Author: Doris

I have forever struggled with our electronic health record (EHR) software program which was called Cerner. Jeremy will tell you how much I fought with it everyday. I can get angry at things and then rebel against them in a passive aggressive way which I did almost every shift. But I *love* our new software system which is Epic. It’ll take time to get up to speed, but yesterday, I had kind of a slow day patient wise and I got to deep dive into the software and play around do documentation. I have this separate sheet of paper that nurses call a “brain sheet” which I needed to have with Cerner to keep track of medication times or tests or new orders or whatever, but now I realize that I can cut down on the paper-note taking by about half. And I can text the doctors now, so my calls are also diminished significantly. I love it. My job will be easier.

Julia’s been staying with us this week and canvassing the Loudoun county (Virginia) most days this week. But she took yesterday off and we went on an adventure to Glenstone which is this contemporary art museum that recently was renovated and opened up in Potomac, very close to the house. I’d never been. Tickets are free, but very hard to get and are booked months in advance , but it turns out that if you take the public bus in, you can go anytime. So we took the bus in and walked the extensive grounds which has a ton of beautiful outdoor sculptures (Jeff Koons living floral split-rocker at the top of the hill behind my head) and saw the beautiful art pavilion. I didn’t know much about the place until I googled after we left. Nowhere in the brochure did it mention who did this or why or anything. Nor did they like to put text alongside any of the art – we were just supposed to draw our own conclusions from our personal experience. I was like – who is the really rich person who did this? Everything is free and very, very expensive feeling. Turns out that one of the 11 billionaires living in DC built this to show off his private contemporary art collection. And it was renovated for over $200 million dollars. So you do need to be a billionaire to build and maintain a facility like this.

I came home to Jeremy who instead of getting some tool from Amazon for bike repair, he got Edgar Allen Poe. So he’s getting the tool shipped to him again and we get to keep Edgar. Lucky us. You see the raven?

Jeremy made it home on Monday night. He did try a 2nd time to go up Mt Diablo in under an hour, but shaved just 12 seconds off of his time a week previous. It was much better paced, but somehow didn’t net him a much better time. He declared his season over and done with and he’s thinking what to do next.

Vince has is first set of mid-terms (I guess they aren’t midterms, they are third-terms) this week. You can do it Vince! 🙂

He shaved his head a few days ago. I think he looks a lot like Uncle Robert now.

I went back to the hospital for the first time in over two weeks. A new software program dropped on Saturday – I was glad my first day was Wed because they had worked out a bunch of kinks over the weekend, but everyone was still learning. They deployed like 4-5 people onto our unit wearing bright colored vests to ask questions to whenever you ran into any issues. So I asked them all the time. It was actually great – I mean, I didn’t even know how to add patients to my “list” or scan medications or anything. Everything did take 4 times as long. I’m usually done with morning meds by 10 or 10:30, but at 12:30 I was still working on them. But I can tell once I get used to it, it’ll be better.

Julia is here for the week campaigning for a delegate in Virginia. I love having Julia around, she is a lot of fun.

We also had a raucous Sunday night dinner last night, I don’t know what happened, but we laughed and laughed with each other. I’m lucky to have this family around. Since we were hosting and Jeremy wasn’t around to cook and didn’t want to cook, I ordered out for dinner. I wanted to order Popeyes fried chicken for dinner and was almost about to do that and I kind of had been dreaming of it for days, but I had my annual checkup the next day (today) and I wanted (as a weird self-dare) to try and get my lipid panel to look as good as I could get it, so I didn’t want to inundate my bloodstream with fried chicken the night before. So I ordered from Potbelly’s which was fine and actually could accommodate all the vegetarians in our group (and I had a veggie sandwich) and I got my fasting lipid panel drawn this am.

Jeremy is coming home today!!!! After spending the weekend with his HS pals. One of them is talking about retiring to Hawaii.

I’m just scrolling through Jeremy’s photo feed to give you this blog post. He’s still over there in California.

Our favorite adult entertainment establishment. This was right around the corner from where we lived in the late 90s. We never went in, but I loved the name – the pink poodle. I can’t believe that it’s still there, the land it sits on must be worth millions.

