Just regular folks.

To celebrate no one extra that I had to talk to (three weeks of people! three weeks!), I had a shouldless day in which I took a two-hour walk around the neighborhood with Elka. I designed my walk to the 5 or 6 little free libraries that are not in my immediate neighborhood, rather extending into the next neighborhood. I’m trying to read more and get more books, I somehow like my books to be slightly random.

The next neighborhood over from my current neighborhood is what I consider my “real” childhood neighborhood. There are some preserved woodland areas around the houses – dense enough so you feel like you are by yourself in the woods, but honestly so close to housing that if you yelled really loudly, someone would hear you from their kitchen. Of all the nature things, beaches, mountains, meadows, marshes, valleys, lakes, rivers, oceans, the thing I love the most is forest. And the forest I feel the most at home in are these little patches of trees that I can walk to. I don’t even know what trees are predominantly there – I just know that, as a kid, I used to go into the woods to explore and dig holes, catch tadpoles and basically hide away. Sometimes with my brother, mostly by myself. And I was only often less than a quarter mile from my house. Most of the time, I could see my house. I’m so grateful its still there, I imagine myself as an 8 year old or 10 year old or 12 year old – running around playing and thinking how I wished I was a grown up and now I am a grown up and I wish I was 8 again back in the early 80s.

Elka is a little tender in the heat. She went on an hour long walk first with Jeremy and then the two hour walk with me in which it got warmer and warmer as we walked. It was for sure toasty, but not super hot. I was OK, but Elka, towards the end of the walk went from shade tree to shade tree to rest and I sat on the ground and played games on my phone waiting for her to recover. We made it to the ice cream/pizza/coffee shop strip mall that is three minutes walking from our house – I was planning on getting lunch there, but it was so busy! The coffee shop was celebrating its one-year anniversary and the place was hopping and the lines were too long and Elka was too tired, so I headed home to make my own lunch. (But then I headed back out without Elka to get my own ice cream). A classic summer day – ice cream, parties, kids wading in streams – omg, so delicious.

I am so proud of myself for basically sustaining a social calendar for 3 weeks straight. I feel like I ran a marathon that I didn’t know I had. I mean, I did slowly increase my tolerance for socializing over the past year and then *boom* a vast increase and sustained effort. And I did it (of course, with Jeremy’s tremendous help and support). It was fun, but I need to rest before doing it again. HAHAHAHA.

Kimchi is being picked up today and then….tonight! tonight! I’ll have the house to just the OG four of us, Jeremy, me, Edda and Elka. I’ve enjoyed having Kimchi here, she’s really grown on me and now it’s no problem to have her at the house. Mainly, she’s letting me sleep through the night and not pouncing and/or wandering the house in the darkness with her clicky clacky toenails which she did the first two times she stayed with us. So I’m getting enough sleep except for last night when Edda had a seizure at 2 am. Nothing to do but just…sigh. Poor girl.

The two dogs are friends, but not best friends. Did you notice the new slipcover on our old couch? This was a good purchase. Custom made delivered from China.

Jeremy’s been great with the dogs, walking them on their walks. Kimchi likes the water more than Elka.

The dogs have made me laugh this past week, it’s been fun.

We had Kimchi put on Elka’s pajamas. She was not a fan. Do you see the streak of grey in my hair? I’m so happy for it!

Vincent left Saturday, Bob left Sunday and Katherine left Tuesday. Kimchi came Sunday and will leave on Friday. Ginny is in Cuba until Friday, so we have no childcare until then. The house is slowly getting back into order, even though, yes, the laundry is in a huge pile and yes, my office is still not in its rightful position and yes, I’m still scattered. Yesterday, I plowed through many emails – catching up, I’m moving through work, trying to clean up my docket – I renewed my MD nursing license which involved getting fingerprinted (a new thing I’ve not done before – I mean, I’ve gotten fingerprinted before, just not recently for nursing license renewals). I tried to cancel anything social for about 36 hours, giving up on my pistol league and various phone calls I should make, but some encroached on my introvert reregulation time. Hahaha.

