Monthly Archives: April 2013

You could say that I failed to hold up my Post-A-Day promise for the month of April. And you’d be dead right.

Or you could choose to say that I managed to throw down a post 20 days in a month featuring a calendar already full to the brim, and be right happy about that. And you know, despite highly public failure to follow through on something I said I’d do, that’s where I’m standing. Since it’s that or hara-kiri.

I’ll be back in May, I promise. There’s lots to tell, but just not much time today to tell it. Vote your favorite and it might actually get featured in a post!

1. Houseguests.

2. PTA thoughts and fears.

3. Cycle 101, or My Dream Comes True.

4. Kira and her lonely recess days of late.

5. Stuff I’m growing. And stuff I might.

6. That bathroom remodeling project.

Dearest readers,

The MPM and I are hosting wonderful friends through Monday. Daily blogging is suspended until their departure, as I’m unwilling to give up any of our too-few-and-far-between hours with them to hold firm to my commitment to you. See how I am?

Just so you know I’m not simply slacking off, but busy with face time and memory-building.

Hugs, and I’ll see you next week. xoxo

Because nothing says Spring like a pedicure, am I right? One of my few self-indulgent splurges. The scrubby stuff, the massage, the shiny topcoat… I love it all.

I’m not much of a girlie-girl, but the fact is colorful toes make me happy. A few years back I pioneered the teal-green look. Last year was purple. And I think I’ve nailed it for summer 2013 with this cerulean shade.

But that was actually yesterday. Today, I taught an hour-long class at the civilized hour of 8:30a.m., which was a relief after far too many 5a.m. wakenings over the past week. The problem isn’t so much getting up at 5 as it is failing to make the proper adjustment on the front end.

This time of year is the stretch we’ve come to know as Red Pen Hell here at Casa Fraught. The MPM, well-prepared in so (so, SO) many things, tends to put off grading student work about three days longer than he perhaps ought to. Which means bedtime becomes a drifting target, shifting off out there on the horizon, getting farther out of view each day as exam week draws closer. And then? Then comes Grading o’ the Exams, which is a purgatory from which he emerges, shaking and drawn, at midnight on the day of Final Grade Submittal.

Yes, I could go to bed without him, and sometimes I do. But I’m not well suited to it. Especially when there is daily blogging to be done. Or other tasks that call me. Cuing a new ride. Scrubbing the tub. Sorting pony beads. Snuggling up with my sweet Spotify for a while.

What else did I do today? Piles of laundry. More grocery shopping. A haircut. Some outgrown-clothing culling and general organization. Oh – and I found my favorite and ancient red leather driving gloves, presumed lost to me forever after they went missing at the end of last winter and never surfaced again. Until today, that is; at the bottom of a bag of hand-me-downs gifted to us and sitting in the closet all year. Why there, I haven’t the foggiest.

I haven’t got a good wrap-up here, but am closing anyway as the brain fog has begun rolling in. Come back soon – I’m here all month. Hugs, A

Y’all, I am as exhausted as if I’d run that marathon myself, and I have a wicked sinus headache to boot. But I know full well I’ve already slacked on my 13/15ths daily blogging commitment once this week, and thus I am also in the throes of guilt. Although as Katie reminds me, I’m not actually obligated to anyone. Nor is anyone paying me.

But I’m so that person. If I say I’m going to do it, I generally do feel obligated. Even if no one is keeping track but me.

So, back to Sunday, just because. A month or so ago one of the MPM’s high-school buddies let us know that he was going to be coming through town with his wife and teenage son in the afternoon, on their way to catch a flight back home to Minnesota.

The morning dawned bright and I toddled downstairs for a refresher of vitamin C and a quick dalliance with the neti pot, part of my voodoo dance to keep the cold the MPM had tried to share at bay.

