Chattering monkeys

Today was a running day. I've sort of fallen off the training schedule, but I'm still out running almost every other day. So when Eric rousted me out of bed, I got up, made breakfast and school lunches in my pjs, and then went back upstairs to get dressed.

First choice -- grab running clothes. I've found that if I'm wearing them, the odds that I will run go up markedly. Getting into (and out of) tights and a running bra isn't for the faint of heart, so if they're on, you might as well use them.

So I made breakfast, as I said, made lunches, dropped a pot with boiling water and tofu dogs in it on my ankle, causing a nice burn, asked Eric to do the school drop off while I took off.

About three quarters of a mile into the route, which consisted of "run toward the wind, then toward the sun," I looked at my little wrist computer. I try not to "ride" it, but just check distance every once in a while.

I looked again.

The pace was blistering. Really fast for me. That was great. What was a little disconcerting was forgetting to start the timer. Power on? Check. Start the recording? Not so check.

So I hit "start," and continued on. But what I was thinking of, as I was feeling the pace finally, was how much I like running, and yet my mental tape in the morning sounds like someone being forced to do something utterly against their will.

"Don't go," say the chattering monkeys. "You never get any faster, your clothes don't fit differently, who says you'll live longer. You don't even like it that much!" "It's too hard, you have too much to do, stay in bed another half an hour!" Or maybe, and this doesn't work much around here, apologies to those of you still in winter's grip, "The weather isn't right, it's too cold/hot/windy." The message is always, "Why bother? Just don't."

And some days I listen, and roll over, and the world doesn't end. And some days I go and have a crap run, and think, "Hey, monkeys, you got it right this time."

But today, despite the operator error, it was worth struggling with latex and shoe laces, dodging children who don't know that maybe sharing the sidewalk works best for everyone, judging whether I can get across the road before the car has to slow, dealing with the fact that running chin-up as I do makes the rising sun flash straight into my eyes, despite my cap, and dealing with hauling what my mama gave me around town, and only timing half of the route, eventually going about a half mile less than I intended. It was a good run.



And now as I'm having my tea and listening to the bookend girls get ready, I'm thinking maybe the monkeys will be quiet for the rest of the day.

Making do

I'm not done with even one of the three baby sweaters that I need to do pretty much right now, if they're going to get here before the babies' arrivals. Maybe I need to let go of (in two cases) finding The Perfect Baby Sweater and realizing that "finished" trumps "ideal and still unrealized" almost every time!

That attitude helped me get out and run today. Raining -- again, and I wasn't feeling overly motivated, but it just doesn't matter. Since I'm not running for time, except in the "more time to live" sense, I can just call it discipline practice, and it counts.

That whole idea of discipline is relatively new to me -- I didn't get it, really get it, until I started having children. Along with some other shifts (hey, I do need some time alone or I go crazy! Who knew?), I began to deeply appreciate the beauty of just doing the work at hand, just showing up over and over and over. So in my world, that ends up looking like running in the rain. Even though I claim to be capable of regular exercise without concomitant increase in fitness, it's not true. Three miles wasn't terrible today. So. Something works sometimes.

I felt a little tight when I got home, so some yoga poses seemed called for. There's only one problem in my house:


Fred thinks that anyone on a yoga mat needs repeated "bonks" from his very hard (and possibly empty) head. Nothing quite as relaxing as easing into a deep Down Dog, hanging your head there, eyes closed, focusing on breathing, when "Bonk!" right against my forehead, my elbows, my legs. Between him and Caterina doing yoga under me, well, it was enough just to show up.

Running around

After my injury hiatus followed by enthusiastic holiday reading, training starting at the beginning seemed like a good idea. Now I'm at the end of the beginner 5k training, and doing okay. I'm not setting any land speed records, but since the real prize I'm heading for is "middle aged discipline," I'm doing great.

Next, speed work! Sprint until you want to throw up! So. Much. Fun.

Something else that came from discipline (and redoing until it was right)? That's right!! The ribbed sweater is done, done, done.


I got to indulge in Extreme Blocking (which should so seriously be a spectator sport). The teeny tube of ribbing that was this:


Had a date with some water, soap, and pins:


And opened up to fit quite well:


It's an "Action Sweater" (apologies to Mr. Izzard) -- I can run the obstacle course that's the yard:


I like how curvy it looks from the back. All in all, I'm really satisfied.

