Pertinent to my Interests

Documentary reviews, body neutrality, parenting, Jupiter, piano, cats, European history, ghosts, rodents, the collapse of civilization, and if this goes on long enough I'll probably end up cataloguing my entire smushed penny collection.

  • Meanwhile, in the real world…

    Casey

    It occurs to me I should write about actual things that are going on in the real world, and not just the things going on in my mind.

    In an effort to be a fun, active mom, I took the kids to a playground after dinner on Wednesday just like all the other fun, active parents do.

    “Do you do this every night?” I wanted to ask every parent there. “When do you clean up dinner?”

    The playground is only two blocks from our house, but we drove because our car was parked on the street and needed to be moved into the garage after dinner anyway.

    “Okay,” I said as we were leaving. “I’ll drive home and you guys can just run alongside the car.”

    My oldest, who is not a fool, rolled his eyes at me and just got in the car. My youngest, who very much acts the fool, declared that this was a great idea and so he did run all the way home, with us in the car creeping alongside him.

    And when we got home I cleaned up dinner.

  • Unfair Assumptions

    Casey

    I get hassled for money sometimes when I’m walking around my neighborhood. Not every day, but frequently.

    I hate being asked for money. I lived in New York City for too long so despite being generally sympathetic towards humans who have fallen on tough times, I have zero tolerance for panhandlers and their bullshit.

    Now if you’re homeless but refrain from hassling me that’s completely different. We had a homeless guy living on our block for part of last year. He never asked me for anything, and I never gave him anything. This was acceptable, and I had no problem with him staying where he was.

    Twice recently I have assumed that someone is coming up to me to ask for money and I have been wrong. The first time it happened I didn’t even let the guy finish his sentence.

    “Excuse me, ma’am–” he started.

    “Nope, sorry,” I immediately said, a kneejerk reaction to his appearance plus that particular opening phrase.

    “I just wanted to ask the time,” he stammered.

    That was embarrassing.

    The second time was in a park outside my neighborhood. A man with a dog came up to me, mumbled something, and I told him no without really listening. Ten minutes later he walked past me again, this time holding a leash for the dog.

    “Don’t worry, I found it!” he proclaimed. He had been asking if I had seen the dog’s leash that he had lost earlier.

    I realized that I had been making assumptions based on the race, dress, and gender of the people approaching me. I don’t like assumptions based on appearance. I pictured the assumptions that others might make about me if I was approaching them for help. Perhaps they would assume that I’m about to ask for directions to the cupcake store.

    I did not like this thought exercise, and I resolved that I should at least let people complete their sentences–and I should listen to what they have to say–before I shoot them down with “Nope, sorry!”

    Since making this resolution I have been approached twice. The first time was a teenager who needed directions. Win. The second time was a man asking for money. Lose.

    But it’s better this way. I’m okay with not giving money to people; I’m not okay with making unfair assumptions about them.

  • Melted marshmallow

    Casey

    During the summer my kids sometimes accompanied me to the grocery store. They took this opportunity to lobby for ridiculous cereals that I never buy (“look, this one has less sugar than oatmeal squares!”).

    That is the story of how I ended up with both Rainbow Krispies and Cocoa Krispies in my cupboard.

    You should know that I am susceptible to advertising. I am aware of this fault and work hard to overcome it. But it turns out you can only see the recipe for Rice Krispie Treats staring out at you from your pantry so many times a day before your will is broken and you find yourself in the aisle of Tiny Target with a bag of marshmallows in your hand.

    We are not a Rice Krispie Treat family; I’m pretty sure this was only the second time I have ever made them, and I went all out and made both the cocoa and rainbow versions. My kids could not believe their luck when they came home from school.

    It occurred to me, as I was standing at the stove stirring marshmallows and cereal together, that you can really do this with any dry ingredient. There’s nothing special about Rice Krispies that makes them susceptible to melted marshmallow.

    Surely melted marshmallows could bind together Chocolate Chex too. Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Goldfish crackers for that sweet-and-salty feeling? Pretzels? Or maybe… emotions?

  • Documentary Review/ Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror

    Casey

    This is not a documentary about the attack on the twin towers on September 11, 2001.

    You would be forgiven for thinking it might be. It opens with American 11 taking off from Boston on the morning of September 11, 2001. We all know where this is headed. I’ve watched a lot of documentaries about the September 11 attacks and my chest tightens with every second as the clock ticks up to 8:46 AM and then 9:03 AM. Every time.

    You would be forgiven for continuing to think it was a documentary about September 11 as we hit all the mainstays of a 9/11 documentary: interviews with survivors, interviews with firefighters, audio from the hijacked plane (I hate this).

