Month: September 2017

Vince and Jeremy are gone – off to go caving somewhere far away with the scouts.  Jeremy volunteered to drive as they seemed to be short of drivers, but there ended up being eight adults going, so maybe he didn’t have to go?  Who knows. They are gone!  Jeremy is not going caving, he brought his bike and planned a 70 mile route near the cave and he’ll explore there.

Edda and I have exciting plans for the weekend.  Let’s see if it pans out, or if I just end up watching The Great British Baking Show all weekend.

We get our meat delivered frozen from the same place that delivers our milk.  Early every Thursday morning, they leave the delivery in a cooler we leave on the front porch.  Jeremy isn’t sure what happened, but last week’s meat order was forgotten in the cooler (somehow the milk and eggs got taken into the house, though).  So when he opened the cooler this morning to get the week’s milk delivery, he got a noseful of rotten meat.  Maybe not the best way to start the morning.

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We went downtown to meet Tony & Natasha’s new baby, Sara.  Two weeks old!  I forget how small they are at the very beginning.

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As soon as I got home, I had to take Vince out to Giant to buy groceries for the scout campout this weekend.  As usual, it was a terrible concoction of sugary cereal, mac and cheese, beef jerky and 10,000 snack items.

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Today is my birthday.  It’s a big one – I’m 45.  My parents called me late at night (8:15 pm) and laughed and asked me how old I was and when I said 45!, they told me that in 10 years, I can join the AARP.  I laughed and said, well me being 45 makes you guys how old?  We celebrated last night because tonight Jeremy had a meeting downtown and I had Edda’s back to school night to go to, so we weren’t going to be together.

Jeremy made me a delicious dinner with all the things I love, including a beet salad.  He bought the strawberry & cream cake I like from Whole Foods.  He got blue cheese & pretzel bread.

I got a pin cushion for my pins & needles.  It’s filled with emery to keep the needles clean and sharp.

I know I tell you that I like things that are at the $8 price point, but don’t think I’m not drawn to expensive stuff like everyone else.  Every time I find myself at a high end mall,  I’ve walked into the Lululemon store and touched the running gear and looked at the prices and then walked out.  Jeremy was determined to buy some stuff at Lululemon for me for my birthday, but then all his female co workers told him he couldn’t possibly patronize Lululemon because they fat-shame people and instead directed him to Athleta (a store that he had never heard of).  So I got a new running bra from Athleta and it’s, by far, the nicest bra I have. My boobs totally didn’t move at all during the whole run this morning.

To get all touchy-feely, I’m keenly aware that, at 45, I’m (most likely) past the halfway point of my life.   I’m working hard to release the bad energy and to harness the good energy and enjoy the ride. I’ve been given so, so very much, I try to repay it back everyday.  I strive to be grateful at the start of each day where I get to try again. Thank you all for being part of my life, I hope I’m doing good by you.

Well, today was Vince’s last violin lesson (sorry Kappa!).  I didn’t tell Kelly in advance that we had decided to end violin – I wanted us to do it in person and together.  Vince walked in and handed her a dozen roses and a box of chocolates and declared – this is my last lesson (and shed a few tears…)!  It’s been a long time since Vince has put in regular practice sessions and I know I’ve been dragging this on because I love Kelly and – who knows – I wanted an excuse to see her every once in a while?  Kelly was not surprised & did not try to convince him to keep going, rather she commented how we had lasted so long.

We found Vince’s first violin notebook and it indicated that 9/9/2010 was his first lesson!  Almost exactly 7 years with Ms. Kelly.  The end of an era.  Vince didn’t play any violin at his last lesson, rather we looked at Kelly’s new 5-string electric violin and chatted about school and friends and what we were planning on doing in the coming year.

Vince went to host a cub scout meeting tonight as part of the recruiting season.  The cub scout troop that Vince belonged to in elementary school (which is the one he went to tonight) has a choice of two boy scout troops in very close proximity and in recent years, the other boy scout troop has been attracting more rising 6th graders.  Our scout troop is losing steam a bit.  When we were choosing five years ago, we also almost went with the other troop as well even though, historically, the cub scout troop does feed into Vince’s boy scout troop.  Our boy scout troop is a little motley, it’s fiercely boy-led which inevitably lends itself to disorganization and miscommunication and lots of thrown cheese balls and the parking at the fair sounds terrible when you first hear about it (What?!  Grown ups have to work 40 hours too?! During August when everyone goes on vacation and it’s super hot? We can not possibly do that.).  But now I love our little troop and the fair and I don’t mind working the 20 hours I need to work.  Vince did a good job tonight, like the pied piper, he had a couple of kids following him out the door wanting him not to leave.  As for why we didn’t pick the other troop, we went with this troop because Vince’s whole cohort went together.  They are such good friends (really, the best of friends) that we were just going to go where everyone else went.

