Just regular folks.

I made this almond cake over the weekend. As I was organizing the baking drawers, I noticed some almond flour, so I made this one – no butter! Just leavened with egg whites whipped into meringue. I’m proud of myself with this one because I got this recipe off of a sketchy-ish website and so I had to modify it a lot. I added cream of tartar to stabilize the egg whites and also vanilla and almond extract to bring out the flavor. I also knew that the almond flour mixture was too thick to fold into the meringue, so I diluted it with whole milk. I used some frangipane I had in the freezer as a topping and! I toasted the almonds that went on top to bring out the almond-y flavor. It was not bad. hahaha, no it was good. I really do like the almond flavor – one of my favorite.

After a week of the storm and Edda being at home all week watching TV on her little iPad in my office, we finally broke down and bought a TV for my office. For people who don’t really watch TV, we have so. many. TVs. If you counted how many screens we have larger than 30 inches, it will boggle your mind. It boggles my mind. We don’t watch TV, we don’t watch sports, what do we watch? Jeremy watches a lot of youtube. Edda watches a lot of Disney+ and Amazon Prime (Dora the Explorer circa 2004 is very popular). Anyways, to mount all TVs in the house, Jeremy finally bought an impact driver to more smoothly put screws into the walls. I didn’t know what an impact driver was – I always thought that sound was a broken drill. Anyways, we are using it to fix doors in the house too.

We are still knee-deep in snow here – it’s not going anywhere as it’s been bitterly cold. Our skin is all so dry. Edda’s been home all week as her day program has been closed. Elka may suffer most of all with her paw sensitivity to the salt – Jeremy’s had to carry her for bits at a time during her – very short – walks.

I’ve been trying to work at home with Edda by my side. She’s usually pretty good, but all of Monday and Tuesday she was vocalizing all day – bah, bah, bah, rhythmically, in a very complaining tone – every ten seconds or so. It’s all hard for me to ignore and concentrate on my job because she sounds not satisfied and unhappy and I feel obligated as her mother to make her feel better. But there isn’t much to do about it. On Monday, she was driving me bonkers and I had to banish her to Jeremy’s office so he suffered through it. (he says, I think for my benefit, that it doesn’t bother him as much, but I think he’s just being nice to me) And then on Tuesday, I tried to be all zen with it and be like…I can work through this, it doesn’t bother me..lalalala and maybe it worked? I have no idea, I worked with her complaining all day. Anyways, Wed, she was very calm and relatively quiet. We’ll see what today brings.

I did leave the house on Tuesday to go to a friends birthday party and it was fun after we got over the hump of talking about the terrible national news. What is there to do? I have no idea, I’m so sad.

I also am organizing my baking drawers which after about a year of steadily baking, I know what I want and where I want it. I bought my little tray organizers I like and sorted everything. Now I can see my nuts, my flavorings, my decorations, my different sugars. I’m very happy.

I also found SEVEN boxes of corn starch dating back to 2016. I think Jeremy was cooking at lot with corn starch then and wanted a box everywhere as he was a stir fry cook then and he’s more of a roaster now. I’m keeping the one not expired.

I’m also cleaning out our bedroom (again). This time with a clothes focus which involved emptying a bookshelf full of books. My new dresser comes next week…

Friday night we celebrated Anita’s first birthday and Ginny asked that I bake a cake for the occasion. (Jeremy baked a beautiful cake – like bakery level – for the baby shower and I told Ginny I wasn’t going to be able to meet that level of perfection..). I baked a chocolate cake – usually my nemesis because chocolate turns out dry for me, but not this cake. This was a delicious, delicious cake that I was proud to serve Anita for a celebration. I also made lemon cookies with the rest of the lemon curd that I got from Loanne.

I wasn’t worried about the amount of cookies and/or cake because right after the dinner celebration, we went to Main Street to celebrate Sharon who is stepping down from her role at MS after 5 years. It was a baking celebration, so I brought the rest of the cookies and cake. But we were ever so slightly late and there were so many sweets that my cookies and cake did not get eaten. But because the cookies were on a paper plate…shhhh, I left them because there were only about 7 left. But the cake was all ours.

And we ate this entire thing over about 1.5 days while we were trapped inside because of the snow storm. It was gloriously delicious.

Saturday, I went to guitar lesson and also, perhaps, the most beautiful celebration of life service I have ever been to. I did not know this person who passed away, but I’m an friend of the spouse and it was held at my church, so I went. When I go to these things, I think about all the people who have passed away in my life and I send them my love. It was truly a beautiful service.

