Vince was suppose to go to the dentist on his own yesterday, but ended up not feeling very well. So he took the day off of school and I drove him to the appointment. I did drop him off (though Vince called me while I was pulling out onto the main road and said – they say you have to be here! and then I pulled over and called him back and said, can I talk to them? and heard him walk back into the office and hand the phone over to the receptionist and told her – I signed all the paperwork last week! and she said, oh yeah, that’s right and then I could do my errands) and ended up running three errands while he was getting his teeth cleaned. Getting groceries, going to the UPS store and buying fake flowers for Edda’s hair for homecoming. 30 min, back to pick Vince up. Vince taught me about Memojis a few days ago. And then what VSCO girls are a few days before that. What am I going to do when he’s gone?
Edda’s going to homecoming this weekend. On her own. Edda has a very enthusiastic teacher who is chaperoning the dance. And there is a Best Buddies club with students who want to include the special ed students more into the community. The teacher insists that Edda’ll be in the mix on the dance floor and not off to the side. It’s very sweet. There is only one other kid from Edda’s class who is going, we’ve not met him, but he’s a social butterfly and loves dances. I’m not sure if Edda is going to love it or if she’s going to be determined to fall asleep in her wheelchair. Kitachi and I took Edda to Montgomery Mall to find a good outfit since we had the day off for YK. I was a little surprised that the girl teens that we know suggested Macy’s as the place to go (it seems unhip to me, but what do I know?) and we found a *fabulous* outfit for Edda (though they forgot to take the don’t-steal-me sensor off and I’ll have to go back tomorrow). I’ll show you the ones we didn’t choose. You’ll have to wait for the big reveal on Sat.
The bathrobe.
I’m calmer about college applications these days – maybe even a bit excited instead of worried. Vince went to the Rutger’s visit to his high school and came back enthusiastic about it and then promptly wrote down the times when the other schools were visiting to try to make it to those sessions. He’s planning on going to a UOregon reception downtown this weekend. He’s interested in chemical engineering, chemistry and food science. Maybe microbiology? The food science is an interesting angle to me.
Saturday, we met up with Joe at Rockoberfest in downtown Rockville. I chided them for not buying the beer steins, but they said that they were $10 and you saved only $.50 per 24 oz of beer, so that’s a lot of beer to drink to recoup costs.
Jeremy took Edda downtown (where was Vince? oh yes, recovering from the last round of SATs that morning, pretty much the very last date to take them. I did not pay for SAT prep, but I certainly paid for many rounds of SAT taking. This time he realized he was losing points for not knowing: your & you’re & there & their, etc. omg. vince.) while went for my run and I met them in downtown to say hello and take Edda home with me. I forget that I look ridiculous in my running outfit and that I needed something warmer once I stopped running. I borrowed Edda’s jacket.
That night, I had a lovely dinner with my father and relatives with Edda at Founding Farmers (no photo!) and Vince and Jeremy went to the scout’s outing to the corn maze.
I worked on Sunday and Monday at the hospital. I realized (finally! after more than a year) that my watch does not accurately count the number of steps that I take during a shift because I spend a lot of time walking and hauling my computer around on this little wheeled workstation and when I’m grabbing it, the watch is unable to count those steps because my arm isn’t swinging. For a whole year after each shift, I’m like these steps seem kinda low for the amount of walking that I’m doing and then I’d shrug and try to go to sleep. So I’m excited to strap my watch to my ankle for the next shift and see how many steps I get in because I literally do not stop moving the whole time. I got an IV in on Sunday which I was really proud of because when it infiltrated 24 hours and I had to call the IV nurse, it took her three tries to get it in. It was a challenging two days, but I had some of my favorite coworkers on those shifts.
Today we went to Edda’s IEP meeting. It’s our second year at her school and it’s nice getting to know people.
