Reading post: Various male authors in August

We've reached the end of August, so it's time for a reading post. At the beginning of August I couldn't decide who to read. It had to be a man, but I had trouble narrowing it down more than that. So I decided to read a few different male authors, and if I especially liked one, I would read more books by him. I focused on authors who had one or more books on the New York Times list of the 100 best books of the 21st century so far.

• Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson (1992). I've heard about Denis Johnson for years, but had never read anything by him. He has two books on the list of 100, Train Dreams and Tree of Smoke, but both had long waiting lists at the library. So instead I read this collection of stories, which some consider his masterpiece. It is an incredible book. The stories are "linked," possibly all with the same narrator, but it isn't always clear that he's the same guy. He moves around, sometimes he drives a VW and sometimes he takes the bus, sometimes he's married and sometimes he has a girlfriend, and so on. But he's always an alcoholic and a drug addict, which is how Denis Johnson spent his 20s. His ability to convey what that's like is stunning. The story will be going along, and then suddenly he'll get confused and the names will be different, or he'll fall asleep and the action won't be what you thought it was. I don't know how to explain it. I was blown away by the book, wouldn't mind owning it, but after finishing it I wasn't sure I wanted to read anything else by Johnson right now. Heavy stuff.
  
  In the last story, "Beverly Home," the narrator is sober, working in a nursing home, and starting to learn how to live again. In one scene he's interacting with a young man with "something like multiple sclerosis" whose wife is divorcing him, he has no visitors, and he can't talk anymore:
  

    "No more pretending for him! He was completely and openly a mess. Meanwhile the rest of us go on trying to fool each other." (p. 159)

I love that.

• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016). This book is on both the NY Times list and the readers' list (the readers' list also includes his Nickel Boys). Most copies of this book are checked out, so I was lucky to get it. It's a good book, but in the beginning I didn't love it. I think I've read so many novels set on plantations during slavery that I'm getting tired of the story. It's like books about the Holocaust -- the first few times you read descriptions of what it was like in the concentration camps you're completely overwhelmed and devastated, but then it all starts to sound the same. (This is why, I think, W. G. Sebald's books are so good -- he is writing about the Holocaust but he somehow isn't telling the same story; he manages to make it new.) I kept thinking, while reading the first section of The Underground Railroad, that I might as well be reading Uncle Tom's Cabin.
  
  But then it changes. The underground railroad, in this book, is actually a railroad underground, perhaps built by slaves. It takes Cora, the main character, from Georgia to other states, each of which is dealing with slavery in its own terrible way. We are in the realm of fantasy here, but fantasy based in part on things that really happened. I would have preferred that the book be even a little weirder, but it's good as it is, and the ending is interesting. So, do I want to read more of Colson Whitehead? Yes, definitely, but possibly not this month.
  
  
• American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1997). Some people think this is Roth's best book, so even though his two books on the NY Times list were checked out, I was happy to find and read this. But I ended up a little underwhelmed. It's the story of Seymour "The Swede" Levov, the golden boy from Roth's Newark, NJ high school, who is a really good, kind, nice person, but whose life is destroyed when his 16-year-old daughter Merry becomes a bomb-throwing terrorist (in 1968). In 1997, when the book was published, this story probably still resonated with a lot of people who lived through the '60s, but I wonder if it still works today, in the era of school shootings. One little bomb that kills one person -- who can spend so much time being worried about that? The characters in the story are also upset about what's happened to the Newark they grew up in -- it's been destroyed by race riots and white flight -- and about Newark's industries going overseas -- and about movies like "Deep Throat" going mainstream. In the age of online porn, that last concern seems positively quaint.
  
  Almost nothing happens -- it's mostly just the Swede's ruminations, as well as the ruminations of Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's alter ego, who is telling the Swede's story -- and although I don't usually need action in a book, this one kind of bored me. I don't know. It's a good book, and Roth is a great writer, but I wouldn't put this on my top ten list. I'd still like to read his two books that made the NY Times list (The Human Stain and The Plot Against America). But maybe not this month.
  
  
• James by Percival Everett (2024). I picked this up as an afterthought -- saw it on a shelf at the library and grabbed it. Everett has a different book on the NY Times list -- Erasure -- and this book is on the readers' list. There was a profile of Everett in the New Yorker recently, and I thought at the time that I might like to read him, but didn't follow up. So this month seemed like a good time. I enjoyed James -- it's a reimagining of Huckleberry Finn through the eyes of Jim the slave. I probably should have re-read Huck Finn, or at least had it open beside me while I was reading James, but I decided I could remember enough of the book. James stands alone just fine, so you don't have to know Huck Finn, although I probably missed things on account of having forgotten a lot of it.
  
  Everett does a lot of clever stuff in the book. The slaves speak a stereotypical slave dialect when white people are listening, but among themselves they speak standard English, and when white people accidentally overhear them, they (the white people) get terribly upset, and the slaves quickly revert to dialect. In a flip of what most white authors do, Everett (speaking as James/Jim) identifies only white people by race, so, "There's a white man over there," but "There's a man over there" (meaning a Black man). Another thing I liked -- this is a bit of a spoiler, but... you know how traditionally when a character in a novel does something bad, they have to pay for it? Like, someone will commit a crime, possibly murder, possibly for a good reason, and then you just know they're going to end up dead, perhaps to remind readers that you should not behave that way? It drives me crazy. I'll just say, in James, that novelistic "rule" is not followed.
  
  At the end of The Underground Railroad, Cora is headed for Missouri, which of course is where James/Jim starts out. At the end of James, James makes it to Iowa. Both books suggest that their story, and their journey, isn't over, as we know it isn't. I wish it were.
  

OK, so, I read those four books, and at the end I was kind of tired of reading serious, award-winning fiction, especially by men. Even though they were all extremely good books, I felt overwhelmed by them. So I decided not to continue with any of these authors just now, although I'd like to read more by all of them eventually. I had a presidential biography to read, and the book group book, and there are those stacks of to-be-read books by my bed. Enough of the men, for now.

