Back together again

So, the four of us are back together again! For how long, I don't know. The future is uncertain. But in the present -- yes! We are all here together again, and we are going to stay like this for at least a little while. And it is so strange.

Rocket Boy arrived Tuesday night, after a harrowing journey which involved things flying off the roof of his car and the need to stop and mail some of the contents of the car to Boulder, so that he could see out the rear window. Eight large boxes arrived a day or two after he did, and more followed. It's been almost a week and he still hasn't emptied enough of his car to be able to drive it safely. (Fortunately we have two other functional cars.) His belongings are strewn all over everywhere. I have no idea how we're going to fit everything into the house. I've been throwing things away, and/or telling RB we need to give this or that to Goodwill.

But he's here, he's home, and we are starting to learn how to live together again.

I didn't post yesterday because we went to the cabin for the first time in two years. I didn't realize it had been that long, but the little notebook that we keep there to record our visits didn't have any entries after October 29, 2022. Last summer there just wasn't time and this summer there wasn't time either. When we're away from the cabin for a while, we always think it may be vandalized, or even burned down, but it never is. On this visit we met a neighbor who looks after the property next to ours and he apologized for walking through our property to get to it (of course, we said it was fine). I think that probably helps keep ours safe too.

At first the kids weren't going to come with us on this trip. They don't like the cabin -- so boring, such a long drive, nothing to do there, etc., etc. But I encouraged Teen B to come so that we could work on homework while we were there. And then Teen A expressed interest in the sandwiches at the Cutthroat Cafe in Bailey where we always have lunch. And then he said he might like to drive...

So without much nagging from us at all, they both came. Teen B brought his homework and we spent an hour on language arts at the cabin, plus he and Rocket Boy worked on math in the car on the way home (before it got dark). Teen A enjoyed a cold ham and cheese sandwich at the Cutthroat Cafe, AND he drove us all the way there and all the way back. He's getting to be quite a skilled driver, though a bit of a speed demon. Rocket Boy sat in the front seat next to him on the way up, scolding him about his speed all the way, and I did the same on the way back. At one point he was doing 75 in a 55-mph zone. Granted, everyone else was going just as fast, but still. I think he needs to get a speeding ticket -- and pay for it himself -- that would help slow him down. 

We didn't spend much time at the cabin. We got a late start (what else is new) and didn't make it there until around 2:30 or so. I took a walk down to the beaver ponds and discovered that the old beaver den had been destroyed, but Rocket Boy investigated and found that the beavers had made a new den on land, with tunnels, so that was interesting. After Teen B and I did language arts, Teen A wanted to leave so that he could shop at Al-Mart (Alma's version of Walmart), but Rocket Boy wasn't ready to go yet. So -- the magic that can happen when they grow up -- Teen A drove himself and me to Al-Mart for a little shopping. We bought some snacks, plus a new hoodie and an Al-Mart t-shirt for him. On the back of the shirt it says "Dude, I think this whole town is high!" and then it gives Alma's elevation (10,500 feet). I was a little worried about him wearing that to school, because of the drug connotation, but he wore it this morning, and I haven't gotten a call from the principal yet, so maybe it's OK.

And then we drove back to the cabin and hung out for a while longer, and then the neighbor dropped by, and we finally left around 5:30 pm. It was fine. We drove to Morrison and had dinner at the Morrison Inn, and were home in Boulder by about 8:30.

I'm a little slow this morning because I took my first shot of the new dose of Mounjaro last night. (I decided to go up to 7.5 mg even though I had one more dose of 5 mg left, because it really wasn't working anymore.) I slept well, but woke up with a splitting headache. That's a Mounjaro side effect that I hadn't experienced before. It's somewhat better now, but it's been replaced by gastrointestinal misery. None of this is surprising. A lot of people have trouble when they go up to 7.5 mg. Speaking of which, it's probably time for the Mounjaro report.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 233.6
• Weight this Sunday morning (after 19+ weeks on Mounjaro): 234.6
  

So not only did I not lose weight, I gained a pound back. Hence my decision to go up to 7.5 mg. I was up another pound this morning, but I decided to put Sunday's weight down here because today's weight is probably just due to the trip to the cabin and eating lunch and dinner out. My stomach has already emptied itself this morning, so the weight would be meaningless.

Only three days until Halloween! We don't have a pumpkin yet and we haven't gotten out any of the decorations. I don't know if there's any point this late in the game, but we'll see. We will definitely get a pumpkin at least. (But when?)

