That went fast

And here we are at the end of September already! I don't know if it really went all that fast. I wasn't very happy, so the individual days kind of dragged. But they always pass, and now it is September 25th. 

I haven't been exercising much, but yesterday I managed to convince myself to get out for a walk, and I took a few pictures of "fall color" with my phone -- it isn't quite there yet, but you can see it starting. There was actually more than I expected. October is when everything bursts into flaming red, orange, and yellow -- but October is only 6 days away.

I have some things I want to accomplish before October descends upon us in all its glory. First, I want to finish Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character. I'm currently on page 322 (out of 456). Oh God, it's boring. Not the personal parts -- I enjoy reading about his family life and his cancer surgery and all that. But the political parts -- the tariff battles and the bimetallism controversy, oh my god, it's so boring I feel like I'm going to shrivel up and die when I'm reading it. I keep losing the thread, because it's so boring, and then I have to go back and read it AGAIN. Sometimes I say to myself, who cares if I lose the thread -- no one's keeping track of this except me. But that's the problem. I'm keeping track. I can't say I've read a book if I didn't pay any attention to it while I was reading it.

It is odd that it's possible to read something without comprehending it. I can read each individual word in a paragraph and not understand any of it.

I feel as though I should be interested in the bimetallism controversy because it involved Colorado. Colorado was a silver-producing state, and it was badly hurt when the country came to its senses and stopped treating silver the same as gold (since all other countries in the world used the gold standard). But oh my god I don't care at all. Part of the problem is that I don't understand it. What IS the gold standard? What does that mean? I seem to be not intelligent enough to take it in.

The other thing I want to finish in September is more cleaning. This week with the FlyLady we'll be in the living room, and I certainly have a lot to do in the living room. But I really want to keep working on the twins' room and the desk room too. I'm afraid I'm going to burn out if I try to do too much. But Rocket Boy will be coming back, probably at the end of the first week in October, and I want to get rid of a lot of things before he does. This week I got rid of SO many things in the twins' room, it was amazing. It's starting to look almost spacious in there. And yet -- not. Still need to work and work on it.

We'll see how this week goes.

***

This morning, weirdly, Teen A did not want to go to Starbucks. So Teen B and I went alone, only to discover that our regular Starbucks was closed, perhaps for cleaning. We could see plastic sheets over the equipment, and people were moving things around. Perhaps they've had an infestation, or something broke down. Anyway, that meant we had to drive to the 30th Street Starbucks, which was naturally more crowded than usual, and I got my first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the year (Teen B got one too). They were delicious.

The 30th Street Starbucks tends to have homeless men hanging around, transients, and there were a few in the store today, spending the cash someone had given them on coffee. Dirty, smelly, with that lean, mean, defensive look they usually have. Hard to love.

I was thinking about homeless people because we have an issue on our ballot this fall that I can't make up my mind about -- whether or not to form a library district. Most pro-library people (of which I am certainly one) are very pro-library district, but one of my favorite local commentators wrote an opinion piece about why this proposal isn't a good one. It's very expensive (funded by an increase in property taxes). Someone who owns a $1.5 million house (the Boulder average) will pay an extra $345 a year. Our two houses put together are probably worth almost that much. I have a hard time paying our property taxes already -- $345 is a not insignificant increase. Small businesses are apparently going to be hit very hard by this, and that's the last thing small businesses need.

But what really got me was an article in today's paper about what the city is going to do with the money it won't have to spend on the libraries anymore (about $12 million) if a library district is formed. Top of the list: a day shelter for homeless people. I read that, and I suddenly turned into a Republican.

They're going to make me pay $345 more per year so that homeless people can have a day shelter?

I don't want to be a Republican, so I am trying to come down from this. 

It's a complicated issue and I think I need to do some more reading about it. It's possible that a library district is a good idea, but it just needs to be funded a little differently. The impact on small businesses may actually be more important than the increase in my property taxes. 

But today in Starbucks I looked at the homeless men, the transients, with different eyes, or tried to. Why do I hate them so much? They are human beings -- extremely unsavory ones, but still human. Perhaps a day shelter would help them find homes, encourage them to be better people. Everyone thinks transients come to Boulder because of all the services they can receive here, the homeless shelter, the nice parks to camp in, all the rich people who give them money because they feel guilty, all the bikes to steal. But is that bad? (Other than the bikes, I mean. And the camping in parks.) And where do homeless people come from, anyway? Where do these lean, mean, defensive-looking men start life? In other cities, I think homeless people are often Black, but here they're almost all white guys, and they all look the same -- being out in the elements all the time gives them this weathered look, plus the drugs and booze, I suppose. Their eyes... they all look like they'd kill you for pocket change. I don't think they're born looking like that. 

Am I being a liberal sucker to try to empathize with homeless men? Or a Christian? I'm not really a Christian, but you know what I mean.

I don't know what the right thing to do is, the right way to think.

