Pertinent to my Interests

I’m starting to enjoy peanut M&Ms and I am a little embarrassed about it.

My natal family is an M&M family. My grandma loved plain M&Ms, my mom loves plain M&Ms. Plain M&Ms were my toddlerhood potty training reward and my little brother famously referred to them as “num nums” for many years. I still put about 10-15 of them in the tiny dessert section of my own kids’ bento boxes when I pack school lunches.

And then there’s peanut butter M&Ms. I still remember the first time I had peanut butter M&Ms. It must have been 1992 or 1993 and I was at the local waterpark with my friend Brie. We sat in the grass and smashed the peanut butter M&Ms into our knees before eating them (why???). They were delicious, and my love of peanut butter M&Ms has not diminished since that beautiful day.

But peanut M&Ms? They’re terrible. You might as well just eat stupid peanuts, which are the second least enjoyable nut unless converted into butter form. For years we have discarded all those little yellow peanut M&M bags my kids get while trick or treating. But this year I found myself pulling them out of the bowl of rejected candy one by one.

“Ah,” I would think to myself. “A nice little protein and chocolate snack! And not too sweet! Perfect!”

Is this what happens to all old people? Sweet things become too sweet? You realize you only have so much enjoyment of the world left before death and you want to stretch it out as much as possible by only eating crap candy?

Grey hair I was prepared for. Sagging body parts, yes, I knew this was coming. But appreciation for peanut M&Ms? Someone should have warned me.

Every time I drop off junk at Goodwill I swing by Costco on my way home. The irony is not lost on me.

What a horrible warehouse of wonders. I’m not even talking about all their Christmas decorations. The snack aisles alone are enough to make me gleeful (welcome home, giant box of Cheez-Its!). They have puzzles too! The kind I like with nostalgic small-town scenes poorly painted by some “folk artist.” They have Squishmallows and smoked salmon and pumpkin pies that are larger than both of my cats combined.

But… why does it have to be so much? They had my favorite mouthwash but it came in a three pack of very large bottles. I would like to try the frozen crab cakes, but I do not want to try them every night for more than a week.

It’s not just a space issue, although space is an issue. Buying food at Costco is a commitment. You go in for pesto for this one great recipe and now you’re struggling to find pesto recipes for the next two weeks. I bought pupusas there last summer and nobody in the house liked them (including me) but I was stuck eating them for lunches for almost two weeks because I didn’t want to just throw them away. I can’t afford to make a mistake like that again; life is too short to not enjoy your lunch.

And don’t get me started on the consumerism. When I was there today there was a couple looking at Christmas-themed welcome mats. The woman was asking the man if he remembered what their current Christmas mat looked like and was wondering out loud if they should get this cute one instead. Um, if you already own a Christmas welcome mat do you really need another one? Then you’re just bringing your old mat to Goodwill and the cycle starts all over again.

We went up to our cabin this past weekend and walked in to discover that for the third time in eighteen months we had experienced a complete boiler failure.

The details on all of this bore me at this point so I’ll try to give the short history for those who don’t know it:

1. In April 2022 we arrived at the cabin to discover the old 1970s boiler was not working, and would not turn on. Luckily it hadn’t been super cold recently, there was no damage beyond the boiler itself, and we had a brand new boiler installed before the end of May that year.
2. In December 2022 we arrived at the cabin to discover that our new boiler had completely failed and the cabin had been without heat for several days during a deep freeze. There was massive damage throughout the cabin: radiators had burst everywhere, the toilet tank had cracked in half, plumbing throughout the cabin was destroyed, and the cast iron well pump had cracked in half. This was a total disaster, the cabin was unusable, and we did not get everything fixed until right before Memorial Day Weekend 2023.
3. It is now November 2023 and the boiler isn’t working again despite the fact that we had someone come out and give it a check up just a month ago. My husband–a genius–had mini-split units installed in the bedrooms this year, so we have set those to heat mode and are using those to heat the cabin until someone can come out and look at the stupid boiler.

