Category: Uncategorized

We had a pretty busy Sunday of President’s Day weekend. Ning, Brian, Noah and Tristan came over and Sofie too (Mike wasn’t feeling well) for a morning brunch/cupcake celebration. Jeremy taught Sofie how to do pull-ups with the band assist.

I squeezed in a trail run between brunch and meeting up with Megan to do a fused glass art class in downtown Rockville. (I have no idea what I’m doing with the running…I’m just…running – which feels both good and strange, because I usually train, but it’s fine.). I invited Megan to do this class with me because I’ve wanted to take an art class here for the longest time and I’m on the lookout for someone to do things like this with. Megan is game for anything (except things with water – so no kayaking for her) as long as I come up with the ideas – so there’s been game night, ax throwing and now glass plate making. It was a very nice class, we had a good time making arty things.

I’m actually very excited about the plate I made and I can’t wait to see it all melted down into a curved plate. It’ll be done in about two weeks. Because the class ended at 5 pm and we were hosting Sunday night dinner, I invited Megan to the regularly scheduled DC Martin dinner where we were all in fine form – talking about poop, gyn exams, CBD, dumbasses, mustaches, primary bedrooms, SSRIs and certifiably crazy people – which we do pretty much every week, but was, I think, very interesting to Megan.

On Monday I worked a bit, Jeremy worked too, but Edda had Ginny care in the morning and then in the afternoon, Edda went to camp for six hours where they gave her lunch, did some tie dye activities and went outside. Edda’s camp has holiday hours! I kind of couldn’t believe it when they told me. (But, alas, Edda was the only participant that day, both good and somewhat lonely-ish, but I think Edda did not mind and had a good time. I do not know what to do in this situation because I was given a choice of whether to send Edda or not on this holiday day, do I say – no Edda doesn’t need to come – so the staff can have the day off? Or if I said no, would they be there anyways without any kids to tie dye with? Or do they really want to work and want me to say yes, Edda will come! Jeremy said to not think about it too hard, but I can’t help it, I do.) With the found time, Jeremy and I went on a long walk together in the afternoon with the dogs to find some new Pokemon stops and to chat with each other. There were many families out, I think it was 60 degrees in February – no one was wearing a jacket. We introduced the dogs to many children – one of which coughed in my face and I was like – oh well, I’m totally going down.

A couple of goofballs.

A vicious looking goofball. Elka can make herself look ferocious. Pip is not impressed.

So after three long years, I think finally on Tuesday, we will have almost the same amount of Edda – care as we did the day the pandemic swept through and closed down all of Edda’s services. We have in-person school, we’ll have an afternoon bus take Edda to an aftercare program, an aftercare program that will run until 6 pm and we’ll have someone pick her up from aftercare and help her with her bedtime routine. This is all possible through a Medicaid waiver that I’m eternally grateful for. I am so grateful for the care we had in position for so long that allowed me to go to nursing school and become a nurse and that gave Edda a richness in her life that I can not replicate at home. Before the pandemic, many caregivers and aftercare programs were available (and none of these programs or people seemed to deem Edda excessively needy) and I was kindly assured (by many people who worked in the special needs community that had worked with a variety of clients) that “everyone” – meaning all the adult programs – would want Edda when the time came. And then the pandemic hit and we struggled to find both programs and caregivers. Our beloved Kitachi who saw us everyday through the worst of the pandemic, moved to be close to her family summer of 2021. Edda’s aftercare program closed down summer of 2022 due to low enrollment and a shift in focus to ? I’m not sure what. Many programs said Edda wasn’t the right fit, some programs wanted $36 dollars and hour, one program, after enrolling her enthusiastically at first and then after a week, insisted she was a safety risk and non-compliant and kicked her out without calling to talk to us first. As for in-home care, this was also very difficult to find. We found people who couldn’t drive, who wouldn’t show up when they said they would, one person fell into the deepest sleep at 2pm with Edda happily sitting next to her and I actually had to shake her awake when she didn’t respond at first to my just calling out her name. Really, the stress of all this really has thrown me for a terrible emotional loop and mental state of which I’m still trying to recover from.

Edda’s been going to the new aftercare for about 2 weeks now. Every day, the afternoon bus drops her off at home and then I drive her to aftercare. The first week, I picked her up everyday. The second week was a mix of us and Ginny doing the pickup. After it seemed like they liked her and wouldn’t kick her out, I went through the school system and rerouted the afternoon bus to drop her off at camp. So the camp/aftercare is in the exact same church basement that her old one was in and it’s very convenient. But, they are just starting up, so only 2 kids so far, which is kind of boring, but less boring than at home. Anyways, the old one closed down because they couldn’t find enough kids, so I’m kind of like, uhhhh, I hope you find enough kids.

I had to say goodbye to Edda’s afternoon bus driver. She is very funny and always smells so lovely, she likes to use scented lotion from Bath and Body Works.

We were trying to get an updated headshot for Jeremy, but he’s not a natural smile-er. I mean, he smiles at home a lot, but when he’s in front of a camera, his smiles come out forced, a bit crooked (which he thinks is from a not-complete-recovery from his two bouts of Bell’s palsy), not super relaxed.

