On Saturday, I volunteered at Main Street at their Locust Grove hike. I brought Elka who was the star of the show. I think this was the least attended activity that I’ve been at, fewer than 5 people maybe? I think it was because it’s not on the Metro line, so folks signed up without a plan to get there. Oh well. It was a lovely day and I enjoyed the fall colors with our small, but mighty group.
I’d not been to the nature center before – they have collected cool things that you can touch.
That evening, I went with Kristen and her sisters to a witchy paddle where we are all supposed to dress up as witches and then “fly” on our paddleboards. I was rushing to leave the house, and I forgot my costume. So I was the very boring witch. Kristen and her sisters had on spooky makeup and even attached a light-up scaredy cat to their board.
My favorite thing in the whole world – money cannot buy – is a good night’s sleep – preferably in my very own bed. OMG, I find it very hard to predict how I’ll sleep at night – exercise too little, too much, to much stress, to lazy and napped too long during the day. Argh… lol. Wed night – terrible night of sleep, up at 3 am for no reason, can’t get back to sleep. Last night, gorgeous night of uninterrupted sleep. Thank the lord.
Everyday, I lament the pizza place that closed down down the street from my house. Pizza is my favorite food. I could eat pizza every day at every meal for the rest of my life. What replaced it was Z&Z which is this Levantine restaurant. They serve things shaped like pizza and it’s so close to pizza that I was hoping it would be a good trade for the old pizza place. I’d gone to this new establishment three or four times in the past when it first opened and through the pandemic and was so underwhelmed with the food and atmosphere and sad that we didn’t have the old pizza place, I stopped going a few years ago. Then, out of the blue, this little small shop got write ups in the NY Times and Bon Appetit. I will say, I was completely incredulous that they got the kudos because I found the food to be, well, uninspired.
I don’t know what possessed me to try again, but I went yesterday and the place was so lively with families with little kids packed into the small seating area. A kind owner helped me to order and I sat down at a table to enjoy one of their flatbreads. It was really good, crunchy and savory, both warm from the oven and cool topped with cucumbers. And they came by and offered tiny free cups of chai to all the customers. It was delightful. (Would I still rather the pizza place? Yes. But will I come again to the flatbread place? Yes again.)
Had I been influenced? Did the food actually get better? Was I charmed by the atmosphere? I honestly have no idea. It goes to show that one’s feelings are fluid and can change based on new information and different situations. When I was younger, I always thought my feelings were true, but now I know they are in flux – depending on how much sleep I got, who is there, who tells me various information. Now I try very hard to feel the way I want to feel about a situation and not the other way around, to not let the situation drive my feelings. Does that make any sense? I’m literally a crazy person. DoN’t LiStEn To Me.
I’m skewing a little too social for me right now, what can I say? The alone time vs social time are in direct competition with each other – one goes up, the other goes down. I want lots of both, I haven’t really figure it out yet. On Wed morning, I met up with Julide at her house – this was supposed to be a summer get-together postponed many, many months.
I love going to her house (which I haven’t done in years) because there are always lots of interesting things – tea collection, unbelievable hand-knits that she does, we didn’t even get to the garden tour before I had to leave and go back to work. She’s going to help me with some of Edda’s transition year issues – she has some special needs kiddos and is a few years ahead of me in this process. You know how you can procrastinate one thing by being productive on another? Well, I’m putting off actually finding a place for Edda to be after she leaves high school which I’m suppose to be doing it right now right now (probably instead of blogging too). Instead, I’m having tea with a friend under the auspices of “learning more” about it, but really, we are just laughing our heads off about various non-serious things.
And I went to an evening meeting where I bumped into Hiroko, also about all the things I should be doing for Edda, but I have not yet really done.
Jeremy biked into work yesterday – 3 hours in, 2 hours back. A beautiful gorgeous day to do such a thing.
I wanted to thank Jeremy for manning the fort for two weeks without me, it’s not easy as it’s still many moving parts and when I left for the Hawaii and NYC stint, I was not quite confident that Edda’s seizures were going to be dormant the entire time. Edda’s meds changed while I was gone and I came back to an entirely different pill-box-filling routine and she seems great (knock on wood) and remarkably happy and didn’t have any medical issues while I was gone. With all my love and affection – xoxo. And thank you Elka for taking care of Jeremy.
