Vince is going to go to UC Irvine for grad school. He found out late Thursday afternoon and are all very excited for him and can’t wait to see what this new chapter brings. He’s so incredibly happy and eager to go start in the fall. It was a tough admissions season for him as this was his only congratulatory letter (after it was initially and, we think, erroneously a you are on the waitlist letter), but he needed only one and we are all thrilled. As someone said – it makes it easy to decide. He’s really blossomed into his scientific self starting the tail end of sophomore year, it’s a joy to see. He likes research and labs and classes and teaching and it’s all good.
We like to compare rent and stipends as he’ll be the third generation to go to grad school in engineering on the Lee side.
My mom got a $200 monthly stipend and her rent was $50 a month which included phone, maid service and fresh linens. My fathers was $400 a month with $90 rent. Mine was a monthly stipend of $1900 with a monthly rent of $420 which might have included phone (land line – I did not have a cell phone in grad school. No one did.) and bathroom cleaning, but no linens. Vince’s will be $2800 a month stipend and he expects to pay about $800 a month in rent.
He’s going to be off on his own soon! I’m not going to buy him any more pants or shoes or cell phones. It feels weird to just send him off like that, but it is as it should be.
It was so gorgeous yesterday. I always love fall the most and spring second, but I’m loving this spring bloom. I planted some azaleas yesterday that I got as a gift. There is a little patch in the garden where I plant all of my plant gifts that can be planted – Hyacinth, teeny-tiny daffodils and now this azalea.
Jeremy made it to Sacramento and he’s not traveling light. He had to take an Uber XL to the airport. He can’t even blame Edda for all his luggage weight.
Bob and Katherine got a pair of puppies! These are rescues and they are not related, though they seem well matched. White one with brown patches is Whimsey and brown one with white patches is Bunter. We are having a fun time facetime-ing with the puppies.
Jeremy is off to CA for business and pleasure. He’s gone for almost 2 weeks (kind of inadvertently), but we’ll be fine here at the mother ship. I gave him a hair cut and eye brow trim yesterday before he left.
We don’t really have any landscaping to speak of, but 15 years ago, I planted a scattering of daffodil bulbs and show up happily each spring and they make me smile!
On Saturday, while I was traveling with my parents, my favorite son turned 22. We had asked him what he wanted for his birthday and he asked for some floor lamps and so we bought him 2 – one a general room lamp and one to read in bed with. We also got him smart light bulbs so he can control them by voice and he’s been having fun with them.
My uncle Louis (my father’s older brother) passed away a few weeks ago and the service was last Friday in Los Angeles. My father is one of eight siblings and this was the first death among them, so there was the regular family drama, but nothing out of the ordinary (from what I know about families). My parents wanted to go and I wanted to go to the service too and I knew I’d make it easier for them to travel, so I went. We went for only the day, flying in on Thursday and flying out on Saturday. I booked the hotel within walking distance of many restaurants in Old Pasadena and on Thursday night, we had dinner at a seafood restaurant.
The day of the service was lovely and beautiful. We swept my grandparents’ grave before the viewing.
A very very rare gathering of the family. Look at all of us being nice to each other :). Really, we are all trying. It was fun to see everyone and reminisce over way too much food. Omg, Aunt Liz ordered like 17 times too much food for lunch.
At the burial, Helen ordered a dove release which was actually very very touching and we all got to release a white bird. They flew around and around and headed back home over the hills behind the cemetery. I asked if they named the birds, but the bird handler said they owned more than a thousand birds, so no, they are not named.
My aunt Jane, who at almost 80, is still working and looking snatched! It was a very nice trip, one of the nicest trips I have ever had with my parents. I know! To a funeral! Us Lees are not good at vacations or just chilling, but give us a trip where we aren’t supposed to have fun and we rocked it. I chauffeured everyone around LA in our little Ford Escape and found parking wherever I went and mostly smooth traffic. And I was so happy we were able to go together.
Big News! Lol. I got to level 40 on Pokemon Go! (while on the phone with Vince, so that was nice.) This is a milestone in my Pokemon journey. From the wiki entry: The maximum level a player can achieve was originally level 40, but expanded to 50 as of November 30, 2020. So I would have “finished” the game. But then they expanded to level 50 and now I’m only like 20% of the way to level 50. This is my mobile game of choice, it encourages walking in the real world and you can play it anywhere you are and you don’t have to spend any money to have fun. But if you spend a little bit of money, it can be fun-er, kind of.
I went to see Kristen this morning for a quick visit. She made delicious breakfast tacos and we went for a walk in her neighborhood. I love going to her house because she has such a great eye for decorating. She thrifts a lot of things and buys other things, but everything is very cute and comfortable, but not overdone and not too fussy. She had so many small plants in cute pots all over her living room and I got a few cuttings to propagate.
Jeremy flew back to Minneapolis to lobby in an actual lobby. He’s been discouraged the past few weeks because he’s “losing”. In MN, he’s being fought by both the Koch brothers from the right and the Sierra Club on the left. Unbelievable. Honestly. Anyways, he’s fighting the good fight and saving the world with Garchomp as his wing man.
Jeremy really, really wanted it to be a one day trip – catch the 7 am flight, home by 10 pm (for a three minute speech), but his grad advisor was winning that big prize at the APS meeting, which, this year, just happened to be in Minneapolis and on MONDAY night was the dinner celebration. I had to kind of nudge Jeremy to go. What are the chances, honestly? So he went and he was glad that he did.
