Doris – Page 228 – Just regular folks.

Passed the Plumbing Inspection

After struggling several times, the whole water, vent and drain system of our new addition was ready for inspection yesterday. The inspector came this morning and he signed off this item. Great!

But, before insulation and dry wall, the inspector indicated that we need to have a fixed A/C system, either tie to the old one or getting a new separate one. I guess a separate one is more convenient and cost effective. But, it has to wait for the next year.

By the way, I am going to connect the new water, vent and drain to the old existing one this afternoon. And, I believe, for this year, I am done with the addition. I will start working on our yard and ready to leave for the winter.

Stay tune on our new addition next year.

A bit of a crappy day.

Yeah, I had a less than optimal day. But I’m going to wear my new PJs to bed and it’ll be better tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Doris

From Mom & Dad

Peanut butter cups.

Vince made homemade peanut butter cups for my birthday. My birthday is tomorrow, but we celebrated a bit tonight at Sunday night dinner. I’m an old, old woman. And nothing makes me feel older than when I meet a new person and they ask – “how old are your kids?” and I say “11 and 13”!!! ?##$%$*& When did that happen? I’m sorry mom – that you have to say your kids are 39 and 43. But wait until next year until you have to say your kids are 40 and 44! Ha ha ha. Oh, time waits for no one.

Driving to Sunday night dinner, we listen to spotify with Vince DJing. We rotate song choices, Vince choosing pop songs now. Jeremy and I choosing songs from when we were in high school and college. Because Jeremy and I are offset 4 years, our songs don’t quite overlap. Edda fell asleep – not interested in 80s, 90s or 10s music.

Drain / Vent Pipe Leaks

Right now, under full water pressure by flooding the whole drain/vent system from the roof top, I have three leaks. Two are under the floor, One is at the vault ceiling.

Yesterday, I decided to completely replace two of them – one section of three adjacent long bend elbows and one section of a tee. For the tee, this was my third attempt.

The other, I think I will do a quick fix now and then do a complete fix afterward when there is no more testing water inside.

Although Mom is teasing me on the leaks, she is really quite sympathetic I think 🙂 And, of course, they are more projects already lining up for me:)

Adventures.

Jeremy is anxious these days as he’s trying to pull together a report he’s been working on for over two years. This weekend, I made a special effort not to work too much this weekend (because I work upstairs on my work computer) so he can spend all day working on his stuff (upstairs) without Edda hitting his head every 15 minutes (because he usually works downstairs with Edda).

I took Edda to Montgomery Mall to watch a movie. I wanted to see either Trainwreck or Mission Impossible – Jeremy advised me to see Mission Impossible because it was louder and would mask any sound Edda would make during the movie. I think she liked it. I liked it because I got to squeeze in my one summer blockbuster. Tom Cruise didn’t disappoint, he’s still looking good into his 50s. But the climax of the movie involved this very quiet underwater scene where Tom Cruise is trying to exchange out two pieces of yellow plastic while running out of oxygen and Edda decided to just yell at that point. I tried putting my hand over her mouth, but she just licked my hand and then kept yelling. So we took off. I will never know if Tom Cruise lives or drowns.

Afterwards, I was feeling a little sorry for myself because sometimes I just get that way about missing the ends of movies when a few girls rushed over and said hi to Edda. These were a bunch of girls from Edda’s elementary school who were hanging out at the mall. They asked why Edda wasn’t going to their middle school (we asked the same question, trust me). I introduced myself and asked how 6th grade was going. Then we said our good byes and have funs. After feeling momentarily happy at the interaction, I promptly then felt slightly more sorry for myself.

Jeremy took us all out to Wegmans, where they are having a hatch chili festival this weekend.

Vince loves chili! Anything spicy…

End of summer.

To celebrate the last day of summer (for me!), I went to Bethesda to see a movie. By myself! Jeremy couldn’t make it. It was date night, but he had a meeting downtown to go to so I took myself out on a date. And now it really is the end of summer, I think even the weather has cooperated…

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Classes started today. I’m doing an OB rotation. I didn’t get to do much today, but it’s going to be a great clinical. Shady Grove is a baby factory: there are 48 postpartum recovery rooms and a NICU. Next week, I’m on the rotation to scrub into the OR and see a c-section. Our clinical instructor knows everyone on the floor or has taught a lot of the nurses on the floor. I’m more and more curious to try and figure out what kind of nurse I want to be. I can already tell that I’m not really suited in labor and delivery (it’s too popular of a choice and as soon as something is popular, I like to run the other direction, and it’s too happy and I didn’t go into nursing for happy) or the NICU. Gah, when I walked into the NICU with all the tiny incubators and bili lights, I could feel that old tingly feeling of having my milk let down and then I wanted to cry. It’s not the place for me either. Tiny babies all wrapped up with tubes everywhere that you could hold in the palm of your hand.

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Jeremy, Edda and I spent our Friday night stuffing evelopes for a candidate who is running for Rockville council. He lives in College Gardens which is the next neighborhood over from us and the neighborhood I grew up in. I don’t have many friends now in College Gardens because the elementary schools are different in the different neighborhoods, so it was a wonderful pleasure to go into a house which feels so familiar even though I’ve never been in this particular house because it was the same model as a house that a friend must have had…

Pictures in Crawl Space

With an extra added step, Mom came down to the crawl space with me. She took these pictures.

Black pipe is the drain and vent. Red tube is for hot water and the white one is for cold water.

A Leak in the Main Section (Larger Section) of the Drain Piping System in Our Addition

Today, I climbed up to the roof again to inject water into the main section of new drain piping system of our addition. The water was injected through the vent opening.

There was leak at a tee way up in the vault ceiling. Everything else was fine including all drain piping underneath the floor – very lucky and, of course, good work too. I am getting tired of working in the crawl space. Some place is less than 2 1/2 feet height.

I replaced the whole tee and it should work fine. I will concentrate on the leak at an elbow of that small section. Hopefully, I can fix it without replacing all three elbows adjacently clustered together.

Note: Tomorrow, I will invite Rena to come down to the crawl space to look our piping system (drain and cold/hot water lines too) underneath. It will be the first time that Mom is down under. Oh, while working in the crawl space, I noticed that I have companions (mouse), we already caught three of them using CHEESE as bait. We even caught two together using just one spring trap. I don’t know how (?).

DMV

I spent the morning at the DMV where I watched this old printer in action. I like the DMV for practicing mindfulness. Long pointless lines, appointments that are missed by two hours, inexplicable rules and a mass of smelly people. Did I expect any differently when I woke up and knew I had to spend hours in a hard chair in a terribly lit room with no money to buy Cheetos from the vending machine? No.

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My first OB clinical on Friday. My clinical instructor has emailed us 17 times with different assignments, patient interviews, test dates, care plans and medication lists. She insisted that we needed to work over Labor Day weekend. I find it very difficult to concentrate on these assigments because my first class isn’t until next Monday, so school has not “in my mind” started for me yet. I do not like going to the hospital before I’ve started the class for which the hospital part is attached to. Friday is 9/11 and it’s going to be a slow day in the delivery room because no one chooses to induce or have a c-section on 9/11.