sunday

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Vince came home from a scout canoeing trip.

Jeremy cleaned the garage workbench.

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We said goodbye to the dishwasher.

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Gong gong helped Vince with his Chinese project.

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Bob, Katherine, Louisa came by to celebrate….

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Gene’s 80th birthday!

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Here we all are!

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Saturday.

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Donald in SF this morning.  Is he wearing a puffy jacket? Where in the US is it cold?  #3 in line for the “stupid iPhone” <- his words, not mine.

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This week, Jeremy decided to meet up with the Potomac Pedalers, the biggest bike club in the DVM. It’s so convenient, one of the weekend group rides meeting up at Wootton – approx 2 miles from the house.  He RSVPed and they were suppose to email him the route, but he got no email and as he set out in the morning (note that the bike is leaning up against our old stinky dishwasher), I wondered if anyone else would show up.  He did make up his own ride route in case no one did show up.

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Off he goes!

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He texted me his safety beacon – so I tracked him and he did meet up with some fast folks who then encouraged him to ride hard for 70 miles.  Something he really wasn’t intending to do when he left the house.  Jeremy sent a text at the first stop – “Wow, this is hard work.”

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He PRed on every Strava segment he had every ridden on before.  He said that this week’s ride was harder than last weekend’s century.  I hope he sleeps well tonight.  I videoed his crazy leg twitches that continued after he got home.  Of course, everyone else showed up with a carbon fiber road bike.  Jeremy showed up with his heavy touring (albeit expensive and saved for many fun fund months) bike.  To which Jeremy came home and told me, I think I might have to buy a new bike.  Ha ha ha.

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Meanwhile, I spent the day studying (and procrastinating by shopping for earrings on Etsy).  I’m not inspired.  So boring.  Just so so boring.  I’m thinking I might be willing to get a C in the class to not study anymore.

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******

I did go out to dinner with my lovely Rett mom friends, Marta and Laura.  There was a moment involving fruit emojis which sent us all laughing so hard.  Don’t worry, I’ll send you naughty fruit emojis too if you ask.  ðŸ˜‰

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And we ate a chocolate mousse as big as our heads.

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friday.

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Somehow the dogs know that it’s Friday night – time to go to mom’s for dinner (and have a plate of Chinese food).

Vince is off canoeing with the scouts this weekend.

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Dinner was delicious.  Dad is doing much better, though his butt still hurts.

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Edda was extra messy at dinner, she seemed to want to eat, but then she spit her food out.

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Good night loves!  See you on the other side.

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44.

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I’m 44 today.  Now I’ve know Jeremy for half my life, I met him in Brady’s graduate level fluid dynamics class this week 22 years ago.  I do not like celebrating my birthday, but I did extra nice things for myself today.  I’m lucky in so many ways, I feel fortunate to have lasted another year and I’m looking forward to the next one.  I try to be grateful for all the things I’ve been given which far exceed the things I have given away.  One of the amazing things I’ve been given, of course, is my own life, and for that I thank my mom and dad for everything.

We started this morning with the birthday breakfast.  This is the trouble with having birthdays so close together – we just had a birthday breakfast last week!

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I asked for the classic birthday breakfast sandwich.

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I opened my gifts, the Born to Run book was a surprise gift from a friend.  Jeremy got me the other two things, Commonwealth which was just released yesterday from one of my favorite authors -Ann Patchett.  I read Bel Canto in Taiwan when I was very lonely and had 4 month old Vince on my own during the day when Jeremy was at work, and it was a fantastic book.  I’ve also loved a bunch of her non-fiction work, especially the one about her friendship with Lucy Grealy.  Her other fiction work, to me, has been so-so, I did read a number of them, but I didn’t feel that always-reaching-for-the-book feeling that I like to get.  But this one got fantastic reviews and is her first semi-autobiographical work of fiction, so I’m hoping that it’ll do it for me.   Jeremy also got me a mic – in anticipation for doing interviews?  Maybe a podcast?  We’ll see.

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I took the day off of work and I spent it socializing.  In the morning, I met up for coffee with the moms from Edda’s class.  Of course, within 3 minutes of sitting down, we talked about seizures and g-tubes as if we were talking about soccer games and homecoming.  I’m so happy to have some moms in class.  Maybe we’ll do something special for class this year.  We’ll see.

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At 11 am, I opened my laptop to check in on Jeremy’s AMA (ask me anything) on reddit.  Reddit is a little like a free-for-all forum where everyone asks questions and answers and the most popular ones get “upvoted” and moved up the “page”.  I upvoted everything and he said it reached the front page.  Jeremy said this two hours on reddit exhausted him for the rest of the day.  I’m sorry, this photo just highlights how dirty my laptop screen is.

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Then I went to lunch with the friend who sent me the Born to Run book.  I know she doesn’t really like to have her photo taken, so I took a photo of the dessert I had.  We went to this new place in Rockville which had fabulous food, but terrible service.  I think we had to wait 20 minutes for our sandwiches (delicious!) and it took 10 minutes to actually pay.  So delicious and disappointing at the same time.  Lucky for us, we had no pressing engagements afterwards, so we happily spent 2 hours sitting and chatting.

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Dad still is in a bunch of sciatica pain,  Vince helping him do some PT moves.  Dad has a plan in place – we are keeping our fingers crossed that it all resolves soon.

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Finally, a quiet moment & Jeremy sings me happy birthday.  <3  Good night!

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tuesday.

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The Montgomery College track at sunrise.  Really, I should have gotten there 15 minutes before I did because I was squeezed for time (as you will see), and I don’t like to rush through a workout.  I did 8×400 – so that’s one lap pretty much as fast as I can muster and then one lap rest and do that 8 times. I haven’t done a workout like this in almost a year because I hurt my hamstring in January and haven’t really been able to rely on it to propel myself quickly around the track.  It held up pretty well today, I’m happy to be back at the track, though I’m slower than I was at this time last year.  Paul’s still (patiently) coaching me, sending me workouts weekly.

