They Just Don't Appreciate That You Get Tired

Being the end of January, it's high time for my end of 2019 race report. Although, "racing" is a strong word for what I did last year, I did what I could and learned a lot from that.

Migraine was the word that governed my competing. I had more migraines (or maybe it was just one that lasted forever) in 2019 than I've ever had in my life. I'm hoping it's the death rattle of my perimenopause and once I reach the other side of the hormone roller coaster to menopause, (hopefully, this year?) I won't be in so much pain. A girl can dream, can't she?

Anyway, 2019 started out pretty well. I didn't have too many migraines at the beginning of the year, and I was able to do some decent training. The weight gain that has been a companion to my hormones' downward spirals, has been another fun factor in all of this aging crap my body is putting me through.

 So, with this new found weight my body has been gaining, my running races were definitely lacking. Luckily, the running races I did, were with family, and I just had fun and did the best I could. the hard part was not comparing my current times with my past times. I can only compete against myself right now, I have to get over what my younger self used to be able to do. Sigh.

Although I didn't have the best Pigman Sprint Traithlon this year, I finally podiumed and won a pig. All that really meant, was that the strongest women in my category are about two  years older than me, and they aged up into the next oldest category. This year, I'll be right back with them, and I'll be kissing my pig dreams goodbye again.

The best thing for me (besides winning a coveted pig) was that I finished the triathlon this year. The year before I tried to race it with a bad cold, and couldn't make it to the end of the swim. In 2019 I finished, but my swim still sucked.One of these years, I'll conquer the swimming part. It might be another 20 years before that happens, but I'll keep trying.

 The one area where I felt like I excelled was in time trials. It could be that it just fell in the early Summer and my migraines were on hold, and time trials are a little more forgiving about extra weight. Another reason to love time trialing. Mostly, though, I worked my ass off to be better at them. I trained well and I made sure I took a few days off of riding before each one to keep my legs fresh. I can honestly say I am proud of how well I did (for me) on this one thing.

I was all set to go into cyclocross season with some strength and confidence, when I got hit hard. First I caught a two week long cold that sapped my strength. I went into my first race fairly fit, but not as strong as I had hoped.

Every year I try to change things up and work on stuff. 2019 was the year I went back to clipless pedals. I still rocked flat pedals, but they had clips inside them. I didn't wholly commit to them, though. So, 2020 will hopefully be the year I get used to staying clipped in for whole races, and to quit being so afraid that I won't remember to clip out when I need to.

I had a migraine for the entire month of September. You heard that right. It struck me on Sunday of Labor Day Weekend and nagged me until about the first of October. Holy $hit! You want to talk about debilitating.  I couldn't race during the month of September and I felt like I lost any strength I had built up in the last year.

I went back to "racing' the first weekend of October to Fayetteville, Arkansas. It was an easy course on Saturday, but then it rained six inches on Sunday and I just tried not to die. You'll be happy to hear that I made it out alive and was able to go on and ride, albeit very slowly, in almost every race I signed up for in  October.

Even though this was a hard year for me during cyclocross season, I got a lot out of it. We traveled to cool places, met really great people, played in the mud, learned a lot of crap, and I got stronger mentally, emotionally, and physically. I am here to rally for people (especially old people) to compete in a sport you love. It is a great way to grow old...I was going to say gracefully, but you've all seen me race. If you haven't, picture Lucille Ball riding her bike in the mud.

I'm coming into 2020 with migraines and weight gain still. Hopefully, those will both get better and better, but if they don't, I'll keep trying to get as much as I can out of everything I do. And most importantly, cut myself some slack when I'm not doing as well as I used to when I was younger. I have to work with what I've got now.

