Reading post: May

It's almost the end of May and I know I won't finish another book before tomorrow night, so... In May my plan was to read Asian and Asian-American related books, since May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. I had a long list of authors and books from 2022 when I read Japanese and Japanese-American classics, but the problem was that the Boulder Public Library had almost none of the books on the list. So I ordered things from Prospector and otherwise made do. 

The names of some of the authors I was looking for came from a collection of poetry that I read in 2022 called The Narrow Road to the Interior by Kimiko Hahn, which I got from the library accidentally. I had ordered The Narrow Road to the Interior by Basho, but they sent me this modern collection instead, so I went ahead and read it while waiting for Basho. In one poem called "Asian American Lit. Final," Hahn mentions numerous Asian and Asian-American writers, and that's where I got the names of many of the authors I tried to read this month (Yamada, Yamanaka, Cha, etc.). 

One other book that I wanted to read was something published just this year: Questions 27 & 28 by Karen Tei Yamashita, about the camps again. I'm on hold for it, #4 of 9 as of today.

Books I said I'd like to read

Camp Notes and Other Poems by Mitsuye Yamada (originally published 1976/this edition 1992). Yamada (who was on that list in Hahn's book, see above) grew up in Seattle and was in the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho during WWII (along with John Okada, author of No-No Boy, and Monica Sone, author of Nisei Daughter). This poetry collection (which I found at the Bookworm, much to my surprise, almost as though it were waiting for me) includes 20 poems about the camp, seven poems about her issei parents, and 16 "other" poems. I really liked it. The poems are short and simple, but some of them pack a punch. I looked Yamada up and she is still alive at 102!

Snow Angel, Sand Angel by Lois-Ann Yamanaka, illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky (2021). I read this picture book because our library had almost nothing by any of the authors I was interested in, including most of Yamanaka's books, but it did have this! It's a lovely book about a little girl in Hawaii who has never seen snow. Her parents take her to the top of Mauna Kea, but the snow there is old and icy. She thinks it would be so wonderful to see real snow falling, make a snowman and a snow angel. Then, on New Year's Eve, they go to the beach and make a sandman and sand angels. And she realizes that she loves her homeland the best. A lovely sweet story and one that I can relate to, having grown up in California.

The Village of Eight Graves by Seishi Yokomizo, translated from the Japanese by Bryan Karetnyk (1950/2021). In 2022 I read my first murder mystery by Yokomizo, The Honjin Murders, didn't love it, but later read his The Inugami Curse, which was better. And I noted that I wouldn't mind reading more by him. Ergo, this book. It was better than The Honjin Murders, but it wasn't very good. I guessed the murderer early on, but I still had to sit through the rest of the 349 pages of red herrings. Much of the book takes place in a cave, which was kind of interesting, but I thought rather unrealistic. Anyway, I might read more of Yokomizo, I might not. Someone on Reddit said several of his novels (mystery and other) have been made into Japanese movies and those are good, but so far I haven't found any mystery ones with English subtitles.

Blu's Hanging by Lois-Ann Yamanaka (1997). It occurred to me that most Y-names are Asian (except Young), so at the main library I started looking at the "Y" shelf in the fiction section. And I found this. That's odd, I thought, I didn't remember that the library had anything by Yamanaka except the picture book (see above) and a couple of e-books (which I dislike and avoid). I tried to check this out, but the machine wouldn't accept it. So I went to the desk, where I learned that the book was actually LOST. "Thank you for finding it," said the librarian. "It was just sitting there on the shelf," I murmured. Maybe the book decided to reappear just for me...

Anyway. This well-written but incredibly depressing novel is about three working-class Japanese-Hawaiian kids whose mother has recently died and whose father is struggling to cope. They live on mayonnaise sandwiches, rice mixed with canned mushroom soup, and chocolate. The boy, Blu, is very fat and has no friends. Their horrible next-door neighbors kill their cat's kittens. An old man living nearby exposes himself to Blu in exchange for candy. The cat-killing neighbors' uncle molests everybody. And so on. It has kind of a happy ending, sort of, but I never did understand the title.

Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1982). The Korean-American author of this book was raped and murdered by a stranger a week after her book was published. That nightmare overshadows the work and makes it hard to assess, although I guess it's also a commentary on the dangerous lives of Asian women. The work itself, hmm. I understood so little of it. It's divided into 9 sections, each corresponding to one of the Greek muses (Calliope, Clio, Urania, etc.). One section has to do with the author's mother, who was Korean but grew up in China. But most of the sections I did not understand at all. If Cha hadn't been murdered, would we still be reading this? Would she have written more understandable stuff later? Impossible to know. I don't know what else to say.

Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories by Hisaye Yamamoto (1988). Another book by a woman who lived through the Japanese internment camps. Yamamoto was born in 1921, so about the same age as Mitsuye Yamada and Monica Sone and other writers I've read. Yamamoto was in Poston, though, in Arizona, which is supposed to have been a particularly bad camp. Only one of these stories is set in a camp, though. Mostly they're about growing up Japanese-American in California. In the introduction she is compared to Toshio Mori, whose short stories I read in 2022. Yamamoto's English is much better, though. Some of these stories are really quite accomplished. I think she should be better known than Mori, instead of not known at all. 

Kokoro by Natsume Soseki, translated from the Japanese by Meredith McKinney (1914). In 2022 I read I Am a Cat by Soseki and didn't love it, despite its delightful premise. As I noted then, 

Supposedly some of Soseki's other works are better, but they don't get read as much because they aren't titled I Am a Cat, which I still think makes the book very hard to resist. Even knowing what I know now. 

Kokoro is supposed to be Soseki's best book (it was also the last one he completed), so I decided to read that. And it was really good, so much better than I Am a Cat. It's the story of a young man who befriends an older man, who he calls Sensei (teacher, more or less). Sensei harbors a deep dark secret, which he reveals to the young man in a long letter that ends the book. I mean, it's a Japanese novel from 1914, so anyone who considers reading it should understand that it's not good in the sense of a modern American novel. But it is really good. I gobbled it up in a couple of days. I may read more Soseki as time goes on.

