Author: Doris

Merry Christmas to you all!  We had a lovely day and I hope you did too.  Vince started out today by opening Uncle Donald’s gift of the newly released Apple Bluetooth earbuds.  AirPods? iBuds?  I forget.  Donald always gets us the coolest stuff, these are sold out until February and are so losable!  I hope Vince tries extra hard to not misplace them.  Donald and I FaceTimed today and Donald thinks Vince’ll lose them in about 14 days.   Apple will sell you a singleton if you lose one of them, which is not the policy of Tiffany’s which I found out from a friend a few months ago.  Tiffany’s will not sell you a single earring that you lost on your trip to the beach, you gotta buy a brand new pair.

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Jeremy made a homemade egg McMuffin sandwich for Dad’s real birthday breakfast.

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Then after the gift opening roulette of random Amazon boxes (which after Donald’s gift of the iBuds, was somewhat less exciting, but still fun in the way going to the neighborhood park is still familiarly entertaining and satisfying even after a few days at Disney (examples of neighborhood park Xmas gifts: socks.  lots of people got socks.  and calendars.  there was at least one calendar), Jeremy and I took turns exerting ourselves outside in the beautiful weather (running for me, biking for him) and then we turned to the prep of the evening meal.

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Nat and her family are here from Thailand and they joined us for dinner.

The roasts came out well.

And Nat made this beautiful domed cake.  Delicious!

Quiet day today in anticipation of tomorrow.  I didn’t wrap any gifts (I’ll say it was because I didn’t want to waste any paper and not because I wanted to spend the day reading and cleaning and napping) and we did just move the pile of Amazon packages from the bottom of the staircase to the bottom of the tree.  Ten days ago, we stopped opening any packages that came to the house because you couldn’t tell if it was a Christmas gift or just something we ordered that we needed and I didn’t want Vince or Jeremy to accidentally open any of their own gifts.  But since I didn’t get around to wrapping anything, now (I know), there are household items that are in the pile – windshield wipers, coffee beans, drinking straws, fiber pills and who knows what else.  I’m kind of excited about this gift opening tomorrow.  A mystery all around, you won’t even know if the box you are opening is for you!  A double surprise!

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Jeremy prepping his rib roast:

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Caught Vince playing air guitar to Queen:

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And we went out this evening to celebrate Dad’s 75th birthday.  We went to the all-you-can-eat Brazilian place where we certainly ate all that we could eat.  We facetimed Donald while we were sitting at the table and shared the birthday cheesecake.  Happy Birthday, Dad!  You are the best.

We had Friday night dinner with my parents last night.  I’m not quite sure how Maxi knows that it’s Friday, but when she senses that we are about to pack up the minivan, she bolts to the door and then claims her seat in the minivan and refuses to budge.  My mom always feeds Max a full dinner of all the courses that she serves us.

Jeremy took a long bike ride today and showed my dad his route this morning.  Vince and I showed my dad GIFs of fat cats.

Edda enjoyed dinner.

This is the most modest ice cream bar ever.

Then we got dressy for a neighborhood holiday party.

I’m looking for the perfect green button.  I didn’t find it today.

I didn’t take any photos today – so you get a photo of Max at Bard a few weekends ago.  I left a pork tenderloin defrosting on the kitchen counter the other day and in the middle of the afternoon, I found the loin, still in its plastic casing, in the middle of the living room floor.  Maxi had pulled it off the counter and had managed to chew a hole in the loin packaging and had started to gnaw on the raw meat.  But then she decided she didn’t like it and left it on the floor.  What kind of crazy dog doesn’t like raw meat?  I rinsed it off and let it finish defrosting a little further in from the edge of the kitchen counter.  Jeremy came home later and  made it into Chinese stir-fry.  I didn’t tell him the story until after we’d finished eating dinner.

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Jeremy worked from home today.  He’s home until after the new year.  I do love having him at home; especially now that he can use the guest room as his home office.  It means that he’s near, but not super near (like 3 feet away).

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Vince had a tough week at school.  A test (or 2!) in every subject and papers galore.  He made it through and is now eager for the final pep rally tomorrow afternoon and then a week where I don’t pester him too much about schoolwork.

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Edda does have some camp next week in the afternoons.  Jermey has the whole week off.  I haven’t taken any vacation days, but I think maybe I should?  I’m not sure what to do when we have a staycation.   We tend to err on the side of too much winging-it and not enough planning and then we end up slightly grumpy at each other.  How much work can I reasonably get done and how much time do I want to spend just hanging out?  A delicate balance that I need to figure out.

Vince got his first paying gig!  This holiday break, he’s taking care of three cats for a week: feeding, watering and scooping cat litter.   He’s also feeding a pinch of food to some fish (I hope they don’t die).  They have a snake too, but they’ll feed him before they leave, so he (the snake) won’t need to eat the during the week.

