it below my eyebrows for a little bit of lively glow. Totally worth $2.94. The other thing I’ve already tried enough times to recommend it is this bronzing mousse. The weather is edging ever closer to summer, and I don’t want to scare the new neighbors with my fish-belly legs, so I’ve been practicing in the hope that I can add a little lifelike color to my skin before I appear in public in running shorts. I am always on a quest for the perfect fake tan, and this is the closest I’ve gotten. The things I like best about it are: a) It’s dark when it goes on, so you can SEE where you are applying it, and you can also see if you are introducing streaks to your thighs or stomach before the streaks have become one with your skin. b) While it has a scent, as all tanning products inevitably do, it strikes me as much fainter and less objectionable than any other tanning product I’ve ever used. c) The resulting tan is darker than my normal skin tone, but not so dark that it screams FAKE TAN. (I use this tanning mitt to apply it to my body which works really well and helps prevent streaking.) Once again, I have no idea which account suggested this tanning mousse, but I am a fan.

4. One of my current parenting goals is to provide more opportunities for Carla to spend time with her friends. I think I’ve mentioned before that I hate playdates. They fill me with anxiety, because they are both forced social time – sometimes with parents I don’t know well – and because I have no idea how to deal with more than just my one child. For better or for worse, that’s just how I am, and so we haven’t had a ton of playdates. But now that Carla is older, playdates presumably no longer require that social element AND the kids are old enough that I can give them a lot more independence. I used to agonize over how I was going to entertain two whole children, and so I’d gravitate toward things in my comfort zone, like baking projects or crafts. Unfortunately, those things require a lot of prep and supervision and clean up, so they aren’t relaxing or easy. But now I can pretty much let the kids go off and play together. Sometimes we all take a walk outside, and I’m always happy to take a walk, even if the kids ask me to pretend I’m not with them.

Even though playdates are, in many ways, easier now, I still of course have anxiety about them. I find myself fretting about planning An Activity, just in case. I find myself worrying about what happens if the kids get into a fight or misbehave or want food (it always comes back to snacks!) or want to be on screens the whole time.

This is so silly! When I was a kid, I don’t think my friends and I EVER had An Activity. We just went and played Barbies or roller skated in my basement or played school or ran around outside or played house. I can’t even imagine asking my mom or a friend’s mom for ideas. And snacks were not provided by the parent! We scrounged up our own snacks, and I don’t even remember a parent being present for any snacking. In fact, part of the fun of going to someone’s house was checking out their snacks. (Not as fun: eating any sort of meal at a friend’s house, because they had different foods than I was used to and different rules. THAT filled me with anxiety.) I loved my friend J’s house because they had an entire drawer full of candy, and you could just… eat candy when you wanted to! J, notably, was pretty uninterested in the candy. I loved my friend R’s house because her garage freezer was STOCKED with popsicles. At my house, we always had little bags of chips or Zingers in the pantry and Dilly Bars in the freezer and pickles in the fridge. (R and I used to each eat a pickle when we were at my house.) So I am guessing that kids DON’T CARE either what they do or what they eat at playdates. They will figure it out. And yet. We have two playdates on the schedule in the next few weeks and I am already stressing about it. I am planning to be Mean Mom and put a ban on screens, but beyond that… I don’t know what to do or what not to do. Wow, I wish I could chill out about this. 

5. You know something that always feels like magic to me, even though it’s science? Topology. Various algorithms keep serving me videos of topological experiments – because I keep watching them when they appear in my feed – and my mind cannot grasp the mathematics/physics. My dad taught Carla how to make a mobius strip and even seeing him create it with my own eyes doesn’t help me understand how or why it works. It’s witchcraft.

What are you up to this weekend, internet? And, more importantly, what kind of snacks will you be eating?

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Friends Through Writing and Bloggers vs Non Bloggers

I have some bloggy questions for you today. But what inspired this post is a little interaction I had with my husband, who is a Non Blogger. As in, he doesn’t blog and while he may read a few blogs here and there, he doesn’t ever comment on blogs and sees them purely as informative. 

Earlier this week, I had the absolutely delightful thrill of connecting with a longtime blog friend. That night, when my family sat down to dinner, my husband asked how my day was, and I went on at length about how fun it was not just to interact with this person, but to see each other’s faces and hear each other’s voices. 

“You’d never met in person before?” Carla wanted to know. 

Nope.

“How did you get to know each other?” my husband asked.

Just… through the internet. 

But that wasn’t enough of an answer for either of them. They were super curious about not just how I’d met this person, but how we’d built a friendship online. For reference, my husband is Not Online; he doesn’t have any social media presence at all. And my daughter is a baby*, so, same. 

