Essay #32: Stats

Jeremy recently said a line that he'd heard somewhere about how middle age is just the process of setting arbitrary goals for yourself. All the real achieving is done, so why not complete a marathon!

To be fair, our world gives us a lot of things in which to track arbitrary goals. It's one of the reasons I know I don't need a Smart Watch. I'm pretty confident I get 10,000 steps a day anyway. But there are some stats I sort of like, regardless of how meaningful they are. So here goes:

Books read: 41

That's actually my highest total since having kids, a fact I realized just now. I've long kept track on an Excel spreadsheet, but I've started using Goodreads. I don't love the app, but it's relatively convenient.

Movies watched: 113

That seems like a crazy number, though considering I've replaced nearly all TV series watching (with the exception of The Great Pottery Throw Down) with movies (usually divided over one to two nights), it doesn't seem quite so bad. Letterboxd tracks this stat.

Miles hiked: 336

I realized how close I was to achieving 365 miles just a week ago--not enough time to make up the missing miles by today. Alas. Hiking 365 miles in a year is an arbitrary goal I hope to achieve next year. I use AllTrails to track my hikes.

Houseplants owned: 43

Thirty-four live at home, and another nine live at school. I walked around and literally counted my plants.

2023: Year in Review

A successful year with forty-one books read! A number of ones that I enjoyed. In my mini-foray into nonfiction environmental books, there were the excellent Desert Solitaire and On Trails. I finished Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet. I liked experimental books, from Woolf's classic Orlando to the faux-biography Biography of X. Some strong showings in both fiction (Either/Or, Erasure, Small Things Like These) and nonfiction (How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, Monsters).

I received a Kindle for Christmas, so we'll see if that has any effect on my reading habits.

1. If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
2. The Two Doctors Gorski by Issac Fellman
3. The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin
4. Verity by Colleen Hoover
5. Either/Or by Elif Batuman
6. Sourdough by Robin Sloan
7. The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
8. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
9. Brutes by Dizz Tate
10. Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
11. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
12. Wild Thoughts from Wild Places by David Quammen
13. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
14. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
15. Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
16. On Trails by Robert Moor
17. The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde
18. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
19. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
20. The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
21. The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
22. Half-Life of a Stolen Sister by Rachel Cantor
23. Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart by John Guy
24. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
25. The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
26. Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari
27. I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore
28. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
29. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
30. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante
31. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Ovinkan Braithwaite
32. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt
33. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
34. Pet by Catherine Chidgey
35. How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement by Fredrik deBoer
36. Erasure by Percival Everett
37. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
38. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
39. The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freiman
40. Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer
41. Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

A few stats: twenty-three books by female authors; eighteen by male. Thirty-two fiction and nine nonfiction. Eight books published before 2000; nine books published in 2023.

Essay #31: Butterfly Clips

To those who have asked, Amelia has said that her favorite Christmas gift is her butterfly clips: four large, plastic clips that cost thirteen dollars at Target (I’m not bitter). I remember such clips from my own childhood, but they’ve made a huge comeback—the Target accessory section must have had several dozen different versions. The clips come in two parts, each with a series of narrow “teeth,” and are connected with a spring. A wearer can twist her hair into a ponytail, pull the ponytail up alongside the back of her head, and then close the clip over the pulled-up hair. It’s a cute and easy look.

On Christmas day, Amelia had me re-attach her clip several times, both loving the “teen” look and worrying that it wouldn’t look just right. She wore one of the clips as we drove to my parents’ house yesterday and was eager to show it off to the family. Last night, after some ooh-ing and aah-ing, Aunt Kathleen brought out a butterfly clip of her own, and we took turns trying the clips out on everyone. Amelia put up Kathleen’s hair; I put up Clara’s hair; Clara put up Emily’s hair; and so on. We even tried on Caitlin’s far-too-short hair. Everyone was giggling on the basement couch.

