I spent a lot of time last week attending various meetings with Main Street, the apartment complex with disabled adults about a mile from our house. On Wed, Jeremy and I spent 2 hours at a morning coffee parent meetup. There were about 30 people there, mostly moms, but a couple of dads and I got to meet the founder of Main Street who I’m kind of determined to get help from. These are parents of 25-40 year olds, many who live in the apartment. These are very determined parents and slightly intimidating to me (in my own head), but I think I can hang. The kids (or young adults) are much more capable than Edda, mostly verbal, can manage public transit, have jobs and take care of pets, so again, it’s not the right fit for Edda, but I’m hoping they can help me figure out something right for Edda. On Friday night, we went to dinner with them (with Edda) again and then on Saturday, I volunteered at a painting workshop which was fun and had about 25 participants. Mostly, what I got from it was that these are rich disabled people. For volunteering, I was told that I needed to wear clothing that could get paint on them, so I wore my actual painting clothes which already have paint on them (like the time I sat on a paint can lid and my entire butt is covered with a circle of paint) and tears galore and hand sewn patches and everyone else wore…just clothes. Like nice clothes. Which were clean and expensive. Hahahah. But everyone was super welcoming and very nice.
Sunday, we went to Sunday night dinner to celebrate Colleen’s birthday and Eric made a very delicious ice box cake. Am I caught up? Maybe.
I’ve been busy, sorry for the delay in posting. It’s been almost 2 weeks since I’ve posted, yikes! Maybe one of the longest times I’ve gone without posting. Sorry about that, everything is fine. I’ve just been busy doing other random stuff. Let’s go backwards a bit. On April 4th, I went for a nice long morning walk in Kristen’s neighborhood which has some rudimentary trail system and is very beautiful, but not at all maintained and goes under freeway overpasses which is a little spooky but we didn’t see anyone there on a Thursday morning and we got to see lots of invasive plants and walk and talk a lot. She’s going to be an ER nurse in like 5 days, a big career shift and I’m excited to hear about it.
We walked through flooded areas that grew these beautiful plants that could survive both above the soggy ground and underwater. There were frogs and ducks even though the water seemed in most parts to be less than 5 inches deep. Elka was on this walk and happily found sticks to carry.
On April 5th, Jeremy and I and Edda went to Friday Vibes, a dinner program at Main Street and we all had pizza and played Bingo. The Bingo (for me) was a little tiresome, but it was fine. Again, we have a very dedicated “Ambassador” Ashley who has dinner with us and Edda seemed to enjoy it.
Saturday, I flew with Ning and Noah to Kansas City to see Mike and Sofie. It was a fantastic trip because I got to see everything through a kid’s eye again. It reminds me that life is FUN. Noah was beyond excited, thrilled and happy. He was happy to be going with just his mom and without his little brother. He was happy to see the plane take off. He was happy to buy snacks. I sat between him and his mom to give Ning a little break, Noah is all wiggles. Like entirely a ball of wiggles – but he did fantastic.
Noah, likes screens, but I think I can tell he won’t be completely drawn in by them. He likes to draw and now my own bullet journal which I use everyday has some drawings by him.
So we got to the Kansas City airport (beautiful and newly renovated) and headed to Mike and Sofie’s house where we met Pip. Who really was named after Bob and Katherine’s Pip and is very very fun and sweet.
And hugged Jojo (who is getting a little crotchety in her older age).
We had BBQ at a local shop and headed to a playground where we got our wiggles out (we found a kite which was a lot of fun) and then went for ice cream.
The next morning we headed to St. Louis. McDonald’s for breakfast and then a long drive.
We made it to the St. Louis zoo where we looked for the mysterious capybara (I’m on the hunt for one). Didn’t find it and then Noah really, really wanted to go on the train. It was great to catch up with Sofie and see Ning and Sofie together – these two have a very special bond.
Soo.. there weren’t a ton of animals that we were able to see from the train, Noah, instead of yelling bear!, yelled bulldozer! But it was very cute. (I will tell you the perfect child to adult ratio is 1:4 – Noah ping ponged his attention to all of us and therefore, the child entertaining was evenly spread out during the day.)
Then we headed to our airbnb which was the three bedroom servant’s quarter of a mansion of one of the leaders of the 1904 World’s fair in St Louis and it was a ton of fun to stay in this historic building. I also made sure everyone got their own room and own bed.
It had fun details like an old elevator and call bells from the different areas of the house.
Here’s a photo of the house we stayed in with horses to get around.
On monday we went to see the arch nearby.
And we were going to go to the path of totality, but we missed it by twenty miles. We were at 99.7 % coverage and it turns out that 0.3 % is still a lot of light from the sun – for sure twilight-like, but not total darkness. I didn’t plan this part of the trip well, we were stuck in traffic and realized that we weren’t going to make our predetermined spot and we pulled over and found a lovely park with lots of people viewing and kids on the playground and we had packed a picnic lunch. It was so perfect in so many ways, but you know…also not. So honestly, I’ve been spending some time moping that I spent all this time/money to chase down the eclipse and missed it by 20 miles. But I’m almost over it. Almost.
Haha, but we were very very lucky on the way home, we flew out of St. Louis because we needed to be back in DC on Monday night and as we pulled into the airport at 3:30 pm, I looked at the app and realized that our 6:30 flight was delayed until 9:30 pm which meant 6 hours at the airport with a squirmy toddler and a very late night in DC, but by luck and pluck, we walked from the car, through a security line with 2 people in in right in front of the door we walked through and then 20 feet to the gate of the 4 pm flight which had 8 empty seats and promptly got rebooked on that flight. And with three boarding passes in hand, we walked to the gate as they announced family boarding. And so we spent less than 10 minutes at the St. Louis airport and we got home 2 hours early. So if we had made our eclipse date 20 more miles away, I would have been up until 1 am – at least. So maybe that’s a good tradeoff?