Anyway, after three boiler failures in a row I did what any normal person would do and upon returning home I immediately googled “how to appease the house spirits” because at this point angry cabin fairies are the only logical explanation for this.

So if you come to my cabin this summer and spot a little jar of honey and little jar of cream on the hearth just know that it’s an offering for the house fairies and that all these boiler issues have caused me to lose my effing mind.

I wanted to follow up on my recent post about reading all the Life magazine issues from 1963.

I am fascinated by the nature of time, how the present tumbles into the faraway past in mere seconds. We lived in New York City in our early twenties; it has only been eleven years since we moved away, but it feels more like several lifetimes ago. On the other hand, I have a very clear memory of sitting on the couch at my grandma’s house reading magazines while my sister and cousin and grandparents play a card game at the dining room table. This must have been around 1997, but it feels like exactly yesterday.

Sometimes I freeze and look around and think about how this present moment will be a really faraway moment someday. Right now we’re eating donuts at the new playground, but will my kids drive by this same playground in twenty years and think back on this time when the playground was new and they were still young?

Then I lay in bed and do time math and freak myself out about things.

Bobby Kennedy was killed in 1968, and I was born in 1983. Only fifteen years separates his death from my life. Fifteen years! There are about fifteen years between my youngest son’s birthday and the September 11 attacks. Fifteen years might as well be fifteen seconds! Fifteen years is nothing!

My mother was born in 1955, just ten years after World War II ended. In 1955 there were Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans walking around who were in their 30s. There are very few of either of those left now, and I would guess most of them are not walking very well anymore.

I remember reading history books as a kid in the 1990s and thinking the 70s were ancient history, but I did the math the other day and realized that in the 90s and the 70s were only TWENTY YEARS APART. DID EVERYONE ELSE ALREADY KNOW THIS?!?

In 1991 when the Cold War ended my second grade teacher gathered us all up in a circle and explained what was going on, and she said to us “This is a really important moment in history; you’ll always remember this moment.” I, being seven years old and not an enthusiastic newspaper reader at the time, didn’t even really understand what the Cold War was or why I should care that it was over, but I did take note of the moment. I still think of Ms. Teeley whenever I see the Berlin Wall come down in a documentary.

“I was alive when this happened!” I think to myself. “I remember being a person when this happened!”

This post has gone off the rails. I could really go on about this for paragraphs, and probably will in the future.

But will the paragraphs feel like seconds or decades?

I’m not usually big on making resolutions at the new year, but this year I had three goals that kind of naturally bubbled to the surface of my brain.

With less than eight weeks left in 2023, now seems like a good time to do a progress report.

Goal #1 – Push harder on my workouts
I was really in a rut with my exercise and didn’t get started on this project until I joined the gym in early March. Having access to all this cardio equipment really reinvigorated my routine, and I am proud to report success on this goal.

I am also saddened to report that achievement of this goal is ongoing. It turns out I can’t just flip a switch in my body and have all my workouts be stellar. I have to force myself to push it every time and it sucks. I hate it. But I like I how feel when I do it.
Status: Accomplished/Ongoing

Goal #2 – Start a blog
Note I did not give myself any requirement for monetization or readership or posting a certain number of times, or even having it all coded and set up properly. I literally just had to start a blog and tell my friends about it.
Status: Accomplished

Goal #3 – Get a job
Note also that this goal has no standards attached, and yet this is the one I still can’t check off the list. I have been looking! If the goal had been “look at job listings at least once a week all year” I would have been able to mark it complete.

I find it easy (fun even!) to look at job listings and difficult to apply. Looking means I get to engage in a fantasy wherein I picture myself breezing out the door in stylish work clothes and appearing in an office where I solve everyone’s problems all the time and come home feeling accomplished and important.