    About twenty minutes into the film both towers are burning, American citizens are weeping in the streets of New York City, and we finally reach the opening credits: vaguely Middle Eastern music and a montage of pictures, one of which includes Ronald Reagan. This is about more than one day in September.

    This documentary places the 9/11 terrorist attacks into historical context, going back to the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989) and moving forward through time all the way through the 2021 withdrawal of United States armed forces from Afghanistan.

    It is brutal. The Taliban, al-Qaeda, the hijackings, the War on Terror, Guantanamo, all of it. The documentarians are ruthless in uncovering the missteps that give shape to a tragedy which is still playing out in dark corners of the world. They do not hide their message: our government made mistakes that snowballed into the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Our government continues to make mistakes that will lead to more terrorism in the future.

    I lived through most of the decades covered in this documentary, but seeing it all laid out like this really gives context to an event that, at seventeen years old, I didn’t even realize wanted for context.

    This is not a documentary about the attack on the twin towers on September 11, 2001. It is much more than that. It gave me a lot to think about, but also gave me a lot of anxiety about the future. You should watch it.

  • Princess Diana and the Old Days

    Casey

    , ,

    I was watching a documentary about Princess Diana when I looked at the date and realized that it had been exactly twenty-six years since her funeral.

    Princess Diana really defines the 90s for me in many ways. Her last, most exciting years and her death occurred right in the middle of my family’s People magazine era. These days I don’t recognize any of the faces on the front of People, but there was a time when we all read People magazine cover to cover, knew every name in there, and argued over whose turn it was to complete the ridiculously easy crossword puzzle in the back. I would guess that Princess Diana was in every issue of People magazine from 1991 to 1997, and we read them all.

    We were camping at Mount Adams the weekend that Princess Diana died. I had gone into town with a relative that Sunday. The car pulled up to the small-town gas station and there was the newspaper box with big, black letters proclaiming the sad news.

    It plays like an old movie in my head now: my 13-year-old self peering through the dusty car window, discovering this awful news through a newspaper headline. It was the last time I would learn such big news in print. Television news was already king, home computers were becoming a household staple, and cell phones were already seeping into our pockets. But back then camping still cut you off from all those things, so I had my old-fashioned news moment that day.

    I woke up early to watch the funeral (this was particularly impressive since I lived on the West Coast at the time), but I set the VCR to record it just in case I missed it. When the tape finished, I labeled it: Princess Diana’s Funeral (1997), and shoved it onto the VHS shelf somewhere between X-Files and Monty Python.

    It’s still there. “So, can I throw away the Princess Diana funeral tape yet?” my mom jokes every year.* “Why did you even record it in the first place?” The X-Files tapes are long gone, the smart television is logged into all the streaming services, and we don’t even know if that VCR works anymore.

    I recorded it because I knew it was history. I recorded it because I had no idea how much the world would change in twenty-six years. I couldn’t foresee that I would be able to type “Princess Diana funeral” into a device that I carry in my pocket and bring up thousands of hours of footage at any time. I couldn’t fathom that someday I would own a touch screen and that I could poke at little squares and access so many Princess Diana documentaries and retrospectives. I didn’t know it was going to be a world in which newspaper boxes are hard to find, but information is not.

    Princess Diana’s life, death, and funeral were always going to be a part of history; I just didn’t realize how remote it was going to seem all these years later.

    *Mom, you really can throw away that VHS now!

  • Safe

    Casey

    This morning my children walked to school together alone, and this afternoon they will walk home together without me.

    They are eight and ten and I suppose they are ready, but I am not.

    I did not expect to be a helicopter parent. I am not particularly precious about children in general, and I don’t think I was with my own in their early years. I let them climb trees and wrestle around the sharp corners of the coffee table. I know how important it is for children to experience independence and competence.

    And yet here I am: barely able to tolerate the anxiety of having them walk the two blocks to school together. My mother suggested that my ten-year-old should walk to the library himself to pick up his books on hold and I almost had a heart attack at the very suggestion.

    Parenting is the art of letting go, and I am very, very bad at letting go of the things I love.

    The first time I saw a therapist was when my parents were getting divorced. I wasn’t familiar with the term “woo woo” at the time, but that is the correct way to describe her. Even at eight years old I was skeptical of her methods, but one of her weird little projects has stuck with me.

    “Draw a picture in your head,” she told me. “Draw a picture of something you want to remember about your family before the divorce and then I’ll show you how you can keep it forever.” She directed me to imagine myself locking away this picture in a safe deep in my brain. I could get it out and look at it any time.

