New Beginnings

Well it's been a long time since I posted. The kids are teens and almost 15 now.  They are so tall, I wasn't ready for them being taller than me (I'm 5'11"). They started high school last month. Last year, we applied to Chicago Public Schools that require tests (and grades) for admission and they both got in, so we bought a house in the city! Then within days my mom was diagnosed with stage four ovarian/fallopian tube cancer. So the year has been a bit of a blur. She's had multiple surgeries and multiple rounds of chemo since then, which she is almost done with now, at least for now. She turned 78 in May and will be fighting this for the rest of her life unfortunately. Since her diagnosis in March, we've spent every possible break in Wisconsin with her instead of on vacation. 

We "moved" over the summer, but since we are keeping our house in the suburbs (at least for now) we didn't really move that much. We bought new stuff for the new place. Thank goodness for the minivan, though it doesn't fit in our new garage. We are loving Old Town so far. The kids are getting settled in and making friends and getting ready for their first HOCOs. Marielle made varsity dance/poms so we've been doing football season and gearing up for competition season. It's been 21 years since I left the city (26 for DH) so we are being old in Old Town. Today is our 20th anniversary!!

Celebrating DH's 50th B-day in California last November

End of an era

I'm one month post-op for my total hysterectomy (and just turned 48 last week) and feel amazing. I had been trying to get my OB/gyne, who I'd been seeing since I first got pregnant 13 years ago to remove my tubes, since my eldest sister had fallopian tube cancer at 40 (posted on this day, back in 2010), and I felt like a sitting duck, but she didn't think I needed to. So I'd been toying with changing doctors for years and finally did. My wonderful surgeon asked me about my ovaries and uterus when I first went in to see her, and since she said my ovaries' job had been completed several years ago (at 45) and any benefit to keeping them was over and I didn't think I need my uterus either, I said just take it all. So glad I did! Turns out I had some small fibroids I didn't know about and everything else was fine, if very tired and ready to retire. I'd been on the pill for years, which helps ease the effects of perimenopause, and am still/now on HRT (everyone's favorite estrogen patches) now that I'm surgically menopaused. I've passed the torch to my now almost 13yo daughter. Recovery has been easy, just have to wait another ten days to play pickleball again.

A dozen

 

The kids are huge (both 5'5"). They also weighed the same until very recently, which is wild. He lives for basketball, which had barely started last year. He's playing on a team now where he towers over everyone. She also played on her school's 7th grade team until she got a concussion (not playing sports) in late September, which even now almost three months later is still keeping us busy with PT and doctors' appointments. She was dancing up a storm until then too. She auditioned for and made her dance school's performance group in late summer, after the spring musical she got the bug, and got cast in the Nutcracker before everything went to shit. It's been a tough fall in every way. 

We celebrated their birthday with a weekend in the city, which we've been doing for years, but they really seem to appreciate now.

We are headed back to Mexico for Christmas because it's warm and DH doesn't need a visa to go. We almost went to England without him on our last trip when he needed a visa (pre-Covid). Never mind that he's been eligible to apply for citizenship for over 15 years now. Cabo was lovely, but we are going to Cancun this time.

My work project got moved up to the Spring this year, so it was crazy, but done for the year early. I've never had a Fall off from work. So I took up pickleball, which is fun.

DH made partner at work in September, which is what he's been working for since he started there five years ago (and arguably the 20 years before that). Now instead of the money just flowing one way, we send it back to them. It's a whole new world.

11!

The twins are 11 already! My how the years fly by! They are fifth graders now. They are both killing it at school. They’ve both taken up the cello this year. She’s still into dance and started at a new dance school last summer. She’s trying out for the school musical this year. He is still into soccer as his sport of choice but is also getting interested in basketball. We had fun watching the World Cup. He’s also really into history and gaming. They both like to join clubs at school.

They are getting so tall and grown up. I don’t think I was nearly this grown up at their age. We had some fun trips this year. NYC to visit my sister as always and then summer back to NY and coastal New England. We are headed to Mexico for NYE and early January. I haven’t been in years and it's the first time for the kids and DH. Yay for new countries!

I just published a post I wrote earlier this year about getting another colonoscopy. I did this partly because I now have an old friend (we started our first jobs out of college on the same day, and later became roommates in Chicago) who is fighting stage three colon cancer at 45. She has a son the twins' age and has been having an unusually hard time with her treatment (surgery, chemo, radiation, etc.). She lives in Canada, but spent the first two plus years of the pandemic semi-stuck in Bali, where she obviously wasn't getting good care, as she had symptoms and nobody did a colonoscopy for years. It makes me angry for her.

