Month: January 2008

Vincent got a violin and Suzuki violin lessons for Christmas. Even though I know that Vince will have a nice time, I’m nervous about these lessons. I don’t know why I’m more worried about these lessons as opposed to the piano lessons we had in Singapore, but maybe it’s that now I’m away from the house from 5:30 am to 6:30 pm and Jeremy’s out of the house from 7:30 am to 6:45 pm and they recommend that a beginner violin player practice 3 times a day for 15 minutes. We barely make room in our schedule for sitting on the toilet and brushing our teeth and we are not doing too well on either thing.

Also, we run a very relaxed household. No one tells anyone else what to do. In a good light, you can say when we do things, we think about what the other person would like and incorporate it into our plans; in a bad light, we’re just terminally passive aggressive. Ruby is perpetually confused by this lack of alpha in the house and is always trying to protect us from chihuahuas. It results in a little bit of chaos and disorganization. But it also means we are really, really bad at making people (especially underage ones) do things like daily practice.

Made it to Park City, Utah yesterday where it is a balmy two degrees outside. The internet is sadly broken. Of course in a house full of computer geeks this is akin to not having hot water or shelter. At least we have three iPhones in the house on which to surf with and of course reception is really good in a frou frou place like here. Skiing today. It should be legendary.

On my blog, I usually don’t talk about work. It’s too bad because so many interesting things are happening, especially with Jeremy (you have to scroll down to the chart with all the flying arrows).

Ruby is 49 today which makes her the senior member of the household. She’s gotten a little grey around the muzzle and every once in a while, I see a little middle-age-dom creeping into her habits – mainly that sometimes she doesn’t want to get up from her nap to go outside in the cold to pee.

Ruby was born in the back of a Volvo – she has 3 brothers and sister. Zuni, Rio, Hoss and the only black dog of the litter which, when we met up with the owner when the pups were a year old, still hadn’t named him! Ruby’s mom is MayBell, the queen of our Austin neighborhood.

Ruby has lived in quarantine, a front yard, an apartment, a house and on a farm. She has lived in the country, in a small town, in the suburbs and 30 minutes from a Gucci store by subway. She has swum in the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Chesapeake, the Hudson, Lake George, tributaries to the Potomac and the Guadalupe. She is a retriever who doesn’t play fetch.

Tonight she got the leftovers from Sunday night dinner.

There is a gym at work that I joined the second day on the job. Since 5,000 people work at my office building, it is a full-service gym with 4-5 aerobics classes every day, personal trainers for hire, full complement of weights and exercise machines.

The first 2 months on the job, I was dutiful. I would go at lunch and run a couple of miles on the treadmill or row a 5K on the rower. Then I got bored. So I started going to exercise classes. I learned to dance like they do on TV with the hand/arm/shoulder/back/hip thing, I learned what a jab and upper cut was in kickboxing class, and I spent an hour sweating while two incredibly good looking gay men taught me how to Zumba.

But then I begged off and then I got sick for 3 weeks. Finally, I’m on my feet again and itching to take a break in the middle of the day and be outside. So I’ve decided to run outside. I’m always nervous looking for the perfect route. What happens if I get tired and can’t make it back to work? What happens if I get lost? Jeremy encouraged me to find something to run around so I won’t be tempted to cut the run short. Today, amidst flurries, I ran around the cemetery!

CSA is community supported agriculture – a family buys a “share” at the beginning of the growing season – usually a few hundred dollars and a promise to work 15-20 hours over the summer – and then every week you get to go pick up a bundle and a bushel of whatever is growing on the farm.

We were members of the Poughkeepsie Farm Project when we lived in New York. I remember bringing three-month-old Edda in her carseat to one of my volunteer hours and nestling her between the rows of vegetables. I nursed her while weeding asparagus.

Part of the fun of joining a CSA is to come home after a Saturday pick-up and look at your 4 beets and 2 tomatoes and 4 pounds of string beans and try and figure out how to use it all up before the week runs out and you find yourself with 8 cucumbers, 2 green peppers and a pile of okra.

When we moved to Maryland, I looked for a CSA and found the Red Wiggler Community Farm. Not only do they have wonderful organic food, but they create meaningful, fully included jobs for adults with developmental disabilities and they have the solar off-the-grid house that the University of Maryland built for the solar decathlon we visited a few months ago. It can’t get much better than that.

The Red Wiggler wrote on their blog that shares for the 2008 season will be for sale next week! The Red Wiggler is so popular that they don’t have any Saturday pick-up shares available. There are only four Wednesday shares available. The Wednesday pick up hours are from 2-5 pm and the farm is 25 minutes away from the house. Those are prime working hours and almost an hour driving! This might be a CSA we won’t be able to join for a while.

Still, it’s nice to think of summer produce when everything is still brown and cold.

On my day off, I went to Edda’s school to spend some time observing her classroom. This is a critical difference between Edda’s school and Vince’s school. In Edda’s you observe and in Vince’s you volunteer.

Much to my former stay-at-home mom self’s chagrin (when I dropped off each child into the arms of a waiting teacher), I have let the whole fall semester pass by and still haven’t gotten to know Edda’s classmates or the aides in the classroom. I was determined and prepared this time; I listened carefully during circle time and wrote everyone’s name down in my little don’t-forget-these-things notebook.

Usually, I don’t dwell on the fairness of Edda’s situation. I have spent many hours in many classrooms pre-motherhood understanding DNA and how the chromosomes split and twist together. I understood that there was a chance that a particular guanine wouldn’t show up when his name was called, wrapped up in the moment the sperm met the egg, and that I was not immune to this randomness.

It’s just that when I’m in a classroom full of kids who drew the short stick and they are surrounded by teachers and aides who patiently coax the best out of these kids everyday that I’m both happy and sad at the same time.

Since I work a compressed schedule (most of my work days are 9 hour days), I take every other Friday off. This isn’t really my choice and I’m not sure it’s the best schedule for me, but who can look a Friday off in the face and not like it? And since our sitter works everyday, I got the day off to do my own thing.

I’ve been a little grumpy this week, I’ve attributed it to the fact that work is getting harder. Our little training bit is over, and now we are in the midst of actually working and it is hard. I love my job and I’m good at it, but it’s a focused, concerted effort for the whole day.

To my own embarrassment, my grumpiness overflowed into my interactions with perfect strangers – I was curt and abrupt to the admin at the elementary school about a form I had to fill out for Vince because I didn’t understand it and she (bless her heart) explained it to me 4 times and at the end I apologized for my poor behavior and she just smiled and said that everything was fine and to have a nice weekend. I felt extra bad because she was so nice to me.

It was also the first week that Jeremy started his job. It went so smoothly (mainly meaning that the kids were not sick and neither were the parents), I almost don’t want to type it lest I jinx myself.

I’m sitting in P’ng and Judy’s dining room at the moment. They are sleeping in the bedroom, and KX is sleeping down the hall. Tomorrow we are headed up to Tahoe to go hang out in a cabin for the weekend.

To my left is KX’s high chair upon which lies a really cute lime green plastic frog bib. The bib actually has a scoop at the bottom of it to catch all the little bits of food don’t reach KX’s mouth. Of course, looking down at the floor, I’m not exactly sure the bib does it’s job so well. 😛 I guess they really could use a dog.

Anyhow, I somehow get the warm fuzzies sitting here in their house. It really reminds me of Doris’ house, and the (good) craziness that ensues over there. Kid’s clothes strewn about. An semi exploded living room with toys. Sippy cups.

Ah kids. Good stuff. 🙂