Trying to look on the bright side (mostly failing)

I guess I could have skipped blogging today, since I wrote a post earlier this week, but it's Sunday and I usually blog on Sunday, so I'll do another post.

Things have been pretty awful. And tomorrow the weather's going to get bad again. Today it was only about 80 (with high humidity), but tomorrow it's going to be 95 (with high humidity). All week it's going to be like that, so I think we're done with outdoor activities. 

We've done a few fun things, fun-ish, anyway. Thursday there was another heavy rainstorm, more flooding, and we stayed home. But Friday was a nice day, so (after dithering about it for a couple of hours) I bravely drove the twins and me to the City Museum and we spent a few hours there. This was our third visit to that great place and the least fun of the three, but on the plus side, we got to go on the roof at last (it's always been closed before). The photo shows Teen B sitting in a wire structure on the roof. We didn't ride the Ferris wheel on the roof because the line was too long -- the museum was SOOO crowded on that sunny summer day -- but we still got a great view of St. Louis from various perches like this one.

The humidity really gets to me, though. I see people walking around wearing shirts with sleeves, long pants, even sometimes a sweater or hoodie. I can't fathom it. It was so humid inside and outside at the City Museum that I didn't have a very good time. The twins weren't that into it either. I spent over $100 on that visit ($28/person admission plus food and beverages). Oh well.

Saturday we did some errands with Rocket Boy, who had figured out how to hide his drains with loose pants and a loose shirt. We went to a doughnut store, a German bakery, and Walgreens. We are eating so badly on this trip, it's embarrassing. Every morning I have a big bowl of whole-grain cereal and milk and berries, with multiple cups of black tea. The rest of the day -- cookies, chocolate, chips, doughnuts... and lots of disgusting lukewarm tap water. I don't have any interest in actual food. Some nights I skip dinner altogether. I just keep telling myself that when we get back to Boulder I'll go back to cooking vegetables.

Saturday night we decided to eat out, and I found a Chinese buffet restaurant called Joy Luck that sounded good. It turned out to be a little difficult to find because it was in an area that had been flooded -- it was the last building before the road was blocked off due to flooding -- but we got there, and so did lots of other people (so perhaps it is normally very crowded). For I think $75 (plus tip) we each had a beverage and the buffet. I thought the buffet was just terrible. It reminded me of the buffet in the movie "Fargo" that the police detective and her husband eat at -- dish after dish after dish of fried brown things. I filled my first plate with fried brown things that all tasted about the same (or else were horrid). But I still thought it was a good place to go, because everyone could get roughly what they wanted, and if they didn't like their choices they could go back and get something else. As I was trying one fried brown thing after another, Rocket Boy said to me, "I would come back here," and Teen A said "Yeah, let's eat here again." 

And then we went to Trader Joe's and got more cereal and chocolate, and Target where we bought a new mop and I got a Ken doll I'd been looking for.

Today I had said I wanted to go to the Miniature Museum of Greater St. Louis, which is something I discovered while driving around -- it's actually quite close to where Rocket Boy lives. It sounded adorable. But then I thought about how awful the twins are being, playing tag and hitting each other everywhere we go, and I thought about them doing that in a museum full of delicate, breakable things, and I said no, I'm not going to do that. Rocket Boy tried hard to convince me to go, he negotiated with the twins and got them to agree that only Teen B would go with me, but my mind was made up.

I wanted to do something nice for me, since I'm so miserable on this trip, but I realized that something that involved DRIVING somewhere and trying to park and dealing with St. Louis in general was not going to be that nice thing. Maybe I can do something nice for me when we get back to Boulder. Or just being back will be the nice thing.

Instead I took the twins to Starbucks -- which involved DRIVING, but it was OK, because I wasn't doing something nice for me, I was doing something nice for them, so it didn't matter if I was miserable. Does that make sense? 

Later I took a nap, because I'd gotten up at 6 am. We are really having a problem with the nights. Rocket Boy of course always wants the room we sleep in to be warmer than I want it, but in St. Louis this becomes a major issue. There is an air conditioner in the room we sleep in, next to the bed, but it is SO LOUD. I like to set it to 68 or so, which means it roars along pretty much all night, blowing cold air at us and yet somehow not really cooling off the room. Rocket Boy prefers it to be around 75, which makes it cycle on and off and the room is horribly hot and humid. We go to bed with it set to 68 and then he changes it to 75 during the night when he can't sleep. I sleep under a sheet, only partially pulled over me, and he sleeps under the sheet and three blankets. I can't sleep naked because Teen A is on the couch right through the open doorway. So I wake up early and can't get back to sleep because it's so hot. Naps help.

Later this afternoon RB decided that we should go to a park (I more or less agreed, since it was going to be our last day with temps below 90) and he picked one near us, Bellerive Park and Sr. Marie Charles Park, which are separate parks but right next to each other. After my usual multiple screw-ups, I got us to Bellerive, but it was kind of a weird park, in a very dicey neighborhood. We parked on the road and walked over to a small playground, but there was a couple doing some heavy canoodling right next to it, so we quickly walked on. We inspected some plaques and tried to look at the river, but the trees were too thick and you couldn't see much. And some weird guy was sitting on a bench smoking. And it was so humid. 

The twins and I started back to the car, with Rocket Boy somewhat behind (he walks slowly with his drains, plus he was cross at us for wanting to leave). Then we heard a scream. A blond woman in a red car was parked near us and she had screamed. Then she seemed to be crying. She was alone in her car, but I didn't feel good about this. We paused, and she started her car and began driving very fast along the park road. She came up behind another car and honked at it and yelled things out the window. But then it got really interesting. She started pursuing a Black guy, who was on foot. She drove UP ONTO THE LAWN, trying to run him down. She drove around a tree, while he raced to keep on the other side of the tree from her. Then she drove off. The twins and I ran to the car and got in, trying to explain to Rocket Boy what we'd just seen. He wanted to call the police, but all I wanted to do was get out of there as fast as possible. He insisted that I drive to Sr. Marie Charles park, so I did (it was a block away), but there was no obvious place to park, and as I was driving away from the park I saw the woman's car again! I hurried us away from there as quickly as I could.

Later I read online that Sr. Marie Charles park is a sex/drug hangout/meetup place, not somewhere you'd want to take your kids. St. Louis -- always an adventure.

After the parks we drove downtown to ride the St. Louis Ferris wheel, which we'd enjoyed for the first time back in 2019, on our first visit to the city. That time we rode the wheel at night, and it was quite different during the day, scarier. Before shutting the door on us, the attendant pointed to a button on the ceiling and said, "Push that red button if you have any difficulties." Immediately after the wheel started turning, I wanted to push the red button. Rocket Boy commented that he should have taken his anti-spasm medication. But we survived the ride. It was $15 each, so $60 for five turns of the wheel.

