Today's Lunch Special

... a ride along the Bay trail. Which was like riding in a wind tunnel. That bay sure puts off some windy wind. Windy, windy, windy.



I have a recurring nightmare where I'm swimming in the air. It's so windy that I can't walk and I'm lifted off the ground and instead of letting it blow me away I attempt to swim freestyle.

I had a nice birthday yesterday. Although I had a sore throat. But now I'm better. The sore throat seemed to dissapear yesterday after sneaking off on a two hour lunch mtn bike ride.

I gave myself a two hour lunch ride for my birthday yesterday.



For my birthday I also bought myself two new red Adirondack chairs with pillows, for the garden, and a new coffee maker and a new red blender for smoothies.

For my birthday, we went out for dinner and had Thai food. The birthday rule was, no complaining from anyone about what kind of food I wanted to have on my birthday. Both small people did good. They even had, what we told them were, crabby patties. And they liked them.

And this weekend for my birthday, Morgan is going to finish the mud on the extra bedroom and help me hang little twinkle lights in the back yard.

I told him I didn't want anything except some time spent on the house things we've been neglecting for so long.

Today I feel a little older, but at least I got a ride in and I imagine if I keep riding, I won't look or feel as old as I seem to be getting.

Girl's Night (Ride) Out

Sometimes, it's girl's night out.

So your husband takes the kids to the movies. And you, you get dressed up.

You put on your wool undershirt, your baggy knickers, your long sleeve pink and black jersey and your beaver socks. You wrap your light tightly on your helmet, pull your battery off the charger and slip it into your jersey pocket.

And you go into the garden and collect various flowers and you place them in a piece of tissue paper. And you go down into the garage and pull your bike off of the hook and place it near the front of the garage and you oil your chain. You put on your helmet and slide the bottle of wine into the water bottle cage holder, slide your shoes on and hold onto the flowers while steering and you head up to your neighbor's house. Her kids and husband are gone and she's hosting a girl's night out at her house.

But you can only stay for an hour. Because in an hour, it's girl's night (ride) out back at your house.

So you have a few glasses of wine. And you talk about your kids and how smart they are and what teacher they have and why they're better then all the other kids. And you have some chips and dip and you hold the baby of the mom who's new and you coo and laugh and smile and nod. And all the while you're looking at your watch.

And soon it's getting dark and you excuse yourself politely and say goodbye to all the other moms and you ride back down to your house.

Sometimes it's girl's night out and you have 10 women come to your house and they bring mountain bikes and lights and snacks and something to drink. And it's warm out and a tiny bit foggy. And someone brings their boyfriend.

And you tinker with your bikes and your lights and someone passes around a flask of something and you eat a few clif blocks and talk about how Erin hasn't really ridden her new bike yet, but this will be a good ride for it.

And then you all set out up the hill. You all ride quietly through the canyons until you hit the first trail. And single file, one by one each woman pedals up the first hill onto the first part of the trail and you ride. And it feels nice. And you smile.

And you ride and ride and ride.

Sometimes you take a left turn onto the single track and it's dark and foggy and you can see the trail and the stream of little headlamp lights up ahead and behind, bobbing and winding and flowing and following and you start singing to yourself. It's girl's night out and you wonder how many other moms are spending their night like this.

And you ride and ride and ride.

On girl's night out, sometimes you come to a fork in the trail and you all stop to make sure that all 11 are there and then Janet passes her flask around and you sip it and it warms your ears. And when you start up again there's more laughing and the single track flows just a little bit smoother.

Sometimes as you ride, you can hear your hubs buzzing and the cracking of the leaves under your wheels and the bumping of the tires against the roots and rocks but you can't see any of it because the fog has gotten thicker and your glasses are fogging up and your light is still pointed too far down from the last time you stopped and tilted it down because you didn't want to blind Sam as you were talking to her.

So you tilt your light back up as you're barreling down the trail and it helps a little bit.

And you ride and ride and ride.

And every so often you look down at your watch and think, this is girl's night out and my kids are in bed and it's late and I'm out here riding single track. And you take in a really deep breath and slowly let it out because you know that it's all very perfect right now.

Sometimes we make a wrong turn and back track a little bit and we have to look at the map to make sure we know where we're going. On girl's night out we use a map that Morgan has made for us, highlighted with arrows in the direction we should be going. So we turn around and take the trail that goes down, with Jennifer leading us.


