Hello, December

It's December and I have that deer in the headlights feeling. Nothing is ready! Nothing is done! How will I ever get everything holiday-related done in time?!

Some years I don't feel like this, but this year I do. Maybe because I was so uncomfortable during Thanksgiving (all that seems to be over, thank goodness, my intestines are fully recovered), but I feel like I got sort of behind.

Calm down, it's OK. You have three full weeks. Let's look at the tasks we need to accomplish and how we're doing with them.

Cards, calendars, etc. I've got the cards all addressed & stamped, and Rocket Boy signed them while he was here. We've been negotiating the "letter," but we finalized it last night and I made the copies at FedEx Office today. Now comes the fun part: writing the cards. Maybe I can do 10 a day? We're planning to send out 53 this year. Rocket Boy took the German cards back to St. Louis with him to work on, so that leaves me with -- 50. Hmm.

I still have to make our family calendar (with family photos) online, was hoping to get that done by the 14th. Haven't started yet. We'll see. I do have an Advent calendar!

Decorations. I thought I might take the tree out of its box sometime this week and we might decorate it next weekend. We have a wreath, bought through a band fundraiser. I managed to hang it on the porch and I think it looks very nice.

I thought I'd set up my dollhouse in the living room with some Christmas stuff, but I have to work on that. I've made a space for it, but the dollhouse is very dusty and needs a lot of attention.

I also need to bring out the Advent wreath and candles, since this is the first Sunday of Advent, and Hanukkah starts on Thursday, so I should get that set up -- I do have the candles for both already.

Entertainment. Teen B and I went to the harp concert at the library yesterday (it was lovely), but we skipped the Parade of Lights. It was so cold. I felt terribly guilty about not going, though. Maybe next year. If Rocket Boy had been here, he would have gone. I don't know if I have any other "entertainment" ahead, other than my book group coming and watching movies at home. We can think about that later, it's not something to worry about. I probably won't try to go to any church services this year (does that belong in the "entertainment" section?), but I'll see. 

I wouldn't mind going to another Christmas concert. I wish there were still a handbell concert in the area, but that seems to be gone for good. Let's see, just looked it up -- there's one in Denver and one in Loveland/Greeley. Yeah, probably not this year.

Food. I'm not going to start baking yet except maybe one batch of cookies for the kids. I was going to make something for my book group this week, but now I think they're not coming until next week or the week after.  I think I'll start my real baking the week of the 11th (and only 6 batches, not 12). I want to try a new recipe or two this year. I was interested in one of the recipes from the NYTimes cookie week: Gingerbread Blondies. They sound yummy and easy. Other than that, no real food stress. We have Christmas candy in the house, which is cheering.

Mostly I just have to remember to cook dinner! Last week I made a lot of weird dishes using the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers. On Monday we had mashed-potato pancakes, which weren't bad. On Tuesday we had a sort of shepherd's pie with the sweet potatoes on top -- very, very weird. Most of it went in the compost. On Wednesday we had Beyond Meat meatballs in a sauce made with 1 cup of leftover cranberry sauce mixed with chili sauce, over spaghetti -- the twins requested that I write on the recipe "Never make this again," but I actually liked it and ate the leftovers for lunch. On Thursday we had cheese & mushroom enchiladas with sauce made from the leftover gravy plus spices -- and the mushrooms came from the gravy too. I sieved them out of it, washed them off, chopped them up, and mixed them with grated cheese. It wasn't bad. But I think for the next few weeks I have to think of normal meals, not weird things.

Presents, shopping. I've started shopping, online and in stores, though I should really have done the online shopping sooner. I was disappointed to see that the shirt I wanted to get Rocket Boy from Lands' End is backordered until the middle of January. It's OK, he has lots of shirts. I'll think of something else. I plan to go out to stores on Thursday and Friday for the next two weeks -- after that I'm out of luck, because the twins will be around that last week -- they have finals, but they should be done by Thursday afternoon, the 21st.

I'm also working on a genealogy project that is clearly not going to get done by the 25th -- I'll have to finish it after the Christmas rush. Note to self: do not start big projects in late November!

Giving. Colorado Gives Day is Tuesday and I'll probably donate about $500. I paid down my credit card this week so I'm ready to do some charging. I usually do the Humane Societies (Boulder, Longmont, and Park County), Hillside School, the Lung Association, and then I pick and choose. Oh, and an organization called Mission St. Louis -- that's not for Colorado Gives, of course, but I give to it at the same time. I think I may owe the school money, too, or maybe the music department. OK, I'll work on this.

Travel. I don't know when Rocket Boy is coming and I don't think he does either. It's OK. If he drives, he could leave on the 23rd and still get here by Christmas Eve. Not going to worry about this.

Reading. I already feel behind on my reading this month, because I am reading the incomprehensible book group book (The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes) which I forgot to even think about getting until a few days ago. Basically, I turned the calendar to December and thought, oh yes, the book group is coming here on the 6th -- and then, oh, right, the book. What was it, again? Fortunately there was a copy available at the Longmont library, so I ordered it and it arrived Friday and I started reading. I'm already on page 140 out of 307. It will be OK, especially now that the book group is going to come the week after, probably. But I want to start doing my planned December reading, plus Christmas books, so I must get this one out of the way fast. I can't remember who chose it, but I know I agreed to it. It's OK, I'll finish it.

Homework. Not my homework, but the kids'. They both have big projects to do for Language Arts, which we started working on today. And with finals coming up the week of Dec. 18th, there will be all sorts of things to do. I have to remember to leave time/space/energy for the kids.

Writing. Of course, because I have all these other things to do, I'm in the mood to write. After reading the John Gardner book on becoming a novelist, I was inspired to pull out the novel I wrote 10+ years ago to see if it could be salvaged. I don't think it can be, but I still want to try out some ideas for fixing it. I'm also working on my next middle-grade mystery, and I have other projects too. It's actually not a surprise that I would want to do this now, right when I have no time. Having no time always seems to make me want to write, or work on some other project that there is no time for. I must find a way to give in to the impulse, because writing is my life, but not let it take over everything. Friday afternoon I was writing, and I just kept on going, not even stopping to make dinner (we were just having leftovers) until 8:30 or so. The kids were unhappy with me and I thought -- yeah. They have to come first. Writing is wonderful, but I'm a mom, and they need me. Must seek balance.

Yardwork. Ack! This should be nothing at all (can't rake leaves when they're covered with snow), except that last night we had some unexpected high winds and our mostly dead aspen in the side yard blew over (mysteriously, it blew west, even though the winds were from the west), taking part of the lilac bush with it. I'm so sad! No more birds raising families right outside my window.

Now I have to carve it up, at least cut the branches off. Maybe I'll have to ask for/hire help. I tried to get the twins to help me today and they wouldn't. I'll see what I can do tomorrow (it's supposed to be warmer, which would be nice).

