Dropping a Ball

Blogging has fallen by the wayside a bit. Between work, kids and exercise, something had to give and blogging has been it. Combine that with a decided lack of inspiration of things to blog about and you've got a precipitous drop in posting.

Every so often, I'll have an idea and a half-formed post in my mind but it seems to evaporate in the night and lose out to the siren call of my bedtime.

I've got to get my blogging mojo back. When it returns, the posts shall too.

In the meantime, I'm working and running and swimming and biking and practicing aikido and cooking and chasing after my three guys. Life is good.

"grass smell pool"

If you add the word 'rotting' to the other three words in this post's title, you'll have the combination that I was googling late this afternoon.

"Why?," you might ask.

Let's just say that we (i.e. M) emptied out the pool in our backyard. As he slowly removed the vinyl from the spot it had occupied for most of the summer, a smell attacked our senses. Ah, it brought back memories of visits to the country. Yes, our backyard smells just like a cow pasture. Lovely.

We are hoping for a dry, hot week and that the neighbors don't sic the HOA on us.

When I Grow Up...

P: "I want to be a praying mantis. No, wait. I want to be a beetle-hunting wasp."

What do you want to be?

Aikido Fun

Though I haven't been blogging about aikido much lately, I have been in class twice a week, practicing, practicing, practicing. What's great about class is that it's familiar and yet new every time. We could be doing the same technique over and over again but there's always something different to focus on - where the feet go, how you move your arms, how you move your center, how you move your uke's center. Then there's the uke role itself- practicing rolls and falls. I'm trying to round out my corners. I still hear way too much thunk when I hit the mat and marvel at how others can almost float above it. More time is needed. I've got that.

Today's class ended with each person getting six consecutive katate tori (same side wrist grab) attacks. The response could be anything that came to mind (or body, as the case may be). I don't quite know what's going to come out when I'm up as nage so this type of training both thrills and scares me.

But it is always, always a heck of a lot of fun.

The Dreams of a Preschooler

Here's a snippet of P's conversation with me the other morning. He wandered into our bedroom, hopped into bed and without further preamble, told me this:

P: When you lose, you don't cry.

Me: Yes, sweetheart, that's right.

P: Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose.

Me: Right again.

...pause...

P: Do you want to sing the ABC song with me?

I wonder what he was dreaming about.

Ride Like the Wind, Bullseye!

Remember that ambitious training plan where I was doing something every day of the week? Well, two weeks later, I've mostly stuck to the plan.

Last Friday was my first venture back into the 50 m pool. I need to work my way up to swimming 400 yards continuously and it's a lot easier to do that in the bigger pool. There's nowhere to stop in the lake and hold on to the side. Last year, I had trained to swim 400 yds freestyle straight but, when the actual day of the race came, I found myself breaststroking for about half the distance. Even though I had been in the lake before, being in the lake with 50 other women all swimming in roughly the same direction at the same time was very different and disconcerting. My goal this year will be to minimize the amount of breaststroke that I do and maximize the freestyle. Oh, and not lose my goggles and not swallow too much lake water.

Last Sunday was my first 'long' ride of the year - 11.3 miles. That's about the distance of the triathlon bike leg. It was wicked windy for more than half the ride. I swear I was in my lowest gears and was still moving at a snail's pace. Still, I stuck it out by looking for a landmark that wasn't too far off and saying to myself, "Just a little bit further, just to that post/tree/hole/turn." It felt really awesome to finally turn and have the wind at my back.

As for running, I tried my first interval workout the Sunday before last - running a minute and then walking a minute. This actually pushed my total running time down. Will try this again this week.

At the end of the week, I'm off to the East Coast for five days to attend a conference. In addition to all my work stuff, I'll bring my running shoes and my gi. Training doesn't stop just because I'm traveling.

The Best Present Ever

It was my birthday last week and though I received a bunch of very sweet presents from my boys and my friends, the best one was something that cannot be bought - the news that my aunt's cancer therapy is working! After 10 weeks of treatment, the chemotherapy and radiation treatment are starting have an effect on those tenacious cancer cells. Her birthday email sounded happy and upbeat and POSITIVE. My spirits were lifted and I felt so happy.

Now I know that this doesn't herald a cure but it does buy her some more precious time - to spend with her loved ones, to enjoy the peacefulness of her and my uncle's little cottage outside of the city, to smell the flowers, to write email, to be a part of all of our lives and for us to be a part of hers.