Year: 2018

Edda’s morning plait:

******

Vince and I tackled my parents’ weed patch.  Got cited by the HOA this past week.

I’m not sure it looks better.

Vince’s final grades care coming in for the spring term.  I will tell you what gave me an Asian mom heart attack this term, the thing that I had to step completely away from and enforce peace and tranquility upon myself.  The spring term is made up of two quarters, the general set up is that if you get two adjacent grades in either quarter, you get the higher grade.  Hence A going to B is an A for the semester and B going to A is also an A.    The quarter grades do not go to colleges, only the semester grades.  My personality would be to work hard the first half of the semester, ensure the A and then you don’t have to worry about the 2nd half of the semester.  Vince does not have my personality.  He’s a little more cowboy which just kills me.  He says he wants to be a chemical engineer (which I have kind of felt both pleased because he thinks what his parents do is kinda cool, and also kind of horrified because chemical engineers tend to live near big factories full of vats of chemicals that smell bad.  I think he has talent in creative writing (well, he needs some help with spelling and capitalization and grammar (as do I)), but am I going to push the writerly life? uhhh, no, I don’t think so).  Anyways, this year he took his first chemistry course.  Cool!  Easy! is what I heard from him.  Fine, I love chemistry.  Avogadro’s number, the beauty of the periodic table, acid/bases, etc.  All fun things.  So he heads into the final big exam of the first quarter in spring semester.  He tells me he has a solid A – like a 92 or something (I have long, long abandoned checking his grades electronically, I philosophically believe it’s his own deal.  But really, it would just drive me crazy to check every day – I know myself.) and that he knows everything on the review packet.  He comes home from the exam – smiles and says it was easy peazy and I congratulate him and promptly forget about it.  I mean, it’s chemistry.  It should be easy for him.  Two days later, he comes to me and tells me he failed the exam, thus plunging his grade into the mid 80s – a B. (Privately I’m baffled, at the height of my academic capabilities I could, to within +/- three points, predict how well I did on an exam as I was doing the exam.  Ask any earnest, diligent student and they will tell you how a 96 feels different than a 92 feels different than an 88 – (though I never knew what an 18 felt like until I took statistical mechanics at C*lt*ch with Jeremy as my TA.  awkward.  we were not yet in love then, I didn’t even speak to him (although clearly evidenced from the 18, I should have gone to office hours) Regarding that era, Jeremy always fondly remembers how beautiful my handwriting was on the problem sets.  He never mentions the how well I did on the problem sets, lol.).  How can Vince possibly not differentiate the feeling between doing well on an exam and failing an exam?)  I’m like – dude, if a test is worth 20% of the grade, that’s a lot!  A lot!  If you want to go to a good ChemE program, you can not possibly get a B in the intro to chemistry course.  It might not have been my finest parenting moment.  So, to get the A in the semester, he needed to get an A the 2nd half.  Fast forward to the 75% point in the semester, he gets a C on the mid-quarter exam, (also with the same attitude, super easy, I know all the stuff, I got the review packet, etc.)  I stand there like – OMG, he’s going to get a B in chemistry.  The subject in which both parents have advanced degrees from very reputable colleges and have spent a lifetime studying and working on. The subject in which he says he wants to major in.   Everyday I look at things that talk chemical structures/formulas, hydrophobicity, catalysts, acid numbers.  Everyday I refer to the periodic table (well, in my head, I don’t actually look at the periodic table very much anymore because it is almost like the fingerprints on my fingers). This is when I decide to let it go – I actually had to decide to physically leave the room if I was about to say anything about chemistry class.  I let him take care of it – no yelling, checking, freaking out or demands from me.  No frantic tutoring about how to do logs to find the pH of a solution. This was supremely not easy for me – I did freak out a lot to Jeremy who told me not to freak out (insert long discussions about how he got Cs in chemistry in high school and now he’s like the super expert on biofuels with nice shiny degrees, to affirmative action (both gender and race), to white/asian privilege, to my own very mixed feelings about how hard I worked in high school/college and had 100% focus on grades, to discussions about what the most important things are to accomplish as a parent – what is our role exactly?, to honestly can we afford $70K a year anyways?)  What’s the worst that can happen from getting a B in chemistry?  Really, not much, I guess.  (one would think that having a child like Edda would promptly relieve me of demanding any As from any of my other children, but somehow this isn’t true (you know when babies are thought of in the ether as mystical, cute amorphous blobs of people and and one gets asked do you want a boy or a girl? and the right answer is it doesn’t matter as long as it’s healthy?  yeah, that and one that gets and A in chemistry, lol.) – maybe the exact opposite is true. So he rides into the big final exam yesterday, with, I swear, an 89 in the class.  I can not believe that this is going to have to come down to the last exam on the last day.   But to his credit, he pulled it off, got 100 on the final exam – pulled it up to an A.  He woke up this morning, a Saturday, and walked into my bedroom told me about it after seeing the grade posted online and I gave him a high five.  He walked back to his room.  I sighed a long sigh.