Books from the New Yorker's "Briefly Noted" reviews

Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins (2022). I chose this novel because, although it's not by an Asian-American author, it's set in the Owens Valley (not far from Ridgecrest) and is, in part, about the Manzanar internment camp, which we visited when we lived there. It's an odd book, though. The author apparently had a massive stroke when she was partway through the book, and over the next few years her daughter helped her finish it. So there are long stretches that are beautifully written and then there are shorter sections that seem very choppy and confused. And the long stretches should have been cut down and probably would have been, if the author had been fully functional. I should read something else by her someday, just to see what she was like as a writer in her prime. Anyway, it was interesting, but ultimately disappointing. Not enough about the internees, too much fairytale happy ending stuff.

Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang (2024). Hmm, I don't know. The subject matter of this first novel was interesting -- a movie theater in China in the 1980s where gay men (most of whom are married to women) congregate, and what happens to them and their wives after they emigrate to America. But it was so first-novelish. The New Yorker called it "moving if uneven," but I would have just said bad. Way too much telling, not enough showing. So much politics, not much art. I would have given up on it after a few chapters, except that I was waiting for two books to come in from Prospector, so I kept saying, oh, I'll read a little more... Maybe his next book will be better.

Other reading

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin with Neil Strauss (2023). I read about this in the New Yorker, but in the "Book Currents" section, not Briefly Noted, so I'm putting it under "Other reading" instead. The mystery writer Patricia Cornwall recommended it.

Sometimes when you're doing something creative... it feels like you're conducting electricity... One of the reasons I like The Creative Act so much is because it talks about that process, and about how you've got to keep your current unfettered by all the distractions in life.

That sounded good, and actually that part of the book was good, but a lot of it was kind of meh. Meh, and then occasionally brilliant, but not brilliant often enough. I kept reading because the book helped put me to sleep at night.

Snow Hunters by Paul Yoon (2013). This is another book I found by browsing in the "Y" section at the main library. Yoon is Korean-American, and his grandfather was a POW from North Korea. This novel is about a North Korean POW who relocates to a small town in Brazil in the 1950s, works for a Japanese tailor there, takes over the shop, and gradually assimilates. I don't know, it was OK. Very lovely writing, but I had some trouble identifying with the main character, especially after he came to Brazil. The flashbacks of his time as a soldier in North Korea were more moving. Anyway, it was OK, something a little different.

Trip by Amie Barrodale (2025). I have been interested in Amie Barrodale ever since I read a ghost story by her (https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/10/03/letter-from-a-haunted-house-part-one/) and I knew she'd published a novel, so when I spotted it on the shelf at the George Reynolds library, I grabbed it. So... the plot: A divorced mom of a teenage autistic son goes to an academic conference in Nepal where she dies accidentally. The rest of the book is her getting used to being dead (experiencing the bardo), and then attempting to rescue her son from danger. Such a cool book AND it's an autism book. That was a surprise, but yeah, it's a book about what it's like to be the parent of an autistic kid. I loved this passage, in the last chapter:

I thought for the last time about how I had not diagnosed Trip early enough. How I had been impatient with him.... I had let him look at screens. I had let him eat dyes. It was my fault for living in a house with lead paint on the porch. For feeding him meat. For not drawing him out sooner, over and over again, the very first time I wondered about him playing alone with his cars. 

I let go of how, like one of his teachers, I had tried to argue my way out of it at first....

....How rigid, how conventional, how prescribed my expectations were. Because I had been a strange person, I hadn't noticed for a long time how much I looked at those around me and followed, and how much they did the same, how little flexibility we had, how someone who actually was a little different made us lose our minds.... 

Obviously, one should "let go" of these things before one actually dies, but it's hard. Barrodale apparently has an autistic child, so this was very authentic. And moving. I might even buy myself a copy when it comes out in paperback. I'm counting it as my seventh book about autism, and I loved it.

Onward into our new life

That's a very dramatic post title, much more dramatic than life seems these days. And yet it's absolutely true. High school is over, K-12 education is over, and our new life has begun. So far, I am not loving it. But we shall see.

The New Vista high school graduation was yesterday and we watched it online to see the last of the twins' kindergarten classmates walk across the stage in caps and gowns. I think there were 5 former classmates that we saw. I'm still puzzled about what happened to some of the others, though. Not counting the twins, there were 5 former elementary school classmates who graduated from Boulder High, and 16 from Fairview. So, including the twins that's (2 + 5 + 5 + 16) 28 kids total, out of 42 or so. As for the other 14, we know where some of them went, moved to Aurora or Arvada or Englewood or Crested Butte. Some of them we didn't really know, and so they've completely disappeared for us. But a few, I'd say three or so, we were expecting to see at one of these graduations and they weren't there, weren't listed in any program. We know all three of them started high school in Boulder, but they didn't seem to finish. I actually watched the graduations for Arapahoe Ridge high school (for nontraditional students) and Boulder Universal (the online school for kids who can't hack in-person school), but none of these three showed up there. So maybe they moved, maybe they didn't graduate, who knows?

Two of them were boys who got in trouble all the time (the third was a girl with a flaky home life). One of the boys was Teen A's best friend in kindergarten, and he and Teen A (Kid A at the time, of course) got sent to the principal's office more than once that year, worrying me terribly. He showed up at Boulder High a couple of years ago, in one of Teen B's classes, missed a lot of class, and then seemed to vanish. The other boy, we thought had gone to New Vista, but he wasn't at the graduation. We think his parents may have gotten divorced. Not sure. And the girl -- she was smart and talented, but her home life, hmm. Anything could have happened.