Medium-Core

I ran in the rain, but only a little bit of rain. Since the pattern has been: squall, clear, light rain light rain, heavy rain, light rain light rain light rain, squall, I figured that a spate of light meant time to lace up the tennies, since I'd finally gotten over the cold. The cold I got during a lovely three day knitting workshop with Janine of Feral Knitter. I got a cold, and many ideas for a sweater, and had lots of fun (and tea). I also discovered that no one making two ply jumperweight Shetland has what I'd call great oranges. Are you listening, yarn companies? yeah, I thought not.

Anyhow, it did feel good to run even though my hurt leg is still very much a part of daily life. It may never feel just right, but it isn't hurting any more if I run than if I didn't, and getting out and going even if the weather isn't perfect makes me feel kind of studly. Not hard-core, because I'm still puttering along at 10 minutes a mile, but medium-core at least.

Despite the rain, life goes on. One of the errands I ran yesterday was mailing a package out to the in-laws. They have cold heads; I'm a knitter, ergo, hat time! The ones for my mother in law are placeholders, one for her and one for my sister in law, so I have time to knit one to the requested pattern. I had these handspun ones done just from fun travel knitting.

Speaking of travel knitting, I plan to carry the gray sweater with me today to a friend's house for a few hours, but will probably leave it languishing in the bag because a baby sweater from stash is calling me. Babies come like inevitable January rainstorms, and I'd like to be done by the time the baby is. Actually, there are two babies on the way, so I need to identify more stash to romp through. And ignore any ideas about colorwork sweaters.

Have I written enough? If the package isn't at your house, and you expect to get that package soon, you can stop reading Right Now. I'm talking to you.

Okay. Pictures now.

Handspun "Felicity" hats. Slouchy, so soft, not my handspun but an absolute dream to work with. I should spin like this.


Regular flip brim watch cap style hat, out of EcoDuo and so soft and light I'd knit one up right now for me if I'd bought another hank, same color. Which I won't because I said anyone with as much yarn as I have should probably just knit some but the yarn is a dream. I'm afraid the brim blocked out floppy -- perhaps the baby alpaca was too much? but it's warm and soft, soft, soft.


So that's it for finished things these days. Except for running. Never finished, which is sort of nice, in a way.

Finish Line in Sight

Sometimes I wonder if folks get tired of slow as molasses knitting pictures. I know I prefer ones where it seems as though the knitter has a bunch of "Shoemaker and the Elves" helpers, buying yarn and then having it seem to magically knit itself up into exquisitely finished garments, presto-changeo.

My knitting is not like that. I don't knit much, and I knit slowly. This is a theme in my life, apparently.

But, even a slow knitter makes progress. Sometimes, that progress is even serendipitous. For instance, when I chose to knit the sleeves for my current project at the same time, planning to steek and sew them later, it was to make the color runs approximately the same size as the body.

I didn't know they would also be a close match.

And now, despite having absolutely zero elves of the helpful-in-handwork category, the sleeves are almost done.

All that's left is to bind off the steek stitches, and then figure out whether to connect the remaining stitches into two separate rounds, and knit the cuffs before cutting the steeks, or cut the steeks, sew the sleeves into tubes, and then knit the cuffs. I think I had better ask around -- I'm tired and can't quite figure out what order to do them. I want it to be done well ahead of the fair, but also done well.

And why am I so tired, you might wonder? Remember how I don't think I knit much or fast? Well, I know for a fact that I don't run much, and that not very fast.

Nevertheless, I ran my first (and perhaps last) 5k today with two really good buddies. Even with approximately 2500 other women running, it felt like it was just us, and Eric and Caterina, who came out to cheer me on. The slower of us in the threesome had dubbed today the "Chasing Grace" day, and it was. I lost her quickly at the beginning and never caught up. I know I ran a faster first mile than I would have thought, because I heard someone call the time. I paid for it, and finished the race with an average of (wait for it) -- ten minutes a mile! So a fast first, slow second and medium third. Sheesh. I could have done that without the crowds and tags and electronic timing.

Oh well. I figured I deserved a little something (although the free massages afterward were wonderful), so I drove my friend's yarn store and picked up some treats for my feet.

Saucon Sock in "Forest" and Rio de La Plata Multicolor Sock in some combination of "Wood Thrush, Crimson, Posy Green, Chestnut, Indial Teal and Black." It's pretty, anyhow. They'll make cushy socks.

And after this sweater, I'm going to want something a little smaller to work on.

6 mph

That's how fast I'm running, which, while slow, is back to my pre-fall sickness speed and distance.

