Bicycle, bicycle . . .

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Pretty please?

Before I re-started my running life, I wondered why it was that so many of my new co-workers were either marathoners or some other form of endurance sport competitors. While training for my first race, though, I realized that that marathon (or for me, 5k or 1/2 marathon) was the perfect metaphor for the teacher life. I pluck along each summer reading a teacher book here, writing a curriculum unit there. If I’m especially ambitious I take a class or two. I run, swim, and kayak.  I cart Colby from camp to camp and force him to go to the beach with me. We eat late because we are busy fitting everything in. The last couple of weeks in August, I taper. Everything slows down. I’m still doing the things I usually do, but more purposefully, much more slowly. Everything I do is aimed toward the general goal of beginning the school year with a reserve of energy, patience, good will and good habits.

This school year, finally, the starting gun was less intimidating. Like a smart athlete, I had goals that I worked toward all summer long (organization and routines) and I have been able to see my, um, training, pay off. I’m waxing poetic about this because I’m proud of the work I’ve done, and so far, proud of the results. I tend to be one of those “fuck it I do the best I can” people, which really isn’t as effective as I think it is. I’m all for cutting yourself a break, but I needed to cultivate an attitude with more push and less couch. This has not been easy. However, if I can sustain this pace throughout the year … awesome things will happen.

Really though, I’m nervous about the 1/2 coming up at the end of the month. I’ve struggled with a weird left tibia shin splint since the week before my last 1/2, and my training has been on and off. I’ve integrated more yoga and bike riding into my training and I shelled out an obscene amount of money for a pair of new (ohsodreamy) running shoes. I’m trying to build strength and endurance without killing myself, because I reallyreallyreally want to break 2:30 this time. And now, my knees really, really hurt. So I’m going for one good bike ride per week.

Which brings me to the constant playing of Queen in my head. Because really? I want to ride my bicycle. I ride this gorgeous 7-mile loop right from my house and when I’m done? I can still walk! My knees don’t creak every time I attempt to lift my leg to say, walk to the bathroom. I pass four horse farms, ride up and down challenging hills, and observe the subtle seasonal changes.  I have no plans to abandon my running life, but . . . I want to ride my (purple $20 yard sale little girl’s mountain) bicycle. The only thing better than riding that 7 mile loop on my yard sale bicycle would be riding the same loop on an actual road bike. In a pair of bike shorts with some, uh, strategic padding.

I want to go back out again right now, but I won’t. Thunder is rumbling, and I have a long run tomorrow, homework and housework today. And the looming presence of the Sugarloaf Marathon next Spring? I’ll keep the tab open on my computer, but will wait and see how the Maine Marathon 1/2 ends. Hmmm.

Summer’s End

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Aren’t you glad I didn’t say ‘Summer’s Eve’. Bahahaha. I’m seriously the funniest person I know.

But seriously. It seems that this year, as summer ends, I am looking forward to the comfort of a schedule while mourning the loss my of mid-morning runs and watching of the  Nate Birkus show.

I’m less reluctant to return to school this year, not just because I have the worlds best colleagues, but because I finally have enough years behind me to relax. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still as anxious as ever, I just don’t feel like throwing up at the thought of the 8:05 bell. Weird. It’s just that now I realize that I can’t prepare for it all, but I’m pretty damned prepared. It’s a good feeling that I don’t get that often. So I’m enjoying it.

We’ve wrapped up this last weekend of summer quite nicely. Actually, it’s been all kinds of awesome. Let’s work backwards. As I sit by the fire, enjoying the contrasting warmth from the hearth and chill from the window, Matt is off grocery shopping. I’ve been clipping away at syllabi and lesson plans and rubrics and so forth for the last few days, and he’s really stepped up to help out. Grateful I am. We’ve been home all day, alternately puttering, working and sitting by the fireplace with the dogs.  I saw an old and dear friend at Mass this morning, and was so glad that I pried my fuzzy, post-champagne head out of bed to go. And really, I’m always happy to go. There is something about walking into that beautiful building with a squirmy tween who can’t stand for me to put my arm around him and leaving with him leaning on my shoulder. If that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is.