And on the cancer front, because that's always a running theme, we lost my uncle Gary earlier this month to lung cancer. His wife, Laura, died of recurrent breast cancer back in 2013, and now their two kids are orphans in their 30s. He's the third of my father's siblings, and first of the four to pass away.

Taking Care

Written in early 2022…

Well I survived colonscopy #3 (in five years) recently with a clean bill of health. Man those preps suck.  This is the new routine since I found out several years ago that I carry a genetic marker that gives me a higher risk of colon cancer, which killed my maternal grandmother, though not until she was 94. With the threat of Covid (and worse yet, long Covid) hanging over someone who has already dealt with long mono for over half my life (especially since they just found that EBV is one of the top drivers of getting long Covid, FML), I'm trying to take better care of myself. 

I treated myself to a food sensitivity test recently and boy were the results a surprise. My top problem foods include coffee, almond, and vanilla (weird), but also cow's milk, pineapple, and orange, so the breakfast routine got a bit of an overhaul. If you haven't tried organic oat milk, which I hadn't, it is amazing. It's also cheap at Costco. Score! I never really liked drinking milk, except in coffee, but I'm a cereal girl, so it's kind of part of the deal. Thank goodness I can still have other dairy products, like cheese and yogurt. Let's not get crazy, I am from Wisconsin. I had to give up caffeine many years ago since it makes me feel like I'm having a heart attack, but man I like the taste of coffee. Trying to make a go with decaf earl grey...

Since the whole family was finally fully vaxxed before Christmas (yay!), we decided to take advantage of the extra long break to get out of dodge. A new year's snow storm almost set us back, but we all got on a plane for the first time in two years and went to Florida to get some sun and be able to eat and be outside. We were very lucky and the weather was perfect, though as someone who spent some summers in Florida growing up, I know it's not always the case. I honestly have no idea how/why anyone lives there year round. Unlike everyone we know, we managed not to catch Covid (double yay!!)

Turning 10! End of 2021

The twins just turned 10! They are each five feet tall. Not too bad for two preemies who came home weighing barely five pounds each. 

They are rocking fourth grade. Though she’d much prefer to be in fifth. Their school has all mixed age classrooms, so they are in 4/5. They are out of their braces and keeping busy with lots of activities, even though we are entering year three of pandemic life. 

My unvaccinated 48yo sister nearly died of Covid in the hospital earlier this month (her body was riddled with blood clots, so she ended up with multiple pulmonary embolisms). Her four kids are aged 9-14. Get your fucking shots folks. We celebrated my very last grandparent (my late step-dad’s mom) turning 95 last month. I was blessed with nearly a dozen in my life due to divorced and remarried parents and grandparents and we lost Rita (my late paternal grandfather’s second wife) in the spring at the age of 97 and a half.

Our tiny nuggets are growing up…

Cheers to 2022!!

The House that got away

Happy Summer!! It's been exactly 25 years since I started my first summer on Cape Cod. Boy that makes me feel old. Spending the whole summer (not a week or a month, or just weekends) in a place like this is a whole other life. The Cape is probably more my style, even though my best sister moving to NYC meant I became a Hamptons summer person a decade ago. Ah our first vacation in a year and a half is coming!

I lived in Hyannis Port for three summers in the mid-/late 90s. If I do say so, it was their heyday (post 60s, of course) when JFK Jr. and Senator Kennedy were still alive and out and about. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Andrew Cuomo were still Kennedy adjacent then too. The original Kennedy house in the compound (just west of the pier) is now part of the EMK Institute. Taylor Swift has come and gone. Ethel is still hanging on. Now 02647 is left with the likes of RFK Jr. Sad...

I met my first ex at the West Beach Club while working for a family who was friends with him and lives up Wachusett (they recently traded "school year living" in Wellesley for Jupiter, of course). And with their encouragement, we courted there and at the Hyannisport Club (where Jack and Jackie had their engagement party) and the HP Yacht Club ("the pier", where he was a patron and held court, is infamous for being a weekend paparazzi hangout) and Oyster Harbors with his parents. We dated into the fall, I spent weekends here even after going back to college. September here is the best. He wanted to buy a house in Wellesley and give me his family ring kept at Harry Winston, but I just couldn't. Even when his "friends" tried to talk me into doing it for the hundreds of millions. We decided, begrudgingly on his part, to be friends instead. So I kept visiting for years after. I remember the morning after JFK Jr.'s secret wedding in Georgia, because they never could have pulled it off here, when he told me about his friend finally getting hitched (they were the same age and grew up here together).

