January doings

So January is rolling along, as it does. It's cold. It gets dark early. There's snow on the ground -- not a lot, but some. I've been going for walks, even though the sidewalks are icy. I bought myself a pair of new sneaker hiking boots (whatever they're called, high top sneakers that are also sort of hiking boots) this fall, so sometimes I just wear those, and other days I put my spikes on (see photo), whatever they're called. Yaktrax. OK, I checked and they're called ice cleats or snow grips. They work really well on ice -- the problem is that we have long stretches of sidewalk or creek path that have no ice or snow on them. So you're walking along on bare pavement, with these chains hitting the ground and it's uncomfortable. But then you come to an icy section and whoa, those spikes are the only things keeping you upright! Often the iciest places are the roads, at intersections where you have to cross. If I didn't have my spikes I might not be able to make it across. But then on the other side you hit bare pavement again and you're clumping along on your spikes, pointlessly. It's probably not good for the pavement either.

This back and forth between snow/ice and no snow/no ice is also a classic winter experience, especially in Boulder.

It's weird, sometimes, to be out in the cold and the ice and snow and then think about what it's like in Los Angeles right now. Today I see the high is supposed to be 65 (ours is 37), but with smoke. Those fires! Of course, you can have fires even in the cold, even in Colorado. I will never forget our Marshall Fire of three years ago. I don't remember what the temperature was the day of the fire, but the next day it dropped precipitously and we got 10 inches of snow. I guess you don't have fires when it's snowing, but you can have fires the day before a snow. Anyway.

Let's see, what else did we do this week? (other than watching fire news, I mean.) The kids went back to school on Tuesday, much to their displeasure. Teen B has a new class this term: Health, which is a requirement for graduation. Most of the people in the class are seniors. The teacher told them that they would have no homework, the assignments will all be in-class, and on Fridays there will be no work whatsoever. They still have to come to class, but she'll bring hot chocolate and tea and apple cider and board games, and they can just chill out. Sounds like a senior class to me, but poor Teen B is a junior, so the class is kind of wasted on him. Still, it sounds like it'll give us plenty to joke about this semester.

It was extremely difficult to wake up this week, in part because we'd gotten wildly off schedule over Christmas, and in part because it's January, and in part because I am not sleeping well these days. It's due to the bed bugs and all my bites. I am just covered with bites. I tried to take a picture of the bites on my legs, but I don't think they show up very well. Every little dot in that photo, except for maybe four or five moles, is a bed bug bite. If you run your hand along my leg, you feel the bites -- ALL these little bumps.

Here's another picture, of part of one thigh, which maybe shows some more bites. There are dozens of them. Some are old, some are new, but they all itch like crazy (and of course I have bites behind my knees, and on my thighs, and on my arms, too). And when I go to bed at night the itching intensifies. It's when I lie on my side, one leg on top of the other, the pressure or something. I start out by rubbing my legs against each other, to try to calm the itch. That makes it worse. I try to resist, then I reach down and start scratching. I scratch for a while, then I try to stop scratching and just relax. Ha. After a while I start rubbing my legs against each other again. Then I scratch. Then I stop. On and on. The least itchy position is my back, because then my legs are not touching each other. But I can't sleep on my back. So eventually I turn on my side again. And then the itching heats up.

At some point each night I succumb to pure exhaustion and fall asleep. That's probably when the bed bugs arrive and start biting me again. But before that happens, I've wasted an hour or two of what could have been sleep. I feel like I am permanently exhausted these days.

Last week I ordered a bottle of Crossfire, the pesticide that's supposed to be most effective at getting rid of bedbugs, and it arrived Friday (a day late due to the snow we got on Tuesday). Yesterday we used it for the first time. Supposedly an application lasts for 30 days and then you apply it again, so I plan to use it again in four weeks, which will be February 8th.

There's a guy on YouTube, Green Akers Pest Control, something like that, who posts videos about bed bugs and how to control them. I watched several of his videos and decided I could do this. We bought a new plastic spray bottle -- despite the fact that we already own about 20 of them -- because I wanted to be sure it was clean and that we would use it only for this. Crossfire is supposed to be a very safe pesticide (for mammals), but still, it's a pesticide. This bottle makes enough for a gallon of stuff to spray, but we decided to mix up only one quart. 

In all the bed bug videos I've seen, the people do not have several bookcases and piles of clothing and blankets and Barbie dolls and lymphedema treatments all over their bedrooms. So we may have been screwed from the start. But we tried our best. We stripped the bed, removed the mattress and box spring, vacuumed, and sprayed everything to a fare-thee-well. I sprayed every inch of the bed frame, the box spring, the mattress. I sprayed under the dressers, between the bookcases. I sprayed the molding. I sprayed behind the mirror and pictures on the walls. I went out into the hallway and sprayed the molding. I went into the living room and took the couch and chair apart and sprayed the couch and chair cushions. The kids haven't had any bites, but I went in their room and sprayed under their mattresses and around the feet of their beds. I even sprayed the inside of my car. 

Then we changed the bag on the vacuum cleaner (outside) and I studied the used bag. No sign of any bugs. I washed our sheets again and studied the lint trap on the dryer. No sign of any bugs.

We went out to dinner at the Taj, and when we came back we put the bed back together again. No sign of any bugs. They say you may start seeing dead bugs here and there. I haven't seen any yet. Just now I crawled around on the carpet in our room, searching for dead bugs. Nothing.

I don't know how long it will be before I notice a difference. That is, these bites stay itchy for so long that I'd have to not get any new bites for probably a week before I might start to feel better. OK. I can wait a week. I'll let you know how I feel next Sunday.

Having Rocket Boy home makes it so much easier to do things like this. Of course, I'm assuming it was Rocket Boy who brought the bed bugs into our house in the first place, since my bites started in early November. He probably got them in a hotel. It occurred to me that they could have been in his apartment, since he apparently doesn't react to the bites, but then I remembered that we were there for a week last March and I didn't get any bites. No, he probably picked them up in a hotel, probably in Kansas, on his last trip back home. Oh well.

I am going to be paranoid about hotels from now on. We are starting to plan our Spring Break trip, and I made two hotel reservations this week. And all I could think, when making the reservations, was "Bed Bugs!" I will have to read up on all the things they say to do to prevent bed bugs from climbing into your luggage. Keep your suitcases on a luggage rack or the dresser, NOT the floor -- which is where I always put my luggage. Bring plastic bags to keep your clothes in and also a big garbage sack to put the luggage rack in. Check the bed and the room for signs of infestation. Keep your suitcases zipped up when not in use.

I'm going to turn into one of those crazy people who's always looking for bugs. It may have already happened.

