Chalkboard Wall
Blank space. Quiet. Paint drying. Evening.
Morning. “You shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace.”
Rules: Only erase your own work (unless you’re me). Don’t write mean things. It’s supposed to be a message board. Do you have something to say? Go ahead. Write neatly.
Helpful messages. Lunchtime.
Oh, what the heck. Cartooning, un-neat writing, impromptu artwork: bring it. I had to add this last photo, taken around 6:30pm, after the kids had a chance to doodle more after school. Fooey pulled up her chair to reach even higher. So far, the only issues have been a) everyone trying to chalk all at once and b) an accidental erasing.
I can’t get enough of these photos
Yesterday, I got a taste of summer. A whiff. A tingle of this is summer. (See above).
Today, I am getting prepared. There are four more days of school, and then we shall hurtle headlong into the beach, overnight camp, strawberry picking, food preservation, swimming, and a multitude of mini-adventures … such is the hope.
So, I started today in the kitchen (can I return happily to the kitchen after losing all interest this past month? Well, I can try). I baked a batch of bread; didn’t take long, actually. I did dishes. The living-room is moderately tidy. Piles of papers have been sorted and recycled (more remain; and more are on their way home from school, no doubt).
AppleApple helped me make a giant (messy) poster of ideas for summer activities: our categories are Plans (dates for things we’ve already signed up for); Away (ie. zoo, beach, Children’s Museum); and At Home (ie. canning and freezing, making magazines/comics, playing with friends).
Kevin is in the middle of painting us a chalkboard wall: for messages, reminders, planning, and scribbles. Photos to come. (Inspired by this friend).
I am defrosting the freezers. One down, two to go.
And the kids have spent hours together in the backyard, even though it isn’t particularly warm or sunny out. The sidewalk is being chalked. A rung on the climber has been broken. The potatoes are thriving. Wouldn’t it be great to have a treehouse? A trampoline? Another tier of garden beds? Chickens? A dog? I’m looking around and seeing lots of potential.
Time for a Shiny New Post
Because, though I could look at those triathlon photos forever (and probably will), the moment has passed, and life goes on, even if it appears frozen here in Blogland.
So … in other news: we got a new couch! (Pictured above). We lucked on it half-price back in April, ordered it, and kind of forgot about it, the way one does, until the company called to say it was coming. Now. Queue frantic clearing of living-room. And then queue um, where was this supposed to go, honey, do you remember? Because we’d originally intended it to replace the ten-year-old sofa (aka gymnasium), now sway-backed and spring-popping. But the new couch looked too lovely and clean, and besides, the living-room lacked seating; wasn’t that the whole point of the new couch? So we spent our Friday evening huffing items back and forth (books! shelves! toys!), removing a few, dragging the piano to a new and starring location, hiding the communal computer (somewhat), and keeping both couches. Almost got it finished before Kevin left for his Friday night soccer game.
Right away, the kids started arguing over WHO GOT TO PLAY THE PIANO. I kid you not. I had the kitchen timer going.
The new lay-out has more reading areas. More seating in front of bright windows. More seating, period. And the piano is getting played far more frequently.
Though this is not meant to be a commentary on Boys versus Girls, or Sons versus Daughters, or Mars versus Venus, here’s what the boys were doing in the newly laid-out living-room the other evening.
And here’s what daughter # 1 was doing.
And daughter # 2.
This is not to suggest that daughters don’t wrestle. But whenever daughter # 1 enters into the fray, holding a pillow, with a gleam in her eye, I shut the show down. I don’t think this is sexist, really, I don’t. It’s because she aims with intent. Somehow, the boys wrestle without doing each other any harm. But AppleApple comes out swinging. She wants to Win. (Maybe I am parenting her differently. What do you think?).
Day of Triathlon
The crowd of competitors on the beach, just before the race starts. I’m at the back. With my jaw dropping. It was a beautiful sight. So overwhelming that I kind of got lost in it, and forgot to put on my goggles. Remembered after I’d swum about 100 metres. Gee, I can see really well, but I have to keep closing my eyes underwater.
Again, it was just awe-inspiring to see the churning arms and bobbing heads, and all the waves. Weirdly, I felt no hesitation or fear running after the pack into the water. I said to a woman nearby, “Isn’t this beautiful?”
Totally geeky photo, but I guess this is what I look like in goggles. Now you know. The pink cap indicates that I estimated my swim time to be between 33-35 minutes, which was the second slowest group. Should have taken that white cap, because what with the wind and the waves, I actually got lost at one point and swam for the wrong buoy. Lost a few minutes. The 1500m swim took me 38:41, but I think that includes the arduous run up the hill to the transition zone. Hardest run of the day. I felt absolutely exhausted and couldn’t catch my breath.
Until I hopped on the bike, that is! I love cycling! I was so emotional here, at the start of the bike race. I almost wept. I’d finished the swim!
