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.

  • Emotions around real estate, part 1

    Now that we’ve told our favorite neighbors that we’re probably moving I can blog about our search for a new home.

    It is difficult and I am very emotional about it all.

    The last time we searched for real estate I was emotional too, but that’s largely because I was very pregnant for most of our home search. I remember going to a series of open houses the month before our son was born. I had to pee at all three open houses and it was terrible. After the baby arrived, we toted him along in the little baby bucket seat, which he hated. Sometimes he just screamed the entire time, even if I held him.

    We looked at so many houses. We put in an offer on one and did not get it. Mostly we just saw house after house and shrugged our shoulders. Nothing struck us.

    My husband came to the open house for our current home by himself. I had given up on real estate and refused to leave the apartment that afternoon, but he came back and said I really should see this one. We packed up the baby and I grudgingly let him drive us across the river to see this house.

    I walked in and immediately felt that I could live here and that this could be home. The kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, every room and every floor.

    I could live here. This could be home.

    We moved in three months later and have been here ever since.

    This time around the search for a new home feels harder in a lot of ways. Harder because we don’t actually want to leave this house. Harder because we won’t want to leave our neighbors. Harder because we’ve put a lot of money and work into this house and it feels like we’ve only recently got it the way we want it.

    Harder because I thought we would never move. When I pictured myself trying to leave this place I would see the ending of The Haunting of Hill House play out in my head (the novel, not the movie or television series). Yes, this place is small, but it’s a good way to keep us from acquiring too much stuff. Yes, we need more space, but it’s nice to have forced family togetherness.

    But the whole time that I was clinging to the walls of this house, things were changing.

    The pandemic happened and work-from-home became a thing. Now my husband is able to work all day and still be home for dinner (life-changing!). That third room upstairs which was supposed to become our youngest son’s bedroom was pressed into duty as an office.

    Our kids have shared a room for nearly a decade now–a room so small there is not even a foot of space between the two beds. They share the single dresser (two drawers each) and split the drawers under one of the beds (one drawer each) and the tiny closet. Their modest bookshelf creaks with exhaustion having been overloaded with Dog Man and Captain Underpants for years. New books do not fit; they are piled on top. There is no room for a laundry hamper.

    Our favorite neighbors–the ones who have been a third set of grandparents for my kids for the past twelve years–admitted that they were thinking of moving to be closer to their actual grandchildren. I realized, I think for the first time, that they would not always be here.

    I purged and organized and purged and organized this little house full of stuff. I got rid of so many of my beloved books because we had no space for them. I got rid of toys the same moment my kids outgrew them. I got rid of half of my clothes every year, culled small appliances, and donated piles of blankets and quilts that we simply could not store. I stopped to survey my years of work and realized that there was nothing left to get rid of. We simply cannot fit.

    “It’s only six years,” I would tell myself. “Only six years until the first child goes to college, and the second not long after that. And then we’ll have more space than we need!” Except when they come home for holidays. Which I hope they do, maybe even with a girlfriend or boyfriend in tow. I hope they move back in for a little bit while they start their adult careers. Or what if the kids are moving back in just as our own parents are no longer able to live independently? Then what?

    I have a friend who works in a hospital. Her job is to help people who can’t go home and live alone anymore figure out what to do. Sometimes that means a temporary rehab facility. Sometimes it means permanent residence in a nursing home. She sees so many elderly adults who should have gone into assisted living years ago but refuse to leave their homes.

    “The worst mistake you can make as you age,” she always says, “is being too attached to your living situation.”

    We have to move. I wish I had realized it sooner.

    So we have a realtor and we are actively looking. We are so picky. We are no longer constrained by money (mostly), but we are constrained by geography. I refuse to make our kids change schools, and that limits us significantly. We both prefer older houses with creaky floors and lots of character. We don’t want to lose too much walkability. But we also don’t want to do any major renovations!

    And, if all goes according to plan this will be our very last home purchase ever. The next move will be to assisted living, and that’s a lot of pressure! If it’s our last house, don’t we want it to be grand and nearly perfect?

    Well, nothing is perfect. This house wasn’t perfect but we’ve been very happy, safe, and comfortable here. I just need to walk into a place and I’ll know.

    I could live here. This could be home.

  • Don’t mind me while I nerd out

    It’s that time of year when I rewatch Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl Halftime Show multiple times per day.