If I go back to the very beginning of bloggy time, which for me was 2009, I think the possibility of friendships is what prompted me to start blogging. At the time, I was working remotely from my apartment, and I was the primary breadwinner for our household. My husband and I had just moved to a new city for his medical residency. I didn’t really know anyone and I didn’t have the temperament to go meet people in the wild. But I had spent two-ish years reading a bunch of wedding planning blogs, which led to finding and reading people’s personal blogs. I was a lurker and never commented, but I could see in the comments how people were getting to know one another. This was very appealing to me and my personal situation. 

So I started a blog, and began commenting on other blogs. Slowly, and despite the fact that I was semi-anonymous online (I am shy and pretty private, which may or may not surprise you), my online community grew. 

Speaking of anonymity: My husband knows I have a blog; my parents do as well, and one college friend. (And now Carla, whose primary knowledge of blogs is via really terrible sitcoms.) But that’s really it. If the topic comes up, I may share with offline friends that I have a book blog, but I try to keep my online world private from my offline world. WHY this separation is important is something I have never fully been able to articulate. Maybe something about feeling freer to be myself online when I know I’m not being observed by people I might see during a playdate or around the holiday table? This blog is a space where I can talk about only what interests me, whether it’s weird interactions at the UPS Store, or too many words about shampoo, or rants about stupid rules, or fretting about the great unknowable job of parenthood. I don’t have to discuss politics or make intelligent commentary about world events or craft beautiful prose. It’s my space and I can fill it with mundanity and silliness and whining. The people who read it are here despite – or because of? – the subject matter, so it feels comfortable to keep going in this vein. I don’t feel any pressure to Write Important Things or be succinct or have fewer rambling sentences. 

I admit, I have sometimes felt a little weird about posting certain things with the knowledge that my mother or husband could be reading. Not that I am in any way different online than I am off, with the possible exception being that perhaps I try a little harder to be funny in my posts than I do in person. Also, I talk a LOT more when the talking is via words on a page rather than verbal utterings. But it’s not like there’s anything secret going on here. I’m not a covert Flat Earther or anything. 

All this is beside the point, which is community. I blog for the community. To keep in touch with people, and learn about their dogs and their kiddos and their aspirations and their frets and their passions and their own everyday putterings. And I feel like I’ve found that community. Twice, now – once before the days of Twitter, which I blame, perhaps unreasonably, for the sharp decline in blogging in the later half of the last decade, and again in the past few years, with a handful of stalwart bloggers who’ve bridged the distance between the two. I love that some of those friendships have bloomed beyond the confines of our separate blogs.

But even though I have had this experience, I found myself really struggling to explain to my husband and child how I’d developed a friendship with people I’d never met. How could I KNOW such a person? How had we made the leap from blog reader / blog commenter to friends? 

I don’t know. Maybe it seems strange, to a non-blogger, that you can develop a real relationship with someone purely through written communication. That you can come to know a person, simply by what they choose to post online. That you can form a relationship that’s as genuine as any friendship formed offline. 

Maybe some of us simply communicate better via the written word. I feel so strongly that this is true for me. When speaking with people in person, I trip over my tongue, or the words cling together in a way that changes my intended meaning and I end up kicking myself later for not getting my point across accurately or well. I struggle to keep up with the flow of conversation, to take part in a way that doesn’t feel lagging or stilted. There’s none of that in writing. I can think things through. Usually I can go back and revise and make sure I’m saying things the way I want to say them. When I respond to your post, or your comment, there’s nothing distracting me or making me nervous. If there’s more to say, or things to clarify, I can follow up in an email. 

One of my dearest offline-world friends is also a friend-through-writing, even though we have also met many times in person. He and I worked together at my last full-time job. While I was in the home office, he worked remotely, from a different state, and it was several months before I met him in person. My first introduction to him was via a series of long emails he wrote me, outlining things he thought I might want to know, describing the position as it had been before I’d arrived, and laying out some things he thought we might work on together in the future. It was informative and provided such insight into the way his mind works, the way he approaches things, the meticulous and thoughtful nature of his personality. And, although we did talk on the phone and in person many times over the years, our primary method of communication was email. Even though we have both since left that company, we have remained good friends. We still communicate a LOT through email, although we also have regular Zoom chats. 

Meaningful, real relationships can grow through writing alone. I’m sure people had similarly strong friendships back in the days of letter writing – and how much more slowly those friendships must have formed! (Can you imagine pouring your heart out in a blog post, aching for commiseration or advice, and then having to wait for the postal service to deliver your post and then wait even longer for your correspondent to respond?) But I imagine it does seem strange to those who have never experienced it.

