Month: July 2015

Dearest loves –

We are all recuperating from a week of dad camp, it concluded last night with a barbecue dinner for all of the families who trusted Jeremy to haul their sons all over the wilderness of Maryland.  I have more photos to share from Jeremy and Vince’s Excellent Adventure, but I wanted to first highlight Edda’s performance in Peter Pan on Thursday night.  Edda was fabulous as a member of Peter Pan’s Indian tribe.  Kara did a great job as Edda’s inclusion counselor.  Keyla plaited Edda’s hair into two tight French braids.  We are very lucky to have such a great program so close to the house which means that Edda can have a summer full of swimming, theatre and friends.  Towards the end of the performance, the kids were kind of forgetting their lines and laughing at each other trying to prompt the next lines from each other.  Then Cpt. Hook, in one of the big fight scenes, sent his hook skittering across the stage which sent the whole cast into uncontrollable giggles which then made all of us in the audience laugh.  Very sweet.

Day 1 (Monday) the boys went and did a five mile hike to visit Wolf Rock/Chimney Rock  up at Catoctin.  As this was the first day, Jeremy was nervous.  He planned this week off of work to host dad camp about a year ago when we realized that he was accruing vacation at a faster rate than I was.

But because this was planned so far in advance, he couldn’t have predicted that he would be swamped with work the days/weeks leading up to this week-long adventure.  Last week, he was frantically trying to tie up loose ends at work and plan all the details of this trip.  On Sunday night it looked like it was going to be steady rain on Mon/Tues, the big camping days of the week, he was thinking that it might just be kind of a miserable experience for the boys – but what can you do?

But Monday was fabulous, the day was overcast but not raining, so it wasn’t too hot.  The boys were rested and eager to hang out with each other.  The dad who volunteered this day had never been hiking before, so it was nice to introduce him and his son to the great outdoors.

OK, I was going to post a long post about Jeremy and Vince’s Excellent Adventure (which continues for the rest of the week), but I’m too tired to download photos.  Jeremy is taking the whole week off work and taking Vince and 4 pals on a crazy week-long “dad” camp.  The other dads are each all taking a day off and volunteering one day.  So far there has been hiking, rock climbing, chili making, cabin occupying, s’more making, fire lighting, class-3 rapid water rafting (and being dumped into the Potomac) and it’s been only 48 hours.  Jeremy is red-lining his logistics capability with ten-thousand emails, texts, keeping track of costs, planning meals, and personalities.  It is crazy.  And according to the boys and the parents, it has been crazy fun for all involved.  Boys have been on their best behavior, weather has been coorperating, etc.

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Lest you think that I have had a quiet few days here while the boys were gone, things don’t stay still here either.  Edda had her teeth checked on Monday, the dentist is recommending that we pull a misplaced molar that ended up in her palate and all her wisdom teeth and put sealants on her molars. This involves coordinating with an oral surgeon, an operating room, and our own pediatric dentist and insurance.  The estimated date of this surgery is Sept/Oct, it’s going to take that long to pull it (ha ha – dental joke there…) together.

Also, today I had a plumber come and declare that our rediculously expensive water heater is kaput. I don’t even want to write down the quote I got from the plumber.  Our house is filled with very expensive appliances that look really great and have many great features that, when they break (which is often), I can’t believe they even make appliances that expensive.  The plumber today actually said to me – you might want to sit down when I hand you this quote.  I sat down.

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I have no photo today.  So you have Ruby.

Twenty years ago today, Jeremy took me to see the movie Safe and then after being dropped off at the front steps of my grad student housing, through some convoluted communication not involving texting, he ended up kissing me on the steps of the Chemical Engineering department.

Well, he didn’t exactly take just me to see the movie Safe.  We had a regular thing going with our grad school friends where on Thursday nights, we’d all meet (all 8 or 10 of us) to go to a movie.  The movie the week prior to Safe was Apollo 13.  Jeremy did not go to see Apollo 13 (even though it was known that he was free) and therefore, I concluded, was not interested in dating me even though I was very interested in dating him.  The simplest explaination is at that time Jeremy was kind of an art-house movie snob.  This story is such a part of our history that whenever I want to see a summer blockbuster movie, I never even think of inviting Jeremy to see it with me.  Which results in questions like, “You saw Skyfall without me?  I totally wanted to see that!” which still makes me a confused wife.

But, our engineering friends, being ever so clever, arranged for the regular meeting time to go to Safe, but then behind our backs, called each other and made sure that no one showed up except me and Jeremy.  Well, except Dave who had failed to get the message not to show up.  So Jeremy and I went on our first date without knowing that it was our first date and we went on it with Dave, who also didn’t know that he was the fifth (third?) wheel on our first date.

Every year, July rolls around and we think about watching Safe together again.  We never do.  It’s not a very good movie, even though I’m a huge Julianne Moore fan.  This year, we can’t even think about watching it together tonight because Jeremy is out camping in some cabin with Vince and a bunch of Vince’s buddies.  More on that tomorrow.

We have reached some critical age in the life of our house.  Everything is starting to break all at once – which is fine.  I understand that things need to be repaired and maintained, but, you know, I don’t really need to go to Home Depot six times over the same number of days.  I’m trying to be all zen about it, trying not to get frustrated, trying not to get annoyed.  Today, (on my first trip to Home Depot) I bought a power washer to power wash the deck ($159).  Vince put it together, I got all the safety equipment: rubber boots, sound ear muffs and eye protection and then – it didn’t work (but I managed to get soaked and I did cut myself again (thumb)).  So back to Home Depot to return the thing.  I didn’t exchange it, I just returned it because I had used up all my enthusiasm and momentum for the day.  No way was I going to try again to wash the deck anymore today.  Maybe another day, maybe never.   I’m going to change the name of this blog from Just Regular Folks to Just Going to Home Depot.  We are just going to spend the rest of my life on this blog talking about home repair.

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Sunday night dinner at our house, hosted by Bob.  Takeout Chinese food from the Great Wall and Taste of Shanghai.

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During dinner, the hot water heater failed.  We went downstairs, noticed water (!) coming out the bottom and the gas locked out.  We fixed the heater by wiping the gas burners (again learning from the internets that sometimes soot falls on the burners and trips a circuit or detector and shuts the water heater down) and I wiped up the water and hopefully tomorrow (after it leaks some more) I can figure out where it’s coming from.

The original weekend plan was for Jeremy, Vince and Bob to leave last night (Friday after a full day of work for Jeremy, a full day of travel for Bob and a sleepover video game extravaganza for Vince)  with backpacks and go hiking on the Appalachian trail for two nights.  That didn’t happen (they ended up doing a morning day hike on the Billy Goat trail), but because Edda and I were planning on having a whole free Saturday, she and I went to see one of our  favorite toddlers, Bert.

Edda and I hung out with Bert, Karuna and Vickey.  We had a great lentil/sweet potato soup/curry.  We talked about politics (well, mainly Hillary) and allergies.

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I came home around five pm and decided to fix (another) dripping faucet.  This time it took only one trip to Home Depot.  And I managed not to hurt myself and bleed all over the sink.