Friday, May 27, 2022

21. take a trapeze class (50 x 50)


 While hiking a via ferrata is not taking a trapeze course, per se, there are elements that qualify it into the same kind of category. Mainly, a) my body was attached to something stable with bungee cords, and 

b) it required a rejection of a fear of heights. 


Xy and I went to NRocks over fourth of July weekend last year to their via and it was AMAZING. There are "shark fins" of sandstone in Seneca Rocks, WV. It took us about four hours to hike about a mile of fixed-anchor, professionally-guided rock climbing. We gained 1085 feet in elevation, crossed a suspension bridge that is 150 feet high and 200 feet long, and reached exposed heights of 280 feet.  





35. grow tomatoes (50 x 50)



We bought the house in Anneslie Historic District in February 2021. We moved in, in May 2021, but were living with Grime for a minute in WV and in an one-bedroom AirBnB apartment in Charles Village (which was a #mistake) while the floors were refinished, the walls' plaster reskimmed to get rid of 90 years of paint on top of stucco (easier than scraping), the gutters repaired, the house power washed, and the walls painted. We finally started unpacking in May, and I promptly began growing vegetable seedlings because our yard grew about five times in size from what we had on Calvert street and Julie had put in a great vegetable planter with 100% full sun. 



I didn't think through the timing of our summer travel plans and the endeavor to be a gardener. We spent most of June and half of July with Grime in Timberlost and then came back to Baltimore for two weeks in July for Stella's Sleeping Beauty Camp with the Baltimore Ballet Company  before heading back out on the road to Fenwick for August.

What this meant, logistically, is that I was not at home to tend to these vegetables once I got them in the ground. What didn't get scavenged by squirrels and rabbits, became completely overgrown and almost inedible. The tomatoes were in the latter category. Here are some of the vegetables of my (lack of) labor:





37. go blueberry picking (50 x 50)



Roddy and I went blueberry picking at Timberlost last summer. Timberlost is the name that we've given Grime's (Roddy's way of spelling "Grammy") house in Canaan Valley, WV. There are wild blueberries all along the Yoakum Run trail. 

The blueberries are small and tart, the bears eat most of them before hooomans get to them. Grime made a pretty good blueberry spritzer drink with them when she went picking.



We put ours in blueberry pancakes, which none of my picky-eater kids ate. It's the journey, right?

23. get a library card (50 x 50)

We've moved four times in six years with a variable count of kids from Baltimore City to Arlington County to Baltimore City, and hopefully finally, to Baltimore County. We've gotten library cards everywhere we've moved, but I don't think that makes it count more than once for my leap list. 

Originally, when I set this leap list item, we were living in Baltimore City, and the name of the library system is very unique: Enoch Pratt Free Library. I wanted to research it (read: look it up on wikipedia and dive into a clickhole, which did not disappoint. Most of the information about the library has to do with the architecture and the buildings and trash talk by HL Mencken). 

When we lived in upper Fells and when Roddy went to the New Century School, we would often walk by an old branch on Ann Street. We never went inside, but the building is gorgeous.



This week, I've been taking a staycation to watch the kids while Jason races the TransVirginia550. Grime (Roddy's spelling of Grammy) came out from Timberlost to help me, because I know that Jason's job is a two person job. I've taken the week to get some personal stuff off my plate that I haven't been able to take care of over the weekends. First task was to reapply for a passport. Turns out that the Baltimore County Public Library system can help you complete the forms, take the pictures, and mail away the applications, in lieu of going through the post office! 

While we were there to reapply for my passport, Stella and I got signed up for library cards. 





Monday, July 12, 2021

36.attend kindergarten graduation (50x50)



When it's all said and done, Roddy loved this year at the New Century School and he'll get to attend two kindergarten graduations because we're redshirting him. 

Redshirting is the practice of postponing entrance into kindergarten of age-eligible children in order to allow extra time for socioemotional, intellectual, or physical growth.

This was such a hard year. He was the youngest of his class and it showed. Our first month was virtual and it was fucking hard, man. Jason and I aren't educators, nor do we want to be. Roddy is an adventure in and of himself, regardless of the activity in front of him. When we made the decision to move, we also decided to sign him up for kindergarten at his new school, Stoneleigh Elementary. 

He'll thrive with the confidence and all of the new disciples he can attract into his cult. 

43.save ~$675K (50x50)

There were so many competing feelings about moving: accomplishment, guilt, resentment,  excitement, grief, and relief.... pretty much in that order.




Even though Jason grew up in the Baltimore area, both of us were open to living in other cities as long as it made financial and recreational sense. Baltimore is the second most cost-effective place to live in the United States - you're close to DC and high paying jobs, but don't have to deal with the snobbery inside the beltway when it comes to living expenses. 