But the champagne head, that came from last night. One of my baby cousins married her sweetheart and hosted the most family-friendly and FUN reception at a local bowling alley. The bride and groom are family people, certainly demonstrated by their choice to put family (namely: kiddos) first on their special day. We had such fun visiting with family and friends and remarking on the very interesting ways in which our family trees intersect . . .  I’m not sure how things went down after Matt took us through the McD’s drive-through, but I woke up at 3 a.m. to find both dogs in bed with us, both of them wearing glow stick necklaces leftover from the wedding. I guess he got bored after I fell asleep. I earned my sleep, too, because I worked straight through yesterday. The only breaks I took were to ride (10 miles! Matt tried to take me off road, which wasn’t my cup of tea. I swore. I almost fell multiple times. I threw my bike. We went back to the trail shortly after) and run (2 miles. no exclamation point). Colby was with my parents, so I had the luxury of being in a quiet house and knowing that my kiddo was being spoiled silly. This led to extreme productivity. Again, weird.

In short, this has been the most fucking fantastic weekend I’ve had in a long, long time. I will need to hold this day in my pocket like a worry stone, and every time another weekend or day or moment takes a shit turn, I’ll remember that they all won’t be that way. Most, but definitely not all.

I have a busy evening of baking and cooking and tea drinking ahead of me. Off to see friends tomorrow and am so excited I may barely be able to sleep.

xoxo

Zen and the Art of Home Repair

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Image courtesy of acousticzen.com

 

I’m trying to be rational here. I’m breathing the three-part breath I learned in yoga class. I’m really pissed off that my little foray into home renovation isn’t working out quite like I planned.

Here was the vision: A couple of coats of eco-friendly paint stripper would reveal the beautiful wood hiding beneath 50 or so years of paint on my stairs. I would replace a few boards on the up- and down- stairs landings. A pass through with the sander would prepare it for a quick day of staining and poly-ing. Three days later it would be finished. There. A week tops, right? Oh, the naivete.
Here is the reality: Spent three entire days of April vacation stripping and scraping. Two super-sized bottles of ‘safe’ and one, uh, unsafe bottle of paint stripper. Fast-forward to say, two or so days before school starts. One night I put up plastic sheeting and tape the upstairs doors shut. I locate all the needed materials and am SET to sand and stain (because yes, I do think it can all happen in one day). Next entire day sanding. I beg Matt for help. I tell him that I have learned my lesson. I won’t begin projects without his explicit agreement. When he tells me I don’t want to do it, I will at least hear him out. I will not, on any condition, do this again if he will just.fucking.help. We sand and sand and are covered in dust all day. We don’t have a bad time, considering. I find endless stains and cracks in the wood we uncover.

Early progress

Now it’s 4 a.m. and I have a day of driving 6 hours to pick up Colby, somehow making it to yoga class, dinner at my parents’, and finishing the sanding and cleaning. Part of me wants to go to Home Depot right now just to get a head start on the day.

Here’s my lesson: No person can truly do it all without help. Making peace with the flaws in the wood is an exercise in making peace with myself. Oh, and I should start a project that simply must be finished by September 4th by, maybe, July or something. Not August 25th. A little lesson in pacing here for me.

 

Adventure Time!

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Do you get it? The pop-culture kiddie show reference? I just knew you would.
Once upon a time, two young women spent their early adulthood adventuring together. At first, most of their time was spent walking a certain un-named someone in the Baby Jogger until he went to sleep – then they would rolllll him into the house and watch Sex and the City re-runs while he slept. Eventually they went back to school and got real jobs. Wouldn’t you know that they managed to find professions with a summer break. They went camping, to Phish shows. They even drank bottles (bottles I tell you) of wine smack in the middle of snow days.