***

This was the first week of trying to follow my New Year's resolutions and it went pretty well. To review, my main resolution was to build a partial schedule into my week. I resolved to do something specific from 10-11 am each weekday, and to write from 2-3 pm each day. My planned activities for the morning hour were as follows:

• Monday: paperwork
  
• Tuesday: lift weights & plan our next trip
  
• Wednesday: call dentists (or whoever needs calling)
  
• Thursday: genealogy
• Friday: lift weights & pay bills
  

And I actually followed this! Each day I worked along on morning FlyLady things until 10 am, and then I stopped and started doing the activity of the day! It was truly amazing. And I got a lot done. I am going to make one change for this week, however. I decided that I really needed to be doing stretch videos/lifting weights THREE times a week, not two. It only takes about 15 minutes to do one of those videos, and then I have 45 minutes for the other activity. So the new schedule is as follows:

• Monday: lift weights and plan our trip
• Tuesday: paperwork
  
• Wednesday: lift weights and call dentists (or whoever)
  
• Thursday: genealogy
• Friday: lift weights & pay bills
  

Probably the least successful day was Wednesday, because calling dentists is so incredibly anxiety-producing for me. I would rather do almost anything than call a dentist's office. Last spring, when I finally got up my nerve to call some dentists, both offices I called said they were NOT accepting new patients and were really rude to me. I suspect they were getting a lot of calls from other patients who used to go to our dentist (who flaked out and closed his practice), but still. They could have been nicer.

So I didn't actually call any dentists this past Wednesday -- I just researched them. I found a few that I want to call -- but none of them were listed on the website of our new insurance, MetLife. I fear that we (I) may have really screwed up on the insurance thing. We knew Delta Dental was bad, but we didn't know what would be a good replacement. I think I made a bad choice.

We may just have to go to a stupid dentist, like Perfect Teeth, this year, and then switch insurances and dentists again next year.

The writing hour did not go as well. I discovered that 2 pm is kind of a sleepy time for me, especially since I'm not getting enough sleep these days (see above). So it was hard to concentrate. It was also hard because I haven't really worked out what this novel is about yet. I have a vague idea, or actually several vague ideas, but they haven't come together properly. So I get discouraged quickly. I write a few lines and then I think -- what is this doing here? Why haven't I gotten to the mystery proper, why am I writing about changing babies' diapers? And then I have to remind myself that writing is how you figure out what to write. Probably the section about the babies will eventually be deleted, but I have to write it in order to get to the more important stuff.

As the week went on, and the word count added up, I felt a little more cheerful. I have about 8,000 words of this novel written so far. A typical middle grade novel might be 40,000 words. At this rate, writing maybe 250 words a day, five days a week, I could have 40,000 words by June. Of course, you need more than 40,000 words -- they have to be the right words. But still. I felt encouraged.

The other problem with the writing hour was Rocket Boy. At 2 pm he's also in the desk room, where I write, because that's where he does his job, teleworking. And he watches videos related to his job, and has loud phone conversations while I'm trying to write. One day, maybe Tuesday or Wednesday, I got very upset about these disturbances and decided that I couldn't work in that room with him. I would have to take my laptop and go work on the dining room table or something. The problem with that idea is that my laptop doesn't travel very well. The battery doesn't last more than a minute or two -- and we've replaced the battery, but that didn't fix the problem. So I would have to drag the power cord and all that along with me wherever I went. Also, in the desk room I have my laptop hooked up to a larger monitor and a keyboard. I don't like typing on a laptop keyboard, staring at a little screen. But I can't drag my monitor and my keyboard out to the dining room every day, that would be such a pain. Also, I really like to be able to look out of the two windows in the desk room.

After thinking many dark thoughts about how I wanted Rocket Boy to go back to Missouri, or DIE, so that I could have the room to myself, and about how no one in the family values my writing, and about how I don't want to get up at 6 am and write before the rest of the family gets up, since I'm not getting enough sleep ANYWAY, due to certain BED BUGS, that a certain HUSBAND brought with him from a hotel in KANSAS...

...it finally occurred to me that I *like* to write in the desk room, and so I'm going to go on writing there, in the afternoon. I will invest in a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, or maybe earpods, something like that, and otherwise I will just do my best to ignore Rocket Boy's activities. Now that he knows I'll be in there from 2 to 3, he can try to watch his videos at other times, but when he needs to be on a conference call I can just put on my headphones and hope for the best.

And once I decided that, miraculously the problems seemed to go away. Rocket Boy stopped irritating me, although he went right on working. Even without headphones, I found it easier to concentrate.

I am looking forward to making some real progress on that novel this winter.

***

Another task that I wanted to work on this week was starting to take down the Christmas tree. I thought I could pack up one small box of ornaments each week, leading up to the first weekend in February, when we take the whole tree down. But I didn't get anything packed up. I still could. I've got tonight. We're having leftovers for dinner, so that's easy. I'll see.

The only way that I worked on the tree was to eat candy canes off it. I was very disappointed with the candy canes this year. We buy Brach's, not horrible Spanglers, but even the Brach's weren't very good. I don't think it's my imagination -- I think they've gotten thinner and less good. The old Bob's candy canes were vastly superior. So anyway, the kids have hardly eaten any of them, which means it's been up to me. I just know I'm going to break a tooth, or a filling, on the darn things, and here we are without a dentist. But I go on eating them. In fact, I'm eating one now. Mmm.

I should give the Mounjaro report before I forget.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 229
• Weight this morning (after 29+ weeks on Mounjaro): 229
  

Sigh. Five weeks in a row with tiny weight losses, and then this week I stayed the same. And it's so frustrating, because most days of the week I weighed less. But, if you'll recall, last week it wasn't clear that I really weighed 229, it might have been 230. This week it was clearly 229, both times I got on the scale. So, there you are. At least I didn't gain. (Maybe when I finish the last of the candy canes, my weight will start going down again.)

I took three good walks this week and did two stretch videos. So I will try to do the same again this week, or maybe more. And that's about all I can do. Cooking is going pretty well. Rocket Boy usually handles the Monday and Tuesday night dinners, and I do Wednesday through Friday. This week I made roasted cauliflower with couscous on Wednesday, tacos on Thursday, and a pasta dish on Friday. We're going to have the leftover pasta tonight. This coming week there's a meeting at the school on Wednesday (from 6 to 7:30), so we may just get a quick meal out afterwards. And Thursday my book group meets, so I'm not sure what I'll do that night, something simple and quick. I need to sit down and plan the meals tonight (perhaps while taking ornaments off the tree).

But for now, it's almost 5 pm and I haven't walked yet, so I think I'm going to go take a short walk. The Weather Service says it's 34 degrees (it's probably colder on our front porch) and it's going to get down to 12 degrees tonight. Hello January. Gotta love it.

Welcome to 2025

So here we are in the new year. When the calendar turned over to 2025, I was so surprised to have my phone say "January 1." Oh yuck, I thought, as if it were unexpected. January! It sounds so cold and bleak after the warmth and fun of December. And it is cold and bleak today: a light snowfall overnight and a high of 31 or so (which is probably what it is right now, at 3 pm). We had almost no snow in December, something like 6/10ths of an inch, so we need to catch up. Sigh.

But January is what it is, and so here we are. 

Our big news is that, as I feared, we do seem to have bedbugs (the photo shows what we think is bedbug poop, on our box spring). Where they came from, who knows. My best guess is a hotel Rocket Boy stayed in on his way home from Missouri. But we don't really know.

I am the only family member being bitten (or at least reacting to being bitten), but I have so so many bites. Sometimes I can't fall asleep because I keep thinking about the bedbugs crawling into our bed, crawling up my legs, biting biting biting. It's quite horrifying. We have yet to see a live bug, but we know they are there.