Cleaning. I can't lie -- I've been neglecting the house the last few weeks. When Rocket Boy was here, he mopped the floors, which is not my favorite task, and he cleaned the bathroom ceiling/tops of the walls, where a whole lot of tiny little flies had inexplicably attached themselves and died, toward the end of summer. It was the oddest thing. Anyway, he got all that cleaned up, and now the bathroom ceiling and tops of walls look really nice. The rest of the bathroom, though, hmm. Also, he fixed my vacuum cleaner, but I haven't used it yet! So I need to do that, tomorrow or Tuesday.

Self care. My favorite (not). But this month it's important. I've been doing well on getting enough sleep -- by 11:30 pm I'm wiped out, so I turn off the light, and then soon it's 7 am and I'm waking up without my alarm. Seven and a half hours seems to be about right for me. I haven't been walking, though -- I think it's 10 days -- or more -- since my last good walk. At McGuckin's this week I bought YakTrax, those things you put on your shoes to make it safer to walk on ice. I haven't taken them out of the box yet. Maybe tomorrow (it's too late today). Also, I've adjusted to the digestive enzymes and I've been taking them with every dinner, sometimes lunch too.

And finally, I should get my Covid booster and maybe RSV too, though I read somewhere that RSV is peaking. I got my flu shot a couple of weeks ago, no reason to delay the others. If I get sick, which I probably will, because I almost always catch something in December, it'll slow me down, but that's OK. We do what we can, no more.

It's going to be OK. 

Oh! One more thing -- we celebrated Baby Kitty's 4th birthday this week. What a good cat. And he ate his whole cupcake. I wasn't paying attention, was trying to get Sillers to eat some of hers -- she kept leaving because she didn't want to eat next to Baby Kitty. Finally I rotated her so that she couldn't see him while she was eating, and she ate a little bit. But while all that was going on, he ate his entire cupcake, all but a little bit of frosting. I watched for signs of problems, but the only thing that happened was an episode of diarrhea, just one, and mostly contained in the box, and that was it. Still, I'm not sure I'll give him another one next year.

Reading post: Books from the desk room

November is over, so it's time for another reading update. In November, I decided to read books from the little shelf above the closet in our office, or as we call it, the desk room (it has 5 desks in it). However, I wasn't really in the mood to read a lot of serious books on language, so it was a rough month. 

I started with Morphology of the Folktale by V. Propp, which was a text used in a rhetoric class I took more than 40 years ago. Why didn't I read it then, I wondered. Well, in fact, I did read it then -- there it is, in my list book, fall of 1981. OK, put that back on the shelf. Another book I pulled out but didn't read was The Rhetoric of Fiction by Wayne C. Booth -- it looked interesting, but I just didn't get to it. In all, I read only three books from the desk room this month. Here's the full story:

1.  An Invitation to Old English & Anglo-Saxon England by Bruce Mitchell. I thought this book always looked so interesting, sitting there unread on my shelf. I took a semester of Old English in grad school, though I remember almost nothing from it. My Old English professor used to talk about Anglo-Saxon culture, so I looked forward to reading the "Anglo-Saxon England" part of the book. Well, it turns out that in fact you have to learn Old English to read this. Mitchell is very gentle about it, he helps you along the way -- it is an "invitation" after all -- but after a couple of chapters of grammar, when he turns to the history of Anglo-Saxon England in Part III, he just gives you sections of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle -- in the original Old English. With difficult words glossed below, and notes, but it's not the same as a translation. So in order to read the history, I had to drag myself through the Old English.
   
   It was like picking up a book about the Pyramids, only to discover that you have to learn Arabic to read it. I am too old to learn a language! I tried, sort of, but it was impossible. Everything I read about the grammar I immediately forgot. And later it got worse: Part IV, "A Garden of Old English Literature," was almost entirely in Old English. I'm going to say I read this book -- I read all the parts written in Modern English and struggled with the Old English -- but I'm not sure Mitchell would agree. What a nightmare. I spent two weeks on it. Keeping it, but perhaps someday I'll give it to someone who actually wants to learn some Old English. (Will that ever happen? Are there such people?)
   
   
2. Early English Poems selected & edited by Henry S. Pancoast & John Duncan Spaeth. I don't know why I have this book, published in 1911, which has Louise Pound's name on the flyleaf. It must have belonged to my father, who studied English under Louise Pound at the University of Nebraska in the 1940s. Anyway, I picked it up right after finishing the book on Old English and I thought -- I should have read this at the same time! Because here are translations of many of the Old English texts Bruce Mitchell was trying to make me read. (Though they were rather old-fashioned translations -- I much prefer Seamus Heaney's Beowulf to the one in this book.) After the Old English section, however, nothing was translated, so I had to read Chaucer in the original Middle English. But after struggling through all the Old English in the previous book, Middle English was easy. In general, though, this book was not easy, and it took me the second half of the month to get through it. I'm keeping it, though -- a good reference text.
   
   One thing that amused me: my favorite author, Barbara Pym, studied English at Oxford and her books are full of obscure quotations from what she calls "our greater English poets." What I learned from this book is that many of her characters were probably named after those poets. For instance, her Archbishop Hoccleve in Some Tame Gazelle must have been named for the poet Thomas Hoccleve (1370-1450), and Miss Lydgate, who appears in Excellent Women and Less Than Angels, was probably named for the poet John Lydgate (1370-1451). Also, some of the characters in Some Tame Gazelle have studied Old and Middle English, and they refer to the poems "Piers Plowman" and "The Owl and the Nightingale," neither of which I had read before. Well, now I have (excerpts, anyway).
   
   
3. On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner. While poking around in the piles of papers under my desk, I glanced at the row of books on the shelf down there (I don't know why my desk has a bookshelf underneath it, but it does) and spotted this one. I've never read that, have I? I decided it would be a good fit for the last few days of the month, and in fact I finished it about ten minutes before December began. What a great book about writing! I loved it. It was published in 1983, so I've had 40 years to find it and read it. Better late than never. I love Gardner's approach to the whole "should I be a novelist" thing. He refuses to base it on money, reminding his readers that no serious novelists live off their earnings. Get a job that gives you lots of free time, live off your spouse, resign yourself to skipping the finer things in life, or inherit money. Writing isn't going to pay. The reason to write is because it brings great joy:
   
   "It is this experience of seeing something one has written come alive -- literally, not metaphorically, a character or scene daemonically entering the world by its own strange power, so that the writer feels not the creator but only the instrument, or conjurer, the priest who stumbled onto the magic spell -- it is this experience of tapping some magic source that makes the writer an addict, willing to give up almost anything for his art, and makes him, if he fails, such a miserable human being."
   
