It’s been a beautiful spring this year, mild temperatures and long. Some years, it feels like it’s straight from winter into summer temperatures, but this year, I’ve been relishing the slow, moderate warming – watching all the flowers bloom and trees leaf out. Elka has also been enjoying the weather. Her favorite is to find a patch of warm grass and flip upside down and twist around scratching her back on the earth.
I went to lunch yesterday with Rachel and though the food was just *ok* (all Korean restaurants are closed on Mondays which would have been our first choice), we managed to ride a merry-go-round together which was very fun on a beautiful, crisp afternoon together.
Sunday – desperately needed some alone time! I did a long run in the woods and Jeremy did a long bike ride and Edda went out for lunch with Eliana. Not quite as beautiful as it was on Saturday, but a good day for exercise.
Such a social weekend. It’s a lot of fun, but also kind of exhausting. On Friday, we went to karaoke night at main street where to our astonishment, like everyone wanted to sing. And so after a delightful dinner of chicken parmesan, we listen and danced to lots of different songs like – Beyonce, Beatles, some children’s show tunes. The last song was the Beatles Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and Jeremy, Edda and I danced and generally had a ball. We are slowly getting to know everyone – I have to ask everyone their names over and over again, but they happily obliged. They really need a premium youtube account to skip over the commercials.
Went for a run in the early morning on Saturday where the crab apple trees are in full bloom. These are my favorites over the cherry blossoms because they are my neighborhood tree.
Then we went to Nat’s baby shower party which was delicious and fun. Ning and Nat took care of Edda as they do each time the three of them get together.
They are going to name the baby Leon – they like the lion sounding part of the name – Leo. Nat looks fantastic! And the cake delicious.
There was a very funny trivia game with shouting and a nail-biting tie breaking last question.
Also – as a footnote, as it’s been freaking me out ever since it happened, Nat, kind of mid-party was talking to Ning and I was watching them from the couch across the room because they were flanking Edda and it became clear that Nat was choking on her food and there was no sound from her and she stood up in distress. So I crossed the room and for the first time in my life, I did the Heimlich maneuver on someone. And I was very scared because I had to go to the 4th or 5th thrust before the food dislodged and the entire time I was doing this, I was like – this thing better work because they told me it would work, but it’s not working, it’s not working, it’s not working and I was calling out to Jeremy because I wanted someone taller to make the thrusts more forcefully upwards, but then the damn piece of meat came out and everyone was fine. And everyone was fine.
And then we went home for an hour and rested and then we ran across the street to our neighbors’ house. They were throwing a house cooling party as they just sold their house for an incredible (dare I say unbelievable) amount of money and they also had delicious munchies. It was such a beautiful day and they did an enormous amount of renovating to such a small house – I’d never been inside, but imagine that you opened the front door of a house and it looked like Pottery Barn, but better with solar panels and two Teslas outside. I thought we would stay an hour, but I think we stayed three. We got to bring Elka over and she behaved beautifully, with small kids, elegant guests (which included a handheld dog named Dior who wore real pearls), coffee table snacks and wine glasses. She did not knock anything over, she did not pee in the house, and she didn’t eat any snacks on the low table, save for one falafel ball from my plate so maybe she thought that was OK as it was ours.
About a year ago, someone said I was like a capybara and, at that time, I didn’t know what a capybara was and she said that capybaras are known for “calming presences and other animals love them” which I think is the highest compliment that anyone has ever given me. So I’ve been on the hunt for seeing a capybara live. I almost thought I could see one in Irvine CA. I was *this close* to seeing one in the St. Louis zoo. The internets is telling fake news – the list of capybaras is not up to date, so it’s hard to track them down. But I found this lovely plushie which I’m happily displaying. First, I displayed it too easily reachable by Elka and she found it and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet right in front of me, but did not destroy it (thank goodness). So I took the slightly slobbery stuffy and perched it up a little higher and it gives me great joy. But I’m still looking to see a live one. Maybe I’ll have to book a capybara safari. Hmmmm…
On Monday, I spent the day in Baltimore on the transplant unit at University of MD medical center. They’ve really renovated it since I interviewed for a nursing job there over seven years ago when it seemed kind of medieval and tortuous. I visited my friend Astra who got a kidney about 6 months ago and is still slowly recovering from that with various complications (she’s been in/out of the hospital dealing with stuff that crops up). I haven’t seen her in a long, long time, so I was very happy to see her on Monday.
I got to roam the hospital a bit during my visit and found these respirator vending machines? They also can vend n95 masks. Interesting.
You can also get salads (and chia pudding) in a jar from a vending machine. That seems nice, though I didn’t order lunch from this machine.
Parking is always an issue in downtown Baltimore. Astra gave me specific instructions to park in a particular parking garage and while I pulled up, there was an enormous sign that said – visitor parking available after 2pm and as it was well before 2pm, I drove past the parking garage and then spilled onto the streets of Baltimore without my GPS buddy. So I found parking right by driving around aimlessly until I found a surface lot at Camden Yards with no posted price and it also said permit parking only, but it let me pull a ticket and it was about half full. So I had no idea if I was going to pay $97 for a day of parking and both Astra and the unit secretary yelled at me and told me I should have disregarded the enormous no visitor sign parking and needed to pay only $9 for parking, but then I was like – well I didn’t want to take a space from an actual patient! Anyways, I paid only $15 for a day’s worth of parking and I learned something about Babe Ruth.
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.
While we were in the midwest, Jeremy and Edda hung out at home for a glorious weekend. Walking in the park playing Pokemon Go.
Going to World of Beer for lunch.
And then going to see Kung Fu Panda 4.
Local eclipse watching on our little street.
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.