Last night I dreamed that I stayed up late and around 3 or 4 am, shone a flashlight on the legs of our bed. I could see bedbugs making their way up the legs. I smashed as many as I could. Then I woke up. Then I fell asleep again and had a version of the same dream. Then I woke up. Then I fell asleep again and had that dream a third time. I am not sure if this really happened. Did I really have the same dream three times? I don't know. But it wasn't a good night.

I feel as though January often starts off with something awful happening. Sometimes people get very sick. Two or three years ago the rental house had that leaking pipe that led to thousands of dollars in repairs and damage control. So for us this year apparently it's bedbugs. (Unless something else even worse is going to happen soon.)

Resolutions

As usual I started off the new year by reviewing my achievements of the previous year and making plans for the year to come.

My achievements in 2024 included the following:

• read 122 books, saw 19 movies, went to 9 concerts and 2 plays (mostly school-related) and 1 funeral, wrote this blog regularly, and did some other writing as well. 
• finally got our trees trimmed and the volunteer Siberian Elm in the front yard removed; replaced the hot water heater and the bathroom door; in the rental house Rocket Boy replaced a light fixture and a broken outlet and put in a new thermostat.
  
• We took two family trips and I went on another with my sister. 
• did stretch videos all winter, walked regularly all summer and fall, and started taking Mounjaro which helped me lose 25 pounds and get my blood sugar down. Also finally got my braces off.
  
• helped Teen A get his driver's license, continued to help Teen B make progress in that direction, and helped both kids survive in school.
  
• and encouraged Rocket Boy to finally move back to Colorado!
  

I don't have a lot of big plans for the coming year. Our income is in good shape for now. With Rocket Boy taking Social Security AND earning a salary with his new job, there's no need for me to bring in money. Mounjaro has such a strong effect on my stamina, especially on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, that I'm not sure I'm up to working a regular job now anyway. Maybe I could handle part-time, or volunteer work. I'll see.

But as always I do have resolutions (or plans, goals, whatever word you prefer). I think my overarching goal is to not spend so much time on housework. Or, rather, on avoiding housework, which takes a lot of time. I'm so focused on following FlyLady that I put housework above everything else, when it really should fade into the background. I can spend literally HOURS not cleaning the litter boxes -- but not doing anything else either, because I'm trying to get myself to clean the litter boxes.

So my idea is to schedule some of my hours, at least on school days. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, I get up at 7 and the twins get up at 7:30-ish, and they leave the house around 8:10 (Wednesday it all happens an hour later). Then I feed the cats, make my breakfast, put away clean dishes from the night before, start a load of laundry, eat my breakfast, do the breakfast dishes, and either swish & swipe the bathroom OR clean the litter boxes. And put the laundry in the dryer. All that shouldn't take more than an hour or so, but I can stretch it out so that it takes three hours (and perhaps isn't even done). So my first plan is that at 10 am I will stop whatever I'm doing and do something else for an hour. I've made a tentative schedule, as follows:

• Monday: paperwork (getting ready to do our taxes, and later working on the files & piles)
  
• Tuesday: lift weights & plan our next trip
  
• Wednesday: call dentists (or whoever needs calling)
  
• Thursday: genealogy
• Friday: lift weights & pay bills
  

I may change this around -- it's just tentative, until I see how this works.

OK, so then 11-2 is free (unscheduled) time, time to do housework, plan meals, go to the grocery store or do other errands, schedule appointments, read -- whatever.

Then comes another scheduled hour: from 2-3 pm I will write. I need some writing time and with Rocket Boy teleworking in the desk room, I know I'm not going to get it unless I demand it -- from myself -- schedule it and keep to the schedule.

Then at 3 pm I'll stop writing and go for a walk. Maybe. But it would be a good time for it, and it would help me break away from the computer. And the rest of the day & evening is open: put away the laundry, start making dinner, read, do other tasks. The twins get home around 4:20 on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, and around 3:50 on Wednesday and Thursday, so they often need things from me.

We'll see how it goes.

In addition to my schedule plans, of course I have all my usual resolutions about reading and exercise and whatnot. I won't write them all down here -- they're quite similar to previous years. Read 52 books, see 26 movies, walk every day, etc., etc. It all seems totally doable and reasonable. Actually doing it is something else. But we'll see. 

***

This was a really lazy week. We had thought we would do a lot of fun things over the break, but we did almost nothing. That trip to the Art Museum last weekend was it. Teen A mainly hung out with his friends and Teen B didn't want to do anything with us. No movies, no trips. I feel bad about it, but I also know that when you're 16 going on 17 you want to do your own thing, not your parents' thing. Even if you have no friends, you don't want your parents to be your friends. I respect that.

 

New Year's Eve was pretty quiet. Teen A wanted to do something with friends but I made him take the bus -- I didn't want him driving on drunk driving night. Teen B stayed home with us and we made a puzzle and watched some TV. Just after midnight I texted Teen A to ask if he wanted me to pick him up and he texted back that he was waiting for the bus. But a little while later he texted that no bus was coming and could he stay overnight (his friend's parents were OK with it). So I said fine, we'll see you in the morning. We all slept late and he woke us up when he came in the front door at 11 am. A funny start to the new year.

 

One exciting thing that happened was we lost Sillers. It was the day we worked on the bedding -- Thursday? Or Friday? I've forgotten. Anyway, we stripped the bed, put the mattress in the hall, draped the gigantic mattress pad over the clothesline, and vacuumed the bedroom to a fare-thee-well. We don't have any anti-bedbug chemicals yet (supposed to arrive this Friday), but we did what we could.

While we were going in and out of the back door, Sillers somehow slipped out. She doesn't usually do that -- it's a Baby Kitty thing -- but that day she did. Maybe an hour later I heard a meow that sounded like it was outside and I realized she was nowhere in the house. By then it was dark, but I went out and used my phone flashlight to search. Teen B helped me. No sign of her, no rustling sounds. I went to the front yard and continued to search. It was cold, probably in the low 20s. Nothing. Then all of a sudden, a very loud meow came from under Rocket Boy's car! "Sillers!" I cried, but I didn't want to scare her. "What a good girl," I said, in a softer, calmer voice. Little by little she came out from under the car and let me pick her up. Once back inside, she ran all around the house, her tail very big and puffy. Funny cat.

Still, other than that it was a boring week. We did go to Starbucks a lot, because Teen B enjoys that. I realized today, on our third trip this week, that I really didn't want Starbucks. I was tired of coffee with whipped cream on top (I'm not normally a coffee drinker, but coffee is a big help with constipation issues). I wanted to go to the bagel shop next door and get a yummy bagel sandwich. But Teen B wanted to go to Starbucks, so we went to Starbucks yet again. And I've already told him we can go tomorrow too -- the last day of vacation.

Time for the Mounjaro report, I guess.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 229.2
• Weight this morning (after 28+ weeks on Mounjaro): 229
  

So, fifth week in a row with a tiny weight loss. I must confess that this may not be accurate. When I first got on the scale this morning it said 230. Oh, come on, I said, and got off. "Error," said the scale. I waited for it to reset and then got on again. 230. Really? I said. I got on one more time and it said 229. At that point I should have gotten off and gotten on one more time, because the scale has to say the same thing twice (with no "Error" message) before I believe it. But instead I thought to myself -- 229 sounds good, I'll go with that. So we'll see next week if this was real.

