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. 

End of April

We are so close to done, it's freaking me out. Two more weeks of classes, then finals, then graduation. Three weeks from today I will be writing a post about how I have two high school graduates (actually I might have to wait until the following Monday to write it -- Sunday will probably be a busy day, with my sister visiting and all). I'm panicking, quietly, trying to think of all the things I should be doing before time runs out.

What always happens in spring, and it's happening this year too, is that plans get interfered with. Last week was a total loss for my plans, due to illness (and the effects of the shingles shot). I didn't do any yardwork or really much of anything else either. No walks, no exercise of any sort. A little cleaning, a little writing, a lot of reading. I didn't eat much, wasn't hungry, but gained two pounds. Sigh.

This coming week it's supposed to rain every day (maybe). This will be wonderful -- we need it SOOO badly -- but it will interfere with plans. I will try to do a little yardwork in the mornings, when it is less likely to rain, but there will probably be days when I skip it altogether. 

I can only work in the front yard, though, because of something that happened this past week in back. A house finch pair decided to build a nest in the pieces of wood that are sticking down from where a tree branch punched a hole in our patio roof two years ago. 

We have never gotten this fixed because no handyman would touch it, and quite honestly, Rocket Boy doesn't want to touch it either. The only real solution is to pull the whole structure down and start over, and we don't have the money to do that. So in the meantime some stupid finches decided it was the perfect place to build an incredibly messy nest. This is a finch thing, apparently. Just throw a few sticks together and call it good.

So now I can't really work in the backyard. Maybe once the eggs hatch I could do a little work, carefully, but right now I think I should leave Mrs. Finch alone. I believe she is already sitting on eggs, and it scares her so much she flies away if I even look at her through the window. We have started keeping half the curtains closed, to give her a little privacy. (She very bravely put up with me taking this photo, but I closed the curtains again right afterwards.) 

On Thursday, Rocket Boy and Teen A flew to Los Angeles to attend his cousin June's memorial service. It turned out that it was really more of a funeral than a memorial service, at least the way I understand the meaning of those words. There was a coffin and a wreath and all that. I told Teen A that no one would be wearing a suit at a memorial service in California, so he didn't need to bring his. I suggested he bring one of his button-up shirts, that would be good enough. He chose the blue & green plaid one, which looks very nice on him.

But then, for whatever reason, on Friday, the day of the "memorial service," he wore a gray t-shirt with a picture of a Camaro on it. If I had been there, I would have made him change, but Rocket Boy didn't realize that he had brought anything better to wear and didn't say anything to him. And, it turned out that almost all the other relatives were wearing black (one was in dark blue), and some of the men wore suits and ties. Oh well.

Rocket Boy had prepared some words to say about his cousin, had worked over them, typed them up, etc. But the "memorial service" was run by a minister who never gave anyone else a chance to speak. At the end of his talk, he asked the attendees to think of a single word that described June. Rocket Boy's word was "gracious," which I thought was very nice and very accurate. I don't know if Teen A offered a word.

Oh well. It doesn't matter. As Rocket Boy said, philosophically, his friend Chris came to the service too and he "looked even worse than [Teen A]." So there you are.

Also, Teen A had photos on his phone from prom that his girlfriend had just sent him (I haven't even seen them yet!) and so the relatives got to see him looking good. Rocket Boy said that Teen A was the object of great interest, since many of the relatives had never met him (or hadn't seen him since he was a baby). So it all worked out OK.

They are coming home tonight, with a flight scheduled to arrive at 6:15 pm. I just checked, and right now they are early (the flight hasn't left yet). 

*** 

Despite illness, this was a productive week for me in some ways. I dosed myself with cold medicine every night and some of the days, so I never had a lot of "symptoms." Teen B has had this thing for over two weeks and he's STILL coughing, because he refuses to take cold medicine. 

Teen B had his yearly physical on Thursday (after Rocket Boy and Teen A left for the airport), which was one of the reasons why I didn't want to go to LA. I desperately wanted to show Dr. Johnson the neuropsych report, but felt as though I couldn't give it to him, because Teen B is now 18 and in charge of his own health. Right before we went into the medical center, I said to Teen B, "I brought a copy of the report from that testing you did and I want you to give it to Dr. Johnson." He didn't say no. But then when he was called in by the nurse, he insisted that I go too. I said, "You're 18, I'm not supposed to go with you anymore," but the nurse said, "You can come in if he wants you to," so I did. And I gave Dr. Johnson the report. And he read it quickly and then we talked about it. He gave us a lot of his time -- he's such a good doctor.

