Somehow the dogs know that it’s Friday night – time to go to mom’s for dinner (and have a plate of Chinese food).
Vince is off canoeing with the scouts this weekend.
Dinner was delicious. Dad is doing much better, though his butt still hurts.
Edda was extra messy at dinner, she seemed to want to eat, but then she spit her food out.
Good night loves! See you on the other side.
Vince and Ruby – Chinese project.
I’m 44 today. Now I’ve know Jeremy for half my life, I met him in Brady’s graduate level fluid dynamics class this week 22 years ago. I do not like celebrating my birthday, but I did extra nice things for myself today. I’m lucky in so many ways, I feel fortunate to have lasted another year and I’m looking forward to the next one. I try to be grateful for all the things I’ve been given which far exceed the things I have given away. One of the amazing things I’ve been given, of course, is my own life, and for that I thank my mom and dad for everything.
We started this morning with the birthday breakfast. This is the trouble with having birthdays so close together – we just had a birthday breakfast last week!
I asked for the classic birthday breakfast sandwich.
I opened my gifts, the Born to Run book was a surprise gift from a friend. Jeremy got me the other two things, Commonwealth which was just released yesterday from one of my favorite authors -Ann Patchett. I read Bel Canto in Taiwan when I was very lonely and had 4 month old Vince on my own during the day when Jeremy was at work, and it was a fantastic book. I’ve also loved a bunch of her non-fiction work, especially the one about her friendship with Lucy Grealy. Her other fiction work, to me, has been so-so, I did read a number of them, but I didn’t feel that always-reaching-for-the-book feeling that I like to get. But this one got fantastic reviews and is her first semi-autobiographical work of fiction, so I’m hoping that it’ll do it for me. Jeremy also got me a mic – in anticipation for doing interviews? Maybe a podcast? We’ll see.
I took the day off of work and I spent it socializing. In the morning, I met up for coffee with the moms from Edda’s class. Of course, within 3 minutes of sitting down, we talked about seizures and g-tubes as if we were talking about soccer games and homecoming. I’m so happy to have some moms in class. Maybe we’ll do something special for class this year. We’ll see.
At 11 am, I opened my laptop to check in on Jeremy’s AMA (ask me anything) on reddit. Reddit is a little like a free-for-all forum where everyone asks questions and answers and the most popular ones get “upvoted” and moved up the “page”. I upvoted everything and he said it reached the front page. Jeremy said this two hours on reddit exhausted him for the rest of the day. I’m sorry, this photo just highlights how dirty my laptop screen is.
Then I went to lunch with the friend who sent me the Born to Run book. I know she doesn’t really like to have her photo taken, so I took a photo of the dessert I had. We went to this new place in Rockville which had fabulous food, but terrible service. I think we had to wait 20 minutes for our sandwiches (delicious!) and it took 10 minutes to actually pay. So delicious and disappointing at the same time. Lucky for us, we had no pressing engagements afterwards, so we happily spent 2 hours sitting and chatting.
Dad still is in a bunch of sciatica pain, Vince helping him do some PT moves. Dad has a plan in place – we are keeping our fingers crossed that it all resolves soon.
Finally, a quiet moment & Jeremy sings me happy birthday. <3 Good night!
The Montgomery College track at sunrise. Really, I should have gotten there 15 minutes before I did because I was squeezed for time (as you will see), and I don’t like to rush through a workout. I did 8×400 – so that’s one lap pretty much as fast as I can muster and then one lap rest and do that 8 times. I haven’t done a workout like this in almost a year because I hurt my hamstring in January and haven’t really been able to rely on it to propel myself quickly around the track. It held up pretty well today, I’m happy to be back at the track, though I’m slower than I was at this time last year. Paul’s still (patiently) coaching me, sending me workouts weekly.
I biked to the track and then I biked home and I realized that I had to forgo the shower and throw all my crap together to make it to class by 9 am. This year, they built a new parking garage on campus and started implementing a $200 fee for a parking permit. I often need just a little nudge like this to get me to do what I should do (and what Jeremy is constantly “encouraging” me to do) which is bike the 2.7 miles to class – which I have been doing for a few weeks now. I have no idea how this works out to be so slow, but it takes me 30 minutes to bike the 2.7 miles. It’s like uphill the whole time and I’m all sticky from the morning’s track workout and I think now I’m doing some perverse backwards triathlon brick workout with jeans, a crappy bike and a Sponge Bob lunch box. I thought I should just find some sprinklers on campus and then walk through them and wave my arms around the water spray call today triathalon tuesday and be done with it.
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We though Vince’s iPad might have finally died. But I didn’t, we rescued it with rice. Oh yeah, Vince started weightlifting class three days ago and, no surprise, he can already lift more than me. I’ve been telling this to him for years, just go out and try like for 10 days, you’ll run faster and lift heavier than me – just 10 days (well the 10 days is for the running, the lifting was pretty much as soon as he touched the barbell). He never tried until now. Ahh, to be a young, growing teenage boy – everything is getting stronger, everything recovers better, everything is brand new. Unlike me, aging female, headed straight into peri-menopause and trying to protect all my parts from being tweaked.
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Mom came over instead of Dad to do the Chinese and math. Mom showed me the spot where the nail went halfway through her foot.
We were telling mom that she looks like she’s 14. If she wore a cap, she could certainly imposter Vince and take his math tests and Chinese tests in his place.
I have this thing about the new dishwasher. I don’t want it to get dirty. And how does it get dirty? By putting dirty plates in it. I know, this is what a dishwasher is suppose to do – clean the dirty dishes, but I don’t want all that food crap in the dishwasher. My solution? Doggie pre-wash. I’m not sure if this is such a great idea.