If in fact I did lose 2/10ths of a pound, it was probably due to exercise. I took four good walks this week. I decided to set a weight loss goal/resolution/whatever for the coming year of 1 pound a month. Even though my weight loss has slowed considerably, I think one pound a month is doable. It sounds like so little, but at the end of the year I could be down 12 more pounds! Last year on January 1st I weighed 251.6. And this year on January 1st I weighed 228.8. That's a loss of 22.8 pounds! Last year I intentionally did not make any weight loss plans because I thought it was hopeless. And sure enough I spent the first six months of the year gaining weight. But then came Mounjaro. So anyway, maybe good things will continue to happen there.

I guess that's about all I have to say today. I was looking at the Christmas cards and thinking about who we heard from this year and who we didn't hear from. We send cards to a lot of people who don't send them to us -- which is fine, no one has to send cards. But sometimes I wonder whether I'm annoying people with our letter and all that. Then today Rocket Boy decided to call an old friend who we haven't heard from in several years. They're talking now, as I write. Since we last heard from this friend he's gone through (successful) cancer treatment, his older son was hospitalized for mental health issues, and he and his wife Natalie separated and are now going through a divorce, although apparently they're on good terms. "We always enjoy your Christmas letter," I heard him say. "Natalie came over and read it too. We always like to read it." OK, I thought. I guess I'll go on sending it out. It's just one way of trying to maintain connection. Which is really the only thing that matters.

What I read in 2024

My goal for 2024, as usual, was to read at least 52 books (one per week). Instead, I read 122 books, more than twice as many.

Here is a review of what I read in 2024, by category.

Children's Books. I don't read children's books to the kids anymore, but I read a few to myself this year. My favorite was, of course, The Birchbark House, which is a lovely story, but I also really liked Zia, which is a sequel to Island of the Blue Dolphins and is very sad. And Totoro was very sweet and made me feel like I was watching the movie again.

• The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich
• Zia by Scott O'Dell
• My Neighbor Totoro (novelization) by Hayao Miyazaki & Tsugiko Kubo, translated by Jim Hubbert
  

Young Adult (YA)/Teen Books. Since I've stopped reading to the kids, I read most of these to myself (except the first, which is the second to last book I read to them). I honestly didn't like any of them much. I don't like this genre. I keep wondering whether I would have liked it when I was a teenager, if it had existed then. I'm not sure. Anyway, my favorite was probably the John Green book, which I have read before. The kids didn't like it that much, though. We watched the movie, and it was pretty good.

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (read to the kids)
  
• I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sanchez
  
• All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir (set in Ridgecrest)
  
• House of Stairs by William Sleator
  

 

Books for the Book Group. My beloved book group continues, even though we have only three members now and two of us are on Mounjaro/Zepbound, so we don't want to eat! I liked several of these, so it's a little hard to choose a favorite. I think I'm going to go with Good Night, Irene, which was a really unusual perspective on World War II. I think the only books I really didn't like were The Promise and Loot. They were both well-meaning books, but they just didn't work for me. Oh, and Rin Tin Tin. So boring, although I learned some interesting things about dogs and dog movies.

• January/February: On Beauty by Zadie Smith
• March: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
  
• April: The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
  
• May: The Promise by Damon Galgut
  
• June: Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
  
• July: Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea
  
• August/September: Loot by Tania James
  
• October: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
  
• November/December: Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend by Susan Orlean
  

 

Mystery/Thriller. Often a long list, but this year it was mostly just rereads of Dorothy L. Sayers. My favorite of the new books I read was probably Slow Horses, which was a fun introduction to a new series that now I get to continue reading.

• Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers (again)
  
• A Cold and Silent Dying by Eleanor Taylor Bland
• Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy L. Sayers (again)
• Slow Horses by Mick Herron
• Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers (again)
• Dead Lions by Mick Herron
• Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron
• Lost Birds by Anne Hillerman
• Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers (again)
• The Silence of the Sea by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Supernatural Mystery/Ghost Story. I only read a few of these this year. Didn't really like the Tremblay, hated the last installment of Phil Rickman's beloved series. So I guess my favorite was The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, lol. Must do better next year.

• Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
• The Fever of the World by Phil Rickman
• The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories edited by J. A. Cuddon

Science Fiction/Fantasy. Hardly read any science fiction this year. I thought about choosing a scifi writer as one of my monthly picks, but ended up not doing that. The Cherryh book was fine, but at this point in the series she's just phoning it in. Drowning Towers was so unusual (about climate change and the destruction of society in Australia) that I'll say it was my favorite.

• Resurgence by C. J. Cherryh
• Drowning Towers by George Turner

 

Poetry. I planned to read more poetry this year, but eventually petered out. Still, eight books, that's better than usual. I'm going to say my favorite was Walking Gentry Home because it was such an interesting concept, genealogy in verse. I also enjoyed the volume of Pushkin, which I started reading during the month when I was reading Nabokov, and finally finished a few days before the end of the year.

• Tomorrow's Living Room by Jason Whitmarsh
• Feel Free by Nick Laird
• There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems 1963-78 by Michael Ondaatje
• Seems Like a Mighty Long Time: Poems by Angela Jackson
• The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923-1968 by Louise Bogan
• Selected Poems of May Sarton, ed. by Serena Sue Hilsinger and Lois Brynes
• Walking Gentry Home: A Memoir of My Foremothers in Verse by Alora Young
• Alexander Pushkin: Selected Poetry translated by Antony Wood

 

General Fiction. A very long list this year, on account of my plan to read multiple books by a different author each month. I liked several of these a lot: Life and Times of Michael K, The Last Night at the Ritz, Austerlitz, Jesus' Son, James, The Trial, The Painted Drum, and The Things They Carried were all really good, and I'm probably forgetting some. Any of these could have been my favorite, but I'm going to put a picture of Jesus' Son here because it probably blew me away more than any other piece of fiction I read this year.

• White Teeth by Zadie Smith
• Martha & Hanwell by Zadie Smith
• Mixed Company by Jenny Shank
• Howards End by E. M. Forster
• NW by Zadie Smith
• Dusklands by J. M. Coetzee
• Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee
• Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (again)
• Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee
• Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym (again)
• The Pleasing Hour by Lily King
• The English Teacher by Lily King
• Father of the Rain by Lily King
• Foe by J. M. Coetzee
• 1984 by George Orwell (read w/Teen A for school)
• Writers and Lovers by Lily King
• Life of Pi by Yann Marten (read (for the 2nd time) w/Teen A for school)
• But Not For Love by Elizabeth Savage
• The Last Night at the Ritz by Elizabeth Savage
• Toward the End by Elizabeth Savage
• Mama's Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes (read to the twins)
  
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
• A Revolver to Carry at Night by Monika Zgustova, translated by Julie Jones
  
• The Apple in the Dark by Clarice Lispector, translated by Benjamin Moser
  
• The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector, translated by Idra Novey
  
• Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald, translated by Anthea Bell
• The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector, translated by Benjamin Moser
• Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• American Pastoral by Philip Roth
• James by Percival Everett
• Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
• Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard (also could be considered a memoir)
  
• Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
• Collected Stories by Franz Kafka
• The Trial by Franz Kafka
• The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (read w/Teen B for school)
• The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich
• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (read w/Teen A for school)
  
• The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens
  
• The Chimes by Charles Dickens
• The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens

Christmas Books. I only read one Christmas book this year (I'm not counting the Dickens books as Christmas books) and it was appallingly awful. So I don't have a favorite, and I won't include a picture. I don't want to encourage this sort of thing.