On Friday night, Rocket Boy and Teen B and I went to the haunted house at the high school. As always, we had to wait in a long line. We arrived around 8 pm and were let into the building around 9 pm, I think. Something like that. It wasn't too cold and I had a warm sweater on, so I didn't mind the wait. The theme this year was Alice in Wonderland, or, as the posters said, Malice in Wonderland. I thought they did a good job, better than last year. The haunted house is always kind of the same, so when you've been through it a few times, you know pretty much what's going to happen, but it's still good.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the best thing that happened this week (after Rocket Boy's homecoming) -- he got the furnace working! To recap, last April it died, RB fiddled with it for several days, no luck, we called in some furnace people and they fiddled with it, no luck, and finally they said it's the circuit board, it'll cost $1200 to replace it, or you could replace the furnace. This time, RB fiddled with it some more, called around to see if he could buy a circuit board himself (avoiding the HVAC company's markup), and ended up talking to a guy at a furnace supply store who advised him to replace just the sensor. The sensor cost about $32. Also, he asked them how much a circuit board would cost: $161. I know the Boulder mark-up is real, and the HVAC company's labor would cost something, but seriously? Anyway, he drove to the store in Arvada, paid $32 for the sensor, replaced it in the furnace, and voila! We have heat!

His ability to fix things is not the ONLY reason I married Rocket Boy, but it's one of them.

Another thing we did this week was drop off our ballots. That was very satisfying, especially since there was someone right before us and someone right after us doing the same thing. Seeing people vote makes me happy, I don't care who they vote for. (Well, I do, but that's secondary. The most important thing is that people vote.) There's one proposition on the ballot that we disagree on -- sort of -- it's confusing, and a lot of people in this state are confused about it and not sure how to vote. It's Proposition 131, which would establish ranked choice voting. In general, I'm in favor of ranked choice voting, but I was uneasy about this proposition for a couple of reasons. It's being heavily promoted by wealthy conservatives, and many Colorado progressives are against it. Rocket Boy is a big fan of ranked choice voting, so he voted for it, but I am more cautious (about everything), so I voted against it. We have been arguing about it ever since. We keep reading different things about it and debating the merits of what we read. It's so satisfying to be able to have this sort of argument with my husband in person, not just over the phone.

This is another reason why I married him. We think alike in some ways, but differently in others, and we both like to talk about what we think. I think it would be horrible to be married to someone who didn't enjoy arguing.

I should probably stop here. It's almost 2 o'clock in the afternoon and I haven't even finished my morning chores yet (specifically, the litter boxes). I think my intestines have calmed down enough for me to do some work. Rocket Boy went to Golden this morning, something to do with his new job, and he mentioned that he might try to go swimming too, so I hope that's what he did. I've been enjoying having the house to myself for a few hours, but I'm also looking forward to seeing him again soon.

Chilly days

It's cold in this house. Last night's low was predicted to be 41, and today's high is supposed to be 68 degrees. Currently it's 62 in the house and 57 on the front porch. It could be worse, of course -- it could be snowing. Six months ago, in April, our furnace died, and at the time, I never dreamed it still wouldn't be fixed by October.

No, that's not true. I totally dreamed it. Rocket Boy was sure he'd be able to fix it sometime this summer, but there wasn't enough time on his two visits, and his move home kept getting delayed. He's still in St. Louis as I type this. He should be leaving today, but he's driving around donating things, mailing boxes at the UPS store, dropping off his recycling. I don't think he's going to spend another night in his apartment -- I think he'll call me from a hotel tonight. But at this point we may not see him until Tuesday. Maybe Monday night. We'll see.

To warm up the house, I turned the oven on to 400 degrees and left the door open. I also have the front door open (we still have the screen on, haven't switched to the glass yet). The sun is shining, so it feels warmer outside than in.

The latest disaster connected with RB's move is that his credit union account in St. Louis has been compromised, so he can't use his debit card. He has a credit card too, but he lost it months ago (probably somewhere in his papers, not "lost" as in "someone else has it"). And of course it's Sunday, so the credit union's not open and he can't go in and get cash or a replacement card. Fortunately he can use his debit card from our Boulder credit union account, but I told him, very sternly, "Don't use your PIN! Use the debit card as a credit card." "Uh huh," he agreed, vaguely. I know he's going to forget. We have had our bank accounts compromised two or three times in the past -- it's a pain! We got all the money back each time (this was in Ridgecrest), but sometimes it takes a while. And Rocket Boy cannot get it through his skull that you should not use your PIN except at the credit union, preferably INSIDE the credit union, when you're getting cash. I do also use mine at the grocery store, I admit, but only there. Everywhere else I either use my credit card or I use the debit card as a credit card. No PIN. PINs get stolen!

