User Manual

I don't really make New Year's resolutions (though if I did, I'd probably get around to it about two weeks into the year). But this year, I did decide (not resolve--verb choice is everything, and to resolve is to de facto make a resolution, which I don't do) to try to force myself to learn new things.

If you hang around here at all, then maybe you're wondering "What on earth is she talking about? She doesn't seem to do anything other than write and read and drive kids around and compulsively clean her house, so she must be learning something from the reading part, at least." And you'd be right. But gaining knowledge (however useless) by reading a book and learning a practical skill are two entirely separate and distinct things. I do the former very well. I do the latter very badly.

For example, I'm writing this on the Chromebook that I bought a few months ago. There's a lot to love about this little mini-computer, including its light weight, compact size, semi-attractive design, and keyboard that is ideally suited to my hands. But there are many differences between working on this and working on a PC, and instead of taking a disciplined and orderly approach to learning how to use the Chromebook well, I'm doing it piecemeal, just looking up tricks and keyboard shortcuts when I need them (and promptly forgetting and having to look up the same tricks and shortcuts over and over again. Hello? Where is the delete key?)

Last year, my husband bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner for me, thinking that I'd rather have something lightweight and easy to maneuver. And it's a nice vacuum cleaner, which also looks interesting and colorful. But it's not well-designed, because I still can't figure out how to use the attachments. I tried one time and gave up. In my defense, it's a domestic appliance, and an obviously essential feature like the hand-held attachments should be so self-evidently easy to use that "figuring it out" shouldn't even enter into the equation. There's always a work-around; mine is making my husband attach them for me. Not perfect, but it gets the job done.

*****

If you're a member of the very broad demographic that includes suburban mothers ages 30-60, then you have probably read or heard about the Instant Pot. And you have probably asked friends about it, who have probably all told you that you MUST get one, immediately. But if you're me, you have ignored their advice, because one look at the picture of the Instant Pot suggests that it's a complicated little piece of machinery, and that even thinking about figuring out how to use it will stress you out.

What is this, the space shuttle?
I mean, that's a lot of buttons, right? 

So I resisted. Every time someone would tell me how life-changingly awesome the Instant Pot is, I'd think about buying one, but then I'd also think about having to figure out how to use it. But two weeks ago, I finally caved and ordered one from Amazon, and it arrived two days later.

I panicked for a moment when I arrived home from work and found the box waiting for me. Normally, I love packages, but I knew that I had to teach myself how to use the Instant Pot the minute I opened it, or it would sit on my kitchen counter, untouched, for months. Maybe years.So I left it in the box, just until the next day. And this is where this could easily have turned into a story about how, weeks later, the box remained unopened, a daily reminder of my practical incompetence and strong inclination toward procrastination, but I actually did open it the next day.

Almost immediately, I wished I hadn't. Aside from being packaged to within an inch of its life, it included accessories and an instruction manual and a recipe book and a "quick start" guide and spoons and measuring cups and various and sundry parts. On a list of things that provoke hyperventilating anxiety for me, complicated machinery ranks pretty near the top, but proliferation of stuff ranks even higher.

Here I was faced with a choice: Either breathe into a paper bag, gather my wits (such as they are), and figure it out; or gather up all of the parts and paper, throw it all back in the box, and run screaming from the house.

I went with Plan B.

The End.

*****

No, I'm kidding. First I got rid of the box, along with the forty pounds of styrofoam packing materials, plastic, and extraneous paper. Then I put the spoons and other plastic parts into the dishwasher. That left me with a reasonably manageable pile of stuff with which to tangle. I started with the diagram, making sure that I could identify all of the moving parts. Then I read through the rest of the instruction manual, until I felt confident that I knew, at least, how to tighten the lid properly (it's a pressure cooker, so you have to do that part right or it will blow up) and how to turn it on.

Armed with knowledge, I decided to try to poach a chicken breast. Success! A few days later, I cooked some rice, which also turned out fine.  So far, I've only used it those two times, but now I have several more recipes to try; and the hard part, as far as I'm concerned, is out of the way.

Me: 1. Instant Pot: 0.

*****
High on success, I decided (not resolved) to tackle one practical challenge per month for the rest of 2018, so that by December, I'd have a dozen new and useful skills. And then the timesheet debacle happened.

People who work for the Federal government, or for government contractors, make up another pretty broad demographic (especially here in the DMV, where we're probably half the population). Those of us who work for contractors are required to carefully record every minute of time that we work, and to make sure that our government customers are billed for all of the time that we spend on their projects, but not for one minute more. This is pretty straightforward if you're 100% overhead (so none of your time is billable to the Feds) or if you're 100% embedded with a particular customer (so all of your time is billable to that customer). It gets complicated for people like me, who work on several different government projects, in addition to overhead projects.

Well, it's complicated now, anyway. We used to use a very simple online system, and it took me no more than five minutes a day, tops, to record my time. And then we decided to upgrade to a very well-known "enterprise" (God help me) system that I won't name here, but it rhymes with "Smell Tek," because it stinks. I won't burden you with details (too late). But many people who are far smarter than I (another very broad demographic) were completely flummoxed by the ridiculous complexity that this system has imposed on the once-simple task of recording work time.

