Year: 2007

I suppose Doris isn’t the only one feeling a bit confused these days..

I’m in my own dilemna of sorts. Basically, I potentially have found a pretty cool place in the city. A friend of a friend is looking for a roommate, and I gotta say that the location is great. It’s in Lower Pacific Heights, close to Filmore, Japantown, Van Ness. If i got a commute bike. it’s not far away from the Caltrain station.

I have less than a week to decide if I want it or not.

Lately, I’ve had a feeling of wanting some change in my life. Whether that’s scenery or job or whatever, but I feel like I’m just sitting in yuppieville, spending my money, for no apparent reason or purpose these days. In some ways, it boils down to waht I want to focus on – the girl or the job.

While I do think finding someone is more important on the larger scale of things, lately, there’s nothing happening in that arena, and I feel like my life is in a holding pattern based on this. If i move to the city, then yeah, I’d probably be hanging out with a different crowd, and possibly meet more people. But the fear is that it’s just the same life in a different (and more expensive) locale.

I think at some point, I have to admit to myself that maybe the girl thing might not happen, and focus more energy on finding something that I want to do. I’m dubious that this would happen in SF. Who’s to say it would be more focused in MD? At least I would have a clean break with my job, and there would be fewer distractions.

As Frank would say, “What to do in life?”

Father and son happily making French toast.

Two minutes later, Vince is in tears. He wants to eat the French toast tomorrow, not tonight.

What’s up with that?

Jeremy is officially unemployed today. So he went and applied for unemployment and his grumpiness over having to do this permeated the morning household atmosphere. Sigh.

I feel like I’ve been in a little blog-rut lately – lots of pictures of the kids, not so much about anything else. There are lots of things going on behind-the-blog-scene. Long, heart-wrenching talks about the future, what-if scenarios, budgeting, negotiating, compromising and apologizing. There is also laughing, joking and luxuriating in a bit of a break from regular life and enjoy our time with each other. I don’t like to complain, because, really – I have many, many things to give thanks for, but I don’t like job hunting because it feeds into my insecurities of identity and self-worth.

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Ain’t nothing like old friends… Shinohara, my old XC, track buddy, from high school came out to SF to go to some conference, but we spent the day hanging out in Marin. We went to Mt Tam and hiked around a bit in the blistering heat, drove down to Stinson Beach, and later ate at the great indian food standby of Shalimar.

Whenever Shinohara and I get together, it’s always good times, like we’ve never left our track days. It was great to see him again.

At the zoo, you can pay 3 dollars for an measly ice cream sandwich or you can look for the jumbo-sized 16 oz Chill double lemon icy treats for the same price. It was so hot today, we had met up with Jim and Alex and their two kids and we really needed that Italian ice cup.

Tromped all the way uphill from the bottom of zoo to find the only vendor who was selling our desired treat just to find out that the power had gone out and the cash register inoperable and they weren’t selling them! This was after 3 hours of walking around in the heat. But a savvy food manager and some exact change later, we had our yummy delicious treat.

Sunday night dinner was at our house again, the kids got wet again.

We got Edda her first computer game. All she has to do is hit any key and something interesting and cute will happen. Trying to get those hands to do something useful.

Also went peach picking.

I love Maryland, it really feels like home.

The bus came today to pick up Edda! Curb-to-curb service. School is a mysterious thing now – the bus comes and three hours later she gets dropped off in front of the house and is smiling and happy, but I have no idea what happened at school. It’s not as if she’ll tell us.

This huge bus is for 4 kids. There are 2 adults, a driver and an aide and there are six Graco car seats strapped into the front 3 rows of seats. So cute! Vince wanted to take the picture of the bus, so you see my backside as I try to see them strapping Edda into her carseat.

There is a bird’s nest right outside the front door. I bet when they built that nest they weren’t counting on 2 kids and a dog disturbing their tranquil neighborhood.

Well, I think our July 4th party was a success… Over 50 people showed up. We had food/grillings/desserts at our place, and JT had smoothies/fruit/drinks at his place down the street. Sadly I didn’t take a single picture throughout the whole event, so hopefully someone else (Frank?) can slide me some photos.

I must say that I had the easy job – desserts. Since desserts are really all prep work anyways. Frank had the hardest time since he was outside grilling, and it was a freakin’ hot day. And he was standing out in the sun. He was there for a good 4-5 hours, requesting drinks from the gentle ladies as he would say. Ha!.

Right at 2pm, it was dead. We were all in the kitchen prepping. about 2:02, 3 of my friends showed up and I had time to chat with them, give them a tour of the place. sit down. I got up to make some bruschetta. Then all of a sudden we got slammed with like 20 people all showing up at once. From that point on it was pretty much non stop all day. Frank was grilling as fast as he could to keep up with demand. A tart I made, was gone in like 10 minutes. The bruschetta was gone in 2. Sadly nobody seemed to like my apple pie or bread pudding. Probably because the bread pudding didn’t go all the way to the top? Or at least the chocolate crossaint side of it was much better? hrm…

It was fun. Some people brought their kids over. A friend brought her 2 dogs – some sort of retriever mix. They were a big hit at the party. She left them at my place to go watch Transformers. I took them on a walk. Fun. Dogs aren’t half bad. 🙂 Of course, we got the glowing review of Transformers, so Frank, JT and I, went to see it at night after everyone had left. Some impressive CG stuff.

And that was the night! surprisingly, we don’t have all that much food left over too. But we have a ton of beer…. Frank? 😛

Also. I got on the scale at the end of the day. Guess what? 170.5. Not too shabby for eating so much!

I’d like to thank Hattie from Stitch Therapy for being a great secret pal. I’ve participated in a bunch of these swaps before and she’s the first one who sent me an actual knitted item! I am so excited 🙂

A lovely scarf in the softest green yarn ever.

A coffee cup holder, which is a clever thing to use up a bit of leftover sock yarn. Now I just have to go to starbucks and try it out.

Also, look at some of the other goodies Hattie sent!

Am I doing any knitting you ask? Well as a matter of fact I am!

Look, it’s just about 6 inches too short. I got impatient with the ocean of plain knitting so I just had to stop it after a while. Maybe I should give it to a child. Also, the joining of the yarn didn’t turn out so well, one of them is located about 4 inches below my chin centered in the middle of my chest. It’s quite noticeable. I don’t even think I’m going to finish weaving in the ends for this one.

Annual 4th of July block party today. Jeremy’s contribution was a success.

I forgot to mention that Jeremy’s been trekking up to Johns Hopkins taking a week-long intensive course in epidemiology. He’s got some ideas about health care/medical records/public health and public policy which are pretty cool and exciting and which I won’t go into here because it’s just not my thing to tell. If you are curious, you’ll have to just talk to him about it.

Hmm, what else?

The school bus was suppose to come pick Edda up today at 8:50 am right outside our door. It didn’t come.

Here’s Edda learning to jump.

She looks really classically Rett in this picture, her thin, thin arms and the way she holds her hands.

Oh, an aside to Donald…
In order to curb your iPhone jealously, I think this is the coolest thing ever.
Love,
Sis