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After we got home from Long Island at 4 pm on Thursday, I went immediately to urgent care. This has been a terrible summer skin-wise. My 2nd bout of poison ivy was held in check during my 12 day course of steroids, but it wasn’t completely gone by the time I had tapered off about a week ago. I just assumed that it would clear slowly now that it wasn’t very bad. But instead, it seemed to take its time to go away and at the same time morph into little red dots all over my body which were like 40x itchier than the actual poison ivy itself. I was pretty miserable on the ride home from Long Island and when I headed into urgent care, the doc took one look at me and said – I’ll give you a third course of steroids, but you can’t take any more after this and you need to see a dermatologist. And whatever you do don’t scratch. And I realized he was right, all the raised, angry areas were due to my scratching. The actual itchy parts were tiny little pustules randomly all over my body. (I did momentarily think that I got bitten by bed bugs, but the itchiness was the worst closest to the poison ivy and radiated out from there all the way to my back, abdomen, groin and upper legs, nothing on my ankles or lower legs which were the only uncovered parts while I was sleeping.) He, depressingly, told me that the steroids probably wouldn’t clear it and it could last for months and it needed more targeted care. Jeremy has a dermatologist that he likes, but she schedules appointments two months out and I completely was beside myself thinking that I would be so itchy for months and months. And it’s true, the steroids do not do anything to this secondary reaction and on Friday and Saturday – Jeremy asked me, so what’s your plan today? And I said, I plan to concentrate my efforts on not scratching. And I did accomplish this – I didn’t scratch for two days even though I was out of my mind with itchiness. I took baths, Benadryl, the useless steroids, I bought all the different anti-itch creams from CVS and slathered away. I even read articles about turning my scratching hand into my healing hand and concentrating healing vibes into my hands and then rubbing it on my itchy areas instead of scratching. Gah, such woo woo crap. But whatever, I did what I could. But I think I can say finally this morning, all the raise streaks of itchiness hell are subsiding today. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still itchy, just like 40% less itchy than yesterday. OMG. My poor body, so confused and overreacting. I’m like – please chill out, I’m ok. totally ok, you don’t need to send the army of histamines willy nilly all over.

I’ll write a few more little stories from our trip to Long Island. So, because I wanted to keep the trip affordable and funny, I did book this RV on airbnb and it was perfect, funny and cheap and totally fine – it has hundreds of happy reviewers on the website and I left a five-star review as well. And it was like 10 minutes from everything we wanted to see. Anyways, towards the end of the visit at the fire department (which was happy and lasted like an hour), one of the firemen asked us where we were staying. And I mentioned that we were staying in an RV in Brentwood. And then he kind of turned his head and said – oh, you are staying in the hood. And then Megan asked, what is your definition of “hood”? Clearly, we have different definitions of being in the hood. We’ve been laughing at this for days now.

Megan is also very well trained in claw prize machines. She studies youtube videos about this craft and I watched her win this teddy bear. You usually can’t win with only one try because you need the first try to gather information about the machine and the objects in the bin. And you can’t decide what you want and go for it, you have to figure out which one is possible to grab and then tailor your attempts towards that. This bear cost $15 worth of tries. I was impressed.

I took the last three days off and traveled with Megan to Hauppauge, NY in the middle of Long Island. We were there as sort of a pilgrimage for her father (who recently passed away) and see her family’s lore. We drove up on Tuesday, we stayed in an RV (airbnb) parked in someone’s driveway, toured on Wednesday, and drove home on Thursday. It was so amazingly successful, I’m happy I got invited to go.

First stop, the all-volunteer fire station where Megan’s paternal grandfather was active for many, many years. We just happened to bump into an ex-chief in the parking lot who knew all the Millers and happily gave us a exhaustive tour of all the memorabilia.

They lovingly maintain this old fire truck for parades and nice days.

