2022 was AMAZING and also SO HARD, 2023 is great so far

I really wanted to write about 2022. And if I don't write here, where else? I don't have the patience for journaling anymore, it's sad.

A year of awesome travels, wonderful concerts (including my own choir's!), family reunions, family visits, visits to friends we hadn't seen in years, photo shoots, a graduation, sending youngest kid to college and beginning empty-nesting having moved and getting used to a new area, community, and church. Planting hundreds of plants! Significant change. Life altering.

Where to start?

OK, some chronological info doesn't hurt, since I haven't blogged in so long. 

Let's go back to 2021. After looking for over six months, we found a house we really liked literally on the day before we dropped our son for his second year of college. I must say here, that the day we dropped him of for his first year (in 2020) was the same day his only remaining great-grandmother died of COVID (at 94 -- age was a factor -- in Brazil). His grandma was her first born as was my husband (who was born at her house) and our son (and I am writing this while my sons's orchestra plays Elgar's "Nimrod" Enigma Variation (No.8), which is often played at funerals and it's gorgeous and sad, I'm watching the live-stream of their concert in California as I write this).

So we found the house in August, bought it on October 12, put our house on sale (it was insane work), moved to the new house in November 2021, and sold the old house on December 2. Then we traveled to Brazil for the holidays.

So we started 2022 in Brazil with family -- my parents, brother and family, two of my husband's 3 brothers and their family, plus some aunts and cousins on K's side. It was a chaotic trip because my mom and brother had pneumonia after Christmas, and my dad, whose leg hurt a lot, was diagnosed with thrombosis (blood clot)! 😱 I even had to spend a night in the hospital with him. They recovered well, but we came back with the promise that my parents would have someone living with them from now on. 

The Spring semester of 2022 was hard in various ways. Our youngest, now a senior in high school, had a 50 minute commute to school because we had moved from our house 8 minutes away. My commute, however, which was160 miles round trip every other day for 9 years changed to be only 30 miles, which was amazing. Our oldest struggled in school which was heartbreaking for me. I spent part of his 20th birthday in March listening to Coldplay and crying because for worry, feeling super impotent. Sigh... We drove down to see his wind symphony concert in February and we drove to Montreal (after so many years!) during Spring break.

My parents came to visit in May for the music concerts and graduation of our youngest son. It was a short visit, but we had fun picking up our oldest son in Tennessee (after he came back from a music trip to the West Coast and got himself a girlfriend -- that relationship ended after the summer, but not until he had already bought several tickets to visit her in Colorado!) and visiting New York City to drop them off to fly to Finland. We had an awesome (if expensive) photo shoot in Brooklyn and a "whimsical" stay at the TWA hotel at JFK airport. I highly recommend it. Especially the rooftop pool facing the runway. I should post photos. 😉😉 

On our way back from NYC we went to the AMAZING Coldplay Concert in DC. It was a bucket-list item for me, to go with husband and sons, especially the oldest who's a huge fan. I sobbed through all of "Fix You" (and filmed it too). The only "downside" is that there were so many friends who were there and we only found out after the show.

The summer was great and brought about a wonderful trip -- postponed from the pandemic in 2020. Before the epic trip, we traveled to Massachusetts where my husband had a week-long conference and I had the opportunity to visit with friends we hadn't seen in a long time. Unfortunately, when we got back home and picked my parents up after their visit to my brother's family in Finland (followed by a week in London), I found out that I had COVID the day before my birthday and I was deathly afraid that I had transmitted it to my parents -- thankfully I did not! My parents went back to Brazil unscathed (but later caught it and did fine, it was super mild).

At the end of July, my husband and I flew to Denmark for a day and a half (I got to meet his friends in Aarhus and see the incredible rainbow exhibit at the art museum -- another bucket list item). Then we flew to London where we met the boys and stayed for four full day at my cousins' house. After London, the four of us joined my mother-in-law and a group of 70 people from Brazil and the U.S. in a wonderful tour through Turkey -- we visited all the seven churches, flew on a balloon at sunrise in Capadoccia, and enjoyed a 3 night Greek Island cruise before the boys flew to Tennessee from Athens (our youngest had no orientation, nothing, just got to the university the day before his freshman year started!). On the way back my husband and I flew via Denmark and spent a lovely day in Copenhagen where we saw so much in one day! 💓(I posted photos to Facebook)

In the summer, prior to the trip, the boys also worked a lot, and our oldest started counseling and medication, which made things better in the new semester at school. And all of a sudden, without much preparation, and no actual transition (dropping off the youngest son, etc), we were empty-nesters! 😱

I joined a local choir (we had two Christmas concerts!), and bought tickets to lots of local concerts. We also started attending a new church and meeting new people. We drove to see a few of our sons' (now both of them!) Wind Symphony concerts. My choir had two lovely Christmas concerts and then we all drove to Florida for my husband's family reunion. The first time all 17 of us were together since 2018! We were in a huge house in Orlando Florida, and my husband's aunt, a cousin and his family joined us, followed by another uncle. There were 22 of us at the house! 

After New Year's, all of use embarked on a 4 night cruise to the Bahamas that was partly to make up for a cruise we "missed" in January 2021 (although that one was a week-long cruise and my parents were going too) and it was lovely. It was hard to drop off both boys in Tennessee after spending such a long time with them, but we met up with them a week after in Portland, Oregon, where my  husband had a conference! It was just for the weekend, but wonderful to see them. 

