Skipping Town

As though we don't have enough chaos, Lucia tested positive for covid this morning and stayed home from school. She's mostly fine--no fever or cough; just a sore throat--but still. Covid? She's isolating in her bedroom and I'm masking in the house, which is the worst but necessary. Sigh. Our house continues to be chaotic. Having a basement kitchen is great...until the work moves to the basement. The electricians and plumbers both need to be down there this week, which has made things like preparing lunch or getting a glass of water a challenge. 

Behind on these posts. In a nutshell:  Andrew was supposed to come home from Germany on Friday but didn't get back until Sunday because of an ice storm in Berlin. We also had bad weather and I chickened out on taking Lucia for her permit test on Saturday morning. The girls and I hunkered down to play games and watch This Is Us. The basement is inconvenient...but also pretty cozy. Sunday was the Big Game. We usually host a Super Bowl party but, obviously, there is no hosting this year. So we went to the Clarks'. The girls and I brought our 'analog bags' and busied ourselves with various crafts while others watched the game. (We had some crafting company, too.) I did a Valentine's zentangle; Greta colored and worked on a puzzle; Lucia started bedazzling a book cover. We did watch the halftime show. Monday, Lucia came home from school saying she didn't feel well, so that's not great.  The house continues to be chaotic. Random areas of ceiling have been cut into...

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...