Finally, Mom Visited My Places @ Oak Ridge, TN

After about a year, finally, Mom visited my places at Oak Ridge, TN which includes my apartment, gym, apartment garbage collecting station, office, McDonald’s, Big Lots and the Double Tree Hilton hotel. I would like to take Mom to a famous local restaurant for dinner.   But, Mom would like to cook instead. And therefore we had a delicious dinner at my apartment.  Mom thinks my apartment is pretty nice and neat.

Since there is no bed in my apartment, we better stay in Hilton for one night before heading Nashville, TN tomorrow noon time.  Early tomorrow morning, I will take Mom to my favorite breakfast fast food restaurant.

Also, we will visit the rowing boat racing courses along the river sand lakes here.

Here, Mom posted a picture in front of floor bed.

NYE party.

Vince said to his pals as they cleaned all the silly string and confetti up, “What happened at the New Year’s Eve party stays at the New Year’s Eve party.”  Per our usual habit, Jeremy and I had gone to bed early on New Year’s Eve and at midnight we were awoken by running and loud thumping and laughing from the first floor.  The next morning, I asked the boys what the ruckus was all about.  I got some muttered answer about Excalibur and brooms.  I didn’t persue any further.

*****

I’m looking forward to Monday.  I hope have fully recovered from December by the time classes start up again for me at the end of January.

Reelfoot Lake, TN and New Madrid, MO


Today, we left Nashville, TN to Reelfoot Lake, TN which was created by the earthquake of 1811-1812. We also went to an earthquake created town of New Madrid, MO.
Pictures 1-3 show the lake scenery.  Picture 4, Mom was playing with snow on the ground.  Actually, it was not snow but left behind cotton after machine harvesting.  The last picture was at New Madrid, MO Mississippi River water front.
This time, I tried to celebrate our new year by staying in nice hotels (Hyatt, Holiday Inns & Hilton) all with hot breakfast (except Hilton). While driving Mom, she kept asking me about hotel rates and looking at her road side hotel coupons.  I guess she [me too:)] are not used to travel several consecutive days in such a fancy style.  Well, everything has its beginning.
After New Madrid, Mom started to look deep into the history of New Madrid earthquake.  

Tow.

Donald Skyped me the day before yesterday. (Otherwise known as qian tian in Chinese. I’m learning that Chinese has these beautiful words for today +/- three days which leads me to ask Vince for the word for the “day before the day before yesterday”.)  Skype works terribly on my Android phone and Donald is trying valiantly to switch me back over to an iPhone so we can FaceTime , even offering a gently used hand-me-down one.  But I’m loathe to change over because we have 10,000 cheap off-brand charge cables for Android phones and no chargers for an iPhone.   I would have to go buy 10,000 chargers because I want them in all the usual places I inhabit – next to the bed, next to work, in the car, in the bathroom, next to the front door, in my purse.  That seems too complicated to me.

Anyways, Donald skyped me from the road in Tahoe.  So lovely he thought of me on his little vacation to some arts/movie/celebrity festival that only people without dependents and who can own nice things without the threat of smeared peanut butter on them can go to.  Anyways, it turns out he spun his car out from the road (even with chains on) and was waiting patiently for the tow truck to come and he was trying to kill some time.

Skype was cutting in and out, so we finally did switch to FaceTime on Edda’s hand-me-down iPad (from Donald, of course) and set it up on the dining room table at an empty table setting and Donald joined us for dinner.

Passenger Rena Lee, .., You have only 30 Seconds Left to Board the Plane

I picked Mom up at the Nashville International Airport and drove to our hotel at Franklin, TN.  We arrived at a diner place at Franklin downtown called Puckett’s Grocery.  Only to find out that the whole restaurant had two seatings at new year’s eve, 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM.  But, it was completely sold out and reserved. Too bad.

On the way to our Franklin, TN hotel from the airport.  Mom told me she fell deep sleep on a waiting chair in front of the podium.  Until, the PA announced repeatly “Passenger Rena Lee, Passenger Rena Lee, you have only 30 seconds left to board the plane”.  She almost missed the whole thing.

Pretty funny I guess.  I clicked the check-in icon right before “24 hours – delta” and got a Southwest A32 for boarding.  But she became the last one to get on.

NYE.

Vince’s bedroom is room is done.  It was a lot of work.  But it looks fantastic!

Since Jeremy had to empty Vince’s room, he managed to convince Vince to give up lots of old toys (hooray!)  But Vince did want to keep all his old Legos (boo!).  Jeremy spent some time sorting through the Legos to weed out some of the non-lego toys in the bin.

Edda is enjoying her hand-me-down iPad.  Thanks Donald.  There is a bit more snot on it now than when you had it.

Dropped Mom off at National Airport today and we shared an oyster po’ boy at Legal Seafoods which was fabulous.

