Month: April 2024

Edda stayed home yesterday, a little under the weather. It was a marginal call, but I’m glad she stayed home. I gave her a spot of Motrin at breakfast and lunch and she was mostly happy during the day and not too bored. And then she took a long, deep nap in the middle of the afternoon. So long and so deep that I did the early infant thing of watching her chest rise and fall to make sure she was still alive.

My girls napping in my office. Jeremy was downtown all day, Ginny, our evening caregiver called out sick, so actually, it was a very quiet day at home. But I couldn’t settle and get to work really well. It was our first day in the 90s (or high 80s) and I had the house too warm and last week I got bit by some insects and I tend to be sensitive to these bites, so I feel swollen and itchy.

The NYTimes ran an article which said the best 25 restaurants in DC. And three are in Rockville! Rockville is the center of ethic food excellence and we don’t take that for granted at all. We’ve been to two out of the three and we’ll try the third one soon. But honestly, I’m baffled. This Z&Z restaurant replaced our beloved pizza place during the pandemic, but we don’t really like it. I mean, if we really loved it, we’d be eating there all the time! Like all the time! Because it’s like a 3 minute walk from the house. But we don’t. We really miss our pizza place. But we are old people now talking about the olden days. (It also does list our favorite high end spots – Pineapples and Pearls and Rasika. Both excellent and fun!)

Jeremy accidentally broke our most expensive computer monitor while trying to move it from his desk to my desk for me to try out. He was easing it out of its place (or trying to unplug it) and it slipped and hit something and you can see an enormous spider web crack in the electronic screen (the actual screen you see is not broken). Poor thing (meaning Jeremy, not the screen). We were trying to think if this was the most expensive thing we’ve accidentally broken. I think maybe some car fender benders were more expensive, but this one is not cheap.

Edda is running a slight fever this weekend and is quite snotty. She’s home from school today. And Jeremy is downtown doing business things so it’s just us girls home today.

I have no idea why, but I feel very, very bloated this weekend – my pants don’t fit, I feel lumbering, it’s not great and I don’t know why. Honestly, all my slight weight fluctuations happen right at my waist right where all the high waisted jeans which are supposed to be so fashionable hit. So it doesn’t matter that the pants are too big everywhere else, they are too small at the waist. But only sometimes! Argh. I swear off pants now. I got no pants!

I went to the woods for a long run on Sunday trying to tuck it into the morning before it got to be 85 degrees.

I got rewarded with seeing a little turtle friend. I did move him off the trail, there are trail bikers who might accidentally hit him.

Friday night, we did hang out for dinner at Potbelly’s with our Main Street Friend and then excused ourselves from watching Kung Fu Panda 4 and took Elka to the dog park on Friday night. And then we went to Baked Bear to meet Ginny’s son Carlos who works there and knows Edda and Elka already, but we have never met him. Elka got some whipped cream. (This might be why my pants don’t fit at the waistline).

Soo…Vince is not protesting at his school. UC Davis remains out of the news regarding that. He spent the weekend at Berkeley competing in ChemE car. So proud of Vince who is the president of this club and resurrected this from non existence post pandemic. They came in about 4 or 5th out of 16 teams including beating out Caltech.

So…last night I went to a raid night meetup for Pokemon Go with my friend Noah. Really, Noah is first Vince’s friend, but now I claim his as my friend as he invites me to go with him on Pokemon Go adventures. Raid night happens every Wednesday night between 6-7 pm local time and communities around the world arrange for little meetups to walk around together to fight the raid bosses in gyms, because, as we all know, you all need friends in life to help you with hard things.

It was a beautiful night, Elka came along and I met lots of very nice people, including a city council member who was along for the walk! Kids, young adults, older folks and even an enormous English mastiff named Riley. I have an alias that I go by in the game – everyone does – so it’s funny to introduce myself to these people as my avatar name – DriveMinivans. lol. I also got invited to go with them to NYC in the summer for the big Pokemon meetup. I think it’ll decline that, but it’s very nice to be invited to go.

It’s been a beautiful spring this year, mild temperatures and long. Some years, it feels like it’s straight from winter into summer temperatures, but this year, I’ve been relishing the slow, moderate warming – watching all the flowers bloom and trees leaf out. Elka has also been enjoying the weather. Her favorite is to find a patch of warm grass and flip upside down and twist around scratching her back on the earth.

I went to lunch yesterday with Rachel and though the food was just *ok* (all Korean restaurants are closed on Mondays which would have been our first choice), we managed to ride a merry-go-round together which was very fun on a beautiful, crisp afternoon together.

Sunday – desperately needed some alone time! I did a long run in the woods and Jeremy did a long bike ride and Edda went out for lunch with Eliana. Not quite as beautiful as it was on Saturday, but a good day for exercise.

Such a social weekend. It’s a lot of fun, but also kind of exhausting. On Friday, we went to karaoke night at main street where to our astonishment, like everyone wanted to sing. And so after a delightful dinner of chicken parmesan, we listen and danced to lots of different songs like – Beyonce, Beatles, some children’s show tunes. The last song was the Beatles Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and Jeremy, Edda and I danced and generally had a ball. We are slowly getting to know everyone – I have to ask everyone their names over and over again, but they happily obliged. They really need a premium youtube account to skip over the commercials.

Went for a run in the early morning on Saturday where the crab apple trees are in full bloom. These are my favorites over the cherry blossoms because they are my neighborhood tree.

