Author: Doris

I’m still sick, but I think today is the last day. I will get to walk with Alice tomorrow, I haven’t seen her in almost a week – too long. I went to the gyn yesterday – I know, I was sick and I still went to a doctor’s office – but I didn’t walk with Alice outside/masked – I know I’m a walking bundle of contradictions. I’m trying (like everyone else) to play catch up with doctor/dental appointments esp now that I’m 49/50 ish. And I figure a gyn appointment is the opposite of how you catch covid and I know I don’t have covid, so I went. (Don’t you think a sexually transmitted disease is the opposite of airborne transmitted disease? The same way that – if you thought about fruit – a banana is the opposite of a watermelon. Or like my late grandmother who had diabetes thought that salt/sugar were opposites. I mean, they kind of are – you could see how someone would think that.)

I’m kind of always disappointed by my gyn practice (I’ve mentioned this before). They are gyn only (no OB, so no babies), so they offer lots of stuff like Botox and cool sculpting and this time, they were advertising the O-shot – which is platelet rich plasma injection into your clit to improve orgasms (omg. that sounds…not fun.) And, my gyn practitioner is very blond, very stylish, and somehow not someone I think I would naturally get along with, but she is super fun and hilarious, knows all about menopause and really kind of made fun of the o-shot. We were both like – o-shot or not, nothing is going to make middle age sex (which is mostly funny and not very sexy) feel like sex you had when you were 20 (which is both funny and sexy, but is way way more sexy than funny). We all want that back, but it isn’t going to happen. hahaha.

Jeremy is having a good time professionally and biking-wise in California. It makes me happy he’s having a good time. He kind of knows that if it’s a bad time when he’s away from me to not spin it too badly until he gets home because if he tells me his meetings/conferences/chatting it up is going badly and he tells me while it’s happening, then I get mopey at home by myself with the kids thinking – argh. I’m doing this home thing by myself for *nothing*. I don’t mind if he complains after he gets home, because then he’s home.

He called last night and was laughing that he has dipped his toe into the weird cycling culture in the Silicon Valley. We’ve known for a while that instead of golf to seal the deal in SV, oftentimes, the sport of choice is biking and so if you want an audience with venture capitalists or the scions of industry, you have to be in good bike shape, have a fancy bike, and not get dropped on group rides. Anyways, we still have friends in the silicon valley and various people wanted to meet up – Jeremy thought it would be a “casual ride” but people immediately pulled out/texted their times up the iconic hills in the area. But it’s fine, Jeremy is faster than everyone. This is also how girls get left out of the room where it happens. There is no (or very few) girl that can keep up with boys on an uphill cycle ride in which everyone is trying pretty hard – both physically and professionally to get funding for their start up.

I caught Edda’s cold, so I’m feeling sorry for myself. Some crying and moping, but I know it’s cold motivated. But things are fine. I’ve been watching TV/movies with Sandra Oh in them recently – because I watched the Chair a while ago on Netflix and someone mentioned (again) that I resemble her in both looks and some mannerisms. When people who aren’t Asian say this, I think it’s because they can’t differentiate between Asians. But some Asian-ish people have said this recently to me and I perked up – how could I not want to be compared with Sandra Oh? Honestly, one of the coolest actresses around. Though I asked a Korean friend of mine (Sandra Oh is Korean and I’m not) and she said – you are absolutely not like Sandra Oh. lololol.

I’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy, the Chair, and this week I watched Sideways for the first time. And this morning, I turned on a show for Edda while getting her ready for school and Sandra was in Ramona and Beezus. What the heck? I wasn’t expecting that. I do want to watch Killing Eve, but not enough to pay for the streaming service it’s on. (I recently unsubscribed from Netflix because I’m trying to reduce TV watching (or at least reduce the choice I have on TV watching. So many things to watch! I want my choices limited down so I don’t spend too much time thinking about what to watch), so we only have Amazon Prime and youtube now).

The most interesting thing, I think, about Sandra Oh (for me) is that she is pretty much my age and through her work, I can think to myself, ahh, this is how I’m aging. She looked old in the Chair. I don’t mean elderly, I just mean well into the middle of middle age. I mean, what did I think was going to happen?

I also watched the new Cinderella on Amazon with Edda (I liked it!) and Minnie Driver does the same thing for me in terms of seeing myself getting old. Oh, how I loved Good Will Hunting (which I know some people just don’t) and remember Minnie frozen as a college senior, but Minnie is playing the queen in Cinderella and well, 50 looks good on her, but still she’s 50.

