Author: Doris

I was having lunch yesterday with a friend who, in their mid-60s, just got diagnosed with autism. Now, I’m all for self discovery, but when you get to your mid 60s, does it help to label it? Dunno. And then I was trying to tell Jeremy that I’m autistic because 1. I love routine, 2. I don’t like small talk, 3. I’ve always felt different, 4. I have repetitive foot movements (I like to knead my feet when I’m falling asleep), 5. I don’t like crowds and Jeremy was like…you are not autistic. And I laughed, and I said, yes, I know I’m not autistic.

And then Ginny said – you have inattentive ADHD. And I was like, what’s that? And Jeremy was like – absolutely not. Inattentive ADHD means a person has: trouble paying attention to details, is easily distracted, finds it hard to manage time or finish tasks, forgets to do routine chores. I absolutely do not have inattentive ADHD, Jeremy is right and Ginny is wrong. But Ginny could not be persuaded. She was like…you always need to be doing something, that’s why it’s ADHD. It’s true, I always want to be doing something, but I usually almost always do it to completion. I complete lots of tasks which makes me….deadly efficient and a machine at times. Which generally equals not fun. I’m not very good at having fun.

One of the joys of getting older is focusing that energy to doing things I wouldn’t dream of doing as a kid – to just do things for fun and curiosity. It’s hard to remember that it’s fun and not turn it into a “job” which is what I struggle with a lot, exercise, baking, guitar, volunteering – such a gift to pursue these interests and it is so much fun. It’s extra fun when someone else is interested too.

Sometimes I can not believe I am here, so lucky to be living the life I have, go grateful for the opportunities and my enjoyment of exploring things as I go watching people I love do their thing, figure out the way, watching myself do the same.

I went to Edda’s day program on Wed to do a quarterly meeting and I was so pleased to see her bestie from school (Izzy) with her. Izzy is a year younger than Edda, so when Edda started, I know she was missing her and now the two of them are together again. Makes my heart sing – to be in community together. (Although about an hour after I left, someone got bitten by a racoon! The wheelchair ramp is in the back of the building and the woods runs along beside it. Yikes!).

I did lots of socializing this past week, I think too much. It’s a lot of fun, but also draining on me. This is Rick, a person I spend a lot of time with – he’s the president of the church and he’s very funny.

Saturday was our 28th wedding anniversary. Per protocol, we got ice cream at Carmens.

I asked for our traditional chicken with bread, cheese, avocado & tomato dinner. Jeremy used to pack all the ingredients in his backpack plus a cutting board and a knife and we’d go hiking together and then when lunch came around he’d whip out all this equipment and food. Back then, I had barely ever seen an avocado, they were very rare on the east coast. We also opened a hard cider that we’ve had for years and had gone bad.

And then we got this little cake – my favorite. And we discussed how lucky we are – so lucky.

We increased Edda’s Keppra and take a look at this gigantic horse pill. Unbelievable. I break it in two, though I think Edda may be able to manage this.

My peach cake, which was so beautiful on the outside, was a little undone on the inside. Hmmm… I bought more ricotta cheese to try again this week. If our peaches don’t run out.

Choir started again! I’m having fun.

I finished my second “meeting” hat – a hat that I knit when I’m in a meeting. I have many meetings in which I need to knit, so I’m doing the same pattern over and over again. It’s interesting, one can learn a lot by doing the same thing over and over again – using different yarns, using different techniques. This hat, I learned how to do magic loop knitting which is using a very long double pointed circular knitting needle to make any sized tube of yarn. Lots of people like it, I understand the appeal, but I’m not a huge fan of it. This hat is also too wide and probably too short on the head. I’m trying to not think about it too hard because…it’s my meeting hat! Only to keep my hands occupied during long meetings.

See? This is my first meeting hat – I made it with yarn from Bob and Katherine’s community. This hat, I learned to do helical knitting to make single row stripes. And I learned about blocking which I never used to do, but it makes such a big difference! I’ll do it from now on.

We went to Friday Vibes for a summer dance party. Fun.

This may be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever baked – peach ricotta cake.

This is a pretty photo too!

We don’t usually park our cars on the street, but sometimes we need to because of the in/out habits of our caregivers when they take Edda out on excursions. But it’s hazardous out there on the street – we got the mirror of the old car sheared off (not completely, it’s hanging on by the wiring that motorizes the movement) and we didn’t notice, I’m sure, for a few days. Momentarily, I thought about installing it myself and I looked on youtube and learned you need to take off the door panel and I was like..nope. And then Jeremy looked at the youtube video and said, you know it takes only like 15 minutes to replace, but you need to be super careful and not break any of the plastic clips that hold the door panel in place. I’m like that car is 12 years old, there is only brittleness and no give and/or resiliency in those plastic tabs. I’m kind of weirdly hoping that they say that the color is out of stock and is a blue/black/green/orange one ok? That would be super hilarious (to me).