The upshot is this: we're going to do auditory testing, as recommended by the psychologist. We're not going to do any anti-anxiety medicine because Teen B hates taking any drugs and didn't want to take this kind either. Dr. Johnson said this summer would be a good time to try it out if we wanted to, before college starts, but Teen B said no, so we respected that. I mentioned that I felt guilty because everyone I knew with a kid like this has had them on drugs from a young age. Dr. Johnson said, "With a kid like what?" And I said the word: "autism." Dr. Johnson said, "There's no drug that treats autism," and he kind of half-smiled at me. "It's best to just learn how to live with them. Autism's not a disease, it's just a different way of being." I got tears in my eyes. This is how I've been starting to think, from reading these books. I just can't seem to drop this idea that I've let Teen B down by not getting him all sorts of "treatments." Maybe I can finally let that go.

I thought Teen B would be mad at me after the appointment, but he wasn't. He had to get a vaccination at the end, the second Meningitis B shot, so his arm hurt, and we laughed about that, comparing it with my shingles shot. We went to Starbucks for a late lunch and then went home and crashed. And it was OK.

Friday night I had gotten tickets for the spring play at the other high school. Most of the high schools do a musical in the spring, but Fairview does their musical in the fall and a serious play in the spring. Last year they did "Macbeth," which was of course pretty gloomy. This year they did "Almost, Maine," which is a series of sketches about love, so it was more upbeat. Of course, Fairview like all schools has trouble coming up with enough male actors, so they didn't have enough boys to play the male parts. This meant that several of the sketches appeared to feature lesbian couples (one of the sketches is actually supposed to be between two women, but the others aren't). I thought they did a really good job and I enjoyed myself. Not sure what Teen B thought.

Saturday afternoon Teen B had a haircut appointment -- another reason I didn't want to go to LA. Those haircut appointments are REALLY hard to come by. Melisa is so popular, you have to schedule your haircut several months in advance. In fact, I have already made his next appointment, for early July.

And today it was pouring rain, with some thunder and lightning, but we braved the elements and went to Starbucks as always. Now we're just hanging out. I'm trying to think about what I should do before Rocket Boy and Teen A return. Oh, right, laundry! I'll go start a load as soon as I finish this. And maybe some other tidying. Mostly I'll just enjoy the solitude. It's been really really quiet while they were gone. They're both sort of noisy, messy people, whereas Teen B is very quiet and doesn't take up much space.

What about the week ahead? Well, as I said, I probably won't get a lot of yardwork done, due to the rain. Ditto walks. Maybe I can lift weights and do some stretch videos instead.

Many things are scheduled: the band concert on Monday, the orchestra concert on Wednesday. On Tuesday morning I have a mammogram (oh joy), and on Friday Teen A has his yearly physical with Dr. Johnson. I bet he won't want me to come in with him, which is fine. He'll have some private things to discuss with Dr. J.

And the book group is coming the week after, so I need to get serious about cleaning. I haven't been getting emails from the FlyLady for a while, so I went to her website to see what was going on. And oh my goodness, the whole thing has changed. All the good useful stuff she used to have on there -- gone! It's bare bones, and not very useful at all. But I decided it was OK. I learned everything I needed to know from her a long time ago, and I can keep going on my own. I made a new weekly schedule (not that much different from the old one, just tinkering), and I'll work with that.

The last few days of April. After this, I'll never have kids in local public schools during the month of April again.

Prom week

Yes, this was the week of Prom, a rite of passage that I had almost no knowledge of until this year, since my high school didn't have a prom. We had something called the Tri-School Formal, which may have been similar, I don't know. The three high schools in town (there were three back then, but soon after, it dropped down to two) had a big joint dance every spring. I think my little sister went one year. My boyfriend and I went to the Winter Formal -- me in an absolutely dreadful dress, black with red roses. I was thinking about that dress as I scrolled through pictures from last year's After Prom yesterday. All these pretty dresses. Why couldn't I have had a pretty dress? 

My high school had a big party on grad night, which I think most schools don't do. That was sort of our prom. It went until late at night and you weren't expected/required to have a date, so all my dateless friends went to it too, which was nice. I think there were games to play -- I don't remember very well. What I do remember is that I had a dreadful dress for that, too. It was sort of beige-y, with puffy sleeves, I think vaguely prairie style. So unattractive, so juvenile. Why couldn't I have had a pretty dress for graduation? Were there no pretty dresses in the stores? Well, it was the late 70s. I know my mother and I worked hard to find me something nice, but we failed.

I guess that's why it was important to me to buy Teen A a really sharp looking suit for prom. I want my kids to look nice. I want everybody to look nice!

At the last minute, practically, Rocket Boy got interested in Prom, or more specifically After Prom. He donated $150 and signed up to help with setup. He did some setting up Friday night and a little more on Saturday afternoon. This photo shows the game room being set up in the East Boulder Rec Center gymnasium.

