Author: Doris

Even though it was drizzling, Jeremy was determined to get in one last grilling session of the season. What is Labor Day without some grilled meat? Edda was very eager to check up on the meat..

Jeremy ducked inside to make some of the sides and when he went back out, there was a pretty good sized grease fire going on. I even hauled the fire extinguisher out from under the kitchen sink, just in case it started to get bigger rather than smaller. Jeremy told me he could see the neighbors looking through their windows – they were probably wondering if they should call 911 on us. Once the gas was off, the rain took care of the fire and the meat turned out great (just a little charred on the outside, but perfect on the inside).

We celebrated Montgomery County’s 233rd birthday. We got there right at 2pm when it started and we wanted to stay until 3:30 pm when the cake was served by Ike Leggett, but we didn’t make it until the cake, so much for that.

Edda and Jeremy checked out the heirloom gardens:

Vince tried out some 3D glasses and a ball-flipping toy. God, I can’t believe that kids had to get through the winter with only that little toy in their little hands.

To celebrate our anniversary, Jeremy took me (and Ruby) on a walking tour of Georgetown. We parked about a mile away from the main drag and walked through gorgeous neighborhoods with beautiful row houses.

Though the university full of college kids moving into the dorms:

And finally to the main drag – so full of people and Hummer limos. We split a brownie sundae and headed back to the car. Total distance – 3.2 miles. I wonder if it was far enough to work off the sundae. Probably not.

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Last night, I went to the 9:30 club to see a Wallflowers concert. I didn’t take the above photo, I was advised not to take my camera to the club, so I’m posting someone else’s photos of the Wallflowers at the 9:30 club in 2007. It’s pretty much the same idea, except that the main dude was wearing a hat last night.

I’m not a huge music fan, that has already been established, so I went with my huge music fan coworker – Jane. This was the first concert that I’ve gone to where I could actually see the band – I was about 30 feet away from everyone in the band. It was a wonderfully intimate experience where the lead singer (Jakob Dylan, Bob’s son) would talk to the audience between songs. I am forever grateful that someone somewhere decided that these clubs should be non-smoking, so I enjoyed a whole evening without smelling cigarette smoke or pot and my still recovering lungs were very appreciative.

I got home at 12:30 am last night. I’m a little tired today, but I had a great time last night.

Vince’s least favorite subject is writing. He likes to write as little as possible in order to fulfill the parameters of the assignment. This is about his summer vacation with Kiki and Kappa, they went to a water park called the Zoom Flume. I thought the last entry was pretty funny.

Our Kitchenaid broke about a week ago. The little lever that brings the mixing bowl up towards the beater stopped lifting the bowl. The Kitchenaid is very special to me, it was a wedding gift from my group of closest friends in college – they all pooled their money together and bought us this mixer. We’ve made a million cakes, mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving, and also grind our meat with it. And frankly, it’s suppose to last forever and 11 years is certainly not forever. I was determined to fix it, so I took it all apart..

and ordered a 9 dollar part on Ebay and then hopefully in a week, I’ll be able to put it back together again.

On a foodie note, since the kids are in school and Eliana is working way fewer hours during the day, we’ve been able to reinstate Tuesday date night which have been missing all summer. Jeremy and I went to see Julie & Julia which was so fun and perfect for us -> food and blogging both hobbies of ours. There is a scene where the husband and wife have a fight and then the husband says that no way can she blog about the fight. It doesn’t happen much, but certainly, there are moments that Jeremy looks at me while we are in the middle of some sort of complicated mess and says to me – this is totally staying out of the blog. Some things just have to remain unrecorded except in our own malleable memories.

The school year started today and I have no photos because I was already at work in Virginia with my camera, so instead of children heading off towards higher education making themselves into model citizens, I’m giving you a photo of Ruby eating a raw lamb bone. It’s not a fantastic photo, but I do like that the raw meat is completely in focus – glistening. We really need to get a 2nd camera so Jeremy can document every single second of everyday when I’m not around.

All weekend, we prepped Edda, told her she was going to kindergarten with a new fabulous teacher and new fabulous school. This morning, she wandered over to the front foyer many times to wait for the bus. This transition was completely traumatic for me and not at all for Edda. Apparently it was so not traumatic that she spent a lot of the school day napping – or maybe it was traumatic and she was napping to avoid it all. She has been in a great mood for the past few weeks and it was no different today.

Vincent headed off to 2nd grade. Apparently he doesn’t yet feel like a 2nd grader, he still feels like a first grader. No homework tonight, so he still got to play outdoors until dusk with his friends. One last taste of summer.

I am not a huge music fan. I have owned at least 2 new and 2 pre-owned MP3 players and I have not been able to remind myself that I actually own them. I have a friend at work who is a huge music fan and she asked me if I knew Oasis and I had to make her hum the tune to Wonderwall to make sure I didn’t totally miss the biggest band of the 90s (she claims, I have no idea who the biggest band of the 90s was).

Anyways, having kids is a great way to introduce yourself to the world of music. For example, I learned about Lady Gaga’s Poker Face at a kindergarten – 2nd grade talent show. It was a little shocking because well, because it is a little, ahem, risque, but then I learned that Lady Gaga was admitted to Julliard at the age of 11, so then I got over how shocking it was to hear Poker Face in an elementary school (kind of).

Anyhoo, we have a new favorite song in the Lee- Martin household introduced to us because Vince has recently requested us to listen to Hot 99.5. With the popularity of Britney Spears, the boy bands, and American Idol, I thought that no one wrote their songs anymore (at least the young, beautiful performers) – that everyone had their own professional songwriters – but I was happy to learn that Ms. Swift writes her own material (and she is both the nerdy girl and the cheerleader in the video)!

We got our groove on today! Tomorrow school starts and I just found out 5 minutes ago that the battery has died in one of the cars. Probably needs replacing. Bring it on, baby.

Well, Rena & I suppose to baby-sit the Diablo Canyon Power Plant during her planned outage about 2 weeks – day and night, 6 days a week.

Mom will on the day shift and I will on the night shift. With my old bones everywhere, it must be fun. To see whether I can be measured up. I woke up at 2:30 AM and came to work around 3:00 AM today 🙂

Oh, we just has one car. So, a rental car will be provided to us by the Plant during that time. I asked Mom to be careful on this winding road to the Plant. I am sure she will be alright. But, I am just concerned.

Eleven years ago, I married Jeremy! Thank you for making my life full of love, adventure, surprises and kindness. I can not imagine my life any other way.