Elka loves the vet. She is a weird doggie. She does bump into the vet at the doggie country club (where the vet goes with her doggies) and she climbs onto her lap and says – I love you! Thank you for spaying me and taking good care of me and I love the string cheese that I get. You are the best vet ever, let me lick your face all over. All I know is that I often walk in with a healthy dog, and I walk out having paid a bill of $500. So that’s what I thought I’d do this time. But it was only $200 for a well visit. I love that doggies don’t have HIPPA because I love looking at all the names! Baguette! Orange Boy! Yoda! Fun.
I got so well complimented for Elka’s teeth (she lets me brush her teeth everyday) that I almost blushed. I enjoy brushing Elka’s teeth, but I don’t enjoy brushing Edda’s teeth (she has bitten me strongly and it’s often a weird oral gymnastics, wrestling, sword fight-type thing) and I don’t like brushing my own teeth because I’m lazy. So Elka gets her teeth brushed only after Edda first, mine, second. Because I know the order. Elka can not have the best teeth in the house, absolutely not.
Happy day after Easter. Christine put on a very traditional Easter Sunday night family dinner which I was not expecting! It was incredible and delicious.
I took Edda on Friday to a Friday Vibes dinner at Main Street apartments (remember? an apt building half with people with disabilities and half affordable housing…). Friday Vibes is their most popular program with dinner and an activity (and honestly at my favorite time 5-7 pm). Ashley – our very enthusiastic ambassador – a resident of the building and a very welcoming presence, met us at the door and ushered us to a table filled with other ambassadors and newcomers and honestly, it was a fabulous time. So we’ll go again next Friday, this time with Jeremy and he’ll be able to check it out as well. It’s not quite exactly right for Edda, most of these people can manage bus routes and have daytime jobs and take care of their own furry pets – these are skills beyond Edda’s capacity at the moment, but at least it’s a starting point and a beginning to a new community. We’ll see.
Saturday, Eliana took Edda on an outing and Jeremy and I went on a date which included beef noodle soup and a walk with Elka while playing Pokemon Go. That was pretty fun including a stop at Ben and Jerry’s (omg, they got rid of the tiny size and so we got the two smalls (which were enormous) and almost $20 total, yikes – everything, literally everything is sooo expensive), but Elka managed to finagle herself a free doggie ice cream treat.
There was so much cake in the house for Edda’s birthday and I was determined to save a taste of each one for Jeremy and I made it! I didn’t eat all the left over cake by myself.
Jeremy’s been spending the past few days with Vince and Dani on their spring break. This is why he hasn’t been here, he’s been out of the house trekking/biking/eating and seeing his family. On Saturday, he drove with Vince and Dani up to Klamath to visit Emy and Seth and see their town.
Games were played.
They spent the weekend with Emy and Seth and then on Monday, they drove to see the redwoods.
The photos are amazing. Again, god’s glory, right?
I was a little nervous about this weekend as it was Edda’s birthday on Sunday and Jeremy wasn’t going to be around. Years ago, I made Jeremy promise that he wouldn’t be gone on Edda’s birthday because I’d feel blue about just how different Edda was from other 8, 10 or 12 year olds, so I was kind of ready to feel that way as well this year (we did talk through Jeremy’s absence and he could have been home, but I thought spending time with Vince on the left coast was more important this year) but I didn’t feel that way at all this year. I felt gloriously loved and Edda felt loved and was so happy this entire week.
Alan, Hai and Viv came – last minute almost – to spend the night on Saturday to squeeze in cherry blossom viewing on Sunday. And I had the best time – they came in late on Sat night (like almost 10 pm) and we stayed up talking and looking through old college photos until almost 1 am. And then the next day, we had a celebratory breakfast with Edda for her actual 20th birthday.
I do get nervous about hosting people without Jeremy because I rely so heavily on him for the cooking/food part, but I think after years of watching Jeremy, I was able to pull this off without too much trouble and I bought all the things I wanted for breakfast – bagels, beautiful fruit and I made all the eggs – cheesy and hard boiled. Jeremy has a very involved and complicated coffee set up (not a Keurig) – so I had to get him to email me instructions (because I don’t drink coffee because all of you coffee drinkers are addicted and can not function without a cup and if there was a zombie apocalypse and they stole all the coffee, I would be fine and all you would be going through withdrawal and acting like the exact zombies that were trying to take over the world) and in the morning, I pulled Alan aside to the setup and said – OK, you’d like some coffee and here’s Jeremy’s set up, does any of this look familiar to you? And we happily stumbled through making a single cup of coffee.
They wanted to get up and out early, but they didn’t get going until almost noon and not after 5 minutes that they left, Nat showed up with this elegant, handmade strawberry cake.
And we all ate cake together for lunch! And Nat said the sweetest thing – she’s about 6 months pregnant as she said she met her husband and is going to have a baby all because Edda brought her here to the US. And it’s true, Edda brings people together and I hope it continues for-evah. And then Ning stopped by with some flowers and we chatted about an upcoming trip we are taking together soon!
I tucked in a run on the treadmill and then prepped for Sunday night dinner (I made Mexican lasagne and rice and beans) and Colleen brought this enormous beautiful cake (to feed 20…we were only 7) and it was a lot of fun to chat and talk and they left a 8 pm.
I have a bunch of birthday hats including this one which Christine wore at dinner. And we laughed and sang together and it was a lot of fun. Thank you all for making it such a special day for Edda and me.