***

In August, I also read a biography of Calvin Coolidge. I enjoyed it more than many of the presidential biographies I've read because the author, Donald R. McCoy, managed to bring his subject to life in a very engaging way. Coolidge was grumpy, low energy, idealistic, and unrealistic, but he was also funny, and McCoy's way of describing him was often funny too. McCoy doesn't try to make Coolidge seem better or worse than he was. It's an eyes wide open biography. I liked it. The last two sentences interested me:

"Coolidge's failure was the failure of a President who does not look ahead and does not fight to head off the problems of the future. Of course, there is little to indicate that he could have succeeded in such a struggle or that there was anyone else available in national politics in the 1920s who could have done substantially better, but the nation would have been morally and intellectually better for the attempt." (p. 422)

Can a nation be morally and intellectually better? What would that mean?

***

That was about it for my reading this month, except for the book for the book group and a few odds and ends. 

Next month it is time for another female author and I am planning to try to read some books by Jesmyn Ward. She's young, born in 1977, so around the age of my oldest sister's kids (born in 1975 and 1978). She's won the National Book Award twice, is the recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant," and has three books on the NY Times 100 best-books-of-the-21st-century-so-far list. I've thought of reading her for several years now, but always diverted to something else because I thought her books would be too depressing. They probably are depressing, but I'll give her a chance. We'll see how it goes.

Northwest vacation

I'm going to write a post about my vacation today, instead of waiting until next Sunday, because by then who knows what else will have happened that will have obliterated all my nice memories. It was a short but lovely break, and I want it to have its own post.

So this was my sister's and my second baseball weekend together. Last year we went to San Diego over Labor Day weekend, and this year we went to Seattle in late August. 

I was very stressed before the trip, because Rocket Boy had arrived the previous Saturday and it had just been one long disaster ever since, all because of our water heater. After a plumber told us we should return our defective one which was still under warranty and put a new one in by ourselves, we attempted to do just that. But every step of the way was a nightmare -- taking apart and draining the old one, returning it to Home Depot, going to the Longmont Home Depot to get a new one, and then Rocket Boy's endless attempts to install the new one, which kept leaking. He finally got it fixed, but when I caught the bus to the airport on Friday morning, I didn't know that was going to happen and I was Stressed Out.

In the Denver airport I had to stand in an unbelievably long line to go through security. I've never seen anything like it. I think it's because at DIA you used to be able to go through a line either at the north or the south side, but now it's all one line. I hope that's not a permanent change. But I finally got through it and made it to the C concourse. There I bought myself various snacks, not really thinking about the current state of my stomach (on Mounjaro). I bought a bagel with cream cheese and a yogurt parfait at Einstein's Bagels, some mint-flavored Mentos, and a Pumpkin Cream Chai Latte at Starbucks. The chai was the biggest mistake. The pumpkin cream must be very fatty, because while drinking it, I began to feel sick. The sickness lasted until halfway through my flight. I kept thinking, don't throw up, don't throw up, what a stupid way to start this vacation, don't throw up. (I didn't throw up.)

I didn't eat the bagel or the yogurt, put them in my backpack for later, and the yogurt split open in my backpack and got on my black sweater, which was the only warm thing I'd brought with me.

OK, so, not a great start. But things got better quickly. Even though I had a terribly high boarding position, I still got an aisle seat because the couple in my row wanted to sit together in the window and middle seats. They were very large too, so we really filled that row. They were from Iowa, headed for Alaska to go on a cruise, very pleasant people.

Nancy was waiting for me in the Seattle airport, eating a burrito she'd just bought, and I sat with her and ate some of my bagel while we waited for my suitcase. Then we walked a long, long way through the airport to the Seattle Link light rail station, which is a lovely, clean, safe form of public transportation, and it only cost $3 each to ride about 40 minutes to a stop near our hotel. We had a slight problem because they were in the process of changing the name of our station from University Street to Symphony, and about half the signs said one thing and half said the other. So we rode past our stop. But it was no problem -- we just got off at the next stop and got on the next train going the other direction.

It turned out that our hotel, the Fairmont Olympic, was only about a block and a half from the Symphony station, so that was convenient too (once we figured it out).

Our room was very nice, although I think I liked last year's room better. We didn't have a view of anything interesting, just the other side of the hotel, and the beds were very close together (and maybe not as comfortable as last year's). But this hotel had some very positive aspects to it. We were on the 10th floor (out of 11?), and it was very quiet, even though we were right downtown. There were five or six elevators, all very fast. There was an attractive pool, though rather shallow, and a large hot tub which we enjoyed on Sunday evening. I tried to swim a little, but we got most of our exercise walking.

There was a nice restaurant, called The George, where we ate three good breakfasts, and Sunday night we had dinner at the bar, which actually meant in the lobby. Because we were staying three nights, or maybe for some other reason, they gave us a $72 breakfast credit for each morning. We laughed at that -- how could we spend $72 on breakfast? In fact, on at least one of the days, we spent more. The food was terribly expensive. I had oatmeal ($14) on two of the days and a smoothie bowl (also $14) on the other. Nancy had the brunch on Saturday and Sunday, which was more expensive. 

Oh, and they asked us if we'd like to skip housekeeping while we were there, for a $25 food credit, so we said sure, we can keep our own room tidy. So that paid for a little of our Sunday night dinner. I would say the only problem was that we nearly ran out of towels. But otherwise it was fine not to have maids coming and going while we were there.

Our first baseball game was Friday night, so after we got settled in our room and I ate my yogurt from the airport, we put on our baseball outfits and headed off to the light rail again. It was raining lightly and a bit chilly, so Nancy wore layers and a waterproof jacket. I (as mentioned before) had spilled yogurt on my sweater, so I washed it in the bathroom sink -- and that left me with a sopping wet sweater, which of course I couldn't wear. So I wore a little shrug-type sweater that I'd brought, over a light orange t-shirt, and hoped for the best. It turned out that I did not feel the cold in Seattle. It wasn't really cold, for one thing, just cool, and I had been so hot for so long in this long, hot summer we've been having that I enjoyed the different sensation.

Taking the light rail to the stadium was incredibly convenient, although you have to walk a long way once you get off. But of course that was good for us. I was impressed by how physically fit most Seattlans seemed to be. To get around that stadium you have to walk a LOT, and go up and down a LOT of stairs. The first night I was a little overwhelmed, but I got used to it. Nancy got herself some fish & chips for dinner, but I didn't have anything.

