Month: August 2016

I’ve heard that if you can get up without an alarm you are getting enough sleep.  We haven’t set an alarm in years, but I think I could use an extra hour of sleep every night.  Mmmm.  That sounds delicious.  But maybe Edda’s our alarm, so the not setting an alarm is moot – although she’s really random, you go to sleep not knowing quite exactly when you’ll get up.  Even though we never set an alarm and we both are usually ready to go at 6 am, it doesn’t mean that we don’t procrastinate starting the day.  Look – the sun is up, Jeremy’s awake but not quite ready to face the day, instead reading random stuff on his phone.

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Vince is still at the fair.  Jeremy worked the noon-10pm shift, putting the adult hour contribution from the Lee/Martin household at 40, five hours over the required contribution level.  Jeremy is a nicer person than I am and indulged the kids’ request to go to Popeye’s for dinner.

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Since the boys were out, the girls went to the mall.  Montgomery Mall is where I tried to maximize the fun while minimizing the cost.  I have a loose goal of visiting all the kiosks at the food court and not just go to my favorites (cheesesteak one and chik-fil-a).  So I tried the Thai place and ordered the smallest meal which was plenty for Edda and me to share.  This place tries to maximize the serving size and in doing so has minimized the quality of ingredients.  It could have been so good.  I’d pay as much as I did pay for half of the amount of food if it was twice as tasty.  ($7).  I even spent 50 cents upgrading the starch from rice to pad thai.

We ran into a camp counselor (who I did not recognize) at the mall.  This happens sometimes at Montgomery Mall – a random teenaged girl will come running up to Edda and say “Hi Edda!” and give her a hug or a big smile and proceed to explain to me who she is and how she knows Edda.  It’s nice for Edda to bump into people she knows and I don’t know at the mall.  Like we are somehow normal in our capabilities of having friends.  I don’t often bump into friends at Montgomery Mall, probably demographics.

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Then we went to the yogurt place where Edda and I split a tart yogurt with fruit.

Mmmmmm….

Jeremy spent all weekend texting Donald about exactly what sort of bike seat to get.  If Donald had a bazillion dollars, he’d open a bike store and just have all the bike parts he could get his hands on.  He’d have road bikes, mountain bikes, triathlon bikes, cargo bikes, electrical bikes – actually, I think Donald wouldn’t have all those bikes, but put Donald and Jeremy as co-owners of a bike shop and it’d be crazy town.  There’s be a wheelchair accessible / cargo bike next to a carbon fiber racing bike. When I text Donald about random stuff, I don’t get any texts back.  Not even a LOL or a smiley emoji.  When Jeremy texts Donald about bike parts, Donald texts back right away.  

Jeremy is having, uh, issues with his old bike seat and wanted to find a more comfortable one.  And, of course, there is the cool seat – British, leather, molds to your butt as you ride it – but it’s kind of pricey.  The one that’s the same shape but totally not cool is half the price.  After texting Donald all weekend and then telling me how he just couldn’t possibly justify spending the extra $ on the cool seat, Jeremy ordered the half-price seat.

But what happened the exact same day that the half-price seat gets delivered?  The cool hipster leather seat gets delivered – a surprise from Donald.  Oh,  Jeremy was so happy that he got such a nice gift and also finally admitted to himself how much he wanted the cool seat.  Sometimes you just want the cool thing for no other reason than to have the cool thing.  Thank you Donald.  You are a very nice brother/in-law.

Brooks – started making stuff out of leather in 1866.

Jeremy worked from home today as he was scheduled to work the fair from noon until 10 pm.  Just as well as the Metro is pretty much shut down from the Twinbrook station to Shady Grove so it’s just a mess getting back and forth downtown during rush hour.

The boys in uniform standing in front of pigs.

Someone told me fair attendance is the lowest its been in 25 years.  Combination of the heat and the thunderstorms.  Here’s the evening one rolling in.  Both Jeremy and Vince got soaked all the way to their underwear.  At least they got to come home early.

Edda and I went to Five Guys.  Oof.  I ate too much.  At least I skipped the planned ice cream after.

