Author: Doris

Back to school.  We are a little tired from the weekend activities, but I guess that’s good.  My doc called me today about my UTI last week.  Apparently the culture grew E. Coli bacteria that was resistant to cipro, the doc told me to stop the cipro (sorry, can’t do that, my last pill was on Sat) and start taking some other antibiotic.  But last week when I took the cipro, I immediately felt better.  Is it all in my head?  Half of all medicine, I swear, is just in your head.  That’s why I laughed when the vet offered to do acupuncture on Ruby’s arthritic legs – because Ruby would have no idea what’s going on, so the 50% benefit you are getting by spending the money and thinking that the acupuncture will work is lost on the dog.   Though Jeremy thought there might be a second order effect, that I would feel better getting Ruby acupuncture and Ruby would feel better when she sensed that I was feeling better.  So now do I take the other antibiotic even though I feel FAN-TAS-TIC (not really, but yes, regarding the UTI).  I think in my efforts to not make any bacteria more antibiotic resistant, I have failed and sent into the world invigorated and fortified E. Coli bacteria, off to colonize other unsuspecting urethra.

Happy Labor Day!  Here’s Vince and Hector with a dry ice soap bubble.

Here’s our time lapse dishwasher install.  We didn’t start installing it until 4 in the afternoon – quite late for us and we’d already spent 3 hours in the sun at brunch earlier in the day so we were tired and sun-worn-out.  It was not an auspicious start.  But I’m very happy that 1) we did not need to go at all to Home Depot and 2) we did not argue one bit.  Not one bit.  We were often just about to argue, especially when we started to get hungry, but we backed off and had some sandwiches and went back to work.  I think we were both on our best behavior – lots of please-s and thank you-s.  That goes a long way.

Ruby is sleeping on our couch.  It makes me happy because it means she can still jump up on the couch.  Almost once a day, I tiptoe to where she’s sleeping quietly and peer ever so nervously at her body and wonder if she’s dead.  But she’s not dead, not yet.  She’s just sleeping.  She’s having trouble going up the stairs now.  I started lifting weights earlier this year because I need to be able to lift Edda, but really – now I need to lift Ruby.

Edda and I on a car ride over to Eric and Colleen’s for Labor Day brunch.

We had a lovely brunch yesterday with Julide and Andrew and their kids.  They bought a house near Needwood and redid the whole thing to be accessible.  It’s fantastic to visit people to have a 100% fully accessible house – this basically never happens, even with all the special needs families I know.   Edda had a particularly great time at this visit – laughing, walking well and enjoying scones.  Vince and Hector spent a lot of time playing with dry ice.

You can’t be a minor to buy dry ice, so when I was checking out at the grocery store – the cashier asked if I was old enough to by dry ice in a joking, conversation making kind of way and I said that indeed I was old enough.  And then he asked what I was planning on doing with the dry ice and I told him that I was promptly going to give it to a minor to do crazy crap with it.  And he replied “you mean science experiments?”.  ha ha ha, at least we wore safety glasses.  That makes it science.

And I met Sam, the house cat.  mmmm, I <3 cats.

Jeremy bike a lot today.  He sent me a virtual beacon so I could keep track of him – it’s suppose to text me if he crashes, though he warned me that reviews of the app indicated that it was hypersensitive and that it might signal a crash even though he actually didn’t crash.  I’m glad it didn’t text me and I didn’t have to figure out if it was a real crash or a fake crash.

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Vince spends a lot of time at Sam’s house.  Like a lot of time.  Maybe all day today?  Vince hangs out a lot with Sam, so much so that I always think he’s imposing on their hospitality.  They even took him out to the fancy place where they throw bits of chicken at you?  Teppanyaki?  Anyways, we retaliated by taking the bunch out to Ben and Jerry’s.  Turns out Sam’s cousin V is visiting from Michigan, she’s down a kidney from Wilms tumor – a childhood kidney cancer – and in the middle of a long chemo course, but she was feeling well and able to come out for ice cream.  Do I get to call tweens / high school-ers cuties anymore?  A bunch of cuties.

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We are finally replacing our kaput dishwasher.

Our new dishwasher – a consumer reports rated #1.  Only the best for us.  May you have a long life and serve us well.  We are saving the $150 installation fee by installing it ourselves.  May the force be with us and enable us to just drop in this baby with very few trips to Home Depot.

Look, lucky for you the internet doesn’t have smell-o-vision (yet).  Our old dishwasher with stinky water at the bottom.

First.  A surprise text from Donald.  He says hello from Burning Man.  I hope he’s having fun.  But not too much fun.  Sometimes I wonder what I would be doing if I was still single.  Would I go to Burning Man?  I suspect I would be sitting at home with my 17 cats in my pajamas watching Netflix eating takeout Chinese.

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Second.  Mom’s back in town!  Which means the reinstating of our Friday night dinners.

Vince having a laugh with the parents.

Gorgeous sunset on the way home.

Someone is very happy these days.  So happy that she was still laughing at 9:15 pm.  Go to sleep!  So I can go to sleep!

