Finally, after almost 11 years, I bought Maxi a new collar. The old one was nasty. Cows. We got cows. Look how grey my Max is. When did she become a senior dog? She’ll be 11 this year.
This is the week where vaccine appointments are all over the place. Last week, it was all booked all the time. Now you can walk in anytime and get your arm jabbed. Almost everyone I know has gotten vaccinated. The few people I know who are holdouts are either surprisingly surprising or completely unsurprising.
Edda woke up yesterday with a bloody nose! I was dawdling and already running a little late for morning prep for the bus at 7:10 am. But I managed to squeeze a shower into the morning schedule and clean her up and catch the bus. I’m super impressed with myself. Though I think it makes me realize that I can hit the snooze button a couple of times before I really have to get up.
Jeremy got his second Pfizer shot yesterday. The first shot, he drove 100 miles for (one way) to the underutilized Salisbury mass vax site, the second shot he drove about three miles to our closest CVS. Now just Vince on 5/7 for his 2nd moderna. Jeremy’s trying to figure out how the vaccine is messing with his recovery from biking training. He has this “body battery” on his Garmin watch and claims he can see that in the middle of the night last night, his body went to work making antibodies. Usually at night, he recovers steadily throughout but last night, a couple of hours in, his body stopped recovering and reached some plateau and just stayed there. Does this make any sense? I find it a little amusing that for the second half of life, Jeremy and I have switched tendencies in certain areas. Jeremy has become more and more data driven and loves tracking things and putting things on spreadsheets whereas I’ve become more feeling based and less and less interested in data. I think the most important things can’t be measured. But I think we were the opposite way when we first met. Also I used to be the quiet one and Jeremy the verbose, but we’ve also switched positions on that. I spend a lot of time talking, Jeremy spends more time thinking.
And he made himself a celebratory dinner – peruvian chicken on a weekday night. Delicious.
I’m starting on the next quilt. I think this is the one. I’m pretty casual about my quilting. I love my quilts, but I have many “mistakes” in them where the corners don’t quite match up. I almost never rip the seams and resew, I usually just deal with the crooked-ness. For this one, I’m going to try to up my precision game. I’m going to try starching my fabrics so they don’t stretch and relax in weird ways when I press them flat resulting in not perfectly square squares and I also bought a little grippy liner for my quilting rulers so they don’t slide ever so slightly out of alignment when I’m cutting the fabric. Let’s see if the corners match up better. Gina, my quilting teacher, says when I’m pointing out missed points or corners on a pinwheel or whatever, that it’s the mark of loving homemade. Lol. Gina’s quilts always have matched corners.
I went for a walk with Alice and Jojo on Saturday.
Jeremy is upping his baked ziti game. He’s ordered many, many different types of pans from amazon just to find the perfect size for many different types of situations – the three of us, the three of us + one Edda caregiver, the right size to give away, the right size for a party. Glass? Metal? Deep? Shallow? I don’t quite understand what is going on, but I love the ziti, so I don’t complain.
Edda had her worst seizure in a month on Saturday afternoon. She is fine. She fell asleep afterwards in her chair which she does not often do.
On our almost daily lunchtime walks, Sofi and I made a point to stop by that house. You know that house – you probably have one in your neighborhood. It’s the house where the garden just explodes from all sides with color and defies all the deer, rabbits and bugs to become a little, tiny botanical eden tucked between boring green lawns with their Home Depot azaleas and deer eaten hostas. Little rock paths wander through the front lawn to a hidden-ish koi pond, which Sofi has taken to lean over every day to count the fish (I get kind of nervous because we hadn’t explicitly asked to see the fish, so Maxi and I say firmly on the sidewalk). We met the owner of the house yesterday – Jeanie. She showed us where she keeps the fish food so we can feed the fish whenever we stop by. Then Sofi asked – is the rumor true? are there three ponds in your backyard? And then we were offered a tour of the backyard, private garden with the rumored three ponds. This is only part of the garden. There are glorious porches, a thatched hut, little statues tucked here and there and swinging benches. A true labor of love. I asked how much time it takes – she says, we’ll I’ve been here 20 years. And I laughed, we’ve been in our house since 2008 and our backyard is a big weed pile. She said she spends a couple hours a day working in her garden – when the weather is nice.
