Category Archives: My Life

Over the weekend and in the works

I have a decent bit to share, but there’s that whole “time to write” thing.  My time promises to be even more crunched this week (physical therapy, no Mrs. L on Tuesday = one extra day with Gabriel, then spending over half of Wednesday at the Gateway Bike Plan Workshop), so here’s quick recap and preview of coming events!

Over the weekend
Matthew and I celebrated our 5th anniversary with a dinner date at Pastaria, followed by dancing at Casa Loma Ballroom.

It was our first visit to Pastaria — it lacked the ambiance for a romantic anniversary dinner, but we enjoyed our meal, nonetheless.  We ordered a ridiculous quantity of food: risotto ball appetizer, large kale salad, pistachio ravioli, butternut squash and sage pizza, and a side of roasted brussels.  We could have easily fed a third adult and maybe Gabriel, too!

The food was good, but too salty (Matthew’s currently reading Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us).  Though I could have done with less salt, I really liked the kale salad.  I’ve made raw kale salads before, but theirs was special.  I particularly enjoyed the crunch of the toasted breadcrumbs in their version.

Afterward, we headed to Casa Loma, where we did not dance nearly enough to make up for our huge dinner!  Casa Loma was a first for me.  It’s a special place because it’s where Matthew’s grandparents (married for over sixty years now!) first met.  I imagine we’ll return, though we may to brush up on our ballroom dance steps at home first.

Saturday was a typical Matthew and G at the garden, me getting stuff done around the apartment, day, though that won’t be the case for much longer, with the garden mostly put to bed for the winter.

Sunday morning, Matthew and Gabriel headed out to Cedar Hill, near where Matthew grew up, to visit a family friend and buy some dried beans and other assorted goodies from his friend’s farm.

In the afternoon, we attended our first local CyclingSavvy “Advanced” session in St. Louis, an informal gathering for CyclingSavvy StL grads to share experiences and trouble-shoot challenges as a group.  It was great to see familiar faces and meet some new people, and we had some good discussions.

In the works

  • Milling corn — trying a friend’s grain mill
  • Skillet cornbread
  • Vole trouble — pestilence in the garden
  • Third cup’s a charm?

Hope to get these written sooner rather than later, but we’ll see!

Twisted vertebrae

Last Thursday’s post, where I shared my thoughts about bike facilities and infrastructure, garnered quite a few hits and is sparking some good discussions.  The thoughts I shared there had been percolating for quite some time, and it felt good to get them off my chest and out into the world.

While the post took quite a bit of time (and mental energy), it was far from the only thing noteworthy last week.

On Wednesday, I started physical therapy for mid-back pain that I’ve had since our trip to Wisconsin in July.  After three months of hoping it would go away on its own, I finally faced facts and sought answers and help.  Turns out that repeatedly twisting around in the car to tend to a toddler in the back seat = very bad for back (shocker!) — as a result, I have a couple of vertebrae that are rotated [slightly] out of place.

My doctor actually recommended that I visit a chiropractor (which I’ve never done), and then perhaps use PT as a follow-up.  Lacking a great chiropractic recommendation, I started with the PT (something I’ve done before for other back issues), and that’s the route I’m going for now.  I chose a therapist who uses manual techniques and myofascial release to encourage the muscles to relax enough to help things move back into place.  My initial visit left me quite sore the next day, but nothing that I couldn’t live with.

I can’t help but miss the health insurance I had three jobs ago (four, if you count my current part-time gig) which covered 100% of physical therapy.  Now it’s forty bucks a visit.  I know it could be worse, but that definitely stings a bit, and it adds up fast!  Hopefully this resolves quickly, but the fact that it’s been an issue for over three months now might not bode well.

Fortunately, biking doesn’t seem to be an issue, and I’m able to bike to my PT appointments, so I’ll probably be doing more biking during these next few weeks than I otherwise would.  There’s something very satisfying about feeling good enough to bike to health-related appointments, and it makes me thankful for relatively good, if imperfect, health.

Camping

So, camping.  Our last camping trip was over two years ago.  It involved a nine-week-old baby, unforecasted rain and chilly temperatures, a leaky tent, very little hiking, and an early return. Gabriel’s look says it all.  (I can’t believe he was ever that tiny!!!)

