Cycle of exams.

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The first round of exams is starting tomorrow for school.  Today we had a review session for pathopharmacology which involved these “clickers” to answer multiple choice questions that were on the board.  Not board, I mean the screen.  I really miss school when they used chalk.  Dry erase markers are OK too.  Powerpoint is just so tiring and boring.

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Great birthday weekend.

I just ate the last slice of my birthday cake – it’s a yellow cake with whip cream frosting and strawberries which is so delicious that I could eat it everyday. With this last piece of cake, my birthday weekend has ended. I had such a great birthday weekend, the weather was beautiful! I got to rock a baby to sleep and I got to sleep with a cat. I got to hang out at home with my family and eat my favorite cake – but I’m so happy mainly because I ran this 10 mile race on Sunday so much faster than I thought I ever could, I finished in 1:32, so a little under 9:15 pace, but for the first 6 miles I had tracked under 9 minute pace and I’m kind of still in a little bit of a high from it.

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I know – it’s still pretty slow in the grand scheme of things, but it’s pretty speedy for me and it’s such a gift to myself that at 41 I’ve somehow managed to be in such great shape – that I now somehow have a body that can move quickly and actually run 10 miles at a time. I miss my running partner – did I tell you that her knee got injured via dog collision at the dog park? – so she hasn’t run with my for the last month or so and she’s my big motivator – she’s a great running partner, a little faster than me, a little more determined than me, and always cheering me on. So it’s been hard the last four weeks just training on my own.  We had dinner at her house on Friday night.  I promise not to talk too much about running because even though I’m very excited about it, I think it can be mind-numbingly boring to everyone else.

 
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I babysat on Saturday night – a trio of children and the youngest one – a toddler really – but a baby to me.  I got to hold him and feed him and rock him to sleep.  And he so peacefully went to sleep in my arms and I remember so well doing the same thing for Vince 10 years ago.  Jeremy had this ingenious plan that I spend the night at my babysitting gig because then the parents could stay out as late as they wanted and I could go to sleep right after the kids went to sleep and slip out for my race in the morning.  Which I did because all the kids were asleep by 8:15 and I was asleep by 9:15 (with the cat – I love cats but can’t have them anymore because some regularly visiting Martins are allergic).

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Finally, an article from the NYTimes that quotes Jeremy.

Hot

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It’s been hotter this week than it has been all summer.  We’ve had to crank up (down?) the AC all week so we don’t sweat all day.  Thank goodness today we had a good downpour to clear all the humidity, it’s suppose to be beautiful this weekend.  Our deck (above photo) was built with the slats right next to each other – the builders had apparently never put together a deck before – so it holds water like crazy each time the rain comes down heavy.  Like a shallow swimming pool full of leaves.

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Jeremy and I took each other out to dinner last night for our combined birthday celebration.  We often get into fights about our birthdays.  I don’t like to celebrate birthdays and Jeremy does like celebrating, but since Jeremy’s birthday is a week before mine and usually goes uncelebrated, then when mine rolls around seven days later, Jeremy’s a little grumpy at me for not celebrating his birthday and then he’s grumpy when he’s trying to figure out how to celebrate mine.  We’ve been together for almost 20 years now and this argument at least 15 times.  But I think we’ve figured it out now – basically we have to start talking about our birthdays in July and come up with a plan that is satisfactory to both parties.  So this dinner was two months in the planning. 

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Jeremy turned 45 and I’m turning 41. I enjoy so much growing old together.  So lucky to have found each other.

Back to school for everyone.

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As I was rounding the corner at the end of my run, I was lucky enough to catch Vince at the bus stop.  He leaves so early in the morning that even though I leave in the pitch black to start my workout, I barely make it home in time to see him head off to school.  Today was trash day so I found all the kids holding their noses to the aroma of trash trucks (which were nowhere to be seen)  while Maxi and I stopped by for a little doggie hello.

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Tonight I went to the middle school for Vince’s back-to-school night.  It’s the same middle school that I went to thirty years ago which makes me very happy.  The outside of the school looks very different than the school did thirty years ago – I assumed that they tore the whole thing down and renovated it in the early 90s when the school system had a lot of money to do these kinds of renovations – so I thought as I walked in that although it was the same school, it really wasn’t physically the SAME school.  However, two steps into the front hallway, I realized with much happiness that they must have actually just built a new wing, or maybe installed air conditioning or something very minor because the school looks exactly the same as I remember.  I think that maybe he’s taking social studies in the same classroom I took social studies in.

