New Year's Eve

Rob first asked to stay up for New Year's Eve way back when he was 7, and the twins were about a year and a half old, and I was pregnant with Henry.

Looked pretty much like this all the time, but with a second toddler too.

Yeah, it was more like that. With me barfing nearby.

(That first photo, by the way, is an argument for "Keep photos of yourself, even if you hate them and can't bear to look at them and have to hide them because if you have to look at them you won't be able to help shredding them." I hated that picture so much when I first saw it, I thought Paul must secretly dislike me to have taken it. Now I love it and am so grateful to have it, and I don't care whether it's flattering per se.) (But Paul really does need to learn about not photographing from up under someone's chin.)

Anyway, I almost couldn't bear the idea of staying up when I COULD BE SLEEPING. I first tried to talk Rob out of it, with the argument that he didn't want to stay up. It was boring, I said. Nothing happened, I said. It was 30 seconds of watching a ball drop on television. It was a long wait in the middle of the night, and then it was over in one minute. I was not going to want to party, or play games, or in fact interact at all. I might even doze in the chair. He would be basically on his own for hours and hours, and he would have to be quiet and not wake up his father or siblings. It would be BORING, I said. He did NOT WANT TO, I said.

Well, but he did. So I let him, figuring I probably COULD manage such a sacrifice for just one night, but saying he had to stay in his room until 9:30, and then IF he was still awake when I came to get him, THEN he could stay up. I added further cautions about how it was not worth it and he would be disappointed and he would be sorry he'd tried it.

He was not sorry. He was not even very tired.

The next year was even worse. I was spending my days with two 2-year-olds and a nursing infant, and continued to be unable to bear the idea of staying up until midnight when I COULD BE ASLEEP.

Tiiiiiirrrrrrrrd

Especially since, at midnight, I would have to face the excruciating dilemma of "Do I go ahead and just stay up until what will likely be a 12:30 feeding---but then maybe end up sitting awake and grinding my teeth and crying with despair at 1:00, 1:30, 2:00, as the baby DOESN'T awaken as expected and I count the time I COULD have been sleeping but now with every passing minute it would be crazier and crazier to go to bed? Or do I go to sleep at midnight, possibly to be awakened by a baby riiiiiiight as I'm drifting off, throwing me into Night Mother Rage? Or do I wake the baby early to nurse before I go to bed, feeling stupid for waking a sleeping baby AND maybe not successfully nursing anyway, only to face the same dilemma at 12:45 instead of at midnight?"

God, the small-baby nights can be unpleasant. But we did it anyway: Rob and I stayed up for New Year's again. I seem to have blocked out what I did about nursing. Isn't memory merciful sometimes?

The year after that, William wanted to stay up too. I had the same rule, now for two children instead of one: if they were awake when I came in at 9:30, they could stay up for New Year's.

They both made it. William just barely.

I'm not sure which year it started feeling like a party instead of an ordeal. I think it took me a couple of years to recover from night-nursing and to feel again as if I could imagine staying up late without suffering. It was probably two New Year's Eves ago, in 2010, when Henry was 3 years old and Rob and William were 11 and 9. Instead of making them stay in their rooms, I let them just stay up and play video games and watch TV. Instead of deliberately making it no fun in the hopes that they would not want to do it anymore, I bought Festive Snacks: pizza rolls, Doritos, M&Ms, soda for them and champagne for me.

I still made it a low-interaction event: I would like to spend my New Year's Eve filling out the next year's calendar, being on the computer, reading a book, doing some puzzles, writing in a journal---not playing with children. But if the children would like to play nearby, that is fine.

And last year and this year, I've even looked forward to it. The boys and I plan ahead of time what snacks we would like to eat (my favorite is the boneless buffalo wings; I am also fond of champagne). We go out together on a special shopping trip to obtain those snacks, in case another snack idea needs to be considered on the spot (this year it was ranch-flavored chicken fries: we were intrigued) (edited to add: ick).

Paul has started watching a movie with them in the early evening, to give me some time to recharge before the evening ahead. (Paul himself hits the hay at 10:00 sharp. He is not tempted by our offers of snacks and Ryan Seacrest and grumpy tiredness the next day.) This year they're all watching the first Harry Potter movie while I sit in the computer room, typing and looking through old photos.

Also, this year the twins are the same age Rob was when he first stayed up. They have been given the option to join us. Elizabeth is ALL IN. She won't have any trouble staying up: sometimes when we go to bed, we have to tap on her door and say "Lights OUT, Elizabeth." Edward is uncertain: he usually has dark under-eye circles by 6:00 p.m., and he is asleep 5 minutes after he goes to bed, so he doesn't know if this will work. Either way, we have plenty of snacks.


Edited to add: They did it!

(William is not taller than Rob; Rob is standing down several steps.)

Spam Blog Take-Over; Candleholders; Cousins Once Removed

If you subscribed to the feed of another blog I used to have, you may have noticed that the address (which I politely gave up when I was done with it) has since been taken up by a spammy fake site. So if you ever linked to that old blog in a blog post and/or in your blogroll, your blog is now linking to spam! Yay! Aren't people LOVELY? Any time a chance to bottom-feed opens up, people RUSH IN to take that chance! No opportunity too low!

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I bought something. Two somethings. They are hard to photograph in the morning lack-of-light, so perhaps I should have waited for later, and perhaps I could have dusted that shelf first, but bygones.

You can still perceive their loveliness, right? Even with the shadows and poor lighting and the dust? They're candleholders. I got them at Home Goods. Each one can be adjusted to take a variety of candle sizes/types. They came in other colors, too; I saw a turquoise one, a bronze one, and one other color I forget. Cream or white, I think. (The little metal birds were a gift from a friend. The thermometer/hygrometer belonged to my grandparents.) It bothers me a TEENSY bit that the smaller one has blue jewels and the larger one has clear jewels, but I think of it as good psychological exercise.

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Two of my girl cousins (sisters to each other) are both pregnant at the same time (both for the first time), and I am quite excited. It's fun to have babies to look forward to and buy little baby things for. And I love the idea of sisters pregnant at the same time. My second-cousin and I had overlapping pregnancies once and we had SO MUCH FUN emailing back and forth about it. And of course I am looking forward to hearing the NAMES! And one baby is a boy, and the other baby will hopefully give up that information this coming week!

And it's fun that the two baby cousins will be so close in age. I wish I'd been closer in age to my own cousins. One girl cousin is four years older, so she was kind to me but she was always at a completely different stage of life. My other four girl cousins were all born when I was in the 10-15 range, so we're a half-generation apart and they were always little kids to me, and I've always been ancient to them. I'm closest to my second-cousin, probably in large part because we're almost the same age.

My own kids are stepping-stairs with their cousins: my kids are 13, 11, 7, and 5, and their cousins are 3 and 1.

Are you close in age with your cousins? If you have kids, are they close in age with theirs?

Caterpillars vs. Butterflies

Leeann is right: it's been awhile since I've written about the kids or put up photos of them. It's gotten difficult to talk about them: Rob made me self-conscious and nervous by asking a lot of questions about my blog, so now I know he could theoretically read anything I write here. Is there any way to say "Some days I hear other people talking about how much they want children and I think 'No, no, don't do it, save yourself while you still can'"---in a way that your children can safely read it?

