Author: Doris

Good night all.  See you on the other side.  xo.

Morning all.  Sunday night, Aileen came from Albany with her son Gordon and stopped by the house on their way to a weekend of sightseeing in DC.  She was Jeremy’s coworker from AMD (now 15 years ago) and she still works in that industry, so she caught Jeremy up with all the random co-worker gossip.  Vince and Gordon spent a nice evening playing video games.  Vince was very sweet, entertaining a strange teenager for a few hours.

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I started my clinical rotation on President’s Day.  A full 12 hour shift where I don’t know much about what’s going on.  I’m back at my adult health clinical site at our local community hospital, so it feels familiar and I know where all the supplies are.  I found out that it’s the busiest floor in the hospital.  Just today, I shadowed my nurse with her four patients – a renal patient waiting for a kidney transplant, a cardiac patient waiting for an appt at the cath lab, two patients who needed consults with hospice – and that was a quiet day for her.  There was a trach patient on the floor, a person in ETOH withdrawal, etc. etc.  Lots of stuff.  Seemed understaffed by quite a bit, so I asked around some of the nurses and they assured me that though it was challenging and hectic work, it was not a dysfunctional floor.  One shift down, 13 to go.  I should bring food and not buy hospital food.

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Jeremy had the kids today.  The day was gorgeous and Jeremy and Edda made it out on a little walk to the neighborhood circle for this beautiful photo.

They did do some holiday window shopping – Vince looked at some big screen TVs at Best Buy.

As well as some headphones.  

Vince was gone a lot of the weekend on a campout and I knew he had a Social Studies paper due on Tues (today).  I asked Jeremy and Vince to go over the paper during the day while I was at the hospital.  When I got home at 7:30 pm, I asked both Jeremy and Vince how the paper went. Vince said (from his room)- I’m done!  Jeremy said (in the kitchen while I’m eating a late dinner) – oh, the paper could have been better, I think I might have made it worse, but we went over it a couple of times and it’s OK.  I thought, fine, that’s OK with me.

I finished dinner and I went upstairs to get an hour in of regular work to start off the work week without confusion.  Thirty minutes after I sit down, Vince asks for a final once over of the paper.  As soon as I started reading it, I was like, OMG, you are your father’s son.  Jeremy loves the complicated argument.  Nuanced and subtle.  Complicated and intricate.  Generally well thought out and probably the best answer, but unclear and difficult to decipher to anyone outside the field (and maybe in the field too). The topic was whether the US should have bombed Auschwitz and the railroads leading to the camp.  The teacher (given the supporting documents) clearly wanted a yes or no answer to that question, but Vince was arguing that the railroads should have been bombed and that the camp should not have been bombed – which then sent the paper into a weird state where you are arguing both for and against bombing.  Now it’s 9:15pm and I’m fading into sleepiness, but I’ve already upset Vince for by over-correcting his paper when I should have just left it alone and then I’m irritated at Jeremy for not going over the paper as well as I thought he should have.

 And Jeremy and I went to bed discussing the Auschwitz and how/when to capitalize the word “Jews” or “Jewish” and our different approaches to paper writing and then we both had to apologize to Vince for jerking him around.  Of course, he starts at a point that is between what is natural for Jeremy (complicated and interesting) and I (strictly following the rubric, the least interesting, but clearest and most straightforward, easiest to grade) and then Jeremy pulls him towards his side while editing the paper and then I try to pull him back to my side at 9pm before it’s due.   But Vince stayed up a little late and revamped the paper, which is why I’m up at 5 am trying to edit.

It’s 3pm on Saturday and I have done nothing important yet today.  I was going to work on taxes or Edda’s birthday invitation list, but instead, I’ve just gone online window shopping and puttered around.

Our weekend caregiver, Kitachi, is traveling this long weekend, so I picked up Edda from aftercare Friday afternoon and then asked Vince to keep an eye on her for 30 min while I finished up some work and we waited until Jeremy came home.

Vince found Donald’s old woolen hat which he is having a lot of fun with.  He’s calling it his “tactical hat” and took it to the scout’s campout this weekend.

