All Jacked Up and Nowhere To Go

The weather’s been lousy all week here – cloudy, cold, freezing rain, schools and businesses closed – except for one day, Wednesday, which was cold but not a cloud in the sky. It was breezy and sunny, and that night we got a PERFECT view of the lunar eclipse, a red moon with a sliver of turquoise on the edge. No telescope was necessary to see the progression of the earth’s red reflection taking the place of what we usually see which is the sun’s brightness displayed on the moon’s surface.

Amazingly Thursday morning I woke up to the same overcast and rainy weather as if Tuesday hadn’t missed a beat. In fact, the ice storm began early and continued through most of the day. Steve came home too as his office closed their campus and sent everyone home. Even the construction guys remodeling our kitchen took off.

We were in the same weather situation when I went to bed Thursday night. Though I was snug under the covers by 8:30pm I was in a deep sleep come Friday morning when the alarm went off at 4:00am (no bounding out as I did Monday!). I laid there for a few minutes and finally rolled out – before I fell asleep again! :)

I use a French press to make coffee since I’m the only one at our house who drinks it, and I like it rich and dark (Steve has at least one of those qualities – he’s rich! – in character traits like patience, kindness, compassion…traits I have to commit to every morning…what, did you think I was going to say something like MONEY???).

Since our kitchen is torn apart it’s been easier to humble myself and just use the coffeemaker. It’s too hard to boil water in the microwave and then try to pour it into the French press carafe. We have the microwave connected to an outlet in another room, which is a HOOT. This is a slide-in microwave with a built-in fan underneath, not one of those countertop jobs, so it doesn’t sit level. We have it propped up on a phone book sitting on two TV trays. To make things even more interesting, our fridge is sitting (plugged in and working fine) in our living room. We stocked it full of beer and suddenly we were able to fluently speak Redneck…it happened so fast…like a religious experience…we’re suddenly “filled with the spirit” (of Amberbock) and speaking in Redneck tongues!!

Steve started parking the Jeep in the front yard and our old kitchen sink is now sitting on the back deck next to the grill…

I’m KIDDING – but only about the Jeep and kitchen sink…and the religious experience :).

Anyway, I make coffee and it’s gooooood. I dash some peanut butter on a wheat bagel, swig some yogurt, down some water. Coffee tastes even better, so I start to drink another cup. I kiss Steve goodbye and practically skip out the door – I am totally jacked up on a LOT of coffee on top of very little food. The brain is firing on all cylinders…just how many scoops of coffee go into a 10-cup coffeemaker anyway???

…Ya know, it might not be a bad idea to check email, see if swim practice has changed due to the weather…

And there it is…”Morning CSPM practice is CANCELLED”

Wow, good thing I checked! It’s only 5:00am – back to bed!!

Um, yeah, that worked great – for about 10 minutes. Even with Steve wanting to “spoon” with me – among other things - I finally rolled out of bed – again – looked at my workout calendar and decided to do Saturday’s workout today, and go to Masters instead on Saturday.

Worked out great! I did a cadence workout and (courtesy of the coffee) I was all over pyramid sets of 95rpms, 100rpms, 110+ rpms – 5 minutes each. It also helped that my iPod served up Joe Satriani’s Surfing with the Alien tracks – all heart-thumping metal guitar music that has held its own for over 20 years – perfect to ride to. Some early Van Halen was thrown in there too.

I was pouring sweat when I finished 90 minutes later, happy as a clam. I reached a new sustaining speed and my nose hardly ran at all. It was the first workout where I really pushed on my breathing since the surgery and it was awesome….so worth it.

Seems I was all jacked up – with “somewhere to go” after all :).