Year: 2019

Vince is going to college! He found out on Monday night that he got into Pitt engineering. I was on my way home, sitting on the employee shuttle bus on the way to my car, when I got this text of the letter (which was incredibly hard for me to read, all squinty-eyed-old-feeling) and made out the first word Congratulations! I knew that he’d hear from Pitt around this time, but we were all expecting an email. Jeremy was sorting the mail on Monday night and came across the thick envelope and he was like – is this just marketing material? Do they still send big envelopes? Apparently they do.

I rushed home and I burst into his room and yelled – you are going to college! And he yelled back – I’m going to go to college! And we gave each other enthusiastic high fives. Everyone is excited about Pitt, we like the school, we like Pittsburgh, we like engineering. I knew Pitt had rolling admissions and I was trying to get Vince to apply earlier so that we’d find out earlier because it just feels good to know that you have a place to go in early December while you wait for the the others in April. I think there are only a few schools that he’d go to instead of Pitt and most of those applications are in already. Since I’m a nervous nellie, I was also worried that if we had heard back from Pitt negatively it would indicate that I had misjudged the whole list of schools and the earlier we heard back from Pitt, the more time we would have to adjust the school list. But after the admission note, Jeremy smiled and said – the list is fine. The list is fine. We are aiming for a 50% acceptance rate for the school list.

This weekend, before all this, I drove a van full of kids to Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg, VA early Saturday morning. It gave me an opportunity to see Gina, Vickey’s mom, who is my quilting teacher.

I’m constantly amazed at her talent/skill. The back of her quilt blocks are as beautiful as the front. Look how straight all the blocks are, evenly stitched and pressed open.

Mine are a bit of a mess, lol.

The boys stayed at the Lodge and I stayed with Gina. I went for a run at a local mountain biking park. Lots of switchbacks.

And then I picked up the boys on Sunday afternoon. Vince is the scout leader these days and it was not a quiet weekend for him. Lots of drama that will remain off the blog. But everyone is safe and back at home.

We went to Il Pizzico last night to celebrate my mother’s birthday. The celebration was suppose to happen the Saturday before Thanksgiving but mom was in the hospital then. It was a fun night! The most entertaining thing was that we all found out that Dad had downloaded the TicTok app – he kind of refused to tell us how he found out about it. We spent a good part of the dinner helping him make an account and username (Gonggong420) and video-ing some content. By the end of the night, he had gotten almost 450 views. Not bad. Happy birthday mom!

Jeremy is still pretty sick, he stayed home from work on Tuesday and Wednesday. But he managed to make it to work downtown today even though I encouraged him to stay home. I made a very good NYTimes dinner recipe – Slow Cooker White Chicken Chili – to warm his tummy when he got home.

We found a dead mouse floating in Maxi’s water bowl this afternoon. I have no idea how that mouse climbed up the slippery, outward sloping side of a stainless steel bucket and then managed to topple into about 9 inches of water. Poor thing. We threw the mouse out with (bath)water into the backyard for a natural burial. But now I know we have mice. Jeremy admitted that a little while ago he saw a flash of furry something or other cross the dining room floor. And I think I hear little scurrying feet in the attic. I’m scared of looking in the attic (the same scared I’m feeling to fill out the FAFSA form) because what if it is a large animal that has already destroyed all the insulation and is rabid and will attack me? Maybe we should get a cat. (I love cats. I’m more a cat person than a dog person, but I acknowledge that a cat just reinforces my tendencies to stay at home and wallow while a dog encourages me to go outside and meet my neighbors.) Isn’t that how people have solved this problem in the past? Can I just send the cat into the attic with a can of mace and a pith helmet? Because that is what I would like to do.

I was at the hospital yesterday. This is the amount of my sandwich I ate. Our census was low yesterday and thank goodness for that because we started out with five nurses and then right at 7 am, one of the them was not feeling well and had to go home. By 9 am, another nurse had to go to the ER and so we were down to three nurses on the floor when at full capacity we are suppose to have seven nurses. It was quite a shift. But I got to work with one of my favorite doctors and we did good things. When I work with a good hospitalist, it goes smoothly even when bad things are going down.

