The dogs need to poop.
Our street is one of the first plowed because at the end of our street, there is a fire station. I just needed to make it to the street and then we could walk pretty well.
This was at 8 am. It’s now 2 pm and still coming down strong.
We are patiently waiting for the snow. Because the two feet of snow will be accompanied by 30-40 mph winds, we’ve been warned repeatedly like children by the weathermen (ah sorry, weather people) that we could lose power and therefore we must be prepared. Like ill-equipped children, we all understand that the loss of power means that we’ll be sitting in the dark, trapped behind two feet of snow, with our electronics running out of charge and slowly getting colder – but how does one prepare for that? Do we fill our tubs with water? Do we call our neighbors and ask to stay at their house with power and, if they are kind enough to share their watts/volts/amps with us, how will we get to any other house with two feet of snow everywhere? We will just have to conjure up our pioneer spirit and eat all the candy I’ve hidden from Vincent.
Last night, as the city emptied out, I went into town and had dinner with Lana and Jeremy. Shake Shack first for burgers and then a round of drinks. The round of drinks may have been more expensive than dinner. Lana is excited to try out the infamous DC “happy hour”. In Boston, there does not exist an alcoholic happy hour. But in DC between 3-7pm, the whole town gets boozy on seven dollar cocktails.
Took Mom and Dad to see Star Wars (finally!) at the *fancy* movie theatre in North Bethesda. In this particular theatre, you have pillows and blankets and unlimited popcorn and table service for food. We had lunch together. My dad had a good time telling everyone (all 4 people who showed up for any mid-day movie) that he took me and Donald to see Star Wars when I was 5 (just down the street at Congressional Plaza), and now, almost 40 years later, I’m taking them to see Star Wars.
It was nice to see Han:
And Leia:
May the Force be with you.
I had lunch today with Amy. She makes me want to run a marathon (kind of) – as she does about 5 or 6 times a year (or more!). Below, here we were in 1994, all on film and printed paper (and in a tree and I have my Nikon F2 around my neck). Above, all digital, baby!
Just came back from our 14-day South America Cruise. In that cruise, on the high seas, at least 4 people were hospitalized, including one evacuated by a medical helicopter.
Patagonia (part of Argentina and Chile), world renowned “the wild and windy” land, is really windy and chilly. Trees always hug the ground in order to survive (picture 1). Picture 2 shows a Chilean glacier. Picture 3 is for a pretty girl with an Argentina hat. The next picture is us ready for formal nights or evening chic (?) – just like used car vs. pre-owned car.
The rest pictures are on board the ship. I have to say that Rena is a much better ping pong playing than me.
Evil eye. Studying for Chinese. We both know it needs to happen. We both are annoyed. Life goes on. Notice Edda has no pants. “I got no pants!”
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Jeremy at IKEA. Where we buy items that are destined to change our lives.
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Sunday night dinner. Lively conversation! Loud! We usually aren’t that loud, but this evening we were all punchy.
It’s Ruby’s 15th birthday today!!!!!!!! From her humble beginnings (born in the backseat of a Volvo in Austin, TX), she has triumphed over every suburban dog adversity. OK, not so many adversities, but she’s still triumphant.
(2nd “real” final – Tues. Chinese.)
To celebrate Ruby’s birthday, we roasted a whole leg of lamb for her. My mother gave us this leg. I’m not sure where she found it, but we cooked it.
In the middle of dinner prep, Jeremy sliced a chunk off of his thumb, so Vince picked up the slack and made the mint sauce and carved the leg.
Vince took his first ever “real” final yesterday. I guess it’s “real” because this grade is the first one of the many that will be sent to colleges on his transcript. Even though he’s in middle school, all the courses which are considered high school level get sent on. We marched through the review packet the night before. I will admit that I got confused with some nomenclature and got turned around and had to google myself math reminders (my poor aging brain, slipping, slipping – 8th grade math, I so want to kick myself).
We tried doing a few minutes before dinner, but he was hungry, the blood sugar was dropping and the frustration level/anxiety was amping up. I know the kids at school were freaking out and I know I contribute to his anxiety which makes me feel bad. It’s a tough line for me to walk – to encourage hard work and good effort (not best effort, but good effort – best effort to me is unattainable because one could have always, no matter the circumstance, tried harder), but not be focused on the actual grade and not to get freaked out about the possibility of doing badly when you get stuck on a particular witchy problem about Claudia selling headbands at $3.00 a piece and it cost her 59 cents to make each one and how many headbands does she need to sell to make a profit of at least $100.
It’s been an uneven term in his math class, the teacher (by all accounts, awesome and fun and had some sort of math/basketball competition going between the girls and boys and the girls were handily winning) had a personal emergency and hasn’t been teaching for the past few months. There have been seven subs in the meantime. I think there is a long-term sub now, but this was the time period where they learned y=mx+b or geometric functions which means they didn’t really cover it very well.
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Keyla’s time with us is up at the end of April. Keyla’s been wonderful. Our au pair experience has been really great, all these girls, I was their stand-in mother for a little while in their young adult lives. It went mostly smoothly, it can never be without problems or issues – I like to say every au pair has their one crazy story! I think she’s going to be our last au pair. We are going to try a new childcare thing. This makes me scared. But it’ll be OK.
All of us tucked sick Edda to sleep last night. She curled up like a little potato bug and fell right asleep even though she was running a fever and just waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in. I slept with her last night as it was my turn (Jeremy had done the night before), but she slept deeply and peacefully. The fever didn’t reappear, but we kept her home today…
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To plow through tedious things, I employ a simple trick. I do the tedious thing and then I get a little self selected reward. In college, I used to reward myself with a 10-minute break of looking at People Magazine (MIT library had a subscription!) Today, I got to look through some old photos/mementos So here you go.
Jeremy has teased me (I want to say mercilessly, but that is not the case) lovingly about wanting to play the lottery this past week. I understand that I won’t win, I understand that the $2 is worth more to me than possibility of winning is, but I can’t help it. Jeremy cited both economics studies which prove the $ argument, and psychological studies which showed that 99% of all past winners spun themselves into bankruptcy and despair. Finally, he argued, you want a prize that was formed and taken from poor people who couldn’t really afford to spare the $20 to buy the lottery tickets? I told him to stop ruining my fun. I want to dream that having all that money will mean that my heart will never break again, but really, I know all that money will only buy me material things when what I really want can not be bought for any price.
The kids are home sick today. My sickies. I hope they are better by this weekend. Vince has a campout this weekend I want him to be well for – it’s a scout campout where there is some sort of competition between troops. Also, it’s very cold, they stay outside the whole weekend.
I think Tylenol is an urban myth. Does it work at all for fevers?
I went to see another continuing care facility today with my friend who is interested in moving into one. It was a full-service one – beautifully maintained, elegant finishes, balconies for every independent living apartment. The apartment had a certain style about that was so familiar to one of the apartments that Jeremy and I moved into when we first both had professional jobs in Austin. It’s one of those communities that likes to use the word “amenities”. The independent living apartments segue into assisted living apartments that ease into comprehensive care, like riding on a little conveyor belt. Then I kind of realized that each time I turn down something I want to have because I’m “saving”, I’m saving for a little apartment that looks exactly like one of the first apartments I rented. The first one was full of potential and possibilities for a life not yet full of stories and the last one will have most (though not all, for the last chapter is an important one) of the stories of my life already written.
