Month: January 2017

 Thank you sherah! Vince was very excited to receive his surprise!  Twenty-one pilots forever!

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Small act: $ to ACLU

I’ve been worried that Edda’s having some pain from her scoliosis.  I hope I’m not making an error in judgment by finishing out my last term of nursing school and then doing the surgery.  I hope she’s not in a lot of discomfort right now and that her curve holds steady for 4 months.  She was a little moody and unstable in her footing yesterday and last night but she seemed very happy today.  It’s very apparent to me now that the ratio of her torso length to her leg length is not right.  She’s missing 4-5 inches in her torso length, squashed like an accordion.

She napped comfortably on me during the afternoon.

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I might have to reinstate my Facebook habit (which I’m hating these days because it sounds like everyone is yelling at me in my own living room), if only to keep track of the protests around the area.  I missed the 1pm march at the White House, but I made the 5:15 candlelight vigil from the Islamic Center in DC with a walk to Pence’s house at the Naval Observatory.  Thank you, my Usual Suspects (Laura, Lauren, Marta and Soojung) for reminding me everyday to show up if I can.  Thank you Jeremy, for dropping me off right in front of the Center.  I wanted Vince to come and he agreed at first, but then decided he was mad at me for making him go and backed out at the last minute.  Next time…

I like this guy’s sign:  “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as on of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself.”  Leviticus 19:34

And a reminder to me from my friend Erik: To my fellow members of Gex X. Friends, we are a small generation, and not used to being in the limelight. I assumed for most of my life that we would never be called to greatness, that our job was mostly to quietly patch things up after the Boomer’s various excesses and keep the parks open and the trains running and, well, just generally get up and make the donuts (to reference one of our iconic commercial tropes). But greatness, or ignominy, has sought us out, and this is our time. No one of sound mind seeks this sort of crisis. But the crisis has come. This is our trial by fire, as real and immediate was the Depression, WWII, civil rights, or Vietnam. This is our crisis, and it comes when we are at the height of our training, life experience, and resources. What we do now will define us forever.

Vince started getting involved with the Drama club this winter.  Between the big fall musical and the big spring play, there is a festival of student-written one acts which were performed on Friday night. I was impressed with the plays.  There were three student written plays and one professionally written play (10 Ways to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse).  I knew and expected that the plays were cast both gender blind and race blind.  I think they don’t have enough boys trying out for drama, so many girls were cast for boy roles and no extensive lyric changes or even hair changes were required of girls playing/singing the role of, lets say, Dan, in the first play who is ready to ask his beau to marry him. A few lines were thrown out about how the Trump admin is like the zombie apocalypse which got some groans and many laughs.  There was a lot of gender fluidity going on on stage which I asked Vince about afterwards and he was like – yeah, we are an inclusive and diverse community and he proceeded to help me understand what a pansexual person was.  “How is it different than being a bisexual person?”, I asked.  “Well”, Vince explained, “a bisexual person likes only guys and girls and if I identified my gender as a helicopter (and neither male nor female), then a bisexual person would not be interested in me, whereas a pansexual person would be.”  Huh.  Being a teenager is complicated these days, it’s hard to grow up and find in love.  I retold this story to various guests at dinner tonight and he (at the table) said – Ahh, me and all my close friends are straight, mom.  And I countered, how would you know?  I see no evidence of girls anywhere for you or any of your friends.  He then raised his eyebrows and looked at me all meaningfully and provided no further information.  Argh!   I love being the most important female in Vince’s life, I know I’m going to get knocked off that pedestal any day now and it kills me.

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Mom & Dad are back in town, just in time for Chinese New Year.  Rooster!

There was a little confusion with the ordering.  Jeremy thought he was ordering for the table and did so in English.  Then my mom ordered a bunch more dishes using Chinese (which Jeremy didn’t understand).  In the end, we got 50% more food than we could possibly eat.

Kitachi came along as it was her scheduled work day – she got to try Peking duck (didn’t love it (how is that possible?!)) and see my crazy Chinese family.

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Edda and I went quilting this afternoon – hunting down fabric, a rotary cutter, a self-healing cutting mat and a quilting ruler.  I can do no more quilting without these tools.  I’m on the cusp of this hobby, ready to start spending money, but hesitating because I think if I commit to buying anything, then I will stop doing the hobby.  So then if I know I’m going to quit, do I buy the cheap beginner tools knowing I won’t use them more than three times?  Or do I buy the more expensive tools hoping beyond hope that I will continue with the hobby?

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Subscribed to the Washington Post.

Ahahahahaha ….  Jeremy comes home late and asks if I did anything interesting today.  I did nothing interesting today.  Compared to the rest of the world, absolutely nothing of interest happened in the Lee-Martin household today.  Edda went to sleep tonight as she usually does. Vince came home from school in the afternoon like he usually does.  And so we keep on as we do.  

My last semester of nursing school started yesterday.  I, yet again (because of my part-time status) know no one.  OK, maybe I know one person, but I barely know that person.  It really is a problem because I have no one to go, pssss, hey – there is a quiz on the first day of class or hey – you really should sign up for the three patient simulations right now.  So I walked into class, took a quiz I had no idea was going to happen (I didn’t even have a pencil, I had to do it in pen) and when I looked at the signups for the simulations, there was conveniently only one time spot left in each of them just for me.

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Jeremy and Edda during the regular night time routine.

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Jeremy texted me this photo of a “RESIST” protest sign on a construction crane near his DC metro stop.

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I made pork tenderloin for dinner.  Tomorrow is the end of the quarter for the kids.  No homework tonight!  We made it through.  I’m a little under the weather, I think I have a stomach bug or something.

