Author: Doris

Edda and I found ourselves inadvertently at an Italian restaurant on the side of Hwy 95 in Virginia on Saturday afternoon.  It’s really a long story why Edda and I found ourselves alone and so far from home.  I don’t like to drive and this trip just made me never want to leave the 2 square miles around my house.  There are a lot of people within 2 square miles of the house and a grocery store there is really no reason I ever have to leave.  We had a very leisurely lunch which included a nice slice of tiramisu which I think may be the most perfect dessert on the face of the earth. I don’t often just hang out with Edda at restaurants – we don’t really have that much to say to each other, but we both usually enjoy the food and the company. I’m always a little happily surprised at servers that we meet all the time with Edda in tow. Here she is, a large girl at kind of an upscale eating establishment, kind of flailing her hands around and catching the tablecloth with her arms and the waitress is totally helpful and understanding and acted like she dealt with this everyday.  I want to be kind and understanding all the time, but I know I often fall short of that.  I’m trying to forgive myself for my lapses in behavior.

Vince got promoted from 5th grade on Thursday night.  I guess since the tornado only went down our street and didn’t down trees in the whole vicinity and since the high school still had power, they decided to go on with the ceremony.  Vince had a great year, here are his teachers, I give them a lot of credit in educating my son, especially Mr. Thanos who had to deal with Vince’s inability to spell. 

Vince sang a solo in the musical portion of the program.  And the best part was when they showed baby pictures of the kids and everyone tried to guess who they were before their name popped up on the screen.  I know so many of the boys (none of the girls yet – although I’m sure that will change in a few years) and it was so wonderful to see them as babies.  I just want to snuggle with them all ten years ago and smell that baby smell! 

Did I mention that Jeremy’s been gone all week? I’m exhausted, I’ve been working, taking midterms for two classes, and trying to manage the last week of school for the kids. And (!) I’ve been running by myself which is terrible. Because Jeremy’s been gone, I haven’t been able to run at 5:45 am with my running buddy because she needs to be on her commute at about 7 am, so I go running at 7 or so and it’s so much less fun without a friend.

 It’s Friday, I’m ready for bed. After the tornado last night, we went to Vince’s promotion ceremony which made me cry in a good way. And then we headed back to the house. The weather was cool and dry, the storm had driven out much of the stickiness of the day.  We lit some candles and had leftover spaghetti and some watermelon. I forget how nice quiet (real quiet) can be. We also played with my camera a little.

So we had a tornado go through our neighborhood last night. It was a really little one, so it didn’t get much national airplay and it seems to not have damaged the adjacent neighborhoods too much, pretty much just my street and the street next to ours. We are very lucky, no one hurt and no property damage for us, but I think that really, it’s only a matter of time before something comes down on our roof.  Here’s some of the damage:

My dad is in town without my mother. That means, if left to his own devices, he would eat a bagel every night for dinner. So he comes over every night where he tries to convince me to order takeout. I try and resist because I have a whole week of dinners planned.  

Jeremy testified in front of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. He prepped all weekend and both Monday and Tuesday night. He looked good baby! My favorite question that he got asked was, “Do you eat turkey?” because he was on the same panel as the President of the National Turkey Federation.  Here’s a screen shot I got of him during the live stream.  Looking good right?

I, on the other hand, have been really swamped with taking Microbiology and Human Growth and Development and trying to do my day job at the same time.  Both of my classes are compressed into a quick 4-5 week summer session, I just have to grit my teeth and try to just muscle it through the next few weeks.

Nat is here from Thailand to help us out with our childcare needs for a year.  We hire au pairs to be Edda’s childcare (Vince is now too old to need a babysitter, heck, I think next year he could be a babysitter himself!) – I depend on my au pairs a lot to allow me to keep the schedule that I keep which is not insanely busy, but having flexible child care allows me to have some time for myself and basically not go totally insane.  We pay a lot for child care, but it allows me not to be too resentful of Edda’s disability because I’m not always “on call” for her needs. 

Every year, the au pair agency requires the host family to attend an au pair meeting.  Usually they try and make it fun, I’ve been to a pizza fundraiser, a shopping spree/tea, and I forget what else.  This time, I went to downtown Bethesda for some sort of kid fair, face painting, balloons, and arts and crafts.  My kids are getting too old for such things, we were surrounded by a bunch of toddlers, but that didn’t stop us from having fun.

We got a bunch of balloons, ate a bunch of pizza and ice cream.  Heard toddlers crying about not having a balloon and gave all our balloons away.  A good day.

I do all my non-grocery shopping online. Clothes, exercise machines, diapers, greeting cards, gardening plants, and even prescription eyeglasses, I order all this online. I find that it’s faster and cheaper and I don’t ever have to step foot in a shopping mall ever and no salesman need to approach me asking if I need any help. For the past year, I’ve saved all my cardboard boxes in the basement. Jeremy often looks at the pile and sighs. I’ve been saving it because once a year, the high school kids at the church raise $ and awareness for homelessness by building some shelters out of cardboard boxes and spend the night camping out in them.

Today was the big day, the day Jeremy has been waiting for. The day that all the cardboard boxes leave the house.   Apparently this is why I bought a minivan.  To move a years worth of cardboard boxes around town. I’m hoping I get a photo of the cardboard house they are going to build out of these boxes.

Kiki is here for just a moment before she is off to Sweden and then Russia. I wish we could have shown her a better time, things are both hectic and very boring with work and school going on. Tonight we did get to go out and celebrate summer a little bit at our local sushi restaurant. Vince really likes sushi and Jeremy and Kiki both had some saki that was unfiltered. We are all keenly studying nutrition which talks about how fermented foods are beneficial to the gut. Saki is fermented, but usually alcohol is distilled which (I guess) takes away some of the nutrients, but the one we ordered was not filtered, so it was a creamy, milky white.

Vince and the rest of us were in a good mood – however, Edda did not have any of her chicken teriyaki.  My suspicion is that  she needed to poop, but when we scampered home to poop in the comfort of our own bathroom, we didn’t get anything except peals of laughter from Edda on the toilet.  It has been hot recently, which I think has sent Edda into kind of a foul mood (yesterday at school and tonight at dinner).  I hope it’s not something that lasts all summer like last year!

So in order to start nursing school in the fall, I need to have two more pre-reqs which I’m racing to finish. Two intensive summer courses, squished into one month of craziness. I spend today in lab staining bacteria. This is all stuff that I think I should have done before, but I don’t really think I’ve done before. Lots of stain on my fingers because the community college is too cash strapped to provide gloves. The summer students tend to often be kids from other colleges working on classes here because they are cheaper or because they want to have the pre-reqs for going to medical school. And because it’s not a blog post without a photo, here’s a photo of us getting ready to eat a mango.