i'm in the wrong house, aren't i?

i recently got my husband a gps for his birthday. he had been casually suggesting one for years. he'd drop hints like: we need a gps. and i'm getting a gps.

but i'd always be all no way. i have an excellent sense of direction.

but he'd say he wanted something that didn't fall asleep two hours into a trip somewhere and i would say i can't help it, sometimes being on a long drive is like a tranquilizer. he would bring up all the times we got lost and i would bring up all the times that if he had just listened to me, we wouldn't get lost, or be needing to make a twenty-six point turn in a thirty-four foot rv.

i prided myself on my sense of direction. heck, i could fly a small plane and vector a course between three points. but that was a long time ago. never mind about that time i followed the wrong river and was looking straight at some mountain ranges which was what prompted the need to vector a course in the first place. i found an airport. i landed. it was all good.

truth be told - lately, my sense of direction isn't as sharp as it once was. i don't know if it's being on the other side of forty or if i need new glasses. but i've been to the eye doctor and he said i don't need new glasses. so there it is.

i really think there's a bunch of stuff that isn't as sharp as it once was but i still maintain it's the glasses.

recently, we lifted our unintentional self imposed ban on going out and having an actual social life, and we went out. the bourbon slushies were all packed up, and i looked pretty good for the other side of forty.

i said i knew how to get there, and what with that new exit on the highway, we could even take the back way. after i totally pretended to know exactly where we were and we unknowingly passed the street three times and then backtracked to just take the long way and then made a phone call to a friend at the party, and circled back around again; an hour later we pulled into the tasty meadows neighborhood and parked right smack in front of the house.

we had argued the entire time and he said we are getting a gps.

and i said, no. look. we're here and can you believe we got a spot right in front of the house? look at all these cars!

we got out of the car, i slung the big bag of double batch bourbon slushies over my shoulder and walked up the sidewalk and into the house. i figured they all must be out back, on the count of it being so weirdly quiet for a fiftieth birthday party. i was also thinking we gotta get out more often and work harder at maintaining friendships, cause it had been a really long time since we had been to this friends house and i just don't remember it looking quite like this. and when i got to the kitchen and saw the kid in his boxers doing dishes, and his mom get up out of her lazy boy to see who was standing in her kitchen, it all became very clear and i just said, hi. i'm in the wrong house, aren't i?

she pointed to the house across the street and said that's where you wanna be. i promised i'd come back with a bourbon slushy and once we were out on the sidewalk steven said we are getting a gps. i secretly agreed, but wondered if a gps could tell the houses apart in tasty meadows any better than i could.

so i got him a gps and he named it suzanne. she's british. i said i wouldn't use it - i didn't need it cause of my excellent sense of direction. but i've totally used it. i had to get from downtown all the way out to east jesus one day and it required getting on a particular highway here that gets me all discombobulated. so i plugged the address into suzanne and off we went. i spent a good chunk of time yelling at suzanne, convinced she didn't know what the hell she was talking about in that insipid accent of hers. i questioned every turn she told me to take thinking surely, there was a better, faster way. i was pretty sure she thought we wanted to go to canada and that she had us on a direct route there via cincinnati.

my son was with me and in a real hurry to get to east jesus and all of my yelling at suzanne was making him worried we'd never get there and so he just begged me to please trust suzanne and do what she says.

so i did.

and we actually got to the right house in record time and i reluctantly had to admit, suzanne is a genius.

the winnebago, the butter dish and the george washington bridge

once upon a time, in a quest to prove that purchasing an rv was just the thing our family of five needed - embrace the open road! travel more easily from kentucky back to the mother land of new england! no stopping for the bathroom or gas station food! save money on hotels! room to stretch out and sleep all while still rolling in the snazzy comfort of a recreational vehicle! - my husband suggested renting an rv.

you know - no commitments. let's just rent one and see how it goes.

i had already worked through the whole if-my-husband-thinks-i-am-going-to-consent-to-buying-an-rv-he-married-the-wrong-woman thing and finally just said

ok.

so. we rent one and pack it up with everything but the kitchen sink cause we didn't even need to bring the kitchen sink seeing as there already was a sink. in the kitchen, on the rv that just so happened to be, i swear to god nicer and better appointed than my own home if you could overlook the excessive use of velour for decor.

as i walked out to the rv with armload after armload of clothes and other household paraphernalia, i sensed a slight vibe of doireallyneedtobringallthatshit annoyance coming from my husband.

but it was a trade-off sort of thing. if we are renting this thing, and it has closets and a kitchen and drawers and shit; then hell yes i am bringing everything i think i might possibly need or want, and even if i don’t need or want it, i wanted the option to need or want it.

and yes honey, that actually includes this very cool antique butter dish from england that was a gift to us. cause look - there’s a spot for it right here, in this roll up alcovy sort of thing in this snazzy kitchen that’s nicer than ours. you know how i like soft butter.

and so, we’re off.

our little family of five. i think our oldest (now almost 15), henry, was probably 7, our middle child annabel around 3, and lulu was 2.

driving halfway across the country in an rv with three small children was surprisingly dreamy. i daresay my husband was onto something. it was fantastic. when the kids were hungry, i got up from my seat and went back to the kitchen to get them some snacks. when they had to go to the bathroom, or i had to change a diaper, it was done. all while rolling down the highway.