This is a hard year for the boy scouts and the parking they are doing at the MoCo fair.  The days have been well over 100F, the nights are filled with thunderstorms.  Vince comes home late and wants to vent about the day.  This is his 4th year we park at the fair and we both realized that we aren’t the new scouts nor the new parents. Vince gets to be responsible for some of the first years (entering 6th graders who seem so tiny to me). Then he gets up at 7:30 am and does it all again.  Did I tell you he was doing all shifts everyday?  That’s 8:30 am to 10 pm for two weekends and a week in the middle.  It’s called doing the Ironman.

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We have two weeks between camp and the start of school.  Eliana came in from VA to stay with us to cover some hours.  This week, her usual after school program is in session from 12-4pm and Eliana fills in the other hours.

I did spend the weekend at the fair.  In the hot sun and I worked a lot – from noon until 10pm.  I probably worked a half hour shift every 1.5 hours.  When I was out in the sun for 30 minutes waving a flag around, I’d easily drink a liter of water.  I got sunburned on my chest where I wore a V-neck and forgot to sunscreen. When I was out of the sun, I slept and chatted.  Below is command central “Baker”  where the boys dispatch people via walkie talkies.

A storm rolled in at 7:30 and the kids were pulled out of the field into the cars.  The grown ups were suppose to take over all the kid positions too.  I was a little wary of that, standing in the middle of a parking lot with lightening strikes happening.  So after I helped batten down the hatches, I went into the car with my carpool boys.

It used to be that whenever we’d have a little flush of money (tax return, an unexpected reimbursement, etc…), I’d tell Jeremy – OK!  We have some extra $, go spend it on something.  And Jeremy, being the careful consumer that he is, would spend a few weeks thinking of the fun thing and then by the time he’d decide what he wanted, the extra $ would have disappeared into the ether- used to pay for a broken cell phone or a new water heater.  This would not do.  So we established our little “fun funds” where money gets set aside weekly for all four of us.  Kids get their ages in dollars, we get $25 dollars a week.  

While it’s fun having, it’s also fun wanting something for a long time and knowing that you’ll get it when your “fun fund” reaches whatever amount that you are going to need.  You spend that time deciding what exactly your going to get – which model, what color, what accessories.  Jeremy waited a long time to buy his new bike, which he’s been riding all around town.  60-70 miles on the weekends in prep for a 100 mile ride/race in early September.  

This is the first time he got a flat during a ride:

A gnarly stick:

Of course, after the initial expenditure on the bike, there are other things to think about getting.  Biking is crazy with the extra accessories – seats, clothing, computers, things to ride inside in the winter, clippy shoes – I don’t even know what else.

101 degrees out this weekend.

Is it terrible that we use Edda’s fun fund on her “medical” expenses?  I’ve used it to buy her a TV.  But I think I might have used it to buy her new wheels on her wheelchair.

Jeremy changing out tires of another sort.

Boo ya!

Edda’s done with camp – which signals to me the end of summer.  We love the camp, but it was kind of a topsy-turvy summer for Edda.  Her counselor had some personal issues so her schedule was all messed up – there were lots of substitutions day to day of who was Edda’s 1:1 which made me feel at little like the uneaten dish at a potluck, but sometimes stuff like that just happens.   And it’s not really the end of summer because Vince’s boy scout troop is doing its annual thing of parking cars at the MoCo fair.  I have volunteered to spend most of my weekend (the hottest weekend of the year so far) helping to park cars.  Vince loves it, but the grownups don’t love it as much.  Each scout family has to put in 40 adult hours.  I’m going to do 20 this weekend.  Jeremy is doing 20 the during the work week.  I will complain a little right now: ARGH!  I’M SPENDING MY WEEKEND IN THE HOT SUN DIRECTING TRAFFIC AND BREATHING EXHAUST FUMES.  THE ONLY SNACKS AVAILABLE WILL BE ONES I DO NOT LIKE.  I WILL HAVE TO MAKE SMALL TALK FOR MANY HOURS.  Ok.  I’m done now.