Hooray.

If only I knit that fast, I'd have new bands on the Kauni cardigan, instead of having no bands at all.

My time, these days, is spent on other things. I'm halfway through sewing a shirt for Caterina, and this morning I cleaned and inventoried the refrigerator and freezer, and am halfway through the cabinets. My shopping list is going to be slim today, because I have enough for a few meals. Then there's the weekly bread to make, and I'm doing a lot of gardening.

So that's it. Any of you have spring fever?

They're all unique

That's at least what I hear about snowflakes; we don't get enough snow here for me to do any personal research.

My only recent experience with the singular nature of snowflakes was a wooly type. I finally (finally!) finished the Stashbuster Raglan, and was embroidering snowflakes along the red band, as I'd planed.


"How hard could it be?" I asked myself. Well, three snowflakes in, I realized that for me, it was "hard," perhaps "impossible," to embroider snowflakes I was both happy with and that bore some relationship to one another, designwise.

Duplicate stitch! That would surely save me. Nope. Apparently making duplicate stitches resemble one another in more than a third-cousin-once-removed way is also beyond my capacities.


Leaving it with just one finally made the most sense, I figured. We'll go with the "it's as unique as you are" approach.


He doesn't seem to care that I managed to knit one red arm-end with a too small needle, since I picked up the last needle I'd made the rolled edge on the other one to finish the second. He just likes it because it's warm and soft. I don't think I'd do the purl ridges on the arms again.


They look a little bit like weird arm gauntlets, but the bustin' out all over apricot doesn't mind, either. And I don't live in Blueland, it was just evening when I took the picture.

The brown cat doesn't mind the children, as long as they're asleep.


Oh! For those of you who care, I pulled a total Bee Whisperer move yesterday! I had talked with a new beekeeper at the Association meeting on Tuesday evening, and he was telling me about his mentor, who works his bees barehanded and often veilless. And yesterday, I wanted to super one of my hives. Didn't want to get in it, didn't want to powder sugar them to treat for Varroa mites, just wanted to make sure I got that honey super on before the flow.

So without changing any clothes or suiting up, I walked to the hive, and with lots of slowness, eased off the top cover very slowly, set it on top of the super, and turned toward the hive. A bee landed on my hand. So I made like a statue, and held very very still. Tor called across the yard, "What are you doing?" I just said, "Waiting for this bee to fly away." After some moments, she took off. Various other bees had been landing on my shirt and pants, but just sitting there and flying off when they were done doing whatever they were doing.

Without moving my feet too much, I turned again toward the super, grasped the sides, and pivoted to place it on the now-topless hive. I didn't want to crush any bees, so I placed the first corner of the super on one corner of the hive, then gently, so gently, lowered it along the sides so any bees in the way could move. Once it was on, I walked away.

Then I felt the shakes. Apparently I'm not quite the Zen beekeeper I was acting as. Not yet. I don't think I'll open hives at least without veils, but it made me feel as though I was making some progress.

In other catch-up news, I'm still maintaining the running schedule, although my slowness and literal feeling that I'm "hauling ass" down the street (like dragging a bag of rocks) hasn't changed much. And I'm supposed to be on a panel discussion on local food production for Earth Day, so I have to get my talking ducks in a row. Someone asked me yesterday how many hours a week I knit. I laughed and laughed. I consider it a bonus day if I even get to pick up needles lately. With four kids, three classes to teach, and a household to run, who has time?

Dreams Can Come True

Last night I knit and watched a movie on the laptop with Sarafina, while poor Eric slept next to us. Even though we were using earphones, we're movie-talkers, and he found it amusing that we couldn't just watch quietly. Didn't keep him from snoring away. Being really sick will do that for you, I guess. Anyhow, I woke up this morning -- for the final time -- from a dream involving John McCain's tailless silent helicopter, about which I said, "No matter how cool it is, it's not worth sitting with him to get to ride in it." Subsequently in my dream, I was contacting a student in one of my classes, and going through someone's estranged father's custom-made study: drawers for everything, including old letters. I remember thinking, "I have more old letters than these; no matter how beautiful the cabinetry, this study isn't very practical."

I called the student up, and apparently the student's mother disapproved mightily of this Older Woman calling, even though I wanted to talk about the missing paper. And then I realized what I was riffling through the study for -- the perfect Blueberry Cinnamon Swirl Coffee Cake recipe!

