Just regular folks.

I got my guitar on my 50th birthday, so it’s easy for me to keep track of how long I’ve been playing guitar – so it’s been three years now. Two years of lessons. I’m having a good time. I have a practice app that I’ve been using for a bit now, it tracks my playing time – I have a goal to play 175 hours by black friday and if I do that, I’m buying myself a v.n. (very nice) dresser that I’ve been eyeing. It’s both do-able and a little hard. I need less than 10 hours, so about 20 minutes a day which I should be able to do. Though sometimes, I’m like…do I really need that dresser? Also, I can tell that my ability to concentrate is not fantastic. This is a relatively challenging fast run of notes that doesn’t last that long and in the middle of it, I can feel my mind drifting from the concentration even though I’ve been committed to concentrating for like 90 second. Gah. I then went to in-person guitar lesson and now I’m good friends with the guitar teacher and there was only one other adult student in the class, so we just talked about random crap with guitars in our hands. I love it.

Then I went to church where I replaced this door knob on the accessible bathroom. I accidentally walked in on someone on Thursday night at choir practice and then three of us spent some time trying to figure out if the door locks and…it does not. So I bought a light commercial doorknob and went in to replace it. I budgeted two hours for this and one extra trip to home depot, but I needed neither – took 15 minutes and BOOM done! Now one can pee in complete, assured ADA door knob privacy. I’m feel extra spicy these days – I got an electrical plug put in and replaced this doorknob in the last week at church. I’m feeling groovy and like I have an entire ‘nuther building to take care of besides my house.

Then I got to go see some bands play from – this is the recital from my guitar school. Again groovy. Wore earplugs which does not feel entirely sociable, but it’s like 95 decibels. Too loud.

Then I came home and worked on fruit cake. This is either going to be delicious or really really weird. A dessert for when people had no refrigeration or chocolate and the only thing they could do to entertain each other was to drink – essentially spoiled fruit juice, I can’t quite decide.

We went to Friday Vibes – Halloween edition on Friday night. We pulled out our tried and true costumes and even brought Elka.

The party was way more crowded than I thought it would be, and I overheard that one of the residents had to bring their dog back to their apartment because the doggie was not a service dog. Technically, Elka isn’t invited to the party – but sometimes we get a pass… anyways, after I heard the dog/apartment gossip, I got self-conscious and tried to make Jeremy take Elka back to the car so we wouldn’t get in trouble. But Jeremy’s like – I’ll take Elka and if they scold me, so be it. But then a few minutes later, after Elka had eaten a hot dog that Jeremy happily gave her, I asked Jeremy again to take Elka back to the car for the rest of the party because – even if he had Elka, I felt like they were going to scold me and not him. Because, no one scolds Jeremy. He just has that privilege. He acknowledged that feeling, and took Elka back to the car for the rest of the party.

Really, no one enjoys Halloween more than this crowd. We accidentally left our porch light on, and there were a few trick o treaters, but literally this year we DID NOT BUY ANY CANDY. Not even for ourselves. So poor them, they got nothing.

Edda won best costume! And got a nice lanyard which I’m going to put to good use.

Jeremy and Edda went home and almost straight to bed, but I kept partying. Elka and I walked down the block to a fire pit. It was cold, but I had a nice time meeting new-to-me people with little kids. And I enjoyed some candy there.

Then I came home and finished the night off with some liquor. I’m going to make a fruit cake! This is Claire Saffitz’s recipie – with Grand Marnier. It takes two months – almost a bit too late for Christmas, but in time for New Year. And it makes two and should keep for years Claire says. So I’ll make one for this year and save the other one for NEXT YEAR!! Crazy. And then I crawled into bed and Jeremy snuggled and said I smelled like a campfire. And then I asked if he could smell the chlorine undertone from my swim in the afternoon (because I can’t run because of my broken toe). Ahhh….nothing like eau de smoke and chlorine to get one in the mood.

Jeremy is spending a few days downtown for work. He’s working a lot. The house is falling apart a little bit, we are both too busy to “reset” it every night now.

