Just regular folks.

for a work trip. We are just hangin’ out.

I spent the day yesterday at the Main Street Golf Tournament fundraiser volunteering. I was assigned hole 17 North and was responsible for running a putting contest. Which I did admirably with absolutely only putt putt golf experience. I chatted in a particular way one does at a golfing fundraiser. Golf happened from 10 am to 3:30 pm. The weather was beautiful – not too hot, not too cold. Just a touch windy. I don’t think I could ever be a golfer. It’s just so….boring. Hahaha. It’s also so…expensive and I like to be cheap. I had other one other volunteer hanging out with me during the day – one for the morning shift and one for the afternoon shift and I learned a lot about Main Street. I got paired with a woman who is great friends with Jillian and I also got paired with Jillian’s future daughter-in-law. I learned a lot!

Here I am arriving at the party at 9:15 am and Jessica and Evan are here to meet the volunteers and golfers.

It’s been about a month since Edda started her day program. Overall, very happy that we are in the program which now has a waiting list as they need to hire more staff. We are also adjusting to using Metro Access as the transportation. It’s fine, but very random. You don’t get the same driver each time, you don’t get the same time each time – they run late often. But they’ve never not picked up and it helps us out a lot to not drive back and forth to the program.

The program is also shorter than we are used to for her regular school year. For school, we got her on the bus at 7 and she came home from her after care program at 6:30. Now, she’s on the bus at 8-8:30 am and can be home anywhere from 2:15-3:20 pm. Ginny, who used to pick Edda up at 6 pm from her aftercare program and then bring her home for dinner and showering, now comes at about 4 pm to give Edda a shower and leaves at 6 pm.

This means after years of having unpredictably from 1 to sometimes 4 extra people at dinner each night (rotating au pairs, caregivers, and for the last half year, Felix), it often is just the three of us quietly rehashing the day. We are very quiet people without….other people.

We had a nice weekend – started out on Friday afternoon with our first Friday Vibes since summer started. It was really nice to see everyone and everyone was excited to see us back, but it was a little sad because a Main Street member passed away suddenly the day before and everyone was reeling from that. Edda was happy to be back at Main Street – enjoying the pasta dinner.

I spent some time putting nails on some friends. I think I did a pretty good job overall.

Saturday morning, I got up early and ran. For the past few years, I’ve been exercising in the early afternoon which allowed me to not just get up and exercise, I like the slow getting up, but then the day would progress and I’d kind of always mini-procrastinate the workout.

Jeremy is doing some off-leash training with Elka which goes great until it doesn’t go great. Jeremy’s working on fetching a ball and coming when called. For many days, Elka was the model of perfection, following every command, ignoring loping deer and bringing balls back. And then the disaster day where she totally ignored the ball and wandered into the woods not paying any attention to anyone.

Sunday was Jeremy’s birthday (57) and I baked him these molasses cookies – his favorite.

He wanted to go on a 100 mile bike ride for his birthday – so he did. I had Edda for the day and we attempted to go to church so I could sing in the choir, but about 15 minutes into the pre-service rehearsal, Edda had a seizure and we headed home for some rest and recuperation. Which I needed because I had my flu/covid shot on saturday and needed sunday to basically sleep. zzzz.

Jeremy’s talk got uploaded to youtube, so if you’d like, you can listen to it. Last Sunday night at family dinner, Seth mentioned that he did not enjoy public speaking (he has to do some of it in the role of a HS ultimate coach) and on the way home, Jeremy mentioned that he doesn’t mind public speaking at all anymore. A far cry from 30 years ago when he was agonizing over his dissertation defense and was really (he’ll tell you) a poor public speaker. Now he’s practiced so much, it’s not a big deal anymore. I feel the same way about talking to people in small groups or one-on-one. I used to feel very self conscious in social settings and was relatively quiet, but I can really shine now in many social situations and move the conversation along and everyone can have a good time. I think it’s important to note that if you think you aren’t good at something, you can always become better at it and feel good doing it. Whatever it is you want to do – sing, run, write, be a better friend, come up with new ideas, write a novel, take better photos – it’s really just attention and practice. I wonder if I can be good at fundraising – this I think is an important skill that I’m not good at. But I have good role models for this.

The weather has been so beautiful, Jeremy has been able to go on some lovely bike rides outside.

His bicycles are stored in the dining room and he can see them as he’s eating dinner and last night, he gazed past me and looked at his bicycles and said very sweetly, I love my bicycles. Ahhh, true love. He retaped the handlebars to match the wheels and the water bottles.

I am learning to drive the new car (I didn’t drive it with the bike on top). There are things to learn, but I can already tell I’m going to love driving this car.

We finally got an electrician to come in and install the actual charger to the wall (we already had the drop) so we are ready to go. I have not yet downloaded the app, so I can’t see things like the location, battery charge level, nor can I turn on the AC before I get into the car. Soon.