I don’t know if I fully addressed my husband’s curiosity about blog friendships. But his interest made me wonder about you, and your blogging experience. Would you share your experience with me? Here are some questions to get the words flowing. (The first few questions are for bloggers, but there are some questions in there for non bloggers as well.) Also, please do not feel the need to be succinct in your answers. I am a huge fan of novel-length comments; never hide your wordiness light under a bushel around here. 

Questions for Bloggers

1. Do you have a blog, and if so what is your blog url? 
2. How long have you been blogging?
3. Why did you start a blog? 
4. Do people in your offline life read your blog?
5. Do you tell people you have a blog?
6. Have you ever met a blogger in the offline world?
7. What do you like best about blogging?

Questions for Non Bloggers

1. Approximately how many blogs do you read?
2. Do you comment on all the blogs you read?
3. Why do you seek out blogs (vs or in addition to other, more formal sources)?
4. Have you ever met a blogger in the offline world?
5. Would you ever consider writing your own blog?
6. If you at one time had a blog (especially one I loved reading), what made you stop posting and how do I persuade you to start blogging again?

Okay, I want all the deets.

And, in case it isn’t clear, I love knowing you. I appreciate your reading the nonsense I post here, and the support and kindness and advice and commiseration you offer. Thank you so much for being here and making this blogging thing such a satisfying, meaningful part of my life.

* Not a literal baby.

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. 

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Things I Wish I Loved (or at Least Liked)

I am shamelessly borrowing this post idea from Elisabeth. 

Tomatoes. Tomatoes are everywhere, in everything. Life would be so much easier if I liked them.

Speaking out loud in groups of more than two people. Most people seem capable of speaking up in groups – whether out at coffee with a few friends or in a meeting or standing in an elevator. NOT ME. My heart pounds and my head swims just at the thought that I might open my mouth. And if I do manage to say something, my words come out all wrong and sometimes I stutter and my face gets all red and I rush through whatever it was I was trying to say, eliminating key context that would help make my point. Oh how I wish I could have even just a LITTLE CHILL when speaking to more than two people!

Dogs. *HEAR ME OUT* I hope you know that I love YOUR dog. I do. I want to see all the photos of your dog, and hear all the anecdotes, and if I visited you I would pet and snuggle your dog. I show my daughter pictures of your dog so often she can now differentiate them: “Is that Rex?” “Oh, is that Hannah?” “Charlie is so cute!” I have a soft spot in my heart for all animals, cockroaches excluded. And maybe snakes. But I don’t love dogs. I can appreciate them, I can admire them, I can enjoy them through their owners’ eyes or the eyes of my dog-crazy child. But I don’t love them. I don’t like licking. I don’t like wet noses. I don’t like drooling. I don’t like the idea of an outside creature bringing the outdoors into my home. I don’t like the idea of picking up poop. I think when you love dogs, these things become part of the package. And I just don’t love them. But oh, how I wish I did. If I loved dogs, we could own a dog and I would be happy about it. 

Pedicures. I think pedicures are such a fun, luxurious indulgence. But I find them so uncomfortable! My feet are very sensitive, and pretty much everything except the warm water soak and the warm towel wrap are verging on painful for me. Plus, I find myself worrying all the time about dangerous bacteria and whether I’m going to develop gangrene or pick up a flesh eating bacterium or something equally horrific from inadequately cleansed tools. 

Group events. Most people I know love parties and gatherings. But I find even smallish groups to be thoroughly exhausting. I overanalyze everything about them from what I will wear to who I can talk to, to where to park and whether there will be food. And then I spend the whole time feeling like I’m on the fringe of conversation, that no one wants to talk to me, that I have nothing interesting to say, that I look weird and stand awkwardly and can’t move my arms in a human manner. I get overstimulated and overwhelmed and have no idea how to keep up with the pace of conversation. It is awful. And then afterward I feel drained and reeling and want to crawl into a cave for days until everything feels calm and safe again. 

Letting other people cook in my kitchen. I am a control enthusiast in the extreme and prefer that things in my kitchen happen MY way. I am insufferable, I know. My kind and generous mother-in-law, for whom “making food” is a love language, will be eternally baffled by this facet of my personality. “Just let her make you dinner!” you may be thinking. But the very thought of it fills me with anxiety.  

Sharing food. JOEY DOESN’T SHARE FOOD and neither do I. And people who do share food find this personally offensive. It would just be easier if I didn’t care. 

