Month: June 2016

The new Mellow Mushroom appeared in Rockville Town Square about a month ago – to blisteringly bad reviews on Yelp.  I’m sympathetic to new restaurants, it always takes time to really get everyone to work well together.  Anyways, a local Rockville booster encouraged all his Facebook followers to try out the Mellow Mushroom and, if it was good, to leave a good review on Yelp because it’s in our best interest to have thriving businesses in our little town center.  The Mellow Mushroom is a very popular national-ish chain and does have kind of a cult-ish following, but I think we won’t go back.  The service was very attentive and prompt, but the pizza was not that exciting to me.

What is exciting to me is that Chuy’s, one of our favorite places in Austin, is opening a branch less than 5 miles from our house.  Mmmm…swirled margaritas and queso.  Though the last time we were at Chuy’s, Jeremy had his one and only seizure.  Knock on wood, never again.

Vince spent all his birthday/Christmas/Chinese New Year and allowance money on a gaming computer.  In pieces.  He’s building his own – with the advice of Jeremy.  I hope it works out.  It looks a little scary to me.  I like my computers to just turn on when I open them right out of the box.

Our au pairs used to do both Edda’s and Vince’s laundry.  Lucky kids (and lucky us) they got nice, clean folded clothes all the time.

But now that era of luxury is over.  We took over Edda’s laundry and Vince was instructed to do his own laundry.  I introduced him to the washer and dryer, the laundry detergent and the theory of sorting clothes by color and we did the first round of laundry together.  He was proud that he was adulting.

Then 4 weeks passed by.  I would remind him to do laundry every weekend or so.  No laundry was being done.  I did not do any of his laundry.  I did not buy him new underwear.  I can only imagine that he was wearing dirty underwear for a long time.

This week, he managed to cycle through a few loads of laundry, which is good.  But then he declared that he was done with all the “summer clothes” and that he didn’t need to wash any of the dirty sweatshirts or sweatpants that were in the bottom of the pile because it’s not cold.  I told him it was not OK to leave the winter clothes dirty for 6 months waiting for cold weather to come.  We are still discussing this point.

We had pound cake, fruit & ice cream for dinner tonight.  Fourth of July a little early.

Then we did the great annual sock sort.  We tend to buy new socks rather than fold them.

And what is this?  Professional sports in the house!  Jeremy’s into it.  Weird.

Vince was at Hershey Park with an overnight stay on Saturday with a bunch of pals, which meant that it was only the three of us who had Carmen’s after dinner.  The evening was delightful, the line at the ice cream place was jovial.  I love ice cream.

Today, Edda and I spent time together binge watching TV.  I’ve just found Nurse Jackie, which I’m enjoying.  Makes me happy to be becoming a nurse – though hopefully always without the painkiller addiction.

And we took a nap together.  Also very enjoyable.  Mmmmmm, Sunday naps.  The best.

Jeremy came home on Friday night.  It doesn’t matter if Jeremy is gone for 2 days, 5 days, or three weeks – the last 24 hours I just think, aahahahhahahhhhh, I’m running out of patience and niceness.  I feel like I’m screwing up every two hours and then having to ask for forgiveness and apologize.  It was Vince’s finals week and it was stressful all around.  Vince is not the most natural of students – he, like most normal people, doesn’t really enjoy doing homework or practicing parabola problems or drilling Chinese vocabulary words, but he does enjoy doing well on exams.  I, on the other hand, enjoy doing homework and love making flashcards and doing endless math drill problems but (I’d like to think) used to (though it resurfaces from time to time) suffer terribly from perfectionism and anxiety surrounding performance.

So it’s a balance, how hard to focus on doing the homework, doing the drilling, insisting that he’s “smart” <- whatever the hell that means and then not pushing so hard that he wilts and feels discouraged and down and “stupid” and feels like all I’m doing is harping on his grades.  Generally, I think I’m so not Asian mom, I don’t check his grades online, I let him lead in many ways, but it’s a competitive school district and he both sees friends who seem to get 100% on no work (supposedly, as middle school boys, as a set, are good liars/boasters or it’s true, the math is still easy enough for some) or friends who seem to study 5 hours a day and are on the Dean’s list (to which Vince says, that is insane, and I agree, if you start at 5 hours in middle school, you are already exhausting yourself too early, though they could be lying too).  It’s a tough thing.  To be both relaxed about learning and grades, but pushing on though to challenge yourself to do the things even though you feel like you are falling behind or not doing well.

Vince, to his credit, does not hold a grudge.  I screw up and yell (and it is my screw up, I try to not yell), make him upset, he leaves and I apologize and then 15 minutes later, he comes back and gives me a hug. He accepts my apologies and he moves on and continues to do the parabola practice problems, solving for the mysterious ‘a’ variable.  That kid – to me the forgiveness and re-righting and navigating our relationship – shows so much more smartness than solving the parabola problem, though he did manage to figure out the math too.

Anyways, it’s over, finals – that is.  And Jeremy is home.  I fed the kids from the pantry all week, we didn’t go out, we didn’t order in and I didn’t leave a pile of dishes in the sink for Jeremy to come home to.  That is my small triumph.  Though I did let a lot of fruit rot and we didn’t eat a lot of vegetables.

Jeremy came home – happy from a week in California, where planning was planned and people played games after dinner while enjoying drinks and good weather.  I managed to get Nat to take care of Edda during the evening so I could pick Jeremy up from BWI.

