I can see why this was so shockingly funny when it first came out. It was still funny in bits, and perhaps Douglas Adams owes Kingsley Amis a turn of phrase.
A good party is dancing "Ring Around a Rosie" with two-year-olds and a few hours later talking about sex toys with Scarf, London, and Wolfman. It is turning Monkey into a murcielago, and Blake bowing when a little boy shows him various sticks, and petting a good pile of squirrel-deterrent off Mia, and showing a little girl where to pick the first zucchini of the season, and admiring Maven's great new haircut, and being spared too much "Ring Around a Rosie" when the littluns become much more interested in picking raspberries than in dancing. It is melodramatically singing and dancing to "Hotel California" with a Where the Wild Things Are puppet on one hand.
I was looking at my favorites shelf after shoving The Quincunx into place, and Girl with a Pearl Earring is missing. That's an autographed copy! Whom would I lend that to? Possibly my sister. Or possibly it is lost. Yii.
We biked to Whole Foods to have smoothies from the embedded Jamba Juice (one day we will have bananas in the house again) before heading for the gym. RDC went to the pool and I returned to the trail to do the bike portion of the race. Twelve miles in a bit less than an hour: I'm not fast. Back at the gym, I found RDC at the bike rack on his way out; I locked up and hopped on the treadmill for the 5K run (33') and then dove into the pool to swim 1000 meters. I swam smoothly and in fine form, five breaths per 25-meter length and five half-strokes (one armpull is a half-stroke) per breath, which is good for me, better this season than ever before.
Then I pedaled slowly home. It began to sprinkle, light and cool, and I took off my non-prescription sunglasses. I've been swimming in contacts recently, and that will be better for race day: I'll be able to see my way in and out of the water. Also the non-rx glasses are sturdier than the nine-year-old rx ones.
As ever, my shakiest element is the run. Aurora Reservoir should be between 63 and 73 degrees, and though my regular swim is in a 78-degree pool, 63-degree water won't paralyze me. I expect that everyone swims faster in open water since she doesn't need to slow for turns, but the number of swimmers, especially trying to make a tight turn around a buoy, might cancel that advantage. The bike route has "rolling hills" and I might be a little stronger with several ups and downs rather than the one of each on my usual stretch of trail.
Though I don't train in any discipline, I have been biking and swimming regularly all my life, since I mastered the doggy paddle and a two-wheeler at about age 5. Running, not so much. I don't run much and almost never on actual ground because of pain--damage I haven't investigated--in my right hip and both knees. The swim will energize me, I'll push myself on the bike, and then I hope not to cripple myself on the run after not touching actual ground in weeks.
It sprinkled on my way back from the gym, strengthening into showers in about the last half mile. I picked green beans and basil and spinach for supper in the rain, and by the time Blake and I got out of the shower, it was sunny again. We had burgers (left over from the party) with tomatoes (not our own) and spinach and a green been salad (blanched, with basil and almonds and olive oil) for dinner, then sat on the porch and read for a while. I am, to no one's surprise, not liking Naked Lunch and picked up Kate Remembered, the Scott Berg biography of Hepburn I was given a couple of years ago. It's being about Kate will only possibly overcome my distaste for nonhistorical biographies, for celebrity biographies. Well, I have books on hold at the 'brary, so it only has to last me until tomorrow.
While we swung on the porch, rain began in earnest. First we took Blake off his column and put him under the porch roof, then farther back, and finally in the house, because now the rain was lashing down in a gale, with thunder and lightning. Neither of us can remember a cool Fourth of July of the 11 we've spent here.
Maybe the anthem sing-along concert at Fiddler's Green in 1996 wasn't savagely hot, but I'm sure it wasn't cool. Red Rocks in 1997 and 1998 for Blues Traveler was hot hot hot, at least until sunset. In 1999, when we were in Vail and Grand Lake with the Beasts, it was so hot in Rocky Mountain National Park that the elk had retreated into the tundra. In 2000, we went to Grand Lake with Haitch to escape the city's heat; in 2001, RDC's aunt and uncle were here and we sweltered at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. In 2002, wildfires rampaged; and if I don't specifically remember vicious heat in the previous three years I am quite sure it wasn't 50 and raining.
It's being that cool, and raining with thunder and lightning and strong winds, means nothing to our neighbors: they still have their air-conditioner on, the freaks.