Applying means thinking about the reality of a job. What do the kids do after school? How do I get there and how long does it take? When does grocery shopping and meal planning happen? Will I have to stop blogging and going to the gym? These obstacles can be overcome, and I know that. But without someone else kicking me in the butt to get a damn job it’s hard to nudge me out of my comfort zone of 8 AM grocery shopping on Monday morning.
Status: Not Accomplished

A few months ago I read all the Life magazines from 1963.

1963 was an interesting year. There was an eclipse and a new pope. Prayer in schools was the divisive issue of the day. Beer can technology was changing quickly (at least according to all the Schlitz ads), and long-distance calls were the new way to keep in touch with faraway friends and family. An article about a disturbing new teenage trend of party crashing made me laugh out loud.

There is something about these articles and advertisements that reminds me of my grandparents and especially of their home. Their house was filled with Reader’s Digest condensed books and vintage Tupperware; it was a highway to the past, full of souvenirs of two long lives, well-lived.

Here, the cake topper from Grandpa’s 60th birthday party in 1990. On the countertop, an Amway dish soap bottle purchased from a cousin in the 1980s. On the bookshelf, a memoir about a good Christian family adopting four difficult children, published 1960. Over here, wooden clogs made by my grandfather’s grandfather, perhaps from the 1930s.

Flipping through the pages of 1963 reminded me of a time when my grandparents were alive, when they were traveling, when they were raising children and buying books and Tupperware. When they worriedly discussed prayer in school and wondered if President Kennedy was going to get his tax cuts through Congress. I turn the page and see an advertisement for the exact encyclopedia set my grandparents had in the sewing room. Did they see this same ad?

This is the feeling I was seeking when I worked on that archaeological dig in Greece. I would gently uncover a terracotta lamp from the floor of the tomb, hold it in my hands, and wonder at the last person who held that lamp. Who made it. Who treasured it. But they were unknowable, unseeable, their experience too far from mine. Thousands of pot sherds and never once did I conjure up a connection with those Roman families from two-thousand years ago.

But 1963 is so much closer. Why, it was practically yesterday that my grandma went to the store and bought that new 1970s era Christmas candy dish. A blink of an eye separates her from me in the churn of generations coming and going, and it seems that in mere seconds my own grandchildren will tumble through this front door and break this same vintage candy dish and complain about how old all my books are.

How will the next generation travel through time to get to me? What will be their equivalent of reading Life magazines? Will they get out the vintage Nintendo Switch and load up my Animal Crossing island? Watch documentaries produced in the 2020s? Read this blog?

(Old Life magazines are available on Google Books if you’re interested.)

It occurred to me yesterday, after posting about our 2023 Halloween season, that some people may find that long list of festive(?) activities discouraging.

Most people probably won’t care, and will just add “way too focused on cemeteries” to their mental list of reasons I am both strange and interesting. But some people (in particular parents of young children) might look at that list and think “ugh, we didn’t even make it to a pumpkin patch this year and I barely remembered to order Halloween costumes in time; Casey is so much better at this than me.”

Casey is not better at this than you. Casey just really likes Halloween and pushed hard on it this year. Casey might not push as hard next year, and that’s okay.

I hate the pressure of annual family traditions, and I think we should all be more okay with skipping traditions, or just quitting the ones that aren’t working for us. This would also give us the freedom to experiment with new traditions without the pressure of doing them every year!

Example: A couple years ago I made gift bags of homemade cookies and treats for our neighbors and neighborhood friends. I did not enjoy doing this, and will not do it again.

This strategy is the whole reason I have a blog. I figured “What the hell, I’ll write in it until it’s not fun anymore but at least it will exist out in the world even if it’s defunct. It can still be a success even if it’s not forever.” And here we are all enjoying my solidly-on-its-way-to-being-defunct blog.

This is an important conversation to have, especially with Christmas coming up. It’s okay to drop traditions and try new ones, or just to do very little. I grew up with divorced parents who weren’t big gift givers and never did the Santa Claus lie; my childhood Christmases were still magical as hell. I promise you that your kids do not need to do or receive All The Things in order to make wonderful Christmas memories.