Then we decided to go out to dinner again. It was Teen B's turn to choose, and he finally chose Denny's, which was quite a ways south. I drove us there, badly. And when we got there it was hot and humid inside and the food wasn't very good. With tip it was $59.50. 

As we were leaving, I asked Rocket Boy if he thought he could drive home. This was only the second time he's driven since his surgery, and the first time was like three blocks. He felt he was ready, so I turned the wheel over to him. God, I hate driving in St. Louis! And it's so easy for him. I don't know whether he'll be able to do all the driving from now on or not. We'll see.

He has an appointment on Tuesday morning and we're desperately hoping he'll get his drains out then. If they decide they need to stay in a little longer, he may get them out Friday instead. We still don't know whether we're driving home together on Saturday/Sunday or flying home on Saturday. I checked airline fares yesterday -- they're still reasonable. I think it's going to be a last-minute decision.

All I want is to be able to go back to Boulder, any way we can (despite the fact that it's hot and humid in Boulder right now and of course we have no air conditioning). I want Boulder's version of hot and humid, not St. Louis's. And I want Rocket Boy to heal quickly and come with us.

I'm not enjoying this.

Hospital days

Rocket Boy is home from the hospital, was only there one night, so I should probably change the title. But these all feel like hospital days. I knew this wouldn't be a fun trip, and guess what, it isn't.

I thought I should write a blog post about the hospital experience, so I can remember it for posterity.

RB had to be at the hospital at 10 am Monday, for a 12 noon operation, so we planned to leave the house at 9 to give ourselves plenty of time. But at 9 he was still in the shower, doing his second antibacterial wash in preparation for surgery. I chose not to freak out -- we would probably still have plenty of time. And we did. He drove us to Barnes Jewish hospital -- I still hadn't driven his car since last summer -- and despite the entrance to the Euclid parking garage being blocked, we still got to the Surgery Center waiting room on the 4th floor just before 10 am. They took him in within minutes, and maybe half an hour later they let me go in to see him.

He was already in a hospital gown, hooked up to an IV and a monitor that kept beeping at him. Although he claimed to be nervous, his heart rate was a pleasant 51 or so the whole time. We waited a long time for something to happen, through multiple changes of nurses (I think they were taking lunch breaks). Finally, around 12:15 or so, the doctor came in (he had been called in to assist with another operation and so RB's operation was delayed) and told us what he would be doing, RB signed some paperwork, they drew all over his neck and leg and talked about what they planned to do, and I was sent back to the waiting room.

I spent a long time in that waiting room. First, though, I locked up RB's clothes and shoes in a locker and went down to the first floor to have lunch in the cafeteria. I was a little bit nauseated (from nerves? heat? humidity? not sleeping well?), so none of the hot food appealed. I found a chickpea and tabbouleh wrap, a bottle of milk, and two white chocolate macadamia cookies that seemed like I could get them down, so went with that. Afterwards I was glad I had to wear a mask, since the chickpeas and tabbouleh inserted themself in all possible sections of my braces.

Back to the waiting room. I read the newspaper, texted people, played computer solitaire, read Google News, texted people, waited. I had a book to read, but it possibly wasn't a good choice: Vertigo by W. G. Sebald, which is somewhat impenetrable. In some ways, an impenetrable text is a good choice for a hospital waiting room, but in some ways it isn't. For instance, I had to keep reading the same page over and over again, sometimes because I would forget what I'd just read and sometimes because I couldn't understand it. A translated text, which is apparently equally impenetrable in the original German... Well. It was a distraction, but it also made me sleepy.

The waiting room had an interesting beverage machine, free, that you could use to make coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. First I made myself some black tea, then later hot chocolate. Other people used it as well. Some were part of a group of people wearing t-shirts that said something like "In our family, we go through this together" and then pink ribbons, so I assumed they were there to support someone with breast cancer.

There were also two vending machines, but they weren't accepting credit cards. Fortunately, I had a lot of small bills and change. I used two dollar bills to buy peanut m&ms, and later a whole lot of nickels to buy Reese's peanut butter cups. It's always great when you find a way to use up nickels.

All of this consumption was just to pass the time and/or keep me awake. I wasn't actually hungry or thirsty.

In the picture of the hot beverage machine, you can also see the screen where they showed the progress of the operations. This was late in the day, past 5 pm, with only three people left on the screen. Rocket Boy is the middle number -- at this point he was in the recovery room. Only one person was still in surgery, a woman having a thyroid operation, and her husband was the only other person left in the waiting room, quietly losing his mind. He offered me some of his chips, but that wasn't my junk food of choice. I told him about my 14-year-old twins alone in an unfamiliar apartment, and he told me about his little girl (maybe 8?) and even littler boy (3?) who were home with his sister -- who had flown out to help him get through this. He said, "I don't know why it is taking so long, she's been in there since 12:45." I still wonder what happened there.

The surgeon had come to see me about an hour before, to tell me the surgery had gone well, although he was only able to reroute one lymphatic channel into a vein. The others were, I guess, just no longer functional enough to do that with. They also transplanted a packet of lymph nodes, with their own blood supply, from RB's neck into his leg.

Finally a nurse came and got me, and I waved goodbye to the worried husband, saying "Good luck." I don't know what I meant by that. Such a useless expression.

Rocket Boy was awake and about to be moved to his hospital room, which is why they came and got me. I carried his bags of clothes and shoes, his backpack, and my purse, and scurried along after the nurses pushing the bed. 

His hospital room, also on the 4th floor, was spacious -- because he didn't have a roommate. He had a nice view of other hospital buildings. 

His nurse was pleasant, but seemed sort of absent. She didn't get jokes, which was a problem, because both RB and I make a lot of jokes (often not very funny) as we talk. We had to speak very slowly and simply for her to understand us (and yes, she was a white American -- it wasn't a cultural issue). She kept calling Rocket Boy "Sir." "Sir, I would like you to take all these medications, but it is your choice, sir."

The cafeteria was about to close, so we ordered RB some vegetable broth, and the nurse also brought him some water and jello. She told me I could stay as long as I wanted, but I explained that I needed to get home to the twins. I was terrified at the thought of having to drive RB's car for the first time in a year, all the way from the hospital back to his apartment. I asked her how to get back to the garage and she looked perplexed, then gestured to me to follow her. We walked out of the room and around a corner. "See those elevators? Take one down to the 3rd floor and follow the signs." This turned out to be good advice and I had no trouble finding the garage and then the car.