I will end with this statement of truth (my truth, anyway):

It is hard to keep racing when you are often competing for last place. If you are placing or even in the middle of the pack, you are motivated, and no one is pity clapping for you or wondering why you're wasting your time. Cyclocross is a great sport to not be very good at, because it's fun even when you suck, and the people are so supportive and welcoming. It still sucks to go back every week when you know you might come in last. So, to any of  you, like me, who come in last or second to last most races, I am ridiculously proud of you. Keep going.  Do what you can do and have fun with it. We're all doing this for ourselves and there's a lot we can get out of racing if we don't create too much self-induced pressure. Now, go out and play!

Hearts Flutter and Race, The Moon's on the Wane

I'm slowly crawling back from a bad stomach flu. I knew it was going around, but I was hoping that it might skip me this time around since I got so sick with it a few years ago. I will say, that it wasn't even half as bad as that time, but it still knocked me out for a couple of days.

So, today as I'm starting to get my sea legs back, I'm hanging out at home drinking tea, and I'm still only comfortable eating miso with noodles. I'm also watching documentaries. The good thing about getting rid of cable and just subscribing to the movie channels, besides saving money, is the amount of incredible documentaries they make available. So far today I watched a Betty White documentary on Netflix, and on Hulu, a biography of Toni Morrison and another documentary about the filming of Aretha Franklin's gospel album in 1971.

Boy, if you ever want to question exactly where you are in your life in your mid-fifties, just watch those three documentaries. Those women accomplished so much by the time they were my age. Just to be clear, I am not disappointed about where I am right now. I am very happy. I've never really cared about being famous, I just want to be able to adeptly create by writing and painting and drawing and photography, the things and ideas I have in my head.

Of course, the problem with that in my past, was finding the time and money. I have more time and money right now than I've ever had in my life, so that means that the other problem for me (as it has been my entire life) is walking that line between balance and focus. Mrs. Parsons, my 11th grade English teacher once told me that we always make time for the things we love. But what if we love so many things that we don't have time to do any one thing very well? I suppose this is where my attention deficit issues come in to play as well...

What if I chose one thing, say, writing and I threw all of my energy, and time, and passion into it? Then I couldn't really read, or run, or bike, or swim, or cross country ski, or garden, or cook, or paint, or have fun adventures with my husband and kids, or draw, or fix up the house, or photograph stuff, or (most importantly) mess with my cats. Just look at all of things I'd be missing out on? If I ask myself if writing well is worth giving up all of those other things, I'd  have to say, I don't think so.

Maybe that's the difference between someone who is a genius at what they do (I'm not disregarding talent). They have to give up so many other things to get there.

I once had a friend who told me, "You can do anything you want, but you can't do everything you want." As you know, I hate restrictions. So, what that means for me, is that I may never be a genius at recreating what's in my head onto a page or canvass or on film, and if you could see what was in my brain, you might think that was a good thing. Which leaves me with skimming the surface of a lot of different things. I can choose to invest more time on any of those things at different phases of my life (which I have), and then move on to the next thing. My grubby paws will be all over the place leaving my dirty fingerprints on all kinds of different disciplines. Will I be disappointed with myself for not getting really good at one thing? On and off, probably, but I would most likely be way more disappointed by missing out on trying everything I can get to and having all of those weird and wonderful and messy adventures.

We Need Body Rockin', Not Perfection. Let Your Backbone Flip, But Don't Slip a Disc

Okay. So, today's end of 2019 post is all about my training/work-out stats. This is where I figure out how I wasted so much time "playing" during the year. Here we go.

Running:  I logged 402 miles of running, both on pavement and trails. It's not anywhere near as many miles as I used to run, but I do all kinds of other things now too.

Hiking/Walking: This is only the miles I logged on Map My Run, so it's mostly when I went out specifically to hike. 38 miles.

Canoeing:   I canoed 9 miles when we were in Page, Arizona. I hope to get more paddling in this Summer, but we'll see.

Cross Country Skiing: We didn't get much skiable snow around here last Winter, despite how damn cold it was. I got in 28.5 miles of skiing in .

Swimming:  I didn't swim as much as I should have last year, which was very evident with the sucky swim during my triathlon last June. I only got in 9 miles of swimming in. Another thing to work on this year.