I don't think they're LIKELY to read it, though. My mother saved a box of all her journals, fantasizing about how she would let her daughter read them one day---and when that magical day finally arrived, I read part of one and was completely uninterested in reading more. Repelled, even. It seems reasonable to assume my children would feel the same way about reading my journals. Still, the idea that they could do it so easily, and with a search feature---it's off-putting.

A general summary of how things are going right now is that as the children get older, I am getting out of the stage I basically like (not all of it, of course, but in the sense that I was glad I'd made the decision to have kids), which is babies and little kids (like, up to pre-adolescent). And as we get out of that stage, I am not very happy about it (even though I felt like I was ready to be done with it), because I don't like the stage that's happening now.

I realize it's ridiculous, because it's not like the literature doesn't explain how this works, but I feel like I signed on for one kind of life and got another kind of life. It's as if I thought long and hard about a pet, and decided after much research and reflection to get a pet caterpillar. It's not that I don't like butterflies, but that's not what I wanted. Now I'm stuck taking care of a pet that's completely wrong for me.

And what can I do about it, right? Nothing, that's what. It's the very thing that's so scary about deciding to have children in the first place: there's no way to know if you'll like it or not, and if you DON'T like it, there's no way to take it back. I can read the pamphlet and understand that the butterfly stage will arrive---but there's still no way to know if I'll like it or not. And if the caterpillar stage had gone so much better than feared, why wouldn't the butterfly stage be the same way? But it isn't.

Rob is almost 14, and he'll be going to high school next year. Elizabeth's Brownies troop has their meetings there, so I've been in the building a few times; it's the same building where I went to high school, so that's freaky. I had what was probably a mild-but-actual panic attack the first time I took her in there: there were several dozen high school kids hanging around (there was a sports event going on in the gym), and I was looking at them and thinking about how extremely stupid and powerful they are at this stage. It's like when a small child's mobility exceeds his brains, so he can move all over the house looking for ways to kill himself---just like that, but with cars and sex and alcohol, and with future career/family happiness on the line. Why was I worried about my stupid baby, when I could easily make him safe by putting him in a playpen or strapping him into a high chair?

Meanwhile, I feel like I live my life constantly on the verge of being drawn into a bewildering confrontation. Rob can be so nice and so companionable, working side-by-side with me in the kitchen getting dinner ready---and then five minutes later I feel like I have to stay calm and think fast so the troll under the bridge will be tricked into letting me pass. I dislike confrontations. I especially dislike confrontations where I am making complete sense on a very simple topic, and yet what I'm saying has no effect on the other person at all---a person who is suffering the delusion that HE is making complete sense. It's like some sort of game: can I get out of this conversation alive AND without getting exasperated to the point of temper AND without crying later in private? If this were my spouse instead of my child, I would be secretly siphoning money out of the checking account in preparation for escape.

And then, most of the blogs I read by other parents of teenagers are self-conscious about writing too, or else only cover the good stuff. So I see basically a series of snapshots of the "nice and companionable working side-by-side in the kitchen" part of life, and it feels like everyone else's teenagers only do that part, and also are SO GREAT AND FUN AND AWESOME to hang out with, while mine is defective and I'm screwing the whole thing up. It's like having a newborn and having mixed feelings about the experience, but finding nothing but bloggers writing about how over the moon they feel, and how they were always meant to be mothers, and how they feel fulfilled like never before---and it's either all true, which is terrible and discouraging, or else all of it is lies because those mothers don't want their babies to grow up and read the blog and feel bad. Either way, USELESS.

William is 11 and in the 6th grade, and I see him as the next of four more train cars coming unstoppably down the track. Or as the next of four more cocoons forming on the twig, to avoid introducing a second metaphor. He's grown much taller and he needs deodorant, which are like Signs of the End Times for childhood. He's mostly still the same kid he was in elementary school, but with weird outbreak moods: I'll ask him to wipe up the honey he spilled while making a sandwich, and he will go dark and moody and STOMP and SLAM as he does it, with me absolutely perplexed. Is it not fair that I asked him to do it? HE spilled it! Who ELSE should clean it up? And I asked perfectly pleasantly! Why do we seem to be in the middle of a Scene, then?

The twins are 7, and in the 2nd grade. One of the huge upsides of having lots of kids and/or wide spacings is that the kids in one stage make me appreciate the kids in a different stage exponentially more than I would have otherwise. When Rob was a second grader, I wasn't seeing him as adorable and sweet and little-kiddish the way I currently see the twins with the contrast of middle schoolers. I wasn't noticing that I could still pick him up or pull him onto my lap, and mentally calculating how many more months that might last. ...Well, actually, that's because Rob even as a NEWBORN didn't want to be picked up. But with William, say: I didn't appreciate 2nd grade William in the same way I currently appreciate the twins, because when William was in 2nd grade, the twins and Henry were tiny, so William was a big kid (and I did appreciate him in that way, because of having littler kids). The twins, though, are 2nd graders and still caterpillars, and the butterflies make me notice this. They're in an exasperatingly forgetful/disorganized stage, but who cares? They're only 7! Look how cute!

And Henry! Henry would be making me wring my hands with worry and despair if I didn't have the middle-school kids. He can be so WILD and ROUGH and HEEDLESS, and I feel like I have to tell him everything a million times. But it's like when you have your second newborn, and instead of thinking "I'VE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE AND I'M DOING EVERYTHING WRONG" like with the first baby, you think, "Eh, this is just a stage. It can be hard, but it'll be over soon."

I try to make myself see the entire butterfly stage that way, but I'm not finding that to be possible. It feels as if the entire pregnancy/baby/little stage is over, which it really IS, and that the butterfly stage stretches into the entire future, which maybe it does. Just as some people really don't like the baby/little stage, I may be someone who doesn't like anything else.

Christmas Report

We're still drinking our coffee "holiday style," right? At least until the kids are back in school?

How did the holidays go for you, or are they still going on? My family celebrates on Christmas Eve (I don't know if that comes from the Dutch ancestry or from the long line of ministers/farmers or from a combination of both), so we've already had The Day of Presents/Celebration followed by The Day of Playing With Presents, and now we are on The Day of Flopping Around Feeling Cabin-Feverish.

I never quite caught the holiday spirit this year, but that's okay. Things were nice anyway, and I managed to do the things I wanted to do to make sure the children still had enough Christmas. I found it motivating to think things like, "They can't do Christmas for themselves; it's something you need to do for them, like buying their clothes and making their meals." I ended up doing MORE Christmas things this year, because I had to actively think about it.


Gingerbread houses (made out of graham crackers) (two separate stations because aaaacccckkkk so many children reaching):

Christmas cookies (gingerbread men purchased from grocery bakery, circles sliced from roll of Pillsbury cookie dough) (maximum three kids at a time, because otherwise aaaaackkk):

Tree-decorating (which turned out to make things EASIER for me):

And presents:

I'm pleased with how things went, and looking forward to the new year. The annual calendar post is up at Milk and Cookies, and also a Christmas loot report.

