Author: Doris

For whatever reason, this week I’m feeling old. The “OK Boomer” line has lumped the GenX generation into it. At first, I was like – boomer! ok, that’s not me, those are my parents. But then the articles all say that – no Doris, you are for sure in it. And then you watch a 17 year old try to use a rotary phone on Ellen:

What else? Oh, I’m constantly using urban dictionary to look up changes to the English language: “pop a squat”, “post up”, “stan”. Stan is a portmanteau of the words stalker and fan meaning a person who follows the Jonas Brothers around to all their concerts and then stands in line screaming to get a selfie with them and that ends up being quote unquote “the best day of my life”. Also, I can’t read anything as soon as I wake up because my eyes don’t really work that well anymore. I feel out of touch. I feel like any advice I give Vince is going to be a dated mess and that I should just give him a wide berth. How am I to know what it’s like to be a 17 year old boy in 2019? I think I actually have no idea. This past week, Vince hasn’t been at home because it’s tech week for drama – he gets in at 10:30pm or so – way past our OK boomer bedtime. So there we are, Jeremy and I tucked in bed at 8:30 pm, each on our own phone reading the NYTimes and then looking at each other and then Jeremy asks – so you wanna watch some youtube together? We look up some labrador puppy videos. (too cute!) And then Jeremy sighs, is this what it’s going to be like from now on once Vince leaves the house? It’s so quiet. And we are so old. Edda is around, of course, but she’s very quiet. And she is a homebody. And she’s not leaving anytime soon, so you know, it’s going to be a permanent triad. Well plus Max. And the puppy that I’m getting.

Also, this week – on some weird email list mistake – I started getting emails from alumni from my old MIT dorm. Inadvertently, someone started an email chain regarding the president at MIT and how he’s been addressing harassment on campus and how that related to Senior House. Senior House was closed down by the administration a few years ago because of both the low 4-year graduation rate and the relatively high use of illegal drugs. Somehow the emails reached all the thousands of people who ever listed Senior House as their residence and it’s turned into a kind of remincience of sorts. Anyways, it was kind of touching to read how important Senior House was to a lot of people. It was important to me, just because it taught me that I was a little oddball or quirky or that I liked being around slightly oddball or quirky people even with my very square personality. But take a look at this photo with the skull logo & the motto “Sport Death” and yeah, if I was an administrator, I’d shut it down too. Are you really going to let a bunch of kids at some high pressure school go around with T-shirts that say “sport death?” mmmm, no. Many on the email list indicated they stopped sending money after Epstein or Khashoggi, or someone even said they stopped sending money when they revamped our alumni magazine from magazine which showed how technology related in a humanistic way to the world at large to a more business/flashy approach – like the most important 35 under 35 technologists (in 1998!). Even though I graduated on time and I never did any drugs, I wonder if any odd-ball dorms exist on any college campus anymore? Do people live in dorms anymore? (I also have a feeling that it’s considered feminist to join a sorority now. Never would I ever. But maybe I would now.) Is it all sanitized and corporate – like a Panera or Chick-fil-A or a Grand Hyatt? Maybe the thing I want for Vince doesn’t exist anymore (not that I want him to graduate late and do drugs), he probably knows better than I do what’s what.

Ack! Sorry, it’s been a while. I was losing it for a bit there, esp at the end of last week (enough for Jeremy to take a look at me and ask if I needed to go back on antidepressants and/or therapy), but I’ve mostly re-righted myself. I feel good and even and well rested. I needed to back off on all the things, working at the hospital, working at work, worrying about college for Vince (<- this is the big one). Vince and I were in a terrible cycle where I was nagging him too much and he was getting despondent and we were upset at each other.

Mid-last week, Vince got a few applications in (Pitt, UMinn, Calpoly SLO & Calpoly-Pomona) and it was so painful for me to get Vince to do these things that Jeremy unilaterally took over starting on Friday and basically forbade me from looking at any college websites. I actually do not want, at all, to be involved in Vince’s college application experience, I think he should do all of it, but he does need some help and guidance and if I’m helping, I can get obsessed and too invested. I want to be only his mother where I give hugs/support/snacks/youtube video breaks and not his educational consultant where I tell him how to spin his extracurricular activities and estimate the odds of him getting into various engineering programs. I’m very good at applying to college and much less good at being a patient mother, but the priorities are such that I need to lean into my unnatural tendencies. Jeremy spent the weekend (I know that already a week has passed) coaxing Vince to write essays and looking over applications for completion and he fell into bed on those days (Sat & Sun) exhausted. I happily spent the weekend shopping for pants (what are the Levi’s 501 version of pants for girls? I just want to buy one type of pants forever and ever. None of this changing fashion stuff.) and eating hamburgers (twice) and thinking about becoming a vegetarian (after this very last hamburger) and generally staying out of the house. I’m happy Jeremy took over as then he realized how much work goes into each application and then he was more sympathetic to why the heck I was going crazy. I’m mainly going crazy because Vince is not doing college in any way shape or form the way I would do college. He wants to hand things in on the last day. He’s not willing to slave over wording on essays. I freak out because OMG, what happens if the web site crashes on the last day and you can’t submit it and I would have written all my essays in the summer. But you know, I wouldn’t have done high school the way he did high school. I think he had way more fun than I did. Fun is worth something, right? I think I’m incapable of having fun.

