Diving into the holidays

Well, Thanksgiving is over. Rocket Boy has gone back to St. Louis and the twins and I are alone once more, with the December holidays looming ahead of us. I felt so sad when he left yesterday, but it will be OK. It actually may be a little easier to get the things on my list done when he's not here (I'm thinking about all the cookie baking). I've got three weeks until the twins get out of school and RB comes back again (we hope). Let's hope my energy lasts that long.

Turkey Day (which we should probably rename Swordfish Day) went fine. I made the cranberry sauce the day before and everything else on the day. Teen A helped me with the pie and we got a very good do on it. Rocket Boy made the mashed potatoes and gravy and assisted with the fish. Teen B refused to help with anything. I wasn't motivated to object. We had swordfish steaks with basil-lemon-caper sauce, sweet potato casserole, spinach dish, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and Pillsbury crescent rolls (which I think weren't out of the oven yet when I took the picture above). We drank two bottles of sparkling cider on Thursday and two more on Friday.

It was a quiet week, with no special activities. Teen B got his Covid booster last Sunday, so he was kind of low energy for a few days. I offered to take the kids to a movie (I think "The Menu" sounds fun), but nobody was interested. This week last year we saw FOUR movies in a theatre, plus one on DVD. This year we just watched a couple of things on DVD, "Quartet" (about a home for retired musicians, that Teen B actually enjoyed) and "The Humans" (which only Rocket Boy and I could sit through). Last year we also took a quick trip to Wyoming, but that wouldn't have worked this year, since RB had to leave on Saturday.

We got takeout from McDonald's last night, something that Rocket Boy wouldn't approve of, as a way to remind ourselves that we have fun when he's not here, too. And he called later that evening to say he'd made it to Russell, Kansas, so that made me feel better.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, so we'll light the first candle tonight, and it's also Baby Kitty's 3rd birthday, so when Teen A and I went to King Soopers this morning for his Covid booster, we also picked up a small white cake. We'll have it probably this afternoon, or possibly after dinner, which will be the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers.

And then we'll do some last-minute forgotten homework, go to bed earlier than we've been going, and get ready to go back to school for three more weeks (while Mom gets going on Christmas prep).

I've been making lists, of course. It's how I cope with complicated tasks. Some of the lists are in my head and some have already been written down. One list has to do with how I plan to handle my time on weekdays for the next three weeks. It's more of a schedule than a list:

• 7-8 am: get kids off to school
• 8-9 am: feed cats, eat breakfast, do basic routines (dishes, laundry)
  
• 9-10 am: do FlyLady stuff, i.e., cleaning and sorting
  
• 10-11 am: write
• 11-12 pm: work on a holiday task, i.e., cards, baking, decorating
• 12-1 pm: lunch, a short walk
• 1-2 pm: errands, shopping (on good-weather days)
  
• 2-3 pm: work on the desk room (long-term project to make it possible to add a desk)
• 3-4 pm: free time before the kids come home
  

This is somewhat delusional, or no, can I call it aspirational? I aspire to have my days be this organized. On the one hand it seems very unlikely, but I have to remember that these time slots put limits on the day, they don't just give me too many things to do. If I follow this schedule, that means at 10 am I will have to say, OK, FlyLady time is over -- even if I haven't mopped the floor yet. And if I spend from 10 to 10:50 diddling around and then suddenly at 10:51 I get inspired to write, well, too bad, at 11 we move on to the next thing.

Well, I'll try it this week and see how it goes.

There's another list that's more specific about what needs to get done over the next three weeks:

• Cards. Off to a good start: cards and stamps are purchased, holiday letter is almost done, and 17 envelopes have been addressed. I'm planning to write most of these this week. It's a fun activity (for me), best done before Christmas goes crazy.
  
• Calendars: I make us a personalized calendar every year and give Rocket Boy one as a present, so I have to set aside some time to do this. Could be an evening/weekend project.
• Cookies: I have decided to make 12 batches. This is so totally not going to happen. I'm sure I will make 6 as I usually do. But at the moment the plan is still 12. I am planning to start on Monday, December 5th and bake steadily for two weeks. On Monday, Dec. 19th, we're supposedly getting a new kitchen floor, so I need to be done baking by then.
• Decorating: The lights are still on the house from last year, but I forgot to ask Rocket Boy to set up a timer for them. Maybe the kids and I can figure it out ourselves. We brought the Christmas boxes up from the basement today. There's a lot of "weather" in the forecast, so it's better to do it now, when we have a clear day (though snow still covers much of the ground). We'll probably put the tree up next weekend (or the weekend after -- next weekend is filling up at an alarming rate). We're only going to put up the top half of the tree this year, since the cats were so hard on it last year, and I'll have to leave off the cat-attracting ornaments. Things that look like cat toys. Oh, speaking of decorating, in the Thanksgiving picture at the top of this post, you can see just a glimpse of the turkeys (made of pine cones and orange and yellow pipe cleaners) that I found in a cupboard and put on the table. And later, Mr. Extremely Bad Merlino took one apart. It must have looked like a cat toy.
  
• Food (other than cookies): I'll plan meals by the week, as usual, in fact I should get busy and plan this week's meals this afternoon. I've already started buying eggnog and putting it in my tea (very bad). There's already Christmas candy in a dish on the coffee table (very bad). We'll have our usual menu on Christmas Eve/Day. We haven't decided whether or not to get a honeybaked ham for Christmas -- that's the one big question mark. I like it because it's easy, but of course, it is a ham -- a dead pig that probably didn't have a very good life. OK, I know, I don't know! We'll think about this.
  
• Gifts & Giving: Colorado Gives day is December 6th. I have to make my list for that. I also should donate to the kids' school -- haven't done that yet. And then there are those family presents. I've had a few ideas, not many. Have to nail that down. I have some ideas for me (a popover pan!), and I've mentioned them aloud, but probably I won't get them. Perhaps I should buy one for myself and wrap it up. I might. I wonder if McGuckin's carries them.
  
• Music: In addition to playing records and CDs and listening to KOSI 101.1 in the car, I'd like to go to some holiday performances. I love the harp concert at the library, but this year they're doing it at the Meadows branch and it conflicts with something else I'm doing next weekend, so maybe next year. I decided the CU holiday concert was too expensive and just now I looked at another holiday concert and the tickets are $40! For a concert in a church. At least the Lights of December parade is free. If I can convince anyone to go with me this year. It's more of a little kid thing. Maybe Teen B will go.
  