In my dream I never found it, but on my run through the quiet streets this morning, I figured it wouldn't be that hard to do, so after I got home, I boiled eggs to assuage any guilt, and pulled a Bill Cosby. Behold, breakfast:


Not enough blueberries for the berry-lovers and too many for the berry-haters, but it is a compromise, even if it is a dream come true.


Before succumbing to the Land of Nod after the movie, I'd done the collar on this little beauty. I figured that it was all done, short of weaving ends and embroidering snowflakes.


Then Tor tried it on this morning, and in a medical miracle, apparently his arms have grown two inches overnight. Sigh. This entire stashbusting sweater has been a labor of knit, rip, reknit, rerip, and still it's getting done. Just a little slowly, and there are two skeins of green sock yarn wanting to be knit into Embossed Leaves and a rainbow Kauni still patiently waiting for attention.

This alpaca sweater fits Caterina very well, but when I suggested that she ask her brother if he still wanted it, and she interpreted that as an opportunity to prance in front of him wearing it and announcing, "Do you want this, because it fits me!" he screamed, "Mine! mine!"

It's nothing but amity and high level communication around here, I tell you. Let them eat cake.

Glad I ran today

I'm sitting on the porch, grading papers while I'm watching the rain come down. We so need the rain (actually, we need snow in the snowpack for next summer), and it means I don't have to get out and water the vegetables.

This morning, I considered staying in bed and not running. I'm not happy about my return to the streets -- feels like I'm carrying bags of rocks and I'm feeling old-lady and out of shape. But in a move of mind over emotion, I figure that running is probably a better choice than not running. So out I go. Even when I have to stop and walk, I'm making forward progress, mostly.

I'm trying new routes -- the beach, the street, the main business drag -- and the route isn't the problem! The months of illness were much more of a setback than I knew apparently. I long for the feeling of running when it felt good, when I was happy in my body and light in my soul, feet slapping along. At least I'm not coughing now.

But anyhow, I don't have to decide whether or not to run tomorrow in heavy rain, since I listened to my "go run" self this morning and did it in light. Tomorrow I guess it's situps and pushups.

Picking up the pace

My eldest said to me today, while we were out frantically doing errands, "Christmas just snuck up on me this year." I stopped mid-stride, and said, "Welcome to adulthood." Cracked me up.

While I had thought I was totally devoid of holiday spirit this year, I managed to do one or two things. We made and decorated cookies, and yesterday I gathered the two youngest and we made our way via public transit (oh, the excitement!) to San Francisco, where at the St. Francis hotel we viewed this year's over the top "Sugar Castle."


And tomorrow, we'll probably get our tree. It's taken a week, but we've gone from our front rooms looking like this, as they have since we moved in (except without the ladder and the plastic sheeting and the furniture all shoved together in the middle,


to different combinations of these four colors:


Now it's clear that the dining room will need repainting. But that can wait until after the holiday.

What can't wait, alas, is a new refrigerator. I thought getting the old one repaired would be a good move, but since Thursday, we've been having odd clicks and shorts in the whole house's electrical system, and unplugging the refrigerator fixed it. Then we discovered that everything in the freezer wasn't frozen. . . So, after my much-looked-forward-to solo grocery shopping trip after church tomorrow, we'll go to the appliance store and get another refrigerator, then get a tree, now that the living room is 95% done, then I'll finish writing the cards that arrived from the printer today so I can mail them on Monday, and then we'll probably go out to dinner. And collapse.

It's a good thing I got a run in this morning. It was sad, as befits the first one after a two-month hiatus, but it was a run. I was just underdressed, but that can be remedied. My still-to-be-graded papers can't, though, so I'll slog through them tonight. The term is almost over, so I'll have about a week off of work. The Kauni cardigan is hovering between the armpits and the beginning of the neckline, and I cast on another top-down raglan for my son, out of a two-ply alpaca, and managed to not mess it up too much during the opening night screening of "The Tale of Desperaux" that the young'uns and I went to last night.

Any minute now, I expect things to calm down. I don't know why I do, except that in contrast to the last few (and upcoming few) days, it can't feel more active.

An Easy Run

I hadn't run for a couple of days, since it was raining so much. Pause here to say a huge "Thank you!" since my state is in such desperate need of water. We probably don't need it here, but up in the mountains, where the reserves are kept.

Still, for a couple of days I've been draining the bath because adding more water on top of an already-soaked garden (and standing in the rain with a hose to do it) was more than I thought necessary. I also didn't really want to take myself out for a run if it was more than a drizzle, although I have fond memories -- at least I think they're mine -- of running in the rain.