Kimchi is…not chill. This is the third time she’s stayed at our house and she’s finally calming down and learning the rules of the house. She’s not sleeping in our bed even though she sleeps in the bed at home. We are training her and Elka to stay away from Edda while she eats. We are also training her to play “the game” which is to find a piece of chicken hidden in the house somewhere. The best thing, though, is that Kimchi and Elka have seemed to form a friendship of sorts. For the first two times, Elka seemed very put out by Kimchi, but these days, they zoom around at least two or three times a day, playing tug-of-war or just wrestling and that is a lot of fun to watch. It helps, I think, that Elka is alpha (at least in her house).

Look! I planted a Mexican milkweed plant and I’m so happy! I have a monarch caterpillar just munching away.

What a thing of beauty. I feel like…I did something for the earth instead of just pillaging it for now. I hope a bird does not eat you – you are very bright for something that is trying to not be eaten.

Hahaha. OK, Edda came out of her benzo induced stupor and by Thursday she was back at camp. Ning and Brian and kiddos left Thursday morning for their trip back to Texas and we rearranged the house – us moving back into the primary bedroom, new sheets for all the beds and blankets and Katherine and Bob (plus two dogs) came Thursday afternoon at about 3:30 pm. On Thursday (during the five hours I had between guests), I took Vince to the bookstore Politics and Prose which involved driving downtown – it was hot and this particular bookstore is not super easy to get to on public transit and then to Montgomery Mall where I did a bunch of mom things like – buy him a new wallet and get his iPhone battery replaced and then we went home where we promptly opened him a high yield savings account. (Go Vince!)

I have had no time to put things away, so here’s Elka lounging on the pile of blankets in our room.

Friday morning, I took Bob and Katherine on a tour of the potential space for renovation of the church and then Vince and his grandparents went to Glenstone art museum. I took a nap.

Then I headed into a weekend of the board retreat at the church which was about 9 hours of time this weekend. Friday night – three hours, Saturday day – six hours. Then Sunday service – 2 hours. I can’t even begin to think how much time Rick, the president is doing. Sunday afternoon, Kimchi came for a week of dog sitting and Jeremy is right now out with her on a doggie walk. Everything is good, I’m really wishing I had nothing to do for a long time. This is all good, I think. Hahah. Actually, I really wish to be able to go back to at least working out. Soon, I hope.

OK, I had this great week of vacation and I disconnected and thought about nothing and then I headed…into a week of chaos. The night before I headed home from Vermont, Jeremy told me that Edda was going into one of her cluster seizures. This one was a little more confusing because she had some breakthrough seizures during the benzo bridge that we regularly administer. Because of this, she’s been on the bridge longer than usual – now 5 days and has missed many days of her day program. We’ve been back and forth with CHOP and her new primary care doctor who wanted to admit her to the local hospital to do imaging for..you know, a brain tumor. But we didn’t want to do that and neither did CHOP. And we didn’t do it, but we thought about doing it for about six hours which stressed me out (how the hell am I going to fit a 24-36 hour admission into this week!). But now I’m past it.

Also on the way home, my parents called and told me that my mom had broken her shoulder by tripping over a baby gate at a friends’ house and it’s her dominant arm. She broke it on Monday and didn’t tell me until Friday which I guess is somewhat OK because I had my vacation oblivious to this situation because I’m sad now and I would have been sad during the vacation as well. Also, they have no air conditioning at their house because…they used to not need it, but Portland is headed into three days of a heat wave and their solution is to eat watermelon.

Edda completely zonked out on benzos for 5 days…poor girl.

Also, Vince is in town – after a great DC conference while I was in Vermont. He was able to extend his trip an extra week to see all of us. He hasn’t been home in years! We’ve seen him other places and often on Facetime. It’s lovely to have him to ourselves. The house objects have moved around and he notes it and he also remembered that we used to bolt down charging cords in the common areas to prevent teenage theft and now we don’t do that anymore because we don’t steal our own cords, but it did cross Vince’s mind to take one of those unbolted down cords to his room and then he was like…I am the problem. It’s great to have him in town, he’s seeing friends and sleeping a bunch. I don’t see much of him, but we had to cede an entire bedroom to him (his old room which is my office now, so I moved my office into Edda’s room so I can have her zonked out right next to me all day)

I also headed back into a weekend filled with church stuff, there is a new minister in town (I like her! Thank goodness!) which involved a three-hour Saturday tour/lunch of the property and Sunday service with a welcome potluck for 75. I’m not doing any of the logistics for this, but I’m there with a smile and some baked goods.