This is an amazing book – I loved every page of it. Over 500 pages, it just flew by. Just like not every run is amazing, not every book is amazing, but you live for those experiences where you can’t put it down or feel like an animal – you feel ALIVE! Thank you Liz Moore, for writing such a great thriller.

To everyone’s surprise, I’m actually standing at my standing desk. Look at me! I can do this for a long time. Interesting. I kind of like it. It didn’t even occur to me to stand at my standing desk when Jeremy bought it for me. Why, then, did we buy a standing desk? Well, because it’s the fashion at the moment. Maybe I’ll sit down soon.

I’ve had a wireless mouse for a while which I love the untethered-ness of it, but I had this nice mechanical wired keyboard that I got for Christmas which I also enjoyed – the little click/clacking of the keys. It’s like actually pressing a something that moves tell you – hey I’m here. But the size and wiring were driving me crazy. And though you can select the strength of the click/clack of the keyboard, I’m afraid I picked a strength that was a tad too sensitive – I really wanted to smash those keys as if I was on an IBM selectric typewriter.

So Jeremy set me up with a smaller unwired keyboard that he had lying around. It’s super tiny and I’ve had to kind of relearn how to type in this more cramped style. Especially the keyboard shortcuts which are a muscle memory and I don’t even know really what I’m pressing. Sometimes it’s annoying, learning these new things, but sometimes, I think, it’s nice to keep the brain going in this way. I dunno. As I age, keep the brittleness at bay and try to retain some resilience. Keeping that brain elastic – just in case I need to replace my own driver side mirror.

Yesterday, Elka spied a very large snake! Jeremy texted me the photo. Usually I get photos of Elka just lying upside down on the grass basking in the glorious sun refusing to move and/or ice cream. So this was different.

I forgot to mention that Megan and I saw a bear on our Vermont trip! OMG, this was on the final day of the hike, we had a dramatic ending (not bloggable) the last half mile of the trip and we were all a little bit high on adrenaline and cortisol and we were on our way back to the place we were going to spend the night stopping by the Vermont Country Store to get snacks and I was like….was that a bear? We had been seeing 10,000 chainsaw cut bears on many many front lawns, and I was certain I’d seen another one, but then my brain was slowly turning, huh, that was only like half a bear and on the side of the road. Do people do that? I kind of mentioned this to Megan and she looked in her rear view mirror and said – I see something moving! So we turned around and saw this very nice bear eating something very delicious about 10 feet from our car. Megan saw bears on both her vacations this summer (the other one was in Alaska on a tour very far away. So our bear was better. Not that it’s a competition or anything.)! (Before we had gone on the Vermont trip, there was listed bear spray and/or whistle on the packing list. And Megan asked about it and I said…I don’t think we need that. Hahahahaha.)

One of my very favorite stories regarding my marriage came from a Edda-care person who shall remain nameless. They were moving on in their life and had to stop taking care of Edda and so, on their last day, I took them out a farewell lunch and at the lunch they leaned over (as if revealing a big secret) and said – Jeremy loves you very much. And I smiled and nodded and then they added – and you don’t even wear any makeup! HAHAHAHA. Also, regarding my face, when I first got my septum piercing, many many people asked me if I had asked Jeremy if it was OK, or if he thought it was OK or some variation on that question. It was only at that question, many weeks or months after the fact that I even thought about that perspective. It never occured to me Jeremy’s opinion.

Anyways, going back to the makeup-free love, Jeremy spent a long time this weekend upgrading my office. Because my office needed to be moved during the past three weeks of guests, he noted some issues that could be improved – so he got me a standing desk, floated my monitors on arms and dropped me a light from the ceiling.

Here’s the desk up

Here’s the desk down. Yes, I know the chair needs to be upgraded, but it’s my most precious thrift store find – a danish designer chair made in 1981 that I got for five dollars! I’m not sure I can give it up. Anyways, much money was spent on this set up, I need to try it out and see how it goes before we spend more money on chairs or other whatnots. After I saw this set up, I was like – Jeremy has transformed my office into his office – this is basically Jeremy’s set up so then it begged the existential question – I’m I turning into Jeremy? Or am I turning into Jeremy more than Jeremy is turning into me? Are we one symbiotic creature? We’ll see.

So lest you think that I maintained all my habits during the three week social marathon, I did not exercise at all, I did not touch my guitar at all, I failed to show up to pistol league, no laundry got done (well, the wash got done (mostly, though embarrassingly I went and bought some more underwear to get me through, a move that I have not deployed in a very long time), very little folding got done -I’m still working through washing all the sheet dirtied in the house), our utility bills were late, and the house was not picked up. Other than that, it all ran smoothly.

And this video made me laugh so so much. I’m sorry Vince! I apologize for all my old age foibles. May I become nicer as I age. Last night at Sunday night dinner, we went through all the entire (long list) of the older generation falling and getting back up – bruises, shiners, tears, broken bones galore.