The beach. Sand adheres to me like a persistent infection. Everything is hot. The sand and ocean stink. Too many people. Things lurking unseen in the watery depths. NO THANK YOU times a million. But the beach is such a quintessential summer experience, and it would be nice if I didn’t feel angry and grumbly every time it’s broached.

Bridgerton, Yellowstone, and West Wing. Since this list is rapidly devolving into a catalog of my anxieties, I will switch to TV. These shows are universally beloved, and I just cannot get into any of them. I have total pop culture FOMO, and would love to love these shows.

Do you and I share any wish-I-liked items? What’s one thing that would make your life easier if you liked it?

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. 

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Five for Friday

It’s Friday! We are chugging right along through November. Here are five things I’m thinking about today. 

1. Falling Back: Changing the clocks has messed me up. I hate it so much. I mean, I guess I don’t mind driving to school in the daylight again. But give it a few weeks and we’ll be back to driving in the darkness. In the meantime, I am going to bed at a NEW normal time and waking up at the OLD normal time, which means I am getting less sleep than I was before. Plus I am still waking up each morning at three or four, full of existential dread. GOOD TIMES. My poor kid is so far on the exact same page. Why could she not have inherited her father’s ability to sleep anytime, anywhere? We are both wandering around, exhausted and cranky. She keeps draping herself over furniture and moaning about how tiiiiiiirrrrred she is. I cannot stop yawning. People keep talking about how maybe this will be the last year of Daylight Savings Time! And I keep thinking, yeah, sure, whatever. But I also think it’s kind of amazing that we all collectively (except Arizona and Hawaii, I think?) agreed to just move everything back or forth an hour twice a year. That’s BONKERS. I feel like there’s no agreement on ANYTHING AT ALL, and yet we all do this???? No thank you. I would like to abstain. 
2. Flu Shot: I finally got my flu shot. I was at the pharmacy and thought to ask if they administer flu shots; this is a newish-to-me pharmacy, and I’d always gotten my flu shot at Walgreens. We no longer live within walking distance of a Walgreens, so I’ve been putting off the flu shot until I had a reason to be near one. Anyway, I realize this is a very long and circuitous way to the point that yes, the current pharmacy DOES offer flu shots. The pharmacist came around the counter which was the first difference between it and Walgreens; there, you wait until the pharmacist calls you back, and you go into a little room with a door. This pharmacist was a cheery woman who seemed impossibly young. She was much friendlier than the old pharmacist, whose entire body seemed weighted down with regret and drudgery. And then she gave me the shot right there in the middle of the pharmacy! There was another client, sitting behind me, while I stood at the checkout counter. It was a tiny bit alarming. She was very sweet, but then asked me what I did for work. I told her I work from home and she gasped and said, “Well why are you even getting a flu shot?!” That threw me, I’ll admit. My answer in the moment was that I have a young child, but also… shouldn’t everyone get a flu shot? You can get the flu at the grocery store. She then chatted with me for a few minutes about having kids (she has a baby). It was a very pleasant interaction but also kind of weird. 
3. Flannel Time: We have reached the flannel sheets portion of the year. I don’t normally love flannel sheets, because I sleep hot. But our regular sheets are feeling a little chilly lately. I’m a little apprehensive though because our house heats very unevenly. The house will get colder and colder until you’re shivering even under the covers – I have been wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt to bed, when I much prefer a T-shirt – and then the furnace will decide it’s time to take action and it will WHOOSH to life and churn out an intense fog of heat so that you’re kicking off the covers and stripping off layers – and then it will turn off, exhausted by its efforts, and the cycle begins again. Will flannel sheets be pleasant or unbearable? Time will tell.
4. Forwarding: We continue to receive mail for the previous owners. It’s not quite at the level it was – at first, we got boxes and season tickets to sports games and multiple cases of wine in addition to catalogs and letters and paychecks and things. But we still get some mail. We have been here since September 1. Is it time to start writing “return to sender” on the mail we receive? Obviously the nice thing to do is to keep holding the mail for the previous owners, and texting them occasionally, and asking them what they’d like us to do with it. (They always come to pick it up, and have ignored my suggestion that we could drop it at their new house.) I keep thinking about how mortified I was to learn, from the people who bought our old house, that they’d been receiving mail for us. My husband had been so diligent about setting up mail forwarding and systematically going through all of our bills and regular mailings to make sure our address was changed. And yet some things slipped past the gate. I also keep thinking about how, at our old house, we continued to get mail for the previous owners even though we’d lived there for twelve years. Not a lot of mail, but one or two pieces a year even at the end. Is mail forwarding really that tough? Are we all really that unclear about ALL the places that have our address?
5. Fear of Friendliness: I saw one of our new neighbors outside and said hello and asked if she worked from home. When she said she was home most days, I said I was too and would she want to get a coffee sometime? She said sure. But now that I’ve made the overture, I don’t know what to do! Do I… have her over for coffee? I don’t actually know how to make coffee (although my husband could probably teach me). And if she comes for coffee, do I need to offer food as well? What do people eat? Do I live on this planet because I don’t feel like it. Do I suggest going for a walk? What if we have nothing to talk about? What’s a normal thing for people to do when they are trying to get to know other people? While I really, truly would love to get to know my new neighbors, I am kind of berating myself for suggesting anything. I know it wasn’t, like, set in stone or anything, and we could probably just never follow up. But… I want to follow up. Even if I also vehemently do NOT want to follow up. 