We are trying to learn olympic lifting from my friend Ward who runs a non-profit weightlifting gym in Frederick. Really, this is Jeremy’s idea and less my idea. Jeremy spends a bunch of time watching videos of people lifting – often he’s like – look at this woman who weighs less than you snatching 100 kg! So, that is a woman, tinier than me throwing more than 200 pounds over her head. Unbelievable. So some videos from our coach from Sunday’s gym session. Sorry the videos are of poor quality, I blame the android to apple (*&@^ texting conversion crap. I have not watched many videos of lifting, so I kind of don’t even know what I’m trying to mimic, but Jeremy’s watched lots. Don’t be fooled by the weights, I didn’t keep track of the weights, but I think we are trying here with less than 45 pounds which is less than a bar without a single weight would be at the olympics. My main goal is to not hurt myself. My second goal, of course, is the Olympics. Sure, it’s very far away, but whatevs.
And, of course, I didn’t forget. The dolphin video from Kauai. Swoon.
OMG. So I was home for less than 48 hours which I tried to rejigger myself back to east coast time and took Edda with Jeremy to the dermatologist to look at moles and crusty ears on Edda.
Then I took a bus to NYC for two nights. My running coach (and German professor at Ohio State), Paul, translated Karl Marx’s book Capital. And it took him only 5 years or so. He would love it if you bought a copy, but no pressure! I went to NYC to attend his book event, which at the time I said I would go months ago, seemed like a great idea and in retrospect, was a wonderful and satisfying trip, but I would have liked a little more down time.
I went to the opera on Thursday night. Rigoletto by Verdi. Dave, my grad school friend and present-day coworker, is a huge opera fan and tried to coach me through the opera the day before, the most important advice was to read the plot before you go so you know what to expect even though they are singing in Italian. He did warn me that everyone dies and it’s true, everyone dies – but not before they can sing about 5 minutes of a song that says – forgive me! forgive him, etc., etc. I went because I’d never been to the Met and look at this gorgeousness. It was a packed house on Thursday night, lots of older folks, but also lots of younger folks. I sat next to a chic young couple – I think b.k. (before kids) with sparkle shoes and fancy handbag and such things. You better believe that I spent some time looking up on the internets, best value ticket – so I bought front row of the highest level which was great. Well worth the ticket price.
The next day, I spent the morning with Lael, eating brunch and chatting – beautiful day in Brooklyn. I’m usually in NYC to visit Lael, so often, I book a hotel near her and never use the subway, but this time, I booked a hotel in Murray Hill – far-ish away from both the bookstore and Lael (I thought the book event was at another branch of the bookstore, I think? I actually can’t quite remember why I booked the hotel in such a weird spot). Anyways, I took the subway so many times – you gotta keep up these skills, finding your way around. God, at least it’s still in english! Just confusing. The signage is both great and unclear. Lots of signs, maybe too many signs. I also paid with no app, no card. I paid for the subway trips on a credit card on my watch.
After brunch with Lael, I went to the Morgan Library which was interesting and I got to see a Gutenberg bible – a thrill. I toured this using their free audio app, which was good. Then I went back to the hotel and took a nap.
Then I headed to the financial district where the bookstore was. Saw the new world trade center subway station with its white fishbone structure.
And the new Perlman Performing Arts center.
And then I met up with Paul and Alan – we got to chat for a bit before the event. Alan amused himself by looking at the Greek in some of the footnotes in the book – apparently it’s very easy to make typos in the Greek, but no typos in this particular section.
Here’s Paul (center) and his co-editor – also Paul and apparently this very famous moderator person. I do not know who this very famous person is, but she moderated just fine. Paul, Alan and I had dinner together which was very nice.
My bus on Sat was not until 11 am, so I tucked a Central Park run in in the morning.
And then had a bacon egg and cheese bagel at a bagel place – look at all these crazy cream cheeses.
So while I was gone, Edda had an art exhibit which I was sad to miss. Every year, Megan, her teacher has the class make a canvas painting and now we have five of them, and I submitted them to the Main Street art exhibit. It was accepted and the opening reception was Friday night. Luckily, Megan was able to go and celebrate with Edda.
Now I’m back at home and planning on not leaving for months! I’m really, really tired and there is lots of work to do at home. xoxo
On Thursday, (after the Limahuli gardens tour (the best one!)) we moved south from Princeville to Poipu. We couldn’t check into our Airbnb until 4, so it was a long-ish day involving my mom’s favorite chicken lunch (unexpected find after my original option was closed), a drive to a plant nursery where I bought some cuttings cleared to go to the mainland, some donuts and then to our place near Poipu beach.