And then I looked at the kitchen, which was right much a wreck, and at the rest of the house, which was cluttered up in fine style due to our full-on Saturday schedule of marathons and lacrosse games and such, and said, “I’m going back to bed. Because if I get started tidying now, I’ll never get around to a nap.”

Truth is, I seldom nap, and even more seldom sleep in. But I’d just read the night before that sleep is really the very best way to help fight off a viral attack. And since for various reasons I’d logged precious little horizontal time over the past week, going back to bed seemed oh so very prudent. Because really? The last thing I needed heading into this  jam-packed week was a cold.

The MPM promised to wake me as soon as his friend called to announce their  departure from his conference hotel two hours to the north, and I yawned my way up the stairs.

And woke, hours later, to near-noon sun and the thought that I’d best rustle out of bed. Stretched, feet on the floor, t-shirt clad… and reached for the ringing house phone, which I saw was the friend, calling to let us know they were on their way.

Or, alternately, to announce that he was at the front door.

I met the man once, almost a decade ago, at their very lovely home in Minnesota. Much as I wished otherwise, there was nothing to do but fess up that I was just that minute getting out of bed and didn’t know where the MPM was, and that to look for him would necessitate coming down the stairs in my current state of deshabille and passing in full view of all of them, given our all-glass front door.

I yanked on some clothes and a ball cap while dialling the MPM’s cell phone and learned that he’d left the building entirely and was a half-mile away, on foot, out for a run.

I ushered our guests in, and asked them to excuse me while I brushed my teeth.

The MPM hustled on up the hill, and I suggested we all take a stroll around the ‘hood so they could stretch their legs and take in some sights beyond the strew of our weekend. After that we went out to lunch, and after that they went on their way.

I can only imagine their report back to the gang.

“Oh, yeah, he married a winner all right. He gets the kids breakfast and she sleeps till noon, and believe me, the house is a wreck. And to think he dated that cute cheerleader all those years. Poor guy.”

Ah well. Maybe they’ll come back in another decade or so. Perhaps I can arrange to be passed out on the couch with a fifth of vodka empty on the floor beside me.

Today marked the fourth running of our local marathon, billed as America’s Toughest Road Marathon. There used to be some contention about the title, but that was solved by adding another thousand or so feet of climbing onto the initial, brutal course.

I didn’t run it. I never will. I’m good with saying that.

Last year I was on my Girlz Trip, so I didn’t get to be a part of the day. The years before that, I helped head up a neighborhood water stop. (Since this post is likely to be short, if you’re in the mood for another serving of Fraught, by all means read about the inaugural party aid station here.)

I woke up at 5 to meet the group of crazies who began running the course at 2a.m., so as to get 26.2 miles in and be at the start line in time to run it again, officially timed and all. Craaaaazy. The Mayor and I, we figure anyone who is that touched in the head motivated deserves to be served coffee and doughnuts 20 miles or so into their 52.4-mile day. Head-turner Gretchen took over for us last year in our absence, and joined us again today.

(A tribute to her high-wattage personality and smile came in the form of “Hey! I remember you. You were here last year!” — from a man who had only seen her once. In the dark. After running 20 miles or so.)

Then I — unrecognized by Mr. Double-Marathon — taught two classes, covering for the amazing athlete who normally teaches them but was running in a women’s relay for the event. Which, to no one’s surprise, they won. Handily.

Then I made my way home, tortuously, as many of the roads I’d normally take were closed, noting the crystal clarity of the sky and the bright sunshine. A fine day for a 26.2-mile run.

The MPM was our corner cheering on runners and, as it turned out, keeping them on track. There’s an odd angle to the intersection, and without benefit of the police lead escort accompanying the first runner, the second guy actually turned up our street instead of staying straight. The MPM hailed him and set him right.

The girls were down at the official water stop a block or so away. I went home, changed quickly into dry and warm clothing, and remembered that last night when I was at Kroger to replenish our beer supply, along with our more usual Negro Modelo and Newcastle, I grabbed a six of Sam Adams that caught my eye: “Boston Lager.”