Jeremy and I are both trying to be phone free at night when we are going upstairs for bed. I removed my most coveted apps from the phone – the NYTimes and reddit. I’m trying to not reach for it when I’m bored. Which is a lot of the time. Jeremy is spending the time trying to train Elka more. Here he is making Elka ignore a fried chicken piece on the ground. Good doggie Elka.

Our wedding anniversary was on Friday the 29th and I did not spend the evening with my husband, rather, I went to Wolftrap with my friends. (I did OK this with him first, haha) and we had planned to celebrate on our own on Saturday night with one of our favorite meals and ice cream. But it turns out (and I had forgotten this) that Emelina’s (Ginny’s daughter) birthday was the same day as our anniversary, so we pivoted and celebrated the two occasions together on Saturday night. Nothing is more fun than burgers and ice cream for a crowd. The line for ice cream was very long, but we used the time to go through the 10,000 flavor options and combinations possible. omg, the kids were entirely overwhelmed with choice. I never go very deep into the options – no I have no idea what flavor unicorn farts are!

This was mango ice cream with watermelon ice and rainbow sprinkles for Emelina.

Seni got a mango shake with gummy bear toppings (a terrible combination if you ask me, the gummies all get hard in the cold and are no longer gummy) and Joab got chocolate ice cream with horchata ice and oreo sprinkles.

We stuck some candles into the ice cream and sang happy birthday. May all your birthday wishes come true Emelina. Happy anniversary Jeremy, I’m so happy we are together.

It’s been gorgeous weather for the past week or so and we are loving it. Jeremy’s been frequenting the newly opened coffee shop within walking distance of the house. He’s now a regular with Elka.

So they were happy to give Elka a swirl of whipped cream as a treat.

Friday night I went to Wolftrap with some folks from the guitar studio. We went to see the Tedeshchi Trucks Band at a sold out show. We’d spent the last month or so learning to play parts of their most famous song, though much more simply and straightforwardly. The weather was beautiful, the guitar playing wonderful. Derek Trucks is a virtuoso guitar player, a delight to watch him play. I brought snacks which was important to me. Even though I really enjoyed the event because I got to hang out with my guitar peeps and I did enjoy the music, I still don’t quite understand concerts. I guess it’s being surrounded by other people who also really enjoy the music, but I think I’d never really go to a concert initiated by myself. It was just a tad too crowded for my taste, I felt like the oversold the lawn seats, so we had to get there super early and even though we did, it was hard to find a spot. Also, I loved that they had two headliners – with our band playing first and they started exactly at 7:30 and ended exactly at 9 pm and we did not stay to hear the second band and I was back home by 9:30! Amazing! Loved that.

Me and Serita!

Also, I’m doing some fall planting for the yard, out of all the bare root trees I planted in the spring, only the white oaks survived. So I went and bought the next size up trees to plant this fall. The first set came this weekend – witchhazel. I planted two. And then I also got an american holly to make the minimum for free shipping. I don’t have a wire cage for the american holly, so I’m hoping its prickly leaves will be enough to deter the deer. Gooo witch hazel.

I got to play my teacher’s Les Paul Gibson fancy guitar on Friday. He had strung lighter strings on it and wanted me to try them. It was fun playing a fancy guitar.

On Saturday I went to my first Olympic weightlifting meet with my club. A small, local meet – a good beginner meet. Ward, my coach, talked me into this. It’s very interesting, I bought a singlet, I weighed in. I was the oldest, but only by like 6 years. These are my fellow competitors. There are some very strong ladies here. I went to the meet a few hours early – you have to weigh in about an hour before the meet starts. Many people are trying to lose weight to make a certain weight class, I do not care which weight class I’m in, so I happily just at whatever I want whenever I want to because I’m too old to be doing that sh*t.

Because I’m the weakest one, I got to go first which I was happy to do. Done and over with. It’s a lot to get used to honestly, like at practice, I had to get used to people watching me do things and then immediately telling me what to change. I’m not used to people watching me do anything – everything is awkward. Jeremy and Edda came to watch me, but then headed out after I finished. I stayed to watch the finish of the women’s and the men’s flight too.

I have a gym and coaches and a nice team. And here we are.

And here’s my clean and jerk. I did make my snatch (which is a more complicated lift), but I’m less happy with it, so here you go.

And just like that…summer is over. I went to the first choir practice of the season last night and it was kind of like the first day of school – seeing old friends that you haven’t seen all summer. And then doing something challenging and fun together.

But then I got home after 9 pm and couldn’t sleep well. Too exciting! And now I’m tired for today. But oh well.

I’m trying to figure out many things. Like how to fix Edda’s wheelchair.

I’ve been repotting my houseplants.

Jeremy is in Sacramento doing great work – apparently he has both groupies (asking for autographs) and bipartisan support. I’m not sure which surprises him more. So proud of him and you can read about it here and here. (He needs a better headshot).