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We are having a minor childcare meltdown. It started with today – which the kids have off (for a Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, but on the calendar is marked “professional day for teachers” – sigh we have Christian, Jewish and Muslim holidays. Now all we need is Chinese New Year! We do need an extra holiday in February. No really, holidays are just messing with my carefully orchestrated child care Jenga stack, no holidays ever!) and I had all day clinical, so Jeremy worked from home and managed all the home / kid stuff which included pick ups from sleepovers and drop off at parents houses for Chinese lessons and random kid crap. And both evening childcare providers are struggling with, sigh, struggles. Which is fine, we all struggle with struggles. But both? At the same time? And then, of course, the back up of the back up, my parents, who really, shouldn’t be doing anything involving lifting of Edda (toileting, showering, even lifting Edda in and out of her dining room seat) are out with a bum leg and foot. So keeping my fingers crossed for everyone to feel better soon! Team Edda needs you!
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Meanwhile – laundry. With black dog hair already deposited on it. Thanks Max.
Facetimed Dad today to get an update on the butt. Guess what? It still is a pain in the ass. Not only that, Mom stepped on a nail and had to get a tetanus shot. I assume not in the butt. The good thing is that my mom stepped on the nail with her left foot and my dad’s right leg is on the fritz, so the two of them together make one complete and well two-legged person.
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Jeremy was amused by an ice-cream sandwich cake he saw on the internet. So he was determined to make it for Sunday night dinner.
Layers of whipped cream / caramel / chocolate / etc.
I was not kidding when I said this was the month of sweets.
Jeremy rode 100 miles today – his first full century. It was a supported ride, lots of snacks, Gatorade, and people to call and ambulance in case you got heat stroke. There are no photos, I have no screen shot of his progress. He probably has it in Strava, but you guys get nothing. He did all the training for this on his own which was fine, but now he wants some biking pals. He’s found a bike group that meets at Wootton on Saturdays that he’s going to start riding with them. This was to celebrate his birthday, for his 50th, he wants to ride a 500 mile ride.
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We had a quiet day: laundry, bills, Words with Friends, naps. At about 1 pm, we decided to watch Wayne’s World and I did something I never do, I fed Edda her lunch on the couch. And then Edda proceeded to surprise me by trying to feed herself. I had to go grab my phone, I can’t remember the last time she did this unprompted.
Maybe it was because her whole upper arm was kind of supported and she only needed to lift her forearm?
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Or maybe it’s her vote to always eat on the couch in front of the TV.
The effort exhausted her. She zonked out right after.
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Facetimed with Donald for the first time in a long time. Tried to understand Burning Man.
We went out to dinner to celebrate our birthdays with my parents. My dad’s sciatica was acting up which is a bummer. It was a little restaurant in Potomac (Lock 72) and the food was quite yummy. There are some doggie bags in the fridge I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
After dinner, we had a 9:30 pm violin lesson. Vince had a short violin passage he needed to video and email his orchestra teacher for seating placement. I asked him if he thought he’d be in the top half? Yes. Top quarter? Maybe. Then I asked if the seating placement would alternate between first and second violin and Vince said he thought that the orchestra teacher just puts stronger violin players next to weaker violin players so that there isn’t a good section or a bad section.
I got to hang out with Inky – my best dog friend at Kelly’s house.
Mmmm, up past my bedtime, I want to use Inky as my pillow.
My clinical on Mondays got moved to today because Monday was Labor Day. We walked around downtown Gaithersburg (the most diverse city in America), we’re suppose to do a report about Gaithersburg as a community – I’m not really sure how much we found out today as we got coffee at a cute coffee shop.
Got a lady to open her antique shop a little early. I do like community health, I could do public health in the future. I’ve learned that no one ever remembers what drugs they have been prescribed. Heck – I don’t even know the name of the antibiotic I’m taking right this moment.
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Gong Gong got a new math student today (Sam). They are learning how to bisect angles. “Ridiculously easy” reports Vince. We’ll see how the test goes tomorrow.
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It was back to school night for Edda. We had a minor childcare mix-up, Kitachi thought everyone was going to back to school night (I was unclear) and so we did end up taking Edda back to see Mr. Twigg. But first: a hamburger for dinner.
We <3 Mr. Twigg.
Edda’s having a great time at school – lots of happy smiles when she gets home. She does love Mr. Twigg too. And for us, we met 2 other families in Edda’s class and they were really nice. Like really, really nice. This never happens. I can’t tell you how many back to school nights we’ve gone to where we are the only parents that show up. But we had a lot of fun this back to school night.
Jeremy turned 48 today, we tried to celebrate well. I have many faults – one of them being my lame approach to celebrating birthdays. I always try to improve and sometimes it’s futile, but yet I continue on. Edda, Vince and I hosted a birthday breakfast at 6 am. OJ, bacon, lox, eggs. Decadent for a weekday breakfast. Flowers too! Yes, we are all wearing crowns. We were also very sleepy.
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Vince is rubbing in our high school rivalries. Ha ha! Edda’s going to Wootton though, I’m looking forward to that.
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Gong gong is helping Vince out with math everyday. #soblessed
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At dinner, we had Edda’s new care giver, Adriana, and Kristina, one of the coordinators of Edda’s care, to teach Adriana how to fill out her time cards. It was a full house to sing happy birthday to Jeremy – we’ve been eating way too many sweets and there are so many sweets to come in the next few weeks – so instead of a birthday cake, we had a birthday burrito (which was dinner).
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Donald got us a surprise (!) birthday gift – some way to super duper upgrade our wifi network. Vince was the most excited (he claims he has a weak signal in his room) and wanted us to start working on installing it at 9:15 pm. We are also excited (see Jeremy), but 9:15 on Wed night is too late to do any sort of home improvement plan. This weekend! Then everyone can come over and surf the interwebs to their heart’s content. Good night! See you on the other side!