what’s that honey? you’re hungry? hang on while i make you a tuna fish sandwich. wanna watch a movie, kids? lie down on the couch? ok. go ahead.

it was truly dreamy.

we were rolling down the highway with all the comforts of home.

and the butter too.

one of the most exciting things on any of our road trips back east was crossing the george washington bridge and looking across to the city - we always hoped it was clear enough to see "papa’s building”.

because once upon a time, my father ran the empire state building. the kids always called it (and still do) “papa’s building”. so, we’d cross the bridge and look across the hudson to see if you could see the building.

and on this particular trip, the kids were doing just that.

so, we’re crossing the gw and i announce, ok kids! come on over here & let’s all look for the building! and they all clamor off the couch and sit in the little kitchenette. cause we’re a rolling house and there’s a kitchenette to sit in.

and we’re all so happy.

i briefly remember glancing at the toll charges and wondering how the hell many axles we had on our rolling house and trying to recall how much cash i had in my wallet.

but mostly. we were happy.

and as my husband recalls this very story, he tells about his concern over the very, very large sideview mirrors on our very wide rented recreational vehicle -- but mostly, he was weirdly focused on only the driver’s side mirror as we passed through the narrow toll. and so, after he pays the toll, and at the very nano-second that he gives a sigh of relief upon clearing it, a huge crack reverberates through our snazzy rented, not so mini winnie.

and this huge cracking, breaking, expensive sound is due to the fact that the passenger-side ginormous mirror has now been sheared off the vehicle and is literally hanging on by a thread. or, electrical cords if you feel like getting real technical.

and so it begins.

and i heard a lot of yelling, but i'm sure what he meant to say was hey honey - i think i sheared off a portion of this vehicle that does not belong to us, how 'bout you come on up here & open the window and get that sideview mirror, will ya?

only the cords aren’t long enough to bring it inside. so i have to hang out the window and hold the mirror just so. and while i'm hanging out the window, i have time to wonder how much this is gonna cost us. and i wonder this out loud in a yelling sort of voice.

now. we’re on i 95 in westchester county and this particular corridor of 95 will make you wonder what the hell your toll money just paid for, cause it sure as shit isn’t the roadway. it’s pothole after pothole. and our rolling house isn’t rolling with the punches as much as i’d like.

stuff is starting to fall out of its fancy constraints.

the kids are crying that they didn’t really get to see papa’s building. i am hanging out the window hanging onto the mirror that i am convinced must cost a first year of college. i mean, my god, this rolling house is pretty sweet as far as rv's and velour decor are concerned. surely this mirror hanging from the cords costs a mint.

with. each. hole. we. hit. more. shit. is. falling.

my husband is trying to figure out the next plan of action and is likely running through the list of napa auto parts locations that i will bet anything he's got committed to memory.

and with each pothole, i look back to check on my unbuckled tiny kids that i cannot help cause we could lose the mirror if i get out of my seat and god only knows what that would cost and i also happen to notice that the rolly door of the fancy little alcovy thing in the kitchen is slowly sliding up.

my husband wants to get off the highway so he can asses the situation. i tell him that if he were to get off any of the nearest exits the only assessing that is going to be done on the situation is how to rip us off - cause i am from here. we've returned to the mother land and i know what i am talking about.

he must not have heard me when i yelled at him something along the lines of: under no circumstances should you get off that next exit in larchmont, cause it's one of those exits that has no re-entry. i promise you. if you get off this exit, we will not get back on the highway.

either he was smoking crack, or he thought i was - cause he got off the exit. and a mere nano-second before he makes this fateful choice, we hit that one last pothole in which the butter dish fell out of the fancyass alcove.

and then, like ralphie's father - for whom i have a special affinity cause of how he worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oil or clay; i wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as i know is still hanging in space over westchester county.

and my three small children are barefoot, just sitting on the couch - gobsmacked at all that has occurred since we were all so happy and looking for papa's building.

there is butter and broken glass all over the floor, i have been hanging out the front window holding onto the mirror for about an hour, and i'm wondering how i could marry a man who took the very exit i told him not to take. and have i mentioned there is butter and ceramic shards all over the floor.

but. here we are. driving down main street, larchmont. with no way to get back on 95 and i'm willing to bet a college education he's not gonna find a napa auto parts anywhere near this little slice of camelot.

the fiasco is really nowhere near over - there's still the bit about the low railroad bridge and the "no vehicles over eight feet" signs and the low hanging wires in the really chic residential real housewives of larchmont sort of neighborhoods. and then of course, there was the litany of "i told you so's" while we tried to maneuver our way through the backroads of westchester county via phone calls (this was in the olden days, before gps) to finally make it back onto i-95; all the while, i was hanging out the window, hanging onto the mirror.

there's no tidy way to wrap up this story, other than to say we made it to our destination. the mirror was finally fixed with a tube of $2.65 jb weld. we're still married. we actually bought an rv. sometimes we think of selling it to pay for college. or therapy for our kids.

in other rv adventures of the websters, there was also - the time we were hoboes.

who's on first?

i used to know a lot of things.

