I am tired of people complaining about Valentine’s Day being a commercial holiday invented by Hallmark to make people spend money. Not celebrating Valentine’s Day because you want to ’stick it to the man’ or you want to prove that your loved one loves you ALL 365 days of the year is stupid.
There are only a handful of holidays that people actually celebrate by changing their daily routines and behaving differently. On the 4th of July, Americans fly the flag, have barbecues, and set off explosives. On Halloween, people dress up, find ways to scare themselves, and give/collect candy. On New Year’s Eve, people celebrate the beginning of a new year by getting festively drunk with their friends. And so on. But these “special” days make up only a tiny fraction of an otherwise completely normal year where you get up and live each day ordinarily.
Today is Valentine’s Day – it has a name and a theme and associated colors – and if you aren’t too busy being against this day, it’s a chance to break from your normal, boring routine. You don’t have to buy flowers and chocolate and jewelry. You don’t have to go on a fancy date or even have a significant other. It’s a day about love and surely there is somebody you love, be it your wife, your kid, your best friend, your mom, or even just yourself. Valentine’s Day is a chance to pay a little more attention to that love, even if you do it every other day of the year as well.
It’s your call. If you’d rather pretend today is meaningless and stupid, go for it. Personally, I like days that are supposed to be a little more significant than all of the others on the calendar. I don’t want to shortchange myself a holiday because I’m busy trying to prove that today is just as ordinary as all the others.
February 14th 2010 |
Posted in Life
I am sick of cycling and the trainer and intervals and workouts and warm ups and cool downs and recovery rides. I am tired of spandex and chamois pads and Bag Balm and sweat towels and Sidis and sports bras and cycling socks and lightweight, uncomfortable saddles. I will be ill if I have another bottle of Heed or glass of Recoverite or bag of Clif Energy Gelatinous Blobs of Miserable Hell. I don’t want to push through another endurance ride or drive to the gym or do another leg exercise or stretch or lube my chain or put on my heart rate monitor or get past my VO2 max.
Winter fucking blows. I’m sorry, but it does. Winter training is fun for maybe a month and then it starts to drag and then it starts to REALLY FUCKING SUCK.
Its my blog and I can swear if I want to. I’m sorry, Mom.
It has been too long since I’ve had a ride I actually enjoyed. I’m having a hard time remembering why I do this, why I train day after day, why I sweat it out on the trainer for a couple of hours or work my butt off at the gym two or three times a week. I’m tired, chafed, calloused, annoyed, burned out, and totally effing over the stupid winter training. Don’t tell me to go ride outside; I have a training plan and I have my reasons for sticking with the trainer and right now I just want to tell the whole world that I WANT TO QUIT.
There. It’s out of my system. Now I can get back to riding the trainer.
February 9th 2010 |
Posted in Biking
When you are 18″ tall, running around in 30+ inches of snow is deeply exhausting. They’ve been passed out next to me on the couch for over an hour and while I love their warm, fluffy company, there are a few issues. Namely, Scout has rancid gas, Kobe is snoring loudly and has disgusting breath, and there are eight paws that each smell strongly of puppy and Fritos.
It’s like cuddling with the trash can, the garbage disposal, the toilet, and a Snuggie all at once.
February 6th 2010 |
Posted in The Pups
As Bobby carefully maneuvers his car through the snow, he says: “The roads are starting to get slippy. Slippy. SLIIIIIIIPPPY! That is such a weird word. I can’t believe the word is ’slippy’.”
“It’s not. It’s slippery.”
February 6th 2010 |
Posted in Bobby
The mice are alive and well. They spend the majority of their time running around underneath the bedding in a network of shifting tunnels and burrows, but occasionally venture out to play and eat. And eat and eat and eat. Those two little rodents eat a few tons of seeds every week. It must be why their ears have grown so big. Like little elephant mice.
At least I have a back-up plan in the event that I lose interest in the pet mice:
That’s only a joke. To be honest, I’m such a stupid sucker for little animals that I already feel sad when I think about either of the mice reaching the end of their short lifespans. I almost wish it would turn out that I have a male and a female, and thus an unending succession of baby mice to love, but that would create its own problems. Two mice are cute; two to the Nth power mice sounds like something that would put me on the evening news. “The smell became so overwhelming,” Lindsay’s neighbors told CNN Reporters, “that we finally had to call the Health Department. They carried out cages of thousands of mice, while Lindsay chased after them pulling at her clothes and screaming, ‘My babies!’”
In other news, my dreams of them spending hours running on their wheel have been crushed. They are too small to make the wheel turn.