We studied the online sign-up sheets with great interest, spotting the names of parents of two kids that our kids went to elementary school with. (We haven't had any contact with these parents for a long time.) But Rocket Boy didn't see either of them when he was helping out. Maybe he wouldn't recognize them. People change a lot, going past early middle age to late middle age. Menopause has a big effect on women's looks, and hair turning gray does a lot too. And men's bodies often fall apart.

There were still some slots available, such as bathroom monitor from 2 am to 3 am, and I actually considered signing up. But at midnight, when we were tucked into bed and getting ready to turn off the light, I was really glad I hadn't. When I was younger, staying up that late was possible, but I think I'm past that now.

Rocket Boy went by the East Boulder Rec Center around 1 pm this afternoon, but they were all done cleaning up already. Someone told him there were 1500 kids there last night! That's kind of hard to believe. The two schools only have about 1000 students each who were eligible to attend (500 in the senior class, 500 in the junior class), and you know they didn't all go (for example, Teen B). So that was a lot.

Of course, Teen A didn't go to dinner with us last night (he stopped by to get his suit and tie and then was out the door in a flash). We considered going to the Bohemian Biergarten, which is basically right across the street from where our kids' school's Prom was held (at the Boulder Theater), so that we could watch the kids arriving. I nixed that idea, suggested we go far out of town to get away from it all. So then RB thought of Helga's, a German restaurant near where he works. It was a 45-minute drive to get there, but they stay open until 10 pm, and we had time. 

It was OK. When we got there, a man was playing the accordion -- really well, but really loudly, and I wasn't sure Teen B was going to be able to stand it (he's pretty sensitive to noise). Fortunately the musician finished up, said he had to catch his bus, and left.

I had pork jagerschnitzel, which was such a bad choice, I don't know what I was thinking. But the spatzle and red cabbage were good, as was the goulash soup that we started with. And we brought home delicious apple strudel. So I would go back, just order something different next time (like the vegetarian plate).  

I'm feeling a little spacey right now, because (a) I'm coming down with Teen B's cold that he's had all week, and (b) I just had my second shingles shot, about an hour ago. I am anticipating that the week ahead will not be a good one, at least the first few days. Unlike Teen B, I will dose myself with cold medicine religiously, but that's not going to help with the shingles shot reaction. Plus, I have to give myself my Mounjaro shot tonight. Oh well.

But I will try to make it through the week, keep trying to follow my new resolutions as best I can. This past week I did OK, some good, some bad. I only managed four walks, but four walks is much better than zero walks. We had SNOW on Friday, so amazing, so I didn't walk that day. In this picture, it's just getting started, but later it got really heavy and coated everything with white. I didn't get a picture of the snow on people's lilac bushes, but it was so beautiful, the purple and white.

And then it all melted, most of it before it even got dark. This was a very quick storm. But more is predicted this coming week, maybe Friday to Saturday. It won't help the snowpack much, but it will be wonderful. 

You can see all those leaf bags lined up by the compost & trash bins in the picture -- that's my hard work cutting down junipers and picking up sticks. I did yardwork on four of the five weekdays (the fifth was Friday, when it snowed, and I decided it was OK to take that day off). And I did yardwork all five weekdays the week before. So that's 9 days = 8 leaf bags plus the compost bin itself.

I will try to do the same this week, with the caveat that the shingles shot and the cold may prevent me from doing so. It will be OK.

As I noted above, I took some walks, but not as many as planned. I lifted weights on Tuesday, but not Thursday, and I did not do any stretch videos. I just seem to have no energy these days. But I will keep trying.

I did some writing, including writing a letter to an old friend who I haven't heard from for a few years. I should probably stop writing to her, but she's such an old friend -- I met her in 1979 -- and she's had times before where she got depressed and didn't write. So I figure I'll keep writing occasionally, at least for her birthday, which is in May, until/unless she tells me not to or I hear that something's happened to her. 

I should note that it was a strange week, because our email was shut off from Tuesday night to Friday morning, when Rocket Boy finally managed to get our domain name reinstated. Any emails sent to us during that time just didn't get through -- they're lost forever. I hope there was nothing important. Nothing I can do about it if there was. 

Housework this week was mostly a bust. The house is really getting very dirty, and I have the book group coming in a few weeks, not to mention my sister's brief visit for the twins' graduation. Finally, yesterday, I thought -- what if Teen A stops by with his girlfriend -- or even, horrors, the girlfriend's father -- not that that was likely to happen -- but what if it did -- and they needed to use the bathroom -- and it looks like this. So I set the timer on my phone for TEN MINUTES, and I got busy. I cleaned the sink, the top and sides of the toilet, scrubbed the toilet bowl, and worked on the weird orange stains in the shower.

(Later, Rocket Boy said to me, "Why is the shower wet?" I said, "I cleaned the bathroom, can't you tell?" He hadn't noticed. But if Teen A's girlfriend's father had stopped by, I'm sure he would have noticed if I hadn't cleaned it.)