Biking: This includes pretty much every form of cycling I did last year - commuting, mountain biking, racing, cyclocross, gravel, pavement and time trialing. I rode 4,202 last year. I can't remember what my biggest mileage ever was, but I'm sure this is nowhere near it. Again, I'll see what I can do this year.

I also lifted weights here and there, and tried to do some stretching. I didn't really record those kinds of work-outs because, frankly, I didn't do much of either. Again, you know the drill, I'll keep trying. That's the nice thing about documenting all of this stuff. It's interesting to go back and see the correlation between how I trained and what my race results were for any given year. But it's also nice to know that these things go up and down and as long as I don't beat myself up on the down years, I can keep trying harder the next year.

I've Seen it in Your Eyes and I've Read it in Books

Today I'm doing my 2019 in books post. I read 92 books in 2019. I gave myself a couple of nerd girl challenges,  I read some great books, and some books where I finished them, and just went, "meh". Here is where I rank some of the best of my reads:


Best Short Stories:

Apparently, I only read one collection of short stories this year. I'll have to do better in 2020. "What is Yours is Not Yours" by Helen Oyemi is a pretty damn good collection to read, if you're only going to read one.


Best Children's/YA Books:

1.) "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian", by Sherman Alexie.

2.) "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe", C. S. Lewis.

3.) "Little House in the Big Woods"/"Farmer Boy", Laura Ingalls Wilder

4.) "Where The Red Fern Grows", Wilson Rawls.

5.) "The Wind in the Willows", Kenneth Grahame.

The Best More Current Fantasy/Sci Fi:

1.) "Adulthood Rites", Octavia Butler.

2.) "Anansi Boys", Neil Gaiman


The Best Classic Fantasy Sci Fi. There's a tie for first. Both of these books are so good, there's no way you could make one second best:

1.) "The Left Hand of Darkness", Ursula Le Guin

1.) The Lord of the Rings Trilogy", JRR Tolkien

The Best Detective/Mystery Books:

1.) "The Secret Place", Tana French

2.) "Devil in a Blue Dress", Walter Mosley

3.) "The Witch Elm", Tana French

The Best Classic Novels:

1.) "Portrait of a Lady", Henry James.

2.) "Madame Bovary", Gustave Flaubert.

3.) "Dracula", Bram Stoker.

4.) "We Have Always Lived in the Castle", Shirley Jackson.

5.) "Spectator Bird", Wallace Stegner


One of my nerd reading projects was to read all of the Jane Austen novels except "Pride and Prejudice", which I read the year before. I will now attempt to rank them in order of which I liked the best and on down (including P&P).

1.) "Persuasion"

2.) "Pride and Prejudice" - I would say this ties with Persuasion.

3.) "Sense and Sensibility"

4.) "Emma"

5.) "Mansfield Park"

6.) "Northanger Abbey"

Best Non-Fiction:

1.) "Educated", Tara Westover

2.) "The Liar's Club", Mary Karr

3.) "Me Talk Pretty One Day", David Sedaris

4.) "Unfamiliar Fishes", Sarah Vowell

5.) "Hillbilly Elegy", JD Vance


Best Overall Novels I Read This Year:

1.) "Homegoing", Yaa Gyaasi.

2.) "Possession" AS Byatt

3.) "Washington Black", Esi Edugyan

4.) "There There", Tommy Orange

5.) "La Rose", Louise Erdrich


So, that's all for books from last year. I noticed I didn't read any graphic novels and I need to read more short story collections, so I have that to look forward to in 2020. Happy reading to all you all!

And Everything Looks Good Tonight

So, it's the beginning of a new year, which means it's time for my end of 2019 posts. I figured the first of those posts would be about my firsts.

As some of you know, I think a good way to try to grow old gracefully and to still stay excited about life, is to challenge myself to do new things. It's tough as I get older, since I'm a creature of habit, but I'm always glad that I have. As always, some new things are great, and some are not.