How about you? Are you pleased with how things went?

When Does It Feel Like Christmas? (If You Celebrate Christmas, That Is. Because Otherwise It Probably Never Feels Like Christmas.)

My mom and dad watch the show The Closer, and my mom was telling me about a funny part in an episode where the people on the show have to handle a big mass-murder thing right at Christmas. The guy doing one autopsy after another looks up from the corpse he's working on and says something like, "You know how there's always that moment where it suddenly Feels Like Christmas? Yeah. This year, not so much."

My mom's real point, besides trying to get me to watch the show, is that she heard that and thought to herself, YES, there IS always a moment where it suddenly feels like Christmas, so she was asking if it felt like Christmas to me yet, and I said not quite yet but almost.

There are a few times when I generally notice it Really Feeling Like Christmas:

• When I've successfully sent the kids off to school on that last day with all their cards for bus drivers and teachers (a project that frazzles me and is so satisfying to complete)


• When the kids come home from their last day of school before Christmas vacation


• The night before, when I'm reading in the living room and I keep admiring the Christmas tree and thinking about how excited the kids will be in the morning (that excitement is more appealing and sweet in thought than in action)


• When we go on the Christmas Eve Light-Viewing Drive

There are also little sub-points, where it feels like Christmas but doesn't Feel Like Christmas: when I'm doing Christmas cards; when Christmas cards start arriving in the mail; when we put up the Christmas lights; when I'm actively shopping for Christmas gifts; when I'm wrapping Christmas gifts; when radio stations start playing Christmas music; when I re-read the Maeve Binchy Christmas short stories; when it seems appropriate to buy egg nog.

When does it usually feel like Christmas to you?

Christmas Books Reading List

On the post Christmas Propelling, I mentioned my Christmas books reading list, and then Becky and Betsy both asked about the other books on that list, so here they are:

The only one that is important to me that I read every year (i.e., I look forward to it as a significant part of Christmas, and will rearrange things to make sure there's time to read it) is Maeve Binchy's This Year It Will Be Different. I love it so much, and the stories are so familiar to me now that I start getting weepy and sentimental just OPENING THE BOOK, and I just really love it.

I don't know whether to recommend it to others, though. You know how people are like, "Oh, I read Anna Karenina every year and I just LOVE it so MUCH!," and then you read it and you think "OMG this is so incredibly awful and depressing and there are so many Russian names to keep track of I can't STAND it, I want to DIE"? You know how that is? Well, I love Maeve Binchy, but when I have recommended her in the past, it has sometimes happened that the recipient of the recommendation has referred to her books as "so depressing." Whereas I find them uplifting and satisfying and if anything a little overly undepressing ("Hey, everything works out right! Again!")---but that is how some people feel about dark Russian novels that have words such as "doomed" and "tragedy" in the descriptions, so clearly there is a certain element of crapshootage to the book-recommendations thing. And it would be hard for me to say that stories involving hideous and unspeakably-rude stepdaughters, sad affairs with married men, and canceled weddings were not A BIT on the doomed/tragedy side, if someone were to read This Year It Will Be Different and then call me out on that. And I don't know if I loved it quite so much the first time I read it. And so forth.

ANYWAY. It's my favorite Christmas book. And in fact I will buy a copy for someone. Leave a comment that specifically mentions it if you want to be included in the drawing; I think you ought to be able to comment on a post without being entered into a contest. My goal will be to get you a hardcover edition, because I think it's much nicer, but this means a gamble with a used copy from an Amazon Marketplace seller---speaking of crapshoots. They're always like, "NEW condition! BRAND-NEW!!" and then it arrives all dinged and scuffed. Which I wouldn't have MINDED if it had been LISTED that way.

So, as I was saying, This Year It Will Be Different is the one that's every year. Then I have Augusten Burroughs's You Better Not Cry (Amazon search results lead me to a $21.99 hardcover, but I see there is also an $8.80 bargain-priced hardcover so I linked to that), which I discussed in the Christmas Propelling post linked to above. This year I also have a new one in the pile: David Sedaris's Holidays on Ice. It has other holidays in it besides just the winter ones.

Two others on the pile are Miss Read books. They're a little hard to find, but I see there's a single volume that has both that can be bought used starting at about $4.00 (they say starting at a penny or two, but that doesn't take into account the four dollars shipping). There are in the "pleasant little tales of a quiet village" category, very nice for reading in a room with Christmas lights and maybe a fireplace.

And the last is Christmas Stories. This one includes stories by famous English-class authors: Dickens and Chekov and Updike. I shouldn't really have it in the pile, because it is the one I leaf through a little bit if I've read all the others. But it has such a pretty binding and I love seeing it with the other books.

All right, so that is the Christmas Book pile. And remember to mention in a comment if you want to try the Maeve Binchy book. I'll pick a name soon, in the hopes of getting the book there before Christmas (although there's no hope of it if it's a book-rate option, which can take weeks). How about...Monday. I'll pick someone sometime on Monday. (U.S. mailing addresses only, as usual---I have Amazon ship it directly.)

(Also see: Christmas Books Follow-Up.)

Edited to add: The winner is Sarah Filchak. I'll email you, Sarah!

Tree Decorated!

The tree is decorated! The tree is decorated!

Does it look a BIT as if someone stood back six to ten feet and FLUNG ornaments at the tree? This is because I crossed "Christmas will not be good unless the ornaments are pleasingly arranged" off this year's list right after I crossed off "Christmas will not be good unless all seven names are signed on the Christmas cards."

After writing yesterday about how I was overwhelmed and trying to fix it by reducing unnecessary perfectionism, I employed my "Well, what CAN you do?" tactic to get myself to do the next thing I really did want to get done: decorating the tree. I couldn't seem to make myself decorate the tree, but I COULD bring up the box of ornaments from the basement and put it in the living room.

From there, nature took its course: children came home from school and descended upon the box. The ornaments were applied two, three, even five to the tip of a single drooping branch. But the ornaments were ON THE TREE.

And, bonus: the children felt as if they had participated in a happy holiday activity. I can picture them later in life reflecting on my awesome laid-back mothering: "She let US do it, however we wanted! She didn't get all uptight about things that didn't matter!" Yeah. That's how it happened.

Soothing Holiday Words

I am speaking soothingly these days into my own ears: "No, no, shhhhhhh, it's fine, you ALWAYS think there's too much to do before Christmas, and it ALWAYS works out JUST FINE."

A soothing mantra, I've found, is "No one really cares." I used this most recently to help me dial back the perfectionism with the Christmas cards this year: I genuinely enjoy sending them so I don't WANT to skip them (I know I COULD skip, but I don't WANT to), but it absolutely works to write "Love, Swistle" and call it a day. No one really cares; no one will say, "Awww, but she usually writes 'Happy holidays and a very happy New Year!' first, and then writes the names of all seven family members! How are we going to have a happy holiday/year without Swistle WRITING that we should have one?"
 
And just because I OWN tons of cute gift wrap and ribbons and gift tags doesn't mean I have to USE them. Some years it's fun to do that, making a pretty assortment of wrappings under the tree and figuring out interesting combinations of coordinating/contrasting ribbon/tags. Other years I want to use a roll of gift wrap until it's gone, and then start on the next one and use IT until IT is gone, and I want to use a sharpie to write to/from on everything. No one really cares which way I do it. No one will say, "Awww, last year my three presents were in three different papers! This year they're all in the SAME paper! Christmas is RUINED!"

And it would be NICE if I had each of the three younger children make cards for their teachers. It would be NICE if I made the little plates of treats for the mail carrier and our neighbors. It would be NICE if I got some extra snapshots printed to send with the card to my great-aunt. It would be NICE if I arranged a gingerbread-house-making activity. But I'm not going to this year, and no one will deep-down care.

(This would be the opposite of soothing on the years that I am getting everything done.)

If It Were Contagious, I Would Breathe on You in Exchange for a Small Fee

ANOTHER thing I've had to learn again and again (I'm picking up this post as if it's been in the forefront of all our minds since then) is that if I am thinking things such as "It's really just a matter of making Good Choices---not giving up ALL treats, of course not, but having them MODERATION," it means I have an infection, and the infection is near my brain. Last time I think it was ear; this time it's sinus.

I hope you won't think less of me when I say that once I'd looked it up online and learned that most routine/moderate sinus infections clear up without antibiotics (and that in fact many of them don't respond to antibiotics), I decided to cruise along with the infection for awhile. It is hard to give up this little temporary time of "I just have to watch PORTION SIZES, that's all!" and even "Oops, it's 3:00 and I just realized I forgot to have lunch!"---and meanwhile the pounds leaving one by one.

Christmas Propelling

This video propelled me RIGHT INTO Christmas spirit: it's Jimmy Fallon, Mariah Carey, The Roots, and some little kids, wearing Christmas sweaters and using classroom musical instruments to do "All I Want For Christmas Is You."




And I NEEDED a little propelling. The tree is not up. Nothing is wrapped. I still have many things to buy and mail. The Christmas cards are not done. (Although that is PARTLY not my fault: the photos I ordered were done wrong so I had to re-order them.)

I HAVE done my annual re-read of the first Christmas book on the pile (You Better Not Cry, which I read first because the stories are not, er, traditionally Christmas-enspiriting) (stomach pumped, boyfriend dying of AIDS, house flooding, waking up in a hotel room with a stranger, etc.). I usually like to bask in the lights of the tree as long as humanly possible, so it is a little stressful to be wasting day after day: here I am, reading about the Christmas when Augusten Burroughs found himself on the street after a 2-day alcoholic blackout, and there are NO CHRISTMAS LIGHTS. And the children are agitating because we have a "Candy canes may only be eaten when they can be harvested from a tree" rule, and the TREE IS NOT UP. There the candy canes sit, tantalizing in their boxes, and the parents do not seem to REALIZE the enormity of this issue: they're all "Eh, maybe tomorrow? Maybe this weekend?" when asked when the tree WILL be up! As if days without candy canes is NO BIG DEAL!

So! This morning I brought the Christmas tree box up from the basement! It is a small step, but it is a step!

Two Twitter Things: One, Twitter May Be Following You Around the Internet; and Two, A Reason People May Seem to Be Ignoring You on Twitter

Oh, coffee with egg nog and whipped cream. Why have we stayed apart so long??

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I learned two things about Twitter recently.

The first thing I learned accidentally, while looking for something else in my account settings (in Twitter, click the little gear symbol at upper right, then choose Settings in that pull-down menu): I learned that there was a box checked (which I hadn't checked) saying that Twitter would "Tailor Twitter based on my recent website visits." That is, Twitter would track my internet usage, in order to "customize" Twitter to that usage. They'd "protect my privacy," of course, while following me around the internet and recording that information in order to use it. Oh! I see! No, thank you! UNCHECK BOX!

The second thing is what I was actually looking for when I stumbled upon the first thing. It had gradually started occurring to me that I was not seeing tweets from protected accounts I didn't follow, EVEN WHEN THAT PERSON HAD @-REPLIED ME. That is, I knew I wouldn't see protected tweets if I wasn't following that person, but I HAD thought that if a person with a protected account deliberately contacted me by using my Twitter name, I WOULD see THAT tweet.

BUT NO. I wonder how many people know this, because I didn't. I wonder how many people have talked to someone on Twitter and then felt ignored when they didn't get an answer, not realizing that the other person couldn't see their tweets? Because it's REASONABLE to think they WOULD see the tweet! And Twitter doesn't, like, reject the tweet, or warn the user at the tweeting moment that the person they've @-replied doesn't follow them so won't see the tweet!

Here's a screenshot from Twitter:

It's that last bullet point. If you have a protected account, and if you directly talk to someone on Twitter, and that person doesn't follow you, THEY CAN'T SEE YOUR TWEET.

This explains why I have felt so confused, looking at Twitter conversations that seem to actively include me and yet I can't see half of the tweets. Sometimes I'll see someone else answering someone who seems to have asked me a question---but I can't see the protected account, so I don't know what the question was.

DID YOU KNOW ABOUT ALL THIS?? Because I did not.

Christmas Notes

Leaving myself notes is turning out to be VERY HELPFUL. Last year I felt like I'd remember most of the Thanksgiving stuff, but I put all my plans and recipe print-outs into a folder anyway. This year when I got them out, I didn't really remember any of it. And I kept thinking things like, "Uh oh. I must have thought I'd remember that recipe for roasted vegetables, but I don't! ...Oh, here it is in the folder! Whew." The best were my menu-list notes such as "5 pounds PLENTY" after potatoes, and "next time, 3 dozen" after rolls.

This morning I got out my Christmas notes, which were much less organized because CHRISTMAS is much less organized. Here are some of them:

1. "Watch Christmas shows and read Christmas books EARLIER." I keep thinking I should wait until it's really close to Christmas, to maximize the Christmassiness of those activities. But instead I ended up feeling stressed and thinking "I STILL HAVE TO WATCH/READ THOSE"---when I'd spent several weeks of December WANTING to watch/read them but making myself wait. Silly! Plus, reading them earlier gets the holiday spirit going earlier.

2. "Eat all the candy canes BEFORE Christmas." Nobody likes them after Christmas, so the deliciousness must be almost entirely Christmas-anticipation based.

3. "Buy one gift card per Target trip for a few months." (I wrote about this idea here.) I need to write this on the calender in September instead: by the time I get out the Christmas Notes, it's too late to remind myself of this.

4. "Remind kids about politeness/gratitude." I keep thinking incorrectly that their training on that is complete. They still really need a refresher before opening any presents.

5. "Divide stocking stuff beforehand." Every single year I think it'll be fun! and festive! to divide the stocking stuff right before it's time to fill the stockings. Every single year I end up sweaty and frazzled and rushed, ripping open bags of candy and dividing them all into five piles and trying to remember where I put the Silly Putty. This year I'm dividing it ahead of time into bags I can then just pour into each stocking.

6. "BRING FLASK."

Lessons

I had to learn AGAIN yesterday the lesson I have already had to learn a thousand times: That if I am being reduced to slumped-shoulder teary-eyed despair by all hundreds of things that need doing everywhere around me, it will actually HELP to actually DO some of those things. I don't know why it feels as if it's pointless, when I've learned so many times that it WILL HELP.

Yesterday after I refilled the soap dispenser, and picked the disposable flosser up off the floor and threw it away, and refilled the cat food container, and washed the pan soaking in the sink, and got out the Christmas address labels, I felt much MUCH better---even though I hadn't scooped the litter box, done any laundry, done any Christmas cards, or done any of the other hundreds of things that had been bringing me down.

I'd only made a FEW, SMALL improvements, each of which took only a few seconds or at most a couple of minutes, but those helped cut down on the number of things I was seeing every time I went into those rooms. The pan in the sink was only one thing, but it was catching my eye EVERY TIME I WENT INTO THE KITCHEN, and so it had felt like a dozen things, and so washing it was like getting a dozen things done. And every single time I went into the bathroom, I was seeing the stupid flosser on the floor, and then a couple minutes later thinking "Oh, the stupid SOAP dispenser!," so those two things felt like a dozen things, and taking care of those two things felt like getting two dozen things done.

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Another recent set of lessons includes "Things That Will Burst Into Flame, FOOMPH!"

William has been engrossed in a series of wax/candle projects/experiments. Recently he's been melting down free candles (he got a bunch from a place we have in town that's like a Freecycle Hut: leave anything you don't want, take for free anything you do want) and pouring the wax into a large fish bowl with wicks dangling down into it. It's looking pretty neat, all stripey.

Anyway, you know what bursts into flame? Wax that got accidentally dripped on a stove burner and down into the little drip-pan underneath. First it just smoked a bit, and I thought, "Well, sure, this is what happens to anything that spills on the burner. It smokes a bit and then it's gone." But then: FOOMPH!! and there were flames, and I stood there staring at them and then slowwwwwwly got a cup of water and slowwwwwly poured it onto the flames, wondering why I was moving so very slowwwwly.

The other thing that bursts into flames: parchment paper in an oven set to broil. I was making a toasted cheese sandwich, and I took the pan out of the oven to flip the sandwich over and I noticed the paper was getting kind of brown, and then I put the pan back into the oven and FOOMPH!! The box of parchment paper has anticipated this, and has a temperature-limit listed---but I had been thinking "parchment paper = aluminum foil" for so long, I wasn't thinking about it anymore.

Oh, one more thing that bursts into flames: crunchy taco shell in a toaster oven. I only needed one or two and it seemed silly to heat up the whole oven for that, so I put them in the toaster oven. And they were doing very nicely, and then FOOMPH!!! I read the box, incredulous, and sure enough: "Do not use toaster oven due to possible risk of fire."

Cough Cough Cough Cough Cough Cough Cough Cough Cough Cough Cough Cough

Every year I seem to get something where first I'm sick for awhile and then I just cough and cough and cough and cough and cough. It's a dry cough that kicks itself off, like a bouncing ball: the first cough irritates my throat so I cough again, which irritates my throat so I cough again, and so on. And it's way worse when I lie down. I've tried every cough medicine on the shelf, and the only thing that works is knocking myself out with a sleeping pill.

I went to the doctor and she said it's "probably viral." Well. Thank you. That's useful information. She also gave me a prescription for codeine cough syrup, which I thought was going to be AWESOME because it's a CLASS-C NARCOTIC and that sounds SEEKABLE, but it didn't seem to do anything for the cough OR make me feel even lightly kite-like. (But DID make me feel like I was going to throw up. Free bonus.)

Alexa told me a mixture of equal parts whiskey and honey would make a nice cough syrup, so I stopped on the way home for a bottle of whiskey. This is when I learned there are KINDS of whiskey---that "bourbon" and "scotch" are not separate liquors like vodka and gin but are in fact WHISKEYS. This has been an educational day. But isn't there a song that goes "One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer?" and not "Two whiskeys, and one beer"? So the liquor store clerk should not have looked at me SO weird. NOT EVERYONE SPECIALIZES IN LIQUOR, LIQUOR CLERK.

Anyway, I think Alexa was thinking a tablespoon or whatever, but I think I'll start with a cup each and sip at that until I can't remember why I was sipping it.

Also, my lower eye lid has been twitching for weeks. WEEKS. Is that something I can die from? Because I've gotten kind of distracted by the cough and haven't fretted about the twitch for awhile.

There! Isn't it EXACTLY like having lunch with an old lady, except no lunch? Now YOU talk about all YOUR physical woes, and then we'll split an entrée!

Sick/Whining; How to be a Woman

May I just flat-out WHINE to you for a minute? I am sick. SICK. Body aches, chills, breathing that makes a sound. Feeling unable to go all the way downstairs to get something. Not QUITE at the level of sickness that my friend Tiffany and I call "wishing for an anvil to fall on my head," but close.

I was telling the children that periodic illness is very good for one's character, because it (1) puts regular daily non-sick life in a new light and (2) makes one more sympathetic to other people's illnesses. But I don't want a refresher in those lessons RIGHT NOW, when I am supposed to be humming cheerfully in the kitchen while making mashed potatoes and cranberry jello, thinking happily about how so many of us are making the same sorts of recipes at the same time. I don't want to be making a doctor appointment this morning in case I have something contagious and we have to postpone/cancel Thanksgiving. I am not in an open, lesson-learning STATE right now, so the lessons are wasted. It's almost as if no one is in charge of such things and they just happen randomly.

Anyway. All the time I've spent on the recliner wrapped in a huge blanket has allowed me to finish this book I bought ages ago:

(photo from Amazon.com)

How to be a Woman, by Caitlin Moran. It's the kind of funny that makes me want to buy it for my sister-in-law (the good one) and my sister-in-law's sister (also a good one)---except it's also kind of page after page about masturbation and pubic hair and porn, which seems awkward at Christmas.

I liked it, but I wished my library had had it, because it's not a book I feel the need to OWN. (I'm going to donate it to the library.) It has a lot of good points, things I felt like underlining and/or quoting. I bought it after reading this interview with the author, and it held up to what I expected, so the interview would be a good way of seeing if you too might like the book.

Ant/Ont/Aunt

I spent part of the weekend with my brother's family, and we had so! much! fun! My niece is three years old and getting so SOCIAL and CUTELY ARTICULATE, and my nephew is one and such a nice squeezy baby.

Here is my question: Did your family growing up pronounce the word aunt like "ont" or like "ant"? My family said it like ant and so did Paul's, but my sister-in-law's family says ont and that's true of most of my friends' families as well. We moved when I was in second grade, so I wonder if that explains my classmates teasing me a bit about it in elementary school: "ANT? That's a BUG!"

We are doing a combination: we say Ant Anna for my sister-in-law (because Ont Anna is harder to say), but my niece calls me Ont Swis.

Let's have a poll over to the right to show us the rough proportions [poll closed; see results below]---but I'd also like hearing more detail (what your spouse's family does, what you do now, whether things changed when you moved to a new area) in the comments section.

