I rode to work again this morning. This time the wind, such as it was, was with me the entire way there. This time I’d also prepared in advance – I now have a little bag of shower stuff in a drawer at work, along with an old, ratty towel which can just live there permanently. I still feel a little awkward showering at work, but hey, that’s what the shower’s there for, so I might as well use it.

I actually was far less sore for the better part of the day. It wasn’t until I got back on the bike to do the few miles to Raley Field where Richard would pick me up that my muscles finally woke up and started protesting. Choir practice was an interesting challenge – every time we stood up or sat down I felt like a little old lady, wincing with every move. But still, this is progress. Next week, I might not even need the ibuprofin by the end of the day. A girl can dream.

********

Look what happens when you have an artist as a house guest for a few days, especially if you point to the mostly leafless tree on the breakfast nook wall, and just happen to leave out the paints and brushes just in case she gets bored. Yay! A few hundred less leaves I have to paint!

Since Richard was selected to be a library commissioner this meant that he got to march in the May Fair parade this year. I figured that this meant I had to at least go watch the parade, since every year we’ve lived in this town we’ve somehow managed to be out of town or otherwise too busy to take part in the festivities. But then somehow the library group needed more warm bodies, and instead of lounging in a chair on the side of the road with all the unwashed masses I ended up joining a small group of maroon -shirted library volunteers at the library before the parade started. We were all handed large poster boards sporting pictures of books on one side, and huge letters on the other, and we did a rather hasty practice of our little routine, which basically involved milling about in a group that was supposedly forming three straight lines, and spelling out either ‘Library’, ‘Books’, or ‘Read’. Since I was the E, that meant I mostly hung to the rear of the chaos until it was my turn to zip forward and take my place between the R and the A and do my best to remember to flip the poster board so it was not only right-side up, but letter-side out.

Of the group, there were two of us who had been marching band geeks back in high school. So we automatically marched in tempo, and tried to keep our lines in some semblance of order. By the end of the (short) parade route, however, we two just gave us with humor, and figured that organized chaos was probably the better way of doing it anyway.

It was all actually quite fun. The route was mercifully short. The weather was perfect for marching in a parade. The people who packed the streets to watch us walk by cheered us on, even though the group holding the O’s took a few tries to spell ‘Books’ correctly. And plus I got a free t-shirt out of the deal. Not bad at all for a few hours of shuffling down city streets and carrying a poster board in my hands.

********

Dear Santa,

I just wanted to say thanks for the belated fulfillment of the last item on this past Christmas’s wishlist. When she told us she was pregnant the rest of us couldn’t contain our screams. It was all we could do not to cry, we’re so happy for her. She’s been trying so hard and for so many years, and this little baby will probably be her very best Christmas present ever come this December. So thanks, Santa, from the bottom of my heart. Of everything on my list to fulfill, this was the one I really wanted most of all.

Little kids have been making crafts for their moms for Mother’s Day presents for years. They do them in Sunday school, or in preschool or elementary school. They usually involve a lot of paste or some form of cheap plastic trinkets, and sometimes flowers and other once-living components. And every once in a very long while they might just possibly also involve something that one wouldn’t normally expect. Such as, perhaps, potatoes.

My mom likes to tell the story of a particular Mother’s Day present she got from me, back when I was in preschool. We are none of us entirely sure just what the teacher had been thinking when it came to her choice of craft materials. Necklaces made of food are a common thing for little kids to make, after all – cereal and candy being the prime ingredients. But this particular Mother’s Day I apparently came home from preschool and proudly presented my mom with a necklace made from chunks of potato. Raw potato. And a lovely raw potato necklace I am sure it was.

My mom, being a good and understanding mom, wore it and gushed over it and then did what moms usually do with such offerings, which is to stick them somewhere hidden in the house and wait for the kid to forget about the hideous thing so that they can eventually throw it away before it attracts ants or worse. Except that in this case she left it in its hidden spot too long and the potatoes started to go bad. Imagine, if you will, a necklace of slimy, rotting chunks of potato. Hey, *any* little kid can wheedle her dad into buying mommy diamonds for Mother’s Day. It takes only the truly gifted to give her mom rotten potatoes.

