Pertinent to my Interests

I have one of those cool sunrise/sunset alarm clocks, which I like very much except for the bright red numbers on the display which–despite being turned down to the lowest setting–have been screaming into my eyeballs all night every night for years.

About two weeks ago I figured out how to turn the time display off completely.

This has been an interesting experiment in not knowing the time when I’m in bed. I just have to guess based on how many chapters I’ve read and whether or not my husband has already fallen asleep with his laptop propped open, mid-email.

Similarly, I’ve had to guess about the mornings based on sunlight coming through the edges of the air conditioner and how many kids I’ve heard in the hallway.

I seem to be pretty consistently getting up between 6 AM and 7 AM, although one day I slept in until 7:45 AM and this morning I accidentally got up at 4:55 AM (I was very confused by the fact that it was so dark, and I was convinced–in my half-asleep state–that it was the sun that was late rather than me that was early.)

The best part is the drop in my sleep-related stress level. If I don’t know what time it is I can’t even begin to construct an anxious thought related to sleep and the possibility of not getting enough of it.

Overall, I think this has been an improvement to my life and I intend to keep the numbers turned off even when I need to start setting the alarm again in the fall.

I ended up at the cabin for one night by myself last weekend. We happened to have two cars for 48 hours (long, boring story) and my husband wanted to take the kids to the local amusement park for the day on Saturday.

“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll go up to the cabin for the day to mow the lawn and water the trees and clean the beach.”

Being alone at the cabin is the introvert mom’s dream, right? A whole day spent just with my own thoughts, only feeding myself, only picking up after myself. A silent retreat of one person, but with a screening of The Shining at the end of the day.

I didn’t even really enjoy my alone time. I missed my stupid family. Not making dinner was great, and not picking up after anyone else was also great, but otherwise it was just kind of lame.

It made me wish that I could be with my family but without the level of responsibility that usually entails.

My personality, I think, is not really optimized for the role of “mother.” I’ve concluded that my best-fit family role is probably “friendly-but-skittish cat.”

We have a friendly-but-skittish cat. This cat wants to be in the same room as us, generally. He even likes to share the couch with me, but he always sits just out of arm’s reach. No petting allowed. He’ll purr super loudly at me, but he’ll depart quickly if I talk to him too much or try to lean too far and pet him.

I think “teenage daughter” is also a good match for my personality. Everyone in her family annoys and embarrasses her, but she’ll show up for family movie night and maybe leave halfway through. She’ll refuse to play Rummikub even when pressured to do so, but then will sit in the living room with a book listening to the rest of the family mixing tiles and chatting. She’ll do chores if you tell her to, but only if you tell her to. When her little brother starts freaking out about spelling words she just walks away.

The role of “mother” is just not working for me. Who makes every meal? Mother! Who knows where the beach towels are kept? Mother! Who listens patiently to long stories about anime characters? Mother! Who validates emotions and settles sibling disputes? Mother! “Mother” is the star of the family show and I am, frankly, not star material.

I am meant to live on the edge of family life. I want my family around me, but I don’t want the all-consuming and endless responsibility that comes with having a family. And let’s be clear that I don’t just mean the chores that come with parenthood. The part that really tires me out is the emotional part, having to balance and rebalance the emotions of all the family members. Anticipating needs. Dealing with the fallout of disappointment.

And this isn’t the sort of thing you can hire out. Even with a full-time cook, full-time nanny, full-time housekeeper, and hyper involved spouse, there are things that can’t be outsourced from the mother. Sometimes kids just really, really need to tell their mother about this cool new theory on Shanks’s origins.

Anyway, I’ve permanently aged out of the “teenage daughter” role and can’t be “friendly but skittish cat” in this life, but I’m hoping “empty-nester mother of mostly-well-adjusted adult children” ends up being a good fit for me when we start recasting roles in seven years or so.

I took a break from stewing about cover letters yesterday so I could stress-eat pretzels and watch a soothing documentary about Robert Kennedy that I started ages ago and never finished.

I watched President Lyndon B. Johnson’s announcement that he would not be running for president again. He surprised everyone by stepping aside at the end of March, 1968.