That’s it for today, Internet. What are you thinking about on this fall Friday?

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. 

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Saturday Superlatives

Did you do that thing at your high school where seniors were awarded superlatives at the end of the year? We did – things like Nicest Smile or Coolest Car or Most Likely to Attend an Ivy League School or Cutest Couple. Then you got your picture above your title in the yearbook. I was never awarded a superlative; were you?

In the vein of Elisabeth’s Happy Things Friday, but also totally in a different vein because I am nowhere near as lovely and optimistic as Elisabeth is, I am going to award some superlatives today. These apply only to this week and I may never do this again. 

Biggest Accomplishment: I attended FOUR SOCIAL EVENTS this week. Four. That is too many, by the way, but I went and I endured and I didn’t die. In addition, I managed to achieve the goal I discussed with my therapist, which was to “talk to three new people.” I am going to go ahead and count “hi, I’m Suzanne, what’s your name?” as “talking” to someone new. I did try to strike up a conversation with a couple people, with limited success, so that feels like a good step. I am also exhausted. After the fourth event, I retreated to my house and had a glass of wine in the quiet dark by myself. I still have not recovered.

Most Freeing Moment: Now that there are no painters in the house, and an interval during which I have no one at all in my house during the day except me, myself, and I, I feel so much freer. But the most freeing moment was definitely when I forgot that my towel was in the dryer, after I had already disrobed, and walked across the house au naturel without a care in the world.  

Best Baking Project: This is a little bit of a stretch, because the actual baking happened more than a week ago. But I am including it here anyway: I made both pumpkin bread and pumpkin cheesecake bread, and they were both delicious. The cheesecake bread was (Mary Berry voice) a little stodgy but once I refrigerated it, I liked it more. It was not particularly breadlike… it was denser, like a brownie that hasn’t quite been cooked through and has gone all fudgy in the middle. But it was easy and tasty, if not ideal in the texture realm. What I REALLY loved was the pumpkin bread, though. The texture was perfection, with a nice tender crumb (I realize I sound ridiculous right now, but the crumb! the crumb!), and the flavor was warm and rich and autumnal. (I was really concerned about the enormous amount of cloves the recipe called for, but it did not taste overly-cloved!) I don’t really enjoy pumpkin anything, and I really liked this bread. I would definitely make it again. If you like pumpkin things, I would HIGHLY recommend it. 

This is the only photo I took of the pumpkin breads, probably because I was too busy eating to be bothered with photography.

Most Frustrating Interaction(s) of the Week: Someone from the title company let us know that they hadn’t received our final water and sewer bill from our previous house, which meant they couldn’t release the funds we’d held in escrow to pay for it. My husband dug up our last bill, I scanned it and emailed it over. We got an email from the title company saying, thanks but no thanks; this doesn’t say “final bill.” So I heaved a great sigh and called the water/sewer company. I hate calling the water/sewer company because a) the wait times are always laughably long and b) everyone who works there hates their jobs, their lives, and me. But there was no other way, so I dialed the number. My call was important to them, the water/sewer company automation assured me, after I picked from an alarming number of options offered via a very lengthy set of menus. However, there were a few callers before me, and the wait time was 137 minutes. One hundred and thirty seven minutes. However! There was an option for the company to call me back once I reached the end of the queue! So I gratefully chose that option and went about my business. The water/sewer company called me back after the time had passed. An automated voice asked me to press 1 if I was available to take the call at that moment, and then said, “We are experiencing higher than usual call volume and cannot take your call. Goodbye.” AND HUNG UP ON ME.  

