Author: Doris

Jeremy bought himself this bike “rocker plate”. It’s suppose to add a bit of real-life tilting motion to a trainer ride. Jeremy and I both try to “train” as exercise. In other words, we both try to get faster at our respective exercise choice – biking for him, running for me. In reality (at least for me), I try and I usually can put together a good six week block of training, but I often get hurt (hamstrings usually, but the toes and knees and ankles have also contributed), busy, or exhausted and don’t forget also older and menopausal, and then it stops for a bit and I have to regroup and try again. This cycle has gone on for years, so really, in trying to get faster, I’m usually pleased that even if I’ll never be as fast as I once was, I have not lost too much ground. (Note: fast is a relative term. I’m slow, lol. but it’s still way faster than I thought I’d ever be able to run.) Jeremy still wants his best performances ahead of him. I think he’s overthinking things. He collects all this data – not only the exercise data, but now all this weird recovery data – mostly heart rate variability which supposedly measures the quality of one’s recovery and I think it psyches him out. Like you wake up, you think you had a great night of sleep and the body battery says – nope, you are really not well rested. Or it says the other way around, you had a lousy night of sleep and the body battery says – you are 100%, it’s a great day to do a hard workout. Then it messes with him. Honestly, for years, I’d marvel at Jeremy’s ability to do weeks/years/seasons of hard workouts. But now it’s more uneven and he can’t quite decide then what workout to do that day. Paul is still coaching me and one of the best parts of having workouts sent to you is that I never waver on what workout I’m doing that day. It almost doesn’t matter how I feel, I just keep trying to hit the workout. Many times, I fail at the workout – I’ve had whole blocks of training where I can’t do the prescribed workout. But sometimes (many times), I surprise myself and do something I thought I couldn’t do – and it doesn’t really seem to correlate to how rested/ready/recovered I am or feel.

Jeremy made dinner for my parents and us and neighbors and caregivers. We had dinner with my parents via zoom last night. They picked up their baked ziti that Jeremy made. Usually, Lee family dinner is Friday night, but my parents asked Jeremy to make a meal so in order to have time to cook, we moved it to a non-work day. My dad will be fully vaccinated on Friday and then his gig at Lowe’s will start two weeks after that. I asked him about the interview process if he first had to submit an application online and he said that he tried to but the place where you entered your birthday stopped in the 1950s so he couldn’t apply online! He just went to the store and asked for a job. On his phone, he showed the interviewer all the renovations he’s done to numerous houses and that he knows the store like the back of his hand. He also mentioned that in the past year, he’s spent tens of thousands of dollars on materials at the shop. (It literally is his favorite store). The person who did the drug screening looked at him and said – you must be really bored at home. My dad really likes meeting people and talking to them. I have the same itch which is why I like being a nurse. We both like the initial meeting, though I think my dad is better at parties and likes telling stories about himself and I like “forced” encounters – like both volunteering for the same boy scout camping trip or I’m your nurse today (I’m not very good at parties) – and I prefer listening to your stories rather than telling you mine. I’m curious to see how they will schedule him, he said he could work anytime, anydays. Is the 6am slot most popular for workers? Or the least popular? Will he work weekends only?

We’ve spoken to a happy Vince. Things are picking up in college. Birthday parties, outings to In ‘n Out, people sleeping in each others’ beds (?!), talk about getting tattoos. (I don’t need to know about the group tattoo trip, please don’t tell me about it until much, much later. Just spend $ and get a nice tattoo if you are going to get a tattoo.) I don’t want Vince to retract from telling me these things so I refrain from asking every three minutes – so you masking? outside? distancing? Fingers crossed he doesn’t get sick. I think he’s got to make it until May or June for his vaccine. I’m not entirely sure he’s going to make it without getting sick, apparently the entire 2nd floor of his dorm rented at house at Lake Tahoe for President’s day weekend and decamped from campus for presumably a weekend of college-age debauchery which somehow doesn’t conjure up images of keeping one’s own body fluids (all of them, every last aerosolized or non-aerosolized bit) to oneself. Also, he some questions about whether he can change his engineering major to a philosophy major (don’t ask, though I think the philosophy dept (and perhaps his grandfather) would be thrilled).

We were going to take Edda to Philly for an appointment Thursday, but that didn’t happen because of the snow. Today we got the notification of her bus schedule (which is wrong, but we’ll fix it) which starts March 1st. School is starting to feel real. The teacher’s union says it has “no confidence” in the reopening of schools. Edda is in the first group of 700 students coming back – less than 1%. We’ll see.

My dad, 79.5 years old and almost fully vaccinated, got a part-time job at the Lowe’s near his house. Twenty hours a week in the paint department. $17.62 an hour with 10% employee discount. I said to my friend, I guess if someone his age can be president then my dad can work in the paint department at Lowe’s. She replied, he can be president of the paint department! Lowe’s is literally my dad’s favorite store. He knows a lot about paint. I’m happy about this. I think my dad is itching to be out of the house with purpose and mom needs some alone time. And my dad is good at helping people with paint/diy/home projects. Start date is in two weeks. (Do you think Biden takes naps? I hope so. I’m only halfway there and I feel like I need to take naps now.)

