Organized like a fox

One morning after a good hard cry and eleven hours of sleep, I awake partially refreshed (if not somewhat achy), stumble my way to the kitchen and grumble my way through making coffee... when I realize that my oldest son has grown sixteen inches since his last semi-formal event.

What the???

Trevor was invited to a mitzvah of some kind (bar or bat... I'm really bad with the jewish nomenclature) , and said mitzvah was this morning at 10:30. Being that I was on my deathbed last night, I made the foolish assumption that his laundry was all caught up and that he was set, clotheswise.

I made this same assumption a few days before his First Holy Communion. And my grandfather's funeral. And my father's funeral. And my second son's First Holy Communion. And... you get the picture.

Trevor is now fifteen feet tall and has actual hooves. He looks like Lurch in his old dress clothes, with bare wrists extending beyond his long-sleeved dress shirt and six inches of white sock peeking out from beneath his navy trousers. But it's really the look of dread that captures it all.

Sadly, Trevor's not one to notice that his clothes don't fit. The look on his face is more related to my screams of horror and the declaration that we must go clothes shopping. NOW.

Like every mother in my situation, I bark orders the entire way to the store: We are going to the buy clothes. You stick with me. Which means RUN. We have a half hour to find something that fits.

Damn my deathbed antics last night!!

We rush into the store, only now my darling son is no longer a sweet size "ten" or "twelve," but has graduated to "mammoth," and "mammoth" sizes are located in the Men's Clothing area. It's like a foreign country over there. I wonder if my currency will even work.

Men's Clothing knows nothing of ten or twelve. It comes in mysterious sizes based on a whole different set of parameters, each article stamped with a mathematical equation on the tag: 30x30; 32x38; 102x54. And the shirts-- vast amounts of shirts and none that will ever, ever fit my lanky son. He's grown, but he's not that big.

I make a quick pass through the teen area and am instantly horrified. Everything has a distressed look: jeans with holes, suit coats with frayed edges, entire ensembles meant to be worn with flip-flops. I ask the clerk if there is anything that will fit my tween.

She laughs.

The short story is that we did it: we found something. I was gazelle-like, swift and sleek, moving about the store with intensity and purpose. If there was an olympic event for panic-shopping, I would have taken the gold.

Except that they had next to nothing in his size. Anywhere. And the sun was in my eyes. So make that a bronze.

We did find shoes for his puppy feet that, when he outgrows them, can go to his father. Hand-me-down khakis and a borrowed coat from a cousin worked well; and there was one size 16 dress shirt not only fit but was heavy enough that it wouldn't expose his nipples. (SIDE NOTE: What is it with men who don't wear undershirts? What is that? Do they just not know it's bad taste? And just plain yucky? And worse, what is it with the clothing companies that they make see-through shirts? Gah.)

Dressed in his new-ish finery Trev was ready for his friends' big event. And he looked... like Lurch. But in clothes that fit.

Twelve weeks

Holy mother of gawd. I got a letter in the mail today saying that the AIDS ride is a mere 12 weeks away.

Twelve weeks.

I have twelve weeks to get up to riding 100 miles a day. Day after day.

My dinner tonight was a handful of hot tamales and a few slices of plastic-wrapped cheese.

I'm so stressed out at work my body feels like a giant rock. Everything aches. My neck, my shoulders, my head... I swear someone has a voodoo doll of my likeness filled with pins. I constatnly get these pricking sensations all over my body. My hands occasionally go numb, especailly my right hand. A lot. Everytime I look up from my desk, someone is heaping on another great idea over my head, because it would look nice and what's another 15 minutes in my daily workflow?

Another 15 minutes is heaping guilt that I actually took a lunch today. Saying "I can't" makes me look obstinate, like I'm not a team player, and who wants to be that person?

But after several weeks of this increasing physical discomfort, I don't know that I can be this person.

I have to get out and ride. And not eat Hot Tamales. And maybe find a different job, one where I don't feel like dying/killing myself all the time while subtly being accused of not being a team-player in the process. There is no I in team. There is no I in me, either.

I am a drone.

I would so go to another country and become a Buddhist monk if I could just take my kids and live oppulently.

Twelve weeks. Almost a hundred miles a day. Seven days.

Gawd I need some Advil.

OMG, how could I neglect to tell you?