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To celebrate no one extra that I had to talk to (three weeks of people! three weeks!), I had a shouldless day in which I took a two-hour walk around the neighborhood with Elka. I designed my walk to the 5 or 6 little free libraries that are not in my immediate neighborhood, rather extending into the next neighborhood. I’m trying to read more and get more books, I somehow like my books to be slightly random.

The next neighborhood over from my current neighborhood is what I consider my “real” childhood neighborhood. There are some preserved woodland areas around the houses – dense enough so you feel like you are by yourself in the woods, but honestly so close to housing that if you yelled really loudly, someone would hear you from their kitchen. Of all the nature things, beaches, mountains, meadows, marshes, valleys, lakes, rivers, oceans, the thing I love the most is forest. And the forest I feel the most at home in are these little patches of trees that I can walk to. I don’t even know what trees are predominantly there – I just know that, as a kid, I used to go into the woods to explore and dig holes, catch tadpoles and basically hide away. Sometimes with my brother, mostly by myself. And I was only often less than a quarter mile from my house. Most of the time, I could see my house. I’m so grateful its still there, I imagine myself as an 8 year old or 10 year old or 12 year old – running around playing and thinking how I wished I was a grown up and now I am a grown up and I wish I was 8 again back in the early 80s.

Elka is a little tender in the heat. She went on an hour long walk first with Jeremy and then the two hour walk with me in which it got warmer and warmer as we walked. It was for sure toasty, but not super hot. I was OK, but Elka, towards the end of the walk went from shade tree to shade tree to rest and I sat on the ground and played games on my phone waiting for her to recover. We made it to the ice cream/pizza/coffee shop strip mall that is three minutes walking from our house – I was planning on getting lunch there, but it was so busy! The coffee shop was celebrating its one-year anniversary and the place was hopping and the lines were too long and Elka was too tired, so I headed home to make my own lunch. (But then I headed back out without Elka to get my own ice cream). A classic summer day – ice cream, parties, kids wading in streams – omg, so delicious.

I am so proud of myself for basically sustaining a social calendar for 3 weeks straight. I feel like I ran a marathon that I didn’t know I had. I mean, I did slowly increase my tolerance for socializing over the past year and then *boom* a vast increase and sustained effort. And I did it (of course, with Jeremy’s tremendous help and support). It was fun, but I need to rest before doing it again. HAHAHAHA.

Kimchi is being picked up today and then….tonight! tonight! I’ll have the house to just the OG four of us, Jeremy, me, Edda and Elka. I’ve enjoyed having Kimchi here, she’s really grown on me and now it’s no problem to have her at the house. Mainly, she’s letting me sleep through the night and not pouncing and/or wandering the house in the darkness with her clicky clacky toenails which she did the first two times she stayed with us. So I’m getting enough sleep except for last night when Edda had a seizure at 2 am. Nothing to do but just…sigh. Poor girl.

The two dogs are friends, but not best friends. Did you notice the new slipcover on our old couch? This was a good purchase. Custom made delivered from China.

Jeremy’s been great with the dogs, walking them on their walks. Kimchi likes the water more than Elka.

The dogs have made me laugh this past week, it’s been fun.

We had Kimchi put on Elka’s pajamas. She was not a fan. Do you see the streak of grey in my hair? I’m so happy for it!

Vincent left Saturday, Bob left Sunday and Katherine left Tuesday. Kimchi came Sunday and will leave on Friday. Ginny is in Cuba until Friday, so we have no childcare until then. The house is slowly getting back into order, even though, yes, the laundry is in a huge pile and yes, my office is still not in its rightful position and yes, I’m still scattered. Yesterday, I plowed through many emails – catching up, I’m moving through work, trying to clean up my docket – I renewed my MD nursing license which involved getting fingerprinted (a new thing I’ve not done before – I mean, I’ve gotten fingerprinted before, just not recently for nursing license renewals). I tried to cancel anything social for about 36 hours, giving up on my pistol league and various phone calls I should make, but some encroached on my introvert reregulation time. Hahaha.

Kimchi is…not chill. This is the third time she’s stayed at our house and she’s finally calming down and learning the rules of the house. She’s not sleeping in our bed even though she sleeps in the bed at home. We are training her and Elka to stay away from Edda while she eats. We are also training her to play “the game” which is to find a piece of chicken hidden in the house somewhere. The best thing, though, is that Kimchi and Elka have seemed to form a friendship of sorts. For the first two times, Elka seemed very put out by Kimchi, but these days, they zoom around at least two or three times a day, playing tug-of-war or just wrestling and that is a lot of fun to watch. It helps, I think, that Elka is alpha (at least in her house).

Look! I planted a Mexican milkweed plant and I’m so happy! I have a monarch caterpillar just munching away.

What a thing of beauty. I feel like…I did something for the earth instead of just pillaging it for now. I hope a bird does not eat you – you are very bright for something that is trying to not be eaten.