For fun, I took a couple of bottles with me down to the corner, and soon discovered it was the hit of the day. “Sam Adams Boston Lager? I’m pouring!” Far fewer took it than didn’t, but the offer almost unilaterally garnered a smile, a thumbs-up, or an appreciative comment. Soon I sent the MPM for more cups, and he returned with the rest of the six-pack. And by the time the I’m-for-sure-walking-this-last-freakin-hill crew were coming through, around 1p.m., I was tapped out.

My first taker, who actually wanted the whole thing and not just a pour:

Had to snap the pic in a hurry, so forgive the odd angle.

And here is Kira, who spent the entire winter walking to school in a thin sweater and no tights. I didn’t think she even knew where her pants resided, but she trucked herself home and found a pair. It was BRISK out there in the wind, despite the sun, unless you’d been running for 20 miles or so perhaps.

Along with a winning smile, she had grapes to offer, brought down by a neighbor who said he’d heard from the MPM that they were the ticket. Frozen, no less.

The eye-popping appeal of her outfit may have been marginally outdone by this matched pair:

Though for sheer impromptu whimsy, she was surely without match.

I didn’t run 26.2 miles, but I am done in and fighting a cold. Off to bed for me, friends. Before the sun even! Hugs, A

I don’t know how I failed to do it earlier in her life, but I just recently began teaching Puff The Magic Dragon to Kira. Somehow it slipped out of rotation before she came along; Megan certainly knew it at a tender age.

Only recently did I confess there are two more verses. “But they’re sad, and I don’t like to sing them.”

There was some insistence, and after a few days I agreed to sing them. But after the penultimate one, I said “The last one is even sadder. Do you want to hear it?”

No one did. So we’re making up our own, we decided.

In the meantime, Kira has really taken to the rest of the song. I can hear her humming it when she’s playing by herself, and on Wednesday she was lustily singing it in the tub. “This is my favorite part, Mommy.”

“Together they would travel, in a boat with billowed sails. Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff’s ginormous tail….”

I tried very, very hard to keep a straight face. Dragons may not evolve, but language certainly does.

Speed blogging. Like speed dating — something that surfaced around the time I no longer needed to subject myself to such atrocities.

5:45a: Teach first crack o’ dawn class.

6:30a: Take first full-on TRX class. Yowza. This is good stuff. How good? I guess I’ll have a better idea tomorrow, if I see this when I look in the mirror:

9a-1p: Yardwork, emails, phonecalls, plus a little FB, kitchen-cleaning and folding o’ the laundry. Contractor stops by to observe that the grout in the shower still isn’t right. Mend a dress of Kira’s that appeared in the laundry hamper with a 1-inch rent in the back. ?

1p: Lunch.

1:30: Shower and phonecall about custom bike jerseys with an amusing (and everlastingly talkative) shop owner.

2:20: Ride the 2 blocks down to school on the cross bike. I did it a few weeks ago because I was running so late, and Kira was over the moon to be transported back, sitting high up and holding on to the handlebars while I pushed her home. She begs for me to do it. I love the huge smile she gets when she sees me roll up on it, and it buys me another 2 minutes to boot.

3:15: Score last-minute transport for Megan from running club to a friend’s house two miles away from Kira’s music lesson, Way Over There, buying myself an extra 30 minutes.

3:45: Embark on 20-minute journey to music.

3:58: Phone rings. Fabulous and unanticipated news of nominee acceptance for PTA president-elect position.

3:59: Angels sing.

4:05: Drop Kira off.

4:10: Retrieve Megan.

4:25: Purchase dress for Megan to wear to piano recital.

4:50: Arrive home. Facilitate recital preparations. Prepare a pre-recital something to eat. Clean kitchen.

5:35: Depart for recital.

5:50 – 7:50: Attend recital.