And then I took a break, and then I set my phone timer for 10 more minutes and cleaned the kitchen (mostly just did dishes and wiped off counters).

Ten minutes is a very bearable amount of time. I will try to remember that this week, do a few more ten minute sessions.

Today I am doing a lot of laundry, speaking of housework, because last night our cat Sillers lost control of her bladder (I think?) while sitting on my pillows. She likes to do this when I'm in bed reading at night. Baby Kitty settles himself on my lap, and Sillers perches on the pillows above my head, nestled close to me. Last night I was reading as usual, and suddenly it felt like someone was pouring warm water down my back. I sat up, looked behind me, and there's this smelly liquid coming down from the cat. She didn't seem even slightly perturbed. I grabbed her and put her on the floor. The stuff was on both pillows and their cases, my nightgown, a little on the sheet, probably in my hair. 

Today, everything's getting washed. I hadn't washed those pillows in ages, so it's probably a good thing. They're currently on the clothesline, baking in the sun (we're beginning a heat wave today).

I don't know what to do about that cat. I think I will call the vet tomorrow. What could have possessed her? She poops all over the house, has no control of that, but she's never peed on anything that I know of. And to pee on the pillows and on me! Sigh. Problems with companion animals.

This might be the place to mention the dead raccoon we found on our neighbor's front lawn a few days ago -- Tuesday, I think it was. Our neighbor on the other side had mentioned seeing a possibly sick raccoon on Friday or Saturday, she'd even called Animal Control and they came out, but couldn't find it. So it somehow made it past our house and died on the other neighbor's lawn. She called Animal Control, but they told her to just double bag it and put it in her trash. I helped her. I lifted the raccoon by its tail and put it in the garbage bag, which she then tied, and then we put it in a second bag. 

I was very glad when the trash was picked up on Friday, knowing the dead raccoon was gone (no, I didn't take a picture of it).

So, the week ahead. Teen A has a dentist appointment on Wednesday morning, and then he and Rocket Boy are flying to Los Angeles on Thursday, to attend Cousin June's memorial service on Friday, and then flying back on Sunday. Teen B and I have several things to do while they're gone: he has his yearly physical on Thursday, we're going to the other high school's spring play on Friday night, and on Saturday he has a haircut appointment. I am HOPING to cram all my sickness and feeling crummy after the shot into the next three days, so I'll be up for things getting more complicated later in the week.

Speaking of which, I think I might go back to bed for a little while. Maybe take some Tylenol for my sore throat, maybe some herb tea with honey. Take it easy. We old people have to look after ourselves. 

A quiet week in springtime

Yes, this was a quiet week for me, no appointments or special things I needed to do. Rocket Boy actually had multiple appointments, including two at 8 am (Thursday and Friday), which meant he needed to get up at 6:30 those days. On Saturday he and I both slept until 10 -- we were so tired! 

But other than that, it was a quiet week, perfect for me to get started with my new resolutions. To refresh your memory, I wanted to (1) be more religious about exercise, (2) do yardwork every weekday morning, (3) write a little every day, and (4) get back into decluttering the house.

I did pretty well with exercise. I went for a walk every day except Friday, so that was good, and I managed to lift weights two days (which was the goal). I did not do any stretch videos, but that's OK. Getting back into walking every day was the main thing. I must say, though, I struggled. On some of the days, I got really tired, and on Tuesday, when I went for a longer walk (1.74 miles), I wasn't sure I would make it back. So I must go a little easier on myself, work my way up to longer walks.

I was successful with doing yardwork, even though some days I really didn't want to. But I got out there all five days. I alternated between front yard and backyard, as I used to do in the summer of 2023, when I did all that yardwork with Teen A. 

I don't like to work in the front yard, because people walking by can see me, and might perhaps comment on what I'm doing wrong or how I should hire someone to get rid of the junipers, etc. But in fact no one does comment, or at least they haven't so far. I don't like working in the backyard because I'm afraid a dog will run in and bite me or a homeless person will come in and attack me, none of which makes any sense -- wouldn't those things be more likely in the front yard? Not that they are likely at all. But the whole time I'm out there, I keep looking around -- are there any threats, is anything in the yard with me -- and I try to keep some sort of weapon (clippers, saw, large branch) in my hand at all times.

It's going to be a long summer.

I also managed to do some writing every day. I'm currently working on a little essay memoir about my wedding, back in 2002. My wedding was absolutely the loveliest experience it could have been -- everything was perfect -- and it was also the most horrible experience it could have been, because of some things that happened the week before it, connected with my difficult sister. Whenever I think about my wedding (usually when I hear about someone else's wedding) I think, oh, it was so lovely, and then I think, well, except that it wasn't. I thought maybe by writing about it, I could tease apart my real feelings about it. So far I have written seven and a half pages and I am no closer to making sense of the experience, but I will keep working on it.