And we ride and ride and ride.

Sometimes we get to the end of the single track on girl's night out and we take a left and cruise along the ridge looking for a way out. And we come to the end of the fire road and there's the real road and we realize it's over.

I look at my watch and two and a half hours has passed and I think, how can that be, we only just started. And Jennifer and I talk about where we should go next, but decide to ride back down to the house sensing that the others want to be done.

Sometimes it's girls night out and after our ride we eat pretzels and drink beer and talk about how we suck in our stomachs at the neighborhood pool while we walk around in bikinis and wonder if it's the last summer we can get away with even wearing bikinis.

This is how we spend girl's night out.

Make It Stop

I'm having a hard time working today. I'm taking tomorrow off, so today's kind of like Friday for me, so I'm sorta slacking. Working a little and slacking a little. Even middle aged moms slack a little.

I'm bored.

I've already harassed the sales team and I've scootered around hitting things with the golf club and it's only one o'clock. And I ate lunch already. And I went for a walk after I got my lunch.

Today's draaaaging. And to no end, I've tried to get Marie to show me the naked picture of one of our co-workers. She keeps telling me she has it, that it was sent to her mistakenly by someone in our other office. But she won't show me. I think she's lying. But who cares. I don't care.

I feel like I'm in a box.

This morning I didn't ride my bike into work. But, I did get up early enough for a nice 2 hour road ride before work. And I didn't wear knee warmers or arm warmers. It was one of those perfect little morning rides. And I felt great, so I rode hard. And then I cruised down the ridge. And the view was pretty. And I could smell the jasmine.

I woke up at 5:15 am because the bike racks and panniers and vacuum apparently fell out of the rafters in the garage. Morgan jumped out of bed in full boxer short samurai stance and then ran outside to see who was trying to commit crimes against us.

It was bike stuff, crashing all around in the garage.

Now, I'm looking at pictures. Old pictures.




I should do something more constructive like read the news or read blogs or search for garden furniture. But I'm in one of those moods where everything seems boring. Even the pictures are boring now. Even naked pictures are boring right now.

My studio co-worker is downloading songs from the 80's and making me listen. And now it's Willie Nelson.

Yawn.

Hacky Sack

Last Saturday a hummingbird flew into the screen door and got stuck. And then died.

He's still stuck there today.

The kids keep asking us to take it down so they can bury it. Not right now we keep saying.

Not right now, maybe later.

Morgan asked me if I wanted him to put it in a box for me so I could keep it. No thanks.



Poor little hummingbird.


Last night we spent an hour playing hacky sack in the living room. We're trying to teach the kids how to play.

Teaching a 7 year old girl how to play hacky sack is not easy.

There's lots of karate kicking and rolling around on the floor and twirls and spins and laughing so hard because all the rolling around causes loud farts to come out of such a small, petite girl person.

The 9 year old can focus pretty well if you keep him involved in the techniques. But the 7 year old ballet shoe and tutu wearing hacky sack farter is, as Morgan puts it, like hanging out with a miniature Mick Jagger.

It's so beautiful out right now. I think I'm going to leave for my lunch ride just a bit earlier then usual and stay out just a bit longer then usual.

First Things First

I'm a dog named Dixie. I have small feet which pitter patter on the linoleum floor, you can hear my toenails in the middle of the night. My tag says I belong to the Johnsons, but they don't own me they just feed me, they just bought me one day.


No one owns me, I'm Dixie the tiny dog. And in the middle of the day I sit in the sun and I hear young children call me a weiner dog, perhaps that's what I am. The Germanic term is dachshund and I like that.


I'm thin and I'm proud and no one can make fun of me. I can slip through the bars of prison if I were ever incarcerated, but I don't know what I would do wrong. My body yields no evel inclination, I'm a pure weiner dog.


My name is Dixie and I go dancing cross the floor in the evening of the Johnsons when everyone is sleeping. Sometimes I look for a morsel of food but they're so clean they're almost anal retentive in their cleanliness habits and there's nothing for me.


But I don't despair.

Because I know tomorrow my Gaines Burgers will be there, and they will unwrap the plastic from them and then feed me this succulent dish and I will eat.


