Month: October 2017

Loves, it’s been a busy weekend and I know it’s Monday night already.  Jeremy started out on Friday going to a hipster coffee shop in Chicago.  The barista is wearing the Supreme shirt Vince covets.

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Vince came home with Sharpie tattoos.

He was headed out to a campout for the weekend, so we squeezed in a rushed trip to a burger joint before dropping him off at the church.

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On Saturday, with Jeremy home, I ran the Interfaith 5K in the morning.  Cindy put it together.  I did win my age group – finished in 26:38 – 8:35 pace.  Ack, could have done better – gave up a little in the last mile, I couldn’t make myself race this morning.

I went home and Jeremy headed out to bike to Vickey’s 50 miles away:

Where she was hosting Bert’s 5th birthday party – Star Wars Angry Birds theme!  (I drove there – no biking for me…)

The catapult was an incredible success.  It went pretty much non-stop for two hours.  Kids pulled at it, the adults helped.  The adults tried a few shots too.  This kid (in the photo below) could launch the balls past the next door neighbors house into the next, next door neighbor’s house.  I’m happy it held up and that it made the party the talk of the neighborhood.  I’m happy that Vickey’s dad approved of it (he’s a pretty good woodworker/carpenter). 

Edda had the most fantastic time at the party – ate all the chicken nuggets and the beautiful/delicious cake.

And she did launch some angry birds.

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Sunday, I went into the woods on a rainy day to orienteer.  I have not been practicing.  Been out of town, been making catapults.  The national championships are in a couple of weeks at Quantico and this was the last meet before that meet.  There is no question I’m in above my head,  I fully anticipate being last in my age group, but hopefully that means that I will be slightly-not-last next year.  We’ll see.

It’s really nice to be out in the woods for a couple of hours, mostly knowing where you are, but sometimes not quite knowing where you are and then reassuring yourself that you can find your way back to the car and then back home.

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Seth turned 55.  We celebrated with donuts.

Delivered Krispy Kreme donuts to Vince’s school today for the Beyblades tournament.  I brought them piping hot to the front office where all the office workers perked up and hoped for a donut.  But they did not get any donuts, they sat there waiting for Vince to pick them up two hours later at the start of lunch.  He brought three home at the end of the day.  One for me/Vince, one for Edda and one for Arietni.  A & E were very, very pleased.

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Jeremy’s new phone arrived today.  But Jeremy is not around to enjoy it.  He is still in Chicago.

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I’m trying to do a bathroom rehab, both in the guest bathroom and in the basement bathroom.  Replacing the molding caulk, fixing the diverters in the tub and replacing the flushing mechanisms in the toilets. 

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Vince is playing video games. 

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I had 5 small screws left to put in to get this singer sewing machine going again (I took a break from a few weeks ago because the screws were driving me crazy).  I managed to get two in and then for the third one, I tried once and I dropped it.  I found it, and I tried again and then I dropped it again and it remained unfound.  I spent at least 20 minutes looking for it.  I had to order a new screw from a vintage singer featherweight shop.  I ordered 2! so I could lose one again.

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Sleepy Edda.  <3

Jeremy is in Chicago for the week.  I would be lying if I told you I was totally OK with him being away.  (Actually, I get grumpy at him for leaving, then I get grumpy at myself for getting grumpy, because it’s not like I don’t have the super-est flexible job with one old kid who can take care of himself and slightly needier (but not extremely needy) kid with tons of after school & evening care.  I might as well be eating bonbons all day.  Some wives might enjoy a week at home with the kids without her husband, but my husband tends to be very helpful and generally a nice conversationalist and he cooks for me.  The most problematic child is Maxi who got into a literal dogfight this morning at 6:50am with the next-door dog.  Story for another time.  (everydog is OK)).  I might have been a grump-meister the few days before he left and I might have started fighting with Vince during those days which resulted in a rougher few days after Jeremy left because Vince and I were still working out whether we were really mad at each other.  It’s such an easier house with a cheerful Vince (which I get like 85% of the time).  But now, I think, we have forgiven each other and hopefully, smoother sailing for the rest of the week.

On Tues night, I manned the Philmont table at the scout meeting.  It’s a little weird that we are asking folks for a $100 deposit (pretty much non-refundable) for a trip with unknown exact dates in the summer of 2019.  We need the money to enter the date lottery in mid-November and once we get those dates, the deposit checks are due.  I’m excited for the boys! 

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Without Jeremy, I do all the cooking/cleaning of dinner and seeing Edda to the bus in the morning.  I lose a little working time in the morning and the evening, but I usually can manage. Bye Edda!  Have a good day.  Edda was so happy this evening, just laughing and laughing.  We are trying to teach her to chew on a chewy toy and not on her bandana which would get soaking wet and then drench her shirt.  I think it’ll take her a while, but it’ll be so much better once she learns.

