Year: 2013

Yesterday was a day of food. Korean food for lunch and steak for dinner. An unbelievable day of feasting. I have been very moody recently (actually maybe for the last 2-3 months) it is not exactly a depression which I have experienced many times, Jeremy describes it as my mid-life crisis. Maybe that is true. It would be not surprising that I am suffering from this malady and not Jeremy. The main manifestation of this comes with the addition of more and more hobbies. I will not list my “hobbies” which may or may not include items that may incriminate me, but I must agree that it is getting a little bit out of control. (Can I count eating as a hobby?)

Sometimes I think I’ve taken all the photos there are to take. I know that this isn’t true. But sometimes I think that it is true. That it is all the same and nothing ever changes.  Ha ha – I’m so funny sometimes.

Edda is dry all the time – both on the inside and on the outside. She doesn’t drink enough water and her skin is so chapped in the winter months. No matter! She’s been in a good mood all winter and we are working on getting her enough fluids.

I bought her this cute humidifier and now I’m taking it room to room to humidify the whole house.

We went to this pizza place last night – I think we are trying to try every single restaurant that we can within a five mile radius of the house – there are a lot, we find them all through Yelp. Did you know that in a 1000 degree pizza oven, it only takes 90 seconds to cook the pizza?  There was a miniature shuffleboard table and we tried to figure out the rules (a la smartphone, but perhaps we could have asked someone). Jeremy seemed to think that we needed to stand on the same side of the table, but I disagreed. We tried to figure it out, but then the food came.

Thursday is my paperwork day – it’s when I carve out the hour or so or more where I slog through bills, RSVPing, getting gifts, filling out reimbursement slips, balancing the budget, etc. I know there are productivity points somewhere that say that this should only happen once a month, but really, if I don’t do it once a week, it all goes kablooie. I really do this task weekly, but for whatever reason, if I need to skip a week (because I’m at the spa, ha ha just kidding), I’m usually OK and not overrun with overdue things.

It snowed just about 1.5 inches last night, it was so cold that the snow refuses to have any slush to the powder, it doesn’t pack into snowballs, it just flies in all directions when the wind blows. Brrr.

It is cold here! I was a little worried that there would be no cold snap – thus allowing all the daffodils to come up in February and that the fleas would happily multiply all winter waiting to attack.

The kids had off yesterday – and Vince was busy. Edda not so busy. I might need to work on that.

Vince is playing in a trio – we are struggling, struggling with practicing. The trio makes him happy, he’s first violin – we’ll see.

It is frigid outside today (finally!). Glad it wasn’t yesterday – Jeremy drove (car) / rode (bike) / walked (feet) downtown to Obama’s inauguration yesterday. Four years have passed so quickly. Jeremy managed to get a ticket from a friend, so that was exciting to be closer to the president (as opposed to four years ago, when he was probably a good 1/2 mile away from the podium), but as you can see, there was not that much to see from his vantage point. Oh, I think the above photo was the line.

Here’s the real vantage point.

Look! There’s Beyonce! OK – just kidding.

For the past 2.5 weeks or so, I took this amazing nutrition class – I knew most of the stuff taught, but the teacher was amazing and it really made me rethink how I eat and how I need to eat better. I do eat a varied diet, but I know I don’t eat enough vegetables and I tend to err on the side of eating too much refined sugar, flour and rice. The family is a little bit in shock, I bring up switching to brown rice, and I’ve introduce Japanese yams and sardines to dinner. Vince especially is a little bit exasperated – he now loves the nights he cooks because he can cook burgers on a white bun with tater tots and ketchup.

As the nutrition class was a full semester in 10 days, it was full of assignments due every day including a presentation with a partner. I was paired with a new immigrant from Ethiopia – a nice guy, hard worker and was a lawyer in Ethiopia; here he’s starting over, trying to get into the medical field to support himself – everything is harder when you have no money – there’s no car, no printer at home, no funds to repair a broken computer and the list goes on and on. At the end of class one day, he asked me, “Why to people run away from me? or cross the street to get away from me?, Why do they ignore me even if I am smart and have something to contribute?” I sighed and told him that he was in a tough spot as a young, black man in America – that racism still existed, even in a diverse community like DC, and that the situation was complicated and distressing. And that I could not begin to tell him what it must be like to be young, black man in America. So on this MLK day – I am celebrating the progress that America has made (there is a black man in the Oval Office which is, of course, an amazing thing), but we still yet have a ways to go.

My running partner, Christine, roped me into coaching 5th grade basketball with her. We know nothing about basketball – pick and roll, layup, full court press? – all a mystery and it showed against our very first opponents who creamed us 42-6. Ugh. That was not a fun hour.

But our second game, we were more evenly matched, kept the score pretty close for three quarters – but in the end lost 24-12. But all the boys played well and are having fun. Which I guess what it is all about.

Christine travels a lot for work – and she is a great head coach – but she’s gone for the next two practices and Saturday game. So I’m on my own. Wish me luck!

Vince has always loved to cook. He’s helped out in the kitchen and likes knives. He will actually leave a video game to go and cook. Finally I had the brilliant idea that he could cook for the family. Last week, he made frozen fish filets and rice and Jeremy came home and taught him how to make the spinach. Which resulted in:

Last night, I sent him into the kitchen with the sitter (for help and to make sure he doesn’t get hurt) and a recipe for Asian chicken from scratch (you know ,with chopped garlic/minced ginger/soy sauce/rice vinegar) and he made it! He made dinner while Jeremy and I were both working and it was ready when Jeremy walked in from work. It is a miracle.
I don’t have a picture of it, but trust me, it was delicious and really, really, incredibly helpful. And I think he really enjoyed it.