Tiny Houses

I am fascinated with the tiny house movement.  I would love my own little tiny house, a space that is totally mine, with no one else's junk or clutter.  Just mine.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of tiny house sites, floor plans, what not.  The example is one I saw today and I want it.  In the back yard, as my sewing room.  My room, my studio, a clubhouse with a membership list of one. And a lock on the door.

Always Remember to Floss

I put off going to the dentist, for a long, long time.  2007.  Seven years.  Which coincides with Micah's arrival.

Fortunately, according to the dentist, I am blessed with good teeth.  After seven years, minimal plaque, one old, old filling with a little decay at the margins, and the reason that finally put me in the dentist's chair, a rear molar with a filling that was deciding to depart little by little, starting last year.

So I got to meet Novocaine once again and listen to the whirr of whatever evil device that was used to burr down the tooth.

And once the anesthetic wore off, pain, that is keeping 4/4 time in my left upper teeth.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.  I will not neglect my choppers ever again.

And fortunately I am lucky to have a speedy dentist, he finished in time so that I could pick up my Singer sewing machine that was in for its annual tune-up and Thea's that was in because it was acting up.

Mac Attack

The last time I owned an actual Apple computer, it looked like this.  I had it until my father bought me a PC while I was at Penn for nursing school.  I was a convert, PCs ruled.

Until this little guy came into my life:

Still getting used to it, but so far, love it.  A lot.  And it has, thanks to Bob the God among geeks, remote access for work.  No. More. Schlepping. My. Work. Laptop. Home.  Amen.  Three pounds.

And it's the one time my Aetna insurance identification card came in handy, getting a discount at the Apple store on the purchase plus a $100 Apple gift card.  Thankfully my brain snapped into gear after the sales dude asked if I worked for any large company, military or government organization.  No. No.  No.  Small, independent family practice, which is a good thing in my book, but doesn't get much in the way of recognition or discounts.  Then the synapse fired, spouse does work for one of the larger employers in the area, and all Apple wanted was something with my name and the name of the employer on it, so insurance ID card.  Yippee.

First Post of 2014

I am a slug, I left my blogging back in 2013 and just never had any thoughts that I could get composed into a post.

Thea's Girl Scout troop finished the Bronze Award, went camping, made patches for a quilt.

Micah got 2nd place for car design at the Pack's Pinewood Derby, he went camping for the first time at Family Camp at Ockanickon Scout Reservation.

And here we are half way through 2014, and I still don't feel like I have much to say.  Summer is in full swing, check the calendar to see which camp for each week.   Squeeze in some private violin lessons for Thea with her former music teacher, Mr. Pugh.  Get to Wilmington to see the Costumes of Downton Abbey exhibit at Winterthur with Janet.  Take a week off to be at home and get about half of the things I wanted to do done, but have a good week overall  Find that Micah has two rows of center lower teeth, call the dentist for an appointment and witness his first baby teeth being strong-armed out of his mouth.  Build rockets with the Cub Scouts, shoot off the rockets and be surprised that most of them fly - but find that the one that exploded was the most spectacular.  Live through the switch from FIOS to Xfinity and find that I have reached my technology threshold as far as learning remote controls - so far I have learned about four channels, and don't much care if I learn more.  Thank goodness for HBO GO, Netflix and Amazon Instant Video with them on my iPad and iPhone, Xfinity can kiss my cellulite pink tush.

So the time goes: fast, slow and every speed in between and here we are six weeks from the start of school.  Soccer, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts.

There once was a day, for the first few years of Thea's life, when I wrote a letter to her on the 13th of every month to help me remember what was going on in our lives.  Time to make a New Year's Resolution for 2015 that I will write more, blog more, but I might find myself this time next year typing a very similar post.

One Year Later

A year ago in November, I took my mother to the ER and we found out the cancer had spread to her brain.  She was at University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro until the day before Thanksgiving, and was discharged to follow up with oncology and radiation oncology.  She finished her brain radiation on November 30, and the radiation bought her (and me) some time, but some time will always be never enough time.

I think I've forgotten most of what went on during the period from her hospitalization through the holidays.  Somehow we had Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas, and on New Year's Even, I enrolled her in hospice.  It was just putting one foot in front of the other and trying to get through the day, watching Mom slowly slip away.

Almost one year later, I'm missing her just as much as when she died.  I was going through my memorabilia trunk (it makes it sound much more organized than it is) and found old photos.  Mom on her high school graduation day, Mom and her mother on the beach - in a bikini no less, Mom holding two-month old me in front of  our house at 2515 Van Buren Street.   Pictures that would be so much more interesting if she were here with me.

The New York Times the Washington Post, CBS Sunday Morning and CNN have been cataloging famous people who died in 2013, and while I will miss Nelson Mandela, C. Evertt Koop, James Gandolfini, Cory Monteith, Lou Reed, Peter O'Toole, etc., my mother tops the list for Lives Lost this year. I miss her most.

Each Week. . .

. . . I tell myself if I get through this week, things will slow down, get easier or more manageable; I will work on writing a post for my blog, catching up on all the UFOs (unfinished objects) in my bags of quilt fabric, clean the house (low priority, but it does still make the list most of the time), get organized.

First it was get through the first Girl Scout meeting, the start of Mandarin school, the start of soccer season, the Girl Scout cookout/bonfire, the start of Cub Scouts, the family cookout for the den, soccer practices, the start of religious school, the back-to-school nights, the 3v3 soccer tournament, the second grade field trip and on and on until the weeks and weekends start to blur.

And each week new things insinuate themselves onto the calendar until "things will slow down next week" turns into a rather hollow mantra.

But the up side to all of this is that both kids are doing well with soccer, scouts and the school year.  Thea decided she wanted to switch from viola to violin to learn treble clef this year.

The Girl Scouts are working on their Bronze Award by babysitting at the monthly leader meetings.  This month is Thea's group's turn to plan the activities and games.  Micah's Cub Scout den is working on earning their Wolf rank.  This year we'll be able to go to the Pinewood derby and I'm looking forward to helping Micah on his car.

Fortunately all of this is a good sort of exhaustion, but it's still exhaustion - made worse since I started wearing an UP band from Jawbone that keeps track of how many steps I take per days (still working on getting to 10,000) and how many hours of sleep.

Two more weeks of soccer, then Hanukkah comes along during Thanksgiving week to ambush us .

Ready for School

As of last weekend I had purchased all the school supplies on the 2nd grade and 5th grade lists, labeled all the stuff and put them in two bags.  At work I printed copies of the children's bus passes and made IDs for their backpacks.

Cleaned out their backpacks, which was more like an archeological expedition combined with recycling/trash-picking .

Ready, set, go - except our "go" is the Wednesday after Labor Day.

And then schools are closed on Thursday for Rosh Hashanah, and back on Friday.

From there the school year rolls on until June 17, 2014.

Mandarin classes start next Sunday, as does Girl Scouts, then comes religious school on Tuesdays, Cub Scouts, soccer practices and soccer games.

The school year hasn't started and I'm exhausted by it already.

Bring it on.