on your left ma'am

that had to be one of the highlights of todays' cyclocross race: they started the juniors 30 seconds after the women, and soon into the first lap, i started getting passed by the little whippersnappers. they would politely yell out "on your left" or "on your right" but really. did that one kid have to come flying by & yell "on your left MA'AM" ? for the love of god kid, i might be racing masters', but i am trying to be badass here. ma'am is not really working for me (although, truth be told, there was nothing badass about my riding). would it be bad form to stick a leg out & trip that kid? i complimented the kids' coach on his very polite tiny racers, but suggested that if perhaps they could just leave the word ma'am off altogether, that would be awesome.

today was my second ever cyclocross race. i got a shit start - dead last right off the line, and going into the first 180 degree turn, (from a downhill to an uphill) a girl went down in front of me, and i went down right after her; and had to run up the hill and do a really bad remount at the top in front of more people than i care to think about. and now i was way more than dead last. so i honestly have no idea what i was smiling about in this photo.

but at the same time that i was bummed about the dead lastness of my situation, i knew i'd catch some girls in the hills. i did ultimately catch & pass four girls. three of them on the hills, but my best moment (after being called a ma'am of course) was passing someone in a crazy jacked turn that took me five tries yesterday to get right. i may have said woo hoo out loud, not sure. lets just say it was a proud moment. after that, i had a girl in my sights and was going to pick her off next, but she got away from me when i messed it all up in a shamelessly bad dismount & remount over an obstacle dubbed the "mini green monster". (an off-camber turn - there was very little about this course that wasn't off camber - into an obstacle that was a two step up & two step down run over thingy).

there was a lot of buzz about this course; and how technical, difficult, crazy, insane & "crossy" it was. i spent all week reading forum posts getting more & more jacked up about it (and not in a good way: i was worried as all hell). it was being billed as a very technical course. and i'm not a real technical girl. give me a shit long road race and throw a bunch of hills in & i'm happy as a clam. but off camber turns? 180 degree turny stuff from downhills into uphills with a pond thrown in the way? i swear, i fully intended on doing a shot of bourbon 30 minutes before the start just to take that edge off. most of my friends didn't bat and eye and said that was probably an awesome idea. another friend was convinced i was going to be yakking up bourbon halfway through the race; and as i came around on the second lap he yelled: "hows that bourbon working for you?" - i yelled back with "i didn't take any", to which he then responded " maybe thats your problem!". and the next thing i heard from another teammate was "get off your brakes! trust your bike!"

lets just say i was riding way too timidly. way. way. too. timidly. (and there's a pattern here). that said, i had way more fun at today's race than i did at my first race two weeks ago. after that first race, i thought i could be screwed. i wasn't sure i even liked 'cross. i thought maybe i was better off cheering from the sidelines & ringing the cowbell. which bummed me out cause i've got a totally sweet bike that i so don't even deserve.

but today? it was a far more difficult course than my first cx race. i had a really bad start and didn't ride anywhere near what i am capable of doing (i had so much gas left in the tank at the end, i could have done another lap if not more; and i was nowhere near feeling like i wanted to throw up. there was no suffering or dry heaving.) i have the fitness and endurance but don't know how to use it all up because i just lack the technical skills. which is probably why i had such a good time & didn't suffer much: i didn't work that hard. the hills were easy. it was the technical turny shit where i pussed out & used my brakes way too much and slowed way the hell down.

all that said; today, my second cross race evah; i brought home some bling. yours truly got her first ever podium. 3rd place in masters and i think 5th overall. although i was completely disappointed by the lack of an actual podium on which to have my photo taken to document the awesomeness that is third place. my bling is a sweet trophy: a gold chick on a bike with boobs and a ponytail. i've been in the money before at road races; but money gets spent, and i gotta say there is something about a trophy that i am totally digging. and much like the high of finishing my first marathon and wanting to wear the finishers' medal for a week afterwards; i shamelessly carried around my golden racer girl with boobs and a ponytail for anyone who cared to see it. and really, whether they cared or not - i showed it off to them.

i'm no longer worried that i don't like 'cross and i should just return to the sidelines & ring the cowbell. i can still do that. before and after my race. today was an absolute blast. maybe it was the fact that my team put on the stellar race that has been getting kudos all day. maybe it was the fact that it was a gorgeous day, the venue was perfect and according to mr. uci official - it was the best course he had seen in the states, "just like europe". the tunes were rockin' and the course was hard, yet fun as hell. maybe it was the fact that every woman on our team who raced took home a trophy. maybe it was hanging around with friends' all day, some who drove from as far as kansas to hang out with her teammates. maybe it was just watching some great, great races. or maybe it was the trophy with the boobs and the ponytail. i don't care what it was - it was a perfect day.

i got some work to do. but by the end of the season, and i'm working on sooner; the goal is to ride like i deserve my sweet bike - golden girl on a sweet bike with boobs and a ponytail.