Then we went to Nat’s baby shower party which was delicious and fun. Ning and Nat took care of Edda as they do each time the three of them get together.

They are going to name the baby Leon – they like the lion sounding part of the name – Leo. Nat looks fantastic! And the cake delicious.

There was a very funny trivia game with shouting and a nail-biting tie breaking last question.

Also – as a footnote, as it’s been freaking me out ever since it happened, Nat, kind of mid-party was talking to Ning and I was watching them from the couch across the room because they were flanking Edda and it became clear that Nat was choking on her food and there was no sound from her and she stood up in distress. So I crossed the room and for the first time in my life, I did the Heimlich maneuver on someone. And I was very scared because I had to go to the 4th or 5th thrust before the food dislodged and the entire time I was doing this, I was like – this thing better work because they told me it would work, but it’s not working, it’s not working, it’s not working and I was calling out to Jeremy because I wanted someone taller to make the thrusts more forcefully upwards, but then the damn piece of meat came out and everyone was fine. And everyone was fine.

And then we went home for an hour and rested and then we ran across the street to our neighbors’ house. They were throwing a house cooling party as they just sold their house for an incredible (dare I say unbelievable) amount of money and they also had delicious munchies. It was such a beautiful day and they did an enormous amount of renovating to such a small house – I’d never been inside, but imagine that you opened the front door of a house and it looked like Pottery Barn, but better with solar panels and two Teslas outside. I thought we would stay an hour, but I think we stayed three. We got to bring Elka over and she behaved beautifully, with small kids, elegant guests (which included a handheld dog named Dior who wore real pearls), coffee table snacks and wine glasses. She did not knock anything over, she did not pee in the house, and she didn’t eat any snacks on the low table, save for one falafel ball from my plate so maybe she thought that was OK as it was ours.

About a year ago, someone said I was like a capybara and, at that time, I didn’t know what a capybara was and she said that capybaras are known for “calming presences and other animals love them” which I think is the highest compliment that anyone has ever given me. So I’ve been on the hunt for seeing a capybara live. I almost thought I could see one in Irvine CA. I was *this close* to seeing one in the St. Louis zoo. The internets is telling fake news – the list of capybaras is not up to date, so it’s hard to track them down. But I found this lovely plushie which I’m happily displaying. First, I displayed it too easily reachable by Elka and she found it and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet right in front of me, but did not destroy it (thank goodness). So I took the slightly slobbery stuffy and perched it up a little higher and it gives me great joy. But I’m still looking to see a live one. Maybe I’ll have to book a capybara safari. Hmmmm…

On Monday, I spent the day in Baltimore on the transplant unit at University of MD medical center. They’ve really renovated it since I interviewed for a nursing job there over seven years ago when it seemed kind of medieval and tortuous. I visited my friend Astra who got a kidney about 6 months ago and is still slowly recovering from that with various complications (she’s been in/out of the hospital dealing with stuff that crops up). I haven’t seen her in a long, long time, so I was very happy to see her on Monday.

I got to roam the hospital a bit during my visit and found these respirator vending machines? They also can vend n95 masks. Interesting.

You can also get salads (and chia pudding) in a jar from a vending machine. That seems nice, though I didn’t order lunch from this machine.

Parking is always an issue in downtown Baltimore. Astra gave me specific instructions to park in a particular parking garage and while I pulled up, there was an enormous sign that said – visitor parking available after 2pm and as it was well before 2pm, I drove past the parking garage and then spilled onto the streets of Baltimore without my GPS buddy. So I found parking right by driving around aimlessly until I found a surface lot at Camden Yards with no posted price and it also said permit parking only, but it let me pull a ticket and it was about half full. So I had no idea if I was going to pay $97 for a day of parking and both Astra and the unit secretary yelled at me and told me I should have disregarded the enormous no visitor sign parking and needed to pay only $9 for parking, but then I was like – well I didn’t want to take a space from an actual patient! Anyways, I paid only $15 for a day’s worth of parking and I learned something about Babe Ruth.

I spent a lot of time last week attending various meetings with Main Street, the apartment complex with disabled adults about a mile from our house. On Wed, Jeremy and I spent 2 hours at a morning coffee parent meetup. There were about 30 people there, mostly moms, but a couple of dads and I got to meet the founder of Main Street who I’m kind of determined to get help from. These are parents of 25-40 year olds, many who live in the apartment. These are very determined parents and slightly intimidating to me (in my own head), but I think I can hang. The kids (or young adults) are much more capable than Edda, mostly verbal, can manage public transit, have jobs and take care of pets, so again, it’s not the right fit for Edda, but I’m hoping they can help me figure out something right for Edda. On Friday night, we went to dinner with them (with Edda) again and then on Saturday, I volunteered at a painting workshop which was fun and had about 25 participants. Mostly, what I got from it was that these are rich disabled people. For volunteering, I was told that I needed to wear clothing that could get paint on them, so I wore my actual painting clothes which already have paint on them (like the time I sat on a paint can lid and my entire butt is covered with a circle of paint) and tears galore and hand sewn patches and everyone else wore…just clothes. Like nice clothes. Which were clean and expensive. Hahahah. But everyone was super welcoming and very nice.

Sunday, we went to Sunday night dinner to celebrate Colleen’s birthday and Eric made a very delicious ice box cake. Am I caught up? Maybe.