• Religious Observances: We've set up the Advent wreath and candles and will light the first candle tonight. I feel like going to church -- maybe I'll go on Dec. 11th or 18th (the 4th won't work because the kids are getting their flu shots that morning. Busy busy busy). Hanukkah is late this year, but I bought a new box of candles already, because those tend to vanish from local stores. And maybe we'll have latkes one night.
  

It sounds like a lot, but I'm looking forward to it. It's so funny about Christmas. Sometimes I'll try poking myself during other months, to see if I'm interested in thinking about Christmas yet, and I never am. Even in October, so close, Christmas is completely unappealing. I think, why would anyone want to decorate in red and green?

And then we get past Thanksgiving and all of a sudden, whoosh, all I can think about is red and green.

However, I also know how quickly it goes, so I'm going to try to enjoy all the bits and pieces as they flash by.

With only one month and three days left of the calendar year, I've started to think about what I wanted to achieve in 2022 and what I could still do. I took a look at my resolutions list and started checking off things I've done -- it looks like about a third of my goals were achieved. A third is not bad, actually. I'm pleased with what I've done. But I'm wondering what else I could do before January 1st.

Maybe I shouldn't do that. December is crazy enough already. Well, I'll see.

One goal that I've happily achieved already -- as always -- has to do with my reading. The goal was 52 books and I'm already up to 106, with a whole month (and three days) left to read. I read all my books for the Classics Challenge, four Presidential biographies, and all the books for my book group, and I read aloud many books to the kids. I guess I'll need to do a "wrap-up" post for the Classics Challenge soon, but I don't think the organizer has posted the link-up page yet, so I won't worry about it for now. I've been thinking about what my theme might be next year, but I'm wondering if there will be a Challenge next year. If there isn't, I'll challenge myself in some way.

I'm currently reading two books at the same time -- it was three books, but I decided to set one aside for later because it's confusing enough switching back and forth between two. One of the books is Howards End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home by Susan Hill, and it's given me an idea that I may pursue next year. As I've been decluttering, the last few months, I've come across a lot of books that have been sitting on my shelves for years without being read. I'm thinking maybe 2023 is the year I read some of those books and then make decisions about them: to keep or donate. Shelf space has gotten to be such a premium in this house -- I feel that books should earn their spots, and if they've never been read, well...

It's 5 pm and I haven't gotten done some of the things on the list -- haven't addressed any cards, haven't planned any meals, haven't celebrated the Baby Kitty's birthday. I did spend roughly an hour helping Teen A with an essay that was supposed to be turned in before the break. I think I need to finish this blog post up and move on to another task (probably Teen B's homework). Oh, Christmas, are you making me crazy already?

Reading post: This year's presidential biographies

Looking at the title of this post, I can hardly imagine anything more boring and off-putting. So please, if it strikes you that way, feel free not to read it. I just thought I'd like to record my thoughts on the presidential biographies I read this year, and how my presidential biography reading project is going in general.

First I want to reiterate that my project would have floundered long ago were it not for this site:  https://bestpresidentialbios.com/. Its official title is "My Journey through the Best Presidential Biographies" and it's wonderful. Written by a guy called "Steve." Definitely visit it if you're considering a journey like this, or if you'd just like to read a few presidential bios. He has great advice, and lots of people comment on his posts and offer their own suggestions. It's a community of serious armchair intellectuals, but not snobby at all.

I read books about four Presidents from the late 1800s this year. I knew almost nothing about any of them beforehand. Their terms were oddly intertwined with my grandparents' births. To wit:

1. James Abram Garfield, 20th President. He was elected Nov. 1880, and a few weeks later my mother's father was born and given the name Garfield (Garfy for short). President Garfield took office in March 1881, was shot by an assassin in July 1881, and died Sep. 1881. I wonder whether Garfield's extremely disappointing presidency had any effect on the disappointing life of his namesake (my grandfather).
   
2. Chester Alan Arthur, 21st President. As Vice President, he took over in Sep. 1881 and served out the remainder of Garfield's term. He was not chosen as the Republican candidate in the 1884 election, and left office in March 1885, a few weeks before my mother's mother was born in April.
   
3. (Stephen) Grover Cleveland, 22nd President. He took office in March 1885, but lost his reelection bid in Nov. 1888, and left office in March 1889, a week or so after my father's father was born in February.
   
4. Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President. He took office March 1889, but lost his reelection bid in Nov. 1892, and left office in March 1893.
5. (Stephen) Grover Cleveland, 24th President. He was reelected in Nov. 1892, took office in March 1893, and finally left office for good in March 1897 (my father's mother was born during this second term, in August 1894).
   

So three out of my four grandparents were born while Grover Cleveland was in office.

Pretty neat, no? Who was President when you were born? Your parents? Grandparents?

Almost nobody thinks about any of these guys anymore. I recently read an article about how if Trump is re-elected in 2024 (God forbid), he'll be like Grover Cleveland, serving nonconsecutive terms. That's what Cleveland is known for, being both the 22nd and the 24th President. Arthur is known for -- nothing that I can think of. Benjamin Harrison is known for being President William Henry Harrison's grandson, and also for serving that one term in between Cleveland's two terms. And Garfield is known for being one of the four U.S. Presidents to be assassinated.

I didn't know any more than that. So I had a lot to learn about them. Here's how it went.

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard. This isn't a traditional biography, but it covers all the bases of James Garfield's life and tragic death (spoiler alert: his doctors killed him, not the gunman) and is just a great book all around. I wish Candice Millard a long, happy life with time to write many more books, because I want to read them all. Anyway, this was such an interesting book. I highly recommend it to anyone, not just presidential biography nerds. Millard makes it sound as though Garfield would have been a fabulous leader had he lived. Oh well.

Steve highly recommends this book too, but feels that "it falls somewhat short as a presidential biography" of James Garfield. I disagree. I thought it was the perfect biography. In fact, after reading it I decided that I would seek out this sort of biography in future. I want the drama, the color, the human interest. The dry dull facts are not interesting to me.

Unfortunately, most Presidents have not been profiled by Candice Millard.

***

Gentleman Boss: The Life and Times of Chester Alan Arthur by Thomas C. Reeves. I knew nothing, nothing at all about Chester A. Arthur before this year, but now I feel as though I know him well. Arthur was practically a criminal before he became President, completely unqualified for the job, but then he reformed himself and became an honorable man. His story would make a good opera. 