Well. Now we’ve had a sitting president do this same thing in July of an election year. I guess I really am living through history.

I was touched and delighted by the speech Bobby Kennedy gave in Indianapolis after delivering news of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. He quoted Aeschylus. Aeschylus!!! Can you picture any politicians today quoting Ancient Greek poetry in a speech? I want to live long enough to see this come back into style.

He also brought his dog on the campaign trail with him, at least in Oregon. This is another campaign strategy I think needs to make a comeback.

Anyway, I’m not sure why I thought this documentary was the right one to watch in the middle of my little emotional breakdown. Half an hour later the Kennedys arrived in California for the primary. I threw my hands up and declared “I’m out.”

Some days I hate knowing what’s going to happen.

(Side note: Apparently both of Aeschylus’s sons also became tragic poets. What a fun family that must have been.)

Dear Employer:

The only thing you really need to know about me is that I am very competent.

Really, that’s it. I’m pretty sure I could do almost any job that doesn’t require a master’s degree as long as you’re willing to give me a couple weeks of training.

Am I a good team member? Yes.
Am I a good problem solver? Yes.
Can I use Microsoft Excel? Yes.
Really, even pivot tables? Yes!

I’m not sure why my applications keep getting rejected by the robots as soon as the job listing closes. These cover letters are carefully crafted to best enumerate my skills, experience, and interest in the job. My resume is bursting at the seams with action verbs.

Am I underqualified? Overqualified? I truly cannot guess.

Perhaps there are some keywords that I am missing? Could you tell me what they are? Leadership? Thesis? Fellowship? Oh! Digitization?

Is it my LinkedIn? I’m sorry, I truly don’t understand why it would matter for me to connect to my friend who is a veterinarian in Boston. I am not applying for jobs in Boston, nor am I applying for veterinarian jobs. But okay, if that’s what you want.

Really, the only thing you need to know is that I’m competent. Just show me which hoop to jump through to prove it.

Sincerely,

Casey

Location: Unknown, maybe Mount Adams
Date: Unknown, but I was very little and I don’t think my brother was born yet so maybe 1987?
I woke up in the tent in the middle of the night. It was raining and water was pouring in from one corner. My mom and dad were frantic, yelling at each other while trying to fix the situation. My mom saw that I was awake and told me to go back to sleep. This is my earliest camping memory.

Location: Canada?
Date: 1988?
We drove somewhere far away and it was the first time I had seen weeds growing in a lake. We had a little inflatable raft my sister and I rode in on the water and I would reach down and touch the lake weeds. I think this was the same trip when I found a “secret spot” in the woods behind our camping site and would go there to play by myself.

Location: Mount Adams
Dates: 1984-1999?
Every year on Labor Day Weekend my mother’s extended family went camping and huckleberry picking on Mt. Adams. My little nuclear family didn’t go every year, but we went often.

The children didn’t have the same patience to fill old coffee cans full of huckleberries like the older folks did, but we would wander along behind them in the fields while they picked huckleberries and laughed together. My grandparents and great aunts and great uncles cooked huckleberry pancakes for breakfast and played horseshoes and card games in the afternoon.

There was a swampy area not far from the campground where we caught huge numbers of frogs. One year we decided that breathing in the campfire smoke turned us into dragons. Another year my sister and I found an old tree stump that reminded us of a throne and we took turns sitting on it pretending to be the queen. My sister got stung by a soda-pop-loving wasp on one of these trips, right on her mouth.

One time we slept in someone else’s camper instead of our usual tent. I woke up in the middle of the night and was alarmed at the complete darkness of the little alcove I was in and thought I had gone blind.

Grandma taught me the proper way to eat a Pop-Tart on one of these trips.

It was on one of these camping trips, during a rare trip to the nearest convenience store down the road, that I heard the unbelievable news that Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash.

Location: Lake Chelan, various sites
Dates: 1993-1999?
We camped at boat-in-only campsites with my dad every summer for a while after my parents got divorced. At the time, I did not realize how special the boat-in sites were or how formative these memories would be. We camped variously at Deer Point, Graham Harbor, Refrigerator Harbor, and Mitchell Creek. The campsites were maintained by the Forest Service and had a dock, picnic tables, fire rings, and often just one pit toilet. We hauled in all our water and food and firewood for the week.