Jeremy update: he rode through the beautiful forests in California. This is where I want my ashes to be scattered – well near there – I would prefer not right by the road but I would be OK with that if Edda wanted to be there. In the forests of Big Basin where Jeremy and I spent time falling in love with each other and where my ashes can be incorporated into the roots and trunks and soaring limbs of the trees around me and I will have many tree friends to help me buffer me from various trouble until storms break us, or fires engulf us, pests/disease consume us or earthquakes move us and my timescale will be on the order of centuries/millennia/aeons and I can witness many, many deaths and in turn, rebirths.

<3 to you too 🙂 and snacks.

So Edda is for sure covid negative, the PCR test came back yesterday afternoon – faster than I anticipated given that both the test and results were over the weekend. I’m keeping her home from school one more day, she did run a fever yesterday, so I want to send her in 100% or at least 95%. I would say yesterday she was 80-85% herself. With Jeremy gone, I felt like I didn’t have much planned for the two of us, but I cancelled dinner with my parents, seeing my neighbor’s soccer game, childcare for Edda on Sunday and Sunday night dinner with the DC Martins and we spent the weekend – Edda watching TV and blowing out what felt like gallons of snot and me kind of working? I don’t know what I do with my time, but it passes quickly and relatively productively-ish. Even without the physical meetups, my weekend felt unusually social – lots of phone calls with pals (I owe you a call, Ruth!), lots of text messages of people checking in on us, Spanish lessons with Ana.

So I won’t bury the lede (well maybe I did with the Edda update) – Jeremy didn’t make it up the mountain in under an hour. 1:03.20 which is a PR, but off his main, aggressive goal of under an hour. He started out too fast and then lost power during the 2nd half of the race.

I did follow him on his beacon during the last few minutes of his race, it’s not really for race tracking, it’s mainly for safety, so I knew it was going to be close. We talked after the race and he wants to try himself again next weekend. (This is one of the reasons his trip is so long, two weekends to try for his goal bookending his business trip. I know, I know.) His pacing was so poor that he thinks the 3 minutes is in him if he paces it right. I think that assessment is quite accurate. Sometimes races can be good and sometimes they can be bad if you are just going for time. Races are exciting and fun, but, especially at the start, they can pull you out too fast because, honestly, most people are terrible at pacing and go out too fast.

Edda is still sick this morning (fever – 100, third morning in a row), but she’s in a much better mood this morning and seems to be less snot filled. I did get her a covid pcr test at a CVS drive-through pharmacy yesterday (1-2 days for result), but I also popped into the store itself and procured some rapid antigen at-home tests (15 minutes for the result, thanks Vickey for the tip – I had no idea this was available) which indicate that Edda is negative. Poor girl, I had to nasal swab her twice in an hour. Normally, I would hold out hope that she could go to school tomorrow, but now I think she really, truly has to be fever free for 24 hours and since she was 100 this morning and I gave her Motrin at breakfast that tomorrow is out of the question. I still feel fine, fingers crossed.

Jeremy saw Vince yesterday. Jeremy had ideas of a semi-ambitious bike ride (15-20 miles), but Vince was like – you have a car? can we go to Target? Jeremy got the tour of campus and lecture halls and they did go to Target and the grocery store in a car where I hope they bought all things heavy and awkward to carry like watermelons and cans of soup.

Burritos for dinner. I miss that kid. Jeremy’s bike race is this morning at 8:30 PST. If you read this before hand, give him a shout out wherever you are! Go Jeremy!!!!

Edda is running a fever today – 100-ish. She’s home with me. I noticed a slight runny nose last night, but brushed it off, but she had a semi-restless night and then the fever this morning. So we are home, cancelled all the friend/family gatherings. If you can believe it, Edda (and Jeremy) have never been tested. I’ve been tested once. Vince has been tested about 100 times. I had heard that covid testing was hard to get, so I couldn’t get an appointment today, but I got one tomorrow about 30 min away. I’m still achy from my booster on Wed. Now I wonder if I’m sick myself. Jeremy texted that he was sorry that he wasn’t here to help, but honestly if it’s covid, it’s just as well that he’s gone for 10 days. And I should be super immune the next two weeks at least. It doesn’t seem very covid-like – fever (none of my covid patients ran a fever), snotty nose, not too fatigued. We are now masking in the house and taking turns eating (feeding). This results in masks filled with snot. I ordered more. Edda is our weak covid link. She’s vaccinated, of course, but she’s in close contact with people all day. Masking for special needs kids is hard. I know all the staff try, but sometimes it just can’t be super consistent.