things like which of the umpteen piles of clothes in the basement was clean and which was dirty. i used to know when my kids assignments were due, when we had to send things in for the bake sales, what forms i needed to sign and checks i needed to write for field trips. the pile of dishes in the sink? the dust bunnies on the stairs? the semi-folded laundry covering the dining room table? i had it all under control. i knew exactly when i might or might not get around to it. i used to know when we were out of milk and coffee, when we needed to get more wine and when it was probably time to pick up all the poop in the backyard.

ok. i still know when we need to get more wine. that's a knowledge you never really lose.

but all the other stuff has gone to shit. especially the shit in the backyard.

ever since my husband casually said hey, why don't you put that degree of yours back to work and i went down to the basement to research myself to put together a kick ass resume, everything's been all cattywompus around here.

cause i got the job.

which is good; but it took my husband and i about four months to figure out who was gonna do what around the house. we've been married 17 years and had really settled into the roles we carved out for ourselves and our family. it worked for us. he went to an office and brought home the bacon and i stayed home monitoring the growing laundry piles, working on the dust bunny relocation program, making sure we were stocked with wine at all times and signing the kids' school forms. i was on top of it.

now, i go to work and he works from home. and mostly i think that because he's home, he should just take over all the stuff i used to do; but he insists that even though he's been in his boxers all day & it might look like he's just been hanging around, he's actually working.

and so this is why the breakfast dishes are still in the sink when i come home.

and this dishes still in the sink thing resulted in a bit of a rough patch where neither of us really did anything cause we didn't know who was gonna do it; nor could we really figure out when we'd actually be able to squeeze it in what with all the putting on races, ballet class and rehearsal transporting, picking kids up from school, bourbon slushie making and hosting folks who were putting on races that we had going on. so naturally, neither of us did a damn thing and everything was supremely messy.

our girls would come home from school crying over the missing homework stamp they got cause their deadbeat mom who went back to work was no longer on top of it all and kept forgetting to sign everything. kids would yell from the shower cause there was no conditioner. i'd be stuck in the basement bathroom with no toilet paper. we'd wake up in the morning and be out of butter or milk or clean towels or god forbid - coffee. no one had any clean clothes and those damn dust bunnies kept multiplying.

it was hard for me to let go of so much of what i had been doing for the last twelve years and delegate it to someone else cause i didn't really like the way the someone else folded the towels or the jeans. so i kept trying to do it all, but then my head almost popped off.

so, four months later, we've sorta sussed it all out and have settled into something resembling a routine. he makes the coffee & puts the thermos in my bike basket for my commute to work. i shop for food and pack the lunches. he sorta does the laundry. i still don't know when the kids' assignments are due cause that's not my job anymore. the dishes eventually get done, the 14 year old cleans the dust bunnies off the stairs, the laundry is in its' rightful place on the dining room table, the backyard is still covered in shit and i still make sure the wine never runs out.

it all seems to be working. which is good. plus, i remembered i had this blog and snuck in some time to write again.

here’s the thing of it

i pinned a number on and raced last weekend. and then i did it again this weekend.

i still do that occasionally.  pin a number on and race my bike. ‘race’, as always, being a strong word, cause sometimes i like to think of it as just riding my bike around in circles in which i happen to be with other people.

i just don’t do it as often as last year, which was just about every. single. weekend. we cut back on the racing this year. cause it’s a lot - to race every weekend, pack up the airstream and bribe the kids with donuts.

plus, all that racing requires a lot of training, hard work and dedication.

i couldn’t muster it up anymore. the dedication. something had to give. so, we’ve been busy with other things:

like trying to show some pride in home ownership, cause all that racing and being gone every weekend on those long base mile rides and stuff and your house will start to take on an abandoned, near-condemned sorta look, and the backyard will turn into jurassic park. at least in kentucky it will. i’ve lived a lot of places, but i’ve never seen anything like what one weekend of rain’ll do to a backyard here. neglect it, and it will take over your life. and it takes a long time to reclaim it.

so we’ve been painting, and sprucing things up. we even put a new roof on the house. we got tired of putting out that bucket on the floor of our third floor bedroom while the backyard grew into a rainforest every time it rained while we slept. we’re digging trenches for better drainage, and we’re finally clearing out the garbage tower of doom in the basement and putting it in our front yard - much to our neighbors’ [and i quote: “in fifty years’ this neighborhood has never looked so trashy”] dismay - for junk pickup. which, as you can clearly see by the entire neighborhood, nay, the entire city, mrs. barnsworth, that it is junk pick up day in louisville. perhaps you should have scheduled your “fancy executive” meeting for another week  - plus, that should give you plenty of time to hang some more doilies in your front window.

i’m sorry. what was i saying?

oh yes – pride in home ownership. as soon as a clean spot is made, all the other stuff that hasn’t been spruced up yet really starts to stand out and look, um, bad. and the list gets longer.

the long list, among other things, put racing and training on the back burner.

this wasn’t that hard to do cause cause sometimes i just didn’t want to do hill stomps or intervals and i didn’t want to feel bad for not wanting to do them. what made me feel bad was that 3 next to my name – the one that put me in the same racing category as the 1’s and 2’s.  so i downgraded cause i just really wanted to be a happy cat 4 and go back to the place where riding and racing was fun and happy. and i didn’t have to work so hard.

