Author: Doris

Seattle / Portland.

Jeremy’s traveling this week.  Left this am.  Back on Friday.  So, as Vince laments, who is going to cook us dinner?  It’s going to be a week of fish sticks.  And low vegetable intake.  I used to be better at cooking – and I did do most of the cooking when I was a full time stay-at-home-mom.  But it’s not something I’m particularly good at – I can’t just rummage through the pantry and whip up something new.  I’m a recipe follower…

Bert is 2!

We headed over to the wilds of Virginia to go to Bert’s 2nd birthday party.  Jeremy made his peanut butter cookies which were a big hit.  We admired the amazing birthday cake.  Vickey and I decided this morning that this cake must have taken the cake lady more than 10 hours to make – we thought maybe upwards of 15 hours?  I dunno.  It was beautiful and delicious.

Bert is the cutest 2 year old ever.

Jeremy biked the 50 miles to Vickey’s house.  He left the house at 6:30 am and made it there by 10:30 am.  He’d always wanted to ride on a particular trail in Virginia.

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I feel like I’m living a lie on this blog.  For more than a decade, I’ve been documenting what I consider to be what I’m mostly thinking about, what I’m concentrating on, or what is really going on in the family.  What is on the blog these days is NOT AT ALL what is preoccuping myself with.  Snapping a picture and writing a few words about it really freezes something like 30 seconds out of the whole day.  And what does my whole day look like these days?  It looks like a lot of work.  I’m either hunched over my work work.  Or I’m hunched over my school work.  Or I’m going to school work. Or I’m procrastinating – which looks a lot like work work or school work, but really it isn’t any work. Besides the crazy work work or school work, there is the incredible clinical work (which I’m playing the most bottom rung role – I get coffee, change sheets, clean people while I’m learning to give meds and provide appropriate interventions when a patient is decompensating in front of me) that just has story after story about death, health, blood, epidemics, obesity, drug abuse, etc, which has just been incredibly moving and stressful and full of humanity that I kind of have to shake my head and clear it every time I leave the hospital.

Halloween.

I think this is the year we’ve outgrown Halloween.  Oh well.  I loved you pumpkin patch, I loved you school parades, I loved you trick-o-treating at twilight.  Vince went to a sleepover last night where they went tricking – trying to scare people.  I hope they didn’t throw eggs at people’s houses. Edda’s last Halloween parade happened.  We still managed a couple of pumpkins on the porch.  The turnout was low.  Maybe 10 groups total….

Hair.

Tonight, I’m going to give Edda a shower and then I’m going to dry her hair.  Then we will snuggle in her bed until she falls asleep.  If I’m industrious, I’ll study via youtube videos while I’m in bed with her.  If I’m less industrious, I’ll watch a movie on Netflix and fall asleep next to her.

Mischief.

We hosted Sunday night dinner.  We did it the simple way and ordered four large pizzas – cheese, pepperoni, meat lovers and verde.  As the boxes emptied, I gathered them up and headed to the garage to throw them away in the recycling bin.  As soon as I opened the door between the house and the garage, Vince and Bryson rushed up and grabbed the boxes from my hands and told me that they’d be happy to take care of the recycling for me.  I squinted my eyes and asked them what sort of naughtiness they were up to.  They sheepishly admitted that they were using a power drill to impale screws into a plastic dinosaur.  I looked at the dinosaur and reminded them that they really should put on safety glasses.  A couple of safety glasses were promptly found and I left them to their power tool happiness.

Oh the poor dinosaur.