    The picture was of my family around the table: Dad, Mom, my sister and brother, and our neurotic little dog on the floor nearby. I still have it, locked away in the safe in my brain, and I still do take it out and look at it from time to time.

    I didn’t get many years of intact nuclear family life as a child, and the years I remember best are punctuated by my parents’ late-night yelling, the early cannon fire of divorce proceedings to follow. So right here, right now, this family is it: this is my one big chance to experience the happy nuclear family. One mom, one dad, two kids, two cats. The yelling is limited. All the holidays are spent all together.

    I am not saying that I love my children or my family more than other people love theirs. But I suspect that my friends, who mostly all come from intact nuclear families, are less frightened of losing what they currently have. I know people who are really looking forward to when their kids go off to sleepaway camp and then to college. I know parents who plan child-free vacations to Florida every year. I cannot bring myself to plan even one weekend away from the kids. My oldest went to sleepaway camp for a week this year and I hated it.

    I’m tightening my grip on this time when what I should be is letting go. Let them grow up and move on. Let them have lives outside of the family. Let them walk to the library alone.

    But that also means I have to put another picture in the safe. And I don’t want to.

  • Meal Planning and Housekeeping Treadmill

    Casey

    , , ,

    It’s summer, which means we spend most weekends at our lake cabin up north.

    Such a strange sentence to write. I never thought I would be a cabin owner. I spent most of my childhood packing up and going to my dad’s house every other weekend and I hated it and had no intention of recreating this in my adult life. Only a child of divorce could truly know the luxury of having just one home.

    But we got desperate mid-pandemic and bought a cabin and now we pack up every Friday and head up north, and it’s great and not anything like getting a divorce. I love the cabin, I love the lake. It’s nice to get a change of pace and definitely nice to get out of the city in the summer.

    But the meal planning. The grocery shopping. The cleaning. It is never-ending.

    “But Casey,” you protest. “Can’t you just meal plan for the whole week, grocery shop for the whole week, and bring everything up to the cabin that needs to come up?”

    I could, if my refrigerator wasn’t gnome-sized. Grocery shopping for an entire week when we will just be at home is already stretching the limits of physics in my pantry. We have guests at the cabin nearly every weekend, so I’m buying even more food for summer cabin weekends. I would be stashing tortillas in the art cabinet and eggs in the basement shower if I did it that way.

    And I’m cleaning all the time. Cleaning the cabin bathroom on Sunday afternoon so it’s ready for us and our guests the next weekend. Coming home and cleaning the home bathroom on Wednesday afternoon. Back to the cabin and cleaning the bathroom on Sunday afternoon again.

    And don’t get me started on sheets and towels.

    And all of this is happening with my kids home on summer vacation complaining that they are bored and leaving a trail of books and socks in every room.

    Anyway, I actually really like hosting our friends at the cabin and this is the price that I pay. But how do people with full-time jobs handle the constant march of feeding people and cleaning things?!

  • Documentary Review/ Arnold

    Casey

    An engrossing biopic about a guy I didn’t think was particularly interesting.

    This three-part series covers Arnold Schwarzenegger’s whole life: from a boy growing up in Austria, through his bodybuilding career, to Hollywood, and finally to the governor’s office in Sacramento.

    I had a lot more respect for Arnold Schwarzenegger after watching this documentary. He speaks very frankly about the emotional and physical abuse he and his brother endured as children. He talks of the “fire in the belly” and how his mind is always set on moving forward and achieving something new. He even voices his shame for the affair he had that resulted in the destruction of his marriage and his family.

    The most touching part happens at the end when he notes that people often incorrectly refer to him as a self-made man. “The only thing that is self is kind of my motivation and my visualization and all this stuff,” he says. “There were endless amounts of people that were there helping me.”

    And I’ve been thinking about that ever since I finished the documentary. There’s a great power in asking for and accepting help along the way, and yet many of us refuse to do this, as if it devalues our eventual accomplishments.

    Arnold is not perfect, but he got some things right. I might have to watch this one again.

  • The clover can stay.

    Casey

    I was just out in the yard doing a shit job of weeding. There’s clover and grass growing in some of the garden beds and I only made a half-hearted attempt to clear it. I picked up some sticks but not others. I didn’t get the pruning shears out at all.

    I find it difficult to work hard when I’m working against Mother Nature. Why even try? I’m already losing the battle to keep the inside of my house clean, and I only have three humans and two cats actively working against me in that arena.

    I can’t compete against nature; nature is hardcore! Have you seen the Himalayas? The Amazon rainforest? Crater Lake? You think I could hold my own against an opponent who can make an entire mountain explode?

  • August

    Casey

    Why is it so hot?
    Why are others so happy?
    Summer is too long.

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