Highest Volume of Phone Calls: On Monday, I made eight separate phone calls. EIGHT. I did not want to call any of these people and several of them required multiple phone calls and one will require me to do it all over again (cough cough water/sewer company), and I only managed to schedule ONE THING. This is why I hate phone calls. They are awful and they don’t seem to accomplish anything. 

Most Charming Moment: This honor goes to the adorable checker at Trader Joe’s, who, when I handed her my reusable shopping bag, exclaimed, “Oh and it’s cats! How wonderful!” She then told me that she is a “bonafide cat lady.” I said, “I love cats too. Do you have a cat?” And she said, “YES. Would you like to see pictures?” Here is where I tell you that I always want to see pictures of a cat. Or any pet. Or a baby or child of really any age. Or your granny. Or your parents doing something cute or weird or just sitting in a chair. Basically, if you thought it was worth photographing, I would like to see it. Consider this an open invitation to email me all the pictures. (Disclaimer: Aforementioned invitation does not apply to genitalia.) Then she showed me her cat, and her sister’s cat, and told me their names, and it was wonderful. Can’t do THAT at a self-checkout! 

Any superlatives jump out at you from this past week? 

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, check out San’s blog here.

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Five for Friday

It’s not only Friday, it’s the first Friday in November. I am not ready for the pell-mell can’t-catch-my-breath of the last two months of the year (and I don’t even want to THINK about the holidays; I am pretending they don’t exist), but ready or not, they’re here. 

• We had our first snowfall of the season! I love snow and it was such a pure delight to see big flakes falling from the night sky, and then to wake up to a good two inches of snow on all the exterior surfaces. Especially because the roads were blissfully bare and dry. I did realize that a) I’d purged Carla’s snow clothing prior to the move, because she’d been wearing them for two years straight and they were sprouting holes and showed an inch or two of ankle and b) I’d never replaced them. Fortunately, Lands End is having a sale so I was able to order her new things. And new snow boots. 

• Speaking of Carla, and snow, and clothing: she has extremely specific fashion tastes these days. And those fashion tastes are not always compatible with the weather. But she’s TEN, and I’ve grown weary of negotiating with her about whether shorts over tights counts as appropriate winter wear. Also, at what age does a child realize that it might be wise to put on a sweatshirt if you are cold rather than complaining plaintively about it to your mother? It’s not age ten, that’s for sure.

• Halloween was fine. There was a neighborhood gathering, at which I felt completely overwhelmed. People were nice but not friendly, and there were so very many of them. I brought the wrong thing and used the wrong container (this group seems to lean quite Fancy), but at least I know better for next time. On the good side, Carla seemed to have a BLAST. There were tons of kids. Twenty? Fifty? I couldn’t keep track of them because they didn’t stay still, and sometimes they had masks on, and sometimes they didn’t. But Carla got to run from house to house in a pack of children and that made me feel very happy and relieved. We bought WAY too much candy and now have an entire grocery bag full of leftovers (on top of Carla’s haul), which I am itching to donate as soon as Carla’s school accepts donations. I wasn’t missing candy – so why am I unable to ignore the siren song of a fun size Snickers? None of my favorites showed up this year, either in the candy we bought or the candy Carla brought home; I’m partial to Milky Way Midnights and Sour Patch Kids. But I’m making up for it with the aforementioned Snickerses and a fairly obscene number of Reese’s peanut butter cups. 

• Do you put outgoing mail in your mailbox, or do you take it to the post office? I am having a bit of a disagreement with someone about the appropriate course of action. Some context: One of us grew up in a country area that wasn’t served by the postal service; mail was delivered to a post office box in town. One of us grew up in the suburbs of a large city and had access to a mailbox at the end of the driveway. One of us believes that you put outgoing mail in the mailbox, and, in fact, this is part of the purpose of a mailbox; why else would there be a little red flag on the side of the mailbox meant to alert the postal worker to the presence of outgoing mail? One of us thinks that outgoing mail should be handled at the post office only, or perhaps at one of those once-ubiquitous blue mailboxes that used to be on every street corner but have all but disappeared in the wake of 9/11. Who is right? Where does outgoing mail go? If a person wants to utilize the home mailbox, do they have to call the post office to make sure it’s okay, or is lifting the little red flag alert enough?