So I'm taking February off. Instant Pot cooking and timekeeping count as my new skills for January and February. Maybe in March, I'll show the Chromebook who's boss.

*****

It's Saturday morning now. I'm hopeful that the politicians will figure out how to reopen the government, but as always, both sides are far more concerned with getting power and keeping it than with actually representing the interests of the people who elected them. "Schumer Shutdown" has a satisfying Fox News alliterative ring to it, of course, but it's just too ridiculous to even suggest that anyone other than the party that controls the Legislative and Executive branches is responsible for this. I'm not a Chuck Schumer fan (I can't stand most of the Democratic leadership) but this is the only shutdown that has ever occurred under one-party control.  Anyway, I'm pretty sure that they'll figure it out today, because President Trump has a $100,000-a-person party tonight. By the way, good luck to all of those billionaires if they think they'll get a refund if Trump doesn't show up.

Time's up

Sunday: I was going to live-blog the Golden Globes, but then I got bored. Because it was boring. So so so boring. Boring and predictable. Not only did I predict the hours of insufferable, preachy identity politics (not that this took any special psychic powers) but I also predicted the very predictable post-show social media backlash.  Seth Meyers was funny, and I was happy to see wins for Rachel Brosnahan and Sam Rockwell and Elisabeth Moss (who also wore my favorite dress of the night), but I couldn't watch the rest of it. Because I was SO BORED.

So I missed Oprah's speech, and I haven't gotten around to watching it. Another thing that I predicted (again, this didn't require a sixth sense, nor even a fifth one) was the proliferation of Oprah 2020 enthusiasm. I don't mind Oprah. I'm not a particular fan, but I certainly admire what she has accomplished, especially coming as she did from virtually nothing. And she'd be better than Trump, of course, but so would I, and I'm an idiot.

I think that what bothers me about the Oprah groundswell is that people keep expecting politicians to be saviors, and when the politicians fail, they expect celebrities to do the job. And they can't do it either, because someone already did.

Monday: I have been without a day planner for a full week of 2018, which means that I don't have a to-do list, which means that I don't know what to do.

I ordered a planner, which came right after Christmas, but it wasn't quite right. I thought about going back to my beloved Filofax, but then I decided to order another of a pocket planner that I had in 2015 (which is actually also pictured in the Filofax post from 2014, rereading which has prompted me to ask myself why I wrote an 800-word illustrated post about day planners, but that's a question for another day).

Wednesday: My new day planner arrived in the mail, and not a moment too soon. It's exactly the same one that I had in 2015, as I'd hoped. The second week of a new year without any sort of calendar, or agenda, or to-do list, and my life was in shambles. Another day, and the whole operation would have fallen apart.

Thursday: Just for fun, I decided to get the worst haircut that I have ever had in my entire life. Not so much too short, just crazy angles and layers and choppy ends that yielded the overall look of a crazy woman who impulsively cuts her own hair, And not necessarily with scissors.

Friday: I spent 25 minutes with a flatiron this morning, trying to organize and subdue my hair, but to no avail. 25 minutes might not seem like much, but I'm accustomed to a five- to seven-minute hairstyling routine. 25 minutes puts a serious dent in my day. I mean, if I have to spend 25 minutes a day fixing my hair, then when will I have time to blog about nothing? It's an issue.

My husband texted me later in the day, to tell me that he felt a bit flu-ish. I texted back:

I'm sorry to hear that. But I have a shit show growing out of my head. There are worse things than flu.

Though I was loath to let anyone wielding scissors near my head again, I made an emergency hair-fixing appointment for Friday night. The hairstylist looked at my hair with a mixture of puzzlement and dismay. "Wait," she said, "a hairdresser did this?"

"Right?" I said. "I know that you're thinking that I must have cut it myself, but I promise you that I paid someone actual money to do this to me." My hair was horrifying, but validation is always satisfying.

"Hmm," she said. "Well, I can give you a really good haircut, but it will be much shorter than you're probably used to. Or I can just clean this up as best I can. It won't be perfect, but you'll be able to live with it."

I opted for Plan B. It's not perfect, but I can live with it.

Saturday: My house is full of teenagers, only two of whom live here. It's loud, so I'm holed up in a bedroom, reading and writing and watching "Breaking Bad" reruns.  I emerge every so often, just to prevent breakdown of law and order.

Sunday: I went with friends to see "Lady Bird," which I loved; except that we had to sit in the front row, which I hated. The front-row seats, which were the only ones available, cost exactly the same as the seats from which you can actually see the screen, which doesn't seem fair to me. It's an artsy theater, which prides itself on offering a superior movie experience, so later on, I sent them a sharply worded email, just like my grandmother would do, if she knew how to use a computer. I don't expect them to do anything, but I'll probably troll them via email for a few weeks, just for fun. 

Hmm. Maybe I should spend more time on my hair.

Children play in the dark

I haven't gotten around to writing my 2017 book list yet. It won't be as long as the ones from 2016 and 2015. I'm one book into 2018 now, having just finished Joan Didion's The White Album. This was my first for 2018, and my second Joan Didion  and I think that I like her non-fiction better, at least based on this limited selection. She's pretty prolific, so I'll probably read a few more. 