so in addition to painting nearly every damn room in my house and rearranging just about everything, to clear the room for more, um – painting - i’ve just been “riding my bike” as opposed to “training”. imagine that- when i’m done painting, or pissing off my neighbors, i just go out and ride my bike for the heck of it. sometimes i ride with people. sometimes i ride alone. sometimes i drag (and it’s the very definition  of “kicking and screaming”) my ornery, reluctant fourteen year old out on rides & you’d think by his protestations that i had just announced i was gonna pull his fingernails out one by one instead of “hey lets go for a ride”. and we ride and it doesn’t take long before there is a smile on his face and he says “yeah, this doesn’t suck”. 

score one for mom.

and then, when he just sits on his bike in the dining room where we currently store it cause i’ve rearranged us out of a place to put it what with all my pride in home ownership and rearranging and such; and he says, “hey, i wanna go for a ride” - it’s all good.

i ride hard & fast when i feel good and super slow when i’m feeling not so good. sometimes i pin a number on and race and feel good and sometimes not  so much. sometimes i don’t ride at all and instead i stay home to be a mom. or paint. or clean. or sit back and just drink a beer.

this is my training plan.

plus, racing less just give us more time for – you know, a little pride in home ownership.

rose avenue

i always get to thinking about stuff on april 15th. usually, it’s two things: i’m wondering what we’ll spend our tax return money on and i’m remembering the anniversary of moving to louisville.

except for last year. last year i was thinking i was knocked up and the tax man hosed us. i wasn’t knocked up, but the tax man did hose us. maybe it wasn’t the tax man, but it was someone. last april 15th was the start of one of the worst years i think we’ve ever had in our lives together cause of all that shit hitting the fan at my husbands company. tomorrow marks our twelfth anniversary in louisville and brings with it the slightest sliver of a shimmery silver lining. i’d take a deep breath if i wasn’t worried i might put the whammy on things. but it all got me to thinking about the place where we started our life together.

we’ve lived a lot of places, and as much as we fantasize after every episode of international house hunters about selling everything and moving to bora bora i really think this louisville gig is just gonna stick.

springtime in louisville is one of my most favorite times of the year. i’ve never lived anywhere that had a real, honest to goodness springtime. we lived in maine for a while, but it just goes from winter right into mud season and when we lived in southern california, there were no seasons. it was just 70 and sunny all the time. which made me a little nutty. i gotta have seasons.

the kids always ask us to tell them “about the time you lived in california”. whenever they see scenes of the venice boardwalk in movies and we say we used to live there, they’re wide eyed in disbelief. i think they thought that a dreadlocked, roller skating, guitar playing dude was just made-for-the-movies material. they were gobsmacked when we said we saw him all the time on out morning walks to our favorite breakfast place. “you mean he’s real?” 

yeah, he’s real. or somethin’.

we lived on rose avenue. just a half block from the boardwalk. i always knew once i graduated college that i’d go somewhere. cool. i think nyc is the coolest place ever, but i spent plenty of time in new york city growing up, so new york was out. so during my spring break senior year, i flew to san francisco for a few days and then to los angeles. i stayed with friends and marched into every private elementary school i could find looking for a teaching job. the school in santa monica was the one that called me back and offered me a job. i love it when others make my decisions easy. santa monica it was.

i graduated that june. and spent the summer cocktail waitressing, bartending, and taking flying lessons (and this would be the summer that began the rest of my life). in august, my mom and i packed up my graduation gift; the 1979 280 sel mercedes (it must be said: british racing green with proper tan leather interior and the original becker am/fm cassette radio) that she and dad had driven for years and drove it across the country. we arrived in santa monica and went on an apartment hunt that i think slightly horrified my mother. mostly because the apartment hunt was not taking place in lovely santa monica, but in the more quirky, affordable venice beach where the digs were too small and slightly dirty. and i’d hear the occasional, is this a safe neighborhood?

i think the only thing that saved me was the thing that i actually thought would get me nearly disowned, or at the very least – in a really big fight with my parents. i was fully planning on living in sin. and told her so.

in fact, i had five thousand dollars in cash from my partner in crime from the sale of his racing bike and every.single.thing.he.owned. yes. he sold his racing bike. and we had only just met. sorta.

i met him about four months before moving across the country – this was part of that summer that would begin the rest of my life - and invited him to come with me. i knew if i didn’t invite him, he’d show up on my doorstoop one day anyway. my mother was relieved that i wouldn’t be living alone. i’d just be a sinner. she promised she wouldn’t tell my dad.

i made good on the whole thing seeing as i married him. but my dad knew all along anyway. it’s stuck for nearly seventeen years, so i think we’re good. anyhow. i digress.

we lived on rose avenue. in a pink building that looked like the one in the karate kid only minus the pool. we’d walk the boardwalk and see the dreadlocked, roller skating dude. and i never knew that muscle beach was a real thing until i walked by it that first time. we had our favorite breakfast place on the boardwalk and i still make the frittatas that i fell in love with there. i almost got a tattoo – several times, but am glad i waited until i was 36 and 40 to make that leap. we used to go to rose cafe up the street and the firehouse restaurant around the corner. our regular coffee shop haunt was the novel cafe and i remember shopping at what i am pretty sure was one of the first whole foods a few blocks away.

we’d go north to zuma beach when we wanted to swim or walk along a shore that didn’t have garbage rolling in with every wave. we’d hike in the santa monica mountains, and go for day long motorcycle rides on the pacific coast highway and in topanga canyon.

