Author: Doris

There is so much happening this weekend. I’m afraid if I don’t write it down, I won’t remember years from now. (I won’t remember because I have the worst memory for my own life.) Please be patient with the vague blogging. I had to take someone to the hospital on Friday in the middle of the day, everything is fine (mostly) and they are home, but still the thing is not gone and is still frustratingly mysterious. Then, on Sunday, there was a car accident and the passenger died and then the driver was seriously injured. I did not know these people in the accident, but there was crying, almost wailing in the house.

Jeremy rode a lot this weekend. Loves his new bike.

We had the best Sunday night dinner in a while. We had a head measuring contest which was hilarious. Here are the rankings:

• Jane 59
• Colleen 59
  • Eric 58.5
  • Gene 58.2
  • Jeremy 58.1
  • Christine 57
  • Seth 56.8
  • Sarah 56.4
  • Bette 55.5
  • Doris 54.5
  • Edda 54

Jeremy bought his new bike yesterday. He put 25,000 miles on his last bike (which he still loves). This is a weekend of bike geeking out. The bike market is still very tight, he had to put a generous deposit on this bike a while ago, wait about 2 months for it and then test ride it for 15 minutes and then no returns after you’ve ridden it for an hour. He thought about this bike for many, many years (even before it existed) and now he delights in this. He carefully saved up his fun fund and birthday/christmas/new year’s money to be able to afford this. I pray to the bike gods to keep him safe and to have a lot of fun on this bike. Right now, he’s happily taking the bike apart, degreasing things, waxing things, and adjusting things.

Spotify did their year end review and again – my most listened to artist was Taylor Swift. Ha ha. I love Taylor. I’m one of Spotify’s heaviest users – logging about 2 hours every day. Which seems low! I stream it all day at work.

I’m trying to reclaim my headspace and I’ve given up Instagram and Facebook for over two weeks now. Will it stick? I’m not sure. I try to not check the news except for the daily 15 min NPR update. Also, I got rid of my most beloved games on my phone – the nonogram and 1010! – which I think I would spend a lot of time on. I do want to replace it to something else, but something a bit less mindless? – I’m trying Pokemon Go (mainly because I have a friend who is really into it) – which is somewhat self-limiting because I run out of pokeballs and then I can’t do anything else and in order to get more pokeballs, I need to go on a walk outside. Which seems like a good idea. Maybe? Or maybe it will be terribly addicting? I’m not sure. I think it is addicting for certain people. Is it terrible to be addicted to going on a walk? Maybe I’ll be taken over by wanting *all* the Pokemons? If it crawls over to the additive side, I’ll have to delete it. I’ll show you a photo of my (virtual) pet:

Because I started Pokemon Go, I ran a different route on my run yesterday (Pokemon Go is about exploring the outside world), and I was rewarded with this incredibly outrageous front lawn display – and also more pokeballs. lol.

Vince is headed into finals week. It’s stressful for him. I talked to him last night and tried to soothe his nerves. He’ll do great. You can do it, V! And I can’t wait to see you soon. <3, mom.

And as I turned the page on the calendar to December, as always happens every year, I get sad, annoyed and critical. Jeremy asks, what’s wrong at dinner? And the answer is mostly nothing. I’m prone to Sunday night blues which, as a shift worker, can happen on Tuesday night, so I know I’m also prone to holiday blues. I’m actually quite grateful for things in my life right now and I’m a lucky, lucky person. I’m trying to focus on that. Ha ha. We’ll see.

We had Ning, Brian, Noah, Nat and Dara over for dinner last night. Of course, we pulled out Vince’s old Thomas the Tank engine trains for entertainment.