This year, many of my new things happened on our Summer vacation. You know it's a great trip when you challenge yourself that often on it.

1.) The first new thing I did was have a snowball fight in July. It was great, because it was warm out, and it didn't hurt to be cold, like my normal snowball fights in the Winter. Also, it was great because we were in the mountains outside of Breckenridge.

2.) The second new thing I did was canoe with my family in a slot canyon. We did this on Lake Powell in Page, Arizona. It was so fun and so beautiful, I highly recommend it, if you can make it happen.

3.) The third thing I did for the first time was to hike in Antelope Canyon. This also happened in Page, Arizona. I would do this every year if I could. It was amazing.

4.) The fourth new thing I did was glamp. That's right - we stayed at a cool site right outside of Zion National Park that offered glamping. It was basically a wood floor with a big canvass tent over it. It had electricity, and most importantly, a chandelier over the bed. It was super cool.

5.) We canyoneered for the first time in Zion as well. While we didn't rappel in or swim in the coldest water on the hike, we did everything else. It was physically demanding, but the pay-off was worth it. It was one of the coolest experiences I had on our trip...And that's saying something.

6.) Now, for something COMPLETELY non-vacation related. I grew hollyhocks for the first time this year. I love them...But unfortunately, so do the Japanese beetles. Hopefully, next year I'll figure out a way to keep those beetles off of my flowers and vegetables.

7.) Like I've said before, some of my first times aren't all good. This year I had a migraine that lasted for at least a month for the first time in my life. I hope that never happens to me again. Eek!

8.) I went to Arkansas for the first time this year. We only stayed in Fayetteville, which is a college town, so there may be some bad parts of the state that I didn't experience, but Fayetteville was so great. We're planning on going back to Bentonville, Arkansas to ride mountain bikes in the next year or two.

9.) My last first thing this year is going to make me sound way more grown up than I actually am. I bought a new bike with money I saved instead of going into debt for it. Woot! What a big girl I am at 54 years of age. I made a rule that unless there was an emergency, I would try not to purchase anything with credit. I hope I'm able to keep that, but at least last year, I did...And I bought a pretty new bike.

What were the things you did for the first time last year? I'm planning on doing cool new stuff this year too. I may not age all that gracefully, but I plan on having fun doing it at least.

All is Quiet on New Year's Day

Well, kids. You get two posts today. I'm just going to do a quick end of the year post after the book one. 2019 was the best of times and the worst of times. We'll still be dealing with some of the bullshit into 2020, but right now, we're still here and will hopefully all support each other as family and friends and deal with whatever other bullshit comes our way.

As always, I am hopeful and happy in general. I have the best partner in crime ever, who is always willing to work hard and play hard with me. My girls are healthy and working through their issues and I have the two biggest asshole cats that a girl could ever want.

Being in my mid-fifties now, I am FINALLY in a place where I don't feel all that sad or lonely or bad about myself in general (I'm sure we all have our days, though...). I appreciate all the best of times have to offer and I don't "get over" things, I work really hard through them. Denial has never been my friend, although he seems like a good idea at the time sometimes. It's the working that gets me through the bad shit.

Anyway, all the bad crap is just reminding me to be kinder, more compassionate and less judgmental. My latest mantras for the year are: "Be empathetic", "it is better to be kind than right" and "when in doubt, drink water". The water drinking thing is more about my physical health, than mental health and outlook, but I'm bad about keeping hydrated.

I hope your 2020 brings you happiness and joy and comfort and adventure and kindness and love. Happy New Year!

Well You Know, November Has Come When It's Gone Away

Okay. I'm finally catching up on the traveling through books post. Now, I'm on November. Woot!

Last month I read eight books:

1.) The first paper trip I took was all over the place during slavery times. "She Would Be King", by Wayetu Moore was described as a combination of "Roots" and "Black Panther". It was a sad, but hopeful book about three people with super powers who meet in Africa and try to protect the Africans from the illegal slave traders. It is an incredible adventure. I highly recommend it.

