Author: Doris

On Easter, we went hunting for the house Gene and Bob lived in when they were in elementary school.  Their father, George, was a labor organizer for the boot and shoe union and he was the leader of the union at the Selby Shoe Company in Portsmouth, OH.  They lived in a small, tiny town called Coles Park.  We found the house they lived in and introduced ourselves to the current owner who has been there since 1974.

Gene and Bob played with the family next door and the family still lives there.   We were hoping to meet the son of their friend in this yellow house.  Alas, no one answered the door.

Then off to find their elementary school.  Here it is, all boarded up and filled with trash.  It seems like the school building had been leased to a sewing factory? or something like that?  But it’s just really shut down and unoccupied.

Then a little Easter egg hunt in a nearby park and an outdoor lunch.

We did try to find the factory in Portsmouth where George worked, but it seems to have been torn down.  We did enjoy frozen yogurt there though.

Then finally, home.

After Columbus, we headed to Cincinnati.  There we picked up Bob (flew into Dayton) and Gene (flew into Cincinnati).  Half of us stayed in a hotel and half stayed in the beautiful home of a Martin relative.

Resident cat!  This is a very nice cat photo.  I got lucky.

Our first stop was the Cincinnati Music Hall.  Bob ushered there and attended a lot of concerts at the hall.

Then we went to Union Terminal.  Wonderful display of art deco styling.  Gene remembered the place being full of travelers – according to wikipedia, at it’s peak, there were 216 trains coming and going.  Now there is only one train, three times a week, arriving at 2 am.

The inside has been turned into a number of museums.

Oh!  What great fonts.

Then we started hunting for Bob and Gene’s childhood home(s).  This one is on Stirgus Ave – lived in when they were approximately high school age.

Then onto the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.  Edda learned about the cotton gin.

Mecklenburg’s Garden for dinner.  Nice German food.  Well, at least a lot of German food.  Bob and Gene remember this place fondly.

Onto find the high school.  Walnut Hills High School.  The fanciest public high school any of us has ever seen.  Brand new facilities, marble statues in the front lobby.  Today, you have to test into Walnut Hills HS.  I think it might be ranked higher than Wootton nationally.

Finally, Graeter’s for ice cream!

Spring break means a road trip somewhere.  This year, we decided to go to Michigan/Ohio.  There was going to be an engineering/manufacturing portion (Detroit, Dayton), a visiting friends portion (Columbus), and a reminiscing portion (Cincinnati).  Because of nursing school and three exams on Monday and Tuesday, I totally missed the engineering part of the trip (a total shame) and therefore, it was poorly documented.  The kids, Nat, Jeremy, and Kiki made it to the Ford manufacturing plant and museam in Detroit and the National Museum of US Air Force in Dayton.   I did manage to fly into Columbus on Wed to meet the minivan where we visited Paul (Jeremy’s college pal) and his family.  This is Ceci – she taught Vince all there is to know about American Girl dolls.

Paul is still coaching me, I’m still running.  He’s trying to convince me that I can string together 6.2 miles at 8 min pace with about 7 or 8 weeks of training.   I’m a little dubious, but we’ll see how it goes.   He is also determined to find a wife for Donald, he’s going to work his connections in San Fran, so Donald, look out.  Mom, he also wants his finder’s fee of $2500 if it ends up in a wedding.

Resident cat!

Today I took Edda to her well check-up.  Neither Edda nor Vince had been to the office for the full year between last year’s well check-up and this year’s.  I’m not sure if that makes me a terrible mother because I refuse to take them in when they feel bad for a day or two or if it means that my kids are so super healthy and I should be grateful.  I think I tend towards the grateful side.   Grateful that I have healthy kids (except for the underlying Rett Syndrome, of course).

Again, the student doctor was there and I had a nice time telling him about Rett Syndrome.  He, of course, had never seen a clinical case, so it was an interesting conversation.  Told him how mildly affected Edda was, in the grand scheme of things, how lucky we are that she’s so healthy.  But also acknowledging that it’s a severe disability and that she requires care in all aspects of daily living.  

Edda got no vaccines this time.  Just a very thorough assessment because it’s interesting to do.  The only assessment that I thought was interesting to note is her small head size.  So we measured it.  But they don’t generally chart head size for a 10 year old, so the information wasn’t really useful.

Only at Jeremy’s work is there a vegan soup club.  Every month, Jeremy is responsible for bringing in a vat of soup to the soup club.  The idea that the office should have a soup club did not seem super well thought out.  Given that the bulk of the employees take the Metro to work, it’s not really easy to bring 25 servings of soup on the subway.  This time he made something with leek.

Beautiful spring day here in Rockville.  It’s so hard to work when one is faced with days like this.  You just want to be outside and soak up all the sunshine…

I took Vince to the pediatrician for his annual check-up earlier this week.  It was the first well-check appointment where I thought that maybe I should step out of the room while they examined him – that maybe he would have questions for the doctor that he wouldn’t want to ask in front of me.  Vince laughed at me when I asked if he wanted me out of the room, he said there was nothing that he would ask the doctor that he felt he couldn’t ask me first.  He got a meningitis vaccine which means (rounding-up person that I am), of course, that he’s almost leaving home for college.   Jeremy sometimes says that Vince and I bicker like an old married couple (sometimes we do and it’s almost always my fault), but he’s really the best son I could have asked for – kind, outgoing and happy-go-lucky.

There was a student doctor doing a clinical assignment in the office, so it was his job to do Vince’s assessment.  I’m learning the same assessment techniques at school – so we had a lot of fun doing all the extra assessments on a willing Vincent.  Usually, as a med student, you don’t want to ask a patient to sit still for a million assessment tests just for your own practice, but Vince was game and was in no hurry to get back to school and I kept asking – what about bicep reflex?  ear exam? cranial nerves? auscultate the bowel sounds? pitting edema? heart murmurs?  palpate the liver? I kept asking Vince, OK pull up your pants, pull down your socks, pull up your sleeves, OK, now turn around.  The student doctor was excited and pleased.  Everything was normal, but I guess you only learn abnormal from doing a million normal ones.  Fun.

Also, one always feels compelled to lie when they ask how much screen time?  How many fruits and vegetables?  Enough exercise?  Not so much junk food?   They told me the guidelines put out by the American Academy of Pediatrics and I just said – that’s unattainable.  Simply unattainable.  Has any one in this whole country been successful in getting their teenage kids to eat more greens or use their screens less?  I can hardly make myself eat more greens and use my phone/computer/internet/Candy Crush less.

Mom and Dad were both in town this weekend, so we recreated Edda’s pancake breakfast at 7 am today.  Jeremy had frozen the leftover pancakes after Edda’s party and we still have some leftover bacon.  Any meal with bacon feels both fancy and casual at the same time.