Arrrggghhh. Last night I dreamed that someone broke into Rocket Boy's house and killed him. I feel as though St. Louis is trying to hold on to him. If he makes it back to Boulder in one piece I think I will collapse in shock.

Other than Rocket Boy's issues, it was an OK week. I managed to cook all five weekdays, which is unusual for me -- usually 4 is my max, although I plan for 5. 

• Monday I made goulash with a new kind of fake ground beef, either Impossible or Beyond Beef, I can't remember which. It tasted weirdly authentic. The kids loved it (Teen A had requested it).
  
• Tuesday was spinach cheese burritos, baked in the oven, and they were good, but way too rich for me. I ate one and got sick. 
• Wednesday I made ratatouille and served it over rice, which the twins thought was weird, but they ate it, even had seconds. It actually turned out really well. My recipe calls for a lot of tomatoes, but I only had one, so that's what I used. Teen B doesn't like tomatoes, and they bother my stomach, so really, cutting back on tomatoes was the way to go. 
• Thursday we had sweet potatoes, twice cooked with black beans and cheese, so incredibly yummy. I could eat that every week.
  
• and Friday we had Thai pineapple fried rice with tofu. Everybody likes that (Teen B had requested it).
  

We have leftovers of every one of these dishes in the fridge, so "forage night" (tonight) will be quite tasty. 

So, a good cooking week, but exercise was a total bust. Did not take one walk until yesterday. Some of that was because it was cold and some because I was cooking at the time I would have been walking. I took a great walk yesterday, though, 44 minutes, so I'll try to do better this week.

It wasn't a good weight loss week either (possibly related to the lack of exercise?), but that's OK.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 233.6
• Weight this morning (after 18+ weeks on Mounjaro): 233.6
  

So I didn't lose any weight, but I'm still down 21 lbs in a little over 18 weeks, for an average of 1.17 pounds per week. Staying the same is fine. Maybe I'll lose this week, but I'd be OK with another week of staying the same. I took the shot last night, a day early again. I've got one more dose of 5 mg and then I can go up to 7.5. 

We're up to 66 degrees in the house! This is the result of having the oven on and the front door open, plus the sun shining on the house and through the windows. It actually got warm enough at one point for the cat to leave the oven and go sit in the window.

This coming week looks a little complicated, especially in terms of meal planning. Monday night I thought Rocket Boy would be home, but now I don't think so. If he is, it will be very late, past dinnertime. Tuesday he should definitely be home, but Teen A has a haircut appointment at 5 and then my book group meets at 7 (fortunately not at our house). I won't eat dinner that night, so that I can eat book group snacks, but what should I have for the family to eat? Wednesday is conferences, from 4:30 to 7:30, so I won't have time to cook and we won't have time to eat until late. Thursday is a normal day, but Friday night we'll probably go to the Haunted House at the kids' high school, so we might eat early or we might eat late.

Hmm.

We had a little bit of weather this weekend, some light rain on Friday and Saturday morning, but then it cleared up. It wasn't enough to damage the pretty leaves, just enough to make the house absolutely freezing. 

Still, it's odd -- a lot of trees haven't changed yet. For instance, our next-door neighbor's honey locust is almost done, but ours has barely started. Yesterday, on my long walk, I went west on Dartmouth to look at my favorite fall tree. I was afraid that it might be done, that I'd missed it. Instead, it's barely started! Look at that tree. It may be in full color by next weekend -- I'll go look at it again then. 

Am I mixed up? Do some trees always wait this long to change? My memory is so screwy these days. We went to CU yesterday for our yearly check-in at the long-term study that the twins participate in, and I had a terrible time answering the questions on my surveys. Some of the questions are so ridiculous. "Was there ever a time when your child acted in such and such a way? When was that? Give month and year." Ummm. I just made things up.

The other thing I did this week was fill out my ballot. I'll wait to turn it in until Rocket Boy gets here, because I'm sure he'll want to discuss it before he fills out his. But I filled the whole thing out, four pages worth, colored in all the little circles. I read about each proposition, amendment, question, issue. I read the review of each judge that I needed to approve (that's a Colorado thing). I researched who was spending money to get each proposition passed. I read people's opinions. In a couple of cases, I changed my mind. It took hours, but it was worth it. At the end I felt more knowledgeable, and as though I had done a good thing (though it won't really be DONE until I drop it off at the rec center).

I'm still panicking about the presidential election. Earlier in the week I started to worry about my reactions. I felt as though I was going to get sick from the worry, have a nervous breakdown or something. I was having trouble sleeping. I still feel that way, but having spent the time on my ballot helped calm me down a little. Also, I'm avoiding reading about the polls, because those REALLY upset me. I'm not reading the news at all as much as I normally do. I know I don't need to -- I've already voted (almost). I'm reading Kafka, and ghost stories, and I'm cooking. This week I'll try to take more walks. In fact, I think I will go take one right now.