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“WTF, guys? Can we please go home already?”

A few months after that adventure, we received a new tent as a Christmas present.  Despite being an upgrade over our leaky, musty version, it sat untouched for almost two years.  This is more related to our “garden” baby than to our actual baby.

In retrospect, hiking/camping with a small, very portable infant was relatively easy, but despite our best intentions to do a lot of hiking and camping those first months (when we were both not working due to maternity/paternity leave anyway), there was just that one trip.

For our great return to camping, we left Gabriel with Baba, and had our first multi-night kid-free time in over a year.

We planned our adventure to southern Illinois, home to some state parks, national forests, and wineries.  Thanks to Congress, we had to remove the national forest from our itinerary.

Saturday morning, we loaded the car and drove through two-and-a-half hours of rain to Giant City State Park (just south of Carbondale, IL).  We kept peering at the sky, thinking that certainly, at any moment, the rain would stop and it would clear.

Failing that, we decided to stop in Carbondale for lunch.  We ate at Longbranch Coffeehouse and Vegetarian Cafe, a spot I’d scoped out ahead of time.  We enjoyed their house recipe veggie burger and a breakfast burrito-type thing — a fun stop and tasty food — would definitely return!

It finally did stop raining, just as we arrived at the state park to be met by a “Campground Full” sign.  We continued to the host’s site to discuss just what they meant by “full.”

Turns out there was exactly ONE tent site left in the entire campground, so we paid our eight dollars and proceeded to stake our claim.  I really didn’t want to set up our nice, clean, dry tent on the wet, muddy ground, so we hung our claim tag and drove to some short hiking loops.

We returned a few hours later to slightly less wet ground, and went about setting up camp.  Between our new tent, new screen house, almost new sleeping bags (which I decided I loathe), and a couple of new backpacks, I felt like we were doing some kind of gear review (minus the free gear).

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We built a fire, ate dinner, and decided to call it an early night.  Unfortunately, our fellow campers had other ideas, and what seemed like a relatively quiet campground before 9 p.m. became obnoxiously noisy for the next couple of hours as we tossed and turned.

Our ultralight fabric (made from recycled plastic bottles), mummy-style sleeping bags, while perhaps great for back-country camping, were just not comfortable for me.  Between that and the noise, I was NOT a happy camper.

Come morning, I strongly advocated for turning our planned two-night stay into a one-night stay.  The lure of a nice, comfortable bed in a quiet apartment only two hours away was just too much.

But before we left, we decided to tackle a 12-mile hike, giving us some more of the outdoor time and scenery that we came for and giving our tents time to dry (just dew, not rain) before decamping.

Unfortunately, the “construction” that the guide at the visitor’s center indicated would last for about a mile of the 12-mile loop, combined with Saturday’s rain, turned our hike into a muddy slog, made extra frustrating by the complete lack of trail markers (perhaps removed because of the construction).

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Heavy machinery, dirt trails, and rain are NOT a good combination.  We found this guy with the keys in the ignition and were rather tempted to just drive ourselves out.

The “path” we were on finally led to a waste-water treatment site (beautiful nature, eh?), and we followed a gravel road back to civilization, i.e., the paved road that runs through the state park.  From there, we “hiked” along the road for a couple of miles (I was tempted to stick out my thumb and hitch-hike) before finally returning to our campsite.

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Pea in a pod

Midday fire, lunch, showers, and some time in the hammock put us in better spirits.  We packed up our nice dry tents, drove back to St. Louis, and concluded our weekend with dinner at Tree House, a [relatively] new vegetarian restaurant.

Our camping gear is packed away again, probably until the spring, when we might get really crazy and attempt camping with a toddler.  Until then, I’ll be enjoying my own bed!

Balloons, longtail test rides, and the plague

The good news is that I am alive, though I’ve felt less-than-lively since being hit by a respiratory virus on Sunday.  Illness plus a heavier work load on the part-time job front equals precious little time, energy, and brain functioning for this space.

I ended last week’s heavy biking log with a trip to Forest Park for the balloon race on Saturday afternoon.  The ride was notable because it’s probably close to the highest single-trip mileage I’ve completed with Gabriel along in the front seat, and it’s the first time I’ve been up and down the Macklind hill with him along.  I made it up on the return trip, thanks to my granny gear!