RDC went out to check the gutters and Blake panicked. He doesn't like stormy weather and particularly dislikes lightning. But the gutters are fine and the basement is dry as toast and Gore-Tex is a miracle fabric. Blake and I watched the rain from inside, so he could be safe and warm-footed on my shoulder, and RDC made hot chocolate for the grown-ups. Now I am sitting in the leather recliner with my feet loosely crossed, and he (Blake, that is) is playing in the crotch cave, between my knees and under the laptop. It's still raining lightly, and we are not walking out behind the museum to watch the downtown fireworks. But we can hear them.
Aside from the nothing-to-read feeling, it's been a great day. I love rain.
The third in Jeanne DuPrau's City of Ember series, and I hope she stops with a trilogy. The first book was vaguely interesting, but flawed; the second really problematic; and this one was just heavy-handed and banal. But not as stupid as I was for reading it anyway.
One 3.7-mile city ride. I would have ridden home, too, except I was in glasses and am made of sugar and RDC was out anyway.
Bike 9.6 miles in three legs. Swim 2000 meters. I'm working on keeping my head up, looking at the other end of the pool. It's the one piece of advice someone gave me last year that I couldn't work immediately and naturally into my freestyle--because to do so really engages what should be my abdominal muscles but aren't.
The title story brought the 1918 epidemic to life for me more than the entirety of The Great Influenza. Somehow I preferred "Old Mortality," though, and while "Noon Wine" isn't in the big collection of short stories that sustained me through the blizzard, somewhere Ive read it before.
I am pretty sure I've read somewhere that Scott Berg's biography of Katharine Hepburn wasn't tawdry for a celebrity biography. A couple of things I didn't know--Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable were the first choice for Kate and Spencer Tracy's roles in "State of the Union"? Spencer Tracy was to have been Penny Baxter in the first attempt to film The Yearling?--were interesting to contemplate and didn't make me feel dirty, but reading about her acquaintance with Michael Jackson and her frail, prideful (and well-founded) reluctance to appear in a Warren Beatty (ugh) remake of "An Affair to Remember" (double ugh) did.
But I liked reading about Fenwick and knowing that she swam every day of the year. In high school when I mastered crossing the Baldwin Bridge over the Connecticut River (several hundred feet up, and where "mastered" means "did it several times without being blown over the side by an 18-wheeler or otherwise dying, even when I had a cast on my arm"), I rode all over Old Saybrook, sometimes to sell advertisements for the yearbook and sometimes just because. Also I went to Fenwick because it was pretty and as close to the Lynde and Breakwater lighthouses as you can get by land--and I didn't consider what I did to be trespassing. Soon after I passed a "No Trespassing" sign (whether it said "please go away" I can't be certain of), walking my bike innocent as a lamb, a woman in a gardening hat asked me who I was and told me to scarper. If that was Phyllis, it is probably as close as I got to Kate in life.
Except now that I look for it, Kate's house was several away from Lynde Point, by itself near a salt pond. Well, someone told me to bugger off, anyway.
Every day as I bring my bike through the gate into the back yard, my eyes are on the garden. How are the carrots? Does the eggplant have a blossom? Are the raspberries quite, quite over? Today I shrieked in dismay and grief, because squirrels scaled my sunflowers and decapitated them again.
The first year, I naïvely planted regular sunflowers--big, happy-faced, seed-bearing sunflowers. Squirrels decapitated them as soon as the flowers bloomed. The next year I planted a non-seeding variety that put out several small flowers instead of one big head, and that they left alone. Last year I planted what were called Mexican sunflowers, also many-flowered, non-seeding, and of several colors, and those were spared as well. This year I tried a variety called Moulin Rouge, again non-seeding, and the first blossom that emerged had absolutely lovely petals, dark red in front with yellow backs.
Non-seeding but still tasty, apparently, and the vermin don't care whether something's in fruit anyway: they dug up both eggplants while they were yet seedlings. I expected them to, when RDC wanted to give eggplant another try, so the one plant's death didn't break my heart and I don't expect them to spare any fruit from the survivor. But sunflowers! Those two years lulled me into hope. Plus, since these sunflowers were not along the fence, the rodents had to scale them, cracking or at least weakening the stalks, so I doubt any more flowers can come.
Fucking squirrels.
So bookclub is just what I needed. We talked about Bel Canto and ate lox and talked about immunizations (for Monkey and for Stick, which is what I'm going to call the stick-loving two-year-old we all adore) and Erin's 170-mile bicycle weekend. AEK and Maven want to come cheer me on Sunday, which is so sweet, and the three of us in a tangle of legs and hand-massages consulted only our own calendars before announcing to Kal the weekend we want to go to her cabin. Scarf and I danced to whatever salsa-y music the hostess was playing.