Sunday, it snowed. Elka played in the snow with Apollo.

We shoveled at night after the snow ended at about 8 pm because Christine, our basement tenant who parked in the driveway, needed to report to her nursing gig early in the am on Monday. So we made sure she could get out in the morning.

We got Elka these booties because her feet seem to be extra sensitive to salt on the roads.

Went downtown last night to Jeremy’s work’s holiday/new year’s party. (I’m sure I got some of those ‘ wrong). Ginny minded Edda at home (thank you!!!) and we had a few hours to ourselves. We were one of the first ones there at 5pm and we were one of the last ones to leave at..about 7:30pm. It was held in the building where UCS is moving to this year, the old lease on K street is ending and this one is on I street. They had a nice event space and I’m such a fan girl of Gretchen, the new-ish president of UCS, she’s doing such a great job and is so…cool. Just look at the cape/jacket thing she’s wearing. How cool is that? So cool.

I had a really nice time, I talked to a bunch of people on my own, I didn’t hang out right next to Jeremy. I talked to the person with the toddler because I remember bringing our toddlers to UCS parties. I can actually go to a party where I don’t know people and have a good time! I’m happy with my performance (lol.)

These folks are saving the world! I’m so happy Jeremy is very happy with his job. Now the food was fine, but there wasn’t enough of it. It was just plain hors d’oeuvres, not heavy. And I had a glass and a half of white wine and was quite tipsy because there was no food and I never drink and so we decided to go across the street to Five Guys to split a burger and a small fries. That was a lot of fun too.

Friday night we had dinner at my parents house and I got to hold Anita for a little bit. I love babies that aren’t mine. lol. I mean, I loved my babies when they were babies but I’m very happy now to hold and baby and then give the baby back to their mama.

We got to see Zeke/Rupert/Chicken/Solecito who is moving houses from Ginny to Emilinas. This would be house #5 for this kitty. We’ll see how that goes. Chicken is as delightful as ever, I love this cat like one loves a bad boyfriend. With complete and utter ardor.

Ginny got us some winter themed Krispe Kreme donuts and…you know what? They were delicious. We live about a mile from this donut shop and we never go there – I had a friend that was like – I can’t believe you live so close and never go, I’d be there everyday. Anyways, I ate the plainest one – the sourcream one.

On Saturday afternoon, I tromped around the woods with some folks from the IWLR. (IWLR requires six hours of volunteering a year, so I thought I’d get a good start on that.) The three acre lake on the property is not filling and usually, they stock it with trout twice a year, but they weren’t able to last fall and they probably won’t be able to this spring. So we were on a mission to see if/how any of the tributaries were blocked by new construction or by Pepco working on some electrical lines. Really, I didn’t know what I was looking for or at, but I had a lovely time in the woods with folks talking about trees, fish and water. I bought clippers, and some guy had a machete to cut through the prickles. I stayed back from him. But somehow more excitingly, I went to this volunteer effort about 30 minutes early and found the Chesapeake Women Anglers club having their new year’s celebration. I was like…these are my people. I might have to learn how to fly fish.

Saturday night, I made these lemon thumbprint cookies for church today from the lemon curd Loanne gave us for Christmas. Yummy! Lemon is not as popular as chocloate…but..variety!

Monday – we spent two hours talking to a person about Edda’s services. This was a third party who, I guess, makes sure her level of services are OK every five years. They needed Edda for the first 30 minutes and then two people for the entire 2-3 hours. So both of Jeremy’s morning and my morning were consumed by this task.

Tues morning, I had my annual physical – fasting at 11 am. It’s a long time to fast hahah because I’m not into fasting per say, but I’m pretty good at not eating anything after dinner – so I usually get an 11 hour fast everyday. I love my PCP, we are friends now, so a visit is fun. I was at the grocery store just before the appt and I was like…what can I give my doctor, and I settled on a package of raspberries, beucase can you give your primary a box of chocolates? And she laughed and said…bring on the chocolates next time haha. My bloodwork came back great – I’m always on the lookout for high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol, because those run in my family, but everything is still OK. My BP remains elevated, but not enough to take BP meds…and we keep going. May my good health continue, I know it’s not a take for granted thing.

Tuesday afternoon, I went to the Izaac Walton league and joined the air pistol league where my new friend Susan taught me how to load and shoot an air pistol. I practiced with a Baikal IZH-46M – which is a Russian air pistol you can’t buy anymore here in the US. You can shoot them…inside! It’s a four week tournament, so we’ll see if I can make all four sessions.