8:10 – 8:35: Prepare post-recital something to eat. Attempt to facilitate bedtime routine. Announce patience wearing thin. Check weather for venue of Big Bike Adventure (aka Girlz Trip) tomorrow of 84 hilly, beautiful and remote miles skirting the WV border. Observe 100% chance of showers, winds at 20mph gusting to 30. Decide adverse weather merely heightens epic nature and improves stories; adventure not to be missed.

8:40: Read brief chapter excerpt of Cheaper By The Dozen to eager & appreciative audience. Tuck in slightly less eager & appreciative audience.

8:55: Discover (early) arrival of period.

9p: Bail on Big Bike Adventure. Briefly contemplate divulging why, to quash the certain torment and calls of wimpitude about to come my way.

9:01: Think better of sharing. It’s hard to maintain an image as One Of The Guys when you’re whining about perimenopause.

9:05: Clean kitchen. Again.

9:25: Commence blogging.

Today was a trying, trying day. Not all of it, surely, but parts of it IN SPADES.

Almost all of that trying centered around one 52-pound 10-year-old.

I don’t want to dwell on it. I really just want it to be behind me.

A month or so ago I had a different trying day, and shortly before dinner announced I was going to go for a walk to “get rid of my grumpies.” The MPM was home and able to pull the final details of dinner together, so that was feasible. (Today, not so much).

And after my walk that day, which did much to dispel those grumpies, I returned to this, penned by the same individual:

The note says “Please put these slippers on.” And do take note of the contractor paper and blue tape… part of my living-room decor for two solid months.

The drawing on the card with the pop-up Perler heart and the bold “I LOVE YOU” across the bottom depicts both of us. She’s wearing her purple hat, and I’m wearing my teal-green one. And we both have our slippers on, matching ones I bought from LLBean.

And that’s the image I’m going to take to bed with me tonight, to try to dispel all the ones from today I wish had never happened.

Oh, this parenting gig is hard. Both in the moment, and in the anticipation of the future, and most of all in the not-knowing: will this course of action improve the underlying problem, or will it actually exacerbate? Who the hell knows?

Because it is daily blogging I sometimes feel like I should blog about today, like live-blogging my slow trek through the tasks of my day, but some days don’t so much lend themselves to that. I could tell you about the score of emails I exchanged with the fella at Kraus, the company that manufactured our very nice faucets, during which I began wondering if it was actually the same person responding each time, or just a fungible crop of slightly inattentive people all with a disdain for the nuances of subtle communication.

My original email stated, “I have are two identical sinks equipped with a matched set of your faucets and drains. One of them drains despite the stopper being engaged. The other does not.”

First “he” (it says Spencer on the emails, but it is probably Venkiryama, along with three of his, or her, cousins, all taking turns) answers in such a way — asking for a video of the leak, with the underside of the sink shown — that I realize he has interpreted my mis-draining as an actual water-on-the-floor type leak.

Three emails later, he wants to confirm my address to send me a new drain-stopper cap. I remind him that I had already told him — in the same email in which I assured him that I had, yes, in fact, screwed the cap on snugly — that when I swapped the caps, the same sink presented with the drainage problem. (ergo, it couldn’t be the cap. Because I switched it! And, yes, screwed it on tightly! Not. Cap.)

Several more emails down this arid road of  “customer assistance” is where he diagnoses the problem as an incompatibility between my sink and their product. My Kohler Caxton sink, one of eight hundred bazillion sold in this country this year. Which is where I sort of lose my shit and remind him, slightly less gently, that only one of the sinks exhibits this problem. ERGO, NOT INCOMPATIBLE. I follow that by asking him to simply mail me out a new drain assembly and howzabout we see if the problem goes away, even if he wants to continue to entertain the airy notion of incompatibility.

I guess I get to wait until tomorrow to continue the saga, as my email must have arrived during his ciggy break at 4:45p. Or whatever time it was where he was.

Oh. I said I could tell you, and then look. I went ahead and did it, even though it  was utterly unblogworthy.