When I woke up today and was the only one really really awake, and the "extra" hour was just sitting there, all full of promise, and it wasn't raining, well. I dressed and took off. If I had run in the rain, also, my shoes would have been wet still. Suzee had been very inspiring about longer distances, so I figured out how long I should run to hit about five miles, and took off. It was lovely. The sky was tones of pewter, and the clouds were doing that ballet where they mass and roil slowly. Empty streets, and just the sound of my little shoes flap-flapping.

I noticed some time ago that I breathe on a 4/4 beat, so songs that follow that beat tend to get lots of play on Stefani Radio while I run. But after about a mile and a half, even the mind monkeys get tired of talking, so I just ran. I was doing great -- I planned not to look at my watch until the halfway point, and I didn't until then. When I made my turnaround at the ferry terminal, I was right on time. So back I went, along a tiny section of the Bay Trail -- it's all patchwork, really -- and was doing fine.

Until my hip started making lots of noise, with a backup ensemble featuring Ms. Thigh and Ms. Knee. I bargained with them -- "Just let me make it to the corner, okay?" -- and I tried slowing then stopping and stretching. No dice. My run was over, no matter what I wanted.

So I walked home from the Starbucks, approximately, and checked the distance. Four good miles until everything went to pot, and a lovely walk home. Even with the walk, they were still in bed, actually.

But one thing hit me as I ran. I'd been telling myself that I'd do "an easy five mile run." And for many people, it would have been. And for some people it would have been impossible, and for others, every possible permutation in between.

Then I realized that my definition of "easy" is "Things that I do." So the fact that I got a Master's degree in English (thesis-free, as Eric is happy to point out)? Easy. Homeschooling four children, some of whom are a challenge? Easy. Soft and squishy homemade bread (apologies to Mrs. Peters)? Easy. Working while full time doing the kids? Easy. Making time for exercise before anyone wakes up? Easy.

I shortchange myself in ways that I would never ever do for other people. Just because I can do it doesn't make it dismissable.

So I've been thinking about ways to make some things less not-easy for me. I'm going to start working with a housekeeper tomorrow -- she has lots of ideas about how to make this household more welcoming and nurturing for us. And I'm 90% certain that the two middle Things are going to start going to school down the street, possibly this month.

These aren't easy decisions, but I'm hoping they're going to help increase the positive experiences around here. I'll keep thinking and evaluating, except for the blissful half hours on my run that I get to turn off my brain.

One step at a time

For the first time in about a month, I ran this morning. 7 am in late October looks very different than 7 am in high summer. Anyhow, the big difference I noticed after taking so much time off to have a horrible sore throat, was that my caboose had a bit more, er, cargo than I remembered. But I remembered that not too long ago, I couldn't run for 30 minutes without stopping, and that there really is no way through the out-of-shape patches than, well, through.

So I ran.

Not fast, don't let me sound impressive or anything. But I had thought I'd have to walk some, and I didn't. I just jogged along, looking around me and not thinking much of anything, which is the gift running brings to me. I did have a goal: Eric had asked for some throat spray, as he's now got the throat thing. So I knew roughly where I was going to end up, and the only question was how to get there. I meandered around, following traffic lights, just moving forward, and when I got to the drug store, I had only run about 18 minutes. I'm still very inexact at figuring how long distances will take.

So I turned left instead of right, and ran along the street under construction. Then it happened.

I don't get "runners' high." Maybe I don't run fast enough. I didn't get nursing highs, either, for what it's worth. Nursing my babies just made me want to fall asleep. Great when they were tiny, not so wonderful when I had Things To Do. Anyhow, right about the 20 minute mark, it happened.

I got into a groove. For just about five minutes, or a few hundred yards, or whatever, everything worked It felt, although it's difficult to put into words, as though my arms and legs were working in circles, smoothly. Not the spirals my mind gets into when I think and think and think and think, just smooth, almost machine-like motion. It's as though I'm not doing it at all, I'm just being running. And then it stops, and I'm back in my head and my body, just running along.

That's what it's about for me. My crazy running friend asks about race training, and that doesn't move me. But feeling this way more often is worth many many miles of training. Maybe I'll have to work up to longer times of running and see if the sweet spot can expand.

Of course, that also means I have to get through minutes 10-15, when I usually want to either quit or throw up. That seems like some kind of metaphor.