Life was good.
Then life was crazy. They moved and switched jobs and (one of them… ahem) got married.

Finally, they were exhausted and lonely. They missed each other. So they went on an adventure.

oh yeah

You guessed it. I’m talking about myself. And Angie.

We spent last Tuesday exploring Little Wilson Falls in Elliotsville Township. In an unbelievable stroke of luck, we managed to arrive without incident (barring a near-death experience at an intersection in Monson). The area was familiar because My Dear Friend Angie and I, like most who grew up where we did, grew our hiking legs on Borestone Mountain.

Armed with PB & Js, junk food, and bathing suits: we had arrived.

Deceivingly calm, this pool empties into the falls.

It was a textbook August day in Maine: hot, humid and buggy. The climb up was easy enough, and we chose a trail overlooking the falls. Incidentally, we spent a little too much time talking and a little too little time paying attention to our surroundings. We followed a few different trails on the way down (um, which one did we take?).

M.A.T.C. sign-in box

The trail connects with the AT, and we spied a couple of through hikers. One chuckled as we approached a small climb, and I thought he was laughing at our general naivete and school-girl gigglyness. Nope. I have a feeling it was because he knew his buddy was taking a shit in the woods and we were going to come upon him quickly. Just about the time I was ready to ask Angie if she was having some issues, the poor guy emerged from the woods with a tell-tale bag. Question answered.

Lunchtime view

Let me tell you – this is an amazing little hike. I wouldn’t recommend it for most kiddos because of the sheer size of the falls and the very, very long drops. If I had brought Colby with me I would have been picturing traumatic brain injury, broken legs, and potential landing sites for Life Flight.

Snapping a mental picture to get me through a long, January day.

We, Angie and I,  agreed that it had been far too long since we had been on an adventure of any kind. The thing is, what we do tends not to matter. We’ve been stuck in traffic in Hartford for 9 million hours and the time, well, however we spend it, it has the same effect. I think the recipe is something like no husbands + no children + friends who will stop and let you drive if you think you’re going to puke = actually relaxing.  Not a day at the spa relaxing, but relaxing into yourself and a moment without worrying about someone’s health and safety, or worrying whether or not your traveling partner is enjoying the experience. So in February when I’m going out of my mind, will you all remind me of this? K. Thanks.

looking up
looking down 😉
top of the falls
the intrepid Angie gets far closer to the edge than I am comfortable with!

Now. What do you do at the end of a day like this? Well, if you’re me, you get naked in the parking lot because there are no changing rooms in the Maine woods. Then you go swimming.

I was a cheerleader. So what.
I stayed in long enough to numb my entire body.

It was lovely. We meandered home, stopping in Monson at a craft store and in Guilford in search of iced coffee and Dramamine. Funny enough, I arrived home a kinder and gentler mama. Maybe there is a lesson for me here?

A First: Family Vacation

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     We survived the family vacation, a rare but expected occurrence in family life. We drove to Prince Edward Island for a quick (2 full days, 2 1/2 days) summer holiday. For all of my intentions to plan well (avoiding those nasty annoyances of family vacations such as, but not limited to: feelings of slight, unannounced and therefore unmet expectations, and all-around miscommunication), we did not. Oh, we packed well, but that was about it. Where were we to meet for breakfast? No one knew until five minutes beforehand. What did we want to do? No one knew. So this became the vacation in which I learned to, from now on, clearly articulate exactly what I want even if no one else will. In other words, Colby’s not the only one who is growing up. I guess this is good.
     It seems to me like family vacations are like childbirth. You find moments of beauty to remember while the moments of agony fade over the following days, months and years (time entirely dependent upon the amount of discomfort involved).  I distinctly remember a family photograph in which my mother is seated with us three (very young) children on a fountain. She looks like she is going to drown us, herself, or c. all of the above in the fountain directly behind her. Somehow, we went on more vacations after that. Whatever happened must not have been terrible enough to prevent further outings.
     Our vacation wasn’t, of course, perfect. There were tears (mine) and name-calling (all you Dearest). We were together too much and not enough. We did too much, we did too little. At the end of it all, we went together and we survived together. We had fun!
Here are some of my favorite moments.