We have also gone to three of their concerts so far this year (Kelvin is also playing in the orchestra!). I am still in my choir and we have continued to go to concerts. We saw a local production of Rent which was really great. This musical debuted in 1996, the same year we moved to the United States, but I had never seen it. 

So far, 2023 has been great, and I hope it continues this way. It can't be as epic as 2022 with all the amazing international trips, but we'll be going to Brazil twice (at least Kelvin and I), in June and in December. Seeing family is a priority since my parents are 82 amd 85 years old. 

I am glad I wrote this post!

P.S. I have to gloss over the "hard part" and we don't even talk to the family and friends about these issues to protect the privacy of our kid.

My CRAZY Life

Things have calmed down somewhat, but there is still plenty of CRAZY to come!!

If you're wondering about my brother-in-law, he had a successful surgery and got out of the hospital in only 5 days after the amputation. The initial recovery was excellent and he's still recovering well, but the "phantom feelings" and nerve sensations in the leg that he doesn't have are really bothering him a lot right now. If you pray, please keep him in your thoughts and prayers. Sigh... we saw him yesterday.

I will try to blog again soon, but the past few weeks were simply insane. My parents arrived on the day I taught my last classes, but they didn't come to our house. We picked them up at the airport (late at night) and drove them my aunt's house so they could help care for my disabled uncle for a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, I printed my final exams and gave them to two graduate students who administered them for me, because I had to travel to Florida for five days with my son's robotics team and their teacher. We drove in two cars, 12 hours the first day (Thursday) to St. Augustine, visited Kennedy Space Center the next day, then took it easy on Saturday. On Sunday was their competition (they finished 8/23, similar to last year in California), then we still drove 4 hours from Orlando to Savannah, GA. On Monday we drove back.

It was harder than the California trip last year because of all the driving, and also, more kids. We had 6 kids last year and were in one mini-van, this year there were 8 kids... and they kind of trashed my new (to us) mini-van. :-(

After I came back I had to go pick up the final exams and grade them, then I drove to get my parents, then helped cook lunch at the elementary school, and volunteered taking photos of an event in the evening. This Saturday were the day-long concerts for my son's high school (morning, afternoon and night!) that I didn't want my parents to miss, then yesterday we drove two hours to spend Mother's day with my mother-in-law and K's two brothers (K4 had driven down from Canada with his family to see K2 after the surgery).

Now I have to gear up to go on my son's 8th grade class trip, then comes the graduation, my husband's birthday, my son's birthday, trips with my parents, etc...

Sigh... and there's more, but I'll write about that later!

P.S. Last Thursday my husband became a U.S. citizen too! I think he's happier than I am about it. He even made a speech! It was kind of cute. ;-)

(Long Overdue) Update

I'm sure I have one or more posts with this exact same* title, but I don't mind.
   *this is possibly one of those "wrong," redundant expressons, oh well! ;-P

After resurrecting a post deep from the drafts folder two days ago, it's time for a real update.

sigh...

It's not "writer's block" exactly, but its part and parcel of living with ADHD. Certain things just feel so overwhelming! Blogging is generally therapeutic for me, it helps me process what I'm going through and also to record life's events (a really important facet of blogging in my view), but it's one of the things that I also "avoid" for fear of getting sucked in and not doing what I need to be doing. This doesn't really work because I find many other avenues of procrastinating and avoiding work that are way less interesting and productive than blogging, but well... that's what I do.

So, if you're wondering, everything went super well with the citizenship interview a week and a half ago. I was afraid it would take very long and even though our appointments were at 1:05 and 1:45 pm I made arrangements for both of our sons to go home from school (they leave at 5 pm!). My husband only waited 15 minutes for his appointment and I less than 10. In addition, the very upbeat African American lady who did my interview called my husband to come too, so we could "celebrate this moment" together.

There is nothing really "celebratory" about the perfunctory interview. (1)You swear to say the truth,  then (2) they do an "English exam" (answering one super ultra simple question and writing one short sentence that they dictate to you -- in my case it was "What money do you pay to the government?" "Taxes!" and then she says "Write here: 'We pay taxes.'"), then (3) there are the six history questions from the 100 questions we study; and finally (4) they go over the application, including checking phone numbers, trips out of the country (she declined to write down my super short trips to Argentina and Canada last Fall because she said it didn't matter, while my husband's interviewer wrote it all down), and asking all the sensitive questions at the end, about crime, and terrorism, and communism, etc. They also make sure that we understand we will have to pledge allegiance, and serve the country, bear arms, or other non-combatant alternatives (I guess in the case of females?) and it's done. It takes less than 20 minutes -- for straightforward, "clean" cases such as ours. I'm sure they keep anyone who says yes to anything much longer.

Yeah, that was it. There will be no celebration whatsoever the day we do the swearing in. We will get our passports ASAP and I will immediately register to vote.

Side note: my husband wants to register as an independent and doesn't want to donate money or work on any campaigns, ever, I don't know if I will try to convince him otherwise. He just watched a bunch of documentaries about Waco & he's mad at both parties. He agrees with everything the left stands for, but he doesn't feel comfortable being involved in politics, I guess I don't blame him, but I'm desperate to do something, anything!

What else...

Yeah, I'm undergoing my review for the renewal of my three year contract (which doesn't expire until next Spring, but that's how they do it, they renew a year and a half before the end of it). I have to prepare a mini-dossier and I was supposed to be writing my teaching statement now, not a blog post.