In "On the Morning After the Sixties," one of the last essays in The White Album, Didion writes about college life in the early 1950s, when she studied at Berkeley, and "the extent to which the narrative on which many of us grew up no longer applies." I remember reading, a long time ago, something about hand-washing wool sweaters and blocking them on Turkish towels. I think this might have been part of Jacqueline Kennedy's famous Prix de Paris essay, which I cannot find online (Joan Didion was also a Prix de Paris winner); or maybe it was advice from one of the characters in The Group. I didn't know what it meant to "block" a sweater; though I assumed that it meant simply to reshape it so that it dries neatly; and I also didn't know what was special about a Turkish towel versus any other variety. 

The point is that Joan Didion, born in the 1930s and educated in the 1950s, is a member of the last generation of American women who would have known how to block a sweater, and who would have been able to identify a towel as Turkish without looking at the label. 

I was thinking about this as I sat at a table at Chadwick's Restaurant in Audobon, PA, with my husband and sons and my sister and brother-in-law and nephews. It was December 28, a weeknight, still early enough in the holiday week that you can revel in several more days of leisured Christmas coziness, but late enough that you're already thinking about the return to work, and school, and daily routines.  Chadwick's is a nice place, so I found it odd that there wasn't a convenient coat rack to be found, and we had to hang our bulky coats and sweaters and scarves on the backs of our chairs. This would have annoyed Joan Didion, I thought; enough that she might even have written about the sad decline in standards that has made it perfectly acceptable for nice restaurants to offer paper napkins and paper packets of sugar and paper-wrapped straws, and no place to hang your coat. 

*****
The live musician was just starting a break when we arrived, so the restaurant played recorded music. In the Philadelphia suburbs, you can switch stations on your car radio all day long, and never hear anything recorded after 1985 or so, and the recorded music selection at Chadwick's did not vary from local custom. The first track we heard was England Dan and John Ford Coley's Light of the World. 

*****
You know, sometimes I lose the thread on these things. I start with an idea, but I forget details. And sometimes, I remember every detail, but have no idea why they're relevant. I think I had a point when I started this, but I can't remember to save my life what it was. Something about Chicago? But it's too late to abandon it now. I'm too far in. 

*****

Oh, I know why I was thinking about Chicago! It was the band Chicago, and not the city! Because of the Gateway Pharmacy. That's it. 

Yes, I see that I need to back things up a bit. I'll begin (yes, I know--too late) by saying that I'm not particularly nostalgic about most things. Time marches on, and all that. Things change. But like any other almost-old person, there are things about my childhood and youth that I miss. One of those things is old-fashioned neighborhood pharmacies. No, not the kind with the soda fountains, because I'm old, not ancient. I'm talking about the kind of neighborhood pharmacy where you could buy candy and gift items and greeting cards and perfume and I suppose you can buy all of that at Rite-Aid, but it's different.  The Gateway Pharmacy is like the 1978-1983 Tardis stop. And I'm not nostalgic for that particular period of time at all, but drugstores were definitely better then.  I didn't know that they still made Alyssa Ashley Musk, or Vitabath, or Fa, but apparently they do, and the shelves full of vintage toiletries aren't just nostalgia props. I thought about the extent to which so much of the narrative on which I grew up no longer applies, and smelled the Charlie tester, and sang along to Chicago's "Make Me Smile." 

*****
And once again, I don't remember how I was going to finish this now way-off-the-rails post. Joan Didion would probably be horrified at this rambling mess. I'm reading Fire and Fury now, because of course I'm reading Fire and Fury. And although I can't resist "stable genius" jokes (which are never going to get old), I'm actually sorrier for Trump now than I am angry at him, because I believe that he might be well on his way to losing his mind, and it's never funny to see the deterioration of a human person. But I'm plenty angry at the sycophants who are loyal to Trump at the expense of loyalty to right over wrong; and even angrier at the cynical politicians who are willing to use this falling-apart mess of a man as a tool toward their own ends.  The narrative on which I grew up no longer applies; and the narrative on which my children are growing up gets crazier every day.  And love is still the answer, and always was, and always will be. 

January 1, 2018

It's the day after Christmas. We went to the National Building Museum today, and then for a late lunch-slash-early dinner at the Irish Channel, one of our favorite places.  Right now, I'm sitting on the family room couch of my once-again clean house. My 13-year-old son is playing Madden 18, trash-talking with his 11-year-old opponent over VOiP or whatever technology makes it possible for two boys who live a mile away to talk without a telephone or a radio. My son is wearing a brand-new Washington Capitals fleece pullover, slightly too big, a Christmas present from my sister-in-law; with fuzzy socks and sweatpants.  A plate with a half-eaten slice of pie sits on the coffee table, and there's a fire in the fireplace.  There are few moments of perfect contentment in life. For a 13-year-old boy, pie and Madden and fuzzy socks and Christmas vacation are the only necessary ingredients.         

*****

It's the day before New Year's Eve, and Christmas vacation, always too short, is almost over. We visited family in Philadelphia for two days, and returned to an icy cold house. There was much more snow in Philadelphia than we have here, but it hasn't gotten anywhere near the freezing mark (moving upward, that is) either there or here. It's a few hours later now, and the house has warmed up considerably.