Maven pretended embarrassment at whatever mystery she's reading now and I said hey, I still read Jean Auel, so have no shame. She hasn't read the latest one, and I offered to lend it to her if she wanted, as unsatisfying as it is, from my cache of trash, with the V.C. Andrews. She said Flowers in the Attic had inspired her to take ballet lessons, and we all cracked up: "As long as that's all it inspired you to do!"
It was a nice evening and distracted me from my savaged sunflowers.
This morning someone complimented my ensemble (only because "outfit" connotes a different thing) and I thanked her and she observed that it is a new color for me and asked if the outfit was new. The cap-sleeved, v-neck green t-shirt is recent, I admitted, but the skirt I bought in 1988. It's still a lisaish pattern--vaguely floral, mostly abstract, muted--but is in two shades of rose, two of slate blue, and a green on white. That is, unless brown leather sandals count, there is hardly a neutral on my body. I am trying not to feel garish.
Between that and the skirts--plus the pacifism and mission of social justice--I think I would make a good Quaker. You know, except for the earth-worshipping pagan bit.
Swim 800 meters in open water, woohoo! My one actual swim at the race site before the big day. It was okay water, not crystal clear, but at least green and not brown. It was 70 degrees, which felt great since my usual lap pool is 78.
Historical, very fictional novel about Katherine Swynford, mistress and later wife of John of Gaunt, by Anya Seton. It has an article in Wikipedia claiming it as one of the first historical novels--I guess it does try more for verisimilitude than Jane Porter's Scottish Chiefs--and maybe it is. It certainly has that genre's faults, despite being published in 1954: comma splices, unnecessary fragments, even a "he might of had" error. But it was medieval geekery, and helped me straighten out Edward III's children. Katherine de Roet Swynford Lancaster-Gaunt's son John's son John's daughter Margaret's son was Henry VII, who married her daughter Joan Beaufort's daughter Cecily Neville's son Edward IV's daughter Elizabeth of York. I still don't care about the Stuarts or Hanoverian kings, but the Plantagenets from Henry II through both branches to the Tudors are my thing.
Two 3.7-mile city rides, despite the day of the week, because the mandatory face-show for the race happened to take place next door to Dot Org. It meant I could put my bike in the building as usual and not carry a lock.
My plan was to attend two clinics in the morning--a course overview and a first-timers' hand-holding--and register as soon after 12:15, when last names A-L were welcome, as I could. I arrove at the site to a big line, but hooray, it was only for 10 o'clock entry to the exposition, not the registration line. I had glazed over the "exposition" bit, but oh yes, in addition to clinics and registration there were things to buy. I found out vital things, like my race and wave numbers, and picked up my mandatory swim cap and non-mandatory lime-green advertisement-shirt. The course overview Oprah-lecturer said the one thing she advised us to get today--because everything else we should have worn before and trust--was open-water goggles. I did that, and planned to test them in Chatfield Reservoir, where we were going now to spend more of the afternoon paddling than we thought when I was going to have to wait until 12:15 to show my face and pick up my chip and sign my waiver and have my limbs marked with my number and bond with my fellow participants.
Luckily the bonding wasn't mandatory.
So we spent the afternoon paddling at Chatfield and, for me, drinking even more water than usual. In a small inlet, upstream of an old beaver dam, I saw fish jumping. I suggested portaging around the dam, and then we could sit in our kayaks against the dam, RDC fishing, me reading. This was a fine plan except for the mosquitoes. So we didn't. We found a beach not quite deserving of the name on the main body of the lake and ate our sandwiches, and then I settled in the private shade of a small cottonwood to read The Persian Boy--first in line regular-sized paperback, after library books, which I wouldn't risk even in a drybag. I propped my 100-oz. Camelbak bladder on my camera and used it as a pillow even as I emptied it. Meanwhile RDC tried to fish from his kayak, but it's no float tube, so he gave up on that, and from shore he couldn't cast far enough to be deep enough.