I suppose the lesson there is that when daily blogging, all is worthy.

There was the irregular gathering of our Hole In The Wall Lunch Bunch at a fine Seafood Grill. No dine-in, and on a corner that, while fine at high noon, probably would have been rather frightening as dusk approached. As with all of our outings to date, the food was really quite decent. Happily there were picnic tables under a tree at the after-school center catty-corner, and the weather couldn’t have been improved on. I ate a few too many hush puppies. Or maybe it was the clam strips or the crabcake.

Tempting fate, I know. But they were all out of the arugula salad with organic heirloom tomatoes, toasted pignoli and shaved manchego.

In any event, it took my stomach a few hours to recuperate. I hung laundry as the girls arrived home and then I did a bit more marketing and such for my Cycle101 program, which I’m very, very excited about but I did promise not to turn this in to one of those Indoor Cycle blogs.

And then I stopped myself midsentence, in kneejerk “No” mode, to say yes to Kira, who wanted me to turn the sprinkler on, and watched her lithe 6-year-old legs and giggly delight from the screen porch for a bit. Later the MPM came home and I went for a painful run. After I stopped going downhill from the house, it became rather apparent that my legs haven’t really — or even remotely — recovered from the 40 miles and two major climbs of Sunday. The only thing that made it bearable was a This American Life podcast. I do heart Ira Flatow*. Apparently some other people do too, and maybe in a different way? Because when I went to Google his name to be sure about the spelling, the auto-fill dropped down “Ira Flatow wife” as the third option. Hmmm.

Well, heck. It’s time for me to toddle off to bed. Hope to hear from you. Hugs, Amy

*Added footnote: One of my Kates brought to my attention that I had a little brain lapse. I would edit that name to correctly read “Ira Glass,” but no one seems interested in his wife at all. Megan recently went down in her school spelling bee by confidently stating “Basket. B-A-S-K-A-T, basket.” She later said to me, after the torrent of tears, “How could that have come out of my mouth when I’ve known how to spell ‘basket’ since I was in kindergarten?”

I know just how she felt.

Oh, people. It is Monday, April 15th, and I am a bit heartsick. And that is all I am going to say about that.

As for what else is surely on all my readers’ minds, being my bathroom mirrors, well, Saturday was spectacularly gorgeous and not only did I fail to blog (it is Katie’s fault; she gave me permission!) but I also failed to even take the photos as promised. I just “did around,” as they say around here, outside.

That should have manifested itself in progress on the Hell Strip, but I had a deep longing for a project that I could at the end of the day look at and think, There, I did something. I completed that. It is DONE.

Across the driveway from the Hell Strip is its young cousin. Call it the Hell Patch. It, too, gets blistering sun and no water. It, too, has gone through several iterations of improvement, none of which did much to accomplish the task.

Friday I found myself at the market, at the greenhouse stand in pursuit of lemon verbena, because you can’t make a lemon verbena margarita to sip on your porch in mid-summer without it. As I stood in front of the lush herbs, my eye fell upon a beautiful mint with rounded leaves and some height to it. Orange mint, the marker said. And I thought, Mint grows anywhere.

In fact, genus mentha is a nuisance and a pest if you’re trying to grow anything other than mint in a given area, because not only does it grow anywhere, it grows EVERYWHERE.

I bought it.  And then I bought apple mint, and Kentucky Gentleman mint (the best for cocktails, said my knowing friend manning the stand as she added it to the flat with my lemon verbena), and chocolate mint.I’m going to let them fight it out, in a true turf war. It will be, if nothing else, a fragrant and tasty battle.

To the right in the photo is some dianthus. I’m thinking the mints will begin making inroads that direction not long after it blooms and I’ll just rip it out. Behind are daylilies, to which I have little attachment. That skirmish could get interesting, but if I had to put money on it, I’d wager they’ll stand their ground in the scuffle to come.

