Author: Doris

Here’s Andy of Erasure – saw them on Tuesday night with my pals at the 9:30 club. He’s looking good!

We are having a good case of the grumps around here.  Jeremy and I were talking about it last night and he mentioned that the week between our birthdays (the 7th for him, the 14th for me) has always been a bad week for us.  It kind of coincides with the start of the school year, our anniversary, our birthdays, the end of the fiscal year for both of our jobs and – this year in particular – Jeremy is traveling a lot.  I joke a lot that Jeremy’s work travel is his “vacation” because he gets to go to cool places with cool people, but I know that he works a lot on these business trips and they can be very draining on him.  I also know that he misses us and tries to not be away from home more than he needs to be.

Anyways, I mercilessly teased him for MONTHS when I found out he was going to a business trip in Monterey, CA and have a catered dinner in the aquarium! Really, what could be more fabulous than that? Not much really. OK, well maybe being in Monterey with us. Without the work 🙂

In my Sociology 101 class, we’ve been learning about the capitalist and the worker classes.  Marx, Weber, and Durkheim – the three classical sociologists.  Usually I think I’m surrounded by natural scientists who know nothing about the social sciences, but I’ve had conversations with a bunch of people in the last week who have basically fallen over themselves all excited to tell me about the three dead white guys who started the field of sociology.

In the spirit of honoring the worker class, we went out to my friend Andy’s annual Labor Day party.  He is a wonderful man with a knack for the wacky and fun.  In the backyard, he has a pool and trampoline.  Sound pretty OK so far, right?  But wait!  He also has a cotton candy machine, 2 machines cranking out 5 flavors of slushies and 3 working pinball machines.  He is an ebay scounger, craigslist follower and master tinkerer trying to fix all these machines that he finds for bargain basement prices.

Vince ran around and tried all the flavors of slushie and the cotton candy. Edda was a little underwhelmed as you can tell from this photo!

Edda falls asleep in the most unlikely of places.

Edda’s school year has started and it is always nice to see her enjoying her friends and teachers at school.  I just finished reading a memoir called Keeping Katherine.  The author has a daughter who has Rett Syndrome (who is now in her 30s) and I really enjoyed reading it.   Some of the feelings that she expresses are spot on with what I felt or what I feel – other very strong feelings that she had did not apply to me at all. I’ve known about this book for a long time, but I did not read it until now because I didn’t not think I was ready yet. My own feelings about Edda and her disability are always such a jumble – acceptance, grief, hope, action and, of course, love – it’s very difficult for me to put into words.

In the photo of Edda above, you will notice she’s wearing a silver necklace.  It is the guanine base pair, the one that she is missing (806delG).  Guanine pairs with cytosine in the DNA strand – so I always wear my cytosine necklace.  

We headed out for a nice 15th anniversary party for some friends of ours, it was a really lovely evening and we got to play some games, eat good food and meet some new people.

Vince busted out his gogos,  which he tried to patiently explain to some adults at the party.  Nigel, his pal, contributed Transformers. 

Jeremy met a woman who works in the same building as he does, just 2 floors down. Jeremy’s building is not very big, one figures that you’d get to know a lot of the people in the building! Apparently, they have not noticed each other in the many years that they have been sharing an elevator.

The first week of school for everyone (including me) is done!  Hooray!  But, of course, my blogging is a few weeks behind – here is a photo of all of us at a beach near Portland a few weeks ago.  Trying to capture the last bit of summer before Jeremy gets home from his business trip this week; because he’s been gone for a week, I haven’t counted this week as “getting back into our routine”.  That’s for next week!

First day of school!  Jeremy is traveling and Denise is only working a few days this week, so Katherine, my wonderful mother-in-law is in the house helping us get ready and get going for the first week of school.  Edda is still going to her school-commuity based program – she has a new teacher this year (a last minute change) who not only has taught for the past 5 years or so in the county’s program for kids with the most severe disabilities, she’s also worked (in the past) as an inclusion counselor for Edda’s summer camp!  I’m looking forward to a great year.  Edda’s two former teachers are still in the building –  the special needs program at Edda’s school is expanding.  It was nice to go to the open house and see all the familiar faces.

Katherine plaiting Edda’s hair for the first day – gotta look good!

Vince is also all gung-ho for 4th grade.  It’s a big year. Forget about math and science.  Forget about reading and field trips – apparently it is an auspicious grade for meeting girls (!).

And last, but not least, I started taking classes myself! I’m going to try and work my way to an RN degree. Really, it’s because I love being in school and want to keep learning. On the first day, I learned that boat shoes are back in style.

Edda had a wonderful time at Camp JCC this summer.  Edda rediscovered her love of water and being in the pool and ended the summer with a deep, golden tan.  Vince also got to attend – he was not in the same group as Edda, but there were kids with disabilities integrated into his group and it was a wonderful experience for him as well.  Edda’s inclusion counselor, Jennifer, was wonderful and so responsible and kind it’s hard to believe that she’s only 16.  Camp ended weeks ago and we are still singing camp songs and Vince still has his swim test bracelet on.  We are looking forward to next year!

We are sitting here awaiting the arrival of Hurricane Irene. While I was working today, I looked outside my office windows at all the huge trees in the backyard and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that none of them will fall on the house during the wind/rain storm.

We are just back from the glorious Northwest! We visited my parents in Portland and Jeremy’s relatives in Seattle and had a wonderful, relaxing time. Due to some scheduling issues, I needed to travel alone with Edda across the country starting from Baltimore with a connection through Phoenix and finally landing in Portland. Throughout our travels through airports, jet ways, and security lines, I always asked for help from the nearest person when I needed an extra pair of hands. No one turned me down, no one looked at me strangely, all six different people I asked stepped right up and held Edda by her shoulders while I folded her wheelchair, looked for her shoes and/or went to the airplane bathroom. Humanity can be really wonderful.

Jeremy, Edda and Vince in front of Mt. Rainier!

 

Vince took movie making at camp. This is his masterpiece.