Yesterday, I asked Jeremy if we were going to put up a Christmas tree. It is not my natural inclination to put up a tree – even if we were staying for Christmas, but I was admiring an absolutely beautiful artificial tree at Alice’s house and wanted to buy the same brand (Balsam Hill). The tree we have is from Target or Home Depot for about $100 bought the day before Christmas probably the first Christmas we were in the house – 2008. I could probably look at photos and see it there. That thing, for the past few years, has looked a little bit ragged. We are missing some branches and the needles are forever shedding all around. But we are spending a lot of money these days – so I think the new fake tree will have to wait. I don’t want to put it up because I’m the one to do it every year (even though various (usually young, easily distracted) people enthusiastically start setting it up with me), and I also take it down every year and sometimes I resent it. But there are things, in my old-er age, that have turned from simmering resentment into something of a joy – for example, I do enjoy picking out gifts for people. For years, I got all pissy that I would buy all the gifts for everyone (most notably the gifts for Jeremy’s family and the teacher’s gifts), but recently, I’ve really come to enjoy doing this. Honestly, it wasn’t that Jeremy wouldn’t buy gifts, it’s that he would do it on Dec 22st and hope that Amazon would deliver by Christmas which absolutely would drive me bonkers. And I think, now, that I’m a pretty good gift giver. So now I take my time and I buy gifts (well this year, I started early Nov) for everyone and if Jeremy wants to add something on the 22nd, he’s totally fine doing that. I also cut out asking for Jeremy’s opinion on gifts and waiting for him to weigh in or for him to say – oh, but what about this other thing? – and just buy them, so it feels like I’m in control more. Also, surprisingly I enjoy picking out greeting cards for people. I like the 5 minutes I spend in the store thinking about the person and thinking what kind of card the person would like. It reminds me how much I like and value the person. I don’t do this often, but when I do, I get joy.

I’m trying to be nice to myself this holiday season. Mostly because there are a lot of sad things happening around me. I miss my brother who has, for a reason unknown to me, decided to stop speaking to me about four years ago. I had always thought we had a warm relationship, but I can only conclude that he thinks his life is better without me in it which is a painful conclusion to come to. If he does think that, I hope he is doing well and is happy and I will let him go. Though sometimes it feels like my arm has gone missing and I’m looking for it, not remembering where I had left it or how it got cut off. Mostly it feels like a part of my heart is forever wounded and I’m patching it up with needle and thread and a band aid and hope that it keeps going and that maybe he will come back to me someday. However hard it is for me, I know it’s harder for my parents. And, of course, these painful things are always harder around the holidays.

We had a wonderful thanksgiving. We had 13, down from our usual 40-50ish and it was lively. I’m not sure that we would have reached the 40 in attendance this year even without the pandemic because of other family health issues. I insisted to Jeremy that we should buy two turkeys because I thought we were going to be 20 (we had many last minute cancellations due to various reasons) and it was too much turkey. It was entirely too much food because we are so used to cooking for 40. But it was small enough to have one conversation for the entire group which slipped easily into side conversations. We invited all the family dogs and this one, Tuna, perched on Edda’s lap for a little while and looked for food. We had four dogs in attendance and my parents had fun feeding them bits of turkey. We did insist that everyone was vaccinated – so we did not invite anyone under the age of 12 (who by now are 1/2 vaccinated). I think the most insistent person of this rule were my parents – because there were (numerous) families with children under 12 who I would have loved to have invited, but I understood the parameters. But funnily, my parents had been hesitant to getting their booster shots (which did worry me, even though they insisted they “never went anywhere” – because they are EIGHTY) but I felt like I couldn’t “make” them go get it. But we all, as a group, managed to convince my parents to get their boosters and they got them on Friday – just in time for the Omicron variant. We did not rapid test everyone before the event, though.

I worked at the hospital on Friday. I feel (this is my own general rule) that I should work either Thanksgiving or Christmas and usually I pick Christmas. But this year, I’m going to be out of town on Christmas – so obv. I should have worked Thanksgiving, and I kind of hemmed and hawed at this but I ended up not working Thanksgiving day, but I did work on Friday and it was brutal. So I feel like I did my holiday coverage for less pay. On a “regular good” day – I have 4 patient and one tech who I usually share with 2 other nurses. Yesterday – I had 6 patients and no tech. I did not cry – I was telling Bob that when I’m so busy – I just know what things I can drop and not do and then I try to not feel bad about it. On a “regular good”, I usually feel like I have a grip on the day by about 11 am. On a “regular day”, that feeling comes at about 1 pm. On a bad day – you feel like you are always falling, falling and going backwards.

