I was going to completely be by myself on Sunday – I wasn’t going to church service, I was thinking that Sunday dinner with the family wasn’t going to happen, I was happily puttering. Trying to clean up the house (which is a disaster. when J leaves, all the food stuff falls to me. Mostly I have the luxury of making things dirty and leaving plates all over the house and he gathers and washes them all. he will do this also for my baking hobby, though I try to clean while stuff is baking, but he probably does 50% of my baking dishes. so this means there are dirty plates all over the place and remain unwashed for a few days, I don’t never do them, I just don’t do them everyday which is standard protocol if you don’t want fruit flies or ants), go through the mail, practice guitar, read a book, nap.
Turns out, this didn’t happen. I did end up going to church on zoom, which was interesting, I’d never done it before and was happy to see the service from that perspective and it was announced our new interim minister who is an Asian woman! Interesting. I washed dishes while listening to the service.
Then I saw that there were some ripe pears I wasn’t going to be able to get to – so I made a dessert and while it was baking Megan texted and wanted a place to go with James and insisted that I didn’t have to entertain them or spend the afternoon with them, but they were going to go get ice cream and really, how could I refuse Edda and Elka (and me) the opportunity to get ice cream? It was a beautiful day and we spent a little bit of it outside with friends.
Jeremy is having a good time in California. He needed to get gas and hunted around for gas that less than $6 a gallon.
Jeremy is having a great time in California – doing his thing. Actually, the most interesting thing (to me) is that he got invited last minute on a WORK BIKE RIDE. We’ve heard about these mythical rides – usually middle aged white men in the Bay Area do bike rides for meetings. Basically, it’s the new golf. Jeremy hadn’t been on one, but he finally did go on one and the person who hosted him is very fast. Jeremy remains fast, though he will say he’s slow these days, but not as fast as this other guy. (Jeremy quite admires this other guy, they had a good time, though Jeremy (I think) wasn’t thinking he’d ride so hard this trip). I’m quite busy here, work has seen some improvements over the last few weeks, a relief really, so that it a slight burden off of my shoulders.
Ginny and Megan have helped out a lot minding Edda for choir practice and a donor appreciation gathering that I needed to attend. I was telling Jeremy, sometimes I resent the constraints that Edda can place on my schedule and other times I’m slightly grateful – oh, I’m so sorry, I gotta leave because Edda needs to… or I have to go check on Edda. Or, I’d love to do that, but I can’t because I need to be with Edda. And then I can stay home, not do the brief remarks, peace out early, not go out to the activity and stay in my pajamas and then hang with Edda while we read a book or just nap.
The first day Jeremy was gone which was a Wednesday, I dropped off some homemade cookies (my favorite – oatmeal raisin with chocolate chips) and two watermelons midday to the Police Appreciation Day at the Izaac Walton league. (I had wondered out loud to Jeremy – do you think I should bring a knife and a cutting board? It was supposed to be lakeside – far from the kitchen , so I wasn’t sure if there was going to be cutting utensils there. But I also didn’t want to leave one of our kitchen knives lakeside all day in the random hope that it would be returned to us. And Jeremy said – it’s a gun club, Doris. Someone is going to have a big knife at the party. ) There was a signupgenius and I dutifully signed up (part of being a member includes 6 hours of volunteer time a year, and I figured this was an easy lift for me) – taking all the watermelon spots and 1/3 of the dessert spots. I show up 15 minutes early for the drop off and already the place was swamped with watermelons and cookies. I felt a little redundant. There were about 10 people there already setting up and they asked me if I was staying for the party and I laughed and said – no I need to go back to work. Remember that? When you did stuff in exchange for money? And they all laughed and said that perhaps I was running late for work. I’m totally ready to retire. If I stopped working, my time is already 100% accounted for, I’d hang out for six hours on a random Wed eating watermelon and cookies with friends.