A few nights ago I had my dissertation dream again. This is the dream I have where I realize that I haven't finished my dissertation yet (in some of the dreams I haven't even started it, perhaps don't have a topic, but it varies) and I'd better get busy, because time is running out. (Of course, I actually finished the darn thing almost 30 years ago!) I have this dream every 3-6 months, something like that, and it's been going on for several years. While my advisor was still alive, I would dream that he told me I'd better hurry, he didn't have much time left to help me. After his death, the dreams have been concerned not only with finishing the diss, but with finding a new advisor. The last time I had the dream, I had to meet with the current linguistics faculty, to see if any of them would be willing to work with me, because of course almost everyone who was there when I was there has retired by now.

In this week's version of the dream, I was still trying to find an advisor so I could finish, but it wasn't looking good. I did manage to connect with one professor in the department who I knew slightly as a graduate student. In the dream her last name was Hope (this is not her real name), which must be significant. Anyway, she didn't seem to want to be my advisor. Throughout the dream I kept thinking, this is it, there's no time left, I'm going to have to give up. I'll just be ABD (all but dissertation). It's not so bad. Lots of people are ABD. I tried to reconcile myself to the idea. I was getting there. Lurking in the background of the dream was the sense that I was going to die soon, that I had cancer, which was why I had to give up on the dissertation.

The dream was so vivid, so clear, that I couldn't stop thinking about it (all the dissertation dreams are like this). I kept thinking, what does this MEAN? Is it an anxiety dream? Is it about getting something done before I die? But what? Is there some big project in my real life that I'm worried about completing or being unable to complete in the time I have left? Surely this isn't about the yardwork. Maybe my novels, but are they really so important? Do I have cancer? My health seemed perfect at my physical last month, but... 

I tried to think who I could ask to explain the dream to me. Finally I thought, the only one who knows the answer is me, so I must ask my psyche. So, the last few nights before going to sleep, I said to myself, tell me what the dissertation dreams mean.

The first night, I got no response (that I remember). The second night, last night, I dreamed that I had two long papers to finish. Not dissertations, just long term papers for classes I was taking. I knew exactly how to finish both of them, but I was running out of time, and my sister Barbara kept talking to me. She was cleaning her kitchen and chatting away. Finally I said to her, Barbara, I really need to stop talking to you and go work on my papers.

Was that my answer? It seems like a different dream altogether, although there is that sense of running out of time, but there were no worries about advisors, and I was clearly capable of getting the papers done. I guess I can just keep asking. 

*** 

The one resolution that I completely failed at was decluttering. Man, I really do not like to clean. I did take apart some of the boxes in the living room and put them out for the recycling pickup. But Rocket Boy did some cleaning himself yesterday -- worked on decluttering the living room a little too. He found some of my shoes, some green sandals, buried in a basket and said, "Whose are these?" Whose do you THINK they are, I scolded him. Obviously they're mine. No one else in the family wears green sandals. "Do you still wear them?" Well... I said I did, but later on I tried them on, and they're really ratty. So I threw them in the trash (they're too far gone to donate). Rocket Boy will probably pull them out later and try to do something with them. Arrrggghhh.

I managed to get all the things done (that I did get done) by curtailing my reading time during the day, and that turned out to be less stressful than I'd anticipated. Mainly it just made me eager to go to bed at night, so that I would have more time to read before turning off the light. 

On Friday I kind of ran out of gas. I did the yardwork, and maybe half an hour of writing, but that was all. No walk, no stretch video, just that little bit of cleaning. I didn't even make dinner (bad Mom). Rocket Boy got home at 6:30 and I was lying on the bed reading. He ended up baking himself a frozen pizza. Teen B just had snacks, as did I. I wish I had the kind of family that didn't expect a formal dinner on Friday, but I don't, so, oh well. In penance, yesterday I made the banana bread coffee cake. It didn't turn out that well. The bananas weren't really ripe enough, and I ran out of cinnamon. But it's OK. We've all had some and it's fine.

Now, the week ahead. It will be a funny week because of state testing. Tomorrow is "senior ditch day" again. I have told the twins I will NOT put in an excused absence for them -- if they want to "ditch," it is their decision and they will have to face the consequences. Tuesday and Wednesday they have off, because the other grades are doing state testing and taking the SAT and PSAT. That means Teen A will be off doing Teen A things, and Teen B will be sitting at home pestering me. But also, he and I are supposedly going to practice driving those days, in preparation for him taking the test to get his license. We will see how that goes. Thursday and Friday are normal days, more or less. 