******

This was the last woods orienteering of the season, Vince didn’t go last week – he promised to go this week.  I know he doesn’t want to do this, but he indulges me.  I had to arrange for Kitachi to come and care for Edda.  Initially, I was going to take Edda and have her do the beginner course with me, but the beginner course had some stairs in it and I didn’t think Edda & I could manage that.  And, it was pouring, pouring rain which I can’t subject Edda to.  Vince and I were going to do different courses – him an easier one, me a harder one.  But it was almost a mile of hiking to the start of both courses on a trail that had turned, in the downpour, into a minor river and he was flagging.  Complaining about not feeling well, of his back hurting, etc.  Saying that he just wanted to go back to the car and wait there for me.  I urged him to start his course, that I would help him find his first control.  We walked around for 20 minutes and couldn’t find it.  It was slippery, still raining and his heart/head wasn’t in it.  It was clear then to me that no one was going to complete any course and that we should just try to keep the mood light and the outing happy.  We had different maps, but we decided to stick together and use the maps in an overlapping manner to try and find a hodge-podge of controls, all out of order, but in the order that we might stumble on them.  We at many points asked each other – you’re navigating, right?  I have no idea where we are and then the other person would say – no, I’m not navigating.  I thought you were navigating.  And then we’d stop and look at each other and then try to look at the map and figure out where we were.

******

Jeremy, on the other coast, is enjoying absolutely perfect weather on a bike ride up Mt. Diablo.

We used to own two pieces of rolling luggage, one from Land’s End and one from LL Bean.  The Land’s End one broke down the last trip we took (the zipper pulled out of its track) and so I told Jeremy to go spend some time and buy a new one.  I suggested the hip Away luggage (suggested by Lifehacker), but he picked TravelPro, the ones flight attendants use.  While he was packing this morning, he was using the LLBean one and getting all frustrated that all his stuff wouldn’t fit into the rolling suitcase and I asked – you aren’t going to use the new one?  So he pulled the new one out (dorky as it is) and managed to stuff all of his gear into the the TravelPro one (there is extensive compression strapping going on in there).  He is not a light packer.  Of course he would fit all his stuff into this new rolling bag because he looks exactly like the guy on the attached tag.  We don’t compromise on anything here in the Lee-Martin household.  It’s only the best in here. 

I asked if he needed a ride to the Metro – given that that carry on bag must weigh at least 40 pounds.  He said – it’s the last day of bike-to-work month, I gotta at least try to bike to the metro.  So I watched him bungee cord his luggage to his commuter bike and didn’t hear from him again.  I guess he made it to work.

******

I went to see Vickey today in Fairfax.  This was the day we decided to see On Chesil Beach the movie before it exited the theaters. It was a delightful afternoon which started with lunch and ended with bubble tea and ice cream. 

******

I came home and then picked up Edda from aftercare.  I fed her some dinner and tucked her into bed and ducked out of the house for about an hour (asking Vince to “watch” over Edda basically meaning if the house caught on fire, please haul her out of the house) to go to a housewarming party at the Rockville cemetery.  I recently ran into some nursing friends at the climbing gym and they are renting the caretakers house at the cemetery.  I couldn’t resist going and seeing them and checking the place out.  Lots of climbers at the party, talking about crimp strength. 