So the thing that I’m trying to learn with the church thing is how to not have the need to have everyone like me. I really enjoy having people like me and most people do like me. But already, I had someone scold and taunt me in front of 15 people on Tuesday night. I got kind of weepy afterward when I think of for the next 2 years, anytime I get up to make any sort of neutral remark, this person is going to get up and basically be a bully to me in front of everyone makes me unhappy. The crazy thing is that I basically agree with this person, so it’s even weirder that I’m being harassed by a person that I AGREE with.
Let see – what else is interesting? Megan hung out with Edda on Saturday afternoon because I wanted to go to a thing and then afterwards I had dinner with Megan and Edda. Megan and I were in the middle of having a long conversation about everything – medication, buying habits, cats, summer and Jeremy had sent me a text. And I ignored it – I think I didn’t even realize that I had gotten it and then Jeremy was like….hmmmm, I wonder what Doris is up to? And then he checked the living room camera and realized that I was eating dinner with Megan and he overheard, briefly, our conversation and then was slightly mortified with himself and quickly turned it off and then was like – I guess Doris will text me later.
I got stuck on this connections puzzle and I texted Dave and he said – “I didn’t get purple, but I got blue first” which was enough of a clue for me to solve it. I just had to imagine myself thinking like Dave. lol.
Jeremy packed his bags and left early Wed. Elka was sad – see photo below. Elka will stand there the entire time Jeremy is packing. Jeremy has spent a lot of time optimizing his bike packing system. Once I get him going on his packing strategy, it might be a 20 minute conversation.
Whenever Jeremy goes on a business trip, we like to play a little game. OK, it’s my game because Jeremy is never around for this – but my game is how long can I possibly eat out of the pantry. The food in the house is Jeremy’s domain – 100% no question (as part of my church duties, I might have to host thank you dinners or some such thing and Jeremy is super excited to cook for them, he’s like, it’s a complete gender switch, I will be the hostess for all your networking needs. lol). He likes to “stock up” – meaning we have like 8 bags of peas in the freezer, 8 boxes of pasta, 2 bars of cheddar cheese, 36 eggs, many bags of frozen ravioli – etc. So my excitement is how far can I go without 1) buying any groceries and 2) eating out. (If I was in charge of food, I would definitely be a just-in-time supply chain person – I would make a list of the meals for the week and buy only what we needed for a week. I’m no prepper.) I’ve gotten pretty good at cooking a 20-30 min meal (usually in the oven) and feeding us. I do make an exception for fresh fruit which Edda and I go through and have to buy every 3-4 days. Actually, Jeremy helped me out a few weeks ago when we did a (chest) freezer inventory and now everything is pretty organized and I can see all the things. Last night I made a shrimp dinner from a very large frozen bag dated best used by May 2025. I ignored that…because…it was frozen solid? I’m ok today, so no food poisoning. The bag was too large really for 2 people, but I made the entire thing because what the heck, I will just eat it again for lunch today. If I eat out, I’ve “failed”. If I need to buy a source of protein, I’ve also “failed.” Though I have to admit, when I went rooting around in the freezer, there is no frozen chicken which is what we are usually totally stocked up on. Odddd. I wonder why we are not stocked up on poultry? I’m going to have to eat a lot of seafood this week. Jeremy comes back and takes a look at the empty-ish freezer (I’m not going to be able to get through 8 bags of peas realistically) and will then take it upon himself to restock up to his proper amount of food in the house.
We had a nice memorial day long weekend. Every weekend should be a long weekend! Ginny was nice enough to take Edda out to lunch and the movies yesterday. She came by at about 9:30 to get Edda, and took a look at both of at our work desks and scolded us for working. What can I say? Jeremy loves his work and I needed to work because I was behind.
We like texting each other about poop:
What else? Jeremy is headed to california tomorrow (Wed) and Elka knows. She always knows because it takes Jeremy like three days to pack his bicycle. Why does it take three days? I have no idea. Anyways, Elka stands by Jeremy has he futzes with his bicycle and looks at him with her sad eyes – don’t leave me! Doris only takes me on short walks down the block. I want to go to the woods everyday and get pup cups at the ice cream store or the coffee shop.