The ill fated Kennedys w/Friday at the pier in the mid-90s, 

they would die just off the Vineyard in 1999 after less than three years of marriage.

My ex-boyfriend passed away last August, after his mother in 2011, and his only brother in 2010. His father is in his mid-90s and lives in Miami. Not surprisingly, he's just put the family summer home (since the 60s) on the market. It's been mostly untouched for decades (that's how the old money rolls), save the new kitchen, this is just how I remember it. (and of course it closed on my birthday...)

The house is named "El Bajareque" (the shack, ironically, sort of) overlooks Nantucket Sound with a big yard sloping down to the Rose Kennedy memorial, Fortes Beach, and the Yacht Club. I would have married his parents if I could have. Though they probably wouldn't have wanted us to buy our own house here, it would have made them "look bad," as this was meant to be passed down. Loved them even if they were a bit too conservative for me. Very Cuban and Catholic (the latter of which HP became a haven for when the Kennedys moved here in the 20s, because the HP club was one of few that admitted Catholics at the time), so I stayed over in the guest room when they were there. A few of his cousins still have houses there. His father's great-grandfather founded Bacardi and the family still owns and runs it out of Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico (since their exile from Cuba the year my ex was born.). He and his brother were adopted, because that's what even wealthy infertile couples did in the 1950s. I never met his brother, he was by then a persona non grata to all but his mother, another HP raised addict, a victim of Fessenden abuse, like so many others. My ex was the "good son" even after getting tossed from Exeter. He redeemed himself at Georgetown and beyond. May he rest in peace.

I spent so many hours on that porch... Ah the memories...

Another hot property on Oyster Harbors (formerly Bunny Mellon's) that has recently hit the market... (and also sold end of summer)

Studying my own family's history, they owned large swaths of the Cape (from Yarmouth to Falmouth), as they (the Hatches) were the first white settlers to buy land from the Indians in the 1600s, so I'll be back...

Down to one!

We finally sold our old house! Wahoo! We started getting offers when we listed last fall, but they were low and we decided to hold out. We accepted a decent offer in January, but that progressively fell apart due to the buyers in late winter so we relisted it even though we were still officially under contract. The market had totally turned in those couple months and we started getting multiple offers (over asking!) with no contingencies. We finally closed and I’m still kind of in shock. Two houses (even in the same neighborhood) is a huge PITA. So why do I want to look for another farther away? Glutton for punishment.

We spent 15 years in that house. We got engaged in the living room our first week (we had plans to go downtown on our anniversary, but I wasn’t feeling well). Six years later we brought home babies. They are now almost five feet tall. 

It made me start thinking about all the places I’ve lived in my life. I only spent ten years in my main childhood home (which was my sixth overall). I’ve lived in over 20 homes/apartments across four states.  I spent a third of my life in that house. It was the end of my nomadic life. So many memories from the best to the worst.

It's debatable whether I'm more excited about this or being fully vaccinated as of the this week.

End of 2020 (the ultimate annus horribilis)

It's hard to believe it's been ten long years since I last wrote about a annus horribilis (a horrible year). This time of year always has crazy mixed feelings for me because of how 2010 and 2011 ended in such different ways (nevermind what we had to go through to make that happen). 

We recently celebrated the twins turning nine. They are huge (I'm buying them 12/14 clothes...) and dealing pretty well with this nutty year. They are doing well with remote school (halfway through 3rd grade!), but unfortunately given the pandemic their activities have been scaled back considerably and/or moved online. We finally got a pet bunny just before Thanksgiving after months (years?) of begging and a PowerPoint research presentation. His name is Cookie. We are getting more settled in our new house, but still annoyingly trying to sell our old one. After six months on unemployment, I did all my regular annual work in Oct-Nov this year, which was a bit much, but we are obviously thankful to come out of this historic year better than we came in. It's a strange feeling, similar to one we had in the long 2008 recession, when the world is falling apart around you, but things are going well for you (except for when they aren't, see infertility).