I’m not my best self these days.  I want to stay in bed.  I did stay in bed for a few moments today. Jeremy is leaving tomorrow for California for his work planning retreat for 8 days and I’m sulking the 48 hours before he leaves. It’s going to be a doozy of a week here in Rockville and I’m upset that I’m going to do what I’m going to do for a week on my own and I’m also upset at myself for being upset because it’s just regular stuff.  No one is sick, no one is in crisis.  I just have like graduations, dr appointments, interviews, family visiting, airport pickups, etc. etc.  It’ll be fine.  It’ll be fine. Can I talk myself into saying that it’s going to be super fun? It’s going to be super fun!  You can do it Doris! 

******

I went to my 2nd acupuncture appointment today which included the cupping session which I’m totally skeptical about.   I’m actually skeptical about the whole thing, but whatever.  I’m just going.  I had a different acupuncturist today than last time, so all the cups went in different places.  This time I had cupping on my back and because it came out so dark, the practitioner said I had the most toxins there.  It’s a little funny explaining my problem to her.  She’s like – OK your hamstring hurts, what can’t you do?  I told her the my hamstring can do like 99% of all the things hamstrings need to do, I just can’t run 100-400 meters as fast as I can and I can’t run 4-5 miles at a time at an elevated sustained speed which is what I want to do.  She kind of looked at me and said, well maybe you should stop doing that.  Then I tried to explain to her that sometimes when one runs pretty fast (especially through the woods), you can get a certain feeling like you are an animal.  You know how you see a deer run gracefully through the forest and they can do it so quickly and effortlessly?  You can feel that way too and it’s fun.  Then she asked if running was my job and I said that it was not and that when I said “running fast”, I only meant fast for me since I run slower than your average high school cross country runner.  Then she asked if I was training for anything and I said not really.  And then she seemed totally confused and left it at that.

I showed Vince my back when he got home from school (he said – woah!) and I asked him to take a photo of my back because I couldn’t see the cupping marks and I was curious to see where the toxins had left my body – he took the photo and then he thought it would be a good idea to make a smiley face on my back.  That’s no instagram filter, that is Sharpie on skin.

******

Once people know I quilt, I get little piles of scraps of fabric.  I got a whole bunch from a person who runs Edda’s aftercare program.  She gave me a whole set of matched fabric!  I have an idea for it.

Such a beautiful week for running!  I’m not running well these days, but I couldn’t resist yesterday morning.  I found this fallen baby bird on the sidewalk.  🙁 I passed my elementary school setting up for field day.  I remember my own field days on the same field almost 40 years ago now. 🙂

******

To make up for the fact that I’m not running much, I joined the local rock climbing gym and I’m learning how to boulder.  My instruction comes from 1. the beginner class given at the gym and 2. youtube videos.   I go a few times a week and my hands end up all chalk-y and sore.  I’m learning that the trick to climbing is to expend as little energy as possible (especially your arms).  Use your legs!  And to only use your big toes which are squashed into a shoe that is 3 sizes smaller than one’s regular street shoe size. I still expend a lot of energy on even the simplest of routes.  Then I have to rest.  I probably should take off my rings, but I’m scared if I take them off then I will promptly lose them.  (you see the missing diamond chip that I got from weightlifting).  The climbing gym is intimidating to me.  It’s not something I walk into and say – these are my people!  And it sort of violates one of my tenents of exercise – the cheap tenent, the monthly fee is higher than I want to pay.

******

Vickey and I finished the 2nd book of our two person book club.  We had a fantastic time discussing this book – V loved it, I was a little indifferent towards it, but the discussion afterwards was fun & lively.  Its a book about an unconsummated wedding night. The language was lovely, the plot – meh (though V loves more character development books).  We are hoping to see the movie in the theater before it exits (it’s doing really badly, it opened two weeks ago and probably won’t make it through the weekend…). 

******

Graduation parties a few days ago, now to the other end.  Attended a baby shower today.  I gave the most practical, most un-cute, most nurse-like gift – the in-ear baby thermometer.  lol.

