Category: Uncategorized

So much music yesterday – guitar lesson in the morning and then to choir all afternoon where we recorded three pieces for general assembly in a few months with over 100 singers from congregations from all over the region which felt amazing, really. I’m enjoying this all, but I haven’t really had time to practice, I’m just winging it. Here’s a recording of just our choir from a few weeks ago. Fun.

Let’s keep this light. I’m enjoying renting clothes. The necklace is from an accessories exchange party I went to a few weeks ago where you bring all the random accessories you have and you trade. You can bring as much or as little as you like and there is no rule for equal exchange. So I got a lot of necklaces to experiment with.

So there is some interest in this clothing rental stuff. It’s completely frivolous and is what I consider “a waste of money” and I feel somewhat guilty of indulging in this, but now it’s been almost a year I’ve done it and I really love it and it’s taught me a lot about how I enjoy fashion. It’s Rent the Runway – I pay about $150 a month for 10 pieces of clothing, 5 at a time, 2 shipments. Shipping and cleaning is all included. If you get a little snag or stain, you don’t get charged for them. They are surprisingly good at guessing which size fits you and you can read the reviews from other renters to figure it out a little more for yourself.

What I’ve learned is that I like different clothes all the time. Rental is perfect for me because I wear clothes for two, three or five times over half a month and then I never wear them again. You can buy stuff you like at a discount and I did that a few times, but then I realized I can’t buy everything I like, because 1. it’s expensive even at a discount and 2. my closet will burst.

So the advice I’d been trying to follow my entire life is to by “timeless” or “classic” pieces of clothing – supposed to be high quality and last a long time is/was basically crap for my personality. I could never do this because I never wanted to spend more than $50 for a piece of clothing and then, if you do, you have a whole lot of plain black pants, grey sweaters and brown shoes and a sturdy leather bag. Which I did like and is totally fine, but it turns out, I like completely funky pieces of clothing, all in bright colors that don’t match anything.

I actually also found out that I don’t mind being a little bit more dressed up than anyone else. I like it when people enjoy the outfits I wear which they do all the time and I thought I didn’t want to stand out or be noticed and, actually, it’s nice to stand out and be noticed – I usually fess up that I rent my clothing. It’s a lot of FUN. Like so much more fun than I thought it would be. This is a very surprising thing that I found out about me that I would have never known. Do I care about fashion? I never did, but now I do. I watch youtube videos about fashion and how to dress. SO STRANGE. (the #1 tip I have is monochromatic dressing. Dress in all one color from head to toe, shoes and accessories included. Doesn’t matter if they exactly match, just dress in all blues or all yellows or all reds or all whatever – try to mix textures or materials or shape, but the same color. You’ll look fantastic. #2 tip is silhouette – mix them – tight pants, billowy top or the other way around, baggy pants and form fitting top). For a long, long time (and the pandemic did not help), I was very content to wear my pajamas to the grocery store. And when I’m stressed out, I’ll still go back to wearing PJs all day. Even though comfort is my #1 goal and even if all the clothes I rent have elastic waistbands and/or fit perfectly, nothing, absolutely nothing is as comfy as a set of sweatpants and a sweatshirt over a beloved soft T shirt & no bra.

I declare that I can back squat my body weight – which was a goal I’ve been trying to reach since last fall. It’s been very slow going, but you keep adding 5 pounds at a time, or even 2.5 pounds at a time, and you can get there. Thrilled! If I can keep that and do a few pullups, I’d be…superwoman. I should start trying to do the pullups. I’ve been able to do one in the past – premenopause. I’ll think about it.

My entire workout routine changed at the beginning of the year because my interests are changing.

I was probably spending about 90 minutes most days working out (mainly running) if you count the actual working out part, the getting ready to workout and the showering afterwards and also, slightly, the procrastination that happened at the beginning of each workout – 10 min of phone scrolling or just staring at the ceiling thinking “I don’t want to workout” <- yes, this happens all the time even when you like to workout. And maybe 3 hours on a Sunday because I had to drive to the long run place and then actually do the long run. I’ve done this for more than 10 years now, I don’t know how I found the time to do it (literally, I look back and think…I was a crazy person), I amazed I’ve been so consistent for so long – thanks a lot to Paul, my coach to help me get faster and learn to love running. And to support this – I would often throw in a 20 min yoga session most nights to stretch out.

