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. 

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.

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

29.Get naked on top of Acadia National Park (50 x 50)

Since we celebrated Roddy's first birthday at the North Rim Lodge at the Grand Canyon in 2016, we've been traipsing around at the end of the summer to national parks to celebrate his birth... with a Simba pic... those will become MORE fun when Roddy gets to be an adolescent.

I don't remember where I heard it, but there's this thing about going topless at the furthest points of the continental United States. Acadia National Park is one of the first places that the sun hits the US in the morning - so I guess there's a thing about showing the Sun your boobies FIRST THING in the morning. I didn't actually show my tits because the top of Acadia is extremely cold first thing in the AM as well as ridiculously busy with tourists. But we did get Roddy's Simba shot without getting other tourists in frame.

We met my parents up there on their boat and sailed around the island with them for a few days. Roddy loves the boat; Grandbear got him a harness that attaches to the main halyard so if he went overboard we wouldn't have to go too far to get him.

I was seven months pregnant with Stella when we went to Acadia. Had I known how perfect it is for kids, we would have scheduled a longer visit. There are so many carriage roads for bike rides and so many places to go swimming. It was magical.

Roddy did not want to touch a lobstah.

the bubbles... look like boobies.

42. survive a pandemic (50x50)

Flippantly, when I think about this, I think there's no way that I could have added this to a leap list until after the fact. It just never occurred to me that, as an American living in Baltimore Maryland, I would ever experience a global pandemic and state-instituted quarantine. that's some privilege, right there.

we did though.

This was a spectacular year, literally, it was a sight to see and live through. We already knew that it was going to be full of change and adventure because we started the year off by deciding that we were going to become a family of five. We quit smoking before we arrived in Connecticut for the winter holiday. In Vermont we heard an announcement about another virus that was impacting Wuhan, China and we asked Roddy's school about the foreign exchange students expected to travel from China. It only took a few days for them to respond saying that they were cancelling the program for the Spring semester.

Grammy had moved in with us in 2019 so that she could split her time between St. Marks and Timberlost, the new house she was building from the ground up in Canaan Valley, West Virginia. We knew that the house wasn't going to be complete before bebe #3 arrived, but that we'd have support for going to Johns Hopkins hospital again. We knew that we would have six months of maternity leave with Deloitte from June to December.

Then shit got real.

Collectively, the adaptations that we faced together every single day were nothing short of revolutionary. We switched to 100% remote work, had a baby in a pandemic, lived through Stella's toddlerhood, absorbed Roddy back into the daily routine when school shut down, had to decide what to do about preschool for Stella and kindergarten for Roddy for the year, quit Mom's, had our car wrecked on Calvert, lived without a car for a few months, got promoted, bought a new car,  invited Christy to live with us because the YMCA was putting her at risk so she quit, managed a few months of remote kindergarten, switched projects and accounts after maternity leave, came back from maternity early, decided to move for a better school district,  had a serious health scare with Jason getting a blood clot in his kidney and Grandbear with another heart problem, sold Calvert Street house, bought another house, moved into a airBnB while improvements were made on Anneslie, moved into Anneslie, fought a serious case of dermatitis.

We went through a lot of bubbles. We wasted a lot of water in the backyard pool. We ate Lucky Charms for a week straight while we figured out a grocery game plan and the kids pooped green for a week as a result. We saved so much money with working remotely. We doubled down into living with the grand parents in Connecticut and West Virginia through maternity leave in the height of the pandemic. We took seven COVID tests. We went on a lot picnics after Amelia was born. We bought a lot of face masks, never had a problem with toilet paper, Grammy stocked us up when she moved in from Arlington. We had our little "pod" with the Coonce's. We never got sick, there were one or two little stomach bugs that passed through the family after a grocery trip. We had hose fights with the next door neighbors. 

We made it through because Jason is #allheart. Because Deloitte provided amazing benefits. Because I worked my ass off while Jason was a Stay At Home Dad. We never gave up on each other. We never lost our sense of humor (much). 

40. be the bad guy (and be okay with it) (40 x 40)

When I put this list of items together, I didn’t think that it would be the iPad that would make me into the Bad Guy. My mom got us the iPad, because I asked for one, before Roddy was born. I had read that it was an effective tool for entertaining, that there are all kinds of games and puzzles on it for the little one. I also had the unrealistic dream that I would use it to get reading done. Roddy and I finished three chapters of Moby Dick (which is actually a fairly humorous tome) before it basically became Jason’s music tool. He uses it for Spotify, practicing guitar, listening to ALL OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD recordings. We used it a handful of times to do yoga in our living room. We consistently use it for FaceTime with my Dad and Bonus Mom in Connecticut. When Jason started the SAHDventure, he began using the iPad when Roddy was eating, so that he could do other things around the house. It became associated with eating for Roddy and I began associating it with Jason's smoking. I have been building the worst resentment against the fucking iPad.