So, I will keep going with my new goals, as best I can. Yardwork every morning, a walk every afternoon, possibly weight lifting and stretch videos in the middle of the day. Some time to write every day. And a little decluttering every day. And of course cooking dinner, bleah. And laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, all that jazz. It'll be a week. Hope yours is a good one.  

Easter and springtime

Happy Easter! And welcome to the second quarter of 2026. This is a strange Easter, as they all are when your kids grow up. Rocket Boy really wanted to hide eggs for the twins (one of whom isn't even here, staying over at his girlfriend's house as usual), but instead, facing reality, he offered up our collection of plastic eggs to our neighborhood listserv on Friday. And someone responded right away, and after some miscommunication finally picked up a big sack of them on Saturday morning. 

So now we have no more eggs (except the random ones that constantly appear and disappear around the house). I didn't even set out our bunnies, as I usually do, or our Easter picture books. All we have on the coffee table are a few jellybeans.

Nevertheless, it feels like a special day. I'm wearing my new yellow shirt, which I think of as my Easter egg shirt. Rocket Boy came with us to Starbucks, which he doesn't usually do. He was hoping there would be a special Easter drink, which of course there wasn't. But Teen B got the iced lavender cream chai, which has a purple top, kind of Easter-y. I got the toasted coconut latte. Rocket Boy just got a chai latte.

Rocket Boy wants to have a special dinner. I, of course, don't, but I compromised. We bought asparagus at Trader Joe's yesterday, and I bought the ingredients for a cheerful spring salad (butter lettuce, avocado, oranges). We had dinner at Aunt Alice's in Longmont and came home with a whole strawberry cream pie. But I told him I don't want to kill anything in honor of Easter. We can have leftovers for a main course (the refrigerator is overflowing) or we can have an omelet. No ham (dead pig), no lamb (dead sheep), not even seafood (dead fish). Unless he wants to handle the whole thing himself. I'm not partaking.

Easter feels like a day of new beginnings, despite the fact that I don't go to church anymore. Coming so early in April this year, it's right at the start of the second quarter, so that's a good time for a refresh.

In the first quarter of the year, what did I do? I read 34 books, saw two movies, went to two concerts and one musical, and saw the Pissarro exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. We took an awesome Spring Break trip through the Upper South. 

I saw my doctor for my yearly physical. I did not lose any weight, in fact, I gained a few pounds (due to eating vast amounts of candy). I was kind of up and down with exercising, some good weeks, some bad. I did not do much writing, nor much housecleaning. I didn't have the energy. 

I kept the house running, cooked dinner, helped with homework, all that jazz. I did the taxes! Our preparer finished them this week and sent them in! Time to watch our bank account for those big refunds (which I'll use to pay our property taxes and the house insurance, sigh).

So, spring quarter, April-May-June. What are my plans?

Well, I would like to read another 30 books or so, see a few more movies. I really want to see the sheep detective movie when it comes out in May, and I'm on the library's waiting list for the dvd of "Hamnet," although I'm number 53, so we'll see. I also ordered a dvd of "Pola X" from Amazon -- that's the movie based on Melville's Pierre. I felt silly buying it, since I'll probably only watch it once, but the only library in the Prospector system that had it won't let it go beyond "local use." And money is so meaningless right now. So I ordered it. What the heck.

I hope to go to three more concerts this quarter -- at least -- the spring band, orchestra, and choir concerts at the high school. Maybe also the spring play at the other high school. Then there's graduation, got to go to that. Before that, in two weeks, there's Prom, so I'll have to shepherd Teen A through that. We still need to get him a tie. And there will be other end-of-year, end-of-high school activities, I'm sure.

I'm not planning to go to Cousin June's memorial service in three weeks. Rocket Boy and Teen A bought their plane tickets this week (and I've already paid off the credit card). I'm sorry I don't want to go, but I don't. I have a very strong negative feeling about it, and I'm respecting that. I'm glad the family will be represented, and I think Rocket Boy and Teen A will have a good time together. Without me there, they may do something wild and crazy, which would be great.

Maybe we'll plan a family trip during the month of June, I'll see.

This quarter I also have a lot of plans for getting things done, and I hope I'm not planning too much. I had no energy in the first quarter of the year -- who's to say anything will be different in the second quarter? But maybe the sunshine and warmth will help.

1. I want to be more religious about exercise. I want to go on a walk every day possible (i.e., excepting days when the weather's terrible or I'm sick or we just have too many other things scheduled). I also want to get back into doing stretch videos and lifting weights. Ideally, I would have two exercise periods each weekday: a stretch video or weight lifting AND a walk. And extra walks on weekends.
    
2. I want to start doing yardwork again every weekday morning, 20-30 minutes. Got to get back to cutting down those junipers, even though it's not much fun. At the start of May, plant my flowers (I don't think I need to wait for the last freeze date this year, sigh). 
   