I woke up at my sister's house this morning, and decided to go out to our beloved Wawa to get coffee for the adults and breakfast treats for the kids. The snow was falling pretty heavily, and the street looked icy, but I was particularly determined to fight my natural inclination to stay inside.

As prone to irrational fear and panic attacks as I am, driving in bad weather does not scare me. I concentrate very intently when I'm driving on an icy road, and when the car begins to slide, I steer into the skid and pump the brakes (from the knee, not the ankle) and breathe deeply as I regain control of the car.  I don't even panic as I watch other cars fishtailing and skidding; in fact, something almost opposite of panic occurs. I don't believe in Zen, but driving in the snow is as close to Zen as I ever get. I glanced at a tow truck that was preparing to tow a Corolla that had wiped out on Route 23, and kept driving. The coffee was delicious.

*****
4:40 PM on New Year's Day. At 4:00, the light was perfect, but now it's begun to fade. The days are getting just a tiny bit longer, but it'll still be dark in 30 minutes or so. Dark and very cold, but only for now. Happy New Year.

A creature was stirring

We have a mouse. Not a pet, but an unwelcome rodent invader.

Gross.

We last had a mouse during a cold snap in 2011 or 2012, and we hadn't seen or heard one since. Then one day last week, I heard a sound that could only be described as "scurrying," but whatever was scurrying stayed out of sight. The next day, my husband said that he saw a gray streak flash by; and then the day after that, I saw the actual live-in-the-flesh mouse.

So gross.

My husband called the exterminator, and they came out and set traps. Something, as I pointed out, that we could easily have done ourselves, saving the almost $250 per year that we pay the exterminator (but that's a story for another day).  After a few days, to no one's surprise, the mouse remained at large. So my husband took matters into his own hands, and built a better mousetrap.

*****

A long time ago, when the boys were little, the three of them were obsessed with keeping the rabbits out of our tomatoes. They'd set Havahart traps in the backyard, and in the mornings, they would drive to a park and let the rabbits go. This went on all summer, until one night, we left the gate open by accident, and some deer came in and ate all of the tomatoes. With the tomato crop ravaged, there was no longer any reason to force the rabbits into exile. We packed away the traps, and the rabbits roamed freely once again.

Another battle in the long war between my husband and the rodents involved unauthorized squirrel access to his beloved birdfeeder. After a few days of studying the squirrels and their habits, he fashioned a squirrel-proof birdfeeder out of an actual birdfeeder, several frisbees, and part of an umbrella. I can't describe it any better than that. Use your imagination. The thing actually worked, though it looked ridiculous hanging from the tree in our front yard.

*****
So the mouse is round three. There are mouse traps everywhere, and my husband has constructed barriers for the doorways, using cardboard boxes. The barriers have small holes, baited and booby-trapped. Wile E. Korean is quite sure that the mouse will be irresistibly drawn to the hole, and will run through it, only to be inextricably trapped on the other side.

Did you think I was kidding? 

It's now the third morning since these makeshift walls were erected (I have to step over them to get through the doorway) and we haven't trapped a mouse yet. I make my husband get up to check, because I don't want to be the first person to see a trapped mouse at 6 in the morning.

*****

We finally caught the mouse the day after I wrote this. Not a moment too soon, as I'd begun to worry about new and extreme measures threatened by the male members of the household. I had already caught my 16-year-old son patrolling the kitchen, armed with a loaded BB gun. ("Mom. Trust me. It ran under the stove, and it has to come out eventually. When it does, I'll pop a cap in its ass.") Again, teenage boys are idiots, in case you missed my last post. Meanwhile, I'd begun to be afraid to walk through my own house in the dark, for fear that I'd end up in a bear trap, or hanging upside down by my ankle from a zip line.

So the stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and humans are the only creatures stirring, and that's the way we like it. Merry Christmas.

Ghosts appear and fade away

Sunday:  This morning was a legitimately cold December morning; cold by anyone's standards, which means bloody well freezing for me. But I couldn't sleep past 6:30, so I went for a walk anyway.

With enough clothing, the temperature was just bearable, and even I had to admit that it was a really beautiful, sparkling morning. There was still a coating of snow on the grass, leftover from the tiny bit of snow that fell on Friday, and it was sunny and clear, but just a tiny bit misty. Beautiful.

I walked past the pool, which was frozen over, with a dusting of snow on the deck. Later, I heard that one of the neighborhood boys had posted Instagram video of himself and his dog, walking on the frozen water. Teenage boys are idiots; this is something that I have personal experience with. No more so than the rest of us, of course, but idiots in their own particular way. I myself did more stupid things this week alone than I'm prepared to write about on this blog, but you can trust me that walking out onto the surface of a frozen swimming pool was not among them. Idiots.

*****

Sometimes I like to listen to NPR when I walk, but I usually like to listen to music. My husband and I share an iTunes library, and I usually just put the whole thing on shuffle and listen to whatever shows up (within reason), but this morning, I felt like selecting songs. I found a playlist with my name on it (literally; it was named "Claire") so I started the first song and was on my way.

It was a good playlist, beginning with my beloved Erasure's "Heart of Stone." Sometimes, I get tired of even my favorite songs, and I skip past them, but I can't remember ever skipping over "Heart of Stone."