One of my favorite things I’ve done with Vickey is our 2-person book group. We made it about 6 books and then stopped. Maybe Middlemarch this time. We are trying.

My parents were kind enough to drive Jeremy to the airport early in the morning with his enormous amount of baggage. Including the comfy elastic behind the head KN95 mask and sound cancelling headphones.

As soon as he got to his hotel, he assembled the bike and took it on the ride to do in Santa Fe. Straight up a mountain – fantastic (10,000 ft) ! And straight back down (30 mph (sigh. the biking does make me nervous all the time. and no way, no how do you want to be in a hospital now because everyone is tired and it can be hard to get a bed) and freezing cold and 7,000 ft) I asked – Did the workout feel bad, you know, because there isn’t that much oxygen? He said it went fine. I can never run well plopped down suddenly at altitude. Jeremy kindly sends me a beacon to track his biking. I think it’s suppose to alarm me if it senses he’s in a crash…

Happy Jeremy at the top.

I got my booster through work yesterday. I was achy yesterday and achy again today. I ran a fever after the 2nd dose, but I think I’m not feverish. I almost can compartmentalize the pandemic so that my mood isn’t affected too much by the status of the pandemic. I just can’t go around in a state of panic each day, it’s not productive. I’m not sure how much the booster will help me past the initial 2 week boost, I’m trying to not think about it too much. I said something about “back to normal” a few days ago and Jeremy’s like – this is it, there is no going back. This is normal – which, today since I’m under the weather, is depressing. With Jeremy gone, I usually order Hello Fresh to make dinners for me and Edda, though I’m slow. I think this one said 30 min prep. I think it might have taken me 50 min or an hour.

I spy on Vince a bit too (he lets me). Here he is in class. It makes me happy.

OK, here is a clearer photo of the trainer – no wheels really, just a frame. The nice thing about getting this trainer over the weekend is that he could pack his bike carefully on Monday night to make sure it made weight for the flight and then not have to unpack it all to do his last workout this morning.

Jeremy is a very talented athlete. Almost always he’s in the top quarter of the field in his virtual world of whatever ranking, frequently he’s in the top 10%. Every once in a while, he’ll happily tell me he’s posted the fastest time of the year on a particular segment. I, on the other hand, am mostly just hard working – ish. I’ll put in a good workout and I’ll barely eke out top half of just 40-49 year old women on the treadmill, which honestly, makes me feel bad sometimes (mostly not very often – but sometimes.), but whatever. But Jeremy totally outworked me this year. Completely, absolutely, easily doubled my running time. I think he regularly put in 13-15 hours of training a week on his bike – mostly in our indoor gym. I am simultaneously super impressed and also think he’s totally crazy. This is also kind of where our personalities show themselves, I am a generalist and can and like to get to 80-85% competency quickly doing the simplest, most straightforward things and then call it good enough and then turn to other things – like yoga and strength training or quilting or nursing or whatever. Jeremy is a specialist and likes to get to 98% competency doing only one thing and getting to the last bits of incremental improvement by paying more attention to details and tweaking little things (ask me how much I’ve talked to him about different types of granola bars/gatorade/kool-aid/cliff bars/gels, etc – a bazillion hours which, for my own training, has never once occurred to me to think about).

I went to Vickey’s house on Saturday – a beautiful day to spend with her and her mother (and Bert, though Bert was usually doing his own thing after saying his hellos and hanging out for the regular amount of time that one expects a kid to hang out with grown ups). Edda came with and we all had a nice time. Vickey is a wonderful hostess, always has delightful things made, but not fussy at all. She made Ina Garten’s favorite turkey sandwich which was delicious – I packed the extra sandwich which Jeremy ate for dinner. Edda, though, preferred the chocolate chip cookies. Edda peed through her whole outfit – I had only packed extra pants, so I gave her my Mickey Mouse shirt (which was under a zip up hoodie which I zipped up to hide the fact that I was now shirtless) and when I came out of the bathroom, Vickey was like – oh! She has the same shirt as you and I said – no, I just gave her my shirt and then Vickey gave me one of her shirts that I’ve seen her in many times and now I’m wearing it like two days later because it reminds me of Vickey and I like it and I think I get to keep it. 🙂 I took a picture of only the sandwich – none of the people.

