Author: Doris

Evil eye.  Studying for Chinese.  We both know it needs to happen.  We both are annoyed.  Life goes on.  Notice Edda has no pants.  “I got no pants!”

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Jeremy at IKEA.  Where we buy items that are destined to change our lives.

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Sunday night dinner.  Lively conversation!  Loud!  We usually aren’t that loud, but this evening we were all punchy.

It’s Ruby’s 15th birthday today!!!!!!!!  From her humble beginnings (born in the backseat of a Volvo in Austin, TX), she has triumphed over every suburban dog adversity.  OK, not so many adversities, but she’s still triumphant.

(2nd “real” final – Tues.  Chinese.)

To celebrate Ruby’s birthday, we roasted a whole leg of lamb for her.  My mother gave us this leg.  I’m not sure where she found it, but we cooked it.  

In the middle of dinner prep, Jeremy sliced a chunk off of his thumb, so Vince picked up the slack and made the mint sauce and carved the leg.

Vince took his first ever “real” final yesterday.  I guess it’s “real” because this grade is the first one of the many that will be sent to colleges on his transcript.  Even though he’s in middle school, all the courses which are considered high school level get sent on.  We marched through the review packet the night before. I will admit that I got confused with some nomenclature and got turned around and had to google myself math reminders (my poor aging brain, slipping, slipping – 8th grade math, I so want to kick myself).

We tried doing a few minutes before dinner, but he was hungry, the blood sugar was dropping and the frustration level/anxiety was amping up.  I know the kids at school were freaking out and I know I contribute to his anxiety which makes me feel bad.  It’s a tough line for me to walk – to encourage hard work and good effort (not best effort, but good effort – best effort to me is unattainable because one could have always, no matter the circumstance, tried harder), but not be focused on the actual grade and not to get freaked out about the possibility of doing badly when you get stuck on a particular witchy problem about Claudia selling headbands at $3.00 a piece and it cost her 59 cents to make each one and how many headbands does she need to sell to make a profit of at least $100.

It’s been an uneven term in his math class, the teacher (by all accounts, awesome and fun and had some sort of math/basketball competition going between the girls and boys and the girls were handily winning) had a personal emergency and hasn’t been teaching for the past few months.  There have been seven subs in the meantime. I think there is a long-term sub now, but this was the time period where they learned y=mx+b or geometric functions which means they didn’t really cover it very well.

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Keyla’s time with us is up at the end of April.  Keyla’s been wonderful.  Our au pair experience has been really great, all these girls, I was their stand-in mother for a little while in their young adult lives.  It went mostly smoothly, it can never be without problems or issues – I like to say every au pair has their one crazy story!  I think she’s going to be our last au pair.  We are going to try a new childcare thing.  This makes me scared.  But it’ll be OK.

All of us tucked sick Edda to sleep last night.  She curled up like a little potato bug and fell right asleep even though she was running a fever and just waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in.  I slept with her last night as it was my turn (Jeremy had done the night before), but she slept deeply and peacefully.  The fever didn’t reappear, but we kept her home today…

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To plow through tedious things, I employ a simple trick.  I do the tedious thing and then I get a little self selected reward.  In college, I used to reward myself with a 10-minute break of looking at People Magazine (MIT library had a subscription!)  Today, I got to look through some old photos/mementos  So here you go.

Jeremy has teased me (I want to say mercilessly, but that is not the case) lovingly about wanting to play the lottery this past week.  I understand that I won’t win, I understand that the $2 is worth more to me than possibility of winning is, but I can’t help it.  Jeremy cited both economics studies which prove the $ argument, and psychological studies which showed that 99% of all past winners spun themselves into bankruptcy and despair.  Finally, he argued, you want a prize that was formed and taken from poor people who couldn’t really afford to spare the $20 to buy the lottery tickets?  I told him to stop ruining my fun. I want to dream that having all that money will mean that my heart will never break again, but really, I know all that money will only buy me material things when what I really want can not be bought for any price.

