A few days ago, a friend introduced me to the Merlin app. It is a bird identification app run by Cornell and it’s a lot of fun. You can have it listen to bird calls and it’ll ID birds that way, or you can snap a photo of a bird and it’ll take a look at them and ID them that way. Then it’s like…do I count it if the app hears the bird and I don’t see it? In the olden days, I might have been…I need to see it to actually count it, but these days, I’m just like, I’m just trying to enjoy myself – no need to torture myself. So, I’m just counting it if the app hears the bird. I’m starting very easy – I have 23 birds on my found list including these Canadian geese, who probably technically found me. Look! Little itty bitty babies!
Here is my Oreo cheesecake of which I only had a little taste of – we cut it into 16 pieces at and I gave out 5 at dinner – one to Ginny, one split between Edda and Jeremy, three for Ginny to take home for the kids and then I just licked the knife. Delicious.
And then I took it to choir and it was demolished. Such joy! I feel like my mom who brought treats to work all the time. Hahaha.
We’ve been members of the JCC for like 17 years? omg, so long. Anyways, we are members because of the annual beloved camp that Edda (and Vince) went to during the summers. Now we no longer really need to be members as we no longer need to register for camp (weep), but when I went to cancel the membership (which includes the gym/pool/etc. that we never use) last year and replace it with a donation, I hesitated because – would they rather me be a member? or a donor? And then sometimes once you hesitate on these things, you never get back to them again. The monthly charge popped up again on my bank statement and then I decided to turn back to it and it turns out that you can be a member AND a donor at the same time. So I’m changing the regular membership to the member/donor option. (This is the most boring blog post ever, sorry.). There are forms to fill out, one to cancel, one to restart and Jeremy and I will be members and then it was like – who is our emergency contact in case both of us are incapacitated? I hesitated and put VINCE for the first time. Then I texted him that this was a big step and he was are emergency contact.
His reply:
Screenshot
I have this beautiful notebook that Dani gave me last year from Japan and I always have dreams of using is with different colors and neat handwriting. I have all the pens, I have all the grids. I probably even have the handwriting. What I lack is the caring. I used to care and square everything and I remember that girl who wanted everything just so – was a rigid person I was back then worried about all possiblee mistakes. But now I’m like…who the hell knows what is going on, I’m just going to scribble and make mistakes everyday – it’s no fun unless you screw up a little bit everyday. I made an Oreo cheesecake last night. I didn’t use a water bath like you are supposed to because the recipe insisted that I didn’t need one, but maybe I did need one because the top did split – a mini grand canyon in the middle of my cheesecake with little oreo crags and crevices that miniature cheesecake rock climbers would be happy to traverse. Oh well. I was hoping to not need to make the ganache to cover the error, but now I need to slather it with a coating of chocolate. Just terrible.
We are so excited that Dani’s graduate studies are suppose to help us measure the ripeness of pears based on their color. We actually have that problem in the house – Jeremy loves pears and they are not predictable. Sometimes, for whatever reason, they never ripen, other times, they rot from the inside, other times they are so delicious and ripen all within the same 8 hours and then Jeremy is like – OK, today we are only eating pears. I have 13 pears here that need to be eaten…right now, right now. And then we all get down to eating pears – except for Elka who will eat a fallen pear piece but really is waiting for the fallen chicken morsel.
This is a photo of my backyard. It appears as if I’m growing metal silos, but there are actually little trees in the center of the metal hoops. I take great pleasure in taking out the compost each day, dumping the slop in a randomly established pile and making the rounds – hello redbud! Hello dogwood! Hello serviceberry! Their tiny leaves unfurling, bright, shiny and tender, like a rug burn reminding you are alive and can hurt whenever you move and your clothes brush against your new, baby skin.
Usually, I’m at peace when I’m walking around. Actually, today, I was feeling slightly overwhelmed for whatever reasons and I was like…I will go walk in my field of metal circles and say hello to my green, leafy friends and try to calm the fuck down. (This is really what I spend my entire life doing, downregulating myself. OMG. so much work.)
