Taxes. Ramp.

Taxes.  Ugh.  OK, they are done.  I should have done them earlier.  Oh well.

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Mike came by to help us ADA our bathroom.

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Construction underway.

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A break mid-day for a walk.

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Kiki is here for a week or so, so we moved Edda’s bed into our closet.  I know, the closet is huge.  It almost makes me wish I cared more about clothes because I wear only t-shirts and jeans and that takes up only 1/64th of the closet.

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Friday

Bryson is over for a sleepover.  It’s fun having conversations with 14 year-olds at the table.

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I can not ever estimate the correct Tupperware size for any leftovers we have.  I had to squish the salad into a very small box.

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Edda says – yo!  good night!  see you on the other side.

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Thursday.

Suit and tie for Jeremy.  He’s wearing the suit he got made by Bob’s tailor in China.  It’s suppose to be dark blue, but it’s really black, even in the strongest sunlight.

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I trimmed Edda’s bangs today, I think the bangs are nice, but they need constant maintenance.

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Jeremy took me out tonight.  We went to three ice cream stores.  1) the sweet frog which we abandoned because they wouldn’t take our gift card, 2) the Ben & Jerry’s which had a “be back soon” sign and 3) finally Carmen’s where we successfully got ice cream.

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Unfortunately, I’ve been arguing these days with Vince about homework completion vs screen time.  I can’t help myself, I get focused on it and I can’t, as Elsa says, let it go.  Come, on!  What’s more fun than the quadratic equation.  Nothing!  (Well except for the ideal gas law, but that doesn’t come until later!)  I’m sure it has to do more with the fact that I haven’t done our taxes yet and we’ll owe this year and that our childcare is completely changing our schedule and that Edda’ll have oral surgery in the next week.  With morphine.  I’m going to bring morphine into the house for something I’m choosing to do on purpose on my daughter.  Sigh.

Backwards in time

Fwd: Edda's birthday party

Vickey sent me some photos she took at Edda’s birthday party.  I just wanted to highlight 1) the cake and 2) Edda’s hair.  I’m so happy I have these photos.

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I went to the PT today for myself.  I’ve been dealing with a hamstring issue for a few months now – it’s preventing me from running the way I want to run – which is quickly and in small, oval circles once a week. I’ve torn it which is not so great, but I can still run on it which is great.

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So I’m intending to run around on it, except for on Saturday when it’s going to SNOW.  WTF?

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Tuesday.

Motivation = low for my pediatric exam this morning.

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Procuring liquid opioid pain medication for Edda’s tooth extraction next week.  Was warned they might not stock it, so I went in a week early.  They stock it – in a large safe.

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Vince doing Chinese homework.  The struggle is real.

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Jeremy made zucchini without the Parmesan cheese.  We were out.  The struggle is real-er.

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Re-entry.

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A little rough here on the re-entry back into regular routine.  Keyla’s on vacation so Jeremy was in charge of Edda’s morning hair.  I’m impressed he managed a couple of plaits.

Edda had an orthotic appointment today – to check up on her brace which is rubbing and abrading her armpit skin.  Not good.  We haven’t been really able to keep her in the brace that long because her armpit is rubbed raw.  We are also getting her foot orthotics to prevent her feet from splaying out anymore and a new-ish type arm brace.  Jeremy picked the flower design.  I feel like we will just coat her with a uniform plastic shell and turn her into a little beetle.

Jeremy locked horns with their billing person who is trying to charge us $425 for 5 stretchy undershirts.  Insurance drama.

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Vince changed phones today, to the beautiful hand-me-down phone from Tony.  We are extra protecting it with tempered glass and a nice case.  Hoping it lasts *forever*.

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Sunday!

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Wind storm last night.  Tree branches fell on the roof and then onto my frozen tropical plants.  Sorry plants, I thought the last frost day was 2 weeks ago, but I was wrong.

Jeremy rode his bike to Silver Spring’s Sunday night dinner.  Then we all drove home together.

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Jeremy and Ruby striking a pose.  Good night!

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Home

On Wed, I finished a 15 minute interview with a fake patient/actor (the reason I had to go home) who had deep vein thrombosis and then I got into the car and drove 5.5 hours to Bard.

I put my bags down and Jeremy and I headed to dinner with Emy and Seth.  They prepared a delicious pasta dinner with all the stuff they’ve been getting in their CSA.  Seth also told us all about his microbe pets – brewing beer, making sourdough bread and kombucha.  He offered to give us some of the microbes, but I told him that we had to take care of the children, then the pets, and finally the plants.  The plants are suffering a little bit, if I went down the evolutionary ladder, I would not be able to muster enough concern for them to keep them alive.

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The next morning, we had breakfast with Kiki and Kappa.  Keyla drove the Civic back to Maryland to start her own road-trip vacation and the rest of us headed to New Haven in the van.

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Hello Pip!

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But first, we tried to see Eileen at the conservatory – but she wasn’t in yet.  Boo.

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In New Haven, as we waited for people to be done with work, we ate New Haven pizza.  We ordered too much.

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We found Bob’s old apartment.  We also explored the Yale campus and because we needed to find ramps and elevators, we stumbled through many buildings including the third floor of the chemistry building past graduate students with pipettes who peered out of their labs to wonder what we were doing there.  Yale seems completely accessible, but it is not obviously so with ramps tucked behind stone pillars and elevators in various nooks.

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We went to the Peabody Natural History Museum.  Edda loved the main room!  With the brontosaurus.  We got in during the free hours, hooray us!

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First set of friends were Karin and Melvin.  We talked about spinal surgery (Melvin had and Edda will have), we met their dog – Lionel (not Richie, but Messi) and Milo, their son, played Minecraft with Vince.  They also had very good, square donuts.  Karin just finished her book on a famous poet, I’m excited to read it when it comes out.

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Next, we had dinner with Lisa, a college friend of Jeremy’s.  I just finished reading her book about surviving brain cancer from 18 years ago.  Now she’s working on a book about her severely disabled sister who just passed away in 2014.  I’m excited to read that book too, but she warned that it might be another decade.

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Again too much delicious food.

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After a night near New Haven, we drove to Long Island and had lunch at the IKEA.

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Met up with Alan at Teddy Roosevelt’s house, Sagamore Hill.  Vince is clearly excited to go on the house tour.  There were lots of animal skins all over the house.

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Had dinner at Alan’s place with Viviane and Hai.  We played board games.

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Then, in the morning, we had bagels with them before we came home.  This was our attempt for self-timed photo:

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This is better:

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