Year: 2017

Jeremy’s spent 2-3 hours in the past two days trying to figure out international flights for Vince.  Vince is going abroad by himself this summer to lots of places in Asia which is a big step for everyone.  I do wish he went last summer as there is some nervousness about traveling out of the country.  We decided no layovers in Canada, Mexico or the Middle East.  (If you route though the Middle East, flights are pretty cheap right now, no surprise…) Actually, probably no layovers at all because he’s an unaccompanied minor.  Though I’m sure he could figure he own way out of the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport if he was stranded there on his own.

******

I had a nursing simulation today with a fake patient (mannequin).   It went OK, I’m glad to be done with it.  There was only one slot remaining when I signed up, so I didn’t go until 4:30pm which is terrible because I spend the whole day fretting.

*****

Vince took all the comforters from the weekend sleepover and piled them high on his bed.

*****

Small act:  none.  boo. tomorrow.  I need to plan these out more so I’m not left thinking about what to do at the end of the day when I’m ready for bed.  xoxo, see you on the other side.

How is it Sunday evening at 8:00 pm already?  (Now it’s 10 pm.  I got distracted.) Friday nights seem so luxurious – the whole weekend ahead of us, like an unending savannah of time.  But it all gets filled up somehow and now it’s all over.  Jeremy spent some time this weekend trying to get Edda’s photo for our annual pancake breakfast.

Friday night, Edda wrestled Jeremy as she fell asleep.

While Vince hosted a sleepover.

I went out into the woods to orienteer where I gave up about 3/4 of the way through and felt defeated. I ate a lot of cookies.  Every time I go to these events I get mistaken for Florence.  Hi Florence!  Umm, I’m not Florence.  Of course, it didn’t take me too long to figure out who this mysterious Florence person was.  I should have taken a selfie with her.

Sat. night we watched “Tonight’s Special” on Netflix.

*****

Sunday Football ice cream cake!

*********

Small act: Donated $ to rescue.org in Silver Spring.

Let’s start tonight’s blog post with Edda laughing.  I’m happy that she’s laughing.  I had a moment this afternoon where I was sitting down trying to work and think about the regular things that I normally work on and think about and I had a feeling of great sadness and tiredness and hopelessness wash over me and literally had to put my head in my hands and had to stop myself from crying.

*****

Finding reading material is difficult.  My reading group is reading Never Let Me Go which made me sad.  I was going very slowly.  I’m turning to Truman’s biography.  I’m not sure that’s right either, but it started with this quote – “We can never tell what is in store for us.” Jeremy and I are at a loss of what to talk about in the 15-20 min before we go to bed.  It’s usually a time that’s reserved for a lighthearted chats what happened during the day, but everything we want to talk about is not very relaxing.  I think we are going to turn to reading books out loud to each other.  Which book though?  I want Jeremy to read out loud the Crying of Lot 49 which he read out loud to me during the first few months of our courtship and I tried very hard to pretend I liked it even though I did not know what the hell was going on.  If he reads it out loud to me now, I’ll be happy to fall asleep listening to his voice.  That doesn’t seem so equitable though.  Maybe Silas Marner?

*****

I got my hair cut today & so did Vince.  Linda, our hairdresser, mentioned that she hasn’t felt so unsafe since she left Cambodia about a decade and a half ago.  She’s cancelling holiday trips to SF and even daytrips to downtown DC.

******

We went to the Habit Grill tonight for dinner with my mom and dad.  Note the RM cheerleaders over at the next table.

Here’s Vince’s new haircut.  Pretty short.

*****

Small acts:

They seemed particularly small today.  This morning, I emailed my handful of Pennsylvania friends (even ones I haven’t spoken to in decades), to urge them to call Toomey to vote no on DeVos.  Most of them wrote back promptly and said that they were already on the case, emailing and calling for days now.  Though we had no impact on the 6:30 am vote.  Jeremy is cautiously optimistic about his actions this week regarding oil company regulations on methane wast turning out OK, we’ll see.  You can read his blog post here.  I need to follow up on Soojung’s email to testify on behalf of ARC of MD about the autism waiver.  If they pull back the Medicaid expansion, we’ll lose our waiver.