Jeremy did manage to find an extra key for Vince’s bike lock so we freed the remaining tire from the bike rack at school.

Who overcame her chit-chating skit-skating Rett Syndrome erratic brain-waving induced insomnia to give her mama (and hopefully herself) a full night’s sleep (well, until 5:15 am or so)?  That would be Edda.  Let’s see if we can make it two nights in a row.  xoxo.  Though I know I’ve jinxed myself already.  Good night.  See you on the other side.

Vince was late coming home from school.  I was annoyed because he has to study for finals and it’s my job to be slightly annoyed that he’s late and not studying.  He was late because he lost the only key to his bike lock and he hung around his bike after school hoping a) optimistically that someone found the key and would return it to him or b) cynically that someone found the key and would try to steal his bike.

After he came home about an hour late, and after texting Jeremy in California about what to do with the bike and whether there was an extra key anywhere in the house (no.), we went back to school to steal back his bike.  He had locked it though only the front wheel, so stealing it back involved only releasing the quick release and disengaging the front brake.  I told him it was probably poor policy in general to lock a bike only through the front wheel as it takes only 3 seconds to steal it, but in this particular case, it was OK because we had to steal it and no one had beat us to it yet.

Home safe.  Wheel-less though.  Jeremy says to free the U-lock, we’ll need to get an acetylene torch.  Hmmm… That sounds like fun.  Maybe this weekend.

Vickey gave me Bert’s old video monitor.  We’re trying it out.  Hello (that’s me and Edda – chillin’).

Argh.  Edda – awake at 2 am & asleep at 6 am.  We gotta look into a sleep safe bed for her (essentially a twin-size mattress crib) so I can put her to bed and then sleep the whole night myself regardless of whether she’s awake or asleep.  As she can make it through the whole day on 4 hours of sleep, I can’t.  I’m too old to be dealing with Edda not sleeping, and I only have a few years until I can’t sleep well myself and I want to take full advantage of my sleeping well years.

Edda’s bus comes at 7am, it’s a quick turnaround with hair, dressing, packing and breakfast.

Bye Edda!  Have a good day!

I hired a guy to clean out our gutters because I’m scared to climb so high up against the house.  He made fun of my landscaping (or lack thereof) skills.  He told me instead of going to the gym, I should just move dirt in the yard.

Two JW yearbooks – 30 years apart.  One teacher is in both.

I burned the B sprouts tonight.

I did a thing for the first time today – I left Edda in the care of Vince for about 90 minutes.  I wanted to fit a run in today, so I negotiated a time with Vince – I like running right at or before 6am in the summer, but that doesn’t work out too well with the teenage schedule that Vince likes to keep.  So I asked for 9am and he said ok and was happy to keep an eye on Edda (I actually left her on the potty, strapped in – she’s quite comfy there (who among us hasn’t spent 30 minutes reading an interesting book/article on the potty?), watching TV with Vince in the living room).  Vince, I know, is a responsible and kind kid.  He’s now bigger and stronger than me, so I know he can lift Edda in and out of chairs and I know he knows how to feed her and he is very solicitous of Edda.  But he’s also her older brother, so sometimes there is a lapse of attention or moments of distraction.  But I came back and everyone was A-OK.

Then Vince stayed home, Edda and I went shopping at Montgomery Mall and ate in the food court.

Then we went to a birthday party for a small child (Rory!  4!) and had a great time.  I kept waiting for it to rain, it was suppose to pour today, but it didn’t really.

Meanwhile on the left coast, Jeremy saw Keyla and dropped off extra stuff that she left at the house, including a pair of grey 4-inch stilettos (which I was amused that Jeremy had to pack into his boring black business luggage).

He saw Ben and Mary-Ann (who is doing great).

And what is California if not for the most beautiful fruit?

Dropped Jeremy off at the bus to BWI in the am.  He’s off!

I had a few hours of childcare today (I need to take a picture of Kitachi, she helps out on Tues/Thur and Sat) and Vince was off doing something (I would later find out it would involve Duck Donuts and BonChon chicken) so I paid the bills, went grocery shopping and went to the gym.

Does it take everyone else an hour to pay bills every week as a grown up?  Seriously?  Seriously.  I need to figure out how to streamline it.  We have nothing complicated, yet we do have a budget and to pay all the bills and reconcile the budget, it takes an hour or more every week.  It takes even longer when I get distracted with youtube music videos.

I went to Whole Foods for the groceries and this time I was happily greeted with a large, orange sign announcing free food.  I was hoping to scrape together lunch from samples.  That didn’t happen and I had to buy some lunch to supplement the samples.

I only bought fresh fruits and veggies on this grocery shopping trip.  It is my mission to eat out of the freezer and pantry this week while Jeremy is gone.  Jeremy is in charge of the kitchen and he likes to “stock up”.  I’m not in charge of the kitchen, but I like to have a house with no clutter.  I know defining 10 packages of frozen chicken thighs (purchased at a good price, I know!) as clutter is not the canonical definition, but somehow my brain thinks of it that way.  Anyways, I’m going to work through things we’ve collected in the pantry and freezer – to declutter the house through our digestive systems.

Jeremy texted me his airplane selfie.  He likes to send me these – he looks a little tired in this photo, no?   Have a good trip sweetie.

I’m already slacking on dinner.  It’s 7 pm already and nothing is going on in the kitchen.  I guess I better get on that.