Another sleepy day

Well, I did it again. I went to bed too late last night, got an unwanted second wind, and then couldn't fall asleep at all. After a bathroom trip and a couple more attempts to sleep, I gave up, turned my light back on, and read a book by Kevin Fisher-Paulson, the SF Chronicle columnist who died recently. I ordered all his books from Amazon and they came yesterday, so I read A Song for Lost Angels. It was very good, though sad, and much better for middle of the night reading than my current spooky book. I finished it around 5 am and then was finally able to fall asleep. 

But around 9 am, our cat Sillers decided it was high time I got up (I normally feed the cats at 8:30). Meow meow meow meow! I fought it as long as I could, hissing "Sillers!" in angrier and angrier tones. She paid no attention. I finally got up and threw her in the garage. Back to bed. A moment later, here she is again, having climbed expertly through the cat door that I neglected to lock.

I gave up and got up, but I didn't feed the cats until after 10 am, just to be mean.

So I'm a basket case again today. So tired and grouchy. I'm sure soon I'll be ready for a nap, but until then I might as well type this blog post.

It's been kind of a strange week. Last weekend, unhappy about the fact that the King Soopers pharmacy had given me another box of 5 mg Mounjaro, I decided to take my shot a day early, on Sunday night. You can do that -- you can take it as much as 3 days early, I think, if you and your insurance company want to pay for extra doses. I thought giving myself the medicine a day early would make it seem a little like I'd gone up to a higher dose. 

I don't know if that's what happened -- all I know is that I spent most of the week in bed, no energy at all. I got nothing done. Well, I made dinner four times, did the laundry, kept up with dishes, took a few walks. I think that was it. No cleaning to speak of, except litter boxes. No work on the files. And no fun stuff, either, no writing or genealogy, even though on a couple of days I specifically told myself: you can spend today writing. I didn't want to. All I wanted to do was read and nap. And even at the end of the week it didn't improve much. Maybe yesterday I finally had a little more energy, but not a lot.

I also lost some weight, 2.6 lbs.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 236.2
• Weight this morning (after 17+ weeks on Mounjaro): 233.6
  

So I'm now down 21 lbs in a little over 17 weeks, for an average of 1.23 pounds per week. Finally made it past 20 pounds! Yay! 

But OMG, spending the week in bed was not yay, it was awful. If this is what it's going to feel like to go up a level, I'm not sure I want to. I'm not going to take the shot early this week, just stick with Sunday for now. Maybe this will be a better week.

It will be our last week without Rocket Boy. I'm racking my brain trying to think of how to get ready for him. What I really wish I'd done was to clean up the desk room, but that's not going to happen in a week. I think I'll probably just try to do the basics this week -- same as I did last week, except more vacuuming and mopping. Dusting. There are some things on the calendar, too: my parent support group on Tuesday and a conference with Teen A's Boulder TEC teacher on Thursday. Plus I'll try to bake something. This past week I made brownies and the week before I made banana bread coffee cake. It's still warm during the day, but cool at night and the house never gets hot -- perfect for baking.

One thing making it hard for me to sleep at night is the election. The presidential race is so close, ridiculously close, that it's making me feel ill. I just gave Kamala Harris another $10 -- I figure that's my November donation a few weeks early. Our ballots arrived a couple of days ago. I'd like to turn mine in right away, but I'm going to wait until Rocket Boy comes, so that I can show him my choices before I submit it. We don't always vote exactly the same way, but we like to discuss our reasoning. Also, he's been out of the Colorado loop, so I can explain some things to him.

But I can hardly bear to read the news right now. I don't want to read that the Democrats are going to lose the Senate, the Republicans are going to keep the House. I especially don't want to read that Donald Trump is doing better in the polls. Who in the name of God is planning to vote for that mess? I just don't understand my country. When I think about him winning again, I get physically ill. We survived his first presidency because he behaved so badly and so many people noticed and fought back. But this time? 

So anyway, I can't think about it. I have to think about anything but that.

You know, I think I'm going to stop here and post this. My brain is obviously not functioning well enough to write a good post, and Teen B has just asked me for help with homework (ha!), so I'll go do that. If I have more ideas later, I'll come back and add to this. But this is probably enough for now.

Beautiful October

Although I'm a little tense this month -- Rocket Boy is supposed to be home, why isn't he home, why did he have to miss Teen B's concert, what are we going to do about the furnace (it's getting colder), what about our health insurance, are we going to have enough money, etc., etc. -- as usual, October in Boulder is just beautiful. It is the prettiest month. 