It got even better, with Gladys Knight and the Pips "Midnight Train to Georgia." I'm always all aboard for "Midnight Train."

Three excellent songs in a row! The third was Men at Work's "Overkill" (the acoustic version). I've always liked the original recording of this song, but I really love the acoustic version, and the lyrics are my life on the radio:

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know will be all right
Perhaps it's just imagination

But day after day, it reappears
Night after night, my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away. 

Anyway, these songs were among my favorites when I made the playlist, probably sometime around 2012 or so. They held up. 

*****

One reason why I like to go out walking early on Sunday morning is that I like to sing, and there are only a handful of people out at 7:30 on Sunday morning. Running Lady, The World's Happiest Dog and his person, Bike Helmet Guy, and maybe a few others here or there, but mostly, I have the streets to myself. And I need the streets to myself. Alone on the streets, I'm free to really cry for your heart of stone. And when L.A. proves too much for the man, I can sing, loudly, about his decision to leave the life that he'd come to know. In fact, I usually sing "Midnight Train" twice: Once as Gladys, and once as a Pip. 

I know both parts equally well, and I slay them both. 

The low battery warning came just as I was turning back on to my street, about halfway through a performance of David Bowie's "Modern Love" that would have blown the roof off the joint, had I not been outside. It was a good walk, and a good morning.

Winter

In addition to The System, I'm also been reading Muriel Spark's The Hothouse by the East River. I usually read e-books at night, in bed; and actual books in better light. Plus I like to read more than one book at a time.

Every time I think I've read everything that Muriel Spark ever wrote, I find one that I missed. I'd never heard of this one, and it was a relatively late novel for her (1973). I think that Spark was preoccupied with mental illness of a particular sort, and in some of her novels, the reader is never 100% sure if we're supposed to accept a character's version of reality or not. This is one of those. The main characters are a very wealthy couple living in a luxurious Upper East Side apartment in the early 1970s. The apartment is always overheated, and despite their wealth, the man and woman can't seem to do anything about the excessive heat except to open the windows, no matter the temperature outside.

The reader knows that both the husband and the wife worked for British intelligence during the Second World War, but we don't know what they did. We do know that they're haunted by the war, and that they have never adjusted to peace and the post-war world.

I've been reading this in bed, a few pages at a time, and the combination of real and surreal as I'm falling asleep has left me unsure about what is actually happening to the characters, especially the wife, who might or might not be dead. I'd forgotten how crazy Spark's novels can be. I'm glad I found this one.

*****
It's actually really cold now, legitimately winter-cold. I've learned that dreading cold is worse than actually living through it. Not that I like it, but I'm kind of reconciled to it; for now, at least. There's a little bit of snow, and the house is decorated for Christmas, and it's kind of cozy. Plus, I have new boots. No season that involves Christmas trees and new boots and Washington Capitals hockey can be all bad. It's not good, but it's not all bad.

*****

So I finished The Hothouse (still neck-deep in The System, too, God help me), and have moved on to Joan Didion's Play it as it Lays. I read one Joan Didion essay once and that's all. I'm always late to every bandwagon. I like the book so far, though I'm only one chapter in.

*****
It's December 15; Friday night and a week before Christmas vacation. Another high school swim meet tomorrow; and at some point between now and December 25, I must do the thing that I dread even more than winter. I complain about cookie-baking every year, and although the cookies stubbornly refuse to bake themselves, hope springs eternal.

Officiating

I have to referee a high school swim meet tomorrow. It's my first refereeing assignment this year, and I thought I took notes after last year's Google incident, but if I did, I can't find them. I've been through a lot of notebooks since last year. Anyway, this time, I'm supposed to help train a freshman parent, and I think I'll omit to mention that I once had to Google instructions on when to blow the whistle. I want him to feel that he's in competent hands. Ignorance is bliss. Do as I say, not as I do.

The Baby and the Bathwater

It's two months post-Weinstein now, and everyone seems to have came to a sort of simultaneous mass agreement to enforce zero tolerance on sexual harassment or misconduct. All of a sudden, any man (well, ALMOST any man) who has ever behaved or spoken inappropriately has to be punished, severely and possibly permanently. 

Like lots of other #metoo women, I have mixed feelings about this. Weinstein deserves his comeuppance (the word of the moment), and so do lots of other prominent men. With super high-profile people like Weinstein and Matt Lauer, the worst offense is not so much the wildly inappropriate or even illegal sexual behavior; it's the gross abuse of power. In those cases, the public downfall is more than deserved. (And it should have happened to Donald Trump. And it should have happened to Bill Clinton. And it's not too late.)

But there's the baby and there's the bathwater. I would like to drain the dirty bathwater, and then thoroughly scrub the tub, but I don't want to discard the baby. I like the baby. I like a lot of men who might, at some point during their personal or professional lives, have said or done something offensive or stupid. In fact, I love some of those men, and I don't want to see them--my friends, or my brothers, or my cousins, or my colleagues might be among them--cast into outer darkness forever. Should we judge the behavior of twenty or even five years ago by the standard of today? Because if so, then who among us will stand up to scrutiny? 