This is my favorite:

But then we added a dog to the photos, and the dog photos turned out all fine (this is my actual favorite to use for the purpose we were doing the head shot for):

Vince has been sick the past week and it’s been a bit rough for him, trying to hand in work and such things, but now I think it’s a long weekend and he can rest/recuperate.

MIT is run by women now. President, Provost, Chancellor and Faculty Chair! Fantastic! They are working on academic freedom and free expression after disinviting some speakers in the recent past.

Christine gifted me this Lego for Chinese new year and I made my little money tree with oranges and red envelopes 🙂

Been working on my squats. This is the first season in a long time I’ve been lifting and not running (as much). Those are my favorite workout pants, lol. Jeremy follows a lot of very strong women on Instagram and often shows me their feats of strength (very impressive!), so somehow in my head, I’m like – I look like those women lifting heavy weights, just fewer plates on the bar. But it’s not true. I look like myself trying to not hurt my back. That’s my main goal – to not hurt myself. When one is younger, one’s goal might be to run a 7 min mile or to deadlift 200 lbs. Those are not my goals. My goal is be strong enough to always be able to lift and care for Edda.

Cake for valentines day.

A photo of my father and his parents and seven siblings. Now there is a bunch of grumpy people all in one photo (me included), lol. My father is the tallest one in the photo, the most handsome in my opinion.

Valentine’s Day began as it should – with a 7 am trip/date to the dump to discard the carpet that I uninstalled this past weekend. Haha. And then a trip to Safeway where Jeremy bought my some poppy seed bagels (which I love a lot).

We are having a nice week here, though very busy. Sunday night dinner was hosted by Seth and Christine and we had the appropriate snacks (chips and salsa) and dinner (frito pie and chili dogs) and stayed for the first play and then we left to go home. Our motto is – have fun! but be home by 8:30. lol. I think that was the night that we lay in bed at 9:30 and declared ourselves to be very very boring. We are not fans of the football. But we love many people who are fans of the football.

Our pet saga continues.

My mother gave me this 45 year old rubber tree plant. It’s the plant of my childhood. I remember as a toddler tasting the sap of this plant and thinking I was going to die. I remember the unfurling leaves of the plant and I remember this plant almost tall enough to touch the ceiling. My mother has a green thumb and this plant has seen a lot including months when she’s away and not minding it. So it goes to the brink of death and then my mother rescues it. I kind of expressed some interest in it last week and she immediately brought it over for me. I honestly am kind of scared I’ll kill it but my mom looked at me and said – if it dies, it dies, it’s ok. it’s yours. I’m not sure if I’m reassured by that because my mother is expressing a sort of existential philosophy or if my mom thinks she’s doomed the plant for sure by bringing it to my house. Anyways, it’s changed a lot since the last time I carefully looked at it, it now has a wind chime, two necklaces, some christmas ornaments and a chopstick in its branches. What to do with this melange created and curated by my mother? I’m not quite sure. Oh, I’m mistaken – not two, but three necklaces.

Pip’s been messing with his left paw so I used a razor to buzz away some of the fur to see if I could see anything. We didn’t see anything, but we got him some anti-itch cream from the vet. I have a strong desire to take the razor and give Pip a buzz cut all over his tiny body just to see what he looks like under all that hair, but I won’t do it because I have good self control like that.

So the quote for a full hardwood floor install for the three carpeted bedrooms came in at just about $11K – we were hoping for under $10K, so we are attempting to save a bit of money. I know I said I was going to DIY it, but for a variety of reasons, I don’t want to move about 2,000 pounds of material into the house, up the stairs and then try to install the whole thing attempting to get it straight. If we were going to do luxury vinyl floating floor, I might have more seriously considered doing it myself. First, we are going to drop the red oak from “select grade” to “character grade” which means there is going to be more line and color variation within the wood slabs and there might be some wormholes, but still within the grouping of the hardwood floor brand recommended by consumer reports. We like the more varied look (at least we say that we do), and I’m hoping to save a dollar a square foot. The other place that we are going to try to same some money is to do the carpet removal ourselves. So I watched a bunch of youtube videos and with some encouragement from Jeremy, I started in on the guest room. I had all the tools on hand and I estimated that all three rooms would take me 15 hours. But I was pleasantly surprised that it was much easier than I thought it would be and I finished ripping out everything in the smallest bedroom, the rug, the padding, the staples and the tack strips in just about 2 hours.

Carpet is so gross. Really. And this is 15 year old carpet – through many, many residents and many, many pets.

All done.

I’m very grateful for my body to be able to do this work close to the floor. I’m very comfortable in a squat position and spent most of the time squatting down and not kneeling (if one kneels, one should invest in knee pads) and I woke up this morning feeling not at all sore from the labor. Even though I do mostly want to save the money, I also enjoyed the couple of hours of steady work and to see the progress of my efforts. There is some joy that I get from that – I’m in a better mood. I do hope Jeremy can help in the other rooms and though he can squat now after a couple of years of flexibility work, it still doesn’t come as naturally to him as it does to me. So maybe or maybe not. Maybe he can just help get the rements to the dump for me.

Elka’s badness level is unusually high. After months of not destroying stuff and not pooping in the house, these behaviors have returned. My poor shoes.