It all came to a head last week. I had seen our neighbors use the iPad with their daughter when she goes to the potty, as a tool to get her to sit in the same spot when she poops. It worked for them, so I thought I would try it with Roddy. First thing in the morning, I sat him on the potty with Blippi and then I proceeded to make breakfast. Trying to get him to sit down and eat pancakes and sausage became a MAJOR struggle when breakfast was ready. He wanted to continue to watch Blippi. He said he wasn’t hungry, that he needed to poop. But meal time – to me – is time when you sit with your family without distractions and break bread. It’s 30 minutes (tops!) three times a day for fucks sake when you can put away distractions and make some fucking eye contact with the people you share your home with. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to cherish this time, to set up some boundaries, to cook a meal for these stomachs that mean so much to me and share the time with them – well, the whole person – including the stomach. He had refused to eat dinner at my mom’s house the week before unless the TV was on. But he inhaled his food as soon as I caved last Thursday.

After 15 minutes of serious meltdown about the iPad, I told him that it was the last day – that I was going to let his Aunt Christy borrow it until our summer vacation to Connecticut in July. Roddy continues to remember that he wants the iPad even though it’s only been gone for three days, and whines for it. It’s harder to keep him contained and entertained. He’s started to eat the same food as I make for Jason and myself. He’s started to play with his toys more. No changes to sleeping or naptime.

Jason says that I’m punishing both of them. I’ve said that the amount of screentime that Roddy has bothers me but it’s just easier for Jason to sit him in front of the iPad so he can go outside and smoke, or “take out the trash.” He said that he would try to cut down the amount of screen time, but he didn’t. So I’m the Bad Guy because I’m setting some boundaries. It’s hard to set boundaries. It’s really difficult to be the one that says this is not okay and to consistently back it up with action. I think that the ends justifies the means here though and I can be okay with being the Bad Guy.

33.camp in a yurt (40 x 40)

Chronicles of Camping in a Yurt and Thunder the Deer

After Roddy's first birthday celebration at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, we drove north to Brian's Head, Utah to stay in a yurt. We went "glamping."

If you don't know what a yurt is: A traditional yurt (from the Turkic languages) or ger (Mongolian) is a portable, round tent covered with skins or felt and used as a dwelling by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia. The structure comprises an angled assembly or latticework of pieces of wood or bamboo for walls, a door frame, ribs (poles, rafters), and a wheel (crown, compression ring) possibly steam-bent. The roof structure is often self-supporting, but large yurts may have interior posts supporting the crown. The top of the wall of self-supporting yurts is prevented from spreading by means of a tension band which opposes the force of the roof ribs.

The glamping yurt we went to Summit Mountain Lodge. It was beautiful, located at the end of a winding, hilly, dirt road that requires visitors to use a high clearance vehicle in the summer and a SnowCat in the winter.  It’s tucked far from anything and is blanketed with a thick black blanket of stars at night. And it is quiet. Sitting back in the woods, both the main lodge and the yurts are sheltered from any sort of standard city sounds. We met one of the owners when we arrived, she gave us keys and told us about Thunder the Deer.

We were the only people staying there, which was a bit eerie, but meant we could walk around naked and climb on things without getting caught.

 

So imagine this: naked mountain praising, Thunder the Deer coming to steal food, cattle grazing, and climbing water towers. All in one day.

 

 

32x32 list

1. donate hair to Wigs for Kids (complete)
2. establish Needles to Say (complete)
3. complete a century ride (Complete)
4. close out corporate bank account, open up checking at a credit union (Complete)
5. go play seal/otter/walrus
6. dye & spin my own yarn
7. watch all the alfred hitchock movies
8. go on 3 blind dates (complete)
9. re-enact a scene from the Miracle on 34th Street (Complete)
10. vote (complete)
11. take someone hostage and love them to death
12. Be a member of the audience in a TV show
13. Send a message in a bottle (complete)
14. Run to the top of the Statue of Liberty
15. Go geocatching
16. Fold a 100 origami cranes and give them to someone special (Complete)
17. Fly in a helicopter
18. go to a silent meditation weekend retreat (Complete)
19. go on tour of the Capitol (Complete)
20. finish trunk projects
21. make garden needles, knit a blanket with +10 strands of yarn (Complete)
22. complete a half marathon (complete)
23. read something by David Foster Wallace (Complete)
24. make an anonymous donation (complete)
25. improve race time on another triathlon
26. swim across the Long Island Sound
27. make stuffed squid like at Cousin Frank's
28. go bowling in the White House (Complete)
29. knit a blanket with +10 strands of yarn (Complete)
30. blow kisses to all highway patrol cars (complete)
31. steal a choir suit and run around singing, clapping, and praising (complete)
32. sit in the gallery during a Supreme Court trial