We don't have the best spring. Ann Arbor had a fabulous spring, every year, flowers and trees and plants just busting out all over. Boulder is more subdued -- it's much dryer, and you can have snow in May, and all that. 

But fall! Fall in the Midwest is glorious, fall in the East is glorious, but fall in the Rocky Mountains is glorious too. And the skies are blue and the leaves are turning and it's awesome. We haven't had any rain for a while, which is bad, but it means the leaves stay on the trees longer. So pretty.

So here's where things stand right now. Rocket Boy's last day at work in St. Louis will be October 18th, and then he'll probably start driving home on the 19th (or the 20th, if necessary). He'll be home that Sunday or Monday. He's retiring, rather than resigning, so we get to keep our health insurance -- forever. (The twins get to keep it until they're 26.) If Rocket Boy dies before me, I still get to keep it as long as I live. This is very good.

His clearance finally came through with this contract job he got, so he'll be starting that as soon as he gets back (but we won't need to use the insurance they offer, which is more expensive than our government insurance).

He's going to start getting Social Security payments in a couple weeks, $2,421 each month. The twins will start getting their own Social Security payments at the same time, $720 a month until they graduate from high school. I have tentatively agreed to give them an allowance of $20/week until then (I control their SS money). Since their allowance has been $2.50/week for many years, this will be a huge bump, and I am a little uneasy about it. But now's the time to learn how to manage money, so I guess it will be good. Better than continuing with the $2.50 and then suddenly giving them almost $14,000 or whatever as a graduation present. Because I'm required by law to do that -- maybe I have to give it to them when they turn 18, I'm not sure. Teen B will of course put his thousands in the bank, but I hate to think what Teen A might do with a sudden windfall like that.

So maybe getting $20/week for a year and a half will help him learn more about how money works (and it will also reduce the windfall by a couple thousand). I don't know. I googled "how to teach teens about money" or something like that and found some websites with all these great ideas, most of which it was too late to try or else they just seemed impossible. "Talk to your teen about blah blah blah." Doesn't that require that the teen listen when you talk and not just say "OK, Boomer" to all your words of wisdom?

One thing about your kids getting older is that you realize how little control you have over their lives. Like, I worry about my kids' social lives, or lack thereof. Guess what? That is none of my business! When they were little I could have worked harder to set up play dates or whatever, but when they're in high school, no. 

I did suggest, a couple weeks ago, that they go to the Homecoming Dance. They both gave me these looks. "OK, OK," I said. "Never mind."

So, with money, I can certainly offer advice, but in less than a year and a half, I won't be able to control anything they do anymore. It's a terrifying thought, but also something of a relief. 

Anyway, after a few weeks of everything seeming like a mess -- Rocket Boy's homecoming, money, insurance, etc. -- it now seems to be working out. And I have two more weeks to (not) get ready for him.

***

Last night we had dinner at Panera, my choice (I wanted someplace cheaper than where we've been going -- last week at BJ's the bill was around $120 just for the three of us). I had a bowl of Autumn Squash soup, Teen B had a bowl of chicken noodle soup, and Teen A had a chicken avocado BLT, something like that. Plus drinks it was $45. I really miss the days when restaurant food was reasonable.

After dinner we went to Target to buy Halloween candy (for snacking, not for handing out). We bought M&Ms (both plain and peanut), Reese's peanut butter cups, and KitKats, and when we got home I brought out my Halloween candy dish and filled it up. It looks very lovely, and I realized that I did not want any of it. I'm totally off chocolate. Actually, I keep looking at it and thinking about eating something from it, but then I think, nah, wouldn't taste good. Honestly, if I could have thought of something to buy for me, I would have, but there isn't anything. The only kind of candy that appeals to me right now is mints, and there don't seem to be any Halloween mints. Christmas, now that may be a problem. But not Halloween. I don't know who is going to eat all this candy. Rocket Boy, maybe.

That seems like a good segue into the Mounjaro update.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 236.8
• Weight this morning (after 16+ weeks on Mounjaro): 236.2
  

So I'm now down 18.4 lbs in a little over 16 weeks, for an average of 1.15 pounds per week. I don't like this slow losing! But I'm glad the number keeps going down. I was supposed to start the new higher dose, 7.5 mg, tomorrow, but the stupid King Soopers pharmacy made a mistake and gave me another box of 5 mg. That is, I picked up the new box of 7.5, but then I got some more robocalls saying my prescription was ready, so I went back a couple days later, got my rosuvastatin -- and another box of Mounjaro. "That's weird," I said, "but OK." Took it home, took it out of the bag, and realized it was another box of 5 mg. If I'd actually seen the box at the pharmacy, I would have noticed it was wrong -- the different doses come in different colored boxes -- but it was already packed in a paper bag and stapled shut.