***

This was not a good week for cooking. Monday I planned that we would have mahi mahi burgers (from Trader Joe's), but instead we had more sandwiches because I was tired from doing the "home blessing" that day. Tuesday I did make veggie enchiladas (from Laurel's Kitchen), but even though I left out the green beans, Teen B still complained. In fact, he removed all the filling and just ate the tortilla and cheese and sauce. "I don't like healthy stuff," he said guiltily, noticing me glaring at him. Wednesday we had "Two Potato Gratin" from the Moosewood Simple Suppers cookbook, and that was not well received by Teen B either, even though I had a note on it saying everyone liked it. I don't know why I bother writing positive notes, because people's opinions change. Actually, Teen A had three pieces, it was just Teen B who was fussy. Thursday I made "Baked Ziti" from Jeanne Lemlin's Vegetarian Pleasures cookbook, and even though I had another positive note on that recipe, it wasn't liked this time by anyone. Maybe because I used shells instead of ziti. I don't know. It seemed dry.

Friday, Teen B and I had leftovers (I had enchiladas and he had dry pasta), while Teen A said he wasn't hungry (too many snacks). And the sad thing is that there are STILL massive quantities of leftovers in the fridge and I don't want to eat any of them. We went to IHOP last night (Teen B's choice) and tonight I said we'd either have leftovers or French toast. We'll probably have French toast and I'll throw all the leftovers in the compost tomorrow.

I have no idea what to cook this week. I'm going to the book group on Monday, finally, so I'll just get Lunchables for the kids that night. But that still leaves Tuesday through Friday. I don't feel inspired. I know, I should feel grateful that I can afford to buy the ingredients to cook dinner. I do feel grateful, sort of. Actually, it's more that I feel angry that lots of people can't afford to do that.

***

It's been a quiet weekend, no special activities. Yesterday I had a Zoom call with old friends and later went to the Bookworm and World Market, and after we ate out, we went to Target. That's what passes for excitement around here when Rocket Boy is in St. Louis. If he were here, we might have gone to the mountains. The leaves are starting to turn. I'll bet next weekend will be beautiful! But Teen B has a band concert next Saturday afternoon, so we won't be going anywhere. The weekend after that is probably when Rocket Boy will come, so the earliest we could go to the mountains would be October 15th or so. We'll see what the weather's like then.

Today, other than Starbucks, the main activity was homework. We're still getting used to the whole concept of weekend homework. I didn't want to stay up all night helping them get it done, so I set up a schedule, with time slots they could sign up for: 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, 4 pm, and 5 pm. It worked pretty well, except that after Teen A finished his language arts homework at 2:30, he went off to Safeway to hang out with friends. So we still have to do his Spanish. But Teen B did his language arts, band, and German homework at the times he'd signed up for.

The day is almost over. I think we're going to have leftovers after all. I don't feel like making French toast. Oh, and think of all the meals I don't want to make this week. No, think about being grateful. Or angry. Or whatever.

The month is almost over.

Feels like fall

It really does feel like fall. A few weeks ago I wrote that early September in Colorado just feels like more summer, but that was wrong. Very quickly things start to change, and I always forget that. The mornings are cooler, and because of that, the house never gets as hot as it does during the summer. Also, it's darker. Darker earlier in the evening, but also darker all day, even when the sun is shining brightly. The sun doesn't get as high, or it's further away, or something.

I haven't turned on the fan at night since our bad heat broke, 10 days ago or so. I probably should just put it away in the garage until next year. It's still in the 80s some days, but the house hasn't gotten hot.

***

This was a nice week. As I mentioned last week, I'm dealing with some depression -- not crippling, but there, in the background, all the time. So I planned a lot of simple tasks to keep myself busy, and that was a good strategy. 

The FlyLady was "in the bathroom and one extra room" this week, and my extra room is always our office, which we call the desk room. I wrote down 26 possible tasks for those two rooms, and I got so many of them done! Each day I would choose 4 tasks from the list and work away at them, in addition to laundry, dishes, cooking, etc. The bathroom in particular got very clean (in part because I didn't want to work on the desk room). I mopped the floor and cleaned the baseboards, scrubbed the tub inside and out, washed the shower curtains, decluttered and rearranged the shelves of the medicine cabinets, cleaned the front and sides of the vanity and various spots on the walls, and of course cleaned the mirror, sink, and toilet.

The desk room didn't get that clean, but it looks better. I worked on the tops of the file cabinets, a space that is just a dumping ground, and I also worked on the horrible files. I decided to focus on medical & dental files, and I spent hours going through a huge pile of papers, many from our time in Ridgecrest. I found that a lot of the papers were cover sheets or otherwise unneeded, so getting rid of those cut the pile by about a third. I also made separate files for each family member, because it's pretty stupid and useless to have us all in the same file. If I want to look up what medicine Teen A was prescribed for an ear infection in 2010 when he was 2, I don't want to have to paw through all of Rocket Boy's paperwork for that year. 2010 was really a terrible year for him -- I'd forgotten that. He broke his arm in the spring, and then in the late summer he was hospitalized with Valley Fever (or something like it), in addition to all the usual trouble with his gastrointestinal system and lymphedema. There were endless communications with Blue Cross and the various companies that make all his compression stockings, getting special approval for this and that.

Rocket Boy is a wonderful person, but I wonder if I would have married him if I'd known what a lot of medical problems he had/was going to have. No, I'm kidding. It wouldn't have mattered one bit. I guess that's how you know you love someone.

***

This coming week, the FlyLady is "in the master bedroom," and during those weeks I also focus on the twins' bedroom. I made another list of tasks, based on her suggestions for this area for the last three months. The list only has about 10 items on it, but that's x2, because I have to do each thing in both rooms. So it'll work out to about 4 each day, just like last week. And just like last week, I'll probably work hard in my room, which is easier, and try to think of ways to skip the twins' room, which is a disaster. But it's OK. Some cleaning will get done.