Even though this is really an introvert's time to shine (though not so much if you are also a wanderlust), Covid also brings up so many feelings given all the loss we've experienced. It makes you grateful that all the people we've lost in recent years weren't lost to a pandemic that precluded us being together. It makes you worry about your remaining two grandparents (step-grandmas) in the rural Midwest in their fragile mid-90s and your three remaining parents in their 70s, especially a mother with preexisting conditions like asthma and RA, and siblings who are cancer survivors and those who work in health care. It's made me think about how I've spent the second half of my life as a post-viral long hauler. It's been 22 long years since I came down with a relatively mild case of mono early in my senior year of college, which single handedly changed the trajectory of every single aspect my life since then. My education, professional and personal lives, relationships, everything is different than it would have been had I not gotten sick and am now still plagued by CFS. I also had to reconfigure my life ten years ago because of infertility and parenthood that meant I already had a pandemic friendly WFH job and life before this year. How's that for foresight (aka trauma)...

The only lingering issue with the kids was getting them to gain a bit of weight. Enter quarantine and the Covid 15 and that problem is now officially solved for Alistair, though it means I have to actually have to make an effort to lose weight for the first time in my life. Our basement gym is now set up and I have a driveway a mile long to shovel. Watch out pool season, we are coming for you!

Wear a mask, stay home, and get your jab. Happy New Year!

How it started...how it's going...

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Happy Holidays!!

So it's September...

Which is my favorite month by far, but it's been a crazy year for us all. I started a post back in the winter about the seemingly pressing issue (at the time) of the kids trying to qualify for gifted and magnet programming (she did, he missed it by a hair, oh well, it's almost time to test again). Little did we know school as we knew it would be ending soon.

I took the kids on a great trip to Boston for President's Day weekend when things with Covid were starting to look hairy and then the shit really hit the fan. We stayed at the Seaport and the Boston outbreak really took off the week after we were there. Our planned trips to NYC for Spring Break and Nantucket this summer unfortunately couldn't happen safely.

The kids have been home for six months (now two weeks into 3rd grade) and for the foreseeable future, ditto the working husband, and my work project got put off in early April (and just got green lit again today for next month!), so I've been experiencing my very first taste of compensated unemployment, yet not at a lack for seemingly endless things to do. 

We found a new (to us) house in April near our old one and then moved in in June. We bought it from a lovely old lady whose late master carpenter husband built it with his friends 50 years ago and they raised their six kids here and (bless her busy perfectionist heart) she had the whole house completely redone to sell it (so I didn't have to!). We were thinking of building new, out of desperation, but I didn't think I (or our marriage) would survive that many decisions. I couldn't talk the kids into changing schools where we are all happy and the hubs didn't want to relocate either. It's rooms and closets are bigger and it has an amazingly huge yard, which is hard to find in our built up suburban area, and it's been a wonderful change, especially given all the time we've been spending at home. Now we just have to sell our old one of 15 years... 

Where the hell does the time go? A decade ago I was still trying desperately to get pregnant. 25 years ago I graduated from high school and moved to Boston and left Wisconsin forever. My first boyfriend from my new life in Boston just died a few weeks ago. My college bio classmate Maeve died in April, along with her 8yo son. Yeah these are crazy times. We are all still healthy, thank goodness, and my family is going crazy not being able to come see our new place.

The kids have done great with their upper expanders (now out after a long delay, they were due to get them out the day everything shut down), now a retainer, and lower braces. And the lowers come off in a just a few short weeks. We thankfully didn't lose any treatment time even with three plus months of no adjustments.

It has just started thankfully cooling down after yet another record setting hottest summer ever. It felt like a very long sweaty hotflash. Next big project is putting in an inground pool (next spring hopefully).

He's not even taller than her, they are both 4'9" and climbing, it's just hair...

Watch out THIRD GRADE!

To my babies on their eighth birthday

We wondered for years whether you would ever be at all, but still we dreamed of you. And then we lost your big sister. And then they told us we would probably lose you both too. But I said no, no, not this time...

Every day since then has been a gift. The last eight years we’ve been lucky enough to watch you grow on your own terms and we couldn’t be more proud of the happy, healthy, HUGE, sweet, funny, and wicked smaht kids you have become. Eight is going to be GREAT!

