Puppy Elka.

Thursday morning, I picked Jeremy up from almost Poolesville because he got a flat tire while on a long bike ride. I was amazed how far he had travelled. I felt like he was gone only an hour, but I had to drive 35 minutes to get to him. The scenery got greener and greener as a made my way to him. He’s trying a new tubeless tire system where there is no inner tube in the tire. Usually, he’s fine fixing a flat tire with an inner tube, but this new system has learning curve – you have a tire and you partially fill it with a liquid latex. So when the tire gets pierced, the pressure in the tire will force the liquid out of the hole and it’s suppose to self seal itself with the particles suspended in the liquid. It works well with small holes, but if it’s a bigger hole, you can stuff it with something called a bacon strip (see below) to help it along, but that didn’t work either. It’s suppose to be better than an inner tube somehow, but not on Thursday. He’s been running experiments all weekend regarding the flat.

Thursday afternoon, we picked up Elka, our new 5 month old puppy. I worked with an organization called K-9 Lifesavers. Someone else adopted the first dog I chose, so now I got to talk to the coordinator and I said – I want a puppy, good with kids & other dogs and then said – will you please be the dog whisperer and tell me which one to pick? And she looked through the list carefully and then picked Elka – she’s a good one. I kind of hesitated a minute because she looked so much like Maxi and I urged her to recommend a 2nd one, but as she was looking through the list (kind of having a hard time picking a 2nd one out of a list of 125 dogs), Jeremy walked into the room and took a look at the photo and said – I’m sold! Let’s get her. So we got her and the house has been full of puppy energy which is welcome because we are so old. We are keeping the puppy name which we all like, but is very close to Edda. And then sometimes I call her Maxi. She’s from Alabama, but now here in Rockville.

She may look like Maxi, but she behaves nothing like her.

She’s curious, relaxed, loves to snuggle, but is not needy. She doesn’t know her name yet – she does not feel the need to come when called. Does that mean that Maxi was uninterested, uptight, didn’t like you to touch her, and needy? Kind of. No, she was curious too and not needy, but she was uptight and very much not a snuggler. Haha. There might have been moments in Max’s life where I thought we weren’t well matched, but we all love Maxi so much and miss her terribly.

She likes going to work with us, here she is at her inaugural zoom meeting saying hello to all of Jeremy’s coworkers.

Thursday night, I went to a ceremony for Edda’s teacher Megan who was awarded the special education teacher of the year award. It was held in a TV studio because, I think, it was mainly to be televised, but I snuck past two bouncers who asked my name (my name was not on the list). It was a long ceremony, and I had a really (surprisingly) good time. Of course, I was very happy for Megan, but it was also quite moving to hear about all the work of various educators over the past year who are taking care of our children. Someone said – it’s easy to advocate for your own kid, but what about a dozen kids? 200 kids? 150,o00 kids? I’m so happy we have such hardworking people looking out for our children.

Of course, as soon as I got the puppy, I left town to have Jeremy manage Elka (me – you know, as soon as I pick up the puppy, you will have to take care of her by yourself for a couple of days. him – whatt?!?!? oh yeah, you are leaving town. i hadn’t quite made the connection that I’m on puppy duty.)

I went to see Kiranavali in Philly where she is spending a few months with her daughter Akshara.

We went shopping at the impressive King-of-Prussia mall where there are fake fiddle leaf figs everywhere – west elm, pottery barn.

And then I went to visit Bob and Katherine where I got to help with computer installation and installing window shutters and visit with folks from their community. It was very, very nice and very, very hot! I headed back Saturday afternoon.

And I came home to Jeremy!