We are all a little sick this week. Jeremy’s home today – working from home and popping Motrin. Vince also took an ibuprofen last night. I actually took some Motrin during my shift yesterday. It wasn’t too bad for me. I think without the Motrin I’d be operating at something like 90% capacity. And I think it’s not too bad for Vince. Jeremy doesn’t feel great. I think it’s what Edda had last week.

We are slowly making plans for the house after Vince moves out next year. For example, we are planning on emptying Vince’s room, ripping out the carpet (10,000 pee stains from Maxi) and installing linoleum flooring and turning it into Jeremy’s office and a gym. (Vince asked where he was going to sleep when he comes home to visit and I said the couch was always available. And then Jeremy said no – he can sleep in the guest room. And then Vince asked if he was coming home for Thanksgiving next year and I said probably not if he was on the west coast and then it occured to all of us that if he went to Canada, he’d probably be working over Thanksgiving as their Thanksgiving is in October.) We are also going to empty the living room and buy a ping-pong table and automatic ping pong launcher and 1,000 ping pongs and start to learn to be competitive ping-pong players. Ha ha, ok maybe not ping-pong. Maybe tap dancing. Then the wood floors would be completely ruined. Mostly Jeremy and I are hoping to massively declutter the house. Before we moved into this house, we lived in a different place every year or two, so the decluttering happened automatically. Now ever single Target purchase just gets swallowed up by the house and nothing ever leaves.

I often think about the presidential candidates and wonder how they are not tired all the time. Right now, in order to operate at an optimal level, I need 8 hours of sleep at night and a 1-hour nap during the day. That is perfect. Projecting out, when I’m 70, I want to sleep 11 hours a night and then take a 2.5 hour nap during the day. Now that sounds delicious. Vince got a bunch of college applications out this week – UC Santa Cruz, Davis, Irvine, Drexel, Penn State and U. British Columbia. The Canadian schools are totally confusing to me. Jeremy said that they would not be confusing if we were Canadian. I’m not even quite sure the applications are complete. But we paid something and hit enter. For Toronto, instead of saying I want to study engineering or political science or English, I swear it asked you – do you want to live in Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Slytherin or Ravenclaw. (Well not exactly those names, but it made you choose different residential halls.) So we looked up all the residential halls and crossed out all the ones that wanted essays, crossed off the one that wanted formal dress for meals (I guess this one is for the lawyerly types) and then randomly picked from the others. For UBC as part of the application, separate from the application fee, they wanted us to put a $50 deposit down on housing which included such things as – do you stay up late? are you messy? (Vince answered – being tidy is not important to me). do you want to live with people who drink? I was like – don’t you think they want to offer admission first before asking us to be putting down the deposit for housing? What happens if you get housing and aren’t admitted? Do you think you can just move to Vancouver? Katherine asked if the $50 was refundable if he ends up not going. I said I think it just went into the disappeared money category.

Vince held a Friendsgiving on Saturday night and we skidaddled out of the house for dinner. Jeremy wanted a place to have vegetables. We went to Flower Child which is a kind of vegetarian-ish place. It opened up a few months ago near us. It was good (I thought). Jeremy said that it was fine, but he should never go there if he was hungry because he could eat all three of our meals.

Then we went to Trader Joe’s.

Lovely thanksgiving. We did have about 40-45 people to the house (we’ve done this for many years now – hosting both the Martin side and the Lee side). When I tell people, oh, we are having 45 for dinner, they start freaking out on our behalf. As we were falling asleep the night before, I asked Jeremy if he was nervous hosting Thanksgiving and he said absolutely not. I asked why and he said that he was confident that he could meet everyone’s expectations. I feel like my photography skills are atrophying. As everyone gets better and better at taking amazing photos on their iPhones, I just get photos like this:

My mom is doing well, her BP is much better controlled at home and she was in fine form making her traditional egg roll appetizer for everyone.

The kids table. They aren’t really kids anymore.

Maxi, who at 9.5 years old, has been deemed mellow enough to join in during the party. This might have been her first thanksgiving. Maxi likes to jump on people and sniff their crotch (no good) and the Chinese people tend to be scared of dogs.

We had our first doggie guest. The Chinese kids were actually quite enamored by this little doggie.

The kids played some phone based computer games.

The buffet line:

The turkey was fabulous. Jeremy’s sous vide technique ended up making the breast meat so tender and juicy.

Edda napped during the party.

We finished the puzzle.

And today’s turkey sandwich. My pants are too tight.

