Author: Doris

By request, I have posted. but here’s my update.

The last couple of months seem to have been drama filled. Of my friends i count: 1 possible divorce. 4 break ups. Of the breakups: One guy commitment-phobe, another guy, ex issues, one girl moved, one girl turns gay. 1 friend got rejected by a girl. Another girl too shy to tell boy that she likes him. 1 friend finally get together with someone after a long search – she’s really happy. 🙂

For me. I’ve been trying to get out and date. I’ve had a couple adventures there, and they are continuing along. I won’t say too much in the public forum. but it’s definitely been keeping me busy;

This photo is from a happy hour in the city that I went to last week. Had a great ribeye steak dinner there too. 🙂 yum

from Grandmom Rena and Grandpa Noel 🙂

Hey guys, I started this blog a long time ago for me, my parents and my brother to kind of play around with and we all have posting privileges (hint, hint Donald), so I just wanted to clarify that the occasional political posts with no pictures (like the last post) are usually posted by my dad (Noel) and the vast majority of other posts generally with photos of the family and free of political content (although not always completely free) are by me (Doris). I know it’s confusing and I don’t know a good way of making it clear (you have to look at the top of the post to see who is talking) because I post 98% of the time and I also think my dad enjoys having the blog audience and you know, he’s a nice guy and how many 69 year old dads blog? Anyhow, of course, I’m clarifying because my position on health care differs from my dad and most other political issues (although we may agree on gay marriage and abortion, I’m not sure, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that we agree on those two issues), maybe I should just say that we have different ideas on most non-social, more fiscally centered policies. I also don’t have hugely strong foreign policy stances and I know that my dad does, so I can’t say if we would agree or not agree in that arena.

Actually, this little clarification is kind of interesting in light of the fact that Edda’s 6th birthday is tomorrow. The fact that my dad and I disagree on many things and that we are both a little stubborn has made our relationship a little trying sometimes (ha!). Really nothing hugely serious, but you know, kind of the standard teenage daughter/dad argument thing that just kind of spills over to young adulthood.

Anyways, once Edda came along and with her, her Rett Syndrome diagnosis, there was almost no one more dedicated to Edda’s happiness and well being than my father. When he’s around, he finds her favorite cheese balls, makes her laugh and is willing to babysit her at night so Jeremy and I can sleep in on a Sunday morning. It has been really heartwarming for me see. So my dad, even though I disagree with him on a lot of stuff and we can still argue, we are much, much closer with each other than we were before Edda was born which has been a fabulous side product of a crappy genetic diagnosis. Although, I have to admit, I still sometimes have to leave the dining room table when he really gets going at a dinner party.

We together made history last night by passing Obamacare legislation.

Philosophically, I just don’t like to see government steps out of her bonds as a regulator, overseer and a public policy shaker and/or maker to become an operator on any kind of business – running Wall Street, running GM, running distribution of bail-out money, etc. And under a tag-along to this bill, the government will soon open the “BANK of DEPARTMENT of EDUCATION” about student loans in the future – loan directly to students. A bank, a monopoly bank, inside the Department of Education?

Hopefully, this piece of monumental legislation will bring in all the benefits that were advertized and promized to the American people. But, looking at our Nation’s balance sheets, one should wonder where all this money is coming from. We, as a nation, are promising beyond our means many folds more. Our balance sheet is tilting to the RED exponentially faster.

Yes, universal health care is important. But, I have seen a lot of people eating to death, smoking to death, drinking to death and/or doping to death. I don’t think it is my responsibility to foot their medical bills. But, I still can see, as a part of kinder and gentler society, one needs to help on their kids’ medical bill. After all, kids have no mean to be responsible themselves. They are vernerable but, absolutely, not the adults.

To be a fair society, one can only ask about equal chance, equal opportunity and equal starting point at the gate with leveled playing fields. To ask for equal results and un-equal wealth re-distribution isn’t the way to go. Just look across the ocean, there is a reflection upon all of us. China is becoming more capitalistic (more prosperous) while the USA is slipping into more socialism (encouraging laziness and with less incentive to hard working.) And everyone knows, even with all its pitfalls, capitalism has served us well. It is the driving force that make all of us very different from other people and be very proud of ourselves.