Deer Point was on the north shore, very sunny. I saw a rattlesnake here once. A very large boulder sat half-submerged in the small swimming bay, and we spent all day swimming back and forth to the boulder. We quickly learned to wear water shoes or else our feet would get ripped to shreds by the rough edges of the boulder and the surrounding cliffs.

Graham Harbor was my favorite of the places we camped. The water was very cold this far up the lake, and we swam in the little harbor next to the boat dock. Graham Harbor is all granite cliffs and chipmunks, and in retrospect I’m not sure how we stayed so entertained up there for a week but we did. We had campfires constantly and told ghost stories and one night I stayed up super late while my dad told me his life story.

Refrigerator Harbor was the furthest uplake we ever camped. This is close to the public boat landing at Lucerne and the trail to Domke Lake so there was a ranger station not far away and a trickle of hikers always coming through. Not far from our tent there was a small cave carved out by miners which we enjoyed exploring. One of us drove the yellow RC truck off the edge of the dock here and my dad had to quickly run to fish it out (it survived!). I believe it was here that we tried to sleep in the boat once. My not-yet-step-sister ended up puking in the small sleeping area and we all evacuated from the smell and slept on the dock instead.

Mitchell Creek was the last place we ever camped uplake. We brought the jet ski. I can’t remember if someone drove it all the way up to Mitchell Creek or if we towed it. My dad had remarried by now and my stepmother didn’t much enjoy camping uplake. But I was getting older too. This is the first time I remember feeling bored on a camping trip.

After my dad was dead and we were searching through his stuff, I found the old Coleman cooler we used to always bring on those trips. So much was tied up in the feel of the textured green plastic under my fingertips. I wish I had saved that cooler.

Location: The Selway River, Idaho
Date: 1994?
My mom brought us on this trip. Our campsite was right on the Selway River, and we spent most of that trip jumping in the river upstream and letting it carry us downstream as far as we could safely go. I would open my eyes underwater to see the rocks flying by below my feet. I understood how the current would pull me under and keep me there if I were to get a foot caught in a waterlogged tree root or between boulders. This is where I learned the power of moving water.

My mom got sick a few days into this trip and we ended up packing up and heading to a hotel in town. She was very ill and needed a thermometer, so I was tasked with going to the nearest pharmacy and purchasing a thermometer for her. It is–I think–the first time I went out and made a purchase by myself and I was much more scared doing this than I ever was swimming in the Selway River.

Location: Mount Rainier
Date: 1995?
My dad took us to Mt. Rainier National Park. It was the first time I remember having a shower house with running water while camping. I was also unaccustomed to the big, crowded National Park campgrounds and got lost one night trying to come back from the bathroom by myself. My sister made friends with a local chipmunk and by the end of the trip the chipmunk would sit in her hand to eat peanuts. He only bit her once. Yes, my sister is the reason all the National Parks have the “don’t feed the wildlife!” posters now.

I’ve been walking around for the last month feeling like I’ve lost weight.

I only get weighed at the doctor so I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty confident I have not lost any weight this year. I have been going to the gym, but not as frequently as I should. I have been working to increase our family vegetable consumption, and that has been a small success. But my local grocery store has been running their annual buy-one-get-one deal on all ice cream this month, and let’s just say that’s been a success too.

I realized just today that I feel like I’ve lost weight because my summer capri pants are loose. They’re loose because I bought them a size up from my normal jeans thinking that if I did so they would better accommodate my large butt, even if it meant I’d have to have the waists brought in (which I did). But even with tailoring they are just still too big.

The disturbing aspect of this is the confidence boost I’ve been experiencing, this sense that when people look at me they see someone who is successful. I am, apparently, still in thrall of the widespread belief that to lose weight is a sign of success while to gain weight is a sign of failure. (I find this dichotomy even more offensive now that I witnessed my friend waste away into a skeleton while he was dying of cancer earlier this year. And yet here I am, still buying into it on some subconscious level.)