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I’m feeling a down about by Edda’s sleep safe bed rejection.  I started applying for funding from the county to help defray some of the expense (I’m thinking we’d get $500 of the $10K) of purchasing the bed ourselves and I asked for the paperwork from the HSC (Hospital for Sick Children) – the letter of medical necessity, the rejection letters, etc. – to send to the county.  The paperwork that I received was slightly different from the path that I thought that the justification and appeal process should have gone.  So I’m looking at all this paperwork and thinking that I need to call the insurance compan(ies) and clarify the rejection and then re-appeal by writing my own letters and re-filing with the help of HSC.  This could be another six months worth of work resulting in another rejection.  And we did find Edda half hanging off the bed yesterday morning.  We did have the camera running, and Jeremy did check on her via the little image, but was too fuzzy to make out anything besides a lump under a pile of blankets.  Grrrr…

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Jeremy’s trying to lose ten pounds – he’s going with the notion that the lighter he is, the faster he’ll be on the bike.  He had a great ride today, finally catching up with the “A” group, though he didn’t do his fair share of the work and drafted most of the time.  The dieting messes with his mood though.  And not in a good way.  A happy man is a well fed man – not a dieting man.

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Face timed Donald today.  And while we were chatting, Vince let Donald know that he was storing saltines in the “tactical hat”.

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Quilt!  This is how I procrastinate now.

We might be finally sleep training Edda.  Now when she gets up at 10 pm, 2 am and/or 4 am, we just turn on the camera, see that she’s not stuck somewhere and then we go back to sleep in our own bed.  She falls back asleep eventually.  This morning, I had to shake her awake at 6:30am  This took us only 12 years to figure out.   We are enjoying our extra sleep.

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Sharon (our elementary school crossing guard) came by today – she misses having dogs of her own.  I hadn’t had the chance to tell her that Ruby passed away in the fall.  Maxi gave her a bunch of loving and sniffed out the doggie treats she always has in her handbag.

Wed.  (OK now it’s Thursday morning).  I’m in a mood.  I feel like the house is too cluttered and I start throwing stuff out.  Then Vince and Jeremy get all nervous.  Are you throwing my stuff away, they ask?  ummm, yeah!  It’s all your stuff that is driving me crazy – you crazy hoarders you.  I told them I decluttered our shoe closet and that my criteria for throw-away-ness was any shoe that they hadn’t worn in the last two days.  Jeremy said – thank goodness I’m wearing some shoes right now so you didn’t have the chance to throw that pair away.

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Wed night is quilt night at the UU church.  Activism and crafting at the same time.  Efficient.  A few postcards of encouragement to the Muslim community & an update on the relative disorganization of the established Democratic system and how now certain groups are just not waiting around for those fuddy-duddies and going ahead and doing their own thing and then I’m good to go.

This is the quilt we are making this year.  I little old fashioned for my taste, but it’s OK.  I’m the newest member and I don’t know how to quilt, so I’m keeping my mouth shut and just doing what they tell me.

Valentine’s Day started beautifully with a full night’s sleep for both me and Jeremy – gifted to us by this beautiful tween.  Though later on in the day, I got the email that our two insurances – primary government employee health insurance & secondary Medicaid insurance – both had finally turned down our appeal to get Edda’s sleep safe bed covered which we had started applying for way back in August.  So *(#^ you insurance companies.

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I went to class today in the afternoon.  These people are fun.  I would have never guessed it because I’ve never been a teacher, but different classes have different personalities and this one is the funnest one of the five I’ve been through in nursing school.  For example, the class on resumes?  The teacher asked for everyone’s past work experience to teach how transferable those skills are to nursing. People started shouting out – waiter, computer tech support, pharmaceutical sales, etc.  And then from the very back, someone shouted very clearly – stripper / pole dancer.  And the whole class erupted in laughter.  Customer service. maybe?

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Jeremy was very nice to me today and made me a very nice dinner – pork loin (145F – the usda recently lowered the pork “done” temp, it’s perfect at 145F, a tiny bit pink in the center).

And Vince and Jeremy assembled a berry themed dessert.

I bought everyone gifts at the Walgreens.  Jeremy got cinnamon gum and heart shaped Reese’s peanut butter cups.  Edda got a caramel heart.  Vince got some cola gummies and chocolate flavored lip balm.

Time to do passport photos.