• The Mistletoe Mystery by Nita Prose

Graphic Novels/Memoirs/Whatever. I only read two graphic books this year, and the second was a children's book. It was OK. But The Talk was outstanding and I'm sure it would be my favorite even if I had read several others. Really good book, with the scenes set in Berkeley as a bonus.

• The Talk by Darrin Bell
• Took: A Ghost Story graphic novel by Mary Downing Hahn, adapted by Scott Peterson, Jen Vaughn, & Hank Jones

 

Memoir/Diaries/Autobiography. Looking at this list, I see that I read a lot of books about death and dying this year. I didn't mean to be morbid -- death and dying are just really interesting subjects, especially as one approaches the latter part of one's life (I'm only 64, but I might easily have lived 3/4 of my life already). Although I thoroughly enjoyed several of these books, I'm going to choose the first one as my favorite. The Bright Hour is really a good book (if you can bear to read about a young mother dying of breast cancer). I also especially liked Stay True, which brought back so many memories of my time at Berkeley. And the books by Kevin Fisher-Paulson were so comforting. I read bits of them at night when I needed something to calm me down.

• The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs
  
• A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety by Donald Hall
• Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor
• Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son by Anne Lamott with Sam Lamott
• The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride
• Night by Elie Wiesel (read w/Teen B for school)
• Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited by Vladimir Nabokov
• Stay True: A Memoir by Hua Hsu
• Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward
• A Song for Lost Angels: How Daddy and Papa Fought to Save Their Family by Kevin Fisher-Paulson
• In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife by Sebastian Junger
• How We Keep Spinning: The Journey of a Family in Stories by Kevin Fisher-Paulson

 

Biography. Now this is embarrassing. I did not read a single biography all year (except for presidential biographies). I guess I could have put the bio of Florence Harding here, but I think it really belongs with the presidential bios. Right after Christmas I read a book about Judy Blume that I thought was going to be a biography, but I ultimately decided that it wasn't one -- it was about her influence as an author, not her life. Oh well. I'll do better in 2025, I hope.

• 
  

 

Presidential Biography. I made it through four presidents this year and they were all interesting. I was surprised to find that I didn't care much for Woodrow Wilson after reading about him. He had many good points, but overall not a very effective president. Harding was a joke: his many affairs, his crazy wife, the Teapot Dome scandal, etc. Calvin Coolidge was a lot of fun, though not a very good president. And Hoover was so interesting -- such a fascinating guy, though again not very successful as president. It's hard to choose a favorite book, but I guess I'll go with Hoover (though I also loved the Coolidge bio). That was an exemplary presidential biography.

• Woodrow Wilson by August Heckscher
• Warren G. Harding by John W. Dean
• The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage During the Great War by James David Robenalt
• Florence Harding: The First Lady, the Jazz Age, and the Death of America's Most Scandalous President by Carl Sferazza Anthony
• Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President by Donald R. McCoy
• Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte

 

General Nonfiction. Even with reading all that fiction, I managed to squeeze in the occasional work of nonfiction. Most of these were OK, but I'm not sure how to choose a favorite. I don't think I was totally blown away by any of them. I enjoyed The In-Between (more books about death and dying), and The Ship Beneath the Ice was very interesting. White Sands was a good introduction to a new writer for me (Geoff Dyer) who I plan to read more of. Rough Sleepers was a good book to read if you want to know more about the homeless crisis. But a favorite???? Could be any of those.

• Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith
• The In-Between: Unforgettable Encounters During Life's Final Moments by Hadley Vlahos
  
• Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson
  
• Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace by Anne Lamott
• Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy by Anne Lamott
• Eating in the Light of the Moon: How Women Can Transform Their Relationships with Food Through Myth, Metaphor, and Storytelling by Anita Johnston
• The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton's Endurance by Mensun Bound
• Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by Lori Gottlieb
• Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West by Wallace Stegner
• The Birds That Audubon Missed: Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness by Kenn Kaufman
• Telltale Hearts: A Public Health Doctor, His Patients, and the Power of Story by Dean-David Schillinger
• A Walk in the Woods by Dick Chavey
• White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World by Geoff Dyer
• Love is Stronger Than Death: The Mystical Union of Two Souls by Cynthia Bourgeault
• The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings by Geoff Dyer
• Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People by Tracy Kidder
• The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us by Rachelle Bergstein

The long vac

Winter break is always a little daunting -- such a nice long break, you think, but you still have to do laundry every day (practically) and figure out something for dinner and clean the litter boxes and all that. And deal with the children, who in their current incarnation are grumpy teenagers. 

So it's not really a break so much as it is a change. I don't have to get up at 7 am, unless the cats decide that I should, and they're being quite reasonable so far. I don't have to help with homework. And there's a Christmas tree in the living room and tins of cookies all over. Otherwise, not much different.

We had an OK Christmas, very low-key. I had struggled mightily with presents, and from the reactions I got I thought maybe I shouldn't even have tried. Oh well, I'll rethink this next year. Teen B was mildly pleased with his new t-shirt (he's worn it once) and his new pajamas (he's worn them twice). He pronounced his new slippers "zesty" and has not worn them. Teen A was not pleased with his soft gifts. He has not worn his new shirt nor his new pajamas nor his polar bear socks. Oh well. They both wolfed down the candy in their stockings, and Teen B has expressed interest in using the German pretzel mix he received (Teen A has pointedly ignored his 12 cans of oysters). Nobody has wanted to play MadLibs or make the new puzzle. Teen A didn't even open the "cat-a-pult" that was in his stocking, much less play with it.

I looked at the pile of paper and gift bags afterwards and thought: huh! What was the point of all that? Again, I must think this through better next year. Maybe we don't need a lot of presents to open. But if we get rid of presents, will the twins even want to celebrate Christmas with us? I started feeling insecure, like I haven't done a good job of instilling Christmas traditions in them over the years. For example, I've never really taught them how to give presents. When they were younger I used to get them involved in choosing presents for dad, and for our next-door neighbor. But these days they don't show any interest in buying or making presents for other people. That is undoubtedly my fault, and it's partly because I'm so lukewarm about the whole gift-giving thing anyway. They haven't had a good model. Rocket Boy is not good at it either. But also I think they're a little selfish, don't want to spend their money on other people. That was one thing when they had no money, but now they get $20/week. They could buy some little gifts for family members. 

Of course, what would they get us? Rocket Boy didn't even get me a present this year. He asked me, rather desperately, what I would like, and I said a new frying pan to replace our two that have the non-stick coating coming off. I said it could be a joint present (since we both cook). So we went to McGuckin's together and bought it (I paid for it), and he put it in a gift bag. I couldn't think of anything to get him, since the house is full of chocolate and tea, and I promised him no more new shirts, since his closet is full to bursting. So on Christmas Eve I typed up some coupons that said things like "Good for one hike in January 2025," "Good for one movie in February 2025," etc., and gave it to him. So lame. And not a very good example for the twins to follow.