Fast forward to this year, as I was shopping for my mom for Mother’s Day. I’d heard about a particular book on NPR – Founding Mothers, by Cokie Roberts – and it sounded like something I knew my mom would enjoy. So I headed off to Borders on the way home from work earlier this past week to buy the book.

While I was standing in the line to check out, I saw a display of those little kits-in-a-box. They have spas in a box, yoga in a box, and tranquility gardens in a box. In fact, I am sure at some point they will have entire six-course meals in a teeny little box too. However, one in particular caught my eye. “Zen Without the Wait”, the title screamed at me in big, bold letters. I picked it up. I pondered the fact that we just happened to have a few potatoes at home that were decidedly past their prime. My mind wandered back to the story of the oh-so-memorable necklace from days of yore. I started to giggle.

My mom got the book for Mother’s Day. But she also got two additional little packages. One of them was a slightly wrinkled, and sprout covered red potato (wrapped in lovely purple tissue paper and tied with a shiny purple bow, too!). The other was that little box. After all, nothing says love on Mother’s Day like a slightly old potato. And once the one I gave her decides it’s done with the sprouting and the Zenning, perhaps she can thread it on a cord and wear it around her neck. It’ll be just like old times. I think it was meant to be.

It is just slightly over 28 ½ miles from my house to my office in Sacramento by bike. I know this from first hand experience because this morning I decided that all the problems I had last week were most likely due to the heat, and that I really ought to just suck it up and give the ride a try. So I did. I got up extra early and rode my bike to work. It took me a little over two hours to do it, which wasn’t as bad as it could have been because I only had to fight the wind when I was heading east, but not when I was heading north. One learns to be grateful for the little things when one’s butt has gone numb and one’s thighs are muttering threats of dire consequences for forcing them to do such strenuous activity so early in the morning.

I never intended to ride home, since tonight my office left work early and headed over to Old Sacramento for dinner and then a Rivercats (minor league baseball) game. Good thing, too, considering that by the time the day was over my front tire was completely flat, not to mention that the wind had picked up considerably and it might have taken me until the end of the second inning just to make it over to the ball park if I’d tried to ride.

I spent the entire day being sore, but it was a good sore. I am eying the calendar now, trying to figure out whether or not I can make this a weekly occurrence. I didn’t end up falling asleep at work (even though I think I could have, if given the chance), and I can always carry enough ibuprofen with me to make the thigh muscles shut up until they get over their little tantrum and get used to the whole idea.

It’s only 28 ½ miles. That’s not so bad. Really it isn’t.

If I tell myself this often enough do you think I will eventually come to believe that it is true?

My boss, in the last few months, has really gotten into the whole bike riding thing. I mentioned our goal of doing 1000 miles this year and he whipped up a spreadsheet and has been happily tracking his own miles. He gleefully reports to me at least once a week where he stands currently (I think if he doesn’t do at least 2000 miles this year, at the rate he’s going, something will have gone horribly wrong), whereas I have not exactly been racking up the miles in response. At this point in the year, in order to be on track to reach that lofty 1000 mile goal, we should have banked at least 320 miles. As of this afternoon I think I have just barely cracked 150. Not exactly an inspiring start.

Nevertheless I am determined to somehow make up all those miles I should have ridden by now, plus do all the rest by the end of the year. After all, two years ago we’d only done 50 miles by the end of March and still made it to about 1000 by the end of the year, and that was when we were brand new to the cycling habit, back when 10 miles seemed like a really long distance to ride. These days I can do more than 10 miles in an hour – 10 miles is just a little jaunt in the country. 20 miles isn’t impossible, but it starts getting tiring. And 30 miles, now – that’s still a really long distance to ride.

Still, I’ve been staring at this glaring lack of accumulated miles for the year so far and trying to figure out where to fit in a few more to try to catch up. So this week I decided to give it a shot and try riding home from work, instead of having Richard pick me up at the beginning of the causeway. Actually, to be completely realistic, I figured I probably wouldn’t make it all the way home, but since it just happened to be Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s, and there just happens to be a Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop right on the ride home, I figured I could at least make it there, which would be about halfway home (and also about 15 miles), and then see how I was doing.

