Category: Uncategorized

Today is Thursday and we were supposed to host the DC Martin Secret Santa gift exchange. Jeremy had been feeling bad since Saturday, but he thought he had caught Vince’s cold – Vince tested negative for Covid, so he (Jeremy) didn’t bother to test. By Wed night, he was feeling much better, had gone out to buy 16 people’s worth of frittata ingredients and coffee cake, but because the DC Martins are more cautious than most, Jeremy pulled out a test at about 7 pm on Wed night to just ease their concerns. After 15 minutes, he groaned and said – I have Covid. Argh, we need to cancel brunch/secret santa.

So then I tested (I felt fine) and it was not negative! I was so sure it was going to be negative, but Jeremy walked by this lame 30 minute test and said – there is a faint line, you have covid. I looked at it in disbelief. I’m like – I have covid too! Then the kids came home from the bookstore (Vince and Dani) and camp (Edda) and we tested them all and they were all on team negative.

Today – Thursday – I’ve spend the day in bed. Sometimes I feel sick/tired and other times, I feel fine. I think if I hadn’t seen the line, I probably would be up and about trying to work and play, but since I saw the line, I can convince myself I’m quite tired. No fever, no runny nose, just a tiredness.

Of course, it’s terrible timing, this beautiful quiet week. Sofie is in town next door and we spent some time together.

Playing our board games again.

I went out to the mall with Vince and Dani where I played the role of the mother and not the friend. Does this make any sense? It’s so weird to be the mother of a couple! I’m not used to it.

Dani had a $50 gift certificate to Build a Bear so we built bears.

We had a nice time together. Fun. And then we welcomed Covid Christmas #2. Not fun.

Christmas eve – Vince and I went to Pike and Rose to have some ramen and do some light shopping for nothing. Which included this hat from Uniqlo (with the eyeballs). We also went into Sephora and Vince happily tried on some fragrance and declared – I smell like a Yankee Candle – which was true.

We went to a local indie bookstore which was new to me too and spent the afternoon happily looking though stacks of used books.

Christmas Day – Jeremy remains sick and is still surrounded on all sides with crumpled up tissues. Vince gets a water pik (recommended by his dentist), Edda gets some clothes from friends, Jeremy wants some sort of weightlifting bar which is enormous and is not ordered yet, but will be once the gym is more organized and there is a place to put the bar. My family bought me a new mechanical keyboard which is clicky and types very fast.

As is our tradition, I took the kids and the dogs to my parents house for my father’s birthday McDonald’s meal. This is what my father wants and he had a 20% off coupon to boot. So we all had McDonald’s and gave the entire shift a Christmas red envelope. It was hopping for Christmas dinner. Nine people on staff and the drive thru was 5 cars deep the entire time.

During dinner, my mother got a phone call on the land line which is attached to a rotary phone. I had to take a photo. I told Vince, now pua pua is attached to the wall. I spent so much time in my youth attached to the wall on the phone.

I’m also doing some catsitting on the side (not at my house, I do house calls!). Say hello to flower!

Happy Christmas Eve – sending love to all of you out there. We are having a quiet Christmas eve weekend here, just the 4 of us. Vince was sick most of last week and Jeremy is sick now, so there is lots of time in bed and lots of quiet time watching a lot of TV. I think everyone will be better by Christmas, unless either Edda or I succumb to the cold today or tomorrow.

Last Thursday, we went to the annual Christmas party at Edda’s school. We had a lovely time – I think every year, it gets better and better. It used to be just like a “snack-y” party, but it has morphed into a potluck lunch of sorts and goes on for a longer time. Jeremy dressed well. I forgot to dress festively.

We are so lucky to have this community.

Good friends will scatter and move on.

We bring the expensive cupcakes every year and did so again this year. lol.

I bought myself a swiffer – which is one of those things I’ve enjoyed knowing about, but never actually held in my hand. I have never ever ever dusted anything in my life, but now I want to dust the entire house. I see cobwebs that are high and dust bunnies on ceiling fan blades. So I watched some youtube videos on “how to dust the house” and now I know. So I started to dust 15 years of dust from the high places in our house – high shelving, light fixtures, inside light fixtures, knick knacks. The house is very dirty. It turns out once you declutter objects in the house, you then go on to clean the house itself. Interesting. Or else it just means that I’m not busy enough which is also a possibility.

Vince got home on Saturday night and we’ve been busy, but in a very quiet sort of way. We started our Santa Candle tradition – thank you Christine!

Bob and Katherine are here a few nights to see Vince before heading to Sweden/Europe for the holidays. Louisa and Leon came by for dinner last night.

Vince made this delicious almond cake which kind of fell in the middle, but was very enjoyable and made a bowl to hold the blueberries.