steven worked two jobs at van nuys airport. one involving emptying the honeybucket. not cool. and another involving refurbishing gulfstream jets for the rich and famous. very cool.

i was an assistant kindergarten teacher and would watch as some kids got dropped off in the carpool line in limousines and others were brought into to school by their very famous parents and i could chat for a moment with them or hold their new babies and talk about connecticut.

we shopped at lucky market with a calculator and put things back when the number got too high. we ate a lot of rice with sautéed zucchini. i’d go to gelsons now and then to just ogle the gorgeous perfect pyramids of fruit.

we’d go to the third street promenade in santa monica to catch a movie, but not before standing outside the wells fargo atm machine on fourth street to get money for said movie and changing our withdrawal amount down to an amount we actually had in the bank.

we were there for the 1992 los angeles riots. i walked home from work that day as shopkeepers on fourth street were boarding up their stores. the skies were black from the smoke and our landlord told us to have our bags packed by the front door in case we needed to evacuate. we went out to walk the boardwalk the next evening only to find it lined with armed national guards telling us to go home.

we thought a few days after the riots broke out would be a good time to drive the mercedes into south central to volunteer to bag and hand out groceries. i’ve never seen anything like it. everything was burned to he ground and buildings were still smoking. i still think of it when my kids get crazy and i say things like can’t we all just get along.

we think about our stint in california every now and then. we wonder what it would be like if we had stayed. and we think it would be fun to go back and visit all our old haunts.

we’ll probably go back someday when we go visit our kids. cause our son will be working for, or running pixar someday and our youngest daughter, lulu – who wants to be a roller skating waitress at sonic when she grows up - will likely be a surfer girl living in a vw van that my husband refurbished for her.

happy easter

we're not exactly regular church-goers. i'm a bit of reluctant catholic. but that good ol' catholic guilt always makes an appearance around the holidays and i feel a need to suddenly drag everyone off to church.

 

so i start making arbitrary we're going to go to church announcements. sometimes weeks in advance. sometimes days. sometimes i just spring it on the kids on the actual day of the most holy holiday of the year just as they dig into their baskets.

my husband says i should work on my timing.

so annabel goes downstairs and announces to lulu
mom says we're going to church.

 to which lulu responds
what! that's gonna ruin the whole day!

and then annabel says
lulu! it's a big day. it's the day jesus rose from the dead.

and lulu says
what!

annabel
well, it's not like he's a zombie or anything.

we never did make it to church. instead, we planted some seeds, picked up some poop from the backyard, went for a bike ride and had some friends over for a beer and the tour of flanders.

i’ll be going to hell in a handbasket someday. i hope my husband takes the kids to church.

resume

you’re gonna need to put together a resume.

i’ve been dreading hearing these words. so much so that i’ve been thinking maybe i’ll just go back to waiting tables. they don’t ask for resumes to wait tables, do they? surely i can channel my cocktail waitressing days. i really was a whiz at the one handed tray full of drinks while weaving through a drunken crowd thing. figured it would be a double bonus cause i bet i’d get to see some friends when they came in to eat and we could catch up between can i get you something to drink and would you like your buns toasted?

when i called the lady to say i heard through the grapevine that there were some openings and i was thinking about maybe thinking about maybe applying for the positions, only i didn’t quite say it like that – it was so much more professional - she was excited and said you’re gonna need to put together a resume.

i told her it had been a long time since i had a resume. she said not to worry and assured me i had plenty of life experience with which to fill up a resume.

so i was all excited and fired up to list my life experiences but when i sat down to type out the list, i couldn’t remember anything. so i went to the basement to look for old papers and the yearly calendars that i’ve been keeping for years. and photos. anything to jog the memory of any fabulous shit i’ve done that might help me land a job.

but i’ve been cleaning the basement lately and all those old papers and boxes of memorabilia to jog the memory of where i’ve been, what i’ve done, who i was, who i am and what i can be was shoved into the farthest reaches of basement shelving. i hadn’t anticipated needing to research myself.

so down i go to the basement for my research. and then i forgot why i was down there and what i was doing.

cause i found the david clark headset and my log book and remembered my first solo flight and hearing through that headset the warnings from the tower that there were two people on the edge of the runway. i figured it was my mom and grandmother trying to get a better picture. as i came in for the landing, sure enough – i could see my mom and grandmother jumping up and down. they were escorted away. but not before getting some good shots.

skilled at landing small aircraft, able to come in high and hot and grease it on the numbers.

i found the picture of myself the morning of my first solo cross country. you don’t go cross country, but you have to leave one airport and land at another, then return to original airport. i thought there was a bit of a discrepancy between the instruments and my charts. namely, i noticed that the river on the chart i was following wasn’t headed right into a mountain, but i was.

successfully able to vector a course to get back on track before crashing into side of mountain. learned valuable lesson on trusting instruments.

i found the page in the 1999 calendar where i was practicing and deciding how we should spell our second childs’ name. annabelle or annabel. we went with the latter. and the one in the 2001 calendar when lulu was born and we brought her home on the fourth of july and i wrote: claudia comes home. huge hole in kitchen ceiling. (courtesy of the pipe that burst in bathroom upstairs). ceiling still not repaired. claudia is eight.

highly adept at keeping entertained during the early maternity leave months by spelling baby’s name in alphabet noodles. on his face.

i’m trying to remember the years i started and ran my own business and i wonder why i folded it. i go into my craft room and think of another business to start -

extremely creative in a manic, whim sort of way and optimistic that folks want to purchase the things she makes so she doesn’t have to come up with a resume.

