Author: Doris

Thursday is usually date night.  But Jeremy had an evening meeting in DC, so I took my mom out to dinner.  I took her to Cava Grill – the hippest place in Gaithersburg.  I know that isn’t saying much, but we suburbanites want to still feel like we know what it’s like to not drive a minivan.  The line was 30 deep, unheard of in the deep ‘burbs.  My mom was a little astonished at its popularity.

It’s a slightly fancier version of Chipotle – price point was 10 dollars each.

Ordering was a little complicated – I tried to explain tzatizki, hummus, falafel, harissa, and tahini to mom and she settled on some choices, but when we got to the front of the line and saw what each of the things were, she immediately changed her mind.  She got the spicy lamb meatballs.  I got falafel pita.

I took my mom to the Costco, where she bought large amounts of a few things.  Then I dropped her off at home and went to Home Depot because I’m still doing a side gig as appliance repair-man.  Our washer wasn’t draining.  The pump was clogged with 7.5 years of crap.  According to a random person on the internet, I needed to purchase a wet/dry vac to repair it.

Vince and I followed the internet instructions and sucked out about 5 gallons of sulfurous smelling water from the pump.  When we started running the wet/dry vac, it was so loud, I went to get some foam ear plugs.  I gave Vince a pair and he stuck them in his nose at first.  I laughed and said – no!  They are for your ears!

After we drained the washer, we found mold/mildew, hair, a lollipop stick, pennies/nickels, a guitar pick, and sewing pins, a lot of glitter fallen from glittery clothing and it all smelled really bad.  Vince was interested only in operating the wet/dry vac.  As soon as that was done, he vamoosed.  I did the cleaning and ended up smelling like a rotten egg.  But it is fixed!  Just like new.  Not really, but it works.  And now we own a wet/dry vac.

I’m relishing the regular-ness of the week.  Everyone is well, everyone is in a good mood.  We are all doing our regular neurotic stuff, but because it’s all within the scope of a regular week, it’s not so bad.  Jeremy’s slightly anxious and can’t sleep, I’m slightly mopey and become lazy and tend to sloth, Vince forgets sheets of paper all around the house and then sends us into a frenzy 3 minutes before he leaves for school trying to locate them, Edda is pooping on the shower floor, Maxi has diarrhea, and, finally, Ruby is perfect.  Because I know that our days with au pair child care are numbered, (3 months left, but who’s counting?), I’m extra aware of all the help I get around the house because of Keyla’s attentiveness and I’m trying to appreciate every moment of it.

Hmmm…. what else happened today?

Vince is trying in vain to help us keep up with teenage culture.  We hear little bits of sayings that we don’t understand, yet know they are part of the youth vernacular and then we ask Vince to clarify the origin of the phrase and to help us incorporate it into situations and sentences.  It’s hilarious to do this at the dinner table, with Keyla both trying to learn old idiomatic English phrases like “pushing my buttons” from us and then trying to learn new idiomatic phrases like “deez nuts” with me and Jeremy.

I had my first set of classes today – pediatrics and a class called co-morbidities in which they give you a case study of a person with a history of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, gall stones and breast cancer – and they come in with a severe case of the flu.  How do they present?  What hormones are released? What happens to the heart rate?  What happens to their electrolytes?  The classes are going to be fun (I think), though I miss having good friends at school.  I do love school, but it’s much nicer when you are going to school with a bunch of your good friends.  I’m determined to not let this semester spiral out of control – sometimes I get overwhelmed and have that constant anxious feeling and can’t think straight for weeks at a time – though I suspect no one notices except me.

Jeremy’s report is at the printers.  It’s really, really done.  It’s going to publish next Tuesday.

Vince is in the middle of picking his high school class schedule.  This being crazy town – the guidance counselors are telling all the kids to get ready for college and freaking them all out.   I don’t want to think about college, because then he will leave me and go somewhere else and I’m not quite ready to let him go out into the world with my credit card at his side.   As for classes, he’s continuing with Chinese and he’s going to audition for chamber orchestra.  A few weeks ago, he asked if he could practice in his room instead of in the middle of the kitchen.  We said ‘sure’ not thinking too much of it.  But it turns out that after electronic curfew, when he’s faced with nothing to do, he’ll practice violin for a while. Like really practice, going over a single measure over and over again until he gets it right.  Interesting.  We are trying to lay low on this and not make it a big deal.

