Author: Doris

It’s early Sunday morning and I’m sitting in bed in our windowless hostel room in Ohiopyle, PA. I’m hoping to get this blog post done in 10 min and get on outta here for a run as the sun goes up. We are out of the house for the weekend, just the two of us. Celebrating our 20 & 21st anniversary and our 50th, 51st, 46th and 47th birthdays (we are a little behind). We should have spent an extra $100 and stayed in the motel across the street with windows. I have nothing against this hostel, I don’t mind the shared bathroom (we didn’t share the bedroom), but I do mind not having a window only because I’m sure I’ll die a trapped, fiery death – but I didn’t so I guess it’s fine to have it be pitch black to sleep well (which we did only 50% of the time. We each had one good night of sleep and one bad night of sleep though we went to sleep at the luxurious hour of 9pm. A true vacation. lol.) We went to Ohiopyle because of a bunch of Frank Llyod Wright houses and because of good biking/running/hiking.

On Friday, Jeremy started early from the house and rode 100 miles towards PA. I stayed at home and saw everyone off to school and did a bunch of small errands (including trying to try out a Peloton treadmill for a friend because she wanted to know if it was as good as a Woodway which is the treadmill I love to run on at the gym (both the Peloton and Woodway are slatted treadmills instead of the regular belt treadmill) – I almost always can run on the single Woodway at the gym because no one cares about cardio at the climbing gym and I also wanted to try out the Peloton streaming class service, but I went to the Mall instead of the Row so I failed at this mission). I drove up to the meeting place about an hour away from DC (the whole time I’m driving, I’m like – I cannot believe that Jeremy is biking this far. It’s unbelievable.).

We met up and then went to McDonald’s for lunch and headed to Polymath Park, the first Wright destination. People are crazy, moving houses from really far away to this property. They try to save Wright houses from being razed. And then they raise them here in PA. We had dinner there as well.

Then we went to Ohiopyle. I didn’t realize that it was such a water sport area, I had only packed for architectural touring and running and eating. We thought about booking a Sat morning guided boat adventure, but I had only one pair of skinny jeans and running shorts and Dansko clogs. Next time. For sure next time!

Gorgeous weekend. Lots of biking. A bit of running. Now it’s Sunday morning, Jeremy left early this am to ride about 100 miles back to MD. I’m going to go for a run and then meet up with him somewhere. He sent me a pinned location on Google maps.

Meanwhile at the home front, Vince is going/went to homecoming. The BOMS (boy poms) performed at the pep rally on Friday afternoon.

I got a big kick out of this today. Here is Bob L*anger and Frances A*rnold at the Met this week with Steven Tyler. So funny! I’ve worked in both those labs (where I learned (very slowly) that science research is not for me) and I’ve also sung along to Aerosmith songs.

My father is home alone without my mother for about a month until she comes back from the West Coast. I let him borrow Maxi for a few days. I texted a little while ago to see how Max is doing and I got this text back. Apparently Max is eating steak and McDonald’s. She is never going to want to come back home.

It is spirit week in RM, homecoming is this weekend. Vince is performing at the pep rally in the all-male dance pom squad. That should be fun, they are practicing on the field today. Each day this week was a different theme. I found a white sheet for toga day.

There is a date for homecoming dance. Vince went out and bought an outfit (at Macy’s! on sale!) and had Jeremy tie the tie for him.

We are going to miss the whole ritual on Saturday night. We arranged for childcare for Edda months ago for this weekend to celebrate all the cancelled celebrations from last year (50th birthday for Jeremy, our 20th wedding anniversary, my birthday) and this year (where we spent both our birthdays at Costco) – way before Vince managed to find a lovely girl to agree to go with him to homecoming. Actually homecoming was never even on our radar as Vince had never expressed an interest in going. But then, something happened and he was interested. It crossed my mind to cancel the trip because this would be Vince’s first and only homecoming, but I had cancelled so many things last year when I was learning to be a nurse, I just couldn’t really cancel this trip.

We went out to support Julie P-C at our local micro-brewery last night.

Started figuring out college applications. I think we’ve opened like 7 new online accounts. And I had to go to youtube videos to figure out how to link the accounts to ask for transcripts. It’s like a 2nd (or 3rd) part time job. Jeremy texted this photo about the MIT Media Lab. hahahahaha. I’m getting emails from MIT every three days apologizing over and over again for taking that money. As if money only ever comes from goodness.

