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 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.
This is an especially good Edda outfit. Everything matches and nothing is black. The blue in the pants picks up the blue in the shirt, the red in the bib picks up another accent color in the shirt. Not often does this happen.
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It’s incredibly hard to pick out Christmas gifts for Edda. What she wants is a mystery! A complete mystery. I think I need to get her a tub of cheeseballs, she will enjoy that. I probably should also gift her a complete detailing of her wheelchair to get all the crustiness out of it. By the way, her brakes broke (again!) yesterday, her teacher texted at the end of the day yesterday. I haven’t even had the chance to look at the broken parts in the baggie they sent home. It’s really no surprise that it happened, I was just waiting for it. It’s such a pain to get the brakes repaired on these wheelchairs. Weeks and weeks of emailing and calling with no response – I should mention, getting these repaired through insurance. If I want to pay out of pocket, it’s slightly easier, but not really.
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Our Friday night dinner was only the four of us – Edda, Mom & Dad and me. Vince was out watching the new Star Wars movie. Jeremy’s still in Portland.
We had a very enjoyable dinner at the local IHOP. I was a little concerned that the IHOP would be a little depressing and sticky. But it was very cheerful and not sticky at all even though they had the four kinds of syrup at each table. My dad found out that they are open on Christmas and was lobbying for Christmas morning breakfast at the IHOP, but I told him under no circumstances was I going to have Xmas morning breakfast (his birthday breakfast!) at the IHOP no matter how many free coffee refills they were going to give him.
Jeremy’s kind of having a weird week in Portland on his business trip. There was a three-inch snow storm which has shut the city down. He was suppose to host a happy hour last night, but no one showed up. Some other work stuff (not really related to the Portland trip) is throwing him for a loop. I wish I was there to give him a hug. But I’m not, I’m here.
At least he got to walk to some hipster bike shops where he was able to look at all the bikes he’s been reading about in all of his little biking blogs (1,000 bikes in stock! no need to put in a special order, they’ve got it right there). The bike shop employees were happy to show him whatever he wanted to see even though they knew he was from out of town and wouldn’t be able to buy any bikes because they were as snowbound as he was. No test bike rides though.
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Vince has a couple of birthday parties this weekend. I usually give cash ($20) to the boys because it’s easy and I’m lazy and it’s fun to watch young people palm a Jackson (soon to be Tubman). But Vince has mentioned to me that some of his friends want to buy stuff online without bugging (or informing) their parents. Stuff like extra lives on video games or, you know, subscriptions to the New Yorker. So I ventured into the Visa gift card aisle. I tried to talk myself into thinking that the extra $4 (!) on a $25 dollar gift card was part of the “gift” – that it was worth the extra fee for a teenager to open a browser window and buy whatever the heck they wanted. I did this for at least 40 minutes today. In the end, I couldn’t do it. They are getting cash. Who pays extra cash for cash? I guess not me.
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Vince all spruced up for his orchestra concert tonight.
The arrow is just so you know where he is. The kids sound good! Not so long ago, they were all playing Mary had a Little Lamb. And now they are playing Brandenburg concertos (though Vince admitted that he got pianissimo during some hard parts).
I broke every rule of being a polite concert-goer and snagged a seat in the very last row and texted Jeremy the whole time during the concert. Poor guy was hosting his happy hour of one at the same time, I thought he needed some company.
We ordered a large supply of fruit (music program fundraiser) which Vince helped me pick up at the end of the concert.
