Jeremy came home on Saturday night from CA. He brought me this little ring from Tienne who made it to resemble Elka.
Felix decided to extend his stay here in the US for another three weeks, but since we thought he was leaving yesterday, we had invited everyone over for a goodbye party. So we hosted a party for 16 (18?) on Sunday for which Jeremy handformed 5 pounds worth of meatballs and I baked two cakes.
My cousin, Chris, who’s been doing an internship in MD came over. So did Bob and Katherine – we had a full house.
We went swimming at the pool to see Felix in action at his job, the doggies came from PA.
While we hosted all these people, we were/are battling an infestation of flies. I ordered these fancy fly traps with UV light which work only at night and, I think, work sub par. And I bought two fly swatters and we just went to town. I felt I was being punished by pestilence.
Can I tell you that I’m killing it on the home front while Jeremy is gone? I do not pride myself on my home making skills – Jeremy really is the chef in the house overseeing all things food and kitchen cleanup (I do neither of these things very often when he’s at home), but I’ve cooked so many meals, cleaned so many dishes, packed many lunches and baked – a pear/apple crumble and a chocolate banana bread – mostly because I had aging pears and bananas in my kitchen. I haven’t had to do take out (take is so expensive these days, I don’t want to spend that kind of money on convenience really), I scrounge in the kitchen. Feeding sometimes just me and Edda, many nights plus Felix some other nights plus Ginny and Joab. It’s kind of a wonder to me – like I can be a housewife, this would not be one of my top skills.
Now, what had to give in order for me to do this? Well, mostly my paid work. I’ve learned that in order to keep the house running smoothly while Jeremy is gone and for me to not feel pinched, I have to take about 1-2 hours a day off of work to make it happen. I usually don’t need the entire 2 hours, but it makes me feel better that I can have that. Even with the time off, I’m behind at work. But it’s how it goes. When a day is really packed with house duties, I might take the entire day off of work.
I went to choir last night. This is summer choir – so really a subset of the main choir. Just practicing one song – Carolina by Taylor Swift.
I was not going to go because I would have to bring Edda, but it all went OK. Edda was very quiet during the entire rehearsal and I’m glad we got out of the house.
Felix is suppose to be going back home on Monday (this may be up in the air now as he’s having a good time working and may be bored at home during the month of August and the flight can be changed without issue) and because of that, I decided to do my workout at the pool yesterday afternoon to see him in action.
This is my childhood pool, where I learned to swim, where I went everyday during summer camp as the hordes of children do now and where I also took my own kids. Now it’s been so long, that when the new renovation at the outdoor pool opened this summer, it’s the 2nd renovation since my childhood. Now this is the new, new pool and I can be an old person where the first pool was basically just a rectangle with a single rickety metal slide. The first renovation featured a beach entry and one big plastic spiral slide. The second renovation now has many water features including a lily pond obstacle course, so many big slides, little slides, 10,000 spraying water features – shaded baby beach entry portion – lots more shade for the chairs and in the play pool, basically nothing deeper than 4 feet.
I couldn’t quite believe Felix when he said there were 20 lifeguards on staff, but there were that many, basically standing sentry in the pool at any activity, along the pool, every 20 feet or so. I was very impressed. When we were young, I felt like there were only three lifeguards for the entire pool.
Anyways, it was great to see Felix at work, the newly renovated pool. I did a lot of the water features including the diving board, the lily pads and the biggest slides. And I did a little bit of a workout. I didn’t eat at the snack bar, perhaps I should have. I fondly remember the snack bar and sitting next to this very cute boy, Andrew who was totally out of my league in school, but summer rules are different and we sat with each other and ate french fries together.
We ran Elka’s DNA test a few years ago and she matched with a brother, Groove and so I messaged them and asked to meet up. But the message got buried and I didn’t receive any replies until a few weeks ago! And now I’m in a text message chat with Groove’s mom. And it’s so fun seeing photos of Elka’s brother.
My friend Lael came for lunch with her two kids and hubby in tow. The kids are 0.5 and 2.9 years old and are super cute and, man, are a lot of work – just watching them at lunch reminded me how crazy it is to have really young children. They were here for about 2.5 hours and it was fun, I love playing with other people’s babies. The littles ate a some lunch and proceeded to nap in various beds all over the house – this tiny one using Edda’s sleep safe bed as a crib because it basically is a twin sized crib.
I curated lunch to be toddler friendly. Lots of colors, everything separate (the adults made sandwiches) – pasta with cheese, but no pepper in case the toddler didn’t want black flakes in their cheesy pasta. The biggest hit was the egg slicer which was used to slice all manner of table food. I love being able to host a low-key lunch at the house – this is a skill to be learned and I learned this from Jeremy.
Jeremy’s on the West Coast for 10 days (as I like to say, saving the world one gas station at a time – figuring out the transition from gas to electric as smoothly as possible) – and he got to see Vince for about 6 hours. Vince flew up for a day and they spent the day just walking around and chatting. It’s been a long time since it’s been just the two of them together. I’m glad this happened.
Jeremy is also spending time with his high school friends (and their kids).
Also, lots of time on his new bike.