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I’m still able to make quilting class:

Triangles this week, trying to get all the points to meet up exactly in the center.

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One of the reasons that Vince is forgiving me for my trespasses is because I promised him I’d buy three dozen Krispe Kreme donuts for his Beyblade tournament he’s having for the Beyblade Club he is running.  The meet Thursdays during lunch and they are getting a pretty big turnout – 30 kids or so.  He also spent his own money buy special Japanese Beyblades from Amazon.  That kid needs a job,  that boy has things he wants to spend money on.

We partied hard on Sunday.  Jeremy’s coworker Jana invited us over to her house for an late afternoon get together.  And then we headed to Sunday night dinner with Ross & Barbara (distant relatives) – sorry, I got a poor photo.  But the conversation was very nice.

Today, I had coffee with two moms of kiddos in Edda’s class.  We should meet monthly, but we haven’t seen each other in over a year – even though our daughters see each other every day.

Maxi puked on the rug today.  What did she eat?

Dropped off my parents at Dulles on Friday am for their Peru adventure.

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Meanwhile, at the same time, the other car was making its way to National where Jeremy caught a flight to Boston to give a talk at MIT.  He’d been stressing about it for a long time, I’m glad it’s over.  I think he’s glad it’s over.

He wanted to buy me a souvenir from the COOP.  This fuzzy sweatshirt?  (I already have a sweatshirt I barely wear).

He got me a notebook instead.  My old one is almost, almost done now, so it’s good timing.

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I spent the day transporting my angry birds catapult to Virginia to beta test it.  The birthday party is next week and I didn’t want the actual birthday party to be the first time I had set it up outside my garage.  I had to take it apart to make it fit in the van and I was worried that it wouldn’t work as well when I put it back together.  It was a gorgeous day for beta testing.  And I had some age-appropriate testers.  I think I’m going to have to man the catapult and help the kids pull it back, it does take some oomph to get it going.

Our wall of boxes:

Actual video!

Someone posted this photo on Facebook today.  This was almost exactly 30 years ago!  Being a teenager was tough for me, but I seemed to have been having some fun.  I’m wearing my favorite Chem-a-thon shirt (our team was 2nd in the state!) and what’s the deal with the red-stripy shorts?  I don’t remember them.  I’m also trying to figure out what watch I’m wearing.  I’ve worn a timex ironman watch most of my life, but I think in high school, I had a classic Mickey Mouse watch with a red strap and the watch I’m wearing in this photo seems to be neither.

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I took Edda to an orthotics appointment for her foot/ankle orthotics.  The ones we have seem fine, we could get a new pair (based on the insurance schedule), but I need to see a physical medicine doc to get a fitting for a new wheelchair and the orthosist thought that as long as I was going to see a physical med guy, that we should get his opinion on what type of foot orthotic to get.  So I left with nothing except to instructions to go see someone else.  Sometimes appointments like that make me feel like I’ve accomplished nothing.  Leah, the orthosist, kind of agreed with Ogeten (Edda’s back surgeon) and thought that the ankle will be stable as long as we brace it well.  But she mentioned we could go see Sponseller at Hopkins for another opinion.  Well, Sponseller will probably want us to operate, which I don’t want to do right now since we just did our major operation this year.  One major surgery enough for us this year.  And if we did get her foot operated on, she’d need to be off her feet for months.  That would be a terrible & hard recovery.

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Vince is messing up Chinese.  It’s hard, requires lots of memorization and a lot of the class is failing.   Even though Vince & my dad are practicing every day for 45 min or so, it’s still hard for Vince because he’s not really drilling the vocab or the grammar patterns.  (Vince still thinks going over something a couple of times is “knowing” it, but it’s not really true.  He thinks it’s true though.)  My dad is headed out of town tomorrow, so it’s going to be me drilling Vince on Chinese.  Remember, I’m illiterate, so it’s not very efficient for me to teach Vince Chinese.  I know Vince should make all his flash cards, but it’s taken me two hours to make this week’s flash cards, so it would probably take Vince 5 hours to make them, so it’s just not going to happen if I make him do it.  I got my dad to translate a bunch of phrases, my dad only knows complicated characters.  I have to take the complicated characters and then look them up to get the phonetic spelling and the possible simplified character version and then make the flash cards.  My dad makes this a more, ahem, challenging by making simple “spelling” errors in his Chinese characters which sends me off in odd directions in my Chinese dictionary translations. 

Loves, I made a quilt square today  (these are test fabrics.  my real fabrics are waaaayyyy cooler.)

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My parents arrived last week and will go off again in a couple of days on a cruise.  Mom was nice enough to make dinner for us tonight at our house.

They met Arietni.  Someone who hasn’t heard all their jokes before.  Fun times.  Edda couldn’t be bothered to turn around, silly girl.