Yesterday, I went on a walk with Kristen and Elka. We had a great time. Jeremy went downtown for the day.

Where we spoke very briefly on how terrible things are right now and pivoted straight into cat stories.

Jeremy was very happy to donate his science-y type coffee maker to the neighborhood coffee shop. It’s proudly displayed on the shelf along a wall for all to admire.

I went to the range on Saturday morning and learned to fire a rifle. I’ve only shot pistols before, so this was new for me. The Izaak Walton league is soooo scouty. I thought I was moving away from the Unitarians, but the other person who was learning with me was a young woman who just stepped off of a board position at Cedar Lane UU. The world is a small place.

I couldn’t actually see where I shot on the target until I went to get it, and then I thought a lot about the words accuracy and precision. I’m precise, but not very accurate.

Then I went to meet Pumpkin/Esme, Megan’s new kitty and she is so much fun! I got to hold her and cuddle with a kitten.

And then choir this morning…

Loves, I’m still sick -ish. So that makes it about three weeks. I’m rally-ing on though. Though the first quarter at work which ends on Friday, through meetings for my extracurricular activities and fun things. Hahaha. Jeremy and I usually touch base on Friday night to check out the schedule for the weekend and then again on Sunday night for the week and I realized that on Sunday night, I had every night booked this week. Thankfully, Monday night was zoom, Tuesday night, I decided I wasn’t well enough to go to a pot luck. Wed night was a meeting about a capital campaign for the church (our minister is leaving to work for the national UU organization, so a promotion, but *sniff* we need a new minister now), Thursday was choir and I have an archery range training tonight. We’ll see how it all shakes out, this is too much for me.

I spent a lot of money on organizing trays for a dresser of mine that is the “office supply” dresser. Apparently, the cool thing to do (which I did not do) is to buy a 3D printer and then print exactly the organizing tray for the space that you have. omg, that sounds like a complete nightmare to me – you have to 1) actually buy a 3D printer, 2) have a place to store the printer, you have to buy the stuff that squirts through the printer, you have to design the thing that you print on some software that you probably have to pay for and then you’ll mess up like 17,000 times. I hardly use the labeler that I have, so a 3D printer is a no-go. I’d rather pay more money for the premade trays – the goal is decluttering and not re-cluttering with another hobby that I can’t manage. I barely can manage adobe acrobat with signatures (I won’t tell you how long it took me to sign a few PDFs yesterday for Edda’s stuff, scanning / printing / rescanning / cursing/ printing / rescanning, repeat forever.)

My organized trays that make me very happy:

On Wed, I went to town center (1.5 miles away) to go to the library and Trader Joe’s and the car was making a funny noise. I took the gas car (which we drive about once a week or less) and I was like – “huh, I guess I’m super used to driving the electric car, a combustion engine car sounds terrible”. Turns out that I was happily driving on a flat tire and didn’t know until I parked in the Trader Joe’s lot. boo.

Jeremy handled the entire thing – he rescued me from trader joes, he called the tow truck, the tire place and it’s all done. We just need to pick it up.

I still don’t really feel like I have a handle on the new year, I’m still slogging though this cold – I hope I’m not contagious anymore because it’s been like more than two weeks now and I’ve been doing all the things.

This past weekend, Jeremy was supposed to end his two week vacation by going to Philly to see a friend, but that got cancelled at the last minute, unfortunately.

Edda had two seizures on New Year’s Day – one at about 7 am, the other at 6 pm, we gave her the rectal diazepam and put her to bed. Then on Friday Jan 2nd, she was scheduled to go back to her day camp, but she had a third seizure while we were getting her ready, so I held her at home. She, thankfully, didn’t bite her tongue during any of the seizures, so once she recovered from them, she seemed happy and able to eat all her meds. We got messages to our neurologist at CHOP – and he wrote back with a contingency plan if they continued, but they did not!

I went to guitar lesson on Saturday – fun per usual and then on Saturday night, I went with Megan to put her kitty down which was super sad and on the way home – Megan said – I’m a crazy cat lady with no cats! She’s lost all three cats within the past 18 months. 🙁

Sunday morning, I went to brunch with Lauren and Soojung – it’s impossible to get all four usual suspects together (Laura’s at Universal in FL!). We went to Founding Fathers and I don’t think I’ve been there for brunch recently. So much to catch up on. and so thankful I don’t have to navigate college admissions anymore! What a racket.