• I recently read the newest Robert Galbraith book, The Running Grave. It was truly gripping, despite the fact that it seemed like no one had really edited the thing, and despite the fact that the will they/won’t they storyline has been grating on me for about three books by now. In fact, reading it made me want to reread the series from the beginning, so I waited until we had unpacked all the book boxes to find the first book… and it wasn’t there. Neither were the second and third books in the series. My husband thinks that I may have started reading the series on my kindle, which sounds plausible. But for various reasons, I don’t want to read it on kindle again, so I am contemplating buying a copy. But then I will want to own ALL the books in the series, and that feels like a commitment I’m not ready to make. So. Here I dither, not reading the book I want to read, not buying books I want to buy, and not complaining about it on the book blog, but here instead. What would you do? I suppose I could check it out from the library, which would address a whole host of issues, some of which I started to discuss here but then deleted. However, for some unknown reason the library option isn’t appealing to me. What would you do? Have you ever bought a book you’ve already read just to own the complete series? What if I DO buy the rest of the series and the hardbacks are no longer available so half the series is in hardback and the other half is in paperback? Will that drive me book bonkers?

That’s all I have for today, Internet. Hope your Friday is sunny and that your weekend starts early!

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 in the fun, check out San’s blog here. 

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Dinners This Week + Other Food Topics

It is a beautiful frosty Monday with honest-to-goodness SUNSHINE and my house is empty of painters and even though my to-do list is full of things I am deeply resistant to doing, and even though the house is still full of boxes, I am feeling sincerely cheerful for the first time in a LONG time. 

I cut the last of the dahlias yesterday and am hoping that the buds somehow blossom in my vase.

They really LOOK like the last of the dahlias. Whew. Scrappy.

Here’s the (tentative, always open to last minute changes) dinner plan for this week.

Dinners for the Week of October 23-29

• Cauliflower and Chickpea Enchiladas: This sounds yummy and different. I will probably use store-bought enchilada sauce instead of making my own. 

• Massaman Curry with Chicken: My husband and I bought a little tub of Massaman curry paste when we went on our Asian grocery store date. This week seems like a good time to give it a try. This recipe calls for carrots, though, and I am going to skip them. 

• Mulligatawny Soup: Soup weather, baby! 

• Sheet Pan Kielbasa with Green Beans: This is a meal I have never made before. But Carla tried a piece of sausage at Costco a couple of weeks ago and actually liked it, so I bought some for us to eat and… now I have to make it. I will admit to not being a huge fan of sausage, although it was a semi-regular feature of meals when I was a kid. And I can eat it without wanting to die. Plus I have some green beans waiting to be used. 

In other food topics, am also in the mood for pumpkin bread, completely out of nowhere (I don’t really like pumpkin), so I am going to make some. Maybe I will also make a batch of pumpkin cheesecake bread as well. 

Too bad pumpkin bread doesn’t count as an appetizer. My family has been invited to a new neighbor’s house for a Halloween gathering and I am charged with bringing an appetizer. (NO desserts, was the explicit instruction. Also, someone else is bringing a salad, so I don’t think I can do that.) As per usual, I am going to bury my intense anxiety over meeting/interacting with new people under a massive pile of anxiety about what food to bring. Redirected anxiety is my jam. But I have no idea what to make! What’s a good fall appetizer? I kind of want to bring the hotdog mummies I made during the Halloween of 2020, but… maybe that’s too cutesy? Plus, I am worried there is too high a chance that there will be hotdogs on offer already. Plus plus, it’s probably better to have an appetizer that can be served at room temperature. And one that travels well. WHAT do I bring? I love the apple monsters and veggie skeleton tray at this link, but… I’m not sure. (Won’t the monsters brown???) And maybe it doesn’t need to be explicitly Halloween-y, you know? I don’t necessarily want to be known as That Neighbor Who Tries Too Hard. Maybe a good old chips and dip is the way to go????

These guys also look worried about what I should bring. Or maybe they are mostly anxious about being eaten. Hard to pinpoint exact emotions with hotdog mummies.

Do you ever eat kielbasa? If so, what’s your favorite recipe? Do you have a favorite fall baked good? What should I bring to the Halloween party?

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On Justification

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.

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Worry Hamsters, Flayed Face Syndrome, and Melodramatic Petunias

My usual methods for lulling the worry hamsters to sleep are not working. 