It’s time to declutter the house again. I feel it being too crowded. I think I like a fall cleaning 🙂

The most important news is that during our Arizona trip last week, I got emails saying that Edda’s adult service snafus got cleared up and she was good to go back to her day program. And on Monday she went! We are all much happier with this little daily outing and grateful that it took only about a month to clear up. Hooray for small victories. (Edda’s bus below:)

Also on Monday, I managed to break my toe (I think) doing the thing I always do to break my toes which is that I dropped a weight on it while I was weightlifting (only 5 pounds). The last time I did this was the day the pandemic was declared in March of 2020. That time it was like 20 pounds and I couldn’t sleep the pain was so bad, but I also didn’t want to go to the hospital because…pandemic. Anyways, the only thing the hospital did that was helpful was to give me some painkillers, and this time I didn’t need it and so…here it is, undoctored and just waiting until it fixes itself. I’m bummed to take a few weeks off of running in the most beautiful running weather, but I switched to swimming and met up with Claudinna at the pool who is a dedicated swimmer and so I have more incentive to stay at the pool longer because swimming is so much trouble and harder than running.

And….look. Zeke is back. So this cat now has three names that people are calling him – Zeke, Rupert and Chicken. Anyways, I knew this when I gave him away – Chicken is a very vocal cat. Especially at night when us humans tend to not be vocal and really don’t want anyone else to be vocal. But I was hoping at the new house, he’d settle down… but no, he did not. I was texting Christine, our tenant in the basement, that Chicken is 95% awesome and 5% intolerable. And you can just tell, Chicken wants so much to be an outdoor cat. He spends his time at windows meowing as if you are torturing him by keeping him inside. Anyways, I got a text from the person I gave the cat to that Zeke wasn’t working out and I kind of knew that this was the 2nd or 3rd home he was being kicked out of and then I called all my kitty lovers and asked if they were going to shame/judge me by keeping Rupert as mostly an outdoor cat (he’s fixed, so no baby kittens in his future). And then I agonized a bit over Zeke. Because I love Chicken, he’s adorable. He’s like my toxic cat lover who I love but can’t really live with. He doesn’t have a job and just always asks me to make him food and a bit ungrateful, but then snuggles and lets me pick him up and is so soft. Anyways he’s back and I found yet another home for him (not mine) and it’s gonna be great. Or it’s not and he’s gonna come back.

Within 5 minutes of him being home, he jumped into my plants. And then we moved the plant further away from possible launching sites and then he figured out again how to get into the plant. I’m sure now Elka is eating poop from the litter box.

My parents stay on the west coast for the summer and come back to the east coast during the winter and this year, they suggested that we meet in the middle during their transition and have a family vacation. My parents wanted to go to Arizona and visit national parks which, if we had done that, we might have run into some issues with the government shutdown, but really, we visited Tucson and Flagstaff and only one national park on the itinerary, the Grand Canyon, which was mainly open.

Baseline – it was a really nice vacation – we were all healthy, there were no real travel snafus, the airbnbs I booked were lovely and it wasn’t too hot in Tucson, nor was it too cold in Flagstaff. I planned the vacation with everyone’s needs in mind – 1. my mother’s love of plants, 2. my father’s love of naps and one fancy dinner, 3. Edda’s love of a first floor bedroom and 4. Jeremy’s love of biking – and my own need which is that I like everyone happy! Hahaha. I know – sometimes this is difficult, but I try and I think I mostly succeeded.

We flew into Phoenix and drove to Tucson and had a simple dinner from the grocery store. Sunday morning we had a Jeep tour of a private ranch which borders Saguaro National Park. Kurt was our (authentic cowboy) driver and we bumped along bumpy roads and saw lots of plants.

And some animals.

Monday, Jeremy rode around Tucson and we went to a botanical garden and saw more plants and then we went to the university to take a tour of the facility which makes mirrors for telescopes.

Tuesday, we hit the road to go to Flagstaff – we went to another botanical garden for breakfast and walked around. I loved these barrel cacti.

On the way to Flagstaff, we stopped by the main strip of Sedona where there was 1. lots of ice cream and 2. lots of crystal stores.

Wed, we drove from Flagstaff to Williams to take a train to the grand canyon. They have a little play before everyone gets on the train and my dad got thrown into cowboy jail.

They have a very impressive lift for Edda’s wheelchair.

We were serenaded on the way there. (on the way home, there was a “robbery”)

We had a bus tour of the grand canyon – a little bit like the grand canyon in ten minutes, but that’s how we roll.

