First week of December

I love the way the December calendar works out this year, with the 1st on Sunday. The weeks are so nicely laid out as a result. So today is Sunday, December 8th and the first week of December is over. It was a busy week for us, in a pleasant way.

I have a Roz Chast cartoon from the New Yorker on my refrigerator that's titled "The Fall Collection." I particularly identify with the first outfit, "The perfect ensemble for days that become increasingly cold and dark." But I also like the middle outfit, "What to wear when it suddenly hits you: soon, the "holidays." A few months ago I got interested in trying to plan ahead for those "holidays," so as to enjoy them instead of getting all stressed out and doing everything at the last minute. I copied a lot of stuff from one of those "Get all your Xmas shopping done in July!" websites and even made week-by-week plans for cleaning the house and otherwise getting ready. I cleaned a couple of rooms, sort of, and then started cutting corners, and anyway, it didn't work out. But I did do a few things early, most importantly the cards. I actually took them to St. Louis with me and had Rocket Boy sign them all. I can't believe it's December 8th and I'm done. I feel so free.

I also thought I would start baking cookies early, but there is a problem with that idea: the cookies will be stale by Christmas. On the other hand, the twins inhale everything I bake, so it is more likely that the cookies will vanish before getting stale. My goal is to dole them out to the twins slowly, a few each day, so that by Christmas we'll have at least a few left, just to show that I did in fact make all these varieties. This will work as long as the twins do not find the cookie tins, which are in the garage, and it's very cold in there, so it tends to discourage young people who like to wear shorts and t-shirts and go barefoot around the house. I've made three batches so far: confetti cookies (prettier than they taste), panocha squares, and Norwegian holiday cookies. (I don't know what is so Norwegian about them. They probably have another name that I don't know. This is one of my grandmother's recipes. She was not Norwegian.) (Postnote: After doing a little research I discovered that the Norwegian holiday cookies are probably a version of thumbprints, and are more Swedish than Norwegian.)

We had several activities to attend this past week. Tuesday, there was the Winter Arts and Academics Festival at the twins' middle school, which I enjoyed thoroughly. Thursday we attended a Posada, also at the middle school, which was interesting in part because of the different crowd. Boulder is a mostly white, Anglo community, and I have gotten used to seeing mostly white, Anglo parents at school events. But the twins' elementary school and now their middle school also have a not insignificant Latinx population (plus the middle school has a bilingual program), and those people attended the Posada. The kids and I were almost the only Anglos there, except for some teachers. My Spanish is very rusty, but it's not gone entirely, and I have some knowledge of Hispanic culture (from growing up in California, six weeks in Mexico one summer, three weeks in Guatemala another, reading, studying Spanish for a few years, etc.). So it was fun. The photo shows Kid B trying to hit the pinata.

When we got home, I pulled out our old copy of Nine Days to Christmas: A Story of Mexico by Marie Hall Ets and Aurora Labastida and re-read it to the twins, which helped them understand some aspects of the Posada that had confused them, such as why we were standing outside the cafeteria while most of the people were inside, singing a song in Spanish that they couldn't understand, until finally we were let inside. This is quite a good children's book, although I think the text is a little long for a child the same age as the protagonist (five year old Ceci, who is in kindergarten). The fact that my eleven year old middle school students were interested enough to listen to it says something.

Yesterday, Saturday, we had two activities. In the morning, Kid B and I attended the annual harp concert at the main library. I love this concert, and the last two years Kid B has really wanted to go to it, but this year he was ambivalent and I kind of had to bribe him (I promised to drop him off at the George Reynolds branch library afterwards so that he could play on the computers). This made me sad -- I think it won't be much longer until the twins don't want to do anything like this with me. I was remembering when I took Kid B to a performance of the Nutcracker a couple years ago. He probably wouldn't want to do that now. But I can't really complain. I didn't want to do things with my mother for at least ten years, maybe fifteen, starting around this age. On the other hand, boys are different from girls. We'll see what happens. Anyway, the harp concert was lovely. Last year the performers all dressed in velvet, which I loved. This year most of the harpists' outfits included red. One girl's dress reminded me of the dress I wore to the Paly Winter Formal back in 1977.

Saturday night we attended the Boulder Parade of Lights, downtown. We took the bus, which was standing room only and crawled through terrible traffic. "I don't know why anyone tries to drive to this," I told the twins. "Much more sensible to take the bus." We arrived just as the parade was starting and found places to stand on the north side of Walnut. The kids found it an excellent place to get candy, even though those handing it out had to climb over dirty piles of snow to reach them. We enjoyed seeing their middle school's marching band (they screamed their teacher's name, but he didn't appear to hear them). Afterwards we walked over to Pizza Colore on the mall, where we'd eaten some good pizza a few months ago. But many other people had the same idea, and the tiny indoor seating area was full, so we sat in the tiny outdoor seating area instead. This did not make the twins happy. It was probably the warmest Parade of Lights I've ever attended, but that doesn't mean it was warm. We miss the Cheesecake Factory, which was always perfect for post-parade dinners. We finished our pizza quickly and walked to the closest bus stop to wait for the bus that would take us home. And waited. And waited. About an hour later, a bus finally arrived. I don't know what was wrong, but we were very cold by then. I told the twins that next year we'll DRIVE downtown (we'll need to be early, if they're in the marching band).