For whatever reason, our house has 10,000 lightbulbs. Eliana (who was here on Saturday) is beautiful in her Christmas themed sweater, but notice just 7,500 lights in the ceiling behind her. When we moved in, they were all incandescent light bulbs and in a flurry of environmental consciousness soon after we moved in, Jeremy switched them all to compact fluorescent light bulbs. This was very expensive and slightly heartbreaking for me because we were throwing away perfectly good things doing their slightly less than perfect job. Anyways, we always didn’t like the compact fluorescents as they are annoying and they go into environmental waste when they burn out, so we are switching (in theory) over to LED as they burn out. But I’ve been so busy the last 5 years, they have randomly burned out and I haven’t notice and I didn’t do anything about it, because instead of 7,500 lights, there were now 7,494 light bulbs and then who cares because, really who cares? But I care now. But here is the problem, I found 6 brand new incandescent light bulbs deep in a closet while decluttering and I didn’t want to throw away perfectly good new light bulbs that I could use right now, so I got up on a step ladder while Jeremy was not paying attention (this is hard to do because he never leaves the house and is often found within earshot of the burned out light bulbs) and then installed the 6 heat spewing Edison era light bulbs. And then I did notice that the there were pockets of darkness that are now no longer dark. I left them there for about three days without telling Jeremy. But I finally had to break down and tell him that I went backwards three decades in light bulb technology and he yelled at me and said – what are you doing?!? you have to take them out!!!? They use so much extra energy and then I said – but they were brand new! What should I have done with them? Throw them away? And then he said – yes! THROW THEM AWAY! And then this resulted in – literally a 45 minute discussion of which new light bulbs to buy – Amazon? Home Depot? Phillips? Off brand? 48 or 12? what about the ceiling fans? Globe lights? Ack. I think now we have a light bulb plan for the entire house. The incandescents are still up there awaiting their death.

Jeremy had a nice bike ride on Saturday.

I spent the weekend volunteering at a horse rescue? Why a horse rescue? I’ve never really been interested in horses at all, but I wanted a “job” where I meet people, is outside and there is some physical labor involved. This used to be nursing (ahhh, it technically wasn’t outside outside, but it was outside the house…, but I really can’t take the 12 hour shifts which often involved yelling (not by me, rather at me) I tried the state parks, but they wanted me to clean up trash by myself around the campground which seemed lonely and gloomy and I would be mad the whole time about the people who hadn’t picked up after themselves in the first place. Then I found this horse place which is a well-run incredibly well-oiled volunteer organization. There is poop shoveling, horse grooming, tractor fixing and an online system to sign up for shifts and people will tell you exactly what to do and it’s endless work. So I did the two day orientation and I’m ready to muck a stall. Anytime! Even on Christmas Day if I wanted to, because horse pooping does not take a holiday. It’s a little far from the house, I’m the only person of color, but the horses are handsome and it fits all my volunteer criteria. This is Waldo. I’m excited. I also am excited I get to buy a pair of horse-y boots.

Wed night we went out to hotpot to celebrate Ginny’s birthday. This was just 1.5 miles from the house and we’d never been to this restaurant Hot Pot City. We were impressed – they had induction stoves for the hot pot, the service was lovely – we ordered on an iPad and every once in a while a robot would come over and sing happy birthday and deliver some red bean fried deliciousness.

That afternoon, I had gone to my parents’ house to help them declutter. Earlier in the week, I had asked my mother if she had any wall mirrors and she thought about it for a while and said – no, I have no wall mirrors, but I will go to IKEA and buy you a new one. And I said – absolutely not. No new mirrors. While decluttering, I found FOUR mirrors. FOUR. To which my mother looked at each one as if was a completely new item to her. Anyways, I brought three of them into my house. One I put up in the front foyer. It’s a little distorted – not the most perfect mirror, but it will do. Look at our front foyer – the table Jeremy and I made in a woodworking class that we took together when we first met. The mirror from my parents’ basement. The glass jar for the dog treats – also from my parents’ house (I’m basically shopping there now for home decor). The basket is from Alice’s estate, the pink box (holds scissors and box cutters for boxes from Amazon) from Katherine’s house. I have been watching home decorating videos – not really to find decorating inspiration in the regular way, but just to encourage me that it’s actually not that hard to hang things on a wall or move things around the house or replace lighting fixtures, etc. So I’m trying.

Today, Kristen and I took a long walk in nature with Elka. We crossed rivers and threw rocks on a frozen pond and Elka rolled in a lot of shit. Then we went to lunch at Cava Mezze which is the upscale, sit-down version of the Cava fast casual restaurant. Kristen is vegetarian and we ordered so many things and, at first, I thought that we couldn’t eat it all, but we ended up finishing the entire meal.

Jeremy is still not 100% well, but he’s on his indoor bike right now for the first time in about a week and doing an easy ride. Otherwise, everything is just chugging along. I’ve progressed from the major decluttering in the house to rearranging things – furniture, photos, etc to – OMG – decorate! I’m trying to spend zero money again, which is my favorite.

I’m trying to learn a new stitch in knitting – a kind of reversible stitch with two colors called a brioche stitch. It works well sometimes.