    It is so fucking good. I love it. In the future I will force the robot health aides at my nursing home to watch this with me.

    After watching the full performance with my youngest I had a hankering to watch Gaga’s old Bad Romance music video. I pulled it up on YouTube, hit play, and was immediately taken aback by the low video quality!

    “Wow,” I commented to my kid. “I forgot how old this is! I forgot how poor video quality was in the 2000s!”

    As a history-lover, I am finding it very exciting to be getting older. I was alive when this music video came out! I remember when Lady Gaga wore that meat dress to some awards show and people were super offended and lost their minds! If you gave me a list of her albums, I could pretty easily put them in order of release date because I was there and I vaguely remember it.

    I had this happen recently when I was watching a documentary about the Bush family. I was taking in all this new information, watching these elections unfold in the 1970s and 1980s with the same interest I have in any historical moments that I wasn’t there for. And then we got to the 1992 presidential election.

    I remember that election! It’s the first one I remember! I made a construction paper sign for Bill Clinton! I remember being confused about how Dan Quayle had the same name as the ridiculous little birds that ran around in our alley!

    I was there and I remember it!

    What a fantastic advantage to have actually lived through something! What a gift! I love that moments from my childhood are far enough in the past now that we’re making documentaries about them! In just thirty years I will be the equivalent of the old guys on History Channel with their USS Endicott hats who slowly relay their personal anecdotes from “dubya dubya two.”

    Of course, I don’t have any good war stories. I didn’t have a front row seat for any major historical event. I can’t think of a single documentary topic that might lead to me being interviewed, now or anytime in the future.

    My kids at least have one thing. They were five years old and seven years old respectively when the covid-19 pandemic hit. They were old enough to have vague memories of those years, but young enough that they will be some of the last people alive who remember that pandemic. I am hopeful that the AI documentarians of the future will deem them worthy of interviews!

    And I will continue along just being delighted every time someone makes a new documentary about a major event in the 1990s, and then the 2000s and then the 2010s. I am going to be insufferable around the time I hit seventy, just wanting to talk about my inconsequential perspective on some random event from 2012.

  • Favorite Words

    My oldest brought home some strange homework the other day. He was instructed to list his three favorite words.

    “Three favorite words?” I asked. “That’s a weird one.”

    I do have favorite numbers, and I feel very strongly about numbers. Prime numbers are the best numbers, and eleven is the best of the best. Even numbers are the worst. It was a real struggle last year when I was 40 years old and the year was 2024 and everything was divisible by everything and I hated it. But now I’m 41 (prime!) and it’s the year 2025 (not prime, but an acceptable odd number) so things are better.

    Anyway. Words. Do I have favorite words? I thought it over, and a few came to mind.

    Asinine
    Redundant
    Entropy

    I think those might be my favorite words, but I’m little disturbed by what that says about me. And why do I like them? Because of how they look? Because of how they sound? Because of their definitions?

    I feel like as a mother I’m supposed to say “my favorite word is please and my other favorite word is kindness” but that is just stupid.

  • Not Blogging About My Job

    I am struggling with wanting to write about my job, but also knowing that it is entirely inappropriate for me to write about my job in a public blog. Even if I changed names and details it feels like an invasion of privacy.

    It’s too bad, because the students, teachers, and staff at my school are a true cast of characters. So many fascinating backgrounds and personal interests! So many strange and wonderful proclivities! Such random moments throughout the day!

    I will attempt to share a small anecdote without revealing too much information.

    One of the teachers has prearranged for one of her students to carry heavy books back and forth to the office when he needs a break. This means that I often look up from whatever I’m doing (filing email, making a very long telephone call with an interpreter, printing attendance letters) to see a child standing right next to my desk presenting me with a very heavy book.

    “Thank you!” I always say, as I take his book and hand him the other large book which sits behind my desk. “And can you take this one back to your teacher? Thank you so much!” It’s very unclear to me if he realizes that this whole endeavor is without purpose, but he keeps coming back.

    The constant interruptions are sometimes stunning. I spent all day trying to print out fifteen attendance letters (they have to be printed one-by-one) and only managed to get through ten. Small tasks take forever. I often walk in at 6:45 AM and the phone immediately starts ringing and feels like it doesn’t ever stop. Some days the calls for behavior support start before the bell even sounds. Those are the days I end up further behind than I started.

    I like it busy so far, but I wonder if it gets much harder as one gets older and more tired. Or the constant interruptions just erode your will to work hard over time?

    Anyway, as of now I am still delighted by 99% of my coworkers and… well, let’s say a smaller percentage of the students but still. The kids are, if nothing else, extremely entertaining.

  • Is it actual climate change or just anxiety?

    I was recently looking at old photos of my kids, photos from back when they wore footy pajamas and built forts out of couch cushions and pulled all the water bottles out of the cabinet just for laughs.

    There was so much snow in so many of the pictures! Winter after winter, month after month of toddlers in snow pants and preschoolers being pulled to school in the sled and Kindergarteners trying to help shovel after a big snowfall. There were pictures of cats sitting on the back porch and glaring at the snow in early April. Snowmen built in March. Snow forts in February and sledding in January.

    We have an accidental tradition in our household. One night per winter when it’s dark and snowing hard, we put on all our snow gear and we walk to the nearby playground and we play in the new snow while everything glows around us. It’s magical.

    I should say we had an accidental tradition. There hasn’t been a great evening snowfall like that in two winters now. We hardly had any snow at all last winter, and just a little this winter.

    I’ve been very morose about it all since looking at these pictures. Especially when I think of my kids looking at these same photographs twenty years from now and exclaiming over the amount of snow we used to get. It was glorious, wasn’t it?

    I try to soothe myself by remembering that climate is change. Climate has always been change. Nature is change. The land on which my house sits was underwater 450 million years ago, and 2 million years ago it was covered by a glacier. We had locusts destroying all the crops in this state less than 200 years ago. And some years have always been colder or wetter than other years. I try to remind myself about the winter of 2022-2023 when we got massive amounts of snow and it was deadly cold. The boiler at our cabin failed and a bunch of pipes burst and even the toilet bowl cracked open.

    See, that was just two years ago!

    Someone who is not a meteorologist but who spends his winters plowing snow in the Cascade Mountains was telling me that the old-timers always say that weather is on approximately a hundred-year cycle. That intense, glorious winter of 2022-2023 was the end of the hundred-year cycle, and now we reset and build back up to that.

    I hope he’s right. Even if it means I won’t get another winter like that in my lifetime. And my kids won’t either, but I like to picture Minnesota mothers a hundred years from now pulling their children to school on sleds and wrangling dripping, dirty mittens in the entryway every afternoon straight through April.

  • Dragging everyone else down with me

    When I woke up this morning, my first thought was “fuck, I have to exercise.”

    I’m clawing my way back onto the exercise train this year, and it sucks. I do not care for exercise. I’ve established an elaborate reward system that involves gold star stickers and Chip and Dale-themed Disney pins and it’s still a struggle to get my ass to the gym.

    I don’t really care for physical movement in general, and this is a problem. I’m not excited by the idea of leaving the house and moving my body. I am excited by the idea of sitting in my warm basement and playing through Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the second time.

    The really sad thing is how I drag everyone else down with me. It would be so good for my family if I was excited about roller skating and made everyone go roller skating on Saturdays. And it would be even better if I made everyone go on a nice winter hike on Sundays, or if I signed us all up for a gym membership with a pool and dragged everyone to the pool every Friday afternoon. If I enjoyed these things myself then it would use very little bandwidth to bring everyone along.

    This is the tough part of being the mom. When I am eating candy all the time my kids eat candy all the time. When I’m in my cucumber and tzatziki era so are my kids.

    Every good decision I make is magnified in them, and every bad decision too.

    It’s too much damn pressure.

    I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before, but this whole system continues to weigh on me. It seems like if you’re the kind of person who enjoys being active and eating vegetables then you’ve already got a massive advantage in life and in parenting. But it takes bandwidth and energy for me to make those same good choices that come naturally to others, leaving me with less bandwidth for helping with homework and encouraging piano practice and picking up the living room and sorting through outgrown clothes and grocery shopping and planning birthday parties and planning trips and soothing emotions and not spending too much money and getting everyone–including myself–in bed on time.

    Anyway. All I can do is treat myself like a five-year-old with a reward system involving cartoon chipmunks, and hope my kids can develop their own reward system for good choices when they are adults.

  • Travel Anxiety

    We booked our plane tickets for Japan. I am… not excited.

    I mean I am excited. I have always wanted to go to Japan, and I am especially excited for the Shinto shrines and the Buddhist temples and seeing the Pacific Ocean from the other side.

    Although I did some good traveling in my early twenties, I have turned into an anxious and reluctant traveler in my forties. I have not left the country since 2006.

    Here is a list of things I’m worried about:

    1. Flying across the Pacific Ocean. It’s just unnatural and absolutely terrifying. What if there’s an emergency and you need to make an emergency landing? Oh no, you just ALL DIE. Also I am still freaked out about Air France 447 and MH370.
    2. One of us getting really sick or injured while we’re away.
    3. A new pandemic starting while we’re abroad.
    4. A major earthquake happening in Japan while we are there. This is particularly dumb to worry about since Japanese buildings are engineered specifically for earthquakes. And I grew up on the Pacific Ring of Fire and have already been through several minor earthquakes in my life!
    5. Something terrible happening to the cats while we’re gone.
    6. Something terrible happening to the house while we’re gone.
    7. A major terrorist attack in Japan.
    8. Really anything that shuts down international travel and makes it impossible for us to return home.
    9. One of us being so sick or so grievously injured that we DIE in Japan.
    10. Insulting everyone with our loud Western ways and our large bodies.
    11. Being homesick the whole time.
    12. Losing our luggage on the way there and having to replace it with… what? Is there a single female person on Honshu that is as large as me? I think I would just have to wear a mawashi for the rest of the trip?

    I would like to pretend that I am an enthusiastic, practical traveler who is totally pumped for this once-in-a-lifetime trip. I want to pretend I’m enjoying all the planning and the researching and that I’m excited to use what little Japanese I have retained from college with actual residents of Japan.

    But no, I am me, and at least on this blog I can’t pretend to be anyone else. Out in the world I will pretend I am relishing the planning and really looking forward to the whole thing. But you will all know the truth: that every morning since booking these plane tickets I have woken up at 3 AM with an unhinged panicky feeling.

    And people enjoy this.

  • Books – 2024

    Is anyone getting sick of these listicle-type blog posts I keep posting? I’m not. They are so easy to write!

    I read 44 books this year, falling well short of my 50-book goal. This is the second year in a row that I haven’t made my goal.

    Here are the best books I read in 2024.

    Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
    What is this book about? Life, death, meditation, religion, growing up caught between two cultures, being a mother, a daughter, a granddaughter, memory, mythology. Everything. Gorgeously written. After finishing this one I went out and got this author’s other non-fiction book and really enjoyed that one too.

    Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
    This was assigned by my book club and I did not think I would enjoy it as I actively dislike plants for the most part. But it ended up being more a meditation on human morality than anything else and I can see why this book is so hyped and beloved.

    Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
    The Bechdel Test is one of my favorite topics of conversation, so it’s really a shame it took me this many years to actually read Ms. Bechdel’s memoir. Chillingly honest, nicely drawn, and fascinating from beginning to end.

    The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels by Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans
    This book follows the stories of four people who end up dead and unclaimed in Los Angeles. The authors provide an in-depth look at the bureaucratic processes that occur when a person dies without an heir or claimant, while also writing wonderful narratives for each of these unclaimed person’s lives. There are so many ways for a life to unfold in such a way that you end up unclaimed in Los Angeles. If I had to describe this book in one word it would be: humbling.

    What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama
    My mom bought this for me, I think purely due to the delightful cover art. And then it turned out to be really good and uplifting in a really reasonable way. Definitely read this if you’re a librarian, but anyone can find what they need in this novel.

    Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
    Lovely and thought-provoking. I want to live in this world.

    I lowered my goal for 2025 down to 30 books so maybe next year I can report success in meeting my reading goal, but I do still own a Nintendo Switch so… probably not.

  • Christmas Movies 2024

    I pushed the Christmas movies hard this year in an effort to get into the Christmas spirit.

    It did work. I was feeling pretty merry by December 24th.

    Here’s what I watched during the Christmas season in 2024.

    Happiest Season
    My sister made me watch this one last year and I liked it enough to watch it again this year. It might become a personal tradition. It’s just cute enough and just funny enough and just romantic enough, and it just makes me happy.

    Elf
    I am not a huge fan of this movie. My favorite scene is in the first five minutes of the film (when the Keebler elf tree burns down) so I don’t really have anything to look forward to after that. We watched this one on my laptop this year while baking cookies and that worked well.