Today we're thinking of starting to decorate the house. The house is not truly ready for this -- I need to vacuum, at the very least. But it's Christmas, and the house should be decorated. The first step is to clear away a space for the tree, which I have done (see photo), and the next step is to bring the tree and all the storage containers up from the basement. I told the twins that and they said NO, they were NOT going down in the basement. But the spiders that live there are all dead in the cold (though their egg sacs line the walls). And it's important to do this between snowstorms. It's chilly today, but the back yard at least is free of snow (the north-facing front yard probably won't be free of snow until April). So I must finish up this blog post and get going. I'll let you know the results next time I post.

Home from St. Louis

It is December! And we are home from our travels -- and the twins are back in school, so I have some time to decompress and think about what to do next. We had a wonderful time in St. Louis, visiting Rocket Boy. Here are some highlights.

We flew to St. Louis last Sunday (the 24th), arriving at about 4:30 in the afternoon. The day went very smoothly -- caught the bus to the airport with no problem, plenty of time at the airport, got three seats together on the plane, perfectly smooth ride (Kid B said it felt like he was in a car), and Rocket Boy there to meet us at the other end. We had rented an Airbnb because RB just lives in a basement, so we went there to drop off our luggage and in the refrigerator we found this surprise! Rocket Boy had bought it and brought it to the Airbnb just before he picked us up. We ate it for several nights.

Rocket Boy had gotten us tickets to ride on St. Louis's newest Ferris wheel, this monster down by the old Union Station. The wheel is 200 feet tall. What terrified me was learning that the first Ferris wheel ever built, which turned at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and later at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, was 264 feet tall (and of course didn't have nice safe enclosed compartments like this one). RB and I enjoyed the ride, but the twins were scared. Afterwards we had a delicious dinner at Landry's Seafood House. I had fabulously wonderful swordfish and Rocket Boy had seafood pasta. Pricey, but worth it.

Monday morning RB had to work, so the twins and I took a Lyft to the St. Louis Zoo. (The plan was that RB would pick us up there after work, around 2 pm.) Taking the Lyft was unexpectedly exciting. I didn't download the app until that morning, wasn't familiar with it at all, and when I started to order our ride, we weren't quite ready to go. The app asked me whether we wanted to go now or later and I chose "now." The app then informed me that my ride would be there in 3 minutes. "Ack! Three minutes!" We went tearing around the apartment, putting on shoes, grabbing water bottles, etc. Once outside, we had to find the address where it would pick us up. It was very close, but I wasn't familiar with the house numbers yet. We raced one way, then turned around and raced the other. Meanwhile, a black car showed up and parked across the street. "Maybe that's our Lyft," Kid B said, but I didn't see a Lyft sticker. The app sent me a message: "Your ride will depart in 3 minutes." "Ack! Our ride is leaving!" Fortunately, the driver of the black car then called me and told me where she was, and so we hurried across the street and were off to the zoo at Forest Park.

We enjoyed the zoo, especially the penguins and the lemurs. One amazing thing about the zoo is that it's FREE, so I spent more money there on souvenirs and food and donations than I might otherwise have done. There was a Starbucks in the park, so we had "lunch" from there (the twins adore Starbucks). After a few hours we were tired of walking, so we sat at a picnic table outside the Primate House and ate the M&Ms I had bought for the plane. It was a beautiful day and we were on a hill near a lot of trees, so I started looking for birds. I am not much of a birder anymore, but there were two birds I really wanted to see in St. Louis: a Eurasian Tree Sparrow, which is found nowhere else in the U.S. (it's an import from Germany), and a Northern Cardinal, because Rocket Boy said he hadn't seen one in a long time and they had probably migrated. "No, they don't migrate," I said, and then had to prove it. While we sat at the table I looked up and saw a cardinal fly by! I tried to find it again, but no luck.

Around 2:30 we decided to exit the zoo and wait for Rocket Boy outside. I called him to see when he might be coming. "We have a problem," he said, sounding very unhappy. "My car won't start." Remember that Rocket Boy is driving his dad's old Mitsubishi Montero, which is 28 years old. It has a lot of problems: windows that don't go back up if you roll them down, doors that don't open from the outside (Kid B's) or the inside (mine). But it had a new battery. "It's not the battery, it's the switch," RB told me. "I can usually start it in neutral, but not today." We decided that he would call Enterprise ("we'll pick you up"), get a rental car, and then come get us. In the meantime, the kids and I would start walking to the Science Center, another amazing free thing in Forest Park, and we would all meet up there. So we started walking. Unfortunately it is a mile and a half from the south entrance of the zoo to the north entrance of the Science Center, and we had already been walking around the zoo for four hours. Plus, I'm developing plantar fasciitis again, so I was in a lot of pain. Partway along our walk I called RB to learn that the Enterprise driver had been given the wrong directions and was now stuck in traffic on the opposite side of the city. Obviously we were not going to be rescued any time soon. The twins and I walked on, Kid A begging me to call another Lyft. By the time we got to the Planetarium (the north side of the Science Center), I was in bad shape. I sat on a bench and watched the twins play while we waited. The Science Center closed at 4:30 pm, and then we waited outside on a bench as it got cooler and darker. I think Rocket Boy finally showed up around 5 pm.

We had tickets to see "Garden Glow" at the Missouri Botanical Garden at 5 pm, so we needed to rush over there, but St. Louis rush hour traffic interfered with that plan. We finally got there around 5:30, and they let us in. We decided to eat dinner at the restaurant first, which was a good plan. I had a spicy tuna melt, the kids had quesadillas, RB had quiche. Then we set out to walk through the "Glow." The Garden is Rocket Boy's favorite thing in St. Louis and I was sorry we weren't seeing it in daylight, but even in the dark it seemed lovely. I started thinking we should go back to St. Louis in the spring, perhaps May, to see what it's like then.