And I've watched the German Shepherds with their long necks, their graceful necks, dipping into the toilet to drink whenever they want to have a drink of cool water in that well. But I must plead, I must beg, I must whine for Mr Johnson to put put my bowl or one of the Johnson boys to refill it after I drink it because I'm Dixie the dog and I like water.


And in the middle of the night you can see me dancing a small Fred Astaire tap dance, with my little toe nails.


They go click click against the linoleum, and I run down the hall and I slide. And the back of me goes in front of me... slowly.


I'm long and I'm thin, I'm Dixie the tiny dog and I like it.

Peter Himmelman

Lazy Bike Commute

I rode into work today. Right now I'm drinking a chocolate recovery drink mixed with coffee.

I saw quite a few bike commuters on my ride in. I could tell they were bike commuters because they were all wearing bags of some sort. One was a woman dressed in a red Clifbar kit. The other two were guys out on Redwood road. We all waved to each other and smiled. It made me happy.

I made it over to the BART station in record time. The motivation was there - the last bus over the bridge being at 8:15am. If I miss it, I'm stuck. And from 7am to 9am you can't bring your bike on BART at certain stations, so that wouldn't have been an option really. It's really quite ridiculous. But I was ready to feign ignorance and try to sneak on anyway if I missed the bus.

I wish I could race as fast as I commute. Something about riding my bike to work makes me ride fast and agile. And my pedal stroke is so smooth and rhythmic. Maybe it's about the boogie man chasing me and the time cuts for public transportation...

Anyway, the route I took today is a hilly back road of 15 miles from my house to a BART station. Much easier then the normal 44 mile dumbarton bridge, marshland sand way. From BART I catch a bus that goes over the san mateo bridge and drops me off right in front of work. The bus has wifi. Not that I would ever bring my laptop on my bike commute, but I thought that was pretty cool.



It's good to ride to work. I was grumbling about getting up this morning, but Morgan reminded me how good I'd feel in a few minutes and he was right.

And I feel good now too. Especially with chocolate recovery and coffee and a banana.

And today is bike to work day.

And today not only did I forget to bring deodorant, but I forgot to bring shoes so I'll be smelly and wearing cycling shoes all day today.

Cinderella Dressed in Yeller

Our new thing is to jump rope once a week for about an hour.

Wednesdays, we have nothing to do after school, so we do homework and jump rope. Sometimes I pretend I'm a stay at home mom and cook dinner early, because I'm here, working from home. And theoretically I should think about what to make during the day, when I'm here which makes it easier to cook.

Most times not though. Around 4 or 5pm while I'm twirling the rope I remember, oh yeah, dinner. And oh yeah, I'm supposed to cook for them.

I cook. But it's just not my favorite thing to do. But you know, when you have kids you sort of have to cook, so I cook simple things.

Secretly though, I think Morgan is disappointed that he didn't get a wife who likes to cook home grown meals or whatever you call them. A few weeks ago he made a comment about how one of our friend's was wearing an apron while she was cooking a nice dinner when he went to pick up Lulu at her house. It seemed like a hint to me.

Maybe I'll wear an apron at this weekend's race.

Anyway, recently we've been tying the long rope onto the chair out back and I turn while they jump. Lulu's the pro. She does it every recess at school and knows the drill. She knows all the rhymes. Sam just jumps and I must say, for a boy, he's pretty good. Best of all though, it's really tiring and an hour on a Wednesday afternoon after school is nice and good for small people.

Right now I'm waiting for the pizza and salad to come. I'm not cooking because jumping rope is more fun.

I think tomorrow is bike to work day around here.

Eat Your Vitamins

Ssingle sspeedss will make you sstronger. A few times a week is the recommended dossage.


For two hours I rode yesterday after work on the ssingle sspeed. But today I feel sso ssleepy. The entire ride yessterday, I felt like I wass going to barf. Ssingle sspeeds are sso hard to ride. Sso hard.

I knew I'd feel even worsse if I didn't go to my sspin class thiss morning, sso I went and felt better for a little bit.


But I'm sso ssleepy again.

My coworker'ss kid iss here because sshe hass the flu. She's been barfing all morning. Now sshe's ssleeping in a camp chair. I want to ssleep too. We have the lights off in the studio, so no one can see what we're doing in here. So I'm blogging. It's too hard to work in the dark.


Ssomething about the fog makess me sso ssleepy.


