Just regular folks.

Felix is suppose to be going back home on Monday (this may be up in the air now as he’s having a good time working and may be bored at home during the month of August and the flight can be changed without issue) and because of that, I decided to do my workout at the pool yesterday afternoon to see him in action.

This is my childhood pool, where I learned to swim, where I went everyday during summer camp as the hordes of children do now and where I also took my own kids. Now it’s been so long, that when the new renovation at the outdoor pool opened this summer, it’s the 2nd renovation since my childhood. Now this is the new, new pool and I can be an old person where the first pool was basically just a rectangle with a single rickety metal slide. The first renovation featured a beach entry and one big plastic spiral slide. The second renovation now has many water features including a lily pond obstacle course, so many big slides, little slides, 10,000 spraying water features – shaded baby beach entry portion – lots more shade for the chairs and in the play pool, basically nothing deeper than 4 feet.

I couldn’t quite believe Felix when he said there were 20 lifeguards on staff, but there were that many, basically standing sentry in the pool at any activity, along the pool, every 20 feet or so. I was very impressed. When we were young, I felt like there were only three lifeguards for the entire pool.

Anyways, it was great to see Felix at work, the newly renovated pool. I did a lot of the water features including the diving board, the lily pads and the biggest slides. And I did a little bit of a workout. I didn’t eat at the snack bar, perhaps I should have. I fondly remember the snack bar and sitting next to this very cute boy, Andrew who was totally out of my league in school, but summer rules are different and we sat with each other and ate french fries together.

We ran Elka’s DNA test a few years ago and she matched with a brother, Groove and so I messaged them and asked to meet up. But the message got buried and I didn’t receive any replies until a few weeks ago! And now I’m in a text message chat with Groove’s mom. And it’s so fun seeing photos of Elka’s brother.

My friend Lael came for lunch with her two kids and hubby in tow. The kids are 0.5 and 2.9 years old and are super cute and, man, are a lot of work – just watching them at lunch reminded me how crazy it is to have really young children. They were here for about 2.5 hours and it was fun, I love playing with other people’s babies. The littles ate a some lunch and proceeded to nap in various beds all over the house – this tiny one using Edda’s sleep safe bed as a crib because it basically is a twin sized crib.

I curated lunch to be toddler friendly. Lots of colors, everything separate (the adults made sandwiches) – pasta with cheese, but no pepper in case the toddler didn’t want black flakes in their cheesy pasta. The biggest hit was the egg slicer which was used to slice all manner of table food. I love being able to host a low-key lunch at the house – this is a skill to be learned and I learned this from Jeremy.

Jeremy’s on the West Coast for 10 days (as I like to say, saving the world one gas station at a time – figuring out the transition from gas to electric as smoothly as possible) – and he got to see Vince for about 6 hours. Vince flew up for a day and they spent the day just walking around and chatting. It’s been a long time since it’s been just the two of them together. I’m glad this happened.

Jeremy is also spending time with his high school friends (and their kids).

Also, lots of time on his new bike.

Here on the East coast, it was a nice quiet weekend with me and Edda. On Saturday, Edda and I went to lunch at the new Wegmans just a few miles from the house. On Sunday, Edda and I went to brunch with the Rett moms, so lovely and then Sunday night dinner!

We celebrated Megan’s birthday on Monday. I got to make her a cookies and creme birthday cake with a light whipped cream frosting. I was very proud of the cake – I had a big sprinkle “M” on the top which looked like a brown UofM logo. But it was for Megan and not for anyone else.

See? I did the piping too!

Megan got to wear our birthday hat, which turns out was purchased by her in 2023 for a combination of Edda’s and Pat’s birthdays and now lives in our birthday drawer for all folks who want to wear the birthday hat. It is one of my favorite birthday items that we have!

Happy Birthday Megan, we are lucky to have you in our lives <3

It appears that my venus fly trap ate a fly recently. I hadn’t been paying attention and then I noticed this dessicated fly body in one of the traps. In the house! A fly had the run of the entire house and it decided to meet its death in the fly trap. Interesting. And then I thought, maybe it would be happier outside in the summer to eat bugs. And so now it’s on the back porch.

Also, I’m trying to get apples from the next door apple trees. I think the trees have some sort of fungus or pest. The leaves are yellowing and dropping mid summer and they are looking a little sickly. Turns out being a backyard orchard-ist is not straightforward. I have about 10 of these baggies left out of about 30. The others have dropped off one by one and sometimes they drop 4 at a time, which is discouraging. But the ones left, they are growing – this one is about 2 inches in diameter – so bigger than they’ve ever gotten. All the ones at the top of the tree that I didn’t thin all dropped off recently. So at least something is going ok. I’m hoping for at least one ripe one.

