Author: Doris

Edda’s been back at her regular after school program just for this week. During the summer, they hold sessions from noon-4pm. Edda’s been at all day Camp JCC, so this is the first week that she’s been back with the regular crew. They haven’t been feeding her lunch :(. The first day, I thought they just missed her lunch box which was tucked into her backpack. I texted and made sure lunch was part of the day and they said it was and then today, lunch came back uneaten again! Poor girl. Eliana fed her her lunch when they got home at 4:30 pm on both days. Hopefully, she’ll get lunch tomorrow.

Jeremy headed to Baltimore today for a meeting. He doesn’t often leave the house in a suit. Most times he needs a suit he changes into and out of it at his office, wearing the suit only for the meeting he needs the suit for. He was grumpy today, but it turns out it was mostly because he is trying to lose weight and did not eat.

This was the first day that neither me nor Jeremy worked the fair. Poor Vince, he had a tough(ish) day yesterday. A few scouts took too long of a lunch break/dinner break and came back to their posts late. Vince had to deal with that. Otherwise, everything is going smoothly. I’ll be there tomorrow.

On Saturday, Edda and I went to see the live action Dora movie. We were the only ones in the theatre. Edda loves Dora. We are still watching Dora videos from 2005. The movie was not terrible. I stayed awake the whole time and might have laughed at certain points. I think Edda enjoyed it. Afterwards, we went to the Panera where we could order using an iPad. Fancy. But lonely.

Vince was at the fair all weekend. I worked Saturday night where I got to talk to a bunch of old mom friends. Vince’s best best friends from elementary school are all still in the scout troop. A gang of 6, but then once high school started, it really split into a group of 2 and 4. And Vince ended up in the group of 2. But everyone stayed in the troop and everyone still works relatively well together – I think no one hates the other ones, but out of the troop, they travel in different social circles. But it meant that I lost contact with the parents of the other group which is a bummer because I like the parents very much. So it’s nice to see them and have time to chat and catch up.

Now that Camp JCC is done and various schools are starting up again, Edda’s childcare is more sporadic and spotty. We have some am care this week, pm care is Celebrate Ability camp and Eliana will pickup Edda from camp.

I worked the fair this afternoon and took naps.

Jeremy biked in from DC to the fair to work tonight.

Eliana is learning to be a CNA so she took blood pressures on my 10,000 times.

Jeremy’s last shift of the night.

I was nice to racist patient the other day. When I took over at 7am from the night shift nurse, he was already yelling spent the night yelling at phlebotomists, nursing techs, food service people. Demanding that we change his name on the whiteboard to Hitler. It was not good. Some staff end up engulfed into the drama of the whole thing and yell or scold in return. I understand their reaction. But I never like that tactic. I always want to diffuse the energy – at all costs to lower the drama level instead of feeding into it because it just makes my job easier and who needs extra drama? So I’m nice. Like doggedly nice. Warm blankets? Water, no ice? Gah. But it didn’t prevent him from eloping from the unit and therefore making me and two techs roam the hospital for 20 minutes looking for him.

The summer passed in a flash for Edda. Seven weeks at Camp JCC – swimming, trips, music, and the dreaded art. I didn’t meet her 1-on-1 counselor until the last day because I did none of the drop offs or pickups and Suary didn’t get assigned to Edda until the 2nd week. It was a pleasure to meet her and hear that they had a great summer together.

Vince started running the parking at the fair, so he’s out of the house from about 7:30 am until 10:30 pm. The action really started Thursday night with a walk through for the first year scouts and their parents. I had had a list of non-fair things to do for him on Thursday, but he woke up on that morning, came downstairs and gave me a hug and said that he was nervous to be running the whole thing. I hadn’t even thought about that, so I didn’t mention the college related things I wanted him to do before he showed up at the fair on Thursday night. It’s been beautiful weather, crowds are showing up. The scouts are directing the traffic. We are trying to be there at least part of the day on most days working our shifts.

Jeremy biking to work.

Vince leading the fair! Which starts tomorrow!

I need to get back in the groove of daily blogging. Or at least every other day blogging. Too much goes on when I leave too much time between posts. Jeremy and I have been crossing paths very briefly for weeks now, so we decided to go on a date on Thursday night. But then everyone else was going to be at home, so we took them all on the date with us. Because the minivan is on loan and we only wanted to take one car (Edda’s caregiver, Eliana was with us), all five of us squeezed into the Civic. Vince promptly started to perform mock sibling fighting with Edda.

