Month: October 2016

We are all slowly catching Edda’s cold, though Edda’s fine and going to school.  Jeremy’s ill now, he went to work this morning, but headed back to the house at lunch to alternate between napping and working.  I think I’m next, I’ve got a running nose/congestion and Vince mentioned today that he thinks he’s getting sick too.  Here’s Jeremy – asleep at 8:30 pm.

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No more politics on this blog – but I will post this from Donald’s Facebook feed.  Funny.

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Vince (pictured below during spirit week dressing up for movie theme day – which for freshmen was “Western”) took the PSATs today (really, it’s the PPPSATs).  The real PSATs (still the fake SATs) are in 11th grade – the one to prep you for the real SATs in 12th grade and if you rank high enough on the 11th grade PSATs, you get the National Merit Finalist stuff.  But to prep for the PSATs, they start in 9th grade with the PPPSATs and then in 10th grade with the PPSATs (does this make any sense?  I’m sorry, I’m not feeling well.).  The whole school took the morning to take these exams and then in the afternoon, they got to pick activities to do – Magic club, Engineering class, singing class, etc.  Vince was nervous (I think) even though he said he wasn’t nervous.  He wanted to make sure that I knew that if he did badly, that it didn’t mean anything – which is what I think the counselors tell the whole school.  Anyways, I assured him that he could do most of the math stuff (they may have some trig stuff he hasn’t gotten to yet).  Turns out, he thought he got most of the stuff he got to correct, he just ran out of time to do all the questions.  Of course, in prep for this exam day, he got no homework yesterday and no homework tonight.  lol.

Mom took Ruby for a dog walk around the block last night.  We inspected all the new concrete sidewalks and driveways they installed on the street.

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Edda slept pretty well last night and since she lasted through the night without Motrin, so she went to school today.  You can still hear a little rasp in her throat, but she’s generally OK.  We were a little off-kilter this morning as we all slept until 6:45 am which is only 20 min before Vince needs to leave on his bike and 30 min before Edda’s bus comes.  Whoops.

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Went downtown tonight to see Lucky who is recovering from a recent heart attack.  Lucky is such a nice guy, he helped me prep for my meeting with Van Hollen to ask for an earmark for Rett Syndrome research back in 2008.  I didn’t think I could just call up my congressman and set up a meeting, but I did and met with him and he said he would and I got some $ for Rett research.  So I’m forever indebted to Lucky for helping me out.

Beautiful night here in DC!

I needed a selfie today.  I gave myself a single attempt and this is what I got.  I think I look a bit cross-eyed in this photo, I tried to follow all the guidelines for a good selfie: natural light, non-distracting background, phone up high, chin down low.

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Vince and dad are mad props studying for Chinese, I think they spent 90 minutes at it today.  I had to cancel violin lesson to get in the cram session (sorry, Bob).  Big final (?) tomorrow.  It’s not a final as there are no more finals in MCPS, they just call it some other thing that is a three letter acronym like RPQ or QAI?  Something with Q in it for quarterly, but it just means a “final”.

Edda did stay home from school today – thanks Jeremy for covering, I got back just in time to cover Jeremy’s conference call.  I think she’ll be off to school tomorrow.  But as she’s sick, she gets a pass on wearing the brace…  <3

Edda spent Saturday with Kitachi while I put some more hours in at work and Jeremy went on a bike ride.  Kitachi brought her home at about 2:30pm after lunch at Denny’s where Edda had, unfortunately, pooped in her pants.  Edda hasn’t really had a bowel movement “while traveling” in a million years, she’s 95% BM potty trained.  It was a big mess (took both me and Kitachi working with Edda to clean her all up) and I attributed it to the full glass of milk that Edda enjoyed at the breakfast that day.  Edda usually doesn’t get a full glass of dairy, maybe that’s why her stomach was upset.

But then Saturday night, Edda had a tough time falling asleep – she was still awake at midnight.  I thought it might be because she’s about to get her period (? – of course, I’m terrible at tracking my own cycle (because I don’t have one thanks to Mirena), let alone Edda’s cycle) so I thought she wasn’t happy because of cramps, we gave her a Motrin at midnight and she seemed to sleep through the night.