Edda, the poor girl, has major medical updates to report.  She has two appointments next week for her  curving back – two people for us to consider.  One at Children’s, one at Hopkins.  I’m also in the middle of arranging dental surgery for her mid-April.  She has a tooth growing in the middle of her palate that needs to be pulled and we are going to pull her wisdom teeth too and get some sealants in there.

I spent Saturday at Children’s Hospital for clinical orientation.  I’m thankful that I get to do clinical on Saturday because I get to avoid a lot of traffic.  I’m on a post-surgery floor – a good mix of GI, urology, ortho surgeries.  My instructor seems great, my classmates are relaxed and fun.  Hopefully, I won’t cry too much.

Today, I went running on the only plowed trail in the DC area.  Even though I showed up right at sunrise today, I said hello ten million people: people running alone, people running in couples, whole groups of people training together. I think everyone who wanted to get in a run today went to the Capital Crescent Trail. I have never run with so many other runners except for in a race! Usually when I run, I say hello to 4 people max.   I ran into Amy – my college marathon running friend and we ran for a few moments.  She warned me about an aggressive owl that might attack you if you are a lone runner.  Lucky for me, I saw no owl.  My hamstring is still on the fritz.  What did I do to it? Ack.

Edda and Ruby napping together.  Edda is ready to go back to school.  She is off her schedule.  Ruby may be ready for Edda to back to school as well.  Given that Edda sleeps on top of her.

Jeremy cleared the deck because he wanted to grill for Sunday night dinner.

Happy birthday Jane!

Kids were home one more day (again).  This is the last snow day!  It’s going to be 60 degrees next week – we are all going to be in shorts and t-shirts then.

*******

We had dinner tonight with Debbie and Dennis. Dennis (I say the next bit with sherah’s Texas accent), bless his heart, snowblew (? snowblowed), my mother’s driveway Monday morning – even before any plow had touched their street.

We had Friday night dinner with them as (tremendous) thanks.

I wanted to give Dennis something nice for his trouble, Debbie told me he liked brandy.  So I shuffled off to the local liquor store with Edda.  I don’t understand alcohol, I don’t drink, I don’t even drink enough water – nothing there looked quite right.  I texted Jeremy to rescue me.

He was just about to leave his office and said, don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.  He walked into a nice liquor store downtown and picked up a fancy bottle.  Dennis was pleased – said he thought he got the better end of the deal which was sweet to say, but I’m sure that I (and my mom) got the better end.

I tried to do some errands today, simple ones like buying spaghetti sauce and black bean soup, but I failed at this task.  The shelves are still empty at the local Target. This mid-day failure set me up for the rest of the afternoon, like setting up a the T-ball stand and just knowing you are going to whiff the next swing.

Though between my feelings of failure, I did have an excellent ox tail for lunch.

My second feeling of failure came from attempting and failing to make an ortho appointment for Edda’s back at Johns Hopkins.  This has been on my list for many months, but I’ve been putting it off because I like to be in denial.  I called the Hopkins # – they said they need a referral in order to make the appointment.  I called my primary care physician – they said they don’t do open ended referrals, they need the exact time/date of the appointment to make the referral.  I called back Hopkins, they said they *really* didn’t make appointments without the referral.  They suggested I change primary care physicians.  Sigh.  In the end, I got the two of them to talk to each other!  Success.  Kind of.  The primary called me back and said – who diagnosed her?  we have nothing on the chart that says she has scoliosis.  I admitted that I diagnosed her.  (I know, I’m not an expert or anything, but I can tell with my eye/fingers when things are two inches off center.)  Primary says – I gotta check with the doc.  I said I was willing to come in so they can see Edda’s back and also that I feel like I needed to compensate them for all this phone tag I’m making them do.  Anyways, primary called back and said  everything was straightened out (ha ha scoliosis pun) and all I had to do was call Hopkins again.  (This is such a boring story.  In the hands of a better writer, I know this could be riveting.)

So I call Hopkins back.  I can’t make the appointment because they can’t find the referral.

Argh.  AAAAHHHHHHHHH~!!!!!1!@@!$@#R$%^$%^.  I give up.