It's teacher appreciation week. I'm a room parent for my 4th grader's class. Each day this week I've organized a little gift for the teacher. Tomorrow each kid is supposed to bring a flower for a little bouquet we're making. I think that's just the sweetest thing, a flower from each kid. The day after that is a fruit basket. And then Friday is a potluck.

I need some pot and some luck for Saturday. I haven't raced in a month and I'm feeling like molasses lately. Saturday I'm racing without my family. I hope I make it on time. Pot and luck would do me good. Well maybe not. Pot would make me oversleep. Luck doesn't make me fast.

The brownie pot luck is next week. One of the soccer parties is Saturday. The other soccer party is Friday evening. The ballet recital is in a few weeks. The big report in 4th grade is due next week. Open house at school is next week. The music presentation is the week after. The camp trip is this weekend. Lulu's slumber party is the week after next. There's a 24 hour race in a few more weeks. The last of the soccer games are this weekend.

... and I can't get my treo to sync up with my pc calendar.

Today, I had an appointment at 11am with a supplier that I didn't know about. Apparently my treo hasn't been syncing correctly for a while now. Maybe I should just carry around a folded up calendar in my back pocket.

Yesterday on my ride, I rode up every single hard ass hill. Towards the end I was getting real sloppy and so, on one of the last rocky pieces of single track I stood and turned the wheels hard and up over the roots and rocks I was griding and right at the top I lost traction and slowly fell to the right side on my butt onto a nice sharp rock.

Later as I was looking at my butt in the mirror to see if I could find the bruise, I got the raised eyebrows from the husband as he walked by. I'm not sure why I needed to see it. I can certainly feel it. I know it's there, but I want to make sure the bruise is there too.

I'm sso ssleepy.

Tomorrow I'll ride the ssingle sspeed again at lunch. Tonight I might get lucky.

Maybe we'll have Thai food tonight.

I like chocolate cake.

Blah, blah, blah.

Traffic and Shyt and Lunch Bike Rides

Is it ok to swear if I spell it wrong?

My ma used to sing her swear words when we were young. Like it wasn't as bad if you were singing it. "Mary! Mother of God you Fucking moron" she'd sing loudly in the car at others.

She'd sing it around the house too. "la, la, la, mother fucker".

I grew up thinking it was ok to say shit in a normal conversation. Shit was the most popular swear word in our house.

My mother, the potty mouth.

When she got back from Thailand a few weeks ago, every other word out of her mouth was fuck this and fuck that, when she told me about the 18 hour flight. She said she almost told the flight attendant to fuck off.

Last night she got pulled over for making an illegal right hand turn. Actually, they followed her home for 2 blocks, called in the back up and then 5 cop cars showed up at her house. They gave her the drunk test. She wasn't drunk. She said she asked them what the fuck they needed 5 cop cars for when a granny makes an illegal turn. She called the police captain today and is having lunch with her to complain about the excessiveness of the situation.

My ma has a Masters in English. She was a school teacher for years. Now she's a member of the city council and on the board of the historic commission & city development and approves development or not and sells real estate in her little town. And she still swears.

Oh man, now I have to go sit in traffic for an hour. Why didn't I ride my bike in this morning? Why didn't I get up earlier and ride in? Why am I so lazy? Instead I brought my bike in and rode it at lunch with a crazy head wind.

I saw some of this along the water where I rode today. Pretty then, but now I have to go sit in traffic with a bike on my roof.

On my ride this afternoon, I listened to Tribe Called Quest on the iPod and thought about sex and rode into the head wind.






Ok, now it's time to go.

I Loves Me Some Hummingbirds

I don't ride much after work. Usually my time is before or during lunch, but yesterday I had a tiny window of opportunity of nothingness around 5pm so I took it. I rode a quick little hour of Pinehurst loop, which when it's really hot is almost like a nice little swim. Lots of pretty trees, deep down in the canyon with some nice pockets of lower temp micro-climates.

While I was riding I thought about my little hummingbirds.

Lately I've been spending time in the garden weeding and stuff. We have a water fall in the back and with it we get lots of little visitors - mostly hummingbirds. They're very talkative. And they like to whip around me when I'm out there low to the ground.

My sister was over the other day and she noticed all the hummingbirds and she snickered and made some comment about how I finally have some of my own hummingbirds.