I know we are very lucky that Teen A and Teen B graduated, that they didn't get in more trouble than they did. I worked hard to make that happen, but I know some of the other parents did too. Some of it really was luck.

Two years ago, Teen B was invited to a graduation party. A Hispanic girl that he knew from his math class was graduating and she invited him. He sent me some pictures of it: enormous purple and gold balloons that said 2024, a big cake, tons of other food. The family lived in a mobile home park, and I think the party may have been in a tent outside their mobile home. Nothing fancy, in other words. But the party was fancy! Oh my goodness. At the time I remember thinking, oh no, I'm going to have to put on something like that too. And of course I didn't. 

But other people filled in for me! The twins received so many cards and so much cash! I almost couldn't believe it. I felt sort of bad about sending out announcements. I definitely did not want that to be a cash grab for the twins. They have money from social security. But they were delighted by the presents, so I guess I just need to step back and say thank you. Actually, I need to encourage the twins to write thank you notes to all these nice people. And then I can step back. 

Stepping back is going to have to be kind of metaphorical for a while, though, since my left knee is giving me even more trouble than before. We had some great rainstorms on Monday and Tuesday of last week (snowstorms on I-80 and I-70, interfering with my sister's drive home!), but on Wednesday after dinner I decided I could go for a short walk. I got maybe five houses down the street when my knee started hurting terribly. I tried to go farther... no, big mistake. A woman had just gotten into her car a few houses ahead of me, and I felt as though I shouldn't cross the street and head home until she took off. I looked behind me, and there was a woman a few houses back with a dog, so I felt as though I shouldn't just turn around and retrace my steps because I'd run into her. All of this was nonsense -- I could certainly have done either thing. Finally I crossed the street and walked back toward home, but the pain got worse and worse. I stopped every few feet to rest. While walking, I waved my arms, which seemed to help a little but probably made me look like a crazy person. I thought, should I call Rocket Boy? But how ridiculous, to ask for a ride when I'm four houses from home. 

Anyway, I made it home, took a lot of pain pills, and Thursday morning I emailed my doctor. The triage nurse called me and said my doctor was out that day, but she would talk to her on Friday. Friday morning I got a call from Boulder MRI! So I'm going to have an MRI of my knee this coming Wednesday. Meanwhile I'm hopping around, sometimes on the crutches Rocket Boy got me at a thrift store on Thursday. I've discovered that I can walk (with or without crutches) as long as the left leg is completely straight. If I bend it a little, the pain is excruciating when I put weight on it. But I can bend my knee just fine if I'm sitting down, i.e., not putting weight on it. I don't know what this means. Is this just more problems with my supposed Baker's cyst? Or is something more serious wrong, for instance with the meniscus? Will I have to have surgery? Would physical therapy help? I just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, the weather has been so lovely, alternating rain and sunshine. Everything is greening up like crazy. I want to go for walks! But all I can do is hobble. 

Despite the knee problem, I made a list of summer goals/plans.

1. Help Teen B prepare for his driving test. If he fails, either sign him up for more lessons, or just get him an ID and forget about the license for now.
2. Apply for passports for Teen B and me (Teen A and Rocket Boy got theirs last year).
3. Plan our trip to California, around July 20th. This is very unclear right now, due to my knee, but we need to keep thinking about it.
4. Prepare the kids for college: attend orientations as needed, encourage them to register for classes, buy supplies for Teen B's dorm room, encourage Teen B to buy himself a new laptop, etc. 
5. Teach them independence: laundry, banking, etc.
6. Clean and reorganize the kids' mess of a room
7. Work on the files and piles in the desk room
8. Sign Teen A up for flying lessons if he still wants them (I think he does)
9. Convert my blogs to books before Google accidentally deletes them.
10. Take Teen B's clarinet to the music store to be refurbished, in case he wants to play it next year
11. Continue working on the yard 
12. Write thank you notes! 

I know there will be more things to add to the list, but these twelve things are what I thought of off the top of my head. 

We've already started working on the list. Yesterday, Teen B and I practiced driving, his first practice in over a year. He drove us to the Starbucks near Walmart, and back again. He actually did really well, after a bad start which involved thinking he'd turned the engine on when he hadn't, and backing down the driveway trying to put the brakes on which weren't responding because the engine wasn't on. Fortunately no one was walking by right then, otherwise we would have killed them.

I think he still needs to practice parking, so we might work on that tomorrow or Tuesday. His driving test is Thursday.

So, yeah, that's kind of where things stand. Wait to see if I'm going to need surgery -- if not, we could think about scheduling Rocket Boy's shoulder surgery. Arrrggghhhh! We are falling apart! Getting older is such a pain. But we keep going. 

Last night, as we were driving home from having dinner in Longmont, we were talking about an old friend of Rocket Boy's, Ray Harding, who we hadn't heard from in many years. I said, as I always do, "I think he's dead." And then it occurred to me that I could look him up on findagrave. Long story short, I found him. He died in 2012, in a little nothing town in Iowa where he had an old house. He was only 66, but the last time we saw him (which we think might have been in 2006, when he was 60), he was in pretty bad shape. Just no money, no one to look after him. 

We have some money, we have health insurance, we look after each other. Every day that we get to wake up is a good day, yes?  

So, the week ahead. Monday is Memorial Day, so Rocket Boy has it off, thank goodness. He needs another day to sleep late. Tuesday, Teen B and I both have dentist appointments. Wednesday is my MRI. Thursday is Teen B's driving test. I don't know how all these things got scheduled during the same week. The week after that is completely blank. But I suppose it will fill up. 

My niece said recently, in an email, "What a transition it will be to reclaim more of your emotional/mental energy for yourself."

Well, yeah. Someday. Not quite yet! But maybe gradually it will start to happen. In the fall? 

It is really and truly over

It really is! My little men, born at 39 weeks and 5 lbs 12.9 oz/19.5 inches and 5 lbs 10.3 oz/18.25 inches respectively, are not only adults, they are high school graduates. We have done it. It is over.