The next day, I ventured out in the morning on my own for a swim at the beach, and walked around town past all the resorts and shopping.
I watched some turtles swim in the water, this one happily saying hello to me.
For lunch, we went to Koala Fish Market. I want to say – I think i knocked it out of the park food wise on this trip. Save for an overhyped beach Hawaiian hot dog, all the meals were lovely – a mix of restaurant, simple meals at home and a bunch of small, local hole-in-the-walls. Lots of fish for my mom, some local delicacies, relatively high on fruits and vegetables, though still lower than what I usually love – but low on the number of hamburgers and pizza. We also were really good at not over ordering (usually by ordering two meals or even one meal and one big salad) and then also packing up extras to bring home for the next meal.
This was my favorite meal of the week, the lau lau, and piece of pork wrapped in a plant leaf. So tender and delicious!
That evening, we went to the Smith family luau. Pretty cute!
My parents enjoyed looking at an imu (buried oven) where they roast three pigs each evening for the luau.
This was my father’s favorite meal. It was also super cute because soooo many people were here getting married, on their honeymoon or anniversary! A few couples had gotten married that day! I was kind of like…ok? It would not have been how I would celebrate my wedding day, but to each their own.
Finally, the piece-de-resistance! We went to the Allerton/McBryde gardens – my mom has tried to go there twice before, once closed because of a typhoon, the second time, she arrived 20 minutes after it closed. So on Saturday, we went extra early to be sure that we did not miss anything. And we didn’t! We got to see it all!
This was my mom on all the plant tours. Lots of photos of plants.
On the south side of the island, the guides were much more savvy with offering to take photos. They were all much, much better at adding flair to the photos. Kauai is known for being the background for many movies, including Jurassic Park and so this guide added a dinosaur into our photo! On the one on the phone, the dinosaur actually moves and kind of opens its mouth more. My parents were like – how did he do that?, and I’m like – I have absolutely no idea.
After all these botanical gardens, I’ve learned that all my houseplants – if I shipped them to Hawaii and planted them into the ground, would completely grow into an enormous tree, like 4 stories tall and as wide as a half a city block. My fiddle leaf fig, my monstera, my dracena, my ficus trees (2), my pothos, all in my house, just miniature versions of their true selves.
Gorgeous spots all up day long.
I really wanted to find a fruit stand in Hawaii for my mom. They are hard to pin down, the weekly ones are held all over the island only one day a week and usually not corresponding to where we were going that day. I had an entire list that I went through trying to match up our iteneray with the opportunities for fruit. I was not optimistic and I warned my mother about that, but in the end, we did find the perfect fruit stand and we were able to go twice and to get a coconut. Success!
Saturday night, we went to “fancy” dinner – at a restaurant with a view.
Again, the waiter was so kind, taking us out to the edge of the property and setting up this long exposure photo with the moon and the beautiful waves in the background.
Last day, Sunday, boat day! We went on a boat to see the Na Pali coast – not accessible by car – only by boat and/or helicopter. This was really fun until it was not, my mom got seasick while we were bobbing for an hour at our snorkel spot. I will count the dolphin sightings as the highlight of the trip because it was on the boat before my mom got sick. Again, the crew of the boat got a good video of the dolphins, I’ll upload when I get back home as I’m on slightly slow airplane wifi right now. I loved this boat ride – calm and sightseeing-ly on the way out, a bit of snorkling in the middle, and a nice choppy (but not scary!) ride on the way home where I sat in the front hammock so I could barely see anyone and only the front of the boat getting splashed and wet and imagining that I was a dolphin swimming in the waves. So much fun. I do enjoy and miss kayaking of which this boat feeling was adjacent, it is exhilarating. There was also food! Breakfast and lunch.