100% chance

a 100% chance of something. that's pretty solid. you can count on that. a 100% chance of rain. a 100% chance that the sun will rise and set each day.

i went for my yearly visit to the dermatologist in august and pointed out all the spots that concerned me. only one concerned her. she froze it off and i got a clean bill of health. i was good to go. one month later, while shaving my legs, i noticed a spot that had never even been there, and so i did what she had told me to do and just made a mental note to keep an eye on it. this wasn't difficult to do. it changed weekly. then daily. which made me mental.

i got on the google and went down the checklist of symptoms, looked at all the gruesome spotty pictures. check, check, check and omg, check. and for weeks, i would call my doctor and beg to be seen asap. i would explain how it was at first changing weekly, then daily; and they would explain they had an opening two months down the road. i thought i could be dead two months down the road. (i am a worst case scenario girl, i can be very dramatic). then i started calling daily to ask if there were any cancellations. i was always told about the two month wait.

but then, through the magic of a friend who is married to a doctor, who does a freakishly good job of pretending to be a nurse - i get a coveted appointment with a different dermatologist. so i go and see him. and he comes right in and looks at the spot that has convinced me i have melanoma and assures me that's not the case. and now i have the peace of mind i wanted all along and i can breathe a sigh of relief.

but. as he was talking to me and explaining what sort of spot it was and that it wasn't alarming to him but how i did the right thing because the alarming spots and the perfectly normal spots will all do the same alarming things; he looked at me with such scrutiny and intensity as he talked; i knew that my face was a road map of my love affair with the sun and held all the dirty little secrets of my sunny sins and indiscretions.

i knew that he knew i had lounged out in my back yard as a teenager with baby oil on my face and a double record album covered in tin foil. i knew he knew my high school friend and i laid out on one of those foil blankets while on vacation to maximize our sun exposure and go home with a good tan. i knew he knew about that really bad sunburn i got on my legs in my 20's. that shameful tanning bed phase. he knew i spent my childhood summers on a beach, by a pool, and winters were spent skiing where on a sunny day you could get a rockin' tan with the added bonus of the reflection off the snow. i had the feeling my face was speaking volumes and all i could see was a double record album covered in tin foil.

and that's when he said it:
you have a 100% chance of getting skin cancer. you will get it within the next 10 years.

after all of my google research i was practically convinced that i was going in to the doctor to be told i have skin cancer. well, thankfully; i don't have it. today. he told me how it would happen and what i needed to look out for. and he never said if. he said when. and i kept thinking: a 100% chance? really? really? why not 98% ? 80? can i get a second opinion? don't you want to do one of those snazzy infrared picture things of my face? or is my face that bad that you can tell with the naked eye? good god. if someone told me i had a 100% chance of breast cancer, i'd get my boobs lopped off. no problem. if someone told me i had a 100% chance of uterine or ovarian cancer - hello hysterectomy. but skin cancer? what do i do? well. i know what to do. i go in to the doctor and get each offensive spot burned off and hope i caught it on time. i have to say the skeptic new yorker in me that my father raised couldn't help but wonder how much money he would get every time i went in to get something burned off.

i'm a smart girl. really. i am. i wear sunscreen. in the summer. when i am sitting by the pool. and shamefully, that's about it. i know you are supposed to wear it all the time. in winter, on rainy days, on cloudy days. every day, all the time. i'll start that now, but 40 years worth of sun damage is done, and while 100% sounds really alarmist, i am actually strangely calm about it. i guess its good to know in that crystal ball sort of way. i know what to look out for and i know it can get taken care of if i catch it on time. i am now on a diligent, religious spot-watch for the next 10 years.

i'll keep that appointment that i have for two months down the road with my regular doctor and get that second opinion. see if she sees the same shameful road map on my face that todays' doctor saw. but still. a 100% chance? shit. that's pretty solid. i gotta go slap on some sunscreen. and wear knee socks.

lulu

my youngest comes home from school and announces that her homework is to draw a picture of what she will look like in twenty years. but since her genius teacher sends home the entire months' homework assignments, i already know that the assigment is to write about what she thinks her life will be like in twenty years. how old she will be, what she thinks she may be doing, etc...

