Angela has jaw surgery. A long while back, our dentist determined Angela had some issues with her jaw that would need to get corrected with surgery. She’s been wearing braces for the past year in preparation for today: surgery to correct her jaw. This is a medium-big operation, and entails a long, two month recovery; during the first month, she’ll be on a blender diet. (In the photo, taken just before she goes in for the operation, Angela is opening her mouth fairly wide — something she won’t be able to do again for a month.)
Happily, the surgery goes smoothly. There’s quite a bit of chaos, however, at Overlake Hospital, where the operation takes place. The hospital has done a complete, wholesale switch-over to a new computerized record-keeping system. The whole system, probably years in the works, goes live at 4:00 am today, just a couple of hours before we check in. The entire day, it’s impossible to find a single person using a computer — all the doctors and nurses are using computers in pairs or small groups, collectively trying to figure out where the heck the such-and-such button went, or how to record a such-and-such event. The one individual we see operating a computer on their own turns out to be speaking on the phone with the hospital’s helpdesk. When the nurses get stuck trying to enter all the records necessary during pre-op, Jan does his best to point out promising-looking buttons. It’s all slightly rattling, but none of the computerized records are actually necessary during surgery, and everything seems to work out okay.
Liya goes to the birthday party for her friend Kira on the Eastside, and as Jan is driving her back across the 520 bridge, traffic is stopped on the highway. They’re opening the bridge’s seldom-opened drawbridge section to let boating traffic through. Today’s the official day of boating season, and perhaps in anticipation of a high volume of tall-masted sailboats, they schedule a highway closure from 7:00-7:30 pm. A grand total of one sailboat goes through the drawbridge. Meanwhile, Jan and Liya enjoy the rare experience of strolling around the temporarily closed highway. It’s a beautiful evening, the weather’s unexpectedly gorgeous for May, and we have an unbeatable view of Lake Washington and Mt. Rainier.
Nutmeg goes in for another surgery, her third in half a year. She has cat breast cancer. The vet recommends a “unilateral mastectomy”. That’s taking out one side — but if you’re a cat, even just one side means removing five breasts. The surgery is long but goes well, a bit better than the surgeon had expected. We’re sad that she has to spend the night at the animal hospital.
Liya’s Ballet III class holds their spring Watching Week. Liya’s grandmother E-moon is in town, so she gets to watch Liya’s class too.
Nutmeg comes home from the hospital in the afternoon. She seems somewhat shell-shocked by the experience, and upon arriving home, promptly disappears. Jan finds her hiding inside the guest room sofa bed, and since she appears to feel safe there, he leaves her there to recover.
This evening Anya and Liya perform at their school’s annual spring music concert. Liya (in the center of the photo) and her class sing a Woody Guthrie tribute with “This Land is Your Land”, while Anya’s class sings “Putting on the Ritz”. The highlight of the show is probably the youngest (kindergarten) class and the oldest (eighth grade) class singing “Life’s a Happy Song” together. It’s striking to see how much they grow while at that school! The rest of the student body stands up and joins in from the sidelines for a nice surprise ending to the song.
For Mother’s Day, we go out for brunch with both Angela’s mom and Jan’s mom. Liya’s away with friends, but her sisters are happy to make up for it by eating extra chocolate from the chocolate fountain.
This morning Angela notices that Bob, our aquarium’s little snail, has finally died. He was a very beautiful type of snail called a Mystery Snail. When we first put him in the tank, he would move (fairly quickly!) around the tank and keep it squeaky clean. Then one of our fish had nine babies, and they grew up to be big fish that liked the smell — and, apparently, taste — of the snail. They pestered him constantly, and so he took to closing up completely and floating around the tank. Snails, it turns out, can float when they want to by trapping air in the shell, then later squeeze it out to sink back down. The fish seemed to bother Bob less when he was floating around, so he would spend all day, day after day, floating around the tank. This trait is how he acquired the name, “Bob”. Eventually, Bob must have let down his guard and become a midnight snack for the fish. Poor Bob.