   I also like his list of writers' typical characteristics: wit, obstinacy and a tendency toward churlishness, childishness, a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation or both, remarkable powers of eidetic recall, a strange mixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing earnestness, patience like a cat's, a criminal streak of cunning, psychological instability, recklessness, impulsiveness, and improvidence (and an incurable addiction to stories). It reminded me of Barbara Pym's comment about how no one likes writers:
   
   "But once outside the magic circle the writers became their lonely selves, pondering on poems, observing their fellow men ruthlessly, putting people they knew into novels; no wonder they were without friends." (from Jane and Prudence, Chapter 12)
   
   Finally, I realized (after studying the list of his previous publications) that Gardner was a specialist in Old and Middle English. He translated "The Owl and the Nightingale," he wrote a biography of Chaucer, and his most famous novel, Grendel, is about the monster in Beowulf. I went right out and got a copy of Grendel at the Bookworm yesterday.
   
   Gardner died in 1982, at the age of 49 (this book was published posthumously).
   

One more month in 2023. In December we move on to the kids' bedroom. They have scads of children's books, from picture books to YA, but I've read most of them already. Instead of those, I'm going to focus on another shelf above a closet -- their closet, that is. On this shelf, we keep our small science fiction & fantasy collection. No reason -- we just needed a place for those books and here was a place. I don't love scifi, so I haven't read a lot of these books. I decided to just pick five to read this month and we'll see how it goes. 

Of course in December I mainly like to read Christmas books, so I may set these aside and read about roasting chestnuts and holly and mistletoe instead, but whatever happens is fine.

Thanksgiving eating

Well, Thanksgiving break is almost over. Tomorrow the kids go back to school and Rocket Boy flies back to Missouri.

It's been a good break, a good visit. We didn't go to the cabin on Wednesday, but we went to the Denver museum. I hadn't been there in ages, even though we're members. We saw two exhibits: one about ice ages and one about color in nature. I enjoyed them both. We also had lunch and a coffee break (I had chai, twins had Italian sodas, Rocket Boy was still making his way slowly through an exhibit).

Teen A complained nonstop the whole trip. Why are we here, why can't we go home now, why does Dad have to take SO LONG to look at every display, why am I going faster -- we're going to lose Dad and then we'll never find him again, why did we come, why can't we leave now, etc.

This was after he claimed, in the morning, that he had no underwear, causing me to do a rush wash & dry of the kids' clothes, making it impossible to go to the cabin because we didn't get out of the house until close to 11 (we had already decided not to go there, but this made it definite). On the way to the museum, our alternate plan, he confessed that he really did have underwear -- he'd just hidden it so that I would think I had to do laundry, thus delaying or (he hoped) cancelling our day's trip.

Very bad teenage behavior. The thing is, Teen A was very difficult back when he was Baby A and Kid A, too, so this stuff kind of rolls off my back. He's actually better behaved now than in the old days.

Anyway, it was a nice outing (despite Teen A's complaining, which I ignored). 

When we got home, we needed to do something about dinner. We had eaten at home the night before, Tuesday, and although it was supposed to be a simple meal, scrambled eggs or whatever, it turned out to be very complicated because everyone had something different. Rocket Boy made himself an omelet, which first required that he steam some spinach to go in it. When we were done cooking and eating, the kitchen looked like a tornado had hit it -- or at least a strong winter storm. So I said we'd eat out on Wednesday night (so that the kitchen wasn't a disaster the night before doing all the Thanksgiving cooking).

Teen B requested the Bohemian Biergarten, in downtown Boulder, so that he could get "Kulturpunkte" for his German class. That was a fun choice -- it was full of large family groups doing the same thing we were doing. Very warm and festive, almost like being in Europe. I had delicious jagerschnitzel with spaetzle and red cabbage, Teen B had gnocchi, and Rocket Boy had some vegetable thing (Teen A stayed home to play video games and eat a frozen dinner -- he'd had about enough of family time by that point). I only ate half my food so that I could have dessert. 

Ah, dessert. I was reading something somewhere recently about easy ways to improve your life, and one of them was "Always order dessert." That resonated with me, because I like dessert and I mostly dislike main courses. But normally I plow my way through whatever I've ordered and then I'm too full for dessert. In fact, even eating half of my dinner at the Bohemian Biergarten left me a little too full for dessert, but I was bound and determined to have it. Rocket Boy and I both ordered the apfel strudel. It took extra time to make it. Then it arrived. Yum.

I'm trying to remember when I first felt the stomach pains. My dietician had suggested I order something called Thorne Advanced Digestive Enzymes, which she thought would help with the stomach issues I've been having -- like vomiting and diarrhea and heartburn -- so I did, and they arrived Tuesday. She had told me to take one with dinner for a week and then see how I felt. So I took one Tuesday night with dinner and *I think* my stomach pains started Wednesday morning. But I could be wrong about that -- it might have been Tuesday morning. I remember sitting in the blue chair in the living room and every time I moved I felt pain. But was that Tuesday or Wednesday? I'm not sure.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, of course, and Teen A and I kicked off the morning by making a lovely pumpkin pie. Seriously, it was the best do I've gotten on one in a long time. The pie didn't crack! And it didn't puff up and then collapse. It was cooked, but not overcooked. I don't know what we did differently. It'll probably never happen again. 

Then I made the spinach dish and the sweet potato casserole myself. And then Rocket Boy and I went outside and raked leaves. It was getting very cold -- a storm was due in that night.

Early in the afternoon, Rocket Boy made a quick trip to the grocery store and came home with a cake! He'd been driving with the boys for the last few days, of course, and he'd noticed that their combined totals had just hit 25 hours (we need 50 hours per boy to get their licenses, so this was a quarter of the total). So he wanted to celebrate. He said the woman who checked him out was puzzled by what he'd asked the bakery worker to write on the cake: was this for a new baby, born just over a day ago?

I thought, as I so often do with my husband, what a sweet, lovely thought -- and WHY NOW?!?! But we ate it. The fact that in a few hours we were going to sit down and eat an enormous dinner, complete with pumpkin pie and whipped cream, well... when you're married to Rocket Boy, you just go with the flow.

Returning to Thanksgiving preparations, Rocket Boy made mashed potatoes and gravy and I set the table. I put the rolls in to bake when I baked the vegetable dishes. Then I broiled the swordfish, spread the basil caper butter on it, and we were ready to eat. A nice dinner. The twins ate what they wanted -- Teen A ate swordfish and spinach dish, Teen B ate swordfish and sweet potato casserole. Rocket Boy had everything except the cranberries (which I'd made on Tuesday). I had a little bit of everything. We killed a couple bottles of sparkling cider. I had a glass of milk. 

A couple of hours later we had the pie. Rocket Boy whipped the cream and couldn't find the vanilla extract, so he added the first thing he spotted -- lime extract. In case anyone out there is thinking of putting lime extract in whipping cream, I'll just say: don't. It tasted like a cleaning product.

