Even though this winter is less snowy than last winter,  I have not been as brave running outside this winter.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe I’m just more worried about falling and breaking my arm? Or I just like being warm?  Who knows.

Anyways, there is only so much treadmill running one can take, so I managed to get outside yesterday.   I wore some chains for my shoes so the thin sheet of ice that accumulated overnight posed no problem.   Maxi, of course, has four legs, which makes her very stable on the ice (Jeremy called it her four-wheel-drive last night).  I took Maxi for the first time in over a year.   Poor dogs. As soon as my schedule gets squashed, the dogs are the first to get ignored.  Although my excuse for not taking Maxi on my runs is very lame.  Mostly she drives me crazy because she wants to pee all the time and she likes to take her time to find the most perfect spot to poop.  Come on doggie!  I’m training here!  I gotta go!  No stopping now!  And then I have to carry a bag ‘o poop for a couple of miles trying to find a place to throw it away.  I’ve been yelled at by neighbors who don’t want a single poop bag at the bottom of their city trash can.  So I have to hold onto it until I get to a public trash can or a neighbor who I know would be sympathetic to my cause.

I have not walked Maxi for longer than around the block in over a year.  It seemed like a lot to ask her to go on a 45 minute run.  I figured that Max would be out of shape.  But she held up surprisingly well and during looked at me many times with gratefulness and happiness (tongue just flopping out of her mouth practically saying:  I’m running!  With you! Yippee!) and I felt guilty that I’d abandoned her for the past year or so.

Sorry Maxi, we’ll hang out more.

I have many talents.  But I’m decidedly untalented in being a girl.  I’ve never really been interested my own hair, makeup or clothing.  I do love other typically girl-y things such as celebrity gossip and celebrity clothing but I haven’t really had the chance to keep up with all that recently. And I do like boys which is a typical girl thing.

But back to hair.  Nat’s on vacaction for a few days this week and next, so I’m doing the usual morning/afternoon childcare duties.  I’m not as good at it as my caregivers, but what the hell?  Let’s just go ahead and try it out.  I delved into the huge selection of hair styling how-to videos on youtube.  Ten thousand teenage girls trying to teach me how to french braid.

Day 1:  Attempt at hairband french braid:

Not so bad, a few flyaways and that weird loop over her ear.  The am bus driver even complimented me on my attempt…

Day 2:  My own design.  I think this looks more engineered than beautiful.  It’s attractive the same way a nondescript bridge is attractive – attractive because it’s functional and is holding the bridge up while I’m driving my family over it.

Ready for school!  Boo ya!

Edda had a chorus concert today.  I couldn’t make any of the daytime ones.  We couldn’t make the evening one either.  It’s hard to convince Edda that she wants to perform at 7pm.  But Nat went in my stead this morning and took some photos!

Jeremy got in late last night.  He was out defending what is right in our local Rockville political scene.   Since he didn’t fall asleep until midnight, I went to tend to Edda when she awoke at 4 or 5 am.  When I go over to her bed, I usually can just curl myself around her and coax her to go back to sleep until we all get up (minus Vince) at about 6 am.  And that is just what I expected to happen last night.  I was happily sleeping with a quiet Edda at 5:59 am.

And who comes running into Edda’s pitch black room right at 6am?  Vince.  Delighted at having no school, he’s up a full hour earlier than he usually is.  I scold him and tell him that he needs to go back to bed and he exclaims, “It’s a snow day!  I don’t want to waste it!”  

Then he took Edda and headed across the hall and tumbled into our bed.  Oh how I dislike snow days as much as Vince likes them.

We are on the southern edge of a huge snowstorm that is going to topple New York and Boston.  But!  The kids went to school today.  I took this photo of Edda while she waited for the bus.  Sometimes she gets up so early that she falls asleep at 8 am in her wheelchair.  It’s like she has two wake-ups.  She wakes up at 5 am, then has breakfast at 6 and then goes back to sleep until she gets to school and then wakes up again and has second breakfast at school.  Mmmm…  sounds like a nice schedule.  I was so sure that it was going to be a snow day that I didn’t really prep for my own first day of school.  It was so nice to see everyone again.

It was Nat’s birthday on Saturday and we tried to plan a big party for her, but because of her weekend schedule and our weekday schedules, we couldn’t really hold the big shindig that we wanted to.  So we celebrated at 6:45 am on Friday morning before work/school.  We got her a crown, a big puff pastry and tableclothed the table and we all ate eggs and bacon and delicious fruit salad.

*******

Vince broke his phone by having it in his pocket and then running into a doorknob.   Jeremy presented me with three options, two of which involved spending money and one which did not.  I chose the one which did not involve spending money.  So last week, we spent some time switching phones around.  Vince got the Android phone I was using.  I started up Donald’s old iPhone 5.   This was the option that didn’t involve spending money which meant that I had to travel back in smartphone time to 2012. Vince didn’t want to go to the iPhone 5 for a couple of reasons: 1. all his games were on the Android platform and he would lose all the progress he’s made in those games & 2.  the iPhone screen was smaller than his phone.  I thought I didn’t care about the screen size, but now after using the iPhone 5 for three days, I feel like my fingers are too fat to type on such a little screen.

It snowed on Wed.  And it happened to be the same day that we got more insulation blown into the house.  So I guess that is a good thing.

Our house is awesome in many, many ways, but it does have its own issues.  One of which is inconsistent insulation in various spaces.  Like the space behind the fireplace which was empty.  See the nice insulation guy put his whole body in that space?  That space that is (well, was) the same temperature as the outside.  Yeah, no good for keeping the house warm.

It took Jeremy and me five years to agree to get this work done.  Jeremy and I have a long and convoluted way of making these decisions.  We got the quote five years ago and have spent the intervening time debating whether we were going to do it or not.   Thank goodness not all of our decisions take this long.  Otherwise, we’d still be stuck on a corner in Pasadena where we first met.

*******

I did this crazy thing where I signed up to TA a class this term.  I’m going to teach a recitation session of the med/surg (adult health) class I took.  I loved this class, it was the first class that I felt tied everything together – how the body works, how disease processes work, what interventions are necessary, what drugs are appropriate and what to teach the patient.  And we went from head to toe, all the major systems in the body.  And I saw a lot of it in actual patients in clinical.  I’ve never done any teaching before, it should be fun.  Maybe.  Or a lot of work.  Or maybe no one will show up and it’ll be a bust.  We’ll see!  Today was a gathering of all the TAs and tutors and we spent some time getting to know each other.  In general, I hate teambuilding exercises, but these were not too terrible.  Puzzle anyone?