Braces: the 30 year rewind

I first got braces some 30 years ago (when I was 12) and had them for 2 1/2 years. The old school metal kind with the headgear (aka the devil), the whole deal. It was painful and generally bad, particularly because junior high/middle school (we had a conversion at 8th, so I got out after serving two, thank goodness) sucked, but I'm thankful my parents (who didn't have money to throw around) got them for all four of us because they thought it was important (thanks mom and dad!). I wore my retainers for a long time, but they would break (I apparently clench/grind my teeth when I sleep) and since I no longer live in the town where I grew up (hallejuah!), I stopped getting them replaced at some point, I don't even remember when.

So I had noticed that my teeth, mostly my front lowers, had shifted a bit over time, as happens. I had thought about getting them fixed, but it wasn't a high priority in the whole scheme of things. As I noticed one tooth was wearing because of misalignment, I figured that was my sign to do something. I've had this ridiculous desire to die with all my teeth (hopefully in old age) and so far I'm cavity free (it's the little things).

I had gotten a quote for Invisalign from my dentist a couple of years ago, but then didn't do anything. I decided early this year to go to Smile Direct Club and check it out and when they came back with a quote that was the same, but with no dentist visits, I decided to go for it. When I got my plan it was longer than I'd hoped, eight months, but the time goes by.

My only complaint is with invisible aligners, you have to wear them 24/7, except when you are eating/drinking something other than water. As someone who likes to eat small meals and nurse an iced coffee or latte for hours, it's been a big adjustment. You have to brush every single time you put anything in your mouth. Don't be like the guy my dentist told me about who drank black coffee with them IN for months, making his teeth black. They were able to clean them, but that's nasty.

Of course since I got mine, they came out with a night only program (same price, longer treatment), which I would have done instead in a heartbeat. I'm officially done this weekend, but have to wear them at night forever now, or revisit my crooked fate once again.

Just in time for the kids to get their braces next week!

Salad Dressing, Darwin, and Nantucket

Happy Summer! The twins just turned 7 1/2!! They are out of school, all about camps (making me a taxi driver), and I just finished my latest spring/summer work project, so it’s back to the book research for me (and summer travel planning, next up: England!), managing our master bath reno (finally!), and solo parenting while S travels for work. Genealogy is so fascinating, it even makes inanimate objects more interesting. 

Pain du chocolat from our local farmers’ market bakery

I first fell in love with this china pattern, Nantucket Basket by Wedgwood (and the Island too of course), over 20 years ago when I babysat for years for a family outside Boston who used it as their everyday dishes (and in a house full of babies, three in less than three years, now all through Stanford, apparently carefree fortunes are made in salad dressing), so I bought a bunch when I found it a few years ago on clearance at HomeGoods (score!). Now come to find out that not only am I related to the Wedgwoods (via Charles Darwin, my 8th Cousin, both he and his wife Emma were grandchildren of founder Josiah Wedgwood) but I’m also related to one of the original founding families of Nantucket, the Swains. OMG! (which for the purposes of my book references stands for old money gone)

Speaking of salad dressing, Marielle was pretty proud of herself for coming up with her own “signature” mixture of ketchup and ranch for dipping some time ago. We should sell this stuff, she said. Turns out Heinz just started marketing something in the last two months they call “Kranch” (as someone who used to name consumer products, that might be one of the worst). After we send them a cease and desist (j/k), ours will be called Ranch Up. Do you think we watch too much Shark Tank? 😉

Who’s a shitty blogger? (2018 wrap and dump)

I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but I should probably make one to do a better job documenting our lives. I completely skipped blogging in 2018.  Oops. Life is pretty good, but busy and exhausting. I should try to make this blog more than the year end letter I never actually write (until after the fact) or send to anyone.

We just got back from three weeks in India, our first visit in five years. My brother and sister in law had another baby last spring (a boy), so after avoiding the trip for several years (we went last after their daughter was born), it became unavoidable, even though I fell deathly ill last time and was avoiding it like another plague. My mother in law last came to stay with us three years ago, so we were a bit overdue. I don’t dislike it there, it just doesn’t seem to agree with sensitive Northern European/Midwestern constitution unfortunately. I was less sick this time than I usually am there, so that’s the good news. Yay for expensive new prophylactic antibiotics! The weather was lovely in Nashik (if a bit cooler than usual at night) and the kids had fun. It’s just kind of boring, as I spend a lot of time sitting around.  I made sure to bring some books to catch up on my reading, which was good, except that there isn't anything else to do. Many of his relatives don’t speak English, which is isolating. One of his many cousins happened to get married while we were there, so that was fun for everyone. Indian weddings are crazy.