But for whatever reason, I needed to change this amount of time working out. I needed to cut the time because 1. I was adding more socialization into my life, 2. I needed about 30 minutes a day to practice music and a little more time to actually go to lessons, rehearsals and performances (this is not consistent, right now), 3. Ginny, our weekday night caregiver, had a baby in January and went on maternity leave and so I did a lot of evening care for Edda and 4. I want some time to literally…do nothing (which is hard for me).

I actually did not want to give up the time running, I wanted to add all the other stuff in my life without giving that up – because, honestly I felt like I’m not parenting young kids anymore, it should open up vast amounts of time, and it did, but I rapidly filled up that time with random stuff. And then I was trying to do all of that stuff, but then I decided to just relax about the whole thing.

Anyways, I’m just telling you that I slashed the workouts to about 45 minutes everyday – and I’m trying to do the entire getting ready/working out/showering part to be only an hour of my day. I rotate through three activities – running, yoga and strength. So I’ve gone from running like 20-25 miles a week to like 6.5? Feels weird. I’m actually really enjoying the 45 minute yoga sessions which, of all three disciplines, I feel like I have the most natural talent for and is great because there are really no goals in yoga. I’ve not done such long yoga sessions regularly ever. And the strength sessions are supported by Ward, who is teaching me to Olympic lift.

I feel lucky/grateful that my body is working well. You never, never know when that is going to be not true. <3

A busy weekend – spent a lot of Friday night and Saturday day cooking for fellowship dinner at church on Saturday night. The theme of our table was the Roaring 20s. So I made a pineapple upside down cake – which reminded me of the cakes that my mom made all the time when I was little and I asked Jeremy to make green beans and stuffed mushrooms (apparently all very popular in the 1920s).

I think I overcooked the cake just a *tiny* bit. A little more dry than I’d have liked it to be, but it all got eaten which, I suppose is the best outcome. It looks good?

I, of course, did not get any photos of the party itself. But it was fun. Felix came and provided childcare, we met lots of new people I hadn’t talked to before. Jeremy came to dinner, which is unusual for him and he and Edda ate dinner and then ducked out early to head on home.

The next day, I made (or really, baked) these guava/cheese that Dani’s mom gifted us for Edda’s birthday. Completely delicious and savory/sweet.

I think I erred on the other side this time and they are ever so slightly underdone. But I was afraid of burning them!

Closing out the week. And we go back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Jeremy wants to spend his free time tutoring chemistry at the local community college. They have a brand new, nice tutoring center built that he toured a few weeks ago. Usually they hire tutors, but Jeremy wanted to donate his time, he just has to take a chemistry test to make sure he knows chemistry. Turns out first year chemistry is really hard when you haven’t really looked at it since…well, since the last century. After he finished his test, he groaned and then handed me a copy of the test and…

Then I tried to take the test and….I’ve forgotten how the orbitals fill in atoms and how to calculate various enthalpies and also, I don’t remember the constants and what the units of the constants are.

So it is/was kind of humbling. I didn’t even finish taking my test. Jeremy was going to take the test TODAY, but he got an extension until Monday, so he has the weekend to study. And he’s really studying. And he says he’s having a lot of fun. He was stymied on a question, and I told him to enter it into ChatGPT – we are all old school here, I still have the same model of scientific calculator I used in high school that I use almost everyday – I prefer it over the calculator on my phone, so we never use ChatGPT (I know it’s fantastic, but I find it tends towards…boring) – Jeremy was reluctant to use AI, but I tried to tell him he should do it just so he knows what the kids are doing.

Right after Edda’s party, Kiki and Kappa took Vince and Dani back to Philly with them. They spent Sunday together at Camphill and then Monday morning, V&D went to Philly to tour the town by themselves. They took the train back to DC on Monday night. We spent the rest of the weekend basically trying to recover and clean up the house – the house still needs cleaning now!

Tuesday, during the day, Jeremy took the three young adults Felix, Vince and Dani to Annapolis for the day to tour the naval academy which was fun (I guess?) and then I picked up Edda early and got my parents and we joined them in Annapolis for dinner at a seafood restaurant.

Here Felix tried his first raw oyster.

We sat right next to this terrible painting for sale – $5200. OK, naked lady underwater. She is standing on an eel-like thing. There are three baboons underwater with her – one smoking a cigar and has a half eaten apple. In the background is a diver with an Asian parasol. We spent a lot of the time looking and wondering about this painting.

On Wed, I got to carve a little time out with Vince and Dani – we did Vince’s taxes, went shopping for jeans, and then took Elka to the dog park. In the evening, Vince went out with Dani to see some old friends.

