Happy Thanksgiving week

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

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

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

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

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

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

It should be a nice day.

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

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

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

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

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

White-breasted nuthatch (above the squirrel)

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

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

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

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

Oh well. It will probably be fine.

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

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

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

November flies by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reading post: Journey to Topaz and a few other books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goodbye Halloween, hello November

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End of the month

So October is almost over, and it's been an odd sort of October. But I'll miss it, as I always do. Today at Starbucks, I got a pumpkin spice latte in honor of the end of October. In November I'll probably just drink tea at home.

As I am starting to write this (at 1:23 pm), we have not yet carved any of our pumpkins, but I suspect that by the time I finish, we will have carved one or two. I have many things to do today and I'm trying to spread them throughout the day. So far today I have done these things:

• Emptied the dishwasher
• Done a load of the kids' laundry, start to finish
• Taken Teen B to Starbucks
• Helped Teen B finish his World Geography homework (he had to make a poster advertising the wonders of Alice Springs, Australia, don't ask -- I helped by drawing a picture of a kangaroo)

Still to do: language arts and science homework, helping the kids figure out their costumes for tomorrow night, this blog post, carving a couple of pumpkins, maybe a grocery store or Target run, making dinner, taking a walk, reading, writing, trying to get Rocket Boy to do a task or two. Sundays are busy days. The FlyLady says that Sunday should be "Renew Your Spirit" day, but she doesn't have teenagers.

Also, there's more to do today because yesterday we actually had a "Family Fun Day" -- we went to the cabin. That is, Rocket Boy, Teen A, and I went to the cabin. Teen B didn't want to go and so stayed home alone for 10 hours. I think he was a little lonely, but it's good for teenagers to have some time to themselves and it was great for the twins to take a break from fighting.

On a slightly related subject, I calculated recently that out of the roughly 5345 nights of the twins' lives so far, I have been around for all but 9. During a few of the other 5336 I had the flu or was otherwise incapacitated, but I was in the same house and at least marginally involved in dinner time and/or bedtime. The nights I know I missed were 2 nights of Outdoor Ed in 5th grade, 2 nights of Outdoor Ed in 6th grade, 2 nights when I went to California for a wedding, 2 nights when I went to Boulder (we were living in California) for a work thing, and 1 night when we were visiting my niece and she took care of the twins while Rocket Boy and I went to see a musical and then we came home and went to bed in her garage spare room and didn't see the twins until around 10 am the next morning.

Oh, and one night Teen A went to a slumber party. But we still had Teen B with us. Am I forgetting any other nights? A few times I probably got home from an event after bedtime, but not many. Usually, if I stayed out late, Rocket Boy let them stay up until I got home, even if it was an hour or more past their bedtime.

Rocket Boy has missed SO MANY of those 5345 nights, being in St. Louis for the past three and a half years, plus various work trips, job interviews, etc., in earlier years. I know it's terrible to say this, but I wish I'd missed a few more of them. I've always been so jealous of people whose parents happily took the grandchildren for regular weekends.

Even writing that, I feel guilty. I'm sure now they'll be in a fatal accident on the way to school tomorrow and it'll be my fault for wishing I'd had a few more nights off.

But this comes up when I start feeling like a bad mother for failing to cook dinner or getting mad at the kids. 5336 nights I've had to do this, so far. Surely that kind of consistency counts for something, even though I'm not perfect.

Also, I am tired of it. I am ready for them to grow up.

Almost ready.

ANYWAY, back to yesterday. Teen A had been jonesing for a tuna melt at the Cutthroat Cafe in Bailey for quite some time, so we decided it might be nice to take a little drive in that direction. It sounded particularly nice to go with only one kid, and it was.

Of course, once we got to the Cutthroat Cafe, Teen A decided that he would have a cold ham & cheese sandwich instead of a tuna melt. He proclaimed it delicious and asked me why my ham & cheese sandwiches are never that good. I pointed out that the sandwich was made with American cheese (I use Havarti) on what looked like Wonder Bread (I use Rudi's Organic Multigrain Oat bread), and the ham didn't look very high-class either. 