And then of course there were the balloons . . .

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We enjoyed a picnic dinner as we watched the balloons  inflate, rise, and fly swiftly south under a heavy breeze from the north.  I thought the last few balloons might accompany us on our ride home, but they must have taken a slightly different route.

On the ride home we discussed Sunday plans to test ride some longtails, and Matthew, who’d put in over twenty miles on the bike on Saturday while leading CyclingSavvy, requested that we use the car to get to our Sunday destination since he was having some knee pain.

I reluctantly agreed, having liked the idea of showing up on our bikes to test ride the other bikes.  Come Sunday afternoon (post cold-pocalypse), feeling like death-warmed-over, I lacked the energy to bike anyway.  Only the fact that we’d  been trying to set up these test rides for quite awhile (over a year, in one case!) persuaded me to abandon the couch and get in the car at all.

I perked up enough to ride the two longtails (a Surly Big Dummy and a Yuba Mundo) around the block.  Once again I failed to photo-document the fact that I was on a longtail, but it happened.  Gabriel also rode along on the Big Dummy.

Both bikes handled well, and Matthew and I agreed that either could potentially meet our needs.  I slightly preferred the ride of the Mundo, while Matthew slightly preferred the Big Dummy.

Of course, just to make things complicated, some other options, including the Xtracycle EdgeRunner and the question of whether a longtail is really what we want at all (would we be better served by a midtail?) entered the picture recently.  Enter the “too many choices” phenomenon!  We’ll have made a decision by the time Gabriel’s twenty and the question of how we transport him by bike is completely moot.

Anyhow, a variety of factors (distance, cargo, sickness) conspired to make this week quite the opposite of last week: a number of car trips (will be up to four after tomorrow morning) and no bike trips.

So far, this virus is outwitting my usual weapons (i.e., lots of liquids; salt water gargles; neti pot; soup with lots of onion, garlic, and ginger).  The only thing missing there is rest, which is hard to come by when the symptoms make it hard to sleep at night and there is too much on the to-do list during the day.  Hoping at the very least to be back to normal by this time next week, when I’m on for a CyclingSavvy gig!

Practicing gratitude

It seems that everywhere I turn these days, I get messages about gratitude.

“Cultivating Gratitude and Joy” was one of the main guideposts in Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection, which I read in May as a homework assignment for counseling.  Within days of reading that chapter on gratitude, and noting that it was perhaps something I should practice, I was on a flight home from D.C. and noticed the young woman next to me on the plane pull a small journal from her bag with something like, “Today’s Gifts,” written on the front.

When I relayed this to my counselor, she suggested that every night, I write down [at least] three good things that happened to me that day in my planner (i.e., something I already had — no need to go buy a special book).

I maintained this practice for about a week, and then it fizzled.  Until Monday, that is, when I saw a Facebook link to this article: Stop Glossing Over the Good Stuff.  The author received a wake-up call when a colleague challenged him with the question, “Are you really complaining right now?”

He goes on to relate the conversation and the psychology behind focusing on the negative and glossing over the positive, which is the default position for many of us.    Fortunately, anyone can shift this balance, though it does take practice.

On the same day I found the above-mentioned post, “Practice gratitude” was one item on this list of “Ten Simple Things You Can do Today that will Make You Happier.”  Hmm.

The idea of, and psychology behind, “training” your brain for positivity was explored further in “How to Rewire Your Brain for Positivity and Happiness.”

Since it appears I can’t escape this gratitude thing, I’m going to embrace it.

Three good things about this morning:

  1. A lovely bike ride to Local Harvest Grocery
  2. Gabriel looking forward to going to Mrs. L’s
  3. 10% off at the store

I will record at least three positive things in a journal (I already had one, and my planner was just too small) every day.  It’s a small step — the links above have more suggestions and ideas, but it’s a start.

I may or may not institute a weekly gratitude post here — not sure yet.  I also like the idea of stopping yourself every time you (or someone else) catches a complaint and listing three good things on the spot.

I have no illusions that making the shift from a negative focus to a positive one will be easy.  No, it will require work.  Practice.  Training.  But the benefits seem well worth the effort.  Will you join me?