This face, oh my gosh. This face.

I swear it all begins and ends with this face and by it, I mean life and happiness and my melting heart. Knock on wood he's still into mom hugs.

Right now, this guy has pretty much beat me in the cool contest. He's a lot cooler than I ever was and he hasn't even reached first grade yet. His most current interests are everything to do with Middle Earth. The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, elves, orcs, Tolkienian maps and the one ring to rule them all. He and dad are reading the Hobbit book right now, chapter by chapter in preparation of the movie coming out this winter. Total dad of the year award material right there.

Of course to temper the above literary interest, my little frat boy at heart has also fostered a wee obsession with the Beastie Boys' "License to Ill" album. Most of Sunday, he carried around his "phone" (my old iPod Nano), headphones and tried (comically) to learn all of the words to every song, including the (obscene?) line "I did it like this, I did it like that, I did it with a whistleball bat..."

"Mom," he asks "what's a whisleball bat?"
"Um, they're talking about wiffleball bats and dancing?" Help.

While one of his old teachers gave us a gold star for music enrichment, I'm not sure our mostly laissez-faire attitude when it comes to music will turn around and bite us once Ira can understand what he's listening to.

What else? Check losing a second bottom tooth and learning to tie shoelaces off the developmental list. My baby is almost 6 going on 16.

NECK WATCH 2012!
I had a massage! It got better! And then it got bad again. I need a neck transplant, I think. It only really hurts when I'm standing, sitting or laying down. It's also kind of a vague pain and sometimes fleeting. It's squirrelly for sure. WebMD told me it classifies as chronic pain, but WebMD also told me I have a face-eating tumor. I guess I'm just effed.

I owe this blog a picture piece on our Florida vacation, but I lost my camera chord thing (that's a technical term). That's what's coming out of the Excuse Cannon (patent pending), anyway.

Ails

Ales or ails? Today it's ails. I have a trick neck. Sometimes it hurts really bad, other times I forget I have one. It's sort of short and stubby anyway and retreats into my body, turtle-like in front of cameras. What? It's true!

The best way to describe the pain is that the muscles that hold my head up feel extremely fatigued and I just can't bear to hold my head up any longer. I used to get the same feeling on my 50+ mile bike rides. I don't know what caused it today and it could be a number of things (bike ride last night, slept wrong, mobile phone use, the egronomics of my workstation could be out of whack). It hurts, yes. Though my range of motion is not limited. I feel well enough to work, but so annoyed by the fatigue that it makes work hard to concentrate on. I look healthy, tired maybe, but I feel awful. However necessary, not having visual pain makes taking time off seem frivilous to me.

I used to see a chiropractor for it. I got everything cracked up and then he told me to get my workstation evaluated for egronomics. It all really helped for a long time. For the last flare up, I had this massage therapist (who I picked solely for our common name, but turned out to be awesome) work on it and his techniques had me feeling pains that were on par with labor pains. It took a complete day for me to feel better after that, but I've basically been pain-free until today. Today can suck it.

We're back from vacation and I have a picture post about that coming soon, but I just realized I had this other post almost finished and ready to go. Seems prudent to publish this first and if there's anything I could use more of is prudence.

Like many people who watched the Olympics, I felt awe, pride, inspiration...laziness and regret. I watched the women's Olympic road race and felt inspired to spend some more time in the (bike) saddle. I've been majorly slacking on training this summer despite my high hopes this past spring. Does intention count for anything? I felt I properly intended to ride more and so I deserve my due credit! I can't put my finger on exactly what happened but I ended up insanely busy this summer and didn't have time to do much in the way of riding. I picked up this book from the library to help with motivation. Why yes, I am a time crunched cyclist. I am also a time crunched parent. Is there a book for that?



I was able to squeeze in a nice long ride to Old Folsom last month. It was an excellent ride! We stopped for lunch at Samuel Horne's Tavern and spotted a band of pirates. They did not order rum in their first round, but did for their second. Sometimes stereotypes are comforting.



Here's that new bar tape I put on. I really like how it goes with the color of my frame. I also got new black brake hoods, which I was so happy about that I actually wrote an Amazon review. My old white ones (originals?) were super sticky, grimey and breaking down into rubbery goo.



I am also back on the 30 Day Shred. I love and hate this stupid DVD. I need all the squats I can get for my riding legs. Sometimes as I roll out of bed at unreasonably early hours to get my fitness clothes on, I repeat this brief mantra, "you deserve this." Often times it's much more of a scold than an affirmation, like "you made unhealthy choices and now you will pay." More recently, I try to think of it in a more positive light as in, "you really deserve this special time to better yourself, be fit and get stronger." I do deserve it.

Nomnivores

We did some camping this last weekend. I didn't get many pictures, which sort of bums me out. I don't know what to tamp into the Excuse Cannon® (patent pending), but it will probably be something along the lines of "why bother, my kid hates pictures and won't sit still." Yes. That sounds right. This picture came out a bit blurry, but I love what is captured here. The big one and the little one sharing a laugh about something. Ira was cracking me up all weekend. I love having a funny kid. His non-sequiturs and out-of-nowhere anecdotes are the best. My favorite of the weekend had to be his completely off-topic story about the dangers of lunch meat.


Ira: "One time at school, I slipped on a piece of salami and I thought it was so funny!" [Reenacts salami slipping] I admit that the humor in this largely was that it was told so out of context.


But it's true. Lunch meat can be very slippery. He also told me that he tried pig at snack yesterday. Pig? Yeah, I know. It's a fancy preschool with a lot of foodie parents and I wouldn't be surprised if someone had brought an entire leg of home-cured Iberico ham. Turns out it was just regular lunch meat-style ham. The kids are learning about dinosaurs and the difference between carnivores, omnivores and herbivores, and were offered corresponding snacks at circle time. What macho little man wouldn't want to have what a T-rex would have? Anyway, he tried it and he liked it. He also told me he taught the class about nomnivores, which only eat noms. We might buy some lunch meats. Do any of you know the best place to find some top quality stuff?


Back to camping. We went here:

This is Goose Lake and it's somewhere, way up highway 49. There were tons of alpine lakes in this region and the scenery was stunning. Our site was right next to this lake and we felt like we were camping in one of those motivational posters, except with way more mosquitoes. Actually, I'm being dramatic. The mosquitoes were not really that bad after heavy application of repellant. And they really only came out for about an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. The fire and clothing kept them mostly at bay. If I had brought appropriate clothing, I might not have mentioned the mosquitoes at all. All in all, I would go back. It really was that beautiful.