Month: December 2015

Remember the birthday party I went to a few weeks ago?  The one where I painted?  I thought my mom would like to go to one of those, so I took her out last night.   We got there early and picked out our spots, but then as people started to come in, it became apparent that we were going to be in the middle of a rather large birthday party.  I think we would have moved if we realized early enough what was happening, but by the time I figured it out, there weren’t two seats available adjacent to each other.

Anyhow – we ordered dinner first.  I was very hungry.

Then we went to work.

A moody painting this time.  Painting with black is very stressful.  You feel like one errant stroke, and it looks like a black gash across the canvas.  We had a nice time.

Jeremy heads out this morning for business.  He declines a ride to the Metro because it amuses him to strap his rolling suitcase to the back of his bicycle.  He told me that he’s only taking public transit on this trip to Davis, CA  (the bicycle capital of America).  I guess the plane isn’t technically public transit, but it’s mass transit, right?  Because it isn’t a private jet.  I can’t get the terms straight. Anyways, he texted me from the Sacramento airport saying that he gave up and took an Uber to his hotel instead of the bus.  2 hours vs 25 minute after a long day of travel.

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Keyla took the kids to get a Christmas tree.  I wanted them to use the fake tree we have tucked away in the garage.  But then everyone looked at me with sad eyes and reminded me that I’m always the grinch.   Now the house smells like Christmas.  Doesn’t Edda look like she’s singing a Christmas carol in this photo?  Wouldn’t it be something if Edda sang to me on Christmas?  Maybe I’ll ask for that from Santa.

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Finals week!  I very rarely study or work after 8pm, I’d rather get up at 6 am and start working right away.  But today I found myself at the library after my own bewitching hour.  I remember when I used to start studying at 8 pm.  OK, I would never really start studying at 8pm, I liked starting right after class ended – like at noon or 3pm and then working through until midnight with a dinner break tucked in there with some pals.  I never pulled all-nighters.  I never really crammed for anything.  I was at the library a lot when I was really a student – but get this – I never thought I spent a lot of time at the library.  Until I went to grad school and someone flagged me down the first week and said – I know you!  You were always in the library!  Sigh.  I hope I had fun then – I think I had fun.  Now I’m a fake student, I often have no idea what’s going on – I’ll show up to cancelled lectures or forget when assignments are due – and I’m found cramming in the library an hour before the test.

I came home from class today to find Vince crying.  He said that he had a bad day.  What happened? I asked. He had had a chapstick and a pencil in the same pocket as his phone and then he fell (?!) on his pocket and shattered the screen.  There are two big dents in the screen – one chapstick sized and one pencil sized.  For those keeping track, he is catastrophically damaging his phone about once every 23.4 days.  Unfortunately, since we can’t really buy a new phone for him every 23.4 days, he’s being demoted to a dumb-smart phone.  Which is a phone that looks like a smart phone, but perhaps behaves, at best, like a dumb phone.

Violin concert tonight.  They flubbed one of their pieces – the violas and the cellos missed their cue, but I couldn’t tell.  We bailed after Vince’s part.  For the record, we’ve never bailed before the end, it’s just that Jeremy is off to CA for the rest of the week.  Things need to happen at home before he can get on a plane.  Like laundry!

But we have a dryer.  So that should be OK.

Happy Hanukkah from our house to yours.

Mom and Dad went to an iPhone basics class in Montgomery Mall this week.  Have you ever seen an angel in real life?  That would be this woman teaching people like my parents how to use their iPhone.  My mother also says she doesn’t need glasses.  I will leave that up to her.

On Saturday, Jeremy took me to Lincoln’s cottage, which was his retreat from the White House during his tenure as president.  It’s located three miles from the White House and Lincoln would commute there daily during the Civil War.  It was a new style of historical house tour – multimedia and very polished.  I like the old-style of presentation, but now I’m old, I feel like a crotchety old lady complaining about the new-fangled things.  Then we went to a southern soul-food place, 20 minute wait for fresh fried chicken.  I

The we went to Target – where the cashier helped Jeremy save $4 by aksing him to download the Target app, scan some barcodes and then present the resulting coupon.  It was a lot of trouble for $4, but now we are $4 richer.

It’s a beautiful, cold weekend here in DC.  The dogs are enjoying their morning outing.

Jeremy admires my dad’s loft.

Saturday night, Vince and I went to a choral Christmas concert.  It was 2 hours long, in a church and mostly in Latin and German.  I got him to go because Sam’s mom was in the chorus and Sam was going too.  So they suffered together.  The last 20% was in English and familiar and we got to sing too.  Fun.  Then Vince got to go to the afterparty.  I went to bed.

Oh holy night the stars are brightly shining
This is the night of our dear Savior’s birth!

A week without childcare finds us working at home, downstairs and at odd hours.   We could manage it mostly – what suffered the most was our patience with each other.

Hello loves. All of a sudden I am tired.  Let’s start off with some holiday song.

As Keyla is on vacation, Jeremy gets Edda ready for the bus.

I try to avoid belonging to any tri-greek-lettered organization, but I managed to get inducted into the nursing honor society.

Vince and Jeremy came to see the ceremony.  Then we had to rush to Edda’s school to pick her up from a full day at outdoor ed.  She didn’t get to spend the night, but I think she was really happy to be able to sleep in her own bed.