2.) "Perfect Little World" by Kevin Wilson took place in Arkansas about a project sponsored by someone who was heir to the fortune of a company that sounded very much like Wal-m@rt. It was supposed to test how a bunch of new parents could live in a communal situation and what happened during and after the experiment. It was a world I will never know in reality, so it was fun to go there in literature.

3.) "The Incendiaries" by R. O. Kwon was about a couple both haunted by or in the throes of religious cults on a societal level, but it was also about abuse and consent on a personal level. It took me mostly to an elite university in upstate NY and it was explosive in many ways.

4.) "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C. S Lewis took me to war torn England, and then to Narnia, of course. I did love this book as a child and it is still a sweet adventure now.

5.) "The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane", by Lisa See took me to China for the most part. It also taught me a lot about tea and the one child rule in China and some about the remote area cultures there. I really like tea, and I also really liked this book.

6.) I finally finished my nerdy book girl challenge of 2019. I wanted to read all of  Jane Austen's novels (except "Pride and Prejudice" since I just read it about a year ago) and then read the "Jane Austen Book Club". Coadster was obsessed with the movie when she was in high school, but I had never read any Jane Austen back then. So, I compared the book to the movie, and I almost liked the movie more. It was still a fun book, though.

7.) "The Absolutely True Diaries of a Part Time Indian", by Sherman Alexie was my seventh book of the month. Every November I try to read a book written by a Native American/First Nations person. Just as a reminder that their plight is all of our faults. Sigh. Anyway, this was a YA book that won tons of awards and it was hard to read, but also hopeful and sweet. It took me to a reservation in Washington State.

8.) The last book trip I took was to London through "Girl, Woman, Other", by Bernadine Evaristo. This book co-won (with Margaret Atwood) the Man-Booker prize. It was a really about women and ageism and racism and misogyny and classism and all the other 'isms and each chapter told a different person's story, so you got to see things through many different people's voices. It was one of my favorite books of the year.

Okay, I have one month left of book trips and then the end of the year post. I hope you had and will have some great reads.

I See a Car Smashed at Night. Cut the Applause and Dim the Light.

Remember how I said the second part of this year has been pretty crappy? Well, the hits just keep on coming - both literally and figuratively. Yesterday morning John got into a car accident on his way to work. He's fine...Amazingly.

He was going about 45 mph (the speed limit) when he got to the light and it turned yellow. Since he couldn't stop safely, he kept going and some woman turned left into his lane to get on the interstate. I'm not sure if she didn't see him, or what. John saw her turning at the last minute and tried to break. He hit one side of her car which whipped him into the cement base of the street light pole. His air bag deployed and his car is pretty much totaled, but again, he walked away from it just fine.

We'll see what happens with all of this. He got cited for driving through a yellow light, but again, the Iowa DMV book says you can run a yellow light if it isn't safe to stop, and that was the case, so he's going to contest it and see what happens.

We are very, very, lucky. He was fine and we have another car and we both live close enough to our jobs to ride our bikes to work. It's just scary and a pain in the ass. Two of my least favorite things.

So, we're thanking our lucky stars and we're not all that sorry to see this year and decade go. I hope things get better and better. Now, bring on the Roaring Twenties!

And So This is Christmas. I Hope You Have Fun. The Near and the Dear One, The Old and the Young

I know this time of year can be really rough for people. Whether they have depression issues, or they feel overwhelmed that they can't afford the time or money to give their kids the Christmas they want, or they don't have a family to spend the holiday with or, they have to work over the holiday when it seems like everyone else is off. I have had some crappy Christmases in past years, so I try to make my holiday exactly the way I want.

This weekend it meant riding bikes outside in this lovely weather to eat food. It was perfect for us.

On Saturday we rode 50 miles to Kalona and back. In the morning I went for a little run, finished reading a book, putzed around the house and then after our bike ride in the afternoon I spent about an hour and a half getting groceries for all of the food I'm going to make on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. So, I did do something practical after all.