Ning Brian and kids showed up on Sunday night, we gave them the primary bedroom with the king bed and a blow up queen mattress and a cot and a tremendous amount of room. We moved out of this room and into Jeremy’s office with a queen sized bed. When they first heard they were getting the primary room, they were like – we can sleep on the couch and I was like – absolutely no couch sleeping! No one is sleeping on a couch. We are all too old and too tired for that shit. They are the easiest guests ever, out of the house at 8-9 am and back home at like 9 pm! And they walk the dog too! (Everyone wants to walk the dog.)

And then on Sunday night I went to see Weird Al Yankovic with Lexy which was a great, fun concert. The tickets were bought months ago and would I have done this during this crazy time? No not really, but I had a nice time and I got home at midnight and couldn’t sleep for an hour at least in Jeremy’s office. Lol. I learned about “chimping”.

Life is lifing along. I’m having a good time.

Sometimes I think Elka would do better in a household with little kids.

The best part of the trip were the people. We were very lucky to have a small-ish group of seven and, for the most part, walked together most days. We learned a lot about each other.

William, Megan, Doris, Cindy, Ivy, Kerry and Maggie!

Here we are at the finish – the Inn Victoria where we started!

The hike was organized by this group of 4 bed-and-breakfasts about 10 miles away from each other. They moved the luggage from one inn to the other and three other groups started at the same time we did. We would have a lovely breakfast at one inn and they would send us off and the next inn would meet us with a snack plate and clean rooms and then they would cook a lovely dinner that we would eat family style.

I took some trekking poles and I learned to walk with them – there is a special rhythm to them. It took me about 5 miles to concentration before I could really walk without thinking about it. I think they really helped on the uphills – I used them to kind of propel me up the hills.

It wasn’t “hiking” per se it was walking on quiet dirt/gravel roads.

Megan and I went on a four night hiking trip inn-to-inn in Vermont. It was magic and one of the best vacations I’ve been on (Jeremy was a little like…what? really? implying what about us?). I did not want to come home which is very unusual for me for a vacation, I’m usually always ready to go back to reality. But I wish walking 4-5 hours a day in summer Vermont everyday was my reality.

We split the drive up into two sections – starting on Saturday, we went to Dia Beacon. As soon as we pulled up into the parking lot and got out, Megan said – we are not dressed well enough. No one is wearing jeans. Hahaha, yes, there is an unspoken dress code for NYC suburb art museums. And it does not really match suburban Maryland dress code. It was fun and also absurd as these things go, Megan constantly asking ChatGPT about the art – at some point we told it that we were standing right in front of the piece and our AI friend said something like – Amazing! You are so lucky!

We stayed one night at a room in a person’s house that I rented from Airbnb. It got like so many five star reviews, and the person is so nice…but it smelled like cat pee. Not the bedroom itself, but the common areas. I mean, we rented it knowing there were resident cats and almost because it had resident cats, but it was problematic and I hate leaving bad reviews. But I did just now.

Sunday, we drove to Bard. A place that I thought that I’d never be back at – but I saw the old house and I took Megan on a tour around campus. I know I was behaving as if I owned the place – opening doors to empty buildings and trying out different paths. We saw the art museum on campus which we enjoyed more than the Dia Beacon.

Megan worked at a summer camp in the area and also remembered Holy Cow, so we got ice cream! I can’t believe these two ice creams with sprinkles and chocolate dip was only $3.50!

Loves, it was a beautiful summer day yesterday and Kristen and I headed out to paddle! I don’t think I’ve unfurled my paddleboard for a few years and Kristen was out on the water on Monday – hahaha. This is the state of our lives, Kristen loves the water and wants to be near the water and wears blue all the time and I apparently just like water. There was a little moment there where my paddle board wouldn’t inflate, but Kristen figured it out and all was well.