I didn't think they'd take it back -- I don't think you can return medication -- and in any case, I didn't try. And the copay was $53, so I don't want to waste it. I'll just do four more weeks of 5 mg (and probably not lose much weight). However, I'm planning to take the shots every 6 days instead of 7, as a compromise. That means I'm going to take a shot tonight, and next weekend on Saturday night. We'll see how it goes.

I did better with exercise this week -- I took a walk on five of the last seven days. On a couple of those days I wasn't feeling energetic, so I just walked for 15 or 20 minutes. My usual walk takes me about 28 minutes, and then one day a week I try to go longer, so that was 42 minutes. I will try to take a walk today too, in a little bit.

I've been doing pretty well with cooking, though not so much with eating. One day last week I made a new (to me) recipe from the NY Times, for macaroni beef casserole, something like that (of course I made it with fake meat, which might have been part of the problem). I thought it would be similar to goulash, without actually BEING goulash, since I made that just last month. Well, it was complicated, took a long time to make, had to make a stupid ROUX, which is not my favorite thing to do, and in the end it wasn't very good. Plus, it gave me absolutely terrible heartburn, don't know why. Maybe the tomatoes, maybe the butter in the cheese sauce. Anyway, the kids didn't like it, and I didn't want to experience that heartburn again by eating leftovers for lunch, so into the compost it went. But first I left it sitting on the dining room table for a couple of days, under aluminum foil, but fruit flies can get under aluminum foil. Here it is just before I finally dumped it in the compost. I don't know if you can see the fruit flies.

Euw.

We are having a fruit fly problem. I put out a cup of apple cider vinegar for them, and a few jumped right in and died, but the rest went and sat in the macaroni beef casserole. Then I remembered you're supposed to put plastic wrap over the vinegar, with holes punched in it, so I tried that, but I think it wasn't then smelly enough and all the fruit flies went away. So today I took the plastic wrap off and mixed in some dish soap, but so far nobody's taking the challenge. Stupid fruit flies. Pretty soon it will be too cold for them, fortunately.

OK, well, I'm sure there were other things I was going to write about, but this is probably enough for today. I need to take my walk, and then the kids have homework. Plus, I need to finish reading last night's ghost story. I bought a book of ghost stories at the Bookworm last weekend and decided to read one each night all through October. What I didn't think about is that reading a ghost story at night (when your husband is in St. Louis for two more weeks) is perhaps not the best idea if you want to fall asleep easily. The noises this house makes! The other night there was a noise and both cats perked up their ears, like what the heck was that? But anyway, last night I started reading the next story and I thought, you know what, this seems like it's going to be very scary, and I'm just going to go to bed. So I did. But I need to finish it now, to stay on track. It'll probably be much easier to read in daylight.

Reading post: Jesmyn Ward in September

September is now truly over, so it's time for a reading post. In September I decided to read books by Jesmyn Ward (b. 1977). She is a highly praised young American writer, has won all sorts of awards, and I'd thought about reading her for a long time. Why hadn't I? Because her books sounded so depressing. 

I tell myself I want to stay up to date with Black literature, and then I read a description of one of Ward's novels and I think, oh, maybe another time.

I mean, she sounds good: "lyrical," "dazzling." But she writes about characters in really desperate situations. So I dither and postpone. But -- a new development -- she has three books on the NY Times list of the 100 best books of the 21st century so far. I decided that September was the time to read Jesmyn Ward.

• Salvage the Bones (2011). Beautifully written, this is the story of a poor Black family in southern Mississippi and how they experience Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The book's 12 chapters each describe one day, including the 10 days before Katrina hits and one day after the waters subside. The main character, Esch, 15, realizes she's pregnant on Day 2. Her dad is an alcoholic, her mom died after giving birth to Junior, now age 7. She has two older brothers, Randall, 17, and Skeetah, 16, who's in love with his pit bull, China, who gives birth on Day 1. And therein lies the problem with the book, for me. I can handle reading about the hardscrabble poverty, the rapes... it's all awful, but the characters are vivid and interesting and you care about them. But the dog stuff, oh my god. I understand that the dogs are symbolic, but I couldn't handle it. China's puppies die, horribly, one by one. There's a dog fight. Around Day 6, I almost gave up. The hurricane stuff is good, a lot of the book is really good. It ends well (except for the dogs, again). But the dog stuff ruined it for me. Unbearable. Should come with a trigger warning.
  