My book group was supposed to meet tomorrow, but one of the members got Covid (like everyone else in the world these days). So I don't really have anything scheduled this week, other than a Zoom call next Saturday. I like that, actually. I like having wide open weeks. I don't get lonely or bored. In a few weeks Rocket Boy will come back, and then I will have his company but I won't have any privacy! Must enjoy the privacy while I can.

I am sorry the hummingbirds are gone, though. I think they really are gone. I thought I heard one buzzing once or twice this week (our hummingbirds, the broad-tailed, buzz), but I haven't seen one at the feeder. And the feeder is still completely full.

I will miss sitting in the living room, reading, and hearing their buzzing sound, and looking up from my book to see a little bird at the feeder. But in the winter we replace the screen door with the storm door, so I wouldn't be able to hear them even if they were here.

***

Maybe I'm depressed, not just because the hummingbirds are gone, but because I don't like what I'm reading. Or maybe I don't like what I'm reading because I'm depressed. I just finished a book about indexes, called Index, a History of the, by Dennis Duncan, and it made me sad. It's an interesting book -- no, really, it is -- very erudite, with references to all sorts of medieval and early modern scholars I'd never heard of, so I enjoyed learning about them. At the same time, I already knew many of the points Duncan was making, because of my background. I used to be a typesetter, so I know a lot about printing and publishing. I've studied Latin and Greek and I have a PhD in linguistics and I've always been interested in writing systems, so I was familiar with many things he said about those. I've even made a couple of indexes -- for real, published books -- so I'm familiar with many indexing issues. As I worked my way through the book, I became more and more aware of how knowledgeable I am about all this stuff -- and I kept thinking, for what? What good is all this knowledge? What have I ever done with it?

Most of the time I don't feel bad about not doing anything with what I know. And then sometimes I do. And this was one of those weeks. Which is why I did so much cleaning.

Moving on from the index book, I'm now reading a 450-page biography of Grover Cleveland. I'd like to finish it by the end of September (end of the 3rd quarter of the year), so I have to push myself along, read at least 30 pages a day (50 would be better). I just have to say, when you're depressed, a 450-page biography of Grover Cleveland is probably not the best choice of reading material.

There are other books in my pile, more Japanese-American books and a memoir by someone whose family all died in the Holocaust. Somehow I don't think those are going to be the ticket either. But what would be? I don't like cheerful, mindless stuff. The book I'm reading to the twins right now is perhaps the best. It was Teen B's turn to choose and he didn't like anything in the current pile of choices in their room, so I rummaged through my bookcases and brought out a few mysteries and whatnot. Of them, he chose The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, and I love that book. The twins, of course, don't like it at all, they totally miss the humor, but we're reading it.

***

I wasn't too successful with meals this past week. Monday I made a pasta dish out of The Savory Way cookbook that was just terrible. I've studied the recipe ("Shells with Spinach and Chickpeas") several times, because I felt as though something was missing, but if there is something, it's still missing -- I didn't forget to add it, in other words. It's just not there. A can of tomatoes might have helped. I made it with navy beans instead of chickpeas, because we don't love chickpeas -- maybe that was the problem. Or maybe it's just a bad recipe. The twins picked at it. I ate my bowl, then put the rest in the fridge -- and two days later, transferred it to the compost bin, because life is too short to eat crummy pasta dishes, even for lunch.

Tuesday was supposed to be Taco Tuesday, but there was a faculty concert at CU that I really wanted to go to, so at the last minute I made "Mozzarella Balls" from the Pillsbury website (which was supposed to be Thursday's dinner) and left them for the twins while I went off to the concert. It was a wonderful show. The faculty member whose concert it was teaches Collaborative Piano, and she had asked a bunch of other musicians to "collaborate" with her. My favorite was the first piece, with a bassoon, a flute, an oboe, a clarinet, and a French horn, plus piano, but all the pieces were amazingly good. It was the highlight of my week. And I had the leftover mozzarella balls for lunch the next day.

Wednesday I made a "Quick Pesto Pizza" from the Vegetarian Classics cookbook, and that was OK, but not great, because I baked the crust too long. Lazy me, I used a Pillsbury pizza crust (it was a Pillsbury kind of week) and it says to pre-bake it for 8 minutes. I've done this before and I should have remembered -- 8 minutes is way too long. Maybe 4 minutes would be good. We chewed away at our rock hard pizza, and a day or two later all the leftovers went in the compost bin along with Monday's pasta.

Thursday we FINALLY had the tacos -- "Spicy Mango, Black Bean & Avocado Tacos" from the Love & Lemons website. I highly recommend these. So yummy. I used a can of Kuner's black beans with jalapeno and lime, and shredded lettuce instead of cabbage, and jack cheese instead of feta because we were out of feta. And regular mayonnaise. It's all good. That was the best meal of the week.

Friday we just had sandwiches and ramen. I was going to make a fancy sandwich recipe and in the end I said screw it. We had sandwiches Saturday night too, because we couldn't decide on a place to go out to eat. So we're supposedly going to eat out tonight, but if we don't, it'll be French toast. Or sandwiches. Teen A has mysteriously developed a craving for tuna melts -- I've made him three so far this weekend. I think it must be the weather. I'm very hungry all of a sudden, too, like a bear in hyperphagia -- of which there are some in our neighborhood today, munching on people's fruit tree bounty.

