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Sofie turned 12 yesterday! We threw a chosen family party – she had a peer friends party this past weekend at a pottery studio and yesterday on her actual birthday, we wanted to throw a party for the important grown ups in her life. So originally we were expecting a party of 17, but a Ning and Brian and kiddos were sick, so it took us down to 13, but then 2 extra surprise people showed up and we were 15. Mad props to Jeremy who made the requested hamburgers (Jeremy ground the beef himself and formed the patties) and cheesy potatoes (from scratch with russet potatoes with a cheesy roux that my mom raved over) for 15 people on a Tuesday night when he had a full day of meetings and I was out all afternoon right up to six pm when the party started because I needed to go to first day of a great looking aftercare for Edda where I introduced the staff to all of Edda’s Edda-isms (more on that later, fingers crossed).

We did outsource the cake – red velvet – to Nothing Bundt Cakes which is across the street from my parents house. So I had them pick it up on the way to our house and my dad had never heard of them and he said, they sell only one kind of cake! And I said – well, it’s called Nothing Bundt Cakes, so yes, only bundt cakes, lol. Sofie has a lot of adults in many parts of her life, so it was nice to get to know each other as we had dinner together.

And, of course, dog pictures. Elka and my mom.

Elka and the kids.

We tried to take Elka and my dad to the dog park yesterday – but it was closed on Monday mornings in the winter – I forgot! So Elka was all excited, excited and then disappointed as was my father. The two make a nice pair.

There are mysterious pee/poop/food happenings in the guest room where the kitty litter is for Ivy and where we also feed Ivy. Jeremy forbid me to write about it (it’ll come out later, lol), but we put a webcam in the room and in less than 5 minutes, we witnessed shenanigans that made us both lol for a long, long time and vindicated me (which I’m very, very pleased about, as would be the case).

We do have a new tenant in the basement. It’s Christine, who is a nurse who worked on my unit at the hospital and her doggie Apollo. We spent part of the weekend installing curtains over a couple of sliding glass doors down there that I had not had the chance to do before she moved in. She had put garbage bags on the glass to shield the light from her and the deer from Apollo. It’s nice to have young person energy in the house again. Of course, the house is enormous and it’s nice that the space is being used again. I like to say that we use every square inch of the house and we never leave it (which is true). So now there are three humans, three dogs and a cat (and probably a lot of mice) in the house.

So inspired by my success in reinstalling the countertop in the basement kitchen and some random youtube videos, I’m going to try (with Jeremy) to rip out the carpeting in the upstairs bedrooms and replace with wood flooring. Now, carpentry isn’t really my jam, my jam is plumbing and appliance repair. But I think I can do it. I kind of groan at the amount of $ that can be spent on home repair. So we picked a small room and see what we can do. It’ll be a bit trying on the marriage – home renovations are famously taxing, but I think we can do it. This is the threshold between the existing floor and the ripped up wall to wall carpeting.

We are also doing this now because the animals (animals meaning Elka) has decided that this room is the bathroom. Elka has been notoriously hard to housebreak, she wants to pee a lot (well a lot meaning, small amounts all the time), her poops, despite investing in very expensive food that promises perfect poops and so few deviations from her regular diet (my mother is kind of crushed because she loves nothing better than to replace the regular Friday night serving of kibble with a specially-made Chinese meat-alicious meal for all our dogs), are runny and numerous each day and her instinct to keep her home clean of either urine or feces is not quite there. At some point in the fall, I was so frustrated with Elka, but she is literally the sweetest dog I’ve ever met, I said out loud to the gods, I love this dog so much, it will be OK if she pees/poops in my house for the next 15 years. And so the gods heard me and shrugged and said – ok, i’ll leave it be. So I think she smells Ivy’s litter box which is in this particular room and has decided – oh, I get it, this is the bathroom and it’s OK here. So I just want the carpet replaced with a wood floor so it’s easier to clean.

I think yesterday was our big unmasking day, even though it was completely not noteworthy. We didn’t wear masks in a restaurant – pupusas! I found a Salvadoran place where we ordered the pupusa sampler with 8 pupusas and shared that which was $12.50 and it would have been enough for lunch, but it felt like poor form to have only spent $12.50 for a sit-down lunch which such friendly and excited staff, so we ordered a pork sandwich for another 10 dollars which was delicious and interesting with beets and eggs and a vegetable slaw.