This house we were renting when we got married. It’s like 900 square feet and must also now be worth a bajillion dollars. I forgot what we rented it for – maybe $1600 in 1998. I remember there were like 20 other people at the open rental house and we got it because no one else wanted to pay so much money for so little space. I think Jeremy wasn’t with me when I signed the lease – it felt very grown up. I really loved this house very much. I remember sitting at the computer (probably while Jeremy was doing something weird or slightly annoying 3 feet away from be because the front living room was that small) a few weeks after we got married thinking – omg. I’m married. forever is a long time. i hope this works out. For one glorious summer, Emy lived in the back room and Donald lived in the garage and Jeremy worked night shift – and we all had different schedules – so even though we only had one shower, everyone used it at completely different times of the day/night.

Jeremy did go on the silicon valley bike ride with two friends. Paul from AMD days and Kirk or (Kurt) from Haverford days. It was fun – not competitive. Jeremy was in the right position by being in the best shape and having the cheapest bicycle. Look at those MAMILs go (middle aged men in lycra).

OK, this trip has gone on long enough, I’m ready to have him home again.

I love to sleep. But middle age sleep is not very good. I have no problem falling asleep, but I have early waking problems. Last night (or this morning), I woke up and the first number on the clock was 5 (meaning past 5 am) and I do like an imaginary fist pump feel like I already have won the day. Earlier in the week, the first number was 3 (typical) and earlier, earlier in the week, it was gd 11. 11! That was a loser night that night.

I’m still sick, but I think today is the last day. I will get to walk with Alice tomorrow, I haven’t seen her in almost a week – too long. I went to the gyn yesterday – I know, I was sick and I still went to a doctor’s office – but I didn’t walk with Alice outside/masked – I know I’m a walking bundle of contradictions. I’m trying (like everyone else) to play catch up with doctor/dental appointments esp now that I’m 49/50 ish. And I figure a gyn appointment is the opposite of how you catch covid and I know I don’t have covid, so I went. (Don’t you think a sexually transmitted disease is the opposite of airborne transmitted disease? The same way that – if you thought about fruit – a banana is the opposite of a watermelon. Or like my late grandmother who had diabetes thought that salt/sugar were opposites. I mean, they kind of are – you could see how someone would think that.)

I’m kind of always disappointed by my gyn practice (I’ve mentioned this before). They are gyn only (no OB, so no babies), so they offer lots of stuff like Botox and cool sculpting and this time, they were advertising the O-shot – which is platelet rich plasma injection into your clit to improve orgasms (omg. that sounds…not fun.) And, my gyn practitioner is very blond, very stylish, and somehow not someone I think I would naturally get along with, but she is super fun and hilarious, knows all about menopause and really kind of made fun of the o-shot. We were both like – o-shot or not, nothing is going to make middle age sex (which is mostly funny and not very sexy) feel like sex you had when you were 20 (which is both funny and sexy, but is way way more sexy than funny). We all want that back, but it isn’t going to happen. hahaha.

Jeremy is having a good time professionally and biking-wise in California. It makes me happy he’s having a good time. He kind of knows that if it’s a bad time when he’s away from me to not spin it too badly until he gets home because if he tells me his meetings/conferences/chatting it up is going badly and he tells me while it’s happening, then I get mopey at home by myself with the kids thinking – argh. I’m doing this home thing by myself for *nothing*. I don’t mind if he complains after he gets home, because then he’s home.

He called last night and was laughing that he has dipped his toe into the weird cycling culture in the Silicon Valley. We’ve known for a while that instead of golf to seal the deal in SV, oftentimes, the sport of choice is biking and so if you want an audience with venture capitalists or the scions of industry, you have to be in good bike shape, have a fancy bike, and not get dropped on group rides. Anyways, we still have friends in the silicon valley and various people wanted to meet up – Jeremy thought it would be a “casual ride” but people immediately pulled out/texted their times up the iconic hills in the area. But it’s fine, Jeremy is faster than everyone. This is also how girls get left out of the room where it happens. There is no (or very few) girl that can keep up with boys on an uphill cycle ride in which everyone is trying pretty hard – both physically and professionally to get funding for their start up.

