My commute to Paypal is 5 miles, and sadly i have done it less than 10 times in 6 months. I rode in once my 2nd week, just to hit that, then i was so busy onboarding for a month, then Beckie started traveling for work, and then they did renovations to the shower. These were mostly excuses. Mostly i didn’t like all the overhead for 23 minutes of riding. Until i had to rrrrrreally start grubbing for riding time, and sampled the new locker room with complimentary toiletries. I am frugal, i enjoy the sensuality of q-tips and mouthwash, free hot water and body wash are worth at least $65 extra a year, and i won a $25 ebay giftcard as an incentive for the mandated Maricopa Country Trip Reduction Plan. Its 5 miles! Tired, weary, hungover, hungry, hot, cold, sunburned, stressed, addled, over-caffeinated, fat-saturated — Genevieve did it with me once — its 5 pathetic miles!

Once i put it onto the project plan at the scrum meeting, i easily did 3 days in a row. But here i am all kitted up 2x a day, and nowhere to go? Possibilities are intriguing for easy brick workouts with minimal overhead: 45 – 120 min CX or XC to the office and back, 20 min of freeweights, 20 min of pilates, 45 min at the gym, 2 miles jogging, runzeheunding, or picking the kids up from school.

Today was the bi-annual bike-to-school day. We locked G’s new ride Hawkeye up in the morning, i rode to work, home, then back with the trailer. From back in the day…G got a free ride across her campus, and experimented with gravity.

G remembered our route from Alana’s school to her school to the golf course, and wanted to lead. Fearless she is, even after she ate shit twice in gravelly transitions in the dark. It didn’t phase her, just motivated her to pick a new spot on the fairway for us to romp. The only 20 feet of rope on the course becomes Angry Birds, pigs popping while little girls tumble down the links.

Alana is such a girly-girl, so tender and so moody. Her idolatry of G pushes her beyond any positive or negative reinforcement i’ve failed to provide. How does an offspring of mine refuse practical shoes? At least she knows barefoot is better.

Insistent on these clothes, which somehow match

dirty girl is happy, she may yet become core

i had no hand in this, Genevieve posed it

The Beatles – Here Comes The Sun

One can actually live on work, obligations and beer for 4 straight days!

96 hrs online, on the kids, or drunkspinning workfinishing. sleep arbitrated with laundry and dishes and feeding the masses. crossfit parenting, dulled to the perfect edge for trudging.

We 3 launched with purpose by sleeping late on Tuesday, an executive decision to power nap, everyone still tired from the zoo and dreading mommy gone. Leisurely breakfast and play with binoculars over a babyblue Valley morning a bon voyage for them, skipping agroSnotsdale school traffic godspeed for me. Why do stay-at-home-moms bristle at the term ‘unemployed‘? I won’t use it, if you won’t drive like you’re late to a meeting.

Wednesday was my monthly volunteer day. I helped kids with math. I went to PE and did aerobics with G. it was the best part of my day, even better than Bagel Day, which is inevitably pockmarked with co-irkers. I spent 30 minutes commando in Fresh&Sleazy, and somehow did not eat any of it til 3 days later. Why would a child complain about a quesadilla? Melted kiddie plates forgotten in the oven looked like Dali clocks, late sittter, sidewall slice at 2 miles in to a 1hr window dodging crap-ass minichunk, spunk dry, forgot extra sealant: white people problems. It is dark and calm and 60 degrees over a babyblue Valley night. I jogged home, ran back out with the dog, took a staff meeting on IST time, drank heavily. Doing it the next day and the next.

I’ve seen a lot of blogs from parents. The women writers gush and whine and take 4x too long to get to the fucking point. The men act disdainful, then redeemed, then make bad fart jokes. I am disinterested in their little monsters and blogspot subdomains. I don’t want to wallow in pearls of wisdom, i just want it to be quiet for another day pushing a boulder up a hill.

I try to find a sparkle every day, something remarkable to testify. Some days the kids or the dog or the sunset provide, some days its a chore and a bore and i slice sidewalls. Some days i can’t even enjoy rubbing one out cause i can no longer imagine any conceivable narrative where stripper-hot women would be interested in me. So omnipotent is my lameness, it suspends suspension of disbelief, even in a porno.

Its 65 and sunny everyday of an AZ winter. Annnnnnnnnnnnnd its trainer season! Monday – trainer! Tuesday – trainer! Wednesday – sidewall slice, and then…trainer!!!

Since i clearly don’t ride anymore, i made myself happy the next best way, and bought gear. Thanks Fish! Then i fought with my kids and kicked Alana’s bike down the street, cause i’m good at ruining a day like that.

Maad gave me a charity fuck and drug me out at 3pm Friday around the Gateway Loop. The start of the weekend was so beautiful it stung, but i could only wheeze and wallow over spanking Alana that morning, even though she so had it coming. Maad bitched about needy bitches and their booty calls interrupting his training sleep. FML. Personal best time on Paradise Wash – 7:32.

50 minutes is not a ride, so i made myself happy the next best way. Kila and i picked the girls up from school.

G showed off her bike by riding around the gym at Kids Club. i asked her if she thought Alana would remember we fought that morning. G figured no, and Alana couldn’t be happier to see us and the bikes. We took the long way home through the golf course. The kids rolled down hills and romped in the dark til they were dizzy. We showed Alana a swamp we’d found the week prior, formed where the golfcourse’s irrigation settles. Reeds and lush trees sprung out of the ill-planned source at the lowpoint of fake greenery interweaved with bands of desert. Hundreds of small black birds chittered in the reeds, quieted as we approached, fled to the high branches as Kila sloshed through the muck, then dropped like beads in a lava lamp back down to the reeds.