What do you cook in early fall? I've been craving Middle Eastern food. Also Indian, because the book group would have had Indian food if we had met tomorrow, which we're not going to do. So I'll just have to wait until next week, unless I can sneak some vaguely Indian food into a meal without scaring the twins. They don't love Indian food, weird children. I mean teenagers. Or I might make enchiladas. I told the twins I don't want to have Taco Tuesday EVERY Tuesday. Every other Tuesday we could have some other kind of Mexican-ish food. They disapproved of this idea, but hey, I'm the cook.

***

When you don't do much during a week, there isn't much to write about. The kitties are fine. I'm continuing to be vigilant about Sillers' laxatives, and she's pooping away, mostly in the litter box. This morning before breakfast there was a rather large poop right near her food tray, but I think that was just from excitement (about getting fed soon).

The hole in the kitchen floor has been getting bigger and bigger, and I've started tripping over it. So this week I got the idea to bring a little rug from the living room into the kitchen, covering the hole. The kitties were puzzled by this -- cats don't like change -- and they took turns sitting on it and rolling on it and moving it around. I just say no, no, and put it back. 

OK, I think this is enough for this week. Enjoy September!

Getting through the week

September is meandering along. It was so hot last week, upper 90s day after day, and the only thing that kept me from complaining (too much) was that California's heat was so much worse! Then, on Friday, the heat broke, and we had clouds and cold, rain and gloom. But again, California had a hurricane! We didn't have a hurricane. I wonder whether our rain had anything to do with Hurricane Kay -- don't think so, but I guess I don't know. 

Anyway, we didn't have high winds or anything like that. Just a soft drizzly rain that went on and on and ruined the annual neighborhood Pancake Breakfast on Saturday. We did go to it, toward the end, and the pancakes were very good. But it was cold and drizzly and not well-attended. I've never been to that breakfast when it wasn't really hot and the line stretched on and on, in the heat. No line this time. Another difference was that Teen A ate 9 pancakes (that's three trips through the (non-existent) line). Teen B ate 6, some with chocolate chips and whipped cream. In previous years they wouldn't even finish their first serving before running off to play on the equipment.

When Teen A got up to get his third serving of pancakes, I noticed that he was taller than two (adult) women who were standing near us, chatting. He's not that big, but he's getting bigger. It's interesting to watch. Teen B is getting bigger too.

There were no crises this week, cat or teen or other. After last week's trouble with Sillers, I committed to giving her a laxative twice a day every day. She gets a little Miralax in the morning, mixed with her dry food -- which I soak in water and she slurps it all up. At night before I feed them I bravely fill a syringe with Lactulose, pick up Sillers, set her in the sink, and then force it down her throat. Unlike an intelligent cat (for instance, Chester), she doesn't remember from day to day that this is going to happen. She hangs around the kitchen with Baby Kitty, meowing for her food, and then expresses great surprise when she is picked up and put in the sink. Afterwards I set her down and fix their food; while I'm doing this, she licks herself, looks disgruntled, and then resumes meowing.

This routine is working: she is pooping. Sometimes in the litter box, sometimes on the floor. I can deal with anything, as long as it keeps coming. Please no more trips to the vet to get her reamed out.

***

We're still adjusting to the high school world, but it seems to be coming along. I tried to set up a homework schedule, some way of keeping track of what they need to do and what's ahead, but I didn't have much success. Most of the teachers don't post their schedules very far ahead (if at all), making it hard for us to plan. This seems lazy to me -- when I was teaching at CU, I always gave my students a detailed syllabus that showed exactly what we were going to do each day, and I stuck to it. Papers were due on the day I said they were. If a student came to me saying "I have three exams on the same day this paper is due, can I have an extension?" I would say, "You have known since the first day of the semester when that paper was due. You need to plan for it, do it early if necessary."

Only the twins' science teacher is that organized. The rest are various degrees of vague. I don't have a lot of patience for vague.

But I am not the student here. I do what I can to help, and the rest is on the twins. And they seem to be handling it pretty well. We do homework together most nights, at their instigation, and even on the weekends. Teen A and I worked on Language Arts both Friday and Saturday night, and I'm sure I'll work with both boys later today. I don't have to nag (much).

Teen B actually went to a club meeting this week, on Tuesday. I was seriously blown away. I've been giving them the "you need to join things" spiel, but I didn't really think it would work. Teen A hasn't joined anything, though, so I get to keep bugging him. There was a football game and a dance this week, but neither boy attended either. The dance cost $20! I don't remember dances costing anything when I was in high school, but maybe they did and I've just forgotten. I didn't go to a lot of them, just the Winter Formal my senior year. I told the boys that if they wanted to go to the dance, I would pony up the $20, but neither took me up on it. Just as well.

Teen B asked me, while we were taking a walk one night, what clubs I had joined when I was in high school. That stopped me for a moment. I wasn't a joiner -- I remember intentionally not joining things at that age. But fortunately I was able to come up with a few things. I was a Peer Counselor and we had a practicum group meeting once a week. Most Peer Counselors never actually counseled anyone (I think I may have helped one person with their homework once), they just went to the practicum group meetings. So that was like a club. And the other thing I was in was Amnesty International. My high school had a branch of it. We wrote letters to prisoners, and later I learned that "my" prisoner had been released. I remember we also had a bake sale once and tried to get people to sign petitions for something.

