Month: June 2017

Karin’s book on John Ashbery arrived after a long pre-order.  Exciting!  Edda & I are going to read it together.

******

Jeremy is thanking me for managing Edda’s recovery by getting me Rainier cherries.  We made almost it three weeks before we have our predictable argument – the one where I get all resentful doing the thing I agreed to do.  Lol.  D – Don’t worry!  I’ll take care of everything!  J – You sure?  I can take some time off.  D – Nah, it’ll be fine.  No worries.  And then in the middle of it all, I get all miffed that I’m taking care of everything.  How often can we have this argument which is totally my fault?  10,000 times over 10,000 different situations.

******

Bihan made dinner for us on Tues night.

Including this famous Chinese dish – Coca Cola chicken wings?  Delicious!

******

We visited Mr. Twigg’s class to say thank you and goodbye before school lets out for the summer.  Edda missed the last three weeks of school and I didn’t want to end the school year without checking in with her teachers and aides.  We showed off our renewed walking skills and everyone looked at her enormously long scar and we gave hugs all around.

Then Edda went to Target with me.  A day of outings, working our way back to normal.

Edda is a combination of the bookends of a person’s life.  Part toddler, part old fogey.  I spent most of the day within 2 feet of Edda, working on her walking, spotting her tipsiness, judging when she is tired.  I fed her leftover brisket from dinner last night, warmed in the microwave.  I eat my half of the brisket, right from the microwave, as hot as I can manage without burning the roof of my mouth and spread her half out on another plate to cool quickly and to make it easier to cut into bite sized pieces.  Her skin is smooth and clear, her incision so cleanly healing, her head is still small and heart shaped I can encircle her whole face in my hands and look at her face to see traces of me and Jeremy in it.  Yet, she has the posture of an old lady.  Now artificially straightened, there are still angles that look not quite right, her neck jutting awkwardly forward, a stiffness that should have come from age, but now come from metal suspension bridges tying her vertebrae together.

My to-do list is very short these days and I try to hold onto each day.  When I’m very busy, I imagine that when I have non-busy days, that they will somehow last longer than busy days; an afternoon that lasts a week, a lunch that lasts three hours.  But this does not happen, the day passes quickly even when there is nothing to do but follow someone around the house making sure she doesn’t tire and fall.

******

I dropped of my parents at BWI to send them back to the West Coast.  I couldn’t have managed Jeremy’s business trip without them.  When they showed up, Edda was still taking Q8h oxycodone and not pleased with her situation.  Now that they’ve gone, Edda’s able to walk on her own around the house without pain.  It was a good recovery week.

I wore my pajamas all weekend.  Like even outside the house – like to yoga class, to lunches out, to Sunday night dinner.  I like to wear my pajamas all the time ever since I got these “joggers” as Vince calls them (not sweatpants).

****

Kitachi helped us out on Saturday, we gave Edda a quick shower in the morning and set her up for lunch.

And my parents and Vince and I went to a concert with Kelly & Bihan.  (I might not have worn my pajamas to this event).

******

Edda is progressing well (ignore her pissed off face in this photo).  Today, I put her on her own workout regimen to get her back to full Edda capabilities.  She’s been off of her feet for two weeks, so I gotta get her used to walking on her own for hours at a time which she wants to do, but I think isn’t strong enough to do yet.  So all day it was 25 min rest, 5 min walking with minimal assistance from about 9 am to dinner time.

We even made it out of the house for the first time since the surgery – where else? but to Sunday night dinner.

I think we are past the worst part of Edda’s home recovery.  She doesn’t really need pain meds anymore, though you can tell her leg muscles are weak and she’s still trying to adjust to her new body’s balancing points.  Before, her body was all tense with trying to manage the pain, but now her sleep is sound and deep.  Last night at 10:30 pm, after sleeping 80% of the day, Edda was awake taunting me and laughing softly at her movie video playing in her bedroom.  I took that as a sign she was well enough to be out of bed most of the day.  No more lazy days in bed in a painkiller stupor.  Today, she spent the whole morning in her wheelchair.  Then after lunch, we walked six houses down the block and then a nice nap in the afternoon and then a few more hours in her chair in the evening.  Hopefully, she won’t be up at 10:30pm.  It is incredible to me how much sleep I’m able to absorb this week as well.   I’m napping a lot with Edda and still able to fall asleep at night without a problem.   Maxi (you see her on the couch in the above photo?) has taken to sleeping in Edda’s room.  Maxi is looking out for Edda and I’m touched.

*****

A big step today for Vince towards becoming an independent adult; he got his first debit card.  His weekly allowance (which is $15 because he’s 15 years old, Edda gets $13 a week) auto deposits into the account every Tuesday.  He has the bank’s app loaded onto his phone.  He used his card to promptly to buy some stuff online and it immediately showed the transaction on his app.  He is very, very excited.  I had to do this because of his upcoming trip to China, but also really because it’s time to learn that even though $300 seems like an endless supply of money, it can go very, very quickly.  This evening, he’s like, I want to spend allll my money.  But I know I shouldn’t.  Yeah, that’s how it pretty much goes your whole life.  I told Jeremy about this in a phone conversation last night and he said, so we are giving up overseeing all his purchases?  Uh, yeah, I guess he can go buy all the weird crap he wants until his money runs out.

*****

I caught my mother matching together mismatched socks.  lol.  None of our socks match.  They almost match, but never do.

