chollaball.net

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.

MLK Day at the zoo.  I forgot the stroller for Alana, perhaps a Freudian slip, i sooooo want her to tuffen up. She walked almost the whole way. I think she got stronger, I did til i cracked. The half mile carrying her from the petting zoo to the water cave was so tiring I contemplated tossing her to the Brown Wolf. We would not survive The Road.

happy girls with rock candy pops
.

really happy, G sat for about 10 minutes and nursed hers

2nd time on the merry-go-round? 1st time feeling likc a triceratops jockey

listen to the giggle

The gospel I preach is they can pick a single ride or treat each visit to the zoo. Its less about saving money, and more about the cardinal virtues and the deadly sins. It leaves me room to be magnanimous, and rebuke G when she feigns entitlement. I saw the slide and knew G would choose it. She rode her bike from 105th St. to the golf course on Quartz Trail the other night, fearless of the chunk or the pitch. I asked her before the last gravelly descent what she needed to think about and she said ‘Staying balanced and holding the brakes.’

4 seconds never felt so good. Selling it to Alana that she would get her own treat too was not easy. Its hard being sub-38 inches.

4 hours non-stop = instant coma

I spent the seasonal slowdown meshing the outdoors with suburban cubicle hell. Verily, the girls did too. They can hate me when they are 16, but they love every minute of it now.

G and I did 3 rides on her new bike, the 2nd one 5 miles to my office on mups and bike lanes. She watched Netflix and ate Captain Crunch while I worked, then we rolled another 5 home. 100 yards from the end of rush hour traffic on FLW blvd, with one driveway left to cross, she got happy and squirrely and turned right into me, premature celebration like the one that nearly broke my thumb on the last 200 yards of Kiwanis. A lesson i will not forget, and neither will G. She bounced off me and into the street. I pulled her back onto the sidewalk while she screamed.  I’m still shaken, but how is she gonna learn to ride in the bike lane if she doesn’t practice? Teaching her to get into granny to climb the canal and bombing off it dispelled the fear of God racing through both of us. *smiles*

here are some bad videos of sessioning the tunnel at Shea\92nd.

The next ride we hit McPump, and the trail. 4 hours ripping the track and 2 1.5m laps on singletrack off the Long Loop – a good day for a tinyHuman and her new bike. She fell, she got up, she had snacks, she rode the jump line on her 20″. I rode it 20 times til i could land pointing down. Beckie rode the 29er and ran. Outdoor fun for everyone.

Alana has learned to run! Sorta. 20 feet at a time. She pumps her legs and slopadoodles 20 feet down the hall, nearly crashing, recovering, then slopadoodling another 20.

Alana rode to the Eagle and back on her 12 inch. She has no power in her stroke, but has begun to combine core with turning. We went down a 1% grade, me in front, stepping 2 steps back and 2 steps sideways, and her steering each direction after me chattering about that damn kid Dylan again. She did not dead-sailor and flop out of the saddle on turns, finally a sign that she is getting it. She began to get braking, when i say pedal forward, and pedal back. But those are similar and confusing words for a Podford; they process very slowly when the cpu connects to the leg api. Like G with her new bike, Alana gets better with more saddle time.

we pedaled, we sang, we played with the remote control car and climbed.

the last day of vacation we hiked Pinnacle Peak. G made it the whole way, albeit with some nudging. Alana did fine, just fine for such a beautiful little girl on such a big pitch.

the first day back at work i wanted to kill everyone and quit, not necessarily in that order. If I could have every day to play outside with my girls, it would not last long enough. I am strongly considering becoming a stay-at-home dad.

two handbrakes, rear deraileur, squishy and too long. A dirt ride covered in her bigger bad-ass pads and new jersey allowed saddle time and gentle falls. G did so well already!!!

The girls have always behaved differently around me. There are things that transpire, depths of activity and imagination that are an antithetic wavelength from my wife’s. The girls connect to her viscerally, obsessively, an umbilical chord. They adore her and melt around her. They are magnetized by how she nurtures them.

I am their left brain, their directed adventure, their challenge to learn and improve themselves mentally and physically, their kick in the ass to quit being wussies and have fun.  They ask me questions, I give them answers. I tell G she is smarter than Kila, except Kila fights better. I tell her cursing is ok if she is ready for the consequences. I tell Alana she can take whatever she wants as long as she carries it, then quickly walk away from her. I let them paint in the kitchen.  My agenda and pain and structure get timeboxed, i love them wantonly, recklessly, as long as they don’t whine.

I try to balance who i am with my role. Two roles now. Beckie is traveling 4 days a week, and her void reminds me everywhere. I sink, willingly, sorta, into a gentle trudge, a pain cave with bursts of beatific light blowing through it. The edges are smoothed by lack of sleep, anejo, and weariness from a high-fat low-workout diet. The sitter got sick, I could not bare resetting them in the car for a trip to the gym and screwing Kila out of another walk. I keep fading, fogging over…I need to help G with a school art project, at 11:30 i finished my day job and started a half-assed beer-fueled workout.

