Author: Doris

Happy Nurses Week! I could get all snarky here about how they are rewarding us at work with carts of M&Ms & pringles (take only one please!) while having us worked understaffed, but I will set that aside. Actually, the president of the hospital walked around our unit on Sunday morning at 9:30 am and I think he went around generally unrecognized (a coworker was wondering why is this unfamiliar doctor walking around wishing everyone Happy Nurses Week!?) but since I’d been to orientation recently, I recognized him and gave a hearty hello and he thanked me for my work and he asked if there was anything he could do for me and I made some quip about having him take care of my patients today and he said he’d be ready to do that if I take over the admin of the hospital and we laughed. I told this story to Jeremy when I got home and he said – you didn’t say something about being paid more or working understaffed or having predictable schedules or any labor issues? I sighed and I said I was not ready to take that on at 9:30 on a Sunday morning. I’m lame, I know. The main thing I want to say about Happy Nurses Week is that I’m going part time at the end of the month and will essentially control my schedule from here on out – I made it 10 months full time with a huge logistical strain to the family and my own other interests – though nursing is a big interest of mine, so it was front and center for the whole family for 10 months. I’m still learning so much every day at the hospital, I find it challenging in all the ways I expected to to challenge me and I do find it rewarding even though it involves a lot of poop. I also often feel like I should quit because it overwhelming all the time. I thought when I started and knew I wanted to go part time, I’d drop to a day a week, but now I’m loyal to my unit (I have a good, kind boss and very good charge nurses) and I know that I’d need to practice more than that to keep it up and anyways, you need to kind of work two days a week to see how patient care is resolved or not resolved. We’ll see how it meshes with the family’s schedule. I am always baseline tired, I feel like I’m never fully recovered from work, but I’m happy (generally).

There was this article in the NYTimes about how husbands think that they are stepping up to do half the family work, but they really aren’t doing half of the work, but I want to say that Jeremy did so much work to make this whole thing possible for me. Almost all the logistics with child care and coordination for the kids, so much cooking and packing lunches and switching out pee stained clothes from Edda’s backpack and making sure school had diapers and all the things. Jeremy packs my lunch for me so when I need to leave the house at 6 am, it is possible for me to sleep until 5:45 am. And he usually cooks dinner and cleans up the whole kitchen afterwards. He did this all while managing his own tough situations at his work which at times were bad enough that he wasn’t sleeping well at night. I also am grateful to myself to care less about things. They mention in the article about women caring more about things like laundry or homework or whatever and I gave up caring a long time ago. First of all, Jeremy cares about laundry as much as I do. I will tell you I’ve left Vince’s laundry unwashed for six months when I thought he was old enough to do it himself. I stopped caring (it’s not actually that I stopped caring) so much about Vince’s homework. I did not sign up to access his grades. I do not know how he is doing moment by moment in his classes. I actually thought long and hard about his homework and college stuff and various other things like getting permission slips done in time or whatever and I decided that it was his job to do all that and if he needed anything that he’d have to find me. He’s old enough, it’s his job to figure that stuff out. And I forced myself to do that by being away from the house more. I thought it was more important to show him how I was pursuing the things I wanted to do and how the family (mostly Jeremy) accommodated that pursuit and less important for him to be forced to master all the details of AP physics which is what I would have made him to do if I had even one moment of spare time his whole junior year. No SAT boot camps, no college counselors which are rampant in the neighborhood. I want to say, I was only willing to do this because I know in the depths of my heart that Vince is a good kid and will be fine. I can’t say I would have parented a different child the same way. I can’t say I did it the best way, because who knows how it all will turn out. And it’s not to say I don’t get periodically anxious about it and fret about imaginged lost opportunities. He’s not doing school the way I would do school, but he also knows that I’m not parenting the way lots of other parents are parenting. He has friends that run the whole gamut from the ones gunning for Stanford/Harvard to the ones that are failing out and their parents are threatening them with boarding school. He can see how much they work and he can see how much their parents are or are not pushing them. Ah Vince! You are making it through your junior year, I’m so happy for you. Just a few AP tests and finals to go. And I’m also at peace with Edda and her own school situation. Could I be more involved? Insist on more things? Take on more of her care? I suppose so. I did very, very little of the hands-on-care for Edda this past year. I’m ok with that for now. I like the school and mainly I know what I wish for the most I can’t have.

May brings not only May Day (International Worker’s Day) and May 4th (Star Wars Day) but also Bike to Work Month. OMG it’s like May 6th and Jeremy’s already ridden something like 185 miles to work. I asked if it was included in the rules that you could take the “long way” to work and he said that the rules explicitly states that you can take the long way as long as you start from the house and end at work and then start your work day. This has resulted in a 75 mile ride to work last week. He has figured out that he has ridden about 18,000 miles on his bikes and this means that he has ridden a bike from here to Singapore and back. My husband is crazy.