I'm serious -- I can see it now. Act 1 would begin with Arthur and the rest of Roscoe Conkling's "machine" gang swaggering around and singing about how much money they were stealing from the Customs House (Arthur was the Collector). At some point there would be a brief scene with his wife (a mezzo?), showing how he mostly ignored her and hung out with his buddies till all hours. Then he's fired as Collector, then his wife dies -- he would have a sad song there, the first sign that he's changing. Then he's elected Vice President, which is mostly a joke, back to the ha ha ha of Act 1, Scene 1. Then Garfield is shot and Arthur becomes President -- oh, the devastation he felt! That would make a wonderful dramatic aria. Then there's Julia Sand, the woman who wrote to him out of the blue and encouraged him to do the right thing. She would be a soprano. They could sing a duet, each in a different room (I can just see the staging). Finally, after doing many good deeds, Arthur would leave office and die of Bright's Disease, and on his deathbed sing one last aria about how he hopes he has done enough to redeem himself for his bad behavior.

I wish I were a composer and could write this opera. Someone should.

***

Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character by Alyn Brodsky. Another surprising story, more things to learn. My first surprise came in the introduction -- or was it a preface? I don't have the book here to check. Anyway, the author refers to himself and someone else as "Grover Cleveland fans." I did not know there were people who identify themselves as such. It turns out that Grover Cleveland was a very honorable man, with high moral standards. He worked hard to get rid of the "spoils system," whereby Presidents handed out civil service jobs to pay back debts, ignoring whether people were actually qualified to do the jobs or not. 

Much of the book I read dealt with two big issues in Cleveland's presidency: the tariff and bimetallism. The tariff, I finally figured out, was a tax on imported goods, and the controversy was over how high it should be to protect American goods from cheap foreign imports. But I never did understand bimetallism. The two metals in question are gold and silver, so it was about whether the country should just have the gold standard or whether it should have a gold standard and a silver standard, which states like Colorado wanted because they produced a lot of silver. I just don't understand what that means, and Alyn Brodsky, the author, didn't bother to explain. I guess he felt that if anyone was weird enough to want to read a biography of Grover Cleveland, they must understand how money works.

What I found most interesting about Grover Cleveland was his personal life. He married his best friend's daughter, who became his ward when the friend died. He waited until she was 22 and had graduated from college and then he swept her off to the White House to be his bride (he was nearly 50). I wanted to hear more about that, but Alyn Brodsky just gave me more about bimetallism.

This was a very boring book.

***

The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison by Homer E. Socolofsky and Allan B. Spetter. This is the book I just finished and my, it was dull. (Duller than the Cleveland book? Hard to say. Maybe. They were both extremely dull.) 

Steve admitted that there weren't a lot of good choices for this President. He recommended the first two volumes of a three-volume biography, with this book substituted for the third volume. Well... I didn't want to waste that many hours of my life reading about Benjamin Harrison, so I just went with this book. It was (barely) bearable. I made it through. 

One problem I had with the book is that it is organized topically rather than chronologically. This was probably necessary because there were two authors, one who focused on domestic issues and the other on foreign affairs. But it meant that certain events were mentioned multiple times, e.g., the illness and death of Harrison's Secretary of State, James G. Blaine. Over and over, Blaine's incapacity was mentioned, and I kept having to calculate -- how sick is he at this point? when is he going to resign? when is he going to die? 

The index lists Blaine's death as happening on page 193. But his illnesses, eventual resignation, and death are mentioned in several other places. Other events that are mentioned repeatedly include the death by fire of the Secretary of the Navy's family, the death of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the death of Harrison's wife. (His was a very gloomy administration.)

This book is really a biography of Harrison's presidency, not the man himself, and the authors apparently felt they would be shirking their duty if they didn't discuss every single thing that happened from November 1888 to March 1893. Thus there is a long boring section about pork tariff disputes with Germany and another boring (and rather distressing) section about hunting the seal herd in the Bering Sea. 

I was horrified to read about Harrison's four Supreme Court picks, which helped to turn the court very conservative. I may have been reading this wrong, but it seemed as though the authors were pleased about this:

In a series of dramatic decisions over a four-month period in 1895--representing perhaps the high point of judicial supremacy in all of American history--the Supreme Court upheld the use of the injunction against strikes, seriously weakened the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and declared invalid the income tax, which was part of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894.

The high point? Not the term I would have chosen. This court was also responsible for Plessy v. Ferguson "which in 1896 established the validity of segregation in the United States." (Doesn't that sound as though the authors think segregation really is valid?)

Oh well. The main thing I remember about Benjamin Harrison isn't from this book. It's the statue of him we saw in Rapid City, South Dakota, when we went there with the twins to see Mount Rushmore, back in 2015, was it? 2016? Anyway, Rapid City has statues of all the US Presidents scattered around its downtown streets, and I remember the one of Benjamin Harrison because he's seated on a bench feeding birds. There's a good picture of it here.

There wasn't anything about him feeding birds in this biography. It was mostly about the tariff, bimetallism, and James G. Blaine's health, and about how Harrison was kind of a jerk and offended everyone. I'm glad to be done with him and this book.

***

Next year, if all goes well, I will read biographies of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, and Woodrow Wilson, which will really bring us into the modern era. Studying Steve's reviews, I think I may count Doris Kearns Goodwin's The Bully Pulpit as my bio of both Roosevelt and Taft. We'll see. 

I started this presidential biography project back in 2011. This is how it has gone so far:

• 2011: Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
• 2012: John Adams by David McCullough
• 2013: Thomas Jefferson by R.B. Bernstein
• 2014: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham; James Madison by Richard Brookhiser; The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness by Harlow Giles Unger; John Quincy Adams: American Visionary by Fred Kaplan
• 2015: Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times by H.W. Brands
• 2016: Martin Van Buren by Ted Widmer
• 2017: William Henry Harrison by Gail Collins; John Tyler by Gary May
• 2018: James K. Polk by John Seigenthaler; Zachary Taylor by John S.D. Eisenhower; Millard Fillmore by Ted Gottfried; Franklin Pierce by Michael F. Holt
• 2019: James Buchanan by Jean H. Baker
• 2020:
• 2021: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Abraham Lincoln); The Presidency of Andrew Johnson by Albert Castel; Grant by Jean Edward Smith; Rutherford B. Hayes by Hans L. Trefousse
• 2022: Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard (James Garfield); Gentleman Boss: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur by Thomas C. Reeves; Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character by Alyn Brodsky; The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison by Homer E. Socolofsky and Allan B. Spetter
  

Never thought it would take me so long, but it's been fun and I hope it will continue to be fun.

Happy Thanksgiving week

I'm feeling good. And have been, mostly, for a few weeks now, which is a nice change from the previous couple of months. My psyche seems to have two basic settings: pleasantly happy and down in the dumps. I almost never get wildly happy, and I almost never get so depressed I can't get out of bed. But even though my depressions are manageable, I naturally prefer the happy times.