I met up with my friend Kate for lunch.  She was in my community health clinical last term and graduated in December.  She was kind enough to give me both the textbook & study notes for my last class that I’m taking this semester – leadership.  Things have changed since I started nursing school three and a half years ago.  When I started, you could get a hospital job, train with an experienced nurse for 6-8 weeks and then they would send you out on your own. My initial plan was to do the 6-8 weeks and then go to part time as fast as I could (a shift a week) and maintain my current job full time.  Now, in an effort to better train their nursing staff, many hospitals are establishing residency programs which are training programs for a full year and require full time status.  Kate is starting the residency program in a couple of weeks at Shady Grove and I wanted to hear the inside scoop.  I’m trying to figure out how to combine both my current career and the nursing career into something like 1.35 careers.  I can not work 2 full time jobs.  It will take me some time to figure it out.  I love school.  I could go to school forever.  Work is something else, especially hospital work were it involves weekend and holiday work (two Saturdays and two Sundays a month for everyone).

******

Tonight, the boys had to get back out the door by 6:45 pm, so I made my good old lazy dinner standby, chicken patty sandwiches and tater tots.  With Martin’s potato rolls.

I got mini tater tots which, as you know, as the size decreases, the surface to volume ratio goes up and then so does the deliciousness.   (Though I did burn them a little which then makes the deliciousness go down).

******

Small act:

Today I did this:

Today’s action. Critical.
Getting Steve Bannon off the NSC may be the most important action we take. Looks like his appointment isn’t legal. CALL RIGHT NOW to urge the Senate HS Committee to push back.
CALL THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY:
202-224-4751

Staff are saying each call matters. REDIAL till you get through, voicemail is full. You can also send an email to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Gov’t Affairs (see comments for link).
SCRIPT:
I’m calling because Steve Bannon should NOT be allowed to sit on the NSC. Any appointee who’s not at cabinet level must be Senate approved under US Code under Section 3021(a)(6) I’m calling to urge that the Senate Committee on Homeland Security represent their constituents faithfully by upholding that rule of law.

I’m trying to figure out what to do with the DeVos nomination, it’s close.  We have 2 Republicans, we need only one more.  VanHollen & Cardin are already voting no.

I have the luxury of everyday going to work and, if I don’t want to, I don’t have to at every moment think about the incredible free fall that the US has found herself in.  But Jeremy doesn’t have that luxury.  While everyone else is distracted about how we are pissing off Australia (really?  how is that possible?) and how the Terminator and the President are in a Twitter war, Jeremy is trying to prevent years of environmental work from disappearing with just an hour of deliberation. You can read about it here (I think he worked mainly on #2).  He sighed this morning as he left for work – we are losing and we are losing fast.

Good night loves.  Start again tomorrow.

Jeremy was on the hill today fighting the good fight.

With Congressman Raul Grijelva.

******

Vince and Dad back at the old routine.

******

After various childcare snafus, I made it downtown for happy hour & dinner with Jeremy and Lana. No photos of us, I forgot!

******

Small acts:  Became a member of WAMU.  Gave $ to Stephanie Hansen’s campaign in Delaware.  Special election coming up on Feb 25th, trying to keep Del. blue. per Sister District.

Beautiful morning at the track.  Two mile workout – sprinting the straights, jogging the curves.  By the time I was almost done, I noticed three military helicopters flying by.  Someone is bypassing the regular morning DC gridlock.  Jeremy just told me he’s determined not to know the SCOTUS nominee until tomorrow morning because he’s mad at the Celebrity Apprentice-mode of the announcement.  It didn’t occur to me not to know, but frankly, I’m fine with shutting the internet down in the house at 8pm tonight, I’m tired.  So I’m rushing with this blog post.  Not that I never rush with the blog posts, I always rush.  Hence the poor editing/grammar/punctuation.

*******

Went to class this afternoon where two hours were spent on cover letters, resumes and interviews. Why didn’t they do this at any other school I’ve ever been to?  I found out my assignment (preliminary) which is at Shady Grove.  Relieved I don’t have to drive to Baltimore.  Now I’m hoping I don’t have to do nights.

******

Taco night tonight, baby!  Best night of the week.

*******

Small act: None!  boo. Nothing besides fretting and complaining.  Does saying “great job” & “thank you” to a pal who advocated for Medicaid services count as a small act?  I hope so.  Go Marta!

 Thank you sherah! Vince was very excited to receive his surprise!  Twenty-one pilots forever!

*****

Small act: $ to ACLU

I’ve been worried that Edda’s having some pain from her scoliosis.  I hope I’m not making an error in judgment by finishing out my last term of nursing school and then doing the surgery.  I hope she’s not in a lot of discomfort right now and that her curve holds steady for 4 months.  She was a little moody and unstable in her footing yesterday and last night but she seemed very happy today.  It’s very apparent to me now that the ratio of her torso length to her leg length is not right.  She’s missing 4-5 inches in her torso length, squashed like an accordion.

