How To Waste Time And Piss Off People

Don't you hate when you discover a new calendar app that promises to make your days more efficient, and then you waste an entire morning figuring out how to enter things in it and how to make a priority to-do list?

Never happens to you? Well, uh, me neither. Just a hypothetical question, really. Asking for a friend, and all that...

Then I got on here to blog and of course had to check a few other blogs first (really, blogging is the 21st-century version of the coffee klatsch, people) and somehow ended up on YouTube, grooving to Joe Jackson's "Happy Loving Couples." It is a wonder my children ever get fed, actually.

It's a great song, though. Here, waste your time like I did - I'll feel better:

In other news, my fiendishly fit friend convinced me to once again sign up for the local Tour de Cure bike ride. Considering that the event is at the beginning of June and here it is April and still not biking weather outside, I am going to be as fabulously unfit for this ride as I have been the past 2 years.

The only thing I've got going for myself this year is that I had my handlebars adjusted so the top half of my body is no longer heading downhill when I sit on my bike. While that posture was an excellent arm strengthener, it always made me feel as though I were about 5 seconds away from catastrophic death. The adjustment also means I can actually reach the brakes with more than the tippy tops of my fingers. Being able to stop when needed is a real plus.

Of course, my fit friend went out and bought herself a bicycle that has those fancy pedals you clip your shoes to. So, yeah, I'm not going to be able to keep up - not in the least. The best I can hope for is I won't have a repeat of the first year, when an entire team of bicyclists began yelling at me because I didn't start pedaling quickly enough at a road crossing.

Friendly. Real friendly. But what could I expect from a group that had the name "Chain Gang" emblazoned across their biking jerseys? I'm lucky they let me live.

Underachiever

Not good enough around here

Whoops, missed a day here, because my neighbor who apparently spends her ENTIRE DAY walking invited me to her workweek FitBit challenge. Sure, I thought, I walk a lot. I can do this. Apparently not, as she is now 10,000 steps ahead of me, and I have only 2 days to catch up.

Seriously, people - I walked the girls to a book sale at the school today, I walked to Michael's with Susie, and THEN I walked to the grocery store. After that, I ran up and down the stairs, cleaning the house for our history class tomorrow. Yet I am still behind on steps. I think maybe my neighbor is handing her FitBit to her 5-year-old son, feeding him some sugar, and sending him out to play.

In other news, my marriage breathed a sigh of relief as Mulch Weekend came to an end. Finally, Larry and I could talk to each other again without the "M" word coming up! Maybe we could go see a movie, even, or take a walk together. It was a wonderful 2 days, and then Larry told me that he has to go to London at the end of the month for his new job. He tried to make it sound as though it were a real inconvenience for him, too. I stopped talking to him anyway.

LONDON. I hear it's nice. But, hey, I see it all the time in Dr. Who episodes, so I'm good.

So now it is 11 PM and I am considering going outside and walking around and around our neighborhood, just to gain 2000 steps or so. If you had asked me a couple of weeks ago, I would have claimed that I was not the competitive type. Apparently, I would have been wrong.

Hope Springs Eternal

The weather can't seem to make up its mind around here. But, really, a spring cold snap doesn't bother me - it just provides me with the prolonged opportunity to wear my handknit socks. It's all good.

I joined my friends for the last day of their yarn crawl yesterday - we only hit 2 shops, but I still managed to spend a considerable amount of money. It's weird what happens in a yarn shop - you come up with all sorts of knitting plans you had no idea you wanted to do. That might explain why, surrounded by the CUTEST acrylic/wool yarns ever, I decided that I needed to start a grandmother hope chest - you know, in case any of my kids ever decide to reproduce.

Incipient baby sweaters

That picture doesn't do the yarn justice, as I am the world's worst photographer. I guess I can't use the excuse that it moved just as I was snapping the photo?

Some other stuff found its way into my bag, also - random sock yarn, mostly. We also went out to lunch, and then there was a stop for sorbet/gelato after the second store. Have I mentioned that Larry and the kids and their Scouting compatriots were still finishing up the mulch deliveries? That made my freedom all the sweeter.

Susie is waiting for me to walk to the bagel store with her. Einstein Bagels has a Monday special (one dozen for $6) that we often take advantage of.  Even though, technically, Einstein Bagels doesn't sell the real thing - their bagels are more like a roll with a hole in the middle. But since we won't have the privilege of living in the NY metro area any time soon, we'll just have to settle. When in Rome...

Oy, How I Suffer

A Scout mom came up to me during our mulch delivery today, someone who is considering taking over the Mulch Czar position in a couple of years. "Tell me," she said, "how much prep time does your husband spend on all this?"

"I have no idea," I told her. She looked confused. "No, seriously," I said. "We don't talk to each other about mulch at all. I do my thing, he does his."

Look, we would like to stay married, all right? This is what it takes. I don't know why people don't understand that.

And if you doubt some of our troop parents' dedication to this project, let me tell you that my main food-tent staffer cancelled a chemo appointment on Friday, just so she would be up to the task of making coffee and hotdogs and grilled cheese all day Saturday. THAT's commitment.

Of course, that also made my leaving mid-afternoon to take a nap look pretty pathetic. But hey, I'm not trying to win any awards here.

See how happy and relaxed they look, loading their truck? That wasn't us.

I spent most of the evening standing by the cones at the entrance to the parking lot, making sure people heading to the high school baseball game didn't drive in where we were loading the trucks all day. I just realized that I made a point of complaining to the other woman there that I am better off pacing back and forth than standing still like that - standing still makes my leg hurt in this weird way, you know, like my knee cap falls asleep and then it spreads down my calf and up to my hip.

The woman working the entrance with me? She was using one of those electric scooters. As in, she can't really walk much at all. In retrospect, I'm sure she really felt sorry for me and my achy leg.

I'm such a dope sometimes.  I mean, really.



[Truck image: Move Ahead]

Foolproof

I'm still alive. We're just headed into that marriage-testing vortex known as Mulch Weekend, so time to blog has been scarce. I'm seeing Sign-Up Genius web pages in my sleep. But hey - we won't be having to take cold showers this year, so that's a plus!

Click on that last link - it's a good one.

As per usual, I am avoiding the Internet today, anyway - April Fool's Day has never been my favorite holiday, maybe because I'm gullible as heck. So there's a plus to having to do mulch this weekend. It doesn't make up for my having to miss out on an epic yarn crawl with my knitting posse, but it's something.

This just doesn't scream "FUNNY!" to me.

Does anyone say "posse" anymore? Probably not. I'm being antiquarian today, apparently.