Jeremy came back from New Orleans without issue. It was only looking through the photo roll that I saw photos he took there. It’s with some sadness that we agreed this will all be underwater soon – if not in my lifetime, certainly within our children’s lifetime. As bleak as other global news is, we continue to go through each day to find comfort with each other. I was excited to hear of Biden’s new supreme court justice nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson – she and I have the same birthday – Sept 14th and she is just two years older than I am. We are peaking now, Gen X!
Vince is happy. I can tell from the fewer phone calls and the excitement in his voice. He made the UCDavid engineering instagram. He tried ballroom dancing on Friday night.
He roasted his own coffee beans.
Noah came over to sleepover again last night. Much easier this time. He ate dinner. He was not as nervous. We also invited Mike & Sofie over for dinner – because I had a feeling from other parties that Noah really likes Mike. And it’s so true! Noah spent the whole dinner pretty much only talking to Mike while the rest of us smiled and looked at the two of them clearly enjoying each other’s company. Mike says it’s because I don’t have enough truck knowledge, but I don’t think that is the case. Sometimes you just like who you like – you know what I mean? Noah likes us, but Noah likes Mike.
The van’s battery died while I was out running an errand. I had to text Mike to come rescue me and he did with Alice’s old car. And then I drove a loop around the freeway – to the hospital, to IKEA and then back home.
I let the dog sleep with me last night. She started the night snuggled next to me, salt and pepper hairs nestled next to golden hairs, both of us sighing the day away. And then we separated each to their own side. She got my regular side, I slept on Jeremy’s usual side – all my things out of reach in the early morning when I woke.
Jeremy flew to New Orleans yesterday for work. On the funny side, he’s discovering Pokemon Go outside suburbs and is excitedly texting me and Vince about his new (virtual) adventures. On the more serious side, Jeremy is nervous traveling. He really has been the absolutely most sheltered person of our family during the pandemic – leaving the house only for grocery trips (and long, solo bike trips) and essentially talking to only me in person for months and months on end. I think New Orleans is the first place he’s gone to that pretty much no one is wearing a mask. We are still holding pretty strong here in central MoCo – no one quite knows if the masking requirements have been lifted because we all still wear masks. So it’s a shock to him to see a room full of hundreds of people mingling, eating and drinking without a mask in sight. He sent an early morning photo of him working out on a hotel bike with a mask (which is so hard to do, I hate working out in a mask) – the only person around with a mask on.
He’s staying near the superdome. He’ll be home on Wed afternoon. Short and sweet.
We’ve spent so much time together (as all married couples have the last 2 years), it’s weird not having him home with me.
This is how swollen my face was on Friday. I felt terrible and (I thought) I looked terrible (you can see it mostly around my eyes, but it was my entire face). But I’ve had 14 people (16 if you count my husband and my daughter) in my house each within 5 feet of me and no one mentioned anything wrong with my face. Lol. I know, maybe you think everyone is too nice/polite to mention anything about my face, but I don’t have that kind of family/friends. Everyone would tell it like it is. This is honestly why I think I should spend no money on makeup/skincare because, really, no one notices that your face looks like one very through jellyfish sat on your face.
This is how it was on Sunday – better, but still there.
I regularly run outside in 20/25 degrees, but Jeremy hardly ever goes outside under 35/40 degrees, but he went out yesterday. He’s training a lot, even more than usual.
Isabella came to hang out with Edda in shorts and a crop shirt! omg. Teenagers!
My face and neck are incredibly swollen due to my new found “skin routine”. It’s an allergic reaction – my face is one big hive. I took Benadryl and napped a bunch today. I did this to myself, lol. I should have left good enough alone.
My relationship with Vince can be complicated at times. It’s mostly smooth sailing with occasional intense emotional events which can send us both reeling. The pandemic has been so hard on him and the beginning of college. It’s only now I feel like he’s hitting his stride with friends and school – what should have happened a year ago. I’m so excited for him. And he sent me this video yesterday which he annotated with – this is what it’s like being home for the holidays – it made me smile.
I noticed some Olympians wear this 3M n95 mask – we just got them in stock at the hospital. They are very comfy, I like them and feel exactly like an Olympian. Some people want the same clothing or sports equipments as the athletes, I just want their very nice fitting n95 masks. I had a great shift yesterday, I was dreading going in which is what always happens after a very bad shift (VBS), a tiny bit of PTSD (though Jeremy says to drop the D). But I got to hug my boss, talk to my favorite charge nurse, arrange hikes with a colleague, dance to Elton John’s new (well relatively new) remix song with a Vietnam vet, pray with a Catholic priest and be proud of being clean with a recovering heroin addict.
I’ve been coaching my friend Vickey in running recently. It’s an unlikely pairing as I dislike telling people what to do and (I think Vickey will agree with this) she dislikes following specific direction. Anyways, we are old friends and it’s fine. Vickey bought her Peloton treadmill before me and before the pandemic and encouraged me to buy mine – I do not think I would have bought mine without her endorsement, but it really is one of my prized possessions. Training can be complicated and very specific with timed intervals or words like threshold and tempo or whatever. But mostly it’s pretty simple – run more and then every once in a while practice running faster.
I did not really want to run on Sunday, but I did and it was cold and mostly a slow slog through slushy mud. But then it got done and I went home and took a hot bath. I enjoy running, but I also very much enjoy being done with the run.
Decluttering continues. We have a lot of Allen wrenches. I’m going to sort a few sets and then throw the rest away.
I found a complete socket wrench set in the garage. This was amusing/distressing because Jeremy was complaining (loudly and repeatedly) just about a month ago about how we didn’t have a complete set and he needed a set for some bike repair – no! – not for bike repair, it was to put together the squat rack. Then he got all frustrated and went out to buy another complete set and hid it somewhere with all his “special tools”. We happened to open this from the garage while standing next to each other while eating lunch and we laughed. Jeremy’s like – oh well, I guess we have two now.