Look! I’m inside someone’s home without a mask (well, my mask is still hanging from my neck). Unbelievable. A visit brought to you by Pfizer and incredibly talented scientists, manufacturing engineers, the folks who work the manufacturing lines, supply chain managers, pharmacists and nurses. Forever grateful. Megan is moving in a few weeks and needed some help decluttering and packing. I love decluttering and was happy to provide a few hours assistance and my minivan to make trips to Goodwill. I also love cats – which she has three! I’m not sure they like me as you can see them warily eyeing me in this photo. Granted, I look ridiculous.
Lately, I’ve been enjoying my job at the hospital. The first year was terror because I was learning to be a floor nurse and it takes a long time to be familiar with the rhythms of the unit and how to interact with patients. The 2nd year was also terror because of the pandemic. I’m going to complete my third year on the unit this summer. My plan was always to quit when Edda turned 18 to take a break (I have other things I want to focus on for 9-12 months) and then go back in a different specialty for another 2-3 years until I physically can not take bedside nursing anymore. I’m very friendly with everyone at work but mostly not friends if that makes sense. But in the past few months, Rachel has befriended me and taken me under her wing. As they say – a work wife. She’s studying to be an NP and as English is her second language, I edit her papers. She helps me with rowdy patients, wound care, etc. She’s trying to convince me to not quit the unit in a year – how will I see you she asks? Of course, I like things better knowing I can quit. I’m not sure what psychological feeling that is, but I always remember this quote from Middlemarch – re Dorothea “Riding was an indulgence which she allowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms; she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way, and always looked forward to renouncing it.”
Ahahah… I’m so looking forward to hanging out on Sunday nights with the DC Martins. We are counting down the weekends until we can regather on Sunday nights and double dip our chips in the salsa (just kidding! no one ever double dips). We’ll do it on Mother’s Day – that’s when everyone will be fully vaccinated. Jeremy makes fun of me because, though I love our Sunday night tradition (since 2007-ish), I hate these zoom calls. I can get petulant and quiet and look at my phone a lot.
I’m enjoying spring with Sofi. She shows up for our walks in a tank top, shorts and a pair of crocs. I show up in sweatpants, a sweatshirt and a puffy vest and maybe a pair of uggs. She makes fun of me. I can take it from a 10 year old. She went to school for the first time last week. This is what happens at in person school from her perspective. Instead of four classes, there are two classes with two teachers each. One teacher sits masked in the room with the (masked) kids. The kids all open their chrome books at their desks spaced six feet apart. Then the other teacher goes to an empty room and takes off her mask and teaches the lesson into the computer. About 25 % of the kids are in person, the other 75% are at home. And then at recess, you aren’t allowed to be within six feet of the other kids and you can’t throw a ball back and forth either. I asked Sofi, so you think this is better than being at home? YES she said. lol.
I went to the canal on Sunday to run eight miles. Beautiful day, beautiful long run. There are so many things that I want to do as a daily practice, but I’m unable to make it happen. But I usually can fit a run in most days. Unlike blogging! I want to blog everyday! Sometimes I think that nothing interesting happens during the day, so why blog? It’s because I’ve stopped taking a lot of photos and this started mainly as a photo blog and I can’t anchor a blog post without a photo. I think I’m going to try to reboot the photo habit. I lost interest in photos when everyone got into it…
Jeremy took me out on a date on Sunday! We have weekend care again – Eliana is back after more than a year apart. We had takeout A&Js, went to REI (where neither of us bought anything. as usual) and then went grocery shopping where I picked out all the yogurt flavors. Classic J&D date.
I’ve been slowly reducing my PPE at the hospital. I work on a non-covid unit, FYI. I wore my standard n95, surgical mask covering the n95 and face shield long after I was vaccinated – like until three weeks ago. And slowly week by week, I tapered down. First I ditched the surgical mask. Then I went down from my uncomfortable n95 mask to another type of n95 mask which I think doesn’t seal as well, but is way, way more comfortable. Then yesterday, I took off my face shield. And then I found out while packing up to go home, we had a covid positive patient on the unit. Negative a few days ago, but then was positive when they tried to clear them for surgery. Yikes! Not my patient, obvs. But still.. thank goodness we are all vaccinated.