Anyway, this is the new trick to boost confidence! Buy your pants one size up and you’ll never need another self-help book again!

I might be that easy.

The past couple weeks I’ve found myself getting annoyed with cashiers and baggers at the grocery store who are overly chatty with me. I am perfectly pleasant to them and engage in polite conversation if they initiate, but I’m not happy about it.

This is notable because for the past year I’ve noticed that I am more and more chatty with strangers in public places. Sometimes I have to stop myself from oversharing about why I picked out this particular kind of cracker for my kids, or whether or not this Atlantic salmon is worth the money. And even when it’s not me initiating the conversation I am usually still pretty enthusiastic about it. Do I want to hear more about the pharmacist tech’s cat’s new favorite scratching post? Of course I do!

I realized yesterday why I’m suddenly so grumpy about people talking to me at the grocery store.

My kids are home for the summer.

Oh. Duh.

I took the kids to a local destination playground yesterday. We call it Chutes & Ladders but that’s not its real name.

I used to hate Chutes & Ladders. I lost my oldest there when he was maybe four years old, and he was missing long enough that I was considering calling the police. On another visit to this same playground a kind woman returned my youngest to me after she had found him stuck and crying in some corner of some structure.

It is a terrible playground for two little kids, but a great playground for big kids. My big kids ran off and I settled on a bench with my book.

Now that I no longer have to constantly supervise my children, I have more time to discreetly listen to the people around me.

Behind me a group of fashionable, young stay-at-home moms was chatting about how nice it was that there were no daycare or camp groups here today and how those big groups always ruin this playground. The way they discussed it made it clear that they did not think that children of working parents should be able to use nice playgrounds and that these playgrounds should be reserved in the summer for stay-at-home parents and their blessed progeny. It gave me pause because I’m certainly guilty of being deeply annoyed when I’ve pulled into the parking lot of the pool and seen the big yellow school bus full of kids in matching neon green shirts pull in right behind me.

When does annoyance cross the line into entitlement? I will have to think about this.

A mom with three smaller kids (6yo, 4yo, toddler) in tow arrived and took the bench next to me. She announced that everyone needed sunscreen before they could go play. This resulted in an immediate screaming tantrum from the 4yo who wanted to put the sunscreen on herself but was not allowed to.

“You have three seconds to stop screaming! Three seconds!” the mom kept yelling at her middle child while she applied sunscreen to the oldest and youngest.

The 4yo did not stop screaming, and the mom changed tactics.

“You’re going to get SPANKED if you don’t stop it right now!” she whisper-yelled at her daughter. “Do you want to get SPANKED in front of all these people?!”

This also did not work and the 4yo continued to scream.

“Okay, that’s it, you’re just going to have to sit in the car! Come on, we’re going to go sit in the car!” she shouted. “Darren!” she called to her oldest child. “You have to watch Carrie now because Lydia and I have to go sit in the car because she won’t stop screaming!”

Now, I overheard this entire thing and was very unconcerned right up until the mom announced she was putting the 6yo in charge of the toddler. Here?! At this massive playground?! This was when I started paying attention. Maybe I should try to keep an eye on this little toddler if the mom really was planning to sit in the car with the screaming 4yo.

It turns out there is a reason the 4yo kept wailing and screaming without regard for her mother’s reprimands: the mom followed up on exactly 0 of her threats. I think the 4yo even ended up avoiding sunscreen completely. Well played, 4yo, well played.

On the other side of me was a grandma who was there at the playground with her two very little granddaughters. This poor grandma was up and down and up and down the entire time. She clearly just wanted to sit. She seemed exhausted. I wondered if she was doing full-time childcare all summer long. Or all year long?

I used to run into grandparents doing full-time childcare all the time back when I was doing full-time childcare all the time myself. They always seemed very tired, and most of them didn’t seem like they were enjoying themselves very much. I wondered how many of them regretted volunteering for this gig but then couldn’t seem to find a way to back out of it once they were committed.