Snow day here. Hunkering down.

Jeremy wanted a window bird feeder for Valentine’s Day. I warned him that I thought the birds would poop on the cars and seed would be all over the driveway, but his desire for cute birdies to accompany him though his long days filled with semi-stressful zoom calls outweighed my concerns and he ordered the bird feeder himself. He put it up last weekend and for days we did not see a single bird. But then I saw that all the sunflower seeds had been sheared open and thought that the birds had indeed found the feeder and that they had eaten all the “chocolate M&Ms out of the trail mix” in approximately 45 minutes and now they were down to the “hard raisin portion of the trail mix” and that he’d better refill it. He countered that they were scared to come to the window while anyone was there.

So he set up the camera which is generally used to track Edda at night to record her sleeping antics and placed it on top of a stack of children’s board books to monitor any avian activity. Now, he gets a text every time a car goes past our house. Or a neighbor walking a dog.

After a few? maybe dozens? of notifications of dogs pooping or Amazon deliveries arriving or cars trundling down the road, finally, today we got our first triumphant office bird sighting.

Edda is going back to school soon. This is a big deal. I’m sure the teachers are working hard and are anxious and perhaps unhappy to be going back. Some, not all! It’s hard to distance from Edda. Actually, it’s impossible to distance from Edda. She’ll have to be fed and cleaned. She’s a max assist kiddo. I’m eternally grateful for her teachers who, this year, have carried an exponential load bringing all the kids their virtual experience and now face the going back uncertainty and tumult. It’s scary, but I hope also hopeful? Anyways, I feel like we are entering a new phase of the pandemic. I’m trying to think of ways to support them, I really like Edda’s educational team. I have since the very beginning.

Happy day after Valentine’s Day, otherwise known as President’s Day. I worked at the hospital yesterday. I try to work every other Sunday (people don’t like working Sundays and that day can be short-staffed more than usual and Sunday’s can be quieter than the weekdays because people are kind of just waiting for Monday – try to not get sick on Sunday) and I mentioned to Jeremy as I was putting together this particular work schedule block that my usual Sunday would fall on Valentine’s Day and if that was OK (because I generally have full control of my nursing schedule) and he laughed and said I guess it is fair enough. Early in our marriage, Jeremy missed a number of Valentine’s Days. I think some were due to business travel, but one memorable one was when he wasn’t traveling and some head guy flew in from somewhere else and arranged a business dinner to happen on Valentine’s Day with three other guys – all of whom were husbands – and then complained that it was hard to make a dinner reservation at fancy restaurants. Yipes. I’m a poor holiday celebrator and usually scoff at holiday shenanigans, but this pandemic has made me crazy and I made valentines for my co-workers.

I bought bags of candy and grocery store chocolates and made goodie bags (I also included my favorite fancy-ish pens which I bought in bulk because no one loves a good pen more than nurses who still use pens every single day and they are surprisingly hard to find when the one you are using goes missing). I just willy-nilly started filling bags knowing that I needed to make about twenty even ones and I failed miserably and just left the detritus on the kitchen island in frustration with intentions to come back later.

But when I came back later, Jeremy had sorted all the candy in piles and determined how many of each one I could include in each goodie bag. That is true love. (He said I was driving him crazy with my method).

So this is our 25th valentine’s together and I bought this Valentine’s Day card for Jeremy. Normally, I don’t buy cards, but I wanted to buy a card for Vince and then I was standing in the Valentine’s Day card aisle feeling silly buying a card for my son and not my husband. So I picked out this one:

And I was only after I had given it to Jeremy, and he had read it and then I re-read it that I realized that it was supposed to be a card for a husband to give a wife. I swear, I swear it was tucked into the section listed as “For Husband”. Of course the better half is usually understood to be the wife and the lucky half is the husband. But I totally feel like the better half is Jeremy and the lucky half is me. OK, if you asked our friends or acquaintances, who is nicer? Jeremy or Doris? Jeremy insists that almost everyone would say that I’m nicer. And I acknowledge this: I come across as friendlier, more approachable, I probably smile way more. Jeremy can come across as more serious, aloof and probably (who am I kidding? absolutely) more pretentious. But I will tell you, Jeremy is the nicer, more generous, optimistic and kinder one. With me, it is only with Jeremy’s example that I’ve learned all my skills with kindness, generosity, openness. He’s allowed me to grow into my own true self. With him, it is all there – the goodness is inherent in his person. With me, I am a more insecure person and therefore, I had to learn to overcome my feelings of insecurity which include pessimism, shame, envy, jealousy, selfishness and competitiveness. I’m the lucky half because without Jeremy I could not have become the person I am today and I’m happy with myself. He encourages me in all my endeavors. When I was learning to be a nurse full time and my schedule was unpredictable and he was traveling for his work at least once or twice a month, he cancelled all but his most necessary travel for almost a full year to accommodate this endeavor to be there for both me and for the kids. Did I have to nurse full time? No, but I wanted to and Jeremy was there to help me out. Jeremy feeds me everyday, he makes sure I’m OK everyday, heck, he wakes up with me before every nursing shift (5:30 am) to make me a lunch – even on the every other Sunday. A shout out to both sets of parents who, between them, have over a century of married life and who set fine examples of affectionate and collaborative marriages.