she says she has no idea how old she will be in twenty years.

i ask her how old she is now and then watch the lightbulb light up.

then she says she has no idea what she will be doing.

so, i say things like: well, will you be living on a beach in california and living the life of a groovy surfer girl? or, will you be living in some cool loft in new york with your name in lights on broadway? will you be a backup singer for john mellencamp? not that these were any sort of childhood dreams of mine or anything. ok. maybe that backup singer one wasn't so much a childhood dream but a more recent one.

but i digress.

she runs for paper and pencil and i can't wait to see what she comes up with. will i finally get to live out one of my dreams through my kids?

I think I will have a great life when I am 27. It will be a bit hard with the children but I could handel it. and I want to be a soccer coach while my husband takes the kids.

huh? that's what you want to do? what about being an archaeologist? a ski bum? where's the part about how you'll backpack all over europe and asia, meet the dalai lama and become enlightened? won't you be busy at book signings for writing that bestselling family saga that turns into a lifetime movie?

sheesh. at least she's got the "while my husband takes the kids" part right.

let there be light

after seven days of no power, we are finally plugged in and hooked up; the comforting hum of electricity permeates the house. i was highly optimistic this evening as i left the house for a ride to see crews working in our neighborhood; but they must have been under some sort of gag order, cause when i asked if their presence meant we'd have power soon, they weren't talkin'.

but as i was gathering up the girls from a birthday party, where i was being given an entire pizza to take home to my still powerless house, my husband called with the good news that we were once again, back on the grid.

the past seven days have been an interesting adventure in contrasts. there was much about the power outage that i loved: i was amazed by how quiet everything was without that undercurrent of a hum of computers, refridgerators, and every other manner of electrical appliance. i loved going to bed soon after it got dark and waking up when the light hit our bedroom. i loved playing board games with the kids. i loved how social everyone in the neighborhood was - everyone would mill about outside trying to soak up the last bits of light & then would gather around our driveway campfire. as friends' power came on, they'd have impromptu dinner parties and it was perfectly acceptable to bring your laundry; and then to leave their parties with the flashlights & coolers that they no longer needed.

all of this was actually really nice.
and sorta fun.

but. without that hum of electricity, my kids never really had any zoned-out down time - sadly, that damn tv provides a bit of a recharge to my oldest in particular. so while nothing else was wired; my kids were. when they decided to dock the ss imagination for refueling, they would get bored and push each other's buttons to see exactly how crazy they could make one another (and subsequently, me). i think one day i screamed at the top of my lungs for them all to get the hell away from each other. they just looked at me stunned & then went to their separate corners.

i was getting tired of the daily search for an outlet and a table at the coffee shop to get online. i am behind on more work than i want to think about. and if i had to eat another pb&j or granola bar or banana; i was going to explode. if i had to go to the store again only to find they were out of ice or tiny bottles of milk for cereal i would have just sit down in the aisle and cried. i think it was just yesterday morning i would have killed someone for an omelet with spinach and feta cheese and tomatoes; and when i took the kids out for breakfast in search of that perfect meal, all i found were restaurants also out of power and so it was back home to the local diner where i got my eggs, but they weren't as dreamy as i imagined.

that cooler that we brought home from a dinner party? i never thought having a cooler and being able to have mayonnaise to make tuna fish would bring such joy into my home. i went to the market and bought an entire half gallon of milk, not just the little chug a lug size. i bought grapes, and pre-cooked chicken to make into chicken salad. i bought greens for a salad. greens, chicken and cold grapes have never been so yummy.

my house is lit up like vegas now. i went down to my basement to throw in a load of laundry and laughed at myself as i grabbed the lantern before heading downstairs. my son is making up for lost time online by cramming in as much you tube and line rider games as he can before bed. and the noise is driving me to distraction. i can hear my husband and i clacking away on our laptops. i can hear the still empty refigerator humming and the dryer in the basement. all the daily hums of a modern life that we took for granted until just 7 days ago seem so loud and annoying now. my girls were watching that insipid disney channel earlier - they have since been sent to bed, but i can hear them walking around upstairs, pro-longing bedtime. all week, we've sent the kids up to bed & they've been asleep within minutes. no last minute trips to bathroom for water, no pleading to leave any hall light on. just instant sleep.