The text was like – oh, my office mate has retired and spends his free time thinking about physics. LOL. And it’s pretty funny to chat with a bunch of folks who live Ising models so much. I love Ising models because I was literally failing all my graduate courses one after the other (like not even understanding what the Greek letters stood for, let alone how to manipulate them mathematically) – never ever feeling so dumb in my life – when I handed in my Ising model homework (the first problem set of my grad statistical mechanics class) which I worked on with Olga and we had to painfully step through some crazy unhappy programming for the Ising model and when we got it back, Zhen-Gang, complimented us on a job well done. I couldn’t believe it! So I love the Ising model too. But not too much. But I still love the ideal gas law better.
I did cut Edda’s hair this weekend. She has so much beautiful hair and it was at least 10 inches long, so we are going to donate it to Locks of Love. Four substantial braids. I cut it this weekend because it was really getting to be TOO MUCH and forever long to dry and braid and also because I’m leaving town for two days this week and Jeremy would be in charge of Morning Hair and it would have just been TOO MUCH for him. I cut both Jeremy’s hair and Edda’s hair (I actually was worried a little too much to make the 10 inch requirement for donation that I cut Edda’s a little too short, but it’s OK). Elka does not need her hair cut, but if I needed to, I totally would cut her hair too.
I was in a terrible mood during the week and I wanted to eat carbs all the time, I feel like I should be over these things – that my hormone levels postmenopausal should be even, but I think it’s not true. The weather was bad during the week, so maybe that. I’m not sure that it has to do with circumstances, but there is background crap always going on, who knows honestly.
I visited an organization called Main Street in downtown Rockville about 1.5 miles from the house. The set up is pretty much (but on a much larger scale) what I dream of for Edda. Seventy apartment units, 25% set aside for people with disabilities and the rest are affordable housing. This opened in 2020 and the first day the phone lines were open, they received 11,000 calls for housing. The need is obviously great. They have programming (about 10-15 events a week) for people of all needs for socializing, crafts, outings, etc all with a focus on inclusion. There is a gym, a classroom and enormous “hang out” and kitchen area. All very hip and welcoming. So Edda signed up for a membership to access the outings, we can have her caregivers go to these programs. Eventually, I want a home for Edda on a smaller scale – something like with 4-6 apartments and large communal space for activities which Jeremy and I intend (at least for now) to build, hopefully it won’t wipe us out financially, we’ll have to work out the numbers. I actually want access to these people who built this building and have them help me (who seem to have much more money than me. These people have a son with disabilities and they, first built their own school for him and then second, built this enormous 70 unit apartment for him when he turned 21. The dad is in real estate. I guess with a big “R” and big “E”). The residents who live here have intellectual disabilities, but they are also much more independent than Edda. They can walk and talk and feed themselves (it seems). I’d not care so much about inclusion for Edda, though I understand the appeal, my focus would be on a smaller community – a chosen family, as such. We’ll see what happens.
I do feel a weird rebirth of sorts, moving though my midlife crisis. My weekends are “free” in a way they haven’t been since before children. I’m just hanging out and like – I can almost convince myself there is nothing to do for days and days (ok maybe only 2). Haha. I’m constantly thinking about how I want to spend my time. I think I’ll need to give up the horse volunteer gig, unfortunately. I went twice and I was certainly put to work and the people are very nice, but it is far away and, honestly, the horses are…meh to me. Like, I want to like you, but do you like me? I’d spend 20 minutes grooming mud off a horse and the entire time, I was like (to the horse) – do you like me? I like you! And, I seemed to get…nothing. Maybe I got the dull horses who are easy to groom? That is a strong possibility. But I always feel tender to all kinds of cats and dogs and they to me, so I have no idea. But really, it’s just too far to drive. So I’ll try volunteering at Main Street which is literally a mile away from the house and it’s with people. I’ll give up on the physical labor and the outside parts. I’ll have to figure that part out.
I’m also thinking that I’ll need to give up the kayaking for guitar. I’ve been practicing a lot more and have gotten over the finger pain and can switch easily between 4-5 basic cords so I feel like I’ve gotten over the terrible beginner part which everything has. I got invited to the secret Friday afternoon slightly more advanced group lessons by my teacher and I like my friends at my lessons. I do love the kayaking and the vibe of kayakers and I bought(!) a kayak at the end of the season last year which is taking up a lot of space in my garage, but somehow I’m slowly realizing that it’s a lot of trouble to kayak – a kayak is very heavy out of the water and you do have to carry it from your car to the water which sometimes is like a quarter mile which sounds not too far unless you are carrying a 50 pound kayak awkwardly on your shoulder next to speeding traffic on the George Washington parkway. Also, there was a young woman who died in September of last year on a kayaking trip in the general spot where I learned with experienced people and rescuers all around her trying to save her and it gave me the heebie jeebies. And! I think, though I’m not sure, a lot of good kayaking happens in the winter – this is due to water levels and other things I don’t know about, but I’m unwilling to add cold to the mix. And I’m starting to like the guitar more. One can only do so much. But I did buy another set of beginner kayaking lessons this summer, so we’ll see how that goes.
But I went to the performances of the bands who take lessons from my teacher on Saturday and they found this great space. It’s at the oldest bar in Rockville and it was so much fun! And this is like a cool, old, run down space, exactly how you want a bar to look like and they host very famous bands and jam sessions. Very fun. I brought my earplugs (I think I was the only one) because my Apple watch told me we were at 100 decibels for about 2 hours (and I knew we would be).
Standing room only, I had to park like a 5 minute walk away. The only thing bad about guitar is that it’s loud and it’s at night. Nothing is perfect, lol. Except, sometimes, a chocolate chip cookie. That can be perfection.