Anyways, my pride and joy is (was, actually, foreshadowing) a little oak tree. The only one I was able to grow from bare root – all my other bare root trees failed to leaf out. It was about a foot tall and maybe 2 mm in diameter. I was dreaming of it 250 years hence, when I was no longer here, perhaps the house would no longer be here, perhaps we all will not be here, but somehow the tree would be here. It’s four leaves unfurled to full white oak size despite its tiny stature. I walked up today and did not see the leaves, panicked – I stood there for a long time searching and slowly, unfortunately negating all the downregulating I was doing. I finally saw the little stump. Can you call it a stump if it’s only 2 mm across? I suspect a rabbit? or chipmunk? Whatever can get through a 2 x 4 inch grate opening (not a deer) (sorry for the inconsistent deployment of measurement systems). And then I muttered to myself – the oak was felled by a resident rabbit.
My friend Dave has three sisters. On Mother’s Day, three bouquets arrived on the porch. The first one read “From your favorite daughter”, the second one read, “From your real favorite daughter” and the last one read “From your definitely, undisputed favorite daughter”. Hahaha. I often say to Vince – you are my favorite son. And Vince says back to me – and you are my favorite mom.
Look! A fox! On its way to kill something for breakfast.
I had a very busy weekend. On Saturday, I went to lunch with three friends to discuss previous capital campaigns of the church – this was very informative and I got to take them to A&Js to share with them my favorite restaurant. And because we were four, I got to try so many things at once. A&Js was at its best, lively and packed, full of mostly Asian folks, a delight! I thought I ordered too much, but I did not. Everything was eaten.
Saturday night, Lexy took me to the Cedar Lane branch of UU and we attended their big action auction night. Lexy had been a member, but now she drives past them to come to Rockville, a move I understand now having spent an evening at Cedar Lane – everyone was super nice, we got a tour of the new renovation, I met with the executive director, who gave us the name of their architect. It’s a very nice congregation, but it was fancier than we are – the night was catered and they had kitchen staff to bus the tables and clean up. We generally can’t afford stuff like that – we have potluck and we bus our own tables. We are scrappier and quirkier and…it made me love us more. It feels like I’m back at my old quirky dorm in college – free spirits, oddballs and mostly live and let live. It’s not perfect, but it’s apparently what I like.
Mother’s Day, I went for a run, went to sing in the choir and I promised myself I would duck out right after service, but I was caught in a few conversations, but made it home by 12:30 pm where I spent the afternoon napping and reading The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny with Edda right next to me. Sunday night, we had a great family dinner, Rachel and Sarah came, and it’s so much more fun when they show up. For example, Rachel told us her story of donkeys having sex in the middle of the children’s petting zoo at the National Zoo a few weeks ago and how everyone scattered, but she walked towards the copulating animals and took photos, which she shared with all of us as we were laughing our heads off.
Happy Mother’s day to my mom!
Maybe Jeremy was thinking of buying me this for mother’s day?
I’ve been baking a lot because I have a lovely audience – choir on Thursday nights and church service on Sundays. We all get to try a slice a home and then I bring take the rest away and it all gets demolished within two hours with no one eating 10,000 slices of cake/cookies. The chocolate things always go first, but sometimes you don’t want to bake a chocolate thing. So I baked this apple cake – so delicious. Because I have only so much time, I’ve unfortunately kind of replaced the hours working out with baking which somehow seems worse than just not working out. It seems the total opposite of working out somehow, except you get a lot of people enjoying baked goods and telling you that they are enjoying baked goods.
It’s fun trying things out, but you slowly realize people want only the regular cookies: chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, snickerdoodles, sugar, peanut butter, ginger. Does anyone want a miso cookie? or toffee cookie? not really.
Remember last week I shot targets with a club-borrowed Ruger Mark II that jammed all the time and I was too shy to do a do-over? Well, someone took the malfunctioning pistol home to clean/service and the Range Officer let me borrow her “fancy” (she called it fancy, I did not call it fancy) Smith and Wesson 41 from the 70s that was her father’s. I was intrigued at the chance to use a highly accurate vintage pistol. The interesting thing about this setup (decidedly not vintage) is that there is a sight on it which is battery powered and projects a small, bright red-dot right at bullseye (who knew this existed?, not me.). Previously, I’ve always sighted by iron sights, which is the little notch on the leading end of the barrel and the two notches towards the back end of the barrel and you have to line those notches up together first evenly and then match the lineup to the bullseye. I talked to Jeremy about it this morning about the little red dot and he was like – that seems like cheating and boy when I set up the gun and sighted it, it sure did seem like cheating. You mean, all I have to do is to match the red dot to the bullseye? I was pleased with my score – I remain a good shot, I could improve if I practiced. To practice, I’d probably need to buy my own gun which I’m not a huge fan of, but I’m slowly coming around to (!). Maybe. This is like the weirdest hobby of mine, I still am not super comfortable around the range – it totally still gives me the heebie-jeebies. I’m now friends with people who actively collect firearms. I’m only intrigued because I’m, essentially without any practice, shooting really, really well. And, really, it’s a lot of fun being good at something, and extra fun to be good at something that boys usually do, it is my favorite way of being good at something – though the person running the league is a very experience, very good shot woman.