I spent some time this morning replacing Nat’s shower faucet.  The shower diverter had been malfunctioning for a month (!) and they were taking makeshift showers with a bucket.  Anyways, with the holidays coming, I needed to fix this right away.  They had only one shower faucet model in stock that I could use at (my favorite store) Home Depot and, although it works perfectly now, there is this 1/4 inch space from the shower wall to the faucet edge which is driving me bonkers.  To really fix it, I either need to special order the right length faucet and wait for it to come in (which would take a while – a week?) or I could have (today) shortened the pipe a bit.  But this would have taken another 90 min and would have involved a butane torch and another trip to Home Depot, so I let it be. Other things needed to get done today, and frankly, the shower works!  Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  Sometimes.

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Vince got elected to a leadership position tonight at scouts.  It is called “Guide” which, according to Vince, is the easiest leadership position that one can have.  This is exciting because he thought, when I dropped him off at the election meeting tonight, that he wasn’t going to be able to have any position at all which he was kind of resigned to – it’s hard to tell what he really wants because he hides behind various statements about various things being “lame” even though I think he really wants to do them.

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Edda is messing with me, as usual.  She was sound asleep and then 15 minutes later, here she is:

Then 15 minutes later, she asleep again only after I have both my arms and my legs trapped under her body.  Had to implement Ross’s hug ‘n roll.  Good night all!  See you on the other side.

Today was one of those days where I did a bunch of work, followed up some emails with my boss, arranged carpools, figured out some holiday hosting logistics and then when I looked up, I realized it was 1 pm and I was still in my pajamas.  Ack, I thought I was still mid-morning.  Each day (especially the quietest part) goes by so quickly.

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Jeremy and I haven’t been going out on dates much in the past quarter, maybe the past two quarters. It’s been a combination of evening activities, shorter/less flexible childcare hours, and then Jeremy going biking mid-day Sat and me going out into the woods mid-day Sunday doesn’t leave a lot of time for us to be out together without the kids.  But today we managed to have dinner together and do one of our favorite dates – going grocery shopping.  We are starting to shop for Christmas dinner, Jeremy wants to make a standing rib roast and so he bought all the ones Whole Foods had tonight.

I’m done with my Christmas shopping, it’s all in the house and I feel good about it.  I usually get all angsty about it because of my complicated relationship with money, my passive-aggressive behavior regarding doing it all early vs procrastinating at the very last minute, my feelings about turning a religious holiday to celebrate a guy who was really nice to everyone into a free-for-all materialistic buying spree and, finally, buying gifts for people who have everything they need.   You got food, clothes, shelter?  You got an education?  You got love from family and friends?  Lucky.  we are all so lucky.  I asked Vince if I could just shove the Amazon packages under the tree and randomly open them and give the resulting gift to whoever it was suppose to go to (you know, to avoid wrapping anything).  He said he was down with that.  I think I’ve gone this far, I might as well do the wrapping too.

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This is exhausted Vince.  He was up a lot this weekend having fun.  He’s still wearing the same shirt he wore on Friday to see Star Wars.  I hope he takes a shower tonight.

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I went to an orienteering class today.  I didn’t run any of the courses, but I wanted to learn a few things and meet a few people.  I learned today that I need to be counting the number of steps I take so I can estimate distance in the woods and that you kind of have to learn to count so second-naturedly that you can kind of shove it into the back of your mind while you are running and navigating with the map.  The person teaching the course said that at both extremes of ability, pace counting is unnecessary.  If you are a beginner, you don’t pace count because you are too busy figuring out the map itself, and if you are an elite you don’t pace count either because it’s just so familiar to your body how long 275m is. But for everyone in the middle, it’s a helpful tool.

Icy here!  Freezing rain last night left a half-inch layer of ice on all the sidewalks and driveways.  I thought it would melt quickly as the temps were suppose to rise in the afternoon, but the rise was very slow so it’s still icy out right now.

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I spent some time today working on holiday gift cards to all of Team Edda and Team Vince.  Both teams seemed to have expanded greatly this year, especially Edda’s out-of-school care team.  We went from one au pair to two evening care-givers and a staff of 8 or 10 at her after school program.

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Finally, Jeremy got home today at 7pm.  I made dinner: a baked chicken dish with rosemary, garlic and lemon.   I don’t know what happened, but in the past year, when faced with having to prep meals for myself (weekday lunch) or the family (usually when Jeremy is out of town), I’ve switched from always longing to go out to eat (even though I might cook dinner at home) to preferring to just find what’s in the pantry and try to make something (usually tasty).  It’s not really an economic thing, it’s just what I find more comforting now.

Jeremy had a long, frustrating week in Portland.  In order to make stuff better I got his favorite ice cream flavor.