Mid-month musings

As the very brief (two weeks!) summer class I'm teaching winds down on Friday, it seems that summer is slipping away all too quickly.  Perhaps it was the trip on the front end of the summer or the fact that I've been so focused on two major events/happenings coming up in August, but I've felt that the days, weeks, and months have quickened their pace this year.  Or maybe it's just that I'm getting older?   Keeping that in mind, and with Friday being my last day of summer school AND the day that we depart for Colorado, it seems timely to jot down a few things.

First of all, on Sunday, it took us 3 bottles of wine, two different steaks and some over-priced potatoes to celebrate our anniversary.  I'll offer up an explanation for what seems terribly wasteful and/or extravagant.  Or gluttonous.  For the wine - the first bottle we opened was bad, which totally sucked because we'd had it hanging around for a while and it should have been a good bottle - so much for aging fine wine!  The second bottle needed a day-and-a-half to "open up" and be drinkable (we drank it last night, not Sunday).  But the third time was charm with a good Cabernet.  Not our usual choice, but it paired nicely with the steak.  As we went through one bottle after another, I did think to myself "I hope that this doesn't serve as a sad metaphor for our marriage!"

As for the steak, we almost never cook steak - and rarely eat it these days.  But, we decided that we'd buy a nice piece of meat and eat at home rather than going out to dinner.  So, we went to the butcher and bought one ribeye, and the butcher halved it horizontally, slicing it so that there were two THIN pieces of steak rather than two thick pieces.  That was nice of him - he wanted us to have equal shares of it, but I really wanted a thick steak, even if the piece was small.  Rather than give back the first steak, we took it, and then decided that we'd get one more steak that the butcher did not cut in half.  I know, I know...  I suppose we could have given the first steak back, but it seemed to be our fault since we did not communicate effectively with the butcher.  The steak that the butcher halved is now in our freezer, and we'll eat it at a later date.  And the steak that we had on Sunday night was pretty damn good.  Finally, the potatoes - we bought them at the farmers' market on Sunday morning, and the price more or less outraged Michael who almost refused to pay for them.  However, the potatoes might have been the best part of the meal - they were amazing!  Overall, it was a great way to celebrate our anniversary, despite some of the mishaps along the way.

Finally, a few other details that have been on my mind.  My students' woeful AP scores?  According to someone who has way more pull/influence/institutional weight than I, they are just fine, so I'm going to stop worrying about them.  Shew!

On to the training for Boulder topic (ad nauseam) - after a few pretty intense weeks for me, I've started the tapering process. Woo-hoo!  Not that I'm tapering 100%, since I still have a few tough days and some long workouts that I'd like to fit in, but after a 46-mile ride followed by a 3-mile run on Saturday, I feel that any major 'pushing' that I do at this point will be too much.  One more thought about that ride - even after 7 years of living in the LA area, the weather continues to confound me.  We had suffered through several days of warmer temperatures around the Pasadena area, so we looked forward to something of a break in Malibu.  But really?  When we went on our ride in Malibu Saturday morning, it was a chilly, damp, foggy morning, and it had barely warmed up by the time we finished up our ride at 10:00 am!  Of course, once we made it back to the east side, the temperatures were right around 90.  On that note, I've made an effort to run in the heat, and it has been slow going!  I'd had an itch to run a bit faster, so last night I pounded out a fast (for me) 10K run.  I had forgotten what sub-9:00 minute miles looked like, let alone sub-8:00 miles!  Nice to reacquaint myself with those speeds!

Not that I'll see anything like that on August 5...

I am reining in the desire to make some sweeping comment about my training or arrive at a premature conclusion.  The more relaxed pace of summer has helped me considerably not freak out too much about training, but I also feel a bit impatient for August 5.  I'd like to focus on a different goal, even if it is smaller and more modest, and I think that I would welcome the change.  I lumped my training for Wildflower and Boulder into one long training season, beginning in mid-January, so I've spent many, many, many months thinking about Boulder, even if I haven't always been training for the event and even if I've had other races on my mind (and legs).

I suppose, what I'm saying, is that I'm almost ready for a loooooooooong break from training and will welcome the change with open arms!

I will, however, miss all of the ice cream that I've been eating these days...

What's rising and converging - crazy dreams

As luck would have it, the two major "events" of my spring happen to fall within a day or two of each other - May 6 and May 8.  I knew this when I signed up for the Wilflower tri, but I decided that I didn't want my students' exam performance to dictate my personal goals.  So, I will be pushing myself on Sunday, and then on Tuesday, I will keep my fingers crossed that my students push themselves and perform well on their exams.  Fun times.  I do work with a motivated and intelligent group of kids, so most of them won't slack off.
Still, if I could have planned it, I would have at least spaced the dates apart by about a week just to give myself some breathing room.  This would be particularly nice as I've started to have weird stress dreams about BOTH!  Last night, for example, I totally had a crazy dream about Wildflower.  I won't go into great detail, but it involved most of my bike and my backpack getting stolen while in what I thought was the transition area.  Seriously - they didn't take the entire bike, just parts of it.  I found the other parts littering the transition area (which wasn't really the Wildflower transition area, but somehow it was to my subconscious).  So, I ended up finding some pieces and thought that I could 'race' but I didn't start until 3:00 pm!  Bizarre, I know.
As for my students' performance, apparently I do have some low-grade (or higher) anxiety there too since I had a dream that several of my best students decided not to take the exam because they were going to try out for American Idol.  Now, this is a show that I have never even watched, but it has embedded itself in my psyche?!
I suppose both of the dates are nearing, and, for both of them, I have dedicated much time and energy.  Ultimately, with both of them, luck plays a large role, so it's a 'wait-and-see' game for a while.  And lots of crazy dreams, it seems!
Speaking of dreams, I'll leave you with this image by Remedios Varo:

Source

Don't be deceived thinking that there is no connection between this painting and my crazy dreams - the title is, after all, "Woman Walking out of the Psychoanalyst".