The ongoing bath reno has, as I’ve mentioned before, been accompanied by a tsunami of decisions to be made, ranging from large (cabinets) to small (how many inches apart should the niche shelves be?) and everything in between (tile, hardware, paint color, lighting placement, ad infinitum et nauseum).

While I’m capable of making decisions for someone else on these sorts of things  in a timeframe best measured in nanoseconds, to do the same for myself, knowing that I’m going to have to live with it for a long, long time, is challenging almost to the degree of paralysis. What I need, really, is for my narrowed-down choices to be presented, fully fleshed out, as photos on Houzz, so I can look at them side-by-side and pick which I prefer. Problem solved.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t often happened. Actually, it’s never happened, much to my disappointment. Instead, I’m left with mock-ups and other visualization aids to assist me as I painfully shinny up each decision tree. When feasible (e.g. towel bars or lighting sconces), I simply purchase the two final contestants and place each alternately in situ waiting for one to loudly declare itself the winner.

That doesn’t happen very often, either. Mostly it just gives me something slightly more concrete to agonize over.

So, bringing you along to today, at long last I find myself staring down the final decision that lies at the end of this very, very long line of very first-world choices. And it’s staring right back at me — literally, in a sense:  mirrors. We’ve nixed the framed variety as the space is just too small, but the question remains: One large rectangle, or two smaller ovals?

I’d planned to do it today, but we had a bit of first-aid drama this evening and I plain ran out of time, so please come back tomorrow for the opportunity to see photos and vote your conscience. So much hinges on this moment in history, and you have a chance to make your voice heard.

See you at the polls. Be sure to bring your valid, government-issued photo I.D. xoxo, A

I regularly feel like I just don’t make very good use of my time. I know people who accomplish, or certainly seem to, loads more than I do in the course of a week. I look back over my day and think, Where did the time GO? I certainly spend a lot of time at my house; what was I doing, that it’s still a wreck and my to-do list has shrunk not one centimeter?

That feeling of unaccomplishment often leads me to search for efficiency, for max return, during those times when I am out and about. Truly, nothing irritates me more than realizing, after the fact, that I could have run a second not-quite-pressing errand in the near vicinity of the more-pressing one that got me out the door.

For instance, Megan has her piano lesson on Tuesday, WAY OVER THERE, in a neighborhood a good 17-minute drive from Casa Fraught. For those of you who hail from other and more densely populated places, anything over or really even approaching 15 minutes is a serious commitment in my small city, requiring mental preparation and perhaps a snack packed for the chauffeur. It’s been a source of intense vexation to me this year that Kira’s keyboarding class (with a different teacher) is a full 20-minute drive — exactly three minutes down the road from Megan’s piano lesson. But on Thursdays. Oh, I could just weep. And I’m pulling out all the stops to align the two commitments come Fall, believe you me.

For now, on Tuesdays, unless I remember to score a playdate for Kira, she’s stuck tagging along. Including computer time for theory, Megan’s lesson takes 75 minutes and, in true efficient form, my habit was always to take Kira erranding during that time. Sometimes we’d pop into the coffee shop near the Co-op after grabbing groceries, or maybe to the small library after whatever other errands I wanted to cross off, but generally our afternoon was all about Gettin ‘er Done.

But on a beautiful day in February, fully vectored in for a Kroger landing after we dropped Megs off, I passed a park. One that I used to take Megs to when she was small and I had two mommy friends from Way Over There that we’d meet. One that Kira had never visited. It has a playground and a greenway path and swings and a cute arched bridge over a creek of pleasant size.

I drove on to Kroger, because we really did need some things, but I turned it into a surgical-strike operation. We were out of there in twenty minutes and I mentally tossed the rest of my errand list out the window and turned back toward the park. Kira expressed some hesitation because there were (horrors) other children on the playground, but I told her we’d play Pooh Sticks instead and she was in.