Jeremy did make it home on Sunday morning from Chicago at about 9:15 am, snow be damned (there ended up being no snow in Chicago – but all flights out on Sat night were canceled). It meant that he could stay for entire 50th anniversary party of UCS in Chicago on Saturday night instead of just showing up for an hour and then high-tailing it to the Chicago airport. And it also meant that he could try out the Peloton bike at the fancy hotel gym. I don’t know exactly how this is happening, but even though I’m working a crap ton and he’s taking on so much of the house logistics, he is managing to get into great biking shape. My workouts are basic and I have set low, low bar expectations (my bar is slow low that it’s laying? lying? lieing? (where is Vickey – my grammar guru?) on the floor) and I’m watching my fitness ebb away out of my perimenopausal body as I knew it would when I started working so much, Jeremy is like – I set at PR on Strava! I’m going to bike 70 miles today! I’m going to climb up this enormous mountain! Twice! We’ve tried various in-person cycle classes, but he’d never tried Peloton. The verdict was that it was just a fine workout, but not his thing. This particular instructor squeezed in-between intervals his struggles with alcoholism which isn’t really Jeremy’s thing. Jeremy just wants to ride fast – he’s not into the personal narrative. He’ll stick with Zwift.

Vince came home from an orienteering campout this weekend and we went to the final meeting for the kids that went on the China trip. As Vince grows up, I get so much pleasure from small things that surprise me! I love that he lets us sit with his friends and that Edda joins in at the table and we get to participate in the conversation. Everyone had Chinese food and bubble tea and we saw a slide show. The slide show was set to the song Africa from Toto and I was like – I think my own high school slideshow was set to the same song. Jeremy confirmed that the song was released in 1982.

Lauren, Molly and Rory came by to try out Edda’s old wheelchair. Molly fits into it pretty well, she’s a bit smaller than Edda and this is a few inches narrower than Edda’s present wheelchair as Edda has outgrown it. They have a big wheelchair that’s perfect for school/bus, but they need a smaller one that can fit into the car when they run errands. Rory played the game of Life! with me and he beat me, yet again.

Our ice cream desires where thwarted when the ice cream line was too long.

Miss a few blogging days and life just keeps tumbling forward. I’m going to try out this new blogging platform (WordPress.org) and see how it works. I’m paying for hosting and I’m going to start having the photos directly imported into the website. So much trouble. I was in such a despair over this (and other things) yesterday that I actually went to the gym and started my workout and then I gave up on it and went to McDonald’s. I think it’s been years since I’ve done that.

Vince’s trip to China was amazing and fun. Unlike his summer trip to language camp a few years ago, this trip was pure American tourism. At summer camp, he was expected to explore the city and talk to the residents and manage more things on his own. This school-arranged trip was run in the standard tour group way – a lot of things to do, regimented to the half-hour and relatively isolated from the non-tourist population. He did not need to access from the dusty recesses of his brain various Chinese phrases, he did not need to tone down his American-ness. He emphasised to me when he got home, I did all the proper tourist behaviors and it was so much fun!

After we came home from LA and Vince came home from China, we welcomed Denise for a few days. Denise was our au pair from 2011. It was really wonderful to see her. I forget how much has changed since she’s left. Of course, Ruby is gone and the kids are grown. She said she would not have recognized Vince if he was walking past her in a store.

I worked at the hospital on Tues and Wed – a tough shift on Tues, a better one on Wed. Often – so often – at 4pm on a tough shift day, I’m like what the hell am I actually doing? I am stupid, stupid, stupid. I could be home eating a bag of Doritos and watching some excellent Netflix. I can not possibly keep doing this. But I inexplicably keep going. Last week, I had a shift where none of my patients spoke English. It was Spanish, Vietnamese and French Creole. Chinese is surprisingly unhelpful at my job. Almost all the other Asian languages seem to be ahead.

On Thursday, Jeremy and I had a date night. A date night meaning a day that we would have dinner together at home. Actually, for our date night, we had the kids and Edda’s caregiver, Kitachi, and then I invited Brian and Ning and baby Noah over for dinner as well – so I’m not sure how much of a date night it was. But actually, after dinner, Jeremy and I cleaned the kitchen together and talked for an hour! A whole hour! By ourselves. That was so nice – hardly happens that much these days. I need to change that.