We are all booster-ed now. In the same order that we got the first doses – me first, then Edda, then Jeremy and Vince bringing up the rear. I guess that is the right order of administration given our relative risk levels. I think if I had to redo the order under the circumstances now, I’d do Edda first, Vince second, me third and then Jeremy. Edda because she’s in school and can’t mask well and people have to be close to care for her and not everyone in the school is vaccinated (I do wish I could have gotten her the moderna one), Vince 2nd, because he’s at school (even though they have 98% vaccine compliance and biweekly covid testing) and interacting with people all the time and he favors cloth masks and is probably slightly unreliable in wearing the masks – like when his friends are piercing his ears in his apartment. Me third – even though I work in a hospital – because by the time patients get to me, they are tested and all my coworkers are vaccinated and I’m very careful with my n95 mask at work (one of the few nurses who still does the n95). And then Jeremy because he goes nowhere. Poor guy. <3. He needs to go somewhere.

Doris – P-P-P (that was the only one available when the boosters were first approved)

Edda – P-P-P (she’s still under 18, so technically not OK for M)

Jeremy – P-P-M

Vince – M-M-M

Vince got his booster at a Costco near school (he had needed to rent a zipcar to get there) and so after the vax appointment, he went shopping for heavy things. And then he texted – woah, it’s easy to spend money at Costco – I got three things and it was $50!

We are so lucky that my parents both turn 80 this holiday season. My mom’s birthday was yesterday and we celebrated at their home with my dad as chef!

My dad bought the best steak on the internet and had it shipped to the house and he thought up the menu. Jeremy was sous chef. We also had long noodles for long life – all delicious.

I splurged and bought my mom a LV bag and I got the most perfect reaction of delight and happiness.

My mom literally is the cutest ever.

And we rounded out the evening with a delicious, beautiful carrot cake from Lauren.

I feel, in many ways, that I’m at a crossroads. I really feel a real break from my old, younger life. Jeremy and I (and Edda) are settling into our new(ish) empty-ish nest and post-pandemic routine. Sometimes I think we are super boring – but someone reminded me that super-exciting is not good either. One of the things I really want to let go of is 1) social media and 2) watching any TV/movies. I did not log into Facebook on my new computer. I thought I was a low consumer of Facebook, but it turns out I did check on it throughout the day on my old laptop computer – but now I can tell I’m really off of it because Jeremy will come into the room and say – did you see what happened to so-and-so? And I’ll say – no, I didn’t. And then he’ll show me his Facebook feed. I think it’s ok not to know, but I waver. I do relax by scrolling through instagram – which is only hobbies – almost no friends, but I can tell I get too invested in people’s lives I don’t know. The movies/TV thing is also surprisingly hard for me to give up. I cancelled our Netflix account right before Squid Games came out and I did feel like I was missing out. But I didn’t resubscribe to watch it. It’s mostly this feeling like – well, I didn’t see Mad Men/Sopranos/Breaking Bad/Keeping up with the Kardashians, but I could always make time to watch it. But I think I want to close this door. To acknowledge that I won’t ever watch these things. One of the things about closing this door is saying, yes, that I’m out-of-touch with cultural happenings and I will always be this way. And my deepest-darkest thing that I want to give up is the news. I don’t want to read the news anymore. But this somehow feels like I’m giving up what it means to be a responsible citizen. I’ve never been a very good news keeping up person, but to let it go is to drop into the category of being the uninformed. Be an informed voter! Be an informed citizen! everyone cries. But everyone is so loud. So opinionated. I no longer want to do this. I just want to live my life.