Tuesday morning, the twins and I took another Lyft to the City Museum, an amazing place for kids to play -- not really a museum at all. It's on several floors of an old industrial building (I think maybe a shoe factory?) and also outside and on the roof (but the roof is closed until May, another reason to go back then). There are slides and things to climb on all over the building -- pictures don't do it justice, the place is nuts! It was supposed to rain all day, but the rain held off until around 2 pm, which meant the kids could play on the stuff outdoors off and on until then. Another piece of luck was that the museum is not usually open on Tuesdays and the fact that it was open on the 26th was very poorly advertised, so there weren't very many people there (also, I believe school was still in session in St. Louis). The kids wore themselves out playing. We were there for six hours.

Once again, Rocket Boy was delayed in picking us up because of his car. He had left it in the parking lot at work the day before, so after work he needed to get it towed to a garage and this time, although the driver had the right address, AAA sent a battery-charging truck instead of a tow truck, so he had to wait for another truck. Fortunately, the garage was near the Enterprise car rental, so it would be easy to return the rental car later. When he finally came and got us, he took us to his basement, which we had been very eager to see. It's a very nice basement, furnished with a mixture of things left by previous tenants and things he's found on craigslist. He had all the greeting cards he'd received since moving -- for Father's Day, our anniversary, his birthday, Halloween -- displayed around the room. The kids immediately asked if they could sleep there one night, so we arranged that Kid A would spend Tuesday night on the couch (and be dropped off at the Airbnb on RB's way to work) and Kid B would spend Wednesday night. We ate dinner at a wonderful little greasy spoon nearby called the Buttery -- very cheap, cash only.

Wednesday, Rocket Boy was due to get off work three hours early because of the holiday the next day (he took two hours leave both Monday and Tuesday), so we planned that we would go to the Gateway Arch with him then. The last two days had been so busy -- and it was so cold that day -- that we just stayed in the Airbnb until he arrived, which was later than planned because of the car again. The good news was that the Montero had been successfully fixed (it was the starter, not the switch), so he was driving it again. We drove to the Arch, which is actually part of a National Park, parked on a side street, and walked over to the entrance. I hadn't realized that you can ride a tram up to the top of the 630-foot arch, but we gamely did it, and it was very interesting. It was a bit terrifying to think about how high up we were and how the trams were over 50 years old, but at least they weren't 80 years old (Rocket Boy first guessed that the Arch had been built in the 1930s). There's a good museum connected to the Arch (underground), and a large gift shop. We were there too late to tour the old courthouse which is also part of the park, but that would have been interesting too. For dinner, we drove to a Bob Evans south of the city -- it's a chain, of course, but a chain that RB and the kids had never been to, and the food was good.

Thursday, Rocket Boy FINALLY didn't have to work, but of course nothing was open, it being Thanksgiving. So we tentatively decided that it would be nature day. I was still hoping to see that Eurasian Tree Sparrow and find more Northern Cardinals, plus I thought a hike in a county park would be pleasant (the twins thought that was a terrible idea). It was a pretty gloomy day, though, with rain threatening (and eventually falling intermittently). Rocket Boy also wanted to show us the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, so we attempted to do that. Crossing over a bridge to the Illinois side of the river we found the Lewis & Clark Confluence Tower... but of course it was closed, although we were able to walk around the grounds and read the interpretive signs. Something else to do in May! We never did manage to see where the rivers come together -- probably should have researched it better. Another thing we did find, while wandering around a swampy area near the bridge was a cardinal! Several cardinals, in fact! Rocket Boy was very impressed.

Later in the day RB drove us to a wonderful outdoor sculpture garden. Even though it was raining again, we wandered through it for quite a while (the kids mostly stayed in the car). Definitely a place to go back to in May. There were a lot of birds around, and I looked and looked for those Eurasian Tree Sparrows, but didn't see any. However, my lack of binoculars may have been a factor. I did see lots more cardinals! so that was fun.

After the sculpture garden we went back to the Airbnb to crash, and finally it was time for our Thanksgiving dinner, which we had made reservations to eat at the City Diner -- a place that apparently used to be really great but is now under new management and has fallen on hard times. We hadn't needed the reservations -- the place was about 2/3 empty at 5:30 pm. "Sit anywhere you like," the waitress told us, so we eventually found a booth that didn't have torn-up seats. Then she brought us these gigantic platters of food. The food wasn't bad, but there was so much of it. I ate my stuffing and mashed potatoes, sampled the other items on my plate, and felt sick. Kid A ate so little you couldn't tell his plate had been touched. Kid B knocked over his pink lemonade (you can see it in the picture, in the tall red glass) and most of it landed on me. Including tax and tip, I paid just over $100 for that dinner, our worst of the trip. But we went back to the Airbnb (Rocket Boy stayed with us the last night) and laughed about it, and it became a funny story to remember.