That evening, John's ex-girlfriend and her husband were having people over for the many birds they were frying.

My friend Nick found some grapes, and my friend Ginger thought it would be hilarious to take a photo of him feeding them to me. Old people and their hilarious ideas...What are you gonna do?

On Sunday I got up and went for a nice run and then came home and cleaned the dormer room, so that Stinky and I could make her husband's Christmas present later in the day up there.

Finally we were ready for another bike ride. We did the Lone Tree loop, which is about a 40 mile, fairly flat bike ride. Don't worry, though, the winds were strong enough to make us work harder than we wanted to.

After our ride we met Stinky and her husband at Big Grove for a late lunch and some Sunday funday beers. It was so nice to get to hang out with them.

As we were leaving, we realized that there was some dog centered event in the beer garden. I haven't seen that many beautiful pups assembled in one place in a long time. It was lovely.

When we got home, Stinky and I went to work on her husband's Christmas present. We were going to buy him a nice piece of art, but he said he would rather we painted him something instead. So, Stinky and I made a three panel abstract painting using his favorite colors, blue and gray and we added a little gold to give it more heat. I think they turned out pretty cool.

So, I had the best before Christmas weekend and covered so many bases. Which was good, because now it's Christmas Eve and the weather is perfect, but I came down with another migraine. John went on a ride without me, and I am left at home to relax and rest and take a hot bath and bake and frost cookies. Not a bad alternative.

I hope you all have lovely holidays, whatever you do or don't celebrate.

I Wish I Had a River So Long. I Would Teach My Feet to Fly.

My roommate Jill and some friends and I in the first apartment I lived in in Iowa City.

 Here is a quaint little Christmas time story for you, just to demonstrate how much happier I am in my mid fifties than I was in my late teens...Again:

Once upon a time, this time of year in 1983, I moved to Iowa City for the first time. I went to the University of Northern Iowa my first semester. I thought I would be a walk-on for track and cross country, but when I realized I couldn't take 17 hours of classes and do all of the practices and miss way too many classes for meets, I decided to go to the University of Iowa instead. UNI is a VERY small town school and while I made many fun friends, it just wasn't really my scene.

So, I moved in with a friend of mine in Iowa City, who used to date my brother for a very short time in high school. The dorms were full and they put me on a wait list, but I don't trust fate, so when my friend, Jill's roommate went to London for a study abroad program for that Spring, I jumped in and sublet her place for the semester.

It was my first Christmas as an adult. On Thanksgiving, I went back to my aunt and uncle's house. Basically, the minute I got there, my aunt put a vacuum in my hand and I cleaned her house the whole long weekend. I didn't know how to drive and they lived in the country, so I was trapped. I made sure not to make that mistake again at Christmas.

My brother and my sister and I were heading to Arizona to visit my other sister for the holiday. So, I did go back to my aunt and uncle's house for some kind of Christmas dealie before that. My brother lived in Iowa City and he had a gigantic 1975 Caprice Classic to drive us to Otummwa for a very short period, and I was guaranteed not to be stuck there this time. Whew!

Before we went to O-town, my brother and I went to K-Mart to look for a present for my aunt. We were being bitchy and ironic when we picked out the horse head jello mold. She, of course, loved the gift, which made us laugh and laugh later on. At the time of our shopping trip, we weren't finding anything very amusing. K-Mart was full of stressed-out, poor people, yelling at their kids. I remember after we left the store, my brother was so depressed about the whole experience, that I suggested we just go get ice cream. As always, in my world, food is love. Of course, it helped. Ice cream always seems to help.

We drove down to Ottumwa where I wasn't trapped, but I wasn't super happy to be there either. I started wearing my hair in its more natural, very curly, state, and my uncle told me that I looked like a Jamaican hippie, ( a Rasta?) and he definitely didn't say it like it was a good thing.