I started the car easily, the Garmin GPS system took me straight home, no problem at all, and I parked successfully in front of the house and unlocked the front door successfully and climbed the terrible staircase with my tired legs.

The twins played it cool, pretending not to have been worried or concerned. I fixed them Trader Joe's chicken drumellas, which they could easily have fixed for themselves, but they wanted me to do it. We decided not to read a chapter from the bedtime book, since Dad wasn't there to hear it. I took a shower and washed my hair and slept well, despite being woken various times by tremendous claps of thunder.

Tuesday morning we woke late to learn that St. Louis had gotten more rain overnight than it had ever gotten in one day in recorded history. It was hard to process, since there was no flooding where we were (except in the field of the old high school across the street). The roads were fine, but I had no way of knowing what the roads would be like on the way to the hospital, so I used that as an excuse not to visit Rocket Boy. We talked on the phone a few times and I told him to find out when I was supposed to pick him up. Even though I had driven home successfully the night before, I was still terrified of going to pick him up. 

I spent most of the day in bed. I wanted to do FlyLady things, clean the house, declutter -- but I just couldn't. I texted and emailed people, read the flood news, tried to read Vertigo.

Finally, around 4pm, the call came -- Rocket Boy said they had taken out his IV and it was time for me to come. I asked where I should park and the nurse (a different nurse, now) got on the phone and said I should put "1 Parkview Place" into my GPS and she would bring him down in a wheelchair. But I was supposed to be bringing him a pair of shorts, because he couldn't put on his jeans over the wrapping on his entire right leg. Was he going to go down to the street in his underpants? "Oh," the nurse said, clearly no brighter than the one the night before. "Well, park in the Parkview garage, I guess."

I promptly forgot this advice, and also forgot the name "Parkview," though I knew the word "Park" was involved. I made the twins come with me and we drove to the hospital, but for some reason the GPS didn't take me the way it had taken Rocket Boy the day before. We ended up in the back of the hospital and I never saw anything with the word "Park" in it. I ended up parking in the Laclede garage and then we got hopelessly lost on our way to RB's room. The twins and I had to ask for directions three separate times and even then I don't know how we ever made it. Everything seemed different from the day before. 

We finally found his room and I delivered the shorts and even helped him put them on. But then I had to go get the car. I left Teen B with Rocket Boy and the nurse, and brought Teen A with me (he has a very good sense of direction). Still, we got lost again. I don't know whether Barnes Jewish needs to work on its signage or we're just stupid. I would be inclined to vote for stupid if it was just me, but Teen A is not stupid. 

We finally found our way back to the Laclede garage, located the car, got in, and I punched in "1 Parkview Place," and we drove there. It was the perfect place to be -- and it was right next to the entrance to the Euclid garage (I never saw any Parkview garage, if there is one), which would have been a good place to park. Oh well. We waited on the circle until I saw Teen B and a wheelchair, and then I pulled up to the front of the hospital and Rocket Boy and Teen B got in and I drove us home.

Now we have been home for two days. Time passes slowly. Rocket Boy would like to ignore medical advice and go out and about with us, but there is a problem: he has two drains hanging off of him, one from his neck, where they removed the lymph node packet, and one from his leg, where they put the packet in. The drain from the neck drains yellow and the drain from the leg drains red. They look like little juice containers, yellow juice and red juice. But they are not presentable and they are not hidable. If we were to go to a restaurant, other patrons would have to look at the yellow juice and the red juice. Thus, RB stays home.

Yesterday I took the twins to the "Minions" movie but today we stayed home (there was a flash flood warning and extremely heavy rain, with more flooding). (Incidentally, Boulder also had a flash flood last night, getting about an inch of rain in an hour.) Tomorrow (Friday) we'll try to do something again. I hate driving in St. Louis, but the twins are going crazy, sitting in the apartment. So I must "man up," "put on my big-girl panties," whatever stupid expression you want to use, and take us on an outing. It will be OK.

Hot in St. Louis

Well, we're here. Getting to St. Louis was a bit of a challenge, but it could have been worse. Really, the worst thing was the twins. That continues to be the worst thing, even though right now (at 5:05 pm central time) it is 97 degrees with 49% humidity, giving us a heat index of 109 degrees.

I wish we could have left them at home. But there was no one to leave them with. I think you can hire people to come stay with your kids, but hmm. We don't have air conditioning and you have to leave the door of our room open at night so the cats can come and go... I just can't imagine having someone stay there who wasn't... me, actually. So we had to bring them along.

And they are miserable. Which makes us fairly miserable.

That said, it wasn't a bad drive. We left rather late on Friday, 11:15 am or so, but we made it to Russell, Kansas by 8 pm or so and checked into a nice hotel, not a chain, it was called Fossil Creek Hotel & Suites. We got a suite -- the twins stayed in one room with a sofa and a cot, and Rocket Boy and I slept in the other room in a king size bed. There was a tornado warning over central Kansas that night -- I don't think we were ever under it, though we would have been if we'd stopped in Hays, KS, as the twins wanted us to do -- but we got a heavy, violent thunderstorm anyway. Constant lightning, for hours, very heavy rain, thunder, high winds, it was impressive.

We ate lunch at a pretty terrible truck stop restaurant in Limon, CO, but dinner was at a funky little place in Russell called Meridy's that had really good food. It looked like the kind of place my grandparents would have taken us to, but the cooking was excellent. We all agreed we'd eat there again on another trip.

Saturday we got on the road around 9 am, after a decent breakfast at our hotel, and then stopped at the Russell Stover factory candy store in Abilene. That was a bit of a disaster. A large, sweet young woman was working behind the counter who didn't really know what she was doing and who had too many things to do -- she had to sell the chocolate but also dole out ice cream and make shakes and whatnot. We made her life hard by ordering specialty items: a float, two shakes, and a sundae. They were out of caramel sauce and whipped cream and about half their usual flavors of ice cream. She kept having to ask her boss for advice. She made the sundae in the wrong size cup and her boss chewed her out for it. Her boss had to come out and sell the chocolate while she mis-made our treats. It all took forever. My shake was the last thing she made and she tried to get me to taste it to see if it was chocolatey enough. I finally lost my patience and said, "It's FINE, we just need to get going here," and her face fell. I can't get her out of my mind. I keep trying to figure out how I could make her life easier. I'm definitely not going to post a bad review on TripAdvisor or whatever, because it just seemed like it wasn't her fault. She clearly hadn't been trained properly, and they didn't seem to have any instructions for her to follow. And then her boss yelled at her, for such a small thing, but her boss was probably having a hard day too. I was sure we were witnessing pandemic/supply chain/inflation problems.