Upon leaving, RDC tugged his kayak into the water and immediately slid in, whereupon one inflatable chamber burst from its zipper. Luckily it didn't break the zipper, but it did mean that he had to sit with his right leg bent nearly out of the cockpit and paddle with his right arm straight out. Or something. After that, I let Watership Up gradually acclimate from hot sand and sun to warm shallows to paddling depth and only then clambered in. All this meant that our plan to swim off the kayaks, within the buoy line but far enough from shore that I, at least, might be able to overlook the muck at the bottom that shore isn't deep enough to mask, was out. When we got back our starting point, hooray, I had lost--in the car? on the beach? as we carried the kayak between car and tree-shade and water? part of the pump valve, which meant that we couldn't reshape RDC's boat and go out again. And I wasn't about to swim there, near the fishing beach and small-boat launch, when I couldn't see my feet in water that didn't reach my knees.
I didn't try the open-water goggles, which give you a larger field of vision than regular socket-only goggles, but that was fine because I couldn't find them anyway when I finished packing Saturday night.
The short version: I was satisfied with my performance until I checked the results. I wanted (to want) only to complete it, not to compete, but a final time of 2:04 disappointed me. I would have been under two hours if I had transitioned better. At least I placed in the top half, both overall and within in my age bracket, in the swim. Lesson: be happy within myself without consideration of numbers or comparison.
The long version: Last Monday at bookclub, AEK remembered that the triathlon was six days away. "Can I come with you?" Was she insane? I wanted to leave at 5:30, and AEK more than most people does not get up early (except to ski). Maven wanted to come too. I was touched and pleased and slightly dubious, the more so after I ascertained that all attendees had to be off Powahton Road by 7:00, when the first wave entered the water. RDC and I had already determined that he didn't need to go, because we have one car and I didn't expect him to get up before dawn either. But they were adamant: "You can't go to your first triathlon alone!" said AEK. Better yet, we would take her car, and lo, I wouldn't have to drive afterward, and could even braid my hair after I left the house, and RDC could go fishing as he strongly desired to do.
I slept little and fitfully after 3, and RDC got up at 4 to drive up the Poudre Canyon and hike up the river into RMNP and harass the trout. I got up at 5, RDC 20 minutes gone, and he called at 5:05 to make sure I was up. He'd made the buddy breakfast, and I wheeled the buddy to his usual daytime spot at the living room window except it wasn't daylight yet: Blake did not like the looks of this in the least. I made my smoothie--banana, yogurt, frozen blueberries, a dash of orange juice, a suggestion of protein powder. I dressed: running shorts, bra, running tank (three layers breastal support total, not nearly as high on my sternum as my regular swimsuit but cramming my bust enough to reduce drag somewhat, especially since I'm not at the level drag makes a noticeable difference, though I did shave my legs), wool socks, bike shoes. I checked my pack: chip and ankle strap; numbers for torso, bike, and helmet; goggles and swim cap; bike helmet and gloves; sneakers, Thorlite socks, evaporative neckband, sweatband. Plus six pints of water: one to drink on the way, one on the bike, two mixed with Cytomax for transitions, and two frozen in a bottle for afterward. Also a towel, not for drying but to lay my gear on and get sand off my feet after the swim; a small bottle of alcohol to dry my ears after the swim; another banana and two packets of energy gel; sunscreen, eyedrops, another pair of contacts, prescription sunglasses just in case, lip balm, phone, insurance card.
Also a totem. HEBD crocheted me a small--smaller than my palm--pouch and when she gave it to me I'm pretty sure she called it a totem. It hangs in my study on one of those quilted boards with ribbons for notes and photographs (also a gift) along with Emlet's and Siblet's birth announcements and a yellow rose from Granny's grave and things like that. I have a tiny blue glass cat from childhood that lives in my little cedar chest. "That," not "who," because if I ever named it, I've forgotten, and because before today it had been out of that box maybe once since the box arrived late in twelfth grade, to accompany me to the GRE. I might not have thought to bring it then except that it had helped me take the PSAT and probably both (or three?) SATs. That went in, and a Blake crest feather, and a shell from my beach, and a piece of Granny's sea glass. I strung my engagement and iolite rings on Tigger's box chain and added those three things and called it done. I might have left my rings on, but they wouldn't fit through the crocheting whereas without them Tigger might, and I wasn't going to risk him in the swim or run.
On the porch swing I drank my smoothie and smeared peanut butter on most of an apple (Blake got a slice) and sucked down water and watched bats flitter toward their beds. I re-inked myself, since sweat and sunscreen had faded yesterday's marks. I went in for a final pee and to brush my beak--three minutes, max--and on the way back stopped dead in my tracks between dining and living rooms because my bike was no longer propped on the porch. I churned into overdrive and burst out the door to see, of course, AEK and Maven loading my bike into the car. Oh.
