Just regular folks.

Jeremy was out of town for two dinners (Kansas City)- and Ginny is also out of town on personal business – so it was just me, Edda and Felix for dinner early in the week. Jeremy did a wonderful and kind thing and made Edda’s lunches for when he’d be gone and left me very simple dinners to make. He’s been making these pre-marinated chicken thighs from Whole Foods and told me I needed two packages to feed three people. I was like….ok? Thinking that there were only four in the package, but there were FIVE. So…five chicken thighs for three people? I mean, I knew I’d eat only one, Edda would eat one and then Felix would eat…more than three? Did we really need that much meat? Anyways, I texted this photo to Jeremy while he was in the air (unable to get my text) saying…really? This is not enough for three people? Turns out, Megan came over for dinner and we still only needed the one package. But like a dutiful sous chef, I did make the 2nd package – so ten chicken thighs for the original three people. Which meant that we had the exact same dinner the next night – cold with also one chicken thigh leftover still sitting in the fridge right now.

We are on some crazy protein kick in the house right now, Felix is determined to gain muscle – you can see the creatine and the protein powder next to the chicken tray. Jeremy is into it too. I don’t focus so much on getting a gram per pound of body weight, but I try to cut out carbs in the house which makes the share of calories of my diet coming from protein higher. Anyways, I don’t believe in protein, I believe in fiber. More veggies people! Balanced with protein.

Kansas City was good to Jeremy – though he ate no BBQ nor did he really see anything outside. He stayed in the hotel the conference was in.

I know everyone is watching White Lotus, but I’m not. Mainly because I’m too cheap to subscribe. Instead of thinking I’m missing out (which I am), I’m, instead, deciding to fight the algorithm. HAHAHa.

Because I’m into vocal music and I’m completely tapped out on Glee club-type a capella, I’ve been listening a lot to the Rachmaninoff’s Vigil I went to see a few weeks ago. I’m also delighted to find myself listening to: Caroline Shaw’s ‘Partita for 8 Voices’ | Music on Main. So interesting, I did not know about this person before yesterday.

And to go the other direction, the movie I’m watching is Captain America: Winter Soldier which, I hear, is one of the best MCU movies out there, which…I think is a low bar. But I’m still, slowly, working on a movie watching challenge and this week’s theme is a movie with a season (Spring, Summer, Winter or Fall) in the title.

On Friday we went to Friday Night Vibes with Edda. The weather was lovely as was the company. I really enjoyed my pasta dinner – Jeremy was not impressed. haha, I think because I’m restricting carbs in the house, I look forward to any pasta dish outside of the house no matter how mediocre it may be.

My guitar teacher showing off his Gulf of Mexico shirt. We are learning a new song my Mumford & sons.

Introducing Felix to Domino’s pizza. We got it delivered, I don’t think I’ve had dominos since college. Or at least, my fondest memories are of Domino’s in college.

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!