Edda’s wheelchair is broken again. Now it’s the other brake. I give up. I cry uncle. I might have just cried.
I even tried WD-40 and a hammer. It did not budge.
Why me? Why!?! All of Edda’s friends love their Convaids. What is wrong with our Convaid? Grrrrrrrrrr….
Jeremy made chocolate peanut butter cupcakes.
Mom made the dinner which included eight treasure duck, beef stew with tofu and long-life noodles. Duck head below:
Happy Birthday Vince, my teenager!
Vince had his birthday sleepover last night. Seven boys vs. two parents. The party met my goals: no crying, no fighting, nothing broken (both on the boys and for the house) and a happy Vince. Vince has a nice group of friends that he’s had for a long time. It’s a pleasure to watch them grow up.
Diet Coke geyser.
One can of shaving cream.
General mayhem.
Pizza cake (+ tater tots).
Cookies and cream cake.
Bacon.
Mountain Dew.
It snowed so much today. School was cancelled. School is cancelled tomorrow. Everyone is trapped in the house – a little bored. I can not shake this blue mood even though I’m trying. I’m hoping it’ll go away when spring comes next week.
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Jeremy shoveled at least twice during the day. He has this new shovel he’s trying out – it kind of pushes the snow in front of it, so you never have to lift the shovel off of the ground. But in order for it to work well, you can’t let the snow get too deep. Here he is admiring his handiwork from Edda’s room. We are out of salt, I’ll have to remember to buy some next week to prep for next year’s winter. All the hardware stores have been wiped out of salt earlier this week from the freak rain/ice storm on Monday.
Freshly shoveled and still coming down.
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Vince had to interview someone older than 75 years and he picked Gene. Vince is learning about WWII, so he needed to interview someone who remembers what it was like in the 1940s. Vince got a lot of information. Gene likes to talk.
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They were holding a book sale at Vince’s school earlier this week. I’ve read a bunch of young adult fiction over the past few years, some of them were really delightful (although I can’t remember any of them) and I gave Vince some money and I told him to buy me a book he thought I would like. Vince proposed a Grumpy Cat book, I told him absolutely not – not a Grumpy Cat book.
I said that he should image a novel that I might like and pick it out for me. He got me this (tagline – Choose to lie…. or choose to die):
Not exactly something I would have picked out myself, but then I turned it around and noticed that the NYTimes said it was a page turner, so I guess I’ll give it a go. We’ll see.
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I’m behind on everything. Except sleep and cookies, I’m fine on sleep and cookies.
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Finally, Edda and I hanging out on the couch. Watching TV.
Tomorrow at sunset starts Purim. Normally Purim doesn’t mean that much to me because I’m not Jewish, but my Jewish / caterer / Rett mom friend, Lauren, recently posted on The Food Jew her mother’s beloved recipe for hamantaschen. The grocery store was all out of Lauren’s suggested filling of apricot and prune, so we made due with raspberry and prune/plum. I took advantage of Nat’s talent for baking and she tried out the recipe this afternoon. So yummy! I did burn the roof of my mouth when I ate one because I couldn’t wait for the filling to fully cool. They were a tiny bit overfilled, so some of them lost their triangle-ness, but we will try again tomorrow.
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I found this old printed photo of Vince. I’m getting all sentimental now that’s he’s about to be 13. Was he ever really that little?
It rained all day on Sunday and all the water froze into a sheet of ice. School was cancelled today. Again. The temperatures were going to get into the 40s today, so I sprinkled a generous amount of salt on the skating rink that was our driveway and I left the house at about noon and hoped for the best. I did have to put some salt and sand behind the front wheels of the car to get some traction because the car spun its wheels a little trying to manage the slight uphillness of our driveway and I did fall on my ass while getting said salt and sand, but no matter, it would be fine when I got home. As I came home after dark, I was hopeful. All the driveways I passed were clear of ice! Our driveway certainly must have melted itself. Clearly I was in denial, our driveway is in shade most of the day. Luck was not on my side today. I came home and it was still an ice rink and now the temperatures had dropped below freezing. So Vince and I scrapped the driveway. Yes, Vince helped me in shorts and bedroom slippers. Well until he didn’t help me anymore which was less than 25% into the deicing project. Somehow, now that he is certifiably bigger than me, can I feel more resentful that he doesn’t do more physical labor for me? I have a full grown teenager on my hands, he should be doing all the shoveling, icing, mowing and raking, right? I gotta figure that out.
We went to a party at Boba’s house last night. Remember Boba is my true love so I go out of my way to see him. Boba’s mom does hold monthly get togethers and potlucks for friends and the parties usually have a theme. Saturday night’s theme was “sesame seeds and lemon grass”. Boba’s mom has the most talented cooking friends. I think it was the best potluck I’ve ever gone to. Vince had a particularly good time. Since the resident kids in the house are 2 and 4 years old, all the other invited kids were of similar age. Vince out-aged them by a decade and at some point had kids hanging off every limb and he was dressed up like Batman. Jeremy met a neighbor of the hostess and learned that she had 10 chickens in her backyard. He scored a dozen fresh eggs. mmmm…