And it was good. It was the best of Kairos time. If you don’t know the Kairos reference, do — really do — click to read this fabulous post from Momastery. I promise you’ll be glad you did.

Since that Tuesday, I’ve stopped being so dang efficient with those 75 minutes. Instead of planning my to-do list, I pack up a bike or scooter or roller skates. We’ve played endless rounds of Pooh Sticks, and played on the playground, and tossed rocks into the creek.

And she’s been asking since Februrary, so when the temperature soared ludicrously into the 80s this week, this was a foregone conclusion:

I hope she’ll remember these Tuesdays when she’s older. But even if she doesn’t, I know I will.

I call it the Hell Strip. Fronting our property, between the sidewalk and our substantial stone wall, is 30 inches. The exposure is west, and there’s nothing to block a single ray of the sun; it beats down from noon until it drops behind the houses across the street shortly before sunset. The “soil” is mostly pure red Virginia clay, so any substantial rainfall runs right off it.

The previous owner of the house planted it in pachysandra, of all things. Pachysandra is a plant with deep roots for me, growing as it did along the garage at our beloved summer destination of 4255 West Lake Road, Canandaigua NY. In the full, deep shade. I love pachysandra, but it doesn’t love the sun, not in the least. In the Hell Strip, within a year it began a slow declination and eventually succumbed entirely to blight, which is what happens when you subject it to dry, hot, sun.

I was busy growing a toddler, and caring for the extensive landscape put in by the childless prior owner quickly lost its thrall for me. So my first attempt at taming the strip was a halfhearted effort to put in mondo grass, transplanted from a friend’s yard. It was a failure, due in part to lack of regular watering and in part to the fact that the weeds grew faster than the clumps of grass and I just gave up trying to maintain the balance.

Round #2 was the fateful decision I made one spring, looking at the violets that made up about 50% of those weeds. They’re pretty, I mused. And they certainly grow like, well, you know, weeds. And look, there’s another five thousand tiny sproutlings coming up!

Out came the mondo grass and Operation Violet Takeover commenced. In May I was quite delighted. Loads of purple everywhere! Lots of green! And so, so easy. Effortless, in fact. That’s my kind of landscaping.

But as it turns out, violets are much happier in the shade as well. By midsummer, the blooms long gone, the leaves began to scorch and soon my lush strip was straggly, brown leaves… interspersed with all the other weeds that are  far happier in the blasting heat.

And so it remained, all last summer. Or maybe it was the summer before, who knows. (Perhaps my neighbors do.)

So now I have a different plan. Now that I no longer have toddlers to tend to, I have a little dream of improving the Hell Strip.

(And a big sarcastic “Thank you” to WordPress for uploading all my photos in such a miniscule format. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THAT? I’m blogging every day, darn you WordPress, I don’t have time to screw around with this.)

The Hell Strip, in part. There’s 40 feet of it, but as usual my Before photo has to be shot in such a way as to obscure the Already Embarked aspect.

A closeup of the myriad species of weeds. Violets, dandelions, crown vetch…

… and whatever this seed-flinging invasive nastiness is that thrives on carbon dioxide and thus is going to take over the world pretty soon:

The degree of my progress, below, is enhanced mightily by the foreshortened camera angle. I’m maybe halfway along.

Eventually, hopefully, I’ll have fabulous After photos to share. For now, I have mostly a backache and blisters. I would share those as well if I could, because I’m generous that way. Or feel free to stop by for some of your own. There’s plenty more where mine came from.

Daily blogging brings you such fascinating snippets of my life, no? Hugs, A

Thursday we had that little flurry of a blizzard, and yesterday I rode in shorts and short sleeves. Momma Nature, you so crazy.

It wasn’t a long ride, as bike rides go, barely ticking past 35 miles. But it took a toll on my legs, oh it did.

