Month: August 2009

I am not a huge music fan. I have owned at least 2 new and 2 pre-owned MP3 players and I have not been able to remind myself that I actually own them. I have a friend at work who is a huge music fan and she asked me if I knew Oasis and I had to make her hum the tune to Wonderwall to make sure I didn’t totally miss the biggest band of the 90s (she claims, I have no idea who the biggest band of the 90s was).

Anyways, having kids is a great way to introduce yourself to the world of music. For example, I learned about Lady Gaga’s Poker Face at a kindergarten – 2nd grade talent show. It was a little shocking because well, because it is a little, ahem, risque, but then I learned that Lady Gaga was admitted to Julliard at the age of 11, so then I got over how shocking it was to hear Poker Face in an elementary school (kind of).

Anyhoo, we have a new favorite song in the Lee- Martin household introduced to us because Vince has recently requested us to listen to Hot 99.5. With the popularity of Britney Spears, the boy bands, and American Idol, I thought that no one wrote their songs anymore (at least the young, beautiful performers) – that everyone had their own professional songwriters – but I was happy to learn that Ms. Swift writes her own material (and she is both the nerdy girl and the cheerleader in the video)!

We got our groove on today! Tomorrow school starts and I just found out 5 minutes ago that the battery has died in one of the cars. Probably needs replacing. Bring it on, baby.

Well, Rena & I suppose to baby-sit the Diablo Canyon Power Plant during her planned outage about 2 weeks – day and night, 6 days a week.

Mom will on the day shift and I will on the night shift. With my old bones everywhere, it must be fun. To see whether I can be measured up. I woke up at 2:30 AM and came to work around 3:00 AM today 🙂

Oh, we just has one car. So, a rental car will be provided to us by the Plant during that time. I asked Mom to be careful on this winding road to the Plant. I am sure she will be alright. But, I am just concerned.

Eleven years ago, I married Jeremy! Thank you for making my life full of love, adventure, surprises and kindness. I can not imagine my life any other way.

School hasn’t even started and we are working on Halloween already. Vince has been asking for at least a month if he could be Pikachu for Halloween and I said, no problem! no problem! And then when I went to order the costume in late July, all the Pikachu costumes were already sold out. SOLD OUT! He was heartbroken, just heartbroken. It took a little while, but we managed a compromise. He’s still going to be Pikachu, we ordered a face mask from Asia off of Ebay (which isn’t here yet) and then we got some yellow clothes.

Edda and Jeremy have coordinating outfits this year. I think Edda’s getting a little bit old to be Blue – according to the age-appropriate meter, Edda should be veering off into Hannah Montana-land, but since I found Jeremy his “Steve” shirt, this opportunity could not be missed.

I generally don’t believe in any efficacy of prescribed medication (Jeremy thinks I am crazy). I used to do research in drug delivery systems and I didn’t believe in aspirin. I still don’t really believe that Tylenol works, I mean it does say fever reducer on the side of the bottle, but when I give it to the kids with their 103 degree fevers, nothing happens. It’s weird, is it all a hoax? I am just a terrible, terrible patient. I diagnose everything via Dr. Google and then I tell my office mates that I have black lung.

I stayed home from work today, I went to my doctor – sat in the waiting room for 30 minutes while patients who came in after me got called into the examination area while I sat in my chair wheezing and coughing. Then I got prescribed an antibiotic and an inhaler – the antibiotic itself was $46 for 7 pills. Then I looked up the antibiotic on wikipedia, apparently it’s presribed for severe or life threatening bacterial infections. I felt pretty crappy today, but I did not think I was on the verge of death when I walked into the doctors office. I crossed my mind to not take the antibiotic as a protest to how expensive it was and how I didn’t think I had a “severe or life threatening bacterial infection”. I’m such a terrible patient.

Jeremy made me some chicken soup.

I’m pretty sick, but don’t worry, I’ve been to the doctor who assures me that I do not have the swine flu. But still, I feel pretty bad. So I have nothing to say except that I wish I felt better. I ran through a course of antibiotics and I feel worse than when I started (ahh, modern medicine, how the hell are they going to find a cure for Rett Syndrome when they can’t even figure out my weird congestion? Sigh.)

Anyways, I spent a few minutes between coughing spells writing to Oprah:

I corralled Jeremy into teaching a Sunday School class about John Adams. He’s been reading Adams’s biography as well as the history of Unitarianism, so I figured he’d like to teach a class to the 2nd – junior high kids.

I didn’t realize that I had also signed up to volunteer in the nursery at the same time – so I needed to take Edda with me to my own volunteer activity. I usually don’t take Edda with me to church (or Jeremy for that matter), so this was all new to me. I was a little concerned that Edda would be fussy or unhappy and I would have to abandon my post in the nursery, leaving the other volunteer to deal with 8-10 toddlers – I don’t like abandoning my assigned post.

We buckled everyone up in our own little parade:

As it turned out, Edda had a fine time for half of the service (she was a little loud, but the 2-year-olds took it all in stride). For the other half of the service, she fell asleep on the floor.

Well, I’m trying to get back into shape, as I have both let my fitness and my weigh go a bit the past couple of months. Anyways, As a measure of my fitness, the other day I went and did a well known local climb Old La Honda. I did it in my worst time in probably 6-7 years – 32″27″ – meaning, I’m out of shape. This was a far cry from my personal record. I had tried to set a hard pace up but I couldn’t sustain it, so I blew up about 1/3 of the way up, and struggled to find a rhythm again all the way to the top.

Anyhow, flash forward to today. I decided to go out for a ride, and what the heck, I decided to go up Old La Honda once again today. 29’27”. Not bad. I didn’t blow up until maybe 2/3 the way up. but managed to hold on to come in under 30′. But then on the descent, I remember Steve posting something on my facebook status, mentioning that he was climbing King’s Mountain, and I just thought, why not climb it too? So yup. I went up King’s Mountain as well. 47’01” which is the worst time I have every gotten on the mtn, but I wasn’t trying very hard and I also probably bonked. (This also wasn’t close to my PR.)

Anyways, I do have a couple of bike morals for you:

1) Eat breakfast before you ride.
2) I probably should pack more than one GU packet if I’m going to do this ride again.
3) It’s fun descending 84 twice.

I liked the course. I’ll do it again in the future…

We are dog sitting for our cousins, Eric and Colleen who are spending the week at the Outer Banks. (Lucky ducks.) They adopted Joise the pug from a rescue group about 3 months ago. Josie has a gimpy leg which makes it hard for her to get up from a resting position which was not apparent 3 months ago when they brought her home. She doesn’t seem to be in intense pain, but she takes a pain pill everyday wrapped in a slice of American cheese.

Everytime I see Josie, I want to call her Pugsley (and sometimes I do call her Pugsley – shhhhh, don’t tell Eric or Colleen). Josie likes to sleep in a bed, so the first night, she slept in our bed. The 2nd night, she slept with Edda. Now she’s just asleep on the carpet next to me.

Last week, Vince came on a run with me. We made it about half a mile. Then we walked half a mile.