Year: 2018

I got a phone call from Vince today.  He’s doing well and very happy.  We are planning on visiting him this weekend (his has Saturdays off from when the last campers leave until the next campers arrive).  He has been bouncing around two different outpost assignments during the week, the mountain biking one and the caving one.  He’s enjoying the caving and wants to come home and boulder in the gym with me.  That would be fun.  The outposts are little stations that are connected by loops of hiking trails.  A troop spends the week hiking the trails and they get to a new outpost everyday where they do the activity and also set up sleeping tents for the night.  They start and end the week at the main Lenhoksin headquarters where there is a dining hall and air conditioned office/meeting space.  Vince has been in charge of the meals at the dining hall which he says is a lot of work.  He wants us to bring his violin (!).  He says everyone there plays their guitar and he wants to play something too.  He also wants us to drive the van in so we can bring his counselor friends to town where we will eat at Waffle House.  I’ve never been to Waffle House before, so I’m looking forward to that.  Inspired by nothing more than having weeks and weeks of extra vacation time and watching hours and hours of the Tour de France, Jeremy is taking off work at the end of the week to bike to Vince.  It’s over 200 miles to the camp from here.  I’ll follow in the air conditioned van on Saturday.  As I was confirming the trip with Vince to make sure that he was expecting us, I mentioned the extended bike ride and Vince said that his dad was insane.  Jeremy is insane, though I know it’s only a temporary insanity brought about by the state of the world and the futile feeling of his efforts away from biking.

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Sunday late afternoon, Jeremy Edda and I went urban orienteering on the George Mason campus in Virginia.

Jeremy wanted to come because they advertised an after-orienteering meeting at a restaurant that served craft beer and Chinese “xiaochi”.  Jeremy’s always wanted to open his own restaurant called Bao & Beer which would serve Chinese dumplings/buns and beer.

I ran around the campus while Jeremy pushed Edda to find little flagged controls.  It was a beautiful day to be outside.

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Being middle aged and generally well compensated means that shopping has become dull for me.  I never really need anything because I usually already have it.  Do I ever reach into the closet for pants and don’t find any?  No.  Do I have clothes for weddings, funerals, job interviews, graduations, Christmas parties, baby showers, BBQs, swim parties, girls night out, girls night in, sporting events and/or costume parties?  Yes.  I have all those clothes.  Even my hobbies, I generally have to wait for things to break to by the next thing (see recently purchased sewing machine).  I don’t like collecting things, I don’t need one of every color.  I’m still running in running shorts I bought before Vince was born and I was puttering around Town Lake in Austin, TX.  I’m patiently waiting for the elastic waistbands to give out on those, but they seem invincible.  Anyways, Jeremy has the same problem, but more kitchen focused.  As a poor grad student, he’d wander the Williams Sonoma dreaming about all the kitchen stuff he wanted, but couldn’t afford.  Now we have all the kitchen things that he’s ever wanted so he doesn’t pay any attention to WS anymore.  Until the toaster oven broke this past week.  So he spent some time (when he wasn’t watching the TdF) dreaming and ordering the next toaster oven.  He picked this one which is basically a true oven but just mini-sized.

In which I roasted a turkey thigh in tonight.  I left it in too long because I’m of the age now where I can’t look at a new fangled thing and instantly figure out what all the buttons mean and I couldn’t get it to turn off at the right time and also I couldn’t remember to check on it earlier because I was distracted doing something else.  Even though it looks burned, it tasted just fine.  Still juicy.  You gotta get the higher fat thigh meat.  It’s more forgiving than the breast meat.

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Vickey and I are reading Chip’s book for our two-person-book-club.  Of course, it’s devastating.  Vickey is watching the Handmaid’s Tale at the same time which I know is good, but I refuse to watch. Our crazy dystopian world, it’ll take us a full generation to figure it out.  It’s hard to be kind and generous when all the forces are pulling the other way.

The tour is on!  Which means that Jeremy is watching it while I’m blogging.  It’s a gorgeous weekend here in the DMV, we tried to take advantage of it.  I often try to put in a few hours of work on Sat, but not today.  Today was for a true, no work summer weekend.  Edda and I went to see Antman & the Wasp.  I have, for years, gotten emails about sensory sensitive showings of movies in Rockville Town Square (1 mile from the house) and paid zero attention to them, but I went this past winter to see Coco because I had heard such great reviews of Coco and now I love these sensory showings.  They are at a great time for us (10:30 am on Saturdays), they usually happen the day after opening day, they reduce the price to 6.50 a ticket and they keep the lights ever so slightly lit and the volume is quieter.  And because it’s geared for special needs kids, I don’t have to worry about Edda yelling the the middle of the movie because there are a lot of kids yelling.  Someone told me yesterday that there were two “shorts” at the end of the movie that we had to stay for – one mid-ending credits and one end-ending credits, so we hung around to watch those.  Edda had a better time than this photo indicated.  Even with the sound down, I still wanted to protect my ears and I had forgotten my foam ear plugs, so I had to make makeshift ones from the inner absorbent layer of one of Edda’s extra (clean, unused) diapers. 