I never thought it would be this hard. It was so incredibly hard, I can hardly believe we did it. And I understand why so many people don't want to have kids these days (for many reasons, but one reason is that it's so hard). I think it must be more obvious how hard it is, with social media, etc. But both Rocket Boy and I wanted kids so much, I don't think it would have stopped us, even if we had known how hard it would be. 

And anyway, you never know, you never have any idea until you do it.

But we did it.

I know, it's not over. We'll be their parents as long as we live, and it'll be a long time until they're fully independent. That's OK. It'll be a long time until I'm ready to stop being so parental. I'm going to work on it this summer and of course all next year. I'm going to try to teach them things that I've neglected to teach them so far, like how to do the laundry. I'm going to try to transfer responsibilities to them (like doing their own laundry). I expect that it will be a long process. That's fine.

But this stage, this long stage of public school, is now over. No classes need to be made up. I printed out the detailed version of their "Academic Plan Progress Reports" which show exactly how they met all the complicated requirements for graduation, what grade they got each semester of each class, etc. Everything says "Complete." They had to earn 220 credits to graduate. Teen A earned 250 credits and Teen B earned 285. Their grades weren't the best, but nobody got a single F. They passed everything. We are done.

It's been a crazy week. They had one last day of classes, that was Monday, and then Tuesday and Wednesday they had final exams. I had to do a lot of driving back and forth, picking things up. On Wednesday, I had to drive Teen B to school with a MASSIVE amount of paper that he'd been saving for four years, all his old assignments, for the "Paper Drop. This is when the seniors go up to the third floor balcony and drop their papers into the courtyard below (and then the janitors sweep it all up and recycle it). 

Then I had to take our cat Sillers to the vet, because she's been peeing on our bed. While she was there, she had some sort of "episode," a seizure or a heart attack or something, and had to be put on oxygen and kept under observation for a few hours. While that was going on, I had to go back to the school and pick up Teen B's clarinet, because he had to take it home and didn't want to carry it around the rest of the day (normally I would have said no, but I was feeling generous, it being the last day of school, plus he'd already had to give up his locker). Then I had to go back and pick up the cat from the vet. 

Then I had to work on getting ready for the book group who were coming that night. Around 4pm I had to go pick up Teen B, who had stayed to watch Teen A perform in the LOYO (Living on your own) dance contest. He obligingly texted me a video of it, which I've watched dozens of times. Then there was Spring Fling, but he decided it wasn't much fun, so I picked him up. Rocket Boy came home early and did some more vacuuming. Then he decided to mop the kitchen floor, 20 minutes before the book group was going to arrive and I hadn't finished fixing the food. The book group arrived and we had a nice meeting, while Rocket Boy took Teen B to Senior Sunset (which I guess wasn't that great because it was cloudy). Life went on.

Thursday, the kids had no school, but Rocket Boy had to work, so I got up early with him. I'll probably continue to do that all summer -- it's just easier that way. And that afternoon, my little sister and her husband and bulldog arrived from California. Teen B and I went over to their hotel to greet them. Then we went home and I made dinner for us. 

Friday and Saturday they hung out here a lot. We mostly stayed outside (the weather was beautiful), because if we were inside we had to lock the cats in a bedroom, plus the bulldog would eat people's shoes. My sister had brought gift bags for both boys with cards & checks from her and our other sister, and these wonderful graduation leis that her coworker had made for the boys.

We ate out at the Hungry Toad on Friday (plus Sweet Cow for ice cream) and Chautauqua on Saturday (that dinner included Teen A's girlfriend, which was fun). 

Friday the kids did have to go to school, for graduation rehearsal, something called the Senior Gauntlet (where they run around the outside of the school and the younger students and the teachers are all lined up, cheering them on), and cap & gown distribution. We also picked up their yard signs! I have been looking forward to getting those yard signs since I first noticed them in people's yards in 2014! So exciting to be able to put them up in our yard. I've been going around the neighborhood looking for other people's yard signs. It's so fun.

But a terrible thing happened on Friday too. Earlier in the week, our finches' eggs hatched, and we had been watching them feed three or four babies. So adorable! But on Friday a blue jay (perhaps with babies of its own to feed) attacked the nest and ate all the babies. I only saw it get the last one. I screamed and ran outside and clapped my hands, but I was too late. The nest was empty.

This was heartbreaking, even though I've been criticizing the finches ever since they built this terrible nest. At the same time, I've been kind of identifying with them. They were trying to raise their babies, just as Rocket Boy and I have been. Now ours have graduated -- and theirs were eaten by a blue jay!

We wonder if they'll try again with that nest. I hope not. I want to tear it down, but I guess we have to wait and see what happens.

On Saturday, after another visit from Nancy and Rick and the bulldog, Teen B and I went to Target so I could buy a "clear bag" because the CU events center only allows clear bags. I got a nice little purse which I can use for other events like this, only $15. 

Today, finally, was the graduation. Rocket Boy and I got up at 6:30 and I got the twins up at 7 am. I ate a yogurt and took a pain pill. I should probably mention that my knee has been hurting more and more and more. Walking hurts. Sitting down hurts. Moving between a sitting and a standing position hurts. Everything hurts. I'm getting used to having pain all the time, I guess, but I'm also horrified by it. How long will this last? Is this my new normal? Anyway.

Teen A's girlfriend arrived at about 7:30 and he drove her in his car to CU. Teen B and Rocket Boy and I left in our car at 7:40. We got to the events center at about 7:45 (it is really close and there was no traffic), dropped off Teen B with his clarinet, and drove on to my sister's hotel. I had told her we would be there a little after 8, but we got there by about 7:47 or something ridiculous like that. I texted her and she came right down. We were back at CU and parked before 8 am. Then we had to climb up a million steps to get into the events center, and, once we'd gone through screening, had to climb down a million more steps to get to where we decided to sit. It was chilly outside and terribly hot inside (no air conditioning). Then we sat and waited for an hour. Fortunately, the combined band & orchestra played for us from about 8:30 on. They played "Phantom of the Opera" multiple times, and some other things. I explained to Rocket Boy and Nancy and Miss Trish (Teen B's old Kids Hope partner) that they only knew a few things together -- most of the time the band and orchestra play different pieces, they don't usually play together.