******

This is how Jeremy fits in 1000 miles in a month:  he gets up at 5 am and leaves the house at 5:20 am while I’m still sleeping and then rides 60 miles to work getting in at 9:30 am at work.  I barely notice.  Sometimes he leaves early from work and comes home 20-30 minutes after the regular time.  I notice this more, but it’s not so bad.  Here’s the sunrise from his ride today.

Jeremy left early on Sunday morning for a quick bike ride before it started really raining.  I had Edda – that girl!  She can sure sleep in these days.  We traded at 10 am when Jeremy came home soaking wet (because it did pour) and then I went out into the woods where I got bitten by 10,000 mosquitos and found myself traversing large swamps where I was shin deep in water where I could not clearly make out the bottom.

******

Vince stayed home and made dinner for Sunday night dinner.  We wanted to host a large party and had invited not only the Martins, but some of my family as well, but one by one folks cancelled on us so by the time I got home at 3 pm, the boys were like – we have all this fish and rice and it’s just us.

So a quick text to our next door neighbors brought them over and we had pretty much the same sized party we were expecting with the food that we were expecting, just with different people.  Smaller people.  Louder people.  I forget how loud little kids can be.  So much stomping.  Some temporary crying.  Lots of exploring. By the time they left all the cushions were off the couches (and the couches somehow got shifted around).  There might have been a pillow fight.  It was actually good timing because Kate and Chris just sold their house and are moving a few weeks – so a sort of good bye party for them. 

******

After the dinner (which was early and quick b/c of the small children), I made a quick stop at Kisa’s graduation party.  I did not know many people at this party, so I sat in the middle of all the high school seniors.  I hung out there and just watched them talk to each other.  It’s kind of fascinating.  So grown up!  My friends have kids who are adults now.  I learned about teenage shenanigans from the other mothers at this party.  Apparently once you turn 18, one can AirBnB a place and just host a party there.  Hmmmm…interesting. 

I plaited Edda’s hair this morning.  First summer ‘do – all the hair up off the neck, tightly constrained.

******

In a probably unwise parenting move, I had signed Vince up to take his first SAT this morning right after the Kendrick Lamar concert.  (He got home at 1 am, Maxi barked her head off waking us all up, he had a great time.  There were lots of people smoking pot, but not him.) This is primarily a baseline SAT which is discretionary, and I kind of hinted that maybe he could skip it earlier in the week, but on Wed, he was like – no, I’m up for it.  It was a slightly different story when I tried to nudge him awake at 7 am.  I signed him up for it in the wake of all our college trips this spring.  I will admit that this spring was tough for me (and Vince) college-wise and figuring out what kind of parent I want to be through this whole college admission process.  I have the stereotypical Asian-mom in me and I could see it coming out in many ways this spring to the detriment of my relationship with Vince.  A lot of college admission is wrapped up in my own ego – where the status of the college can be a quick shorthand for how excellent of a parent I am. And, of course, I want to be the most excellent parent. It’s also wrapped up in the fact that I get to do it only once, when I thought I would get to do the whole thing twice.  So I had to take many, many steps back and take a look at what I wanted to do the last two years I get to parent Vince at home.  I know what I want to do, I know what things I want to show him, I know the relationship I want between us.  Of course, one would think that I could calmly do this, but it is not true. 

Jeremy & I sat in the car waiting for him to finish the exam.  We thought we’d take him out to lunch to celebrate.  Maybe celebrate isn’t the right word.

******

Vince was tired and just wanted to head on home, so we dropped him off and went to our neighbor’s house where he was hosting a common cause gathering.  A short speech by Jamie Raskin, our rep.  And I ate a lot of BBQ pulled pork. 

I spent the morning with Soojung and Alice in the PICU at Johns Hopkins.  Alice is there recovering from her spinal fusion she had on Tuesday.  I got to see Alice start eating and get transferred from the bed to sitting.  All good things.  The PICU at Hopkins is phenomenal – large rooms, lots of natural light (see photo above), great nursing staff.  I can’t believe that Soojung says this, but she feels most relaxed in the PICU because the nursing staff is 1:1, so someone is in there every 10-15 minutes checking on something or helping Alice with her respiratory stuff.  So Soojung feels comfortable enough to sleep soundly at night.  Once on the regular floor, where the staffing is 4:1, the she feels like she has to be more awake and alert to advocate for Alice because the nurses are have more patients to take care of – so if Alice needs something right away, she has to track the nurse down.  Even though the PICU is phenomenal and Alice is doing well and I know all the kids there are getting excellent care, it is still quite something – walking past rooms and rooms of little, tiny kids who are working so hard to get better and their sleep-deprived parents.

