Author: Doris

I got my covid booster + flu shot on Tuesday (the last one in the family, everyone else got it weeks ago), I timed it to match my taper in my marathon training – to do it early in the taper, but not too close to the marathon itself. I could have waited until after the marathon, but honestly, I have a whole stack of medical things that need to be done that I’ve been postponing until after the marathon including my shingles shot, the delightful colonoscopy, my mammogram, etc that I didn’t want to wait too long for these shots. Also, I need the flu for working at the hospital and I think the deadline is the end of October? Anyways, it was my first time getting Moderna for no particular reason and my watch could tell that I got it (I have a Garmin watch, not an Apple watch). I had the shot at 11:30 am and then suddenly at about 3 am at night, my watch could tell something fishy was going on. Usually on a quiet day, it stays mostly blue. On nursing days, it does go into the orange a lot, but there are breaks into blue here and there, but this orange is steady and unrelenting. And it lasted through the night last night as well – I was stressed out while sleeping. I did take the day off yesterday and slept, but today, I feel pretty good. I’ll go for a run.

Vince is having a fantastic time at school. A delight to behold, honestly! Joy for me to see him doing well and having fun. There is something about being a junior that is MAGIC. I miss him! Other families have their kids close by at UMD and I can be jealous that their kids drop by and say hi. But it’s ok. He’s living the dream out in California (in this windowless room in the basement of the ChemE building, hahaha.)

I feel as if I’ve been neglecting this blog! Sorry! I’ve been have a tough time of it recently. Not for any particular reason, just still adjusting to this new phase of life, with Vince grown up an out of the house and the rest of us trying to figure out what to do. We are still struggling to find an aftercare program for Edda, it seems daunting, but I know it will be this way until something works out and then it will be fine. There are many leads, but there are wait lists and organizations not on the Medicaid waiver program that we are on and various other sundry problems, it just makes it seem ominous when Edda reaches 21 and we will no longer have the support of the school system. So this is a downer for me. Although, we did find a weekday caregiver (who deserves a blog post of her own! She is hilarious!) who we like and seems to like us. Right now, Edda’s teachers are an invaluable source of support, like a spring of water in the middle of a desert, I don’t know what I would do without them.

Jeremy and I find ourselves in each other’s company a lot. Like a lot. We enjoy each other, there is no question that he is still my favorite, but it is bad in many ways. The pandemic settled on the house and feels like it didn’t lift for us. Jeremy is home working. I haven’t been at the hospital much recently and, although I feel like the nursing job has run its course and mostly want to stop, I’m loathe to give it up because it I did give it up, I’m afraid I’d never leave the house! The house is comfortable and large and we have our own work spaces, Jeremy makes beautiful meals and we laugh and sigh and cry together (ok, mostly me, Jeremy is not a crier), we are very content in the house. But it’s kind of isolating in a way that is unclear to me how to fix. It’s not as if we can go willy nilly out, we are bound to the house (kind of) by Edda and neither of us wants to leave the other alone for too long to be there for Edda. So we are three. Or actually 4 if you count Elka. Or maybe 10,000 if you count the mice in the attic.

Recently, I discovered that I have a grey streak in my hair. I kind of love it! I need to cherish it and show it off before the rest of my hair is grey and you can’t tell there is a streak.

We are cat sitting Ivy for about a week while Emy is visiting Seth in New Mexico and cheering him on in his 50K(!). Ivy did great with our neighbor’s dog, Scarlett who was another long term boarder – they ended up being “friends”. So we are trying with Elka, but Elka is very puppy-like. Ivy spends most of his time in the guest bedroom, but a few times a day, we try a meet-and-greet.

It’s going as expected. Some hissing and hiding, some intense tail wagging and crazy curiosity. But, really no sheer terror or aggression from either side. I think if we had more than a week, it’d be ok. But I think we’ll run out of time before we can let them both roam freely in the house unsupervised.

I ran 18 miles on Monday. The last long, long run for my marathon training. I love running in the woods, it’s lots of fun. In the deep, deep woods (well semi-deep because I always have cell coverage, but it’s far from the most popular parking lot, so no families or large groups of friends), I only saw about 4 or 5 people, almost all of them middle aged women out for a run or a bike ride. As a woman, I know it’s conventional wisdom to not go running alone, but it’s hard to give up because it’s wonderful and calming and invigorating. I’m hoping to clock in under 5 hours. We’ll see. I’m not sure if I can make it under my usual goal which is less than twice as fast as the female winner. It’s not a fast marathon race course, so it’ll be a slowish time for a “big” marathon.

Vince texted me that he was going through my old fluids textbook and found that I scrawled some (math) notes in the margins. Although this particular example, I had decided that smiley faces were appropriate. He also went through Jeremy’s old Kant book which 20-year-old Jeremy made some funny notes back in the stone ages.