Oh well.

We ate lunch at a Bob Evans in Kansas City and then headed for St. Louis. It seemed to take forever to get across Missouri. We stopped at a convenience store that didn't have air conditioning, and at a rest stop where the women's bathroom was out of order. The twins complained about everything. At one point I told Rocket Boy that we could take a trip together for our 25th anniversary, because in five years the twins will be all grown up and self sufficient and won't have to come along. We can take a driving trip across country to visit Presidential museums and look at rocks (two things the twins wouldn't be caught dead doing). I wonder if that will happen. How will things be in five years?

Finally, around 7:30 or so, we got to Rocket Boy's apartment in St. Louis. It was only a little under 100 degrees and very windy. At least the wind made the humidity easier to stand. RB's upstairs apartment hadn't had the A/C on the whole three weeks he'd been gone, so it was as hot and humid as it was possible to be. We turned on the three window units and waited. It was dreadful. We made a grocery store run, and when we got back, it was still terribly hot. Finally, around 11 pm, the kids passed out, and soon after RB and I did too.

Today has been pretty awful so far. We slept until 10 am, which was funny -- clearly we were all desperately tired. We ate cereal for breakfast and started a load of laundry. Following FlyLady, I made our bed and straightened up the couch Teen A is sleeping on, and she was right, it made things look better and made me feel better. Tonight I plan to "shine the sink" before we go to bed.

Rocket Boy felt that he needed more pillows for us all, so we drove to a JCPenney to buy some. We found some great pillows for only $9 each, and I also chose some lovely organic towels, since he's a little short on towels. Those were on sale too. But getting out of Penney's took some doing. I don't know what was wrong, but we got in a long line that didn't move. Both clerks were dealing with difficult customers. Managers had to be called. The line got longer. Tempers got shorter. Because we were near the store entrance, it was hot and humid. 

I didn't really mind the line, even though I was sweating so much that those new towels I was holding were getting wet. My hair, which I should have braided or clipped back, was stuck to my neck and dripping. I was interested in how the other customers were coping, and just who was in Penney's shopping that day. I could have stood there a lot longer with so many people to watch. But the twins threw a fit! Nonstop complaining, so bad. No one else in the line sounded like them. I was embarrassed, especially since one of the "problem" families up at the front had NINE children, all dressed in coordinating colors (white, peach, and light green, in different combinations), none of whom were making any noise. I figured they had been to church that morning.

Finally Rocket Boy took the twins to the car, started it, and left them there with the a/c on, before coming back to join me. And soon after, the problem families' problems got solved somehow, and the line moved, and we were able to check out. 

Our next stop was the church of Starbucks, where we always go on Sunday mornings (though by now it was about 2 pm). It was only a five-minute drive away, but once we were inside we learned that it would be a 15-20 minute wait for our drinks. I didn't mind -- we found a table where we could all sit down -- but the kids were angry again. They groused away, staring at their phones. Teenagers are so much fun. Again, I got in some good people watching. At one point a large woman with strawberry-blonde hair came in, accompanied by a child with curly red hair. Watching them, I thought, she should have had another like that -- and then the door opened again and three more kids came in! Four little redheads! I was very impressed.

It was an interesting Starbucks for other reasons. It had a drivethrough, which is probably the reason for the wait -- the workers were concentrating on keeping the car line moving. Also, there were at least 10 different drinks on the counter that no one ever picked up. We did notice that the workers called people's names very softly, so you couldn't hear them. I saw people sitting around the room who did not seem to be paying any attention, so maybe some of the drinks belonged to them. Also, as at any Starbucks, there were difficult customers. The photo shows, in addition to a certain sad teenager, a woman (on the right) who had to have her drink re-made three times -- too much ice, the wrong number of shots, whatever. She kept criticizing the barrista and telling her to do it over.

The twins didn't want to stay and finish their drinks there, so we went on to our third stop, Trader Joe's. Here, they refused to come in the store, so Rocket Boy finally left them in the car with the engine (and a/c) on, even though he hated to do it. They really missed out, because Trader Joe's air conditioning was the best I've experienced on this trip, just fabulous. I could have spent the afternoon there.

We took a circuitous route home, to the twins' dismay, so that RB could show me some parts of the greater St. Louis area I hadn't seen before. Places a person could imagine living -- we're not going to, but still, it was interesting. We kept pointing things out to each other, and the twins complained about that too -- "Listen to the Boomers, can't stop talking for even a moment." I wanted to reach in the back seat and strangle them. Then I tried to be understanding. This is not a fun trip for a 14-year-old. We're all scared about Rocket Boy's surgery. I'm scared about how tomorrow is going to go. I still haven't tried to drive RB's car. 

So here we are. Rocket Boy went swimming and should be home soon, because the pool closed half an hour ago. We're going to eat out tonight, don't know where, we've already argued about it. Teen A wants to go to IHOP, Teen B wants to go to Denny's, Rocket Boy wants to go to an independent St. Louis type restaurant. I want to go somewhere without the twins, doesn't matter where.

Tomorrow is the surgery, at noon (we have to be there by 10 am). Wish us luck.

Pets and other problems

Good grief, what a week! I looked back at my post last Sunday and it said something about how we didn't have much of anything planned for this week except the cats had a vet appointment and Rocket Boy was getting a haircut.

A few other things ended up happening.

I'm not sure when I wrote last week's post, what time of day, but I think Rocket Boy and I had already been to Longmont to take his brother to the hospital. He had a hurting tooth and his dentist told him to go to Emergency and get a prescription for antibiotics. Since he doesn't drive, Rocket Boy and I went up there (it's about 20 miles) and took him to the ER -- it seemed like a strange use of the ER, my dentist would have just called in a prescription to a pharmacy, but whatever. Rocket Boy and I had a nice time. We went out to lunch on our way up, and also bought his brother a birthday card and cake, because his 70th birthday was Thursday.

Then I decided to be nice and volunteered to take him to his actual dentist appointment on Wednesday. That was less fun -- I just drove 20 miles, took him to the dentist (he goes to a discount dental office called Dental Aid), waited for him, took him home, drove 20 miles back. At that appointment, they determined the tooth was broken and needed to be pulled right away. The soonest appointment they had was on Friday at their office in south Boulder. I said I'd drive him.

So Friday I got up at 7:15, brought in the milk, put out the recycling, gave the cats some meds (more on that in a minute), and left the house at 8:30 to drive 20 miles to Longmont, get RB's brother, drive him 20 miles to south Boulder for his appointment at 10, wait until 10:40 for them to take him in, wait until 11:30 for the appointment to be over, stop off at our house to use the bathroom and get another cup of tea to keep me awake, drive him 20 miles back to Longmont, and drive myself 20 miles back home.