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Is there a better time to rejoin my Unitarian friends?  I haven’t made it to Sunday service in years now, but Jo (in the photo on the right) sees me in the gym during the week and suggested that I should come to the quilting bee as my spiritual practice.  At the same time as the quilting bee, the church was hosting the first of the 10 actions/100 days from the Women’s March which was to send postcards to our representatives.  It seems a bit futile since our reps are the heads of the resistance…sigh.  Let’s see what tomorrow holds.

Four hours after I got home from Charlottesville, VA – I turned around and went right back.  This time I went with Vince, Soojung and Ben to a Twenty One Pilots concert.  Soojung originally bought two tickets, one for her and one for Ben for his surprise birthday present as he was a really big fan and they couldn’t find any friends to tag along.  She mentioned this to me a little bit before Christmas and I said – you should have told me!  Vince loves Twenty One Pilots, he would have gone with Ben!  And (though we were a bit nervous and told them never to leave each other, even to pee, because this was the first huge public event either of us has sent them to without direct adult supervision) so we sent the boys into the arena on their own and Soojung and I had a very nice, quiet dinner in downtown Charlottesville.  Everyone was *very* happy with this arrangement.

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We did all the classic concert things – standstill traffic a mile from the arena.  We ended up dropping them off 1/3 of a mile from the venue.  I had to teach them about opening acts and encores.  I hopelessly gave them many foam earplugs and encouraged their use – and if they weren’t going to use them, to please give them to any grownups who seemed to want them.

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Soojung and I laughed and laughed at the boys singing and talking seriously about music genres.

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Vince has a lot of photos from the event – he said it was “super fun” – this is the only photo he texted to me.

Way before the election, I conferred with Nat about having her take care of Edda for a weekend so Jeremy and I could skip town for a few days.  Nat is a busy person  and the weekend that worked out was inauguration weekend (though at the time we agreed on the dates, I didn’t remember that fact). After it became clear that the Women’s March was going to happen on Sat, I did think briefly about cancelling, but I really wanted the weekend away with Jeremy – the last time we were on our own was 2013.

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I booked a small, little cabin in the Blue Ridge mountains and Maxi got to come with us – we left on Friday, right after noon.  We had a quiet dinner in Charlottesville, VA.

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On Saturday, we spent all day hiking.

Over streams.

Seeing waterfalls.

Going to the top of mountains and observing college students.

Max did so well!  We haven’t taken her hiking in this way ever before, but she was an eager and willing hiking partner.

It got foggy on the way down.

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We drove back Sunday morning and got back to Rockville at noon.  Extra thanks to Nat & Dara who spent the weekend with Edda (and Vince).

Beautiful day here in Rockville.

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I went to Vickey’s house today to get my first quilting lesson.

I’m totally going to make a quilt.  I’m hoping to have it done in a year’s time.  Christmas is my goal.

I got to spend just a tiny bit of time with one of my favorite preschoolers.

I’m fretting about losing Edda’s Medicaid.  After being on the waiting list for almost a decade for our number to be called up, we’ve had it for almost a year now.  It provides mostly chid care for Edda, but it also covers all of Edda’s diapers and I’ve not paid any medical copays for her, her dental surgery this past year was at almost no cost to us, but 5 or 6 years ago, when we had dental surgery and just our primary health insurance, there was almost a $2,000 copay for hospital related surgical costs.  I would not be surprised if it disappears under the new administration.  I would say this benefit is worth $20,000 to $25,000 a year for us.  I know, I’m very, very lucky.  I know if it disappeared, we would be able to swing it – I mean we’d have to swing it – take it out of our retirement/college savings and, of course, we have good primary insurance, but, you know, $20,000 is a lot of money.

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Speaking of dental surgery, at Edda’s last dental appointment we got scolded for not properly brushing her teeth.  It was so bad that we scheduled the next cleaning for three months out rather than the regular six months out.  All of us (the four of us who brush her teeth, Kitachi, Adriana, Jeremy and I) refocused our tooth brushing efforts and we came out of today’s dentist appointment we a gold star!  Go team!  Jeremy took her in and said she was laughing and smiling during the whole visit and didn’t try to grab anyone’s hand.  For someone who can’t purposely use her hands, she’s really good at grabbing toothbrushes.

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I did get in the mail a new brake for Edda’s old broken wheelchair.  They included a very confusing exploded drawing of how to install the brake.  Convaid (the wheelchair manufacturer) wanted to send the part to a Convaid service provider (like a car dealership) to have it installed.  These “dealerships” drive me crazy.  Oftentimes, I can’t get them to return my calls.  I have, in one instance, called them every week for 6 months straight only to be denied a bath chair.

It took me 45 minutes, but I fixed it.

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Quick date night tonight.  A smart growth meeting for the White Flint area.  Jeremy got me a cookie.

Inspired by success at Sat night’s party, Edda and I continued to go out and check out wood glue and epoxies at Home Depot on Sunday morning.  Edda and I need to go out more.  I think this is the first time that I’ve taken her and her new wheelchair out on an outing since we got it.  Just this morning Jeremy and I were trying to figure out a new hobby that would involve the two grownups and Edda to encourage us to go adventuring.  Jeremy & I both have things we like doing on our own that we can’t see combining very well, we need to find something to do together with Edda.  I think it should involve something quirky, but I’m not sure what it should be.

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I saw an eagle’s nest on Sunday’s run at the C&O.

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The boys got back at noon.  I tried to get Jeremy to take ownership of an UnderArmor jacket that I bought Vince on super sale that he hasn’t worn once this season.  Jeremy wore it to Sunday night dinner, but he didn’t like it.  Edda’s in the front seat for the first time.  She seems unimpressed.

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Mom & Dad are in South Africa eating lots of food.  We are all excited to be getting texts from them. xoxo.

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I went out with 3/5 of the usual suspects last night.  The usual suspects at our usual restaurant.