Friday, our last day in St. Louis, we packed up our stuff, said goodbye to the Airbnb, and drove back to the Science Center, where we hung out until it was time to go to the airport. One thing that really struck me about St. Louis was the black/white segregation. St. Louis has more black people (49.2% of the population) than white people (43.9%), but I saw very few black people enjoying the attractions we visited. I saw black people working at menial jobs, I saw them huddled near abandoned buildings. We did go to one grocery store where almost all the shoppers were black. But mostly we just saw white people, even though many of the places we went to were free, intended for everyone in the city to use. Why does it have to be like that? The Civil War was over 150 years ago. I did see a few more black people at the Science Center that last day, but not 49.2%. I know I sound naive and I don't know what to do about it. But it seemed so very wrong.

Rocket Boy came with us into the airport and watched and waved until we disappeared into Security. I was so sad to say goodbye. Our flight left late because of bad weather in Denver, and it was an extremely bumpy ride. We got to Denver around 6 pm and caught the 7:20 bus to Boulder. That was also a hair-raising ride, because it was foggy and the roads weren't completely clear. I knew Boulder had gotten 22 inches of snow on Monday/Tuesday, but I still wasn't prepared for the mess at home. It's going to take forever for all this snow to melt. Fortunately, our neighbors had cleared our sidewalk as well as a path to the house, and our cat-sitters had been able to get over and keep the cats alive. We dragged our suitcases through the snow -- and we were home. It was a wonderful trip, but I'm so glad to be back in my cozy little house again. Rocket Boy will be back in less than three weeks! and on we go.

Serious November reading

We are nearly halfway through November and the impeachment hearings have begun. That's pretty serious by any measure. As befits the seriousness of this month, I have been reading serious books, four so far.

First I read a novel published in the 1930s, Of Lena Geyer by Marcia Davenport. I was inspired to read it after reading Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark a few months ago -- someone in some comment section somewhere mentioned it as being similar. Marcia Davenport was the daughter of famed opera singer Alma Gluck, and her book is based on the life of another famed (back then) opera singer, Olive Fremstad, as was The Song of the Lark. Fiction, yes, but serious old-fashioned fiction.

After that I read LaRose by Louise Erdrich, because my book group had read The Round House, which is actually the second book in a semi-trilogy (LaRose is the third -- I read the first book, The Plague of Doves, earlier). Again, fiction, but very serious fiction, all three about crime and punishment on an Indian reservation, with interesting things to say about the intertwined history of Indians and whites, different ways of dealing with crime, etc. All three books are sad, but I found LaRose to be truly depressing, not redemptive, didn't want to finish it, didn't really believe in its happy-ish ending. The Round House was the best book of the three.

Then it was time for a presidential biography -- #15 James Buchanan, thought by many to have been our worst president ever (present president excepted). I read the short bio by Jean H. Baker, in the American Presidents series. To my astonishment I found it utterly gripping. I finished it in a day. Here is a quote I took the time to copy out, from the last pages of the biography:

"He was that most dangerous of chief executives, a stubborn, mistaken ideologue whose principles held no room for compromise. His experience in government had only rendered him too self-confident to consider other views. In his betrayal of the national trust, Buchanan came closer to committing treason than any other president in American history."

Baker wrote that in 2004 (or before), long before we'd even dreamed of Trump as president. Dubya would have been president at the time. Was she thinking about his failings when she wrote this? It doesn't sound like it's about him. But so much of it sounds like Trump -- not the "experience in government" part, nor the "principles" part, but otherwise. God.

And then I read H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, a book I'd been wanting to read ever since it was published (in 2014/2015). Oddly, I found it a little disappointing. It wasn't quite the book I was expecting, or it didn't hit me right or something. The book is a memoir of how she dealt with her grief when her father died by getting a goshawk to train. Macdonald has described her book as also being part "shadow biography" of T. H. White, who also wrote a book about training a goshawk, and it was that part of it that made me sad -- White had such a sad life. On the other hand, the part about Macdonald's own grief didn't really move me, although I did understand what she was going through. She was about 37 when her father died, I was 28 when mine did, and like her, I fell apart. Looking back, I don't know why I grieved so hard. I wasn't very close to my father, though I admired him greatly. But his death was just devastating for me. A year after he was gone I wanted to kill myself. Drugs rescued me, just as they rescued Macdonald. I am not a fan of antidepressants, but they can work miracles with major depression. Anyway, this is a book I might have to think about some more.

Now I'm re-reading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, the book group's next choice, which is in its own way quite a serious book too, and after that I will read The Crucible by Henry Miller, because I'm supposed to read a "classic play" for the Classics Challenge, and THEN I will start reading Moby Dick, my choice of "very long classic." I was first going to read The Golden Bowl by Henry James for that category, but Jill Lepore's article about Herman Melville in The New Yorker steered me in that direction instead. As a teenager, I used to try to read Moby Dick off and on. Our public library had a large old illustrated hardback. I would check it out, return it, check it out again a few months later. I never got beyond the first few chapters. Later I found out that my future high school sweetheart, Greg Chediak, was doing the same thing at the same time. Such an odd thing to have in common. I wonder if he ever read it all the way through. I am finally going to do that soon.

Not much else to report. The Halloween candy is gone except for a few pieces that only Kid A likes, but Kid B won't let him have (dog in the manger). I did not steal a single piece of candy this year (the boys did give me some hated Almond Joys). Another item: the twins had their first band concert last night, which I thoroughly enjoyed. They have such a wonderful teacher! The 6th grade band played so much better than the 5th grade band last year, and the 7th/8th grade band was amazing. An excellent musical experience. And oh, how I missed Rocket Boy.