It has been weeks though it feels like MONTHS since I've sat down and written a "meaningful" blog post (READ: Anything frickin' at all). I woke up this morning, looked at the calendar and thought, "Whaddaya mean it's MARCH?" The spring equinox has come and gone already-- don't even get me started there. I think I have officially entered that stage of life where time moves at warp speed, where one drink feels like too many and where eight a.m. is defined as sleeping in.

Is it because I am less aware of time that it moves so quickly, or rather, more aware of my impending death?

HAPPY THURSDAY, everybody! Call me Ms. Chipper. I don't know, maybe it's the weather and the fact that I haven't ridden my bike. At all. In weeks. It's not for lack of want (she quickly adds)-- it really is the weather. There's a story here. In fact, I have several stories here, and they have all been brewing in my otherwise-preoccupied brain. I will start with...

The "half century ride,"(aka, or "The Mother of Good Intention")

Two weeks back I spent the weekend in a small town called, "Solvang." It's this amazing Dutch hamlet on the central coast, near Buellton (of Andersen's Split Pea Soup fame). My friend joked that you needed a passport to gain entry, and I think he was only half-kidding. They actually sell wooden shoes there. And not like smooth, Dr. Scholl style shoes-- I mean actual rough-hewn, splintery wooden shoes that need a good sanding. The Dutch are a tough people. Don't be fooled by their flaky pasteries. Those shoes will kill you.

Registered as I was for the Solvang Half Century, I knew I was in for a pretty great ride and a blistered arse in the end. Fifty miles is a long haul and would be my longest ever (I'd done 46 the weekend before), but my saddle issues hadn't changed and I was pretty much dreading the chaffage.

The weather was also a factor. It was freakishly cold out that weekend with storm clouds drifting threateningly overhead. As I lay down that night, images of blisters in delicate places dancing in my head, I secretly hoped for rain.

I awoke to sunshine. Blue skies, some clouds, and still the freakish cold. I mentally bid adieu to my privates, and headed out to face my destiny.

The second I stepped out from the building's overhang, it began to hail. And not just regular hail, but like, small animal-sized hail. It was charming at first, but then, after some 15 minutes, I realized I wasn't headed out on my bike anytime soon.

The fact is, I intended to ride. I intended to get out there, do my best. I intended to perform like no other... so I went wine tasting instead. I mean come on, hail, fear of blisters--whaddaya gunna do?

Proof of the hail, which was later followed by rain. Lots of rain.

NOTE TO SELF: Wine "tasting," not "guzzling"

So my friend and I head on into the wine country, to execute enological edification (done herein only aliteratively, of course).

According to my father, wine came from two places: Sonoma County and France, and the latter only sometimes. As he put it,"If you want car parts, you go to Napa. If you want wine, you come to Sonoma." I don't know that my dad even knew they grew grapes in the Central Valley prior to his relocation here in 2001.

And me? Gah. Growing up an avid beer drinker in a wine-snob household, you think I'd have picked up something other than "Pink is not wine" knowledge. But I didn't. I learned more from working at the Watergate Hotel and befriending the sommelier than I did growing up in the greatest county in California. Unfortunately, the sommelier knowledge amounted to, "Professional wine tasters have stinky breath." (He was a close-talker. And a smoker. Gah.)

My wine-tasting experience-- which was only the second or third in my lifetime, and the first time not with my parents-- was wonderful and silly and filled with ignorance and lots of wine.

My summation: Wine tasting is like golf. In golf, you got the duffers, the guys who look like they've just walked out of one of those obnoxious dentist-office paintings, with the radio-controlled bags stuffed with Callaways and TaylorMades, and you just cringe thinking you're going to get stuck in their foursome because gotDAMN they look good. And then they tee-off and you are reminded yet again that everyone sucks at golf.

Wine tasting is the exact same thing. Everyone swirls the glass and sniffs the wine and makes, "mmm"ing and "ahhh"ing noises, and tries to come up with pretentious sounding statements about its delicate tannin earthiness and full-bodied bouquet and in the end, they're just as s**t-faced as everyone else, having quaffed what should have been sipped. For every Tiger Woods of Wine tasting, there are a hundred dorks trying not to look as drunk as they feel and wondering if it's okay to admit they liked what they just drank, or hated what is supposed to be loved.

My experience: Liked some, disliked others, will not ever hit six wineries in one day again.

The only thing sexier than me declaring I was going to get sick was the actual sound of me retching on the side of the road. As cyclists rode by, no less. Cyclists from the event. The one I was supposed to be in.

I am such a badass.

It was cold. Those are foothills, with snow. We're talking an elevation of like 500 to 700 feet or something.