I went to a women-only fly fishing class on Saturday. A few weeks ago, I was thinking this was sunk-cost event, meaning that I had paid for it (past-Doris) and then felt too busy to go (present-Doris) and I wouldn’t go – I really just wanted to stay at home and just do NOTHING as it is my favorite thing to do, but really, I’m trying to relax by doing things and this was going to be fun.
I’m interested in going on women only fly fishing trips which seem pretty affordable and I think I would like more than other type of self-care retreats and it would be a good way to be outside. I’m also interested in fly fishing because it matches well with Jeremy’s biking hobby. Family vacations can be a little problematic for us because Jeremy wants to go to famous mountains and climb up them on his bicycle. And he doesn’t want to leave me and Edda behind – but he also doesn’t want us to just sit in the hotel while he’s biking up a big mountain day after day. (I mostly would prefer for him to go by himself, and I also don’t really mind sitting in the hotel with Edda, but we go around in circles because…what else is a marriage besides getting into the same discussion 10,000x?). Turns out that the good places to go hill climbing on a bike is also the good places to go fly fishing. So he could bike one day and the next day, I’d go fly fishing – and we would both be entertained.
So….will I love fly fishing? It is unclear to me. I think it’s better than my kayaking hobby because the risk of drowning seems much, much less (but not zero). But there is a lot of equipment. So it seems…..expensive. Each of these flies? Maybe 5 dollars? And how many do you need? Technically only one. But no – it seems like one likes to have many, many, many. I tend to not like hobbies with a lot of equipment.
I like it because there are women-focused groups in a male dominated sport, so that is appealing to me. The river was too fast for us to fish in, so we practiced casting a fishing in a pond. And while some people did catch bass and trout (stocked pond) – I caught nothing. The instructor was like – there are 500 fish in this stocked pond (we were on private property where the owner owns a fish hatchery to raise trout/bass for stocking local streams). I’m like, OK, it’s like a New York city block – instead of people, there are fish? She was like – yeah pretty much. HAHAHA. I’m bad a fishing apparently.
The baking continues – I made a tiramisu which got raves at service yesterday. I used the wrong cookies – not lady fingers, something else which didn’t turn cake-like. But no worries, it still tasted delicious. We learned how to pasteurize eggs at home – Jeremy helped me sous vide them for a little while so no one would get sick from eating raw egg. I need to try again.
It was a long week – I was at Edda’s camp at least 4 times this week – twice on Tuesday because she had had a seizure that morning at 3:30 am and I wanted to make sure she got back and forth to camp ok and I wanted to talk to staff there. I was there once mid-day on Wed to go over her quarterly meeting with her benefit coordinator who needs to see her at the meeting – (who is amazing, I had been warned many, many times that her coordinator would change over many times and could be unresponsive and not up to date on the rules, but while the person has changed over – at least three times, but each time, we get someone very competent and on top of things) and once on Thursday – I had just settled down to work when camp called and said the power was out and could I come pick her up for the day. (I had a momentary thought…you could have camp without lights? Maybe that would be ok?) So I did drive there and find her in the dark with a bunch of other early arrivals waiting for their parents to pickup. I have found out after six months or so that Edda is often the first to arrive (8 am) and the last to leave (3 pm). I’ve figured out most folks don’t show up until 9 am. I think as everyone gets older, it’s like…what’s the rush, let all just sleep in more. I can see that happening to me.
After many years, ney, decades of avoiding meetings (in both careers, the PTO and nursing), I’ve gone off the deep end and had meetings almost everyday this week for church – if you count going to church as a meeting itself and, yes, I feel like it’s a working meeting. I now realize that I can’t quite wing a meeting – I need to actually practice a tiny bit before I head into one. How to compress a lot of information into a small bit of time or exactly what I want to cover and maybe what I don’t quite want to cover.
I’m reading more – I’m going back a few decades and reading The Hunt for Red October – I loved the movie.
I try to go to the library once a week, I check out many books, sometimes I read one. Sometimes I read none and return them all.