We had quite the Halloween season around here! Every year it gets a little a little spookier, a little scarier, a little more. It is possible we hit peak Halloween this year.

(Lists are not rankings.)

Scary Movies Watched

1. The Exorcist
   I had somehow never seen The Exorcist before! It was much more vulgar and creepy than I expected, and I’m glad I didn’t let the kids watch it with me.
2. The Shining
   A classic! I watch this one at least once a year, and actually enjoy the spooky setting more than anything else. It is much scarier if you watch it when you are alone in the house.
3. Smile
   This one freaked me out more than I expected it to. Not perfect, but extremely creepy and well done.
4. Children of the Corn
   I had somehow never seen this one; did you know that Linda Hamilton is in it? It was fun to see the 1980s again, but it wasn’t very scary or very good.
5. Crimson Peak
   This was a rewatch for me; I keep circling back to it for some reason. I think it’s the setting and the aesthetic that really appeals. It’s all dark corners and odd angles and red oozing out from everywhere. Also Jessica Chastain is fantastic. I recommend this one.
6. The Nun 2
   This was not good. There was one scene with a cool effect having to do with a magazine rack, but my sister said that was in the trailer anyway. I would skip this even if you liked the first The Nun.
7. Fall of the House of Usher
   This is from Mike Flanagan, the director who has been putting out a new horror series on Netflix every year (previous offerings include Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass). I really enjoy his work, and Fall of the House of Usher did not disappoint, although it was a little more gory than previous series. I might rewatch this one!
8. Halloween Ends
   This movie was weird, and sucked, and I blame my sister for putting it on while she was here.
9. All the Bob’s Burgers Halloween Episodes
   It’s a family tradition! More on this tomorrow.

Spooky Books Read

1. We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger’s Daughter by Rachel Hanel
   I really enjoyed this memoir. The author acknowledges the mingling of death among life in a way that maybe only a gravedigger’s daughter can.
2. The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds by Marilyn Yalom & Reid Yalom
   A little dry, but a fun jaunt through various cemeteries across the United States. A good primer on various burial and gravestone traditions, nice pictures.
3. Saving What Remains: A Holocaust Survivor’s Journey Home to Reclaim Her Ancestry by Livia Bitton-Jackson
   This book was excellent and will stay with me a long time. The author documents her trip back to Czechoslovakia in 1980 to exhume her grandparents and bring their remains back to Israel. It was a perfect snapshot of the Holocaust, Communism & the Iron Curtain, Jewish life and culture, and the goodness of people.

Cemeteries Visited

1. Oakland Cemetery in Saint Paul
   I went on a guided tour of this cemetery with the local historical society in late September. This cemetery is not beautiful, but there are a lot of notable figures from the city’s history buried here and a lot of older graves.
2. Cottage Grove Cemetery in Cottage Grove
   This is a sweet little country cemetery with plenty of older graves and too many children’s graves.
3. Newport Cemetery in Newport
   This cemetery is on a hill, which I thought was unusual and exciting. Also unusual: the number of flowers and trinkets left at the graves in the newer section. I was impressed.
4. Church of St. Peter Historic Cemetery in Mendota
   This is a lovely, well-kept little cemetery with interesting graves old and new.
5. Elmhurst Cemetery in Saint Paul
   This is a gorgeous cemetery! They’ve recently planted a large number of trees so I think the place will become even more stately in the future. I was impressed with how well-kept it was and also the number of visitors there on a Sunday afternoon in October. Would be it wrong to use the words “lively” and “cheerful” to describe a cemetery?
6. Viola Lake Cemetery near Webster, Wisconsin
   I found a very lovely set of monuments here: for a living set of parents and a departed daughter about my age. I waited around wishing the parents would arrive so I could tell them how moving their daughter’s gravestone is, but they didn’t come.
7. United Hebrew Brotherhood Cemetery in Richfield
   I love how closely the graves are crowded together; it feels like a real city of the dead. I also adore the Jewish tradition of leaving rocks and pebbles on the headstones, a reminder that the living exist here as well.