I think I never mentioned what happened with my drug situation. I had stopped taking rosuvastatin after becoming convinced that (a) I didn't need it, and (b) my super low LDL cholesterol might be contributing to my depression. I was off it for probably a couple of weeks? Then I met with my endocrinologist, and she convinced me to go back on it -- but at half the dose. My regular doc agreed and so I cut all my 10-mg pills in half and now I take half a pill a day (5 mg). I'm OK with that for now. The endocrinologist explained to me that rosuvastatin is the best statin there is because it works so well at such low doses and has so few side effects compared to other statins. Even though I don't have heart disease, since I have diabetes I'm still at risk for strokes and other problems that the statin will help with. And a 5 mg dose should do the trick. If my cholesterol stays super low, we could always cut 5 mg pills in half (they don't make them any smaller than 5 mg).

Anyway, maybe my cholesterol had nothing to do with the depression and it was just time for me to feel better. Or maybe my LDL has gone up a little and that's helping. Or maybe Rocket Boy's arrival pulled me out of the swamp. Whatever it is, I'm feeling better. 

Oh, and I am almost 100% over my cold, after more than two weeks. No one else has any lingering traces of it, but I still have a slight cough. But it's very slight.

This is all good, since Thanksgiving is right around the corner. I am ready, more or less (unlike "The Woman" in "Breaking Cat News" today, who is taking a nap with all the cats because she feels overwhelmed). Here are the plans:

• It will just be us four, unless an unexpected guest pops up at the last minute. We'll eat at our regular dining room table. I will probably not change the tablecloth (just sponge it off). I won't make a centerpiece (there's no room on the table), but I might set up a little decoration on the coffee table or something like that. Has to be cat-proof, though.
  
• We will have our usual menu: swordfish with lemon-caper sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potato casserole, spinach dish, rolls, cranberry sauce, sparkling cider, pumpkin pie and whipped cream. I already have most of the ingredients. I'll do a Sprouts run on Wednesday to get the swordfish and some more lemons.
  
• I will pretend to forget that there is such a thing as stuffing until the last minute when Rocket Boy decides we need it and runs off to the store to get the ingredients. I feel that stuffing is one starch too many. Sometimes I win that argument and sometimes RB does. 
• The house is already pretty clean, but I will do my usual "home blessing" on Monday so it will be cleaner.
• I will probably make the cranberry sauce on Tuesday, and maybe some other sides on Wednesday. I'll see. It's totally doable to make it all on Thursday instead. I'll try to get the twins to help with at least one dish each, like we did last year.
  

It should be a nice day.

We had two snowstorms last week, a little one on Monday night (or was it Sunday?) and a big one on Thursday. We got about four inches with the first one and about 10 inches with the second one. It was extremely cold all week, so nothing has melted yet, but it's supposed to be in the 40s and 50s in the week ahead. Thank goodness. I understand, I live in Colorado where there is snow and snow is a good thing. But I'm still always relieved when it melts.

Nobody made a snowman or snow angels with this storm. Maybe during Winter Break the kids will feel more like kids. Or maybe they're just too old for that sort of activity.

Thursday was a pretty yucky day, with snow already starting to fall when the kids were getting ready for school. Extremely cold, too. I thought it was too cold to snow, but apparently not. 

Teen B had a band concert scheduled for 6 pm and I was sure it would be cancelled, sure the superintendent would cancel all after-school activities -- but the ways of superintendents are mysterious, and he did not. So the band teachers had to go ahead with it. They sent out emails saying the kids wouldn't be penalized if they couldn't make it (concerts are part of their grade), but we decided to try. We took Rocket Boy's car and he drove, which was good since I kept my eyes closed. I've been driving in winter weather since 1988, when I started grad school in Michigan, but I still hate it. I don't have the confidence of a native. Rocket Boy learned to drive in Colorado -- icy roads don't scare him.

And I was very glad we'd made the effort, since if they'd rescheduled, Rocket Boy wouldn't have been able to go -- and 13 out of 14 kids in Teen B's class were there. I think there were a few more missing from the advanced band, but not many. The sound was a little ragged, but I think that's because there are so few kids. They lost their one and only trumpet player a while back. There's only one flute player (an unidentified adult stepped in and played too, to help out). It's all because of Covid disruptions over the last few years. They do the best they can. 

White-breasted nuthatch (above the squirrel)

So now we have Fall Break week, which is also Rocket Boy's last week here. He should leave next Saturday to drive back to St. Louis. He's already started saying things like "I might leave on Sunday instead" and "I might still be driving on Monday," but I am trying to put a stop to that. He told his boss he'll be back on Monday, so he should be back on Monday.

That means we only have five more days with him, not counting today. At his request, I made a Projects list for him, things we should try to get done before he goes. So far, there are 8 things on the list and only one has been done (putting the last dose of sealant on the bathroom tile). By me, today, because Rocket Boy took Teen A to Denver to go to the History Museum. It's OK, I'm glad they went. We're trying to do more things with the twins separately, to reduce the competition and fighting, and RB took Teen B mini golfing last weekend.

So I did the tile sealing by myself. Probably wrongly, even though the tile guy showed me how to do it. The bottle of sealant said to put it on a clean white towel and then rub the towel on the tile, but it wasn't clear that enough sealant was really going on the tile. The towel seemed to soak it all up. I kept putting more on the towel, but it didn't seem to matter. When the tile guy did it, there was drippage.

It might be because I left the sealant outside for most of last week and it froze (and then thawed yesterday, when I brought it in). Maybe something about it changed, due to freezing and thawing.

Oh well. It will probably be fine.

Anyway, we've got five days to get seven more "Projects" done (and whatever else I think of for that list), plus do fun things with the twins who will be off school, plus celebrate Thanksgiving, plus Rocket Boy has to work.

I don't know how it will all happen, actually. But it will. And it will probably be fine. Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S. There is a magpie in this picture, in the middle near the top.

November flies by

November is really flying by, but I'm enjoying it. One more week of school, then a week off (then Rocket Boy leaves), then a half week more -- and then December. 

We're having lovely November weather, cold and crisp. A bit lacking in snow, but we might get some at the end of the week. The kids seem to have forgotten about winter -- OK, late fall -- and we keep having fights about long pants, shoes, coats... Teen A keeps GROWING, which yes, I know, it's normal, but it means I have to keep replacing all his clothes. Yesterday I had to make an emergency run to Target to get him another pair of pants and two shirts. Fortunately Target isn't very expensive. But he also needs new pajama pants, and I need some new pants...