I was out on a trail run last weekend and I fell hard about half a mile from my car. Hands & knees slammed into the ground, then after the fall, I rolled supine and stared at the sky for a minute to regain my composure. Then later that afternoon, I noticed that my jade bracelet had a brighter white spot on it. It’s hard to tell from this photo, but it’s in an unlikely spot to have helped me on my fall, it’s on the inner edge closest to my arm on the side that is closer to my torso – so it seems unlikely to have hit there. But I swear it wasn’t there before. The bracelet is supposed to protect the wearer – I walked away from the fall with nothing wrong with me except for a slight skinned knee. Maybe my bracelet protected me? The thing I like most about my bracelet (well, the most important is that my parents gave it to me), but I love the temperature changes of jade against my skin. Often it’s different types of temperature – sometimes it’s a comforting cool, other times it’s a chilly cool. Sometimes when it’s wrapped in layers of clothing, it’s the same temperature as my body. The weight of it also feels different at different times, sometimes it’s heavy and annoying, other times it is solid and grounding. I haven’t taken it off since I put it on on 8/8.
Jeremy and I are trying to pull bedtime in from our many-years habit of 10 pm to 9:30 pm. We’ve been trying this out with some success for about a week. This is because we want to get up at 5:45 am everyday without too much groaning. Vince makes fun of us for this even when our bedtime was 10pm, he’s like – you are the only one of my friends’ parents who go to bed so early (I think even all of our parents all in their late 70s early 80s- save my father who likes to go to bed at 8 pm and get up at 3 or 4 am – go to bed later than 9:30 pm). What can I say? We like our sleep. I do truly believe that 8 hours of sleep enables us to do the things we promise ourselves to do. Self control and discipline all arise from being well-rested – you can better emotionally regulate, make measured decisions, have willpower, etc. Once I get too tired or too much is going on, I can’t be as disciplined as I want to be. Of course, I understand this is intensely boring, I know. But I’m trying to be OK with that. I can tell that the 9:30 bedtime is enough sleep because I’ll wake up just before the 5:45 alarm without too much trouble. I read somewhere that a grown-up’s sleeping in is going to bed early, but I will also say that going to bed early is not as delicious as sleeping in.
Of course, as soon as I wrote about Jeremy’s pokemon, I think he ran out of pokeballs and he’s not really willing to go walk and get more. I think it might be over for him.
After playing Pokemon Go daily for about 3 months, I’ve slowly realized that people like having 2 different accounts (at least) and also that (I think) very few people actually walk to the pokestops/gyms. PoGo primarily is a walking/exploring game – it gives you rewards for going places. But lots of people (most?) trick or “spoof” their phones into thinking they are somewhere they are not. But Vince and I promised we wouldn’t “spoof” and we wouldn’t spend money on the game. But the thing about having 2 accounts is nice because you need a friend who is right with you to trade pokemon with you, you can’t do it if you are physically apart (unless you spoof, I guess) – and sometimes there are bonus points or rewards for trading pokemon. But I didn’t want to open 2 accounts because that seemed like out of bounds of the self-imposed rules. So I sheepishly asked Jeremy to open an account on his phone to trade pokemon with me. He agreed and I thought it was going to be a simple – open account, trade three pokemon and then Jeremy wouldn’t open the app again until I need a trade again. But then it turned out that Jeremy needed to reach level 10 to trade with me which is about 3-4 days of play, so he did that. And then we traded my requested 3 pokemon and then…Jeremy kept going. He’s kind of into it. Jeremy texts me about getting coins, about reviving his fainted pokemon, finding new pokemon. He texts Vince about leveling up. Jeremy, even though he is the sweetest/goofiest guy ever, can sometimes come across as serious and intimidating (especially if you get him going about anything about work) – to watch him try to catch pokemon on his phone is actually very amusing and adds levity to the days. He might even curl his tongue across his lip in that look of concentration.
I have been trying recently to be more helpful to Rett research, signing up for various surveys, participating in medical history gatherings. When I was younger and we were doing the fundraising circuit, I wondered where the older parents were. Now I know, they are all tired. I’m tired. Anyways, one of the surveys was about communication. I would still like Edda to communicate better, but honestly, I don’t think she thinks complicated thoughts. Maybe just – my family loves me and I love my family. That is enough. Her clearest communication honestly is about ice cream – Dad, I would like that ice cream. That look is never mistaken. We need to get her a Pokemon Go account so we can all play together with our little avatars.
So I need some skin help. This has been the coldest, driest winter ever and is probably the first winter where my estrogen levels have plummeted. I’ve never use anything on my face. I hardly even use sunscreen (which was probably a bad move given the amount of time I spend outside running around). But now I need to do something. Mostly, everything is dry, dry, dry and I don’t want that tightness across my face. I tried a drugstore retinol cream for night a few weeks ago, and it sent my skin into a flaky red mess (which apparently is pretty standard – one has to build tolerance to it) and I’m still recovering from that. So I stopped the retinol after one use and ever since then even plain moisturizer burns my skin. I’ve never, ever had that problem before, but then again, I never used moisturizer on my face. Maybe I should go back to using nothing and then my face won’t burn or flake and will just go back to “regular”. I’m loathe to spend money on this. I like the way my grandmothers and my mother have aged, they all grew into their 70s and 80s into super cute Asian grandmas. (Your grandma is so cute! Your mom is so cute! Of course they are – super cute.) Of course, they had/have wrinkles, but one earns all of them. I don’t think they used retinols. lol.