In six and a half years I had never read my course evaluations. That's now I bury my head in the sand, ostrich like, but just yesterday I learned from this article that most ADHD folks have "rejection sensitivity disphoria" -- I TOTALLY HAVE THAT!! This in addition to other things that I already knew I experienced, but didn't have the right terms to express: we have an "interest-based nervous system" which doesn't respond to regular incentives (importance, priority-based) and "emotional hyperarousal" -- oh, yes! The feelings of frustration when something goes wrong are HORRIBLE and physically overwhelming and just don't go away! Pretty much ever! (I mean... after a long while they get better). 

In any case. I had to read them and for a few moments there I nearly died (and began writing a desperate blog post which I didn't finish), but then I continued reading the next day and I got over the few negative comments. Most are great and very kind! YAY!!!

So, yeah... that's what's been going on. There are other things I need to blog about -- upcoming trip to LA, I'm singing in a choir again!, my parents coming in the summer, my brother abroad... and more that I can't remember now. I hope to be back soon!

In 2017...

... I had two amazing trips that were only 7-8 days long: to the West Coast with my son, his teacher, and the Robotics team (May 1-8) and to Patagonia (Argentina & Chile, Oct. 30 - Nov 7). The natural beauty I saw on these two trips was incredible, particularly on the one to Patagonia/ Tierra del Fuego.

... I planted morning glory (one of my favorite flowers) again for the first time since 2007! I cannot believe it had been TEN YEARS! :-( I seriously feel like sitting down and crying thinking of that.  (I did that with some help of a lovely friend who shared four seedlings with me to add to the seeds I'd put in the soil).

... After one year dragging my feed with indecision I got my own laptop at work and I'm not very happy with it. Because I decided to with a PC instead of a Mac (long story of grievances) I don't have administrator privileges and cannot install ANYTHING, not even software updates sometimes, without calling the IT tech at work. Talk about a nearly useless machine. Oh, and I'd always hated the way Macs dealt with photos. Guess what, stupid Windows 10 literally does it the same way (you cannot preview your photos and just go through them anymore on the PC. I hate Windows 10 -- which  is made for touch screens, it feels very "Mac like" with a passionate rage! :-( If I'd known about the admin issue I would definitely have gotten a Mac. Sigh...

... I watched LOTS of movies on DVD & Blu-ray and even some in the theater. I have a post about this coming.

... We FINALLY decided to become citizens of this country in the worst year ever to do so -- the horrible first year of that orange man's "regime."

... I intensely helped a family of refugees get settled (and now I feel guilty that I am too busy to continue to help them much).

... I actually got to teach a literature class that went extremely well which was a bittersweet experience to say the least. 

... for the very first time in my life I exercised 5 or almost 6 times a week with a group of friends & with a video for about 6 weeks in June -- but then NOT ever AGAIN more than once or twice a week (they just started doing it at 6 am yesterday, but I cannot handle 6 am, unfortunately, I did 7 am, and IN THE SUMMER NO LESS, but no, not 6 am, even less in the winter).

... We saw everyone in my husband's family twice (I also have a post about this).

... We did some long overdue work to the outside of the house (never got to post about this): trimming of bushes that hadn't been done in years, mulching of backyard, and we bought a power wash and power-washed the driveway, the front steps and the back patio. Still remains to be done: the siding. (and re-staining the deck).

... I taught a private class for 4 weeks in the summer whose compensation will probably make us pay EVEN MORE taxes, just like the 8K translation that took me a year and a half to complete just to cost us pretty much half in taxes. And it's infuriating to know that the new tax law won't help us at all, only the rich. :-(

... Oh, and for the first time ever I spent a week at a beach in this country and it was amazing! My father-in-law would have LOVED it. We are carrying on his legacy by doing the things he enjoyed together as a family.

Those are all the significant things I can think about right now. Lots of the same: soccer for younger son, swim team for both sons, K working a lot.

My apologies for the fact that most of these have an "oh, but..." side to them. That's life, I guess. Most things have a bad side. :-(

actually written on 1/9/2018, but intended to have been written on 12/31/2017

Found!

Last time I blogged I was upset because I couldn't find something I'd written and I found it the next day on my phone's notes.

I will post it, maybe later today, but I feel I need to write an update since I have been posting very sparsely, no? Sigh...

I'm at the orthodontist's office with my youngest son right now and this morning I had to drive to school to take an inhaler to my oldest (he hardly ever needs it, but I guess running during P.E. made him wheezy, I hope he'll keep the inhaler in his backpack and use it as needed).

The past two weekends were extremely busy, first we did our annual "mega-volunteering" for our church's Christmas community outreach event: a very involved "guided tour" of 1 AD Bethlehem. My husband and I are guides as is our 15 year old with a classmate. We help for over 4 hours 5 nights straight (plus a couple of hours two days before for the dress rehearsal).

This past weekend our high-schooler and his classmates had the Christmas concerts weekend: Candlelight concert Friday night with a repeat performance Saturday afternoon, performances at church in the morning and a Pop concert on Saturday night.

I'm tired! But I'm happy that yesterday I was able to put up a small Christmas tree. I hope to share photos soon!

Appointment is done and we're off!

Alive, busy, happy

I'm alive, very busy (not excessively so, thankfully! Leisure time guaranteed), and happy.

I was angsty before the semester started, for several reasons, but now I feel quite at peace, which is great. We're much more organized this year, my husband is helping with making a meal plan for the week and we're spending less and eating better!

OK, I'm about to drive 80 miles in pouring rain, so hopefully I'll continue to be fine. I always think about my probability of being in an accident, but there's nothing I can do. It's how I operate, it doesn't make me less happy. ;-)

I added so many labels to this tiny post, it's quite funny! I hope to blog again soon.