On the other hand (there's always another hand, isn't there? It's why we have two) I have extremely limited patience with the men who are now crying that they just don't know where the line is anymore. They just don't know how to behave! They don't know what they're allowed to do or say! Because it's not that hard. If you're not intimately involved with a woman, then she does not want you to touch most parts of her body. If you work with women, then they do not want to see naked pictures of you or anyone else, and they don't want to talk about sex, either. Because it's work. See? Pretty easy. 

The larger implications of this whole thing are just beginning to become clear. Or at least one specific thing is clear, and that's that the sex-soaked culture of the last 50 years, in which every aspect of entertainment, art, sports, music, politics, and pretty much every other field of human endeavor is permeated and dominated by sex, will have to change. If we're going to hold men (and women, of course) accountable for maintaining a level of decorum that excludes recreational sexual aggression, then we probably can't shove near-naked bodies in people's faces 24 hours a day anymore. 

On its own, that's a good thing. Even if I wasn't a Catholic, I wouldn't actually want to see sex scenes in every movie. I'm disgusted and bored by crude sexual humor on the radio and on TV. I cringe when I hear the lyrics of some of my children's favorite songs. I'm tired of seeing so-called cheerleaders dressed like pole dancers.* 

But the baby is still in the dirty bathwater, isn't he? Bari Weiss** said something about revolutions taking on a life of their own, quickly swallowing everyone in their path, devouring the guilty, the innocent, and the indifferent bystanders, and it's not unlikely that this revolution will have unintended consequences. Ideally, the culture will shift toward an idea of sexuality that acknowledges and respects human dignity. But if you have been on this blog for more than five minutes, then you know that I never expect the ideal outcome. The worst case scenario is my default option. I even have a tag. 

And what's the worst-case scenario? There are any number, but the one that I can see rising to the top is a new Puritanism that combines the very worst of radical feminist hatred of men and radical religious hatred of women, in a country so divided that you won't be sure which standard prevails from one county to the next. In this scenario, Roy Moore wins in Alabama and ten years later, he's part of the moderate wing of whatever new party replaces the Republican party; the moderate wing being the one that believes that a man should only beat the women he's related to, and that a man shouldn't marry a 14-year-old girl without her father's permission. Meanwhile, in what we now call the blue states, men will be fined or arrested for smiling at women they're not married to, and state-financed abortion up to forty weeks will be a basic civil right. 

Or maybe the whole thing will blow over, and everything will be back to normal, whatever that is, in six months. I don't think so, though. I think that a hard rain is going to fall. I think there's going to be a sea change. I'm praying that it's the right one. 

*****

*That's not so much an attack on NFL cheerleaders as a defense of pole dancers. Why should we consider a stripper a social undesirable; while NFL cheerleaders, who dress and behave in the same manner, are held up as examples of wholesome young womanhood? 

**By the way, I agree with a lot of Ms. Weiss's column, but I've never heard anyone say "Believe all women." There's a huge difference between "Believe women" and "Believe all women," always and everywhere, just because they're women. It's the baby and the bathwater again. Don't throw away the very reasonable "Believe women" because it sounds almost like "Believe ALL women." They are two different things. 

Books and movies

So a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I bought a pile of books at the Friends of the Library book sale, one of my favorite semi-annual events, and I think I promised (threatened) to tell you all about the books that I bought. Here's the list.

Stuart: A Life Backwards, Alexander Masters. I had never heard of either the book or the author, but the cover and the hand-drawn illustrations appealed to me. I read this one first. It's very, very sad, and funny in bits (though not "hilarious" as many of the blurbs exclaimed because spoiler alert, there's only so much humor that you can wring out of the life of a drug-addicted homeless man who suffered horrendous abuse as a child and eventually took his own life at age 34). It's a life backwards because the author begins with the present, and then works backward through Stuart's teenage and childhood years. Apparently, there was a movie, starring Tom Hardy, one of the last actors I'd expect to see in this role.

Endgame: The Inside Story of SALT II, Strobe Talbott. Not sure if I'll ever get around to actually reading this, but I'll report back if I do.

Fortunes of War (The Levant Trilogy, Volume II), Olivia Manning. I normally won't watch a movie if I loved the book, but this is a rare case in which I saw the movie first. It was actually a Masterpiece Theater miniseries, starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson when they were still married. It was very good, and I always meant to read the book; or books, because it is a trilogy (not sure how I feel about starting with Volume II). Anyway, if it's half as good as The Cazalet Chronicles, then it's money well spent.

The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point, Haynes Johnson and David S. Broder. I'm actually reading this now. Despite the hilarious quaint nostalgia of the subtitle (and the whole premise of the book, if it comes to that), it's actually a very lively read. The aforementioned premise is that the American political system (kind of annoyingly referred to as The System throughout the book), which comprises politicians and elected officials, political appointees, journalists, lobbyists, and consultants, broke down into complete fragmentation and chaos during the Clinton/Gingrich years.

Adorable, right? If only the authors had known what was coming.* But they're right in many ways. I once had to write a paper about the Carter White House, and while I was researching the malaise speech, I ran across a Hugh Heclo essay that blamed Bill Clinton for the "permanent campaign" that has so damaged American politics. Clinton and Gingrich share the blame. Both of them paved the way for the swamp that Donald Trump has shockingly failed to drain.