Verizon came through and installed fiber optic to the church. (This has been such a boring, boring set of blog posts. I’m sorry.) This after the folks in the congregation were like – it’s going to cost us $70,000 for them to trench and install the fiber when the fiber is running in the neighborhood like 100 feet from our driveway. But it’s in! And it cost me *nothing*. I feel like I can resign any leadership position at the church now. I got them a new copier. I got them fiber optic internet. My work here is done.
Once you get this old – like as old as I am, nothing surprises me anymore. Like literally nothing. People will be like…I’m going to tell you something that is completely shocking or embarrassing or terrible or whatever, and when I hear it, I’m like, yeah, that sounds about right – it’s all about money, hurt feelings and grief – there is really nothing else. How does one keep going? Really, you have to keep going.
I’ve been indulging Vince. He’s been doing so well and he asks, really, for very little. He’s never been one to clamor for new electronics, new clothes, fancy trips or stunning cars that other people might have that he wants. And now, he’s really on his own, never asks for money, calls me all the time, I just want to squeeeeee with happiness. One of my favorite teenage stories is this eavesdropping story I had at the gas station when Vince was a teen (so now 10 years ago), a mom with her teenage son were standing next to each other filling up the tank for a fine-looking minivan and the mom kind of mumbled how expensive gas was and her kid – half yelling, half exasperated was like – MOM! We need to buy a TESLA! I hear other people’s children put an entire powerpoint slide for Christmas desires. Vince is often happy to delay his holiday requests and birthday requests until a need arises. Vince recently moved into a new-to-him grad housing which was unfurnished and I bought him a new IKEA couch and coffee table for his grad student apartment. He called this weekend from his couch, lying on it in great comfort and he said – now the couch-sized hole in my heart is filled. Thank you mom.
He’s so grown up! And yet, I have regressed by buying on ebay Thomas the Tank engine toys. Here I am happily housing the trains in the roundhouse and the mine (Jeremy is like – wtf about the mine? you know we don’t like mines.) hahaha. Of course, of all the things I brought to the babysitting gig, no one really played with my beloved trains. OF COURSE! of course.
Jeremy was in Kansas City last week as soon as he got home, he was like, I think I need to go to California next week (meaning this week). So he’s gone this morning. We had been planning to drive to Ohio this weekend to see friends, but, in retrospect, I’m very happy that that did not happen. I’m so busy and frustrated at work (my real job), the church stuff (my fake job and now I’m really getting into the underbelly of it all) and trying to get better from this cold and relearning how to exercise. It’s not perfect, but it’s manageable.
I volunteered to help watch six kids on Friday night for a Parents’ night out. I packed well. Sheets for sofa forts, bubbles for the playground, popcorn popper with fancy popcorn, tent, all my Thomas the Tank engine toys, and all the socks in the house for a sock fight.
I showed up and there were not six kids, there were NINE kids which was pretty much our capacity as two of the kids were under two and not potty trained. It was a gorgeous day and the bubble was a big hit – we stayed outside as long as we could, maybe heading in at about 7 pm. I made sure to get the big bubble wand to make enormous bubbles. I helped with the kids from 5-8 pm, but by happenstance, the little little kids were picked up at 7:30 which left 4 of the oldest kids and 30 minutes for me to implement the sock fight which was a big hit and a great way to end the night and, really, fifteen minutes of sock fighting was enough time as we somewhat devolved into some light sibling squabbling. I think I amused the parents at pick up a lot too, which I enjoy – I like being the fun babysitter. HAHAHA. I also like big bubbles and sock fights and it’s not everyday I get a chance to do those things.