I am personally committed to never providing full-time childcare for anybody ever again. Fill-in childcare, because daycare is closed for two days? Sure. Weekend childcare because mom and dad need a goddamn break? Yes, absolutely. Full-time? Never. Absolutely not. I have been there, I have done that, and now I read books in the shade at Chutes & Ladders and listen to other people’s conversations.

“Ugh, Mom, can we go soon?” my oldest said, interrupting my thoughts. “Some camp group just got here and it’s too crowded now.” I looked up and saw a sea of neon pink shirts flowing into all corners of the playground.

“Yeah, let’s go,” I said.

I spent last week at the cabin slathering myself and my kids in sunscreen as if it was my job (it actually is). This time of year, I seem to read an article every week in which I am reminded that “there is no safe amount of sun exposure.” It is not, they tell me, even safe to slowly get a tan, and every time you burn your chance of getting skin cancer ticks up a notch. So I have dutifully purchased fresh sunscreen, long sleeve rash guards, and hats. I gave myself a pep talk re: sun protection protocols way back in June. This year will be different! This year we will do better!

Instead, we’ve all returned home with beautiful tans that would have made many teenage girls envious back in 1993. I am frustrated, feeling like I’ve done all that I possibly can to avoid sun exposure and still it’s not enough.

I’m not sure why I’m bothering to try to protect my own forty-year-old skin at this late stage in the game. I’ve already got some serious sun damage: brown spots on my forehead that never go away, a permanent farmer’s tan of pink freckles on my arms. I’m sure there’s some bullshit happening on the back of my shoulders that I can’t quite see.

Strategizing about ways to avoid sun exposure in the future got me thinking about my sun exposure in the past, and how I got here.

I grew up in a very sunny part of the world. We lived maybe a mile and a half from a gorgeous lake filled with clear blue glacier water. My mom would take us swimming almost every afternoon in the summer. We did have sunscreen and I do remember using it from time to time, but it was the 90s and we mostly swam in the late afternoons and didn’t need it. I don’t remember burning a lot as a kid, but I do remember getting very, very tan every summer. I look ridiculous in some of my childhood pictures with my dark brown skin and bright blonde sun-bleached hair.

We spent a lot of time in the sun with our dad as well. Dad owned a boat, Dad loved his boat, and we all spent a lot of time on that boat. With the sun bright above us and the water reflecting from below it was a good thing we already had those base tans! And if we weren’t on the boat, we were probably camping at one of the lakeside campgrounds, eating pop-tarts in the morning sun, swimming in the mid-day sun, jumping from rock to rock on the shoreline in the afternoon sun. I recall my father putting 90 SPF sunscreen on his own nose once or twice. I do not recall him ever putting sunscreen on us, but I think he must have from time to time.

One week of the summer we would always be away from the lake at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm. It was a little less sunny there, but we made up for it by spending almost the entire day outside biking up and down their long gravel driveway or pretending to be varmints in the field. I don’t believe my grandparents even owned sunscreen. They certainly never put any on us.

Childhood summers gave way to college summers, and I spent three of those college summers in Greece working on an archaeological dig. We all used sunscreen and hats, but we also all burned at least once per season (I think it was impossible not to). I swam in the Mediterranean every afternoon with the sun shining on my back. I hiked up Acrocorinth with the sun beating down on my arms, and I touched the massive column blocks of the Temple of Zeus in Olympia with the sun beating down on my hands.

Not too many years later my husband and I took an epic honeymoon trip through the national parks of the West. We climbed five miles up to Grinnell Glacier on a beautiful sunny day and stood at the edge of the eerie blue glacier water with September UV rays reflecting right back up into our faces. We drove through Arches National Park with the sun screaming down on us through the windshield. We stopped at a small cheese factory in California and sat in the parking lot eating fresh cheese while the sun beat down on us.

When I examine my sun damage in the mirror and start to consider everything that has led to it, I get angry. Not angry at myself for not being better about sun protection (although I certainly could have been better), but angry at the dermatologists of the world who continue to insist that “there is no safe level of sun exposure.”

Sun exposure is the small thread that binds together this patchwork of active, outdoors-based memories that make up my childhood and my young adult years. My life would have been very different if I had spent the first forty years of it trying to avoid the sun. I would have missed out on a lot of memories with my grandparents, siblings, parents, friends, husband, and now my children.