I love this guy – thank you for going on this craziness with me. My love for you is deeper than the grand canyon – though I don’t think it is as old as the grand canyon.

Thursday, we drove up Snowbowl mountain to pick up Jeremy who biked up the mountain and saw the most beautiful leaf-peeping I’ve ever seen – the aspens were so brilliantly yellow!!

Thursday night, we were lucky enough to catch Andy and Rita just before they left town and eat a lovely dinner together.

Friday – we left Flagstaff and headed towards Phoenix for our flights out on Saturday. We needed to kill some time, so we stopped at a casino to have lunch. My mom loves a casino – she won $9.

In the afternoon, we had a tour of the Wrigley mansion in Phoenix (of the gum fame) and we had dinner in the mansion – this was our fancy dinner and it was lovingly fancy – it seemed like we had 18 waiters. With a sunset and everything!

The next morning, while the boys checked bags at the airport, the ladies went to yet another botanical garden – this time in Phoenix and this was very fancy. I loved it.

And now we are home! I love to travel because it reminds me so much how much I love being home.

I did not sleep well last night. We did the unfortunate thing of talking about “serious things” all the way up to and past our usually strict lights out time of 10pm. Things that we usually don’t talk about after 8 pm include: logistics and work and news. We are allowed to talk only about “fun” things which usually include: cooking, pets, things we want to buy, and weightlifting (we’ve been watching the world championships).

Jeremy has been sick since Sunday, but he recovered well enough to go into DC on Wed almost as soon as I came home from my DC trip to see some coworkers for lunch and a get-together. Poor guy, he really misses in-person work. He came home at 6:15 pm and I had dinner ready, which I’ve taken to serving in our Nambe serving wear which I’ve gotten both as gifts and thrifted. And then I said out loud into the ether that I wished I had something sweet and he said – OMG! I got us free leftover cookies from the office get together from your favorite place to get cookies. And I’m like – what’s my favorite place to get cookies?! Panera? no. Giant? no. Potbelly’s? yesssss. So I had cookies.

Then I went to church – my church is full of beautiful, service oriented people who work so hard to build community and friendships and yet…they mostly are not very handy. So they have me, fortunate? or unfortunate? They recently got a modern, energy efficient seven multi-head mini-split heat pump installed in a set of offices in late summer on the order of 50K. It’s a very good system with a very poor controller panel. (Actually, have I ever met a mini-split controller that I’ve liked? The answer is NO. I have not.) There are seven of these panels attached to the walls and they are super confusing to program and to use. I guess we didn’t specify that we wanted the fancy remote control unit wi-fi with nice user interface which I think we were expecting. When it was installed, the offices needed air conditioning and no one could figure out how to turn that on. The contractor, a somewhat slow texter, came days into hot weather to turn it on. Anyways, as we’ve been heading into colder days, they couldn’t turn on the heat! The staff could barely could make the AC stop blowing cold air. The vendor…not so responsive. I should have gone sooner – they’ve been working a week with space heaters. Anyways, I set all of them to heat and hopefully, the heat works now.

I took the Metro into work today to renew my ID card that I use to log into my computer. I didn’t want to waste the entire day, so I took the 8 am time slot which meant that I was on the metro at about 6:30 am which is early for me to be out of the house.

There are many changes at work, most of which make me melancholy, but I’m overall still very grateful that I have it and can work from home. It’s…fine. Nothing like anything happening at NIH, CDC or various other scientific government agencies. I don’t know what we’d do – as Edda is still at home with her suspension from adult services and so we keep each other company during the work day. Edda is super vocal these days – I made the mistake of calling an attny while she was in my office and mid-call she started “yelling” and what to do? It’s even weird to explain that it’s my daughter because it’s not a regular little kid or big kid sound. It’s an Edda sound.

I’m listening to this..which is not my usual jam, I half-joined a book club and this is what was suggested.

Clara Barton was a patent clerk! I did not realize that.