Finished the bike race on a high. Forty km in 1:18. I felt so powerful. My knack for climbing hills came in handy, and the weird thing was that I got faster and faster as the race went on (or else the people in front of me were getting slower). If it hadn’t been for the strange ticking noise my bike started to make with about 15km left, the whole ride would have been pure pleasure. I was thankful to have no mechanical issues in the end. I really felt I like I could have kept going and going and going.
Which is a good thing, because I still had some race left to complete. I do run 10km regularly in training, but it must be said that it’s very different to run it post-bike-ride. But the “brick” runs came in handy (training runs immediately following bike rides), and my legs made the transition without much complaint. By two kilometres, they were ticking like normal, and I thought to myself, Hey, I know how to run! That’s when I picked up my pace. I pushed as hard as I could, though the last couple of kilometres were, well, gruelling. I used every mental trick available: feeling gratitude for the hours put in, picturing my children, and, finally, just running like I was doing a solo run–I always run hard on those.
The race organizers kindly arranged for the final couple hundred metres to be oriented downhill. I could hear my friend Tricia and her husband Jeff (who took some of these photos) and then my own family (including my mom!) calling out my name, and I just sprinted as hard as I could. The time on the clock was 2:53:17, under three hours, like I’d hoped. 10km run in 51:23 (not sure whether that includes transition time after hopping off bike, but if so, it’s close to my PB).
Packing up afterward in the transition zone. Note the bike gloves. I couldn’t rip them off fast enough after the cycling, and then I forgot they were there. Ah, the face of a happy woman. Holy bleep, people, I actually did it!
Day One, meet Day Three-Hundred-and-Twenty-Five
Here’s what I wrote 324 days ago, last August, (slightly edited): the first entry in a blog I called “Swim Mama! Bike Mama! Run Mama!”:
Day One: The Idea
Tonight in yoga class I felt strong, fit, stable. It was a wonderful feeling, a feeling of digging deep inside my body and working with it, in a very submerged fashion. No worries, no thinking about being somewhere else; my focus for the class was “patience.”
Afterward, in the shower, I thought, I’d like to be in the Olympics. But I’m thirty-five years old. Is it too late? Um, yes, endorphins, it is. But then I thought, okay, it’s too late to be in the Olympics, but it isn’t too late to train my body to do something it’s never done before … like becoming a triathlete. The thought jumped ahead: and it’s not too late to write another book, a completely different book from the ones I usually write. This one won’t be made up. It won’t resemble fiction at all. I’ll write about this–this exact idea, and about how I go about doing it. I’ll stop saying that I’d like to run a triathlon, and I’ll just go ahead and do it. I’ll do it and I’ll write about the process.
Some little time later, getting dressed, drying my hair with a towel in front of the mirror, I thought, this is one of those things that you’d never do if you knew how hard it was going to be.
I am thirty-five, relatively fit and active, but I’ve never run a race longer than 5 kilometres. That was nineteen years ago. Another obstacle: I can’t swim. I took one week of swim lessons. And failed. That was twenty-seven years ago. My kids swim better than me: I’ve forced them into the pool in all seasons and against a good deal of grumbling because goshdarnit they are going to know how to swim.
Is it too late for me to learn? Can I swallow my pride and hop into the water and take adult swim lessons? Swim laps, learn to turn my hand the right way, breathe to the side, kick the proper kick?
What else do I need to learn to do in order to complete a triathlon? I know how to run, but my feet get hot after an hour’s worth. Do I need to look into special equipment, a special diet, training regimens? Where will I begin? Alone?
I packed up my little idea to take home to my husband. What if … I write a book about a mother of four who decides to complete a triathlon (okay, I’d really like to write a book about a mother of four who achieves her goal of becoming an Olympic triathlete, but my previous athletic achievements lead me to believe I’d be over-reaching. Somewhat.)
But sitting down before the computer to brainstorm and write, I can think of nothing but obstacles. The idea sounds ridiculous. I might as well be typing out a bit of fiction.
Time. That might prove the biggest obstacle of all. My youngest child is two. What’s he going to do while I’m at swim lessons? Am I going to send him to daycare in order to train for a race that I really don’t need to run? I imagine getting to the end of the story. I imagine discovering something new and amazing, experiencing pain and suffering (self-inflicted) and arriving at an emotionally salient insight. A big one. Significant. Uh oh. What if the insight is: go back to looking after your family, you ridiculously selfish woman? You were riding a bicycle while your two-year-old turned into a three-year-old, and you missed experiences that cannot be replaced or found again.
I don’t know.
My husband thinks it’s an awesome idea. Maybe he’d like to join me, and do it too.
Where to begin? Where to begin? I haven’t got the faintest idea. I guess I’ll begin here.
::::
And tomorrow, 325 days later, I will compete in my first triathlon. I’m not destined for the Olympics (sorry, self), but I haven’t regretted anything about the process so far. I’ve enjoyed a small writing gig out of the material (though probably will never write a whole book). And the three-year-old is doing just fine. I’m just so grateful that this idea came to me, that I considered it seriously, accepted it, and pursued its existence into reality.
Thanks for your good wishes! And thanks especially to those who joined me along the way. Here’s to Day 325.