Promptly at 9 (I think) the graduation started. First everybody marched in, then they played the "Star Spangled Banner," then the choir sang, then there were the interminable speeches, and then the 503 members of the class of 2026 went up to get their diplomas. It took absolutely forever. At first I clapped for each student, but as it went on and on, and we were only in the B's, I thought, I need to save my strength. So then I only clapped for names I recognized -- people they went to elementary school with, people in band and orchestra and choir and theater. It went on and on and on.

Finally it ended. We climbed up the stairs again, and then down the outside stairs, and started looking for the kids. It took forever to find Teen B. We took some pictures. It was starting to rain, so we agreed to meet at the Southside Walnut Cafe for lunch. We took my sister back to her hotel (she and her husband would come in their car, with the dog). Miss Trish went ahead. Teen A went ahead. We finally got there too. We waited in the light rain for a table for seven. They finally gave us two tables close together, which was fine. I had a latte and a waffle. It was delicious, but I was fading. As we sat there, it began to pour.

We ran for our cars, headed home. My sister and her husband went back to their hotel room so she could have a nap. Rocket Boy took one too. Teen A went off to find his girlfriend (and unbeknownst to us, attend the other high school's graduation which started at 2 pm). Meanwhile, at home, Teen B and I watched the other high school's graduation on YouTube (I also took another pain pill). Then we started to watch the replay of his graduation, to see things we'd missed. Around 4:30 or so, my sister and her husband and the bulldog came over again and we stood around in the front yard (it had stopped raining by then) and looked at birds. Four western tanagers were flying around the yard across the street! I never see them here. Maybe were migrating through. 

After they left, Teen B and I went to Starbucks, even though it was 5:30 or so. Can't miss that Sunday tradition, right? And an hour later we met up with my sister and her husband for dinner at BJ's. I was not hungry at all, but I had a bowl of soup. Afterwards we hugged goodbye. It was so wonderful that she was able to come out for the graduation. I will never forget how wonderful that was.

I think I'm forgetting a lot of things, but I will stop here because it's 10 pm and I know Rocket Boy wants to go to bed. He has to get up and go to work tomorrow morning! And Nancy and Rick and the bulldog have to get on the road for home. It's supposed to snow on I-80. Well, sure, it's only the middle of May. (We're only supposed to get rain, but it could snow a little tomorrow night.) 

I still can't believe it's over. What comes next? For the boys, it's the rest of their lives, all the exciting parts. For me, and for Rocket Boy, it's a gradual downward slope, but I hope it's a pleasant slide. We shall see.  

Crazy last days

It's almost over. One more day of regular classes, then two days of finals, then no more class, just graduation rehearsal and graduation itself and then it's all over. By this time next week, my kids will no longer be enrolled in the Boulder Valley School District.

OMG.

Today, of course, is Mothers Day, but I'm not making a big deal out of that. Rocket Boy got me a card and he and the twins signed it, and we MIGHT go out to dinner, but we'll see. We went out last night, to horrible Cracker Barrel. I actually found something good on the menu, an egg sandwich, that reminded me a little of my mother's old Denver sandwiches. Except I didn't get mine with bacon, just a slice of cheese and sliced tomatoes, and I had my eggs over easy instead of scrambled. It was delicious, unlike almost everything else at Cracker Barrel. Also I had watermelon lemonade to drink, which was also delicious.

It reminded me of when the boys were little and they sold watermelon lemonade from our driveway for a quarter. I think that was in 2014, when they were six. I found a picture of them selling limeade that summer, but I think that was also watermelon lemonade summer. Or it could have been 2015.

Memories.

The thing about Mothers Day... all over Reddit, mothers are terribly upset because their kids have gone "radio silent," aren't doing anything for Mothers Day. Maybe in 10 years I'll be all upset like that. But it's hard to imagine. For me, a good Mothers Day would be one in which I don't have to do a lot of work. I don't need someone to buy me flowers.

This Mothers Day I actually AM having to do a lot of work, specifically laundry. For quite a while now we've been smelling a bad smell in our bed, and this morning we finally figured out that our problem cat, Sillers, had peed all over the bed at various times. There were big yellow stains on the mattress pad. So we took the whole bed apart, including the mattress pad, including the cover on the mattress pad, and washed everything. Four separate loads to get all the blankets and everything washed (Rocket Boy has three extra blankets on his side because he has no body fat and gets cold). Let's see, I washed the mattress pad cover, the bottom sheet, the top sheet, the pillowcases, the blanket, RB's three extra blankets, the comforter, and the cat blanket that goes on top of the comforter. Plus an old sheet that I used to cover some of the flowers during our snow this past week. Somehow that added up to four loads. Fortunately it's a beautiful day and things dried quickly. We also put the mattress pad on the line for an hour or so. We also treated the mattress pad cover with Nature's Miracle. But now we have to figure out how to keep the cat off the clean bed. I'm going to call the vet tomorrow. Maybe she has a bladder infection or something else fixable.

I also spent a couple of hours helping Teen B with his stats project, and we still have Personal Finance ahead of us. We finished the language arts project last night. 

This was a very busy week. Monday I saw my doctor because of the knee pain I've been having. She did a very thorough exam, plus an x-ray, and decided that, as I suspected, I have a Baker's cyst, even though she couldn't feel it. She said they don't typically drain them, because they just recur, so I have to live with it until it resolves on its own.