Busy Weeks 5-6 (Before & After Photos!)

I've almost forgotten weeks 5-6 already, but I'd like to write about them before I write about weeks 8 & 9 and before grueling weeks 10 & 11 begin tomorrow.

I guess I could sum up weeks 5-6 in a few words: working out, helping refugee family, swim meets, house guests, French horn lessons, yard work and house cleaning. I guess having that followed by week 7 was perfect, no?

On week 5 we didn't have the house guests yet (my brother-in-law and his family and my mother-in-law), they arrived on Monday of week 6, but we had a swim meet (only my oldest son competed this year) and a French horn lesson and I worked out every day with my friends in the morning in addition to spending some time helping the refugees. We started cleaning the yard -- my husband began to use our brand new pressure washer and he loved it! I took tons of before and after photos and will share some below.

On week 6, the family arrived on Monday and I continued exercising in the morning (my sister-in-law joined us for two days and was really sore) and even did double workouts on Thursday going to yoga and feeling the strongest ever. SIL and I went to the Farmer's market and I helped the refugee again for several hours on Thursday and Friday. We had a swim meet in our town and Grandma got to see her oldest grandson swimming, but K was late with my younger son and our nephews and they missed Kelvin's races.

Before, WIP (work in progress), and After photos, I tried to select as few as possible, but I take too many photos!

The most satisfying before & after set: 

power washing:

 Cleaning back brick patio:

weeding, power washing, spreading new sand:

 Weeding back flower bed:

April,then June, WIP, mulched

 Last, but not least, weeding.

Raised bed, and some of the back (WIP) --

the part with the most poison-ivy.

  It was because of this weeding (and also hugging my cats) that I got some poison ivy right before we traveled. :-(

P.S. I also changed the knobs of the vanities in our three bathrooms, but I only have before and WIP photos so maybe I'll share those another time, together with the 2011 photos of the before & after of kitchen cabinet knobs! ;-P

Week 4: Exercising and Helping Refugee Family

This has been the most intense week yet, bordering CRAZY intensive!

And I just had to create two new labels: Exercising and Helping/Volunteering. The second one is already a HUGE part of my life as you may recall from last year's post about my "'indiscriminate and reckless' helping," but this year the helping is quite difference and more practical.

OK, so thanks to my friends Laura & Cali I worked out SIX DAYS this week, starting Sunday, and for four days (Sunday to Wednesday) we did it at SEVEN IN THE MORNING! I never, ever, EVER even wake up at 7 am, only when I'm in a trip and have to. I'm a night owl, so I love sleeping in. I did, it though! And I've enjoyed working out a lot. It's mostly Barre led by our friend Laura, mixed with some Pop Physique (yesterday and today we actually did it with Pop Physique DVDs).

Starting Monday, I began to make and drink a green leaves (Kale, Collard greens) + frozen fruit + orange juice smoothie after I got home because I need the calcium. I am bound to have osteoporosis, given my slight frame and the fact that my mom has it really bad, so I need to do this: strength training (Time magazine from last week) and calcium rich foods.

I was really tired on the first few days, particularly because I didn't sleep much one one of the nights, but I've been getting enough sleep and also taking my medication some days (Wednesday and today), which helps with staying alert. I'm glad that many of our friends have been joining us in exercising, so I think that I'll be able to exercise a lot and be in incredible shape by the time we travel to Florida. This will be the first time in my life that I'll actually be pretty fit at the beach!!

I also helped the newly arrived refugee family this week a lot. They are from Congo (but lived in a refugee camp in Rwanda for the past 17 years) and have six kids, aged 20 to 6 years old. Last Saturday I drove them home from church (in a large 15 people van -- I hated driving it) and spent time with them walking to a local park (after we gave them a used soccer ball). Then I visited them Tu, Wed. and Thu. On Wednesday I also went grocery shopping for them, in addition to helping them learn how to use the cleaning products in the house and trying to teach them how to use a washer and drying (they still can't do it on their own).

Everything is new for them and they don't speak the language (only the dad speaks some French), so it's overwhelming both for them and for me. I hope to write more about this later, I need to go clean my house now, it's a wreck! (also because my husband has been working like crazy with summer teaching and we've been watching movies too). 

Week 2 Recap, Week 3 almost recap

I've been busy with all kinds of things lately.
                     ... this was the original first sentence of the post...

But week 3 is almost ending in a complete meltdown (mine), so I can hardly even think of whatever happened last week to try to recap it. Sigh...

So, yeah, last week was ok. I could have been more productive, but then, who couldn't?

I give you a tentative Week 2 recap (preview of all weeks here):
The party on Sunday was good, it was quite a success (because it ended up being a surprise for the graduate, even though she had cooked for our "Game night") and I have some photos for you! I like the cell phone ones better, but the blogger app doesn't work, so here are the DSLR camera ones. ;-P

 potato salad prepared by the unsuspecting graduate for her own party.

 Her husband took this one... you get to see my hair.

 

Passion fruit "mousse" (more like a cream ;-)

arepas! :-)

My brother-in-law arrived on Monday and K picked him up. I don't remember Monday -- oh, it's coming back to me now! On Monday I went with my son's class (and all the 5th and 6th graders at our school) to a water park. On Tuesday I missed the farmer's market. :-(
    BIL left on Wednesday morning to pick up my mother-in-law from the airport and that evening we had another game night, this time with our friend's brother just arrived from class trip.
    On Thursday I didn't go to yoga :-( and did three loads of laundry, when I was going to hang the first one, look what I encountered outside!!