I convinced\strong-armed them to walk Kila around the block with me. All of us a little too tired, G skyping Beckie I was being mean, shoving them away for 17 minutes to keep the house from crumbling down. Getting out fixes almost everything, smiles and jokes returned. It is beautiful, if I can keep my sisyphean conscious from rolling down on me.

G wanted me to take pictures of her climbing the Eagle. I did not have a camera, which made no difference, since really she just wanted to pose.  She quoted Phineas and Ferb about mental picutres. Hehe, she quotes shows…on her way to geekdom, pretty blonde popular geekdom.  Sure baby, i’m down with the fakey photos, saves me time cleaning the memory card, and i can be lazy while they run themselves retarded up and down a pile of rocks.

Except, ‘Say cheese‘ lasts for 3.5 pretend pictures, until they lose all interest and spell my doom.

Me: Maybe you haven’t been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked!
G: Daddy, take another picture, or I’ll start choking Alana
Me: I don’t wanna rain on your parade, but we’re not gonna last seventeen *hours* against them things!
G: Daddy!!!! i found a rusty knife, some acid, and this dead skunk!

Panic!

PANIC!

We still had the Despicable Me thing going on. giggle, laugh, cry, whine   And i do love this commercial

Soon it became eagle, cat, Kila, cow, jaguar, silly, chicken, frightened, pteranadon! G kept up. so did Alana. Hands, and feet and faces, standing on top of a rockpile posing in the dark.  And there we 3 were, in perfect harmony.

We rolled home, G enjoying a scooter so she could keep down with Alana, still on her dumb-ass-baby-trike that she insisted on taking. And pedaled the whole way. By the end she pushed, she carried, but she did not quit. Blew my mind, I was ready to carry it rather than be dickDad to whiny Podford — better place better time for correcting this behavior. But she made it! The next night she picked up and almost dropped a 15 lb dumbell on her foot. Really…15 lbs, who knew?!  The drop scared her, but for once she did not implode. I explained owies, and rock falls, and certainty. Then bumped knuckles and exploding knuckles and grabbed butts, and still she pouted, but did not quit. By now G at 3 would be laughing dropping the dumbell again.  I put her in bed at 12:41, after she finally passed out at 12:36. She stirred when i started to drop her, a nod to Inception, and rolled awake screaming that she wanted to stay up.

climbing class

potty training

fall break summation

mexico preparation

Ida Maria – Queen Of The World

G and I got into a BIG fight.

The cherry topping on this giant pile-o-shit cake was that it came after rock climbing class. G is on Fall Break, and we did not clue-in to kindergartners actually having an actual ‘Fall Break‘ in time to avoid 5 days of Hurricane G to the chest. Her climbing coach said it was her best ever day. I’m sure, rested and antsy and ready to blow. After class I climbed with her.  She became  the teacher. She has 4x the hours on a climbing wall I’ve ever had; six months weekly has made her hands and forearms powerful. and i’m coachable.  G said ‘look up, don’t look down.’ The extra effort i spent flailing my feet were easier on my body then the drag from pointing my head down. On the second run i started remembering where the toe-holds were, or getting the most out of a quick glance and sticky climbing shoes. Suddenly it made sense how carelessly she hops up the walls flopping on only 2 contact points; she is good. And my 3 runs were so much easier than they looked from the bottom, a milestone for me…thanks t.Human!

I was about to ask the staff for the next belay class when G baked the pile-o-shit cake. Suddenly she was kicking and screaming and writhing on the floor about tying her shoes. *boom* Welcome to Genevieve’s meltdown.

It was so obvious, when I look at it now.

The day before,  Alana — also being vagrant due to teacher career enhancement training at Kinder Care (which *groan* i wholeheartedly support) — threw a too-expensive-for-toddlers bowl of peas into the wall. I shrugged and ever-so-mildly berated myself. Saw it all coming, saw her not-nap, nod off in the car, slide into bitchiness. I was too very weary to care, it was just a bowl.

I got beatdown at work, beatdown by housewifing, beatdown by my house and wife, and blown from 30 minutes climbing and an hour lifting. I may still have been feeling dt’s after Tuc Fxs.

It was so obvious, when I look at it now.

But in the moment, it was an insult, her personal grudge against all the work and patience i’ve given her, a submission to her lazy self-indulgence. She knows…KNOWS…i can take just about any of her bullshit anywhichway…except shrieking, too many years of that.  “oh no you didn’t!‘ I thought while my inner angry black chick waggled her neck.

I felt awful all next day. tummy-twisting awful. don’t-look-in-the mirror awful. be-nice-to-awful-coworkers awful.  move-out-failure-as-father-&-husband awful.

