Currently / 2.17.20

Valentine’s Day has become a much more important holiday with two small girls. They were anxiously awaiting the big day all week, and excitedly planning their Valentines boxes and card exchanges. I put together a little treat bag for both of them with jewelry from Claire’s and Pocky sticks and both girls thought it was the best thing ever. We had family Valentines Day dinner at Jason’s Deli. Ha.

For our part, Jose and I exchanged cards, and we did manage a date night on Saturday thanks to the arrival of Jose’s mom, who is visiting for a week and a half. She will be here to help Jose while I go to Austin for QuiltCon, so that will be nice too.

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Last week I attended the kickoff event for a new parenting group at work. It was organized by a couple fellow NASA daycare moms and friends, and the first event was a roundtable discussion in cooperation with Mindr. I’m excited to see how the group grows, and what we can do to make NASA a more parent-friendly work environment.

(To be fair, I find that NASA is already a very parent-friendly environment, with a lot of policies in place that support flexible work schedules and a great childcare center. But there is always room for improvement!)

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It’s President’s Day so the girls and I are all off, but I had to take Charlotte to the pediatrician this morning. She has what I think started as an infected hangnail, and cleaning it plus neosporin wasn’t making it any better. We left with two different kinds of antibiotics — oral and topical — so I expect her big toe to be feeling better in short order.

In less happy news, I’m trying to straighten out what is either an issue with the pediatrician or with our insurance. The pediatrician says they never got payment for the girls’ well visits last fall; insurance tells me they did pay. Fun times.

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This morning I managed to shrink my Rothys sneakers. These shoes are all over social media but it’s not a gimmick as far as I’m concerned. I own 4 pairs — 3 pairs of round toe flats and 1 pair of sneakers — and they are super comfy. I wear the flats 5 days a week for work, and the sneakers the other 2 days.

But this morning when I intended to put them on “air dry” (which I have done before) somehow they ended up getting dried on low heat. And they shrank, as Rothys tells you quite clearly that they will when exposed to heat. Woe!!

I was super mad about it because 1) I really like these shoes and 2) they are not cheap. Once I calmed down, I started googling and found a recommendation to try putting on a couple pairs of really thick socks, squeezing your feet into the shoes, blasting them with a hair dryer for a few minutes, and then letting them cool with your feet still in them. So I did. And it worked!! Hallelujah.

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Two days till QuiltCon!!