I have been thinking about getting another dog. Max just turned 9, so it’s time and it would be more fun before Vince went to college. But then this summer, Max started peeing all over the house, which dampened my enthusiasm. But then we got medication for Max which has helped a lot. Though I know, in my deepest doggy loving heart, that Max wants to be an only dog. Do you see how jealous Max is of this baby? So sulky.

Jeremy drove Vince and Sam to Pitt for a day-long tour. I think I was secretly hoping Vince would come home and breathlessly say – I love Pitt. Let’s apply to Pitt early and then he’d (probably? hopefully? maybe?) get in and then it would all be done. But that did not happen. He was meh about Pitt. They are not my people. He’s like – they talk too much about sports. Everyone does sports at Pitt. I’m like – huh? Have I ever heard of a Pitt juggernaut in any sport? (Whoops, I see they are #1 in their conference in football. I am an idiot.) I’m like – who exactly are your people? I have no idea. Actually, I do have an idea. I think he thinks his people are 0.5 miles away from Pitt at Carnegie Mellon to which I internally sigh a deep sigh.

Jeremy drove the two on Thursday night to Pittsburgh late after a scout meeting that Vince needed to run. So they got into Pittsburg past midnight and then up early for a 7:30 am tour. Jeremy got them checked in and settled and then went on his own five hour bike ride. Pittsburgh is very hilly and there is a race there called the dirty dozen which goes up and down the 13 biggest hills in town. Jeremy tried to recreate it though a bunch of roads were closed and one of the hills had a 38% grade. I asked Vince if all the other parents stayed for the whole 6 hour program and Vince said that he was the only kid without a parent there the whole day (well except Sam, who was in another section). Jeremy was like – I drove them there! I missed my bedtime twice, took a whole day off of work. He said, I already went to undergrad, I don’t need to go to undergrad again. I laughed.

Edda is having a nice summer – lots of fun at Camp JCC. This is the last week. Lots of help from our lovely caregivers. <3

Every since Jeremy and Vince came back from Philmont, I’ve hardly seen Jeremy. I worked at the hospital on Saturday and Sunday, then I was out late on Monday night visiting Violet and then Tuesday, Jeremy flew to Minneapolis. He’s coming back at this moment, but then he’s leaving tomorrow with Vince to visit Pitt on Friday. Then I’m back at the hospital. It’s crazy – but it’s good.

Vince got his hair dyed yellow and this is going to be the look that is going to be immortalized in the high school yearbook. He got his senior pictures done today. Vince and I argued a bunch this week and I knew we were going to argue. This is the week that college applications really start, the common app opens for Fall 2020 admissions tomorrow. It’s good that we like each other a lot, because we drive each other crazy (at least when it comes to college admissions). Jeremy just stands back and watches the two of us go at it. We were going over some simple lists and thinking about whether he wanted to take the SATs yet again (despite my many, many suggestions that he study hard and get the score that he wanted to get in junior year so then he wouldn’t be in a position of having to take them October senior year) and then he looks up at me and say, crap mom, I need to take SAT subject tests. I can’t apply to Carnegie Mellon without them (or as it turns out many other engineering programs). I’m like f me a new one, what? Like you didn’t know this? OMG. So we registered for the tests in three weeks paying late fees and going to a far away testing facility. All I can say is that the College Board is a racket. The whole time, I’m like – you aren’t working hard enough, and him saying – I’m working so hard! And then Jeremy is like – you know, you think it’s so simple to do well in school & do well on standardized tests. And I’m like – of course it’s simple to do well, you just have to do the work and then Jeremy says it’s not as simple as you think. I’m like – high school is simple. Anyways, I’m trying to focus on the process and not the outcome. Process oriented, Doris! Don’t focus on the outcome. You only get to shepherd someone through the college application process once. Only once. You thought it was going to be twice, but it’s only once. So enjoy it. I argue with both Jeremy and Vince in a similar way in which we can step out of the argument and analyze the argument and then step right back into the argument. So while I was arguing with Vince, we both looked at each other, stepped out of the argument, and then told each other – ok, it’s only 5 months of this, we can make it through five months – and then went back to arguing.

I loaned Lauren our minivan for three weeks. Our minivan is having so much fun – going to the beach, taking kids to ice cream. Our minivan is like can I hang with them? You guys are so boring.

I visited Violet at Children’s on Monday night. She is a total rock star and did amazing with her spinal fusion surgery. No narcotic pain killers – only Tylenol & IV motrin. Ate well, heart rate was good. Amazing Violet.

I asked Jeremy the night before if he was going to see Dave in Minneapolis and he said that there wasn’t really time. But the plane touched down early and Jeremy found himself within a few blocks of Dave’s office and an hour to kill, so they had lunch on 2 min notice.