We lost the first game, 5-6, but the Giants did very well up until the end. Then the Mariners tied it 5-5 and won in the 10th inning. We left before that -- right after the Giants didn't score in the top of the 10th -- because we knew what was going to happen. When we got back to the hotel I ate the rest of my bagel, took a shower with lovely warm water, and went sound asleep.

On the second day, it was raining again and cool. I decided that I'd better wear my sweater, even though it was still wet. But even in a damp sweater, I was fine. I wore a large bright orange shirt (J. Jill) that I'd gotten on eBay and I was very comfortable. Both Friday and Saturday, the retractable roof over the stadium was closed, due to the rain. This made it somewhat dark inside, even with lights. The Mariners have a rally thing they do where they tell everyone to turn on their flashlights (on their phones) and it was effective even during the daytime when the roof was up.

Possibly the thing that made me the happiest during these games is that Matt Williams (former Giants 3rd baseman from long, long ago) is now their third base coach. Last year he was third base coach for the San Diego Padres, so we enjoyed looking at him in his embarrassing pink and green City Connect uniform. Now he's a Giant again, in respectable gray and black. We discovered during Saturday's game that EVERYBODY loves Matt Williams, not just us. I like to imitate the hand signals he makes, because they are so complicated and it doesn't look as though the players are paying any attention. The guy sitting next to me laughed and tried doing it too. Nancy asked him if he were old enough to remember Matt Williams as a player, and he turned to her and said no as Nancy said, "oh, no, I see you're not." But one of the women seated below us turned her head and said, "I am!" And then I heard the women with her discussing who BESIDES Matt Williams was their favorite Giant. Everyone loves Matt Williams. He is 58.

We were going to have dinner with a friend of mine from grad school that night, Z, so we didn't want to eat much. I ended up having Cracker Jack and a Sprite, and Nancy had a large pretzel. And the Giants won! The score was 4-3 and we really expected Seattle to go ahead at some point, but they didn't and the game was over. Nancy had warned me that we might lose all three games, so it was nice to win one.

We left a little early in order to make it back to the hotel in time to get ready. There was some confusion with meeting Z, and we were outside looking for her while she was inside the hotel looking for us. But we finally connected, and it was so nice to see her again. I think the last time I saw her was about 16 years ago, when the twins were babies. Nancy was thinking she'd never met her, but then she reminded us that she was at my wedding! Z in her turn got Nancy mixed up with another relative she had met at the wedding, but I'm not sure if it was my next older sister or my oldest niece. She said to Nancy, "I thought you were there with your daughter..." and that could have been either of them.

It was clearing up, so we walked down to the waterfront -- which reminded Nancy and me greatly of the San Diego waterfront last year -- and ate a delicious, expensive seafood dinner at Elliott's Oyster House. Z and I had the halibut, which was yummy, and Nancy had the king salmon. I was kind of sorry they didn't serve sourdough bread and butter before the food, but if I'd eaten that, I wouldn't have had room for my dinner, so, OK.

I had known ahead of time that it was very lucky I came that weekend, because Z normally babysits her two grandsons on the weekend but her daughter and family were out of town when I came. During dinner I learned that it was even more lucky I came when I did, because next weekend Z and her husband are going to Switzerland! I don't know how I managed such perfect timing. After dinner we walked back up the hill toward the hotel and stopped to take a picture, but I look enormous in it. That big orange shirt! I should have changed -- or at least brushed my hair. It's OK. I'm just including the tops of our heads here, but you can see the stairs of Seattle behind us and a bit of the Seattle Art Museum on the left.

Sunday was a beautiful day! Brilliant blue skies, warmth -- and I was too hot and got sunburned. In Seattle! I had brought two orange shirts with me, plus a black tank top which I wore with my black shrug sweater on Sunday. But almost immediately I realized it was too hot for the sweater, so I took it off and draped it over my arms. Thus my face got sunburned, but my arms were OK.

I think this is my only sunburn of the summer. And I got it in Seattle!

The Giants lost this game, 3-4. It was OK. The Mariners had a very good pitcher this day, and we were glad to have won one game of the series. I bravely purchased some "tofu tots" for lunch (they were not very good), and a pineapple-coconut slushy, which was delicious (both from Marination, a Hawaiian-Korean food place). Nancy had softserve ice cream, which she said was the best thing she ate at the ballpark. While we were watching the game, I kept thinking, now what shall I have tomorrow for lunch? It was as though I thought I was just going to watch baseball games at T-Mobile Stadium forever.

That evening (after the pool and hot tub) we discussed places to go out to eat, but ended up finding a cozy corner of the lobby and eating "at the bar," which just meant a waiter brought us some menus and we ate in our cozy corner. I didn't see anything I really wanted on the menu, but I ordered a chicken sandwich and it was fine. I ate about half of it. Also a Sprite, which is becoming my anti-nausea standby. We sat and talked and watched the people come and go for a long time. The waiter didn't bother us and we didn't have to give up our "table" to anyone else. Finally we went back up to the room and got ready for bed.

Monday morning we both woke up early, ate breakfast early, and checked out early. We pulled our suitcases to the light rail one more time, rode it back to the airport, and checked in. I bought some presents for my family (chocolate for the twins, tea for Rocket Boy) and some food for lunch (more yogurt and a cookie). My flight was late, but it wasn't a big deal. Again I had a terrible boarding position and ended up in a middle seat between two young people who did not look happy about it. But just after takeoff I looked out the window beyond my seatmate and saw this amazing snow-covered mountain. "Is that Mount Rainier?" I asked, breathlessly. "Yes!" she said, and then the young man in the aisle seat looked over and said, equally breathlessly, "Is that Mount Rainier?" "Yes," the young woman and I both said, and we all stared at it open-mouthed. Then, just a little while later, two more mountains appeared, which she identified as Mount St. Helens and Mount Hood, and they were wonderful too. And then the clouds came over and we couldn't see anything else until we were in Colorado.

Because my flight was late, I missed my bus and didn't get home until 7:15 or 7:30, something like that. But it was fine. It was nice to see everyone, even nice to help with homework. Rocket Boy had to pack, because he was leaving this morning. The house is a mess and I took my shot last night, so I am a wreck today, so tired, keep taking naps, can hardly get anything done. But in a day or two I'll be better, and I'll get the house pulled together soon. The hot water heater works, for now, and I'm very happy about that. Sillers is off her food, so she is going to the vet tomorrow, we'll see how that goes. 