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Jeremy finally got his birthday power meter in the mail today.

So excited! (Who was more excited?  Jeremy about the bike stuff or Vince with the Supreme shirts?  It’s hard to say.)  And he got a free birthday ice cream cone at Ben and Jerry’s.  I could never take up biking for the following reasons: 1.) I brake on all the downhills because I’m scared of going fast, 2.) I am scared of cars, 3.) there is just so much stuff to buy and it’s all not $8 which is my preferred price point.

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This is going to be painful.  For the both of us.

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Date night at Giant.  Looking over the cheese snacks.

We had brunch at the house with Nat and Dara and their friends Ning & Brian.  N & D bought a house in the neighborhood and are planning on moving out of our basement apartment within the month and we are hoping that Ning & Brian will be our new tenants.  Nat made us this delicious pastry for our birthdays.

Almond cream filling!

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Lately, Maxi has been giving me some forlorn looks.  Anytime we make an extra to-do packing up the car (Jeremy’s bike ride yesterday, a picnic with a cooler, going on a road trip), Maxi runs to the car/van in the garage and leaps into the car and asks – can I come? can I come?  And the answer is always, always no.  Then I realized that she must be so bored, always in the house, hardly ever leaving the neighborhood.  She’s the 4th child, really no time for dog parks, no time for doggie play dates, she just sits on our bed, stinky-fying our pillows.  So today, I decided to take her orienteering – it was the first meet of the season. I wasn’t sure how she would manage, there are lots of dogs at check in and check out and Maxi is not really good with meeting other dogs.  And would she be able to manage the terrain without getting tangled in the leash and would she run as fast as I wanted to run?  (I have not been taking her running around the neighborhood on my runs, I ask her, but she doesn’t ever seem excited to go – I consider her to be out of shape for a dog, she just runs to her food bowl.)

Max did great: over logs, through undergrowth of the forest, up and down hills, over streams.  (I did less well performance-wise, not Maxi’s fault, she didn’t slow me down, only my own navigation did that.) I did this thing called a Score-O which is timed and I needed to get back to the start within a 75 minute window or penalties apply and I realized a little too late that the time was closing in on me and I had to book it back on an open trail and I asked Max to keep up with me for a good while and she did, surprising me.  She did growl at dogs which is unfortunate, but, I think, manageable.  She might be my new orienteering partner.

Jeremy left before 6 am to do a century bike ride (100 miles).  He wanted to find friends to ride with, and he was a little nervous to ask, but ask he did and ended up riding with Kelly and Liz.  His goal was to not be dropped by them.  He has ridden with them before and they follow each other on Strava so he knows exactly in what kind shape they are in and they are in better shape than he is.  He did not get dropped and cut an hour and 20 min off his time last year.  Liz wrote on Strava that it was a wonderful ride with good company at a conversational speed.  It was not a conversational speed for Jeremy.

Good weather, good pals and lots of training might make this year’s time hard to beat.

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An hour after Jeremy left, I dragged both the kids to David’s Eagle Scout project, a 5K race around Clopper Lake to collect food for Manna.  Eddda was Buddha-like about going, but Vince was reluctant.  It was early in the morning and who wants to get up at 6:55 am for a 7 am departure from the house? We haven’t been going to various Eagle Scout projects, but it’s about time to start now that Vince is an older scout.  I thought it was paved and I imagined that Vince would push Edda around the lake while I ran, but it was all on trails, so Vince kept Edda company at the start while I ran around.  (Actually, it was good that Vince went, he did end up helping out a bunch and, I think, felt pretty good about it.)

Unlike Jeremy, I did get dropped twice.  First, a splinter group of four trailed off of the lead group.  And then I kept up with the four for a good while, but I did eventually get dropped by the splinter group.  But for my efforts, I did win the female division and received a carrot cake.

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In the evening, we hosted Xiaoying & Chenny and met their delightful new baby, Legend.  So smiley!  So well behaved!

We ate so much food!  Including my prize cake – which turned out to be chocolate chip carrot cake!

Happy birthday Jeremy!  It was a beautiful day today here in the DMV.  Jeremy’s ginger cake didn’t look perfect when I unsprung it from the springform pan, but it’s nothing a little sugar and sprinkles won’t fix.

A dinner of enchiladas, mexican rice & beans.   (Edda did not eat any of the dinner, rather, she had two helpings of the cake & ice cream.)

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Vince’s long awaited package of shirts from this particular brand – Supreme – came today.  He tells me that all the celebrities wear this brand of clothing and that it is super popular.