Then we drove on to Alma, stopping at Al-Mart to get snacks and buy Teen A a coat! He needed a new winter coat, so we bought something called a "Storm Defender" (by Carhartt, which Al-Mart specializes in). Worn over a hoodie, it should work as a winter coat, especially considering that he is rarely willing to wear a winter coat. Then we went to the cabin and hung out for about an hour. It was chilly, but not too cold, starting to cloud over. Some leftover snow on the ground. Rocket Boy hadn't planned any projects, so he did a little dusting. Teen A sawed some branches off a fallen tree nearby (just to have something to do), and I walked down to the beaver ponds, which were almost frozen over.

Then we drove back to Fairplay and swam in the pool at the rec center for an hour, after which we had an early dinner at the Mexican restaurant that's taken over the Brown Burro (Casa Sanchez). And then we had a nice drive home, returning around 8 pm. 

Now it's 2:50 pm and we have done our science homework (this is a joint effort, since the twins have the same science teacher, albeit at different times). We have not yet carved a pumpkin, though -- better get on that soon.

On Friday, Rocket Boy and I finally voted. In Colorado, of course, everyone gets a mailed ballot, which you can fill out at your leisure and then either mail in (if you allow enough time), deposit it in one of the many dropboxes around the county, or take it to a polling place on election day (you can fill it out there, too, if you prefer). It is the best system, and I don't know why more states don't adopt it. 

Well, of course, I do know why they don't adopt it -- most states are trying to restrict voting, not encourage it. But more liberal states should try it. Even Utah does it this way.

I filled out my ballot first and then gave Rocket Boy advice on how to do his, even though we don't agree on everything. We respect each other's differences, more or less (of course, it helps that there aren't too many of them). I said things like, "I voted for A, but you'll probably want to vote for B because of XYZ." I think we voted the same on everything except that I ended up voting for a library district and he voted against it, and he voted for psilocybin legalization and I voted against it. 

Then I drove both ballots to the closest dropbox, and yesterday I got an email from Boulder County Elections saying they'd received my ballot and would let me know as soon as it was counted. I love voting in Colorado.

My book group came this week, on Monday evening, a few hours after Rocket Boy arrived. He got down the Halloween boxes for me, so I was able to get everything decorated in time. The FlyLady and I had done the Weekly Home Blessing earlier that day, so the house was pretty clean. I also prepared all the food. Usually I order takeout, but this time I decided to make the food myself. We had read a book set in England, and there was mention of pub food and whatnot, so I set out to make pub food but ended up making more like tea food. I made a lemon cake and Irish soda bread, four kinds of tea sandwiches, (English) cheese and crackers, and strawberries (should have been an apple tart, but it's OK). And of course there was Halloween chocolate. And tea.

The book we read was a ghost story, The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, and to my surprise, two of the book group members really liked it. They found it just the right amount of spooky (I actually thought it was a bit depressing). 

The third member of the group had accidentally read The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John, which is about four women who work as shop clerks in Sydney, Australia, in the 1950s. When we began talking about the book, she mentioned that it had reminded her of a book we read earlier in the summer, A Summer Reunion by Fanny Blake, in which four former friends travel to Majorca. Thinking of The Woman in Black, I said, "How could that possibly have reminded you of this book?" We all had a good laugh when we figured out the problem.

The thing is, this is not the first time this has happened (it was a different member who read the wrong book the other time). We are getting old, the book group and I. At 62, I am the youngest member. If I ever read the wrong book, I will be truly horrified. I work hard to be sure I have the author and title right. I can't really imagine not doing that. But I'm fussy that way.

Next month we are going to read The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty, and I can see how I might mix it up with something else, because there are actually a lot of novels out there with rabbits in the title. We read Bunny some months back, and there's another new book called Little Rabbit, and I see on Amazon there are a few books with the words "Rabbit Hole" in their titles. Maybe I should read Little Rabbit instead, oh, but I see the library doesn't have it yet. May just have to read the right book.