   
3. I want to write, at least a short bit every day.
   
   
4. I want to get back into decluttering the house. Specifically, I want to clean out the twins' room in preparation for them going to college. I probably wouldn't start that until late May, after graduation. I thought I could do it gradually, assign myself to one small section of the room each week (a set of shelves, a section of the closet, the space under their beds, the dresser they share). I used to think this was something they would do themselves, but the fact that they're basically not speaking to each other has made that impossible. Teen A has worked on the area around his bed a little, but that's all. No reason to wait for them to sort it out. I should just get busy. 

If I'm going to do all this -- or even a small part of it -- I'm going to need to borrow time from other places. What do I spend time on now that I could give up for these activities?

Well, reading. Maybe my goal shouldn't be to read 10 books each month, maybe it should only be 7. Or just however many it turns out to be.

I think mainly, though, my time gets used up in feeling sick and having no energy. I don't know what to do about that. I did think I might try to eat better. For example, eat lunch every day, don't snack on candy and then just wait until I feel awful to drag myself out to the kitchen and stare unhappily at the contents of the refrigerator (incidentally, it's currently 2:23 pm and I have not had lunch). Plan lunches, even. Buy bread (we have none at the moment) and make myself a peanut butter and jam sandwich at 1 pm every day. Or eat leftovers. Or cottage cheese. But something. 

I also spend a lot of time avoiding things. Every night I make a to-do list for the following day. Certain things on it I do pretty much without thinking: feed cats, start laundry. Some things I don't want to do, but I do them (emptying the dishwasher, eating breakfast). Other things I actively avoid, and that takes time and energy. Examples are the litter boxes and hand-dishwashing. I hate cleaning the litter boxes because I have to bend over and that bothers my stomach. I can't get through the three boxes without triggering an episode of heartburn! So of course I avoid them. 

Hand-dishwashing isn't painful, but it isn't fun. We have so many dishes that can't go in the dishwasher, and most of them are large -- big pots and pans, ancient cookie sheets, and worst of all, our reusable to-go containers, which we take with us to restaurants, keep in the fridge full of leftovers, and Rocket Boy takes his lunch to work in them. It just seems like there's always a stack of them waiting to be washed, and they are such a pain, full of nooks and crannies. The photo here is what I actually have waiting for me at this very moment. FOUR to-go containers, plus a small cookie sheet. Ugh. It's impossible to wash them without splattering myself. Their lids are attached, so they're big and they don't really fit in the sink.

Complain, complain. 

I think the only way to keep from having tasks like this derail me is to not plan to do them early in the day. Schedule them for the evening, when Rocket Boy might even do them for me (he won't do the litter boxes, but he might do dishes). 

Well, I don't know. I'm probably planning too much and I'll probably totally fail at all of it. But all I can do is try. 

Something else that I want to get done is Teen B's driver's license. I told him this week that we need to either do that OR get him an ID. He said, "why can't I just take the test?" So we agreed that on April 14-15, when the kids have the day off due to state testing, we'll go out and do some practice driving. And then I will schedule his test.

Once that's done, whatever the outcome, we need to apply for passports. Rocket Boy convinced Teen A to get his last year, which was smart. I want to get mine renewed and I want Teen B to get one too. Of course, if the stupid SAVE act passes, a LOT of other people will be doing the same thing, but we'll just get in line. 

And so on, one task after another. In the beautiful time which is spring. 

Reading post: March

In March I planned to focus on "classics," loosely defined, that at some point in the past I said I'd like to read. "Classics" are often long books, so I figured I wouldn't read very many this month, but it turned out that length wasn't the problem. I just had all these other things to read, like book after book about autism and a very long biography of Dwight David Eisenhower, and the book for the book group. My "brief reviews" book this month was long too. It's fine! It's all good. I can read classics some other time.

Books I said I'd like to read (Classics)

Passing by Nella Larsen (1929). In 2020, I read Larsen's first novel, Quicksand, and noted,

Larsen is better known for her second novel, Passing, but that was checked out at the library (I might read it later). 

Passing is short, only about 120 pages, and very tightly organized. I didn't enjoy the book, but I was fascinated by the subject, the question of "passing" as white, back in the days of Jim Crow and the one-drop rule. The main character, Irene, who occasionally tries to pass, is forced to think deeply about the subject when she meets an old friend, Clare, who is married to a white racist and thus passing 100% of the time, but still wants to hang out with Black people, including possibly Irene's husband. It is a thought-provoking book.

Pierre or The Ambiguities by Herman Melville (1852). In 2019, I read Moby-Dick, inspired in part by Jill Lepore's article on Melville in the New Yorker. In that article she also discusses Pierre, which I had never heard of, so I made a note that I'd like to read it. Hmm. The edition I got from the library is truncated -- it's an attempt to recreate Melville's original version, before he tacked on some extra stuff to appease his dubious publishers. But that means it's not the Pierre that other people have read. Probably doesn't matter. This edition also has wonderful illustrations by Maurice Sendak, so that's a plus. 