It's getting worse and worse, though. She said I could use heat, painkillers, massage. When it gets really bad I take ibuprofen, but I don't want to dose myself constantly. It's getting hard to walk, so I haven't gone for many walks for the past few weeks. I'll reevaluate the situation when we get past all the end of school stuff.

The x-ray results said I have "mild tricompartment osteophytosis." That means I'm developing little bone spurs on all three parts of the knee. This is bad, but I'm going to focus on the "mild" part of it. I'm nowhere near needing a knee replacement. The arthritis is probably what caused the Baker's cyst.

Tuesday night was the last choir concert, which we attended even though it was already snowing. The choir director (who greeted us with "Welcome to our winter concert, lol")  had a slideshow with bios of all the graduating seniors projected onto the wall of the auditorium. I would have preferred a program, but she doesn't do programs for some reason. Anyway, it was VASTLY better than what the stupid band director did.

Wednesday was an actual snow day, no school at all, all activities canceled including the theater banquet (which Teen B wasn't going to anyway). We got ELEVEN inches of heavy, wet snow (about 1.71 inches of water, so good for our snowpack), and so so many branches broke off the trees. In our backyard there is an enormous branch that (thank heaven) fell on top of a juniper, not the roof. However, there's also a branch on the roof, that may have done a little damage. Rocket Boy thinks not. We will see.

I was a little skeptical about the whole snow day thing, like, come on, we can handle this much snow. But the tree branches coming down was a real issue. It would have been dangerous for kids walking to and from school. I was afraid to go out in the backyard. Also, our power went out a couple of times, although it didn't stay out.

Thursday it warmed up and everything melted. By the end of the day there was no snow left. None. All eleven inches melted into the grateful ground.

Friday, I took Baby Kitty to the vet because his cat asthma, or whatever it is, has been getting worse. The vet decided it was time to move on to the pill form of prednisone, instead of injections. I was worried about that until he told me that I could grind the pills up and mix them with his food. So I'm doing that. It's very easy. I grind a pill up using a mortar and pestle, stir it into his wet food, and he eats it all up.

However, I'm not sure it's actually helping. The vet said we would see an immediate improvement and BK is still having attacks. Maybe not as many. The next step, if this doesn't work, is a pediatric inhaler, which sounds impossible. We'll keep trying the pills for a while.

Cats. Why do we have them, exactly?

Also on Friday, Teen B, Rocket Boy, and I attended the 150th anniversary celebration of the kids' high school, which graduated its first class in 1876. It was the first public high school in Colorado, or maybe the oldest that's still operating, something like that. (Its motto is "Still the First!" which I think is silly -- how could it stop being the first?) The actual building is not that old, only 90 years old, completed in 1936, but it seems ancient. Since 1936 they've remodeled it over and over, added on, not thought through what they were doing when they added on to it, etc. It's an absolute maze. I love it so much.

There's a staircase in the library that students are not allowed to go up. It has little signs all over the stairs, strictly forbidding students. During the celebration you were allowed to wander all over the school, so we went up the forbidden staircase. At the top were THREE locked doors. We don't know what they lead to. Why are there three? We will never know.

Teen B commented that after this coming week, he probably will never go in the school again. I pointed out that he could attend the 200th anniversary celebration, when he's 68. Or maybe they'll celebrate the 100th anniversary of the actual building, which would be in only 10 years. 

I got so sad about not being able to go in the building anymore that I started thinking about becoming a substitute teacher again.

On Saturday we did a lot of homework, and we've done a lot more today (plus we'll do more as soon as I finish this). Today, in addition to all that laundry, Rocket Boy and I did manage to go to the nursery and get more plants: more marigolds, more impatiens, basil & parsley & a tomato plant -- and a fuchsia! I love getting a fuchsia for Mothers Day. Rocket Boy said that this year he will hang it up for me, so I'll look forward to that. Hummingbirds came to my feeder all through the winter storm, so I was very glad I had that up. And the mama finch is still sitting on her eggs, very bravely. 

We ended up having dinner tonight at Boulder Social, so I didn't have to cook on Mothers Day after all. I had the heavenly golden beet salad (with goat cheese, golden raisins, pecans, salad greens, and a balsamic dressing, plus I added grilled salmon). It was so good. Tomorrow I'll cook. The kids both ordered tacos, and Teen A didn't eat his sides. When Rocket Boy admonished him, he said "I'm not going to eat no rice and beans." I said, "I'm not going to eat ANY rice and beans," but I started to laugh in the middle of it and couldn't finish. I love my boys.

There's so much coming up this week ahead. The last three days of school. My book group comes Wednesday night. My sister and her husband and bulldog arrive Thursday. The kids have a whole bunch of activities on Friday. Sunday is graduation. Oh, and it's going to be REALLY hot. Wish us luck getting through everything. 

Finally, May

And here we go! One last week of classes for the kids. Then early finals. Then graduation practice, a barbecue, the spring fling, all the end of year stuff. Then graduation. And then it's over, and OMG.

I'm panicking. In two weeks we will lose access to the BVSD internal websites, Infinite Campus and Schoology and all that. Is there anything stored in those places that I want to grab before it's gone? What do the kids need from their teachers and counselors before they lose access to them?

It's a strange feeling. Yesterday I remembered about their graduation announcements, which we paid for last fall and then left in a pile on the desk in their room. I wrote notes on 8 of them and mailed them out. I considered sending more (we have 25, the smallest number you could buy), possibly to the bulk of our Christmas card list, but the problem is that then people might feel obligated to send a graduation present or at least a card. I wrote on some of them "no gifts, please" or words to that effect, and then I just cut it short, didn't send any more. So we have 17 announcements that will probably sit around here and there for several years until I finally get rid of them.

Teen B reminded me today that I could have told the recipients of these announcements that the graduation will be live-streamed on YouTube, no need to be there in person. I told him I don't think most people really want to watch a high school graduation on YouTube. But we'll see. I might mention it to a few people. *I* enjoy watching high school graduations on YouTube, so maybe a few other people will too. 

