Year: 2012

My mother is in town for a few months and usually she hosts a Friday night dinner for us, which is wonderful because after a long week at work and school, we all love to have a dinner already made for us. This past Friday, she wasn’t feeling very well, so dinner was cancelled and I didn’t get to see her. So Sunday (after a reminder from Jeremy), I called her up and went over to her house to hang out. Her house is so much quieter than my house without the kids/dogs/17 million Colbert/Dora/Minecraft/Christmas music going on.

We worked on getting this mulch pile a little smaller. She’s so pleased – all this mulch she got for free from a tree service she saw just on the road near her house.

Organizing spices:

Making oatmeal:

Did I mention I’m assistant coaching Vince’s basketball team? Did I mention that I have no idea what a short forward does? Or a guard? Or a center? I have all these basketball enthusiasts around me telling me that we have to “pick and roll” or “teach the fundamentals” and I’m at a loss. So I went to the local high school (with my running pal and head coach Christine)and watched an early evening basketball (JV) game and talked to some of the dads of the players. They also mentioned the “pick” and the “fundamentals”. As in “OMG!  Did you see that?  That was the perfect pick!”  I thought to myself “?. You are not really helping me people.”  Anyways I’m very lucky to have a head coach who loves coaching and also doesn’t really know basketball. We are having a good time.

Also, last night we were confused. When people tell you that Hanukkah ends on Sunday, it means that it really ends Saturday night. So only 7 candles were lit on the 8th night.

Jeremy’s office holiday party was held downtown at the Hamilton, this year we decided to leave Edda home with SyHyun and just take Vince to the par-tay. I think this is the first Xmas party that Edda’s missed – she just likes going to bed at 8 pm. We don’t often go out just the 3 of us, sans-Edda, so I just marvel at the ease of travel (making a quick detour to CVS, running for a train pulling into the station, never looking for the elevator, stopping to admired holiday displays at Macy’s) and then feeling guilty about the whole thing. Jeremy always, always wants me to go to the Xmas party – “it’ll be fun!”. I kind of have fun, I know a lot of people by face now, I’ve seen them a bunch of times, but they like  gossiping about work and I don’t know what they are talking about or else I need to make small talk, which is OK, but exhausting. But I had a nice dinner and a glass of sangria.

Vince had a nice time, I told him he could have as many Cokes as he wanted, he just needed to ask the bartender himself and not bother me about getting him a Coke. I think the grand total for the evening was 4, maybe 5? I also required him to pee before we left the restaurant.

Every office event, we end up hoping that a particular 4 and 2 year old end up showing up because otherwise Vince will be bored out of his mind – this year, they were there, so in the midst of cocktails and adult conversation, there was wrestling and wrangling.

The time has come to decide if I’m going to apply to nursing school. I’ve taken one prereq course a term since the fall of 2010 and I thought that I would not even need to think about going to nursing school until Spring of 2014 (which in 2010 seemed like an eternity away). But just a few weeks ago, I discovered that my prereqs will be done by Fall of 2013 so I need to apply now! Which brings me to an existential question of whether I can actually pull this nursing/working/house/kids/dogs and husband thing. I’m not sure that I can, I have been breezing through my prereqs, none of them have required a lot of studying, so except for class time, I’ve been doing very little of prep work. This semester, with my first Anatomy class, I’ve been swamped. The memorization work has been very time consuming and I’m doubting my ability to take 2 classes a term (which will be necessary for going to school part time) and managing the rest of my responsibilities. I also mentioned to Jeremy that I wanted to start taking guitar lessons to which Jeremy replied, “You are not allowed to have any more hobbies, I’m the one who gets the next hobby!” Apparently I’m too busy? Or too busy for him?

So yesterday, I started knocking down my non-class requirements for applying to school, the first of which was to take a 4-hour test of academic skills.

When Edda was diagnosed with Rett Syndrome, my weight plummeted 15 pounds – I looked great! and I felt awful. Over the years, the weight has come back as I’ve become happier and now I’m 20-25 pounds up from the low which is a little too much, so I’ve been wanting to bring my weight down 8-10 pounds – so I’ve been watching my intake pretty carefully for the past month or so. The thing about dieting is that one is always on the edge of hunger and that being on the edge of hunger makes you grouchy. It also makes one vulnerable to extra caloric expenditure. So I’m in the middle of the math section of the test and I can actually feel my brain drawing more caloric reserves so that I can simplify fractions or do unit conversions more quickly and accurately, but I’m also about to pass out and I can see the errors creep in as I get to the end of the section.

No matter what happens during the day – most nights we all have dinner together. Sometimes it is something elaborate, but most of the time it’s pretty simple. Last night we had spinach and gnocchi (straight from a package of pasta and a jar of sauce).

When my mother-in-law came over this past weekend, it was clear that all discipline regarding the dogs and food had broken down. Maxi was especially egregious – her nose was under your elbow, muzzle practically in your bowl of soup ready for a taste. It’s always a little embarrassing to have your dog eating a guest’s dinner while they themselves are still eating it. So we reinstated some rules. I put down some painters tape of the floor to mark off the dining room and then I’m making the dogs stay on their mats behind the line during all of dinner.

I’m still assistant coaching Vince’s basketball team this season. It’s hard to coach Vince, he’s not so good at basketball, so he commits some technical fouls and we called him on one for traveling and he got so upset with me. He’s still mad at me during dinner:

Katherine came down from NY on the bus on Friday to spend the weekend with us. All I can remember is the baking.

My running partner’s daughter was performing in her ballet school’s Nutcracker on Friday night. I have not seen the Nut in many years, so I was looking forward to this production. I made Vince go and he did complain until I mentioned three of his male friends would be there that night as well.  Then things got a little perky.  My friend’s daughter is in middle school and even though she hasn’t been dancing at this high of a level for very long, she had a few solos and looked absolutely beautiful and graceful. I was so proud of her and happy for her hard work and we deluged her with flowers and only momentarily had the fleeting sinking feeling about Edda never being able to dance. I have been very good at keeping these thoughts away this season shoving them into the corner of my heart and enjoying the season and being thankful for all the good luck and fortune we have.

The last time I went to see the Nut, I bought a Clara ornament which was beautiful. Tall with a full pink dress, it was one of the largest in our collection. We hung it too low on the tree and now the evil devil grinch dog has destroyed it.