The boys came back from Philmont last Thursday. The flight home was late and it meant that the boys stepped into the house at midnight from BWI. Jeremy and I spent the flight texting each other over WhatsApp which is free over their wifi system. Jeremy said that 24,000 scouts were suppose to go through this summer and although they hiked more than 60 miles, they were never really far from anyone. Philmont works like this, you hike about 4-6 hours a day, and there is usually an activity where the day’s hike ends or begins. They were working really short staffed and they were actually doing trail hires where if you were 18 hiking with your troop, they’d offer you a job right then and there and you just call your mom and tell her you aren’t coming home until later. None of our boys did that.

You can pick a hike heavy trip with fewer activities or a trip with more activities and less hiking or a good mix of both. Vince’s group picked an itenerary with a good mix of both hiking and programming, but a little longer on the hiking. The troop sent 19 people and split up into two groups. Vince and Jeremy went with the younger crew, so the hiking was just a tad easier. The other crew had older boys and did a more strenuous hike. So there was mountain biking, tomahawk throwing, pole climbing, blacksmithing, etc.

Jeremy said the mountain bikes were nice. Nicer than his mountain bike. He thinks the boy scouts get them at cost and it’s a nice product placement for the companies. Thousands of scouts will ride those bikes. Jeremy said the food was terrible. Mismatched and weird. He thinks also a lot of food gets donated, so there were items like sriracha peanut butter.

Vince’s troop hadn’t gone in 50 years to Philmont and the last time they went, a scout died when he was hit by lightning. All the boys knew about this and were actually telling it as part of meeting other troops on the trail. The whole lighting thing was nerve wracking for Jeremy because they were slated to climb Mt. Baldy, the highest peak in the area. But this involved an hour of hiking on clear, exposed rock. So they hiked up there, early to avoid afternoon summer storms. But when they got to the top, all the boys wanted to call home. They all knew this was the only spot to get cell service. And of course Jeremy was the only person to not let his phone completely run out of charge, so all the boys wanted to use Jeremy’s phone to call their mothers. That meant they were on the peak for an hour – the whole time, Jeremy could see the afternoon storm clouds come closer to the mountain. Anyways, as soon as the conversations were over, he grabbed the phone and hustled everyone off the mountain safely.

About 20% of the treks are burro itineraries. All over youtube and the chat groups, everyone thinks the burros are a pain in the ass. The advice is clearly – do not pick a trek with the burro. But the boys picked a burro trek and I asked Vince why and he said, the burro will be a pain in the ass, but there will be awesome stories. And there was a crazy story involving actually losing their burro. They had penned him up for the night and when they went to fetch him from the pen in the morning, the gate was wide open and the burro was nowhere to be found. They blamed their sister crew who also had penned their burro up for the night, but left a few hours early the next morning with their burro and probably left the gate loosely closed. Anyways, the burro was loose, but then about 80% of the way through the hike, they found the burro again, just happily eating grass on the side of the trail. The burro just followed them without a harness or anything to the next campsite.

A few videos for your amusement. Reentry into real life has been hard on all of us. I’ll tell you why in the next blog post.

Boys are back in cell service at base camp at Philmont. They will be home tomorrow night. I’ve been busy checking everyone into the flight and also coordinating the carpools back from BWI.

I spent the day inside thankful that the air conditioning seemed to be holding up. I hosted Sunday night dinner, something that I’m perfectly capable of doing, but something that I don’t excitedly lean into doing. I made potato salad.

And homemade chocolate chip cookies – which got glowing reviews.

And I started up the grill and managed to grill a couple of homemade burger patties until I made Eric take over the grilling. It’s really something standing in front of a grill on a 95 degree day.

Jeremy, for a moment on top of Mt Baldy- the tallest peak in the Cimarron range – turned on his phone and sent me a text saying they had made it to the top and that the boys were doing well and they were having a great time. And then he turned his phone off. That’s it until Wed.

In some ways, I’m glad that he’s out there with Vince enjoying the (hopefully) cooler weather and beautiful nature at 12,000 ft and bypassing our terrible heatwave and the terrible national news.

It is another weekend hanging out with Edda, but we are mostly staying inside because of the oppressive heat. I vacuumed out the minivan today which was satisfying in its own way, sweating up a storm in the open garage with a shop vac vacuuming tumbleweeds of Ruby’s hair and piles of stale cheerios. When was the last time Ruby rode in the minivan? Election night 2016. When was the last time children ate cheerios in the car? Probably much longer ago than that.