Google steered me east on 70 and south on 470, but yesterday the Oprah chick had warned about traffic on 470 and Wednesday when I drove from work all I had to do was go east on Sixth, which eventually turns south. So we did that, and while we did join a one-lane traffic jam eastbound on Quincy, this way did spare us two or more miles of it. As traffic jams go, it was okay--unidirectional and unidestinational--and we were parked by 6:20. I ate my banana as we packed up, gave Maven the totem to keep in a pocket, hugged and kissed my friends, and mounted Shadowfax to ride the mile to the race site there to to rack the bike and set up for the transitions.
Goggles and cap in hand, I entered the swim chute. The swim entry was the boat launch--concrete to two feet down--and thank goodness, because with 25 waves of 125 women, the less churning of "lake" bed at entrance and exit the better. I am really glad I did the open-water swim on Wednesday because even with many fewer participants, it gave me an idea what the actual swim start would be like. AEK and Maven shouted for me from the fence--they'd found me, that was amazing! Sally Edwards, who perhaps started this event? but who is anyway a fitness author and cheerleader, counted each wave start at four-minute intervals. As with a ski lift, once one wave had started, the next group could enter a corraled bit of water. Each wave had the same cap color (mine had the decency not to be orange or pink) and while we waited in the water, Edwards would give us a word for a mantra (wave 10's was "sensational" and while I might rather have been "invincible," at least I wasn't a Pre-Teen Sensation called Mavis) and ask what the best cap color was ("Purple!") and have us high-five our wave-mates ("You go, girl!") and it managed not to feel hokey at all.
The swim start was a total hippopotamus wallow. You know how as the rains end and the rivers dry, each hippo lives in a smaller and smaller bit of water, and then mud, and then the fighting begins? There wasn't any fighting and I didn't get kicked in the head or, as far as I could tell, kick anyone else in the head. But it was a tangle and I was nearly to the first buoy before we finally spaced ourselves. The 750m course was triangular with the apex at the boat launch, and I, unable as usual to swim in a straight line without a stripe under me (possibly the open-water goggles would have helped, since they would have afforded more peripheral vision, but fog is fog), nearly went left of the first buoy. It was within arm's reach of my right arm, instead of my left. Whoops. I put it on my left side and headed for the second buoy. This every fifth half-stroke that I've been breathing? Out the window. I breathed every left stroke until after the second buoy, in the homestretch, and I so badly wanted not to go off course that I checked more often than I needed to, wasting time.
And then! The thing that killed me! With the concrete ramp under me, I ripped off cap and goggles to start the ride with a nice cool wet head, ran up toward the transition area (grinning at AEK and Maven who found me again), and located the four racks for wave 10, but I could not find my bike. Again, good drugs: I was angry and frustrated but not paralyzed by these emotions. Once, I glimpsed the bike and headed toward it, but it moved away from me. Perhaps Shadowfax knew that I would have liked to have a street bike for this section of the race. Finally I ran the elusive thing to earth. Whew. I whipped on shorts and dropped to gulp Cytomax, bite sport goo into my maw, squirt alcohol into the porches of mine ears, rub sand off my feet, pin the number to my front, and don socks and shoes. I buckled my helmet, shoved hands into gloves, triangulated the particular rack with a tree and a bluff and a building--for next time I know to do that first and to know not just that there are x racks per wave but that mine is the yth rack from this direction and the zth from the other--and walked the bike to the gate. I lost minutes upon minutes in this transition.
The 20K bike ride was fun. Yes, I have a mountain bike and it's heavier than a street bike, but it has street tires on it. I hadn't bothered to remove my lights and rack because again, I am not at that level, and besides, mountain bike. RDC asked me if I wanted to carry a toolkit, and that'd be real nice if I knew how to use it but since I don't it'd just be weight and guilt. The only weight I wanted was the goop in the tires that has saved me from many a flat, and I relied on that to keep Shadowfax from throwing a shoe. If the bike spit out its bit, well, I can get a chain back on with my fingers. A couple of weekends ago we checked the gears and brakes, but otherwise the only maintenance I did was to pump psi high enough to feel every last crumble in the road. Shadowfax was naughty to hide during transition, but I expected it to behave during the race itself and it did. Whatever slope I was on, I spun. My bike is geared low enough and I am not in shape enough that any pedaling in even the highest gears effects no change in speed on descents, but I spun anyway. I am a calm swimmer and I did not expect to push myself on the run, but the ride was fun and I grinned maniacally throughout.