After that trip, I decided that I was 18 years old and I didn't have to spend my time around people who wanted to make me do all of their housework and/or disparage me about how I looked. My siblings and I went to Arizona and I came back to Iowa City to start my first semester. I was making decisions about how I wanted my life to go for the first time, and that meant that I didn't go back to my aunt and uncle's house for many, many years.

That It's Strange. So Strange

Well, I guess it's good that cyclocross season is over, because things are really getting away from me. Here it is December 12th, and I'm finally doing my October books post.

I ended up reading 10 books in October. I have no idea how I managed that. I usually save up all my scary/suspenseful/murdery kinds of books for October, but I ran out of those by the end of the month. Anyway, here is my list of book trips I took this month.

1.) The first adventure I went on was to Africa during 1800's and then it switched to the US and Africa and back to Africa up to the present. "Homegoing" by Yaa Gyasi was an incredible book about how horros of slavery and racism affect people even today. It was very well written. I couldn't put it down.

2.) "White Tears" by Hari Kunzru was pretty bleak. It was about a ghost getting his reparations from a wealthy Southern family who killed him back in the past. He was a musician and he was able to get to the family through their youngest son who was obsessed with old timey blues music.

3.) Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" took me too a large house with a family who didn't fit in with the rest of the town. There was a tale of abuse in there from the past and the youngest daughter tried to take care of it. I love Shirley Jackson. She always sets such a creepy mood.

4.) My fourth trip was all the way to Transylvania and England in the 1800's. I read "Dracula" by Bram Stoker. I read it for the first time in my early 20's and I remember liking it. This time around I still loved it. The whole idea of femininity and masculinity was pretty amusing and the story itself was riveting.

 

5.) The fifth book I read was "Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History", by Tori Telfer. It was non-fiction and took me all over the world during many different eras. What I learned is that most women either killed their servants, or tried to get money out of men, or were protecting themselves from men and the sexist environment around them and they almost always used arsenic to kill their targets. It was a deadly trip, but perfect for Halloween.

6.) "The Cabin at the End of the World", by Paul Tremblay was very disturbing, just as it should be for October. Parts were very stressful. It took place in rural New Hampshire right around now. I'm not going to give anything away, let's just say, it is not for the squeamish.

7.) "The Witch Elm" by Tana French is the only book by her that I've read that wasn't part of the Dublin Murder Squad series. It took me to Dublin, Ireland in the recent past and then in the characters' pasts as well. It was a mystery book, and it started out a little slow, but then I thought it got really good.

8.) I entered the land of Orcs and Wizards in "The Two Towers" by J. R.R. Tolkien. It was the second book of the trilogy. Coadster told me it was a lot slower than the first book and she was right. I still really liked it, I just skimmed a bit here and there.

9.) The last of my Halloween reads and the last of my Jane Austen books was "Northanger Abbey". It wasn't my favorite Jane Austen, but as far as I'm concerned, there isn't a bad Jane Austen. I always get engrossed in her novels. I'm just sad that I can never read them all for the first time again.

10.) Since I ran out of Halloween type books, the last book I read was "Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career" by George Plimpton. It's non-fiction and basically a collection of quotes about Truman Capote and his life. He was one crazy character. I don't think I could be friends with him, but he seems to have made an impact wherever he went and his writing was great too.

Okay. So, I finally did my book post for October. I've got two more to write for the year and then my annual book rating post by January. So many book posts, so little time...

'Cause We're the Party People Night and Day

 Okay, so this weekend we went back to Chicago to do our last race of the year - The Midwest Cyclocross Championships at Montrose Beach.

The race is on Sunday, so last year we came up on Saturday and went to the aquarium and ate at cool restaurants.

That worked out so well, that we decided to do the same thing this year, but to go to the Field Museum instead.

Where we saw Michael Jackson before he was reincarnated.

I do love going to a big city around Christmas time. Everything is so decorated and festive.

The Native American exhibits were really cool.

My brother-in-law suggested that we check out the Pawnee Earth Lodge and he wasn't wrong. There was just a warm, cozy, feel in there.