Last week was a doozy. I felt like everything was overwhelming and that I couldn’t possibly keep up. When I get overwhelmed and then a little cloud settles on my brain, then the rate at which I get anything done slows down and it reinforces my perception that I can’t possibly get everything done that I want to get done. I’m too overcommitted & the family is too overscheduled. Sometimes I try harder to get at it, but often what needs to happen is to take a nap and not fight it. To let the mood move through you. But sometimes I need to not mope in bed and get out of bed and get moving again. It’s a tricky thing. And as Vickey says, it all gets done in the end somehow. And it does.

Was it because I turned 47 on Saturday? I don’t really think so. I had a very nice weekend and today, Monday morning, I feel good. We had so many dinner guests this past week, so when Jeremy heard that there was to be only three of us (Vince was out) on Friday night, he said – let’s go out, we’ll celebrate early. And we went to Founding Farmers, and although I didn’t think it was going to be anything extraordinary, we had a great time. Edda ate well (she’s been having trouble eating recently. It’s almost as if she’d forgotten she was hungry. She would take many minutes to decide to take a bite of food (even her very favorites, sweets and fruits, took a long time) and then she would hold the food in her mouth – like a chipmunk. This is not like her. For a Rett girl, she eats happily and well and competently. I was worried, maybe she had suffered a concussion in her fall on the first day of school and forgotten how to eat.) We had, what seemed like, a seven course dinner, including two courses of dessert.

Saturday, I had a very nice birthday run in which I started early before it got warm and I paced perfectly so I felt strong through to the end. A wonderful birthday gift to myself. Then I admired all the wrinkles which have taken me 47 years to make. Generally, I’m OK with the grey and the wrinkles. We’ll see what happens. I can change my mind, though I think my inner cheapness will always win out on my outer beauty.

I did spend the afternoon of my birthday in a mild funk, but then we went to Costco and Jeremy made me a wonderful birthday dinner. A roast, a salad with candied walnuts.

I look so much like my mother these days.

Vince’s big Eagle Scout project was this weekend as well. Three meals for 65 people each at the local homeless shelter. Dinner on Sunday night and then delivery of breakfast and lunch for Monday.

They used the church’s kitchen. Please admire the hair nets which took me consulting 4 friends, asking at the Ulta store and running around to three different places to procure them the morning of the cooking. Though Jeremy help drive the kids around, he stayed out of the kitchen and Vince coordinated all the cooking. Chicken for dinner, pancakes for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch. Jeremy called me and said, Vince brought no papers, no recipes, no notes. Sigh. But it all got done somehow.

Delivery at the shelter.

Publicity!

And the handshake. Well done.

And my father is back in town – hello to Edda.

I’m quite tired. I asked Jeremy tonight why I’m so tired. All week, I’ve felt like I’m sleeping enough and then Jeremy said – we are not sleeping enough. We are not asleep until 11 and we are getting up at 5:30. That is not enough sleep.

We hosted four dinners for ten each weekday night. Thank goodness it was the same ten! Alice’s husband was out of town for the week and normally, I wouldn’t host four consecutive dinners for the same group of people, but we had extenuating circumstances. It was fun and I was happy we were able to pull this off. On Thursday night, both Jeremy and I were out of the house (Jeremy at a downtown meeting and me at BTSN) and the group dinner still happened over takeout Chinese food.