We then went by the house where her dad grew up. It’s abandoned and rumored to have been bought by a dentist. We were poking around, when from across the parking lot came a dentist in full scrubs and the light on her head and she scolded us for being on the property and sure enough, it was the dentist and she softened upon learning about Megan’s connection to the house. We talked to her a bit as she was probably leaving a patient with their mouth open with Mr. Thirsty hanging.

This Carvel location featured prominently in Megan’s childhood, as they always drove by and commented on it, but never stopped for ice cream. We stopped for ice cream.

Megan’s grandfather was the superintendent of schools in the town, so we stopped by the high school and found this plaque which Megan has heard so much about, but has never seen it before. This was a great find.

Finally, we went to the library where there was a Myron Miller archives with old photos, clippings, handwritten letters and a very enthusiastic librarian who had collected and cataloged it all. It was super impressive (the little one is Megan’s father). Megan carefully went through the clippings and I took a nap in a leather chair.

Finally, in the morning before we hit the road, we (shhhh…) buried some of Megan’s dad’s ashes between the gravestone of his father and uncle. Megan had been carrying the ashes in her purse, so, you know, he kind of got to visit all the locations with us while we tooled around town.

I had such a wonderful time touring this little town and meeting various folks enthusiastic about their jobs and happy to share what history they could. We also ate at a lot of diners!

Busy Sunday! In the morning, Ning came over and we talked about gender. Hahaha. Recently, I’ve had some feelings over transgender-ness (not myself, I’m solidly she/her) that I wanted to suss out with some friends and I have done that in the past week. Nothing makes me feel older than this topic, except for maybe tiktok. OK, everything makes me feel old. Anyways, Ning, being from Thailand and about half a generation younger than me, has a unique perspective on gender as, really, lots of people change their gender all the time in Thailand and it’s considered normal and no one gives them any trouble. You don’t need to go to a doctor, you can start transitioning anytime, people admire transgender folks. It’s no big deal. So I will take this to heart and let it be. Which is really what I want to do, make it no big deal and let it be. And I will.

Then we went to lunch with Maryam and Tom at one of my favorite restaurants, Panera. We are planning on going to Las Vegas to celebrate Tom’s 70th birthday in late September and we worked on logistics and planning of which there is a lot. Maryam loves Vegas and loves glitz and nightlife, we are a little more lukewarm about Vegas – dare I say that Jeremy and I are prudish (gasp!), but we want to do what they want to do. It’s a big party – like 25 people, we aren’t the only ones going, so I wasn’t sure how much “hanging out” we were going to do together. The main party is Saturday, but they were flying out on Wed and we might have condensed the time we spent there, but everyone seemed to want to hang out and get tattoos together (Jeremy – absolutely not), so we came home and matched their flights. We are as game as we are going to be for gambling, tattoos, piercings, little chapels, and fake Venetian canals. We were kind of excited for Edda to pull some slots, but turns out you need to be 21. So no slots for Edda.

In the evening, we went to Sunday night dinner where we talked about everything except politics which was a lot of fun and laughing, until someone was really excited to talk about politics and then like 70% of us left the table even though we ALL AGREE on politics. Literally, so tiresome and, well, tiresome and kind of exhausting.

And then Vince asked me for a photo of my college class ring. And I felt old all over again. In the last millenium!

A nice, quiet weekend. Some socializing today, but yesterday, a day of puttering around the house. I’ve been slowly working on our front entry which for 15 years has really just looked like a shipping warehouse, full of opened amazon boxes, piled mail bubble wrap and discarded shoes and turned it into a little plant sanctuary. The plants are mostly cuttings or gifts from people and I’ve found pretty pots here and there and I’m enjoying taking care of them (mostly). I’ve watched lots of plant-y youtube videos of people with 100s of plants in their house – that’s not me, but I’m having fun.

This weekend, I finished sewing up the little red curtain that I hung from our glove table that we made together in a woodworking class when we first started dating to hide an enormous blue recycling bin and white plastic trash can for all the incoming mail and trash that can fit there. You know how your house looks totally normal to you and then a friend who has never been there walks into the room and then you are a little like – yikes? That doesn’t look so great, that big pile of something-or-other? I’m not very self conscious about the house, there are people here all the time (almost everyday), I generally won’t “clean up” before company, but…still sometimes.

