DEAR GOD ALMIGHTY, math is hard for me. I have struggled with math my entire life, pretty much from third grade on, except for one brief and glorious interlude when I learned geometry in ninth grade. I especially loved the Golden Ratio, and one of my strongest memories of high school is when Beth Goldberg applied the Golden Ratio to a photograph of Ellen Scott's face because she thought she was the prettiest girl at school, an opinion so universally shared that nobody questioned it.

I'm in a situation now where I am trying to teach my eleven-year-old concepts that I myself never grasped. "After the neighborhood block party, one and two-fourths of the pans of baked ziti were left. Then Claire ate one-sixth of the leftovers. What portion of a pan of baked ziti did she eat?" All I know is she sure as hell ate more than she should have. This was an actual question on Michaela's math test. (Yes, it said two-fourths instead of one-half.) I don't even want to tell you how long it took me to figure it out and how many Khan Academy videos I had to watch before I could do it.

Numbers are my nemesis. Not just in math problems, but in life. I think about them constantly and with increasing anxiety. I have a birthday this month, and I will be 51, the age when most people stop telling people their age. I am now officially closer to 100, closer to 90, closer to 80, closer to 70, closer to 60—do you see now why this makes me anxious? Reducing your life to a number line is not an exercise I recommend. I used to be skeptical of medication, all RFK Jr about it, as though 19th-century people didn't routinely die of infections that could have been easily and quickly treated. Now I am a walking pharmaceutical lab, with enough pills rattling around in my medicine cabinet to open my own pharmacy. At night I lie awake worrying about the cost of my future healthcare, and by the way have you seen how this country treats old people? Maybe that is why our politicians stay in office as long as they do—otherwise they'll be shunted off to a retirement home in the middle of nowhere.

Take a deep breath. Stay in the present. The future is unknown so there's no point in worrying about it. Those are the things I tell Michaela when she is getting anxious. I need to remember to tell myself those things, too.

In case you were worried, we did make it to piano on time.

Three Things Keeping Me Going This Week

1. Kelli Connell at the Elmhurst Art Museum

I found out about this show from Friend of Mushroom Head Kristin Taylor, and I wish other outlets (any outlets?) were covering it, since it is sensational. Over a period of several years, Connell undertook an intensive exploration of photographer Edward Weston and his muse/wife Charis Wilson. She retraced his journey across California and tried to recreate some of his iconic shots, using her own partner as a stand-in for Charis. Landscapes start to look like bodies, bodies start to look like landscapes, romantic and artistic partnerships become complicated. I left wanting to learn more about all the actors involved, photographers and muses, which is about the highest compliment I could give to a show.

2. Bruce Goff at the Art Institute of Chicago

This show is one of the most expertly installed and designed architecture shows I have ever seen. Actually—scratch that—it is the best. The colors pop, the objects are genuinely fascinating (not always a given in architecture shows), and the maquettes give you a true sense of what a building looks like (or might look like, had it been built). The whole time I walked through this show I kept thinking of a line from Wayne Koestenbaum's biography of Andy Warhol: "Was Warhol gay? As gay as you can get." (I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist.) This is the gayest architecture show I have ever seen; is that why it's so good? To discuss.

3. The Choral

Set during WWI in a fictional mill town in England, this movie borders on mediocre, but the music and the message made it, well, better. Spotlights Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, and it struck me as rare that I have seen a film explore a relatively obscure musical composition in such depth. (I should clarify: it's obscure to me, whose knowledge of classical music is extremely limited.) We watched this for family movie night and Michaela enjoyed it. Some scenes were a little mature for her but overall it is pretty PG.

That's the news from Mushroom Head for this week. I forgot to wish you all a Happy Pulaski Day! My favorite Illinois bank holiday. So here are my belated wishes.

xoxo Claire

PS: Cook County dismissed the charges against the protestors, including me! See coverage as well as an extremely unflattering photograph of me here in the Trib.