Anywhere but Here, Mona Simpson. Oddly enough, this is the second book in the group that I have seen the movie version of, but have not yet read. I liked the movie.

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (1st ed.) I read the Nook version of this soon after it was published. I don't remember much of the plot, except that it opens with a terrorist attack in a museum, and then follows the protagonist around the world as he lives his life while concealing an immensely valuable painting that he took from the museum in the aftermath of the bombing. Although I don't remember many details, I do remember that it was astonishingly good. I might read it again, but even if I don't, I'm happy to have a hardcover copy, and a first edition, at that.


Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World, Mikhail Gorbachev (1st ed.) Another first edition! I'm only a bibliophile in the sense that I really love to read books. I don't really care about their cash value as objects. But this one has huge historic significance, and it's exciting to have one of the first copies in print. I'll definitely read it, because the only thing better than reading about the Soviet Union is reading about the end of the Soviet Union. Another common element: This author, like Broder and Johnson, probably had no idea what was coming.

*****

*Case in point: I wrote that sentence on Tuesday night, before Trump weighed in on Matt Lauer and all but accused Joe Scarborough of committing a murder. The System is literally deteriorating by the day. Though they didn't know it at the time, Johnson and Broder were writing about the good old days.

An incident

This was probably the 20th time that I've hosted Thanksgiving. Each year, it gets a little easier. I learn new tricks, and refine established processes, and make slight improvements. The dinner hasn't cooked itself yet, but hope springs eternal.

Everyone who mashes potatoes knows that Yukon Gold potatoes are best for mashing. Some potatoes are good for roasting, others for baking, others for frying; but Yukon Gold make the best mashed potatoes. They have a nice color, and they crumble very nicely when they're cooked, making them easy to mash and then whip.

And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. Thanks to the Internet, EVERYONE knows this; which means that sometimes it's hard to find YG potatoes during Thanksgiving week. I had to go to two stores; and in the second store, I had to dig to find one of the two remaining bags of YG among the piles of Russett and Idaho. Even if you don't have 20 years of hard-earned potato-mashing experience, you can ask Google what kind of potatoes you should mash, and because Google knows everything, it will tell you that you need Yukon Gold. This is why I can never find the boy peppers when I need them. There's no such thing as insider knowledge any more. The well-kept secret is no longer a secret. The cat is out of the proverbial bag.

But the potato hunt was worthwhile, because dinner was delicious.

*****
I'm not a particularly dramatic person. I prefer not to draw a lot of attention to myself, and I seldom show emotion in public. I'm not a scene-causer. Except on rare occasions.

Like today (today being the day after Thanksgiving).

My younger son and I were at Safeway, shopping for our annual neighborhood Thanksgiving get-together (normally held on the night before Thanksgiving, but this year, on Saturday, because we had hockey tickets for Wednesday night). We were crossing the parking lot, just behind a car, which I couldn't describe to you now. The car, to my horror, began to back up, forcing me to actually grab and stop it so that it wouldn't knock us down.

I started banging on the car, and the driver, an older man, cracked the window.

"What is wrong with you?" I screamed. "You almost ran over my son!"

"You came out of nowhere," he said.

"WHAT? That's your response? You almost run over my 11-year-old child, and we came out of nowhere? You're supposed to LOOK BEHIND YOU BEFORE YOU BACK UP! IDIOT!"  I was angrier than I can remember being in I don't even know how long.

"I looked in the mirror," he protested, "but you and your son walked out right between the parked cars and I didn't see you..."

"BETWEEN THE PARKED CARS? It's a PARKING LOT! EVERYONE WALKS IN BETWEEN PARKED CARS!!! And you didn't look, or YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN US!" I smacked his car again a few times.

"Well, I certainly didn't intend to hit anyone," he said, a bit huffily.

I smacked his car a half-dozen more times (my hand actually still hurts). "APOLOGY ACCEPTED!" I screamed.

My older son would have joined the melee, and I'd have had to tell him to zip it, but my younger son just stood quietly, pretending to be an onlooker who was in no way related to the crazy car-smacking lady (really, my hand is going to be sore for several days). We walked into Safeway together, my son looking furtively around and hoping no one was looking at us; me still seething. "Idiot," I fumed. "Between the parked cars! It's a parking lot! He didn't even look!"

"By the way, Mom, I'm 13," my son pointed out.

"I know," I said. "I have no idea why I said that. I was so upset."

"I mean, I've been 13 for a while."

We walked into the store, and I turned around to grab a cart, just in time to see the man walk in. My son saw him too. "That's not him, Mom," he said.

"It's him," I said.

"Pretty sure it's not," he said nervously.

The man approached me. "I actually am very sorry," he said. "I'm a father and a grandfather, and I'd have hated to cause any harm to your child."

"I appreciate that," I said. "I know that you didn't do it on purpose, but it seemed that you were blaming us, and that combined with the adrenaline response made me react more emotionally than I normally do."

"I understand," he said. "I really do apologize."

"It's OK," I said. "No harm was done." (Not 100% true. It's Sunday morning now, and my hand still hurts a little.)

"Thank God," he said. Thank God, indeed. The rest of the errand-running proceeded without incident.