Anyway, Pierre is one of the weirder books I have ever read. Moby-Dick is actually not hard to read, but Pierre is -- I think intentionally -- written in this florid, confusing style that was just so hard to get through. The story itself is nuts. Pierre, 19 years old and engaged to be married to blonde Lucy, meets a dark young woman, Isabel, who claims to be his half-sister (from an illicit affair his father had before marrying his mother). Pierre, who has a weird, vaguely incestuous relationship with his widowed mother -- he calls her "sister" -- doesn't want to destroy his father's reputation by acknowledging Isabel, but he wants to take care of her. So he comes up with a crazy scheme: pretend that he has married Isabel (his sister -- maybe -- but no one else knows that) and then run away with her. He breaks up with Lucy, his mother disowns him, his cousin pretends not to know him, his mother dies and leaves the estate to the cousin. Lucy, who still loves Pierre, comes to live with him and Isabel, and her mother disowns her. And then they all die (sorry for the spoiler -- was anyone actually going to read this?). Completely nuts. Well, I've read it. It's done.

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

The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative by Gregg A. Hecimovich (2023). No one really knows who wrote The Bondwoman's Narrative (the oldest known novel written by an American Black woman), but Hecimovich makes a good case for Hannah Crafts. In part the book is fascinating -- the research that he and others did is just wild. But I found his descriptions of the men who owned her to be boring and hard to follow. I kept thinking, you shouldn't have written this chapter like this, you should have done XYZ differently. A family tree would have helped. So it's a mixed bag, but in general pretty darn amazing. I will now have to read The Bondwoman's Narrative.

Other reading

Your Child is Not Broken: Parent Your Neurodivergent Child Without Losing Your Marbles by Heidi Mavir (2023). My third book about autism, and I liked it a lot. The author's son was not diagnosed until he was 14 and started experiencing autism burnout. The author is herself also autistic, diagnosed late in life, and the second half of the book is more about her, which I was less interested in. Also, she's in England, and things seem different there. She had a lot of horror stories about how parents of neurodivergent kids are treated. I learned a lot from this book, especially the first few chapters, and I liked her attitude. I started to think that perhaps I haven't done everything wrong with Teen B, perhaps I've even done some things right. What a thought.

Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism by Barry M. Prizant with Tom Fields-Meyer (2015). My fourth book about autism and it was great. Everyone with an autistic kid should read this. I may even buy the updated edition from 2022. As far as I can tell, there are two possible approaches to autism: behaviorally modify the heck out of kids until they act more normal OR let them be themselves and work to understand what makes them happy and less stressed. The first approach (ABA) is very popular these days, but Prizant follows the second approach, which appeals to me (it may be possible to do some of both). Really good book. Rocket Boy read it too, after I finished it.

Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith (2012). I am so close to the end of my presidential biography project! Eisenhower was elected in 1952, serving until 1960, when I was born. My parents were Adlai Stevenson supporters, so I grew up thinking there was nothing to like about Ike. In fact, I think he was a pretty good president (based on this book), although he made some very bad decisions, causing the current mess in Iran and destabilizing Guatemala. I was also uncomfortable about his romantic history, his affair with Kay Summersby and his relationship with his rather trivial wife Mamie. I was planning to read just this one book about Ike, but now I'm thinking I might read Kay's tell-all book, Past Forgetting. I'll see.

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell (2020). The book group book. I was really interested in reading this book about Shakespeare's son who died at age 11, possibly of bubonic plague (but we don't know). It's mainly about his mother, Anne/Agnes Hathaway, an interesting decision since nothing much is known about her. So O'Farrell makes up all kinds of stuff, turning her into almost a Mary Sue. Then Hamnet dies and Agnes becomes more human. I don't know. I found the book disappointing. I was hoping for something like Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower, which is my idea of a perfect work of historical fiction. This isn't that. I'd like to see the movie, though. Wonder what the book group will think of the book.

Post-note: I got the movie from the library and watched it. I thought the actress cast as Agnes was very good, which removed some of my concerns about the book. The movie puzzled me in some ways, but I think the book and the movie together tell a good story. 

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman (2015). My fifth book about autism. It's 477 pages long, but I started reading it on the 25th and finished it on the 27th. It's fascinating. The author is a journalist, not a clinician, and it's not a book about how to deal with autism -- although there are lots of horror stories about what NOT to do. It's a history book, all about how autism was first recognized, the ways in which it has been misunderstood, the different approaches to treating it, all the controversies, and where we are now -- or were, in 2015. Supposedly there's an updated version of this book too, and I think I should buy it. A very useful, helpful reference.