Maxi was super excited to see my mom cooking again.  It can only mean one thing, a whole plate of meat for her (I don’t think she got it this time though…)

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Vince is struggling in Chinese & in US history.  I’m trying to teach him to study.  Today he came home and said (sounding surprised), I actually knew the answers to the questions she asked in class today.  Because you did the reading?  Or I dragged you through the reading?  I would have preferred if he read the whole packet on interest groups, PACs and collective goods, but there wasn’t enough time (I certainly would have read the whole thing – less than 20 pages) (actually, I think there was enough time, but I couldn’t imagine him making himself read the entire packet), so I taught him how to study without reading the whole thing – getting the general overview, looking at the highlighted terms and then using the review sheet to backwards indicate the important passages. 

Jeremy was out tonight – went to Bethesda to the area coordination meeting for the Boy Scouts for the Philmont (New Mexico) hiking trip he’s leading summer of 2019.  Yes, you have to plan 2 years in advance.  Jeremy’ll be collecting names and deposits within the month.  (Vince’s take on letting girls become scouts is a resounding thumbs down.  We’ll see if his opinion changes in the next few years.)

Edda was having a bit of trouble settling down tonight, so I crawled into bed with her and started playing Words with Friends. Then Vince joined in and wanted to show me youtube videos about taste testing fried chicken.

While I was putting on my running shoes this morning, I noticed in the bookshelf the Singer Sewing Book!  It goes with Jeremy’s Grandma Edda’s sewing machine.  With such gems like – “Never place a machine where it is hard to reach.  Let it be a part of your household equipment as much as your electric iron or mixer.”  or “Prepare yourself mentally for sewing.  Think about what you are going to do.”  and “When you sew, make yourself as attractive as possible.  Go through a beauty ritual of orderliness.  Have on a clean dress.” and “Again sewing must be approached with the idea that you are going to enjoy it, and if you are constantly fearful that a visitor will drop in or your husband come home and you will not look neatly put together, you will not enjoy your sewing as you should.”

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Maybe I should not let my husband see me like this:

I came home from a run just in time to high five Jeremy on his way out on a bike ride.  No child care days means a more tightly run ship.  I wanted to have lunch with my parents at noon with Jeremy.  Jeremy wanted to go on a 3.5-4 hour ride, which meant that I needed to be back from my run at 7:30 ideally, which means I should be out the door by 6:15.  That did not quite happen, I ended up reading the sewing book and procrastinating getting out the door, so I didn’t get home until almost 8 am, which resulted in a quicker turnaround than would have been ideal.

While Jeremy was out, I scooted Edda into a chair with a safety belt and put her in front of the TV so I could see her from the garage and then my neighbor Mike came by with his miter saw to help me with my Angry Birds catapult.  I am scared of this saw.

So I needed Mike to help me with the bracing 45 degree angles.

And we got it put together.  Don’t get too excited.  It broke after this.

And look!  my parents are back on the East Coast.  They came over for chinese food for lunch.

A quiet Friday night, it was just us – it’s not often we have dinner only the four of us.  Jeremy was a little late coming home, he needed to pick up replacement glasses from Warby Parker (they disappoint him still, but they fit better now.  I think we will no longer go to WP).  I made a quick dinner which turned out nicely, that always surprises me because I’m the worst cook in the house.   Vince made some pumpkin cookies after dinner.

Today we went hiking in Frederick.  There might have been some teenage grumpiness during this trip.  I will curate that part out of my retelling.  The woods were beautiful.

We ended up at a hipster bike/coffee shop.  Vince spent a lot of time on his phone.

Then we dropped the still-slightly grumpy teenager off at home and then we went to Home Depot to grab a sander and caulk.  We need to do some work on the basement before the new tenants moved in.  While I was in Philadelphia, Jeremy fixed a mysterious electrical problem which spanned the basement apartment and the hallway in the entrance of the house.  It is mysterious because Jeremy took out the broken switch, replaced it with a seemingly new switch which made everything more broken (garage doors would not open) and it freaked him out (we can not survive very well without access to the garage (Edda’s ramp is in there, it’s the way she egresses)) and then re-replaced it with the original broken switch hoping to make it less (but still) broken, but everything fixed itself when he did that.  Hooray for Jeremy!  I don’t do well with electricity.  I can handle water and carpentry, but once I can’t see it, I don’t understand it.

I spent this evening working on Jeremy’s grandmother’s sewing machine.  At my quilting class, half the class has really expensive computerized sewing machines, the other half have old Singer Featherweights.  I remembered that we had Jeremy’s grandmother’s sewing machine in the basement.  It did not run when I first plugged it in, but I’ve spent a bunch of time on youtube trying to learn to fix it.  It’s working mostly properly now, but I still have a few screws to put back in.  They are tricky, I tried about a dozen times, but I think I need to take a break before trying again tomorrow.