Yesterday I spent almost $300, just doing ordinary things. How did I do that?

• Haircut for Teen A ($30)
• Vet appointment for Baby Kitty ($69)
• Target run to get pants, shirts, cat food, chips, bread ($62.43)
• Gas for Rocket Boy's car at Costco ($47.71)
• Dinner out at Village Inn, plus a whole pie to take home ($82.33)

That's, let's see, $291.47. It would have been a little more except that they gave us the "senior discount" at Village Inn (which we didn't ask for). 

Yes, there were some special things: we don't get haircuts EVERY week (though sometimes it seems that way), and the cats don't go to the vet that often, and we only eat out once a week, etc., etc. But there's always something special. How are most people managing right now?

I look at that list of purchases and try to think how we could have reduced it. I guess I could have shopped for Teen A at Goodwill instead of Target, but teenagers have very specific requirements for their clothes. At least his shirts are cheap ($6 each), but of course then you think about sweatshops and all that. They were made in Indonesia, probably by very poor people.

I could have made a pie instead of buying it. I should have done. In penance, I have already started dinner prep for today (we are having Spinach Rice Casserole from the Moosewood Cookbook).

***

This was a fun week, despite the fact that we were sick. I came down with that virus on Friday the 4th and now it is Sunday the 13th and I am still coughing a little. I was really good about staying home, taking it easy, getting enough sleep, doing nasal cleanses and salt water gargles -- all of that. But the darn thing hangs on. I'm the only family member still showing signs of it. I have a feeling that's how it's going to be from now on. I've become a little more fragile than even Rocket Boy.

On Tuesday, Teen B's music teacher sent out an email to all the parents informing them that some grant had come through which would enable a group of students to attend a performance of Rigoletto at Opera Colorado on Thursday -- and did any parents want to be chaperones? I said yes immediately, but then there was the problem of background checks. There hadn't been any need for those in middle school, due to the pandemic, and I'd let mine lapse. I finally applied for a clearance on Wednesday afternoon and it came through within hours, so I was good to go. 

On Thursday morning, Teen B and I (armed with many many cough drops) joined about 27 other students, 2 other moms, and a teacher, and rode a school bus to Denver. The bus let us off about a block from the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, where I had never been before, and we walked quickly through the cold, getting there about 10 minutes before the opera started. It was a performance specifically for schools, and not just high schools. There were lots of elementary school kids there -- and what they got out of Rigoletto I have NO idea. During intermission they sat out in the lobby and ate their sack lunches, looking confused. But I loved it! The music was wonderful (even in the shortened form they present to kids)! I don't think I had ever heard this opera before, other than the famous aria that is used to sell pizza, but the music just delighted me. Teen B was a little less impressed. He had refused to let me educate him about opera, this opera, or anything beforehand. He told me afterwards he had thought "Rigoletto" was a type of music, not a character's name.

I'm sure he didn't learn anything useful from this, like, listen to your mother when she tries to explain something to you? At least now he has some idea of what opera is (and will probably never voluntarily see another).

But that wasn't the end of our cultural enrichment for the week. For the past few weeks our next-door neighbors have had a yard sign advertising not a political candidate but a musical, Mamma Mia!, at the other high school (the ones the twins don't go to). Performances were Wednesday through Saturday, and I thought Friday might be our best bet. All performances were sold out, but the website said if you went at 6:15 when the box office opened, you might be able to get seats that someone else had turned in. So Rocket Boy and I did that (the twins were not interested). We put our names on a list and waited for a while, during which time we opened the door for other people (for some reason the outside doors were locked). We were sitting on a bench next to a recycling bin, so after a while RB reached into the bin, pulled out an empty water bottle, and put it in the door to hold it open. A man came by and removed the water bottle, so when he wasn't looking, RB got another bottle out of the bin and replaced it in the door, and later still another. This embarrassed me horribly and he teased me for being embarrassed.

Eventually our names were called and we got excellent seats, right in the middle, maybe five rows back from the stage.

The only problem was, I couldn't fit in the seats. They were big enough for my bottom, but not my legs. This particular auditorium is constructed very oddly, almost as though the architect thought only short people would be sitting in the seats. Or maybe the original design wasn't going to accommodate enough people, so they shrunk the rows? I don't know. All I know is that for someone with a bad knee, that threatens to lock up occasionally, those seats are scary. If there is an empty seat next to you, you can sit sideways (this is what we did the last time we attended a performance here), but this time there were no empty seats near us. We sat down and I immediately freaked out. "I can't sit here," I said. "If my knee locks up, I'll be screwed."

"What are you going to do?" Rocket Boy asked. He was having his own problems fitting his long legs in his seat's space. 

"I'll sit in the lobby and wait until it's over," I said. "You stay. Enjoy it!" I got up and left, Rocket Boy trailing after me. He tried to get me to ask someone to switch with us -- maybe there were some seats for people like me. I refused to consider it and marched out of the auditorium. I sat down on the bench in the lobby where we'd waited for tickets and got out my phone. Only 43% power. Would it last the two-plus hours I'd have to wait? Well, I didn't need a phone. I could just sit there. Or I could walk home, but it was really cold.

Suddenly I heard Rocket Boy's voice calling me. I looked up. "I got us seats!" he shouted. "But hurry!" I got up and followed him. "I asked two girls to trade with us," he explained. "They were very happy to have our seats." We rushed into the auditorium as the pre-play announcements were being made. I couldn't look at anyone, I was so embarrassed. He hurried me to a row of seats in the front of the balcony that had nothing in front of them -- full legroom. Glorious. But so embarrassing. He teased me about it all the way home and all the next day.

We enjoyed the musical thoroughly, and our next-door neighbor's kid had a small but delightful part.

The next day I decided to make a list in my list book of all the "events" I'd gone to in 2022. I used to do that (I've been keeping a list book since 1980), but stopped about five years ago or so. You don't go to too many "events" when you have elementary-school aged children AND you're flat broke. But seeing both Rigoletto and Mamma Mia! in one week made me want to record "events" again. So I tried, using this blog as a memory helper, to recreate the year. 

It's a pretty sad list. I saw a high school play and a high school musical, one middle school musical, three of Teen B's band concerts, one free "Faculty Tuesday" concert at CU, and Rigoletto. We took two trips (Nebraska for Spring Break and St. Louis). I had a cardiac catheterization and Rocket Boy had a horrible creepy surgery. We watched the twins graduate from middle school. 

Surely I can do better than that. Maybe I'll make that a goal in 2023. Or 2024. At some point I'd like to start going to performances again, even if the twins don't want to go.