Jeremy, at the same time, went biking all day with a friend! He has no picture of the friend, only himself. I think he inadvertently went on a mountain bike trail with his road bike.

On Sunday, I worked at the hospital – I knew we were going to be short – I had peeked at the staffing levels the last time I was there and we were short and I was overwhelmed, but I managed. I’m off for a long time until October when I signed up to work a bunch because the new software is kicking in on October 9th and I’ll need to practice. I saw the doctors trying to figure out the new system while I was working – everyone has to learn new ways to place orders, dispense medications, admit/discharge patients. Jeremy went to Sunday night dinner. Bette’s been in the hospital a couple of weeks, but is doing well enough to be discharged soon to rehab.

Can you even see what is going on here? Look at the thing that Jeremy is riding. It’s a trainer that has no bike on it – but it has a seat and handlebars – no front wheel and just resistance where the back wheel should be. He’s been looking at this thing for a while, wanting to buy it but hesitated at the price. It came up on a used list – facebook? craigslist? – and he bought it on Sunday. The person he bought it from is a serious biker, she mainly likes biking outside and wanted to try indoor biking and bought this crazy indoor trainer and tried it a few times and didn’t like it. So Jeremy drove over to Alexandria yesterday to buy it. Jeremy does 90% of his training indoors. This thing tilts up when his little avatar goes up a virtual hill. He likes it because his regular bike often needs repair and he rushes to repair it because he doesn’t want to lose a day of training. (Before, he mounted his regular bike on a kind of flywheel trainer – so his bike attached to a small trainer to do his indoor riding). But now he can take his time repairing and ordering parts and tools and also avoid some adjustments that always came with taking a bike on and off the small trainer. A few days ago, while we were falling asleep he said – I think I’m not going to make my goal next week (for those not following along – the goal is to climb Mt Diablo in under an hour). I said 8% is a lot to take off an hour-long race. He said – yeah and I was in great shape in 2018. But I think I can PR. A few more days of training and then – travel.

I’m still looking (albeit kind of slowly) for evening care for Edda. We’ve had a few leads, but they fell through (not vaccinated, schedule mismatched). At full child care capacity, I hardly touched Edda Monday morning through Friday evening. We had an hour of morning care and then about 3 hours of care in the evenings (Edda is attending an aftercare program until about 5:30 pm). But now we have neither. So now those hours are mine to do – feeding Edda, picking Edda up, doing the nighttime routine. I do enjoy caring for Edda because we do become closer to each other (her care for now, is easy, predictable and not stressful, it’s just time and attention) and I’m finally meeting people in her aftercare which she has gone to for over five years and were, for the most part, strangers to me. And if I’m honest, I do like having the house to ourselves. Of course, this is at the expense of the other things I like to do. I like to do a lot of things – ha ha, but those things need to be put aside for now. You might be asking – well, what about Jeremy, why don’t you split the Edda-care? What’s fair? What’s square? Well, he is great at Edda-care and does it all when I work at the hospital. But mostly because, he does all the food in the house – the cooking, shopping, kitchen cleaning, lunch packing (both me and Edda) – and these things are done in parallel with my Edda care. When we did have childcare, all those hours I spend with Edda now were released to me (during which I was able to do my own thing with not a word from Jeremy – usually I was working, but oftentimes, I was pursuing my own interests which included nightly Spanish exchange lessons which are now pretty much on hold), while Jeremy still and always made breakfast/lunch/dinner for all of us.

Vince called yesterday and I got the report from the first day of class. He showed me his notes that he’s taking – all about Reynolds number and laminar flow and Maxwell’s equations. He was like, you know the math professor? he really likes math. I laughed and says, that’s usually how it works – your professors generally really like the thing that they are teaching you. Usually obsessively interested in some unhealthy way. Why would anyone want to know so much about math? (Ha ha, just kidding. I’m just a generalist, not a specialist like all those professors out there.) Apparently the math professor derived Maxwell’s equation the first day (the class is culminating in one knowing how to do it) but Vince doesn’t realize this and is furiously note taking wondering what a curl is and wondering if he was supposed to know all of this already and the answer is no. The prof did the whole semester in an hour. I’m not sure I would have taken that approach. Jeremy was in meetings all day and couldn’t talk to Vince and so I recounted the conversation with Vince to him and Jeremy sighed – Dimensionless numbers are so cool. lol. And Reynolds number is the very first one.