I spent a lot of the week doing lots of paperwork for my hospital job. I had to renew my CPR certification one morning. And then I had to go to my annual health checkup at work in which they’ll fit you for an N95 mask (airborne precautions), do your blood test for sugar, lipids, take a BP (all fantastic. I’m like a 20 year old inside.) and then run the TB testing (I am negative I DO NOT HAVE TB). The CDC just recommended that annual screening for health care workers can be dropped because the rate that healthcare workers get TB is extremely low. But it didn’t stop me from fretting for a whole 48 hours that I had TB because I had redness/puffiness around the injection site which I obsessed over (I’ve never ever had a hint of reaction at any other TB test I’ve ever done) and scoured the internet for hours for pictures to compare my arm to. We had a TB patient on our unit for SIX months. We all rotated taking care of him. I asked if that counted as an exposure and the checkup people said it did not because the patient was in the special air handling room and we all wore our N95 masks and he was taking his antibiotic cocktail (mostly). I know all the ED nurses get random people off the street coughing on them all the time some with active TB, so I shouldn’t be that scared because the CDC recommendation must have included the thousands of ED health care workers. But I was. And then I spent time regretting ever becoming a nurse and thinking to myself every good deed gets punished. One the first night after the test, I woke up at midnight and checked my arm for induration and was sure it was positive and then resisted waking Jeremy up. I managed to fall asleep until 5am and then I woke him up and told him I was worried but that I managed to not wake him up at midnight and he said – thank you. thank you for not waking me up at midnight to say that you have TB. Upon telling Vickey my concerns, first she said – wait, when was the last time I saw you? Do you think I need to get tested for TB? And then second she said – if you die from consumption, at least you will be signing a beautiful song in wonderful lighting like in Moulin Rouge (Nicole Kidman) or Les Miserable (Fantine).

Thursday night was BTSN for Vince. Jeremy was at a meeting downtown. This is his favorite teacher who teaches him math. (I forgot her name). Everyone spent their ten minutes talking about their test scores. We score awesome on all the AP testing. We are prepping for the AP test. They are totally going to be prepared. They will be prepared for college. No one talked about how beautiful science and math can be. I didn’t even need for them to say how beautiful science is, maybe I just wanted a list of what they were going to learn in science/math? Not that intro calculus or chemistry changes that much in 30 years. But still. Come on people, I love a good test score, but I also love chemistry. It’s fall of senior year for Vince. I will miss going to back to school night next year. I hope I’m doing right by him. I have my doubts.

Here’s the list: Carnegie Mellon, Haverford, UMd – College Park, U Wisconsin (Madison), U of Oregon (Eugene), U of Washington (Seattle), UC (Irvine, Davis, Santa Cruz), Cal Poly SLO, Pitt, Drexel, U Toronto, U British Columbia, Rutgers. He wants to apply to the engineering schools and he’s an engaged and motivated student. I’m sure all his teachers enjoy having him in their classes, he participates a lot and isn’t afraid to say his ideas and he loves group work (mostly. He still gets frustrated by the one person who doesn’t pull their own weight and never answers the group texts). He likes to think about concepts and understand them, but he is indifferent to acing the tests which, I will admit, is infuriating to me. So a common (but weird) scenario is that he’s tutoring other kids to better grades than he is getting himself. WTF? How is that even possible? He’s gotten a lot of Bs in math/science classes (which are hard classes, but not the hardest at our magnet school which he turned down the offer to take) and then his test scores are a bit on the low end, slightly lower than expected for the level of classes he’s taking and then on top of that, one has to subtract 100 to 150 points for being Asian (if he says he’s Asian, if he says he’s not Asian, it just hurts my feelings to which Jeremy and Vince are both surprised at my hurt feelings) so that’s a bummer. I’m not sure how being out state plays in whether it’s an advantage or not. We’ll see! I think this is a reasonable list. I didn’t do any of the things I’m supposed to do. I didn’t pay for SAT prep (goes without saying that I didn’t pay $15,000 to do SAT cheating). I didn’t get his slight dyslexia (so much trouble spelling. like the word “turkey”) formally diagnosed so that he’d get extra time on all his tests. I’m not going to pay for a college coach. I didn’t get him diagnosed with ADHD and put him on Adderall which now I’ve come to realize is a common thing. I didn’t hound him on all his homework. He says he’s not cheating – not participating in the legions of group chats in which the kids text each other about what’s on the exams. So I’ll take the Bs and the lower SAT scores and figure it out from there.

I biked there because parking was going to be terrible at the school and then I met up with Jeremy who ended up back at the Rockville station at the same time BTSN ended. We snuck off and had an ice cream date.

Julia stayed at our house last night. She has been traveling since June on a road trip from LA staying with friends along the way. I hope someday I can do a leisurely road trip across America seeing good friends along the way. I came home after dinner, tired from a shift at the hospital. It was my 2nd shift in a row and even though I thought the day was entirely manageable (challenging, but manageable), I could feel my mental acuity drop the 2nd half of the day. I haven’t yet recovered from it – I slept poorly last night.

Edda’s wheelchair is slightly broken. I need to replace a sheared bolt.