Oh well. Next year things will be completely different. We won't be getting used to having Rocket Boy around -- we'll be used to him. The twins will either be even more independent, or they'll be coming back around to us (probably the former). Whatever plans I make after this holiday will be upended by whatever situation we're dealing with next year. I just need to remember to revisit the issue in general. But for this year, I'm still sorry Teen A seemed to have such an unhappy Christmas.

BUT! Yesterday Rocket Boy drove to Longmont to buy a new TV/monitor thingie that will be able to interact with our old VCR. It cost $50 (on craigslist). This means that we can get rid of our old gigantic TV that sits under our flatscreen TV (we kept it so we could watch VCR tapes through it) and I'll be able to see the picture of my ancestors that's been hidden behind it for a few years. And so, Rocket Boy put the old flatscreen TV (which we got for free from a member of my book group) in the desk room, to be a giant monitor for Teen A to play video games on. Teen A had actually requested a giant monitor for Christmas, but I had ignored that request because we have perfectly good monitors and why do we need a new one? Anyway, Teen A now has his "new" monitor (our old TV) and is thrilled. So it's a merry Christmas for him after all and his mood has improved.

Our Christmas ham has been a bit of a disappointment. We didn't start eating it until Christmas day (had salmon for Christmas eve). Teen A took one bite, said yuck, threw the rest in the compost bin, and hasn't been willing to touch it since. I don't know what the problem was -- he won't say. Teen B ate the ham for three nights, but now he says he's done too (we had it again tonight). But the ham's not done! Even though we got the smallest size, there are at least six slices left. I've promised to make something without ham tomorrow, and then I'll probably make my mother's rice ham dish, and then I don't know, maybe soup? Bean soup with some ham mixed in?

Anyway, we won't have ham for Christmas for another several years, I think.

Two nights before Christmas we went to my friend Sally's house and decorated sugar cookies with her (this was part of her family tradition -- her family decorated their Christmas tree with these cookies). She had made two different kinds of chili, and we ate that with her for dinner before decorating. 

I wanted the twins to come with us, and I couldn't think how to convince them, but in the end I just pretended to be a hard-ass, and they bought it -- they apparently thought, oh, Mom's forcing us to come, so they came. It occurred to me that the less you say, the less of a foothold they're able to get in an argument. I just said, we're going, and that was that. And I think they had a good time. They decorated (and ate) lots of cookies. But after that I knew I wouldn't be able to get them to do anything else over Christmas, and I was right about that.

Teen B really likes Sally's cookies. I don't -- I tried one, the green butterfly (that I decorated) and thought it was awful. But he likes soft cookies. I make my sugar cookies as thin and crisp as possible. Not his thing. So he's finished off the Sally cookies and I have (almost) finished off my sugar cookies. I've discovered that Mounjaro doesn't seem to prevent me from eating Christmas cookies, although it prevents me from bingeing on them. Each day this week I've had Christmas cookies for "lunch," i.e., for a snack in between breakfast and dinner.

This is probably as good a place as any for the Mounjaro report.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 230.0
• Weight this morning (after 27+ weeks on Mounjaro): 229.2
  

Yep, that's right. Fourth week in a row with a tiny weight loss, although this was a bit more -- almost a pound. And that's with all those Christmas cookies! I think what did it is exercise. We continue to have this very mild weather, and so I took advantage of it. On five of the days I took good walks outdoors, one day Teen B and I walked around and around Walmart, looking for something that I was too shy to ask a clerk about -- and I had my app turned on, and we walked 1.28 miles just in Walmart! -- and one day I was lazy. But six days out of seven I walked, and I think that's why I lost the weight. I will try to do that again this week (after tomorrow, when we're having a wind event).

Today, Rocket Boy and I went to the Denver Art Museum and saw the Maurice Sendak exhibit. I've been wanting to do this for a while now, even rejoined the museum in anticipation of it. But it's been hard to find a time, and the twins were adamant about not wanting to go whenever we did go. In retrospect, I think they made the right call. The exhibit involved a lot of reading (not their strong point) and trying to push your way past a whole lot of other people in order to examine tiny little pictures up close. I enjoyed it a lot, but they wouldn't have. So it's all good. And I'm glad we finally went.

On the way to Denver, listening to NPR, we heard the news that Jimmy Carter had died. 100 years old, so amazing. If my parents were still alive, they would be 102. So it's like someone from my parents' generation dying, and yet my parents have been gone so long. I remembered how when I used to work for the government, it was a problem when a former president died, because federal employees get a day of leave to either attend the funeral or watch it on TV, and this could be a problem when calculating people's leave balances, especially at the end of the year. I remember our budget analyst saying, "Come on, Ford, don't die!" but he did, on December 26, 2006, thereby messing up all the leave balances. Rocket Boy isn't a federal employee anymore, nor, of course, am I, so it won't affect us, but there are probably many budget people out there tearing their hair out right now.

So, we have eight more days until the twins go back to school. I don't know what we'll do with all that time. I'm going to try to get Teen B to go to a movie with me. There's finally something in the theaters that I think we would both like: "Flow," an animated movie about a cat in a flood. 

He probably would also like to go play mini golf again. But I don't know what else. There's got to be something.

Tomorrow there's that "wind event," so we won't do anything then. I can read, maybe fill in the 2025 calendars (I annotate everyone's), maybe work on my New Year's resolutions. Try to enjoy another day when I don't have to get up early.

Reading post: Charles Dickens in December

December is not over, but the end of the year gets so complicated that I think now would be a good time for a reading post. In December I decided to read books by Charles Dickens (1812-1870). He seemed to fit well with the Christmas season. But when I looked at my master list, I was shocked to realize that the only Dickens on it is Bleak House, which I read with my book group back in 2016. Of course I've read A Christmas Carol, but I've always thought of it as a short story, so it didn't make my list. I've seen dramatizations of some of his works, but haven't read them. I think I always thought I didn't like Dickens, but I don't know what I was basing that conclusion on. So this month I attempted to remedy my lack of Dickens experience.

Here's a fairly complete list of his longer works. I've highlighted in blue what I'd read before this month, and in red what I read this month.

• (1830s) Sketches by Boz, The Pickwick Papers,  Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, 
• (1840s) The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, A Christmas Carol, Martin Chuzzlewit, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain, Dombey and Son, 
• (1850s) David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities,  
• (1860s) Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, No Thoroughfare, 
• (1870s) The Mystery of Edwin Drood (posthumous)
  

Yes, I read Dickens all month, but didn't get very far.

• The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club aka The Pickwick Papers (1837). I started with this book because nobody ever seems to read it, and yet I knew it's considered funny, plus I knew it had Christmas bits in it. I really enjoyed it, every one of its 57 chapters, which took up (in my edition) 801 pages! It was as long as a very long presidential biography. And since it was Christmas, and I had a lot to do, I mostly read this at bedtime, when I was sleepy, and the book would put me right to sleep. I didn't finish it until December 23rd. But I did really enjoy it and am very happy I read it. It's funny, it's silly, and the characters are delightful, especially Mr. Pickwick's servant Sam. There's also a "goblin story" that must be Dickens' first attempt at what eventually became A Christmas Carol. The edition I read had multiple introductions, including one by G. K. Chesterton in an Appendix, and Chesterton makes the point that in The Pickwick Papers, Dickens' tendency to be maudlin is happily restrained (because he was trying to make the book lighthearted and funny).
  