Oh, and right around noon today I got a bunch of phone calls and emails and texts telling me that Boulder TEC was on lockdown, some suspicious individual on the roof. It turned out to be a construction worker, quite harmless, but before they figured that out, afternoon classes were canceled, so Teen A came home to play video games. And I took a nap. All in a day's work for Mom of Teens. My lovely vacation is fading fast, but it was lovely. I'm so glad we did this again!

Heat up

We're back in the 90s for another week -- low 90s, but still. Yesterday was very hot, high 90s, and the house didn't cool down enough, and it's going to be in the 60s at night all week.

Complain, complain. I'm feeling kind of nauseated today, for no good reason, so it makes me grumpy.

Rocket Boy arrived yesterday, which as always is a mixed blessing. Glad to see him, glad to have him here -- especially since our hot water heater decided to stop working Friday night. If he weren't here, I would have just called a plumber, and instead he has to think about it and decide whether he wants to fix it himself, but he's also done a lot of troubleshooting already and he's pretty sure he knows what the problem is. I think we're going with a plumber, but he'll be able to tell the plumber what needs to be done, so that will speed things along.

***

OK, the plumber has been and gone, and now we have more problems. The water heater is totally shot, first of all. The plumber thinks it is under warranty (it's less than 4 years old), so we may be able to get a new one. But Rocket Boy will have to install it, because our whole setup is totally not to code and no reputable plumber would be willing to work with it. The plumber suggested a tankless water heater, but his guess was that it might cost $6000 for the whole thing -- the water heater, the work to change out setup, etc. He really recommended that we replace it ourselves with a free one.

We're pursuing the warranty idea, but we don't have the original receipt. I have my bank statement saying we spent $835.73 at Home Depot four years ago, which might be enough, but Home Depot told us we also have to bring in the old hot water heater, which will be quite an undertaking since it will be hard to fit it into either of our cars. To do that, we will first have to drain the old water heater and unfasten it from the water intake and outtake valves, the gas intake, etc. Rocket Boy noticed something about his original setup that is going to have to be fixed first. It might even involve welding. I would like to take a nap and let all these problems waft away, but our bed is covered with the contents of the water heater closet (normally it has a board in front of it and then shelves with all our linens and miscellany).

So, you know, I'm glad Rocket Boy came home, but it doesn't seem coincidental that the water heater implodes right before he arrives. It obviously knew he was coming.

***

The kids started school on Thursday, and so far it all seems fine. Teen A is only taking three classes at the high school, and then in the afternoon he's at TEC, so that's different. They provide a bus to get him back and forth and all that. The first day, he called me to pick him up after school because he'd missed his bus, which was a pain, but the second day he made it home on his own just fine, so I hope that's how we'll proceed. Teen B has all regular classes, but I realized that I've already met four of his seven teachers. He has the same teacher for music and foreign language as last year, the same special ed teacher, and his language arts teacher was Teen A's teacher last year.

Oh, and they have US History together, so that's the same teacher, although it's someone new.

Teen A needs some special boots and clothes for his TEC class, so today we drove to Longmont and went to a store I've seen before but never entered: Murdoch's Ranch & Home Supply. What a cool store! They had a wide assortment of steel-toe boots, and Teen A chose some nice black Caterpillars. We also got him some appropriate shorts, and Rocket Boy got himself some new jeans. I was tempted to buy something for myself, but since the bill came to almost $300 and the water heater and its associated costs were looming in the background, I was glad I didn't.

***

I'm trying to remember what else happened this week. Oh, I got my retainers and I'm learning how to wear them. Which reminds me, I'm not wearing them right now! OK, got them back in. They are starting to smell, because I keep drinking milk with them in. Must give them a good brushing tonight. Retainers are a lot more trouble than I expected them to be, and I hope I will not have to wear them 24/7 for more than a month. Wearing them at night is bad enough, but during the day... one problem is that I can't speak clearly when I'm wearing them. The orthodontist said that would only be true for a few days, but obviously that's not the case. The bottom retainer is OK, but the top one is impossible. The kids make fun of me when I try to talk while wearing it.

But I think I can learn to live with them at night. I thought I wouldn't be able to sleep when I was wearing them, but it turns out that I can. 

I lost a little more weight this week.

•     Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
•     Weight last Sunday: 244.0
•     Weight this morning (after 9+ weeks on Mounjaro): 242.8

So that's 11.8 lbs down in a little over 9 weeks.

OK, I need to go start dinner. I don't want to make dinner, but we spent $120 on dinner at Murphy's last night, and there are all these expenses rolling in, so...

***

All right, dinner's started. It's a pasta dish, and the water is heating for the pasta. The sauce is made out of roasted tomatoes and beans, both of which have been seasoned and are in the oven roasting. I should note that I do not want to eat this. It is hot and I am not hungry. So far today I have eaten a bowl of Heritage Flakes with a small banana, tea with milk, a CorePower protein drink, and part of my leftover salad from dinner last night. I do not want tomato-bean pasta. But dinner must happen, so dinner is happening.

***

And dinner is over -- it turned out pretty good, though Teen A only ate about one spoonful -- and Rocket Boy and I went on a walk, and now everyone but me is having pie (I've had all my food for the day).

It's going to be a challenging week. Heat, my tiredness from the drug, the hot water heater saga continuing, Back to School night, happy hour at a friend's house on Tuesday, helping the kids with their homework, and on Friday I go to Seattle. Sure hope I'm up to it!

Cool down

So, right before summer's end, we finally get a cool down. Thank goodness. We had a few more hot days this past week, and then on Thursday we woke up to cool, cloudy skies. Both Thursday and Friday the temperature only got to 67 or so, it rained heavily, and it was in the mid 50s at night. Fabulous. Teen B even asked me when it would warm up! The answer is -- today, when we're supposed to get to 87. But no more 90s for a while. All this coming week, for the next 7 days, high temps are predicted to be in the 80s. I can live with that! For the past three days I've been wearing shirts with actual sleeves, but this morning I put on a tank top (even though it was rather cool). 

But really, only a few more weeks of tank top weather. After that I can wear one with a little sweater over it if I want to, or I can just wear short sleeves. It was heavenly to wear short sleeves this week, even my boring old shirts that I've worn a hundred times (or more).