Thankfully, we booked our last week to be just us four in Goa, which is a beach resort down the western coast and a former Portuguese colony. I felt like a heel leaving his family for a vacation in India, but we needed it, badly. We stayed at a fancy resort on the sea and ate way too much.

I went out to NYC in the spring to visit my sister, and of course it was monsoon season (per usual). After sixish years in Brooklyn, they finally moved to the Bronx to be near her NYPL branch and because they needed more space since her new husband’s adult son is now living with them (long story). I managed to injure my hip somehow (I always walk dozens of miles when I go), and that has sort of been plaguing me since. I went to an orthopedist (for the Bears, hello overqualified) and of course it’s another mysterious unexplainable problem, so I did many weeks of PT, which helped, but it’s still not great. Besides being annoying, it has also affected my mobility enough to contribute to gaining a good ten pounds, which is making me crabby after being the same weight/size for decades, including for years after having the twins.

It probably also didn’t help that the initial injury coincided with my first/only failed foray into anti-anxiety meds, which I’d started the previous year and my Dr. tinkered with unsuccessfully for months. They did nothing. So while I should be exercising to help not be a nervous hot mess, I have pain simply walking. My problem hip is my left where you may recall I spent four months residing back in 2011. Payback time isn’t a good time.

We took my mom and eldest sister with us on our summer vacation to the Hamptons this year. My mom has been doing a lot of genealogy research the last several years, since she left her job as a nurse to be a caregiver for my grandma, then my sister, and her grandkids, and most recently my late step dad. Unfortunately most of it since she lost her mom, who would have gotten a real kick out of all she’s found. She had mentioned the previous year when we were there (without her) that we had some connection to Shelter Island (which none of us had ever been to), but didn’t elaborate until we got there this year.

Well it turns out, across the shortest ferry ride, we had ancestors who owned the whole flipping thing!? We went together to visit Sylvester Manor, which is still there even though most of the land was sold long ago. And that was just the beginning. So the big news is I’m now working on a book on our Brinley ancestors who also owned huge swaths of Newport, RI, Boston, and NJ from the 1600s, because why not take on a ten year project. It gave me some serious direction and work for my September solo trip to New England, which I likely would have taken anyway, but was pretty mind blowing. Planning on NY/NJ next, with England to come.

I literally used to walk every day past Boston’s King’s Chapel cemetery (its very first), from one crappy job to the next, where my ancestors were buried and have a historical plaque proclaiming them “the richest Bostonians of the 18th century” (turns out their portraits are hanging in the Met for crying out loud), and a couple generations back further (to the immigrant one) were the same for the 17th. Just three centuries of Harvard guys. Well that’s about 25 years too late a discovery to be helpful to me. Oh well.  I used to row early morning crew on a river named for the King of England who my 10th great grandfather worked for. Remember I was a scholarship student, whose family barely went to state schools, and thought I was crazy for picking up and moving to Boston. How’s that for mind blowing? Oh and they are also my familial link to the current British royals (via the late Queen mum).

Sagar started a new job in late September, which seems to be going well. The whole process took awhile, but I think it's better. He was done after nine years at his old firm, which was well past ridiculous. The new one is a great firm where he is building their public practice from scratch. It's big time and I'm super proud of him. Of course they also offer market leading infertility benefits, and irony is never lost on me. Too old for that shit, but it did cross my mind for about a nanosecond.

I also turned 42 in late September, which should/would have otherwise been an uneventful Monday. But that morning, my boss/client/whatever you want to call him called me at 9am right after I’d sent him an update email on our project to tell me the evening before his wife (of nearly 30 yrs) had stepped in front of a train. He was still reeling and waiting for their three grown kids (b/g twins + another daughter) to arrive home from all over to be with him. Talk about sad. I had only met her once briefly when they hosted a party for the team at their old home in Barrington Hills back when he was my CMO. I didn’t know she had a PhD and was a clinical psychologist. Just goes to show that you can “have it all” (and be a mental health professional) and still have and succumb to serious mental illness. He is the nicest guy (and basically my professional benefactor, as I’ve been able to work from home on my own hours making beaucoup bucks for the last three plus years because of him), and I’m just glad I was in a position to completely take the project over, so he had one less thing to worry about. Probably one of the saddest funerals I’ve ever been to, and for someone I didn’t even know. I just can’t imagine. Now I get to feel guilty for having my best year yet, and for making a bunch of extra money because his wife killed herself. Mostly using it to travel, which it seems she would have liked.