I was also in the choir. But I think that was the extent of my high school activities. I had a very large friend group, so that pretty much occupied my time. 

***

Tomorrow is Rocket Boy's birthday, so I got him a cake at King Soopers (even though he's in St. Louis). I had thought we would save it until Monday, but once you have a cake in the fridge it's hard to say no, wait two days. So we had some last night, after first decorating it (see photo). It's a yellow cake with caramel frosting, not a flavor I ever remember having before. The twins like caramel -- that's why I chose it. I suppose it would be considered a fall flavor. But it was nasty. We were all kind of grossed out by it. Too sweet.

Though just now, this afternoon, we all had a second piece. So it can't be that bad.

I told Rocket Boy I'd save him a piece for the next time he comes home, which will probably be in October.

I did pretty well with cooking this past week. As planned, I made some things with fruit. The most successful were the delectable open-faced melted brie & pear sandwiches we had on both Monday and Friday (the twins liked them so much, they requested a repeat). Least successful was the fruit soup I made on Thursday. It called for 3 lbs of peaches and I only had 3 peaches, so I added some plums and some orange juice, and, well, it wasn't very good. Another miss was the delicious couscous salad I made on Wednesday. It's a recipe I used to make for potlucks all the time. I really like it. But the twins weren't impressed. And it makes a lot, so I'll be eating it for a while. Tuesday we had quesadillas and melon, because I was tired of making tacos every week. And last night we got Subway sandwiches for the kids, while I finished the fruit soup, with some couscous salad on the side.

I need to plan this week's menus today. Not sure what to have. It's supposed to be in the mid-80s all week.

***

I had some trouble with depression this week. No particular reason, though the two cloudy days didn't help -- I'm so sensitive to the lack of sunshine. Hard to remember how much I used to like cloudy weather, when I was young.

I wasn't sad about anything. It was just an inability to feel pleasure. Nothing tasted good except my morning tea, and that not as much as usual. Music didn't lift my spirits. Reading bored me. I liked the book group book, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, but about halfway through I suddenly understood that it was going to have a sad ending -- because how could a book about people living in a slum in India end any other way? Sure enough, sad ending. And that kind of colored the week, even though my own life could not be more different from the lives of the characters in the book.

Also, I filled the hummingbird feeder one last time, but no hummingbirds came to it. I'm not sure we've seen the last of them for the year, but it's possible. They need to get down to Guatemala, or wherever it is they go. I will miss them.

I realized after a day or two that the only thing that helped with the depression was activity -- specifically, chores and errands. Those things didn't make me happy, but they passed the time, filled up the time so I didn't have to spend it being actively depressed. The Flylady was very helpful here. I've been trying to get back into her routines and having some trouble, but this week I broke through that. 

I even managed to take some old clothes to Goodwill. Goodwill is approximately 1 mile from here, maybe not even that far, and they have it set up so you just drive up, hand over your stuff, and drive away, takes about 2 seconds -- but for some reason I was filled with anxiety about it and couldn't get myself to do it. This week, fighting depression, I managed to fill three large garbage bags with the kids' outgrown clothes (all washed and sorted into pants, shirts, and pajamas) and dropped them off. I'm so psyched about that. This coming week, maybe I'll take more.

With Flylady, this week we were "in the kitchen," as she says, and I cleaned several things in the kitchen, most notably the refrigerator, which was so dirty and gross I was embarrassed to open it in front of other people. I scrubbed all the containers in the door and threw out a LOT of moldy icky stuff, including roughly 1000 little packets of soy sauce, mayonnaise, etc. Of course I don't have a "before" picture, but believe me, it was so much worse than this.

And then I spilled some fruit soup in the main part of the fridge, and I haven't cleaned it up yet, so, yeah, this is a work in progress.

I felt as though Flylady made a mistake this week, because her "detail cleaning" suggestions were identical to those from the second week of July. I don't know how often she repeats herself intentionally, but I don't think it's every two months. But, I hadn't done most of the kitchen cleaning in July, because Rocket Boy was here and I was having trouble doing Flylady while he was here, so this worked out quite well. I hadn't done the August kitchen cleaning either, so I made a list of all the July and August suggestions and just did the ones I wanted to. I dusted, and wiped down the cabinet doors, and spent a long time on the fridge. 

This coming week we are "in the bathroom and one other room." She says the "other room" this month should be the room where you toss things, which for us is the office, and since I also didn't do the bathroom and "other room" cleaning in July and August, I've made another large list with all the things from three months on it. I'll just pick and choose from it, whatever looks good. 

I have a few other things on the calendar this week: a support group meeting on Tuesday and an orthodontist appointment on Thursday. Also our next-door neighbor is going on vacation and I'll be bringing in her mail and watering her plants. What a thrill my life is. But it's OK. The weather should be good and I have lots of things to clean.

OK, September

It's Labor Day weekend, September for sure. We've changed all the calendars, I printed out my "Fall 2022 Plans" to give myself a longer view of the season, and today at Starbucks, Teen B ordered a pumpkin spice latte. That's usually my favorite drink, but I feel that the hottest weekend of the year is the wrong time to order it. I generally wait until October. 