The only sad thing about the return of cool weather is that the hummingbirds will be leaving. I mean, not yet -- we have a few more weeks with them. But right now they're coming to the feeder almost constantly -- buzz buzz, oh, there's another, buzz buzz -- and I will miss them SO much when they're gone.

***

The other thing that happened this week is that I got my braces off. Yes, after two years and five months, 29 very very long months, I no longer have braces on my teeth.

I think it's an improvement. Hard to tell, really. I don't have a good "before" picture to use as a comparison. The main difference is that my top teeth now come sort of over my bottom teeth, which is a bit uncomfortable. I'm learning how to position my teeth so they don't hurt. I may ask the orthodontist about it when I go back on Tuesday to get my retainers.

I think the main benefit to having had braces, honestly, is that I don't bite my fingernails anymore. I was worried that as soon as the braces came off I would start nibbling again, but I don't have the slightest urge to. I started biting my nails when I was 18 months old (according to my mother) and stopped when I got my braces at age 61 and a half, so that's 60 years of nail biting. But I think it's over.

Actually, all week after getting the braces off I had terrible nausea, which I think had something to do with getting them off, even though I can't find anything on the internet about it. Some people get nausea when they get braces put on, but apparently I am the only person who has ever had it when getting them off. Figures. Of course, yes, I already had nausea from my drugs, but it got much worse after the braces came off. It had something to do with having to position my teeth differently, constantly moving my jaw and my tongue because everything felt weird. Also, it hurt like heck when the orthodontist removed the brackets, and my gums are sore, and my teeth hurt for several days and... let's just say, getting braces in your 60s is FOR THE BIRDS and nobody should ever do it. 

But it's over, and the nausea was better yesterday, and the pain was better, and my gums are improving (though it still hurts a little to brush and floss). It's kind of funny -- with braces I brushed my teeth with water a lot, on and off throughout the day, in addition to brushing with toothpaste a couple times a day, plus I was constantly poking at my teeth/braces with dental picks and things. I'm trying to stop, because I think I'm irritating my gums. I keep telling myself, you don't need to do that so much, you don't have 18 million things stuck in your braces anymore, the braces are GONE.

***

Speaking of nausea, I lost a little bit of weight this week.

•     Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
•     Weight last Sunday: 244.4
•     Weight this morning (after 8+ weeks on Mounjaro): 244.0

Last Sunday I thought my weight loss that week was partly due to vomiting, so it makes sense that I only lost .4 lb this week. I'm good with it. So that's 10.6 lbs down in a little over 8 weeks.

I had to start a higher dose of Mounjaro this week -- up to 5 mg from 2.5. I was worried about it, but so far I don't feel too different. Maybe a little. I took my shot last night instead of Friday, because I'm trying to change my shot day. Rocket Boy arrives next Saturday and Back to School Night is Monday the 19th, so I'm thinking I might delay my next shot until that Monday night (so I have the energy to do all that running up and down stairs). Then I won't have to worry about shots during my little trip to Seattle -- I'll just take a shot when I get back. Friday has been sort of a bad time to take the shot, because we go out to eat on Saturday.

***

I thought maybe the kids and I could do something fun this past week, their last full week of freedom, but they didn't want to do a darn thing. No movies, no trips to museums. They are 16, after all, and doing stuff with their mother isn't high on their agendas. One night we went to Sweet Cow for ice cream, and Friday night we went to Dairy Queen, and that was about it. On Friday we also did a Target run, to get school supplies, but they didn't want to get much. Of course, they won't find out their schedules until tomorrow afternoon, but they pretty much know what they're taking already, and the stores run out of supplies pretty quickly. I finally convinced them to choose one notebook and one folder each, plus some pens and pencils. That's all they wanted for now. It's fine.

They don't seem to have a real sense that this is their second to last year of school. Of course, Teen B may go to college, and even Teen A may have some more education in his future, but they have only two years left in the public school system, which blows my mind. Only two years left of me getting up at 7 am in order to get them up at 7:30 am to catch the bus at 8:10 am. 

Only two more years of the school lunch calendar! I love that calendar. I've loved it ever since they were in kindergarten and they both brought it home in their Friday folders. (I used to put the extra calendar up at work.) I keep track of the laundry on it. 

The last few years I've had to beg Teen B to bring me one (they have them in a box at the school and kids can get one if they want it). He says it's embarrassing. This year I'm offering $10 to the first kid who brings me one. We'll see. 

You can also print them out at home, but it takes so much ink and then you have to put it together and it's a pain. I did print out August, because Teen B probably won't bring one home right away.

***

Speaking of school, there was a weird thing in the paper this week. The headline said "Teacher accused of inappropriately touching students." Oh dear, I thought. Then I saw the subhead: "Manhattan Middle School." The twins' middle school. Oh no, I thought. So I read the article. And I realized it was their 6th grade math teacher.

And, you know, I'm ashamed to say my first thought was -- it couldn't be. There has to be a mistake, he's been falsely accused. I liked their 6th grade math teacher! I thought he was a nice guy. They didn't like him -- apparently none of the kids did -- and I thought that was very wrong of them. I spent the whole year trying to get them to like him. And now this. 

I asked Teen B whether he'd ever been aware of anything like this with this teacher. He said "there were rumors." And I thought, oh my God, this is why the kids didn't like him. They didn't feel safe around him.

The former principal (he retired the year the kids graduated) is accused of not reporting the teacher, but instead having him take some sort of class on how not to inappropriately touch students and then putting him back in the classroom, where he apparently continued to inappropriately touch them. The teacher has been on leave since March and now they've finally arrested him and he's in jail. Blows my mind.

We spent the rest of the day making jokes about inappropriate touching. I kept saying to the cats, "Come here and let me inappropriately touch you," and things like that. But mostly I just kept thinking, OMG, OMG, OMG.

***

Well, so anyway. It's August. I was thinking I should do a monthly overview of July, plus my goals for August, since I forgot to do it last week.

1. Reading. I read 9 books in July, for a total of 72 books through the first 7 months of the year. I've already read four books in August, so it's looking like another good reading month.

2. Presidential biographies. I finished that biography of Warren G. Harding's wife Florence in July, so this month I am planning to read a biography of Calvin Coolidge (it arrived from Prospector this week). At the beginning of the year I thought I would only get through three presidents, but I can't see any reason not to read Herbert Hoover this fall. That will set me up for FDR in 2025 -- I expect I will read more than one book about him and Eleanor. It's crazy to think that in a few years I will actually finish this reading project.

