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.

  • What it’s like to be a stay-at-home parent to an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old in the summer.

    Casey

    Well, it’s great.

    It feels like everything about those early, soul-crushing years of having children was a terrible investment which is now paying off in a big way.

    Here is an incomplete list of things we have done today:
    1. Sat together reading quietly in the living room.
    2. I went to the gym. The kids stayed home.
    3. The three of us went to a playground together. I stood up exactly one time in order to throw away garbage. I corrected behavior exactly zero times.
    4. Went to the library. We all went our separate ways and met up later.
    5. Kids got smoothies. No drama.
    6. We shared a cookie. No drama.
    7. Kids got haircuts. No drama.
    8. Kids vacuumed and dusted the main floor. No drama.

    The fact that I am even sitting down at my computer and composing this blog post should tell you something about how this summer is going. These elementary years are a whole new level.

    Now, the kids have only been out of school for a couple weeks. I might have to write about this again in August and see how I’m feeling then (my guess: more worn down and frustrated with the state of the house). But there is no way it will compare–even slightly–to how I felt back when I was a full-time stay-at-home parent to two toddlers. Back then I felt trapped, exhausted, overwhelmed. The days were so long and unending.

    Time is going so quickly now; it’s frightening how the hours are slipping through my fingers. Now I just feel grateful that I have the luxury of spending this summer with my kids.

  • Summer Solstice

    Casey

    I really prefer the dark and quiet of the winter solstice, but I’m told we can’t have year-round winter so here we are. The sun is like a toddler going through some terrible sleep regression. Still up at 9 PM. Up again at 5:30 AM. The whole family suffers.

    The winter solstice always seems like a perfect time for a backyard fire and hot drinks in the dark. Celebrate the darkness by creating light. But how does one celebrate the summer solstice? Should we hide in the dark basement this evening and have cold drinks?

    Actually that sounds nice. Cold drinks in the dark basement and maybe a horror movie. Celebrate the light by creating darkness.

  • Summer Sleep

    Casey

    It’s the last day of school here, exactly a week until the longest day of the year, and my ability to sleep soundly has vanished.

    Summer sleep is the worst. Too much heat, too much sun. The kids understandably struggle to go to bed when the sun is still up. The thin quilt on our bed just doesn’t feel right. In the evenings people walk up and down my street talking loudly as they return from the restaurant on our corner. My mosquito bites itch more in the evenings. And did I mention that it’s light out constantly? There is only so much the blackout shades can do.

    The real nail in the coffin of my sound sleep is the very nature of summer itself. The kids are home all the time, the house is constantly a mess, and I am always sweaty. We travel back and forth between the cabin and our home in the city all summer long and damned if I can remember which place is running low on butter. Which adult is supposed to have the car today? But I still have to remember to go grocery shopping and do allowance and scoop cat litter and arrange social activities for everyone.

    The dark and cold of winter is so much better for my sleep. And the solid rhythms of the kids back in school. Grocery shopping on Monday morning. Piano lessons on Wednesday afternoon.

    I thrive on habit, not on novelty, and although I am looking forward to having my kids home all summer, I am also looking forward to starting the long slide toward the solidity of the winter solstice and my good sleep.

  • I’ll smile when you’re gone.

    Casey

    I just got hassled by a panhandler on my way into Target. He called me beautiful and then told me I needed to smile more to make more friends, all while shaking his cup of coins at me.

    Do you know how many times I have been told by strange men that I need to smile more? This sort of shit used to happen all the time when I lived in New York City. Constantly. It was background noise to sidewalk life and I just ignored it completely. I did not smile more.

    But I’ve been living in Minnesota too long and I’m not used to this anymore and what I really wanted to do was tell him to fuck right off but I didn’t because the stupid second amendment means I never know who has a gun. Also I probably shouldn’t start shit with big crazy men on the street.

    I left Target through the other door so I could avoid him on my way out. And fuck you, I’m still not smiling.

  • A Sense of History

    Casey

    Yesterday I volunteered to help clean and organize a closet at my kids’ school. This is exactly the sort of volunteer gig I like; I would much rather sort through piles of toner cartridges than have anything to do with the carnival.

    Shoved in a low corner was small box labeled “archives.” I was surprised to find six beautiful photo albums inside, the oldest dating back to 1931.