At least I didn’t try to do this yesterday – the day that broke records for temperatures in April (94 degrees! In April! If this is a taste of what summer is going to be like, just shoot me now. Have I mentioned how much I hate the heat?). But today wasn’t much better – low 90’s, and just enough of east-blowing breeze by the time we left the office to be inconvenient. I should note right about now, in case you hadn’t figured that out yet, that we were heading west.

My boss rode his bike all the way *to* work – something I simply do not have the guts to even attempt yet – and the plan was for me to follow him at least to Davis, so I could see all the little bike paths and such that I would need to take in order to do this again. However we ended up separating in Old Sacramento and he didn’t catch up with me again until I was nearly over the causeway.

And ah, the causeway. It’s about 3 miles of long, straight path right beside the freeway, with only a cement wall topped with chain link fence to keep the bikes separate from the cars. The wall does nothing, however, to protect the cyclist from the buffeting of wind as semi trucks barrel past, nor does it do squat to protect from the heat and the noise that emanates from all the cars.

I have done 11 miles before and have still been ready to keep on riding. But there was something about riding over that causeway that just sapped me completely. By the time we got to the end I was about ready to keel over. I tried my hardest to keep on going, but when I started to feel dizzy I finally gave up. I called Richard to come get me, waved my boss on his way, and then wearily pedaled my way down the pass under the freeway to wait for Richard on the other side.

The most frustrating thing about this whole situation was that it would have only been another 5 or so miles to the heart of Davis where the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop waited. While I stood there and waited by the side of the road to be rescued by my husband I grumbled to myself about what a failure I was, that I couldn’t even do a measly few more miles. But a little later, after a ride in a comfortingly air conditioned car, and then while eating a free scoop of Dublin Mudslide ice cream, I realized that I should at least be proud of having made it as far as I did. At least I tried.

I have a feeling it’s going to be a while before I’m actually ready to ride all the way home from work like my boss. I think it will be even longer than that until I’m able to not only bike *to* work in the morning, but still have enough energy to be at least remotely productive while I’m there. But I’m not giving up. Thursday I’ll do the regular ride, since with choir practice in the evening I don’t have the luxury of a few extra hours to battle the wind and the heat and the traffic. Next Tuesday, however, Richard says he’s willing to wait for me at Borders, which is right next to that ice cream shop. My goal is to at least make it to the first Davis exit, which is only a few miles away from where I hit the wall today. Maybe in another few weeks I’ll be able to actually meet him at Borders instead of having to call him to come rescue me before I fall over in a whimpering heap. And maybe by this time next year I’ll be looking back at this and marveling about how I used to think 30 miles was a really long way to ride.

I think I might have mentioned something about this earlier, but I’ve been sort of the driving force behind trying to get a social group going for the 20’s and 30’s at our church. We weren’t having much success at all (the ‘group’ was only Richard and I and another couple), but with the advent of the bible study, suddenly we had a good sized crowd. A mention of our Valentine’s dinner at the fondue place in Sacramento spurred fondue envy from a few of the others, and eventually it all culminated in a planned event – a fondue party at the church for all the 20’s and 30’s. And even with a handful of them not able to come for various reasons, we still had a dozen people excitedly looking forward to eating melted cheese and chocolate from a pot.

We decided to do three different cheese fondues and three different chocolates. I managed to get the rest of the crowd to volunteer to bring all the dipping items, and even foisted off the making of two of the fondues on someone else, but that still left four for me. So for a short time last night I wandered around the store with a little list and peered at all the cheeses I usually do not even let myself notice because I adore cheese, but cheese is not Point friendly. Gruyere. Fontina. Emmenthal Swiss. Sharp Cheddar and Romano. Mmm. Cheese. I filled up my basket, detoured down the baking aisle to grab bags of chocolate chips and jars of caramel sauce, and then got to do something I have never done before: pick out a bottle of wine.