My stomach pains continued through Thursday and Friday. My first thought actually (this was on Tuesday or Wednesday) was that it was a UTI, because I've been wondering for a while now if I might have one -- I keep having these bladder spasms, sort of like a mild version of what I had after my parathyroid surgery. Then I decided it was an IBS flare, caused by the rich meal on Wednesday night and then Thanksgiving dinner (and a driving cake). The pain moved around a little at first, but finally settled into my left lower abdomen. I've had IBS pain there before, although I also sometimes have it higher up.

Friday, which was possibly the worst day, might be when it occurred to me that it might have something to do with the new pills. One of their possible side effects is "abdominal pain." But what kind of abdominal pain, I wondered. I could not find any details on that. All the customer reviews I found were glowing. I finally found the negative Amazon reviews and read through every one. Nobody seems to have experienced what I have. Some people mentioned that it made their heartburn worse. I've actually found that it helped with that. The last five nights I have not had to take a Pepcid AC at night -- which, considering what I've been eating, is pretty amazing. Oh, and some people said it made them constipated. Constipation can cause abdominal pain, but I haven't had that problem either.

But it hurts to get up and down, and it hurts to lie on my side, and it hurts to bend down (like to clean litter boxes or get laundry out of the dryer) and it hurts to get in and out of the car, and to some extent it hurts to sit. Or to stand. It just hurts.

Our storm started Thursday night and when we woke up on Friday, the ground was white. But it wasn't a lot. We looked at it through the windows. It was pretty, but not very impressive. I said I wasn't going to do anything on Friday, just take it easy. Rocket Boy took Teen B out driving again -- he got his "Snowy Day Badge" from the driving app. 

But then on Saturday it was still snowing. Maybe even more than on Friday (later I read that we got 7.4 inches). Our trash pickup was delayed a day by the Thanksgiving holiday, so I dragged the trash and compost bins out Saturday morning, plus 7 of the leaf bags we'd filled (after first attempting to scoop out some of the snow in them). There were 6 more bags that I didn't drag out. I just thought the garbageman would be so depressed if he saw 13 leaf bags. I think I'm right about that. When he finally showed up, around 4 pm, he looked distinctly unhappy when he saw the bags.

Rocket Boy took Teen A out driving midday and he got his "Snowy Day Badge." In the late afternoon, after the snow finally stopped, I agreed to go out with Teen B and Rocket Boy. We took some movies back to the library and then went to World Market, where we spent almost $100 on tea, chocolate, hard candy, and stollen. I've never spent almost $100 at World Market before. It all fit in a normal sized cloth grocery bag. With room to spare.

Later still, we decided that since it was Saturday, we would go out to eat -- even though we still had lots of leftovers. We went to the Gondolier, where we had also gone the previous Saturday. We need some more restaurant choices! But that's a good restaurant, anyway. We like it because it's not downtown. It's in a strip mall with a Safeway, so there's lots of parking. Take that, Boulder powers-that-be that want to get rid of cars. When it's 20 degrees (roughly) and snowy and icy, if people leave the house at all, they'll want to take their cars, not the bus. And certainly not their bicycles.

I had salmon. And dessert (again). Crème brûlée. The bill, with a generous tip, came to almost $150. (That included an appetizer, 3 desserts, and soft drinks for the kids. Rocket Boy and I just had water.) We've spent some serious money on food this visit. But I don't care. I keep thinking -- if Rocket Boy retires, we'll have to do some major economizing. And we will. But for now we don't have to, so why not enjoy ourselves a little? Not to mention the fact that most Saturdays the kids and I go to Subway or Macdonald's.

I was still in pain, all through all these activities, lack of activities, and eating. Last night I thought -- what if it doesn't have anything to do with the new pills? What if something else is wrong? This morning I googled "lower abdominal pain." In addition to the usual suspects (like IBS), lower abdominal pain is a sign of diverticulitis. Oh, no. This past summer, the daughter of a friend of my sister's was in the hospital for weeks with complications from diverticulitis. 

So now I'm trying to decide whether or not to go to Urgent Care. They're open until 5 -- that's in about two and a half hours. After today I won't have Rocket Boy to take me anywhere, because he flies back to St. Louis in the morning. 

But maybe I'm feeling a little better. The pain, while still very much there, is not as excruciating as it was on Friday.

If I didn't have IBS, I probably would have gone to Urgent Care on Friday. But abdominal pain is pretty normal for me. 

I don't want to end up in the hospital for weeks.

But what if it's just IBS, as usual? Or something caused by the new pills?

Sigh. I wish Rocket Boy weren't going back to St. Louis tomorrow.

Postnote: We didn't go to Urgent Care and I am feeling somewhat better. It was probably just IBS, as usual. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Fall break

Thanksgiving vacation is a little early this year -- we have a full week of November after the holiday. Nevertheless, Rocket Boy wants to put the Christmas tree up while he's here. I disapprove of putting up the tree so early, but maybe I'll give in. It would be nice not to have to do it myself after he goes back to St. Louis. We'll see. The problem is that we put up the tree on the card table where he keeps his suitcases when he's here (in this photo, the suitcases are covered by a blanket, which the cat is sitting on). So then where will the suitcases go? What do we normally do at Christmas time? I've forgotten.

OK, I just looked back at pictures from previous Christmases and there is no sign of Rocket Boy's suitcases in the living room. So we must keep them in our tiny, crowded bedroom. Lovely. I can see why I might have blocked out that memory.

I swore last year that I was never going to put up the old Christmas tree again, the 50+-year-old falling apart tree from RB's youth. So, before Thanksgiving, I found a tree online and sent Rocket Boy the link -- "what do you think of this one?" He didn't respond, so I nagged him about it on the phone. 

"What about the tree in the basement?" he asked.

"What tree in the basement? I SAID I don't want to put up the old tree again."

"No, it's some other tree, I don't remember where we got it."

I disbelieved in the existence of this other tree until Rocket Boy arrived on Thursday, went down in the basement, and brought it up. Oh, that tree. We got it at McGuckin's -- but when and why? Fortunately, my old blog gave me the answer: in 2015 our regular tree was mysteriously missing a part (a part? what part?) so we rushed off to McGuckin's and got a new tree, which we apparently only put up that year. In 2016 there is a note saying that the new tree could not be found, so RB fixed the old tree. And we've gone on using the old tree until last year, when I said NO MORE.

In 2016, we rented the house next door to our neighbors who still live there, and I vaguely remember some confusion about Christmas trees. We had been storing things in the garage of that house, and then they moved their stuff in, and some Christmas trees got mixed up... Anyway, something like that.

So we have a tree, a perfectly good tree, that's been either lost or in the basement or in the garage next door for the last almost-8 years. 