Skechers; Cadbury/Dove; The Orchardist

I would like to find the same perfect pair of Skechers lace-up boots I wore for basically the entire 1990s. They were soooo comfy---and also, as I'm sure you can imagine, HOTT with my flannel shirts and rolled-up jeans.

I ordered a pair that looked like the closest available thing---and less than an hour after they arrived, I was standing in line at FedEx to return them. They were like walking around in a pair of watermelons, except drier.

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When I first tried a Cadbury ice cream bar, I thought, "This is just like Dove! But less expensive! Yay!" But just now, I ate the last of the Cadbury ice cream bars and still wanted more ice cream bar, so I ate a Dove ice cream bar right after it---and I liked the Dove way less. I preferred not only the Cadbury chocolate but also the Cadbury ice cream. It was surprising.

This will require further testing: I'll need to eat the two kinds in the opposite order, too.

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(photo from Amazon.com)

I saw The Orchardist on the New shelf at the library and thought it looked promising (nice quiet orchard, two young pregnant girls softening the heart of hermit), but then I got to the part of the book jacket where it says "...men arrive in the orchard with guns, and the shattering tragedy that follows will...." So, okay, no thank you.

Then a couple of bloggers recommended it, so FINE. I read it. I really liked it. It is the kind of book that makes me wish wistfully/unrealistically for the old-style life (satisfying manual labor, not having or needing many possessions, cooking simple meals, etc.)---and simultaneously makes me strongly appreciate NOT having to live that life (hard manual labor, not having many possessions, outhouses, laundry in the river, 2-day trip to get to another town, orphans getting sold to whorehouses, people dying all the time of normal things like illness and childbirth, etc.).

There is indeed a tragedy in the orchard, but it helps to be prepared for it. When the men showed up with guns, I quickly leafed ahead and got the gist of it, and then kind of skimmed. It's not gory, just sad. I was more bothered by the parts where the author could have told us what happened to a character (before or after they appear in the story) but chose not to. I got the message that in real life, the hardest part can be the not-knowing---but I'm familiar with that concept already, which is why when it's fiction and I CAN know, I WANT to know.

I didn't entirely love it. There was a lot of time spent on Della, and I couldn't understand the way her mind worked at all; she never made sense to me. Or sometimes characters did things that didn't seem to me to fit with what we knew of them so far. Or sometimes the drama was so underplayed, I couldn't figure out what had happened. And there are no quotation marks. And sometimes the author seems to lose herself a bit in the beauty of her own words.

I feel like what happened is that the author had about ten books' worth of story and had to make it fit into one volume. I would love if eventually there was an entire book for every character: one book about Caroline Middey, one about Elspeth/Elsbeth (I returned the book so can't check the spelling), one about Clee/Cree (why don't I remember which it is?), one about Angelene's adulthood. I really wanted MUCH MUCH MORE of this book.

Giant Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

This school year is worse than last school year, schedule-wise. Last year, I had 3.5 hours three times a week with no kids, and I told myself sternly that I could spare 30 minutes (which is 60, including preparation and clean-up) for exercise on those days, and I did. This year, I have 2 hours five times a week, which is almost the same number of hours but doesn't feel like it. Am I willing to spend half the day's child-free time on exercise, even three of the five times per week? No, it turns out I am not. Do I instead invest that time in increased sugar consumption? Why, yes I do. So I am feeling marvelous all the time, as you can imagine.

Speaking of which: every year for the last three holiday seasons, I have seen at Target GIANT novelty Reese's peanut butter cups. The first year, I marveled but did not buy, and later I rued it. So the second year, I determined to try some, so I put them on my wish list and I hinted to Paul, but he did not buy them for me. So the third year, I was definitely going to buy some for myself, but they were $10/package and I knew they'd go on sale for $8/package, so I waited---and they sold out before they went on sale, and I rued again.

This year I saw them at Target and they were already on sale for $8, so a pack came home with me.

I'm not sure this fully communicates the vast novelty size.

 

That's better.

William felt it was important to compare the size of a single peanut butter cup to a quarter. Edward, meanwhile, loses the battle with his self-control.

I cut one cup into eight pieces. It didn't make nice tidy wedges, but close enough. I had Paul advising me that I should have warmed the knife first, but I don't think that would have helped.

Here's what 1/8th peanut butter cup looks like. It's about an ounce, which means it's approximately the equivalent of 1 and 1/3rds regular peanut butter cup.


Our family consensus was that the proportion of peanut butter to chocolate was done very well (though it requires careful bite-strategies to make sure it STAYS right), and that this was a very fun novelty sort of thing. I can imagine starting a tradition of buying one package each year---maybe having it on the Friday after Thanksgiving, to kick off the Christmas season.

How to Take a Single Serving of Medicine in the Diaper Bag

Today Paul is taking the twins out for most of the day, and I needed to send a dose of medicine with Elizabeth for an annoying cough. I didn't want to send the whole bottle, because that's messy and heavy and I am not 100% ready to give dosing responsibility to Paul, who always jokes things like "I'll just give her a swig, is that okay?," and also because it's happened before that I've sent off a bottle of medicine and then I need it at home, or it gets left in Paul's car and he drives off to work with it the next day, or whatever. Hassle.

Anyway, here's what I do: I measure a dose into one of those little sample-size liquor bottles. Yes, I suppose it DOES look a little odd to be pouring a child a shot (though I feel like most parents would nod understandingly and wonder only why I wasn't pouring another for myself), but I generally administer it in the privacy of the bathroom, or in the car, or from behind a large fast-food soda cup. Plus, I bring a dosage cup so that the child is not actually seen drinking DIRECTLY FROM a liquor bottle.

First I measure out a dose of the medicine I want to bring with me. Then I pour it into a little liquor bottle.

Usually I peel the label off the bottle to make it look less seedy, but this particular label was leaving a ton of sticky residue and I didn't have time to mess with that so I just left the label on. I have a tiny little funnel that makes it easier to get the medicine into the bottle, but I've also just carefully poured it.

Then I rinse out the little dosage cup, put the cap on the little liquor bottle, and label a baggie with what's in there. I also put down when to give it: I've been surprised at how easily I can forget what time I gave the last dose. Sometimes I'll add a note about exactly how much medicine it is ("two teaspoons" or whatever), if I plan to have the medicine along for an extended amount of time---if, for example, I were making an emergency single-serving of Benadryl to keep with me.

The baggie is for easy labeling and also for in case of leaks, but it's also because AFTER the dose of medicine is given, the dosage cup will be sticky and I might not have an opportunity to rinse it.

I put the bottle and the dosage cup into the baggie, and the baggie into the diaper bag.

I HAVE worried about various open-container laws. But it seems like the odds of me being pulled over on a particular trip, AND of the officer deciding to search the diaper bag, AND of the officer not believing me (or believing his/her eyes or nose) that it's cough medicine or Benadryl in the bottle, AND of the officer thinking that what he/she has mistaken for 2 teaspoonfuls of liquor (1/3rd of an ounce) is worth making a fuss over---even if ALL those things went wrong, a test of the substance would vindicate me. I imagine myself in court saying to the judge, "You see, your honor? I was telling the truth ALL ALONG." Music swells, courtroom cheers, officer looks mortified and starts stammering, judge apologizes fervently that the state has so flagrantly wasted the time of an innocent citizen, etc.