This being a church-sponsored function, normally it would never have involved any sort of alcohol at all, but cheese fondues are made with white wine. And since I know there is an actual reason for using wine or beer in fondue (something about how it makes the cheeses blend better or something), I discussed it with a few people and we decided that as long as the fondues were made before they were actually brought to the church (whereupon the alcohol would have all cooked off anyway), we’d be fine. However, I have never in my life purchased a bottle of wine (since frankly I just don’t like the taste of alcoholic beverages and figure I’m far more fun on caffeine anyway), I was a bit at a loss as to what to get. Luckily I found a sympathetic woman who pointed me in the direction of a nice, cheap white wine.

The fun didn’t stop there. Since we are not normally a wine-drinking household (Richard has the occasional Guinness but that’s about as far as it goes) it had not even occurred to me that opening the bottle might be problematic…until I peeled off the paper top and discovered that it came with a cork. A hasty search through the drawers of miscellaneous kitchen accessories revealed that we do not own a corkscrew, or anything resembling a corkscrew. Luckily Richard’s pocketknife has one, or else I might still be gouging out bits of cork from the stupid bottle with a chisel.

The house smelled divinely of cheese for several hours today, what with the shredding and the stirring and the cooking. I collected our fondue pot and the one I borrowed from my parents, we loaded the car with a hefty selection of board games from our even larger assortment, and headed off to the church to meet up with our friend (the one who’s painting the tree on our breakfast nook wall) who got there early as well to make beignets. I would like to point out right now that beignets are incredibly good in chocolate fondue.

It was a wonderful evening. As I mentioned, there were a dozen of us, and we set up the fondue pots in the kitchen, then milled around between them, from one counter to the next, tasting and dipping and stuffing ourselves until it’s a wonder we didn’t all explode. Then once we had eaten as much cheese as we could possibly handle – and to get ourselves away from the cheese so we wouldn’t keep eating more – we all crowded around a table and played games. And just when we thought we’d finally recovered from the overeating of the cheese, it was time for the chocolate – a straight dark chocolate, chocolate with peanut butter and chocolate with caramel stirred in. I think the entire crowd ate themselves into possible food comas. Even the kids seemed a bit overwhelmed with the sheer amount of food available.

It was a wonderful evening, over all. Everyone lingered, helping clean the kitchens and wipe down tables, chatting and laughing and getting to know the newer additions to our group. We’re already talking about our next ‘organized’ event – a barbeque/camp fire evening out on one of our friends’ ranch.

There is a feeling of relief about tonight, and I know that I am not the only one who feels it. Two other women and I were standing around talking, and one of the others mentioned how hard it has been to meet people since leaving college. And the other replied with a laugh “Yes. It’s nice to finally have friends.”

That’s it exactly. I’ve wanted this for so very long that it’s strange to think it might finally be real.

Once Buffy finished its seventh and final season last year we’ve been at a loss for a weekly fix from the Whedonverse. We’ve been busily purchasing and watching the first five seasons of Buffy so we’re at least now caught up to where we started watching it, but there’s still time before season 6 comes out on DVD and what are Joss Whedon fans to do?

Why, get started on Angel, of course. We rapidly plowed through the first two seasons, and this weekend we finished the third, which ends on a cliffhanger. Gah! If I hadn’t given up and rooted around online until I found a really high level synopsis of the next season, which at least told me how the cliffhanger resolves, I think I would be getting a little twitchy by now. Richard, naturally, has far more patience about this sort of thing than I do and is remaining spoiler free.

I had to do it, however. Season four does not come out until…well, actually, we have no idea when it’s due to be released because it’s not even showing up on Amazon for pre-order yet. Buffy, on the other hand, releases season 6 next month. Of course, in this case, we had watched season six on television when it was first aired, so at least we know what’s going to happen. Not that that has anything to do with our need to get it on DVD and watch it all over again, of course. Must…feed…addiction.

I spent so much time knitting this weekend that my left hand ended up cramping up. But I did manage to get a significant start on the next project, so at least I am feeling pretty optimistic about the time line I set for myself. Of course I’m basing this next project on something I read once in a book that I not only do not own, but cannot seem to track down again. So I’m not entirely sure how I will proceed in the near future. I am, however, confident that I will muddle through somehow, if only because I seem to have somehow developed a knack for this.