It was in this shopping center strip mall which is close to the house, but we never go to and we found next door to the Salvadoran place, a very crowded Japanese bakery place with very interesting snacks (we did not spend any money there) and then we explored a vape/cbd place that was next next door. So the door was plastered with mirrored film, so you couldn’t look inside. So we stood outside the door for a few moments wondering what we would find inside…would it be gross like those old porn video places seemed to be? But once you pulled the door open, it was well lit and very well organized and filled with middle-aged white people in puffer jackets all kind of milling around. While the clientele was just like us, the staff person who helped us (super friendly and knowledgeable), had many facial tattoos and spoke to us as if we knew what we were talking about. Jeremy is interested in CBD for better sleep and quicker recovery from workouts, but they didn’t have just plain CBD. And the staff person didn’t know where they sold just plan CBD. They only had stuff mixed with a psychoactive ingredient. So we bought a sample for five dollars to try later. We haven’t tried it, I’m not very interested – Jeremy is more so (but he’d rather take the CBD without the THC), but it won’t surprise me to see the sample sitting around collecting dust.

Then to Home Depot to look at flooring (also no mask!)

Then to a scout Eagle ceremony. All three of us went (no masks!) and had a really nice time. Jeremy looks forward to the sheet cake served at the reception. This might be the last one I go to because Vince is now three years older than the kiddos who are being honored now, so we know fewer and fewer of the boys.

And here’s another pet picture -Elka and Pip playing with Elka looking super vicious, but she is not, she is the sweetest ever.

My father is finishing the basement at the house. He got Vincent, Ruben and Jeremy to move about 100 sheets of drywall into the house after it got delivered from Lowe’s over Christmas break. Then he’s moving the drywall himself into place and then doing all the nailing/mudding, etc. A few years ago, he asked for a drywall “lifter” which hold the drywall in place for the ceiling ones. It’s nice to see that in use :). A few years before, he asked for a snowblower for Christmas, I’m sure we got him a nice one that was a four stroke and not a two stroke engine and ever since then, it hasn’t snowed any appreciable amount.

Jeremy watching Edda have an early morning seizure on the monitor. They are still infrequent, but they do happen. Sometimes it’s Pip snoring and then Jeremy awakens thinking that Edda’s having a seizure and then I have to mumble, it’s not Edda, it’s Pip and then we slip back into sleep.

Rachel has covid – she’s showing me her packet of Paxlovid. She’s good, though she got covid during the week that she was planning on going on vacation. As is usually the case…

Dog and cat kiss.

I almost never put meat outside in the compost, but for whatever reason, I had a very old meatball sandwich that I discovered deep in the fridge and I decided to set it outside with the compost and our neighborhood fox found it right away.

I had lunch with Beth yesterday! She’s working at MC Rockville and has since 2017 and since she’s so close, we’ve always been kind of looking forward to seeing each other, but this is the first lunch we’ve been able to arrange – crazy. Time passes very quickly. She is so tenacious – she’s a professor in counseling now, a position she applied for four time and got it the fourth time – same people, same dept. She just keeps going undeterred. Ahhh, she is a good counselor – I wish she could be my therapist – she gave me a bunch of good ideas to implement in my life.

Sofie and Elka helped me to start putting together a Chinese New Year Lego set that Christine gave me last week. I’ve not put together a Lego set in a very long time, but here we are.

If you had asked me when I was 20 if I would ever love my hair again, I would have said no. I probably lost about 1/3 of my hair between the ages of 17 and 25 and it was really hard! Jealous of all those girls who had long beautiful, thick hair that gathered into a ponytail that you could only twist the hair tie around twice (not three times). So jealous! But I love my hair now as it’s turning grey – I have this grey streak that I want to show off all the time. Like Susan Sontag or Claire Saffitz, I’m leaning into the grey.

I haven’t gotten a haircut in months! Since May – though I think around thanksgiving time, I insisted that Jeremy trim my hair a little bit. I went to see Linda, my favorite (and only) hairdresser at the Hair Cuttery in Congressional Plaza and I showed her this photo (maybe I should consider the cat eye and red lip too) and then we spent an hour hilariously catching up (her 9:30 cancelled – so I spent more time in the chair).

I ended up with this: a little more gender fluid which is what I like. hahaha. I spent this past weekend trying to explain to my parents about they/them pronouns – Vince’s partner is they/them – and my parents were like – why? I don’t understand? But they should understand because in chinese there is no gendered he/she/they. My face is so dry! I’ll need to find some moisturizer.