Inherited Housecleaning

My brother and I grew up in a very, very, very tidy household. The family joke is that if you put your book down to go to the bathroom, you'd return to find the book on a shelf with a bookmark in it. My mom worked more than full-time but kept up with the housework constantly whenever she was home (full table/counter/stove wipe-down and floor-sweeping every night after dinner, for example, and constant clutter-clearing), and also did a huge multi-hour house-cleaning every single Saturday.

Fast-forward a bit, and my brother keeps a very tidy household, and mine is a constant mess. I'm sure we could both find ways to attribute these results to our upbringing no matter what our original household had been like: just as one person can say "My parents always kept sweets around so I got in a terrible habit" at the same moment another person is saying "My parents never kept sweets in the house so I grew up constantly sugar-seeking," we too could frame our reactions as either complying with or reacting against our house-cleaning training. I think if we'd grown up in a messy household, we'd just switch sides: he'd be reacting against, and I'd be a result of. It's very easy to blame parents either way for everything, which is so very pleasing and useful until we are the parents.

What I'm curious about is your own set of experiences: What was the cleaning/cleanliness situation in the household you grew up in, and how clean do you keep things now? And have you been considering your own cleaning system either a result of, or a reaction against, your childhood training and experience?

Young Adult; The Chocolate Money

I wish I could use the same verb for watching a movie as for reading a book, because what I want to say is that recently I verbed a movie and a book that both struck me in some of the same ways. Both shocked me at some parts, and some awful things happen in both, and I wouldn't know whether to recommend either one---but on the other hand they've both stuck with me.

(photo from Amazon.com)

The movie was Young Adult (Netflix link). Parts of it seemed SO GOOD, and I thought Charlize Theron did such a good job, and I got a crush on Patton Oswalt, and I approved of the basic messages of the movie. And it was refreshing to the point of riveting to see trichotillomania shown all casual-like (she's scalp and I'm eyebrows/eyelashes, but that's like saying someone smokes a different brand of cigarettes).

But there are some agonizing scenes where someone ruins a party or says something very very inappropriate/awkward/mean. And the character sketches are good and well-accomplished but depressing. But in the end I was glad I'd seen it, and there were quite a few funny moments. I don't know. I'm not really recommending it, but I'm bringing it to your attention in case it looks good to you.

(photo from Amazon.com)

The book was The Chocolate Money, by Ashley Prentice Norton. Dear god. This is the kind of book where I kept looking at the author's photo thinking two things: (1) This book is heavily based on her actual experiences, I'm sure of it; (2) She is just self-aware enough to realize she's been damaged by these experiences, but not self-aware enough to realize just how badly. Also, the author photo has her ostentatiously wearing ripped jeans with heavy jewels, like "Look how quirky!" It turns out she's a Rockefeller heiress, and her mother isn't speaking to her after reading the book.

I kept thinking I was going to stop reading, because I found it so many parts gross and disturbing, and because so many people were doing so many devasting-emotional-impact things to each other, and I was afraid those parts would linger with me, and I think some of them will. But the thing is, I also thought it was good. I didn't ever think "She only got this book deal because of who she is"; I thought, "Whoa. Ouch. Ick. Oh, dear." It reminded me a little of Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld---but it was as if Ashley Prentice Norton said to Curtis Sittenfeld, "Oh, you think YOU depressingly and painfully exposed the disgusting underbelly of the rich and privileged? Nice try, OUTSIDER." Again, I'm not really recommending it---more like exclaiming "dear god!" in front of you and, when you say "What?," telling you why I exclaimed.

Bureau

This seems like a good day to have my coffee in my Will and Kate mug.

I'm also wearing my bleach-fireworks shirt, for probably the last time (fabric is finally disintegrating from being worn/washed a million times).

********

I am having a touch of the blues. They are of the "Some day all my lovingly-acquired possessions are going to be dumped in some yard sale or consignment shop, where strangers will look at them and say 'meh' and/or make mocking remarks" variety.

This is the flip side of one of the things I like about shopping at consignment store, which is the feeling of giving someone else's lovingly-acquired possession a loving new home. It can backfire, as seen here.

That reminds me, though, to show you one of my recently/lovingly-acquired possessions:

I've been questing for a bureau for Elizabeth's room, and found this old bureau at a consignment store. It had been marked down, like, THREE TIMES, yet it is gorgeous (cream and gilt and all curvy and shapey) and has drawers that are dove-tailed front AND back. And it goes very nicely with Elizabeth's bed frame, another consignment-shop find. And also with the little bookshelf, which we assembled from a box from Target.

Fall Back; Get Low; B Vitamins

It took a year for this to work out---but then today it did, EXACTLY AS PLANNED. This morning I caught myself saying, "Let's see, it's going to be LIGHTER in the morning now, right? Or wait, let's see, we..."---so I went directly to the computer and printed out my own Fall Back Printout (I actually DID get around to making a Google Doc for it, so you can print it out too) and put it on the fridge so that NO ONE has an excuse to start ANY sentence with "Wait, we set the clocks BACK an hour, so..."

********

(photo from Amazon.com)

Last night I watched Get Low (Netflix link), and I greatly enjoyed it. It's a slow-going movie; it took me awhile to get into it. It's the kind where there's something we don't know, and we get the story verrrrrry gradually; at first I found this frustrating, but after awhile I was willing to wait. Bill Murray was in it, and he was my favorite kind of Bill Murray: underplayed, with a lot of tiny voice things and tiny expression things that I found hilarious (but difficult to explain to the children why I was laughing). At the end there's some cathartic crying. And there are a lot of interesting things to think about afterward (including "Wait, I thought they were going to tell stories. Why didn't they tell the stories? I wanted to hear the stories").

********

I am confused about B vitamins. I went to the store to buy B1, and they had B6 and B12 and B-complex, but no B1. I went home to look online, and found that B1 is usually sold as thiamine. B3 is sold as niacin, and B9 is sold as folic acid.

Isn't that strange/neat? Some B vitamins are known by names, and some by numbers. ...That seems less remarkable/interesting now that I type it out.

Teen Titans Raven Costume; Jedi Luke Skywalker Costume

I want to make a note for next year: glow stuff is THE BEST HALLOWEEN IDEA EVER. I got a pack of 15 glow bracelets in the Target dollar section for, as you might suspect, a dollar, and I also bought three glow necklaces and a pair of glow glasses. The glow glasses were not a great idea (Paul wore them and looked awesome, but he said they messed with night vision), but the rest of it was great: the kids were SO INCREDIBLY MORE VISIBLE than the kids without glow stuff on. Each kid wore a bracelet on each wrist, and a bracelet on each strap of their trick-or-treat bag, and if I'd thought of it I would have put a bracelet on each ankle as well. (Next year I'll spend TWO dollars on glow bracelets!) Taking motion photos outdoors at night rarely goes well for anyone, but this gives the GIST of what two kids look like in the dark if they're wearing some glow stuff:

I had some costume triumphs this year. The best one was Elizabeth's costume: she wanted to go as Raven from Teen Titans, and I didn't want to spend $40 on the costume + shipping. Here's what Raven looks like (I would like to credit this image, but it is ALL OVER THE PLACE uncredited, so here it is with thanks and credit to whoever it belongs to):

Looking at Raven, I'd say her most important feature, costume-wise, is that cloak. I looked into buying just a cloak, but that was in the "might as well just buy the costume" league of expensive. My mom offered to sew one, but that looked like it was going to end up more expensive and time-consuming than would be worth the savings.