My knitting-enabling friend very kindly detached the offending sleeve from my sweater so that I did not have to worry about inadvertently shredding it in the process – much as I had done with my nephew’s sweater (although the very cool news is that she thinks she can fix that too). So now I can reattach it, right side out. Oh, did I forget to mention that teensy little problem? I finished the darn thing up on Wednesday and fully intended to wear it on Thursday – except that in the car, on the way to work, I happened to glance down and realize that I had oh-so-stupidly attached one sleeve inside out. Sure, maybe no one else would have noticed, but at that point I now knew of the problem and I also knew that it would drive me insane if I wore it like that all day.

Plus there’s the pesky issue of the button strip, which is, by its very nature, too soft to act as a proper button strip without a little sagging. Happily the fix for that is simply to acquire and attach a strip of grosgrain ribbon to the back of that section to give it some reinforcing, which we did this evening. I sat on the bed while Richard did homework and reattached the sleeve (right side out this time – I checked more than a few times) and stitched on a length of ribbon. So now it really *is* done. And luckily the weather has remained cool enough that I can wear it tomorrow. Phew.

Tuesday I had Richard drop me off at Raley field again and I rode to work, but this time on the way home I decided to try to ride another few miles, and make it all the way to the beginning of the causeway. Of course, this was all planned before we realized just how windy it was going to be. I’ll admit that I very nearly called Richard as I was setting off from the office to have him pick me up at the usual spot, but instead I hunched over my handlebars and pressed onwards. He found me along the route, since he knows how much I hate wind, and this time the wimpy part of me won out and I took him up on his offer for an earlier pick-up.

We were going to do the same routine on Thursday as well, except that this Thursday was the last day for one of my coworkers, so we closed down the office early and headed off to the local bowling alley. We all proved to each other just how much we all *don’t* know about how to bowl. There silly trophies handed out for the funniest bowler, and I think half the group managed to tweak a finger or yank a muscle in arms or legs during the process – all of us with bowling injuries. As it turns out, by the time we were done the timing would have been perfect for me to hop on my bike and pedal down to the end of the road, which was only a few miles from where Richard would have picked me up normally. But ah well – perhaps next week.

********

An old friend of Richard’s has been in town for the past few weeks, playing at a local coffee shop and also displaying some of her paintings there as well. Friday night we went to listen to her play, accompanied by another friend on saxophone, and then she crashed on our futon, where the cats apparently either were nice enough to leave her mostly alone all night, or else she was so out of it she didn’t even notice when they started bouncing on her head.

Richard went off to do library commissioner type things Saturday and was gone for most of the afternoon. So the friend and I spent most of the day at home – or rather, I spent it at home knitting, while she spent it on our futon, catching up on her sleep. I made her get up long enough to drive out to Davis for lunch. It was Picnic Day at UC Davis, so we met my parents for the traditional barbeque lunch at the Lutheran church there in town. I’m not sure when the last time was that I actually *went* to Picnic Day, since the novelty wore off long ago. But the barbeque is always nice, and even when the inevitable rain started, they’d thoughtfully erected huge tents so we could eat our homemade pie in peace.

Since Richard had access to these two old friends (the one sleeping on our futon and the saxophone player), and since they were also old gamers from way back, he incorporated some of their old characters into the game he ran on Saturday night. We ordered an obscene amount of Chinese food and sat around the table rolling dice and inhaling various stir-fries and noodle concoctions. I knew we’d been playing a very long time when we took a break, hours later, for a second round of dinner. Both of them fit in wonderfully with the campaign Richard’s running and it was as boisterous a game as it usually is with the smaller group.

So that sweater I’ve been working on? It’s done. I finished it tonight, while watching Angel. Making the buttonholes was…interesting, since I had to knit the band and attach it all in one long piece as I went.

It fits loose enough to wear over things, which is good because I ended up putting on the top button a little lower than I’d normally be comfortable wearing just by itself. And how convenient that they’re predicting cold weather and rain by the end of the week. I might actually get to wear it before the winter after all.

Here it is. I’m actually quite pleased with how well it turned out. Ta da!

First of all, in response to the last few days that have culminated in Easter weekend, let me just say that if I am forced to either listen to, or sing “Were You There” one more time I may just shoot myself. Or I may shoot someone else. The whole point is that there will likely be shooting of some kind. You have been warned.