I was listening to Cal Newport’s podcast about phone use and how to limit it and his suggestions were 1. to get all algorithmic apps off the phone 2. to put the phone in a particular place when you are home (kitchen, charging station etc). and 3. cultivate long term dopamine hits. (Usually I don’t listen to Cal Newport because he has three kids and a wife and never mentions them in managing his time. I feel like he has a very nice wife who takes care of all these things so he can do deep work, lol). Anyways, I’m in the mood to limit phone time, so I did make my phone as boring as possible – it is sooo boring – took off news apps, reddit, youtube in the past few weeks, long ago I took off facebook, instagram. I still have the NYTimes games – and I need to not do spelling bee, because that one in particular takes too much time. In the past, I have been good at leaving my phone elsewhere in the house, so I reinstituted that. Three is the hardest one – to turn to other long term projects to relax and enjoy. But I was thinking this week in particular, I feel like I’ve made strides in both the guitar and weightlifting. Got compliments on technique on both things this week! It’s pretty terrible, the rate at which one gets dopamine hits in the real world vs phone time. OMG, I’ve been at guitar for two years – I still can’t really do barre chords. Weightlifting for about a year. I was telling Ward, my lifting coach, it took me six months just to get used to people staring at me lifting. Forget about the actual lifting technique, I really don’t like people looking at me very much – so when the entire sport is people looking at you, that takes a long time to not be embarrassed to try things while people look at you! Also, it’s hard for me to enjoy these things and not turn them into another “job” another thing “to do”. That kind of ruins things for me, I take them too seriously. Gah. Take things seriously, but not too seriously. Hahaha.

For the first time, instead of replacing my iPhone, I got the battery changed out. I have the iPhone 14 which I bought 3 years ago, almost exactly. The battery was down to 73% – they recommend replacing at anything lower than 80%. It cost about $100 and they took my phone for about four hours, which they apologized for, but I was relieved because I thought they would want to take it for two weeks. I remember getting the 14 and thinking it wasn’t much better than the 10 I had, so no reason to upgrade now to the 17 or whatever they have (though it does come in a pretty orange color that Jeremy is salivating over). The dropping off and the picking up took longer than I thought it should have, they have a weird check-in and waiting system that I don’t particularly like, but I know some business major thought really hard about it. I probably spent about 45 minutes in the store waiting. And while I was waiting, I thought of Dante’s circle of hell – which I thought I was in. The inside of the store looks good, but there are too many people, it’s like 5 degrees warmer in there than it should be from the sweaty bodies, the music is some random techno-beat non-music. There seem to be as many staff as there are customers, yet..I wait. The staff walk in/out of the back room – sometimes with items, other times with no items. This is the entry to the weird hell-scape that the internet can be sometimes.

Somehow each time I’m at a party with a belly dancer, I think to myself – wow, I can’t believe I’m at a party with a belly dancer and then I also think – I don’t think this is going to happen ever again. And then they keep happening! I think this is my third belly dancing party in like the last 2-3 years.

We went to a casino to celebrate our friend’s Tom’s birthday – it’s the same friend we went to Vegas last year to celebrate. Anyways, this time was local and it was a steak lunch and a belly dancer.

Sometimes at a party, I believe I have a role to perform and it reveals itself to me as the party goes on. Sometimes, I’m suppose to meet someone, sometimes I’m supposed to arrange the chairs, sometimes I’m suppose to keep the conversation going. This time, it apparently was to get all the women up to dance with the belly dancer, especially Tom’s wife, Maryam. Fun.

Jeremy is home and I’m delighted. Sometimes his trips can feel like that last a long time and sometimes not so much. This one passed by rather quickly.

Last night, I had choir rehearsal and it was so much fun. We have an excellent choir director, super accomplished and he is so ambitious for us. We are kind of always on the edge of our capabilities – almost about to fall apart, but yet miraculously, usually able to pull it together. He’s been at the church for three years? Maybe this is his fourth year and the choir has grown and now we have enough people and experience to tackle more challenging choral music. Lots of times, the alto part splits into two parts. I always take the lower part and I try to find the harmony, sometimes it works, other times, not so much. These things always take so much time, to make friends, to feel like you are part of something bigger than yourself. To learn to sing in a group!

This is always what I want for myself, to be at the edge of my capabilities and explore the unknown, but also be close enough to the familiar to not feel adrift or lost.

Ginny helped me out so much this week…she made space for me to get some errands done (like HVAC appointments and choir) for which I’m very appreciative.

I did manage to take Edda out of the house once during the week. We went to the dog park with Elka. It was such a gorgeous fall day yesterday, it was to be taken advantage of. Elka – long suffering dog when Jeremy is out of town. She doesn’t get the long, leisurely walks that she gets with Jeremy in the house.