It's hard getting older and losing your memory. When I was younger I would not have forgotten about something as large as a fake Christmas tree. But my life is more complicated than it used to be, there's that. We have a lot more stuff than I used to have as a single person, and we also have a lot more places that stuff might get to. I probably should cut myself some slack.

Anyway, we have a tree.

***

Last week was a busy week, and the coming week promises to be busy too, with Rocket Boy here and the holiday. Fortunately, one planned event didn't happen -- he was supposed to get up on Friday morning and drive to Alamosa for an interview, but they wanted him there by 12:30, and he just wasn't sure he could get there in time. So they switched it to a Zoom interview. It lasted all of half an hour. I was very glad he didn't rent a car, drive 227 miles (4 hours) to Alamosa, stay overnight in a hotel, and then drive 227 miles (4 hours) back, with numerous side trips because that's what he does, for that. It seemed clear from the interview that he didn't have the qualifications they were looking for, though I was also struck, listening to it, by how much he knows.

Just watch him get this job. I am worried about it because back in 1997 when I was just about to give up on the academic job market, I got a tentative offer from Adams State, down in Alamosa. I turned it down, but a connection was made, somehow, and that makes me suspicious that I might have further business with Alamosa. It's like Ridgecrest. I made a memorable trip to Ridgecrest in 1979, and then we ended up moving there in 2009. 

***

I had a long honey-do list waiting for Rocket Boy when he arrived, but he's been checking off items like mad: fixed the light switch in the kids' room, fixed the vacuum cleaner plug, put in the new light bulbs underneath the microwave, changed out the screens on the doors for the glass. He likes to keep busy.

Today I asked him to look at my bar stool, that I sit on to eat breakfast, because it felt as though it were about to collapse. He discovered that both of our bar stools are disintegrating, due to very shoddy construction (we got them at Walmart using a wedding present gift certificate back in 2002, so they've probably outlived their useful life). He didn't feel they were worth fixing, so I found some nice-looking ones on Craigslist for $25, and he and Teen B are off to buy them right now, as I type.

In addition to fixing everything, he's also gotten sick, which pretty much always happens, but he's not TOO sick, no cellulitis yet, no trips to the ER, so we're OK. Just a cold. Teen B has a cold, too, so that means Teen A and I will probably be next. It's OK, it's the holidays, people get sick.

I have to think about how to manage the week ahead. I'll do my normal shopping tomorrow (Monday) and get most of the food for Thanksgiving. I'll probably do a second shopping on Tuesday and get the swordfish then. I would normally get it on Wednesday, but we're thinking of doing a cabin trip on Wednesday because that looks like the best weather. So we'll come home tired Wednesday night and then get up bright and early on Thursday and do all the cooking. It's doable, except that I'll try to make the cranberry sauce on Tuesday, to have that out of the way. 

The idea is to have a traditional holiday celebration without making too much of a big deal about it. Rocket Boy wants to DO stuff, fun stuff, not just sit at home getting ready. So I have to be flexible and agree to go out and about, do fun stuff and all that. At the same time, I know everyone would feel weird if we didn't have a traditional Thanksgiving, so I have to make that happen too. It's doable. It is. I've cooked enough Thanksgiving dinners in my life -- I know how to do it, even if I am tired and sick. One foot in front of the other.

The new bar stools have arrived! Here is Baby Kitty sitting on one. I think they're very nice looking. The black metal doesn't really go with our kitchen "decor," but the brown seats fit in fine -- and really, nothing in our kitchen matches anything else, so it doesn't matter. And, you know, heck, for $25, what's to complain about?

I have to leave in a few minutes to take Teen A to get a haircut. It's a new person, we've never been there before. He has an appointment with our regular hairdresser, Melisa, but it's not until December 2nd (she's very popular and busy), and he didn't want to wait that long. He's been begging me to find someone else. So finally last night I went online and found a single appointment available today. So we're going. I hope this new person does a good job.

Beyond that, not much else to say. We're enjoying Rocket Boy's visit, though it always takes a little time to adjust. He always walks in and moves the dish soap to the left side of the sink (I like it on the right side). He gets his rubber gloves out from under the sink (I don't use rubber gloves). He closes all the windows and sets the fan in my car to 0. I go around re-opening the windows and moving the fan setting to 1. We go back and forth about these things the whole time he's here.

Sometimes I think, what on earth am I going to do when he finally moves back permanently? I guess the answer is that I will compromise on some things and not on others. We'll work it out. Marriage is a compromise, and living apart so much the last four years we've been able to let those compromises slide. It would be worth it to have him back -- I'd be willing to bend on some things. Not everything, though. The dish soap definitely belongs on the right.

Leaves, leaves

I'm not sure why, but there seem to be more leaves on the ground than I ever remember seeing before, in previous Novembers. In our yard, definitely, but also in other people's yards, as though the trees had more leaves this year to drop. That can't be right. Still, there are a lot of leaves.

There have been some articles floating around -- or maybe it's the same article, reprinted over and over -- about how you shouldn't rake, you should just leave the leaves alone so that insects will have a winter home. I think this is OK up to a point, but we really have a LOT of leaves. I have to do some raking.

Last week was a busier week than I expected it to be, and this coming week will be busy too: I have my parent support group on Tuesday, I see the dietician on Thursday, and Teen B has a concert that night -- plus, if all goes well, Rocket Boy will arrive sometime that afternoon. And on Friday afternoon, Thanksgiving Break will begin. So I have to spend the next few days getting ready. Fortunately, I've been keeping up pretty well with housecleaning, so things aren't that dirty -- except, of course, that my vacuum cleaner is broken. Maybe this will be the week I pull out Rocket Boy's ancient vacuum, which I hate, and use that. The floors, and especially the rugs, are getting rather grimy. I can (and do) sweep the floors, but the rugs...

But speaking of last week, it was rather full. Monday was my usual housecleaning, meal-planning, shopping, etc., day. 

Tuesday was Election Day and I was quite pleased with the results, both here and in other states. I had voted for Bob Yates for Boulder's mayor, but I wasn't happy with my choice. I wanted someone other than the mealy-mouthed current guy, Aaron Brockett, but the only other choices were Nicole Speer, a progressive of the beyond-reasonable type, Paul Tweedlie, a Republican with zero experience, and Bob Yates, who pretends to be an independent, but is too conservative for my taste. I voted for Yates, and he got the most 1st-place votes, but it was a ranked-choice election, and in the end Brockett won. And since what I really wanted was someone in between Brockett and Yates, having Yates win the 1st-place votes but Brockett win the election worked for me. If that makes any sense. It's like Brockett won, but he doesn't have a mandate. I think.