Just because I liked it, here's a picture of what we had for dinner over noodles last night. I thought it was definitely eating across the spectrum. My kids almost uniformly said, "Yuck," but I thought it was beautiful and tasted pretty nice, too:

Physics, regular and meta-

A 50' garden hose is easier to move around a yard than three five gallon buckets when one is emptying a bathtub. That same hose, however, will practically rip your lips off while you're establishing the siphon.

After running and before showering today, I emptied the bath onto the front yard plants. They're just thriving under the (no doubt nitrogen-enriched) spare water regime. But lugging heavy buckets early has been wearing. Today's experiment was a good one, but I'm still committed to getting storage barrels for my semi-grey water setup. I'd like the option of watering, rather than the imperative.

And that run this morning? It was an unusually bad one. I'd enjoyed a four mile run just a couple of days ago, at a fairly respectable ten minute mile pace. But today? It was as though I'd borrowed someone else's body, someone partially made of lead. I played games -- I chose to run down an allee of sycamores at the regional park. "Pretend you're in Narnia," I thought, "Pretend you're running to someone beloved," "Pretend you can fly."

And it helped, some. I liked that part. But the rest? Logy, uninspired.

When I got home, chaos reigned. The second one couldn't find her helmet, the fourth one was crying and wouldn't say why, no one had made me any tea (never mind I hadn't said I would really like that -- just no one cares), and I was in a mood.

So I watered, and I washed dishes -- amazing how much water we're capturing with a simple bucket in the sink -- the compost is damper than it's been in weeks. But all along, something was off. I went out to feed the scraps to the chickens and collect eggs -- sheesh, they're out of water again and I do not want to lug it, but the hose isn't there. And I just did it. Filled the bucket,carried the bucket, watered the chickens, collected the egg, and on my way in I saw this.


And it came inside with me.

One of the dishes I hadn't washed was a small bowl of leftover yogurt from one of the sailor's breakfasts. I cut the Elephant Heart plum up into it and remembered to add a handful of almonds.

That small bowl of yogurt and the second pot of tea fed me more fully than much of the unconscious munching I've been doing lately. I've not been more hungry, just bored and antsy and not wanting to grade. So instead of knitting or spinning or reading to a child, I've been prowling the kitchen. And I don't want to eat like that.

So thinking about why this was so different seemed a useful exercise. I had picked a fruit from my yard and taken a moment to reflect on how much I enjoy having homegrown food. I had imagined how good the foods would taste together, and I had remembered a finishing touch. Hopefully I can keep that intentionality in my kitchen and dining room -- I have two full bags of produce from the farmer's market and a menu/shopping list on the refrigerator for help.

Whole lot of mulching going on

Saturday dawned nice and early, and it was our day to run sprints. But Friday night had been a bit longer than we intended, so after one sprint, I said, "I can't do this."

"Okay," said Eric. "Let's go get coffee."

So we did. Then the planned "get the kids to work" day began. The ratio of work by child to whining by child was. . . low, shall we say. Even Thing 1, who usually can do quite a bit, spent a lot of her energy on her emotions rather than the wheelbarrow.

I wanted to prep the area before laying the mulch because, you know, that Bermuda grass stuff. I'll be pulling it the day before I'm laid in my grave, I betcha. So I did a lot of digging with a fork and stooping. The kids who weren't shoveling picked up trash. It's only fair, since most of the trash was theirs. . . but oddly enough they didn't see it that way.

Here's what one bit of yard looked like mostly post-weeding and very pre-mulching:


The sandy dirt is partly why I sweep and vacuum so much. It's just tracked, by four feets and two feets all over. Unlike some television gardening diva, I manage to look like a nut most of the time I'm working:


Itchy noses and dirty work are a dynamite combination. Fortunately, I wash nicely.


And after what felt like dozens and dozens of loads of mulch, here's that same area. Apparently the tree company had chipped either different kinds of trees or different parts of trees, since one side of the mulch pile was much redder than the other, while one seemed whiter. Since the children were starting on different sides, we got a neat bicolor effect. And since we have a lot, we're laying it on thick.

Eric and Thing 4 rested after finishing a big whack of the yard. We still have a whole lot of yard -- all around the garden, all around the lawn, and up each side of the house -- to thickly mulch.