I caught Edda’s cold, so I’m feeling sorry for myself. Some crying and moping, but I know it’s cold motivated. But things are fine. I’ve been watching TV/movies with Sandra Oh in them recently – because I watched the Chair a while ago on Netflix and someone mentioned (again) that I resemble her in both looks and some mannerisms. When people who aren’t Asian say this, I think it’s because they can’t differentiate between Asians. But some Asian-ish people have said this recently to me and I perked up – how could I not want to be compared with Sandra Oh? Honestly, one of the coolest actresses around. Though I asked a Korean friend of mine (Sandra Oh is Korean and I’m not) and she said – you are absolutely not like Sandra Oh. lololol.

I’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy, the Chair, and this week I watched Sideways for the first time. And this morning, I turned on a show for Edda while getting her ready for school and Sandra was in Ramona and Beezus. What the heck? I wasn’t expecting that. I do want to watch Killing Eve, but not enough to pay for the streaming service it’s on. (I recently unsubscribed from Netflix because I’m trying to reduce TV watching (or at least reduce the choice I have on TV watching. So many things to watch! I want my choices limited down so I don’t spend too much time thinking about what to watch), so we only have Amazon Prime and youtube now).

The most interesting thing, I think, about Sandra Oh (for me) is that she is pretty much my age and through her work, I can think to myself, ahh, this is how I’m aging. She looked old in the Chair. I don’t mean elderly, I just mean well into the middle of middle age. I mean, what did I think was going to happen?

I also watched the new Cinderella on Amazon with Edda (I liked it!) and Minnie Driver does the same thing for me in terms of seeing myself getting old. Oh, how I loved Good Will Hunting (which I know some people just don’t) and remember Minnie frozen as a college senior, but Minnie is playing the queen in Cinderella and well, 50 looks good on her, but still she’s 50.

Jeremy update: he rode through the beautiful forests in California. This is where I want my ashes to be scattered – well near there – I would prefer not right by the road but I would be OK with that if Edda wanted to be there. In the forests of Big Basin where Jeremy and I spent time falling in love with each other and where my ashes can be incorporated into the roots and trunks and soaring limbs of the trees around me and I will have many tree friends to help me buffer me from various trouble until storms break us, or fires engulf us, pests/disease consume us or earthquakes move us and my timescale will be on the order of centuries/millennia/aeons and I can witness many, many deaths and in turn, rebirths.

<3 to you too 🙂 and snacks.

So Edda is for sure covid negative, the PCR test came back yesterday afternoon – faster than I anticipated given that both the test and results were over the weekend. I’m keeping her home from school one more day, she did run a fever yesterday, so I want to send her in 100% or at least 95%. I would say yesterday she was 80-85% herself. With Jeremy gone, I felt like I didn’t have much planned for the two of us, but I cancelled dinner with my parents, seeing my neighbor’s soccer game, childcare for Edda on Sunday and Sunday night dinner with the DC Martins and we spent the weekend – Edda watching TV and blowing out what felt like gallons of snot and me kind of working? I don’t know what I do with my time, but it passes quickly and relatively productively-ish. Even without the physical meetups, my weekend felt unusually social – lots of phone calls with pals (I owe you a call, Ruth!), lots of text messages of people checking in on us, Spanish lessons with Ana.

So I won’t bury the lede (well maybe I did with the Edda update) – Jeremy didn’t make it up the mountain in under an hour. 1:03.20 which is a PR, but off his main, aggressive goal of under an hour. He started out too fast and then lost power during the 2nd half of the race.

I did follow him on his beacon during the last few minutes of his race, it’s not really for race tracking, it’s mainly for safety, so I knew it was going to be close. We talked after the race and he wants to try himself again next weekend. (This is one of the reasons his trip is so long, two weekends to try for his goal bookending his business trip. I know, I know.) His pacing was so poor that he thinks the 3 minutes is in him if he paces it right. I think that assessment is quite accurate. Sometimes races can be good and sometimes they can be bad if you are just going for time. Races are exciting and fun, but, especially at the start, they can pull you out too fast because, honestly, most people are terrible at pacing and go out too fast.