I made these peanut butter blossoms on Saturday. I had the best day on Saturday! I literally did NOTHING. Well not nothing, I changed all the sheets on the beds which took all morning. I did my favorite part of the laundry which is running loads through the washer and dryer and not folding. I went on a run early, early during the day. I spent a lot of the day napping and reading a very long book. I did not write a list, I did not cross things off a list. I didn’t talk to anyone except for Edda and Jeremy. Ahh, I remember someone called this a should-less day. I did whatever I wanted. (Actually, I’m very lucky, most of what I’m doing, I want to, or at least I’ve convinced myself it’s something I want to be doing).
There was a suggestion in the comments that the hershey kisses should be put in upside down and that it was a game changer. It was not. It just felt like their butts were looking at me.
I also spent a long time reading this book. It was both really well written, like each sentence was compelling, but the story was…underwhelming. Here, I’ll give you the 3 second overview. Young girl (Sonia) is in an abusive relationship (the book opens with this and stays with this a long time) and when she escapes this terrible relationship, she forgets to take her beloved, sentimental necklace. Then for hundreds of pages she and a boy (Sunny) go all over America and India going in and out of their lives with a sprinkle of magical realism and he finds the necklace and then gives it back to her. The end. There, you don’t have to read the book now. I’m shocked….shocked I finished the book.
I usually have an audiobook going at the same time and I’m listening to this memoir which was pretty amusing at first – she opened for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, amusing enough that I went to see if she was on tour (she was) and I bought a single ticket in December for a reasonable price in DC – like third row! And then almost immediately after, found out she’s semi-cancelled because she’s a supporter of the current administration. Now I’m listening to the 2nd half, kind of less amused. I’ve always wanted to go to live comedy! I’ve never gone and it’s kind of Asian-tiger mom funny. We’ll see. Anyways, two books going on at the same time about Indian family drama was just a touch too much for me and even though the tone of the book and audiobook were completely different (think creme brulee vs hostess cupcake), sometimes I got the plotlines confused.
Then Monday and Tuesday and Wed were filled with meeting and doings – mostly I think it was well above 90 for three days, killing my will to live. Monday morning, I did yard work with a friend who is 71 and we sawed discarded fencing and brought it into his van and then took it to the dump. I was the one asking for breaks hauling this crap from my yard, he was totally fine – barely breaking a sweat. Edda had a pretty long seizure on Monday night with both me and Jeremy up at 3:30 am, thus having me worried all day on Tuesday driving her to her day program instead of having transport pick her up. I also had very long meetings on Monday and Tuesday with architects and project managers. Tuesday night I sat down and told Jeremy, I need two days off for every 1.5 days that I work.
My peonies are in full bloom. This year, I decided to bouquet them – I’ve given 4 away and they are always met with delight. I’ve not done this before, now I have no more flower vases. I’ll have to pick some more up from the thrift store. I’m torn about the peonies. I was going to rip them out to execute the plan that our landscape designer suggested, but look at this. They are gorgeous, no?
A few days ago, a friend introduced me to the Merlin app. It is a bird identification app run by Cornell and it’s a lot of fun. You can have it listen to bird calls and it’ll ID birds that way, or you can snap a photo of a bird and it’ll take a look at them and ID them that way. Then it’s like…do I count it if the app hears the bird and I don’t see it? In the olden days, I might have been…I need to see it to actually count it, but these days, I’m just like, I’m just trying to enjoy myself – no need to torture myself. So, I’m just counting it if the app hears the bird. I’m starting very easy – I have 23 birds on my found list including these Canadian geese, who probably technically found me. Look! Little itty bitty babies!
Here is my Oreo cheesecake of which I only had a little taste of – we cut it into 16 pieces at and I gave out 5 at dinner – one to Ginny, one split between Edda and Jeremy, three for Ginny to take home for the kids and then I just licked the knife. Delicious.
And then I took it to choir and it was demolished. Such joy! I feel like my mom who brought treats to work all the time. Hahaha.
