Bears, utilities, guitar.

I love having Vince at home. He makes everything more fun. Of course, there are mothering things I’m working on – mostly to let him go and be his own person. But he makes it easy for me, he’s a low maintenance kid.

At dinner a few nights ago, Vince was talking about how he saw a bear at Woodley Gardens Park. I said – there are no bears in Rockville! (I was wrong about that.). I insisted that he mistook a black Honda Civic for a bear. And then we wondered if there were grizzly bears in Maryland. And then I said – all bears are brown. and then I paused and said – except for the black bears. And then Vince looked at me and said – mom! what about polar bears? And then Tienpei said – well, there are also panda bears. And then, embarrassed, I was like – is a panda bear really a bear? (Yes. it is.). OK. So in my defense, I was thinking there of all the hypothetical bears in Rockville – those are all brown (except for the black ones).

Then yesterday, Vince came upstairs and said – I got an email from our landlord, I need my share of first and last month’s rent. And I said cool, how much? and he figured that out. And then I asked – so are utilities included? And he said – yeah, I think so. And then he asked, the landlord wants us to call PG&E to set up an account. What’s that about? And then I laughed and said – OK utilities are not included.

Last night, it was just the four of us at dinner, which is kind of a rare occasion, so I asked if I could open my gift for my 1/2 century birthday. It’s a little early, but I wouldn’t be able to open it on my birthday, and I only wanted to open it with the just four of us hanging around. I thought for a long time about what I wanted, I feel like this is my first milestone birthday – all the other ones were not a big deal for me. For a long time, I thought I wanted jewelry and looked at Caleb’s jewelry website for a necklace or something (but it’s a little too extravagant and I have all the jewelry I want, really). And then I thought I wanted an electric bike (but that got weird because it’s something I think that Jeremy would enjoy getting for me more than I would enjoy using it myself). But then I decided I wanted an electric guitar and amp. I manage to get about 2-3 hours of practice on my free acoustic guitar or ukulele a week – I could tell that the free one would be hard to learn on, the action is high and the strings are hard on my fingers. And everyone was excited to get the guitar for me (that so cool, mom! – V.) and it’s appropriately middle-age-crisis-y enough. I have a blue guitar and an orange amp now. We all had fun playing together. I’m coming after you, Red Hot Chili Peppers. hahaha.