***

So we have two more weeks with Rocket Boy. One week of school and one week of no school. I need to firm up my Thanksgiving menu and start shopping for it, as the FlyLady recommends. All I've bought so far is some frozen spinach and some extra butter. Most of what we need is fresh stuff, so I can't buy all of that ahead -- but it's not too early to buy potatoes and cranberries, I could do that.

I finished the book for the book group last night, and today I picked up three books at the library that I'd requested, so I have lots more to read. 

I'm still puzzling about Christmas gifts. We decided to go ahead and get the kitchen floor (with its big hole in the middle) replaced in December, so that's going to cost about $2500. We put a $1500 deposit down on Friday (speaking of spending money recently). Then we've got to buy Rocket Boy a plane ticket to come for Christmas, which is going to cost around $400, though I'm going to make him pay for that himself. Our joint bank account is really suffering right now.

Then there are charitable contributions. I always like to give away a lot of money in December. This year it will be less, but I'd rather give at least some money away than spend a lot of it on unnecessary presents.

So what do I do about the presents? Could I make some? What on earth do you make for teenage boys? Maybe some gift certificates, like "I Owe You one batch of your favorite kind of cookies." Wrapped in a big box, maybe, or a big reusable gift bag. 

I went to McGuckin's today, just to have a look at their Christmas stuff. I bought an Advent calendar (an inexpensive one, $6), and a box of Hanukkah candles (the cheapest they had, $4), and a Christmas-themed magnetic list pad ($7), and with tax and "rounding up for charity" it came to exactly $19. Christmas adds up quickly. I didn't buy any candy, or any holiday dishtowels (though I admired them), or a new ornament (saw a cute quail), or a box of cards (I'm going to drag Rocket Boy back there next weekend to choose some). 

There weren't very many people in McGuckin's, nor at the grocery store either. I don't know where everyone is this weekend.

Well, time to go make Spinach Rice Casserole, help with homework, and enjoy a little more November. We've got a cold week ahead of us. Glad we have a cozy little house.

Reading post: Journey to Topaz and a few other books

I'm done! I've finished my twelfth book for the 2022 Classics Challenge: Journey to Topaz by Yoshiko Uchida, published in 1971. I chose it to fulfill category #3: A classic by a woman author. This is yet another book about the Japanese American internment camps. It's not bad, but it was a little disappointing after reading so many other books about the camps. 

Journey to Topaz is a children's book, which is probably why it was less satisfying for me. Yuki, the main character, is 11, and Amazon rates it as for age 9-12 or grades 4-6. It would bore my 14-year-olds. Maybe when they were 9 or 10 it would have suited.

Yoshiko Uchida wasn't a child during the internment, even though she writes about the experience from a child's point of view. She was around the same age as some of my other authors -- born in 1921, two years after Monica Sone and two years before John Okada, she was 20 and a senior at UC Berkeley when she was forced to enter the temporary holding camp at Tanforan (like Toshio Mori and Miné Okubo, who were in their 30s at the time) and then on to the Topaz internment camp in Utah. However, Uchida worked as a teacher in the camps, and that must be how she gained insight into what the experience was like for children.

The story begins on Sunday, December 7, 1941. Yuki is at home in Berkeley with her parents. Listening to the radio during lunch they hear about the attack on Pearl Harbor, but at first they don't believe it. Later the same day, however, FBI agents show up at the house and take Yuki's father away. He is held at Immigration Headquarters in San Francisco for a few weeks and then sent to an internment camp in Montana. Meanwhile, Yuki's mother and brother Ken, a college student, must pack up the house in preparation for their own "evacuation": selling what they can, giving what they can to friends to store. Yuki must give up her beloved dog Pepper and her bird, Old Salt. 

On May 1st, 1942, they report to the Tanforan Assembly Center, where they are assigned to live in a former horse stall (as Miné Okubo also describes, in Citizen 13660). Four months later, they are sent to the internment camp in Topaz, Utah, where they spend a year, during which time her father is released from the camp in Montana and comes to join them at Topaz, and her brother leaves them to join the Army. But Yuki's father begins to be threatened by a group of "bitter, frustrated, and fanatical men who seemed to hate everybody, especially those residents who worked with the Caucasian administrative staff." 

Fearing for his life, Yuki's father somehow gets permission for the family to leave the camp and move to Salt Lake City. On the last page of the book, they get on a bus that will take them to their new life. Yuki is happy: "It was as though she had climbed out of a cocoon and suddenly discovered the sun." Of course, they aren't going home -- the West Coast is still off limits to Japanese Americans -- and Yuki's father doesn't know what he'll do in Salt Lake City (in Berkeley he worked for a large Japanese firm), and he'll have to report regularly to a parole officer... but it's still better than the camp. At least they hope it will be.

Sections of the book are interesting and moving, while others seem too childish. I was particularly unimpressed by the ending, which seemed written entirely for young children. But this is a book for children, I kept reminding myself. It's good that a book like this exists. Elementary school kids could learn a lot from a book like this. I didn't learn anything, but that's because I'd already read Citizen 13660 and Nisei Daughter.

When I read Uchida's bio on Wikipedia, I realized that she had written a lot of books, and perhaps this wasn't the best one I could have chosen. The problem was that although she published her first book in 1949, the books I would have been interested in reading were written later, after 1972, which is the cut-off for the Classics Challenge this year. So this one was probably the best choice for the Challenge -- but there's no reason why I can't read some of the others too. Thus I put in library requests for three other books by Uchida: Journey Home (1978), the sequel to Journey to Topaz, about what happens to Yuki and her family after the camps; Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese Family (1982), a memoir about what really happened to Uchida and her family; and Picture Bride (1987), a novel for adults about a young woman who comes to California from Japan in 1917 for an arranged marriage.

I'm going to go ahead and post this now, but I'll update it as the other books come in and I read them.

Update #1 (11/14): I've now read Journey Home, the sequel to Journey to Topaz, and I did like it a bit better, in part because I haven't read this story over and over. It also just seemed more honest. It was published in 1978, seven years after the first book. I wonder whether children asked Uchida, "What happened next?" This book is No-No Boy for children.

At the start of Journey Home, Yuki and her parents are living in Salt Lake City, in an apartment in the house of an elderly white couple. The woman expresses doubt that the U.S. would have imprisoned Japanese Americans unless they really were a threat, and Yuki can't convince her otherwise. Later, the family is able to return to Berkeley, but bad things happen there too. Yuki's father can't find work and they have to live dormitory style at the Japanese church. Someone chops down the cherry tree planted next to Yuki's sister's grave in the cemetery. Eventually they join forces with others to start a small grocery store, but someone who doesn't like Japanese sets it on fire. Yuki's brother Ken is wounded in the fighting in Europe and is sent home, but he must use a cane and is very depressed because a close friend of his died in the war.