Felix is leaving soon – less than 20 days, so we are trying to cram in some Maryland themed things before he goes. So we went to Bethesda Crab House last night for crabs. It was just what I wanted -a slightly dingy place, old ceiling fans turning, crowded – but no line and crabs smothered in Old Bay. So I taught the boy how to eat crabs and then we had crabs.

Jeremy is not a crab fan – thinks it’s too much work for too little food and in the middle of the dinner, we was like – I give up! We are in the post-industrial revolution era. And he proceeded to look up patents on automatic crab peeling machines. (He had ordered a crab cake sandwich which was delicious). So I finished doing the peeling for Edda’s share of the meal. We also ordered hush puppies (they ran out of puppies soon thereafter) and the best tater tots I’d ever eaten. And then after we squared away the bill, Felix eyed another table’s funnel cake and we ordered that for dessert. I had a great time, felt so much like summer.. a great outing.

We had a lovely 4th of July – I got caught up on the laundry and some other sundry things. We celebrated Joab’s 10th birthday with a requested burrito dinner. Jeremy went all out and bought beef – delicious. You know it’s a special occasion when there is beef in the house (you can drastically cut your carbon footprint by just cutting a lot of beef out of your diet – no need to go to vegetarian or vegan to make a big difference).

It was fun, there were balloons, our trusty HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner which has celebrated at least 15 years of family and friends’ birthdays.

I also made the requested chocolate/chocolate cupcakes. I upped my game by piping the frosting. The frosting was excellent, but I thought the cake was still too dry. I tried switching from a butter/dutch processed cocoa, to an oil/natural cocoa recipe and while it was better (better meaning quite good still..), I still didn’t knock it out of the park. I think I’m baking them too long, or leaving them in the hot muffin tin while they cool too long so. It’s hard to see them cooking because it’s hard to see them brown because they are already brown. A good chocolate cake is my holy grail. I will keep trying (this is a subtle thing, I acknowledge, they still all got demolished by this morning). I don’t think I can call myself a real baker until I get this chocolate cake under my belt. (Just like I don’t really think I can call myself a guitar player until I can play barre chords – I’m working on those too).

This is the chicken, not the beef. lol. We don’t grill that much, so it was a bit of a learning curve for Jeremy.

Felix came home from a shift at the pool and after the birthday party, the two of us headed to the Rockville fireworks. I haven’t been in a long, long time (over a decade, I’m sure) – these are descended from my childhood fireworks, the same ones I saw when I was a kiddo. I was super impressed, lots of parking, mostly good signage and the vibe was amazing. I get discouraged a lot about the state of our union, but sitting here packed with my fellow citizens – so diverse – all ages, races, languages, food, laughing and TOGETHER. I got to feel that American feeling again and hope that we rise up and do what’s right. We may stumble along the way, but what is it about the arc of justice?

We tried to get snacks – corn dog and/or poutine, but the lines were too long. Felix drew our fellow attendees.

And it was beautiful. Now that I’m in my 50s, you kind of realize that US history is very, very short. Like when you are a kid, 1925 sounds like the dinosaur age, but now you realize it’s like the length of your life but backwards from the day you were born. I’ve been reading some books about 1915, 1918, etc. WWI. All quiet on the western front (WWI), Dead Wake about the sinking of the Lusitania, now I’m reading about the 1918 flu and see that all these things overlapped and how everyone was going crazy then too and these crazy terrible patterns repeat themselves, but hopefully, we keep reaching for the light.

When I was a college student, I think I signed up for pistol class to fulfill a PE requirement (I wasn’t athletic then) and so – I found out that I’m not a bad shot. I remember that they wanted to recruit me to be on the pistol team, I kind of even remember the captain running out of the building after me as I was walking out and telling me that if I joined, I’d surely win, there were so few women competing and I was quite good. My mother, also a good shot, has an enormous trophy that she won when she competed in some shooting competition in her youth.

Anyways, it’s been more than 30 years since I’ve picked up a gun, but I still have a small, lingering interest in target shooting and Felix also was interested shooting a gun and, frankly since gun culture has exploded in the US in the past 30 years, I wanted to go to the shooting range to see what was going on. Sadly, what is more American than experiencing gun culture.

Ginny, Edda’s caregiver, also came with us. I couldn’t resist. A middle-aged Chinese woman, a Mexican woman and a teenage Swede walk into a gun range and…there is the beginning of a joke. Ginny is a gun owner and actually has been a member of the gun range we went to.

I was nervous, it did not help that on the way there, Ginny told us that someone got shot at the facility accidentally the day before (a person accidentally shot themselves – they are fine!). Anyways, I purchased us beginner packages and we watched a safety video and then we went to the range where it turns out, I still am an excellent shot and man, the entire thing was really scary. We shot a semi-automatic handgun (the name/brand escapes me) which was way more involved than the pistol I shot with in college. Ten rounds in a magazine. Very loud. Very scary the entire time for me.