Jeremy worked his plywood skills and finished out the wood shelves for this wrought iron shelving and I’m hoping to paint it next weekend. I’m thinking a bold red for the iron and pale pink for the shelves. I invision plants of this shelf as well, but this will be well far away from windows, so it’ll need some grow lights installed which I’m a little bit hesitant about.

And finally, Jeremy spent the weekend moving TVs around. The TV in Edda’s bedroom was really small and very slow to load, so we got a new TV for Edda in the living room and then moved the living room TV up to Edda’s bedroom. This involved moving bookcases around and mounting hardware around. As we were moving the books around, we laughed and said who would have ever imagined that paper books wouldn’t be a thing anymore. These are mostly books from Jeremy’s college era.

Something ate this. A deer? A rabbit? Those damn rabbits. So cute, yet so hungry.

I took the morning off and went paddleboarding with Kristen at Black Hills. We tried to get out early as it was going to be hot and we had a great time. A lot of talking on the paddleboards, some paddling – I’m actually kind of nervous standing on the board, I’m much more comfortable on my knees or sitting, but I’m practicing and did not fall in not-on-purpose. We may have taken a dip in the middle of the lake on purpose. The lake was quiet, but not empty. I love doing these things on the weekdays. Great day! Poor Elka, she saw that I was packing up to go somewhere fun and she loves going on hikes with Kristen, and I would have love to have taken her, but she isn’t trained to actually go on a paddleboard. I’m hoping to work on that in the next few weeks.

Sometimes, it’s a pain to do these things, like you gotta lug your stuff out of the garage and then lug it to the body of water and then pump up the board and then get wet, but it’s actually not that bad and the reward is wonderful. Kristen actually has an electric pump for her board and I pumped my board by hand faster than the electric pump – so, I impressed myself. I also touched plants with my body and really, really scrubbed down in the shower afterwards and I’m hoping to ward off my summer streak of poison ivy (which is still bothering me and won’t be 100% cleared by the time I finish my course of steroids, but it’s much, much better than it would have been.)

I planted one of my first native on my mission to transform the lawn. Appropriately, a black eyed susan, the state flower of Maryland. I just dug a hole in the ground and plunked it down. Jeremy took one look at it and said – will a deer eat it? I said, I think not and it’s been there for like 36 hours, and no deer has nibbled it.

Jeremy came home Saturday night and Sunday was all day DIY install of our new induction stove and downdraft. This took at least 5 hours on Sunday working together. We each had goals. Jeremy’s goal: install downdraft and induction stove. My goal: work together and I will not once get annoyed at Jeremy. Well….I met my goal (happily) and Jeremy did not meet his.

It took us five hours to install this downdraft and I want to say that we did a beautiful job, much better than the initial new build install (this house may look good, but it’s not terribly built well). We made all the electrical work neat, we did some cabinetry adjustments to not kludge the install and have it more stable and sturdy than originally installed. We neatly taped all the vent connection – beautiful. This did take us a long time, talking, lifting the vent into and out of the space to do test runs, etc. But in the end, gorgeous. And I did not get annoyed one bit. But as we were finishing installing it, Jeremy’s like – the stove is just going to drop in, it’s going to take 5 minutes. I said, shhhhhhhh…don’t anger the kitchen gods. And we unpacked the stove, tried to drop it in and the granite space is 1/2″ too small. Argh… so I need to find someone to cut the hole slightly bigger. Hmmm, and the lip is slim, so it might break if they try to cut it. We’ll see.

I told Jeremy that if we break the countertop trying to make the hole bigger and need to replace it and uninstall the downdraft, I might just cry. Anyways, it was a triumph for us as a team – it was a good satisfying day. Teamwork makes the dreamwork.