January 30th 2010 |
Posted in Life, The Mice
“Remember when I texted you last night to say ‘I can’t sleep and I miss you’? Yeah, what I meant was ‘I can’t sleep and I have really bad gas’.”
January 25th 2010 |
Posted in Life
In the course of conversation today, I was reminded of the time in fifth grade when I decided I wanted a nickname. At the time, “Linny” seemed like a great choice. Determined to make the nickname stick, I insisted on writing my name as “Linny” on all of my school papers. Nothing happened for a while and I figured my teacher was accepting of my new name.
Not so. One day she called me up to her desk, pointed at an assignment where I’d written “Linny” in the header, and disdainfully asked, “What is that?” I tried to explain, at which point she told me my name was Lindsay and I should use that and that alone.
I’m not bitter or anything, though. Bitch.
January 24th 2010 |
Posted in Ye Olden Days
It was finally time for a much overdue haircut yesterday. I don’t have a regular stylist, mostly because I am not regularly styled, but I went back to the girl who has cut my hair a few times over the past two years. She’s nice and nothing if not interesting. For example, last night she covered my head with conditioner and then announced that she was going to the restroom. Then she disappeared into the bathroom for five minutes. I felt weird about the whole thing at first, but then it sort of amused me. I’m used to a world where women (primarily at my office) pretend that we do not do anything in the bathroom except fluff our hair and examine our teeth. We do not poop, and if anyone comes into the bathroom while we are doing anything other than fluffing our hair, we universally fall silent and pretend to not exist. So having my stylist announce that she was going to the bathroom and then making it clear what she was doing by being gone for more than thirty seconds was interesting. Honestly, it was somewhat refreshingly honest and human. And I just described someone going to the bathroom as “refreshing”.
This is not the only time she has left me briefly speechless. There was the time she was talking to a neighboring stylist about their mutual friend’s herpes, at which point she included me in the conversation by sharing that she has HPV. Last night she told me that she got a DUI this past summer and chose to pass on the restricted license because she didn’t want the breathalyzer installed in her car.
These are not things I normally share with strangers.
But I like it. It fascinates me in the same way that the Total Honesty movement fascinates me; I can’t imagine doing it myself, but I imagine it would be deeply freeing to hold nothing back and share every thought and detail and feeling. Some people even think that what I say here is a version of being overly open about my life, but I think that’s more of a generational gap than a true assessment of how bluntly honest I am.
I’m rambling. I think I’ll stop and go to the restroom.*
*Strictly to fluff my newly-cut hair.
January 22nd 2010 |
Posted in Life
Discussing meats over a lunch at Whole Foods: “I’m very particular about my meat. Gristly, fatty, weird stuff just freaks me out. I think it was the way I grew up – my mom always bought the nice, lean, high-quality stuff and it spoiled me. A few years ago, I bought a big package of store-brand chicken breasts and they were gross. I had to throw them out.”
“Really?” Bobby replied. “Chicken is pretty lean.”
I grimaced. “Nope. These were bad. For me, it’s Perdue or die.”
January 21st 2010 |
Posted in Bobby, Family, Life
I feel kind of over writing this blog. Maybe I’m just being an irritable shit today. Probably, actually, but I still feel like quitting anyways. Sometimes I think it would be awesome to just drop off the Internet entirely; kill my Facebook account, unsubscribe from any mass emails, stop checking blogs and websites regularly. An analog existence actually sounds refreshing a lot of the time, and it certainly would help me avoid times like Monday afternoon, where I lost several hours to pointless surfing while avoiding a ride on the trainer.
But then I’d miss the latest post on fmylife.com and then I’d probably catch fire.
I’ve been grumpy for the past few days on and off for no discernible reason. It’s annoying because I know I’m a drag to be around (I’m around myself all the time and it sucks), but I can’t change the problem if I can’t identify it. If I had to venture a guess, I would say it’s the same problem I’ve been facing for the past few months: I am discontent, dying for a change of some sort, but unable to choose a step to take in any direction. Be a pro cyclist? Go to law school? Try being a writer? Reproduce? Pierce or tattoo something?
This is probably a quarter-life crisis. It makes me want to fill my ears with cement when I realize that saying that calls to mind a John Mayer song I used to love when I enjoyed generic, boring music. When I made my mom listed to Mayer’s album back when I loved it, even she was like, “Meh. It’s boring.” I didn’t know any better at the time. Now I listen to generic, ‘trendy’ music by bands with names that start with “The” and I feel superior to my former, John Mayer-listening self.
I just choked on the gum I’m chewing while being completely sedentary in my cubicle. FML.
January 20th 2010 |
Posted in Family, Life, Ye Olden Days