    These albums contain a lot of what you would expect: pages full of class pictures, event invitations, and newspaper clippings. But there are some surprises too. There’s a copy of a questionnaire sent home to parents about their child’s sleeping habits, TV habits, and allowance. Copies of the PTA budget. And my personal favorite: a letter sent from the principal spelling out the circumstances under which students were allowed to eat lunch at school rather than go home for lunch (subzero weather or with special teacher permission only).

    That letter was sent in 1955, and back then it must have been quite normal for students to go home for their lunch. But whoever saved that letter must have had a sense of history. Did she know how much the world would change in the next seventy-five years? That we don’t expect children to walk anywhere by themselves anymore? That there are very few stay-at-home parents left who are around to make lunch for their school-age children in the middle of the day?

    She could not have known how shocking that letter would be to the PTA parents of 2023, but she chose to save it anyway. She also thought someone might want to know that the entire PTA budget for the 1951-1952 school year was $993.50, and you know what? I do want to know that.

    So now I’m trying to wrap my head around what it means to have a sense of history. I think it has something to do with appreciating the mundane details of our daily lives. Something to do with recognizing the impermanence of it all.

    And yet… I am still going to recycle pretty much every piece of paper that comes into my house. So much for my sense of history.

  • Documentary Review/ Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie

    Casey

    New and different enough to fascinate me even though I’m pretty neutral on Michael J. Fox.

    I was in eighth grade and my family was going through our big People Magazine phase when Michael J. Fox went public with his Parkinson’s disease diagnosis, so I was already familiar with his story. Twenty-five years of disease progression has made the arc even more interesting, and Michael himself more willing to excavate the emotional nooks and crannies of his life.

    I had heard about how the director spliced in pertinent scenes from Michael J. Fox’s old movies and shows. I thought I would hate this (I dislike obvious reenactments) but it worked surprisingly well. And the few actual reenactments were expertly folded into the narrative. The documentary did feel more obviously scripted than most until I realized why: much of the narration comes directly from Michael’s book.

    The movie and television scenes are a fun device, but this documentary succeeds where it lets Michael speak for himself. They could have skipped all the production and editing and I still would have enjoyed just watching the raw (and it is raw) interview footage.

    Whether you’re a fan or not his story is interesting enough to hold its own and I enjoyed this documentary.

  • Eat Your Breakfast

    Casey

    I went to the gym this morning intending to pound out thirty intense minutes on the stair stepper. Instead I came off the machine feeling weak and tired at the twenty minute mark.

    I forgot to eat breakfast. Well, I didn’t forget (I’m not the type of person who forgets to eat), but I often put it off until as late as possible.

    Why do you put off breakfast, Casey?

    Well, because of diet culture. I’ve been awash in tips and tricks for eating less for years: take a sip of water between each bite, always use the small plates for portion control, only eat half the sandwich, never eat the fries. Putting off breakfast has been one of my personal tricks for eating less. I find my morning hunger easy to ignore, but about two hours after I eat a meal my hunger signals begin to become unmanageable. Putting off breakfast until nine was a quick and easy way to make the journey to lunchtime less of a slog.

    This is bringing back so many memories of how hungry I was all the time when I was doing Weight Watchers. How obsessed with food I was.

    Anyway, I don’t have to be hungry or obsessed anymore. I can eat my breakfast at 6:30 with the kids and then get in a good workout at the gym and have a snack at 10 and lunch at noon and literally nobody cares. NOBODY CARES. Weight Watchers isn’t doling out thirty measly points to me anymore. I get to eat food when I want food and when I need food and it’s great.

    But it’s hard to break old habits! I need an adult to poke me in the morning and note that I’m not just making scrambled eggs for the kids. I need someone to hand me peanut butter toast and remind me that I need to eat this if I want to run on the treadmill later. Fuel your workout! Eat your breakfast!

  • The Red Disk

    Casey

    In the summer of 1994 I was ten years old and living in a small town in Eastern Washington. We had a babysitter that summer and her car had a small hole in the floor, just big enough so you could see the street moving under your feet. My sister and I always fought over the seat right above that hole.

    The babysitter had taken us downtown. It was a hot, sunny summer afternoon, but as I stepped out of her car I noticed the light around me was a strange gauzy yellow. I looked up and saw a bright red disk above me, a harbinger, it seemed, of the End Times. It was the sun, hidden behind a thick black cloud that was moving quickly across the sky.

    This moment marked for me the opening notes of the Tyee Fire Complex of 1994.