A lot of driving. But this is only a tiny part of what happened this week.

On Tuesday I was watching the Jan. 6th hearing, and I noticed that Baby Kitty couldn't seem to sit still. He kept jumping out of Rocket Boy's suitcase where he likes to sleep, going to the litter box, jumping out again, running to the back of the house where the other litter box is, running to the garage where there's a third, running back to the suitcase, and then repeating the whole sequence. Finally he ran under my bed and stayed there.

Idiot that I am, I didn't realize what was wrong. I thought, oh well, the cats have their appointment at the vet on Thursday, we'll ask about it then.

And then suddenly I realized that it wasn't OK, this could be bad. So I called our regular vet, and the receptionist had me leave a message for the technicians. By the time a technician called back, I'd managed to coax Baby Kitty out from under the bed, and he was sitting next to me on the bed, cuddling. I told her that, hoping it meant he was going to be OK after all. "You really need to go to the emergency vet immediately," she told me. "This can't wait."

So I called the emergency vet and they told me to come in immediately, so Teen A and I and Baby Kitty headed off. After dropping him off we had to wait a long time (on a bench outside, where we were hassled by a security guard, but that's another story) and they finally told us he had a urinary blockage and it was very serious and they needed to catheterize him and keep him at least 36 hours and it would cost almost $3000. 

And I said OK, because what else could I say?

Thursday morning, Baby Kitty was still at the emergency vet, so I couldn't take him to the regular vet. But I took Sillers, who had spent the last two days straining to poop and not going anywhere -- not in the box, not in the hallway or any of her other places, not at all. So I told the regular vet about that, and she felt Sillers' abdomen and determined that Sillers was blocked (intestinally) all the way up to her stomach. So Teen B and I had to leave Sillers at the regular vet to be unblocked. She came home at the end of the day (her tail wrapped in yellow tape, making it look like a pale, thin carrot sticking out of her butt), to the tune of $550. But fortunately Baby Kitty (who came home earlier that afternoon, with one shaved foreleg) only ended up costing $1700. Still. It's so much money. And now we know they both have these problems, and there will be more money to be spent in the future.

I've got to get a job.

Baby Kitty is on two medications for pain and one for urethral spasms, but I think he'll be done with everything by the time we go. Sillers is on a laxative and ear medicine, because on top of everything else she had an infection in both ears -- but we'll finish that the day before we leave. So the pet sitters won't have to do much, just try to keep an eye on both cats and make sure they don't die. I think we can skip Sillers' laxative while we're gone. Oh yeah. In the meantime I'm spending a lot of my time grabbing cats and forcing medications into their mouths or ears. Fortunately the emergency vet clipped Baby Kitty's toenails after he scratched her. (And despite that, they told me he was absolutely adorable and they wanted to keep him.)

So, let's recap. Sunday was a trip to Longmont. Monday was a quiet day -- following the FlyLady's instructions, I "blessed the house" as best I could, and Rocket Boy was impressed. Tuesday was Baby Kitty's emergency vet day, Wednesday was Longmont again, Thursday was Sillers' vet day, and Friday was back and forth and back and forth to Longmont.

Also, it's so hot. Did I mention that yet? In the 90s all this past week, 97 today, and tomorrow it's supposed to hit 100. The coolest day will be Wednesday, when it's predicted to be only 92, but there's a 40% chance of rain that day, so it will be humid. And of course we have no air conditioning and no swamp cooler.

We leave for St. Louis on Friday, and it is going to be horribly hot every day from now until then. It will also be horribly hot driving across Kansas (in the 100's) and of course equally horribly hot (and so humid) in St. Louis. I just can't fathom how this is all going to work.

Saturday morning I sat down and made a list of all the things I could think of that we needed to do before we leave, and we started working on it. Rocket Boy hung some pictures that I wanted moved around, I ordered some cans of Baby Kitty's special urinary diet from Chewy.com, I took books back to the library, called in a prescription refill for myself, and paid bills. Today we bought Teen A a new (used) bike off Craigslist, went out to Eldorado Springs to get 20 gallons of spring water for our next door neighbor and tenant whose van is in the shop and who has covid, and did some major furniture moving in the kids' room (to prepare for high school).

We watched "Little Miss Sunshine" while we worked on the room. We watched 30 minutes, then moved something, then 30 minutes more, then more moving, etc. That's such a great movie. I hadn't seen it since 2007, the year after it came out. The kids actually watched it with us and actually enjoyed it. They were playing games on their phones and they actually looked up from their phones and laughed at many of the scenes.

When we got their room into slightly better shape than the photo above shows, we went out to eat at IHOP, even though I was prepared to make French toast for dinner. It was just so hot! Too hot to cook and too hot to sit in the hot house and eat hot food. I felt awful because this was our third "meal" out that day -- we went to Starbucks in the morning, which was the kids' breakfast, we went to Jamba Juice after buying Teen A's bike because it was just so ungodly hot, and that was my lunch, and then IHOP for dinner, just to be able to experience their air conditioning. 

We'll be eating out constantly on our drive to St. Louis, and probably a few more times before we go for the same reason -- too hot to cook in the house, too hot to eat in the house. I just paid off my credit card, even though the bill's not due until early August, but I wanted to have it done before the trip. That does NOT give me an excuse to charge lots more stuff on it.

I've got to get a job.

The week ahead looks dreadful (did I already say that?). Tomorrow there's nothing on the schedule, but lots to do -- cleaning, laundry, errands, more prep for the trip. Tuesday a guy is coming to measure the kitchen and bathroom because we need to replace the flooring in both rooms (the kitchen floor has a big hole in it and the bathroom floor has missing tiles). Scheduling that was one of the "before we leave" projects yesterday. That afternoon we meet with the lawyer who's going to draw up our wills/trust/etc. On Wednesday I have to go to the orthodontist to have my wires removed, then to the dentist for a cleaning, then back to the orthodontist to have the wires put back on (and tightened). On Thursday the twins have their dental cleanings, preceded and followed by Teen B's visits to the orthodontist, similar to mine.

And Friday we leave.

Happy birthday and all that jazz

Yeah, so now I'm 62! Older and older I get, and what a good thing that is. 