I suppose if I were a kid, I might not like this book because it's too depressing. But as an adult I find it realistic. The happy ending, when it comes -- and it does come -- feels earned. Yuki grows and changes, as do the other characters. Anyone who reads Journey to Topaz should definitely also read Journey Home to get the whole story.

Update #2 (11/15): I finished Picture Bride this evening (it was another very easy read). This is Uchida's adult novel (published in 1987) covering some of the same territory as the two children's books. It starts in 1917 when Hana, a young woman from Japan, arrives in California to be the "picture bride" of Taro Takeda, and continues until 1943, when Taro dies -- guess where? In the Topaz internment camp. Uchida does a good job of imagining what it must have been like for the picture brides. I read a short bio of Uchida online here and it sounds as though her own mother was a sort of picture bride.

In some ways the book sounds like a children's book, and since this was Uchida's only novel for adults, it makes sense that she would have trouble changing the voice she's accustomed to using in her writing. The main difference seems to be that the adults have sex, and each time sex was mentioned I found it jarring. 

The book has four main sections: 1917-1918, 1920-1921, 1930-1940, and 1941-1943. The first section was the most interesting to me, while the third section was the weakest. The Great Depression isn't even mentioned, which seemed very odd. The fourth section is Journey to Topaz all over again -- Hana and Taro live in a former horse stable at Tanforan and all the rest of it. The characters in Picture Bride act out many of the same incidents that occur in Journey to Topaz. I'm very curious now to read Uchida's nonfiction memoir, Desert Exile (still on its way to me through Prospector).

Picture Bride ends in 1943, with Hana still at Topaz. She plans to stay until she can go back to California (with her husband's remains), even though her daughter lives in Salt Lake City and she could leave to join her there. She has great plans for herself in the future -- she will buy back the shop Taro had to sell when they went into the camp and become an American citizen. In some ways the ending is as falsely cheerful as the ending of Journey to Topaz. This isn't my favorite Uchida book.

Update #3 (12/9): I have finally read my third follow-up book, Desert Exile, Uchida's nonfiction memoir of the evacuation and life in the camps, published in 1982. It came to me from the Regis University library and for some reason took a very long time to get here.

I was looking forward to reading this book of Uchida's, and in some ways I was not disappointed by it. I finally learned the sources of many of the stories she tells in her other books. There are no false happy endings. The book actually has a somewhat happy ending, because Uchida and her sister both did well in later life (they were in their early 20s when they were in the camps), but it's an earned -- and qualified -- happy ending. Their father worked a succession of menial jobs after getting out of Topaz and then had a stroke, but never lost his positive attitude.

But Uchida is angry in this book. Of course, she was angry in all the books she wrote about the evacuation, but in this book she makes no attempt to tone down her anger. It's there on almost every page and she makes it clear that her anger is justified. So that was good to read from her at last.

It's funny, though. I kept losing the thread of the story, had some trouble making it through. Maybe I've read this story (told by different people) too many times now. What I started thinking, toward the end, was that the book I really wanted to be reading was Miné Okubo's Citizen 13660. Okubo lived in the same horse stable at Tanforan that Uchida's family did, and Uchida tells a funny story about her:

The artist who lived a few stalls down tried to solve her need for privacy by tacking a large "Quarantined--Do Not Enter" sign on her door. But rather than keeping people away, it only drew further attention to her reluctant presence.

"What's wrong with you?" her friends would call.

And she would shout back, "Hoof and mouth disease. Go away!"

If I were going to recommend a book about the camps to someone who knew nothing about them, which one would I recommend? To a child, of course, Uchida's Journey to Topaz, even though I had issues with it. But to an adult? Desert Exile is good, and Monica Sone's Nisei Daughter is good, but Miné Okubo's Citizen 13660 maybe cuts to the chase better than any of them. I don't know. My opinion seems to change based on my mood. In the end, I'm glad all these books exist, and of course there have been more written since then. They describe a very challenging time in our nation's history, a shameful time, a time that mustn't be forgotten.

Goodbye Halloween, hello November

It's November! In fact, it's November 6th, so it's been November for a while. But I must start this post with Halloween, which was last Monday, and which we enjoyed very much.

Although I had planned to carve the pumpkins on Sunday, we ended up doing them all on Monday afternoon, which was fine. I carved three and Teen B carved one (Teen A declined to participate). I thought they looked very nice and they certainly attracted trick-or-treaters -- we had as many as we've ever gotten, maybe 30 or so. I had bought a few bags of candy at the last minute, and to appease Rocket Boy some granola bars, and we ended up giving out a lot of everything.

Teen B wanted to go trick-or-treating, so we made a costume out of his old wizard hat (the only part of the costume that still fits) and my old witch cape from, hmm, 6th grade? Why do I still have that? Maybe just for this purpose. He said lots of people praised his "costume." The thing is, you can't see costumes very well in the dark, so he really looked just fine. Many kids who came to our door seemed to be wearing sort of generic costumes that I couldn't identify. It's all good.

I usually go out with the boys, and it's very fun, but Rocket Boy hadn't had the chance to do it in a long time. So I suggested he accompany Teen B, and I think they had a good time together. Teen A and I stayed home and watched the movie of The Woman in Black, which was not very much like the book and was full of jump scares, most of which scared me. Also,  just as something scary was about to happen, our own front door handle would jiggle, scaring me before I remembered to jump up and grab our bowl of candy for the kids at the door.

Teen B came home with a massive amount of candy, but it is already basically all gone. Teen A finished off all the leftover candy that we were handing out (I put the granola bars away for Rocket Boy). I washed the Halloween cloth that I had on the coffee table and put it away, and now we have more of a fall/winter cloth there. The pumpkin tin is allowed to stay until Thanksgiving because it doesn't have a face. It holds what's left of the candy: things Teen B doesn't like, like Almond Joy, and some Hershey's Kisses. 

As to why Teen B's candy bowl is full of plastic Easter eggs, well, as I clean, I keep FINDING the blasted things. The Easter bunny hides eggs in really strange places, often much too high for little boys to reach. Granted, they aren't little anymore. By next Easter I expect they'll both be taller than me. I guess, though, that they still look for eggs lower down. Anyway, all these eggs need to be returned to the Easter box in the garage, which I can't reach, so one of these days Rocket Boy will do that.