------------------------------------------

One summer when we were kids, we went on a series of organized Saturday hikes around the Bay with this nature lady called Mrs. Terwilliger. She was famous in our parts. We'd drive out to Marin and meet her somewhere and spend the Saturday hiking and learning about the local plants and animals and marshlands and tide pools and blah, blah, blah.

Lots of families would show up. As a kid it was a great learning experience.


Before we went on each hike as we were arriving, she'd be pulling out all the "animals" from her VW bus, arranging them on the ground. We'd talk about each of the animals that we'd probably see on our hike that day, what they did, how the lived in the environment, blah, blah, blah.

They were the real deal animals. Dead and stuffed. And glued on platforms. We were always a little creeped out by this. But we'd pet them anyway and listen to her stories. And when she was done talking, as we were getting ready to go on the actual hike, we'd help her put them pack in her bus.


One time I stole some of the stuffed hummingbirds. Yanked them right off their wooden platform.

They were so soft and so cute and so still and so dead and as I was helping put the animals into her van I slid them into my coat pocket. And all through the hike I kept my hand in my pocket, petting their soft little fur and holding their soft little bodies.

When we got home, I found a shoe box, wrapped them up in some soft paper towels and put them in and hid them on the top shelf of my closet. Each day I'd pull them out, unwrap them carefully and put them in my pocket and keep them there all day during school, petting them and carrying them in my hands. They were my little friends.

At home I'd wrap them back up carefully and put them in their box for the night. Sometimes I'd pull them out late at night and pet them and look at their dead, stuffed little bodies and their bulging eye balls. I wondered how they'd died. And how they stuffed them. I'd pet their little backs over and over again.

This went on for a few weeks. My own little hummingbirds. I loved them so much.

Until the day my mom was looking for something in my closet and found them. When I came home from school that day, there they were in the kitchen, unwrapped and standing on the counter staring at us as we came in.

Shit.

The hummingbirds sat on top of the fridge for the rest of the week. I saw them every time I went to get something to eat or drink. They were there staring at me.

The next week at the nature walk, I had to bring them back. I wanted to just try and slip them into the van as we were putting the animals away again. I noticed that there were no other hummingbirds. Apparently I'd stolen the only 2 she had.

But my mom had other ideas. So as Mrs. T was setting all the animals up and starting her talk I was forced to raise my hand in front of the entire group of 30 hikers, including a neighborhood family who we were good friends with, and tell Mrs. T that I'd stolen the dead hummingbirds and that I was returning them because stealing was wrong. I walked into the middle of the circle and placed the two birds down next to the other dead birds and walked back to my place in the circle.

I don't even remember what happened next, because of course in that sort of situation you're mortified to even be alive. I'm sure I just closed my eyes and pretended to be back in my room at home petting my stuffed animals.

Jeezus.

To this day, my sister and brother still tease me about it. The time I "stole the stuffed hummingbirds" and carried them around in my pocket, petting them all day and talking to them, calling them George.

And now I watch these little hummingbirds in my backyard and I hear them talking as they buzz around me and I continue to ignore them and go on my merry way.

Vicariously

I'm going to post pictures of Morgan's bike race, because when you're married sometimes you think and feel like you were there even know you really weren't, because well... you're married and stuff.




I'm going to post pictures of Morgan's bike race because I really wanted to be there.



I'm going to post pictures of Morgan's bike race because of stuff like this...





I'm going to post pictures of Morgan's bike race because they won iron balls and they called themselves "Team Quatros Machos Saquatchos".



I'm going to post pictures of Morgan's bike race because men who race single speed mountain bikes and win are super sexy. Quien es mas macho?

24 Hours of Cool and 9 Miles of Walking

I'm home this weekend with lots of kids. Morgan is out doing the 24 Hour of Cool mtn bike race up in Auburn somewhere in a placed called "cool".

They left early this morning. Around 5am I think. His teammates, Cisco and Matthias spent the night on our living room floor and they got up early and went.

I really wanted to go and hang out and help and blah, blah, blah, but, well, you know. A mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do.



Morgan called me sometime between 10 and 11am this morning to tell me that on the way up, his therm-a-rest had flown off the roof and he wanted me to call caltrans to see if they could save it for him when they found it.

What?