Jeremy had gone on a long bike ride in the morning, but he finished as the same time as the movie let out, so we met at World of Beer to have lunch (tour on TV.  also world cup.  also wimbledon. lots of sports activities to keep track of. )

My quilt came back from the quilters this week.  I need to do the edging.

I got the new sewing machine threaded and worked on some quilt blocks.

Today was the kind of day where a neighbor texts you asking if Vince is around to help clean up a dead bird.  I guess I’m flattered that the first person they thought of was Vince?  It was a crazy, hot day – lots of running around, lots of weird logistics and frantic texting, but now it’s bedtime and we are all doing A-OK. 

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I got acupuncture above my Cupid’s bow for my hamstring injury.  huh?  I have no idea.  She told me to walk around for three minutes and it would realign my chi.  Of course.  That’s why.

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I have my very own N95 mask.  Just in case.

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A nice text from Jeremy.  Though maybe out of the frying pan into the fire.

I love these highlighters.  It’s more like a wax pencil than a marker.  If you need to highlight things, I’d recommend this one.

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I finished One Hundred Years of Solitude yesterday.  Vickey finished it last week when I was only at the halfway mark and I made a concerted effort to plow through it before too much time passed.  I was the one who suggested this book for our two-person-book-club and Vickey read the book blurb on the back of the paperback which proclaimed it was “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race” and said, well!  I guess we should read this book.  I remember reading the first 75% of the book in college and just loving every sentence of it, but I never finished it because maybe I fell into depression or love or just got frustrated with the number of Aurelianos in it.  I did not love it now the same way I loved it then, but I could tell why I loved it in college.  Magical realism then was like nothing I’d ever read before. Magical realism now is more familiar and less surprising.  I have gone back to books I loved as a young person and sadly should have never tried to reread them because they are terrible (Xanth books, sigh.), but this one was worth going back to – though I’m not sure the entire human race needs to read this book.  Maybe let’s just get the entire human race to be literate first and then move on from there.  BTW, Jeremy needs a blurb for a book coming out soon.  I urged him to model it on the one on the back of OHYOS and mention both the Book of Genesis & the entire human race in it.  We are planning on reading the Underground Railroad or the Sixth Extinction next.

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I settled on a Japanese sewing machine, price point right in between $150 and $1200.  It’s made by the largest sewing machine manufacturer in the world Juki.  They usually make industrial machines, but make some hobbiest machines as well.  It weighs a ton.  It actually weighs so much that it causes my plastic sewing table to sag. 

In order to remedy the sagging sewing table, we went to IKEA to buy a proper sewing table.  (Really we needed to get out of the house on this oppressively hot holiday day.) We also bought a couch to replace our last IKEA couch that has a broken armrest.  Jeremy was under caffeinated for this outing.  He likes to have his second cup of coffee before noon, but sometimes he forgets to have it or the timing isn’t right and by the time he realizes it, it’s 2pm.  And once it’s 2pm, he feels like it’s too late to have a cup and be able to fall asleep.  Once he forgets to have that 2nd cup, all his thoughts and ability to make a decision kind of slow down and then his frustration ramps up and then he asks me to do things which he knows I get annoyed being asked to do (he was asking me to do internet research on possible restaurants for dinner on my phone while he was driving, asking at a faster rate than I can surf for the information when I thought we had already decided on a place to eat for dinner so what is the point of doing all this extra restaurant research and I’m totally starving and slightly hangry) and then I’m trying to be extra nice and indulgent because I know he’s under caffeinated and that we shouldn’t get into a fight because he forgot to drink his 2nd cup of coffee.

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We had a short text conversation with Vince today.  He’s still having a blast even though it is insanely hot.  He let us know there is an instagram account, so I found this photo of him and the rest of the staff.

 Jeremy’s trying out a new look. I think he looks like a priest. Adriana thinks he looks like a waiter.

I’m enjoying a quiet weekend.  A weekend where the most pressing thing I’m thinking about is the next sewing machine I’m going to buy.  My $150 sewing machine has gone through five quilts in the past year and the tension setting on it is giving out causing my stitches to be uneven and wonky.  Sometimes I can nudge it back into the correct tension by fiddling around with the three things I can fiddle around with, but the problem is becoming more frequent and more unfixable.   I think it’s telling me that it has reached the limits of what it was designed to do.  It was designed to be a disposable sewing machine.  I’m having trouble deciding how much I want to spend on the next machine.  I went to my local quilt shop today and a very nice lady tried to sell me the $1200 sewing machine.  I think I want something between $150 and $1200.  The lady said that the Janome SkylineS5 makes very accurate seam allowances and that you have total control over your piecing.  It’s hard to explain to a professional level quilter that I need my machine to be slightly uncontrollable because I want the seam allowances to be just a touch inaccurate and mismatched.  If everything was exactly even and precise, then I think it loses whatever homemade/handmade quality it has in the first place.  Part of the loveliness of my homemade quilts (I feel) is that there are mistakes, crookedness and unevenness in the effort.  And so I need a sewing machine that matches that philosophy.  I want a machine that is reliable and not complicated.