Fortunately, no matter how much mulch we put down, we apparently got a load from the magical mulch company, because I don't think the pile is really much smaller at all:

Besotted with Brambles

Solo run this morning -- Eric's knees are acting up. He can sprint with me, or sprint ahead of me while I gasp along behind him, but he can't put in a longer run. Thing 1 said emphatically that she did NOT want to come, despite saying last night that she actually did want to run, "If it's going to be long running."

Maybe 6:40 am feels earlier in the morning than it seems at night.

So, hat on, I headed out to the beach. I vary my route a bit because I read lots of spy novels. Ha! No, it's because I get bored pretty easily. I'm okay with the broad outlines being the same, but I like a bit of change up. No pelicans this morning, alas. Just gulls and cormorants, the grouchy members of the beach community, in my opinion.

No idea why pelicans get to me like they do, but it's getting worse.

What also is going nowhere, obsessionville-wise,is my addiction to the bramble fruits. On the last leg uphill I discovered a fairly large blackberry patch (another good reason to try different routes -- surprises!). Since I have never, to my memory, passed ripe berries without stopping, I stopped and got a handful for breakfast. I'll have to get my sister to come over and pick through the patch with me this week.

With the sweet complexity of ripe blackberry on my tongue, I finished the tiny hill and came home to this:

Where oh where

Generally, Thursdays feel most like a weekend for me. Once preparations are made, we go off to park day and everyone plays and plays and plays.

Yesterday wasn't that blissful. My beloved car won't start, and my mechanic-by-telephone said he'd love to look at it, could I bring it in (no, obviously, it won't start) and after some serious kerfluffle, my spouse arranged for me to come and borrow his car, necessitating a bus trip by me and the son-child. That was actually fun, and getting to go swim at the lake afterwards was also much fun, but worrying about not being able to help out a friend as I'd hoped was a bit more stress.

Then, there was the call at the lake about a swarm of bees in the next city over. I arranged to talk to the person later and headed home. When I told Eric the address, he said, "Oh, no. No. NO. Not a place you want to go after 7pm." Well, okay, he knows this city much more than I do. Then the person returned my "I'm not coming" call, and after I hung up with her, I looked at the caller ID. It read (I kid you not and will provide a picture as soon as New Camera shows up -- whoopiee!) "Pimp oftheyear." Apparently it really isn't the neighborhood I want to be in.

I do not get it. Okay, I get street cred and all this stuff, but why? Why make anything harder on yourself. It's as though the Enron guys would have programmed "White collarcrime" as their cell phone IDs. I don't know. Things remain far too mysterious for me.

One curent mystery is the location of the two pieces of dowel around which I wind newly-spun yarn into skeins, on my "yard stick" which is a piece of board with holes (the diameter of those dowels) driled in it. One round is two yards, which is how I count how many yards I spin.

Yesterday I finished the crabapple roving I'd dyed back when they were in bloom. It wasn't a fully accurate color match, but it was nice thick spinning and I gave the 45 or so yards to a friend and she'll do something lovely with it. But last night, I finally finished the bamboo/merino (well, okay, I stopped -- there's still some of the maddening-to-spin bamboo left) and plied it up, trying to not underply as is my wont.

Now I would dearly like to wind it off and see how many yards it is. But Thing 4 had those "sticks" yesterday, and now she doesn't know where they are. Neither do I. I do know they are not "in my head" as she's insisting.

But when wiping a shelf in the refrigerator two days ago, in preparation for putting new groceries on it, I found nail scissors. On the shelf. Those sticks could almost be anywhere.

Solo

I took myself out this morning for a reprise of yesterday's route -- alone. What a gift. No vision of a 13 year old gazelle outstripping me, no stroller to push, and man was it quiet in my head.

Just wonderful.

Which is nice, because there's a lot going on here on even the quietest of days.

Here's a nice essay by a long-ago friend of mine. I share some of her experiences, especially the nagging feeling that my family wasn't finished. As I hear mine preparing their overly-honeyed tea in the kitchen now, and see the lump that is Thing 1 down in my bed, I'm peacefully satisfied that four was perfect for me.

Wasted on the Young

When sleep tickles around the edges of my consciousness, I enjoy feeling my body slow down and become heavy, resting until I drift off. My four children, however, apparently view this as a challenge -- just how can they use their bodies' frantic motion to stave off any drift into the Land of Nod? No matter what sleep routine we work on, this happens. So they (not Thing 1 so much any more -- she just stays up late) wave their arms and legs, they talk to each other, they jump on their beds, and bedtime, well, bedtime stinks at my house.

I go to bed every evening in some degree of frustration and irritation.