Tuesday, I went to the retirement party of my boss at the hospital – Anthony. He might be the best boss I’ve ever had in my life in the toughest job I’ve ever had. He’s been at the hospital 25 years and many people have followed him from department to department to keep reporting to him. His unit has always had the lowest turnover of nursing staff (even though it’s still brisk). Med surg is the New Jersey of the hospital, unglamorous and a little nondescript, but the backbone of the Turnpike – ykwim? Anyways, it was lovely to go – there was SO MUCH FOOD. I saw so many old friends and coworkers. And it’s incredible how you can work with someone for four years and not see them for two and totally forget their name (and it’s weird which ones, some popped into my head immediately, others I still can’t manage even though it’s been days). Congrats Anthony!

OK, on Wed, things started to fall apart. Not in a catastrophic way, just in the regular way. I had gone gardening in our front lawn on Monday and gotten (again!) into some poison ivy. So my reaction started blooming on Wed morning on my arms and on my face again. Edda’s caregiver was coming down with some wicked viral puking thing, so she called out that morning (and would call out the rest of the week) and Jeremy left for a business trip in a corn field and would not be back until Saturday night. So I dropped Jeremy off at the Metro, dropped Edda at camp, went to my desk to work and found I couldn’t concentrate with poison ivy pustules erupting up my arm and took a sick day and took a Benadryl and then napped. At two pm I woke up and thought to myself, I should go for a run and then I looked at my crusting over face and decided – no, I need to go to urgent care to get some steroids. So I saw a very nice NP who gave me the same course of steroids I used only a month ago and took the first dose as I was walking out of the clinic on my way to pick up Edda from camp. Anyways, the last time I took the steroids, my reaction was waning (it had already gone on for more than 2 weeks) and the poison ivy was gone in less than 24 hours, this time, my reaction was just starting and surging, so I could tell that the steroids and my histamines were waging a terrible, drawn out battle on my arm. Impasse. Stalemate. Who was going to win? Well we are on day 4 of steroids and my arm still looks terrible, but the med are winning. And I’m glad I went early to get them. But I still felt very worn out and with Jeremy gone and Edda’s caregiver also gone, I took the rest of the week off as sick days when I didn’t have meetings and besides doing the regular Edda-care, I stayed in bed and read books (I’m reading Hawaii my James Michener to prep for our trip) and tried to go to bed early as my meds would allow.

Jeremy, had, as far as I could tell, a nice trip which involved doing a long bike ride on a bike borrowed from the hotel through corn fields. We texted each other a lot about Pokemon.

In my weird poison-ivy filled steroid/benadryl moodiness, I saw that there was a Taylor Swift merch drop of her og cardigan from the folklore album and in that moment, I dearly wanted this acrylic shapeless article of clothing. So I bought it and here it is. Let’s see if I wear it outside the house and if anyone notices it.

I drove into Alexandria to get my computer fixed from this CloudStrike update – they had an entire floor dedicated to fixing the problem full of IT folks. I showed up 30 minutes before my appointment, and they were able to fix my problem in 20 minutes. I was out of there in a flash. There were also donuts. Sound like the in-person fixing is going quickly, it’s just folks that are outside the 50 mile radius that need virtual fixing that are lagging. I bumped into two coworkers I hadn’t seen in a decade and it was a nice reunion.

We met with a financial advisor for the first time and it was a great experience. I feel like now that college expenses are over, we needed someone to look over our investments and insurances and streamline things for the next 10-20 years. The rules are constantly changing and it’s hard for just me to keep up with them. Lots of good, solid advice and recommendations with an eye towards retirement as well as building a home for Edda.

Quiet weekend. No chance for me to log in to work – I often work between 2-5 hours each day on the weekend because I tend to flex my schedule during the week, but there was no chance to log in and so, a true weekend for me. I love the flexibility my job provides, but there is always a feeling of I could log in and work. I read and I gardened.

Jeremy spent a lot of time this weekend training for a big hill climb race-thing in August. Some time at home watching the Tour de France.

And some time doing hill repeats.

He’s spent a lot of time messing with his bike to make sure it has super low gears.