We took Edda to her regular dental appointment today. Last time I went just by myself and it was really hard to get a good cleaning. You really need 4 people. I straddle her legs while she’s sitting in her chair and hold her hands, Jeremy holds her head steady and then the dentist and hygienist can do their jobs without worrying about her body. Only her teeth. She can bite and bite hard, but I think the dentist has a lot of practice keeping her fingers clear from chompers. It went well. We’ve gone through phases where we’ve been worse at cleaning her teeth, but we seem to be in a good spot now. Vince has an appointment next week, I signed all the paperwork so that he can drive himself to the appointment and do it on his own without me – that’ll be fantastic. Then the scheduler said, let’s make the next 6th month appointment which will be in April. She mentioned that I won’t need to sign the papers then because he will be 18!!! I have less than 6 months. And I mentioned this to Vince and he said – OMG, I’m going to have to find my own doctors and dentists in college, right?
On the way to the dentist.
I think Edda’s going to homecoming this year. I think she might have a date. Kitachi and I are going to go shopping for a dress next Wed when the schools have off for Yom Kippur.
I’m still in a weird mood. I’m fighting productivity. I usually love writing checklists and crossing off the items, but now I’m resenting it. I just want to sit around and do the NYTimes crossword puzzle (I subscribed to the app. Fantastic.) Vickey recommends the game Cooking Craze, but I’m scared to download it. I think I would never work again. At the with the crossword puzzle, you finish it and then you have to wait a whole ‘nuther day for a new game.
Jeremy rode to work this morning and sent me this photo. He’s the one who is motivated enough these days to wake up in the dark and start biking at 6 am. I like to sleep in when I can which was today! I was at the hospital yesterday, it was a fine shift. Busy, but completely manageable. I sent three people to surgery and got them back (lap chole, lap appy, removal of an infected permacath). I really need to learn Spanish. 2/5ths of my patients spoke only Spanish. I have no time this fall. Maybe this spring. I only have to have to memorize about 10 different conversations. The shift before was really terrible and when I have a terrible shift, the shift right after the terrible shift gets me anxious.
On Rosh Hashanah, the kids were off school. Kitachi had Edda for the day and she went to her mom’s house and her dog, Waku loved to sit on Edda’s lap. I want a dog like this. A dog that will sit on Edda’s lap all day. Maxi is actually a little bit anxious and aloof. Not a snuggler. I miss that from Ruby.
I spent the weekend in a bad mood. And I can’t let the bad mood be. I get mad at myself for being in a bad mood, why, why, why when the rest of the world is so screwed up and there are people who are actually suffering that you can’t be content with your contentful life? Then I waste extra energy on it. I can still feel the bad mood this morning. Sigh. I know it’s mostly hormone driven, but you can’t think clearly when everything is irritating you all or making you sad or whatever all the time. I run through all the things I’m supposed to do to make the bad mood go away – go outside, talk to a friend, pretend I’m happy, go for a run, cook, talk to myself like I’m my best friend “it’s ok, Doris, it’s just a bad mood”, do some jumping jacks, gently tell myself when I hear the words – “I suck. I suck. I suck.” that it’s not true. Ahhhh.. grrr. When I get this way, I get needy in a kind of unattractive way. (Is needy ever attractive? No.) I go around the house asking people to give me a pep talk and tell me that I’m doing great. Vince complies, but rolls his eyes.
I gave all the $ that I w(sh)ould have spent on Vince’s college prep stuff to Edda’s special needs program. The class goes out twice a week for the entire year to learn life skills – like grocery shopping or home depot projects or to the post office. The budget for the entire year was $130. For 14 kids! For 50-ish outings! Crazy. So that money went there.
Edda on an outing with her class. Enjoying birthday cake I hear.