 I hate snakes!

I had to force him not to play with it!

That evening we also had the 8th grade graduation and as a parent of a 7th grader I needed to stay and help with the cleaning. It was a great reception with TONS of food! Next year will be just as good, if not better! (we'll make sure it is).

On Friday it was K's birthday and I got up super-early (after having stayed late watching all the extras in the DVD of the movie we watched that night) to cook my husband breakfast (he had to go teach by 9 am). His mom and brother arrived in the afternoon (just as I'd left to go grocery shopping) and we spent the weekend with them (playing board games and talking, etc. --> I should have another post for board games. We like to play Dominion and Seven Wonders and we got Ticket to Ride Rails and Sails for K's birthday -- it's much better than plain TTR!).
         Week 3:
Thankfully K didn't have to work on Monday and when we went to eat out at Olive Garden to celebrate my youngest son's 13th birthday. I again cooked breakfast to serve in bed to him on Tuesday and mother- and brother-in-law left to New York where he was going to have a doctor's appointment on Wednesday.

What messed up week 3 (this week that hasn't ended yet) was putting this together, trying to mail it, figuring out we had forgotten a document, copying the document, writing a letter, getting it notarized, etc... and hence my almost meltdown. Good thing I mailed it today. Oh, yeah! And we've been having plumbing problems (leaky faucets and toilet tanks) and we finally had a plumber take care of it all yesterday afternoon. It sure is a relief to have a good plumber!

Oh, yeah, and we are sponsoring yet another family of refugees (the fourth one!). This time a family of 8 (6 children from 7-10, the oldest, at 23 had to stay behind) from the Congo. I cooked dinner for them yesterday and, with my not-so-good French tried to communicate as best as I could with the father of the family who speaks some French too. I should blog about this experience, I hope I can do it.

I also need to blog about the films we've been watching...

I hope this wasn't a too horribly boring "update" post!

Crazy week of little sleep

Quick update because I need to go to bed.

Last week was pretty crazy! It started with a super intensely packed & exhausting weekend because last Sunday was the day when I cooked dinner for all my students (around 30 people). Everything went well, with the help of my husband (who started coming with me last semester for the first time in five years!), but it was stressful and tiresome.

Then, Monday night (with no sleep!) and Tuesday came along and the week got crazier. One great thing about last week is that we ended up having two "game nights" with friends who used to live here, but who were living further South for the past three years and are getting ready to move to Tulsa, OK over the summer. We got together on Monday and Wednesday and it was great.

Thursday was an ok day (yoga, some shopping, and a dinner date with my husband to celebrate our 27 years together), then, I had to pack for over 36 hours away. I left on Friday morning and had to leave straight from work to drive for several hours to meet up with my son who was attending a music festival with his school.

We stayed overnight with a good friend who moved from Brazil to the U.S. three years ago, but who we rarely see. They live in the house where my brother-in-law and his family used to live and it was the first time we stayed there for the night after they moved to Egypt three years ago. It was fine, much better than the first time we visited back in 2014, that felt really weird and sad.

Since I see my friend so rarely, we stayed up until 1 am talking about our sons, our families, etc... we literally had years to catch up on. On Saturday my son had a concert in the morning with his band and the bell choirs (10 of them!) and then I got to spend a couple more hours with my friend before visiting my aunt and uncle. That visit was fun because my cousin's son, who is almost three years old and the cutest boy ever, was there and L, my 12 year old, enjoyed playing with him.

We stopped at a couple of grocery stores on the way and didn't get home until 11 pm! Then, K & I had so much to catch up on (especially with all of my conversations with friends and family over the weekend) that we were talking until nearly 4 am. And today I did three loads of laundry and had to spend a lot of time in the soccer field with my son (last Sunday he had to go with his coach).

Needless to say, we're exhausted! I took a short nap earlier this evening, that's why I'm still up, but I'm headed to bed now! 

P.S. I'm really mad that I didn't realize there was a new SNL last night, so I missed it. It's ok, though, because I was talking to my husband. TV is not as important as family!

Blame it all (blog hiatus mostly) ;-P on the birthday boy

My son turned 15 two and a half weeks ago and I didn't even blog about it! Or about anything else, for that matter.

The main reason is that with him constantly gaming and editing videos, I have hardly ANY access to our only desktop! :-(  And I don't like to use my macbook pro that needs urgent file purging to work ok. (and a secondary reason is that I have NOT installed any other blogging apps on my phone, so I continue not to be able to blog from the phone! :-( :-( :-(

So... what have you missed? TONS ;-P

If we're friends on Facebook, you'll know that on International Women's Day my husband and I went to DC to get our Brazilian passports and we ended up participating of a Women's March protest in front of the White House. That was awesome because minutes before the march started pouring in, we were there looking at that place and feeling horribly dismal and upset.

Too bad we came back home to find out that our youngest son needed a new passport too! What a failure!! Sigh...

I wanted to blog more about my "Volunteering" Spring Break, so I'll leave it at that for now (many many hours of volunteering, but, thankfully, also three fitness classes [two yoga], YAY! Conversely, I haven't been to one in two weeks [since then!! oh no!!]).

I still cannot believe that the craziness had taken various hits and that we have a temporary break and some respite from the constant anguish and despair. I'm indescribably relieved that the second banned was blocked even before it went into effect and there are no words to describe my relief about the health care replace failure. I literally want to cry for joy.