These days, the first person to wake up in our house each morning is Bree. She gets up around 6:00 am, sometimes a bit earlier, and plays by herself in her bedroom or the loft. Usually she colors, or plays with Lego or Playmobil; sometime she looks through books. She often sings to herself, or narrates a story. When she hears Jan start a shower, she usually wanders into the bathroom to say good morning.
Bike to School Day! Liya and Jan ride the 6+ miles to Liya’s school for the annual event. This year, Liya’s on her shiny new bike with plenty of gears to tackle some of the hills. Jan’s planned a route that avoids the big hill leaving Madison Park, but Liya’s up for the hill. She does great, and thereby cuts a long detour out of the ride. The rest of the ride is smooth, and we make it there in an hour. We still need to push the bikes up the massive Queen Anne hill, but will do it someday. Anya was all set to join this year on her shiny new bike as well, but she’s recovering from a cold and we decided it was better to wait. Next year for sure!
It’s hard to believe Bree can already drive. They grow up so fast!
Liya is wearing her crab, “Crabby”, on her head. We ask her if it makes her crabby, or if it’s a reflection of the fact that she’s feeling crabby. We all think it would be a pretty good rule if only the person who is wearing Crabby is allowed to feel crabby — because then we’d have, at most, one crabby person, instead of several, as is often the case.
The following day, Liya attaches Crabby to a headband, and wears Crabby to school. She has to take Crabby off in a few classes that prohibit hats, but she happily wears Crabby the rest of the day.
Sabriya is allergic to dramatic tension. Whenever we watch a movie with even the slightest degree of tension, she covers her eyes, cowers, and cries, “It’s too scary!” Jan takes Bree to a Storybook Theater production of “Rapunzel” this afternoon. The show is advertised for children ages 3–10. All the characters wear rainbow-colored outfits and sing happy songs. But one of them disobeys instructions, and so consequences loom. Bree can’t stand knowing that something bad is going to happen, and asks repeatedly to leave. Finally, halfway through show, Jan quietly exits with Bree. They go for a bike ride around the neighborhood instead.
Kitty chemo: Nutmeg takes the first of a series of five chemotherapy treatments. Apparently chemo doesn’t take the same toll on cats as it does on people: cats don’t lose their hair, or throw up, feel exhausted, etc. But it’s still no fun. We’re crossing our fingers.
Our second wedding in a month! This time the wedding is for Yee-Shin, one of Angela’s former Sunday School students from years ago the Seattle Taiwanese Christian Church. The wedding Angela officiated at in April was for Yuri, another former Sunday School student. Now they’re almost all married!
Jan’s sister, Skye, and her husband, Jared, come up from Salem for Memorial Day Weekend. On Sunday we take them to the Northwest Folklife Festival at Seattle Center. There’s plenty color, noise, and food to go around. Anya loves the little bag of mini fried doughnuts we get so much, she mounts a successful campaign to buy a second bag. Bree and Liya spend most of our time at the festival in the crafts area building little wooden toy boats.
Jan accompanies Sabriya on her school’s annual field trip to Lincoln Park in West Seattle for a low-tide walk. The forecast calls for rain, but the day stays dry, and at the end the sun even peeks out a bit. The kids happily play at the water’s edge — and, in some cases, a bit too far out into the water. Good thing everyone had to bring spare clothes. They find little crabs, tons of seaweed, and various little sea critters. Jan and Bree aren’t around when one group sees a small octopus, but they do meet up with some naturalists from the Seattle Aquarium, who show them a moon snail and tell them all about it.
At bedtime this evening, Anya falls asleep in her clothes while reading a book in her bed, so Jan just turns out the light and shuts the door. She’s just returned from a whirlwind overnight school field trip to Victoria, BC.
Angela had to wake Anya up at 5:15 am yesterday morning to get her ready for a 6:00 am carpool to the high-speed ferry. As soon as the students arrived in Victoria Harbor, they checked into their hotel, took a tour of Parliament, ate lunch, toured the BC Royal Museum, visited the Butchart Gardens, played in a park, had dinner, then played in a park until bedtime, then stayed up late whispering and giggling. This morning there were more activities before heading back to the ferry and home. No wonder she was tired.