I think over the past week, I’ve slid into the other side. It’s always a fine balance. Now I’m bored. What to do? Learn spanish? Read Middlemarch? Learn to rock climb? Ping pong? Cooking? My motivation is low. It’s dark early. I want to just snuggle in my bed. I need a dog that snuggles with me. Maxi is no good for that purpose. I subscribed to the NYTimes cooking app and cooked a dinner for the family this week. Today I bought semolina flour and cardamom pods for an almond cake this weekend. Now Jeremy is giving me the side-eye. He knows when I start venturing into cooking meals for the family, I’m not busy enough.

When Jeremy got his colonoscopy a few months ago, the CRNA – as he was putting Jeremy under – asked, hey – do you have any chest pain? shortness of breath? and proceeded to move the sticky pads on his chest to try to reposition the leads on the cardiac monitor. Jeremy said he felt great, never better. The CRNA said – huh. you have this ST-elevation in your trace which is usually indicative of a person having a heart attack. And then they shrugged and went ahead and put him under for the procedure (??!!). Anyways, the procedure went fine and it took him like 4 follow up appointments to figure out that the ST-elevation was an anomaly that day for whatever reason. Which brought the total number of appointments stemming from that colonoscopy to 7. 1. Regular appt for checkup to get the order for the colonoscopy. 2. Preop appt. with GI doc. 3. Actual colonoscopy. 4. Follow up appt with reg doc for ST-elevation. 5. Follow up appointment with cardiologist. 6. Treadmill stress test. 7. 2D Echo appointment. Jeremy was a little fed up with all this.

Jeremy failed to go to the doctor right after his tumble from his bicycle. And he seems mostly OK now, the cuts/scrapes/bruises are healed. But there is a persistent fluid bump on his hip that we keep poking at. It is about 5 inches x 5 inches. Not at all bruised, but for sure squishy and probably contains about 50-100 cc of fluid. He was patiently waiting for it to resorb back into his body, but it seemed to not be changing over time. Finally, last night, I typed into google – trauma hip fluid lump and found that he probably has Morel-Lavallée lesion. He spent the night reading about it. Maybe it’ll need to be drained or debrieded? or have a wound vac? He said – this one guy needed a vacuum for six days! Do I need to spend six days in bed? I said they have cute portable wound vacs. Then I said he probably won’t need a wound vac. And he groaned that he has to go to the doctor again. I said he probably should have gone to the doc right after the bike accident for his head.

I went to Bert’s 7th birthday party on Saturday. Vickey knows how to throw a party. Most of the action was happening outside with a bouncy house and laser tag, but I stayed inside with Edda eating too many snacks. I was helping myself to some more chicken nuggets when I overheard one 8 year old tell her pal – Bert’s parties are always the best parties. Jen (Vickey’s identical twin sister even though they did not share the same amniotic sac) and I laughed and told the little girl to go find Vickey and tell her that.

I had Edda with me. Gina (Vickey’s mom) fed a very happy Edda some pirate booty.

I legit had a nightmare last night about nursing. I never have nightmares. Is this a sign? I don’t think so. I almost always have a feeling of dread or resignation going into a shift (a patient asked me last shift if I enjoyed being a nurse and I did say yes – no hesitation), but I’m usually very happy at the end of a shift having completed it. I dreamt that I was 90 minutes into a shift and the night nurse had failed to give me report. I couldn’t find her for the life of me. Then I went to the charge nurse and asked for the assignment sheet because I wasn’t sure who exactly were my patients. Then she handed me a piece of a paper which was indecipherable and I didn’t know any of the other nurses on the unit. Then I cursed out the charge nurse (! This shocked me even in my dream.). Then there were about 50 middle schoolers crowding the hallway rushing here and there and I wasn’t sure if I was suppose to take care of them or not. On a side note, I got a raise! I’ve never worked so hard for money in my entire life. I’m very happy I never became a doctor because, holy hell, it would have killed me.

