Month: August 2016

On Saturday, we went to our next door neighbor’s 32nd birthday party.  There, I met a fellow Wootton alum, though she graduated in 2010 and I had to admit I graduated in 1990.  Anyways, what was interesting about her is that she’s just ditched medical school.  She’s going to grad school instead.  She said she ditched med school because they scooted her into a patient’s room, gave her 15 minutes and told her that she needed to get all the information she could about the complaint that brought the patient in.  Nothing about their personal life, nothing about extenuating circumstances, nothing about the person themselves – just focus on the illness itself almost separate from the patient.  It was not how she wanted to practice medicine.  I was shocked (but I guess not surprised) to find this out.  In nursing school, I get scooted into a patient’s room and given 15 minutes – half my grade is based on the, let’s say, postpartum assessment – fundus height, locia, episiotomy, etc and the other half is based on my conversation with the patient – did I find out she’s at risk for postpartum depression, that her family is far away, that her husband works long hours and she doesn’t have a car?  I guess I had read so many articles about doctors trying to treat patients more holistically, that I was sure they were doing the same sort of patient interactions we were.  Oh well.  Just happy I never went to med school. Anyways, if I had gone to med school, I would have never met Jeremy and this whole blog would not exist.

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I think I do not really know how to have fun.  There are various ways I have “fun” – like decluttering, going for a run, fixing toilets – Jeremy thinks that they are fun to me because I have subconsciously decided that they are a form of work and that I really just enjoy working.  This does cause me some consternation as I’d like to be able to have fun, but the latest credit card bill is revealing.  It separates Jeremy charges from my charges.  I like to charge things like: gas, groceries, gifts for other people, car registration, dental bill, A/C repair.  Jeremy likes to charge things like: ice cream, rental cars, hotel rooms, dinner at World of Beer (which, I know, I was at too, so it only counts half), coffee, movie tickets.  Speaking of fun, my boys are headed out of town again to have some fun – this time with Uncle Ben and nephew Ruben.  I’m hoping to post some photos as they will be in cell service the whole time.

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Vince made pizza from scratch for dinner tonight (including the dough).  A spinach/tomato/feta one for the grown ups.

Pepperoni with stuffed crust for the kids.

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This is Nat’s last week of working for us as a steady gig.  She’ll pinch hit every once in a while, but she’s got 6 classes going on in the fall and they scared her good and plenty at the orientation.  We’ll miss her, but I know she’s always going to be close by.  xoxo!

Deb came over for brunch today.  Deb is Edda’s OT, but we had to stop seeing her because of Edda’s new after school care schedule.  But we miss, miss, miss seeing Deb every week.  Edda was so happy to see Deb.  Nat used to take Edda to see Deb every week, but she hasn’t seen Deb in more than a year…. <3

I’m testing out these new photo filters.  Jeremy worked from home today (I did not know he was planning on doing this), but he set up his office in the “hall” on the 2nd floor.  Vince had taken Jeremy’s desk out of the study and put it in his own room to organize Magic cards on them.  Jeremy was stuck using the enormously heavy desk in the hallway.  This desk (which usually lives on its side the tall way) has been in the hallway for years, I’m trying to get it down the stairs and out of the house.  I have to hire professional movers to get it down the stairs.  I made the mistake of asking for a quote last week – during the height of moving season – woo!  too high!  gotta wait until October.

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Edda’s camp continued with “color wars” again today.  Edda’s team was green and it turns out we have very few pieces of green clothing.  We did what we could.

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Vince is home.  This time for longer than 13 hours.  xoxoxoxo!

Ruby is deaf and almost blind.  I went to an online dog age calculator which takes into account that she’s a large breed dog and it said that she was 93 years old.  She’s still going up and down stairs, still eating well, pooping well and still giving lots of wags and licks.