This past week we attended the final concerts for band and orchestra. At the end of the last concert of the year it's traditional for the teacher to introduce the graduating seniors and tell what they're planning to do next year. The orchestra teacher actually had that information printed in the program, along with photos and words of advice to younger musicians from each graduating senior. The band teacher made us sit through EIGHT jazz pieces (there are two jazz bands and they each played four pieces) and then said that there were so many seniors (24) that he didn't have time to talk about each one, so he just had them come up on stage to get a rose, and we clapped for them. Didn't even call out their names. Didn't even have them identified as seniors in the program (which the orchestra teacher did). 

I never do this, but the next day I actually wrote an email to the band teacher telling him how unhappy this made me. I thanked him for four great years, told him how much I'd enjoyed all the concerts, and then assured him that I would have been HAPPY to sit there for another half hour while he introduced each senior and told where they were going next year. I didn't just want Teen B to be introduced, I wanted to hear about all the seniors. After all, I've been listening to them make beautiful music for four years. And also, if the jazz bands had only played THREE pieces each (as the larger bands did), we would have had time for that.

He didn't respond.

Teen A also had his yearly physical this week and although he wanted me to come along, he didn't invite me in to the examination room. So I sat in the waiting room and looked at my phone. Soon, I'm sure, I won't even have to come along. He already goes alone to get his hair cut, although for some reason he likes me to come along for dentist and eye appointments (and sit in the waiting room). Little bit by little bit, the boys are growing up. 

This coming week is the final choir concert and we will probably go to that too, although the weather's supposed to be bad, so I may have some trouble getting Teen B out of the house. Last week the weather was supposed to be bad on a couple of days, but it never materialized, so I have my doubts about this week. But we'll see. I decided to go ahead and get flowers and plant them yesterday. If that makes the bad weather come, so be it! It would be worth it, even if I had to re-buy and re-plant everything. 

Last Thursday, when it was supposed to pour and did nothing, I kept thinking, I should go outside and do yardwork and THEN it would start to rain. But I wasn't feeling great, so I didn't. Should have.

I've been having pain in the back of my left knee for a few weeks, and this past week it got out of hand. It's most painful when I drive, even though that's not my driving leg. Something about the position it gets into is not good. But it comes and goes. Some days I wake up with no pain and it gets worse, other days I wake up in a lot of pain and it gets better (or worse). On Wednesday or Thursday, can't remember which, I got into so much pain that I was practically screaming, so I emailed my doctor and asked if I should be seen. She got right back to me and said yes! So I'm going in tomorrow morning at 9:45. I assume it's a Baker's cyst or something like that, but we'll see. I'm not aware of having injured myself in any way. 

Then on Friday I was changing all the calendars (no one but me ever remembers to do this) and I ripped the hole in Teen B's calendar so it wouldn't hang up properly. So then I went in the desk room to look for those little thingies that you can stick onto a torn hole to fix it. While I was rummaging in a drawer of the secretary desk (which has lots of stuff piled on it), I dislodged a bunch of stuff which then fell hard onto my RIGHT foot. Oh no. I was afraid I'd broken my big toe.

In fact, the toe seems fine, so disaster was averted. But it reminded me that I need to be careful right now -- 'tis the season for accidents. Last year at about this time, Teen A had his smash-up with the car. 

Partly because of my knee and partly because of I don't know what, this wasn't a good week for getting things done. I did a little cleaning, a little writing, no yardwork, and no filing. I don't even care. I can work on my schedule after school gets out. I'll have to revise it again then, because it's hard to do certain things when the kids are home, but that's fine. I don't know how much Teen A will really be around, of course. He might basically move in with his girlfriend and her dad.

We learned something today though -- the girlfriend is going to go to CSU next year, not Metro as we thought. So Teen A will probably be around here more than we expected. I suspect this means the relationship will end, gradually, but we'll see. Maybe Teen A will go up there every weekend at first. 

I know what that's like. When I started college, at UC Davis, my boyfriend was at UC Santa Cruz, and there were several weekends when he made the long drive (about 135 miles, maybe 2.5-3 hours) between campuses in his little red MG (until we eventually broke up, in February). Metro to CSU is actually much less, about 65 miles, maybe a little over an hour, depending on traffic. And Teen A likes to drive. Well, we'll see.

Maybe that's all I have to talk about today. I should go help Teen B with homework. Maybe one more weekend of doing that, and then it will be over. Forever. So weird. 

Reading post: April

In April my plan was to read biographies and memoirs -- that kind of book. Not difficult, since those are some of my favorite books to read and there were several on my master list. I made it through quite a few of them, including some that jumped onto the list at the last minute.

Books I said I'd like to read (Biographies/Memoirs)

Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir by David Rieff (2008). I'm not sure how this got onto the list, but I like cancer memoirs, so... It's a weird one, though. David Rieff was Susan Sontag's only child, born when she was 19. He had a troubled childhood, a history of addiction, and is currently a right-wing apologist! A messed-up person, which comes through loud and clear in the memoir. He feels guilty about not having saved his mother from her awful death at age 71. She could not accept it, right up until the end, nor could he, and he seems to think this is normal. I don't think it is. A sad book.

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (2021). I'd already read several of these biographical essays, but others were new to me, and I enjoyed them. The book seems to be a lot about smoking -- although she quit in 2005, I get the feeling she looks back on it with fondness. That's the one aspect of Ann Patchett that I have trouble dealing with! Other than that, she has so many friends and seems to love absolutely everyone, but it's OK, it's good. I liked the essay about choosing not to have children, "There Are No Children Here," which has some interesting insights into the topic. Reading her essays made me want to write essays too.