• I have tried making lists: seems to awaken additional worry hamsters, plus I keep forgetting about the lists I’ve already made and making new ones.
• I have tried long solitary walks: more time for thinking and worrying!
• I have tried distraction via TV, book, and endless scrolling of the internet: these work with varying degrees of success, but leave me feeling yucky.
• I have tried comfort eating: see above re yucky. 
• I have tried retail therapy, which is certainly fun. (By the way, Stitch Fix is KILLING it right now. I have liked nearly every single item they have sent me recently and I keep clicking, “yes, send me a new fix!” as soon as I pay for whatever I just bought.) I have a bunch of new clothes, including several new dresses and a very long skirt I love but have yet to wear. I dislike how people say “you’re so dressed up!” when I wear a sundress. Also, is age 42 too old to wear a shirt that might once in a while show a small sliver of your stomach? Kae influencered me to buy this shirt, but I have a very long torso and so the shirt doesn’t go quite to the top of my high-waisted jeans. My daughter and, I’m sure, my mother would say an emphatic YES, 42 is too old, or more particularly, I am too old (my husband’s take: “just don’t raise your arms”), but I have a friend who is in her later 40s who says WEAR IT and I’ve already taken off the tags and purchased a second shirt in a different color so I guess I’m a belly-shirt wearing person now. My mom and my daughter can go shake their heads sadly about me in another room. I did, however, return the dress to which my husband’s response was *a very tender and carefully worded version of* “I think you might be in an age range where a dress this short no longer looks appropriate.” But I didn’t return it because of that; I returned it because I hate my knees. And this dress – well, you know how some dresses are designed to showcase your décolletage or your back or whatever? This dress was designed to showcase your knees. And my knees get me around and do a great job of getting me up stairs but they are not show-worthy knees, you know? So I returned the dress, which was otherwise adorable and extremely comfortable.
• Oh right, I was listing things that I have tried to help prevent all the endless anxieties that keep scurrying around my brain.
• I have tried complaining to my husband, who has limited patience with reassuring people; why did he marry me when I need near-constant reassurance about everything????
• I have tried sending ridiculous hyperventilatey emails to blog friends, whom I hope have enough of an existing familiarity with my all-caps style of hyperbole to not think that I have completely unhinged. I am still semi-hinged. For now.
• I have not yet tried therapy, although I have broached the topic with my husband and have asked some offline friends for recommendations. Who has time for therapy, though?!?!?

The only thing that works even slightly is exercise – strenuous HIIT or strength training – but the downside is that the worry hamsters wake up immediately upon my heart rate returning to normal. And I just cannot exercise every second of the day. 

Speaking of exercise: do you have, as I do, Flayed Face Syndrome? (Which is a totally made-up non-disease that is not to be confused with Scalded Skin Syndrome, which is a real and horrifying thing.)

Every time I do something that raises my heart rate for a prolonged amount of time, I end up looking like a character in Game of Thrones whose facial skin has been peeled away to reveal the tomato-pulp flesh beneath it. Is Game of Thrones still a relevant reference point? Feels like a million years ago that it was the hot thing, but then again I don’t consume a lot of other media where “peeling off someone’s face” would be a reasonable plot point. 

The effect is quite alarming, let me assure you. Every time I have exercised in public to the point of my skin scarleting itself, people approach me to ask if I am okay. It is highly embarrassing. The redness lasts for a long time; I am writing this an hour after I finished a very heart-pumping exercise routine with Tracy Steen (this 45-minute HIIT workout) and my face is only just now cooling off to the “moderate to severe sunburn” level of redness. 

One of my friends keeps asking me to go to barre class with her. I would love to – I used to love barre, and haven’t been back since March of 2020, hmm wonder why, but I am pre-embarrassed about my tomato-y complexion. 

(Also keeping me from barre class: I am an extremely sweaty exerciser. And while that is tolerable at home in my own house, at least to me; I have not asked the other members of my household, I feel super self-conscious about it in public.)

I have been like this – a deskinned tomato person – for as long as I can remember. I don’t think there’s anything to be done about it, but maybe YOU have a solution? Perhaps that solution is simply, “avoid exertion,” which makes sense to me.

Recently, Lauren shared some rules to live by. One of them is that everyone deserves flowers. And even though buying flowers doesn’t soothe the worry hamsters, it does bring me a little ping of joy every time I see said flowers. So I am buying the flowers and I hope you are too. 

Currently, my dinner table has some lilies and some delphinium (at least, I think it’s delphinium) in a vase. But I also bought a bunch of flowers for outside my house. Including two hanging baskets of bright magenta petunias. There’s nothing like a basket of magenta petunias to lift a mood, if temporarily. 

Of course, one of them fell from the little hook that dangles the basket above my porch, and the basket broke. I transferred it into a pot and it seemed to be doing okay. Then I forgot to water both pot and basket for two days – two days during which we got significant rain, by the way – and when I went to check on them, the flowers had all wilted in an extremely distressing manner. I couldn’t bear to throw them out, so I watered them. And it turns out they were just being melodramatic. They look glorious once again. (Phew.)

In a fun twist, these petunias are the same hue my face turns after intense exercise.

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