And then on Friday, Jeremy flew to Chicago. He was suppose to fly home tonight. Until I got this text from him this morning:

Well this is my test blog post. Welcome here.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

I have to migrate the blog.  I’ve been very lucky that for 17 years, I’ve been able to use the same platforms – blogger and flickr – to do this little hobby of mine.  Now I’ve realized, slowly and painfully over the past month or so, that I’m not really able to upload photos effectively from my very new iPhone to the very old Flickr.  Vince and his friend took well over 1,000 photos on his China trip and it was a combination of getting those photos onto Flickr and trying to put together that blog post that was upsetting to me.  I’m not sure quite what to do.  I have well over 100,000 photos on flickr.  I’m afraid both flickr and blogger will become obsolete before I figure out how to do this.  Years before I was kind of OK with this disappearing into the ether, but today, I’m feeling needy and I want it to stay around.

Argh.

We are home and I’m fighting a head cold.  It crept up on me on Thurs/Friday, but it was the worst on the flight home and today, I’m just trying to rest and sleep but really, I think I’m just making my jet lag worse.  Jeremy is at Dulles now picking Vince up from his China trip. 

Quick photo recap of the vacation.  Jeremy took most of the photos and I’m trying a new workflow for photos since my flickr uploader seems to not be working from my iPhone.  So here goes:

Lunch in the Burbank hills at a place called Castaway with Eva and Nancy.   Talked a lot about biking and drug/medical device development.  Had half a mimosa. 

Castaway has great views,  Edda’s not impressed.

Then Jeremy went to Minnesota for a few days – those days are documented in the previous blog posts.

On Wed, he came back.  We went to Tree People where Julia and Katherine began their friendship:

Edda walked a good bit on the trails:

Wed night we had a dinner party of 10 (?) no photographic evidence, oh well.

Thursday I took public transit (Expo line) to downtown LA to meet up with Ruth for a swim at the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

The swim was in a pool on the 5th floor.  I’m always astounded by pools high up in the air.  We had lunch at the club, this was the only photo I snapped. 

While I was swimming, Katherine, Jeremy and Edda went to visit Barbara and her in-home dog sitting business.  Seems like a lot of fun.

I came home and napped with Edda, Jeremy and Katherine went to visit Miwako.

Fun old photos of the families:

This was the first time Jeremy traveled with his bike.  It was an adventure in packing, paying luggage fees, breaking down and rebuilding the bike.  It didn’t get damaged in transit, it got damaged at Julia’s house where he left it outside when he went to Minneapolis and it fell over and got a dent in one of the carbon fiber shafts.  He rode up Mount Wilson on Friday while Edda and I found Europane, our wedding pastry provider and enjoyed blueberry brioche and a cheese danish.

From the Mount Wilson triumph, we met up with Aunt Liz at Ding Tai Fung.  Turns out there are two locations within a mile of each other and we managed to confuse the two.  Delicious soup dumplings and lovely to catch up.

Feviu came over for dinner on Thursday night:

Today, back home!   Celebrating Easter with Nat and her family.

Every day in California is glorious.  In the mornings, Julia – our host, walks outside onto her porch wondering what the weather is going to be like that day.  I laugh and say, it is just different shades of absolutely beautiful.  Because of the heavy winter rains, everything’s green and in bloom.  There is not a trace of humidity and nothing feels better than taking a nap in a patch of sun.  Oranges and lilies grow in Julia backyard.  There is even a pet turtle that wanders by.  I eat chocolates from Trader Joe’s. 

On Tuesday, we made it out to the Getty where we toured the gardens.  There were so many usual and unusual plants growing in the garden.  We were looking for the Shazam! app for plants, but we couldn’t find it.  There was a family of ducks swimming around the central water pond thing and I commented that this fowl family had the best real estate in all of Los Angeles. 

Edda was not impressed.  OK maybe she was impressed, but didn’t want to acknowledge it.

Going to the galleries was an afterthought, we were a little short on time and had to skedaddle – but we went and saw Vincent’s famous Iris painting. 

We are getting hundreds of photos from our Vince’s China trip.  I’m having trouble downloading photos, but my parents did manage to see Vince and his friends at my mom’s high school and they spent the day in Shanghai.  Will post some photos soon.

We are in Los Angeles for spring break.  Well, right now, Jeremy is in Minnesota because after we scheduled the vacation, a work commitment cropped up that needed committing to and Jeremy flew out of LA to Minn on Monday and will be back tonight.

On Monday, I visited Charlotte.  Bella was there and we talked about the grandkids getting married and various adventures.  I’m so happy I had the chance to catch up with Charlotte.

******

In the afternoon, Katherine, Edda and I went to the Santa Monica pier.  Edda enjoyed watching the waves.

We enjoyed some ice cream and walking along the boardwalk.

We saw Shazam in an almost empty theater and then ate a delicious meal at the True Food Kitchen.  Very vegetarian/vegan.  California is delicious.  I’m having a good time.  I’m hoping to get some naps in.