Other than that, I have been working my way very slowly through some cleaning projects -- made some good progress on the twins' room, and now am trying to face this mess in the living room. (Note that I am blogging right now, not cleaning.) My book group comes here next week (to discuss Brideshead), so I must deal with this by then. Wish me luck. One step at a time is usually a successful strategy for me, but this disaster looks like it will all fall apart if I pluck something off the top.

On the plus side, it's 59 degrees outside and our latest snow is melting. Hold that happy thought.

Snowy Halloween

Well, it is November 1st, the sun is shining, and I am in a pretty good mood. I always kind of dread November -- October is so much fun (usually) and it's hard to let that go -- but when November arrives it's never as bad as I thought it would be. Nice to have a break from the excess. Nice to focus on serious stuff. Speaking of serious stuff, I have already turned in my ballot for the November 5th election. I'm really wondering how that's going to turn out -- there's a chance that the Boulder City Council will flip back to "build, baby, build," which I would be sorry to see.

I'm hoping November isn't as snowy as October was, because the snow and cold have been overwhelming recently. HOWEVER, I'd take snow and cold over fire and smoke any day. I've been obsessing over the California fires this past week or so, and every time I go out to shovel or do anything that's affected by the snow and ice and below-freezing temps I remind myself that it's better than fire. And smoke! When I talked to Rocket Boy the other night, he asked whether the smoke from the fires had made it to Colorado yet, but I sure haven't smelled any. He asked about the quality of the sunsets (which would indicate the amount of particulates in the air) and I reminded him that our high was 8 the other day and except for shoveling, I have been spending most of my time indoors. I certainly have not been going out to look at sunsets!

While indoors, I have been spending a lot of time reading, as always. In my last post I showed a picture of seven spooky books I'd gotten from the library -- as of today, I have read four of them and nixed the other three. No point reading something that doesn't thrill you. My favorite, though, was one of the better books I've read so far this year (I'm up to 100, and counting). It was The Remains of an Altar by Phil Rickman, book 8 in a so-far 15-book series, and I am now planning to go back and read all the others. This will be a challenge, since our library only has a few of them, and I can't spend a lot of money on frivolous things right now, not having a job and all that. But I suspect they're the type of book that I won't want to read a dozen of right in a row -- better to space them out. And anyway, it's November, so I have to read serious books. Biographies, general non-fiction, classics -- that sort of thing. Not supernatural mysteries, a type of genre fiction I only learned about this year.

Yesterday was of course Halloween, and I really wondered how much celebrating the twins and I were going to do. We had gotten three pumpkins the week before -- at the grocery store, which made me feel terribly guilty. The local farms need the money they make off their pumpkin patches, but this year with all the snow, we just didn't feel like trekking out to one, not even Munson's which is quite close. So we had our pumpkins, but they weren't carved. I had bought several bags of candy (varieties I don't like) while the twins were on their Outdoor Ed trip, and stashed them in the garage. I'd asked the twins over and over what they wanted to be for Halloween, but got very muted, uninterested responses. Finally, on Halloween afternoon we carved the pumpkins (I scooped the guts out and each of us carved one face) and the kids got into their costumes. Kid B decided he would be a wizard one more time. We have really gotten our money's worth out of that costume, and amazingly, it still fit him (just a little shorter than in years past). Kid A decided to be a "blue-haired purple-shirted eye-knifer," whatever that is, but at least it was easy to assemble. I had bought him some blue hair dye for "Crazy Hair Day" at middle school (which is actually today), so that worked for Halloween too.

They took some time getting ready, taking off their costumes in order to put sweatshirts on underneath and all that sort of thing -- because it was COLD. Even when they were ready, they hung around, handing out candy to the first few trick-or-treaters, getting their courage up. This was their first year going out on their own, because I had to stay behind and hand out the candy (usually Rocket Boy does that). That means they probably didn't say thank you to any of the people who gave them candy, because I always have to yell, "Say thank you!" Oh well. They finally set out and did Dartmouth, 36th, and 35th -- and then ran home to tell me all about it and use the bathroom and warm up. Then they went out again and did 32nd Street, after which Kid A came home for good, saying he had enough candy (this was about 7:15). I worried about Kid B trick-or-treating by himself, all alone in a wizard costume, but we have a very safe neighborhood, brimming with kids, and of course he came home safely at about 7:45, with an enormous bag of treats.

So now it is November, and we have an ungodly amount of candy in the house, but so far I have stayed out of it. That is, I've eaten two small Almond Joys, but those were formally given to me by the twins, because they don't like almonds or coconut. I have not put my hands into any of the bowls and poked around (the middle bowl is the leftovers of what we handed out). Unlike previous years, I'm letting them eat all they want, in the hope that it will be gone quickly. This morning they had candy for breakfast (and a glass of milk each). They have to learn some self-regulation at some point, so this is an experiment to see if they can do it at all. If they can't, at least the candy will be gone quickly.

Frozen fall

So it is fall, usually my favorite time of the year. Some falls are better than others, though, and this one is definitely challenging me.

To everyone's surprise, our first snow of the year arrived on October 10th (3.5 inches). On the 9th it was a balmy 78 degrees, but on the morning of the 10th, it was 18 degrees on our front porch, a 60-degree drop. This did not make me happy. The snow didn't last -- in fact, when Rocket Boy showed up a day later, there was barely a trace left on anyone's roof or lawn. But because it got so cold, especially the night of the 10th, many trees' leaves froze. This means they're not turning beautiful colors as they should be. They're just kind of greyish and unpleasant.