  This is the one book in which Dickens was, as it were, forced to trample down his tender feelings; and for that very reason it is the one book where all the tenderness there is is quite unquestionably true. (p. 812)
  

  
  The Chimes (1844). Partway through Pickwick I realized that I wasn't going to get much else read this month, so I took David Copperfield back to the library. I did hope to read a little more than Pickwick, though, so I settled for a couple of novellas. After the success of A Christmas Carol, Dickens wrote four more "Christmas stories," none of them nearly as good and most of them not actually about Christmas. The Chimes is about a poor man called Trotty who likes to listen to the bells of the nearby church. On New Year's Eve, when things in his life are looking pretty desperate and he has lost faith in their ability to improve, he climbs to the bell tower, where the goblins of the bells show him what will happen to his family if no one has hope. He regains his hope in humanity and everything magically fixes itself. I was not impressed by this story at all, and in fact kept getting confused by it. Not recommended.
  
  
• The Cricket on the Hearth (1845). In this story, which has nothing to do with Christmas (though it does take place in the winter), a young woman married to a much older man is suspected of cheating on him. Of course it isn't true, and all is well in the end, including another young couple whose love is almost, but not quite, thwarted. And the cricket chirps along. This story was OK, but it was so obvious what was going to happen that I got quite bored with it. Not recommended either.
  

So, what's the consensus? The Pickwick Papers was so much fun that I do want to read more Dickens eventually. I'd like to read David Copperfield and Oliver Twist and Great Expectations and maybe some of the others. Eventually. When I need a break from all my other reading. December actually seems like a great time to read Dickens -- I'll try to remember that.

I read very little else this month, though I did manage to read one modern Christmas book (a silly romantic mystery). Also, Teen A had to read The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien for English, so I read it to him, and we finished it earlier this month. What an incredible book. I've been told for years that I should read it, but I thought it would be too depressing. It's really not, it's just very good.

What comes next? 

So 2024 is ending, and 2025 is looming, which means it's time for a new challenge of some sort. I see no signs that the Classics Challenge is restarting (hope the woman who runs it is OK) and I don't really want to go hunting for another internet challenge. Instead I am going to do what I've been meaning to do for a while. 

Each issue of The New Yorker contains a section called "Briefly Noted," where they describe (briefly) four new books. For at least 15 years, maybe more, I've been clipping the reviews that sound interesting to me and sticking them in a big envelope. I didn't do it with every issue, but even so I had many, many little reviews saved. I decided recently to go through them, throw out the ones I was sure I didn't want to read (and the ones I've already read), and divide the rest into fiction and nonfiction. I ended up with something like 500 reviews (which really isn't many, seeing as how the New Yorker publishes nearly 200 of them per year).

So now I have two big envelopes, and my plan for 2025 is that each month I will reach into them and pull out a review of a novel and a review of a nonfiction book. If the books still sound interesting, I'll attempt to get them from the library or whatever, and read them. If the review I pick doesn't sound good, I'll toss it. No fair saying, hmm, maybe another month. It's do or die. I think this will be fun, and it means I'll have the rest of the month to read whatever else I want to read. And in 2026 I can do something more specific and historical, or whatever. But 2025 can be my year to catch up with books published in this century (24 of them, anyway). I'll also continue to read books off the NY Times' "Best of the 21st century so far" list.

Oh, and I'm planning to read biographies of three presidents: FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower. I'm planning to read more than one book about FDR, which is why I'm only going to try to do three presidents this year.

Next week I'll do my usual post about what I read all through the year. And on we go.

Almost here

Christmas is almost here, yet again! And we are basically ready. I had my week of writing and sending cards, that's done. I had my week of shopping, that's done. And this week was my week of baking cookies. It started out well and then became a bit of a slog, even though I like baking cookies. I think I am getting old. By Friday, when I made the sugar cookies, I didn't think I would survive the process (fortunately Rocket Boy helped). And then on Saturday, making the candy cane cookies, I thought my arms would fall off. So old and weak! But my arms didn't fall off and I also made the fudge.

It all got done. And we have one more day before Christmas Eve. I still need to buy some ingredients for our Christmas Eve/Christmas Day dinner (we have the same thing for both dinners, leftovers the 2nd day). A couple of things need to be wrapped. Oh, and I still need to set up my dollhouse. But it's so minor. I feel very relaxed. We might go over to a friend's house tomorrow to decorate cookies that she's baked, as a holiday activity.

Yesterday, or maybe it was the day before, I decided that I wanted to have a ham for Christmas dinner. We used to always get a ham, and then we got tired of it, probably because we don't eat anything like that the rest of the year. So I don't know why I suddenly wanted a ham again this year. Maybe because I'm supposed to be eating a lot of protein and it's so hard to get enough from cottage cheese. Maybe because a ham, even a very small one, means dinner is taken care of for at least three nights. I know we'll get tired of it and everyone will say "no more ham!" and then we won't have it for a few years. And that's fine. But we're going to have it this year.

Anyway, since we always eat out on Saturdays, Rocket Boy suggested that we go pick up the ham and then eat out somewhere near there, killing two birds with one stone. We used to always eat at the Chili's that's in the same strip mall, but Teen B has gone off Chili's, so we looked for other choices. Hey, there's a Black-eyed Pea right near there. I didn't know that chain even still existed, at least in Colorado. But apparently it does. So we decided to go there. First we went to the Honeybaked Ham store. It closes at 7 and we got there at 6, in case we had to stand in a long line. But I guess four days before Christmas is too early (or is the chain in bad shape?). There was almost no one in the store. We got a little ham, and some rolls, and a blueberry coffeecake for Christmas morning. And then we went to the Black-eyed Pea.

I hadn't been in a Black-eyed Pea in many years, probably since before the twins were born. So I'd kind of forgotten how it works. When the waiter asked if we'd like to start with some rolls, I misheard him and ordered a fried pickle appetizer (Teen B loves fried pickles). After the waiter left, looking a little puzzled, my family told me what he'd actually said. "I'm sorry!" I said, putting my head on the table in shame. Deafness is embarrassing. Then another waiter brought the people next to us some rolls. "See, Mom, we could have had that," the twins pointed out. Fortunately, when our waiter came back with our drinks, Rocket Boy asked him if we could have some rolls too. So we had rolls and fried pickles and tons of other food, besides. I ordered the vegetable plate, which means you get to pick five of the sides listed in the "vegetable garden" portion of the menu. One of my choices was a Caesar salad. They brought that first -- a huge salad, plenty big enough to be my dinner. But I still had four more things coming. Teen A ordered a stuffed potato AND green chili mac & cheese. The waiter misunderstood him, probably because most people don't order two entrees. But after Teen A finished his massive stuffed potato, we asked the waiter if he could also have the green chili mac & cheese, and pretty soon it arrived too. Huge quantities of food. RB had brought a large to-go container and we filled that up, but we still needed the waiter to bring another container for the rest of our leftovers. 