******

I got home and picked up Vince and his friend Sam and shuttled them to the metro so they could head downtown to Jeremy’s office. A few months ago, Jeremy overheard one of his young, hip coworkers lament that she really wanted to go to the Kendrick Lamar concert tonight, but she didn’t have a car and the concert venue was in the middle of nowhere.  Jeremy said – well you can borrow our car if you take two 16 year old boys and that is how Vince and Sam are going to the concert without us!  Thank goodness we don’t have to go to the concert.  So loud.  So Jeremy drove into work today in our car (which he never does) and then we sent the boys in on the Metro to his work to meet up with his coworker and our car.  I did what an old-lady mother does and gave them all foam earplugs which I insisted they take with them.

******

Finally, I ended the day with Edda’s pick up from aftercare where I got to pet the resident therapy dog, Ysette!

I feel a gentle resistance to doing anything these days.  Do I want to go to work? No.  Do I want to make dinner? No.  Do I want to snuggle with my children? No.  Do I want to go get ice cream? No.  Do I want to answer email? No. But do I do these things?  Yes!  I do all of them.  Well except for the ice cream because, really, I’m not exercising enough to get ice cream everyday. I’m not sure why I feel this way – maybe it’s a whisper of my old old depressive tendencies when I wanted (and did) stay in bed all day unable to face the world (this happened even before Edda’s Rett diagnosis, I think the strongest and most protracted occurrence of this happened in my mid 20s).  Now that feeling is so reduced to the slightest of tugs – I can usually redirect myself into doing what I’m suppose to be doing, though sometimes I do still tuck in under the covers. 

******

Alice is had her scoliosis surgery at JH on Tuesday, so we are trying to entertain Soojung during her long hours at the hospital.  Who’s idea was it to Facetime?  Or Facebook messenger video? 

*******

Jeremy spent an unbelievable 63 hours on his bike in May.  1000 miles.  Somehow I had wrapped my head around the 1000 miles, but the time!  So much time!  This amount of time seems to indicate that he spent no time at home this month with me, but I didn’t feel like he was away more than usual. 

******

Lyme disease?  No.  It’s cupping.  I can’t believe I had cupping done today.  I found an acupuncturist who takes my insurance and is close to the house (my old acupuncturist is unreliable only in the sense that he is a man of leisure and travels a lot).  I’m trying to fix my injured hamstring (which has been slightly injured for months now), but I’ve resisted (surprised?  I’m not) going to anyone – no physical therapy, no acupuncture (which Paul always suggests), no nothing.  I like doing nothing. But I also like to run, so I reluctantly set up this appointment.  The acupuncture included a cupping session & a 15 minute massage.  I asked – so what’s the deal with cupping?  The clinician replied that it was to remove toxins from the body.  I guess that was the answer that I was expecting.  My mysterious toxins.  Also the masseuse (after pulling on my ears and asking if it hurt…I said, well you are pulling on my ear, so that isn’t fantastic) was telling me that my liver was full of toxins and that I needed them removed by having a longer massage session for an extra fee, I politely declined.  I had to go back to work and anyways, my liver is suppose to be full of toxins that it’s removing from my body.  It’s fine.  I’m ready to be surprised tomorrow, we’ll take the leg on a test run.  Maybe. 

Memorial day, Jeremy and I went out on a mid-day date where we saw RBG which was fine.  It was interesting and generally cheerful & funny, but I was in a bad mood all day, so I think that dragged my reaction of the movie down.  We sat very close to the front of the theatre and so it took up our whole field of view and we had to watch with our necks slightly crooked.  I’ve for sure turned into an old person because now I always bring foam earplugs to any movie and wear them to protect my ears from the loudness of the sound.  I usually reserve them for only action movies, but I guess now I use them for regular just speaking movies.  We went to H-mart on the way home to make some ramen (inspired by the YouTuber Vlog after College) which we all enjoyed.