The Plague and I by Betty McDonald (1948). In September 2022 I read Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone, about growing up Japanese-American in Seattle and being sent to an internment camp during WWII. In her late teens, Sone contracted tuberculosis and while in a sanatorium, she met a nice woman she called "Chris." Then, last year when I read Looking for Betty MacDonald, I learned that "Chris" was Betty MacDonald, and in her book about the sanatorium, Betty writes about Sone, who she calls "Kimi Sanbo." So of course I had to read Betty's book!

Although The Plague and I was published in 1948, MacDonald and Sone were in the sanatorium in 1937-38, i.e., pre-antibiotics. So this is really an ancient history text. Treatment consists of being forced to lie still in cold rooms, having one lung collapsed in order to rest it, and even having ribs removed. Patients are given no information about the progress of their disease. Some of them die. Still, MacDonald manages to make her story hilarious. I kept annoying Rocket Boy by giggling (while reading in bed). At first I thought the racism would be too much for me, but MacDonald clearly adores "Kimi" (although she makes fun of her speech) and criticizes other patients for being racist, so it was bearable. I would recommend. (Rocket Boy read it too and enjoyed it.)

The Goshawk by T. H. White (1951). In November 2019 I read H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, which she describes as a "shadow biography" of T. H. White and his experiences training a goshawk. In December 2023 I read White's The Sword in the Stone and at that time I wrote,

Now I don't know if I want to read The Once and Future King.... If I read something else by White, it might be The Goshawk.

So this month I read it. It's beautifully written, but it made me sad. At the end of the book, White quotes "an old proverb":

When your first wife dies, she makes such a hole in your heart that all the rest slip through.

And that's what this book is, a description of that first wife and that hole in White's heart. I feel as though I too lost a goshawk.

I Am I Am I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell (2017). A late addition to my list, I ran across this when I was reading about Hamnet. I thought it sounded fascinating -- 17 brushes with death! Who has a life like that? And then I found a copy at the Bookworm, so I read it, and it is really good, but also, I kept thinking -- well, that happened to me. Or something like it happened to me. And I realized that by the time you get to be 65 (or older) you will have had a lot of brushes with death. It's part of life. And that, in fact, is Maggie O'Farrell's point -- that brushes with death are what life consists of. At some point the brush becomes more than a brush and you die, but until then... Really enjoyed this book.

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon (2015). This jumped onto the list at the last minute, after I read This Long Pursuit by Richard Holmes (see below). Holmes has a chapter on Wollstonecraft and mentions this book, and then I saw it cited somewhere else too, so I thought I would like to read it. And it was great, so interesting, a biography of a literary mother and daughter who never knew each other because the mother died 10 days after the daughter was born. It goes back and forth between their lives. It's 547 pages, which was a little daunting, but I got interested and made it through.

One thing that really struck me about the book was how both Mary W. and Mary S. insisted on having time to "work" (write, study, read) every day, even while raising children, running a household, etc. It was very important to them, even under impossible circumstances, in the late 1700s/early 1800s. Something to think about.

May Sarton: A Biography by Margot Peters (1997). In 2024, when I was trying to read more poetry, I accidentally read a collection by May Sarton (her last name started with S and I was focusing on Elizabeth Savage that month, etc., etc.). I didn't love the poetry, but I noted at the time,

I might consider reading Margot Peters' biography of her at some point. 

So, at the end of April, I tackled the 399-page bio. I knew it was famous for being very critical, not a lovefest, but Oh My God. May Sarton clearly had borderline personality disorder, and maybe narcissistic personality disorder too (I'm not as familiar with that one). She had a very sad childhood, with parents who could not cope and kept sending her away, and I wonder if that's what caused it. So awful. Margot Peters doesn't come out and say it in the main text, but tucks a mention of possible BPD into the endnotes. But I didn't need her to tell me -- it was so obvious from her description of Sarton. Oh My God. I'm actually curious to read one or two of Sarton's novels or memoirs now, just to see what a borderline writes. It's impressive that she was able to produce as much as she did (over 30 books), considering how miserable and crazy she was. A freaky story.

Books from the New Yorker's "Briefly Noted" reviews

This Long Pursuit: Reflections of a Romantic Biographer by Richard Holmes (2016). It was fun to choose a book from my envelopes that relates to this month's theme, but I didn't realize that this is actually Holmes' third book about being a biographer. It's a general review of his whole career, though, so not a bad place to start. The first section of the book talks about general biographical issues, and the second and third sections are about various historical people who have been biographied (including Mary Wollstonecraft), either by him or others. An interesting book, not quite what I expected it to be, but good.

Other reading

Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate: A User Guide to an Asperger Life by Cynthia Kim (2014). My sixth book about autism. Kim was diagnosed with mild autism (Asperger's) at age 42 and this is her book (based on her blog) about herself. I didn't find it very helpful. It often seemed to me that she was labeling things as autistic that weren't. It's as though, having been told she's autistic, she decided to attribute everything about herself to autism. Still, there were some useful bits. So I'll go on reading, picking up what I can from these books.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1968). I read this with Teen A earlier this school year, and so now it was time to read it with Teen B. Of course I've read it many times before, but it's always good to revisit a classic, see how well it stands up. This one really does.

Chocolat by Joanne Harris (1999). The book group book. We wanted a book set in France, because one of our members was going there in April. Le Miserables was rejected when Amazon told us it was 1376 pages. The Count of Monte Cristo was rejected when Amazon told us it was 1312 pages. So we ended up with Chocolat. Which is about the most un-French book set in France that you can imagine. At first I hated it, just forced myself through its pages. Gradually I got sucked in, and at the end I'd say I enjoyed it, a little. But here's the funny thing: I mentioned it to Rocket Boy and he said, "We saw the movie, remember?" I have no memory of this. None. But I looked in my lists book and there it is, January 2005. And I put a star by it, meaning I really liked it. I watched the trailer online, but it seemed completely unfamiliar. Anyway, we're going to see if we can get it from the library and watch it again. Maybe that will jog my ancient brain into remembering. Post-note: It didn't. Absolutely no recollection of it at all. Sigh.