I'm no stranger to moving; since getting clean I've moved 10 times. From DC to VA to CA to VA to DC to DE to VA to MD to VA to MD and again in MD. The last three times have all been to set ourselves up for financial stability. We moved from Fells Point to my mom's to save money for a down payment on a house. Then we used that down payment savings for a house in Charles Village. We chose Charles Village because of it's proximity to Penn Station, so I'd be able to get down to DC and those projects easily, because of the diversity in the neighborhood, and because we could walk to the grocery. #RIPeddiesCV 

We felt so good to own one of the painted ladies on Calvert (well, potential painted ladies, it was on our list of things to do to the house - paint the outside as brightly as others' in the neighborhood)
One of the assumptions when we moved was that we would have some financial help to send the kids to private school, because, well, Baltimore isn't exactly known for it's stellar elementary and middle school programs (see all of the Sun articles on broken air conditioners, no heating, also, season four of the Wire). They are very well known for their magnet highschools - and I was holding out for them - until I couldn't anymore. After getting pregnant the third time, we couldn't make that assumption about financial support, and it's reasonable that when the circumstances changed that the financial expectation changed.

We did the math. Three kids, average private school cost per year is $15k, from primary school to 12th grade, equals $675,000. That's the equivalent cost to an upper middle class house in Roland Park! Except at the end of 18 years, we'd have that amount of equity to sell if we wanted. We started thinking of how we could get the kids into a public school district that was ranked better than Margaret Brent. 
This is where the guilt comes in. We are in enough of a financially stable situation where we could even have these conversations. I had joined the Friends of Margaret Brent parents group in 2017, as soon as we moved in. There are twelve other kids on our block in Charles Village who were zoned to go there, all the kids would have to do is cross Calvert street and they would be in the building from kindergarten to 8th grade. There are other families who are sending their kids there who are just like us (DC/NoVA transplants). Maybe if I had done more with the Friends group, we could have seen some movement with the school ranking factors. There are a lot of maybes.

Jason was on a bike ride when I took the kids to the Waverly farmers market in October 2020. After picking up donuts and a breakfast burrito we walked over the open space in the Abel neighborhood and met up with our neighbors who had just moved from Charles Village to Armagh, which is a tiny little neighborhood in northern Baltimore/south Towson. They had a covid baby too and had moved during the pandemic, so Lindsay's words were immensely comforting when she said that it was important to do what's best for our family, right now.

When we came to the decision that we would move, we were offered financial support to make the move faster than we had moved the last time to Charles Village (which took two years). Like, we needed to move before Congress counted the electoral votes in December 2020! I resent that I didn't put my foot down and say it was going to take as much time as it was going to take. Instead, when told to jump, I said, "how high?" 

That lived with me until ... still lives with me.

Back in August 2020, we reached out to Kim Lally Holmes (our kids have been making her name into one: KimLally) because as much as we absolutely love Charles Village - and the place she helped us find in 2017 (after two years of searching) - we had decided to move to a better school district. There are a couple of things to put this endeavor into context: 1) I had just given birth in June 2020, 2) the pandemic for personal safety reasons, 3) two toddlers - one of whom is currently in hybrid school because of the pandemic, 4) coming out of maternity leave, 5) KimLally had just started her own realty group, and 6) the pandemic real-estate market is BANANAS.
She managed to manage us into the sweet spot of selling our current home within a day of putting it on the market, with multiple offers, for full asking price and some wiggle room for finding our next house. She sent her stager, Julie, over first in October - to be a mediator between me and Jason about what updates needed to be made to the house. From there, we had a path forward and a clear list of things to get done to get the most for our house. When we were done with the house updates, we came up with a selling strategy in January and within a week it was on the market AND under contract.
On the buying side, there were times over the past seven months that I didn't think that we were going to find a place because the current inventory of homes is so low. KimLally is a staple of the Baltimore real estate community - whenever I'd show up at random open houses, the seller's agent would always have something positive to say about her. She dug deep into her network to find us our new home. She was always available to take us to see houses - some of which were just excursions to see what a huge budget could buy us. She was always pragmatic about the pros and cons of a house and never tried to sway us one way or another.
She also has a great sense of humor. On the night we visited the house that we would ultimately come to buy, we saw three homes and it was the second of three. The third was an immaculate renovation, very chic, like straight out of a Pinterest board. While we were walking around Jason made a comment that the second house seemed like we should be shooting heroin while listening to Nine Inch Nails in the kitchen in comparison. When we closed on the second house last week, KimLally sent us a text saying, "The heroin den is yours! Congratulations!"
That being said, we absolutely love the #hOme we chose and KimLally and her team hustled so that we could close within 19 days of submitting our offer. This buy has enabled a $675K cost avoidance. It was a rough year, but we positioned ourselves well financially for the future and that's what's important.

Friday, July 9, 2021

39.remain employed after current project ends (50 x 50)

It was early afternoon in Glen Canyon, Arizona, on an epic three-week long vacation with Roddy and Jason, when I got a call that changed our lives. It was from Deloitte, they said that it was official, I was hired. I had been working on a project for four years for a company that was a subcontractor to Deloitte.  I had started to look for work in Baltimore, since that was where we were going to make our life. When Deloitte heard that, they asked how they could keep me on the project. It was about a month before the contract was recompeted, and so when the project ended, I remained employed.



Lion's head in Antelope Canyon in the Navajo Nation on the same trip, maybe even on the same day. 


Since starting with Deloitte, I've had an amazing journey. Multiple projects, multiple accounts, two maternity leaves (completely paid for 16 weeks) and amazing coworkers. Not only have I remained employed, but I like what I do, it's easy to get up in the morning and go to work. #lovethislife