It’s 6:20 am. Very unusual time for me to be updating, but it’s just me and Edda awake right now. I was a little too cocky about Vince’s puking illness, as soon as I said that no one else had gotten it, I went down pretty hard Saturday night and Jeremy went down pretty hard last night, unfortunately right after a generous meal at McDonald’s. Sigh. At least it’s quick, I was only out of commission for about 12 hours and I suspect as soon as Jeremy wakes up, he will be mostly fine. So the big mystery is weather Edda is going to follow. She seems OK this morning, but it comes on fast and furious, we’ll see.

On Sunday, while Jeremy was preoccupied, I took Edda to her first non-family, non-Vince associated, non-Doris-knowing-the-mother, non-special-needs birthday party. I have to put a lot of qualifications on it because Edda does get to go to a lot of parties, but not the sort of parties that just get invitations that get stuck in a backpack. It was from a kid in Edda’s typical class and at first I thought that the mom had invited every single kid from the class (Edda is on the class list, tucked into the last spot, completely out of alphabetical order) and had no idea that Edda was special needs, but no, the mom knew Edda from volunteering at the Valentine’s day party (which, of course, I didn’t have time to make) in her son’s classroom and helped her make a Valentine’s magnet that I now have stuck to my filing cabinet in my home office.

So we went and had a nice time. I met the hosting mom and also a few other mothers and kids that knew Edda. It was really sweet. And it was at this incredible bouncing place called Bounce U, which Edda loved and I found exhausting. It’s hard to haul around fifty pounds of child and bounce together. But we did and had a lot of fun.

Emy is visiting for the weekend. Hooray! We trundled downtown to the Mall to see the Natural History Museum. The Metro was single tracking which made it incredibly frustrating.

There were 2 demonstrations on the Mall yesterday, one anti-health care bill and one bring-the-troops home. We saw people carrying signs for both on the Metro and we also saw something like 100 port-a-potties lining the mall, but we actually couldn’t see the actual rallies. I think there were only 1000 people at each one so I think they were easy to miss.

Jeremy spent the day at a high school science fair as a volunteer judge. We discussed the difficulty of judging a summer’s worth of research at NIH against someone who spent 3 weekends at home with stuff from Home Depot.

Vince felt much, much better today. On his way home from school, he picked some crocuses for me. I asked them if he picked them out of someone’s garden and he told me not to worry because “no one lives in the house”. Hmmmm…

Jeremy dressed up today. He wore what I consider his wedding/funeral shoes. He bought a pair of very nice black leather shoes for our wedding and I told him that I thought he would not wear them again until he died and then he would be buried in them. This was when we were employed in the Silicon Valley and having an ironed shirt was super fancy, I did not think that he’d ever have a job where he’d get to wear those fancy shoes again. He’s worn them many times since the wedding, but I still refer to them as the wedding/funeral shoes.

Puked six times last night; four times into the toilet, twice onto the floor. Jeremy and I are both a little stressed about goings-on at work and really are tired. Neither of us got up in the middle of the night to clean up puke. We waited until morning to strip the beds and clean the floor. I’m glad Ruby didn’t eat the puke (it has happened before). Poor Vince. Stayed home today and had some Sprite.

Look! He’s talking while he’s bowling!

Ever since we moved into the house, we’ve noticed that some of the finish work in the house is a little slap dash. These are things that I figure, oh no problem, I’ll just watch some youtube videos and go to Home Depot and fix it myself.

Like the waterlogged grout in the master shower:

Or the missing grout in the laundry room:

But then a soap holder in a shower fell off and revealed an ominous hole behind it. There shouldn’t have been a hole behind the soap holder! And they didn’t use the water resistant drywall! Did they not use any water resistant drywall in all the bathrooms of the house?!? Are all the bathrooms going to crumble because of terrible tile work?

This was a little too much to handle and we needed the bathoom without the soap holder to be back in service really, really quickly, so I had to call someone in. It was pretty much the best money I have ever spent. Took him 4 hours to do an awesome job and fix all the grout work that was broken. In the master shower he lifted off the tile and found a whole well of goopy crap that has not dried in the three years since the tile was set.

Our handyman was super nice, super competent and very reasonably priced. In other words, a gem! Jeremy actually pointed out the drywall patching job that I did on the living room ceiling after the plumber fixed the broken pipe and I was so embarrassed. It’s like showing a professional baker a cake you made from a Betty Crocker mix and then frosted it yourself.