Thank you, Amanda, for helping me with this blog! I hired Amanda to clean up a lot of back end things because things were getting out of control (just a bit) and I just couldn’t figure out WordPress (even enough to move the blog to its proper website name) and to also help with the blog design and she was a dream to work with. It’s the only significant amount of $ I’ve spent on this 18+ year old blog and justregularfolks really needed it. I know blogs are old-school. No one really does a personal one like this, but I love this one. I don’t want to go to Instagram or whatever other thing people are doing. I’m happy with my 9 regular readers. It’s mostly for me and no one else. The other day I got sad because I know someday I will be unable to update/pay for this and then it will just disappear into the ether.
We took Edda to the dentist on Wed. It was the first time we’ve gone back to our own pediatric dentist since Edda pulled out her front teeth almost a year ago. After she pulled her teeth out and I managed to almost immediately shove them back into her head and we saw our pediatric dentist, we went to 8 other dental super-specialists over a period of 6 weeks to try and figure out what to do. Most of them kind of side-eyed Edda and said – we can’t really help you out. One guy even said – uh, I’m not going to charge you for the visit because that looks super complicated and I can’t help. In the end, we settled out at the UMD dental school where we were encircled by a bunch of enthusiastic dental students and their professor who said – she looks pretty good! Roots look good on X-ray! Let’s do nothing and see what happens. So we did nothing. They are still loose and she re-traumatizes them each time she grinds her teeth (which is all day every day) and will probably have to be pulled someday. But I’m slowly coming around to that. It’ll be ok. I’ll just say Edda lost them while playing hockey.
On Friday, I spend the day with Megan. She’s moving soon and needed some help decluttering. I’m a fan of decluttering. She also has three cats. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve pet a cat. I find cats very soothing and comforting. I’m 10,000x thankful for everyone who developed/made/etc. the vaccine possible. I would not have been able to spend that time in Megan’s place without both of us being vaccinated.
Vince got his first dose of the vaccine on Friday. The clinic was about 7 miles from campus and he took a Lyft there with no problem, but had a problem finding a ride to take him home. He waited around for about 30 minutes before there was an available car. Then he learned that for students, the zip car usually ends up being a more reliable and cheaper option. So he’s going to try that for a bit – he’s going to need a car to take his stuff to storage for the summer. A lot of his local Maryland friends are wrapping up spring semester at their colleges and will be home in a couple of weeks, but Vince just started his third quarter. We just bought his plane tickets home for June. He wants his friends to pick him up from the airport. I said that we get first dibs on him! We want to pick him up from the airport!
On Saturday, I had an active day. A little more active than I had anticipated. I first did a long run on the canal and then came home while Jeremy went out for a bike ride. Then I went out again with Alice and her family and Ning and Brian and their toddler. I thought, I can totally outwalk a toddler – how long can this walk possibly be? Turns out I can not outwalk a toddler. omg, a bundle of energy. We walked around Lake Needwood for over two hours and then ended up at a playground where our toddler continued to move around rapidly. And all I wanted to do was to sit with Alice and lean my head on her shoulder and take a nap.
Jeremy is taking his bike training seriously. Like race-weight seriously. I don’t understand training hard and cutting calories at the same time. I mean, I understand it, but like no one here is an Olympian or anything, so why suffer in that way? But Jeremy is committed. It means that you are tired and hungry all the time. (And usually grumpy, but he’s surprisingly not grumpy. I think he’s too excited about busting out of covid home quarantine with this race to be grumpy.) He’s plotted it so that he’ll reach his race weight 2 days before the first weekend in June where he’s going to race straight up a mountain – hence the race weight. Because you gotta take every extra pound straight up with you. I still spend lots of time talking about biking, looking a graphs of HR vs power, graphs of weight trends, talking about different approaches to training. Debating the difference between tempo and threshold. Is there any?
I was at the hospital on Sunday. I’ve had a number of good shifts in a row which makes me feel good. Though no matter how good the shift is going, I always look at my watch at 4pm and say to myself – ok this is enough. this has to end soon. But I still have 4 hours to go. My patients! I learn so much from them. Now I’ve jinxed myself and I’m going to have a run of hard shifts.