As the short work week started, we went to see Edda’s surgeon first thing this morning.  We did a set of X-rays and then a quick appointment and everything looks great!  Everything has healed well and I said – textbook?  and he said – yes!  And then he knocked on wood.  Now he considers it pretty stable and we can come back yearly…

Then we went to Edda’s transitional meeting to high school at her current middle school.  Her whole middle school team told us how well she’s been doing and how they are so sad that she’s leaving them.  I wish I had asked for a group selfie, but I did not.  It’s been a nice three years, I do love her teacher and he’s been her teacher for the whole time we’ve been in middle school.  I enjoy that continuity.  We met the coordinator for the high school team and she told us what to expect from a regular school day for Edda.  I asked if it was OK to go visit the high school now to meet the teachers, but it turns out they are expanding the program from 2 classrooms to 3 classrooms and one of the teachers is retiring and so they’ve hired two new teachers and they are not there yet, they are teaching at other schools right now.  Edda will go to my old high school, Wootton, and she’ll go to a program where she’s out in the community most days and they are going to try to teach her to do a job.  I know, it’s weird.  I have no intention of Edda having a job, I want her to have a life of leisure where she will watch movies, drink beer through a straw and take naps next to people who love her, but whatever, they are going to try to get her become task oriented… I dunno.  I’m more worried about her graduation ceremony which happens in the middle of the day in a few weeks and I’m trying to figure out how to make it happy & not too sad like the class photos.  I think I can ask for her to go first or last in the whole line of getting diplomas.  Maybe I can bring Vince to walk her across the stage? With a whole bunch of balloons?  Maybe I could walk her out on stage.  But if I walk her, there won’t be anyone in the audience to cheer for her.  Jeremy’s out of town and I’m afraid I might bail and not go.  Isn’t that terrible?  I can be terrible sometimes. You need to understand that I know none of the kids or the parents at her middle school.   Like no one.   This is not my neighborhood school, so these are not my neighbors.  She’s the only 8th grader in her teacher’s class, she’s going to be the only special needs kid walking or rolling across the stage.  It could be really kind of traumatic for me.  Ack, you know, usually these things that I think will be traumatic end up being OK.  I’ll figure it out.

Jeremy made GABA rice tonight in the super smart rice cooker.  My bowels feel all healthy and extra regulated.

One of my favorite parts of learning something new is all the extra vocabulary that goes along with it.  I’ve given up learning a 2nd language – I can tell my memory even for my first language is slipping, slipping – but I’m mostly ok with learning new English words.  In quilting, there are mitered corners, chambray, bias, English paper piecing.  In orienteering, there are reentrants, spurs, attack-points, handrails.  Jeremy & Edda and I had gone to packet pickup for this race and I was reading through the packet – telling Jeremy that 1. this was not a race and 2. he needed to stop at every stop sign and 3. that the sag wagon could pick him up if he faltered.  (It was not really a race because they’ve had serious accidents in the past and people got angry about fast bikers zooming through not-closed off roads.  And yet.  There are posted, timed, chipped results.).  I told him that Edda and I were his own personal sag wagon and what did SAG stand for exactly?  He didn’t know – I looked around.  It stands for support and gear.  I said that I had no gear and that maybe we were just his cheering squad and that I thought in triathlon they would call me & Edda sherpas.  Then he said in biking those people were called:
soigneurs.  Ah, back to French.  Soigneurs, people who take care of you.  I think we take care of each other. 

We settled into the hotel room.  Edda falling promptly asleep between her bedrails.

Wounded toe in a little band aid.

Woke up really early and made our way into the mountains about 15 minutes away from the hotel.

I was going to just drop off Jeremy and head back into town, but there was only one opening into the parking lot which was one car wide so I couldn’t leave until everyone had started because they couldn’t reverse traffic until the race started, so we hung around an extra hour in the lot.

