Skipping Town

Lucia is selecting classes for junior year. She is supposed to start choosing classes that create kind of 'narrative' for what she wants to study. We are trying to help (not that she wants our help), but she truly has no idea what she is interested in.  I can relate. I recently came across a bio I wrote during my summer at the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts, which was the summer of 1994, when I'd just finished my junior year of high school. I was seventeen. This bio was to be included in a collection of pieces written by the other students in my poetry class:           Besides writing poetry, Margo "Violet" Orlando also enjoys writing in her journal, playing the violin, and acting. This year, she will be a senior at Geibel High School in Connellsville, PA. Margo's future plans are completely made--where she wants to go, what she wants to do, who she wants to be--and she's waiting for just the right moment to reveal these plans to the world...

I won't bury the lede: our insurance claim for ribociclib (kisqali) was APPROVED on Tuesday afternoon! I am, frankly, surprised. But so happy. The other medication choice was absolutely valid, and I'll likely be on it at some point; but the side effects are more intense, so I'm glad to be able to choose this fulvestrant + kisqali protocol right now. There are also side effects from this one, of course. But different. (A compromised/decimated immune system is one of them, so I'll be back to masking in public.)  After the peer-to-peer discussion failed to happen again on Monday, I'd pretty much assumed it would never happen. However, it actually did happen on Tuesday, and I was told I'd have an answer within 24-48 hours. But within one hour, I got a notification that the insurance has approved the treatment, and I was able to call the speciality pharmacy to arrange delivery of the pills for Thursday.  Glad to have this in place. The eighteen-wheeler is revving its...

We had a busy Sunday: Costco in the morning (I wanted a round of prepared/frozen foods to get me through this week since Andrew will be in Germany), brunch at the Clarks', and then a visit to the Center for Creative Reuse, which is basically a permanent rummage sale of craft supplies. Andrew escaped to get a coffee but the girls and I were in our element.  On our way there, knowing from a photo I found online that there would be a card catalog full of junk that you could purchase by the bag, Lucia said, "I'm going straight to the junk drawers," and my heart filled with pride, both in her for being a creative child and in myself for successfully parenting her into that child. I feel like there's a college application just waiting in that line--I can't articulate it yet, and she didn't buy it, but I think there's something to it.  Tonight, I went upstairs and found that the salad Greta had made for Nutmeg was sitting on her bedroom floor, untouched. This...

Friday evening we went to dinner at the club as a break from our cobbled-together "cooking" from the week, and then Greta met a friend at school to see the Upper School play.  Saturday Lucia was gone all day--from 6:30 a.m. until 10:30 p.m.--for a track meet in Spirer, Ohio. She got a new PR for the mile--5:57!--and was exhausted but excited about her events. Greta went to Saturday crew practice in the morning, and Andrew and I went to the Oakmont Bakery after dropping her off. Afterward, we went to Panera for lunch then browsed in Anthropologie. Greta found a cute skirt sale-on-sale and Andrew bought a cute casserole dish, also sale-on-sale. I admired a swan tray that will, at some point, be mine. Later Greta and I watched an episode of Stranger Things.  I forgot to write earlier in the week that Greta won two awards for her short stories! Her teacher had encouraged her to submit two of her stories for the Scholastic Writing Awards, and this week she found out she was awarde...

The workers fixed the heat when the arrived on Tuesday. I guess I should say "fixed," because the only thing they had to do was TURN THE THERMOSTAT UP. They'd turned it down when they worked on Friday so dust wouldn't fly around everywhere. We had no idea the thermostat was still there. "Ha ha, I guess that was an easy fix, we had no idea," I blathered when I saw the guys on my way to the basement. They gave me withering looks (at least they did in my imagination). Tuesday the girls had a two-hour delay and their piano lessons were virtual. Wednesday they were back at school at regular time. It's still not easy getting around, and there are mountains of snow in front of our house, but the roads are somewhat / kind of cleared. Fun New Winter Twist: it's so cold outside that we now have drips of water coming down our chandelier in the stairwell. This, in addition to the drips of water near the window in our bathroom. There must be some kind of ice dam....

We are all excited about the snow. It's been too long since we've had a decent snowstorm, and we were happy to just stay home all day Sunday and Monday. The kids had remote school and Andrew and I worked from home. We played Blokus and Rummikub. Greta and I read some winter picture books in front of the fire in the Long Room. We watched This Is Us. Greta and I worked on a puzzle. The kids went sledding down Wightman on Sunday; on Monday they had a snowball fight in the backyard. Farrah loves bounding around in the snow. When we took her for a walk on Monday, Andrew ended up helping to push a stuck car out of the snow; three people had unwisely ventured out, trying to get to the airport. It took a few neighbors to push the car and dig them out, but they were successful. The only bad thing about these snowy days is that somehow the heat in the basement completely stopped working over the weekend. Saturday was chilly, but by Sunday it was absolutely freezing. Lucia had the good id...