After I got home from LA, Jeremy and I spent a few days together before he headed to Delaware and Philly. In Delaware, he saw our friends Yushan and Xiao Tsung (<- I don’t think this is how she spells her name in English).

And then he drove to Philly and had a work meeting and then drove on to Camphill at Kimberton to the event of the weekend which was the 50th anniversary celebration of the community that was organized by (who else?) Bob. Jeremy said the day was wonderful, lots of great speakers, music and community. Then he spent the night there and drove to see his friend Dan (they went for a bike ride together) and then he drove home. He came home by Sunday afternoon, in time to drive together to go to Sunday night dinner.

So Elka’s been with us for about 5 months now and she is beloved. She is sweet, outgoing, loves us, loves Edda, loves other people, loves other dogs, easy to walk and full of personality. She loves to play and will modulate her playfulness to match her partner – gentle for aged small dogs like Pip and rowdy with more aggressive pit bulls at the dog park. She loves it all and we love her for it.

She immediately makes friends with strangers.

And loves on Edda everyday (this is her saying – good morning Edda!).

But we all have our flaws and Elka’s flaw is that she will never be truly housebroken. She can hold her pee for 10 hours as she does every night. But during the day, if we delay ever so slightly past 2.5 or 3 hours, see will pee in the house. And she will brazenly pee in the house. Just yesterday, she walked to within three feet of my desk, looked me in the eye and peed on the rug. I’m like – dude! at least you need to find a hiding spot to pee like far away from where we sleep/play/work so I know that you know that you are not supposed to pee in the house.

I went to LA for Charlotte’s memorial service last weekend with Katherine (sorry Ruth! I didn’t have time to say hello <3, please forgive me). The service was lovely and touching. Katherine spoke during the formal service and many, many people spoke of Charlotte lovingly. Charlotte had many friends of all ages! This is certainly a life goal, to have friends that span the generations.

I ran around Beverly Hills early in the morning and on a weekend, so it was quiet and I had the streets to myself. I saw a young couple who were clearly instagramming.

I did see two family members who live in LA, Arlinda who is my cousin (no photo! I forgot) and also my Aunt Liz. I ate incredible well with the Lees. Arlinda wanted to go to the Ritz in Marina del Rey and Liz wanted to go to Bistro Na’s which serves Imperial Court Food. Fancy. Srsy – fancy.

Julia hosted us at her lovely home, we cooked and ate and laughed together. So much travel for me! I’m still trying to recover a bit.

While I was working at the hospital, Jeremy and Edda had an unusually packed weekend. This started with a Friday night excursion to Baltimore to see Seth who was in town for a conference. Doubt of the success of this excursion crept into Jeremy’s mind as he navigated traffic between here and there, but it turned out to be a wonderful night. The three of them together went to half-price Friday night at the aquarium which instead of being incredibly expensive, was just expensive.

Edda loved the fish. They had been doing a unit on fish at school during the week, so this visit tied in nicely.

Then they had dinner – so late!

Seth was able to do some amazing networking at the conference, so that was good news.

On Saturday, Ning and Brian held a housewarming party – full of food. I told Jeremy to look around to see if they needed anything for housewarming and Jeremy was like – they are missing nothing! So I still need to figure out what to get them.

I worked at the hospital on Friday and Saturday. It’s been a long, long time since I did two shifts in a row. Friday was easy-ish. Saturday was brutal. I had all my patients from Friday and then a new nurse who was on orientation and a student nurse and, seriously, every patient was crazy. I don’t mean crazy in a insulting way, just crazy in the way all of us are crazy when we are sick/tired/at our wits end and, you know, unfiltered. I was called both a racist and a heathen who will burn in hell. It was that kind of day.

These were taken on Friday, the quieter day.

(This is a photo of Vince at Powell’s Books in downtown Portland. Isn’t the person in front of him a perfect example of a Portland-er? – like if you plucked them out of the photo and put them in a photo studio and asked – ok, which major US city does this person belong to, you’d say – Portland!)

Vince started class yesterday! So late! I can’t quite believe it. Finally, he’s in his junior year, it’s time to take fluid dynamics. It’s a class that my parents (my mom’s PhD thesis is on fluids) took and then I took – like 3 times, literally (and then miserably failed my qualifying exam at Caltech on it) and now Vince is going to take it. He’s been hearing about the Navier-Stokes equation for years and I’m afraid he’s going to get it tattooed on his body under the ideal gas law which is already tattooed onto his body, but he wisely decided to delay it until he learned about it at school. He is known around campus as the guy with the ideal gas law tattoo, which I’m both happy about (it’s my favorite equation) and like omg, he’s such a nerd about. I was wondering if he’d be using Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot (BSL) like my parents did and I did, but he is not! He’s using something else. Looks like he has a good professor for it…