Headed home to Portland right now! I’m so happy I got to do this with my parents. I’ve not done this before, planned a vacation from head to toe – so I’m super please on how it turned out. Hawaii does make it easy, it’s basically 24/7 vacation, i’m not sure I could plan a trip to Europe or South America as well, so good training grounds for me. I did spend a lot of time thinking about the rhythms of the days and how the activities/restaurants all flowed together. All plants all the time for my mom, a pig roast for my dad (and he also enjoyed very much the nice photos people took for us), and for me, a chance to do something nice for/with my parents. This was not a cheap trip, and normally I’d hesitate to spend this much money on this stuff and many times in the past (or all the times in the past, I’ve tried budget more carefully – but it is true, you pay for convenience; the better flight times, the closer in parking, etc.), but I’m not sure how many more trips of this caliber that can happen, so I tried to spend-out. But not crazy spend-out. I mean, I did not book any private tours or personal guides or luxury resorts, but I tried to not agonize over an extra $150 here or there. I know, so lucky to be able to do this. So lucky to be able to afford it, have the time to go and be in good health. Blessings all around, things I do not take for granted. And Hawaii presented its best self to us, gorgeous weather all week, good food, nice accomodations, great hospitality everywhere we went. And I personally thank the traffic gods who helped me navigate the island smoothly and would present parking spaces when I needed them without too much trouble – thank you for looking out for me – sincerely, a nervous driver – me.
While we were at Vince’s graduation in June, my mother turned to me and said – I really want to go to Hawaii – and then I said – so what do you want to see in Hawaii? – and then she said – I want to see plants. So in an act of filial piety, I arranged a week-long trip to Hawaii for my parents – all.plants.all.the.time. I wanted to go to only one island, so we are on the plant island – Kauai. They are footing the bill; I’m the travel agent and chauffeur. We are about 75% of the way through the trip and it’s been both fun and, as vacations always are, full of not-good sleep nights, little spats, lots of talk about pooping (both too much and not enough).
Here we go – Hawaii, it turns out, is a long way from DC – my parents are based in Portland right now. So I took one day to get to Portland, stayed over at my parent’s house and then the next day, we flew to Lihue Airport in Kauai (stopover in Honolulu). Flying to Hawaii is interesting – everyone on the plane is on vacation, so it makes for a kind of festive kind of flight. (though the person next to me was working on an excel spreadsheet? )
We split the week into two parts, one on the north shore (a little more rustic, rainy with lots of dangerous but beautiful surf and lots of plants) and one on the south shore (more resorts, better beaches, more tourist amenities).
I chose well for our first airbnb (not so much for the 2nd one, we’ll get to that later). Sunning view this is from the lanai (balcony). Unbelievably gorgeous and breezy.
First day, I knew we were going to get up early so we went to Ha’ena Beach Park and watched the sunset – my most favorite beach of this trip, the entire strip of sand to ourselves, the gorgeous sun coming up over the clouds.
This is my favorite photo of the trip. I’m leaning up against my father who is making a funny face and my mom is kind of littering in the way that she does throwing a banana peel into the bushes. Can you see the flying banana? Classic Rena – honestly.
Then we went to Princeville Botanic Gardens, a private garden which was lovely. There were plants, there was a chocolate tasting. All good things. There were little bridges and steps to connect everything. I thought it was nicely done. Because we are doing all plants all the time, we are going on 4 botanical garden tours, this is the first we would hear of many of the same stories about famous plants in Hawaii. Excellent – 5 stars.
The cacao tree – super interesting. Those pods grow from the trunk from the flowers on the trunk. And if you leave the pods on the tree and they overripe and die, they get sucked back into the tree for nourishment.
The next day we went to Na ‘Aina Kai Botanical Gardens which is also a private garden (by a couple named the Dotys) and this was super weird. Like really weird. This person loved these kind of kitschy sculptures – like hundreds of these all around the property and random themed planting all around. She also decided to like build an entire Alaskan village complete with enormous fake glaciers. The tour guide was a personal friend of the Doty’s, and kind of refused to answer where all the money came from, but some internet snooping afterward led me to the fact that the woman was the ex-wife of Charles Shultz of Peanuts fame. So all this is Snoopy money.
Besides the weirdness, they did have some absolutely gorgeous things – I really liked the plantations of teak and other hardwoods, those are really lovely areas – almost cathedral like – and this particular point was unbelievable gorgeous. Off in the distance, you can see Mark Zuckerberg’s 800 acre plot of land that he’s building a “house” on – I read that it was more of a compound than a single dwelling. Well, it’s a lovely spot for sure. The guide was sure the island spirits are going to kick him off soon enough. Hawaiians are big into their island energy here.
The third place we went to was the Limihuli Garden and Preserve – (I, for whatever reason, have no pictures of us at this garden). This was a 5-star place, really enjoyable and probably the most botanically knowledgeable guide – all these places, I booked the morning tours which lasted about 2.5 to 3 hours. Also, I believe the most stunningly gorgeous of all the gardens we went to, but alas, somehow no photos. (Looks exactly like Moana. Sersly.).