The hard part is that we still don't know what is going to happen in the rest of this presidency, there's no predicting it. :-(  Have you been reading/following Dan Rather's Facebook updates? It's the BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED since the election. Reading what that man writes keeps me sane (yesterday's post is most excellent, and a great "sample"). I like him better than Michael Moore who can be a little incendiary and who's been very very quiet lately... don't know why. I hope his health is OK.

Ok, what else? Well, there's some more, but maybe it's worth saving the juiciest bits for stand-alone posts.

Dirty confession (that also deserves its own post, but is too silly not to mention): I have become a  LuLaRoe legging semi-addict, but I'm working on quitting, slowly, but surely. Sigh...

I'll end here, this is a jumbled and long enough post to break the hiatus, isn't it?

2016's Final Blogging Stretch

Last year I had to write 19 posts on Dec. 31st to reach my goal of 215 posts in 2015. The goal is considerably lower this year (116 posts), so I have to write only 10 more after this post, and I've got two days to do it! And the good thing is that I have a lot to say, so it should be easy. I'll start with a look back at the past week.

Quick holiday trip update:
After we arrived here in Montreal last Friday, I spent nearly three days cooking for three families (13 people). The meals were relatively simple ones, but I was the main person cooking. K's uncle's wife helped to clean lot as did my husband and my sister-in-law, who was also in charge of setting the table and decorating on Christmas Eve.

We decided to do our Secret Santa and open presents on Christmas Eve because on Sunday K and his brother took their uncle's family on a driving tour to show them Montreal. It was really cold and most everything was closed, so it didn't take them too long.

They left on Monday and I spent many hours at the outlet helping my sister-in-law with her Boxing Day (more or less equivalent to Black Friday in the U.S.) shopping excursion (she took advantage of the holiday promotional prices to buy things for her mom to take to Brazil).

Since then we've been mostly staying up late and sleeping in, then playing board games and going out to eat, first to an all-you-can-eat sushi place and then in a Brazilian bakery. We also had to go to stores to return Christmas gifts and K ended up buying a bargain priced snow-board, bindings, and boots for himself!

I am still recovering from a pretty bad sinus infection and my husband also had a nasty cold, but we're much better. The guys (K, his brother and our two sons) were going skiing tomorrow, but the forecast is pretty bad weather for the place where the ski station is located, so I guess they will go on Sunday -- even though we were planning to start driving back then. It looks like we'll have to drive straight back home on Monday (our younger son goes back to school on Tuesday).

Other things we did: I read two books and have started a third one! We watched one movie (the new one about Pelé, the Brazilian soccer player, more on this later) and played lots of games!

Thanksgiving in Michigan... thinking of other bloggers during trip

I'm still grieving and upset, but I am actively choosing to avoid listening to or reading the news. I feel a knot in my stomach just by looking at email updates from Time magazine (we're still print subscribers) and thinking about their (now dreaded for me) "person of the year" issue. Sigh... My dear friend wrote very poignantly a couple of days ago about the thought of "empty tomorrows." I've always looked forward to future days, but right now it's hard to look into the unpredictable future that awaits those living in this country. OK, moving on from that, this is supposed to be an "Update" post and those are often cheery.

Last week we traveled to a place close to Michigan's Southwestern shore to spend Thanksgiving with K's cousin D who is finishing his master's degree there. D and his wife are expecting a baby girl (due Jan. 1st) and it was very nice to spend time with them. We did a quick side trip to Chicago on Friday and we played lots of board game. Their friends had a potluck Thanksgiving celebration at the house of their friend who is a pretty well-known Brazilian food blogger (I'm linking to her Christmas dinner "post" so you can see some of the decorations that were actually used in our dinner. I have photos, maybe I'll include some of them later). It was nice, and I was the one providing all of the "traditional" American Thanksgiving touches: cranberry sauce (I had made "only" 14 quarts of cranberry sauce for my son's elementary school banquet last week and I had taken leftovers), the Yams with Pecan Praline (a recipe I posted TEN YEARS ago!), roasted Brussels sprouts, and butternut squash "pudding" (crust-less pie).

What I really wanted to blog about, though, is that during the whole trip I kept thinking of the bloggers and former bloggers who live (or grew up) in places not too far from our route or from our destination. When we drove around Pittsburgh and into Ohio, I thought of Jenna who grew up there. Then, when I saw the sign for Fort Wayne I thought of my friend and former blogger Professing Mama. And when we went to Chicago I thought of Doctor Mama Esquire who lives there now, and of Jamie who is not that far away. I still want to meet these women! And I really miss all those who quit blogging along the way and who are one of the main reasons I'm on facebook a lot.

OK, gotta go because I have lots to do! I have one week of classes left (YAY!) and I have tons of grading to do. Hopefully I'll blog more in the coming days. 19 more posts to get to my "116" total for 2016. Yeah, I'm doing that, just to be cute. That was the main reason why I skipped "NaBloPoMo" for the first time in 9 years (with the exception of 2012 when I wrote only 25 times in November) -- very silly, right? In a way I'm glad I wasn't blogging daily. There would have been lots of anguish and despair about the election. Sigh... 2016 was a crazy year, that's for sure! :-(   

List of Updates

- We drove my parents to the JFK airport in New York on Monday. LOOOONG day driving for over 12 hours. Sigh... They arrived safely in Brazil.

- Car situation still not resolved (and my poor dad super stressed about it). Tank was flushed, but car won't start. Of course it's NOT in the Toyota dealership & I guess the mechanics don't have any experience with hybrids. We're trying to figure out a solution.