We are hosting dinners this week – neighbors all around. Tuesday taco night!

Vince hosted a party on Friday night. Jeremy hosted a party on Saturday night. Vince’s party was non-alcoholic. Jeremy’s was kind of alcohol centered.

But this meant that when Vince was having his party, we had to leave all the beer in the car because it just seemed weird to be bringing in cases of beer into a teenager-y party. So we didn’t bring the beer into the house on Saturday morning.

Jeremy’s 51st birthday was on Saturday. We celebrated by going to Costco and spending about $800. New glasses for Jeremy. Loading up on supplies for Edda’s classroom (kleenex, clorox wipes, paper towels) and party supplies and the week’s grocery shopping. I’m hoping these glasses will solve all 40% of my marital problems since about 40% of my conversations with Jeremy are about how bad his eyes are and how all 4 pairs of glasses are inadequate in some way and he can’t read anything.

Jeremy hosted a “fun”draiser for our friend Cindy who is running for Rockville City Council on Saturday night. It’s nice to host a party because the house gets scrubbed down to be presentable (Vince didn’t scrubbed down the house for his party.)

Sunday night dinner birthday cake for Jeremy. I missed this! 🙁 Trust me, we do have an anniversary/birthday celebration planned that is more involved that Costco and trips to the diner.

Exciting and stressful first week of senior year. As I write this, Vince is hosting a party downstairs. I’m not quite sure what is going on, all I know is that they are doing Shabbat with Arizona ice tea and Maxi is trying to eat all the popcorn. As for the first week regarding non-party stuff – Was there crying (both on the son side and the mom side)? Yes. Was there feeling like a failure (both on the son side and the mom side)? Yes. So, it’s all going as expected. But Vince also decided to join the BOMS team (the boy pom team) so I got to see him dance (at the house, by himself) to Fergalicious and that was hilarious. We also watched Pitch Perfect 2 together which is surprisingly and unexpectedly really racist for such a recent film.

Edda fell on the first day of school. Pretty hard. She was sitting in a chair and then shifted her weight quickly and ended up on the floor on her knees and her face. When I got the email mid-day – you get that welling up of tears starting from the back of your throat and then to the back of your eyes and then you’re almost crying – I couldn’t really bear to answer it, Jeremy answered it for us. I was like – why didn’t they seat belt her into the chair, they know sometimes she tries to stand up unsteadily. Well, that was answered on Back to School Night when the teachers apologetically explained that her chair actually has a seat belt, but they can’t use it because technically, it’s a restraint and you can’t restrain a student. I groaned and understood – there are lots of rules about restraints at the hospital. I asked if I could sign something to OK the use of a seat belt. We’ll try to figure it out. So we have bruised knees. We did go to BTSN on Thursday for Edda. A mini-date of sorts, we biked to the school together because I knew the lot and the surrounding neighborhood was going to be full and it would take just as much time to park half a mile away and walk compared to just biking and parking by the front door. The whole time I told Jeremy he was not to make fun about how slow I was going, but he said I wasn’t too slow and then we went to eat ice cream. We wore the crazy reflective vests and all the bike lights. It was really fun, we rarely get to to that kind of stuff together.

I’m holding $15,000 worth of medication in my hand. My poor pal. There’s been helping out & shuttling to downtown medical appointments this week.

Jeremy’s birthday is tomorrow. His work celebrated today.

Sunday we went out to lunch to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We wanted to go a brand new lunch place in Rockville Town Center, but we got there right after 12:15 pm and the place was full and there was a line. As it was the very first public lunch they were serving and no one had their food yet, I thought it best to go elsewhere and we ended up at the Woodside Deli which was fine, but not my favorite. Somehow I had hoped it would be a little more festive than a bacon, egg, spinach & cheese breakfast sandwich, but it was fine. I think it was more our moods than the place. Jeremy had come in at dinner time on Sat and I was working at the hospital on Labor Day, so Sunday was all we got.

I worked Labor Day at the hospital. It was nice, quiet-ish.

Day after Labor Day, the kids went off to school. Vince via bike.

Edda via bus.

Vince is excited to be a senior. Got senior bagel breakfast on the first day and his senior class shirt.

I want so much for this to be a good year for him with a smooth transition to college. We are working on it.

Since Vince is the scout leader, he has to go to all the extra events and show up early and leave late. It’s extra time.