Amelia wore one of the clips again today, and she also wore the cheapest gift that I got her for Christmas, as it came from my local Buy Nothing Group. It’s a grey sweatshirt that reads “S’mores, Campfires, & Lattes.” I thought it was absurd—why make a sweatshirt about lattes in a kid’s size? I wasn’t sure what Amelia would think, but I think it’s grown to be one of her other favorite gifts. Like her butterfly clips, it’s a piece to show off, to start a conversation. 

I never did “girl” culture. I didn’t wear makeup or think about fashion or put any thought into my shoes. In fact, I prided myself on what I perceived as my lack of vanity. Yet during my sister’s bachelorette party, when all her friends gathered in the bathroom for several hours to “get ready,” I realized for the first time that I’d missed out on something meaningful. I wonder if that’s why I find Amelia’s interest in fashion more endearing than eye-rolling. Before we left for my parents’, we sat down together and watched several TikToks looking for new uses for the butterfly clip. I love complimenting her when she’s thought carefully about how to put together an outfit. It’s something simple and fun that we can share.

Essay #30: Christmas

For the first time in my entire life, I celebrated Christmas not at my parents’ home or at the home of Jeremy’s parents, but at my home. It was a far quieter day with just the four of us, but not too quiet. Clara woke us up at 6:11—and then again at 6:30, when she was allowed to wake us up. She roused Amelia, and we went downstairs where the girls explored their gifts from Santa and emptied their stockings. We delayed present opening as long as possible, so we were finished by 8:00am, when Jeremy got the french toast casserole going in the oven. The girls explored their gifts: unpackaging the Chelsea Barbie festival, complete with ferris wheel; trying out the new butterfly clips in Amelia’s hair; eating half the candy in a couple-hour period.

I feared a long day of restlessness, but the girls were content and occupied, and though I felt some anxiety about the mess (okay, a lot of anxiety by the end of the day), everything was nice. It helped that I escaped for a quick four-mile hike midday, and that I got some texts from friends far away. It also helped that we saw the movie Wonka at four. I didn’t mind Timothee Chalamet singing about candy even though my kids had consumed several pounds of it that day.

It's hard to know how to feel about Christmas now that I’m an adult. I enjoy seeing the magic of it through my kids’ eyes, but I’m personally ambivalent. I find it easy to feel stressed and anxious and hard to appreciate the present. Still, by any account, it was a successful day. I went to bed with a full belly, a clean house, and happy kids. 

Plus I got a soil moisture-level reader for my plants!

Essay #29: Bad Movies

"So-bad-they're-good" movies are having a heyday, what with long-running podcasts like How Did This Get Made and The Flophouse. I'll enjoy the podcasts occasionally myself, but I rarely watch movies of this ilk (Cliffhanger was a worthy exception).

Last night we had the neighbors over and celebrated Christmas Eve by watching Family Switch, a potential contender for "so-bad-it's-good." The movie is a blatant rip-off of Freaky Friday--this time the dad and son switch too!--with a shoehorned Christmas theme that appears to have been added at the last minute. Freaky Friday has plenty of charm, and its own narrative logic once you accept the basic premise. Family Switch has relatively little charm, unless you find Jennifer Garner's existence charming, and no internal logic. Bizarre choices are made solely for narrative convenience, and a superfluous CGI-baby is only creepy. The resolution is so pat and perfect that by the time there's full snow in L.A. on Christmas Day you just shrug.

So is it "so-bad-it's-good"? If we'd been watching just the four of us, maybe not. But with eight of us and the Christmas spirit, I loved every stupid minute. We talked at the movie the entire time, and got overly excited at its cliché turns. We might have screamed when we saw that the fortune teller's (?) license plate read "SLAY." Clara and Katie danced during the "spontaneous" choreographed number at the teen party. Amelia and Clara took turns flopping into my lap and then racing into the living room to eat popcorn. Even Joe, a proper teenager, stayed for the entire time. 

There's been numerous movies (and books, restaurants, places, etc.) in my life that weren't objectively good but were perfect for the moment, and I'll declare that this was one of them. 

Essay #28: Piano

Clara's been asking for weeks to learn piano. I've been hesitant, mostly because it went so poorly when I tried to teach Amelia a few years ago. We carried along for several months, but she became frustrated once the pieces got slightly challenging, and soon our lessons turned into her screaming and refusing to play. Now she remembers only one song, the plodding "Cowboy Joe," which she plays at far-too-regular intervals.

I've taught seven of the neighborhood kids, so I'm reasonably confident in my ability to teach (even if none of my former students still play). I played for most of my childhood and also taught younger students when I was a senior in high school. Still, my own relationship with the piano has been uneven. I started playing young, but I hated the teacher I had through elementary school, and I became lazy, refusing to improve with the excuse of disliking him. I quit for a few years and then picked it up in high school, but my new teacher had reasonably high expectations that I wasn't prepared to meet. My former teacher hadn't held me to account on accurately playing the beat, and so I'd mostly ignore it. I eventually quit on my new teacher too, but I restarted with my boyfriend's teacher during my senior year of high school. She was honestly a good fit--not too exacting, but not too lenient, and I eventually taught some of her youngest students--but my graduation was the end of my piano career.

Soon it became embarrassing to tell other people that I had played piano for most of my childhood. I wasn't any good, particularly given the number of years I had devoted. I couldn't name any great composers or pianists. I could sight-read basic music, but I didn't even know how to count out the beat for more complex pieces.

Once we moved to Cincinnati, my parents had my childhood piano sent down, and it resides in my office. I still have vague memories of choosing the piano at the store alongside one of my first piano teachers. I've thought about trying to learn again as an adult, and I find some pleasure in picking out a song, but I don't think I'll ever really return.

Nonetheless, I hope both girls will play. So, today, I reluctantly agreed to give Clara her first lesson. She was eager and attentive, listening carefully to my instructions. By the end of the thirty minutes, she could play "In the Jungle," an easy three-finger piece. 

I don't know if her enthusiasm will last. Maybe she'll end up in the same place as Amelia within a few weeks. But it was a good thirty minutes. I got to appreciate my thirty-year-old piano again. I got to appreciate Clara, who can wear me down with her "Mommy, will you...", again. 

Essay #27: Grocery Store

We got back from my mother-in-law's mid-afternoon today. We'll be leaving again on the 26th to visit my parents, but we have the next two and a half days at home and no food. So what does that mean? Family grocery trip.

During the pandemic, we switched to doing pick-up grocery orders, and a little over a year ago we switched to Kroger delivery. We never seemed able to make time to grocery shop anyway, and I hated the crowds. Now, I stop by only occasionally to grab a missing item.

Jeremy or I could have gone alone without the kids, but since we'll be doing Christmas Eve and Christmas here at our home for the first time, it seemed appropriate to let them get involved. I braced myself for chaos, but Kroger wasn't nearly as bad as I might have feared for a Saturday two days before Christmas. They were completely out of non-green bell peppers, but Amelia managed to find two orange ones hidden atop the bin. They were out of cream cheese too, but I pulled out a shipping box and ripped out a block. No green beans, so we subbed broccoli. We will have to settle for grating our own mozzarella--no more shredded to be found. We ran into Clara's Girl Scout troop leader. We doubled back for hamburger buns and chopped pecans. We decided my dad definitely needed a local brewery's IPA with fir tips added. We bought expensive nuts and fancy cheeses for a Christmas day charcuterie board.

All the hunting and discovery made it feel a little like an adventure. The girls were in great moods. Amelia pushed the cart with Clara hanging off the side and didn't even run into anyone. Now, our pantry and refrigerator are full, and Jeremy's cooking dinner in the kitchen with our haul. It might just feel more satisfying than a delivery person knocking on the door.