I had a very low-key birthday, just as I had planned. I made myself this beautiful cake. It's an angel food cake (from a mix), frosted with a mixture of whipped cream and lemon curd (inspired by a New York Times recipe). I cut the cake in half and put the cream-curd in between the layers, and then covered the top and sides with it and added a few raspberries for garnish. It was sooo good and exactly what I wanted for a birthday cake, something light and lemony and fluffy. It's what I want every year but this was the first year I'd been able to make it happen. I may do this again!

I've gotten six cards so far, and I assume this will be all, unless one more comes wandering in this week or next. But I think I was well remembered. My only gifts were a bunch of red roses from our sweet next-door neighbor and a mortar and pestle set from Rocket Boy's brother, which I didn't need, but it was a nice thought on his part. I told everyone I didn't need or want anything, and that was true!

I've had some moments of guilt about the low-keyedness of the birthday -- like, shouldn't I treat myself to something? When I was talking to my older sister on the phone that day, I mentioned that I had planned to wear my favorite shirt that morning, but realized I don't really have a favorite tank top (which is all I wear in the summer). So I wore a plain purple one, which was fine, but nothing special. After talking to my sister, I ordered myself three more tank tops from Lands End (the purple one is also from Lands End) as a way to "treat myself." They'll arrive this coming week. But now I feel silly. I didn't need three more tank tops and I doubt whether any of these three will become my favorite. It was an unnecessary purchase. Not expensive, because they were all on sale, but still. On the other hand, they'll probably fit and be durable, so I'll have them for years. But still. 

The fact is that I have still not figured out this birthday thing. But it was a nice day and it's been a nice week, and we'll let it go at that.

It seems impossible that Rocket Boy arrived just one week ago today. It feels like he's been here much longer, and I mean that in a good way. We are having a pretty nice time together. Last week he was working on a presentation for work that kept him quite preoccupied and I couldn't get him to do any of the house projects I wanted him to do. (He did clean off the back porch and do a barbecue for 4th of July, but that wasn't actually on my list!) Normally when he comes home he spends a few days doing all the little things I've saved up for him, but not this time. He just worked on his stuff. It's OK. I'm very happy he has this job. And we'll see if I have any better luck getting him to do my stuff this coming week. Or next weekend. Or next visit.

On Friday we did do one very important thing. For years and years, especially the last 14 and a half years since the twins were born, I've been trying to get us to make wills and set up a family trust. For years I couldn't even get Rocket Boy to talk about it. But after his scary episode of cellulitis last summer he started saying maybe we should do something about this. I got a few names of estate attorneys, but my heart nonsense delayed us further. Finally, finally, finally I found a firm I liked, paid a retainer, and set up an appointment. To prepare for the appointment we had to fill out a long, complicated (9-page) form with all our financial and other information, so on Friday afternoon we finally got our acts together and did that. We meet with the attorney on the 19th and we are going to try really hard not to suddenly die before then. I will feel so much better when we finally get this done.

I've been having mixed luck with trying to do FlyLady things while Rocket Boy is here. This week "we" (i.e., the FlyLady, me, and all the other flybabies in the world) were in the kitchen, in other words, I was supposed to be doing cleaning tasks in the kitchen, but I skipped most of them. Monday of course was 4th of July, and I didn't want to do the "house blessing" (though I did take out the trash, compost, and recycling), but I did the daily task, which was to clean all the stove burners. Rocket Boy helped me, so that worked. Tuesday was my birthday, so I didn't want to do the house blessing then either, and the daily task was to clean out the silverware drawer, which sounded hard, so I skipped it. By Wednesday I figured we'd just skip the house blessing this week and the daily task was to clean out the fridge, which I knew would upset Rocket Boy (he doesn't like to see food thrown away), so I skipped it. Thursday's task was to declutter my collection of foils and plastic bags and such, and that didn't really need decluttering, so I skipped it, and Friday I was supposed to inventory my cleaning supplies and decide what I needed to buy and I decided I didn't really need to do that either, so I skipped it too.

Fortunately, you're never behind with the FlyLady, you just pick back up again wherever they are, so we'll see what I can do this week. The rooms are going to be the bathroom and the office, so we'll see how that goes. The bathroom tasks I can probably do; the office is the tricky part. I'll try.

I did OK with other stuff, though. I followed my morning routine pretty well, kept up with the dishes and laundry, and even swished & swiped the bathroom so it looked good all week. And I spent my "15 minutes of decluttering" working my way through the pile of old New Yorkers on the kitchen counter. I think I read two each day for four days (it took much more than 15 minutes/day), so eight magazines, better than nothing. In the process I found two cartoons that I loved the first time I saw them and then couldn't find them later. I cut them out and put them on the fridge. I especially love the one with the tortoise, and I had looked through dozens of magazines trying to find it again.

Saturday it was supposed to be 100 degrees in Boulder (I don't think it actually got that hot), so we decided to go to the cabin. We left around 11 and drove to Bailey for our usual lunch at the Cutthroat Cafe. They had a singer performing outside in front (we sat indoors) and we thought he was pretty good, so Rocket Boy gave him $5. The Cutthroat Cafe had raised its prices, at long last -- after all, they live in this world too -- but they seemed to be doing just as much business as ever. As we approached Kenosha Pass we saw a lot of cars stopped up ahead. An accident? No, a moose! A big male in a mud hole. I managed to get a quick shot through the window (Rocket Boy was driving). We also saw one lonely antelope in South Park, lots and lots of beef cows eating grass, and one lonely deer on our drive home.

We stopped in Fairplay to swim at the rec center (since they closed at 5 pm, we wouldn't have enough time if we tried to go after the cabin visit). There were seven other people there, which is by far the most people I have ever seen there -- but we usually go late on Sunday afternoon, so maybe mid-afternoon Saturday is a busier time. 

We got to the cabin around 4:30 pm or so and spent a pleasant couple of hours relaxing. Rocket Boy did one tiny project and the twins mostly played on their devices and complained. I walked down to see the beaver ponds, and RB joined me. We didn't see any beaver, but there were fish jumping around, and the big beautiful ponds were evidence enough that beaver live there. You can't even see the river in this picture -- it's behind the ponds. We just caught a glimpse of it, rushing by. Rocket Boy said when he was younger you could walk right down to the edge of the river and jump in, but not anymore. They used to pan for gold (unsuccessfully) in the river! Try doing that now.

I'm glad beaver are living happy lives on our property. I sometimes feel guilty that we only go to the cabin once or twice a year, but I don't think the beaver mind. It's benign neglect on our part, and it leaves the beaver free to do their hard good work.

There were lots of wildflowers, probably not at their peak, but very nice all the same. This is some kind of groundsel, possibly Rocky Mountain Groundsel, that was near the beaver ponds. They were very impressively yellow. Usually we just get little bits of flowers here and there, not these dramatic big clumps.