I ate too much of my food in the restaurant, more than I should have, and by the time I got home, I wasn't feeling great. Rocket Boy and I tried to watch the special features on our latest Christmas movie ("Rare Exports"), but I kept falling asleep. Finally I decided to feed the cats and go to bed. But when I got up, my stomach heaved. Oh no. 

To make a long story short, I didn't throw up, but I was sure I was going to. I could feel this massive amount of food in my stomach and my stomach rejecting it. Also, I couldn't stay awake. Finally I told RB I was going to bed and I would probably wake up in the night and throw up. But I didn't. I woke up about 9 hours later feeling great. Sometimes you get lucky.

This is probably a good place for the Mounjaro report.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 230.4
• Weight this morning (after 26+ weeks on Mounjaro): 230.0
  

Third week in a row with a tiny weight loss. I thought I was going to do better this week, because I exercised more than usual. I took three good walks, and on another day I did a stretch video. So, four days out of seven, on a week when I had all those cookies to bake. It's true that if I hadn't eaten so much at the Black-eyed Pea I probably would have been a little lighter this morning. But it's OK. Honestly, if I could lose .4 lb every week, I'd be thrilled. We'll see how this week goes, but I am going to continue trying to exercise as many days as possible and see if that helps.

Since I finished making the cookies yesterday, we decided that today would be a good day to take Rocket Boy's brother his cookies. Rocket Boy also wanted to go for a hike, and I said that sounded good. He also wanted to go out for lunch, and I really didn't want to do that, after last night, but he loves to eat out, so I agreed. I skipped breakfast, just had Starbucks with the kids, and we drove to the First Watch restaurant in Longmont and had a late lunch (said kids did NOT want to go with us). Then we went to Ralph's apartment. It was as awful as always. The low-income apartment complex is quite pleasant, but his apartment... He was wearing a long-sleeved white t-shirt and boxer shorts, looking ancient and weird, listening to what he calls Krishna music, and the air was full of incense. Mysteriously, there were seven pairs of shoes on the floor (I counted), along with piles of boxes holding who knows what. We gave him the plate of cookies and a King Soopers gift card. He thanked us and gave RB a Krishna calendar. RB didn't seem to want to leave. I was coughing from the incense and started saying, "Well, we should be going," but RB didn't pick up on it. I think it was the Christmas spirit, that feeling of loneliness and sadness and memories of childhood. This is his brother, after all, all that's left of his family of origin.

But we did finally leave, and we drove to Sandstone Ranch, an open space park on the east side of Longmont where neither of us had ever been. There was a feature about it in the paper this morning and I thought it would be fun to explore. It was fun. We took the loop trail, including the overlook offshoot, and it was just under a mile. There were several other people there -- I was glad the place does get used, since it's very nice. The trail goes through a natural area (no dogs allowed), but ends up at the old mansion that the guy who moved here in the 1860s built out of sandstone. So a neat combination of nature and human history.

Rocket Boy is having a hard time adjusting to the twins being teenagers. He wants them to be little boys, always happy to go on trips with him to explore new places. I feel bad for him. I realized that the last couple of years, almost every time we've seen him we've been going on a trip to Arizona or Yellowstone or whatever. And so of course the boys have been willing to do things with us, because we're on a trip. But in regular life, they prefer to do their own thing. They don't want to go out and about with their boring parents. This breaks Rocket Boy's heart. 

I've reminded him a few times that I warned him about this. "I told you that you needed to come back sooner!" But the pleasure of "I told you so" gets old. Mostly I sympathize! I wish they were still little boys too. Just last night, when I was feeling sick, I was reminiscing about when they were toddlers. When I felt myself needing to vomit, I would quickly put my hair in a ponytail. The twins saw me doing that a few times and then when they felt sick they asked me to put their (much too short) hair in ponytails too, like they thought that was a requirement for vomiting. Funny little boys.

What I think RB and I need to do now is remember how to enjoy each other. Not feel bad when the boys don't want to come along. We met in 2000. The boys were born in 2008. So, for seven and a half years, we had fun together. I think we can learn to do that again! We'll have to -- or we'll be miserable. Teen A at least is going to move on as soon as he can. Teen B might stick around a little longer, but eventually he'll go too. RB and I have the rest of our lives to spend with each other. We need to get used to that. Going on a hike together was a good start. We had fun, and at the end of it, Rocket Boy acknowledged that he had enjoyed it and that sometimes it was nice to do things without the twins.

I can't remember much else about the week -- it's just a blur of cookies. The boys took their finals, with some successes and some failures. Teen B ended up with 3 As and 3 Bs, which is fine. He blew his math and history finals, but still ended up with Bs in both classes. Teen A ended up with 4 Bs and 2 Cs, which isn't great, but it's what he deserved, based on effort. If he wanted better grades, I think he could achieve them. It drives RB crazy. I tell him to let it go, it's their life.

Almost forgot about the stress of the Continuing Resolution debacle. For a while there, after EM started meddling, it really looked like Congress wasn't going to pass a CR, and we would have a shutdown. We've gone through this many times before, first while I was a government employee, here in Boulder, and then while Rocket Boy was (at China Lake and in St. Louis). But this was the first time we'd gone through it with one of us working as a government contractor. Employees always come out of shutdowns in good shape -- you get some time off and then you get all your back pay. Contractors, well, that's a different story. Depending on what his contracting firm wanted to do, Rocket Boy could have been laid off. He could have needed to file for unemployment. He almost certainly would not have gotten any back pay, ever, even if he was able to go back to work at the end of the shutdown. So all of a sudden we were looking at a big loss of income. At Christmastime, right after I just gave away a lot of money to charity. My hatred of the Muskmelon grew by leaps and bounds.

But then they managed to pass the CR. And on we go. It was a taste of what's ahead. We must be ready for anything.

Oh, I know one other thing that happened this past week. A flock of magpies came to visit! On Friday afternoon, Sillers was looking out the front window, seemed very interested. And then we heard what sounded like a tiny knock at the door. Rocket Boy went to the door and opened it, but there was no one there, just a magpie on the lawn. "Did the magpie knock?" I asked. RB didn't know. He had a medical appointment, so he left to drive to Superior, but I kept looking out the window. "There's another magpie," I said to Teen B, who was not interested. "And another! And another! There are EIGHT MAGPIES on our front lawn! I couldn't resist, I opened the door. The magpies flew up into the tree and then across the street. But for a brief span of time, there were eight magpies on our front lawn.

Later, when RB returned, I told him about the magpie invasion. "They were pecking the ground all around the tomato plant pot," I said. "I don't know why. No bird has ever been interested in that area before." "It must have been the rotten food I threw out there," RB said. This is a thing he does, that annoys me. When there's something icky that needs to be disposed of, and it seems too liquidy for the compost bin, RB throws it on the lawn. "I WALK on that lawn," I tell him. "I don't want to step in that goop." But this time, his behavior led to EIGHT MAGPIES coming to our lawn, and one perhaps even knocking on the door. I decided to forgive him, this time and maybe every other time.

Magpies on the lawn. Could Christmas get any better?