  
• Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017). This is a less successful novel than Salvage the Bones, and if it hadn't been for those dogs, I'd say I liked the earlier book better. Sing is the story of another family: grandparents (Pop and Mam), their troubled daughter Leonie (and their murdered son Given, now a ghost), Leonie's white husband Michael, and their two kids, Jojo who's 13 and Kayla who's 2 or 3. Much of the book is about a road trip Leonie and the kids take to pick up Michael, who's been in prison for three years. Pop was imprisoned in the same place many years ago, and there's a subplot about a boy he befriended there, Richie, who is now a ghost. The story is told from three perspectives: Jojo's, Leonie's, and Richie's. I think part of the problem with the book is that Leonie is a mess. Every time she took over the story I wanted to close the book so I didn't have to "listen." Jojo, on the other hand, is a sympathetic character. So, Sing has strengths, but on the whole I was disappointed. It's all so jumbled, especially the ghosts. Not enough character development, other than Jojo. Leonie is so awful, and Mam is a little too woo-woo. Too many loose ends -- what was wrong with Kayla? Too much misery for any of it to have an impact. Oh, and we have to watch a goat being killed. I really didn't care for this novel.
  
  
• Men We Reaped (2013). I was very interested to read this book, which isn't a novel but rather a memoir of five Black men in Ward's life who died young. I've heard that it's harrowing but worth it, and anyway, I like memoirs. But both local copies were checked out, and they remained checked out all month. So I'll read this in October (it's "in transit," will probably arrive in a day or two).
  
  
• Let Us Descend (2023). Because I couldn't get Men We Reaped, I reluctantly tried Ward's most recent novel, which follows a young woman, Annis, as she descends into the hell of slavery. I was expecting to hate this book and planned to read only a chapter or two. Instead, it wasn't bad. I liked Annis and cared about what would happen to her. And I've started to be interested in how writers deal with the subject of slavery. What is the best, most effective, most meaningful way to write about it? It can't just be Uncle Tom's Cabin over and over -- but then what? One thing Ward does is to introduce a mysterious "spirit," Aza, who sometimes helps Annis, a little, when she asks. I made sense of this by comparing it to how someone might try to talk to God, ask God for help, be disappointed when not much help is forthcoming. But in the last third of the book or so, the dialogue between Annis and Aza takes over the book, and I was left wondering what on earth was going on. One reviewer (in the Guardian) thought this was where the book came alive, but for me it was where the book fell apart. The ghosts and magic realism were my least favorite aspect of Sing, Unburied, Sing too. I'm not opposed to those things in fiction in general, but I don't think they're Ward's strong point.
  

What's the verdict? I am not, at this point, a big Jesmyn Ward fan. She writes well and I expect that I will look at reviews of her future books with interest. But whether or not I actually read the books, hmm. Might or might not. I don't know. I really didn't enjoy the animal torture porn. Likewise, I didn't get much out of her weird ghosts and spirits. I don't understand what she's trying to do with them. A New York Times reviewer said the spirit Aza "sounds as if she is making up her own mythology as she goes," and that's also how I felt about the ghosts in Sing. Like, what is this sh--? 

I'm glad I finally made the effort to read her, and I'm still looking forward to reading Men We Reaped. But Ward probably isn't going to be one of my favorite writers. On the other hand, she's fairly young. She still might write something amazing...

POST-NOTE: It's October 11th and I finished reading Men We Reaped about an hour ago. Now THAT is a good book. It's sad, terribly depressing, but I thought it was worth it. It earned its misery, it wasn't gratuitous. I read a stupid review of the book on Goodreads by someone who felt Jesmyn Ward hadn't "processed" her grief enough before writing it. "I've lost several family members as well, so I do understand," the clueless person went on. I looked at her little photo: a white person, obviously. Which is not to say that white people can't lose several family members and feel grief, but Men We Reaped is about more than that. It's about losing one young Black man after another (they ranged in age from 19 to 32) for stupid reasons that all circle back around to the way Black people are treated in this country, especially in Mississippi, which is almost 38% Black -- that's a higher percentage than any other state. This isn't the kind of grief you "process." Ward doesn't apologize for some of the behaviors that got the young men in trouble, such as drug use, but she explains clearly how it all happens. The dead-end jobs (after all the decent factory jobs were outsourced overseas), the lack of support for Black students in schools, for crying out loud the defective crossing gate arm because no one cares about fixing them in rural Mississippi...

OK, I've revised my opinion of Jesmyn Ward. I am going to go on reading her, but I'm especially interested in any other nonfiction she may write in the future. Men We Reaped is a very good book.

Other reading this month...