Today, we went out to brunch and then the three young adults went to Dream Wizards to look at Magic cards and then Jeremy took them to the airport! A lovely trip – I had such a nice time being with them.

Like an hour after they left we got a gift from Dani’s parents, savory pastries! It’ll be interesting to try them. 🙂

Sooo, it was a little bit frantic around the birthday party not only because of the party itself, but because Edda went into a seizure cluster starting on on Friday night and lasting until Monday morning. So she had a total of six seizures which were: Friday pm, Saturday early am and also 15 minutes before the party, Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning and Monday morning (her birthday! boooo.). So we did administer rescue medications on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. I would have given it on Saturday morning, but I didn’t want her to be asleep for the entire party. She did not have a seizure during the party (thank goodness, I was most worried she would have one while we were singing happy birthday) and also, this time she did not bite her tongue (like last September when I had to take her to the ER and get a tube down her nose). So she was able to keep eating and drinking between the seizures.

Since she had a seizure on Monday (almost right when the bus pulled up to the house), we kept her home that day just in case. But I could tell that the seizures were waning in strength and by Monday afternoon, she was back to herself just in time to celebrate her actual birthday with a nice dinner, champagne and ice cream, kindly provided by the Strickers in Austin! I had not heard of this brand of ice cream before, it was exciting and Edda was thrilled as were we.

We found a bottle of champagne that we had in the fridge and popped the cork and poured for us all.

And we opened the gifts from the party! Many, many were amazing shirts from people’s favorite bands. So fun!

A busy time, but good. Mostly. Vince and Dani flew in on Thursday for their spring break. Vince has been very anxious because this was the week where he was learning about matching or not matching with a lab. And because of all the potential funding issues that are all up in the air, I was a bit nervous for him too. But on Friday morning, he got news that he matched with his #1 lab with corporate funding in place. I know he’s nervous, but he’ll do great. Jeremy also got really good news during the week about his own funding at his job, so all good things. I’m pretty protected here at the USPTO, there are changes, but I think I, for the foreseeable future, get to do what I always do.

Everyone came in this weekend to help and attend Edda’s 21st birthday bash, held on the 22nd in the Main Street space. We rented the big event room and invited everyone we knew! I was really, really nervous before, though I do the easier part which is inviting and then socializing and Jeremy does the more complicated part, the actual pancake making. Both of us took most of Friday off. Jeremy spent 6 hours cooking 40 pounds of bacon. I spent most of Friday trying to not be anxious. Did I watch a movie? Maybe. I think I took a lot of naps.

Logistically, it was more complicated than all the years we’ve had it at the house. Because we were moving it to Main Street, Jeremy needed to pack all his kitchen equipment. He was kind of regretting this fact the night before the party and I said…let’s give it a chance! We were worried about 2 main things: 1) that we’d blow a fuse running 2 griddles and 1 crock pot off a single circuit and don’t know where the fuse box is and 2) they have an electronic virtual concierge which is confusing to get yourself into the party and I thought people would be trapped in the vestibule of the entrance. Neither of these things happened, thank goodness. We are also, strangely, down to only one car, so we rented a minivan for the week while the kids are in town. And in that minivan, we hauled our entire kitchen (almost) to Main Street. We were there at 8:30 for a 10 am start. A few folks arrived at 9:30(!) which was totally fine and in retrospect, should have been expected.

I felt like unlike the other years we’d had the party, the party started right at 10 am – none of this fashionably late crowd! My father was the first in line for the pancakes and bacon. We had such a nice turnout. Deb, Edda’s OT in elementary school. And Vince’s OT too! For handwriting.

Edda’s school team and student alumni!

My nursing/yoga friend!

It was so nice to have my parents, Jeremy’s parents and Vince all together for this party.

We had, in the end, about 120 people RSVP. We had such a great turnout from all groups of people that we know and one of the best things to see were groups of people saying hello to each other that have known each other but haven’t seen each other in a long time. The Rett families, Jeremy’s co workers past and present. Many of Edda’s caregivers got to see Edda and each other. Our extended families got to see each other and talk. That was really lovely. Ginny’s kids, Seni and Emelina, helped work the kitchen and were indispensable and Jeremy loved working with them to make all the pancakes. Lauren baked the lovely cake and Megan kept me company and took all these photos and helped me make signs and brought balloons. It was a good party! I remember when Edda was so little with such an overwhelming diagnosis and I literally thought I could not live to this day, but we made it and continue to keep going! And I’m so grateful for all the support everyone has given us, both big and small because we could not have done it without you all. Happy birthday Edda!