She napped comfortably on me during the afternoon.

*****

I might have to reinstate my Facebook habit (which I’m hating these days because it sounds like everyone is yelling at me in my own living room), if only to keep track of the protests around the area.  I missed the 1pm march at the White House, but I made the 5:15 candlelight vigil from the Islamic Center in DC with a walk to Pence’s house at the Naval Observatory.  Thank you, my Usual Suspects (Laura, Lauren, Marta and Soojung) for reminding me everyday to show up if I can.  Thank you Jeremy, for dropping me off right in front of the Center.  I wanted Vince to come and he agreed at first, but then decided he was mad at me for making him go and backed out at the last minute.  Next time…

I like this guy’s sign:  “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as on of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself.”  Leviticus 19:34

And a reminder to me from my friend Erik: To my fellow members of Gex X. Friends, we are a small generation, and not used to being in the limelight. I assumed for most of my life that we would never be called to greatness, that our job was mostly to quietly patch things up after the Boomer’s various excesses and keep the parks open and the trains running and, well, just generally get up and make the donuts (to reference one of our iconic commercial tropes). But greatness, or ignominy, has sought us out, and this is our time. No one of sound mind seeks this sort of crisis. But the crisis has come. This is our trial by fire, as real and immediate was the Depression, WWII, civil rights, or Vietnam. This is our crisis, and it comes when we are at the height of our training, life experience, and resources. What we do now will define us forever.

Vince started getting involved with the Drama club this winter.  Between the big fall musical and the big spring play, there is a festival of student-written one acts which were performed on Friday night. I was impressed with the plays.  There were three student written plays and one professionally written play (10 Ways to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse).  I knew and expected that the plays were cast both gender blind and race blind.  I think they don’t have enough boys trying out for drama, so many girls were cast for boy roles and no extensive lyric changes or even hair changes were required of girls playing/singing the role of, lets say, Dan, in the first play who is ready to ask his beau to marry him. A few lines were thrown out about how the Trump admin is like the zombie apocalypse which got some groans and many laughs.  There was a lot of gender fluidity going on on stage which I asked Vince about afterwards and he was like – yeah, we are an inclusive and diverse community and he proceeded to help me understand what a pansexual person was.  “How is it different than being a bisexual person?”, I asked.  “Well”, Vince explained, “a bisexual person likes only guys and girls and if I identified my gender as a helicopter (and neither male nor female), then a bisexual person would not be interested in me, whereas a pansexual person would be.”  Huh.  Being a teenager is complicated these days, it’s hard to grow up and find in love.  I retold this story to various guests at dinner tonight and he (at the table) said – Ahh, me and all my close friends are straight, mom.  And I countered, how would you know?  I see no evidence of girls anywhere for you or any of your friends.  He then raised his eyebrows and looked at me all meaningfully and provided no further information.  Argh!   I love being the most important female in Vince’s life, I know I’m going to get knocked off that pedestal any day now and it kills me.

*****

Mom & Dad are back in town, just in time for Chinese New Year.  Rooster!

There was a little confusion with the ordering.  Jeremy thought he was ordering for the table and did so in English.  Then my mom ordered a bunch more dishes using Chinese (which Jeremy didn’t understand).  In the end, we got 50% more food than we could possibly eat.

Kitachi came along as it was her scheduled work day – she got to try Peking duck (didn’t love it (how is that possible?!)) and see my crazy Chinese family.

*******

Edda and I went quilting this afternoon – hunting down fabric, a rotary cutter, a self-healing cutting mat and a quilting ruler.  I can do no more quilting without these tools.  I’m on the cusp of this hobby, ready to start spending money, but hesitating because I think if I commit to buying anything, then I will stop doing the hobby.  So then if I know I’m going to quit, do I buy the cheap beginner tools knowing I won’t use them more than three times?  Or do I buy the more expensive tools hoping beyond hope that I will continue with the hobby?

*******

Subscribed to the Washington Post.

Ahahahahaha ….  Jeremy comes home late and asks if I did anything interesting today.  I did nothing interesting today.  Compared to the rest of the world, absolutely nothing of interest happened in the Lee-Martin household today.  Edda went to sleep tonight as she usually does. Vince came home from school in the afternoon like he usually does.  And so we keep on as we do.