The twins just turned seven, though as always, the celebration is a month long as their big party was later in January, after all the holiday/break craziness dies down. They are both loving and doing great in school (1st grade), though I’m already worrying about fall when their regular trimester testing will determine if they get tracked for the magnet program (at yet another elementary school for 3rd-6th, and our neighborhood middle for 7th-8th), gifted (at their current/each school), or regular acceleration (which they have now).

She is consistently on track to qualify for magnet (98%ile or higher for both math and reading), while he is right on the cusp for the gifted program (95%ile plus). These are the same kids who didn’t do much “on time” folks, in case you are wondering how relevant most milestones are. So now I’m faced with separating them potentially (worst case), and while they have been in separate classes for three years (and separate preschools back in half day pre-K), it's not the same as a separate school, I'm not thrilled with the prospect. I wish they could stay where they are and get what they need, at a school of our choosing, though the magnet school is another great school of choice (it’s thing is Mandarin immersion, though I don’t know yet if the magnet kids automatically get into that program or not). Two schools with two different schedules (ours now is late start) on two different buses, on different ends of town isn’t ideal. We could move to get him into the school, though that would likely separate them for junior high, and feeds to a different high school, or I could apply to them as a choice school, but the decision would be due before she finds out. Ugh. Maybe we’ll be cramming for 2nd grade testing this summer like a bunch of fools. They don’t send a new group into each program until 5th, if they don’t make the cut for 3rd.

Finally took them to the pedi for their 7 year visit now that we are back and they are continuing off the charts tall. Operation try to chub up the kids continues.

Hence my main genetic offerings, smart and tall. Rock on giant geniuses!

Obligatory year end post (2017)

Well hello there.  I had started a back to school post back in September, but then life got really crazy and it didn't happen.  The kids are doing great.  They just turned six and they are growing like weeds and losing and growing teeth right and left, and loving their new school.  We seriously won the lotto.

We lost my step-father in mid-October at the age of 64.  I still haven't fully come to terms with his passing, as it was very sudden at the end.  He was cruising along with his (stem cell inhibitor) clinical trial and chemo (though he'd lost a lot of weight) and then in late August, he got his first bad scan since January (when he first got into the trial).  This indicated that his aggressive cancer was not going to cooperate and since a bad scan gets you kicked out of a trial (insult meets injury), he wanted to qualify for another (this one immunotherapy) at Mayo, that he got into in September.  But it was sadly already too late.  He was willing to do whatever he could to get to watch his grandkids grow up.

We got to be there at the end.  It was eerily like my grandmother, who passed when I was pregnant with the twins, though she got an extra 30 years.  Within a few hours of our arrival, he was gone.

Dave became my step-dad when I was 8, a role he took seriously for the second half of his life and the vast majority of mine.  He loved us like his own, which was no small feat.  He saved us.

He met my mom when I was my kids' age and starting kindergarten and she was starting her new life.  She's doing as well as can be expected.  We just took her and my eldest sister on vacation with us, which will likely be how we do it for awhile, maybe forever.

It's overall been a pretty shitty cancer year for us.  My brother in law lost his dad and my step-mom lost her mom (both to metastatic liver cancer), and I lost a 40 year old high school friend and the twins' best friends lost their grandma who we saw every week at dance (both to metastatic esophageal cancer).  My kids have been to more funerals just this year than I did in my entire childhood.

I had my best year professionally since I went out on my own, but now that the kids are in school full time, I'm thinking of going in-house full time.  I will never be satisfied.

Speaking of that, we finally went to see Hamilton for our November anniversary. It was great.  Get the soundtrack, it's at least half the experience.

Wait for it

Death doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners
And the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
And we keep living anyway
We rise and we fall
And we break
And we make our mistakes
And if there’s a reason I’m still alive
When everyone who loves me has died
I’m willing to wait for it
I’m willing to wait for it

Well hello...Summer

Summer seems to start earlier every year, so we've been trying to make the most of May.  My step father is still fighting his cancer, and undergoing chemo and his clinical trial, but since he is still feeling ok (and his latest scan, the week of my sister's wedding, showed his aggressive tumors are shrinking), we decided we should all take a little trip together. 