I really love dinosaurs, so I warned John that we would be spending time hanging out with them...And taking pictures of them photo bombing each other, apparently.

 This is the T-Rex skeleton that a woman named Sue found parts of in South Dakota. How cool is that?

 After a few hours we had reached our museum saturation point and it was getting late, so we headed to our Air-BnB in Andersonville.

We were lucky enough to catch the gorgeous sunset over the water too.

We had never been to Andersonville before. It was originally made up of a large Nordic/Swedish population, but now there is a big gay community there. So, it is even more awesome.

We went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and even though I probably shouldn't have, I ordered a jumbo margarita, and I have absolutely no remorse connected to that decision. It was pure deliciousness.

I also got some chicken enchiladas with mole and and John ordered tacos. We shared, and the food was excellent too. It was a lovely dining experience all around.

The next morning we had to get up early to race. So, we were able to see the sunrise over the water as well.

We got to hang out with our friend, Sarah again. She came to watch us race and had lunch with us before we headed home. These Chicago weekends are really becoming my new favorite thing. Like I always say, there's no way I could ever live in a big city again, but it sure is fun to visit.

It's My Own Desire. It's My Own Remorse.

Where we used to have our Wednesday evening meetings in the California Conservation Corps.

I'm trying to do more writerly posts...Again. So, here we go. This is just a sketch and will need a ton more work. As you know, I am about the messiest writer in the world. I just need to get some of it down, so I can start tidying it up:

We were riding in a state van from Angels Camp to Leggett, California. The radio was on playing all of the big hits of that Spring. Too much Wham and Whitney Houston, but then Tears for Fears came on. I said, "Ech! That's not true. I don't want to rule the world."

"Bullshit. Everyone does. You're just trying to sound like you're better than that."

"No. The last thing I would ever want is to be in charge of the world. I don't want to tell people what to do. I just want them to do what they want without hurting anyone else. It would make me crazy to have to be in charge of everyone."

"I don't believe you. If you could make everything work exactly the way you wanted, you would do it. I know I would"

At the time, I didn't realize how telling this conversation was. He was my first boyfriend, and we were heading to our first real job in the Conservation Corps. I was 19 and everything felt new and was happening so fast, that I couldn't process it all.

Originally, I wanted to get placed at Turtle Island. I had friends moving to San Francisco, and I wanted to be able to hang out with them. Then when I went to the training academy I changed my mind. I met Jimmy, and he was going to Leggett. He told me that that was where the real work was. Salmon Restoration. We would be saving our little corner of the environment. On Turtle Island I would mostly be picking up garbage all day.

So, I went. We were a small group heading to a tiny satellite center in a town of about 150 marijuan growers on the border of Mendocino and Humboldt County. We were there for about a month before Jimmy just stopped talking to me for no apparent reason.

Eventually, he got his ex-girlfriend from high school to join the corps and come to Leggett. She was so sweet. I remember talking to her after she had been there for a few months. she was all upset and frustrated that Jimmy was always so critical and bossing her around all of the time.

I, on the other hand, met another guy there and we started dating. He wasn't bossy, he was just messed-up in as many different ways as I was. Not a good combination, we two. We stayed together on and off, and moved around all over the place before finally breaking-up for good in 1988.

It took me years and ever so much emotional work on my part to finally be able to have a healthy relationship, starting in my mid-forties. There were always clues early on in every relationship that it wasn't going to work, but I either ignored them, or was sure I could and should change or cut off those parts of myself that didn't work with the other person. For the first time in my life, I haven't had to do that for John. Sad that it took so long in my life, but I'm glad that it eventually happened.

People always say they wish they could go back in time and relive their youth, knowing what they know now. I don't think I would. With as many horrible mistakes I've made in my life, I wouldn't want to go back there without being able to experience all of that for the first time. I wouldn't want to experience that time without that innocence and ignorance...Mostly, though, I can't imagine having to hang out with all of those other messed-up people in their late teens and early twenties in 1985 without my head exploding.