The kids are home sick today.  My sickies.  I hope they are better by this weekend.  Vince has a campout this weekend I want him to be well for – it’s a scout campout where there is some sort of competition between troops.  Also, it’s very cold, they stay outside the whole weekend.

I think Tylenol is an urban myth.  Does it work at all for fevers?

I went to see another continuing care facility today with my friend who is interested in moving into one.  It was a full-service one – beautifully maintained, elegant finishes, balconies for every independent living apartment.  The apartment had a certain style about that was so familiar to one of the apartments that Jeremy and I moved into when we first both had professional jobs in Austin.  It’s one of those communities that likes to use the word “amenities”.  The independent living apartments segue into assisted living apartments that ease into comprehensive care, like riding on a little conveyor belt.  Then I kind of realized that each time I turn down something I want to have because I’m “saving”, I’m saving for a little apartment that looks exactly like one of the first apartments I rented.  The first one was full of potential and possibilities for a life not yet full of stories and the last one will have most (though not all, for the last chapter is an important one) of the stories of my life already written.

I was going to write this post last night, but I got distracted.  Anyways, both kids are sick and home today.  Jeremy is feeling better.

Edda starting to feel crappy.

Morning rush.  One boy in a suit, the other in shorts.  Off to the races (aka, Monday morning).

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A few days ago, Kiki texted us – “large package coming, open instantly and hang outside!”.  What could it be?  Curious minds wanted to know.

We got it today!  Thank you!  We hung it from the bird feeder post for now.  What should we cook with it?

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I enjoy hearing from our previous au pairs, they are off living their lives carrying a piece of us with them.  Makes me happy – look!  Denise is in a band, in fine form.

Jeremy presented today downtown on biofuels – he said it went well even though he feels crappy.  Edda and I spent most of the day in our pajamas, we watched Finding Nemo (I’m very much looking forward to Finding Dory this summer, I hope it’s good).  Vince came down and ate my lunch of dumplings.  But in exchange for stealing my lunch, I got him to do a round of Chinese vocabulary words.  Finals are next week for him – he’s working on a bunch of essays, projects and studying.    

Edda and I went to Sunday night dinner where I kind of watched the Packers / Redskins game.

Jeremy is sick.  Selfishly, I hope it is the same illness I had last week, so I don’t get it again this week.  Today (Sunday), he needs to go to a three-hour networking event where he’s planning on giving a talk.  He lamented that networking is hard even when one is feeling well because, being of a typical non-looking-forward-to-networking personality, one needs to gird oneself up to meet people you don’t know but want to know – however, feeling crappy, it’s next to impossible to pep-talk yourself into feeling charming.

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The Christmas slight splurging continues – Jeremy got these padded gloves for biking on Donald’s recommendation to dampen the vibrations on the trails.  But first, he needed to try it out driving.

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Vince wanted a sub for lunch and there’s a new Jimmy John’s in town and he’d never tried it before.  I used to eat at Jimmy John’s all the time when I worked in Alexandria, I was happy to find one near my house.

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I hurt my hamstring last week running, so I’ve switched to swimming.  They renovated the pool I learned to swim in and just re-opened it in the new year.  Something about swimming in that pool makes me feel both young and old.  On an evolutionary level, I think that being surrounded by water on all sides reverts you back to the un-rememberable feeling of being in back the womb, where you are being taking care of in all the ways you need to be taken care of.  That’s a nice feeling.  It also makes me feel like I’m seven because I do remember spending so much time in that same pool when I was in elementary school.  And then I see seven year olds having their swim lessons and then I just feel old and wish I was seven again.  I’m comfortable in the water, but I never had formal swim lessons, so I’m flailing around – arms in all directions, water splashing, no clean fluid streamlines around my body – being beat by seniors with their kick board drills.

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A couple of Vince’s co-scout members made Eagle Scout rank and they had their Court of Honor last night.  It was a nice celebration.  Making Eagle Scout is a lot of work, I’m hoping Vince’ll be inspired along the way.

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Finally, a last minute thing.  To get together for drinks and dessert with a couple of my favorite Rett mom friends.  So much to talk about as we all go through middle age and as our kids get older – as we get older.