Vickey and Karuna came by on Wed and brought us so much lunch!  The gorgeous bundt/pound cake was only one of six? seven? delicious dishes.  I felt very spoiled (and full).  Originally lunch was scheduled to be on Thurs, but Vickey is my CNN/C-span maven/junkie and asked for a reschedule to accommodate the historic testimony.  I, of course, complied because I get all my world news from two sources: The New York Times and Vickey.  Sometimes after dinner, Jeremy’ll ask me to repeat “Vickey’s version” of an incident and he’ll nod his head, yeah that’s about right.  Jeremy is also, of course, a political news junkie, but he rarely sees anything on video, it’s all print or audio.  Vickey fills me in on the visual stuff because she’s got the TV turned to the news channel all day.  A side note: my friends are totally twinning in their stripy shirts.  A side note two: for at least ten minutes during the visit, we discussed polymer molecular weights and their distribution and at what point does it matter to the properties of the bulk material.  Women in STEM: we do talk about polymer science during a purely social event.

******

My parents are here and goofy.

*****

Vince is cooking a lot.  He cooked the steak dinner last night.  He also made homemade chicken nuggets tonight.

******

Vince was home from school today because the seniors had graduation today and all the teachers went downtown for the ceremony.  I worked a couple of hours today and here’s how the kids spent the morning.

I wonder how long I’ll enjoy taking care of Edda?  When the kids were infants and I was home with them all day – nursing, cleaning, diapering, laundering – I went bonkers.  Literally medication-worthy bonkers.  Now I could lie in bed all day with Edda feeding her oatmeal, monitoring her poops, giving her pain meds and resting – happy and lazy.  I think there is a huge difference this time around.  First, I have a job to go back to once this convalescence is done –  when the kids were babies I was really unemployed which meant that I was a full-time stay-at-home-mom and this was something I never thought I’d be which made me itchy.  Second, I have so, so much help now.  For example, today, my parents watched Edda in the morning and fed her breakfast which allowed me to get Vince off to school and go out for a run.  Then in the afternoon, Adriana came and helped me maneuver Edda into the shower where we washed her hair for the first time in 10 days and took off her big bandage.  This was a big production, Edda’s still in pain during the transitions from standing to sitting especially.  I don’t like moving her myself without someone else’s help.  While we were showering, mom and dad downstairs were making dinner.  Maybe I should have gotten more help when the kids were infants.

We are about 4-5 doses of running out of Oxycodone.  Do you think I can just call and ask for a refill?  Or do you think that they gave me enough to last how long the pain usually lasts?  The fact that it’s a controlled/addictive substance gives me pause.  Will the person on the other end of the phone refuse the refill?  I’m not sure why this makes me nervous to ask.  Anyways, Edda’s getting stronger everyday, maybe we won’t need anything past the 4-5 doses.  But I’m a person who likes to fill a take when it gets to 3/4 empty even though you can go another 150 miles, so it makes me nervous we’ve gone through more than half the med without backup.

Adriana is a rock star and she’s been encouraging Edda to walk to get her bowels moving.  And when we couldn’t get any results from her distended belly from our constitutional around the kitchen, Adriana and I gave Edda an enema and we were rewarded with a lot of ??  – the whole process involved KY Jelly, rubber gloves, 4 diapers, a full change of bed sheets and then a much more comfortable and sleepy Edda.  Even though Jeremy is in California, we have a house full of helpers to cook, help Edda up and down the stairs, give enemas, lift wheelchairs, study Chinese and give carpool rides.

Vincent wuz here

Edda laughed for a moment today!

Mom and Dad are here helping out.  Edda loves my mom’s cooking.

Vince, me and Bihan spent a good deal of time this morning cleaning out Vince’s room.

******

On the other coast, Jeremy and Donald went biking.

California has such beautiful biking places, Jeremy laments.  Did he rent some fancy road bike?  Maybe.

Now he’s with Ben and MaryAnn!

Jeremy left for the Bay Area & Portland – lucky Jeremy, he gets to see Donald!  My parents are arriving this evening to ease us through the week.  Jeremy had to pack for all occasions from a long bike ride (with Donald) to a suit and tie, so it was very complicated.  He had to break all the rules business travelers follow and check a bag!   Kitachi was kind enough to work a couple of extra hours so I could drop Jeremy right off at DCA.

I did have a moment there in the day where I snuck away to a used bookstore in the area.  Whenever I really need a bit of alone time, I like to find a good bookstore to spend a couple of hours.  Good bookstores are hard to find these days, I made do with this one.  Not that I’ve read any books this year – I really think I’m at zero books.  I have to go look at my book journal.

After I came home from dropping Jeremy at the airport, we all gathered in Edda’s room to snuggle. And to try and get her to smile.  She’s not really smiling yet – we got the one smile when she realized she was at home, but no more since then.  Vince is trying to encourage one.

We managed to score not one, but two (!) grey fuzzy blankets from friends.  Two different friends, same awesome blanket.  We spent a couple of hours under their fuzziness.

I made a relatively lame dinner of chicken sandwiches and tater tots and these two played violin duets together.

We celebrated 10 years in Maryland tonight!  It’s been a good decade, Maryland is a good spot for us.  Bihan found her way to Georgetown today and brought back cupcakes:

At the same time, Jeremy ordered a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cake (Maryland themed).

I thought maybe we could sing the Maryland song which I was pretty sure Maryland has but I didn’t know what it was.  It turns out that it’s racist.  So we didn’t sing it. They need to get around to changing that.

Edda had a good peaceful day with lots of sleeping and resting.  She managed to make it up and down the stairs three times today, arriving at the table for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  The frequency of the pain medication dosing is elongating and she seems more comfortable with eating, pooping and being moved.  I’m sleeping a lot with her and resting myself.  There is nothing more I want than to snuggle up next to her while she is slowly rebuilding her strength.  I’m determined in the next month to be a little lazy, take adequate sick time off to care for Edda, to not rush back to work & my to-do lists.  As Vickey says, it’ll all get done.  I need some time to recuperate myself.  It’s the beginning of summer & I want a summer break.