So the trees came yesterday..AND I WAS READY. The deer cages were up, my new hose reel was ready to deploy. I’ve been focusing on weight training for exercise…grrrr… I have never felt so prepared to garden. I soaked the trees in water for an hour or so before I plunged them into the ground. The oaks and the redbud were substantial in size….

But the serviceberry was….a nine inch stick with like three old man whiskers for roots. This is totally not going to be able to live in my backyard….because it’s a stick. But I tied a red ribbon around it so that I would not mistake it for trash and then did plant it into the ground. Then the watering involved turning on the water spigot which I had turned off for the winter and, also sending a text alert to Jeremy with excessive water use threatening entire house shut off, and getting myself moderately wet by errant and unexpected spray, so…in other words, a success.

We’ve lived in the house since 8/8/08 and I don’t think I’ve spent so much time in our backyard as I have the last two days. Let’s see what happens. Elka is here checking out my work. I did have her outside with me on a leash while I was working.

Felix and I did our first driving lesson together yesterday. (Sometimes I think I do nothing all day, but then…I do do stuff. It all goes into the ether). I had been passive aggressively putting it off. For all young, new drivers, the state of MD makes them take a 30 hour class and then three 2 hour driving sessions from a third party company. Felix is done with the class, but they scared him and said that there was a possibility of failing the driving sessions and you’d have to pay an extra $65 to retake the driving sessions. So then he was like, I need to practice with you (meaning me) before I do a session and I’m like – I really, really hate teaching new drivers how to drive, so I want you to take at least 1 two hour lesson before I sit next to you in our car. Anyways…I put it off for a while, but I relented first (why is that always the case?) and we drove to the twinbrook library which involved driving on Rockville Pike, Viers Mill road, backing up, parking, three point turns and then finally pulling into our garage. He did great! Totally ready for sessions with a professional driving instructor. And we have to do like 60 hours of this….omg.

I recently got a promotional postcard from MIT noting that my beloved Hayden library had been renovated. I last visited in 2019 (my 25th reunion which I had a disappointing time at – never had I felt so badly and out of place about my alma mater, so I might never go back), right before they started the renovation, so I was able to relive the gloriousness that was the old library. MIT’s undergraduate is mid-size, so I didn’t know everyone by name, but it meant that there were lots of familiar faces – anyways, when I met someone in graduate school later, they said – I recognize you, you were always in the library and it was true. Now, I know this is all relative because when you go to a school at MIT, it’s really easy to feel stupid (even though you are not) and I felt stupid a lot and I got through with the determination of a mouse in the middle of the night in the attic that won’t stop scritching, scratching away for hours keeping you awake. I spent so much time at the library. I remember it was my goal to study about 10-12 hours for each exam, and I did 95% of my studying on the first floor of Hayden.

Hayden library was…not pretty. It had metal shelves full of dusty books. It was crammed to the rafters with technical books with thick bindings that you could touch with inscrutable titles and I never referred to them at all. It had little staircases leading to nowhere. There was the tired but friendly all night librarian (!) that I became friends with like you’d be friends with a barista now. But it had enormous wooden tables and that I could spread out four feet wide and four feet deep with my notes and books. It was never crowded unless it was finals, but there were always a rotating group of fellow study-ers for a collegial feeling.

I rewarded myself after each 30 min study session at the library to go upstairs to the magazine section to read People Magazine – which inexplicably the library had a subscription to. Anyways, can I be disappointed in the renovation? There are no books! It looks like an airport lounge or any regular office space. I mean, it’s nice. But also so not nice. (Also, there are no people in this tour video, so maybe that it also swaying my reaction). It’s no longer open 24 hours. Haha I’m an old curmudgeon. I’m spending a lot of my time trying to recapture the feelings I had in high school and college without phones, without being so tied to the computer.

I got notice that my bare root trees that I ordered months ago shipped to arrive at the house today! And I was like, I’m not ready, I’m not ready! But it was a beautiful day yesterday and I (having bought the supplies the same time I ordered the trees), spent a few hours outside setting up 6 tree guards for the main 6 trees I’m going to plant: white oak, serviceberry, redbud and witch hazel. There are a few extra white oaks I’m going to try to plant with kiki’s tree tubes and see how that fares against extreme deer pressure. We will see. It feels so nice to be outside, my daffodils give me joy, the sun further wrinkles my face. And we go on. (Also! I found a porcelain top to one of our little pitchers in the compost pile! Who knows how long it’s been there….)