I found myself feeling adrift being home when normally I would be at work. I missed my coworkers very much. At first I was so tired and shaken from how things had gone that I was happy to hide at home and lick my wounds.
Mostly I felt the pain of rejection from the firing and the wrench of completely losing my social circle.
My wonderful friends texted me and offered lunches and talks and were as always amazing.
I met Krishna for a fun D.C. cherry blossom tour as she returned from a conference.
As always with Krishna I found myself doing things that I would normally only admire from afar.
We did scooters to get around. They were super fun.
A think I love about spending time with Krishna is that with her I do things that make me feel like the world is large and full of possibilities.
When I am at my most anxious I imagine myself retreating into a tiny sphere of safety. Its useful and reassuring to feel like there is some "controllable" slice of the world. I always feel disappointed with myself when I do that retreat though. I feel like I've lost the world.
Here play this one
The blossoms were beautiful.
I felt happy and loved.
The world seemed large and full of possibilities.
I dove back in.
I went to Haven and volunteered some of my copious time. I worked on building some crafting tables.
The kids played with their hamsters.
We went on some history excursions.
We got ready for Easter and even ate at Ikeas special Easter meal.
We started the garden.
Potatoes!
We even moved the seedlings out for the warmer parts of the day.
We went to my cousins wedding.
Congratulations to Justin and Lauren
I love my family.
I especially love my husband.
It was so great to finally see Mary again. She came to the mainland to attend the weddings of her two nephews.
She decided to stay for the duration between the weddings to visit with family.
I was happily awaiting our turn.
I took a cool class at Haven on wood working tools.
I loved the class but now find myself too afraid of this thing to ever really want to use it.
The spring brought my garden back bit by bit.
I got some cool updates from dad in Hawaii.
I started working with sincerity on my long term archery project.
Michelle and I decided to go to Pennsic in 2020 and enter into an archery competition. We made this decision in the safe fall of 2018.
I am clearing a range in the back lot. I will make a big target and backstop to keep from losing arrows.
I want to have throwing targets to the sides and put down two lanes for shooting int the center.
I measured out 25 yards from our back fence and put up a hay bale to start off with.
Kiernan has been shooting with me. He is getting fairly good.
I got to see Martin by picking him up from the airport.
He brought me delicious chocolate from Germany.
Everyone should have a Martin.
I went down to Scearce's and the yard was covered with these.
Kathryn's mom for a wonder didn't know what they were.
So I got the chance to try out this cool new app. This is called Seek (Mariam showed it to me). It is a plant identifier.
Its better with flowers than trees but I am loving it.
I spent some time cleaning and hanging in out in the yard and talking to the dog
Mom put in some brussel sprouts and broccoli and some cauliflower.
The peach tree started.
I finally went into the Exotic Lumber store in Frederick that I had been meaning to check out for about two years.
I bought a few small pieces. The lady in the shop talked to me about wood for instruments and about acoustics. She knocked on some of the wood to demonstrate the differences and it was so clear and so bright.
I am thinking about making some more of the jorvik pipes with the Osage orange wood (the bigger one on the bottom)
I went into school with the kids quite a bit. I had lunch with both of them and got to go to Kiernan's band concert.
I got going on my archery project very practically.
Here is how my arrow stand was.
So then...
I started my archery range project with some thing small. I went to pinterest for inspiration. I saw an arrow stand that looked useful. In the SCA they use longbows and traditional bows instead of the compound bows that I learned on.
So the arrow stand that I was using was too short for the recurve bow that I am learning now.
I am loving feeling braer about wood working style projects. Thank you Haven.
I wanted to start on something smallish and cheapish (this was a 30 dollar outlay) thing before starting to put together the backstop because the backstop is massive and heavy and intimidating.
I had to get this circle cutter because the one we had was too small.
It all come together pretty quickly (maybe 3 hours).
I got to use our band saw again and am still excited each time I have an opportunity to use it in earnest.
I even tried some wood burning.
Its been very wet this spring so I decided to water proof it as well. It is now gray and sitting in the back ready to use.
Megan is fancy.
We went out to lunch with some friends from high school and then left David at the resturant and drove down to Bracey to pick up grandma Mary.
Bracey is one of my kids favorite places. In large part this is due to the great grandma and great grandpa presence.
It is also of course due to the fact that I am so happy there.
We have no plans and we do very little. There is a playground and a beautiful lake to walk around and there is family.
Megan and I had an adventure where in she dropped a toy into the lake and we tried desperately to fish it out. It was touch and go for a bit there but victory was achieved.
I love my family.
I had decided that I would treat the entire trip like a real vacation despite its brevity. On the way home therefore we stopped at the National Harbor.
I used to climb over this statue when it was across the river at Hains Point
There was still some cherry blossom festival stuff going on so we also got to see a show of Japanese drumming. The kids talked about Erena and Kiernan got excited about coming back to eat at all the restaurants.
We finished stretching our legs and got home for some pizza.
There is no Ledos in Hawaii. Poor grandma Mary has been deprived.
I knew that we had 2 weeks with her and I planned for the first week to be art and the 2nd week to be nature.
I love art museums. I planned for weeks/months in advance for the museums we would visit. My being unemployed was a real advantage here.
On our first art day we went to the Renwick and to the National Portrait Galley
Mary is great to travel with because she so enthusiastic about what we do. She is an artist and so the art stuff was great. She is a lover of food in the same way that I am. So each time we went out we would also get something special to eat. I thought about and planned the food for the same amount of time that I planned the museums.
It was chilly and we were a little short on time because I wanted to drop the kids up and pick them up from school while I was not working.
We were getting ready for Easter.