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Because we’ve been trying for a long time to enforce (exemplify) good eating habits with Vince, we rarely have snacks for no purpose in the house and we also rarely indulge in indulgent things at the dinner table while he’s at home.  Since he’s been gone, we’ve had some desserts after a weeknight dinner at home.  I’ve had 2nd helpings of rice with butter and soy sauce (gasp!, I feel so reckless).  I felt like I went crazy today when we went grocery shopping and bought fruited yogurt. 

Don’t worry, Edda is still toeing the line.  She refused her ice cream cookie sandwich after dinner on Friday.

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Saturday was a hot day.  Me, Jeremy & Edda went to A&Js for lunch. 

We went to REI.  I wandered around the sale section where I found this down coat – original price $250 ish, would be below $100 on sale.  I did not buy it.  I already have a winter coat. 

Then to Whole Foods where Edda napped and I resisted buying a cookie.

And the world keeps spinning… sigh. 

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Vince called last night. If you want his summer phone number to text him, you can text me & I’ll give it to you. I was surprised to hear from him, but his night off was last night and he decided to call us!
He told me a number of things:

* He’s the youngest counselor, in charge of kids his own age.

* He’s one of 4 junior counselors (under 18).  The other three are named Jack, Jackson and Jeremy.  So he got nicknamed – “Jay”.

* As a junior counselor,  the main rules that separate you from the senior counselors are 1. you can’t use power tools and 2. you can’t climb ladders.  This leads to shenanigans where Vince is going to the fridge to get a snack and someone says – hey!  that’s a power tool, you can’t use that.

* When they have free time to go to town, he can’t be wearing any scout clothing.  He packed only scout gear.  This resulted in him going to Walmart and buying a shirt with an American flag that says “Born to be Free” and a pair of ratty gym shorts, I think he spent 5 dollars on each item of clothing.  He asked us to ship him some clothes.

* He asked us to ship him: new shoes, new clothes, a phone charger, a solar phone charger. We threw in some extra cables. 

* He says he is showering everyday and doing laundry.

* He says he has enough underwear.

* On his mountain biking duty, someone flipped their bike and broke their wrist.  He helped splint it and walk the kid out of the woods.

* His scout troop is coming next week, he’s hoping to coordinate his day off for July 4th to hang out with him

* He sounds good and happy.

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All my Usual Suspects are home.  Everyone got home a few days ago and everyone is on the mend. If you need any pulmonology advice, forget about going to an MD, you can just text Lauren or Soojung.  They know everything about suctioning, pain meds, intubation/extubation, bipap settings, chest PT, etc, etc, etc.  Every once in a while – they’ll say, check with Doris, she’s a nurse and I’m like I’ve seen the words that you are using in the text chat, but I have no idea what happens clinically so – woah.  I’m out of my league.  This was my favorite exchange on yesterday’s chat:

 

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I went downtown today to Rasika to meet up with coworkers.  I didn’t get fabulous photos, but it was lovely.

The last time we were all together was more than three years ago.  We talked about doing it every quarter, but that seems ambitious.  Maybe twice a year?  That would be an improvement.

Jeremy volunteered to hand out flyers for Julie Palakovich-Carr in front of my old high school this morning.  Election day!  He was there from 7-11 am.  He thinks he got one vote. 

Here’s Edda’s camp counselor!  I think they are a good match, fingers crossed it’ll be a nice summer.

Now we enter the “regular” summer schedule.  Edda’s at Camp JCC for the next seven weeks and I’m always nervous the first day because it’s the first time we all meet Edda’s one-on-one counselor.  I want to make a good first impression. The counselors are high school kids and lots of them don’t have prior special needs experience though they make up for that by having big hearts.  Ning (our morning caregiver) woke Edda up at the late hour of 7:30.  Since the morning routine is different than the school morning routine, I worked with Ning this first morning from 7:30 to 8:30 to make sure all the swim attire, sunscreen application, lunch supplies were packed.  Then Ning went to her regular day job and I drove Edda to camp for drop off.  Edda’s counselor seems great – she just graduated from high school and is headed to Whittier in the fall.  I asked why Whittier?  She shrugged and said – I love California.  We bumped into friends and said hello to lots of people.  Edda knows many people at camp as she’s been going for a long long time.  Lots more people say hello to her than hello to me.  Though Violet said hello to me and we hung out for a bit.  Edda had a nice first day, swimming in the pool, a poop (hopefully in the potty and not in the pool) and all smiles when she came home.  Adriana did pick up for me.

Mid-day, we got a text from Vince.  The first set of campers have arrived.  His initial job is to man the mountain biking & ATV “outpost”.  He has no experience in either activity and tells us that he keeps falling off his mountain bike.  Here he is with his ATV helmet.

I chose this book for our book club and I’m regretting it.  I put it down for a week because of craziness and now I can’t remember what all the characters have done.  There are six generations in this book and they all have the same names.   Arghhhh…  yet we will forge ahead.  Vickey is 200 pages ahead of me.  I’ll get there.  We should have read Love in the Time of Cholera.