He left me 3 messages about this. I listened to them while I was working at "registration" at the school walkathon. I was registering all the second graders; taking their forms with all their pledges, handing t-shirts out, getting their signed permission slips, adding up pledges, passing out pledge buttons, checking off names, listening to voice mails about long lost therm-a-rests on the Benicia bridge...



Whenever Morgan goes on some adventure for the weekend, I pay back all the play dates and sleepovers I owe to other parents. It works pretty well. I schedule kids to come over for the day and or night - we go swimming or hiking or bike riding or play basketball, play in soccer games or walk in walkathons or whatever. I stack up all my dues and paybacks and stuff them into these weekends.




Today was the school walkathon and knowing Morgan was going to be gone all weekend, I signed up to volunteer all day. Might as well, right? The kids walked something like eight or nine miles. A reaally slooow eight or nine miles. Like nine miles in 4 hours around and around and around the course, stopping at every station getting water and eating popsicles and talking about hairstyles and comparing lego men and drinking more water and taking pizza breaks and eating more popsicles.

After my volunteer shift I sat under a tree with some of the other parents and heckled and cheered the kids as they walked by. Once in a while I'd get up and walk a few kilometers with a group of kids or parents.

They made their goals and they got their medals. They walked the walk. And then I took them all up to the pool and we swam for 4 hours.

Lulu later told me that she'd had enough exercise today and therefore wouldn't need any tomorrow.

I wonder how the 24 hours of "cool" is going right now. The sun's just setting, they've been racing for a while and the night fun is about to begin. And what's pretty cool about "cool" is that they serve you dinner and breakfast, so you only need to really worry about food during small parts of the day.

Mac-n-cheese baby! Come n get it!

Blind Intervals

Yesterday my favorite pink sunglasses were lost all day.

I have quite a few pairs of glasses, but like shoes I tend to wear my favorites non-stop until they wear out or until they break or I lose them. Early in the morning I lost them. Early, as I was getting dressed for my ride I lost them.

What should I do? I mumbled as I looked around the house.

Do some intervals, Morgan says. Go over to Redwood, ride down to the park entrance, turn around and ride up as hard as you can. Turn around at the top and recover on your way down and then do it again. Do it five times.

You need to ride harder, he says.

No, I mean about my glasses.

He leaves with the kids, to take them to school. I shuffle around the house looking for my pink sunglasses. I look for a half hour and then give up and put on my regular clear glasses and get on my bike. The sky is bright. The sun makes me squint.

Over to Redwood I ride. Down Redwood I ride, with blurry vision and squinty eyes and tears streaming down my cheeks from the wind of going too fast down the hill with tiny clear glasses.

And then up I go, back up to the top of the hill. Harder, faster, faster I push, sweating and steaming up my tiny clear glasses and I'm blind from the skinny granny glasses with the top of the frame that sits right in the middle of my vision.

I end up looking over the rims. And that's worse, because I can't see anything. I'm looking at a Matisse painting.

But who needs to see when you're going uphill as fast as you can and your lungs hurt and you're breathing is hard. All you should be worried about is going faster, pushing it harder, passing other riders. Who cares if those tiny glasses are slipping down your nose and they're itchy and you have to keep pushing them back up to sit right.

But I can't see anything and where are those damn pink glasses? They were on the bed when I was getting dressed. I saw them! Those kids were probably playing around and then they wore them somewhere and tossed them aside.



All day I wear a regular pair of clear glasses. No rose colored frames to make my world seem just a little happier. All day I wonder where they are, my little pink glasses. My co-workers ask me if I have new glasses. At lunch I search the web for something that might take their place. Nothing seems right.



When I get home I clean the house and look in every nook and cranny, but I have that sinking feeling that they're just gone.

And then, while the kids are laying on the bed and we're all reading before their bed time I get up on a whim and walk over to the pajamas hanging in the corner and pull them off the hook and shake them a little and out fall the glasses.

Truth Be Told

The reason my 7 year old, Lulu, is a vegetarian is because all this time she thought hot dogs and sausages were made out of pig weiners.

She told me this at dinner earlier, while we were all eating our sausages and she, eating her tofu dog.

No, said Sam, hot dogs and sausages and stuff like that are made out of pig intestines. And actually these are made out of chicken intestines because they're chicken apple, so they're not even part of a pig.

No, she said, they're pig weiners.