One more day of fun and games; then comes Serious November.

OK, it's 4:20 pm and we haven't carved a pumpkin yet NOR have we done language arts. The time has come for both.

And now it's 6:37 pm and all the homework is done, plus Teen B and I have paid a visit to Target to look for a Halloween costume -- but alas, there are only small children's costumes left. We will have to kluge something together for him. But we have wigs and such -- I think it will be all right.

I don't think I'm going to carve a pumpkin tonight, which means I will have to do them all tomorrow, in addition to cleaning and meal planning and grocery shopping. But it's OK. It will be Halloween and I will be happy.

Oh, I should do a reading recap. I ended up reading every single Halloweenish book I planned to read, except for December by Phil Rickman, which I am still working on. It is 675 pages long and I am on page 174, so, hmm, 501 pages left. It kind of drags, too -- it's one of his early novels. I don't think I'll finish it by tomorrow night, but hopefully in the next few days.

One fun thing I did this year was treat myself to some new Halloween children's books. From Abe Books I ordered old library copies of The Vanishing Pumpkin by Tony Johnston, The Witches' Supermarket by Susan Meddaugh, and Harriet's Halloween Candy by Nancy Carlson. Lots of fun, and great additions to our collection. We feel as though we're missing some books: where is Max & Ruby's Happy Halloween? We used to read that to the twins. Maybe I'll have to buy it next year.

A few more days

The last full week of October is upon us. And I finally feel a little better! It's totally the placebo effect, or in this case, sort of a reverse placebo effect, but I don't care what caused it, I'm just going with it.

What happened was this: on Friday, October 14th I got a bunch of labs done. My blood sugar and A1c were high, which is bad, but what I was interested in was my cholesterol levels. Since last spring, I've been taking a statin, rosuvastatin, even though my cardiac catheterization showed absolutely no sign of heart disease, because diabetics have to take statins, it's the law. At first I was taking 20 mg/day, and then in April after we found out I don't have heart disease and I said Why do I still have to take this, hmm???, she dropped me to 10 mg/day, which is considered a moderate dose -- but rosuvastatin is a very strong statin.

OK. Back in February my total cholesterol was 192, which is normal, but considered borderline. My HDL was 43 (it should be above 50, preferably 60) and my LDL was 123 (it should be under 100). Flash forward eight months, seven of them spent taking a statin, and my total cholesterol is now 121, which is quite low. My HDL is still 43 but my LDL has dropped to 53, which is crazy low. If I'm doing the math right, that's a 57% reduction. According to a website called hcahealthcaretoday.com, "At the highest tolerable dose, [high-intensity statins] can reduce cholesterol levels as much as 50 percent." And I've been taking a low dose.

I googled LDL numbers and discovered that it is possible for your cholesterol to be TOO low. Very low LDL numbers are associated with an increased risk of cancer, anxiety, and DEPRESSION.

And with that, I took myself off the statin. I mean, come on, this is ridiculous. Immediately, I felt better. I know, my LDL couldn't have gone up immediately, and probably my LDL isn't what's been making me depressed anyway, and it's all a reverse placebo effect, but I don't care. I feel better, which is all that matters to me. Placebo effects rule!

I see my endocrinologist this coming week and I'll probably have to go back on a statin, but I'm going to advocate strongly for one of the weaker ones, not rosuvastatin. We'll see what happens.

***

There were other things that happened this week that probably also contributed to my mood shift, but I can't talk about them (family related, too personal, etc.). All I can say is that they shifted my thinking a little, enough to sort of jar my sad mood loose. If that makes any sense. It makes sense to me.

Oh, and the tile guy finished, on Thursday. That gave me a big boost. I don't adore the new tile, but I adore the fact that it's in, that the bathroom problem is over, and that the tile guy is gone. I gave him all our money (most of what was left in our two savings accounts), and I don't have to worry about the bathroom anymore.