A few days after Halloween the weather turned, and we got 6.5 inches of snow, our first of the season. (I was grateful it waited until after the 31st -- I remember some very snowy, cold Halloweens in the past.) I had taken the jack-o-lanterns off the porch and put them in the dead flower bed, so they all acquired nice snow hats. The snow knocked every single orange leaf off the honey locust. When I went out to shovel, around 2 pm (it's hard to remember that snow means shoveling -- have to get back in that mindset), I was confused by the heavy layer of leaves on top of the snow. Then I looked up into the tree. This picture suggests that there are still leaves on the tree, but they're really all gone now. The high winds we had the next couple of days helped with that too.

The snow is all gone now too (due to those winds, plus rising temperatures), so now we get a little more fall. The maple tree in the backyard still has leaves, some even green. 

As always, November takes me by surprise because there is so little of it. We've had one week already. Now there are two more weeks of school, then Thanksgiving break week, and then another half week -- and then it's December. And Rocket Boy expects to leave to head back to St. Louis the weekend after Thanksgiving.

The FlyLady is trying to get me to prepare for Christmas already (we have a holiday "mission" every weekday in addition to the regular cleaning missions), and I'm sort of going along with that, but sort of not. She wanted me to get rid of my fall decorations, but I refused -- it's "fall" in this house until December. She also wants me to plan my holiday meals and start shopping for them now, and I admit that makes sense. I always end up trying to find candied ginger and frozen spinach (two different recipes) right before Thanksgiving and sometimes failing. Same thing with certain cookie ingredients. Maybe this week I'll start looking for some of those specialty items. It would also make sense to buy our Christmas cards before Rocket Boy goes back to St. Louis. I should stop by McGuckin's and see what they have in stock.

She wanted me to do all my online shopping this week, to give things time to get here before Christmas. That makes sense too, but the problem is that I haven't thought of anything to buy anyone yet. It's the same problem we've had for a couple of years now. We don't need anything and we don't want anything -- but it's sad not to have packages under the tree. The twins have already told me, firmly, no clothes! I think what everyone really wants is a bunch of toys and games -- and to temporarily become five years old again so we can enjoy them. I could buy the boys some toys, but they wouldn't play with them. I don't even really want any Barbie stuff. I have plenty.

What to do, what to do. I don't know. It seems like a dumb, first-world problem, but it is a problem. Christmas is all about ritual, and one of the rituals is gift-giving. I have to figure out how to make that work without bringing a lot of unneeded, unwanted STUFF into the house. I'm particularly cognizant of that this year because while doing FlyLady I've been giving so much stuff away! I've taken bags and bags of stuff to Goodwill, with more to come. Why would I want to bring more stuff into the house?

Anyway, it's November. We might have done something fun this weekend, but instead we all got sick. Just a cold. I didn't even realize the boys were already sick when I came down with it Friday afternoon. They're like cats -- they don't tell me when they aren't feeling well. I was miserable on Friday and yesterday was awful. Today is a little better, though I had a difficult night. 

I'm taking it very very easy. Wouldn't go out to dinner last night, wouldn't go to Starbucks this morning. Rocket Boy is less sick, so he took Teen B (who is also less sick) to his haircut appointment yesterday, took him out to dinner last night (Teen A stayed home sick with me), and he did the Starbucks run today. Following the FlyLady, I've gotten in the habit of getting dressed in real clothes every day, no pajamas (though I don't wear shoes, as she wants me to). Yesterday and today I wore pajamas! Pajama pants, that is. I figured if I wore pajama pants I wouldn't go anywhere, and sure enough, I haven't gone anywhere.

This coming week I expect we will all start to feel much better, and there are a few appointments on the calendar that we'll probably make it to. Friday is a holiday, for Veteran's Day.

I finished the last of my spooky books, finally, and have started my November reading, which is intended to be more serious. I'll read my last Presidential biography of the year (it's on its way from Prospector) and my last Classics Challenge book of the year. 

I started, however, with a book of essays called Bee Reaved by the San Francisco writer Dodie Bellamy who was profiled, sort of, or I guess reviewed, in a November 2021 issue of The New Yorker which I just got around to reading recently. I thought the book sounded interesting, so I checked our local library and found that they didn't have it, but a couple of other libraries in Colorado did, so I could get it from Prospector. So I did.

It's an odd, interesting book -- I'm almost done with it. She references a lot of pop culture in her essays, so I read with my phone at hand, ready to look up what she's referring to. I've watched some very strange videos in the last few days, as a result. 

Much of the book is about her late husband, Kevin Killian, who died in June 2019 after 33 years of marriage, and her grief for him. He was gay and she was bisexual and they both liked to write about their sex lives and their bodies. This book is thus a bit like a crude version of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, which Bellamy reports having read obsessively after Kevin's death. I found myself wondering, if I knew someone who'd just lost her husband, which book would I give them? I love The Year of Magical Thinking -- I think it would be useful to anyone who's suffered a loss. But this book is good, too. One thing about Didion -- she had a lot of money. Money to jet across the country, put on an elaborate funeral, pay for complicated healthcare. In that way, she's not like most people, though I've never had trouble identifying with her because of it. Bellamy, while not flat broke, does have financial concerns, and sounds more like a regular person (though maybe not in any other way). She and Kevin lived in a one-bedroom apartment stuffed with stuff. He dies after a Kaiser doctor possibly mismanaged his care. She pays for Kevin's niche at Cypress Lawn with Kickstarter donations (she and Didion are both rich in friends). 

A month after Bellamy's husband dies, her cat Sylvia is diagnosed with intestinal cancer and starts having unpleasant "accidents." In one essay, "Plague Widow," Bellamy describes cleaning up after the cat, again and again and again (she refers to herself in the third person, as "Bee").

Somewhere there's shit, somewhere close, but Bee can't find it. She turns on the flashlight on her iPhone, lies on the floor and looks under the bed. Nothing, but then she sees it, a foot from her head, a huge splash of diarrhea all over the bramble of cords plugged into the surge suppressor next to the nightstand. It takes her fifteen minutes of patient wiping and spritzing to clean it up, all the while fearing electrocution.

I thought, Joan Didion would not have done that. On the other hand, maybe she would have. I might be selling her short. I would have done it, in fact I have done it. Bellamy's story reminded me of how whenever something awful happens, a whole lot of other awful things tend to happen too. You can never just concentrate on being sad, you have to clean up after the cats and call the plumber to get the tree roots out of the sewer line and deal with the kids being sick and all of that. That's most people's lives.

I had a bunch of other things I wanted to quote out of the book, a lot of good stuff about aging and about love, but now I've lost them. I don't know whether I recommend the book or not. Let's say if it sounds like something you might like, you might like it.