It was wonderful to have Mary with us just to show her our day to day.
I got a call to go in for an interview. I wore the interview clothes that I bought with the Amazon gift card provided me by my wonderful x-coworkers for that very purpose. The job checked everything on my wish list. It was in Frederick (at Fort Detrick) and it was with robots (I love lab automation) and it was for a company I knew about.
I hadn't been on a base for a really long time.
I felt like the interview went well and I like the people and I was hopeful about employment but not sure.
The next day we went to the Walters
We all thought that this one looked like Megan.
A real Fabergé.
Easter was late this year but I liked that in many ways as it really looked springy.
We went to Scearce's and got things ready for the Easter egg hunt.
We spent the rest of the day at Scearce's being in the nature.
Kathryn's dad was up and walking around and that was great to see.
Mom found out that the county was giving out free mulch so we took the truck over and got a load.
I worked on 3D printing some Easter stuff.
The eggs looked great except that I started them too late in the day and had to stop them so they wouldn't run by Mary's head all night. This resulted in a weird line of inconsistency. I need to figure out how to pause a print without ruining a project.
Also we dyed eggs.
We went to the Delaplaine art museum in Frederick
We went for a walk in Frederick and I found a Frederick Rock
Then Easter morning happened and my long 40 days of no Amazon ended. YAY!
Also there was chocolate.
We went to Scearce's and met up with my cousin Wendy's husband and daughter and hunted some eggs.
It was a beautiful day.
Rosa and Megan hit it off.
My eggs finished.
It was a crafty old time.
Kiernan and David worked on Kiernan's new chess set.
We finally put together the 3D printed 3D scanning turn table.
We got cool post Easter Spring break company. Aunt Pammy and cousin Kaleb came over and we had a picnic lunch and hike.
Mary left for a fun trip with her friend Jan.
I took mom out to a new Mexican place by the canal in Frederick.
I took Megan out for a fun day at the library and out to seat and
To get her other ear repierced.
She was super brave and her earring is beautiful and she has been very good about not touching it.
It seems to be healing well.
I took advantage of the weather and of my new bow stand and did some shooting.
I got a few target bags from Amazon to hang up once I get the backstop up.
My arrows just bounce off of it from 15-20 yards so I may need to get a stronger bow.
Its weird to think of going up a step and I only just now managed to easily string this bow.
Megan had super hero day in her class.
She was very super.
I took the kids and David to the Fort Frederick colonial fair.
They had punch and Judy.
We have been watching Punch and Judy on YouTube even since.
I took Megan out for a little experiment.
She is somewhat obsessed with Ramen, so I decided to try her one a real Ramen place.
We tried Akira Ramen & Izakaya. She loved the edamame and was ok with everything else. She wanted her normal blue packet home cooked stuff.
I loved it! Super good. If you get a chance you should go and try their vegetarian Ramen bowl.
After lunch we went for a hike.
I let her lead and she chatted away and did brave and bold things like lead us across the creek. It was very cool.
I had been hoping to go fossil hunting with some folks from the Haven but something happened and the trip was a no go.
Geoff and Michelle had also been hoping to go so we decided to take our own trip.
We took Miles and not Pax because I wasn't sure how she would do with fellow hikers and I didn't want to leash walk her for miles and miles because she has bad leash manners.
Side note here: She is reaching that place where her leash manners are making it unappealing to walk her so she is getting fewer walks (the kids cant walk her and mom shouldn't walk her and David and I are the most time pressed and must sacrifice the most to walk her). Its not that we don't walk her but I know she wants more. Much of this is our fault and we need to make time to retrain her but it is also true that she has grown in aggression especially towards cats and squirrels and that makes her harder to handle on a leash.
We went to the abandoned town of Daniels MD
This is a town that was abandoned due to both flooding and mill support being retracted back in the late 60's and early 70s (click the link if you want to read more).
It was a beautiful day and a good long hike with great friends.
I also got to spend some time with Michelle when she taught me how to use moms sewing machine.
I am hoping to make a costume for myself for SCA events
Miles was very helpful.
Megan was very curious.
She really got into it and sewed 4 stuffed animals for herself.
Also Michelle made me feel not isolated and chill. She is another person with whom I do things that I would not otherwise. I knew about Daniels. It was on my list of places that I said I would love to go but where I would probably not get up the gumption to actually go.
It was so cool.
The sewing of the costume is the same sort of thing.
I always say I am going to learn to sew and then I do nothing about it.
She even helped me finally get Megan's many many Girls Scout patches on.
We grilled and sewed
I tried a great southern meal of
spicy greens and vegan fried chicken and cornbread rolls. Oh man so good!
I got offered the job with the nice people and all the robots.
I accepted the job.
I now work for the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research.
This makes us a household of contractors. There is a ton of paperwork.
Gracious.
Megan painted my 3D prints
The free mulch blew the trucks tires.
We will replace them when we have some money coming in again. Its a bummer being without the truck during spring. I had more mulch plans and some getting tree plans and Krishn's dad offered us more wood for Scearce's.
Dad got a cool climbing trellis up.
The tomatoes started looking like tomatoes and my long pepers refused to germinate.
I got a fancy new cocktail dress for my next cousins wedding.
I quite like it.
Michelle got some quail!
She is a bird person and I cant help but feeling that her having birds means all is right with the world.
I went to Haven and worked on another workbench. I have been meaning to do more helping out there now that I have time but I find that time fills itself up pretty quickly. Still they are such a valuable place for me that I want to do what I can to show my gratitude.
I've been there less while unemployed that I was when fully employed. Some of that is anxiety but most of it is just busy.
I miss these guys.
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