***

So, suddenly Halloween is only a week and a day away and I'm not ready. One problem is that Rocket Boy was supposed to be here by now, and only he is tall enough and thin enough to get the Halloween decorations out of the garage, because they are in boxes on a very high shelf that is blocked by the train table. I do not know why we have to have a train table in the garage. It is one of those things.

He was supposed to arrive today, but he got a late start yesterday and now probably won't get here until Monday afternoon. Which is fine, except that my book group is arriving at 5:30 pm Monday. 

It's still fine. If he gets here by 4:30, we might be able to get the decorations up by 5:30. Hold that thought.

It occurred to me that we could go get pumpkins this weekend, even though all the non-perishable decor is trapped in the garage, so yesterday Teen B and I did that. Teen A didn't want to come, which kind of blew my mind. It's the first year he didn't want to participate.

Next year Teen B probably won't want to come either.

Having your kids grow up is kind of painful. Though, of course, the alternative would be much worse. Must always remember that.

Teen B and I selected five pumpkins, which cost (wait for it) almost $60. Inflation, la la la. We brought them home and put them on the front porch. Later I brought the two smaller ones inside, to protect them from teenagers out looking for trouble. This morning, a squirrel started eating one of the three left outside, so I put an old tablecloth over them, and that seems to have worked -- he's leaving them alone. But now we don't have a pumpkin decoration on the front porch, we have an old tablecloth.

***

I spent most of the week reading a single book, I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, because it was so scary that I couldn't actually read it at night. I couldn't read it during the day either, because I found it embarrassing to have the tile guy see me reading. I finally buckled down and finished it on Friday after he was gone. Oof. If you want a really scary book, I'd direct you to that one.

Then I quickly read what I thought was going to be another ghost story, That Beckoning Ghost by Douglas G. Browne, but it turned out to be a very soothing British mystery from the 1940s, no (real) ghosts involved at all.

And now I am reading Ghosts, a collection of ghost stories by Edith Wharton that she assembled just before she died, in 1937. I started the first story last night and immediately realized that it was too late and dark for me to read something like that. I'll save it for after Rocket Boy gets here. 

This month of reading spooky stuff has been fun, but at the same time I'm kind of looking forward to November, when I can go back to things like Presidential biographies and the Classics Challenge.

***

It wasn't a great cooking week, in part because of the tile guy. That is, I could cook when he was here, but I felt as though I shouldn't cook anything smelly, like onions, because that would stink up the house and it might bother him.

Also, while he made it possible for us to use the shower (carefully) over the weekend, during the week we couldn't use it. So on Wednesday evening we finally took our filthy selves to the East Boulder rec center to take showers. We also swam in the leisure pool, and went in the hot tub, which was really fun, but it all meant that there wasn't time for dinner, so we got McDonald's on the way home.

One thing I did make this week is shown in the photo above: Broccoli Cheese Soup from the Cookie & Kate website. Despite all the glowing reviews, it was terrible. I mean, just the worst. The twins took one spoonful and stopped. I finished my bowl, but I was gagging the whole time. One problem was that I didn't cook the broccoli enough the second time (you add the broccoli in two sections), so it was a little crunchy. But I don't see how that would have ruined the flavor.

Anyway, I ended up throwing it in the bushes the next day. Maybe a squirrel got a little nutrition out of it.

And last night we went to Wendy's, sigh. I'm really looking forward to having Rocket Boy here -- he can make some of his specialties and we can have fish again. I never want to cook fish when he's not here, because Teen B won't eat it, which means 1/3 of the family won't eat it. But when he's here, it's only 1/4 of the family that won't eat it, so it's all right. OK, that doesn't make sense, does it? Somehow to me it does.

***

We have a front moving in, with a slight chance of snow tonight and tomorrow morning. We'll probably just get a dusting, if anything, but it feels like it's time for something like that to happen. Often we have our first snowfall before this. 

The beautiful fall color is starting to fade. I saw a tree last week that just blew me away: red, orange, and yellow all in the same tree, and it was a really big tree. I kept meaning to go back up there (it was on Dartmouth near Kohler) and take a picture of it, but I never did and I'll bet by now it's not so dramatic. We've had wind, and it's getting colder. Maybe next year I'll see it again.

