Month: October 2012

Because we prepared so thoroughly, Sandy did no damage to the house and no damage to us other than the fact that we were trapped inside the house for days. We filled all our bottles with water, we had non-perishable foods available (Halloween candy), we gassed up all the cars, unplugged all the electronics, and charged up everything we could. I think we could have all gone back to school/work on Tues – but no one did.

Poor Maxi was the most stir-crazy – she really could run for miles and miles everyday and she did not get a good run in for 3 days. By last night, she was so ramped up, she couldn’t even settle to fall asleep.

Sunday night, we still had dinner with the family. We had breakfast for dinner to celebrate Seth’s 50th birthday!

Waiting, waiting for Hurricane Sandy to hit our neck of the woods. Right now it’s raining steadily, but no wind. We have incredibly high trees surrounding our house, so we aren’t worried about flooding, we are worried about trees falling on our house. Planning on sleeping in the basement tonight.

We are all home, no school, no work (meaning we don’t go to work, but as long as the power is on, we are suppose to work) so hunkering down.

At no time has my aging been more apparent than this semester when I’m taking Anatomy and Physiology at the local community college. I have an exam tomorrow on the skeletal system and I’m trying to stuff a million things in my brain about the bones in the body (you will not believe how many landmarks or features on bones that have names like Medial Malleolus). It’s a class that is straight memorization and in my early twenties – I know I could have gotten a 100% on this type of test, but with work/kids/house/friends and then this class plus my 40 year old brain which is a little slower on the memory uptake – I think I’ll be right on the frustrating B+ level which I’m trying to reconcile myself with as being OK.

I thought that all the skeletons in class were plastic, but this one is from a real, deceased guy.

Studying yesterday with furry study partners:

The weather in the DC area has just been wonderful – the foliage is bursting with color and I’m always trying to remind myself to go outside whenever I have a few free moments. On Sunday, while Edda and I were taking apart the fireplace, Vince and Jeremy went with the Cub Scouts on a 20 mile ride on the C&O canal – past Leesburg and White’s Ferry. For some reason, they were slow going with lots of breaks (maybe the fact they had many small children), they didn’t get back home until well after dark.

Edda and I were getting a bit worried about the boys, but they got back OK after enjoying a dinner at McDonald’s which Vince has been hankering for for months and were tucked into bed for good night’s sleep.

I can’t believe we paid someone to give Edda a haircut that makes her look a little like a Romulan. So this weekend, even though it’s not quite completely grown out yet, I took a pair of scissors to her head in a desperate attempt to make it more Dora-like.

Better, huh? (Please ignore food-stained shirt on Edda. I was cutting her damn hair! Who needs a clean shirt for a hair cut?)

I am a little at a loss about what to do with Edda these days – her mood is back to normal – but she really resists doing anything else besides watching TV and if you ask me what else she is interested in besides watching TV, I would have to give you a big – well, I dunno. I have these various ideas, swimming, adaptive soccer, etc, but frankly, it requires so much effort from me! And I’m inherently lazy and Edda is almost 80 pounds and is much, much harder to handle than when she was 40 lbs.

So then I had a different idea – that Edda needed to be busy with me! So this weekend, we took apart the basement fireplace to show that – indeed, there is no insulation in the shaft which is why it it pouring in cold air every winter.

Beautiful fall weekend! Vince played his last soccer game – he had a great time on this low-key team. Wanted to play, wanted to be there – such a nice thing. It did not hurt that he was on a winning team and that he had a friend and made friends on this team. He left trying to convince everyone to sign up for basketball which is the winter sport we are doing.

I was strangely possessed to make a cake from a box – I haven’t made a box cake in a long time, I think I just wanted to see how it turned out. Of course, homemade is better, but this cake sufficed for the post-game party.

I started getting all Asian-mom on Vince with his violin practicing exactly a month ago and although I have yet to hit him or yell at him, he has practiced triumphantly (and begrudgingly) for 30 days in a row. There have been tears and there have been bribes, but I think we made a lot of progress in the past 30 days – mainly to learn that there are some things that are hard and not fun and if you work at them, you will get better. We are well on our way to Carnegie Hall (just kidding – I’m just hoping to make it to the next recital).

Although the bribe for making it 30 days was a video game for the Wii, we decided to go out yesterday to celebrate by having dinner at the bubble tea place down the street.

Edda was a little confused by the bubbles.

Last night, Edda was in a good, vocal mood, and I tried to ask her to say “mom”. I think she was trying – I tried really hard to turn in my head the sounds she was making into the word “mom” but I couldn’t hear it. No matter – she kept chattering and eventually fell asleep in my arms.

I try hard to find meaning in the routine things I do everyday. That in the face of hard, difficult days, that one can put one foot in front of the other and proceed forward – that the forward motion might not seem to be very much, but at least it is something. Sometimes it can seem like the days are all the same, that all efforts are futile and that there is no point to it all – but I know that is not true. Be good to each other.

When I first started working from home (3 years ago now), I started cooking dinner so that the family would be ready to eat the within 15 minutes of Jeremy walking in the door. I’m not the natural cook in the house, everything I learned, I learned from watching Jeremy cook. I tend to wander over into fish stick territory – easy prep, easy cleanup (especially if you line the cookie sheet with tin foil). Anyways I was cooking, cooking and cooking three years ago and I asked Jeremy if he was pleased that he got to eat as soon as he walked in the door. Jeremy replied that although he did enjoy my food, as far as he was concerned, cooking was something that *he* loved doing, so I was really doing him no favor by cooking every night because I was depriving him of something that he really enjoyed.

So then I got a little huffy and I stopped cooking dinners. For like 2.5 years. If I needed to cook dinners, I would make my world famous fish sticks and tater tots. It got so bad that Vince was concerned whenever Jeremy went on a business trip that I would be unable to feed the family. I can’t believe our little petty argument went on for 2.5 years – I am not usually one to hold a grudge, but apparently I can do it for years. Jeremy likes rotating favorites and I like making new recipes and cooking it only once, so without me cooking, Jeremy thought we were only eating like 4 kinds of dinners on the weeknights – it was getting a little boring.

So now I cook 2-3 nights a week – last night I made a vegetarian meal (at least for the grown ups) – spinach, beets, potatoes, carrots, pecans, goat cheese and a fried egg. Yummy!

Loving kindness.