These days, of course, I mostly don't order anything when we attend the Church of Starbucks on Sunday mornings, because it's gotten so darn expensive. I let the kids get their fancy drinks and eats (Teen A likes the sandwiches, while Teen B is partial to cake pops -- today he got an owl), and then we go home and I have tea and cereal. In some ways I feel as though this sends the wrong message -- that the kids get all the treats and the parents make do with the crumbs. But I like tea and cereal and I don't like spending money unnecessarily. The kids love Starbucks, whereas every time I go in one, I think about Ann Arbor and how it had all those wonderful different coffee shops, each with its own special treats. In October, I'll let myself have a few pumpkin spice lattes, and maybe at Christmas I'll have one or two caramel brule lattes, and the rest of the time I'm good with tea and cereal.

So, September! Time to make some plans. This is not my favorite month. In northern climes, it is perhaps still the month when the cold weather begins -- Michigan used to start getting chilly in early September, wonder whether it still does. But in Colorado, not really. In the mountains, sure, but not down here. Maybe by the end of the month. Right now we're hot -- not like it is in California this weekend, but we're supposed to be 93 today, 97 tomorrow. It doesn't feel like fall.

As far as September plans go, I need to read another presidential biography before the third quarter of the year ends. Grover Cleveland is the man, and Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character by Alyn Brodsky is the book that I just requested from Prospector. We have all those home improvement projects coming up in October (bathroom wall, kitchen floor), so I have to get busy and choose the tile for the shower. I also should find out what happened to the guy who was going to work on our backyard. Maybe he'll show up some time this month.

I've got the book for the book group (Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara, which looks better than the last few books we've read) and I may start it tonight. I only have two books left to read for the Classics Challenge this year, so no rush there. I've read 79 books so far in 2022, so I'm sure I'll get to 100 again.

There are lots of little things on my calendar: dentist, orthodontist, support group, the book group, a zoom call with old friends, the neighborhood pancake breakfast. I'm sure more things will come up. Mostly I'm going to try to get the house back in order, get back into all my FlyLady routines. And maybe apply for a job. I'm so nervous about that! We'll see.

I guess the theme for September is Back to School/End of Summer, although that was also August's theme. September definitely feels like the Back to School month, though. As for a color, I've always thought of the color of September as yellow or gold, meaning dry, dying plants. Our weedy side yard epitomizes the color of September.

But I'm trying to reorient myself to think of September as a purple month, purple as in ripe fruit -- most of which is actually yellow or orange or red, but still. Some fruit is purple. Plums! I should buy some plums. I've been focusing on peaches, but there are lots of plums in the stores. Next time I go, I'll get some plums.

It's hard to get excited about September, but it is to be sure a wonderful month for stone fruit. I should think of something to do with stone fruit every week this month. Last week I made a peach pie, but it wasn't very popular with the twins. Teen A eventually finished it off, but I don't think Teen B had a single slice. Rocket Boy would have eaten it.

Rocket Boy is back in St. Louis, going in to the office, visiting museums on the weekends, all of that. He asked me what we were doing this weekend. Uh, relaxing? He makes me feel so slothful when we talk. But then, he isn't managing the lives of two teenagers.

This was a busy, stressful week. It was the second full week of school, so lots of homework, lots of adjustments. We're figuring out the bus thing. Every morning my alarm goes off at about 7:08 (I want it to go off at 7:00, but I can't seem to get it set right). I get up, go to the bathroom, come back to my room and get dressed, and make the bed. Then it's about 7:30 (sometimes there's time for Wordle, too), and I go wake up the twins. I open their curtain and turn on the light, and then I leave them and go start the tea. Ten minutes later, at 8:40, I wake them up again, and this time it's serious. One or both of them is up by then, usually, so it's OK.

They get dressed and wander out to the living room and I offer breakfast, but I'm not fussy about it. Sometimes Teen A fixes himself a gigantic bowl of cereal, sometimes he wants me to make him a piece of cinnamon toast. Teen B often doesn't want anything. Sometimes he'll have a cup of tea. It's all fine. They're 14, I think they can make their own decisions about breakfast. 

At 7:40 I also pull up "Next Ride" on my phone and start tracking the buses. A Skip usually gets here around 7:50, 7:55, maybe 8:00, and then nothing until 8:15 or 8:20 or so, and that's cutting it a little close. So we have to watch the early bus on the app. I've gotten pretty good at estimating when it will arrive, but sometimes it catches me up. Then I'll start screaming, "The bus is going to be here any minute! Get your stuff! Hurry!" They've figured out that they need to have their backpacks packed ahead of time, because Mom's scream could come at any moment. So usually they can get out the door in a minute or two. The slowdowns are Teen A's shoes (Teen B is still wearing flip flops every day), and whether someone needs to use the bathroom. 

It only takes them a minute or two to get to the bus stop, so we haven't missed a bus yet. If there is some question about whether they caught it, I'll text Teen B a few minutes later: "Are you on the bus?" He's patient with me: "Yes." 