Though, paradoxically, I am pleased very with my target. I did the target a 3 yards, 10 yards and 15 yards – the ones wider out from the center were from further away, but I’m pretty sure all my bullets landed on the paper. I still have a steady hand, but my eyesight is pretty terrible, lol.

So, what did I think of the whole thing? I was actually very discouraged and scared for all of us. When we walked on to the range from the classroom, there were a pair of buddies shooting a large gun – I literally have no idea what the names are for each of these items – with a laser sight (what fun is it when the red laser tells you where to aim?) and the loudest fire sound I could image coming out of a gun without it being a bomb that goes off in your hand. I was like – I hope those folks aren’t crazy and just decide to turn around and shoot all of us right here, right now.

Our instructor, very kind and measured, owns more than 25 guns and we asked him to bring some out and he brought out this gun which begins with AK was it 15? 19? it know it wasn’t the 47. Anyways, we weren’t allowed to shoot it at our class, but Felix did try out the feel of it. Anyways, the instructor told us he has a concealed carry permit, so he took it in his backpack everywhere he went. Like do you need an AK whatever at the grocery store? It just baffles me. I mean, I guess I knew of this, but to see it and feel it and then to imagine that every other person on the street has this in their backpack makes me kind of want to throw up. This weird fetish of gun ownership.

Busy weekend! I feel good – mentally that is. It was a tough beginning of the year for me – so it’s nice things are on the upswing. I’m trying to take advantage of it all. I did most of these on my own – Jeremy is working A LOT. So he worked a lot and exercised a bit. Eliana came both days and took Edda out on lunch adventures.

Friday night, I went to Billy’s band – the Sonic Spell at That’s Amore – a suburban bar that closes at 10 pm. I had a great time, chatting with other students of Billy’s and dancing a bit. Watching drunk people I didn’t know play air guitar. Watching 80 year old grandmas cut the rug. Goals! Now I’ve gone to enough of these to know: 70-80 db is loud, but comfortable. 90 db is loud, but you can hold a conversation with the person next to you if you yell a bit. 100 db is extremely loud and hurts your ears and no conversation is to be had. You can get the decibel readings on your watch. Always bring your earplugs (which I did) – I told Billy during the break, I care less about the hearing loss and more about acquiring tinnitus which is a huge bummer.

Saturday morning, I volunteered at Main Street’s first ever neighborhood safety day! I was busy from 9:15 to 1 pm easily. Helping set up, moving furniture, signing people in, it was a lot of fun for me. I’m happy I found such a nice place to volunteer at –

Saturday afternoon – I met Sheela at Target at Rio and played two (!) hours of Pokemon Go with her. I had told myself, only one hour because 1. how much Pokemon do you really need in your life? and 2. it was really really hot. But we bounced from shade tree to shade tree and tried to catch them all. Here we are in a cafe, cooling off after Sheela became concerned that I had brought no water at all and was worried about me dehydrating and passing out.

Friday night – we (Jeremy, Edda, Felix and me) ventured into Pike and Rose where we had ramen for dinner and, now I know this, traded dinners with everyone because, well that’s just how we roll. And then we went to Sur La Table where Felix bought gifts for us to thank us for his sabbatical stay – he bought a really nice pepper grinder for Jeremy and he’s been eyeing for a while and he bought me beautiful cotton oven mitts (I have silicone ones that were NYT’s number one pick, but they suck and are not very satisfying) so the new ones will be wonderful when I bake!

Felix can be particular about what he eats, so he hemmed and hawed about getting this baked bear cookie ice cream sandwich. Which we did end up getting and splitting four ways! Enormous. Totally enough for 4 people. Delicious.

Sunday, I took Felix to the olympic weightlifting gym. I was a little nervous about how it was going to go – would he not like the vibe, would he not like the people?, so I had planned a day of it, a little lifting, a little lunch and bookstore. This is about 30 minutes from the house in Frederick. I haven’t been in like 6 weeks because it conflicts with singing in the choir. But Felix took to it like fish to water. Like mosquitos to blood. Like a moth to flame. LIke Elka to rolling around in smelly things. He’s really good at it, the coaches were astonished that it was his first day and when he walked into the gym, he didn’t really know what a snatch or clean/jerk was. Anyways, I was done after an hour, but we stayed until the end of the session which, I think was an additional 90 minutes and we’ll go back the rest of the weekends we can before he leaves. There were people lifting more than 300 pounds over their head and Felix was like – I want to workout here. Hahaha. Everyone was encouraging him to continue training in Sweden… we’ll see.