I was happy with all the other results too. Two of the people I voted for for City Council won, one definitely lost (but got more votes than I thought he would), and one probably lost (results aren't final yet). But I'm fine with the two who probably won who I didn't vote for. They seem like good people. The anti-vaxxer I accidentally voted for for School Board lost, so that's good, and I felt guilty for voting down Proposition HH, which was going to lower property taxes and cut down TABOR refunds and do other things that no one was quite sure about, but it lost HUGELY, so I don't have to take responsibility for it losing. Oh, and "Safe Zones for Kids" passed, even though there were many many letters to the editor about why it was a bad idea. I don't think very many parents of kids who had to walk past the exploding encampments (due to propane heaters) last spring voted against it.

Tuesday evening I was planning to take the kids to the Technical Education Center open house, but things didn't work out. Teen A said he didn't want to go, he already knew what he wanted to sign up for, and he was furious that I made him go. Teen B was still at school for a club meeting and said he would take the Jump bus, that goes down Arapahoe Road, and meet us at TEC (at 65th & Arapahoe). Only problem was, he missed his stop and got off somewhere beyond it, at Willow Creek Drive. So I drove down Arapahoe looking for him, but it got more and more rural, and there were a million people driving along single file, off to their homes in Erie because they can't afford to live in Boulder, and I had no idea where Willow Creek Drive was, I'd never heard of it, and it was dark, and finally I did a U-turn and went all the way back to TEC and called Teen B and said I couldn't find him. My phone was low on power and his was almost out. He said he would cross the street and wait for the next Jump to take him back to TEC. But when the next Jump came, it went right past him. So then he started to walk. He walked to 75th & Arapahoe, which has a little business area, with a gas station and bright lights, and I drove there and found him. And by the time we got back to TEC, the open house was almost over and I was a total basket case. And Teen A wasn't speaking to me. So we didn't go.

I thought, both during and after that fiasco, how every phase of parenting has its nightmare experiences: when they're babies, they have diaper blow-outs, and when they're toddlers they have tantrums in public spaces, etc. In high school, all kinds of things can happen, including having the bright idea to take a bus somewhere when you don't really know where to go and getting lost and wandering in the dark with your phone on 6% power. 

It would have been scarier (for me) if he were a girl. But it was scary enough.

And yet -- how cool that he was able to do all that and not freak out. I freaked out, but he was basically fine, just wet from stepping in a small pond and covered with burs from walking through fields. But cheerful. He's growing up. They both are.

On Wednesday, I finally had my second call with my old grad school friend who has early Alzheimer's. I first called her back in August, and that was scary, but I survived it and was very glad I'd done it. I said I'd call back in a month, but September whizzed by and suddenly it was October. And her husband and I spent October scheduling and then rescheduling calls, when things kept coming up for both of us. Finally on Wednesday the timing worked out and we had another hour-long call. And again, although I was scared, it turned out to be wonderful. I wonder whether I can not be scared the next time I call her. I'm actually looking forward to it. I figure I'll call a week or two before Christmas.

It's so unlike me to be making these calls. I am just not the sort of person who does nice things for other people, who shows up, who sticks around when things get rough. I have a long history of running the other way when someone I know is in trouble. I always have some sort of excuse. But I read an article in the New York Times a month ago, a little personal essay (if the link is behind their paywall, I can send you the article), by someone who had a friend who died of cancer, and in the end she "didn't go to Ohio" (where her friend lived) because this and that, all these reasons why it would be hard. The point of her essay was that you should "always go to Ohio" when someone you love is dying or in trouble or whatever. Don't make all the excuses, just go. And even though in the essay she's talking about actually physically "going," I think it also applies to any sort of "showing up" you can do. So on Wednesday, when I was sitting down to make the call, I thought to myself, "go to Ohio," and I did (even though it's Michigan, and only on the phone).

It's a good thing and it feels good. I will try to remember how it's a good thing, the next time the opportunity arises for me to show up for someone.

***

Thursday night, Teen B and I went to the musical put on by the other high school. They did "Freaky Friday" and our next-door neighbor was in it and did a great job, as he always does. I really enjoyed the show.

Friday, the kids were off school because of Veterans Day being Saturday, so I'd scheduled our flu shots for that morning, at the King Soopers pharmacy. Even though they're awkward and smelly and pimply and they fight all the time, I get such a kick out of going places with my two teenagers. They teased me nonstop while we stood in line. I get into it, I can't deny it. They call me "Boomer" and make fun of my age and my size and my likes & dislikes, and it's all a pleasure. I made these guys, I think to myself, as the nonsense continues. They don't have my genes, but I brought them into the world and fed them and changed their diapers and got them to this point, and they're so much fun.

When they're not getting lost on dark country roads and/or not speaking to me, that is.

OK, so I must get ready for the week ahead -- and the week after that. I'm greatly looking forward to having Rocket Boy here, but at the same time I'm a little sad because it will mean more than a week when I can't write. That is, I can write, but I like to talk while I'm writing and I can't talk if RB is in the desk room with me -- not to mention that the twins will be there too, on vacation, everyone shouting at everyone else. I didn't write all summer, with the twins home.

I have finished my middle grade novel, but I'm still tinkering with it, trying to smooth out the rough edges. I have to read it aloud to be able to do that. It's while reading aloud that I notice problems, notice, for example, that I said it was freezing cold one day and warm & sunny the next (both of those are entirely possible in Colorado in October, but I think I need to point that out). 

So as to keep from getting bogged down with endless rewrites, I went ahead and started the second book in the series, which takes place in November. I've only written about 1000 words so far, but I have lots of ideas and I would like to be able to work on it all through November. Instead, I probably just have three days this week, no days the week after, and then the last four days of November. So, seven days in all. It isn't much.

If Rocket Boy manages to move back here, I'll have to figure this out! Especially if he retires, as I've encouraged him to do. I know he doesn't want to retire, but he needs to come home.

And now November

So it's November, and as always I'm puzzled by how short the month is. I mean, it's 30 days, but the kids get a whole week off toward the end of it, so that seems to shorten it. So we've had five days already, and now we get two full weeks of school -- except that this coming week is only four days due to Veterans Day -- then a week of Thanksgiving break, and then one more almost full week of school (December begins on a Friday). And that's the month.

I'm trying to plan my reading and it feels like I don't have enough time. I think I'm only going to read about four books this month, maybe five (last month I read 14). OK, well, no, because I've already finished three. But only four or five more. It's OK. I've already read 100 books this year. I remember when it was a huge big deal for me to read 100 books in a year. Times have changed.

We had a nice Halloween. Neither boy wanted to go trick-or-treating, which made me kind of sad, but in the end I agreed with their decision. Most of the kids who came to the door were clearly in elementary school, with a few middle schoolers sprinkled in. My friend Sally lives in a Halloween neighborhood, where people come from far and wide to trick-or-treat, and she got 400 visitors, including plenty of older kids. She actually got more than 400, but she only had 400 treats, so once she ran out she closed her door and turned out the light.