I own all the cold-weather gear I need to ride well down into the 20s, but these years I’m seldom motivated to wear it. And this year, even less so, because a woman I admire tremendously — both as a person and as an athlete — decided to open an indoor-cycle studio practically around the corner. And then she asked me if I’d be interested in being an instructor.

Well, duh. Biking is a passion for me. And — though I never thought about it particularly in that way — so is teaching. I enjoy sharing the bits of knowledge, tips and technique that have come my way over the years. I’ve mentored riders, in one way or another, for at least a decade. And I was looking to take on something new in my life.

So I’ve been on a bike a couple times a week, or more, since January — but there’s a rather broad chasm between on the road, pushing a real gear up a real hill, with gravity smirking at your winter avoirdupois, and a studio bike, no matter how nice or how technologically advanced. With the added component that when I’m teaching a class, I have to back down the intensity by a good amount so as to allow for sufficient breath to talk, not to mention oxygen for cognitive function.

On the plus side, I find myself paying more attention to form, and pedal stroke. On the minus, right, with a pleasant, motivating, climate-controlled environment to ride in, it’s wickedly hard to get excited about donning all that cold-weather attire to head out on the blustery road. Yo, Mother Nature, it’s me again:  What’s up with leaving the fans on high for the last three months, anyway?

So back to yesterday, and my dose of road reality, out playing with the boys. Ouch. Let’s just say now that the temperatures are soaring up into the 70s and beyond, it shouldn’t be so hard to get motivated for time on the tarmac.

As for the instructing, I have to say, it’s been a true positive in my life. There’s a learning curve, yes, but now that I’m over being nervous about screwing up my cues, I’m really enjoying it.

One of the biggest challenges for me initially was creating playlists, because over the past decade I managed to almost completely divorce myself from popular music. There are multiple facets to the why, one being that when your music taste has very little overlap with that of the person you spend the most time with, it’s easier just to listen to NPR instead.

We’re trying to get past that, the MPM and I, though we haven’t yet sought professional help.

So yes, I have a new best friend. We spend so much time together that if the MPM were the jealous type, he’d be totally torqued, because sometimes I just can’t help myself and I go on and on about what I’ve been doing with my sweet Spotify.

(Pandora, I am over you. Oh, sure, sometimes I might stop by and hang out with you for a bit, but just so you know? I’m totally using you to introduce me to strangers so I can invite them over to play any time I want, with Spotify. Because really, you’re a big tease. You don’t ever give me what I ask for. And I want you to know we are never, ever, ever getting back together… because you don’t know better than to play that song.)

Seriously, how crazy is it to be able to listen to any music you want to, when you want to, for free?

Do you want to know about my playlists? Yes? No? Doesn’t matter, I’m telling you anyway. Let’s start with Imagine Dragons, Nelly, Flo Rida (both names I would have guessed, three months ago, to belong to women rather than large black men), Mumford & Sons, Rihanna, Linkin Park, Fall Out Boy. So yes, I throw in a lot of Top 100-type tunes, but that’s the easy stuff. The harder part by far is finding other sounds to round it out with, cool music that isn’t played every 20 minutes on your drive time and yet has broad appeal. And can be cycled to. Which cuts out roughly 99.8% of my singer-songwriter favorites, dangit.

So. For starters, ZZWard. I insist you check out her album, “Til The Casket Drops.”

Some fun individual tracks, by artists I’ll be surprised if you’ve heard of:

• Turn It Around, Lucius
• Boy, Emma Louise (well, it works for a cooldown)
• Ghosts and Creatures, Telekinesis
• Holy Roller, Thao & The Get Down Stay Down
• In My City, Priyanka Chopra
• Pide Piso, Bajofondo
• Is Your Love Big Enough, Lianne La Havas

Those are some of my favorite recent finds. Please, and I mean it sincerely, share your own favorite workout music — I’m always looking to expand my repertoire and my listening library.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch a little basketball with my man. I’m bringing along Spotify too, so we can cozy up during the commercials. All three of us.