Here's what we did: I bought a $4 one-size-fits-most blue rain poncho (the kind that comes in a little packet) and cut up the middle allllmost to the top (leaving the neck opening intact). I also ended up cutting a long strip off each side to make the sleeves shorter. It was PERFECT.

She's trying to look crabby like Raven

For the jeweled belt/brooch, we happened to find some of those big-version flat glass vase-filler things at a consignment store (if I'd thought of using those glass things before seeing them at the consignment shop, I would have looked at a craft store). Paul happened to have four flat round metal things to hot-glue the big red glass things to, but if he hadn't had those I would have used cardboard painted with gold paint. (And if we hadn't found the big red glass gems, I would have used circles of red paper, maybe with saran wrap over it for shine.) Then I hot-glued the glass-on-metal-circles to an old belt, which she wore backwards so the buckle wouldn't show. (There was originally another round thing on that belt, but it fell off and got lost at school.) I glued one more glass-on-metal to a clothespin, which I clipped to the top of the cape-cut as a brooch. (I colored the exposed part of the clothespin with a blue Sharpie.)

She wanted a black leotard, but those are not cheap. Instead I had her wear a black turtleneck and dark navy skirt. She wanted slouchy purple boots; I had her wear her dark turquoise ones. Raven's skin is grey, so she's also wearing grey tights and grey gloves we already had (both from Target: tights $4, gloves in a pack of three pairs for $2). I used a $1 tube of white face paint to make her face pale-but-not-clown.

The main disappointment was the hair: Raven's is blue-purple (it looks VERY PURPLE in the image above, but it's described as midnight blue), so I bought a $2 can of purple hair spray. It says clearly on it "Cap indicates color." No, it does not:

It was PINK. Bright pink! The cap is DARK PURPLE! Well. We got over it, but it was disappointing.

(She was compensated by the fact that it DID NOT WASH OUT. So she gets to go to school today with pink hair! Whereas I consider that a second disappointment with the product.)

Also a little disappointing: we forgot to put her jewel sticker on her forehead, which a brother helpfully pointed out when it was too late to do anything about it. But our PLAN was to use a jewel from a Sticky Mosaics set she has; if that wouldn't stick, I would have used a washable red marker to draw one on.


The other costume struggle-ending-in-success was William's. He wanted to be Luke Skywalker, but JEDI Luke Skywalker. Which basically looks like a guy wearing black/brown clothes. Since William is 5'4", I thought we were already pushing the trick-or-treat thing without also making it look like he didn't bother to dress up. So I made him look more dressed up with a belted brown towel, and I felt like he REALLY DID suddenly look much more in-costume:

(I evened up the ends of the towel after seeing this photo)

The other crucial element was, of course, the sword, which glowed in the dark. It was $8 at Target, but then that was the total cost of the costume. I have been informed that it is The Wrong Color, but there were two color choices, red and blue, so I got blue.

This outfit showed me that Doing Something almost always looks better than Not, even if the Something doesn't really make Sense. That is: even though the towel is not an accurate representation of any part of a Jedi costume, he still looked MUCH MORE like a Jedi with it than without it.

Old Enough

I'm reading a book that says parents can't drink alcohol and still expect their teenagers not to drink alcohol AND smoke pot (because pot is reportedly less dangerous than alcohol).

I was all, "Oh, crap," and started composing a memo to Paul ("To: Paul. Re: Alcohol. Memo: GET READY TO TOTAL THAT TEE, BABY"). Then tonight as I was folding laundry and thinking about how I couldn't expect my teenager not to drink if _I_ continued to drink the gin-and-seltzer I was sipping, I had this thought: "Wait. Yes I CAN expect that."

Because otherwise, I would also need to give up driving: I can't reasonably expect my un-driver's-licensed teenager not to drive if I'M going to drive. And I would need to stop having sex, because otherwise how can I possibly suggest to my child that he or she not have sex, if they know from the number of children in this house that _I_ must have done it at some point? I can't stay up until 10:00 or 10:30 anymore; I'll need to go to bed at the kids' bedtime. And I will need to stop using matches, because otherwise I'm practically INVITING them with my own match-usage! And I can't SWEAR, certainly, and still expect THEM not to! And so on.

It's silly to think that it's hypocritical to do grown-up things while expecting our children NOT to do grown-up things. The message isn't "THESE THINGS ARE EVIL!! NEVER DO THEM!!!," it's only, "Wait until you're old enough."

Pierced Ears

Elizabeth's ears are pierced, and have been since she was five. It's gone really well, much better than when I had MY ears pierced at five and they got infected, and KEPT getting infected, until we let the holes close up.

She's had two minor infections in the last couple of years, both of which cleared up with a few days of cleaning them with the stuff they gave us a bottle of when we got her ears pierced, and putting antibiotic ointment on them. Other than that, they've been zero care: after the first six to eight weeks or however long it was that the ear-piercing place told us to take daily care of them, we haven't routinely cleaned them or done anything at all with them.

I asked her yesterday what percentage of her female classmates had their ears pierced, and she said about half. I was interested because customs vary widely: in some communities it's common to get the ears pierced in infancy, and in others it's common to wait until the teens. My GUESS was that my particular community the curve would show very few (but SOME) infancy piercings, and very few (but SOME) "not until you're 16/18/21" piercings, but then the biggest chunk of piercings divided into three basic age groups: the "about age 5-6" group, the "about age 9-10" group, and the "about age 12-13" group.

I really wish there was a good way to COLLECT information I'm curious about. I can stare at everyone's ears and come up with a very loose estimate---but that doesn't give me BACK STORY. I've gotten used to the blog-type community, where if I'm curious about something I can just ASK. ...Maybe it's not too late to get my questions added to the ballot.


Here's basically what I'm wondering: What was your own pierced-ears experience, and how was the age decision reached? And then, what about your daughter-related experience/plans? (You don't need to have daughters to answer this part---it can be what do you think you WOULD do if you DID.)

My own experience is that I got my ears pierced twice in early childhood, at about ages 5 and 7, once with star-shaped studs and once with birthstone studs. I remember really really wanting them pierced, so my guess is I did it at the very first age I was allowed to. The first time, the ears got repeatedly infected and we finally let them heal over, and the second time was a re-do in a slightly different location (the piercing person said the first pair hadn't been done in the right place). Then I got them pierced twice more in high school, so I have four holes in each ear. (I use two: top pair and bottom pair.)

For a daughter, I could think of upsides and downsides to any age for piercing. I wanted her to be old enough for it to be An Exciting Event, and I had age 5-8 in mind.