Spinning My Wheels

Whoa! Where did this week go?
Surely I've done something since last I posted?
I mean, besides laundry and reading a good, long book and cleaning up the house and taking care, taking care.

Let's see. The weather's been all over the place. We've had cold and rain and we've had pure blue sky and sunshine and short-sleeves, we've had blustery wind and we've had a plum tree in full bloom against a dull grey wintery sky.

I took the kids to the local park one of the sunny, blustery afternoons and had a park encounter of the vaguely perturbing kind. There's not much to it: no trauma, no one got hurt or anything. There was just no good reason for the only other parent at the park when we got there--a mother with 2 children clearly very close in age and much younger than my own--to villainize Jonah and shoot glares at me every chance she got. Though having kids and plain ol' growing up have lessened this tremendously, being judged is something I'm very sensitive to. Even when (especially when?) it's being judged based on nothing, there's still the nagging worry that she is absolutely right: I am not a good mother, my children are terrors, etc. I figured at the time that I would blog about this, about how preposterous this woman's naked judgement was, how her behavior fit so poorly with what I've come to expect from interactions with other parents. I found that the more I thought about it, though, the harder it was to shake the feelings of inadequacy. Instead, I've let it fade, let it help me become less harsh on myself, my parenting, my kids. We're all better off for that.

We keep a post office box at a tiny post office near here, the kind of place where all the postal workers greet everyone by name (and probably know all our business too). When I've got packages to mail (I just sold a bunch of the kids' clothes on eBay), I always take them there. On Wednesday, the friendliest postal worker (a man) remarked that I've been "shedding the pounds". Aw, what a nice thing to say. Not that it's entirely true, but I have been making an effort to get more sustained exercise. With a break while I was sick, I've been riding a bike on a stationary trainer a few times a week. I used to ride my bike a lot--at least 150 miles a week for quite a while--and I've been missing that lately, as well as missing being in great shape. Sure, riding inside, not going anywhere is not quite the same, but I bought the first 2 seasons of Grey's Anatomy (which I have taken to calling "my anti-bacterial soap opera") and I watch an episode while I cycle. I want to work my endurance up to the point where I wouldn't feel like a fool joining one of the spinning classes at the gym.

That's that then. John's on Spring Break next week. With grading to do. But we are working on a big project this weekend. If all goes well, I'll tell about that tomorrow.