On a walk one evening I found Stay True by Hua Hsu in a little free library. It's about his years as a Berkeley undergrad and his friendship with Ken, who is then senselessly murdered. Their friendship reminded me so much of my Berkeley days. Even though I started at Cal in 1979, two years after Hsu was born, Berkeley is Berkeley and the Berkeley dorms are still standing. I lived in Unit 1 and Hsu lived in Unit 3, but I know those dorms. It's kind of an odd memoir, a bit meandering, but I really liked it. He takes some rhetoric classes (my major) and makes fun of them, which I enjoyed. His perspective on the Asian experience(s) at Cal is interesting. Just overall a cool, though odd, book.

Then...

In an article in the New Yorker from 13 years ago called "Why You Should Read W. G. Sebald," which I happened to reread this month, the author, Mark O'Connell, mentions another writer who is something like Sebald, Geoff Dyer, implying that Dyer imitates Sebald. Apparently Dyer responded by pointing out that he started publishing before Sebald did, and that both of them were actually influenced by the writings of Thomas Bernhard. 

Geoff Dyer? Thomas Bernhard? I pursued this line of thought. Our branch library had one of Dyer's books, White Sands, a sort of offbeat travel book. I happily consumed it, and then I got The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings out of the main library. That was a more difficult book, referring to all sorts of writers and musicians and artists that I wasn't familiar with, going on and on about Nietzsche. And yet it was full of gems too. I love the section on books we read as we get older vs. books that make more sense when we're younger. Talking about reading long nonfiction works, which I often do these days...

It's always time well spent, reading whoppers like these. You learn so much. The problem is how little of that 'much' is retained after finishing them. 'Little' is sometimes a euphemism for nothing.

And...

That's the other thing about the process of knowledge absorption as you get older. You can't get it all on one plate, in a single helping. You have to read about the same events, slog through the same subjects, in multiple whoppers... Knowledge has to be laid down in the brain in overlapping and criss-crossed layers. You need the underlay before you can have the carpet and then---then you can abandon the analogy because it's completely unsustainable. Everything has gradually to become a kind of sediment in the brain, its ocean floor---a place so dark and mysterious that the fish aren't even really fish, just creatures without eyes or brains, flattened by the dead weight of water-knowledge pressing down on them.

I thought this was a wonderful, goofy description of what it's like to read when you're older. I've read so many great books the last ten years, feel like I've gained so much from reading them, and yet, when I try to explain what I got out of any particular book, I'm stumped. Or all I can remember is maybe a line or two from the jacket cover, the blurb. So why did I have to read the whole book, why couldn't I just read the blurb? Well, something happens when you read the whole book, more of those "overlapping and criss-crossed layers" are laid down in your brain. Little by little, you're more knowledgeable about the world, while at the same time you get stupider and stupider because you're getting older and your brain is leaking bits of knowledge right and left.

I plan to go on reading Dyer. He's a lot of fun, although I don't quite see the connection with Sebald. 

Moving on to the Austrian author Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989), no Boulder libraries had anything by him, but the Longmont library obligingly supplied Wittgenstein's Nephew (1982). And here, yes, I can see the influence he had on Sebald. The narrator of this book -- Bernhard himself, since this is a sort of memoir (but also sort of a novel) -- is a crabby, depressed middle-aged man who seems like someone W. G. Sebald might include in one of his novels. But I don't think he'd have the crabby, depressed middle-aged man narrate, he'd have his narrator encounter the crabby, depressed middle-aged man and perhaps listen to him for a while before moving on...

Wittgenstein's Nephew is the oddest book. Thomas Bernhard was in real life friends with Paul Wittgenstein, whose father was actually Ludwig Wittgenstein's cousin, not brother. Anyway, Paul was about 25 years older than Bernhard, but Bernhard was in very poor health his whole life and died in his 50s, so perhaps the age difference didn't matter much. Bernhard was tubercular and Paul was insane, so they were both always in and out of hospitals. The book begins when they're both hospitalized but then does not seem to follow any pattern of organization, it just meanders along, crabbily, for 100 pages and then stops, when Paul dies. 

He lies, as they say, in the Central Cemetery in Vienna. To this day I have not visited his grave.

I may or may not read more of Thomas Bernhard. Probably I will (though I will have to request his other books from Prospector). Have to be in the right mood, though.

So that was September. Now, what about October, the spooky month? After some thought I decided I am going to read Kafka. Yes, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the German-speaking Czech Jewish weirdo with his own adjective: Kafkaesque. I've read "The Metamorphosis," long ago in high school, and that's it. I figure if I don't do it now, I may never do it, and October seems like a great time to read books that have been compared to nightmares. Of course I will also try to read some ghost stories.