Rocket Boy's monthly visit went well -- much better than September. We agreed it must have been partly because he stayed longer. He arrived the night of Friday the 11th, in time to cuddle with the twins while I read from our current chapter book, and left around 11:30 am on Tuesday the 15th, a couple of hours after we sent the twins off on an Outdoor Education trip with their school. So we had three full days plus the two travel days. Even my bad cold didn't detract from it (Kid B was mostly over his cold by then and Kid A didn't come down with his until Outdoor Ed). We worked on lots of tasks, he took the boys and two friends on a Denver trip (museum and botanical garden), we watched silly movies at night (he got the "Tremors" series from the library) and both he and Kid A had dentist appointments. He changed the furnace filter, brought down the Halloween decorations, and dragged an old filing cabinet down to the curb (someone nabbed it a few days later).

But when you have a great visit, it's so hard to say goodbye.  I've been missing him a lot this time. Of course, the same day he left, the twins also left, and they didn't come home until after 4 pm on Friday the 18th. So I had three and a half days alone, which I did not enjoy.

Last year when the twins did Outdoor Ed with their 5th grade class, Rocket Boy and I had a blast. We ate at non-kid-friendly restaurants and just generally enjoyed ourselves. But I found that it was no fun to be all alone, just me and the cats. My book group met the first night, Tuesday, and that kept the loneliness at bay for a little while. Wednesday I took a walk, and saw one person I knew, but that night I ended up driving to Target, just for some human interaction. I felt very lonely wandering the aisles. Thursday I went to the library and the post office, but otherwise was alone. When I woke up Friday morning I was so relieved! The photo shows the buses arriving back at the school -- I did not manage to take even ONE photo of either twin, packed up to go or coming home, but I got those buses! (Actually, the kids weren't even on these two -- they were on bus #3, which arrived about half an hour later.)

So now the weekend is drawing to a close and the poor twins have to go back to school tomorrow (their last day in the classroom was October 11th). Today was cold and very windy, and tomorrow will be similar. I woke up a few times during the night, the wind was so strong. I tried to take a photo of the blowing trees this morning -- not sure you can get a sense of that, but see how greyish everything is? Still a little green, too, but mostly the leaves just look sad. I didn't go outside today at all (except to take these photos). Too cold and blowy for a walk, plus the wind makes my cough worse.

I need a fall project, something to remind me of how much I like this time of year. I've already read some books with "ghost" in the title this month (American Ghost by Hannah Nordhaus and Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss) but I decided that I needed to read a whole lot more scary books, so I got an armload of them at the library yesterday. So far I've read Alice Isn't Dead and tried The Turn of the Key but decided I didn't like it. I think I'll try Midnight Riot next. There are 11 more days until the end of the month, so we'll see how many I can get through by then. (Come November, I switch back to serious books.) It's a little tricky reading scary books without Rocket Boy next to me in bed. I try to get the cats to come sit on the bed with me, but they won't comply. So I read alone, nervously, telling myself that the creaking noise is the wind, or a twin turning over in bed.

Oh yes, you may be wondering what the news is on the job front. There's no news -- I've thought of some things to pursue, but haven't pursued them. One conclusion I have come to is that I really need to stop taking jobs that I'm likely to quit in misery -- which is what happened with three of my last four jobs (with the IRS, the second teaching job, and my research assistant job). So I've been thinking about why I quit those jobs. Some of the reasons: (1) the jobs were low level, not "careers," so I didn't feel like I was losing much by quitting; (2) I had very little control over what I did, had to follow silly rules and orders from people who kept changing their minds; (3) I didn't enjoy the work, wouldn't have chosen it voluntarily; and (4) I didn't value the work enough. I don't think I can do anything about #1. No one is going to hire a 59-year-old for some big career type job, and I don't think I want one anyway. #2 kind of goes along with #1 -- low-level jobs don't usually have much autonomy, although it might be possible to find a more rational boss. So what about #3 and #4? Can I think of something that I would enjoy doing? And/or can I find something to do that I consider important? It's not so bad to be a little cog in a wheel if you value the wheel. Part of what went wrong with my last job was that I wasn't terribly interested in what we were doing. I would tell people about it and they would nod and say, oh yes, very important work. But I didn't really think it was. So that's where I am, trying to think of something I could do that I would find valuable.

Onward to Halloween! I put my little dolls out today and that always cheers me up. Neither boy has decided on a Halloween costume, which worries me -- I don't want to be frantically trying to put something together for them at the last minute. But their trick-or-treating years are coming to an end, and maybe the lack of interest in costumes is what precedes that. I told them I'm not going with them this year -- have to stay home and hand out candy, which is usually Rocket Boy's job. I wonder if he'll get trick-or-treaters in St. Louis? Trader Joe's is already out of their wonderful pumpkin bread mix (should have bought two packages last time we were there), but I can think of something to make from scratch. We're finishing off a very good pumpkin cake that I made while Rocket Boy was here. Maybe just Halloween shaped sugar cookies would be good? I'll see. Gotta do something to salvage the month -- real winter will be here before we know it.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Some big changes around here recently, as if we needed more of those! But that's life, right? Stuff keeps changing.