These are literally Hanes (you see the package says Hanes on it?) undershirts with a tiny, tiny, tiny Supreme logo printed on the front.  If you go to the Supreme web site, everything is sold out except for these undershirts.  Maybe they sell only undershirts and the rest of the web site is a sham.  Anyways, he loves them.  I know it’s ridiculous because it’s a stupid shirt, but there is a deep pleasure in giving my children exactly what they want.  To say yes when so often I say no.

Every year, there is something about school starting, our anniversary & our birthdays that brings about random arguments and serious discussions between me and Jeremy.  We are doing pretty well this year, I almost thought we would sail through the season, but alas, it was not to be.  I don’t want to make a big deal about it, because if it was a big deal, trust me, I would not be writing about it on the blog, but it is always interesting to me how our way of arguing and what we argue about changes over time and also remains so much the same.  This year, we argued about a certain approach to parenting which will require steady focus and attention and effort and Jeremy wants to take the lead because he thinks it would be a bad idea if I took the lead.  I generally agree with that assessment, but I’m skeptical of Jeremy’s follow-through ability.  Jeremy said it was unfair for me to already count his attempt as failing before he’s even started and that I needed to not wait on the sidelines until he failed (or had success, because he’s had many successes that I conveniently forget about) on the follow through, rather, I should support him in his attempt.  I did come around to this argument, I will support him in his position as the lead in this particular parenting endeavor.  This will not be easy for me as I have my own ideas about this, but I know that Jeremy disagrees with each one of my ideas and has a completely different approach.  I can see how his approach would work, it’s just not how I would do it.  We can’t spend the time arguing about the approach, we just need to do one and we’ll do Jeremy’s and I will support him 100%.

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One of our weird dynamics that brings encourages discontent is our feelings about birthdays and the timing of our birthdays.  (Do I write this blog post every year?, I think maybe I do.) Tomorrow is Jeremy’s birthday.  I’m not really a birthday person, I don’t think of my birthday as a particularly special day and I don’t really ask (or even really want) other people need to do anything for me on my birthday.  Jeremy likes celebrating on his birthday, but his birthday is a week ahead of mine.  So what happens is I forget to celebrate or downplay his birthday or just go out and buy him cookie and then a week later, my birthday comes around and I’m OK not celebrating because I didn’t celebrate Jeremy’s last week and I don’t care much, but he wants to celebrate mine because he likes birthdays but is resentful because the recent non-celebration of his birthday the week before is fresh in his mind.  So this year, I’m trying trying to make an extra effort to celebrate.  I’m making a ginger cake from scratch (even though Vickey, slightly doubtful of my baking skillz ever since the date cake fiasco, told me go to to Trader Joe’s to buy one – it’s really good!), I have gifts, I have a dinner idea.  It’ll be good.  He’ll be 49.

Vince got up at 6:30 am and got himself to school.  Excited about: a math teacher that juggles, a history teacher who has fluid seating, an English teacher who make everyone put their phone on a shelf, an organized Chinese teacher.  With him out of the house, I had a chance to speed clean his bedroom.  Disgusting.

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Maxi fell right back into the school year routine.  Looking out for Edda’s bus.

Same bus driver & aide, but brand new bus!  Edda’s the first kid to go up/down on the lift.  It has AC and everything.  Very nice.  The bus driver was super pleased since the last bus was a little flaky.  These buses all have cameras so you’ll get sent a ticket if you run the red flashing stop sign.

Summer is over!  The kids are in school tomorrow, Vince – 10th grade, Edda – 8th grade.

I will post my handwritten Edda-care calendar here.  We had 4.5 people in rotation (I count Nat at 0.5 because she was slated to work, but didn’t end up working – but I knew she always had my back in case I needed her help).  Because Edda’s companions don’t work full time for us, they always have a more primary gig going on at the same time (and it’s summer, so they all had vacations & holidays), so it meant that I had to keep in the back of my mind all their other schedules so I knew who to call on on what days to pick up or drop off Edda or if the camp schedule changed.  I’m lucky to have all these people who know Edda and care for her so well and it’s what I wanted when we went off the au pair childcare route, but sometimes it’s a little crazy.

Vince has jet lagged himself the past week without leaving the time zone.  He went to bed at 2 am on Friday night and 5 am on Saturday night/Sunday morning.  Whaaa?!  He was asleep at noon on Sunday morning.  He’s going to have a tough time getting up at 6:30 tomorrow morning.  The rest of us aren’t that bad, but we all have been sleeping in until 7:30 am the last week.  I know 7:30 am doesn’t sound like “sleeping in”, but Edda’s bus comes to the house at 7:10 am.