When he signed up for this race months ago, he was in less good shape than he is now, so they had assigned him to the 2nd wave.  But he petitioned to get moved to the first wave because he could tell from the weekend rides and who was assigned the first wave that he needed to be moved up.  I’m telling you, this is serious business.  Off he goes!

After everyone started, Edda and I headed back into town to a breakfast at  Panera.

And then a lazy morning at the hotel. 

Then I drove back to the race start at about 1:30 pm where I found Jeremy just having finished.  The race is called Mountains of Misery because you spend 60 miles on relative flats and then the last 40 are hills with the finish on the very top of a mountain.  Then you take a bus down the mountain and they’ll bring your bike down on a different bus.  Being Jeremy’s soigneur means, primarily, that I listen to hours of discussion of race strategy, route elevation, other people’s performance, his own bike qualities, professional bicyclist’s performances, etc. etc. So the initial race strategy was, as he considers himself a good hill climber, to stay with the peloton the first 60 miles and then be strong on the hills.  He had a few people in mind to catch/keep up with, etc.  My only advice was to please not do anything dangerous and crash somewhere out there.

After the race, we waited for his bike for a long time to be shuttled back to us.  Maybe an hour.  During this hour, Jeremy said that he didn’t think that he’d do this race in the future.  He said that it was too far from the house and it wasn’t his kind of race.  He likes to start off strong at the beginning of a race and fall apart as he gets closer to the finish line (fly & die) and this race isn’t conducive to that.  It’s a sit and kick race because you are conserving energy in the first 60 miles with the peloton and then you have a ton of hills which are slow and hard and mostly alone.  He said he felt like he was worried the whole time about managing his energy reserves and that he couldn’t kick into a higher gear and therefore, at the end, he felt it wasn’t a full race effort.  He said the race in NY a few weeks ago was much better – higher average effort throughout.

we waited a lot.  The bike got delivered and we headed home.

Jeremy, who was not driving, enjoyed stretching out his legs, analyzing his Strava splits, planning future rides.  A few hours into the drive, he found out the results.  He came in 12th.  You see the guy who came in 11th?  He’s a former olympian in kayak – competed in three summer games culminating in a 9th place finish at the 96 games in Atlanta.  I’m like – dude you came in right after an Olympian, you absolutely cannot be bummed about your perceived effort.  He countered – but it’s in kayak and he’s 10 years older than me!  I’m like – really?  you’ve got to be kidding me, last time I heard kayaking takes a bit of aerobic capacity.  And then he conceded that maybe the NY race was an anomaly because he was on high dose of steroids for the Bell’s Palsy (therapeutic exemption!) and maybe he won’t feel that way on any other race ever again. 

I was 10 miles into the drive home when I had the hunch that I had lost my wallet.  I pulled over and we searched the van and it wasn’t there.  When I first arrived at the pick up site, Jeremy had asked if I had my wallet to buy a race jersey.  I had pulled out my wallet and held it in my hand as we wandered around the parking lot for an hour.  Then I remembered putting it on top of the van as I loaded Edda as we were getting ready to leave and dammit, I left it on top of the car as we drove away.  We drove back to the parking lot, asked all the people and left phone numbers and was feeling very discouraged that I’d have to replace everything in the wallet.  We started driving home, without the wallet.  Jeremy was like – just keep looking on the road, maybe we’ll see it.  And we did see it, in the middle of the highway about a mile from the parking lot.  It had gotten run over and destroyed.  We picked up the wallet (it was a relatively quiet freeway) and then I walked the shoulder and the median and picked up more than half of the cash and most of my cards.

My license is still OK.  It’s a wonderful feeling to have found the wallet!  It isn’t a mystery anymore what happened to it.  I lost about $40.  I hope someone finds it and buys something fun with it, though it’s on the side of a freeway, I’m not sure who will find it.

Now I finally get to buy a new wallet.  I bought this wallet at the Lot 1 in Singapore in 2006 right outside our apartment complex.  I remember I was very sad because of Edda’s recent diagnosis and I wanted to buy something to cheer me up and I bought this orange wallet.  I’ve thought many times of replacing it, but it still served my needs and I didn’t want to give up the memory.  But it is done now.  After being run over, it’s ripped all over – unusable.  I’ll have to get a new Costco card.