    The smoke poured into our valley, first obscuring the mountains on the horizon, then the lake. The air tasted of campfire. The windows stayed firmly shut but eventually the inside was saturated with wood smoke as well. We watched helicopters collecting water from the lake with massive buckets at the end of a rope. The grocery store parking lot was packed with Forest Service trucks, the aisles inhabited by dirty, tired young men. A series of fire-themed songs played on the radio between hourly updates on fire containment efforts. There were terrible stories in the newspapers of young firefighters who died.

    After a few weeks of this, my siblings and I were sent away to the fresh air and bright blue skies of my grandparents’ farm in a different part of the state. Back home my friends were stuck inside smoke-filled houses, watching with terror as the fire ate its way down the hills to threaten our town. My sister and I were biking up and down the gravel road, eating ice cream for lunch, and complaining that we were missing all the excitement.

    It is the spring of 2023. I am thirty-nine years old and I live in Minnesota. I walked my son to school this morning under the gauzy yellow light of the red disk. Smoke from a forest fire in Canada is blanketing our state and has been for a week now. This happened last year too, although much later in the summer. We know the drill. We close the windows, turn on the air purifier, and get on with life.

    Every time I look up and see that red disk I am transported back to my ten-year-old self who thought the world might be ending. I already lived through this once; are we really doing it again?

    Twenty-nine years and 1,500 miles has not insulated me from forest fires the way I thought it would. And now there is no escape, no farm with fresh air and bikes waiting to take in my family. No part of the nation isn’t affected by forest fire smoke, and the red disk, it seems, is here to stay.

  • Documentary Review/ P!nk: All I Know So Far

    Casey

    I usually enjoy a good behind-the-scenes tour of a celebrity’s life, but this one just stressed me out.

    This documentary follows Pink and her family during the European leg of her tour. Pink has chosen to bring her husband, her two-year-old son, and eight-year-old daughter with her and they are together all the time. When they aren’t together in the hotel room, or out exploring the city as a family, the children are accompanying her to rehearsals and meetings. The line between family life and home life is so blurred as to be nonexistent, and Pink says it herself: she never gets to walk out one door (home) and into another door (work) in her life. Her daughter zooms around rehearsals on her hoverboard and her son shrieks with glee as the backup dancers take turns tossing him in the air.

    I think any parent would agree that having your children always with you is both lovely and terrible at the same time. There must have been a nanny they kept off screen because otherwise I don’t understand how Pink can focus on learning the choreography while also preventing her son from throwing himself off the edge of the stage. It’s clear her husband takes on a lot, but there was at least one scene in which she left for rehearsals with both her kids in tow and her husband stayed back at the hotel.

    I am impressed with her ability to balance these two things, but I felt exhausted just watching her.

    Amazon Prime Video describes this documentary as “bold” and “cerebral.” Pink herself may be both of those things but this documentary is not. They only give a few moments for Pink to share her insights on work, motherhood, passion, and the passage of time in human years. I would have enjoyed more of this and less of the two-year-old attempting to fling himself off the stage during rehearsals.

    I won’t watch this one again but I enjoyed it. Best for people interested in backstage life and fans of Pink.

  • Roller Skating

    Casey

    My kids’ school hosts a roller skating program in gym class for grades 1-5 for three weeks every spring. It’s a much-anticipated annual activity.

    Except it hasn’t been an annual activity recently, or at least not for us. School shut down due to covid-19 in early March 2020 when my oldest was in first grade. No roller skating for anyone that year. And in spring of 2021 we were still running our at-home learning pod. No roller skating that year either.

    So here he is in fourth grade, only one year left in elementary school. This is only his second year doing the roller skating program, but it should be his fourth. We’ve only been to two proper fall festivals instead of the five we should have attended. All these annual events are still new to us.

    These things, I know, are not a big deal. Kids move to new schools all the time or experience much more tragic circumstances that keep them from participating in the spring roller skating program. Our extended pandemic lockdown and learning pod certainly had some benefits.

    But now that the pandemic is over I keep forgetting it even happened. My kids go to school now, every day, like some sort of miracle. Current ICU patient numbers are no longer taking up space in my brain. We are flying in airplanes again and planning vacations as if they will actually happen (and they sometimes do!).

    But.

    The roller skating program wasn’t ever a certainty in 2020, and it’s not a certainty for 2024 either. Fifth grade is not a certainty. School is not a certainty.

    I’m so glad he’s enjoying roller skating this year.

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