3. Movies. I watched just one movie in July, something I got from the library, but it's possible Rocket Boy and I will watch something together while he's here in August.

4. Special things. I've done nothing "special" since our trip in May/June. Someone in the neighborhood was offering two free tickets to Macbeth, at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, for this afternoon, and I asked Teen B if he'd like to go, but he said no. I didn't push it. Soon school will start and there will be concerts and plays to attend.

5. Writing. I haven't done a lot of writing, but some. I typed up and edited the short story I wrote on our trip and I was pleased with the result. I've been doing a lot of genealogy stuff, which seems to use the same parts of my brain as creative writing. And of course this blog.

6. Exercise. In July I did 7 stretch videos and took 23 walks. I'm trying to get back into the stretch videos, while also continuing to walk. It's going pretty well, although there are certainly days when I do one but not the other. The goal is not to have too many days where I do nothing at all.

7. Hiking. In July, Teen B and I did that humongous hike for his class. I don't know what I'm going to do for August. It would be nice if I could get Rocket Boy to take a hike with me while he's here, but I don't know if that will happen. We'll see.

8. Goodwill or Charm. I am really not doing well with this goal. I didn't take anything to Goodwill in May, June, or July. Meanwhile, the huge garbage bag full of clothes and linens in my room now has a big hole in it, caused by the cat. I would like to transfer the stuff to a new bag and take it to Goodwill this week (before Rocket Boy comes), but I don't know...

9. Wardrobe. For several months now my goal has been to work on shoes, and it's just not happening. I could really use a new pair of tennis shoes, because my current ones have holes in both feet, but I haven't felt inspired to do anything about it. Maybe this month. I'm more focused on clothes for the kids right now, though. Teen B needs new shoes, Teen A needs new pants...

10. Files. I have done nothing on the files this whole summer. Maybe after the kids go back to school.

***

This coming week, before Rocket Boy arrives, I am planning to do some cleaning and decluttering. I know I won't get as much done as I want to, but it always helps to have a goal. So here are the plans:

• Sunday (today): dig up some of the weeds in the front lawn (see photo; this might not happen, since it's already 5:30 pm).
• Monday: clean up the front porch a little, and the piece of furniture by the front door that always gets stuff heaped on it.
• Tuesday: declutter the kitchen counters a little, clean out the fridge
  
• Wednesday: clean the bathtub and maybe the bathroom walls, possibly wash the shower curtains
  
• Thursday (kids at school): declutter our bedroom a little, vacuum the house, maybe take stuff to Goodwill, maybe work on the desk room
  
• Friday (kids at school): declutter the living room, wash our bedding, mop the kitchen floor!
  
• Saturday (before he arrives): work on the weeds some more
  

We'll see. Whatever gets done will be good, whatever doesn't get done just won't get done.

A summer to forget

This has been such a yucky summer! Nothing bad has happened to us, that's not what I mean. Nothing good, nothing bad, just blah. It's just in terms of essential summer-ness, this has been a sucky one, and it keeps getting suckier. (And yes, I know the terms "sucky," "suckier," "sucks," etc., refer to fellatio and were originally an anti-gay slur or an anti-woman slur (because who performs fellatio, right?), but I think that meaning is so far in the background that it's OK to use the words now. I could be wrong. I don't care. It's too hot to care.)

It's been so hot, so dry, such awful air quality. We've been trudging along, eating, sleeping, fighting, spending too much time on our devices, waiting until it's cool enough to turn the fan on at night, taking endless showers, turning the fan off again in the morning. Paying bills, going to the grocery store, doing laundry, feeding the cats, and scooping the litter boxes. Making to-do lists and then not doing the things on them. Watching the progress of the local fires on the Watch Duty app and the website for the Boulder Office of Disaster Management.

Nothing fun. No real enjoyment. Teen B expressed interest in going to the Denver Botanic Gardens a few weeks ago, but it's been too hot. I keep mentioning the possibility of a movie, but there's nothing in the theater that anybody really wants to see (other than "Inside Out 2" which we saw in June). Teen B's class is over, so he doesn't have that to challenge him anymore (not that it did -- but I guess it challenged ME), and Teen A never did manage to get a job, so the only worthwhile thing he did this summer was get his license (which he still hasn't used -- has not driven once since getting it -- but at least he has it).

Between the heat and the terrible air quality, from all the fires this past week (mostly under control now, thank goodness), I haven't been walking. The last walk I took was last Sunday. So that's bad. It should be a little cooler this coming week, so maybe I'll be able to get out. We might even get some rain.

Mainly the heat has been sapping all our energy, making us more and more grumpy, and the lack of rain is kind of scary. We've continued to water the front lawn a little, and it has some green in it now. All my neighbors are talking about getting rid of their junipers, which are apparently a huge fire hazard. Last summer I worked hard on our junipers, but this summer, mainly because of this drug I'm taking, Mounjaro, I haven't had the energy to do anything with them. And we don't have the money to pay someone to take them out. This past Friday I paid the car insurance bill for the next six months: $3015 (that's with the paid-in-full discount). In the old days I think it was less than $1000. I should probably look at some old bills, but that's what I remember. The house insurance was over $1000, the car insurance was under $1000, like maybe $700 or $800. It went up this time for three reasons: (1) car insurance rates have gone up in general, mainly due to uninsured drivers; (2) our new car, which is ONLY 9 years old; (3) Teen A getting his license.

$3015 twice a year is a lot of money for us. After Rocket Boy retires, I don't know if we'll be able to afford that. Something to think about, six months from now.

So anyway, yeah, I can't afford to hire someone to remove our junipers. I just look at them (mostly out the window), and wish they would vanish.

I might be feeling a little more cranky than usual today because I threw up last night, around 3 am or so, after struggling with heartburn and nausea for a couple of hours and finally giving up. Food is continuing to be a problem for me in terms of nausea and lack of appetite, but I haven't thrown up in a while. It's my fault, too -- we went to IHOP and I forgot to take one of my little digestive enzyme pills before I ate. I chose IHOP because they have a "55+" menu, and those dishes tend to be smaller. I ordered a BLT with fruit as my side. But it was a larger sandwich than I was expecting, and a larger bowl of fruit, and Teen B gave me the avocado out of his sandwich, so that was some additional fat. I don't know. All I know is that around 3 am I was in the bathroom, throwing up about seven times into the wastebasket. The kids didn't even say anything to me this morning (they usually comment if the wastebasket is upside down in the bathtub after being rinsed out). They're tired of me being sick, I'm tired of me being sick.