We’ve been members of the JCC for like 17 years? omg, so long. Anyways, we are members because of the annual beloved camp that Edda (and Vince) went to during the summers. Now we no longer really need to be members as we no longer need to register for camp (weep), but when I went to cancel the membership (which includes the gym/pool/etc. that we never use) last year and replace it with a donation, I hesitated because – would they rather me be a member? or a donor? And then sometimes once you hesitate on these things, you never get back to them again. The monthly charge popped up again on my bank statement and then I decided to turn back to it and it turns out that you can be a member AND a donor at the same time. So I’m changing the regular membership to the member/donor option. (This is the most boring blog post ever, sorry.). There are forms to fill out, one to cancel, one to restart and Jeremy and I will be members and then it was like – who is our emergency contact in case both of us are incapacitated? I hesitated and put VINCE for the first time. Then I texted him that this was a big step and he was are emergency contact.
His reply:
Screenshot
I have this beautiful notebook that Dani gave me last year from Japan and I always have dreams of using is with different colors and neat handwriting. I have all the pens, I have all the grids. I probably even have the handwriting. What I lack is the caring. I used to care and square everything and I remember that girl who wanted everything just so – was a rigid person I was back then worried about all possiblee mistakes. But now I’m like…who the hell knows what is going on, I’m just going to scribble and make mistakes everyday – it’s no fun unless you screw up a little bit everyday. I made an Oreo cheesecake last night. I didn’t use a water bath like you are supposed to because the recipe insisted that I didn’t need one, but maybe I did need one because the top did split – a mini grand canyon in the middle of my cheesecake with little oreo crags and crevices that miniature cheesecake rock climbers would be happy to traverse. Oh well. I was hoping to not need to make the ganache to cover the error, but now I need to slather it with a coating of chocolate. Just terrible.
We are so excited that Dani’s graduate studies are suppose to help us measure the ripeness of pears based on their color. We actually have that problem in the house – Jeremy loves pears and they are not predictable. Sometimes, for whatever reason, they never ripen, other times, they rot from the inside, other times they are so delicious and ripen all within the same 8 hours and then Jeremy is like – OK, today we are only eating pears. I have 13 pears here that need to be eaten…right now, right now. And then we all get down to eating pears – except for Elka who will eat a fallen pear piece but really is waiting for the fallen chicken morsel.
This is a photo of my backyard. It appears as if I’m growing metal silos, but there are actually little trees in the center of the metal hoops. I take great pleasure in taking out the compost each day, dumping the slop in a randomly established pile and making the rounds – hello redbud! Hello dogwood! Hello serviceberry! Their tiny leaves unfurling, bright, shiny and tender, like a rug burn reminding you are alive and can hurt whenever you move and your clothes brush against your new, baby skin.
Usually, I’m at peace when I’m walking around. Actually, today, I was feeling slightly overwhelmed for whatever reasons and I was like…I will go walk in my field of metal circles and say hello to my green, leafy friends and try to calm the fuck down. (This is really what I spend my entire life doing, downregulating myself. OMG. so much work.)
Anyways, my pride and joy is (was, actually, foreshadowing) a little oak tree. The only one I was able to grow from bare root – all my other bare root trees failed to leaf out. It was about a foot tall and maybe 2 mm in diameter. I was dreaming of it 250 years hence, when I was no longer here, perhaps the house would no longer be here, perhaps we all will not be here, but somehow the tree would be here. It’s four leaves unfurled to full white oak size despite its tiny stature. I walked up today and did not see the leaves, panicked – I stood there for a long time searching and slowly, unfortunately negating all the downregulating I was doing. I finally saw the little stump. Can you call it a stump if it’s only 2 mm across? I suspect a rabbit? or chipmunk? Whatever can get through a 2 x 4 inch grate opening (not a deer) (sorry for the inconsistent deployment of measurement systems). And then I muttered to myself – the oak was felled by a resident rabbit.
My friend Dave has three sisters. On Mother’s Day, three bouquets arrived on the porch. The first one read “From your favorite daughter”, the second one read, “From your real favorite daughter” and the last one read “From your definitely, undisputed favorite daughter”. Hahaha. I often say to Vince – you are my favorite son. And Vince says back to me – and you are my favorite mom.
Look! A fox! On its way to kill something for breakfast.