But now I think it’s just that she’s sick.  She didn’t want to eat lunch today and then we lay her on the couch where she watched TV without moving for most of the afternoon.  She seemed a little warm to the touch even though her ear temps hovered around normal.  Anyways, I think she might stay home from school tomorrow, which means Jeremy’s home because I have to go to clinical.

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We went to Sunday night dinner (Jeremy not only biked on Sat with the bike group, but he’s also gotten into the habit of biking to Sunday night dinner) where Jane introduced me to her tame squirrel, Albert.  She feeds him raw almonds.  He’s a very smart squirrel she says because she was worried that Albert would become dependent on her almonds and then maybe she wouldn’t be able to feed him anymore and he would die, but he’s burying about half of the almonds in the ground.  Saving for a rainy day when Jane goes off to college.

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Cookie tryouts continue into Sunday night dinner.  The (by far) clear winner is the white chocolate chunks in the chocolate cookie.  Even though it’s the clear winner,  Jeremy doesn’t want to make them because he thinks it’s the too obvious choice.

Edda’s sleeping at Sunday night dinner.  <3

We went out to dinner with my cousins (?) to a restaurant that my mom picked out.  It has a buffet with all-you-can-eat crab.  My mom was thrilled about this and ate only the crab even though there was Italian / Chinese / Japanese and french fries at the buffet.  My mom knows how to enjoy herself.  Maybe Vince and Edda get their happiness abilities from her?  I certainly know that their joie de vivre did not come from either of us sticks-in-the-mud parents. Oddly enough, I think there is a Chinese tourist hub for visiting DC is located in Gaithersburg (the most diverse city in the US), because we’ve met up with traveling friends from Asia at hotels in Gaithersburg and there seemed to be a busload of Chinese tourists queuing up at this suburban buffet place.

Vince invited his pal Bryson to dinner with us and then they had a sleepover where they promised me they wouldn’t go to be too late.  This is how I found them in the morning.

Jeremy went on a bike ride with his new bike group and found the one that had the right pace.  The first week was too fast, the 2nd week was too slow.  This one was Goldilocks.  Though they were the least friendly of the three groups.  You can’t have everything.

Then Jeremy too me out to lunch where we discussed the merits of different bike trainers.

It is cookie competition season at UCS.  This round is white chocolate.  Jeremy made three batches of cookies in 90 min.  We invited Ruth and David over to sample to cookies.  Now it’s 10:30 pm and Edda is still awake!  Go to sleep Edda, we need to sleep too.  xo

Our front walk has been suffering for a few years now.  The stones separated as the ground settled and created this space between the bottom step and the front walkway.  Then about a year ago, one of the stones fell off of its substrate.  The front walkway slopes downward from the driveway, so that spot where the gap is always collected water and ice (also!  green mildew? mold? it’s in a shady spot) and it wasn’t doing so well.  Our front step looked like the above for a long time.

For me, there are brave things and braver things.  I have no problem moving the family to Taiwan or trying to go to school while working or going to a party/movies/restaurant by myself.  But I have some courage problem with home repairs.  I falter and I hesitate.  It has something to do with not wanting to spend the money, worried I won’t find a reputable contractor and also maybe also thinking I’ll regret the final outcome.  So it takes me a lot of effort to manage home repairs that require other people.

This is not helped by my dynamics with Jeremy.  Usually I want to make a decision, while Jeremy likes to keep his options open which is great because Jeremy thinks of all possible scenarios (not just the KISS one that I came up with) and then I (we?) decide on something.  But with home repair, Jeremy likes thinking about all the possible types of walkways (stone, pavers, accommodating ramps, pitch and curve) and because he likes talking about all these things, I get nervous about what we should do and then I do nothing.  And then we leave the gap in the stone walkway for over a year and invite a family of chipmunks to move in.  (Alvin! Simon! Theodore!)

But finally someone made a decision for us. They are ripping out all the sidewalks, curbs and driveway pitches on our street to make them ADA compliant (and I will tell you that this is fantastic, not only for folks like Edda (which there are few), but also for moms with baby strollers (you were a baby once and you liked being walked) and older folks with walkers (with luck, you will be one of these too).