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I think after 10 years of watching the same 7 movies, Edda might be tiring of them.  I’m trying to introduce new ones into the mix – it isn’t an easy task. And now that I realize that she’ll hang onto a video for a decade, I don’t want to introduce any lame videos to her.  This morning – an emphatic thumbs down to Beauty and the Beast (which is a shame because it’s my favorite) and thumbs up to Cars.  Lightning McQueen, we are on to you, just a decade after you came out.

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I went to breakfast with my pal, Julide.  Her daughter goes to the same camp as Edda.  If you can’t tell, today was the color wars day.  Ingrid and her counselor were on the yellow team.

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Our evening walk – I like to brush Ruby in the common area in our neighborhood.  Jeremy thinks I’m littering.  I think I’m giving birds materials to build their nests.

It’s been a quiet – and thus – productive week.  I’m trying to work out some insurance stuff for Edda, getting letters of medical necessity ready, trying to follow up with the non-responsive durable medical equipment folks, straightening out bills that still linger from Edda’s oral surgery back in April.  You can easily lose hours doing this kind of stuff and I know, Edda’s medical stuff is like a cute, fluffy bunny compared to what other people have to deal with.  I’m trying to not be on the brink of tears when I call the fourth or fifth person in a row to try and help me out and I finally find a nice person who sighs sympathetically to my plight, yet still can’t help me – I’m sorry, we don’t cover Rockville, you have to call our Baltimore office with the tone that suggests to me that he knows the Baltimore office is full of it.  But, he says, hold on, lemme talk to my manager and we’ll find you a nice person in Baltimore.  Also, as the seasons change, so does Edda-care – so there is extra arranging for that as the school year threatens to start.

Last night, we went to National Night Out on our block.  These nights out skew towards people with kids under the age of 8.  They close off the street and the kids careen up and down on scooters, bicycles, skateboards.  Dogs have arguments (and we knew dogs would have arguments, so we didn’t bring ours).  Though I feel completely a part of our neighborhood, we don’t know many of the people on the block.  When did all these kids move in?  Did we look so young when we had toddlers?  Even though I didn’t know many of them, I did start a number of conversations with – ah, you are the runner who also has the two dogs – a black one and a golden, right?  So I’m known, if only by sight.

Vince is off with friends again this week.  I think he’s spending easily half of the summer nights sleeping in places not across the hall from me.  He went to Chincoteague, the island of the famous Misty.  It’s nice to have friends who have beach houses.  He has such luxurious, adventuresome summers.  I miss him.

Vince, Jeremy and Bob went hiking for 5 days and 4 nights in the Gila wilderness.  I think it was about a thirty mile hike with a lot of water crossings.  They went with New Mexico friends, Carol & Mike and their son Hawk.  Vince and Hawk met during one of our previous trips to NM because they used to be close neighbors to Katherine’s house there, but they’ve moved now. I credit Hawk a lot for Hawk and Vince’s friendship.  Hawk would call the MD house every 3 weeks or so a few summers ago asking for Vince, and I’d usually have to say that Vince was out – but I’d pass the message along to Vince and Vince might or might not call back.  Hawk would call back a few weeks later and ask again for Vince.  Anyways after a few iterations of this back and forth, they started playing computer games together at night and spent a lot of time together skyping and texting back and forth.  Then Vince started looping Hawk into computer games with all of his own friends in our neighborhood, so, you know, the modern world – making friends all over the place.

The week they went hiking, it was record breaking heat all over the country – I was worried – hoping they weren’t too hot or lost or thirsty.

There was a moment where they had to walk extra long in extra heat to get to the river to refill their canteens.

There was a moment where Vince was lost for 30 minutes (although he was lost right at the river, so at least he was lost close to water).

But, according to all, it was lovely and fabulous.

There was also a rattlesnake.  This photo looks like the photographer was very close, but Mike is an ornithologist – so he had an extra-long-lens on a real camera body.

I spent the day watching the beginning of Sixteen Candles while putting felt stickers to the bottom of our dining room chairs.  And I discovered that the dogs like to pee in hidden spots on the rug.  I think it’s this one particular dog, but I can’t prove it.

The boys made it to the Very Large Array.

The girls made it to Sunday night dinner!