The bus went back to charging people on September 1st (it was free for all of August), so on August 31st I bravely drove downtown to the bus depot and picked up two "MyRide" passes for the boys to use. I put $10 on each pass and then at home I registered them and attached my credit card to them and put another $6 on. So we have $26 on the two passes (it costs them $1.10 each time they ride) and I thought we were all set. Unfortunately, RTD (aka Reason To Drive) doesn't have enough staff, so the buses haven't all been upgraded with new card readers yet, so the boys' passes don't work. The bus drivers have been letting them ride anyway, but apparently they aren't very nice about it. I called RTD and the nice woman assured me that it would all be worked out by the end of September.

Meanwhile, the twins are like, "Why don't you drive us?" and I'm like, "No."

La la la.

Wednesday was Back to School night at the high school, and that was interesting. Teen B went with me. First we sat in the auditorium for, like, an hour, and listened to boring talks about this and that. After each person spoke, the assistant principal running the show would say, "Let's have another big hand for so-and-so," and the parents would politely clap some more. I really think they could have cut that down to half an hour without losing any meaningful content. Maybe next year.

At 7 pm it was time to start running around to the classes. We had 10 minutes in each class and 5 minutes to get from class to class. Their high school is three stories, with a courtyard in the middle, and some of the classrooms can only be reached by the stairs in the courtyard. Up and down and around we rushed, along with all the other parents. I was definitely on the old side, and the fat side, tottering up and down the staircases, gripping the railings for dear life. Teen B rushed ahead of me and then looked back, laughing. Evil child.

I went to two of Teen A's classes, four of Teen B's, and one that they share (they share the teacher, but not the same period). It was the best I could do. I really missed Rocket Boy that night.

Later that night the cat problems began. I was woken multiple times by the sound of a cat vomiting, and by morning it was clear that Sillers was in trouble. There was vomit everywhere -- great piles of it, but also smaller spots. In some cases I wasn't sure whether it was vomit or something else. After the kids went to school, I fed both cats, but of course she wouldn't eat. "Why did I do that?" I asked myself. I put her food up on a high shelf and tried to keep an eye on her, but she kept getting on things and vomiting (or something) on them. Teen A's bed. My bed.

Finally I just put her outside on the back patio. I was feeling really angry, unreasonably angry. I had all this extra laundry to do all of a sudden and I was tired from the night before. We just got this problem fixed in July! (I assumed it had something to do with her gastrointestinal system.) True, I had been skipping her laxative some days, and true, I'd only been giving her Miralax, not Laxatone. But could she really be blocked again so quickly? 

Sillers did not like being outside. I put a bowl of water out there with her, and made a soft bed in a milk crate, but she chose to hide in some leaves near the lawnmower instead, and mewed at me. "Why don't you just die?" I said to her, and then felt terribly guilty. But I don't want to have another sick cat! It's bad enough that Baby Kitty has FLUTD, like Chester did. The anniversary of Chester's death is in a couple of weeks (September 19th). I don't want another sick cat!

Fortunately, Sillers had no intention of dying. At 1:45 I pulled myself together and called the vet. Miraculously, they had space to bring her in that afternoon. I put Sillers in the cat carrier, where she immediately began leaking on the towel. At the vet, they did an x-ray. Sure enough, another poop blockage. I left her there for a couple of hours while they cleaned her out. Picked her up at 5 pm to the tune of $400. Her tail was wrapped in blue this time and we had to keep it like that for 24 hours. I promised to give her a laxative twice every day from now on.

I washed Teen A's sheets. Washed the cat blanket we keep on top of our bed. Set the comforter aside to take to a laundromat. Washed towels.

On Saturday, I was sitting on my bed with a cup of tea, stewing over the problem of Sillers, and she jumped up on the bed, one foot landing in my cup. She is very uncoordinated and could not have done that if she'd tried. Tea went everywhere, soaking the blanket, sheets, mattress pad. What's a little more laundry? Eventually I tried putting the comforter in the washer too, and it fit, so I didn't have to go to a laundromat. And now I have a really clean bed -- I don't usually wash the mattress pad when I wash the sheets, and the comforter hadn't been washed in probably a year.

So, OK, that was our week. Tomorrow is a holiday, so we get to take it easy for one more day. We'll probably focus on homework. I need to set up a system for checking on their assignments. I learned last year that I can't just leave it up to them. I wish I could, but my kids aren't me (at age 14). They need help. So I'll try to give it to them.

Meanwhile, welcome (purple and gold) September.

Reading post: Nisei Daughter

I have finished my tenth book for the 2022 Classics Challenge: Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone, published in 1953. I chose it to fulfill category #9: A nonfiction classic. My last two books have been about Japanese-American life both before (Yokohama, California) and during (Citizen 13660) the internment camps, and now this is a book about both times. Monica Sone begins her story around 1925 when she is six years old, and ends it in December 1944, when she is 25.

I was going to take a break from the Challenge after my last book, but Nisei Daughter was sitting there on the pile and I knew it also had something to do with the internment camps, so I just picked it up... and there you are, another book finished. It can happen.

Although I chose this as my nonfiction classic, I think my previous book, Citizen 13660, is a little closer to nonfiction than Nisei Daughter. It's probably not fair to say Sone sugar-coats her internment experience, but she seems to be trying to convince an unfriendly white-American audience of her loyalty to her country. In 1953, I guess that was still necessary. Actually, let me back up. The sugar-coating isn't really obvious until the last couple of chapters. 