I found my spot quickly on the second transition and only had to shuck bike shorts, change socks and shoes, tie on my neckband, and gulp the other half of the water and goo, but I spent another minute trotting to where someone had left a Usan flag on the ground to drape it over the rack. This was such a touchy-feely race, what with the high-fiving and the volunteers in the water who'd reassure you if that's what you needed or accompany you the full distance, whew, that I still didn't know transition time would count toward the total. So I scampered quickly but didn't scurry to the 5K run start.
Where AEK and Maven found me again! I scooped up a cup at the first water station and they were just past it, and I shoved the empty cup into AEK's hand. Thanks! Now, I realize the limitations of the location. The race can be at Aurora Reservoir because the facility is nearly in Kansas so doesn't have a lot of traffic to disrupt, and it doesn't allow motor boats so doesn't lose as much revenue as Cherry Creek or Chatfield Reservoir would from half a day's closure. Having an out-and-back bike route on a suburban road is one thing, because the road is wide enough to accommodate four bikes abreast in each direction plus the double yellow line makes for an obvious divider, but an out-and-back run on a regular-width sidewalk is not such a clever set up. The by-phrase "on your left" meant nothing and those people I passed I did so when no one was oncoming, and I tried to keep right but walkers made that inefficient, and sidewalk? Ow: not a good running surface. The worst thing was that people to the left on my way out were congratulating people on their way back, and I kept hearing "You're almost there!" when I had barely begun. I set myself a pace that I thought I could maintain and stuck to it. And I guess I have no sense of how far five kilometers is, or even how far a mile is, because when I got to the first mile marker all I could think was, that's it? The turn-around on the bike hadn't felt like six miles at all, but the turn-around on the run never came at all. Except it finally did, and I hadn't walked on any of the slight hills, up or down, on the way out, and so I didn't on the way back either.
Nearly at the end stood AEK and Maven again, waving a hot pink ("We know how much you love pink") sign that read, "Go Lisa!" AEK yelled reallyfast, "We'll meet you at the playground past the finish line." Past speaking, I thumbsed-up with my left--the non-gimpy thumb--and sprinted for the end. (I had given a thumbs-up to some participants who were walking their bikes up hills, but did so with my right hand. My right thumb doesn't straighten fully, and I always worry that people think I'm being sarcastic. Whatever.)
Oh yeah, and I crossed the finish line, high-fiving Sally Edwards as I did. I was handed a bottle of water and a medal and someone misted me and I was done. These percentages are the reverse of the usual: 76% means I would have been 76th in a field of 100, not 24th.
I found the playground but had a more pressing need. Lavatories stood alongside, with a line out the women's door. Fuck that. I knocked on the men's door and entered, calling "Woman coming in!" and anyone who had a problem with that could kiss my sweaty ass. But no one said anything, a damn good thing. Now I was dry inside and out.
For all I had drunk--a half gallon in the past four hours--I didn't pee much: that's how much I had sweat. I finished by 9:45, but the day's high was 104 and it was probably over 90 for the run.
My sweet friends found me as I emerged from breaking whatever law and waited while I skittered down the beach to dunk myself again. I could have stayed there forever. The worst part of the day was waiting 30 minutes to get out of the transition area: the exit crossed the start of the run, so people could only get out in gaps between racers. We walked the mile to the parking area with AEK remarking on how I was still pacing faster than they were. On the way home we stopped at a farmer's market ("Unless you mind? Are you too tired?" "No. I am going to eat peaches until I explode"), and a shopper exclaimed how how strong my (bare) feet must be. It struck me as extremely funny that my feet, and not the numerals pinned to my front and inked on my skin ("I am not an escaped convict!"), are what he noticed. And my number! I hadn't thought of the calendar, only that I didn't know who sat on the English throne in that year--some Dane named Cnut, whatever--but Haitch pointed out it's her birthday. So she was there with me too, whee!
On the Formigny's front door, Stick and his mother had taped up a sign! It said things like "Congratulations!" and "Way to Go!" and had little drawings labeled swim bike and run, and Stick's lettering and spelling are extremely advanced for a not quite two-year-old. Also it had decorations in scribbles in many different colors.
All day I was tired, but not sore or weary. I think I felt the lack of sleep more than the race, yet afterward I didn't sleep. I ate peanut butter toast and bananas and peaches and drank lots of water and watched "Pirates of the Caribbean" and pet the buddy head and made RDC stop for ice cream on his way home.