5. buy a hOme (40 x 40)

We started looking for our home after a whirlwind romance, getting married within 10 months of meeting. We were looking for a place that we could grow into with the addition of little ones running around. My husband wanted more of a turn-key property and growing up with a carpenter father, I wanted more of a fixer-upper. We knew we wanted to live in Baltimore but we were ALL OVER THE PLACE, started in Reservoir Hill, then looked in Patterson Park, Hamden (the ubiquitous), Mattfeldt Park, Dickeysville, Lauraville.

We would send our realtor the redfin and trulia links of houses and she would patiently take us to these houses and I'd tear them up and nothing would come of it.

Pinterest was a black hole of a time-suck before those major adult (American) milestones appeared on my horizon: marriage, children, home-buying. I just didn't really understand why I would "pin" a recipe or a beautiful place or a fashionable skirt to a "board" when it was just something interesting on the internet. I would copy and paste links to things that I liked into an email and send it to myself if I wanted to remember and organize places (because fuck bookmarks).

And then came a whole new level of needing to save various corners of the internet: organizing a wedding reception, planning for a newborn, and the ultimate need of dreaming of a hOme (capital "O" for the Orioles).

Maybe I have put the cart before the horse, but I started to accumulate ideas for non-existent house on Pinterest. I definitely put the cart before the horse when I downloaded apps to my phone to start looking at houses before a) checking my credit score (because I assume it's heinous from the wreckage of student loans) and b) cleaning up my credit so that c) we could get a ball park figure for how much we could afford.

While Pinterest dreams flourished, the reality check came in early August when we met with a loan guy. Based on a 4.5% mortgage rate the Debt To Income ratio (DTI) for a 200k home is around 21% of solely my income, and a 300k home is around 32%. Jason and I are definitely not comfortable with a $2000+ monthly mortgage (which is what it would be for the 300k home). We also spoke about the 203(k) loans and about finding a house that may need renovations. Seems like there are a bunch of hoops to jump through going that route, but might be worth it.

Since then, we've been a bit busy with the arrival of the little bodhi man, but I've stayed on the lookout for a house that could be our hOme. I've also kept pinning and searching for the elements of a hOme that I would like to have.

Here's what I'd like for the kitchen:

 I love keeping old houses like they were: rehabilitation > renovation

 The green subway tiles and the white counters, gas range.

 lots of natural light

 black board and space for pictures for the little man and others (maybe...)

 open shelving with the painted pipes, I could do that. Jason never remembers if he has something unless it is visible (object relativity is real), so this might be more funcitonal than aesthetic for him.

 reclaimed and repurposed wood has a big place in our hearts, we care about not making more Things.

 

 this type of mural but with Orioles or Black eyed Susans

Here are some ideas for a dining room:

 to match the time of the house... if we happen to find a turn of the century home...

 for all of the mismatched china plates that we were given as gifts for our marriage

 decorating with green is always a dream... unfortunately, it's jason who always has to pick up the responsibility for my dreams... like watering said dream.

I could go on... okay, okay, I will!

ideas for a yard:

 

 

I'll stop there. Hopefully the next thing I'll be able to update this post is that we found a place and bought it.

January 2016:
Jason became a stay at home dad and we moved to Arlington, VA to save some money by living with my family so that we could have a nest egg for "getting serious" about buying a house. I put it in quotes because my husband was also following #vanlife on Twitter and I don't know if there was ever a couple who could be more ambiguous about "getting serious" about buying a house.

July 2017:
 Finally after a year with my family we were ready to put it on the good foot and we found a few houses and actually put in offers, our realtor (Kim Lally Holmes, from the the Beliveau Group of Keller Williams) made it amazingly smooth. There were a few nights when we sent her some late night text flurries - but she was professional with her boundaries and answered us reasonably the next day. She was always honest and forthcoming about pros and cons on the house that we finally bought. She's amazing, anyone would be lucky to have her representing them when going through this major life event.

And now we have a hOme! I'll post pictures as soon as all of our boxes are unpacked. It kills me that our boxes aren't unpacked yet and that there's still lingering things. Jason says we have a lifetime to make it a hOme, but I'd like to get my pictures hung and our clothes unpacked and the plants in the right rooms and the walls painted NOW. This has been a great lesson in patience and incrementalism and deferred gratification and compromise.