there were plenty of moments that i wanted to tear my hair out and when the whole thing had crossed the line from fun and adventure to complete tedium. but it could have been a lot worse. we could have had a tree through our house. it could have been 90 degrees all week. we could have had no hot water. but we didn't have any of those issues - in the grand scheme of things, the inconvenience of it all wound up to be sort of nice.

i'm just sayin.
it wasn't so bad.
i'm gonna miss certain aspects of it.

but first i'm going to shut off some of these lights that are on, finish checking my emails, catch up on some blogs, switch my laundry, set my alarm - because tomorrow i can't wake up with the sun -and go to bed.

those lawn chairs gathered around our driveway campfire look a little lonely. we're gonna have to make that a regular gig.

off the grid

it's morning 3. still no power still no school. i am sitting in the coffee shop with the girls who just ate cinnamon rolls as big as their faces.

we’re on day 4 of no power courtesy of ike. well for us personally, day one didn't really count - we were racing in ohio and left just as the 55+ mph winds were hitting the elite racers and the power probably went out at home. the drive home in the airstream in the winds that had just hit louisville was an adventure indeed.

that first night home was fun. (the fact that there were no trees through our roof had much to do with the fact that the power outage was fun). we got back from the race and headed back out on our ‘cross bikes to go to the market to get candles and matches. and having to dodge debris and dismount and pick our bikes up to get over the tree across the road on the way to the market made it feel just like a cross course. we wandered through the market with our bikes and went home and brought our firepit out front and had a driveway campfire – lawn chairs and all. our neighbors made their way over to officially make it a party. there was lots of beer to be drunk before it went bad. we have our priorities.

and the next day, with no school - there was no need for alarms; we woke up with the sun and had a lot of work to do. there was debris to be cleaned up and chicken to be rescued. my 12 year old with no school or computer to occupy him got on his bike at 8:30 am announcing he was heading out to “survey the situation”. he doesn't ever head out on his bike that early. a friend called and had power at her apartment downtown – there was still hope for the shitload of chicken breasts i bought on sale. i rushed the $30 worth of chicken downtown and hung out at her apartment while i juiced up my phone only to go back out to the car to find a $25 parking ticket on my car. they had nothing better to do? no debris to clean up? no one to go rescue? i should have just thrown the chicken in garbage & stayed home.

but there was still an air of fun and adventure about it all.

it was fun to go to the coffee shop to get online. and on line to buy coffee. (although i sent my husband to get on line while i snagged a table and an outlet to get online). the whole neighborhood was in one place. you bumped into friends & chatted; caught up on the whole storm experience.

we went to bed early & woke up with the sun the next day too. not getting up at the butt crack of dawn for school buses was fun. what wasn’t fun was emptying out the entire fridge & freezer and dumping every last bit of food in the garbage. i will say my fridge has never been cleaner. i do wonder how long ago and what it was that spilled that required the use of a spatula and half a spray bottle of simple green to dislodge the gooey mess from the bottom.

when we put the kids to bed on monday night they asked what we would do the next day. i told them we were going to set sail on the SS Imagination. the girls ate it up and my 12 year old asked me why i had to be such a dork. i teased them and said there would be a scrabble tournament on the lido deck at 10 am. my son played along and said make it 10:31 … and sure enough at 10:31 yesterday morning, my hands full of a spatula of gooey-ness from the bottom of the fridge the kids stood in the doorway with the scrabble box beaming: “scrabble on the lido deck at 10:31!”.

i don’t know how many stores i've been to in search of D batteries. people. this is one of those emergency staples. all those good lantern-type flashlight things take D batteries. it would behoove you to have some on hand for just such an emergency. D batteries and a cooler bigger than a six pack. we don’t have these things. nor do any stores right now.

i was tired of the outage yesterday when i had to bring the kids to the office so i could get online & get a few things done (most importantly posting the race report from first 'cross race!) – we commandeered the conference room and they played school on the whiteboard and had rolling chair races and spinning contests and then started crank calling people down the hall. time to go home.

three days without power has its' fleeting moments of niceness and fun; watching the kids set sail on the ss imagination and using their god-given brains for fun and entertainment instead of a tv and a computer is great. but its' not without its moments of tediousness - waiting in line for coffee and batteries and dinner tables at our favorite restuarant, no tables or outlets at the coffee shop and tons of work to get done... the air of fun and adventure is quickly dwindling.

but - the outage was fun again last night when we roasted marshmallows and made ‘smores over the campfire in our driveway and hung out with neighbors and friends under the moonlit sky. think we'll be lighting another fire tonight. you're welcome to come on over.