I think we had about 40. Forty is a nicer number than 400! As it was, I felt as though the knocks on the door were almost constant. I was trying to make dinner and I had to keep leaving my half-chopped onion or my saute pan to go hand out Tootsie Pops to darling little dinosaurs and fairies. 

I tried to get the kids to answer the door but they wouldn't. However, after we ate dinner, I asked them if they'd like to watch "Ghosts," the British TV series I'd gotten on DVD at the library. Surprisingly they agreed, and we ended up watching three out of six episodes. It was an excellent choice for Halloween -- not very scary, but very funny. We watched the rest of the episodes two nights later and then they wanted more, so I requested the DVD of Season Two, which will be coming to us from the Denver Public Library. (And yes, I know, if we had Netflix or whatever streaming service we could watch everything all the time whenever we want. I don't care. I think waiting is fun too.)

And now November. November is a very patriotic month, which is why I always try to read a Presidential biography at this time. This month I'm going to read The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin, about Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. (I've already read a bio of TR's early life, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris.) In two days we have Election Day, at the end of the week is Veterans Day, and then of course Thanksgiving. 

I've already voted and gotten the email that they've received my ballot; Rocket Boy had to mail his from St. Louis, so I don't know if it'll arrive in time. Unusually for me, I wasn't sure how to vote on several issues. People I usually agree with wrote opinion pieces in the paper that conflicted with opinion pieces by other people I usually agree with! It ended up being kind of a coin toss. I also messed up -- this is a School Board election year and I thought we were only supposed to vote for someone running in our district. But it turned out that we vote for candidates in all the districts (then why have districts?). I didn't do enough homework on that, and ended up voting (and telling Rocket Boy to vote) for someone who I think might be an anti-vaxxer! I hope she doesn't win. Watch, she'll win by two votes and it'll be my fault.

Speaking of vaccinations, I seem to be an anti-vaxxer this fall -- still haven't gotten any. But this Friday the twins and I have appointments at King Soopers to get our flu shots. Better late than never. I still have to do something about Covid, though, and I guess RSV? You're supposed to get that if you're over 60. Sigh. I don't want to get them all at the same time, so I'll have to make more appointments. The thing is, the best time to take the kids is Saturday, so they have time to recover before school on Monday (we're doing it this Friday, because they have the day off). But we drive on Saturday, and they probably won't want to drive if they've just gotten shots. Sigh again.

We didn't drive last Saturday because of the snow, but we drove yesterday. Teen A and I drove to two Safeways and a shoe store, while Teen B and I just drove to the Starbucks in Lafayette. They have their Christmas drinks already, so I got a Gingerbread Oatmilk Chai Tea Latte, very tasty. I realized today, though, that I missed my chance -- the Lafayette store still had pumpkin spice drinks but our Boulder store is already out of them. I loved the Iced Pumpkin Cream Chai Tea Latte that they had this year. Should have gotten that yesterday. I didn't get anything today when I found out they didn't have pumpkin cream, just came home and had tea with milk.

I shouldn't have a lot of Starbucks drinks anyway, not recommended for diabetics. But 'tis the season to feel conflicted about that. Yesterday at one of the Safeways we went to, Teen A and I walked down an aisle that was entirely Christmas candy and treats (one side of the aisle, anyway). I walked down it thinking, I would like to buy that, and that, and that... We didn't buy any of it. It's early November, for crying out loud. They had obviously just set it up, because it looked untouched. And delicious. 

I'm feeling conflicted in general about food these days (food, and other things that go in your mouth, such as candy and Starbucks drinks). I've seen the dietician twice, and she's very helpful, but then I come home and don't want to follow her advice. It's not that I want to stuff my face with candy -- the only time I really have a problem with that these days is when I'm helping the kids with their homework, for some reason. "Can you think of a good topic sentence here?" Munch, munch, swallow. 

No, I just don't want to eat something with protein and fiber. I have those things in the fridge: hummus and cottage cheese and fruit. But my -- stomach? brain? other organ? -- cries out for another cup of milky tea. Or a muffin. A few days ago I had a terrible bout of stomach upset, some vomiting and terrible, horrible, diarrhea. My sister the nurse said it was probably food poisoning and I think she must be right because once it was over it was over (and I was 4 pounds lighter). I suspect the dish in question was an odd thing I made on Tuesday (and had leftovers of for lunch on Thursday) which had Brussels sprouts and sauerkraut and pasta and bacon. Perhaps not actually poisonous, just things my gut didn't want. But my reaction was so extreme that it made me worry about my body. I don't want to try to feed a body that can react so violently. My rib cage is so sore from the vomiting that it hurts to cough or laugh, and my gut, while functioning semi-normally now, just hurts.

Guess I should get that Covid shot. I really need to not get sick if I can help it.

Seriously, I don't know what to cook anymore. If it's good for IBS it's bad for diabetes and vice versa. What's good for IBS? Simple carbs, like potatoes and rice. What's good for diabetes? Protein and fiber. Thus, I drink tea.

At my book group this week we started talking about what you do when you get older, moving into retirement communities and assisted living, arranging for care, paying for it, all that sort of thing. We're all in our 60s, so nobody's ready to take any special steps, but obviously it's coming. It comes for us all. I wonder, will we still be meeting in 10 years, when we're in our 70s? Maybe by then we'll switch to daytime meetings at least. I don't know. 

So, the week ahead! It's warm today, should be warm for a couple more days, and then we'll have a brief return of cold and rain/snow. On Tuesday, I'm planning to drag the twins to an open house at the Boulder Technical Education Center (TEC), where they offer classes in things like auto repair, construction, welding, etc. I'd really like Teen A to explore this, and maybe Teen B too. Right now they're fighting me, "Why do I have to go?" etc., but we'll see. Thursday, Teen B and I are going to the musical at the other high school, and of course Friday is a day off and we're getting our flu shots. So, a full week (smile).

Reading post: Books from the tall bookcase by the front door

October is over, so it's time for another reading update. In October, I chose seven nonfiction books from seven of the eight shelves of the tall bookcase next to our front door. I also found various spooky books to read in between the serious books. This is how the reading month went. 

1. The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower. I started reading this years ago (it was published in 1978), but couldn't get past the first few chapters. I thought it seemed interesting, though, and this time I pushed on and finished. It's a quirky little book: a portrait of the (quirky) (but aren't they all) physicist Freeman Dyson and his (quirky) estranged son George Dyson, who at the time the book was written was living in a treehouse in British Columbia and building a giant kayak. Most of the book is about hanging out with George in the wilderness and traveling with him by kayak. I don't know what readers are supposed to get out of the book or what it all means. I think that's the point. I looked up George Dyson -- he eventually became a science writer and gave TED talks, so, a more or less normal person. Freeman Dyson died three years ago. I enjoyed spending some time with them, and I am keeping the book. However, I moved it to a different shelf in the bookcase. Before, it was with some books about physics, but now it is by some memoirs of the natural world.
   