And works poorly other times (I have trouble with the transitions, don’t we all?). To me, this is what growing up has meant to me – when I was twenty, I would have stressed so much about those ugly stitches and worried so much about them and not wanted to go on without fixing them, but now, I just stumble through them, knowing that maybe I can figure it out later (and I did in the next few rounds), but also knowing that it can fall apart later (and it did, I messed up more stitches (no photo) after I had a few successful rows). But in the end there will be a hat and there will be many more hats to knit in which I hope to be better, but maybe not. And that will be OK too.

We have totally gone over to the dark side in which the house now feels more smart than dumb. We have many lights on timers (grow light for plant, two sets of Christmas lights, Doris’s office lights). A bunch of other lights which can be turned on/off by voice. All the TVs we can turn on and off by voice now – no need to find the remote to turn off the TV after Edda leaves for the bus or if we want to go to bed after watching Cooking Tree youtube channel. Our doorbell recognizes people and animals and packages left and packages taken.

And after year and years of downsizing our “app” subscriptions to Amazon Prime, Disney+ (Edda) and the NYTimes & WaPo, I feel like now I subscribe to a million things including: New Yorker (read very little) and Atlantic (I read a lot), two to-do list apps, two guitar learning apps, a food tracking app, fitness apps, we also subscribe to YouTube premium (this is quite more expensive than either Netflix or Hulu, but it’s our main source of entertainment for both me and Jeremy) and Spotify and I’m sure the list goes on and on.

For example a Japanese bunny jumping contest – I know people like to go out to concerts and dinners and comedy shows, but my favorite is being in bed with Jeremy and laughing over random things we find on youtube together. And then we yell into the air – “OK Google, turn of the bedroom TV and good night” and the TV goes dark and the lights go dark and then google wishes us a good night.

I don’t really like the gift giving part of Christmas and this year I have an opportunity to not buy very many gifts, so I’m not. It is exhilarating! But I’m part of a few white elephant/secret santa exchanges and I like to buy everything early, like the first week of December. But oftentimes, the rules change about which method of gift giving a group wants to do and, like I do every year, I’ve messed up. (What can I say – I want to not feel rushed and I like free, slow shipping.) I honestly tried to get people to agree, but they weren’t ready yet around Thanksgiving. I’m not bold? imposing? bossy? enough. So on Dec 1st, I went with last year’s rules and bought a few beautiful gifts (which was white elephant – recipient unknown) and then the rules changed (secret santa) and now my gifts are not appropriate for the name I drew. Oh well. I will save the gifts for another time.

One of my favorite parts of the holiday is the open fire part. Vince and I have a candle ritual which I’m hoping to implement when he gets home (Saturday!). I ordered all the special candles for all my spinning holiday decor and the menorah. This year, I had time to polish the menorah! Unbelievable – it polishes up nicely. I did not let these candles burn down. Just for dinner and the moments I could be around the table. The wooden one has a tendency to stop spinning and burn the fan leaves, there are already a few scorch marks from when I wasn’t paying attention. And it’s just freaky to leave this much open fire unattended.

A quiet weekend because we were supposed to drive to Philly for Kiki’s birthday party, but it was cancelled because Kiki and Bob both got Covid (both are fine now). I know other people’s weekends are filled with holiday activities, but I’m quite content to stay at home. Jeremy got a weird stomach bug after his trip to Denver – he puked on Thursday and spent a lot of Friday lying down and watching youtube videos. Elka did her doggie duty and kept him company.

I finished another knitted hat which I’m pleased about. My mom decluttered her entire yarn stash to me so now I never have to buy yarn again for the rest of my life if I go at the rate I’m going.

Jeremy spent the entire weekend working. I know this sounds dreary, but he’s excited about something and fleshing it out and he was so excited he couldn’t sleep on Saturday night (weird, I know.) I happily spent the weekend doing laundry, running a few errands, going to the dog park, testing out running with my slightly not perfect ankle, practicing guitar, learning the brioche stitch in knitting and installing our new doorbell/camera thing-y.

Busy, busy – though not really with holiday stuff (we are doing a very, very low key holiday – hardly any gifts and maybe no parties) and less busy than I thought we’d be. Jeremy was in Denver this week, back last night. We hosted our friend Lael on Tuesday night and were supposed to host her two nights but she got sick and wanted to retreat back to a hotel room (even though I wanted her to stay). We were supposed to go to Philly this weekend to see Jeremy’s parents and do a big Kiki birthday celebration, but Kiki is sick too and we cancelled. (So if you are keeping track, we had to cancel both our mothers’ birthday celebrations in the last couple of weeks due to sickness…whomp whomp…)

I’ve been going once a week to help my mom declutter her house. It’s interesting to declutter with her there are a lot of things I remember her wearing as a child that are coming out of storage bins. My mother has a weakness for clothing which is on sale and “is a good deal”, many of them new and she wants to keep. Which is fine, we are making progress and she’s doing great. We also find some hidden money, my mother likes to tuck money here ad there and then forgets about it. So we found two crisp 100 dollar bills in a purse that hasn’t been opened in 20 years. Fun!