Before that, this is a very interesting -- and utterly charming -- description of growing up Japanese American in Seattle in the 1920s and 30s. Sone, born in 1919, was just a few years older than my own mother, and so I kept imagining her as a darker-haired version of my mom, watching some of the same movies and reading some of the same books. Sone writes about how she and her siblings (Nisei) adopted modern American ways, much to the consternation of their Japanese-born parents (Issei), and I thought about how my mother's white American-born parents also found it hard to accept their modern children.

Still, I can't deny that there is a huge gap between Sone's early life and that of her parents. The book begins at the point when Sone's parents decide to send her and her older brother to "Japanese school" after their regular elementary school each day. Sone is furious, because up to that point she had no idea she had "Japanese blood" and now she will lose a great deal of her playtime each day. She adjusts to the school, more or less, but she never learns how to be a true Japanese girl -- which is made clear when she and her family visit Japan later on and the kids get into trouble by acting like the Americans they are. It wasn't clear to me whether Sone really learned to read and write Japanese well, or just at a rudimentary level. Her parents were both well-educated -- her father had come to America to study law, but wasn't able to pay for school, and her mother owned copies of Japanese classic literature and wrote Japanese poetry as a hobby. 

I thought, aha! there's the connection I was looking for, between classic Japanese literature and Japanese-American literature. But Sone and her siblings make fun of their mother's poems, and in 1942, as they wait to be ordered to evacuate to the internment camps, the family burns all their Japanese books and papers and artifacts, so as not to be thought disloyal to America.

And I thought, yep, that's where the connection went. The internment camps killed it, in so many ways. That really is the answer. Japanese Americans were kept in the camps for a fairly short time, but it was long enough to wreak havoc on their lives.

Of course, it was harder on the parents, the Issei, who had been in the US perhaps 30 or 40 years but were by law not allowed to become citizens. The Nisei, those American children with "Japanese blood," had a somewhat easier time of it. Sone and her family were sent to a temporary camp ("Camp Harmony") on the fairgrounds in Puyallup, Washington on May 1, 1942, and then on to the more permanent Camp Minidoka in Idaho in August, but she was allowed to leave in early spring, 1943. The West Coast was still off limits to Japanese Americans, so her parents stayed in the camps for a few more years (all the camps were closed in 1946). But Sone and her siblings were able to find jobs and school placements in the Midwest before the war ended. She went to Chicago and lived with a minister and his wife and worked for a dentist, after which it was arranged for her to go back to college, in Indiana.

So just about a year is all the time she spent in the camps. Such a mess, and it was only a year.

Sone eventually graduated from college, earned a masters in clinical psychology, and worked as a social worker for 30-some years. She married another former internee and veteran, and had four children. They lived in Canton, Ohio, and I guess had a good life, possibly a better life than she would have had in Seattle. Sone writes briefly about the prejudice her family encountered as she was growing up, and about things they weren't able to do, such as rent a vacation home. When Sone tried to enroll in business college (around 1937), she first had to prove that she had a job with a Japanese firm waiting for her after graduation, because no white firm would have hired her and the school didn't want to waste time training unemployable students.

But it doesn't sound as though things were all roses in the Midwest either. She writes briefly about how she was allowed to participate in the sorority rush at "Wendell College" (actually Hanover College -- I don't know why she changes the name in the book) but not allowed to pledge, due to the rules of the sorority's national headquarters. Some of the girls in the sorority come to apologize to her about it and she accepts their apology graciously.

I knew this call had cost them something in pride, and it took moral honesty to have come in the spirit in which they did.

It would have taken even more "moral honesty" for the girls to have dropped out of the sorority to protest those racist "national restrictions," but apparently Sone didn't expect that of them. Perhaps she felt that including this little story would encourage other white Americans to behave better.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone, with the caveat that some of the sentiments expressed in the last couple of chapters are hard to take. This is the sugar coating I referred to earlier. Sone goes back to the camp to visit her parents at Christmas in 1945 and there she has a stilted "conversation" with them about the camps, democracy, and whatnot. She says to her parents,

"In spite of the war and the mental tortures we went through, I think the Nisei have attained a clearer understanding of America and its way of life, and we have learned to value her more. Her ideas and ideals of democracy are based essentially on religious principles and her very existence depends on the faith and moral responsibilities of each individual. I used to think of the government as a paternal organization. When it failed me, I felt bitter and sullen. Now I know I'm just as responsible as the men in Washington for its actions. Somehow it all makes me feel much more at home in America."

Gag me with a spoon.

But then read Sone's preface to the 1979 edition (note: "Nikkei" means all Japanese Americans, both immigrants and their native born descendants):

So that their story will not be forgotten and lost to future generations, the Nikkeis are telling the nation about 1942, a time when they became prisoners of their own government, without charges, without trials. This happened because the President and Congress yielded to the pressures of agricultural and other economic interest groups on the West Coast, which for fifty years had tried to be rid of the Nikkeis. Mass media assisted in molding public opinion to this end. Most astounding of all, the Supreme Court chose not to touch the issue of the Niseis' civil liberties as American citizens...

I wonder whether Sone knew all this when she wrote her book. Her last chapter doesn't make it sound like she did. Or did an editor force her to add all that nonsense about how she was "just as responsible as the men in Washington"? We'll never know, I think. 

I found an obituary of Sone (she died in 2011) that said she was at work on another book when she died. I wonder whether she wrote other books and couldn't get them published. I wonder what else she might have said.