Edda is 16!

Yesterday was Edda’s 16th birthday! A mixture of happy/sad as usual. Toss in some pandemic anxiety and there you have it. We did make the best of it as we could. Jeremy made a very nice breakfast of pretzel roll and eggs and we asked Kitachi (usually we have her come from 10 to 4) to stay until dinnertime to celebrate. Jeremy made the most delicious dinner of pulled pork, red cabbage and polenta. And we celebrated with an ice cream pie from Carmen’s. We FaceTimed my parents and we all sang happy birthday to my darling daughter. May I always be able to care for you & may the love that you send to me everyday sustain me. We also Google Duo’ed Edda’s teacher and had a fine time chatting about Celine Dion. We also got virtual missives from so many previous au pairs from around the world, European au pairs who we were going to see this summer, but now we most likely are not.

Jeremy is working on keeping up Edda’s eating skills. We normally just feed Edda her food, but at school, they patiently load food onto Edda’s fork and encourage her to feed herself. So Jeremy’s been doing that with Edda.

We had two telemedicine appointments this week, one with Edda’s neurologist and one with Edda’s pediatrician. The neuro to follow up on Edda’s increasing frequency of seizures (we are not putting her on an anticonvulsant, but we are getting her some rescue meds if her seizures turn lengthy/scary). The pediatrician for well visit – which I set up for camp forms. Is camp even happening? I dunno. Probably not.

I’m working on my quarantine area. I have my work computer, a bed and my quilting stuff all into the 2nd half of our bedroom. I know, the whole house is so enormous I can basically put an apartment’s worth of stuff into half of my bedroom. I think the idea would be that when I’m at home, I’d spend all my time in this area and we’ll designated bathroom space too. I saw other health care workers on Instagram who are camping out in a tent in their garage. I can’t do that. I just can’t. If I’m going to do something that scares me, I can’t also be sleeping in the cold garage away from my family. I mean, I’m going to be 6 feet away from my family in my house. But at least I can talk to them or watch TV with them or something. I guess other health care workers have sent their families away and they work all the time. I also can’t be working 7 days a week, I hope it doesn’t come to that – working 3 days a week non-pandemically was exhausting enough. If you work all the time, the chances of you getting sick because you are exhausted are so high. Sometimes reading the news makes me feel better, sometimes not reading the news makes me feel better. It’s a toss-up. I probably should figure out how to reuse masks or something. Or how to splice an oxygen tank (I have an idea with straws and tegaderm). I saw videos of engineers trying to make face shields and ramp up manufacturing from simple materials. That made me cry. I texted a pal on the unit yesterday and she told me that the floor was fine, but there is mandatory float to the ED or the ICU. So it means that if they are short in those depts, you get sent there. Which is nerve wracking, not only because, you know, that’s where all the coughing people are, but also I’d be working with other nurses who I do not know with procedures/routines I’d be unfamiliar with. Like ventilators. Honestly, I do not know how to use a ventilator, how to monitor a ventilator, etc. Jeremy is helpful saying that cell phone data shows that Marylander’s are pretty good at staying put. Maybe it won’t be bad here.

Vince has decided to go to UCDavis in the fall. He’s already dreaming of the clubs – I think he listed three including one that involves working on the farm on campus with the cows. It is my sincere dream to take a road trip with him and our family and my parents in our stupid minivan and deliver him to his dorm in the fall where I will buy him X-long sheets from Target. I will then go to the college bookstore and buy him a UC Davis sweatshirt and then I will have lunch with him in the many open dining options around campus. Maybe we’d even bring Max. She’d be completely beside herself with happiness. We’ve been watching Bon Appetit videos and we watched this one last night. I love Hot Pockets and I marveled at the time when you could buy 20 boxes of Hot Pockets. I asked Jeremy if there were any Hot Pockets left in the store, he said absolutely not – those things are the first to go! And then I marveled at all these unrelated people sharing food together! Back when people could leave their houses. Sending lots of love to you all. <3

One thought on “Edda is 16!”

  1. Hey there Doris! Happy Birthday to Edda and congratulations to you and Jeremy for raising such a wonderful daughter.

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