I was unaccountably tired on Friday, no swim, and collapsed on a blanket on AEK's front lawn, where we idly threw balls for the dogs and drank mojitos (I had a mouthful of one but didn't like it). We watched the sunset in the clouds and I observed to Kal that my father says the only perfect view is of the sky over our heads. She responded, of course, "I imagine your father has been reading Dantë." She spent that rainy weekend up at the cabin, and even I watched only "Philadelphia Story" instead of also "Room with a View" and "Persuasion." Enough time has gone by for "Room" to have rejuvenated, and my next project is to suck "Persuasion" as dry as I have "Sense and Sensibility."
Swim 2000 meters, smoothly and steadily.
The master swimmer told me last summer to look forward, not down, and I have to find a swimming book to advise me on that. Besides technique, and lazing about form, strength training is the most important thing I must do for my swimming.
The neighborhood hasn't had a baby for six months and we are almost due for our next. This one's quilt turned out much better than last August's baby's, much less clumsy. Scarf's assembly and construction of our different squares was fine last year, but I think the squares are better this time. I gave Runaway Bunny because my square was the scene of his being a flower in a garden, and Kal gave Very Hungry Caterpillar for the same reason. Also pajamas with weensy dinosaurs and another set with dogs, and Olivia because she's a badass with a big mouth.
I violated gender protocol and spent some time on the porch with the men instead of in the (hotter) house with the women. A yellowjacket got me in the left eyesocket, not through the lid to the eyeball thank goodness, and though near the outside and halfway up to the eyebrow, my left eyebag now deserves the name. It's even swollen enough to deprive me of some peripheral vision. If only it were bruised, then it would look really punk rock. But goggles hurt, and I did not swim.
I'm watching "A Man for All Seasons" and reading along. Three of my favorite movies--this, "The Sting," and "Jaws" have Robert Shaw, and I might have to seek out his other movies.
Thomas More to Thomas Cromwell: You have your desire of me. What you have hunted me for is not my actions, but the thoughts of my heart. It is a long road you have opened. For first men will disclaim their hearts and presently they will have no hearts.
Between Robert Bolt's Thomas More and Atticus Finch, my conscience has all the role models it needs.
This week I did a lot of lying around icing my eye. I reread books (A Man for All Seasons, Becket, To Kill a Mockingbird), and watched the fifth season of "Gilmore Girls," supplied weeks ago by the obliging koroshiya. Why do I keep watching this show? I hate everyone in it. Off the top of my head from the latest few episodes: 1) I hate Rory for saying "Traffic on the 95 was bad." The 95? What is this, California? No one says "the 95," even the freaks who call Boston Post "the Post Road" or "Route 1." 2) I hate Sookie because she tells Jackson that he's having a vasectomy, even though he wants more than two children, right now today, no discussion. 3) I hate Jackson for meekly agreeing. 4) I hate Lorelei for considering selling the Dragonfly as if Sookie has no say in it whatsoever. 5) Paris, Michel, Taylor, Kirk, Zach, Emily, and Richard are obvious and easy. 5a) I hate Rory for forgetting she has a best friend, but I like Lane all right, and Miss Patty. 5b) No, I don't like Lane. You can do a lot more than kissing without coitus, cupcake. 6) I hate the writers for inventing a "Stars Hollow," which, though based on Washington Depot, is 30" from Hartford and 20" from New Haven--triangulation which actually lands you in Meriden or maybe Waterbury. I hate that there's nothing vaguely Connecticutesque about the setting. I hate that it sets up unrealistic expectations about the consequences of unexpected teen pregancy, about excess eating, about finances, and about everything, probably. Most of all I hate that I watch it. Still.
Ha! Now I am rereading sixth season recaps to be ready for fall's seventh, and I am reminded that I hate T.J. too but like Liz. And I do like the fast-paced dialogue, though I lament it's only for comic relief and not for the emotional rollercoasting as well.
Ha! I must further confess that TWOP has made me laugh: "Thank God nobody on Deadwood uses the internet...although I sure would like to see what Al Swearengen would put on his blog, naturally to be found at "CocksuckersIKilledToday.livejournal.com."
There's a line in To Kill a Mockingbird that I have never quite got. At a white women's tea after the trial, when white Mrs. Meriwether complains of her black employee's attitude, Miss Maudie asks, "His food doesn't stick going down, does it?" I mean, I get what she's criticizing, of course--but the antecdent of "his"? why food--because Sophy is a cook?