We asked the contractor to do our front walkway for us.  No pavers, no fancy stone, no patterns.  Just plain concrete.

They jackhammered the very nice and expensive & poorly installed stonework.

They scooted the rubble away.

They put in the forms.

Poured the new concrete.  We made it higher and flatter and flush against the first step, so we lost a step which is good because fewer steps = slightly more accessible.

Vince has spirit week this week, which can only mean that Homecoming is this weekend.  The first day was class color day.  Freshmen got assigned purple.  Vince got to wear the Team Mary Ann shirt which is infused with happiness because Mary Ann is doing fantastic.  When the shirt was printed, we were all hoping against all hope for a miracle and sometimes miracles happen (well, a miracle which was the work of a lot of scientists) and it happened to Mary Ann.  Mary Ann is one of my nursing role models, she worked in pediatric oncology for many years before being diagnosed with cancer herself.  Immunotherapy baby! No one knows how long it will last (she’s in the first cohort of 17 patients, I think she even made it into a Merck commercial).  She’s doing really well.  Heck, I’ll even link an article.

On Tuesday, it was tie-dye day.  Vince wore the DC Martin shirt that Seth made for the first Rett Stroll-a-thon.  Vince is also cooking dinner on Tuesday night.

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It was cold on Monday morning, Edda wanted to join in on the purple fun, so she donned her favorite cupcake hat.

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Vince was cooking dinner on Tuesday night because Jeremy took me out for date night.  We had a happy hour dinner at World of Beer – and then we saw a movie about chess.

It’s already Wed!  I’m behind on blogging.  Sunday, Dad still going strong on the Chinese tutoring.  Vince may or may not have had two sleepovers in a row that weekend, he’s trying really hard to be nice and not a butthead.  Vince and I call each other out on our butthead behaviors all the time – usually when one of us is underslept.  Jeremy and I never call each other buttheads.  Edda is the buddha and doesn’t even know the word butthead.

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Sunday night dinner was hosted by Gene & Bette.  We were going to try out a new buffet restaurant at their retirement community, but if you think getting into a hot, new restaurant is hard in DC, try getting into a newly opened restaurant at a Rivendale.  The turn rate on the tables is very low.

We ended up going to a Chinese/Thai place.

I sat at the kids end, far away from the political chat at the other end.

I, instead, talked to Jane and Sarah about necklaces, school, Thai iced tea and SNL.

Eric photobombing my picture with Edda.

Saturday night, Vince was out with friends, so it was just me, Jeremy and Edda for the evening.  Jeremy asked me what I wanted for dinner and I asked for beef and barley soup.  It had been cold, dark and rainy all day because of Hurricane Matthew and I wanted a warm stew.

It’s evenings like this that I wish I enjoyed having a drink.  Jeremy was having a beer and I wanted to have something too.  We decided to finally open a bottle of scotch whiskey that an old HS boyfriend gave me about a year ago (apparently he doesn’t know how little I drink now – not that I was a drinker in high school either).  We had gone to a memorial service of one of Vince’s scout troop member’s dad that morning who passed away a month ago from pancreatic cancer, so we raised a glass in remembrance of him & his life and sent our consoling thoughts to his family.

I hated the scotch, but I did like pouring it into my glass and imagining that I might like it.  Jeremy reminded me that in Brady’s fluid dynamics class (the class where we met), Brady talked about the fluid dynamics of scotch – how the vapor pressure differences between water and alcohol result in concentration gradients and allows the alcohol to climb up the glass.  I had forgotten this particular lesson.

I got Ben’s new book in the mail!  I think I got a copy even before he did, the European publication date is later this month.

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My hairdresser has this iPhone case.  I might have to get it myself.  Bling bling.

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Friday night dinner.  Dad’s still in a bunch of pain, though it’s now in a new spot now.  The old spot has resolved, but the new spot hurts a lot.  They had to cancel their Machu Picchu trip in a few weeks – boo.  On the other hand, the cane I ordered from Amazon was perfect.  They are hopping onto my Amazon prime account.  Amazon Prime & Lyft all in one week.  What will be next?  I know.  Snapchat.

Mom’s scallion pancakes.

Mom.