It’s a lovely song. I am sure it is. It’s just that there are people out there who feel that it must be sung slowly and with great drama. And the problem is that these same people often do not grasp the distinction between Slow With Drama and So Painfully Slow I Must Claw Out My Own Ears. Five verses, people. No song with five verses should ever be sung in such a manner.

Aside from my whole quirky little slow song issue, it has been a fairly nice Easter. There was the short service on Thursday, which I attended because it was during the normal choir practice time and I forgot there was a service until I showed up, at which point I was drafted into singing with the rest of the choir members who had also shown up thinking it was actually practice. Then there was the Good Friday service on, yes you guessed it, Friday, which I attended for the sole reason that every year my dad and I (and sometimes other people) each show up with a pile of miscellaneous musical instruments and inevitably end up only using the oboe and the recorder and play the ‘which part shall we play next’ game with Taizai songs (which also, amusingly, tend to be slow and dramatic and drag on forever, but I can handle those because I am always busy trying to kill my lips playing a double-reed instrument the entire time). And to top it all off, there was yet more church and more music (of the singing kind) and yes, even another rendition of “Were You There” (gah) this morning – two whole services of it. I wore my pink flowery dress and my lovely pink shoes and was appropriately Easter-ish. I also ran around after each service and tackled people in their 20’s and 30’s in the most gracious way possible to coerce…I mean invite them to come to the event we’ve scheduled for later in the month. Said event will involve chocolate and cheese and long, sharp forks, and promises to be all manner of fun.

Yesterday, in the spirit of Easter, which is all about resurrection, and coming back from the dead, Richard and I decided to go see the most appropriate movie currently in the theaters. Naturally, that would be Dawn of the Dead, because zombies certainly count as coming back from the dead (although they don’t so much save your soul as try to eat your face off, if you really must quibble over that little distinction). As far as horror movies go, it was one of the better ones I have seen in quite some time. The build-up of suspense in the beginning was marvelously done, and the blood and gore was not gratuitously overdone. The characters all seemed quite believable in their reactions and I don’t think there was anything in the entire movie that made me roll my eyes. This is high praise from me for a horror film, in case you hadn’t figured that out already.

We also did other useful things, like eat crepes for breakfast and steak and shrimp for dinner, and go to the fabric store so I could pick out buttons for the almost-completed sweater. Speaking of the sweater, this afternoon I got hasty lesson number who-knows from my knitting enabling friend on how to make buttonholes while knitting, and finally got the chance to return the enabling favor by letting her borrow the book I bought a few weeks ago that is full of lots of gorgeous sweater patterns that I have convinced myself I will make, one of these days. So at this point I have put on both sleeves and tucked in most of the loose ends and sewn and attached the button band to one half of the front and all that is left is to attach the buttons so I know *where* to make the buttonholes, and finish up the button band, and do a little more mattress stitching and then it will be complete.

Easter dinner was with Richard’s parents, which meant that this morning I got up extra early to whip up two batches of apple cinnamon sweet potato muffins to take down with us. My parents came too, so after church we all went home to change and then they came and picked us up and got a chance to walk around the backyard and see all the new flowers and the eight little baby peaches growing on the peach tree (we have peaches!) and then we piled into my dad’s car and joined the throngs of other people all going off to their families’ homes for Easter dinner.

Dinner was ham and pork roast and scalloped potatoes and corn fritters and spinach salad and my muffins and if that wasn’t enough there was cake later for dessert. We did a lot of chatting and didn’t pause the chatting significantly even while doing all the eating. After dinner we all got to view a screening of Richard’s little sister’s television debut, which involved “hot nerd on nerd action” (That probably sounds far more risqué than it really was. Except for maybe the ‘nerd’ part. Um. Never mind). This was naturally followed by much more chatting and raucous laughter and the usual frivolity that ensues when our families get together. Plus there were the very untypical but much appreciated Easter gifts of strawberries and snap peas, and Starbucks gift cards. So while the Easter season never did end up including any Cadbury caramel eggs after all, it had zombies and ham and buttons and family gathering, and best of all, hot nerd on nerd action, right there on the television for all the world to see – all the necessary elements to make this a perfectly marvelous Easter.