And this is a somewhat fuzzy shot of, I think, Mountain Bluebell (ignore the Indian Paintbrush at bottom right). I don't remember seeing this before. It was in the "front yard" -- the land near the road, where we leave the car. I had a wild urge to pick it -- which of course I could, it's our land, but of course I didn't. If I leave it be, it might bloom another year too.

On our way out, we stopped at the former Brown Burro restaurant in Fairplay for dinner. It's now the Casa Sanchez Mexican restaurant, which has two other branches, in Leadville and Buena Vista. When I looked at the menu I was excited to see "Mole Enchiladas" and of course ordered them. I still don't have full sense of taste and smell, after Covid, so I never know how things are going to taste, but those enchiladas were delicious! I could definitely taste the mole sauce. Teen B was griping because they didn't have any ranch dressing for his chicken nuggets, and I'm sitting next to him in ecstasy over my mole. Oh well. I want to go back! (Today Rocket Boy and I had to go to Longmont to take his brother to the hospital, long boring story, and we had lunch at Aunt Alice's, so I ordered cheese enchiladas, still dreaming of the mole enchiladas the night before. They were a poor substitute.)

I was in such a good mood the whole day, even though by the end of the day I was sneezing like crazy -- something's in bloom and it affected me and both kids, but for some reason not Rocket Boy. I got myself into such an allergic state that I couldn't get out of it after we got home, even with two antihistamine pills, a nasal cleanse, and a shower, and I woke up this morning with a sinus headache (it's better now). So, yeah, you pay for joy, you always pay. But so worth it. 

I don't have many plans for the week ahead, other than FlyLady stuff. Rocket Boy will work, and he's getting a haircut on Friday. Oh, and the cats are going to the vet on Thursday, mustn't forget that (Baby Kitty to get his nails clipped and Sillers because she keeps pooping outside the litter box). I've finished the book group book (hated it) and am going to try to finish a couple of other books before I start The Makioka Sisters. I should try to think of any summer activities we might still want to do before we go to St. Louis -- because summer is going by fast.

July!

So here we are in July. Not my favorite month anymore, if it ever was, despite my birthday, because of the heat. I actually dread the summer heat now, because we don't have a good way of dealing with it. Our single fan in the desk room window, running through the night, has to cool off the whole house, and then our big trees in the backyard do their best to keep the heat from getting unbearable during the day. It works OK if it gets cool enough at night, and if there isn't any smoke, and it isn't humid. But if it doesn't cool down, or it's too humid, or the air is too smoky to run the fan, then we're in trouble. So far this summer we've been lucky, but here comes July.

And of course, later this month we have to go to St. Louis for Rocket Boy's surgery on the 25th. He has air conditioning now, but going outside will be awful. I can't see us taking a lot of walks. Oh well, don't borrow that trouble now, too many unknowns.

As I sit here typing this, Rocket Boy is driving the last stretch of his journey toward home. It's 6:35 pm now and I'm estimating he'll get here around 7. I have a banana bread coffee cake in the oven, and I should probably go work on dinner too. We're just having hummus and pita bread, plus a cucumber-tomato salad, with some apricots on the side. I hope he doesn't think that's too weird or skimpy. I thought it sounded delightfully summery.

***

He made it home! He called from the road and asked if we'd like to meet him at Great Scott's for dinner, but I said no, I'm making dinner, so he just came home. The dinner was good, even if a bit weird, and I think everyone got enough to eat. Though later we went to Sprouts to pick up some food for tomorrow and while we were in that shopping center we also stopped by Dairy Queen! I didn't get anything, since we have five kinds of ice cream in the freezer. That's kind of my thing these days, a way to save some $$ -- let everyone else get something when we eat out, and then I have whatever at home. I don't get Starbucks anymore when we go on Sundays, just get the kids stuff.

I don't feel deprived when I do this, because it's totally my own choice, and I like saving money. Beats working, right?

So I have a new plan for Rocket Boy's visit, and I'm very curious to see how it works out. Usually when he comes home I hand over some of the household chores to him, especially the dishes. I feel as though I do everything when he's gone, so he should do some of it when he's here. He's quite willing, but he doesn't do it the way I want him to. Dishes build up, there are always a lot of them piled up on the counter and the stove and in the sink. I get cross with him. Then he goes back to St. Louis and I have to do everything again.

This time I want to do things differently. I've been doing so well with the FlyLady that I want to keep that up, not change anything. So I'm going to try to keep doing all my chores, not push them off onto Rocket Boy. There are lots of other things I could have him do, things that I don't like doing and tend to avoid, such as taking the bags of used clothes to the donation center and the boxes of used books to the Bookworm. We could do some yardwork together. There's a long list of things like that, and then I can continue with my FlyLady routines and not let them fall apart.

We'll see. It's 9:15, I should go feed the cats and then start cleaning up the kitchen, sticking to my evening routine.

It's not only a new month, it's a new quarter. I haven't been writing down my plans, so maybe I'll do it now.

Quarter 3: July through September

• My next President is #22 (and #24), Grover Cleveland, and I think I am going to read Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character by Alyn Brodsky. I will have to request it from Prospector, so I won't do that until we're home from St. Louis, sometime in August.
  
• Home improvement project(s): I'm thinking I may try to get Rocket Boy to look at flooring with me while he's here, so that we can make progress toward getting the kitchen floor fixed. I've also arranged with the guy who worked on the yard at our rental property a few years ago to come work on our yard, but it probably won't be until August.
  

Month of July:

• A theme, hmm. I suppose red-white-and-blue patriotism, with the understanding that I don't like one single thing that's going on in the country right now, at least with the Supreme Court. But I'm still a patriot. I'm the kind of patriot who wants the country to do better, to live up to its ideals.
  
• I've been doing lots of socializing, should try to keep that up. And of course there's the trip to St. Louis looming.
  
• The next book group book is The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner. We meet in two weeks, so I got it from the library on Friday. Not really looking forward to reading it.
• This will be the month I read The Makioka Sisters for the Classics Challenge. I plan to bring it with me to St. Louis.
• We'll probably do some fun things with the twins on weekends now that Rocket Boy's here.

Week of July 4-10:

• Monday (Independence Day): We'll have a barbecue in the evening, and in the day we'll probably unpack Rocket Boy's car and get him acclimated. The FlyLady says we should do the Home Blessing on Tuesday this week, but since Tuesday is my Special Day, I'm going to do it on Monday. Not a big deal. Maybe Rocket Boy will want to help!
  