And finally, Vince is hosting a sleepover to celebrate the new year.  I spy four cans of silly string in the house. The boys promise promise me that they will clean it up tomorrow morning.  I’m not so sure this cleaning will happen.  Vince provisioned the house with Mountain Dew and cheese puff things.  The adults in the house are going to celebrate by going to bed early.

********

Do I recap 2014?  It was good.  What are my resolutions for 2015?  I don’t have any goals.  I like showing up and seeing what happens – it’s almost always surprising and interesting (in both good and bad ways).  Oh, I forgot.  I do have goals for 2105.  #1. Get enough sleep.  #2.  Be nice.  (#2 is easier to do when you do #1).  So boring, I know, but it pleases me and makes my life a lot easier.

I read the book Wonder this year.  You should read it too, especially if you love a special needs child. Here are Mr. Browne’s precepts: (and at the end, there are some precepts from the characters in the book)

September
When given the choice between being right or being kind,
choose kind.
–Dr. Wayne W. Dyer


October
Your deeds are your monuments.
–inscription on an Egyptian tomb.


November
Have no friends not equal to yourself.
–Confucius


December
Audentes fortuna iuvat.
Fortune favors the bold.
–Virgil


January
No man is an island, entire of itself.
–John Donne


February
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
–James Thurber


March
Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
–Blaise Pascal


April
What is beautiful is good, and what is good will soon be beautiful.
–Sappho


May
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can
To all the people you can,
As long as you ever can.
At all the times you can,
–John Wesley’s Rule


June
Just follow the day and reach for the sun!
–The Polyphonic Spree
“Light and Day”

It’s not enough to be friendly. You have to be a good friend.
Charlotte’s Precept

Don’t be friends with jerks.
Henry’s Precept


If you can get through middle school without hurting anyone’s feelings that’s really cool beans.
Summer’s Precept


Everyone in the world should get a standing ovation at least once in their life because we all overcometh the world.
Auggie’s Precept


Don’t try too hard to be cool. It always shows and that’s uncool.
Amos’s Precept

Sometimes it’s good to start over.
Julian’s Precept

John 16:33
“I have said these things to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Closing out the old year. Ringing in the new.

Although the kids are still out of school for the rest of the week, we are settling back into our old routines which means that I’m able to hit my priority #1 – getting enough sleep (once I’m able to do this, everything else follows so much more smoothly).  I’m back at work – the quarter ends this biweek.  Jeremy’s office is closed, but he’s working a bit and he’s decided to paint Vince’s room.  He’s doing it by the book, all the steps, no shortcuts – washing the walls, taping and drop cloth-ing everything, patching up all the holes and priming.  He even got himself coveralls and a painters hat.  We’ll see how it goes!

Taylor Swift has abandoned Spotify and I must admit I couldn’t resist and I downloaded her whole album and I’m listening to it during work this week.  Ha ha.  Love it.

Worked Inside and Around the House

I came back for Christmas to be with Rena.  My birthday dinner was very good.  The wonderful birthday card from Vincent was funny as well as creative.

In the meantime,  for safety, I kept working inside and around the house.  I installed two toilet safety frames, one in the master bedroom, the other in the first floor bath.  In there, an additional long vertical grab bar was also installed for the ease of setting down and getting up.

Several entrance doors were taped with glow-in-the-dark tape which consists of aluminum oxide grit materials.  It helps immensely when the light is just turned off and/or becomes unavailable.  After that, the glow will gradually fade away.  It works better for a couple of hours.  Indeed, I got up around 1:00 AM for two days to check.  And, it is indeed just that.

Outside the house, I taped up the entire wooden bridge in our backyard with anti-skid black tapes.  I also installed 7 vertical wooden posts for round fences to be installed later (next trip back in mid-January) to keep off deer.

Oh, btw, Mom’s three Mahjon widowed friends (77 or beyond) insisted to take Mom and me out for launch, yesterday. They never asked for the restaurant I preferred.  They simply picked a place worth the money. What could I say?  I guess they have been their household boss for a long, long time.  But, I did enjoy their invitation, food and their companionship – very, very different from all others.

looking forward for Mom to coming down to Nashville, TN for four days to celebrate our new year (2015) together next Wednesday (12/31),

Japanese Steakhouse.

It’s been busy here at the Martin-Lee household.  I’m all holiday-ed out.  We did go out to dinner last night to celebrate my father’s birthday.  Noel = born on Christmas.  The young lady seated next to us was also celebrating her birthday and my father was hopeful that her name was Noelle, but alas, it was not.

We went to a Japanese steak house where they set oil on fire, flipped eggs into pockets and performed acrobatics with utensils.  I was able to capture photos of some of my family members attempting to catch flying bits of food.  It was amusing in just the right way, we all had fun.

Hey look!  Jeremy’s wearing his Christmas vest again!

And here is my dad opening his FARTing card (which was selected by Vince) – lest you think I gave my dad a f*&*ing card as he mentioned in his blog post below.  I can be crass, but giving my father a f(*&^ing birthday card on Christmas is not something I’m capable of doing.