 

The sole backseat passenger entertains himself wisely, which is to say, quietly.
I exclaimed “we’re crossing the Big, Big bridge!” momentarily forgetting that Colby is, in fact, 11 not 4.
When traveling in other countries, one does well to remember to check the sizes before ordering. In this case, I enjoyed an teeny, tiny coffee when I really wanted an American sized vat of coffee.
Have you ever seen an outdoor (and free) gym? I’m ready to move to the other side of the border!
Biking from Dalvay to Brackley Beach
Ahhh.
Beach Mama = Happy Mama

You are *Here*
I could not get enough of these dunes. Lucky for me, they were everywhere!
Just look at those boys. Can you spot Colby? He’s hiding.
I LOVE cows. While this lady isn’t real (gasp), it seemed like every road I drove down held a clean (don’t ask me how) and picturesque farm dotted with beautiful cows. I love cows.
Waiting for our tour and ice cream at COWS Creamery
I’m ready for school! Visiting the Orwell historic village, and its amazingly preserved village and buildings.

Cow kisses!
Which way, boys?
Someone decided to swap out his appetizers for extra dessert at St. Anne’s Lobster Supper!
A two-person ride home in which I am the passenger drinker, reader, and sleeper. A rare, rare gift.

Family values are a little like family vacations -— subject to changeable weather and remembered more fondly with the passage of time. Though it rained all week at the beach, it’s often the momentary rainbows that we remember.

LESLIE DREYFOUS

I’ll say it. This one night at band camp . . .

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Colby (and his teachers, peers, and counselors) put on the most kick-ass performance as the finale for this summer’s Maine Summer Youth Music camp at the University of Maine.

I am, as you all know, one nervous mama. The funny thing is, even though Colby got himself lost the first day, I always knew that he was in good hands. He was learning and growing and wringing every bit of value out of his all-you-can-eat meal plan at Hilltop Commons.
Since some of you couldn’t be there, I wanted to share a bit of this with you.

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/46330155″>Colby sings.</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user12601700″>Heather J Webb</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/46330154″>Jazz Band</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user12601700″>Heather J Webb</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/46330153″>Chorus Finale</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user12601700″>Heather J Webb</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

Needless to say, I think he’ll go back. 😉

Chime in and let Colby know what you think! Enjoy.

Roasted chickpea panzanella – or the perfect salad.

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You know you want some.

Inspired by Catherine Newman’s chicktons, I set out to make a quick, tasty, wholesome supper for both Colby and myself.  It was a total win, and I assure you that all experiments in my kitchen do not end up as wins.

From Newman’s recipe, I omitted the garlic powder (didn’t have any) and used onion powder instead. I used her stove top method instead of the oven, though I’m tempted to try the oven for a crunchier, snackier snack. Yum. Wanting a one-bowl meal, I cubed up a few day-old slices of this delicious roasted garlic rustic loaf we get at our local grocery. Colby stirred them around a hot cast iron skillet with some olive oil until he got bored. Then we took them off direct heat to finish cooking on their own. In ten years when he regains his attention span I’ll charge him to cook this meal on his own. Until then, it’s a family affair.
Roasted Chickpea Panzanella

(serves two, but can be easily adjusted for more)

1 can organic chickpeas (props to you if you cook your own)

salt and pepper

good olive oil

garlic or onion powder or spices of your choice

Rinse and dry chickpeas (spread over dish towel or paper towel while heating OO). Heat OO in dutch oven, cast iron pan, or heavy-bottomed pan. Add chickpeas – let them hang out a bit before you start stirring them around. Liberally salt and pepper. Toss around the pan a good while till they look crispy and crunchy. Add more salt if needed (kosher or coarse is a good addition). Spread in single layer on paper towel to cool.
Meanwhile, add more OO to pot. Dice a few slices of good, day-old bread and add to hot oil. Toss around till desired crustiness. Take off heat and leave on stove.