Things are not as bad as they seem, and blogging is dramaqueenization. Focusing on improvement is my best effort at closure on pile-o-shit cake mistakes. Words hurt, and i’ve always been too good with them. When you make a nearly-6 yr old cry for 5x longer than when she ate shit on this big hill, i don’t need to be told twice a correction is required.

Sometimes i hate my wife for my burdens and bondage. Then, her comprehension of my dynamics awe me, remind me of all that’s genuine between us. She said: G’s not a bad kid, she’s tired, sometimes she needs help, sometimes you punish her. I chapped Beckie a few days prior for letting Alana faceplant when she 75% knew it would end in a faceplant. Touche, thanks Sweet Honey for the knowledge.  ‘

I apologized to G an hour later, while she was washing her hands. M’eh, the moment was there. I’m sorry i got cranky, i was tired. you know how it gets when your’e cranky?

Then Beckie went away for 2 days. and G was still off school for 2 days. Genevieve, Alana, and Paypal – i was monster-herding every second, i dreamed about my stress. Thursday was luau night at the Fishbowl! G spun nearly 3 hrs nonstop, exploding from a good day of movies and cooked-to-order meals and Starfall. ‘May I have some broccoli‘ = parenting heroics. Alana was much the same. At the Fishbowl, I looked for it, saw it, caught it also in myself, then loaded us all into the car and got the fuck out, before any vampires feasted. All night i calibrated on helping, not pushing. The return of positive-dad [insert estrogen joke here]. I explained it to G when i was starting to lose it, and she said ‘i’m gonna take my cranky face off too’, then passed out in the car. Alana was so jacked on candy she yapped nonstop, but i finally got her to lay down and sleep without yelling 2 hrs later. By Friday i was hungover and drunk, kept marching on, brought G to my office and the library and Fresh&Sleazy. She ate everything in sight, she spoke to me and i listened to her, she was beautiful for 6 hrs. I finished my work day at 12:04am.

Parenting is probably better both hard and soft. The positivity of going soft is immeasurably easier.

Climbing on the Bird is finally less-than-utterly-pathetic. My legs and balance are coming around. There are ~10 big ups on Somo from Javalina to Buena Vista, and each ride for nearly 10 years their ticks have located a climbing performance meter in my head. I think i got 4 last ride, which was 3 more than the first time on the Bird. Coupled with a vigorous pace chasing Chongoman up the mountain, i declared myself a winner!  40 minute sprints up the McDs and 2 days at Rancho are paying off in enough balance and strength to power over challenges, and enough confidence to commit to finishing them. Each of the last 5 rides have been better than the one before it. Descending is so copacetic it hardly merits the attention to type. I’m developing a trust in the big fat fork and the stiff sticky rear end, learning to jump safely jump into chunk. I got the s-curve on 24th St. for the first time in far too long, and on Highline let the bike take me down through danger by going faster. Paradise Wash time trials are pushing me into new comfort zones of speed. Last run was 7:59; descending the AZT in Flagstaff was a rainbow of emerald and olive and moss and malachite.

I’ve started again picking the girls up from their school(s) with the bikes and Kila. I slam a beer on the ride over, its like happy hour, where fatigue and anxiety slip away in adventures with my pack. G’s climbing gets stronger, less sprinting and more spinning. Sometimes she zig-zags lazily up the hill while we talk about her school day.  She too unwinds, kindergarten happy hour on 2 wheels. At the Hill Park she followed me down a 5-stepper. She stopped and asked before trying it — can i do it? When i told her no problem, and reminded her how, her body language spoke her understanding to unweight the front and trust gravity. Summer PT days have sharpened and relaxed her to  ride out the momentum.  She can climb every table at Rage and knows which to avoid at McPump, absent are the out-of-control backward flops, finding her comfort zone between attacking and retreating from a big up. She finishes our sessions filthy, shweaty, unscathed, and starving!  The last time rolling home from the Hill Park she shot off the front, stopped and looked at every intersection, and then pulled out of sight on the long descent. I half-expected to find flashing lights and twisted metal at the bottom, but I found G waiting for me before crossing Thompson Peak, just like she knows to do. A 2o yard skidmark led up to the intersection. She said she made it on purpose. Gnar junkie unleashed, the downhill is what inspires her to climb.

Alana can barely reach the pedals, has no balance, and the slightest shift of the front wheel knocks her over, but she can’t wait to ride bikes. Sometimes riding means dressing up in helmet and pads, sometimes its cheering wildly from the back of the trailer, sometimes its standing around holding her bike and admiring the fresh set of streamers that to a 2-yr old make it all seem brand new.  It seems fanboy and voyeuristic, but its not her fault she can’t fit the 12 incher yet. She’s still 6 months ahead of where G was on that bike. She’s happy to get propelled around the pump track, barely a dozen laps for me hurts a lot more after pushing Alana around another 15 times.  She cheers and squeals and diabolically giggles when a tumble almost happens. Someday she will pedal, sometimes she goes down the street and back, her psych is the triumph that presupposes all the others.