Friday Randomness

I’ve been off almost all week. Tuesday I thought it was Wednesday, Wednesday I thought it was Thursday, and Thursday I thought it was Friday. But finally, Friday is here. Yay Friday! This will be a busy weekend for us, because…

Tomorrow is Maya’s birthday! She turns 18, which is INSANE. I cannot believe my baby will legally be an adult. She can gamble, see R rated movies, whatever she wants to do. Every year I find myself reminiscing about those early days…so 18 years ago today, I was going into the hospital. I spent the night, and was induced in the morning. Gross, but effective. OK, gross is not the right word. The right word is pain inducing, which is, I guess, the entire point. So 18 years ago, the whole thing was starting to hit me, that I was going to have to go through this, that I was going to have to get my baby safely out of my body. Terrifying.

So tonight is her birthday party with her school friends. They’re going to dinner without an adult to accompany them. Symbolic I guess. I hope they have a great time.

Tomorrow will be the family party. Maya loves Ted’s lamb curry, so we’re having lamb curry, chickpea curry, curried pumpkin, roti (aka, naan), rice, and appetizers. It will be a lot of fun, as always.

Yesterday was Meals-on-Wheels. One of the couples on my route has a big bush out front, with lovely birds of paradise. They let me cut some blooms to decorate the house for Maya’s birthday party. I love the vibrant orange, with the hint of purple. I was thinking I would buy some irises to put with it, and how that might look nice. Guess what? Maya came home from school with a bouquet of irises. She has NEVER come home with flowers for no reason before. Synchronicity! They’re lovely.

Before the flowers, yesterday was kind of a crummy day. I can’t point to anything specific…just kind of work wasn’t going great, I was tired, I don’t know. But then Ted’s mom called and said, “I have some crab for you, still alive it’s so fresh”, and she appeared with crab. YUM. We had delicious crab with ciabatta bread, chardonnay, and salad for dinner. I got flowers from my MoW folks, and then from Maya. I had two things I wanted to get done for work before the end of the day, things that have been hanging over me and bugging me. I am taking next week off from work, and I wanted to get things done before going. Happily enough, it worked, I got the chores done, and now they are off of my plate before my week off. Right when I was getting ready to put dinner together (very quick, as I had already cooked and chilled the crab), Maya said she was going to go for a walk. After she left, I considered sitting down and having a glass of wine and reading my book. Then I thought, “No, I’m going for a walk too.” So I did, which felt good and took away that tired feeling. So the day started out kind of bleh, and came out really nice.

What else…well, Maya has been accepted into 4 good colleges. She didn’t get into one (very competitive) school, and is wait listed at another. I’m SO proud of her. She has worked so hard on all of this, with her AP classes and volunteer work and so on, and now it has paid off. The frustrating part is that, so far, there isn’t enough financial aid coming in, so she may end up going to a community college for the first two years. I was fine with that for me, and Ted was fine with that for him, but neither of us were so focused or hard working as she is. We SO wish that we could afford to send her to a 4-year right out the door. There’s still a chance…she has applied for a couple of scholarships, we haven’t gotten financial aid offers from 2 schools, what if she lives at home, etc. Chances are it will be community college, and if that’s the case, she will do well there. But we’re holding out hope still for a 4-year to work out in the next month.

I took next week off, because I haven’t really had any time off since December, and I like to take a couple off weeks off every year. OK, more than a couple. A few. This will be spring break for Maya. She is taking an art class, and one thing they have to do is to go to either a museum or a gallery, and report on a work of art. The SF Legion of Honor has an exhibit starting today, Impressionism from the National Gallery of Art. It’s stupid expensive, but I’d like to see it anyway. The first Tuesday of the month is free (not for this exhibit, but at least the general museum admission), so I’d like to go do this on Tuesday. I’m not sure what else we’ll do…maybe go to the ocean, though it’s colder now than it was in February. Not cold, but colder. It’s been raining off and on over the last week, which is delicious and lovely. Not really enough to end the drought, by any means, but every bit helps.

Speaking of which, I described the crummy showers we’re taking, right? It has paid off. Governor Brown asked that everyone cut their water use by 20%. We already have low flow toilets and a high efficiency front load washing machine, and we don’t have a lawn or any trees, so that’s kind of all we can do. We received our first bill since cutting back the other day, and our water use has been cut by 21%. Yay us!

I’ve been reading about this drought, and how difficult it is going to be on farmers. California has really taken advantage of the demand for almonds, and a lot of fields that used to grow other produce now have almond orchards and grape vines. All very well and good when there’s enough water, but one thing about orchards and vineyards is that you can’t leave the fields fallow in dry years. The trees take years to grow and become productive. With tomatoes or lettuce or whatever, you can leave the field fallow and not grow anything during a drought. But with trees and vines, they need water, no matter what. So look for your California products to get pricey this summer and so on. Careers are falling apart, people are losing their farms, trees are dying, cattle are dying. It’s ugly. So yeah, I’m enjoying the rain, and I wish that it could somehow be enough to solve a few problems.

Lastly, on a lighter note, did anyone watch ‘True Detectives’ on HBO? We binge watched after the season ended. I really liked it a lot. Ted was a little disappointed by the finale, but I liked it. Really interesting storytelling, really good acting, all of that.