Saturday night, we went to Fairfax to see Deb. She declined Edda’s birthday party a few months ago and so I reached out for a chance to see her. I knew she was looking to move into a continuing care complex, but I thought she moved to the Montgomery Mall area, but it turns out she moved to Fairfax! It was a really new one, just opened in 2024 and it was fun to go and see her and eat in the dining hall. This is one run by the same company that runs Gene and Bette’s housing. Deb has lived on her own for a long time in a house that was hard for her to manage and so it was so nice to see Deb making lots of friends and saying hello left and right in her new place. So social! The apartment was lovely and we had a great time! It’s nice to be around young people and old people to keep it diverse, all within 24 hours.
Many years ago, my PCP was Dr. Belcher who I adored and she was part of a 4-5 woman internal medicine practice and they were an independent medical office called Spectrum Family Health. They had a slightly run-down waiting room, but everyone was very nice and I felt well taken care of. Then, it got combined with a local practice conglomerate (maybe 10-15 offices around the DMV) and rebranded as Comprehensive Primary Health. I asked Dr. B about the acquisition and she said that Spectrum could not keep up with insurance demands and would only be able to survive by combining with an organization with a dedicated insurance team calling insurance all day, following up on everything. The practice moved into a brand-new space with kiosks for logins. My lovely doctor B retired and the doctor who took on Dr. Belcher’s caseload, I love – she’s young, in her 30s with little ones, she’s funny and straightforward and on our second visit, because we liked each other so much she gave me her personal phone number. (When Jeremy heard this, he was like…this would never happen to me in 10,000 years.). She’s a big fan of vaccines and vegetables – really? ME TOO! Then, this year, Comprehensive Primary Health got bought out by an insurance company and private equity. Now it’s called CloseKnit. My primary care office is run by an insurance company – and now they are squeezing the blood out of every interaction, not maximizing my health, but maximizing profits. I think there are no independent internal medicine practices left in the local vicinity. They are increasing the workload of every provider, so they can not keep up with they patient load. (I felt this way when I was a provider – how many shifts did I end up distraught because I couldn’t do all the things I needed to do for my 5 patients? – perhaps all of them, now I know nurses take on 6 patients a shift regularly, omg, I would DIE.), and I know it has only increased since the pandemic. My beloved doctor is now setting up her own concierge practice. Basically, for an annual fee, you get twelve unrushed visits a year and an annual physical and access to her 24/7 via text/email. Same day visits are always available and she will call you back if you are worried about something – all medications and tests are routed through insurance, but the visits are not. So, I’m going to follow her to her new practice. Do I feel bad about this? Yes. I have a pretty strong loyalty to public things – I sent my kids to public schools – all the way through university. I’d like to think I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t … like a friend to my doctor and want to support her new business. I mean, she’s already kind of acting as my own concierge doctor. Edda (and I) went to see her at CloseKnit yesterday as she’s winding down her practice there for an annual checkup – she’s trying to get Edda at-home PT (!) and because she recommended her #1 local neurologist to Edda (who we like) but we realized doesn’t take Medicaid and that is a critical thing because we need Medicaid to pick up some of Edda’s rescue seizure meds ($300 if they run it through only my insurance, but $1 if they run it through Medicaid), she was texting me last night at 8 pm when she talked with her ER doc hubby and remembered a few more local neuros that take Medicaid that they like! 8 pm! Talking at dinner with her hubby! So how much is this going to cost me? like $2500 a year.
Elka-belka took her stuffie on a walk with her yesterday, it was the most beautiful day!
The last week or so, I’ve been strangely obsessed with collecting these metal Thomas the Tank Engine toys from Vince’s childhood. I have about 20 of these, well worn from Vince’s continuous play during the years from 2004-2006? And I started buying more from ebay because they stopped making them in 2009 or so. Yesterday, I wondered if anyone had compiled a list of the complete collection and – yes! someone did. This is what the internet is good for. (omg – the internet is so bad these days. so bad, so hard to use, so easy to be scammed, ads left and right. it’s so hard to have lived through the golden years of the internets and see it just…turn into the slop that it is today) So I lined up all my trains and accounted for them. This is a good collection – finite in scope (less than 200), the items are old, but not too old (no lead in these toys) and they made a bajillion of them, so each can be bought on ebay for about $10, probably less than they charged when they were originally for sale (counting for inflation).
Jeremy was in Kansas City for two nights – one day. He came home late last night, it was only when he was at the Kansas City airport on the way home that he realized that he was flying into Dulles and not National – which was the airport he flew out of and where the car was parked. Doh! So he took an Uber from Dulles to National and picked up the car and came home. Elka, the good dog that she is, jumped up with alacrity when she heard rustling downstairs.