- but not before throwing the pile of laundry at bottom of chute into the washing machine.

able to perform mundane tasks year after year. after year.

i hit the mother lode when i found the drawer-full of old cassette tapes mostly from college and had to go through every one of them. was not was? cocktail waitressing. john hiatt? flying lessons. everything but the girl? senior year boston university.

uncanny ability to recall specific events and songs in direct relation to each other.

i found wedding albums, yearbooks, old letters, five shoeboxes full of photos of various cross country road trips, our various homes and apartments in los angeles, boston, maine and kentucky. there are milk crates full of school work and drawings of thirteen years and three kids.

writes everything down. engaging writer with enormous attention to proper grammar and a flair for artistic license - someone should pay this girl to write a book – it would be a nice addition to a resume. partial to sharpies. likes a colorful calendar page. has had the same handwriting for ten years. possibly longer. may benefit from organizing the five shoeboxes full of photos.

wait a minute. what am i doing down here again?

blog-worthy?

i’ve had lots going on in my life since i last blogged over a month ago about how i was the tool can that crashed out a friend and teammate. i’ve got a gnarly (ok. it’s not that gnarly. my husband just laughs at it) battle wound of a scar on my elbow to show for it and said friend has since had surgery and even thanked me for the whole incident cause it gave him time to slow down a bit and think. about a girl.

i’m all for crashing people out if it somehow in a round about sorta way helps set them up with someone that is just perfectly perfect for them.

i’ve had lots going on and lots of ideas for blog posts, but i’d always wonder, yea – but is it blog-worthy?  which would then always make me think of one of my favorite seinfeld episodes. you know the one.

anyhow. i was gonna write about how my first thought upon seeing my daughter in her nutcracker costume when i was spending nearly every waking moment volunteering in the children’s dressing room for a bunch of little angels (no pun there, they really were angels) was that she looked like foxy brown in her wig. they were supposed to look cherubic. i thought she looked like foxy brown.

i had all kinds of dressing room backstage stories to tell. one of which was the fact that i think i missed my calling as a stage manager. cause for the 3rd year volunteering for the ballet, i watch the stage manager and all that goes on backstage and am fascinated. and i think, shit – i missed my calling. it’s like being a fly on the wall back there, but the stage manager tells them all what to do. damn. i want that job.

one of my favorite fly on the wall scenes was when the little girls were all lined up waiting to go on stage, watching one of the principal dancers dip her shoes into some sandy grit that would prevent her pointe shoes from slipping. they asked her if dancing was fun. (these little girls have all been dancing for at least three years) she turned around with her big stage make-uppy smile and asked the girls what they thought. all the girls said that yes, it was fun. and the principal dancer agreed and said we wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t fun, right? i laughed to myself and thought i’ve heard that same statement about bike racing and thought that could be arguable at times. then she turned away to wait for her cue. and the little girls secretly reached out to touch the tulle layers of her beautiful rose skirt.

heck, i wanted to reach out and touch it too, but i figured that would be weird.

let’s see. what else? the shit hit the fan at my husbands’ company a while back - the same one that he and his business partner have been busting their asses over for ten years, and they’re still mopping up the stinky mess. now that was some blog-worthy material. but i’m not here to air that sort of dirty laundry. although shit, it was like a soap opera. good stuff. or, not so good, really. more like the creepy lifetime movie kinda stuff.

the sort of stuff that makes you drink a lot and wonder how you’ll get through christmas. but you get through it just fine. somehow. putting your wine in a fancy decanter that you got as a wedding gift just like they do in soap operas and lifetime movies helps.

kids who don’t get bummed out at all about how they didn’t really get anything that was on their list and in fact say it was the best christmas ever also helps.

a week before christmas, my mom came to visit for the first time in nearly two years for what was originally just going to be a quick weekend visit, but thanks to the snowstorm back east that delayed travel and closed airports she was able to extend her stay through the holiday.

she brought a book that my dad’s sister and her husband wrote. my dad is one of nine kids and the book chronicled his parents’ lineage and was full of stories of their childhoods and how they met and what life was like with nine kids. i’ll say it again. they had nine kids. and twenty grandchildren and i believe they went to every one of our high school graduations.

it included stories and letters written to my grandparents over the years from their kids and grandkids – one line from a friend of my grandmother’s talked about how there was “a new tole every year”. 

i used to wonder how my grandparents did it. how did they hold it all together with nine kids?

reading the book just reiterated what i already knew. they held it together cause they laughed a lot, drank a bit, did what they loved- be it golfing or skiing (my grandfather still raced at age 73) or the weekly card game with the ladies. they had great friends, loved each other and had amazing kids. my grandmother also said the rosary every day of her life.

eh. i’ll take long hiatuses from writing because i feel like i don’t have anything “good” to write about or i’m just not feeling it – till i feel like i’m gonna explode if i don’t write about something. truth of the matter is; it might not always be blog worthy. it might not always be funny. it’s just life. all the good, bad and the lifetime movie shit-hitting-the-fan sorta shit. we just muddle through with each other, including the laughing a lot and drinking a lot and make the best of it.