Last night, we said, this has to stop.

The only way I know that works to get children to sleep at night is to roust them in the morning.

Accordingly, Operation Boot Camp swung into play today. Solo, because Eric had to actually go to work this morning, I rousted the kids, got them in something resembling clothing, got the bikes out, got the jog stroller out, and put on my sunblock.

It went about as well as could be expected, really. Complaining, falling off of too-big bikes, and then just the running and riding. It's so beautiful that even when I'm in the middle of my head, it gets my attention.

But after all of this? What really sticks in my craw?

After a summer of lying around, sleeping until noon and eating lots of ice cream and potato chips, Thing 1 is still faster and in better shape than I am.

Cold, cold cold

We've had a bit of what feels more like our winter weather lately -- heavy mist in the morning and cloud cover during the day. So when I went out running this morning, late because we'd overslept, it was still cold. Cold enough for me to dig out the enormous floppy fleece hat because if I run in chilly or windy weather, my ears ache.

So I jogged along, looking no doubt like an enormous goofball, but my ears were warm. Or at least not actively cold. By the end of my run, I was a bit sweaty under the hat, so off it came, ears or no ears.

And then after, the weird happened. At home, I attended to what I needed to, ate a bit, and began working. I literally have been dreaming about grading grammar exercises, so that's what I obviously need to do. But I was so cold that I couldn't type well. Even in my shower, I was cold. Even with the bathroom heater on, I was cold.

Later, wearing three layers of clothes, warm socks, that silly hat again, and drinking hot tea, I was still -- cold.

Since March I've lost a bit over 10% of my body weight, and I'm not underweight, just at my regular young adult weight. I'm just cold. Maybe I'll have to add some more weight lifting or something -- anything to stoke the furnace a bit more. I'll try jumping around at home, or doing more pushups and situps -- that ought to warm me up. Oh! I just remembered my yoga teacher telling me that inversions were heating poses. Must. Do. That. I have my mat out, so I could probably do a handstand or something like that when I'm cold. I'm not going to try to grade grammar upside down, but warming up might allow me to concentrate enough to do so. My students will thank me.

Taking the two youngest to swim lessons today almost felt like torturing them. As I sat in the (windy, cold) watching area, they appeared to be fine in the water. Thing 4 says cheerfully every time someone asks her if she's going to put her head under water this time: "Oh no, I'm not!" Fine with me. If they're not actively crying, swim lessons are okay as far as I'm concerned. Some day they'll all be proficient swimmers. And she actually tried the shower today -- apparently she hadn't believed me that it would be warm and feel good after standing all wet in the wind. The fact that my shoes and cuffs got splashed was more than compensated for by her being less chilly. Then she sat snuggled on my lap, which was warming inside as well as out.

She cut more of her hair off yesterday, in the company of the same barbering cousin. We're not going to have to worry about her bangs getting in her eyes any time soon, is all I'm saying.

And I'm finally working through the grammar exercises, drinking tea my sister made for me and lounging on her bed listening to the kids romp around. I'm not cold, much, any more.

Interval, shminterval

I insisted that we get up this morning and go do the rounds at the baseball field. It's not that this is enjoyable running, it's that this is just part of doing the whole "get healthy/live longer" thing.

Tell that to my chest, which decided that after the first sprint around the perimeter, that it was going to not expand enough to allow me to breathe enough. In fact, my body seemed to strongly suggest that lying face down on the wet grass would be preferable to continuing in an upright manner.

It didn't get easier, either.

Fortunately, after we stopped, so did the pain. I guess that's the blessing of the interval. Of course, it begs the question of why I'm not just hitting my feet with a hammer and then stopping. The pain/cessation cycle would be the same.

At least I haven't had as much kool-aid as Suzee has. No marathons, heck, not even a 5k race, call to me at all.

And, since I never ever post about what I'm reading, despite the title of this blog, I started Nic Sheff's Tweak last night. I had heard an interview with him and his dad about their books that had me in tears in the car, and had been wondering if I could handle this book. When I saw it on the new books shelf at the library, I figured, "What the heck!" So far, it's gripping and sad and worrisome and everything I thought it would be. I'm not sure that I can handle his dad's book, as I see myself much more on the parent end than the kid one these days -- it's a position I hope to never ever find myself in.

To the incredible relief of anyone who reads this, there's a camera on the way -- I have pictures of one finished thing I've done, one Eric has done, what I'm working on, and of course, the Energizer Bunny pumpkins!