So, I lost a little more weight this week, though I suspect one of those pounds was from being sick.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 246.4
• Weight this morning (after 7+ weeks on Mounjaro): 244.4

This means I'm officially down 10 pounds. Whee. 

Next Friday I have to go up to 5 mg (I've been on 2.5 mg/week for 8 weeks). It will probably not be pretty. 

Another dumb thing that happened this week is that I slept in some funny position and ended up with terrible pain in my neck on the right side. I babied it for a day, hoping it would fix itself overnight, but instead it intensified, so I turned to Pain Free by Pete Egoscue, my bible for fixing musculoskeletal pain. Usually I use it to help me with my back, in the past I've occasionally used it for knee pain, but I couldn't remember having ever used it for neck/shoulder pain. But the exercises are not that different for the different body parts. It was very hard to get down on the ground to do some of them, but when I'd finished the sequence for necks, my neck felt MUCH better and I could turn it in both directions.

However, it's continued to bother me a little. I have good mobility now, but there's this pain that vibrates from my head down my neck to my shoulder occasionally (like just now). I feel as though I must have injured something those first two days and it's going to take a while to heal.

You know, by next week I will probably be feeling better about all this. Today is supposed to be our hottest day, although I think they've already revised the numbers downwards a little. Mid 90s, not 98. After today we're predicted to have three more days in the low to mid 90s, but then after that, starting Thursday, the temps should drop significantly. Thursday's high is currently predicted to be 79. I could really use some 79 degrees! Also, there's a good chance we're going to get some rain. We REALLY need rain.

So, what else is happening this coming week, other than (we hope) lower temperatures and increased moisture? On Tuesday I am supposed to get my braces off. This is something I have been looking forward to for two and a half years, ever since they were put on. But because of my generally low mood right now, I've decided that they're going to change their minds when I get there and not take them off after all. Dr. Walker told me to wear my bands every chance I could this month, and I just haven't been doing that. I've worn them maybe half a dozen times. They have been giving me a headache (probably related to congestion from the bad air) or making me nauseated (the Mounjaro), so mostly I don't even try, or I take them off after a few hours. 

I think I'm so excited about getting my braces off that I'm psyching myself up for something to go wrong. We'll see. I did buy myself an apple at the grocery store, just in case I do get them off. What I'm really looking forward to is being able to floss. Two and a half years of food stuck in my back teeth. Gaaah.

And next weekend is Rocket Boy's and my 22nd wedding anniversary. He sent his card weeks ago and I opened it, thinking it was my lost birthday card (which did finally come, but after the anniversary card). I thought I hadn't gotten him a card yet, but I just looked and I do have one, so I need to get that in the mail. Maybe next summer we'll be able to celebrate in person.

It's going to be the twins' last full week of summer vacation before school starts on the 15th, so I'll ask them if there's anything they want to do. Maybe if it cools down a little, they'll think of something.

Reading post: Clarice Lispector in July

The long hot month of July is over, so it's time for another reading post. In July I decided to read books by Clarice Lispector (1920-1977). She was around my mother's age, but led a completely different life. She was born in Ukraine, but her (Jewish) parents emigrated to Brazil when she was a baby to escape the pogroms after World War I. She earned a law degree and published her first novel at the age of 23. Then she married a classmate who was a diplomat, lived with him in Italy, England, and the U.S., and had two sons. Finally in her late 30s she left her husband to return to Brazil, where she lived another 20 years before dying of cancer.

For years I've read references to her as being an "important" writer, but I've never read her or met anyone who's read her. Who is this person? I decided to find out.

• The Apple in the Dark (1961), translated by Benjamin Moser. This was the first book to arrive at the library, but it was NOT a good introduction to Clarice Lispector. It is the longest (385 pages) and most complex of her works, and I spent five miserable days reading it. The story: a man who is running away from a crime he committed ends up at a ranch owned by an older woman. She hires him to do menial work for low pay, and eventually reports him to the authorities. But that's not what the book is "about" -- it's about the man's epiphanies, which I mostly didn't understand. The language, the phrasing was so difficult, so hard to read. I read a Goodreads review that suggested maybe there was something wrong with this translation, that Benjamin Moser made the language weirder than it is in Portuguese. But Moser claims the Portuguese is even weirder than what he did with the English. In the Afterword by her son, he says the book was "a commercial and critical success in Brazil." I'm sorry, but there is no way this book, as translated, could be any sort of a success in an English-speaking country. I don't know. Reading The Apple in the Dark made me feel stupid and I did not enjoy it.
  
  
• The Passion According to G.H. (1964), translated by Idra Novey. According to Wikipedia, "one of her most shocking and famous books." OK, now this was better. And I suspect it's because Idra Novey is a novelist and poet in addition to being a translator. However, this is a very strange book. A wealthy woman who lives in a high-rise apartment in Rio de Janeiro goes into her maid's room (her maid had quit the day before) and discovers that it is more empty than she expected, with strange drawings on the wall. But when she opens the door of the wardrobe she sees a very large cockroach. She closes the door on it and manages to cut the cockroach mostly in half, trapping it so that it stares out at her, still alive, while a thick white paste oozes out of it. And that's about all that happens, except that toward the end she actually eats some of the cockroach, some of the white paste. (I guess I should have said SPOILER! but this information is all over the internet.)
  
  The rest of the book is all philosophizing, which was hard for me to follow. She talks a lot about what she and the cockroach have in common, and I liked that part. But many pages I read without comprehending. In the Afterword to the next book I read, her son explains how this novel was actually very political, that people like the maid were in desperate straits, that the cockroach represents the maid... Oh dear, I did not get that at all...
  