“There is no safe level of sun exposure” just doesn’t work for me. I want a more reasonable statement from the American Academy of Dermatology. “Try to avoid sun exposure as much as you can without interfering with your outdoor activities” would be a good start. I would like “It’s actually okay to get a little bit tan if it happens accidentally, just really try to not burn” even more.

I think these more reasonable statements would be helpful not just for me, but for other parents who are trying their best and still coming up short. It might be good for the dad who wants to take his kids camping but is overwhelmed by the prospect of reapplying sunscreen to his hyperactive toddler sixteen times. They might be helpful for the mom who wants to let the tweens go to the pool but just can’t stand having to fight over the long sleeve rash guard again.

I don’t think the recommendations are going to change the way I want them to, so I have had to make some personal decisions about what I am and am not willing to do to protect us from the sun.

I am not willing to keep my kids inside at the cabin, even during the hottest/brightest part of the day. I am not willing to stand in the shade much at all. I’m not going to limit my swimming time, or their tubing time. I’m not going to mow the lawn at 6 AM.

I am willing to wear sunscreen every time we go outside, and to reapply every two hours (or so). Sometimes we will wear long sleeve rash guards and sometimes we will wear hats. But sometimes we won’t, and I will still sit at the end of the dock with my feet in the water, a book in one hand, and a beer in the other, and the sun beating down on my back.

If you are willing and able to do better at this than me, then good for you. Your skin is going to look great, and you probably won’t get skin cancer and I am envious of both of those things while also fully admitting that I was unwilling to put in the effort for the same reward.

“Her skin was such a wreck,” my gravestone will read. “And she had so much skin cancer, but she didn’t regret standing in the sunny huckleberry field for hours with her grandmother. Also she really liked cheese and beer so that’s three health strikes against her and probably how she ended up here if we’re being honest about the whole situation.”

I just hope my kids will forgive me for all the sun damage that will pepper their foreheads someday, and all the great memories that came with it.

We’re spending the week at our cabin in Wisconsin, our annual tradition. I’m pretty sure every other cabin owner in northwest Wisconsin does the same, at least judging from the number of watercraft on the lake and people in line at the local grocery store.

This is our fourth summer owning this place. I remember it feeling very overwhelming at first. I struggled to understand what sort of yardwork needed to be done. I didn’t have any strategies in place for cleaning or hosting. I’ve since developed some tips and tricks; I should do a real blog post on this someday. But so far my top cabin-owning/hosting tips are:

1. Buy a rainbow of bath towels so that everyone can have a different color. And put hooks in all the bedrooms so that people can squirrel away their towels.
2. Buy tons of hand towels. You will want to change out the bathroom hand towel at least once a day when there are guests.
3. Even if you are a minimalist like me, you must have an extra set of sheets for every bed.
4. Buy the kid sleeping bags with built-in pillows; fewer things to keep track of!
5. Pick two kinds of beer and only keep those on hand. Guests can bring up other stuff if they want it, but if you expand your own beer purchases beyond just two kinds the refrigerator will quickly become a disaster.
6. Sandwiches for lunch; burgers for dinner. This allows the lettuce, onion, and tomato to be sliced up in the morning and used for multiple meals in a row!

This list ended up being longer than I expected. Maybe I do know what I’m doing.

I have been busy this week mostly with mowing and yardwork. I had to break up the mowing into a two-day project because there was so much to do. I cleared some raspberries (terrible job!) and I’ve been spending the afternoons de-mucking and weeding our beach area. I did not expect to be spending my 40s carefully collecting muck from a lake with my bare hands but here we are.

I have not seen my beaver friend, but I did see the water snake and he is disturbingly large and I am really still not okay with swimming snakes.

I am also very pleased with the fact that our cabin has an upstairs living area and a downstairs living area. We’ve brought the kids’ favorite cousin up with us for the week and they are all having a great time. It’s nice that they can take over the basement but I can still read on the couch upstairs undisturbed by their boisterous wrestling and even-more-boisterous farting.