    Bob’s Burgers: The Bleakening, Parts 1 & 2 (S8: E6 & E7)
    This is my kids’ favorite Bob’s Burgers Christmas episode, and I am a sucker for the silly Twinkly Lights song.

    Bob’s Burgers: Last Gingerbread House on the Left (S7:E7)
    My second favorite Bob’s Burgers Christmas episode, with my favorite Bob’s Burger’s Christmas song.

    Bob’s Burgers: Christmas in the Car (S4:E8)
    Possibly my favorite Bob’s Burger’s Christmas episode. “All batteries die, but this one truly lived!”

    Die Hard
    Yes, we let the kids watch this one with us. I am really not a fan of this movie and hope this doesn’t become a family tradition.

    Spirited
    Now this is a worthwhile film! Have you even heard of this one? It’s a little Christmas gem hidden away on Apple TV packed with Broadway energy, clever jokes, and a nice message. Highly recommend!

    Robin Robin
    A 30-minute Christmas short that went well with my coffee one December morning.

    Muppet Christmas Carol
    I love this movie and try to make sure we watch it every year. I especially love how much material it lifts directly from the book. I listen to this soundtrack every Christmas season because it’s so good.

    Polar Express
    I had not seen this before and did not particularly care for it, but my kids liked it.

    Klaus
    My favorite Christmas movie. I will watch this every Christmas season until I die. I cry every time, and not just a single tear sort of cry. It’s the multiple big tears running down my face kind of cry. Put it on your list for next year if you haven’t seen it yet.

    In reviewing this list, I am seeing a clear trend in my Christmas movie preferences.

    I do not care for the movies that stress the importance of believing in Santa Claus. Why? Why does our culture emphasize the importance of believing in a lie from our childhood? I get that movies with that message are trying to make us feel good and nostalgic and young again but… we aren’t young anymore, are we? Why are we making Christmas magic an ideal that is only for children?

    My favorite Christmas movies are the ones that stress the importance of kindness and giving. The movie Klaus, which I adore, creates a version of the Santa Claus origin story, yes, but not once does it state that one must believe in Santa Claus in order to receive gifts or to be happy. No, the theme of Klaus is that a selfless deed always sparks another selfless deed. That’s the message we all need right now.

  • Odds & Ends Again

    When I last wrote I was suffering through a major tech issue with my computer that has since resolved just as mysteriously as it started. I am grateful and trying not to question it too much.

    I am almost done with Christmas shopping. I’ve got one teacher gift left to purchase, and possibly two kid gifts. Other than that, it’s just fretting about shipping times and fighting with wrapping paper for the next nine days. That part I don’t mind so much.

    I got the new Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom, on my birthday. I have been very slowly working my way through it. I am very proud of the fact that–so far–I have figured everything out myself and have not turned to the Internet for answers to seemingly unbeatable bosses or particularly flummoxing dungeon puzzles. I am not good at Zelda games. My sister and brother are both very good at Zelda games, but I always gave up around the fourth dungeon or so. I am determined to beat this one myself, even if it takes me months to figure these things out.

    My oldest kid was diagnosed with an infected finger and cellulitis last week, so I spent a large chunk of last Tuesday evening at my local dystopian Walgreens. Standing in line there for an hour and overhearing all the interactions and gazing at the dirty, empty shelves made me feel like I was watching the United States crumble right before my eyes. One pharmacy customer ran out of the store screaming “Fuck this country!!!!” destroying displays on the way out. A pharmacy tech used the same word in frustration even after the pharmacist asked him not to.

    Anyway, my kid is on day 6 of antibiotics and it’s already hard to tell which finger was the infected one, and I am very grateful. But now I’m all in my head about those alternate universes in which we don’t have access to antibiotics and that Casey is burying her oldest child after spending three days at his bedside while he grew desperately, fatally ill and my prayers for healing went unanswered.

    This is why I don’t sleep well at night.

    But I went to the grocery store today to do the grocery shopping and I purchased so much cheese that the cashier commented on the extreme amount of cheese in my cart. This is even more notable because I’m pretty sure the cashiers at this store undergo extensive sensitivity training to prevent them from commenting on the food that people are buying. It is, perhaps, my proudest grocery store moment.