College applications are painful. None of us likes it. All of us like the going to college part. The applying part sucks so much. And I hate saying it sucks because, what the hell, Edda is not going to apply to college. She’s stuck at home with needy, moody me. I should be grateful. For Vince going, for us to be able to be able to afford to pay to apply & attend. I suck for not feeling grateful. I get anxious about the deadlines and remind Vince of them daily – you need to get transcripts, you need to get recommendations, where is the essay?, and the supplemental essays?, Jeremy is trying to help out by playing mediator and with the tracking of deadlines, Vince looks at me and is like – do I really have to tell them now what I’m going to study? How do I know now what I want to do later? Who the hell ever knows what they want to do with their life? Do I know what I’m doing (besides trying to encourage you to apply to college by the published deadlines)? I have no idea. Do you ever read a memoir where someone is like – I knew I was going to do this when I was 4 years old and I have not wavered from that goal for 68 years? That person is lucky. The rest of us bumble along and try to figure it out each day like a drunken, walker and as you are trying to figure it out, random things happen, like earthquakes that flatten your house or you meet a beautiful, enchanting person that you can’t take your eyes off of and then you have to change directions completely. I am trying to be grateful. I’m trying to be nice. I have only 10 months left with Vince in the house and I will try not to ruin the past (relatively sane) 17 years with 10 months of bad mothering behavior. Jeremy tells me not to let it go, he tells me to roll with it.
Ten thousand college web pages. And laundry. Always laundry.
We had Sunday night dinner with neighbors and family. I made Lauren’s mom’s famous (well, famous to us) kugel for Rosh Hashanah. The Jews at the table declared it delicious, one of the best kugels they had ever eaten. The rest of us were like – hmmm, a noodle casserole for dessert? sure, I’ll try it. I’ll post the recipe here for my future reference.
My plant started to send out new shoots this past week. I’m not sure why it failed to do this all summer while it was outside and as soon I moved it inside, it was all happy and decided to grow. This is how exciting my week has been.
My husband loves me so much that he will snag a free bottle of relish for me from his office.
My dad came over for dinner last night. The first thing he wanted to do was to go on our computer to get some BOGO offer from McDonald’s. He had already gotten it on his computer and they wouldn’t let him redeem the offer twice.
My dad and I went to Vince’s Court of Honor where he was the emcee. The court of honor is a quarterly ceremony to give out rank advancement and merit badges. He did a great job! Told two punny stories (I wish I had taken a video, but I had no advanced warning he was going to do what he did) which went over well and got through the entire ceremony in just under 30 minutes. All the parents were grateful as sometimes these can go as long as 90 minutes.
Had lunch with Amy at the Spot in Rockville. Which was not as lively as we thought it was going to be.
omg. Ordering is so complicated these days. To order the drink I had to decide which drink out of 10,000 drinks and then decide: size, sugar level, ice level, and any toppings that I wanted.
I resisted coming home from vacation. I promised myself that I would not think about anything on my to-do list while away and I did a pretty good job with that, but as soon as we were driving home I was not looking forward to being home. Traveling alone with Jeremy is full of the ease that comes from 20 years together, we generally know what the other person likes to do and we can accomodate without realizing what needs adjusting. We can talk or not talk. Do something or do nothing. It’s all good. This kind of travelling is unobtainable with anyone else. Just adding children or parents or friends – no matter how well you know them or how much you love them, travel is just stressful no matter how beautiful the destination (I’ve been grumpy in Europe, at National Parks, perhaps in Hawaii?). Someone wants to sleep in, someone hates the restaurant choice, someone gets sick, someone thinks you are not spending enough money, someone always gets grumpy splitting the check evenly when one person order 2 drinks and an app and all they had was a burger.
We came home to an upset Vince who had a bad time over Homecoming weekend. We talked through the emotional events of the weekend. I remember as a teenager, everything was so earth shattering. I loved so strongly, I hated equally as strongly, I despaired over everything. Now, everything is so muted for me – at least muted compared to what it was like when I was 17. What is there to say to an upset teenager? That we’ve all been there before? Awkward dances? Feeling like you don’t know what to do? Feeling like no one likes you or understands you? Or also the exact opposite, feeling amazing and in love and that no one has ever been in love as much as you are in love right now. All the love songs suddenly make sense!
Thank you Ning & Brian for hanging with Edda this weekend so we could have some time to ourselves. We told them we’d repay the favor when Noah is old enough and they are ready.
I had a challenging (note: I did not say terrible) shift yesterday. I did not stop moving the whole time. At no point was I like – OK, I have a few minutes to sit and chart. I did eat because I now know if I don’t take 15 min to eat, I will end up crying. Highlights:
