Author: Doris

Who are these crazy people?!? Am I related to them? Why yes I am!

Vince is taking the first part out of four sections of the MSA this morning. The MSA are some sort of no-child-left-behind testing that is done in almost year Vince has been in school. They have spent a tremendous amount of time preparing for this exam, every piece of homework sent home this year (especially the reading homework) has been geared to improving performance on this exam. It’s a little tiring how much this exam is emphasized – but I’m happy that Vince gets to do a lot of other non-test prep stuff at his school. He’s learning to play the recorder in music class as well as making awesome masks in art class. His mask was on display at the local library and we went to admire his masterpiece this weekend.

Edda spiked a fever again on Friday night. So she’s sick again. Poo poo. Ruby is very concerned.

I was hoping that the fever would dissipate during the day yesterday (sometimes Edda gets a 24 hour bug that comes and goes pretty quickly) so we took her all around town doing various errands…

Like shopping for low sodium chicken broth from Target (Edda is feeling crappy).

and admiring their large display of cheese balls.

And we also stopped by our local cookie stand which was raising funds for IRSF!
Drink hot cocoa for a cure 😉

Because both of the kids have birthdays in March, I often feel like the whole month is a big, endless, sugary celebration. Last night we started with a Lee family birthday party for Vince. My mom cooked (love me some wide lens action).

Vince asked for a cheesecake for his birthday cake…

I am in a bad mood. Nothing is bad. I’m just in a bad mood.

I have transferred my service from one dumb phone to another dumb phone. I’m wondering how long I can hold out from getting a smart phone.

Maxi is still a pain in my ass. She licked the cream cheese frosting off of this cake while it was sitting in the exact center of the dining room table. I guess she prefers frosting over the actual cake. Jeremy trimmed off the dog slobbered section and saved the rest in a tupperware container. Slightly pink red velvet cake anyone? We have ice cream to go with it. 🙂

I forgot to mention that Little, our developmentally delayed frog, left this world earlier this month and went to the (non-Bisphenol-A contaminated) pond in the sky. Vince was heartbroken and didn’t want to just flush him down the toilet, so he’s in the freezer right now awaiting a spring burial.

It took me a few weeks to clean out the tank and welcome new inhabitants into the aquarium. And they have new digs – the Parthenon. We got four goldfish and there is one that you can already tell in this photo is almost about to join Little in the great big pond in the sky and his corporeal remains are now in the freezer (in the same baggie) as Little.

Maxi has been a great big thorn in my ass. She has a dominate streak that needed to be squelched and we started last week when I regained the alpha position in the household. I am not naturally an alpha, so when it became clear that I needed to be alpha or else Maxi would end up running the house, I had to change my whole personality. Just ask Vince and Jeremy, I was yelling at them for a few days to SIT! STAY! It was not very much fun for any of us. I wanted the submissive puppy, the submissive one! Not the one with a Napoleon complex, because Maxi at 40 lbs is the smallest one of us all.

Jeremy worked from home on Thursday. He comes with me on my morning run.

We take the doggies with us. They wait patiently for Sharon, the school crossing guard, who always has treats.

And we work and work and work. (And I eat cake. See blue plate under on my desk.)

I work on a two-week cycle called a biweek. Every two weeks, a computer system does its batch job and calculates how many patents I have processed and sees if I have met my quota for the biweek. My job is a monotonous mountain of paperwork, but I can not tell you how much pleasure I get from starting over with a clean slate at the beginning of each biweek.

At the start of each biweek, I give myself a pep talk and tell myself, this is the biweek where for TWO weeks, everything will run smoothly according to plan and nothing out of the ordinary will happen. This has not happened for many, many biweeks.

Edda has been sick all week. I know she will miss school tomorrow as she still is trying to shake off her fever today (day 4 of the fever). She is chipper now, but earlier in the week, she has been hovering at the 104 F fever mark, which is scary, but it is how Edda typically gets sick. We took her to the doctor and checked for ear/throat issues – I really wish Edda could tell me if her ear or throat hurt or if she has a UTI. It’s, unfortunately, always a big mystery. I want to buy my own ear light thing-y and my own strep tests so I can run them myself at home.