Prepare two large bowls. Add whatever fresh, clean produce you have. We went with broccoli, lettuce, a huge tomato a cucumber and a bunch of green onions. Divide bread and chickpeas between the bowls (depending on taste you may have some leftover chickpeas to snack on). Throw a sprinkle of feta or a few crumbles of goat cheese on. Scour the refrigerator for anything that looks good.

Now, on the topic of dressing. This really doesn’t need any, but will accept whatever you put on it, which is a good quality in a salad for family eating, I think. My favorite, though, is to drizzle the salad with a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. Colby is happy to drown it in Wishbone Italian dressing.

Make it. Love it. Catch your kids sneaking leftover roasted chickpeas after they tell you repeatedly that they HATE chickpeas. And hippie food.

Table for two? Right this way. Don’t mind the dog hair!

Heather commandeers the mom van . . . and likes it.

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I’ve been borrowing children. Since it’s easier to switch cars instead of multiple car seats, my friend and I swap keys and kiddos. She goes to work. I pour a large cup of coffee and herd us all out to the porch.

Did I mention I get the minivan with the kids???
Colby is so embarrassed. He says “Mom. Promise me if you have another kid we won’t get a van. Promise me”. I always swore that I would never drive one, but I have to tell you, these things make you feel like you are In Charge. You may actually have control over very little, but strap a couple of kids in a minivan, hop in the drivers seat, and look back. You, my dear sir or lady, are in control. Seriously. I had lines from Invictus (poem not movie) going through my head all day. I am the master of my fate:/I am the captain of my soul.

I don’t know if it is the sheer size of the vehicle or the space that it puts between driver and children. All I know is that I like it. Don’t tell anyone.

 20120719-145909.jpg

No, we were not moving.

 

We spent over an hour on the porch. Playing pentominoes, drinking coffee (and juice).

20120719-145924.jpg

Notice that there is no picture of me at the end of the day, when I lurched out of the house and into my car and drove to music camp in my pajamas at 9:30 p.m. to pick up Colby.

I see the deer and the deer see me.

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We burned our brush pile today. Finally. It was sitting in the exact spot where I wanted to place our much-awaited, hand-me-down pool we’ve inherited from my parents. Needless to say – after unrolling the pool and wrestling with the pool and a garden hose in an attempt to clean said pool – I think burning the brush pile is going to be the easiest part.

I love fires. Not the type that leave destruction and broken hearts, of course. But the ones that you inevitably gather around to do nothing but hang out by the fire.  The best part of burning brush is the sitting, the waiting, the endless poking of the fire and grabs for flaming sticks and always, always, nearly incinerating your eyebrows. After everyone else tired of the fire, I was still out there, in the twilight, beer in one hand, a book in the other. Birds were darting overhead, an owl was hooting in the distance, and the intermittent crack of early holiday fireworks rumbled in the distance. I had pulled up a little corner of heaven on the outskirts of Bangor, Maine.  Then the COOLEST thing happened.

I looked up from my book to check on the fire to see the teeniest little deer face I have ever seen staring me down. It was smack in the middle of a patch of red clover and daisies, clearly enjoying itself and clearly not afraid of me. If this is one of the same deer that keeps eating my garden, oh well. It was to damn cute to worry about the tops of my tomato plants. After five or so minutes of grazing, it meandered toward the woods, white tail up, but certainly in no hurry. As sad as I am to not have pictures, I’m so grateful that I was paying attention and realizing that moment without spending my time digitizing an image.

Later on at least five more came out, but it was dark and I was tending the fire. They fled quickly once they realized I was there, but now that I am inside (writing instead of folding the enormous load of laundry sitting next to me), I am sure they’re right back at it. I just hope they leave my cabbage alone.