I'll try to make this a good week. It will be great to have Rocket Boy with us. I have a bunch of appointments, including (finally) my omicron booster, so that will take up time. And we can enjoy the last of October's glory together.

More beauty

I almost didn't want to blog today, but I think I will write a short post.  

It's been another beautiful week. The fall color in my neighborhood is just stunning right now, almost overwhelming. The yellows, the reds, the oranges. Some trees have more than one color, such as yellow with an orange undercoat, or orange with a red undercoat. I don't know what I mean by undercoat, exactly. I don't know what I'm seeing. I just know it's gorgeous. 

I find that my mood (depressed or cheerful or whatever) doesn't seem to matter when experiencing all this beauty. It's like riding a waterfall of color. All you can do is say "ooo" and "ahhh" -- you can't worry about your feelings.

***

The tile guy finally showed up on Tuesday, and then there were various delays, plus he couldn't be here Friday. But in three days (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday), he got the old tile off, dried out the wet wall, determined that it was still usable (no rotting wood), put new drywall up, and attached 50 tiles to the back wall (5 rows of 10 each). I won't include a photo, because he taped plastic up over the walls so that we could take showers, and you can't see it very well. Oh, well, OK, I will post one blurry photo. It gives you the general idea. This is happening.

The tile guy is a very pleasant person, not obnoxious and not over-friendly, just the right amount of friendly. He chats a little bit and then knows when to stop and go back to work. Also, he enjoys his work. He told me, "I love tile," and I could tell he meant it.

Still, it's stressful having him here. I can't drink as much tea and water as I want, because there's the bathroom problem. He told me (on Thursday) that whenever I need to go, I should just tell him, and he'll back out and leave it to me. But I'm sorry, I just can't do that when I need to poop. Just can't. The smell, the noises. Just can't do it. Our next-door neighbor told me to come over and use her bathroom whenever I need to, but I couldn't do that either. Nope, that's when I get in the car and drive three miles to Target. Yes, I did that one day. Wednesday, I think. Thank goodness for Target and its long row of anonymous stalls.

Now we have probably three more days with him. He thinks he'll get the rest of the tile up on Monday and Tuesday, with Wednesday as a day to finish things off and install the new vanity. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) the kids will be home Monday also, because it's one of those weird days off that I've never understood. A conference exchange day they call it. I think it's supposed to make up for the extra time the teachers put in doing conferences, which are Tuesday and Wednesday evening. 

***

I read two ghost stories this week, including the one that we're reading for book group this month, The Woman in Black by Susan Hill. I didn't like it much (and may have to apologize to the book group about it), although in parts it was gratifyingly spooky. The setting was the spooky part, not so much the ghosts. I requested the movie from the library, so maybe I'll watch it again and try to remember it.

I also read Unseen City by Amy Shearn, which was pretty good, but not really very spooky. I don't think Shearn has much practice writing ghost stories. The pacing is very tricky to get right. Also, her ghost was too active. Truly spooky ghosts in ghost stories don't do too much at once, you don't have every window and door opening and slamming shut, just one -- and then maybe one more. 

Now I am reading I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, and it's already too spooky. I read one chapter and then had to set it down. Maybe I'll try again tonight, though I think it's a book better read during the day!

***

Cooking didn't go too well this week. This photo shows three of the dishes I made (this was leftovers night). At top are bean & cheese quesadillas, at left is pineapple tofu stir fry, and bottom right is the farro, squash, and apple salad that the twins wouldn't even try (no, Teen A had one small helping and then gave what was left on his plate to me). 

Sometimes meals just don't work. The quesadillas and stir fry are some of my standbys! But no one really wanted them this week. I still have stir fry (and of course salad) in the fridge, slowly rotting away. Maybe tomorrow I'll dump them in the compost.

And I see it is now almost 7 pm and I haven't made dinner yet, so I should go do that.