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Outtake #1

Outtake #2

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My washing machine is like my unpredictable lover.  Sometimes saving me and making me feel so loved and well taken care of and sometimes purposely ignoring my texts while I silently glare at my phone for the little undulating dots.  My washer has has a small, intermittent leak.  It’s so intermittent that I get all sad when it leaks, then I don’t do laundry for a few days.  Then I do one load and it doesn’t leak and I get all happy.  Then I try to run 7 loads through it during the day and then it leaks every 2.3 loads and then I get sad and frustrated.  I try to not let the state of my appliances dictate the state of my mood, but I can’t help myself.  It’s like trying to stop eating Doritos after a handful when you are alone and have just opened a huge bag.  Especially if they are the original nacho flavor.   I’m tired just thinking of putting the machine up on blocks to see where the leak is coming from and then taking apart the machine, then replacing all the rubber parts which have aged in the last 1.5 decades and then finally replacing the pump (ordering the part, paying extra for 2 day shipping, installing it) and then not being able to fix it (deinstalling pump, boxing up the pump and going to the UPS store) and finally having to spend $800 +/- $200 on a new washing machine.

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Math test for Vince tomorrow on volumes of 3D shapes.  I’d been checking some of Vince’s practice work earlier and I was going to continue after dinner while Jeremy washed the dishes, but Jeremy sliced his fingertip off with a mandolin (note thumb condom) so he asked to trade night time duties.  I said sure – I’ll do the dishes, you can do the math.  Which then led Jeremy to groan when he realized that he had to figure out the volume of a truncated cone.

I spent hours and hours outside today.  Mostly by myself – running, hiking, getting lost.  I did spend a couple of hours with other people who are teaching me how to read a map in the woods.

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Sunday night dinner at the famous Far East restaurant!  A Rockville landmark for 40 years.

Jeremy went on a bike ride this morning and, while on my own, I got into a tiff with Vince and then I felt blue.  To feel better, I went and took myself out for a walk and Jeremy just happened to come home and spy me walking towards the pizza place.  He asked where I was going and I told him I was just taking myself for a walk for pizza because I was blue and then he asked – did you and Vince get into a fight?  How did he know? He asked me to wait for him and he drove the three houses home and got changed and came back and took me out for pizza and ice cream at 2pm.  He laughed at me and said – you two are quite a pair, a true dyad.  While I was eating my pizza, Vince was trying to text and apologize and I texted back my apology too.  The apology involved edamame gifs.

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I trimmed Edda’s bangs this morning.  Kitachi then put her hair in two ponytails, she looks like a Japanese superhero.

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I went to Thu’s monthly dinner – this was a cheese wheel party.

I used Thu’s party as an excuse to buy things at Whole Foods that I covet and only want one slice of.  Pineapple upside down cake.

Sometimes I do really well at Thu’s party and can chat a lot.  Sometimes I can’t.  Tonight, I was particularly introverted and I worked on a puzzle.  First by myself, but then later with three puzzle friends.

Right after his report card came home, Vince asked for an extension on electronic curfew – from 9 to 9:30.  I hesitated.  This is primarily because I want my parenting duties for Vince to be over at 9 pm, because I want to shift my focus from my children back to myself.  And also because our best time as a family come between 9 and 9:30 pm, when Jeremy’s home from evening meetings, when the child care providers are out of the house, when all the homework and school work is done and we are winding down.  It’s when Vince tells us both what’s going on in his own little world – concerns about friends, various sticky school situations, and funny memes so we don’t get too far behind.

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Jeremy worked from home today and we celebrated Valentine’s day with lunch out.  Adriana, who now works Tuesday nights, last week asked if she could have Valentine’s Day off and reminded us about the holiday.  (It’s her first Valentine’s Day with her beau).  I looked at Jeremy and said, oh yeah, Valentine’s Day doesn’t matter to us and gave her the night off.  And then I looked at Jeremy again and took it back and said, oh no, I meant every day is Valentine Day around here.  xoxo.

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We facetimed Gong Gong and found him asleep in bed.

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Max(ine) is our gender fluid dog.  Recently, she’s taken up humping her bedding.

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We went to my parents’ house for dinner where they have entirely too much ice cream.

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Edda’s so happy tonight!  Maybe because it’s my favorite day, Friday!