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Jeremy uploaded some videos of the trip:

Note the tied score…

Piggyback rides:

Duck attempted to break into the hotel room.

Arcade fun:

The crazy kids went to Great Wolf Lodge which is a big indoor water adventure park in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. The highlights of this waterpark are these tall water slides, but since they were all in the water, there are no photos of those rides.  Instead, you get photos of the kids at the arcade.

Ruben is trying to decide which goodie to get from all the tickets he won:

Vince got a set of chattering teeth:

Motorcycle rides!

The big excitement around here the past few days is that our neighbors decided to cut down the four closest poplars to their house including one that overhung our house.  These poplars have relatively weak limbs, so they come crashing down every strong storm.  We had one branch pierce our roof a few years ago and our neighbors have branches come down regularly on their roof and deck.  At first I thought it would make a huge difference in how I saw the house, but now that they are done, I can hardly remember where they were in the first place.  It still looks very woodsy around our house.

The other exciting thing (well, more worrisome than exciting) is that Ruby’s abscessed tooth is bothering her again and she has increased weakness in her hind legs.  I tried a new vet today and I think I like him.  He’s just down the block next to the ice cream shop, which is a bonus.   He thought he could pull the tooth and that Ruby would get through the surgery just fine, but I refused it and got the antibiotic and it’s already working, the swelling is going down. She has a raspy breath (which she’s had for 2-4 years) which is some weird constriction of flaps in her trachea and he said that that could be fixed by some sort of flap-stick-open surgery and I refused that.  As for the hind legs, Ruby has arthritis and so the muscles are atrophying and her range of motion is significantly reduced.  He said he’d like to check her thyroid levels, her liver and kidney enzymes and maybe depending on those levels, he’d give her Synthroid and NSAIDs for inflammation.  I refused those too.  Then he said he was trained with acupuncture and would be happy to do that.  I laughed at him.  And then I felt bad.  Then I told him that I had had acupuncture myself and that it was helpful to me and I hope I didn’t make him feel bad.  I told him this is what I wanted:  I want Ruby to be happy the rest of her days, for her to be relatively pain free, for her to sleep more and more, for her to transition from kibble, to hot dogs, to rotisserie chicken and finally to sirloin steak.  And when she refuses the sirloin steak, I will know it is time.  It hard to refuse all this stuff because I want her to know I’m doing the best for her.   Maybe I’m not, but it’s how I’d want to go.  I did also get a bunch of pain meds for her, but I’m confused.  She does not seem to be in pain as she’s still eating kibble with a rotten tooth (faster than Maxi)/going up and down stairs/pooping well.  Do I give her the meds?  Dunno.  I’m hoping I’ll know when to give them to her.

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OK, Ruben might be a little confused about America, because after the ball game last night, they stayed at a hotel in Flushing and had breakfast at a dim sum place.

Then they drove to this crazy water park place in the Poconos – The Great Wolf Lodge.  I think they are having a good time.  😉

I imagine Sweden to be this far away land of socialized medicine with lots of blonde people sitting in rooms filled with IKEA furniture and mostly in the dark and cold.  Mainly, it’s just far away with cousins that we don’t see often enough.  But Ben and Ruben came to NYC for a few days, Jeremy and Vince are on a mission to show Ruben America.  Ben speaks only English in their Swedish household, but Ruben, the little one, never speaks English at home – only Swedish.  So it’s amusing to Ben to hear Ruben switch to English to talk to Vince.  Which has to happen because Vince is giving him piggyback rides, introducing him to Pokemon Go and Vince can’t say a single word in Swedish.

They drove up this morning and headed to a museum.  In front of rocks.  (Vince had a section of geology in science last year which we both groaned about.  The thing about geology as a science is that the time scale is just too long.  You get a rock.  You put it on your desk.  Nothing will change for a very, very, very long time.  Although I did admit that my geology roommate at Caltech did get to spend a lot of time in Hawaii driving a Jeep around).

Ruben is a fan of Daft Punk.  $3.50.  A bargain in NYC!

Vince is now taller than Emy.

In front of of a famous restaurant:

In front of Columbia:

At a baseball game.