Let's start with the least problematic change. My niece Risa came to visit us September 13-15, and helped me do some cleaning, sorting, and furniture moving. The biggest thing we did was get rid of our old couch, which had been in Rocket Boy's family for at least 40 years, probably more, and whose springs were gone, and whose upholstery was disintegrating. I had been trying to get RB to get rid of it since we got married back in 2002. He had recently agreed to let it go, but we hadn't managed to do anything about it on his last visit and I knew it would be emotionally hard for him to take it to the dump. So Risa and I (with a little help from the twins) carried it outside and left it at the bottom of the driveway, where it stayed until Friday the 20th, when the garbage truck came and took it away (I had scheduled the pick-up). I figured the fact that no one lifted it for the five days that it sat out there is proof that no one would have wanted it if we'd posted it on craigslist, etc. I saw a few people stop, get out of their vehicle, and look at it, but they always drove away quickly. And with good reason -- it was junk. But still, hard to let go. Now we just have a bunch of cat-protected chairs where the couch was. The next time Rocket Boy visits, maybe we'll go couch-hunting or maybe we won't. No worries.

The next big change happened two days after Risa left, and I'm still processing this one. I quit my job. Yep, I did it. I'd been thinking about quitting for months and months -- almost since the job began. I wanted to quit last fall, and also last winter and also this summer. But each time I managed to pull myself together and not quit, mainly because we needed the money and the health insurance. I've experienced a lot of anxiety and misery related to this job and I guess I hit the breaking point on Tuesday, September 17th. Monday had been an extremely stressful day, following the previous Friday, which had also been bad. The tasks I'd been given that were worrying me were increasing in number, and my boss had informed us she was too busy to help with anything this semester. (But not too busy to continue doling out assignments and criticism.) I had decided to work at home on Tuesday, to avoid the high stress of the office, and when I looked at my email and saw a cluster of messages about something I'd done wrong, I just snapped.

We won't die: the kids and I are transitioning over to Rocket Boy's health insurance as of October 1st, and we still have his salary to live on. Fortunately, I hadn't made any major changes to our lifestyle -- there's no house cleaner I'll need to fire, no services I'll have to cancel. But we'll have to stop fixing things, and I won't be able to save as much money. I'll save as much as I can, but it will be less.

I'm trying to think about what to do next. Obviously I need another job, but what on earth could it be? Mainly, I want to retire. But 59 is too young, especially when you have 11-year-old twins. However, 59 is very old when you're job-hunting, and then there's my enormous weight, and the fact that I walked out of this job in the middle of a project, presumably alienating everyone who might have served as a reference. (I SO wish I had just quit on August 31st, as I had been planning to, instead of letting people convince me not to. It would have been a cleaner break.) On the plus side, I updated my resume this morning and it looks pretty good. Not necessarily the kind of resume anyone would want to see right now, but it makes me look like a competent person -- which is not how I feel.

I periodically think of something I'm not going to have to do now and I feel a weight lift off my chest. But I wouldn't say I'm happy. And I've still got all the single parent woes, and the depression, and the what are we going to have for dinner misery. So life is challenging. I have a to-do list each day and I try to work along and check things off. Yesterday I mended five pairs of Kid B's shorts. Of course, he's almost outgrown them, but they'll work for a little while longer.

And now the third big recent change. Our next door neighbor Eugene -- our tenant, along with his wife and kids -- is on hospice. This photo shows the view through our front door last Sunday afternoon.

Eugene, who is 86, had been behaving oddly a few days before this. In fact, it was the day before I quit my job, and may have contributed to my own anxiety. He came to our door that Monday morning, very upset, and asked how he could reach Rocket Boy. I explained that I can't reach RB during the day -- he can't bring his cell phone into his workplace and he doesn't have a secretary, etc. Eugene acted like he didn't believe me, but he left. Later, RB called me at work and said he'd gone to his car to check his phone on a break and found four voicemails from Eugene, all about how someone was trying to kill him and he needed RB's help. RB was very upset and didn't know what to do. After I got home from work I went over to their house and asked Aspen what was going on. She sighed and said they'd watched a scary movie the night before and apparently it had gotten wrapped into Eugene's dreams and when he woke he couldn't distinguish between the dream and reality. Later I saw a police car outside the house, and still later Eugene called me and apologized for his behavior, explaining that the police had very kindly managed to reassure him that he was not in danger. Throughout the evening, Rocket Boy kept calling me and calling me, trying to find out what was going on.

So then I quit my job and that absorbed me for several days, but on Sunday there were suddenly all those emergency vehicles. Eventually I saw Eugene going out to the ambulance in a chair and they drove away with him. I thought about going over to ask what was wrong, but I felt as though I would be intruding. Finally, last night Aspen came over and told me Eugene was on hospice, at the Longmont facility. He'd been going downhill for a few weeks, and apparently the delusion that his life was in danger was part of that. (Except, from this perspective, was it really a delusion?) Aspen looked sad and stressed. On top of everything else she now has to worry about money, because she's been his caregiver and those payments will be ending. I told her we hoped they would stay in the house and we'd figure something out.

So now we wait. Rocket Boy wondered if he should fly home this weekend, but Aspen said Eugene might live a month (or, of course, die tomorrow). They don't really know. RB has known Eugene a long time -- at least 30 years, maybe 40. I know Eugene wanted to live to see all his kids graduate from high school. The youngest is only in 7th grade.

I was wandering around in a daze last night, unable to concentrate on anything. Kid B said to me, "Mom, do you LIKE Eugene?" And I thought for a moment about all he has to learn in life, such as how whether you "like" someone becomes rather beside the point when they go on hospice.

Postscript: Eugene died this afternoon. So it's over.