  
• The Hour of the Star (1977), translated by Benjamin Moser. Her last novel, published the year she died, and it's recommended as a place to start reading her. Now having read it, I'm debating whether or not that's true. It's very short, less than 100 pages. At first, I didn't like it any better than the other two, and I didn't find it so easy to read. But the book improved. It's the story of a very poor, disadvantaged young woman named Macabea (probably Jewish), from northeastern Brazil, and she is very sweet and easy to like, though her story is terrible. The problem is the structure: Macabea's story is told by a male narrator named Rodrigo who I found irritating. He doesn't sound male, he sounds exactly like Clarice Lispector -- so why did she bother trying to create him? Once he gets out of the way, I was charmed by Macabea, but I'm not sure it's fair to ignore Rodrigo. He has a purpose, something to do with how narrative works. As with all Lispector's books, I was confused by this one.
  

So what's my final word on Clarice Lispector? I don't think she translates well, and more context would be helpful. There's a spark there, but I'm having trouble grasping it. Maybe because you can't really grasp a spark, if I'm going to continue that metaphor. I liked the second and third books better than the first, but I can't really say I liked them. I didn't fall under her spell, as people are said to.

Part of me thinks I should go on reading her. Maybe her short stories -- they're supposed to be more accessible than her novels, and very good. But for the most part I don't think she's really my kind of writer, and I'm puzzled by all the people who think she's amazing. Well, anyway, I tried.

***

In July, I also read, very slowly, a long (over 500 pages), weird biography of Florence Harding, Warren G.'s wife. I started it in June and spent the first half of July reading it as well. I would read Clarice Lispector during the long hot days and the Harding bio at night before I turned out my light. It was supposed to make me sleepy, and sometimes it did, but I finally finished it. 

Florence Harding was an interesting person and an interesting First Lady, but at the same time she was sort of awful. Her marriage to Warren G. was a disaster, but she never gave up on it, never gave up on trying to prevent Warren from cheating on her, even though they hadn't been intimate in many years. She made terrible decisions regarding who to trust (as of course did he). I don't know. Strange lady, strange book. I think I'm done with the Hardings for now, until someone writes a better book about them. I've already requested a biography of Calvin Coolidge from Prospector.

It was also my month to read a book I already own from the bookcase in the dining room, so I grabbed Beyond the Hundredth Meridian by Wallace Stegner and spent the last few days of the month engrossed in that. It's about John Wesley Powell, the first person to map the Colorado River. The first section, about exploring the river, was fascinating, and then it gradually bogged down, with its detailed chronicle of the failures of politicians of that time. Still very interesting for anyone who lives in the dry, dry west. 

The only thing was -- it was published in 1952. I wanted an update! Obviously Wallace Stegner has been dead a long time, but I feel as though someone else should write a final chapter that could be tacked on. But, of course, the story will never be over. Water in the west will be fought over as long as there are people in the west.

***

I've been really torn recently regarding the accusations against Alice Munro. Such a great writer, and then it turns out that she blew off her own daughter when the daughter, Andrea, revealed that Munro's second husband had abused her sexually. Munro refused to denounce her husband and maybe even blamed Andrea for the abuse, I don't know. Such an old, ugly story: mothers not believing daughters, mothers choosing to stay with abusers, mothers not protecting daughters...

I just can't think about Alice Munro the same way anymore. I don't really want to read her at all now. But does that make sense? I don't like "cancel culture" for the most part, although it's nice when some very powerful man gets cut down to size. I don't know.

Another writer in the news recently is Neil Gaiman, who has been accused of sexual abuse. The women who have spoken out were "of age" (barely) and the abuse occurred within consensual relationships, but it's hard to know what "consent" would mean when one person is much older, famous, and in one case the woman's employer. It's thought that this is probably the tip of the iceberg...

I love Gaiman's spooky, weird books, and it doesn't make them (much) less wonderful if I know their author is an asshole. That's because I've never turned to Neil Gaiman for advice on how to live my life. He's just fun. So for now I will still read Neil Gaiman. Maybe. 

But is this fair? To get angry at Munro and give Gaiman a pass? I feel sorrier for Alice Munro's daughter, who was nine years old when the abuse started, but I also feel sorry for these young women whose trust Neil Gaiman abused. 

I wish great writers could just not be assholes, but a lot of them are. So what do you do?

***

This month the New York Times published a list of what it thinks are the 100 best books so far of the 21st century (books published from 2000 to 2024). I discovered that I'd read 26 (now 27) of the 100 books -- and I'd like to read several of the others. So now I'm adding that goal to my reading plans, as if I needed another goal. There's also now another list, of 100 best books submitted by readers who didn't like the NY Times list. It's similar to the NY Times list, but contains more mainstream fiction (I've read 34 out of the 100 on that list).

Of the top 10 books on the main NY Times list, I'd read five, so I thought maybe reading the others would be a place to start (the greyed-out titles are the ones I've read). And so I read Austerlitz, which I already had sitting in my to-be-read pile, and was blown away by it. I love everything I've read by W. G. Sebald, but that book is incredible.

1. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
2. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
3. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
4. The Known World by Edward P. Jones
5. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
6. 2666 by Roberto Bolano
7. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
8. Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
9. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
10. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
    

In August, it's time for another male author, and for some reason those are harder for me to come up with, even though the world is full of male authors. I thought seriously of choosing Kafka, but after Clarice Lispector's cockroach, I needed a break from stories about insects.

So I took a closer look at that NY Times list. There are several male authors with two books on the list, so I thought I'd choose one of them. First I thought I'd go with Philip Roth. I've read several early books by Roth, but nothing in a long time. He's won all sorts of awards for his later works, but I haven't felt inspired to read them. Still, I thought I could give him one month of my life. But then I realized that his two books on the NY Times list are both checked out at the library.

So then I considered Denis Johnson, whose Train Dreams I actually have meant to read for a long time. But his two books on the NY Times list are not only checked out, they have long waiting lists. I think I'm not the only person in Boulder who's decided to read everything on the NY Times list!

Hmm. OK, well, what about Colson Whitehead? He's written a lot of books, they're always well reviewed, and one of his books is at #7 on the list. Plus, his books aren't all checked out.

Not to keep you in suspense, or anything, but I ended up not deciding. I got a book by Colson Whitehead out of the library, but I also got a book by Denis Johnson and a book by Philip Roth and a book by Percival Everett. And I'll just see how it goes. Depending on who I like, I could put my name on some waiting lists, check out the Bookworm or Barnes & Noble, even order something from Amazon. August is a long month. We'll see how it goes.