We went over to Holland, Michigan for the final Tulip Festival weekend and had a great time.  The weather was amazing, which made up the many of the flowers being past prime (again those earlier summers).  Our twins found two random flowers all alone and we declared them the twins.

The kids finish up preschool (forever!) next week and then their fourth year of summer camp (now up to four hours/day, yay!) starts right away, which is great because I've been keeping busy with work (my biggest project yet, a repeat of one I did last spring, but this time I'm doing it mostly myself).  It should wrap up at the end of June and then we are headed back to the Hamptons for the week of the Fourth, since back to school (kindergarten!!) events in mid-August required a rescheduling of our usual vacation time.  No showhouse for me this year, as it starts in late July. :(

The kids are doing great and while it's been crazy, I'm so glad that they each got to go to their respective schools this year.  We've met tons of new friends and are super excited about our new school. They will be in different classes since they always separate sibs, but they are old pros and will have some things together, including the bus rides.  They will be 5 1/2 in a few shorts weeks.  The time does fly my friends.

I'm working on figuring out what to do with myself come September when the kids are in school full time (~9-3 plus bus time).  I may do contract work while we get used to the new schedule, or if something great full time comes along, I may do that.  Anything to avoid all the home projects that still don't get done with kids in school just over two hours a day.  Ack!  I'm really not looking forward to finding someone to come help us in the afternoons/evenings (see also: why I'm still a SAHM) for when the kids get home, making dinner, watching them until we get home.  Ugh, time to bit the bullet after I procrastinate most of the summer.

Happy Memorial Day weekend!  Happy Summer!

Amazing News!

Enjoying our first snow in three months

(which is already gone a few days later)

I've droned on for years about the kids' schools and I've been researching them even longer, since we've lived here nearly a dozen years now.  It's hard to believe that they are starting all day kindergarten in just five short months.  We registered at our neighborhood school (a STEM academy) last month, and then had to apply to enter a lottery for our top choice open enrollment school.  It was seriously more nerve wracking that anything I've applied for myself.  I had to write essays, though it was supposedly a straight lottery, so it drove me crazy that I couldn't do anything to up our chances.  And given we had two who had to get winning numbers (or we'd have to decide to split/try again next year if only one did), and how low acceptance rates have been in recent years, it was even more unlikely.

By some random act of luck, we found out yesterday that they were both accepted.  Unbelievable.

Beyond being ranked in amazing company (I'm looking at you Chicago's Classicals and the suburbs' best), it is a smaller school (about half the size of our neighborhood school), all while being K-8 (bye bye middle school hell), super diverse, with mixed grade classes and a curricular focus on multiple intelligences.  It's starts/ends later than other schools, and they'll take the bus together since it's several miles away, but conveniently located otherwise.  It's basically like private school, without the bills. I will not miss having them in two different schools. 

We literally don't have to worry about where they are going to school again until high school in nine years.  We also love our neighborhood school, if for some reason it doesn't work out.  I wish I could say my work here is done, but of course it's all just the beginning.  And I wish I could claim some credit, but unlike conceiving, carrying, birthing, nursing, getting them to finally walk and talk and potty train (by force), there wasn't a damn thing I could do.  Craziness.  Now we may never move, since we'd have to stay in district anyway.

Work is keeping DH super busy, so he can't take off for a proper spring break. :(  Instead, I'm taking the kids up to visit family in sunny WI, as my step-father is still fighting his cancer valiantly (it has spread quickly and he's now doing a clinical trial as well as more chemo) and they love nothing more than their cousins.  Then I head to NYC for my solo spring break.  Can't wait!

Hamptons Designer Showhouses (Part Two: Traditional Home)

Traditional Home sponsors THE annual Hamptons Designer Showhouse, which while it is a spec house, it is truly a showhouse for designers, as there are many represented.  My favorite room was definitely the living room by Kate Singer Home.  I could have just pitched a little tent in front of the fireplace (and under those panels) and lived their happily.  But the outside was great too, with a pool, tennis court...  I should have gotten a job on Wall Street.  This house was a lot busier, so I got lots of photos bombs to go with my sketchy IPhone photos.  Sweet!

The house was up on a crazy hill and they had us park in the driveway, which was weird.  Hello parking brake I never use, nice to meet you.

The Living Room!  Swoon...