Year: 2014

Where are we again, exactly?  Oh yeah, we are at the ortho’s office again.  Guess who broke her arm again?  That’s right.  My mom.  This is the story of her left arm:

30 years ago, sliced open her finger to the bone on a garbage disposal.
20 years ago, broke her wrist running away from a dog
this spring, broke her elbow rushing to dinner
last week, broke her shoulder gardening

Let’s not think about where this is leading.  I told her perhaps she should just get it over with and cut off that poor arm.

It’s fine, mom is fine.  No surgery.  No cast.  4-6 weeks of PT to prevent it from freezing up.  Should be good to go.  Good as new.  We are very lucky.

Folks, read: THIS

Possible treatment for Edda.  Not a cure, but a promising treatment.  It’s also being studied for Fragile-X and traumatic brain injuries.  It’s an already approved drug primarily used to treat long term growth failure in children (IGF-1: insulin-like-growth-factor).  Rumors from Facebook indicate that the families who participated are excited about the results that they saw (improvements in hand use and attention span), but they aren’t allowed to talk about it.  Exciting!  And the study was done on older girls, not little, little ones who are prior regression.

Then maybe Edda can get a point or two on inane forms like this that I still have to fill out:

Dad was in town in the am to get the house ready for Mom who came back into town Sunday afternoon.  Jeremy was kind enough to send Dad on his way with a whole roasted chicken.

Sunday evening we went to Eric and Colleen’s for Sunday night dinner.  Attendance was down from the usual census, but there was great food and good snobby wine.  

We went to the celebration dinner of Vince’s soccer team on Saturday night.  Jeremy and Edda checked out the BMW i3 electric car we parked next to.

Getting Vince to play any organized sport thing is quite difficult – he just doesn’t really like doing it.  We’ve tried soccer, basketball, swimming, ping pong, gymastics.  All the things. The only way I got him to play this season was because three of his very good friends were already on the team.  They were completely defeated this season and Vince whined a bit before every practice/game, but I think he secretly liked it.

Edda and Jeremy thinking about pizza.

Jeremy’s home.  For a moment or two.  We met up at Meghan’s birthday/going away party in DC.  She’s joined the foreign service and is going away to her assignment soon.  I’m so excited for her, it sounds like a great adventure.

I drove into DC on a Friday night – this is a huge accomplishment for me.  I won’t do it for just anyone.

This wasn’t today.  Whatever day it was, it was beautful.

We got a little overzealous with the candles at dinner tonight.

Jeremy’s traveling this week.  Left this am.  Back on Friday.  So, as Vince laments, who is going to cook us dinner?  It’s going to be a week of fish sticks.  And low vegetable intake.  I used to be better at cooking – and I did do most of the cooking when I was a full time stay-at-home-mom.  But it’s not something I’m particularly good at – I can’t just rummage through the pantry and whip up something new.  I’m a recipe follower…

We headed over to the wilds of Virginia to go to Bert’s 2nd birthday party.  Jeremy made his peanut butter cookies which were a big hit.  We admired the amazing birthday cake.  Vickey and I decided this morning that this cake must have taken the cake lady more than 10 hours to make – we thought maybe upwards of 15 hours?  I dunno.  It was beautiful and delicious.

Bert is the cutest 2 year old ever.

Jeremy biked the 50 miles to Vickey’s house.  He left the house at 6:30 am and made it there by 10:30 am.  He’d always wanted to ride on a particular trail in Virginia.

*******

I feel like I’m living a lie on this blog.  For more than a decade, I’ve been documenting what I consider to be what I’m mostly thinking about, what I’m concentrating on, or what is really going on in the family.  What is on the blog these days is NOT AT ALL what is preoccuping myself with.  Snapping a picture and writing a few words about it really freezes something like 30 seconds out of the whole day.  And what does my whole day look like these days?  It looks like a lot of work.  I’m either hunched over my work work.  Or I’m hunched over my school work.  Or I’m going to school work. Or I’m procrastinating – which looks a lot like work work or school work, but really it isn’t any work. Besides the crazy work work or school work, there is the incredible clinical work (which I’m playing the most bottom rung role – I get coffee, change sheets, clean people while I’m learning to give meds and provide appropriate interventions when a patient is decompensating in front of me) that just has story after story about death, health, blood, epidemics, obesity, drug abuse, etc, which has just been incredibly moving and stressful and full of humanity that I kind of have to shake my head and clear it every time I leave the hospital.