I biked to the track and then I biked home and I realized that I had to forgo the shower and throw all my crap together to make it to class by 9 am.  This year, they built a new parking garage on campus and started implementing a $200 fee for a parking permit.  I often need just a little nudge like this to get me to do what I should do (and what Jeremy is constantly “encouraging” me to do) which is bike the 2.7 miles to class – which I have been doing for a few weeks now.  I have no idea how this works out to be so slow, but it takes me 30 minutes to bike the 2.7 miles. It’s like uphill the whole time and I’m all sticky from the morning’s track workout and I think now I’m doing some perverse backwards triathlon brick workout with jeans, a crappy bike and a Sponge Bob lunch box.  I thought I should just find some sprinklers on campus and then walk through them and wave my arms around the water spray call today triathalon tuesday and be done with it.

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******

We though Vince’s iPad might have finally died.  But I didn’t, we rescued it with rice.  Oh yeah, Vince started weightlifting class three days ago and, no surprise, he can already lift more than me.  I’ve been telling this to him for years, just go out and try like for 10 days, you’ll run faster and lift heavier than me – just 10 days (well the 10 days is for the running, the lifting was pretty much as soon as he touched the barbell).  He never tried until now.  Ahh, to be a young, growing teenage boy – everything is getting stronger, everything recovers better, everything is brand new.  Unlike me, aging female, headed straight into peri-menopause and trying to protect all my parts from being tweaked.

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*******

Mom came over instead of Dad to do the Chinese and math.  Mom showed me the spot where the nail went halfway through her foot.

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We were telling mom that she looks like she’s 14.  If she wore a cap, she could certainly imposter Vince and take his math tests and Chinese tests in his place.

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monday meltdown.

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I have this thing about the new dishwasher.  I don’t want it to get dirty.  And how does it get dirty?  By putting dirty plates in it.  I know, this is what a dishwasher is suppose to do – clean the dirty dishes, but I don’t want all that food crap in the dishwasher.  My solution?  Doggie pre-wash.  I’m not sure if this is such a great idea.

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We are having a minor childcare meltdown.  It started with today – which the kids have off (for a Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, but on the calendar is marked “professional day for teachers” – sigh we have Christian, Jewish and Muslim holidays.  Now all we need is Chinese New Year!  We do need an extra holiday in February.  No really, holidays are just messing with my carefully orchestrated child care Jenga stack, no holidays ever!) and I had all day clinical, so Jeremy worked from home and managed all the home / kid stuff which included pick ups from sleepovers and drop off at parents houses for Chinese lessons and random kid crap. And both evening childcare providers are struggling with, sigh, struggles.  Which is fine, we all struggle with struggles.  But both?  At the same time? And then, of course, the back up of the back up, my parents, who really, shouldn’t be doing anything involving lifting of Edda (toileting, showering, even lifting Edda in and out of her dining room seat) are out with a bum leg and foot.  So keeping my fingers crossed for everyone to feel better soon! Team Edda needs you!

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*****

Meanwhile – laundry.  With black dog hair already deposited on it.  Thanks Max.

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sunday.

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Facetimed Dad today to get an update on the butt.  Guess what?  It still is a pain in the ass.   Not only that, Mom stepped on a nail and had to get a tetanus shot.  I assume not in the butt.  The good thing is that my mom stepped on the nail with her left foot and my dad’s right leg is on the fritz, so the two of them together make one complete and well two-legged person.

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Jeremy was amused by an ice-cream sandwich cake he saw on the internet.  So he was determined to make it for Sunday night dinner.

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Layers of whipped cream / caramel / chocolate / etc.

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I was not kidding when I said this was the month of sweets.

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100 miles.

Jeremy rode 100 miles today – his first full century.  It was a supported ride, lots of snacks, Gatorade, and people to call and ambulance in case you got heat stroke.  There are no photos, I have no screen shot of his progress.  He probably has it in Strava, but you guys get nothing.  He did all the training for this on his own which was fine, but now he wants some biking pals.  He’s found a bike group that meets at Wootton on Saturdays that he’s going to start riding with them.   This was to celebrate his birthday, for his 50th, he wants to ride a 500 mile ride.

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We had a quiet day: laundry, bills, Words with Friends, naps.  At about 1 pm, we decided to watch Wayne’s World and I did something I never do, I fed Edda her lunch on the couch.  And then Edda proceeded to surprise me by trying to feed herself.  I had to go grab my phone, I can’t remember the last time she did this unprompted.

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Maybe it was because her whole upper arm was kind of supported and she only needed to lift her forearm?

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Or maybe it’s her vote to always eat on the couch in front of the TV.

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The effort exhausted her.  She zonked out right after.

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*******

Facetimed with Donald for the first time in a long time.  Tried to understand Burning Man.

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birthdays and violin

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We went out to dinner to celebrate our birthdays with my parents.  My dad’s sciatica was acting up which is a bummer.  It was a little restaurant in Potomac (Lock 72) and the food was quite yummy.  There are some doggie bags in the fridge I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

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After dinner, we had a 9:30 pm violin lesson.  Vince had a short violin passage he needed to video and email his orchestra teacher for seating placement.  I asked him if he thought he’d be in the top half?  Yes.  Top quarter?  Maybe.  Then I asked if the seating placement would alternate between first and second violin and Vince said he thought that the orchestra teacher just puts stronger violin players next to weaker violin players so that there isn’t a good section or a bad section.

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I got to hang out with Inky – my best dog friend at Kelly’s house.

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Mmmm, up past my bedtime, I want to use Inky as my pillow.

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