- I'm packing to fly to Brazil tomorrow night. I hate packing and the days before trips. So much stress! Thankfully if I forget anything my husband follows in two weeks.

- Boys will miss the last three weeks of swim team, but they have been swimming SUPER well, it's awesome to see. I even want them to swim/have some swim lessons maybe in Brazil (except that we'll be traveling most of the time).

- I STILL HAVE NOT planted flowers that I bought into the vases that I always have by the front steps in the summer. HORRIBLE, no? I should stop blogging and go do it. Sigh...

more later.

Crazy Changing (& Traveling & Hosting) Times (and I hate Facebook)

Sigh...

Sorry, but I have to begin with a sigh.

Can't believe it's been 20 days since I last blogged. Unbelievable.

Such few people from my old circle blog today (or read this blog), though, and I don't think I'm picking up any new readers or making any new bloggy friends, that I end up spending a lot of time on stupid facebook. I know I should simply unfollow (-->word not recognized by spell check!) most of the 600+ people in my friend list and stick to old-blogger-friends-who-now-facebook-instead and just not be there, but, yeah... blogging is so... I don't know 2004, 5, 6, 7?

And then there are other apps that allow us to talk to friends and family and too much time on my phone.

OK, quick update because I need to write two or three or more blog posts if I truly want to catch up.

My (next to) last post outlined "the crazy" from the second week of May. Well... it turns out the crazy from June would be CRAZIER than I'd anticipated, with a tragic note (next post).

The whirlwind trip to Massachusetts (for a wedding on May 29, one of those (big, huge) weddings you go to where you only know the bride and two other people, then New York City and a brief stop in Philly/PA was great. We left for New Jersey on Saturday (stayed at a hotel) -- my in-laws were here and went there too since they flew out of NYC on Sunday -- then drove to the wedding and drove back to spend the night in Connecticut. Spent the day in NYC on Monday (visited the MoMA and went up on Top of the Rock) -- that wasn't my youngest son's favorite way of spending his 12th birthday, but it was not like he had any choice. We indulged his wish to not dine in the city (OH, SO SAD! So many delicious ethnic eateries) & ate at Panera close to our friends' house in Long Island.

On Tuesday we drove back to Manhattan to park and visited the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island (GORGEOUS DAY!!) before walking back to see the 9/11 memorial and driving to Philly to sleep at our other friends' house (yes, we have countless friends at whose houses we stay, that's why we also host countless friends here). And on Wednesday, we went to see Samson at Sight and Sound and visited (our favorite!!) Longwood Gardens in the afternoon before saying good-bye to my parents (who stayed in Philly at our friends' house) & heading back home -- stopping at IKEA for furniture shopping (more on that later) & dinner (with bonus sunset!).

Sigh... wasn't that intense? But it was fun and we had lovely weather.

When we got home, I had to work on my friends' wedding shower of and that was also intense and a big success (with a small group of attendants) & I didn't take enough photos, which makes me sad.

The shower was barely over when my parents came back with our friend and her two kids (7 & 9) -- she had decided to bring my parents back and spend a few days here sightseeing and enjoying her kids second week of vacation in the countryside (they live in North Philly right now). That meant we went to the park, went to the farmer's market and shopping (mostly my mom & my friend, to thrift stores), went sightseeing at other local attractions and to the water park all day on Friday.

Since my older son's dear friend is moving to TN, we invited him to the waterpark with us and on Friday morning had a Wii & WiiU playdate with four loud boys (while my mother was sick in bed with something (some kind of digestive discomfort with nausea and dizziness) -- right next door to the family/TV room). Sigh...

Mom recovered quickly and then... and then we started the crazy process of moving our office from upstairs to downstairs so the boys can have separate rooms!! Yeah, it took me this long to get to the "changing"/moving part of the post that comes first in the title.

IDEALLY, we would have first painted the family room downstairs, then moved everything, then painted Kelvin's new bedroom, then assembled the IKEA furniture we bought, but, we didn't have all that time AND... were going to have guests again this past Thursday, so we wanted to get the bed together ASAP for the guests (twin that turns to king bed -- LOVE IKEA and foam mattresses).

We didn't do the painting, BUT we did ALL the filming. Yeah, this is the house of a YouTuber and, having enjoyed immensely our previous furniture moving time-lapse, we filmed everything again, except that this took a lot of time (WAY less than it would have taken to paint, ha ha ;-) because we couldn't find the tripod (probably lost it), then the memory cards wouldn't work, or the camera's battery would end and need to be recharged. But we finally moved most everything in time for the guests who arrived mid-day on Thursday.

This was my husband's cousin and (newly pregnant!) wife plus three friends & a baby. They all live in Michigan and came for a speaking engagement in D.C. The friend who came by himself is actually practically family to me -- he was the baby of my next-door neighbors when I was growing up in Brazil and his family remained really close to mine, so I've known him from the time he was born (the Seventh-day Adventist church community is really a huge world-wide family, you always know someone who knows someone, all over the world, especially if you're Brazilian!!) :-D

They stayed only 24h and my parents actually left for Maryland not long after they arrived. Their visit included an unexpected rain shower while on a hiking trail (which let to iPhones on rice and rice getting into charging ports and whatnot), but I didn't go on the visit to the park because I had to take the boys to have their vision checked and mine was too (another quick post for that). And yesterday I did stuff for my friends' wedding, picking up mason jars, getting nails done, YAY! loved that part!, shopping for fruit and cakes (YUMMY, can't wait to eat them!!), picking up photo booth, practicing music briefly.