And we both went to the grocery store (separately) and picked out the exact same gift for each other from the seasonal candy aisle. Aisle is a hard word to spell.

Good riddance to the year of the rat (my year!) Hello, year of the ox.

Maxi having her occasional panic attack where she hides under our desks and shivers. We’ve been giving her some natural anti-anxiety meds recommended by the vet which seemed to have been working, but not yesterday. Jeremy wants to try some CBD. We’ll see.

Keyla, our au pair from a few years ago, extended her au pair experience an extra year after being with us for a year and moved to California to be with another family. There, she fell in love with an American and is getting married to him. They now live in Colorado. The wedding was suppose to be in Buenos Aires last November, but that didn’t happen. They rescheduled at that time for Buenos Aires in March, 2021. But that became complicated as well, so they are doing it on the day they picked in March, but they are doing it in Estes Park, CO. I texted her a little note giving warm wishes for a beautiful wedding day, and she was like – come! come to my wedding! I’d love to see you. I was caught off guard and said – oh! I can’t come, I was just going to watch the zoom feed. But then Jeremy said – maybe you should go, it should be ok. And then the thought of going is overwhelming me (in a good, delicious way). I was like – I get to take a plane ride, rent a car, see people. Eat with other people. See Keyla! Meet her beau! Go to a wedding! But I thought about it and even if it’s outside with only 20 other people, here is no way I’m not kissing and hugging Keyla and everyone if I go. How is that even possible? Honestly, for a variety of reasons, I think the wedding will be relatively well attended and indoors (can it really be outside in March in Colorado??) and how can you not eat/drink at a wedding? I thought I was going to break my isolation gently and slowly, like maybe with a dinner with two other people. But Jeremy was like – maybe you should just go big. Break it for a good, wonderful, occasion.

Speaking of Buenos Aires, initially I was hoping to go the city to see if I could get along in Spanish at all. And the answer is no. I can not. I’m stuck learning sentences in which I “know” all the words, but nothing makes any sense. I’m trying to learn idioms. All these simple sentences which don’t translate well: Whatever it is, it’s something good either way. What do you mean he’s not here? She’s around. Awesome! How far are you? He’s never as nice as us. Yes, everything, even the house. It was time to be at home. I’m home again. Actually, I am happy.

Sometimes you look outside and are surprised that you have a snowman in your front yard. It’s a good one! The snow was perfect for snowman building. And we have a resident toddler – a good combo for snowman making.

We celebrated Sofi’s tenth outside before the start of the Super Bowl. In the most exciting way I could think of pandemic-wise: with sparklers. Yes, I’m wearing one of those blanket/sweatshirt things.

We were lucky enough to secure a vaccine appointment on Monday for Edda. Edda’s teacher texted us late Friday night saying that they opened some slots at a hospital about 30 minutes away from us and kept encouraging us to keep trying with the website (we almost gave up after being stymied for 15-20 minutes). It took us about 30 minutes to get the appointment using the clunky website (kept kicking us out and kept saying no appointments available, you had to keep refreshing). Jeremy took her for her 5:50 pm appointment and they waited outside for almost an hour. We were lucky also that they had the Pfizer one which Edda is OK to take as she is 16. She qualified as Group IB tier 2, a person with developmental disabilities. Since it was the last appointment of the day, I was hoping Jeremy could maybe ask for an extra dose, but the lines were long and they were already running late and there was already a long group of people waiting to see if there were going to be extra doses at the end of the day, so it didn’t work out, but that’s fine. Jeremy is OK to wait.

She got her little sticker. We are going to give her Motrin for a couple of days. Last night, she had a hour long low-grade seizure (?) I can’t tell anymore – during dinner.

Edda is going to be the first to go back to school starting March 1st. Four days a week. We are excited and looking forward to it. A bit nervous, but still excited.

I went sledding with Sofi yesterday. I don’t think I’ve been sledding in over a decade. Sofi is a cool kid and I like hanging out with her and we have nice mid-day walks almost every weekday, but I have to say – it is 10000x easier to go sledding with a kid who is not your kid. There was no whining, no complaining about snow in boots or that the sled was too heavy to carry. It was pure fun from start to finish. We walked to the park, tied Max to a trash can, and went down the hill a few times together and many times just Sofi. I did go down this mini-mogul with her, which was fun when we were sailing through the air, but the landing was a little harder than I think I should ask my spine to withstand a second time.