Between the hours of 7 am and 10 am on Tuesday, I had argued with both Vince and Jeremy about the state of the college applications (omg. they drive me crazy. both of them.) and my mother was going to be discharged from the hospital, but her blood pressure was still in the 170s (omg. mom, what is with your bp? – they gave her half an ativan and it went down. white coat syndrome probably.) and we got a text from the basement tenants that the sewage ejection pump had stopped working and the basement was starting to flood (just omg.). Gah. By 4pm, all my problems had pretty much resolved. Vince came home and we went over our morning interaction and left it better. The plumber came at 4pm and fixed my sewage problem for $65 and my mother was discharged happily from the hospital at about 2pm. On Monday night, I had made a marzipan/coconut cake to pass time and I gave half to the nurses taking care of my mother and half I left on the counter and Maxi managed to eat that half. Well, she ate about 3/4 of the half, so I was left with a few slices myself. Which is really all I wanted in the end.

We are still mad puzzling over here. We are hosting 42 people for Thanksgiving at last count.

Kiki came on Monday from NM via Berlin. Emy drove down yesterday from Bard. We had lunch today at a Chinese place.

It was a half day today so Edda was with us. She was so happy at the restaurant.

We picked up rental tables and chairs at the party rental place. Jeremy went to whole foods to pick up 2 twenty pound turkeys. He’s going to sous vide them.

Vince and Edda hanging out.

Vince and his charcoal face mask to tighten his pores.

So my mom is in the hospital for an uncontrolled hypertensive episode. Systolic was as high as 205-210. Yikes. She got some IV blood pressure meds which seem to work and then not work and then she is also getting oral BP meds to try to get it controlled that way. She can’t really get discharged until the BP is OK with oral medications. She feels good though. Super cutie in the hospital. Kindof irritated that she can’t take a shower because of the telemetry and the doc refused to let her off the telemetry. Edda is not happy that she’s in the hospital. Sunday night will be night #3.

Jeremy came on on Saturday night. Edda was pleased because it meant that she could steal his pear. He had a good work trip. I don’t quite know what happened with his work stuff, but I do know that he had four flat tires in four bike rides. But no crashes!

I made these cookies that look good, but taste meh.

Vince went to see his grandmother.

I’ve been cooking this week while Jeremy’s been gone. On Monday, I made Italian Wedding Soup with Turkey Meatballs and tonight I made Weeknight Fancy Chicken and Rice. All from the NYTimes cooking section. Kitachi, Vince and Edda all were good sports and ate dinner without complaining (while picking cardamom pods out from between their teeth for the rice dish tonight)- though I did get comments from Vince like – oh! I wasn’t expecting this. They were pretty good, but not super fantastic. Vince was like, I think you need to stop making recipes from the NYTimes and find just regular recipes. I did intersperse this with a totally processed meal of chicken patties on potato rolls and tater tots on Tuesday. I’m not sure what I’m trying to prove here, but I’m obviously compensating for something.

Puzzling continues. I think this will be done tomorrow night. I need to get a new puzzle.

Jeremy went bike riding today with Mike R.! A blast from the past – we might have last seen him in 1995/6…in grad school. Funny. And cool.

Vince is showing my unicycle videos.

Jeremy went biking today somewhere on the West Coast. He did not fall. He did not get hit by a car. He’s still fine which makes me happy. I didn’t speak to him today, but I got a few texts and I see his photos. I promised him that I’d make some progress on Thanksgiving. (He took over college applications and, in return, he gave me Thanksgiving.) I ordered the turkeys today and the extra tables and chairs.

Vince stayed home from school today because he woke up and said he was feeling sick. I don’t think he’s truly sick, I just think he’s managing his energy poorly (staying up all night & drinking those terrible caffeinated energy drinks) though he insists that he isn’t (except that I find cans of the stuff in his trash can). I don’t doubt that he felt terrible at 6:45 am when I woke him up for school. I let him sleep in. He read the blog when he got out of bed at about 10am and trundled into my room while I was working and said – I’m going to rewrite all my UC essays. You said they were boring. I said that I didn’t say they were boring. He said – you said my essays weren’t writerly and therefore they are boring. I said that I said they weren’t writerly as a compliment. And then he said, I’m still rewriting them. And then he asked if I could buy him some soup.