YEAH... CRAZY busy. So, yeah, I'm tired and slept only about six hours, but I'm wired and can't sleep from the moment I open my eyes (generally between 6 something -7 something).

Last, but not least! I worked out three times this week with friends. They do Pop Physique & Barre. I'm lovin' it!! (but I do want to try to go back to doing Yoga every week in addition to that fun ladies' group work out).

So there you go, mostly updated about my (crazy) life!!

Too Much to Say (or Not)

These past two weeks were intense. The main reason I haven't blogged about the horrible terrorist attack and hate crime that took place a week an a half ago in North Carolina is that it's very hard for me to know what to say and how to say it. I want to be an outspoken ally of the African American community and to condemn racism, but I need to be keenly aware of my white privilege at all times.

I am grateful for all the writing that my online friend LaToya (Dr. Mama Esquire) has been doing on Twitter and in her blog. Hearing her voice and her perspective is very important to me and one of the reasons why I stayed silent even though another online friend whose opinion I value, Susan, was upset at those of us who didn't speak up.

So many things are so complicated -- I know this is a cliche, but it's so true of my life. Things are even more complicated when you are an immigrant, living in several conflicting worlds and cultures. In addition to that "condition" I also am part of a faith community about which I have extremely complex and mixed feelings. Ditto for academia. Sometimes my brain and my heart hurt at the same time because there are so many forces pulling me in so many directions. I can't even articulate my thoughts and feelings.

I just happened to come across something critical about NPR's coverage of Israel and I was reminded once more that in a few weeks I'm going to visit a country I have very mixed feelings about as well, because of the Palestinians.

Then there's the daily reality of our lives. My husband is scrambling to finish writing a grant proposal and academic articles, so he spends 15-17 hours away from home working in his office at the university every single day except Friday night & Saturday (and, Sat. night lately). He leaves between 9-11 am and comes back between 2-4 am.

Most nights I've been awake until he gets home, but it's mostly been coincidental. Sometimes it's because I took some short catnaps and have just been able to stay up, sometimes I'm just naturally awake. I'm going to bed now, but maybe he won't even come back home -- because he needs/wants to finish writing the grant tonight.

Obviously, I still have TONS of things I want to blog about and end up not doing it. I will try. Today I prepared food for a bridal shower at church and I want to share photos of that! And some other things.

Gotta go to bed now, though!

Reading, Field-Tripping, Not Sleeping... (and dreading to wake/get up)

I guess the title kind of summarizes this week. Those activities, or lack thereof, added to my already super-busy teaching schedule.

I'm reading more of the books that arrived last week, into the night, obviously... sigh (I know I shouldn't be doing that, but it's fun to read like that).

I want to write a photo post about the field trip, hopefully I can do that later today.

For now I'm glad that the weekend is here and I hope to be able to sleep in and take naps.

Too bad I have a stack of exams to grade... sigh. I do need to sleep more, though, and hope that next week I won't be dreading getting up and going to work as much as I did this week.

Sorry for the super boring update. Sometimes I feel the need to write one of these. ;-)

P.S. I can't wait to watch the Divergent movies. Even if they may not have had much critical success. From the trailer of the first one I can tell it'll be a way better adaptation than the Hunger Games (the first movie). 

Week 2: Productive/ Blizzard Envy

Week 2 down, 15 more to go (discounting Spring Break, adding finals), 'cause unfortunately this semester is not 14, but 15 weeks long! :-(

Week 2 was great because it started with our only holiday year-round (that is not Thanksgiving) in both universities, which is the ONLY holiday that my kids' private school doesn't respect!! (boooh!) Can they even do that? For all the other Holidays (Labor Day, President's day, maybe another one I can't remember) kids are off & we work.

I miss my graduate institution. We had so many holidays and a full month off in Dec.-January! I want to go back to Massachusetts! (not really, we love it it there, but I'm happy with our lives here). I do enjoy starting early (in late August, & early January) and having most of May off and ending in very early December.

OK, back to last week! Because of the holiday I really made some significant headway in my freelance translation project. Too bad I was unable to keep it up past Wednesday (I got busy & productive with work) and today I went skiing with the family, so I couldn't do it either. Last night, however, I finally made an online quiz for my class, so the weekend hasn't been completely unproductive. edited to add that tonight I made another online quiz, yay!

It was pretty good to go to my therapist on Monday afternoon and report that I'd been so productive. I have to find a way to keep it up because it's HARD! Especially with the grading I need to do. Graded a quiz last week and have about 30 compositions to grade. Good thing the online quiz will be automatically graded!

The holiday made it tough to go back to work last week (it felt like we were starting the semester all over again), but Friday arrived quickly and we were exhausted as usual.

I'm not looking forward to this week AT ALL. Tomorrow and Tuesday people will have tons of snow up North & hardly any will fall here. Having lived 8 years in MA, I love me some blizzards! ;-)

And I know for a fact that U#2 probably won't cancel anything because I don't think it'll snow there. BUT there may be snow on my drive. So I'll leave at 7:30 am with the standard gear car. :--( A very inauspicious beginning to Week 3.

I'll keep you updated!

Better!!

I'm glad to report that my uncle is better.  The infection is somewhat controlled and doctors said that it's mostly in the lungs now (though it's not pneumonia).

My aunt and my youngest cousin (who is divorced and lives with his parents now) visited him earlier tonight and my mom spoke with them.

I hope he'll recover!

In Print

Just got the scanned offer letter in an email.

Relief.

Now to sign it, take a picture and email it back, and, more calmly now, carry on.