A big day here as a parent…Vince is launched! I mean, he was launched before, but last night he was talking to me about the first few days of grad school and mentioned that he did get his first paycheck direct deposited into his bank account. And then I said – ok, I’ll let your allowance go through tomorrow (Tuesday) and then I’ll stop the automatic transfers. And just like that, the last of the money went through today and I cancelled the transfers. He’s still on our phone plan, he’s still on my health insurance, he’s still on my Spotify account, but other than that, he’s on his own. I kind of can’t believe it. Of course, he’s never really on his own, I have his back, but still, a very momentous occasion for all of us.
Classes started for him last week and he’s been meeting with potential advisors to fill two rotation spots this quarter and next quarter before committing to an advisor. This has been going well, he’s found three different potential advisors who he thinks would be a good fit and vice versa (hopefully there is funding, it’s always about the funding) and the classes he’s taking sound manageable and good. I had such a bad experience myself in grad school which took so long for me to recover from that terrible and humiliating experience (where at every turn I felt stupid and like – wtf am I doing here?) that hearing such a nice start to his grad school years has made me relax a bit and be thrilled for him. Fingers crossed for a good grad school experience.
It’s also been nice seeing him out and about at concerts with friends. New friends and old friends blended all together. love you! xoxo, mom.
Loves, we are back from Vegas. OMG, I think I’ll never need to go back there again unless it is for some very compelling reason. So, our friend Tom, who was Vince’s scout leader for over a decade and tirelessly dragged him and his friends across the Eagle Scout finish line and mentored them all, had a stroke about three years ago and lost so much physical ability, but overall maintained his mental capacities, really wanted to celebrate his 70th birthday in Vegas. And they really wanted us to come and we really wanted to go. The birthday party was to be on Saturday and we were going to just fly in/out and stay a two nights, but Maryam (his wife) seemed disappointed that we weren’t going to fly in on Wed like they were (I actually wasn’t sure how much hanging out we were going to do together as this was going to be a semi-large family/friends thing), but she insisted that we were going to hang out together all the time, so we flew on Wed (literally craziness). Edda skipped school to play the slots.
We stayed at what we thought was the Paris hotel – we checked in at the Paris hotel lobby, but really, we stayed next door where we had to walk past the Paris hotel amenities for about 3 minutes. Do you see this line? This is not my favorite – people – but Jeremy managed the self service kiosk and we were in/out quickly.
Wed afternoon, we regrouped and found our friend Tom.
And I bought him a beer.
Tom et al are late risers. We are early risers made earlier by the time change. We tried to walk to Denny’s on the strip and we failed because it was so early that they hadn’t turned on the elevators to the overhead walkways. But we window shopped at the Gucci.
So, I didn’t know this about Vegas, but they’ve re created lots of European landmarks. It’s the craziest thing, really, but here’s the Eiffel tower.
Standing before the Arc de Triomphe. This is our party. Three wheelchairs! All flown in, so much travelling effort.
The three wheelchairs crossing the strip to get to the Bellagio.
Tom, a serious and orderly graduate from West Point (hence the dedication to scouts), married Maryam, a Persian who likes to party. They are completely and utterly devoted to each other. Maryam was completely in her element. I liked to call this weekend – partying with the Persians.
We had sweets at a bakery. Literally there is no place to sit down unless you want to pay – at a cafe, a bar, or a gambling table/slots.
And we did (except that I went to bed at 8 pm every night). We shopped at at least 4 Louis Vuitton boutiques looking for the perfect navy blue purse (not this season’s color, unfortunately).
We had the most expensive cocktail I’ve ever had at a Vanderpump restaurant.
We rode in a gondola at the Venetian (where I’m literally sitting next to Santa (Tom’s brother Dexter who does play Santa all over Texas)).
Went to see an aquarium.
Saw the Statue of Liberty (literally, wtf.)
Checked out the pool.
Saw the Eiffel Tower from the pool.
Finally, the party on Saturday am, where I struck a pose with maryam who is much better at it than I am.
Elvis came by and actually was so kind and funny.
And then we stayed the last night on Saturday night and then left super early on Sunday morning. Both very happy to have gone and spent all this time with their families and very happy to go home! So out of the ordinary for us and maybe a day too long, but at least we weren’t stuck (for two extra days!) there like some people due to the hurricane in the southeast of the US. Back at work/school for all us here.