I’ve been battling a low-level UTI for 5 days now.  I could almost kind of ignore it, so I did.  I ignored it and did all the things that I needed to do and sometimes I could even forget about it.  I did a full day of clinical and met all sorts of people in section 8 housing, I did all my work, went to class, I managed the start of school for the kids, trained a new helper for Edda, I did all the workouts I wanted to do and I drank a lot of water.  It didn’t go away, but I kept telling myself, it’s so mild -you can barely feel it.  But I did feel it.  And I went to the doctor today who scolded me for not coming in earlier and getting the script for cipro.  I told her that I didn’t like seeing her.  Not that I didn’t like her personally (because I do really like my PCP), but I just hated going to see her and I hoped that she understood.  Also, I have this thing about antibiotics, I don’t like that they are overprescribed because I want them to work when I really need them to work – like for kids with pneumonia who can’t clear their airway effectively or for people who have (for whatever reason) have suppressed immune systems – so I try to do my part and slog through trying to coax my own immune system to do its thing and work it out. To which the doc said – you tried!  For 5 days!  It wasn’t until I was waiting in line to get the antibiotics that I admitted to myself how crappy I felt.  Then I went home and took the med and told myself that I’ll just lay down for a minute and then before I knew it, it was 1pm.  I took the rest of the day off sick.  I feel better now after a six hour nap and some antibiotics.  It’s not just the recovery from the UTI, sometimes I just need a break from taking care of stuff.  Sometimes I want someone to take care of me.  MEEEE!!!  ha ha ha.  sigh.  

While I was waiting for the script to fill, I went to Levande, our local new French bakery run by Koreans.  I had an almond croissant.  It was quite good even though Vince said this picture made them look like poop.

My (very nice and very patient) father has agreed to come to the house everyday at 5pm to tutor Vince in Chinese and math.  It was originally just for Chinese, but then it did occur to me that I could throw math into the deal and then I’d only have to do English (my weakest subject, but at least it’s my native language).  Vince is amused and last night told me Dad’s obsession about the right-hand rule / Cartesian coordinates and then I was like – oh yeah, I totally remember Dad teaching me the right-hand rule at about the same age.  I’m working upstairs, but I do go downstairs and check up on the two of them – make sure they aren’t goofing off because they are a pair of goofballs.  I come downstairs and my dad is patiently teaching Vince all the bad words in Chinese.  I guess that was bound to happen.
 

On Sunday, we eeked out the last bit of summer.  Vince went to a glow-in-the-dark mini-golf party to celebrate Calvin’s birthday.   Vince, Ben and Calvin got to hang out together, which they don’t do that often.  That’s Vince with the slime on his mouth.

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We experimented with these multi-filling water balloons.  You put the hose on the end of a straw-type-thing and then you can fill 25 water balloons at once.

Lucky for Jerry, Vince loves water balloons.

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First day of school photo.  Older brother giving younger sis a noogie.  Thank goodness we celebrated our wedding anniversary on Saturday, because by Sunday night we were all a bit grumpy at each other.  Homework (not done yet), electronic curfews (someone wants it to be later), what to by at open lunch (snacks at the 7-11)….  already!  Delegation/discussion of who gets to be the “fun” parent and who gets to be the “mean” parent.  All before the first day of school.  And that was only Vince!  For Edda, there’s coordination of new care providers and making sure she’s one the right buses with all the right stuff going to the right places.

Off he goes!

Maxi standing (well, sitting) sentry at the door for the school bus…

There’s the bus!

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And finally me, it was my first day of school too.  Jeremy packed me an extra special lunch.  Community health this quarter – using some rudimentary Chinese, doing blood pressure screenings and seeing what’s out there.

Tomorrow, Jeremy and I will be married 18 years.  Thank you Jeremy for everything.  For all this.  I rely so much on your kindness, generosity and steadiness.  I’m the lucky one.

To celebrate, we had breakfast with Edda on Saturday and then we spent about 10 hours on our own.  We hardly ever have that chunk of time on our own.   After breakfast, we drove couple of hours into the MD countryside and headed to Harper’s Ferry for a brief hike.

Jeremy bought me a lot of ice cream.

He had a lot of ice cream too.

We walked some.  Then we went to Frederick to have dinner at this place called Family Meal.  We thought Vince would like it.

Then we saw a wonderful movie called Kubo and the Two Strings.  We thought Edda might like it.

Quick updates before school starts.  If it doesn’t get blogged now, it’ll never get blogged.  This past week, we took Edda to HSC (formerly known as the Hospital for Sick Children, but now known as just HSC, just like the ARC which used to be known as the Association for Retarded Citizens, but now is just ARC) to get her a sleep safe bed.  I’m have a B of a time getting the bath chair from my other vendor, it was only by chance that I heard about HSC.  SleepSafe beds didn’t mention them as a vendor, my insurance didn’t mention them as a vendor.  I’m very excited because HSC seems to call me back and, well, that is enough.  If it gets through insurance (2 months) we should get the bed in 3 months (1 month to build the bed).  Keeping my fingers crossed.  I have to admit that every night when either Jeremy or I go over at 2am, 3am, 4am, or 5am,  I dream about the adult sized crib.  Sleep.  I love sleep.

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We did go out with Lael and Rachel this past Monday, they were kind enough to drive all the way to Rockville.  We went out to Chinese food and Ben & Jerry’s.  We talked a bunch about marriage and kids.  But we also talked about cigar bars.

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It’s actually great serendipity that my dad (Gong Gong) is here in town because the summer Chinese packet is INSANE.  After two years of reasonable vocabulary about school, family members, jobs, body parts/illness and ordering noodles in a restaurant, the summer packet is about silver haired rabbits yelling poetry at personified seasons.  Huh?  Vince can barely handle the weird mysterious crap (magical realism mainly) happening in his English readings.

Vince swears that 75% of the words in the packet, he’s never seen before.  Also, after two years of simplified characters, this new high school teacher wants to throw in traditional characters too.  All this points to a difficult road ahead.  I’m thankful that for now, Gong Gong can help out with the silver haired rabbits.  Hmmm….