Author: Doris

Love holds us all together – everyday! xoxo

It’s the beginning of the long Veteran’s Day weekend – Vince is out with his scout troop and I’m about to step into the shower with Edda. Edda hasn’t had a shower in a few days and her hair is getting a little greasy. I never understand when fashion magazines tout the advantages of unwashed hair. I wish I could bathe Edda every day – I could have our sitters help us out, but the accessible bathroom is the master bath and I work our bedroom so it is a little awkward to have the sitter in our own private space and also while I am working. I would do it in the evening, but then Edda gets grumpy and it just seems easier to just ease her into bed without tormenting her with a shower. Anyways, it just means that she’s a little bit under bathed. Not too terrible I suppose.

Edda went to a regular 3rd grade classroom for the Halloween party. Her teacher asked if I could come in during to party to help out and dutifully I go every year to help out even though it makes me sad and then a little sadder.

Usually Edda falls asleep:

Then I go rogue with the crafts, (this was suppose to be a scary ghost):

Even though I go and I know it makes me all unhappy, I had a wonderful time with Edda’s teachers and aides, we’ve been there for years and know everyone there pretty well and it is with open hearts that we laugh and cry together.

So many things in life – I both love and hate. For example – running, laundry, my job and ice cream. I also both love and hate Halloween. I love that it’s in the fall and it involves being crafty. I love that there are no gifts to be bought and that the whole neighborhood comes out to meet each other. I hate that it so starkly highlights how Edda really is missing out on so many things.

Last year, Edda and Vince were bacon and eggs and I didn’t really think I could top that this year, especially since Vince really, really wanted to be a bar of chocolate (which I thought was pretty lame). Edda I knew I wanted her to be Waldo from “Where’s Waldo?” and I ordered items from eBay over the past month for her. I kept procrastinating and delaying my starting efforts on Vince’s costume until the last possible moment. I think it all turned out very well – Vince and Edda both got a lot of great comments on their costumes.

Because we prepared so thoroughly, Sandy did no damage to the house and no damage to us other than the fact that we were trapped inside the house for days. We filled all our bottles with water, we had non-perishable foods available (Halloween candy), we gassed up all the cars, unplugged all the electronics, and charged up everything we could. I think we could have all gone back to school/work on Tues – but no one did.

Poor Maxi was the most stir-crazy – she really could run for miles and miles everyday and she did not get a good run in for 3 days. By last night, she was so ramped up, she couldn’t even settle to fall asleep.

Sunday night, we still had dinner with the family. We had breakfast for dinner to celebrate Seth’s 50th birthday!

Waiting, waiting for Hurricane Sandy to hit our neck of the woods. Right now it’s raining steadily, but no wind. We have incredibly high trees surrounding our house, so we aren’t worried about flooding, we are worried about trees falling on our house. Planning on sleeping in the basement tonight.

We are all home, no school, no work (meaning we don’t go to work, but as long as the power is on, we are suppose to work) so hunkering down.

At no time has my aging been more apparent than this semester when I’m taking Anatomy and Physiology at the local community college. I have an exam tomorrow on the skeletal system and I’m trying to stuff a million things in my brain about the bones in the body (you will not believe how many landmarks or features on bones that have names like Medial Malleolus). It’s a class that is straight memorization and in my early twenties – I know I could have gotten a 100% on this type of test, but with work/kids/house/friends and then this class plus my 40 year old brain which is a little slower on the memory uptake – I think I’ll be right on the frustrating B+ level which I’m trying to reconcile myself with as being OK.

I thought that all the skeletons in class were plastic, but this one is from a real, deceased guy.

Studying yesterday with furry study partners:

The weather in the DC area has just been wonderful – the foliage is bursting with color and I’m always trying to remind myself to go outside whenever I have a few free moments. On Sunday, while Edda and I were taking apart the fireplace, Vince and Jeremy went with the Cub Scouts on a 20 mile ride on the C&O canal – past Leesburg and White’s Ferry. For some reason, they were slow going with lots of breaks (maybe the fact they had many small children), they didn’t get back home until well after dark.

Edda and I were getting a bit worried about the boys, but they got back OK after enjoying a dinner at McDonald’s which Vince has been hankering for for months and were tucked into bed for good night’s sleep.

I can’t believe we paid someone to give Edda a haircut that makes her look a little like a Romulan. So this weekend, even though it’s not quite completely grown out yet, I took a pair of scissors to her head in a desperate attempt to make it more Dora-like.

Better, huh? (Please ignore food-stained shirt on Edda. I was cutting her damn hair! Who needs a clean shirt for a hair cut?)

I am a little at a loss about what to do with Edda these days – her mood is back to normal – but she really resists doing anything else besides watching TV and if you ask me what else she is interested in besides watching TV, I would have to give you a big – well, I dunno. I have these various ideas, swimming, adaptive soccer, etc, but frankly, it requires so much effort from me! And I’m inherently lazy and Edda is almost 80 pounds and is much, much harder to handle than when she was 40 lbs.

So then I had a different idea – that Edda needed to be busy with me! So this weekend, we took apart the basement fireplace to show that – indeed, there is no insulation in the shaft which is why it it pouring in cold air every winter.