*****

So it's Sunday afternoon now, and a long weekend, marred only by the parking lot altercation, is coming to an end. Like most other things that are supposed to be fun, the holidays are a source of anxiety and panic for me. I always think that there's something that I should do better, or more of, to make the season perfect for my family. But despite last-minute misgivings, the party was a success, and my Christmas shopping is underway.  My husband and sons are setting up the brand-new 65-inch TV that they just bought at Costco. The old 42-inch TV was just fine, but every few years, a new TV calls my husband and I can't do a damn thing to stop him from responding to the call. I'll be able to see the tape on Alexander Ovechkin's hockey stick now. It's just less than a month until Christmas.

Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning

Depression is nothing if not predictable. Not so much in when it comes back as in that it always does seem to come back. I don't like to talk about it anymore, not to anyone, so I just write about it here, and wait for it to go away.

When I don't want to get out of bed, and I don't want to do any of the things that I need or like to do, I make myself do them anyway. It helps a little bit. It helps to go out walking on Sunday morning and find that Running Lady is out running, and that Bike Helmet Guy is out for his morning ride, and that my neighbor is out walking the World's Happiest Dog. I don't really even know most of these people, but we always say hello because we're neighbors, and we like to be outside on Sunday mornings, even when it's cold. And you can't feel completely bad after two minutes with the WHD.

Another thing that's predictable: It always feels like it will never go away, and like the fog will never lift, but it always does.

*****
My younger son is a planner. He likes to be prepared. You never know, for example, when you might need a mini survival kit packed in an Altoids tin, or a large notebook and pens in every color, or a rolled-up towel, so he usually just tries to bring everything with him, just in case. He loves to go on trips and outings, and planning and packing are his favorite part of every trip.

We have to rein him in sometimes. Deep in the weeds of gathering every possible thing that he could ever possibly need, and in figuring out the perfect system for organizing and carrying it all, he will forget that one small 13-year-old boy won't enjoy a trip to Hersheypark when he's carrying a forty-pound pack containing extra socks and gloves, a freezer pack to keep chocolate from melting, a flashlight, and a water bottle big enough to sustain an expedition through the Gobi Desert. "Put that back," we tell him. "There are no circumstances under which you'll need a scientific calculator. And your fielder's glove is too heavy to carry all day."

I haven't been to Hersheypark since I was 15 or so. My son sent me pictures (he was invited to join a friend's birthday trip), and it's nothing like what I remember. But he had fun, and he bought king-size candy for all of us: A Mr. Goodbar for my husband, Reese's Cups for my other son, and a four-piece Mounds for me. I still have three left. So things can't be all bad.

*****

And I think that's all for now.

Seasonal

As I mentioned last week, I was thinking about buying a Surface. But I didn't want to spend so much money, so I decided to just stick with writing notes by hand or on my phone. I still wanted a smaller computer, though. Then I thought, a-ha! Chromebook! Much cheaper, and it will do everything I want it to do.

I came this close to buying one, and then I remembered that I have a 7-inch tablet that I hardly ever use.  It didn't seem right to buy another piece of technology when I already have something that's only a few years old. I bought the tablet in 2014, but it already feels like a relic of the Obama years. If I pulled it out of my bag at at meeting, someone would probably tell me that 2010 called, and it wants its technology back. Seven years feels like a long time ago; and it's a generation, in terms of popular culture and technology. So maybe I'll just be the quirky person who likes antique technology, like a Polaroid camera or an IBM Selectric. 

Or maybe not. I'm typing on this little on-screen keyboard, which I have to look at, because I can't touch-type without actual keys. I looked away just long enough to watch the Capitals score against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Anyway, it's not the best solution. The tablet, I mean. The Capitals beating the Penguins is always the best solution. The on-screen keyboard, though the predictive text feature is excellent, is still way too slow for me. I type pretty fast. The technology has to keep up. 

Enough of that. I'm back on the PC now, typing fast, but thinking not quite so fast. I found a 10-inch Chromebook that's not the prettiest device, but it might be small enough to carry and large enough to actually be useful, so it's a possibility.  The Capitals beat the Penguins 4-1.

*****
It's winter-cold now, after weeks of unseasonable warmth. I dread cold the way that other people dread root canal or an income tax audit. As a matter of fact, I've had a root canal, and it's not as bad as winter. But I had to do several outdoor things today, and it wasn't as bad as I expected.  So maybe I'm getting tougher with age.

*****
After a short beta test, Twitter has officially doubled its character limit from 140 to 280. Obvious twice-as-long-Trump-tweet jokes aside, this is bad news for an entirely different reason. I'm very good at expressing an idea in 140 or fewer characters. Very good. This isn't a boast as much as an acknowledgement that I have very few real skills; this is one of them, and now it's no longer relevant. Spelling, total recall of useless facts, and snappy comebacks are all I have left.

*****
Despite the cold, I took an early-morning walk this morning, because I get so little outdoor time during the winter work week. The air was cold and still, and it smelled like snow. Now it's 3:45 on Sunday afternoon and the pale sunlight is already waning. I couldn't live in one of those Scandinavian towns that gets four hours of sunlight a day. Winter has its charms, though. The sunlight looks pretty, filtered through the almost-bare trees, and it's kind of cozy in here. I'll write my next post on the Chromebook that I just bought.