When I brought that up, three other women said yes, that line has always troubled them too. Kal said her used copy is unmarked except a star next to that line, so someone else didn't get it either. So she investigated. She found a site that suggests it means that Mr. Meriwether can still bring himself to eat Sophy's cooking, but the site's author cited a suggestion she'd received that the line is not about Mr. Meriwether and Sophy but about Mrs. Meriwether's ability to eat Atticus's food in Atticus's house while denigrating Atticus's purpose and effort. That seems to make the most sense.
What I didn't bring up was grammar. Third paragraph: "Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to us...."
Chatfield Reservoir is 25 miles away: why does getting there take almost an hour? Given how long the drive is and the time to set up the inflatable kayaks, you kind of want to go for a long, long time.
Next time we might try Aurora Reservoir, which isn't bounded by trees--Chatfield has trees except along the dam--and doesn't have a view of the mountains--it's farther east and in a hollow--but, crucially, doesn't allow motors (evidently excepting a police launch). I really don't like motor boats.
Three miles through water so churned up by motors that I called it practice for open-sea kayaking.
The possibility was to hike up a tributary of Bowen Creek deep into one of the old-growth forests in Colorado. We found the tributary, on the south side of the creek, easily enough from the north-of-creek trail, but didn't get far up the tributary: It really was wilderness area, no official trail and no unofficial one other than an elk run.The tributary itself had tributaries, little streams that I am not allowed, west of the Mississippi, to call brooks. I did not want to lose the main channel, but streams and scrub necessitated leaving its side, even leaving earshot. So we stopped about a quarter mile up.What we saw was lovely, the creek jumping down rocks and carving out channels, the streams running sometimes above and sometimes under ground, the ground itself damp enough in this fold of the Never Summer Range that it had, no lie, actual moss on it! Because this valley traps so much moisture and is accessible only with difficulty and not so much with trucks, some of the trees are 600 years old and four feet in diameter. We didn't see any of those, but we were certainly in an old-growth forest, with canopy and saplings and the best kind of utter quiet--wind, water, and birdsong.
I was wearing a framed pack with 25 pounds, since this was a test for proposed back-country camping later this summer. I just bought the pack yesterday after a prolonged set of fittings and trials of various models. My torso length is apparently short, which I find humiliating. In whose universe is a 5'7" woman with my shoulders a small? In the universe of Gregory packs, I guess. I had never heard of Gregory--are they to Arcteryx and Marmot what Tuffskins are to Levi's? The Marmot Femme Nikita (!) didn't quite work, nor did an Osprey. And so the Gregory came out, and I confess that my first reaction after slate blue and sage green packs was a girlish revulsion to its color. I said to the patient saleswoman--somewhat glad of such a perfect occasion--"Please don't tell me I have inspired anything...burgundy." This she (reasonably) didn't get but I was able to (amazingly) give a three-sentence explanation of "Kinky Boots." She knew Peter from "Love Actually," who is a drag queen, who meets the inheritor of a failing shoe factory, who together retrofit the plant to make, not conservative oxfords, but two feet of tubular red sex with steel shanked stilettos, and whose first failed experiment in drag-wear is boots in burgundy suede with a sensible low chunky heel. And I was only somewhat glad of the perfect occasion for that line because my new pack is not, alas, available in fuckme red pleather. I possess something burgundy now, and calling it "plum" doesn't help. We adjusted this and that and buckled and zipped and cinched and tugged and filled it with bean bags: an eight-pound bulk at the bottom, two ten-pounders, and another eight-pounder on top. So well does it fit and balance that I swear it is an offshoot of my body. I ran the stairs (the REI store is three storeys) a few times and climbed the boot-trying-on fake hill and did one-legged squats and wore it and the weight around the store for almost two hours and except for the color, I love the hell outta this pack.
Especially I love wearing a dress and going commando while wearing an internally-framed pack! Even underwear, let alone shorts, would have required at least unbuckling the hip belt for peeing. And a skirt would have had a waist. I love this dress.
Our turn-around spot was lovely, with frigid pools and small cascades and a pebbled beach where spring floods had carved a shelf into the bank. I shrugged off my pack and shucked my dress to dry in the sun. I felt extremely stupid in bra and boots alone--it's really not a good look--and felt much less naked in my altogethers. We ate our sandwiches and basked in the sun and so forth.
My knee didn't announce itself for seven miles. I finally arsed myself to find a doctor who accepts the new health insurance and have a general examination in two weeks, and if she doesn't agree that my right knee sounds like a handful of Mexican jumping beans, I will pout.
Eight miles, less than seven off-trail, with a pack.