some days i think i should look for those glow in the dark rosary beads my grandmother gave me all those years ago. they’re around here somewhere.

i was the tool can

until i started cycling, i had never heard of people being referred to as tool cans.  i don’t know if it’s part of a universal cycling lexicon, or if it’s just a regional thing or just a weird louisville thing. god knows there’s a bunch of weird louisville cycling things, so that could be the case.

i actually just did the google for cycling slang and came up with the roadie slang dictionary only to find that ‘tool can’ is not even on the list, so maybe it’s just a weird thing in our house. god knows there’s a lotta weird stuff in our house too.

my husband would come home from rides muttering about some tool can out there who didn’t know how to ride in a paceline and jacked everything up. he made up a joke about being at the start line of a race and looking around for the tool can – if you can’t find him, then its you.

so when i started riding two years ago, i really wanted to know all the cycling etiquette so i wasn’t a tool can. i didn’t want to be ‘that’ girl . the one riding out by the double yellow lines instead of in the paceline, the one who couldn’t hold her line.

but most of all, i didn’t want to be the girl who crashed out herself or  worse – a bunch of other folks all riding in a nice neat little paceline. 

being the tool can who crashed everyone out was probably my second worst fear after actually crashing.

today? today i killed two birds with one stone.

my first thought as i went over the weirdly awkward railroad tracks and i saw my wheel get caught in the groove and the next thing i know i was lying on the pavement was:

wow. that whole crashing on your bike thing happens fast. too fast to even be scared about crashing your bike.

my second thought as i lay on my right side in the road over those damn tracks was: that’s my teammate flying over me.

and my third thought was: shit. i think that was my fault which would mean that in addition to just having my first crash, i was also the tool can that took other people out.

two birds. one railroad track. truth be told, three birds went down.

it was a nice little winter team training ride of 6 folks. the ride and route were both my idea. we were all chatting. having a lovely ol’ time of getting in some leisurely base miles. there were a whole bunch of tracks on the route – all of which if you just kept going straight over them, you hit them just fine & pretty much perpendicularly dandy.

but this one set of tracks was a little odd, a little off camber-y, old and rutted up a bit. and in the nano-second between crossing the first track and the second, i thought i needed to adjust my perpendicular-ness and then in another nano-second i was lying on the pavement watching a teammate fly over me.

i saw my wheel get sucked up in the track. and my husband said “you were looking at your wheel?” yes. and of course i wonder if  maybe i wasn’t looking at my wheel and instead looking ahead at where i wanted to go – instead of where i didn’t - cause i sure as shit didn’t want to go down on that track; that maybe my teammate wouldn’t have taken a flyer over me & separated his shoulder and another wouldn’t have gone down and gotten a flat and i wouldn’t have had to get eight stitches and have my calf run over.

since i started riding, crashing has been my biggest fear. it’s done. and and on one hand, i am weirdly happy that i got it over with. i’m only sorry that there were others involved.

i have crasher’s guilt and wish i had gotten the worst injury, not my teammate.

here’s what i learned:

• don’t change your mind in a nano-second. just look where you want to go, and assuming you don’t want to go down on railroad tracks, just keep going.
• crashes really do happen way too fast to be scary. one minute you’re riding your bike and the next minute you’re not.
• the adrenaline will ward off any crying fits that you imagine you’ll have when you first crash.
• teammates & friends are the best thing to have around when you crash.
  
• the G3 iphone google map thingy with the blinky “you are here” blue dot is an awesome feature for when you have to call folks to come get you when you don’t even know where you are.
• wine helps.
• so does ice.

u.s.g.p.

another usgp has come and gone.

i’ve been trying to come up with the perfect post to describe the awesome-ness that is this weekend. there’s a pretty good account of the awesomeness here. but read this one first. then go there.

the usgp came into our lives – our city, our cycling community and very literally, our house three years ago when the “race people dudes” (as lulu used to call them – a.k.a the folks who ran the show) were our houseguests. it’s become a regular gig now and now she calls them by name. every october for a week, we’re sorta the official unofficial usgp louisville headquarters when the gang comes to stay (except for the one girl that would come to stay so often we just convinced her to move here). we really love having them and i think they really like staying with us even though sometimes the towels are holey, they’re sleeping in the driveway and we only have one bathroom.

i think it says a lot when your houseguests come into the kitchen to get some coffee in their underwear and nobody bats an eye. it’s important to me that my guests are comfortable and lets just say that we’ve really moved beyond “houseguests”.  total bonus if one of your houseguests has just come off of hiking the appalachian trail for months. even the holey towels and blow up bed are a luxury.

for us, the usgp is so much more than the event itself. it’s seven days of a whole lotta crazy, exciting chaos. it’s like the holidays. the kids get to eat whatever they want. they stay up way too late for their own good and i have to write notes to the teachers about why homework didn’t get done and i add that they should come down to the races and check ‘em out cause it’s super fun. and lulu has to explain to a friend that she couldn’t go to her birthday party “cause it was the usgp bike races”. and when the friend says “but its just a bike race”, lulu responds with “um. it’s the USGP. there’s a green monster and everything”.  sheesh.