Kristen mentioned that her and her husband had a weekend away without kids for the first time in like 6-7 years and it just floored me. Her two kids are like 19 and 21 and I was under the impression that all couples with typical kids go away for the weekend, like…all the time! I imagine that I would with Jeremy if Edda was able to make her own sandwiches. I went home and I asked Jeremy when the last time we went away for the weekend and concluded that it must have been before the pandemic (but it’s not true, now I remember we went away for one night to see friends in Delaware where we caught our first case of covid).

We have had planned weekends away from Edda, but they have been…odd. We stay within driving distance of the house and go at odd times of the year and it seems kind of pointless and we do worry about Edda while we are away. Jeremy has no interest in seeing Europe, he’s like we did all the traveling before we had kids! He only wants to go places where he can climb up a very tall mountain. I want to see things, but not “tourist places”. I’m really not interested in the Louvre or Big Bend or the place in the US where you go through the little tunnels and light comes in through the tops of the slit in the earth and you have to shove all the other tourists out of the way to make it seem like no one else is in this canyon besides yourself. My favorite vacation is to go somewhere and see friends along the way and eat pizza. I really enjoyed our cross country trips with the dog. I’m kind of not willing to fly somewhere with Jeremy (who I literally spend 24 hours a day with normally) and be that far away from Edda with her random seizures and the caregivers that we have wouldn’t be able to cover the entire day/night anyways. And mostly, we like being at home and with each other. Jeremy makes meals that are better than most restaurant meals, I make desserts better than most bought desserts. Our house is very nice, we like each other. Travel is a lot of trouble. Hahaha. And money. And Ginny asked us if we did travel points via credit cards and we do not because…1) it’s too much to keep track of (I’m already having trouble just keeping track of the credit cards themselves. I have had to order THREE new credit cards in the last few months because of misplacements – at least one of which I found after I ordered the new one already – granted these are Edda’s credit cards so they flit in/out of the house with different people and at different times in different bags/wallets), 2) it’s a rich person’s game and I tend to not like that kind of stuff and 3) we don’t really enjoy traveling in a way that would use points well – like we like to stay in nondescript hotels and eat in ethnic hole-in-the-walls.

I had to kind of sneak out of the house because Elka has an uncanny way of knowing when I’m going to see Kristen. I usually start bustling a rushing around at 8:30 am and Elka’s like – OMG we are going on a super long hike with KRISTEN! But I couldn’t bring Elka onto the water, so…slinking out of the house was for me.

Jeremy loves me so much, he bought me a cordless weed wacker. He knows me so well! I’m going to head out to wack some weeds.

As we grow older, I feel like Jeremy has really gone for measuring and collecting data, and I’m going more towards throwing all that stuff away. Jeremy measures his sleep, steps, heart rate, heart rate while sleeping, blood pressure, weight. All the biking parameters – workout, distance, power, recovery. He wants to do even more, glucose monitoring. He gets mad at his AI watch telling him – you are really ready for a workout! or your workout was too hard! or you need a rest day! As if you can’t really feel it yourself? I measure my weight and my blood pressure daily, but other than that, I try to throw it all away. When Paul was coaching my running, I did much more tracking of my running – the speed at which I did all the workouts, how fast I could run a mile, a 400s, whatever. When I was really, really into it, I could dial in my pace on the track to the correct prescribed pace by feel and not look at my watch.

Anyways, for about a year, I shifted the focus of my workouts to weightlifting and cut back on running and it was…ok. I don’t really mind weightlifting, but it doesn’t really feel like a workout to me. I mean I can spend an hour at it, but at the end, I’ve not sweated, I’m not really even that tired (and it turns out, I’m not very good at it (which is fine, but..also slightly discouraging). And then it turned out that I procrastinated on those workouts and my exercise routine was all wonky and out of sorts. So I switched back to running more a few weeks ago and not just running running (plodding along), but slotting in some intervals or sprints which I have not done in a long time and it feels good to me. You have to kind of learn to be not beholden to the number on the watch or the treadmill. I’m so much slower and heavier than I was even 5 years ago, but I’m not really chasing a number, I’m chasing a feeling.