   1a. Spooky book: The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag. A graphic novel with a trans theme. Not at all scary.
   
   
2. The Desert Year by Joseph Wood Krutch. Another quirky little book, from 1952, this is Krutch's story of the sabbatical year he spent in a rental house outside Tucson. In the last chapter he muses about returning to Connecticut, but Wikipedia tells me he ended up relocating to Tucson permanently, dying there in 1970. I wonder what he would think if he could see Tucson now, as we did last March. It's still nice, but the population has gone from 77,000 in 1950 to a little over 1 million today. Anyway, I enjoyed the book, although less so Krutch's philosophical musings. I preferred it when he focused on the birds, lizards, spiders, insects, toads, bats, and plant life of the Sonoran Desert, as well as the rock formations, weather, and stars. Although I'm familiar with a different desert, the Mojave, I could relate to Krutch's descriptions easily. There's just something about the desert. A couple of pages in the next-to-last chapter of this hardback edition were uncut, so no one before me had ever read it all the way through. I'm keeping this -- it's a treasure.
   
   2a. Spooky book: Nantucket Hauntings by Blue Balliett. Very scary -- recommended!
   
   
3. The Coming Quake: Science and Trembling on the California Earthquake Frontier by T. A. Heppenheimer. I bought this after the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, but never read it. More's the pity, because when I finally did read it, this month, I found it to be horribly out of date. The book was published in 1988, with a little update in 1990 that refers to the '89 quake. But that was 33 years ago. Scientific views on earthquakes have changed, as I learned when I googled some of the people Heppenheimer interviewed. The book is still interesting, but I have a few quibbles: (1) the font is terrible, (2) there should be more diagrams explaining seismology terms to a non-geologist reader, and (3) the long, dense chapters would be easier to read if they had subsections. Google told me that Heppenheimer died in 2015 at the age of 68 -- so he'll never see the "Big One" hit Southern California. He seemed very worried about that in this book. I guess I'll keep this for reference, though I do think I should read a more up to date book too.
   
   3a. Spooky book: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna. Not even the tiniest bit scary, but some enjoyable discussions of how to perform spells.
   
   
4. The Birder's Bug Book by Gilbert Waldbauer. Like the squid book that I read last month, this book was a present from my older sister (a Christmas present, in 1999). So it was time to read it. And what a delight it was! The beautifully designed book was published in 1998, so it may be a little out of date, but I doubt if much has changed in the world of insects, other than the worldwide decline of both birds and bugs. The book is an exhaustive description of bugs that birds eat, how bugs avoid getting eaten, bugs that eat (parts of) birds and how birds avoid them, and bugs that eat (parts of) people and how people fight back. It also contains a brief overview of all the insect families and a brief, sad chapter on how birds and insects are disappearing due to human activities. I wasn't kidding when I said, last month, that this book sounded kind of Halloween-ish. The descriptions of the disgusting and weird things that bugs do were mind-blowing. Waldbauer is a bird-loving entomologist, so he knows his subject very very well. And he's still alive! He's 95 years old. Wouldn't he be fun to meet and talk to? I guess reading this book is the next best thing. Definitely keeping this.
   
   4a. Spooky book: The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen. Not spooky! A romance novel! One of the lovers is an undertaker and the other kills the undead. But still, not even the teeniest, tiniest bit spooky.
   
   
5. Colorado's Iceman & the Story of the Frozen Dead Guy by Bo Shaffer. Without giving too much away, I'll note that my husband is mentioned a few times in this book, and I have met Bo, the author. I have also visited the Tuff Shed in Nederland that houses "Grandpa" (or used to), and Trygve (his grandson) sometimes calls us from Norway. I have not, however, attended Frozen Dead Guy Days, formerly held in Nederland and now moved to Estes Park, along with "Grandpa." I used to have a restraining order against someone who lived in Nederland and I interpreted that to mean that I should stay out of Nederland. He died in 2009, but by then we had moved to Ridgecrest. Anyway, it was interesting for me to read the story from Bo's perspective. He does a pretty good job with the material, though I feel as though the tale cries out for a real writer, someone who could give a better sense of how deeply weird the whole thing is. This is probably the best we'll get, though. Keeping it.
   
   5a. Spooky book: The Way of the Bear by Anne Hillerman. Not a spooky book, a mystery, but it had some scary bits, even though I guessed the murderer(s) within the first 50 pages or so. A pleasant interlude.
   
   
6. The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson. A beautifully written discussion of the oceans of the world. I learned a lot from this book, even though it was written 74 years ago. I'd love to read an update, but sadly Carson died in 1964. This edition does include an appendix with some interesting updates that she wrote in 1961 -- when I was a toddler. Yeah. She's better known for Silent Spring, about the ravages of DDT, but I don't really want to read that. Nor, to be honest, do I really want to read about the oceans of today, so scratch what I said above. There was a New Yorker article recently about what the Chinese fishing industry is doing to the oceans, and, well, I can't get it out of my head, so awful. But this book is very sweet, because fewer terrible things had happened in 1950. I'll leave it there. Of course I'm going to keep this.
   
   6a. Spooky book: Gallows Hill by Darcy Coates. Definitely a spooky book! Excellent choice for Halloween reading, and it even had a happy ending.
   
   
7. The Yangtze Valley and Beyond by Isabella Bird. Nope. Nope. Nope. Couldn't do it. It would have been a stretch to finish this 500+-page book by the end of the month, but I ended up only reading two chapters. I was given this book by my friend Z'bet, back in 1997 (I think), because she and I went to China together in 1986 and she thought I'd enjoy it. It was first published in 1899 and from a historic standpoint it's fascinating, but I don't know. I found it so boring I could hardly keep my eyes open long enough to read three pages at a sitting. I'm tempted to get rid of it, but since it was a gift, and since every review I've read of it has been glowing, I think I'll keep it a while longer. Maybe at another time I'd enjoy it. But not now.
   

OK, October is over!

In November we leave the living room (finally) and move on to the office, or as we call it, the desk room. There are many many books in here that I haven't read, and never will read, because they're Rocket Boy's boring technical books. Things like Remote Sensing for GIS Managers and C Programming Using Turbo C++ and A Primer of Multivariate Statistics. They're mainly his old textbooks.

One area appeals to me, though, and that's the shelf that Rocket Boy installed above the closet, to give me space for some of my books in this room. It holds books about rhetoric, linguistics, Old English, reading, and writing. Some were my textbooks, but others are books I picked up along the way. They're too dry for me to get through a lot in a month, but I've picked out a few to try. I'm not going to include a photo of the books because I'm so unsure of what I'll get through. This month I will also be reading a very long Presidential biography, so I have to leave time for that.

Only one more month after this one! What a crazy reading year this has been.