it’s the one time each year that we get to see folks that have become good friends and i finally get my pumpkin seed oil stash replenished. we chat and catch up like it hasn’t been a year since we’ve seen each other. (and in bruce’s case, it hasn’t – the airstream is his home away from home). we talk about our hopes to win the lottery so the five of us websters’ can go over to austria to visit them.  we cook breakfast and dinner together and do dishes and laundry together. and god knows i need help with my laundry.

over the umpteenth pot of coffee that gets brewed every morning, we chat about the event and how the community here embraces it, lives for it, volunteers for it, counts down the days till it’s here, races in it, promotes it through sheer enthusiasm and pride in the fact that our city hosts an event of such awesomeness. and how invaluable all of that is.

i love this week. i love our guests, i love stapling numbers to registration forms and hanging snow fence with friends. i love seeing the course all set up. i love the watching the long train of racers in the men’s 4 race. the dollar bills thrown on top of the mud, the bourbon in the flasks, the kids in the blow up chairs, resting my eyes for just a minute in the back of the jeep cause there was too much bourbon in my post race 10 am coffee. love all the chatting with, cheering for and heckling friends. i love finally not even blinking an eye at the top of the green monster on the second day and just going down without a thought of how stupid steep it is.

it’s a good week.

it’s the sort of crazy, super cool kind of week where simon burney comes over for dinner, and another night we’re out to dinner with richard fries. and then when the racing is over, and the course is torn down and the  girls bring garbage bags of course tape home so they can set up a ‘cross course in the front yard and they throw sram and selle italia tape all over the tree and even put up a barrier - all for the impromptu celebration at which we all crowded around our dining room table to have dinner, drinks, laughs and stories with tim, jamey and jesse.

winner winner post usgp dinner.

in our house, the usgp is a weeklong, whirlwind affair that has brought more friends and fun into our lives than we could have ever imagined and after i sleep off some of this usgp hangover we’ll start counting down the days till everyone comes back and we do it all over again.

duct tape fixes (almost) everything

we raced another cross race last weekend. another morning getting up early to get the dounts that make getting up so early ok with the kids. plus, its sorta nice to come off a race and have a chocolate glazed donut and a beer. i’m just sayin’.

so were at the race. and we race. i went first. i just wasn’t feeling it. not sure exactly why although it could have something to do with the fact that the only time i seem to be actually riding my bike lately is when i have a number pinned to me and i have to ride it really fast. but then it was over and i had my husband take a picture of my awesomely muddy socks before he went to race and i went into the airstream to change.

i was changing and eating a chocolate covered donut and listening to the announcements and cowbells already clanging and i was worried that i was missing my husbands’ race but i couldn’t leave yet cause the helmet hair could not be salvaged and i was trying to decide if i should go with a hat or the faux hawk that the kids loved and actually didn’t look so bad.

i went with the hat but after seeing pictures of myself, wish i had gone with the faux hawk.

then i grabbed  beer and headed out to watch my husband race. i got a good cheer in for him as he went through the sandpit. he looked good. all nice and up front. then i cheered for other folks i knew and then went to chat with a friend while we waited for them all to come around again.

i started wondering where he was. cause he wasn’t coming around again. then i’d wonder how did so and so get in front of my husband? and this went on for four so and so’s before i realized something was wrong. i figured he had a mechanical.

i headed back to the airstream and was headed off by a friend who had to forewarn me that my husband had just been spotted walking his bike up a hill; something about being a certain shade of green and something about a collarbone.  what? again? i arrived to find him getting checked out by a doctor friend and finding out that not even one full lap into his second ‘cross race, that his season was over. and i felt super bad for him.

but then, my second thought was – who is driving the airstream home?  cause it sure as shit couldn’t be me. and i wondered if that made me a bad person.

                             

we got him a camp chair, i cleaned up his legs and we taped him up with duct tape and gave him a beer. i was super happy to have folks there who knew how to tape a guy up with duct tape. 

we stayed to watch the pro-races and the kids had a picnic lunch before being chased away by the bees and running back to the airstream for cover.

we watched during the men’s race as the guy who was racing for 10th place went down and broke his collarbone. he and my husband were among 2 of the four broken collarbones all day. i bet my husband was the only one with the snazzy, duct tape sling.

the kids were tired and it was finally time to go home. so after talking to umpteen people in the lot on the way back to the airstream and organizing who was actually going to drive it home, we were all settled in our seats and finally pulling out of our double parked parking spot.

and then a teammate came up to our window and said there was a whole bunch of brown stuff leaking from underneath the rv; and cause he can be a bit of a joker, i thought he was maybe joking that the pooper was leaking or something.

but then i saw the look on the planet bike folks’ faces and realized that something was indeed leaking and i really just hoped it wasn’t the pooper.

so we stopped. and got out and it smelled really bad, but it didn’t smell like poop so i was happy. sorta. the other part of me was thinking i put the whammy on things by writing this other rv story. cause it had been a really long time since we had been stranded and had a need to get under the airstream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the transmission hoses had blown and there was fluid all over the place. the planet bike folks gave us some towels and sympathy. friends and teammates stuck around to heckle and help. my husband, well prepared for such an event, had extra transmission fluid, hose clamps and all the other paraphernalia he needed to fix things. he even had a friend on hand with two good shoulders to do most of the fixin.

lulu held her nose and i took pictures to document the occasion. cause that’s what i like to do. tell stories. and it’s kinda fun when they just land in my lap. i’m just sorry this particular story involves the end to my husbands’ very short cross season.