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My pathopharmocolgy teacher was in the Pentagon on 9/11 – she’s a life long military nurse and was at the Pentagon in a non-clinical role (nursing policy?) when the plane hit and she helped triage all the wounded people at the Pentagon and get them mostly to burn centers in the area.  When I walked out of class at 7 pm, I saw that in the two hours I’d been at class, the whole lawn was covered with US flags to get ready for the campus memorial tomorrow.

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Our posted signs

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I’m amused this week that our household appears a little more politically conservative than usual.  With a magnet of the local Catholic Church on our car (via Nat) and a join the Cub Scout sign out front (via Vince), I would not fault anyone for thinking that we are all Republicans in the house.  I think Vince has (though the scouts) handled a gun more than I have and I know that the gun events at scout camp are, for him, one of the highlights of the whole week. During a 4 week period in my college days, I handled a pistol every day for at least hour.  I was a good shot (like my mother – who has an enormous trophy for winning a marksmanship contest) and I was thinking about joining the pistol team – but alas I did not.  I think I should have now that I look back on it, maybe it would have been good to go to some college level competitions.  But it was just the repetitiveness about it all – I mean – you just tried to breath the same way each time, to pull the trigger the same way each time, to have the same metal focus each time – that really seemed to pull me a little further away from being human.  I tend to sway too much towards the practical and unemotional – so even to this day, I have to remind myself that it’s OK for everything to be a little messy – a bit out of my control.  I try to cultivate a little messiness in life – which is not really that hard because no one else in the family ever wants to do anything the most simple and practical way.  No one.  All trips must include a scenic detour.

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Edda has a little wound on her ear that won’t heal.  It’s at the junction where the ear lobe meets the side of the head.  I guess Edda’s earlobe there has the tiniest bit of a fold and therefore holds moisture a little more than a smooth expanse of skin.  Every time I have the chance, I kind of clean it and wipe it down, but I probably do it only once a week when I notice it – it’s probably been there for months and months (not getting better nor getting worse) and today someone at school noticed it and sent me an email about it.  I wonder if she would have this problem if she had Rett Syndrome.  I mean – it’s not really a part of her body that’s impacted by Rett Syndrome – would a typical 9 year old have a non-healing wound on their ear for months?  It’s hard to imaging that she would have it as a typical child, but I have no reason to think that Rett has caused this.

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Today in nursing school, I learned all the seizure class drugs.  All their modes of operation, what seizures they work on, what side effects occur for each type of drug.  It all seems scientific and orderly – like as if you can order pizza with exactly the toppings you want and 15 minutes later – Poof!  All the seizures are gone! As a mother of a child who has been on seizure meds, it all seems so not scientific and orderly.  It seems like a guessing game for everyone involved.  A guessing game which always starts with Keppra (mode of mechanism unknown but tolerated very well).

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Many cookies.

Vince had a sore throat Friday morning and looked glum when he came to my room at 6:35 am. I gave him a once over and then gave him a Motrin and then promptly sent him to school. And I said that if he felt badly, to go to the nurse and that we’d be able to pick him up. Although who exactly would pick him up would be an issue – I was going to be 15 miles away around the Beltway during the morning and then Nat was going to Baltimore to pick up someone from the airport. Anyways I told him the schedule – that it might take us a while, but we’d be there to pick him up if everything didn’t get better during the day. Sending him to school probably was a mistake – by the time he came home at 3, he was running a fever and took to his bed. I had been home working all afternoon and I asked why he didn’t call – he said he didn’t feel bad until 6th period and that he asked his teacher if he could go to the nurse and the teacher said that there was only an hour left of school – so just tough it out. Poor kid.

Jeremy spent his birthday weekend making a bunch of cookies – oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip (with and without walnuts), snickerdoodles and finally lemon sugar cookies.  We hosted a coffee hour for our local mayor/council candidates for our fair city.  We invited everyone we knew to come over – we got a few people to come out – we actually met some neighbors right near us we’d never known before and I’m happy I had the chance to meet all the candidates.  There were too many cookies.  But they were all delicious, I think I had cookies for all three meals on Saturday.  Meeting neighbors meant that we could learn the history of our house – our house is a new house built in an older neighborhood – it was built after the original house was torn down.  Apparently the gossip around the neighborhood was that the house that used to be on our lot was the house you could count on to get your drug fix – apparently they had a whole colored outdoor light scheme which would tell the customers when they were selling or maybe when they were out of stock.  All this is pretty incredible because the chief of police lives like 5 houses down on the next block!

I ran 15 miles this weekend.  Five on Saturday and ten today.  I’m beat.  Going to bed right now.  This morning, before I ran the 10 miles, I woke up at 5 am to volunteer at the start line for a half marathon which started right at the metro station near our house.  The winner of the women’s race came in at 5:50 pace.  Just a smidge slower than half my pace.  Crazy.

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