Earlier this year I had asked Jeremy if U of I Urbana-Champaign should be on the list. I had a favorable impression of it. Jeremy dismissed it as being in the middle of nowhere. I was like, ah, the college is enormous – it is the town, it should be fine. Anyways, it remained off the list. Last week, Jeremy was sitting in Urbana-Champaign at a college cafe (probably nursing a boba tea and a slightly concussed head) and he said, there are so many hipster Asians here on campus after I drove hours through cornfields; is it on the list? I said, it is not on the &%&^# list! You said it shouldn’t be on the list. I can’t add it to the list, the list is already too long.

At the start of the school year, Vince’s SAT scores were pretty poor in relation to his grades. For example, Rutgers engineering for the middle 50% of admits had a weighted GPA of 3.7-4.2 and an SAT score of 1350-1500. Vince’s numbers were skewed – way above the high end for GPA and way below the low end for the SAT scores which left me confused how to structure the list. I feel since he’s an Asian male wanting to get into STEM, that low SAT score would tank him as the first to get cut. That’s why there are some schools on the list centered around his low SAT scores. (FH, I feel your pain. That damn test.) Anyways, he managed (somehow) to up his SAT scores another 80 points last month (a Hail Mary attempt), so now he’s mostly in the middle 50% of the SAT ranges of all the schools on the list to which I breathed a sigh of relief, maybe there is a chance but still likely the first cut as an Asian out-of-state guy. Vickey was like – now you gotta add U of Michigan to the list. I said – it’s still too much of a stretch for him. And she asked – will you be mad that he gets into all the schools on your list (minus the obviously out of range ones), that you didn’t try for anything more prestigious? I’m said no. Absolutely not. I will thank my lucky stars that he got into all the schools on the list. Anyways the *(*&^ list is too long. I can’t add to the list anymore.

Vince came home yesterday from talking to Ms. Vincent his physics teacher who is writing one of his recommendations. She suggested Purdue to him and he was excited about it. She said a bunch of her former students had gone and had a great time. One majored in engineering and theater both. I said it’s a great engineering school, a bit conservative, but you could become an astronaut. He wanted to add it to the list that is now really too *(&#& long.

We went to inclusion night at Wootton. Put on by the Best Buddies club. Snacks included pizza, chicken nuggets and cookies. Activities included Zumba & bocce ball. And we met Edda’s twin. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her, she looks exactly like Edda! We tried to get a picture of the two together, but Edda’s twin seemed to be a little bit scared of Edda and unwilling to stand right next her. Maybe they need a little time to get to know each other (they are in different classes). It was her helper with her and not her parents and so I asked if Edda’s twin was full Asian or half Asian and it turns out she’s full Asian.

Jeremy worked from home today, so I got to go to lunch with him. We went to the pizza place and ice cream place four hundred steps from our front door. I ordered the lunch special (2 slices of pizza and a drink) like I always do and the proprietor handed me a Diet Coke without asking me which drink I wanted. Jeremy looked at my like I was crazy and said, I didn’t think you ever drank diet Coke?! I said I only drank Diet Coke with the lunch special at this pizza place (which I go to quite often without Jeremy’s company – probably biweekly (not twice a week, but every two weeks. is that semi-monthly instead?)). The proprietor and I laughed about how I’m keeping secrets from Jeremy. Serious Diet Coke secrets.

When Bob & Katherine were decluttering their house, they found an old Star Wars sleeping bag of Ben’s all tattered and worn. I took it home and saved the outside cloth and reinforced (haha! get it? reinFORCEd?) and turned it into a quilt. Now I’m trying to get it to Sweden. UPS quoted me $200. USPS I think is going to be $90. Really?!?

Mom is back in town. She came in from the West Coast last night.

I think we are peak bruise from the bike crash. Jeremy asked me if I’d seen bruises this big at the hospital. And I told him I see them all the time on little old ladies who fall and break their hip.

And the day with Edda passes quickly. Somehow when I wake up to Edda’s soft laughter in my bedroom’s monitor, the day stretches out long. I have a list of things to do knowing that I will not do them. By day’s end we have done so very little except happily keep each other company in quietness. We napped together, we ate together. I made little progress in my book while she watched her familiar videos. I cycled loads of laundry through the washer/dryer knowing full well I will never fold.