Here on the East coast, it was a nice quiet weekend with me and Edda. On Saturday, Edda and I went to lunch at the new Wegmans just a few miles from the house. On Sunday, Edda and I went to brunch with the Rett moms, so lovely and then Sunday night dinner!
We celebrated Megan’s birthday on Monday. I got to make her a cookies and creme birthday cake with a light whipped cream frosting. I was very proud of the cake – I had a big sprinkle “M” on the top which looked like a brown UofM logo. But it was for Megan and not for anyone else.
See? I did the piping too!
Megan got to wear our birthday hat, which turns out was purchased by her in 2023 for a combination of Edda’s and Pat’s birthdays and now lives in our birthday drawer for all folks who want to wear the birthday hat. It is one of my favorite birthday items that we have!
Happy Birthday Megan, we are lucky to have you in our lives <3
It appears that my venus fly trap ate a fly recently. I hadn’t been paying attention and then I noticed this dessicated fly body in one of the traps. In the house! A fly had the run of the entire house and it decided to meet its death in the fly trap. Interesting. And then I thought, maybe it would be happier outside in the summer to eat bugs. And so now it’s on the back porch.
Also, I’m trying to get apples from the next door apple trees. I think the trees have some sort of fungus or pest. The leaves are yellowing and dropping mid summer and they are looking a little sickly. Turns out being a backyard orchard-ist is not straightforward. I have about 10 of these baggies left out of about 30. The others have dropped off one by one and sometimes they drop 4 at a time, which is discouraging. But the ones left, they are growing – this one is about 2 inches in diameter – so bigger than they’ve ever gotten. All the ones at the top of the tree that I didn’t thin all dropped off recently. So at least something is going ok. I’m hoping for at least one ripe one.
Felix is leaving soon – less than 20 days, so we are trying to cram in some Maryland themed things before he goes. So we went to Bethesda Crab House last night for crabs. It was just what I wanted -a slightly dingy place, old ceiling fans turning, crowded – but no line and crabs smothered in Old Bay. So I taught the boy how to eat crabs and then we had crabs.
Jeremy is not a crab fan – thinks it’s too much work for too little food and in the middle of the dinner, we was like – I give up! We are in the post-industrial revolution era. And he proceeded to look up patents on automatic crab peeling machines. (He had ordered a crab cake sandwich which was delicious). So I finished doing the peeling for Edda’s share of the meal. We also ordered hush puppies (they ran out of puppies soon thereafter) and the best tater tots I’d ever eaten. And then after we squared away the bill, Felix eyed another table’s funnel cake and we ordered that for dessert. I had a great time, felt so much like summer.. a great outing.
We had a lovely 4th of July – I got caught up on the laundry and some other sundry things. We celebrated Joab’s 10th birthday with a requested burrito dinner. Jeremy went all out and bought beef – delicious. You know it’s a special occasion when there is beef in the house (you can drastically cut your carbon footprint by just cutting a lot of beef out of your diet – no need to go to vegetarian or vegan to make a big difference).
It was fun, there were balloons, our trusty HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner which has celebrated at least 15 years of family and friends’ birthdays.
I also made the requested chocolate/chocolate cupcakes. I upped my game by piping the frosting. The frosting was excellent, but I thought the cake was still too dry. I tried switching from a butter/dutch processed cocoa, to an oil/natural cocoa recipe and while it was better (better meaning quite good still..), I still didn’t knock it out of the park. I think I’m baking them too long, or leaving them in the hot muffin tin while they cool too long so. It’s hard to see them cooking because it’s hard to see them brown because they are already brown. A good chocolate cake is my holy grail. I will keep trying (this is a subtle thing, I acknowledge, they still all got demolished by this morning). I don’t think I can call myself a real baker until I get this chocolate cake under my belt. (Just like I don’t really think I can call myself a guitar player until I can play barre chords – I’m working on those too).
This is the chicken, not the beef. lol. We don’t grill that much, so it was a bit of a learning curve for Jeremy.
Felix came home from a shift at the pool and after the birthday party, the two of us headed to the Rockville fireworks. I haven’t been in a long, long time (over a decade, I’m sure) – these are descended from my childhood fireworks, the same ones I saw when I was a kiddo. I was super impressed, lots of parking, mostly good signage and the vibe was amazing. I get discouraged a lot about the state of our union, but sitting here packed with my fellow citizens – so diverse – all ages, races, languages, food, laughing and TOGETHER. I got to feel that American feeling again and hope that we rise up and do what’s right. We may stumble along the way, but what is it about the arc of justice?
We tried to get snacks – corn dog and/or poutine, but the lines were too long. Felix drew our fellow attendees.
And it was beautiful. Now that I’m in my 50s, you kind of realize that US history is very, very short. Like when you are a kid, 1925 sounds like the dinosaur age, but now you realize it’s like the length of your life but backwards from the day you were born. I’ve been reading some books about 1915, 1918, etc. WWI. All quiet on the western front (WWI), Dead Wake about the sinking of the Lusitania, now I’m reading about the 1918 flu and see that all these things overlapped and how everyone was going crazy then too and these crazy terrible patterns repeat themselves, but hopefully, we keep reaching for the light.