• Tuesday: My 62nd birthday. I'm going to make myself a cake (angel food with lemon curd and whipped cream), but I don't have any other special plans. It's Taco Tuesday, so in the evening we're going to introduce Rocket Boy to the joys of Crispy Butternut Squash and Poblano Tacos.
  
• Wednesday--Friday: No plans as yet (except taking my car in on Wednesday), though I do have meal plans. The FlyLady has plans for me, and Rocket Boy will need to work.
  
• Saturday: Eat out, maybe do something fun. Teen A wants to go to the cabin at some point, so it could be this weekend.
• Sunday: This could be the cabin day, depending on the weather. It's supposed to be stinking hot.
  

It's now past 10 pm, cats are fed, one teen is bathed and the other is about to do that too. Rocket Boy is watching something on TV that sounds boring. All's right with the world.

And I need to do the dishes!

Reading post: The Honjin Murders

I have finished my sixth book for the 2022 Classics Challenge: The Honjin Murders by Yokomizo Seishi (translated by Louise Heal Kawai), originally published in 1946. I chose it to fulfill category #6: Mystery/detective/crime classic.

We have now jumped forward in time to the modern era -- post World War II, in fact. Wikipedia says that Yokomizo "faced difficulties in getting his works published due to the wartime conditions," and then in 1946 he published both this book and its sequel, which suggests they might have been written earlier. The book describes a murder that took place in 1937, but the narrator is telling the story some years later, and at the end he mentions what happened to the surviving characters during and after the war. I could imagine that Yokomizo drafted it earlier and updated it after the war. But I don't know.

This book is one of the first I acquired for the Challenge -- it was the only book on my list that I found at the Bookworm. I've been eagerly waiting to read it for several months. After reading and learning more about Japanese literature, though, I began to wonder if I'd chosen the right book. Yokomizo was not the first Japanese crime writer. One of the most famous who preceded him was Hirai Taro, who used the pen name Edogawa Rampo (which sounds like Edgar Allan Poe pronounced with a heavy Japanese accent). Also, Tanizaki Junichiro, who wrote The Makioka Sisters (which will be my next book and which inspired this year of reading Japanese and Japanese-American literature) wrote some works that might be classified as mysteries. So I decided to read a couple of earlier works before reading The Honjin Murders.

First I read Devils in Daylight by Tanizaki (translated by J. Keith Vincent), which was originally published (serialized) in 1918. Tanizaki would have been about 32 at the time and had been publishing for about 7 years. This is considered part of his "early period." Classic English and American mystery stories were very popular in Japan (in translation) at the time, especially the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Devils in Daylight is inspired by "The Gold-Bug" by Poe, and in fact two of the characters write messages to each other using the cypher from "The Gold-Bug." The translator, in his "Afterword," argues that Devils is also inspired by The Tale of Genji -- which I am very glad I began this year by reading, since it has been referenced in some way in every other book I've read so far. I found this story to be mildly diverting, but maybe no more than that. The Poe connection must have been important back in 1918, but I was less excited about it in 2022. I'm not sorry I read this, but it was a minor amusement only.

Next I read a collection of short stories by Edogawa Rampo, Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination (translated by James B. Harris). The stories were originally published between 1924 and 1950, but most in the 1920s. This translation was published in 1956, and apparently Harris worked closely with Rampo, because Harris could not read Japanese and Rampo could not write or speak English (though he could read it, and both could understand each other's spoken languages). Edogawa Rampo was 8 years younger than Tanizaki Junichiro (they both died in 1965), so he would have been around 30 when he started publishing these stories. I should note that I'm writing his name in Western order, family name last, because as noted above, "Edogawa Rampo" is meant to sound like "Edgar Allan Poe," so it functions differently from a typical Japanese name.

Again, these are very Poe-like stories. They seemed -- how can I put this? -- out of date! Poe was writing in the 1830s and 40s. These stories were written (mostly) in the 1920s. I kept thinking, haven't we moved beyond this? But of course, Japan didn't encounter Poe until long after his death, and he was all new to them. There is just one story in the collection, "The Psychological Test," which features the detective character that Rampo used often, Dr. Akechi, and the story is unusual because we know who the murderer is before Dr. Akechi figures it out for himself. I didn't really like any of the stories very much, but if I had to choose a favorite it would be the last one, "The Traveler with the Pasted Rag Picture" (1929), which was agreeably spooky.

Finally it was time to read The Honjin Murders. The author, Yokomizo, was born in 1902, so he was 8 years younger than Rampo, but he would have been around 44 when this novel was published. I'm focusing on all these writers' ages because I think it's interesting that they aren't very different in age. Yokomizo published his first two novels in his mid-30s, before the war, but didn't really become popular until after the war, when he was in his 40s. According to Wikipedia, Yokomizo was a big fan of the mystery writer John Dickson Carr -- not Edgar Allan Poe, like the other two -- so The Honjin Murders is more of a classic mystery novel. A murder is committed, we don't know who did it, and a detective arrives to solve the crime.

OK, so it's not another Poe story. But even in 1946, Japanese writers were apparently still so enamored of Western mystery writers that they couldn't tell their own stories without referencing their models. One main character (and suspect) possesses every Western mystery that has been translated into Japanese at that point, and the detective asks him which novel he feels the current crime most resembles (it's The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux). Some reviews I read of the book praised this "breaking of the fourth wall," but I was less thrilled with it. I didn't want to read a book about how fun mysteries are, I wanted to read a mystery. This is a "locked-room" mystery, and much is made of that. But I've always hated locked-room mysteries. In the end, the solution is implausible and annoying, and like the solution to most locked-room mysteries I couldn't even follow it, it was so complicated. 

My favorite part of the book was actually the last few pages, where we learn what happened to everyone after the war. Kind of sweet and sad.

Would I read any of the sequels to The Honjin Murders? Possibly. Even though I didn't like the book very much, the writer's voice (as translated by Louise Heal Kawai) is intelligent and amusing. The Boulder Public Library has two of Yokomizo's other works. I might check them out. We'll see.

Post-Note: It's October 9th and today I finished one of the sequels, so I thought I should add a note about that. I read The Inugami Curse, originally published in 1950/51, and I thought it was much better than The Honjin Murders. It's apparently Yokomizo's sixth mystery novel and he must just have developed as a writer over the course of the six books. The Inugami Curse is not a locked-room mystery, so that's a plus right there. It takes place a few years after World War II, with important characters having served in the Japanese Army and one having been seriously wounded. I didn't quite guess the solution to the murder, although I was on the right track, and although it was implausible, it wasn't horribly implausible. It was a fun story to read. If you want to read a classic Japanese mystery, I'd recommend this one.