Back to school again

I just realized it's been more than three weeks since I last wrote a post. I guess we've been busy. After our vacation, we had just a few days until middle school began, and that was a very exciting time. I remember how huge the transition to junior high school was, back in the day. I remember sitting around with my friends, talking and talking and talking, and every so often someone would scream, "gym suits!" or "lockers!" and we would all scream too. After seven years of elementary school, it was such a huge change.

The boys only went to elementary school for six years, since middle school begins in 6th grade and they didn't go to preschool. But still, such a long time of walking down our street to and from school. Kid A asserted his independence early, and would zoom off on his bike by himself. But Kid B liked having one of us walk him to school and he also liked being picked up at the end of the day, so we kept doing that through the end of 5th grade. Often we would just walk quietly, but sometimes he liked to talk, and it was nice to be there when that happened.

Now it's all different, though they still walk down our street to get to school. But now they turn off at the creek path and walk to their bus stop on Martin Drive -- and I am not allowed to accompany them. I went with them on the first day of school, and a few other days early on, but after that they laid down the law. Other kids wait at the bus stop too, and nobody's parents are there. Way too embarrassing. So I stay home. I am not allowed to meet their bus in the late afternoon, either. It's nice, not having to interrupt what I'm doing, but I'm also getting less exercise. It's kind of like when they got too big for their stroller. Pushing the stroller I could go anywhere, long lovely walks. But once they were out and running around, I stopped walking nearly so much.

Adjusting to middle school is full of challenges. For instance, that bus! For the first two weeks the bus was late every day -- scheduled to leave their stop at 8:21, it wasn't getting there until 8:30 or later, and the kids would get to school (which starts at 8:40) after the bell rang. A couple of times they were marked absent in their 1st period class. I called the Transportation department repeatedly and eventually they got the problem fixed. But now the bus comes early! On Friday the kids actually missed the bus, even though I'm sure they were there before 8:15 (its new departure time), and they had to run home and have me drive them. So now we've decided they'll leave to walk to the bus at 8, which should solve the problem.

Another middle school issue involves Kid B's hair, which he's worn long for a few years. In P.E. class he was told he'd have to tie it back, so we experimented with scrunchies, but he had a hard time doing it himself. Each day another kid would have to help him, and he didn't like that. "I want to get my hair cut," he told me. I was shocked, but hey, maybe he was ready for a change. So I took him to my stylist, who's cut his hair before, and she did a quick and dirty layered cut that had kind of a long feel but was much shorter than it had been (see photo). He went back to P.E. class the next day -- and was told to tie it back! This is when I freaked out and started writing emails. A few days later, after involving the counselor, the assistant principal, and the gym teacher, I learned that the real issue was hair getting in his eyes, which the gym teacher feels is a safety issue. My stylist had cut his bangs a little too long. So I took out my sewing scissors and hacked away at it, and now he's "legal" for P.E. It looks pretty bad, though. We need to go back for a repair trim. But he doesn't seem terribly concerned about it. I guess middle school boys don't care that much about their looks -- or maybe not yet?

We've also been having cat problems -- sweet Chester has a bladder infection, a drug-resistant bug that requires treatment with Clindamycin (the other choices have worse side effects). I paid an enormous amount of money to have the drug formulated into soft chicken-flavored chews, and the medicine took a long time to arrive, but Chester likes it, so maybe he'll get better. Silly Fluff, thinks he's getting special treats twice a day. Pie Bear soldiers on, despite his oral tumor -- which can't feel good, but he doesn't complain. He likes to spend a lot of time outdoors, mostly observing the world from the soft chair on our front porch. He's also my alarm clock -- sleeps on Rocket Boy's empty side of the bed and begins walking on me and purring a few minutes before my real alarm goes off. This is helpful on weekdays and very very sad on Saturdays and Sundays, when there is no real alarm.

Rocket Boy came for another visit over Labor Day (see photo up above -- everyone in a warm-toned shirt except the unseen Mom, who was wearing blue and white stripes). It wasn't one of our better visits. He flew in late Saturday afternoon, after I had spent six hours cleaning the house. But he's forgotten what our house looks like. Sometimes I wonder if he's remembering when his mother was alive and it was spotless. I don't know. Anyway, when he walked in the door he started talking about the mess. And all weekend he kept going on and on about it. He seemed to be in a critical mood just in general -- in the McGuckin's parking lot he yelled at me for being too timid, and later for not parking in the space he thought was best. On the plus side, he fixed some things (such as our back door which wouldn't open -- a real safety hazard) and cleaned some things, such as the horrid shower curtain. I appreciated the help and told him so. I'm not, after all, the maid -- we both have jobs, we co-own this house, and it's his responsibility too.

After he left, or actually while he was packing to go, I fell into a depression from which I have not yet emerged. It will get better, I think -- it doesn't feel like the beginning of something really serious -- but it's so hard to function when I feel like this. Work is hard. Cooking is hard (cooking is always hard). Cleaning is hard.

Fortunately, today is Saturday and it is a lovely day. Supposed to get to 87 -- better than the 90s we've been having, but not by much -- but there's a nice breeze. I did my laundry and have several things hanging out on the porch, waving in the wind. The neighborhood pancake breakfast was this morning, so of course we went. I ate one pancake with delicious fresh peach compote and an odd vegetarian sausage. After the kids finished eating they asked if they could go to the library by themselves and of course I said yes. They go in order to play games on the computers there, but I still love it that they're spending so much time at the library, which seems a very safe place for them to be. And I walked home in the warm breezy weather, feeling not too bad at all.