Haunted Experiences Survived

1. Scream Town in Chaska
   We love Scream Town! This was our third year at Scream Town, and although they replaced one of my favorite experiences (Rest in peace, Santa’s Slay) they seem to keep making improvements to everything else and it just gets better and better. I think everyone’s favorite is the Oak Blood Forest. I love how they space the groups out so well so you truly feel like you’re trying to find your way through a haunted forest, and it goes on forever! The vibe is always excellent, and the scare actors and other workers are just great; I cannot say enough nice things about this haunt.
2. Onionhead’s Revenge at the Mall of America
   We happened to be at the Mall of America for dinner one night and decided on a whim to do this new haunt despite the terrible reviews we had read. There were some parts of it that were great! Several of the actors really got up in our faces and creeped us out. There were a few spots in the haunt that were built like mazes, which was fun, and another spot where someone chases you through a bunch of twists and turns. Several of the rooms were really well-done and creepy. I enjoyed this one a lot more than I expected, although being indoors made me feel a little agoraphobic.
3. The Haunted House at my kid’s school
   Of course this was fun! Not at all professional, but my oldest had a blast working as a scare actor and it only took my husband like three days to recover from building and taking it down all in the course of eight hours.
4. Dead End Hayride in Wyoming
   This was our first year doing the Dead End Hayride. Wow. The hayride itself was fun; it was mostly scare actors doing their best to get up in your shit and freak you out. After the hayride you walk through a bunch of haunts of various themes and those were amazing! I was actually a little terrified a few times! It feels way more professional than Scream Town, and they have much better food vendors and common space. I think this is what Scream Town wants to be when it grows up. We all loved Dead End Hayride and will be going back next year.
5. Neighborhood haunted house
   I had heard about an annual, Halloween-night-only haunted house just a few blocks away from us, but had never made it down there to see it. This year we trick-or-treated with a friend who lived nearby so I finally got to experience it. The homeowners basically closed in their wraparound porch with plywood to turn it into a haunted house and this year the theme was clowns. It was actually quite good and we all enjoyed it.

We had the big Halloween event at my kids’ school last week. My husband and I were both on pretty major committees and wow that is not my favorite thing. It was stressful, and I’m glad it’s over. But my oldest got to make his big debut as a scare actor in the haunted house, and my sister flew out to see him and spend the weekend with us and that was wonderful.

Yesterday my youngest got diagnosed with strep throat for the third time this month. He just can’t kick it and I’m starting to really worry about it.

I spent this morning running back and forth between the pharmacy and the urgent care trying to get the right antibiotics for him. I won’t go into the details of our antibiotic drama because it bores me to even think about it, but the important thing is that I succeeded in my quest and we now have a little orange bottle of antibiotic capsules sitting at his spot at the table.

So now I’m thinking about how grateful I am. I am grateful for all the wonderful medical care providers we came in contact with yesterday at urgent care. I am grateful for the pharmacist–working solo last night with a long line of people snaking around the store–who patiently agreed to send a note back to the prescribing doctor asking for a change in the medication.

I am grateful to the pharmacy technician this morning who had to deal with me on three separate occasions but was helpful and kind each time. I am especially grateful to the receptionist at urgent care who took pity on me and brought my message back to the doctor.

I am grateful to that doctor. She had not seen my son the day before, but she was willing to update the prescription without me having to bring my sick kid back for another $280 urgent care visit.

This whole ordeal was really just a long performance of Variations on the Theme of Kindness. I did not deal with a single incompetent person during my quest. Everyone I interacted with was helpful and kind and did their best in a system that is a little bit broken and not easy to navigate.

I kind of hate bloggers who are always finding the good in everything. Do not worry: I definitely did not see the good in this whole process until it was over. I would really prefer to be sitting here with two healthy kids and all my usual notions about how awful people are. But sometimes life hands you a stupid lesson and then you have to hate yourself just a little while you write in your stupid blog about it.